The Project Gutenberg eBook of History of Scotland, by Margaret Macarthur.

The country (1)—the people (2)—Roman occupation (3)—English invasion (4)—the Scots (5)—introduction of Christianity (6)—conversion of the Picts (7)—conversion of the English (8)—English conquests (9)—union of Picts and Scots (10)—the Northmen (11)—the Commendation (12)—annexation of Strathclyde (13)—acquisition of Lothian (14)—Cnut's invasion (15)—Macbeth (16)—English immigration (17)—William's invasion (18)—Margaret's reforms (19)—disputed succession (20)—Gaelic period ends (21)—summary (22).

1. The Country.—The northern part of Great Britain is now called Scotland, but it was not called so till the Scots, a Celtic people, came over from Ireland and gave their name to it. The Romans who first mention it in history speak of it as Caledonia. There are two points in which the history of this country and of the people who live in it is unlike the history of most of the other countries and nations of Europe. Firstly, it never was taken into the great Roman Empire; and secondly in it we find a Celtic people who, instead of disappearing before the Teutons, held their ground against them so well that in the end the Teutons were called by the name of the Celtic people, were ruled by the Celtic kings, [Pg 2] and fought for the independence of the Celtic kingdom as fiercely as if they had themselves been of the Celtic race. But the whole of the country is not of the same nature. The northern part is so nearly cut off from the rest of Britain by the two great Firths of Forth and Clyde as to form almost a separate island, and this peninsula is again divided into Highlands and Lowlands. Speaking roughly, we may say that all the west is Highland and the east Lowland. A range of mountains sweeping in a semicircle from the Firth of Clyde to the mouth of the Dee, known as Drumalbyn or the Mount, may be taken as the line of separation, though the Lowlands extend still further north along the eastern coast. The marked differences between these two districts have had a very decided influence on the character of the inhabitants, and consequently on the national development. The Lowlands are well watered and fertile, and the people who lived there were peaceable and industrious, and both on the seaboard and inland there is early notice of the existence of populous and thriving towns. The Highlands, on the contrary, are made up of lakes, moors, and barren hills, whose rocky summits are well-nigh inaccessible, and whose heath-clad sides are of little use even as pasture. Even in the glens between the mountains, where alone any arable land is to be found, the crops are poor, the harvest late and uncertain, and vegetation of any kind very scanty. The western coast is cut up into numberless islets, and the coast-line is constantly broken by steep jagged promontories jutting out seaward, or cut by long lochs, up which the sea runs far into the land between hills rising almost as bare and straight as walls on either side. In the Highlands even in the present day there are no towns of any importance, for the difficulty of access by land and the dangers of the coast have made commerce well-nigh impossible. The Highlanders, who were discouraged by the barrenness of [Pg 3] their native mountains, where even untiring industry could only secure a bare maintenance, and tempted by the sight of prosperity so near them, found it a lighter task to lift the crops and cattle of their neighbour than to rear their own, and have at all times been much given to pillaging the more fortunate Lowlanders, of whom they were the justly dreaded scourge.

2. The People.—As the country is thus naturally divided into two parts distinctly opposite in character, so the people are made up of two distinct branches of the great Aryan family, the Celtic and the Teutonic. The Celts were the first comers, and were in possession when the country became historically known; that is, at the first invasion of the Romans. In later times we find three Celtic peoples in North Britain; to wit, the Picts, the Scots, and the Welsh. The Picts were those Celts who dwelt north of the Firths in Alba or Alban, as the earliest traditions call it; and if we judge from the names of places and contemporary accounts and notices, there is every reason to believe that they were more akin to the Gaelic than to the British branch of the Celtic race. The Scots, the other Gaelic people, were, when we first hear of them, settled in Ireland, from whence at different times bands of them came over to the western coast of Britain. They were friends and allies of the Picts, and are early mentioned as fighting on their side against the Romans. After a time, when many more Scots had settled in Alba, their name became common to all the Celts north of the Firths, and from them the whole country was called Scotland. The Celts south of the Firths were partly Christianized and civilized by the Romans, and thus became very different from the rest. They got their name of Welsh from the Teutonic tribes who came from the land between the Elbe and the Eyder, and, settling along the eastern coast, finally took possession of a great tract of country, and called [Pg 4] the Celts whom they displaced Welshmen or foreigners. The Celts called all these new comers Saxons, though this was really only the name of one of the first tribes that came over; and as they gradually spread over the Lowlands, the word Saxon came to mean simply Lowlander. In course of time the original proportions of these two races have been nearly reversed, so that the modern Scottish nation, though it keeps its Celtic name, instead of being made up of three Celts to one Saxon, is much more nearly three Saxons to one Celt.

3. Roman Occupation.—The Romans, who had already made themselves masters of South Britain, were led into the northern part of the island by Julius Agricola, a.d. 80. But the Celts whom they found there, and whom they called Caledonians, were so well able to defend themselves among their mountains that the Romans, though they defeated them in a great battle on the Highland border, gave up the idea of conquering the country, and retreated again south of the Firths of Forth and Clyde. Across the isthmus between the two, which is about thirty miles wide, they built a line of forts, joined by a rampart of earth. This rampart was intended to serve as a defence to their colonists, and as a boundary to mark the limit of their empire; though, as many Roman remains have been found north of the isthmus, they must have had settlements without as well as within the fortifications. But the Caledonians, who were too high-spirited to look on quietly and see their country thus taken possession of, harassed the colonists by getting over the wall and seizing or destroying everything they could lay their hands on. At length (a.d. 120) the Roman Emperor Hadrian built a second rampart across the lower isthmus, between the rivers Tyne and Solway, leaving the district between the two pretty much at the mercy of the fierce Picts, as the Romans now began to call the Caledonians. Twenty years later, in [Pg 5] the reign of the Emperor Antoninus Pius, one of his generals, Lollius Urbicus, again drove them back beyond the first wall, and repaired and strengthened the defences of Agricola. But, before half a century had passed, the Picts again burst the barrier, and killed the Roman commander. In 208 the Emperor Severus cut his way through Caledonia with a large army. He reached the northern coast, but had no chance of fighting a battle, and lost many of his men. He repaired and strengthened the rampart of Hadrian. In time the Picts got over the second rampart too, and came south as far as Kent, where, in the latter part of the fourth century, Theodosius the Roman general, father of the famous Emperor of the same name, had to fight his way to London through their plundering hordes. Theodosius drove them back with great vigour, restored the Empire to its former boundary, and made the district between the walls into a Roman province, which he called Valentia, in honour of Valentinian, who was then Emperor. It was probably about this time that the great stone wall was built across the lower isthmus. The dangers which threatened the capital of the Empire in the beginning of the next century forced the Romans to forsake this as well as all their other provinces in Britain, and the withdrawal of their troops left the Romanized Britons of Valentia a helpless prey to their merciless enemies the Picts. At the end of the three centuries of Roman occupation, the Britons south of the Firths had so little in common with the wild Picts, who in Alba and in Galloway still maintained their independence, that they were like people of a different race. The one sect, though still savage and heathen, were as brave and fierce as ever; the other, though Christianized and civilized, were so degenerated from the vigour of the original stock that they were powerless to resist their more warlike kinsmen. [Pg 6]

4. English Invasion.—In the sixth century the Angles came in great force and settled on the eastern coast of Valentia, and drove the Britons, or as they called them Welshmen, back to the Westland Hills. This district then between the Roman walls was thus divided between two kingdoms. The English kingdom of Northumberland, founded by Ida in 547, took in all the eastern part of the country south of the Forth; while the Welsh kingdom, called Strathclyde from the river that watered it, stretched from the Firth of Clyde southwards towards the Dee.

5. The Scots.—About the same time that the English were pouring in on the east, the Scots were settling all along the western coast. As the strait which separates Britain from Ireland is only twelve miles broad, the Scots could easily come over from Scotia, as Ireland was formerly called, to seek their fortune in the larger island. It is impossible to fix the date of their first coming, but it was not till the beginning of the sixth century that there came over a swarm numerous and united enough to found a separate state. This is one of the few Celtic migrations on record from west to east, and forms an exception to the general displacement that was going on, by which the Celts were being driven further and further west before the Teutons. The leaders of the Scots were Fergus MacErc, and Lorn, of the family of the Dalriads, the ruling dynasty in the north of Ireland, and from them this new state founded on the western coast of what is now called Argyle got the name of Dalriada.

6. Introduction of Christianity.—These Scots were not pagans like the Picts of Alba, for Ireland had already been Christianized. The new comers brought the new faith to their adopted country, and through them it spread among the Picts, and also among the English of Northumberland. The great apostle of the Scots was Columba. He was Abbot of [Pg 7] Durrow in Ireland, but was obliged to leave his own country, because he had been engaged in a feud with some of his kinsfolk, in which his side was worsted. He came over to the new colony on the coast of Alba, and Conal, who was then King of the Dalriads, welcomed him, and gave him I, or Iona, an islet about a mile and a half long and a mile broad, lying west of the large island of Mull. Here Columba settled with the twelve monks who had come with him, and here they built for the service of God a little wooden church after their simple fashion, and for their own dwelling a few rude huts of wattle, which in after-times was called a monastery, where they passed their days in prayer and study. But their missionary zeal was as great as their piety, and from their head-quarters on Iona they went cruising about among the adjacent islands, extending their circuit to the Orkneys, and even, it is said, as far as Iceland.

7. Conversion of the Picts.—Columba himself undertook the conversion of the Picts. About two years after his arrival at Iona he set out on this important mission, crossed Drumalbyn, sought the court of Brud, the Pictish king, converted him, and founded religious communities on the same plan as that on Iona, on lands granted to him by the king or his dependent chiefs. The Church thus set up was perfectly independent of the Bishop of Rome or of any other See, but it inherited all the peculiarities of the Church of the Irish Scots. The monks had a way of their own of reckoning the time for keeping Easter and of shaving their heads, trifles which were considered important enough to become the subject of a very long quarrel, and it was not till 716 that they agreed to yield to the Roman custom in both matters. According to their system of Church government, the abbots of the monasteries were the chief dignitaries, and had all the power which in the rest of [Pg 8] Christendom was held to belong to bishops, while the bishops were held of no account except for ordaining priests, for which purpose there was one at least attached to each monastery. Columba, who was himself of the royal race, had so much influence among the Dalriads that his authority was called in to settle a dispute about the succession to the throne. The abbots of Iona after him continued supreme in all the ecclesiastical affairs of Alba till the middle of the ninth century, while the well-earned reputation for piety and learning enjoyed by the monks of his foundation was widely spread in continental Europe. About this time Kentigern revived among the Welshmen of Strathclyde the dying Christianity which had been planted there in the time of the Roman occupation.

8. Conversion of the English.—The English of Northumberland were still heathens, and, as they were ever fighting with and growing greater at the expense of their neighbours, their state bade fair to become the most powerful in Britain. In the beginning of the seventh century their king Eadwine was supreme over all Britain south of the Forth. But though Eadwine was converted by the preaching of Paullinus, the first Bishop of York, the new doctrine does not seem to have spread much among his people; for one of his successors, Oswald, who in his youth had been an exile at the court of his kinsman the Pictish king, prayed the monks of Iona to send him one of their number to help to make his people Christian. Conan, the first missionary who went, was so much disgusted with the manners of the English that he very soon came back to his brethren. Then Aidan, another of their number, devoted his life to the task which Conan had found so distasteful. He taught and toiled among them with a zeal that was seconded by Oswald, the king, who himself acted as interpreter, making the sermons of the monk intelligible to his [Pg 9] English hearers. From Lindisfarne, where the little church of Aidan was founded, like that of Iona, on an islet, Christianity spread to the neighbouring state of Mercia, and many monasteries and schools were founded after the Columban model.

9. English Conquests.—Oswald and his successor Oswiu extended their dominions beyond the Firths, and it is said that they made the Scots and Picts pay tribute to them. The next king, Ecgfrith, marched north and crossed the Tay with a mighty host, but he was routed and slain in a great battle at a place called Nectansmere, the exact position of which is uncertain. From that time the English seem to have kept more to the country south of the Forth, and the Picts were more independent of them. This is about the only event of moment that we know of in the history of that people, of whom no records remain, except a long list of their kings down to 843, at which date they became united with the Scots under one king.

10. Union of Picts and Scots.—This union took place under Kenneth MacAlpin, who was king of the Scots. That he was king of the Picts also is certain: how he came to be so can only be guessed. It is more probable that it was by inheritance than by conquest, though he and the kings after him kept his original title of King of Scots. Over how much land he reigned, and what degree of power he had over his subjects, is not known. It is thought that among the Celts the king was only the head of the dominant tribe among many other tribes or clans, each of which was bound to follow its own chief, and the king's control over those chiefs seems to have been more in name than in fact. The northern districts seem to have been ruled by powerful chiefs called Maers or Mormaers. These chiefs, who it has been supposed were nominally subject to the King of Scots, acted as if they were quite independent of him. They were indeed his most [Pg 10] troublesome enemies, and several of the kings lost their lives in battle against them. Moray was the greatest of the Mormaerships. It lay north of the Spey and of the mountains of Argyle, and stretched across the country from the Moray Firth to the opposite ocean.

11. Coming of the Northmen.—Kenneth was followed in turn by Donald, his brother, and Constantine, his son. Their reigns were mainly taken up in fighting with the Northmen, a heathen people of Teutonic race, who infested the seas and plundered the seaboard. From the eighth century downwards they were the scourge alike of English and Celtic Britain, swooping down on the coasts, harrying the lands, and making off with their booty; or, at other times, seizing and settling on great tracts of country. Three countries of modern Europe—Denmark, Norway, and Sweden were peopled by the Northmen. But while it was those from Denmark who chiefly harassed and finally conquered the English, the Norwegians seem to have looked upon Scotland as their own especial prey, attracted doubtless by the likeness between its many isles and inlets and the jagged outline of the larger Scandinavian peninsula. The long narrow lochs of the western coast, like the fiords of Norway, proved convenient harbours for the ships of these pirates. It is towards the close of the eighth century that we first hear of the descents of the Northmen on the Pictish kingdom. It is told how they ravaged all the coast, destroyed the Pictish capital, and haunted the Irish Sea. Their fury was specially directed against churches and religious communities, and Iona did not escape. Again and again it was wasted by fire and sword, its churches plundered, the brethren slain, till at length the abbot was compelled to seek on the mainland a refuge for himself and the relics of the saintly founder. Under Kenneth MacAlpin the supremacy over the Scottish Church was [Pg 11] transferred to the monastery of Dunkeld. Under Kenneth's son, Constantine I., a fresh spirit was given to these invasions by the formation of the kingdom of Norway by Harold Harfagra. The petty chiefs displaced by him, who were called Vikings or dwellers on the bays, sought a settlement elsewhere. Several of them founded settlements in Ireland, whence they went to plunder the western shores of Britain. Others took up their quarters in the Orkneys, and the Sudereys or Southern Isles, as the Northmen called those isles that are now known as the Hebrides. Those in the Orkneys were subdued by Harold, who made the islands into an Earldom and gave it to Sigurd, one of his allies. Thorstein, Sigurd's successor, proved a formidable foe to the King of Scots, made himself master of all the north country, pretty nearly answering to the modern counties of Caithness and Sutherland, to which last the Northmen gave its name because it lay south of their island possessions. On Thorstein's death his great earldom fell to pieces. About this time one Cyric or Grig, who is supposed to have been one of the Northern chiefs, seized on the throne and reigned about eighteen years, leaving his name on record as the liberator of the Scottish Church.

12. The Commendation.—Constantine II. (900-943), grandson of Kenneth, who came after Grig, commended himself and his kingdom to Eadward, king of the English, in 924. Constantine chose him as "father and lord," that is, he placed himself under his protection, and acknowledged Eadward as mightier than himself. On this compact were based the subsequent claims of the English to the over-lordship of the Scots. This commendation was renewed to Æthelstan, Eadward's successor. But Constantine soon repented of his submission, and a few years later he and the Welshmen of Strathclyde joined the Danes in their attempt to get back Northumberland, from which Æthelstan had expelled them. [Pg 12] The allies were utterly routed in the great battle of Brunanburh, in which Constantine's son was slain, in 937. Six years later Constantine exchanged civil for spiritual rule, and retired as abbot to the Monastery of St. Andrews.

13. Annexation of Strathclyde.—Malcolm I. (943-954) succeeded Constantine, though not his son, but his kinsman, for the Scots did not adhere strictly to the order of succession which is now customary: though they kept to the royal family, they generally preferred the brother to the son of the last king. The great event of this reign was the annexation of Strathclyde, which had been conquered by the English king Eadmund, and was now granted by him to Malcolm as a territorial fief, held on condition of doing military service by land and sea whenever it should be required. Thus Strathclyde became an appanage of the heir apparent to the Scottish crown. Of the six kings after Malcolm, Induff, Duff, Colin, Kenneth II., Constantine III., and Kenneth III., little is known. They passed their lives and met their deaths in struggles with the Welsh or with their own northern subjects. Under Induff the Scots got Edinburgh, which had been founded by Eadwine of Northumberland.

14. Acquisition of Lothian.—Malcolm II., grandson of the first of the name, was the last of the direct line of Kenneth MacAlpin. His reign, which lasted thirty years, is notable from the fact that he managed to get hold of Lothian, the northern part of Northumberland. One of Malcolm's first acts was an invasion of this earldom. Waltheof, the earl, being old and feeble, shut himself up in his castle of Bamborough and let Malcolm advance unresisted. He got as far as Durham, but there he was met and defeated by Uhtred, the vigorous son of the old Earl. Some years later, when his old enemy Uhtred was dead, Malcolm made a second invasion, and took ample revenge for his defeat at Durham in the brilliant victory at Carham, on the banks of [Pg 13] the Tweed, in 1018. After this victory the Scots were in possession of Lothian, which Eadulf Cutel, now Earl of Northumberland, was not strong enough to take from them. It has been said that Lothian had been already granted by Eadgar of England to Kenneth III., who petitioned for it on plea of ancient hereditary right. If so, the Scots must have lost it again; but after the victory of Carham they had it and kept it, though their king held it as an English earldom, and did homage for it to the king of the English.

15. Cnut's Invasion.—In 1031 Cnut, the mighty Dane who reigned over Denmark, Norway, and England, came north, and Malcolm met him, acknowledged him as his over-lord, and renewed the agreement which had been made between Constantine and Eadward. Three years after his submission to Cnut, Malcolm died, leaving as his heir Duncan, the son of one of his daughters who had married Crinan, Abbot of Dunkeld. There is a tradition that, to secure Duncan's succession, Malcolm had caused the grandson of Kenneth III. to be murdered. If he did so, this crime defeated its own end, for Gruach, sister of the murdered man, was now the wife of Macbeth, the Mormaer of Moray, one of the most powerful chiefs. Duncan came north to make war on some of these turbulent Maers, and Macbeth seized the opportunity thus offered by the presence of the king in his province, attacked and defeated him in battle, and afterwards slew him in a place called Bothgowan, which it is thought means a smith's hut.

16. Macbeth, 1040-1057.—Macbeth must not be looked on as an usurper and murderer. He was the natural supporter of the claims of his wife and Lulach, her son by a former marriage, who, according to the received rule of Gaelic succession, had a better right to the throne than Duncan himself; and no doubt he justified the murder of the young king as lawful revenge for that of his wife's brother. At all events, [Pg 14] after he had got the kingdom, he ruled it well and wisely, so that his reign was a time of great national plenty and prosperity, and he and his wife were benefactors of the Church and of the poor, not only at home, but abroad, for it stands on record that they sent alms to the poor at Rome. But he was not left long in peaceable possession, for the father of Duncan, Crinan, Abbot of Dunkeld, got up a rising in favour of his two grandsons, Malcolm and Donald. About the same time Siward, Earl of Northumberland, brought an army against Macbeth, and drove him from the throne, though he got it back as soon as Siward went away. Some years later Siward, whose kinswoman Duncan had married, again took up the cause of his cousin Malcolm, invaded the kingdom and defeated the king in a great battle; and though Macbeth held out for four years longer, he was at last slain at Lumphanan in Aberdeen. Lulach, son of Gruach, died soon after; and though he left a son, called Malsnecte, whose claim was brought up again long afterwards, there was no attempt made at that time to prolong the struggle.

17. English Immigration. Malcolm III., 1057-1093.—The reign of this Malcolm, surnamed Canmore or the great head, is a turning-point in Scottish history, which henceforth ceases to be essentially Scottish; the Celtic manners, language, laws, and customs being changed by the strong English influence brought to bear on them in this and the following reigns. This change was in great measure due to the conquest of England in 1066 by the Normans under William the Conqueror. The Scottish court was the nearest and most natural refuge for those Englishmen who would not yield to the strangers. Thither they flocked in great numbers, and there they found a hearty welcome. Among these exiles came Eadgar the Ætheling, the representative of the West-Saxon kings, and with him his mother and his [Pg 15] two sisters Margaret and Christina. Malcolm received them very kindly, and they stayed with him all the winter. In the beginning of his reign Malcolm had invaded England, where Edward the Confessor was then king, and had wasted the shires of York and Northumberland, while Tostig the earl was gone on a pilgrimage to Rome. He now made a second raid of the same sort, although, when William held his court at York two years before, he had sent in his nominal homage to him by the Bishop of Durham. This time he went on behalf of the Ætheling, and harried the districts of Cleveland and Durham, which had already been wasted by William. His progress was marked by every species of cruelty, neither churches nor children were spared, and the Scots brought back so many captives that English slaves were to be found even in the very poorest households. Meanwhile Eadgar, who had taken part in two or three risings in England, again sought the protection of the Scottish court, and shortly after Malcolm succeeded in persuading Margaret to become his wife. He had before this been married to Ingebiorg, widow of Earl Thorfin of Orkney, and had one son, Duncan.

18. William's Invasion.—In 1072 William came north with a fleet and an army to avenge Malcolm's raid. He went as far as Abernethy on the Tay, the former Pictish capital, and there Malcolm met him and acknowledged William as overlord, by becoming his man or vassal, giving hostages, among whom was his own son Duncan, as warrants for his good faith. But some years later Malcolm took advantage of William's absence in Normandy to harry his kingdom again as far as the Tyne, bringing back both spoil and captives. The Conqueror's eldest son, Robert, came north to avenge this invasion, but happily he and Malcolm came to terms without any more bloodshed. This peace was not broken till 1092, when Malcolm again invaded England. [Pg 16] The excuse for this was that his brother-in-law, the Ætheling, had been turned out of the retreat in Normandy granted to him by the Conqueror. William Rufus, who now sat on his father's throne, marched into Lothian, where peace was again made by the mediation of Robert and Eadgar. Malcolm renewed his homage, and William renewed the grant made by his father of certain manors and a yearly payment of twelve marks. But William did not keep to the terms of the treaty, and when Malcolm complained of this breach of good faith he was summoned to appear before the English court at Gloucester. He went, but soon came away again, justly incensed at the insulting way in which he was treated by being put on the same level as the Norman barons. For the fifth time Malcolm entered England at the head of an army, but from this expedition there was no triumphant return, for the king and his son were slain on the banks of the Alne, and the host that had followed them fled in great confusion.

19. Margaret's Reforms.—The disaster did not end with the death of the king, for the good Queen Margaret, who was then at Edinburgh, died of grief almost immediately after hearing the sad tidings. This good woman, whose many merits have won for her the title of saint, was the chief worker in the revolution which was being silently wrought in the manners of the court, and of the people, and in the government of the Church and of the State. The influence which her piety and learning gave her over her husband and his people was used to soften their fierceness, and to win them from their own half-savage ways to the customs of more civilized countries. She is said to have introduced silver plate at court, and many other luxuries of which the Scots had hitherto been ignorant; she encouraged literature and commerce, but she chiefly busied herself in reviving the state of religion, which had sunk to a very low ebb. The Church had fallen from its ancient purity and zeal, and had become a prey [Pg 17] to many singular abuses. The abbotships were hereditary in the great families, and were often held by laymen, and the religious foundations were in the hands of a body of irregular clergy called Culdees, from two Latin words meaning 'servants of God.' Margaret called a council of the clergy and spoke to them herself, her husband acting as her interpreter, and did her best to make them give up their peculiarities and give in to the usages of the rest of Christendom. She rebuilt the church of Iona, which had suffered so terribly at the hands of the Northmen, and founded a new church at Dunfermline, in which she and her husband were buried.

20. Disputed Succession. Donald, 1093-1097.—The death of the King and of his son Eadward, who had been recognized as heir-apparent, threw the kingdom into confusion; and the Gaelic party, who had looked on with disgust and jealousy at the changes of the last reign and at the displacement of the Gaelic chiefs by the English immigrants, elected Donald Bane, Malcolm's brother, to the vacant throne. Meanwhile Duncan, the son of Malcolm and Ingebiorg, his first wife, prayed William of England to aid him in recovering his father's kingdom, which he promised to hold as an English fief. His suit was granted, and with the help of an English and Norman army he drove out his uncle and reigned a few months. But Donald, with the help of Eadmund, the eldest surviving son of Malcolm and Margaret, once more got the upper hand, murdered Duncan, exiled the rest of the family, and kept possession of the throne for three years. At the end of that time Eadgar the Ætheling was sent north with an English army, and placed his nephew Eadgar on the throne on the same terms as those which had been granted to Duncan. Donald Bane was taken, and, after the cruel custom of the time, his eyes were put out before he was cast into prison. Eadmund died a penitent in an English monastery. [Pg 18]

21. End of the Gaelic Period.—With Donald ends the Gaelic or Celtic period. The sons of Margaret carried out the reforms begun by their mother, and the Celtic customs gave way more and more to the Saxon influence both in the court and in the country. The King identified himself with his new nobles and with his English earldom, so that Lothian, as it was the richest, became the most prominent part of his dominions, and the true Scots of the North came to be looked on as savages and aliens, the natural enemies and perpetual disturbers of all peace and prosperity. The records of this period are so very scanty that any ideas of the state of the country or of the habits of the people are extremely misty, and are chiefly drawn from incidental notices of Scottish matters in the chronicles of other lands. The chief architectural fragments which remain to bear witness to its Christianity are the round bell-towers in the Irish style at Brechin and at Abernethy. The church at Brechin was founded by Kenneth the Third.

22. Summary.—The most noteworthy events in this the first period of Scottish history are the repulses which the Romans met with from the Picts; the coming of the Scots from Ireland; their union with the Picts under Kenneth MacAlpin; the introduction of Christianity by Columba; the conversion of the Picts and of the English, and the joining on of Strathclyde and Lothian to the Scottish Crown. We must also notice the strong feeling of hereditary right which kept the succession for so long in one family, and the remarkable revolution brought about by the English exiles, which completely turned the current of the national life, and led to much strife and bitterness between the two races of which the nation was made up.

CHAPTER II.

Eadgar; invasion of Magnus (1)—English marriage (2)—Alexander I.; rising in Moray (3)—Church reforms (4)—David I. (5)—English war (6)—Battle of the Standard (7)—peace with England (8)—internal improvements (9)—Malcolm IV. (10)—subjection of Galloway (11)—William the Lion (12)—Convention of Falaise (13)—homage at Lincoln (14)—independence of the Church (15)—internal troubles (16)—social progress (17)—Alexander II. (18)—settling of the border line (19)—state of the North (20)—Alexander III. (21)—his marriage and homage to England (22)—last invasion of the Northmen (23)—literature and architecture (24)—state of the kingdom (25).

1. Eadgar, 1097-1107. Invasion of Magnus.—In the beginning of this reign, Magnus Barefoot, King of Norway, made good his right to the Orkneys and the Scandinavian Earldom on the mainland. He seized the two earls, and placed his own son Sigurd in their stead. He then sailed for the Sudereys, at that time dependencies of the Kingdom of Man, wasted them with fire and sword, marked his claim by sailing round each island, and, by way of proving his right to Kintyre, is said to have had himself dragged across the isthmus that joins it to the mainland in his ship, with his hand on the tiller. On his death the islands fell back into the hands of the former owners, and their descendants, the Lords of the Isles, were afterwards wont to declare themselves vassals of Norway, whenever it suited their convenience. In one respect only did this expedition differ from the former piratical descents of the Northmen. This time the sacred island of Iona was [Pg 20] respected, and the church, so lately rebuilt, was left uninjured by the special order of the King.

2. English Marriage.—The friendly relations with England were maintained and strengthened by the marriage of Eadgar's sister Eadgyth, who took the name of Matilda, with Henry the First, the youngest son of William the Conqueror. She proved nearly as great a blessing to the English as her English mother had been to the Scots, for she taught the King to "love his folk," and was affectionately remembered by them as "Maud the good Queen." On his death-bed Eadgar separated Strathclyde from the rest of the kingdom, and conferred it on his brother David as a return for the wise counsel with which that brother had helped him through his very uneventful reign.

3. Alexander I., 1107-1124. Northern Rising.—This King, unlike his easy-tempered brother, had a strong will and unyielding spirit. His reign was consequently a troubled one, as always happened when the Scots King tried to rule instead of being ruled by his turbulent subjects. His first difficulties were of course in the north. The men of Merne and Moray came forth secretly and swiftly, hoping to surprise and murder him; but their tactics, which had proved fatal to Duncan, were upset by Alexander's discovery of the plot and rapid march to meet them. They were thus forced to fight, and thoroughly beaten on the northern shore of the Moray Firth, and the signal vengeance taken by the King after his victory, won for him the title of "the Fierce." To commemorate his success he founded the monastery of Scone.

4. Church Reforms.—Alexander deserves to be remembered for the spirit and wisdom with which he upheld the independence of the national church. Anxious to carry out in the same spirit the reforms already begun by his mother, he appointed her confessor Turgot, Prior of Durham, to the See [Pg 21] of St. Andrews, and asked the Archbishop of York to consecrate him. The Archbishop on this claimed the canonical obedience of all the Scottish bishops, declaring that the whole country was in his province. This demand was clearly unjust; for, though Lothian was undoubtedly so, the Scottish Church was older than his own, and had never been dependent on any foreign See. This difficulty was got over by the consecration of the new bishop by the Bishop of London, and Turgot was installed as head of the Church from which his own priory of Durham had originally branched off. Instead of identifying himself with the interests of his new charge, he did all he could to bring the Scottish Church under the authority of the Archbishop of York, so that he and the King soon quarrelled; and as the King refused to let the Bishop go to Rome to lay his case before the Pope, he resigned, and went back to Durham, where he shortly afterwards died. To evade the claims of York, the King resolved that his next bishop should be chosen from the southern province. Eadmer, a monk of Canterbury, the friend and biographer of Anselm the Archbishop, accepted the bishopric. But he proved no better than Turgot, for he persisted in considering himself and his bishopric as dependent on Canterbury; and as the King would on no account agree to this, he too resigned and went away. Though he afterwards repented, and proposed to return, it was then too late, for Robert, Prior of Scone, had been appointed in his stead. As Alexander left no children, his brother David succeeded him, so that Strathclyde or Cumbria was re-united to the kingdom.

5. David I., 1124-1153. Rising in Moray.—The usual rising in Moray took place in the early part of this reign. The Moray men seized the opportunity for revolt afforded them by David's absence in England, whither he had gone on some business connected with the Honour of Huntingdon, [Pg 22] an English fief which he had got by his marriage with Matilda, daughter and heiress of Waltheof, Earl of Northhumberland, who had been put to death by William the Conqueror. Angus and Malcolm, the representatives of the old Moray Mormaers, were descended in the female line from Lulach, the son of Gruach, and the northern party wished to place one of them on the throne. The Constable of the kingdom, the first on record, defeated them; but as the rebellion still continued, David in alarm asked and obtained the aid of the barons of the north of England. He was preparing for his northern march, when the Celts took fright, and gave up their chief, who was imprisoned in Roxburgh Castle. The district of Moray was declared forfeited, and was divided among the Norman knights whom David had drawn round him when Prince of Strathclyde.

6. English War.—In 1135 Henry the First of England died, and David, who had been among the first to swear fealty, for the lands he held in England, to his own niece Matilda, daughter and heiress of Henry, was now the first to take up arms in defence of her right against Stephen. David at once marched into England, received the homage of the northern barons, and took possession of all the northern strongholds, except Bamborough, in Matilda's name. Stephen came north, but peace was made between them; for though David would not break his oath to Matilda by himself holding any fiefs of Stephen, this difficulty was got rid of by investing David's son Henry with the Honour of Huntingdon, which had been hitherto held by David. Carlisle and Doncaster were also conferred on Henry; and though his request to be put in possession of his mother's inheritance of Northumberland was not granted, Stephen promised to take his claim to it into consideration. Henry went south with Stephen, at whose court he took precedence of the English barons. This roused their jealousy, and they straightway left the court in a body. [Pg 23] David, highly indignant at this insult, recalled his son, and the next year prepared to invade England again, nor would he agree to any terms of peace, unless Henry were put in immediate possession of Northumberland. In 1138 his army ravaged the northern counties, reduced to ashes the castle of Norham, and routed a body of the men of Lancashire who had mustered to resist the invaders at Clitheroe on the Ribble. After this success, the victors committed greater outrages than ever.

7. Battle of the Standard.—But their excesses, and the fear that David, as the representative of the English line, was trying to win the English crown for himself, at length roused the chivalry of northern England, who, forgetting party feeling, made common cause against the common foe, and assembled round the banner raised by Walter Espec, a doughty and gigantic warrior. A few years before they had prepared to help David in suppressing those very Celts whom he was now leading against themselves. Against such men, inspired by such righteous indignation, the mixed multitude of Scots, Picts of Galloway, Welshmen from Strathclyde, Northmen from the Orkneys, and English from the Lothians, who with a body of Norman knights made up the so-called Scottish host, had but small chance of success. This chance was made still smaller by what proved fatal to the cause of Scotland in many an after fight, the inevitable squabbles between the rival races. The Celts were jealous of the Norman strangers, and clamoured so loudly for their right of leading the van, that David at last gave in to them. His own better judgment would have led him to give the task of breaking the hostile ranks to his well-armed, well-mounted horsemen, leaving it to the infantry to follow up their advantage. The two armies met on a moor, near Northallerton, where the English were drawn up round their Standard, which was so singular that from it the battle took [Pg 24] its name. It was the consecrated wafer hoisted on a ship's mast, with the banners of St. Peter of York, St. John of Beverley, and St. Wilfrith of Ripon, floating round it. Before the battle commenced, a last attempt for peace was made by two Norman barons, whose descendants afterwards played a great part in Scottish history. These were Robert de Brus and Bernard de Bailleul. They were friends of David and held lands from him, and they begged him not to fight with the old friends who had formerly stood by him. As he was unmoved by all their entreaties, they renounced their allegiance, and the battle began. The Galloway men made a fierce onslaught on the English, but were driven back and beaten down by the English arrows. They fled, and by their flight spread confusion through the army. The panic was made greater by a cry that the King was slain; and though David did all he could to rally the fugitives round his banner, the ancient dragon of Wessex, he was forced to retire upon Carlisle, where his son Henry joined him a few days after. But this defeat did not drive the Scots out of England. David still continued the siege of Werk, a strong castle, which at last surrendered.

8. Peace with England.—Next year, peace was made at Durham. Earl Henry was invested with the earldom of Northumberland, though Stephen kept Bamborough and Newcastle, and David continued to administer the affairs of the northern counties till his death. Two years after this peace he again took up arms in favour of Matilda, and narrowly escaped being taken prisoner when her forces were routed at Winchester; and it was by David at his court at Carlisle that her son Henry of Anjou was knighted. The close of David's life was embittered by the death of his only son Henry, a just man and a brave soldier, whose loss was universally lamented. He had married Ada de Warenne, daughter of the Earl of Surrey, and left three sons, Malcolm, [Pg 25] William, and David, the two eldest of whom reigned in succession. His eldest daughter Ada married Florence Count of Holland, and got the promise of Ross, a great tract of the Highlands, as her dowry. After the death of his son David sent his eldest grandson through the provinces to be acknowledged as his successor, and within a few months he died at Carlisle, and was buried beside his parents at Dunfermline.

9. Internal Improvements.—David was both a good man and a great king. He upheld the honour of his kingdom abroad, and did so much for the welfare of his people at home, that most of the social and political institutions of the later kingdom were afterwards ascribed to him. It is true that he introduced a foreign baronage, for he encouraged many Norman barons to come to his court, and by the lands which he gave them induced them to settle in the country. He thus gave great offence to the native chiefs; but he did not forget the interests of the Commons, for he increased the number of the royal burghs and granted many privileges and immunities to the burghers. The life of David has been written by his friend and admirer, Æthelred the Abbot of Rievaulx. He has drawn an attractive picture of an able and virtuous prince, kindly and courteous alike to high and low; ever ready to listen to the complaints of all his subjects and to set wrong right, and never turning his face away from any poor man. He tells us how the King himself dealt out justice to his subjects, and in his progress through the several districts of his kingdom, used, on set days, in person to hear the suits and to redress the wrongs of the poor and oppressed among his people. Six bishoprics—Dunblane, Brechin, Aberdeen, Ross, Caithness, and Glasgow—were either founded or restored by him; and many abbeys date their foundation from his reign. He carried on the work of church reform by inducing the Culdees to conform to [Pg 26] more regular ways, on pain of being turned out of their monasteries. His reign lasted twenty-nine years, during which time the country continued to advance steadily in wealth, fertility, and civilization. There is little doubt that, had his successor possessed the same abilities, the future boundary of the kingdom would have been the Tees instead of the Tweed.

10. Malcolm IV., 1153-1165.—Malcolm was not quite twelve years old when he came to the throne: the fact that he retained possession of it proves that the principle of hereditary succession was gaining ground, and that his grandfather David had put down the unruly spirit of the northern clans and had more firmly established a regular government.

11. Subjection of Galloway.—The principal event of Malcolm's reign was the subjection of Galloway, which was now reduced to direct dependence on the Crown. A rising, the object of which was to dethrone Malcolm and to set up his brother William in his stead, had been planned by some of the nobles while Malcolm was in Aquitaine, helping Henry the Second of England in his war with France. Soon after his return in 1160, they surrounded the city of Perth where he was holding his court, and tried to take him prisoner. But they were dispersed and routed, and though the chiefs fled to Galloway, Malcolm followed them and reduced the district. Fergus, the Lord of Galloway, ended his days in the monastery of Holyrood. A few years later another dangerous enemy rose against Malcolm. This was Somerled, the Lord of Argyle, who ruled the western coast with the power, though without the title, of King. He landed near Renfrew on the Clyde, with a large force, but was almost immediately slain by treachery, and after his death his followers dispersed and returned to their several islands without doing any serious mischief. An increase of power was thus won for the Crown within the limits of the kingdom, but on the other hand the northern [Pg 27] counties of England, which had been held by David, were lost, for Henry of England obliged Malcolm to give up all claim to them at Chester, where the two Kings met in 1157. At the same time Malcolm was invested with the Honour of Huntingdon on the same terms as those on which it had been held by David.

12. William the Lion, 1165-1214.—William surnamed the Lion succeeded his brother Malcolm. He was eager to regain the earldom of Northumberland, which his father had held and which his brother had lost. As Henry of England refused it to him, he aided the sons of that monarch in their rebellion against their father, and, when Henry was absent in France, he invaded his kingdom and took several strongholds. But by his own imprudence he was surprised and captured, with the best of his nobles, while tilting in a meadow close by the walls of Alnwick, and was sent for greater security to Falaise, in Normandy, July 1174.

13. Convention of Falaise.—In the end of the year William regained his freedom by signing a treaty called the "Convention of Falaise," the hard terms of which were most humiliating, both to him and to Scotland. He was in future to hold his kingdom on the same terms of vassalage as those by which he now held Lothian, and as a token of further dependence his barons and clergy were also to do homage to the English King, who was to be put in possession of the principal strongholds. His brother David, Earl of Huntingdon, and twenty-one other barons were to remain as hostages till the strongholds were given up, and on their release each was to leave his son or next heir as a warrant of good faith. The homage was performed in the following year, when William met Henry at York; and the King of Scots, with his earls, barons, free-tenants, and clergy, became the liegemen of the King of England in St. Peter's Minster. The clergy swore to lay the kingdom under an interdict, and [Pg 28] the laity to hold by their English over-lord, should William prove unfaithful to him. This treaty remained in force till the death of Henry in 1189, when Richard of England, who was in want of money for his crusade, released William, for the sum of 10,000 marks, from these extorted obligations and restored the strongholds, though he refused to give up to him the coveted earldom.

14. Homage at Lincoln.—When John succeeded his brother on the throne of England, William did such homage to him as the King of Scots had been wont to render to the King of England before the treaty of Falaise. He met John at Lincoln, whither he was escorted by a brilliant retinue of English barons. But there was no kindly feeling between the two Kings. John tried to build a castle at Tweedmouth in order to spoil the trade of Berwick, the largest trading city in Scotland, but the Scots drove away the builders and levelled the castle, and for some time both Kings kept threatening armies on the Border.

15. Independence of the Church.—At a great Council held at Northampton in 1176, the Archbishop of York claimed Scotland as a part of his province, and called on the Scottish clergy to acknowledge their dependence. They protested and appealed to the Pope, who forbade the Archbishop to press his claim. Clement III. in 1188 confirmed their claim of independence, on the ground that the Church of Scotland was in immediate dependence on the Holy See.

16. Internal Troubles.—During William's captivity, Galloway revolted. All the King's officers were either slain or expelled, and as, after the submission at Falaise, Gilbert the chief of Galloway considered himself a vassal of England, he let the Lothians have no peace till his death in 1185. William's nephew Roland then seized Galloway, drove out his opponents, and rebuilt the Royal castles. William used his influence to induce Henry to confirm Roland in possession, [Pg 29] and thereby gained a devoted and faithful ally. It was mainly by his aid that William was enabled to put down a formidable rising in the north.

17. Social Progress.—During this reign the free towns began to rise into notice. Their privilege of trade and right to govern themselves was recognized by a charter granted to the city of Aberdeen, in which William confirmed his burghers north of the Mount, in their right of holding their own court or "free anse," as they had done in the time of his grandfather David. Thus we see that the towns of the north of Scotland were united for mutual support a century before the rise of the great continental Hansa, which bound together by a similar league the trading cities of the Baltic. Some of the most important towns date their charters from William, and he extended the influence of civilization in the north by holding his court in such remote places as Elgin, Nairn, and Inverness. The only religious foundation of this reign was the abbey of Arbroath. It was dedicated to the newest saint in the calendar, Thomas of Canterbury. William died at Stirling in 1214, leaving one son, Alexander, who succeeded him.

18. Alexander II., 1214-1249.—Alexander's accession was the signal for one of the usual risings in Moray; but as the power of the Crown in that district was now stronger than it had been in earlier times, this rising was more easily put down than any former one had been. The great struggle between despotism and freedom had just at this time set John of England and his barons at variance. Alexander joined the barons in hopes of getting back Northumberland. He crossed the Border and received the homage of the northern barons, and the following year he joined his force to those of the confederates, and marched to Dover, where he did homage to Louis of France, who, at the invitation of the barons, had come over to take the crown. The death of John and the [Pg 30] victory of his son, Henry the Third, at Lincoln, changed the whole state of affairs, and in 1217 Alexander did the usual homage to Henry and was invested with the Honour of Huntingdon. Four years later the bond between them was drawn closer by the marriage of Alexander to Joanna, Henry's sister. This alliance was followed by a lasting peace, though Alexander still claimed Northumberland, and Henry upheld the right of the Archbishop of York to supremacy over the Scottish Church. In a council held at York in 1237, Alexander agreed to compound his claim to the earldom for a grant of the lands of Penrith and Tynedale, and, when Henry went to France, he left the Border under the care of the King of Scots.

19. Settling of the Border Line.—In 1222 an attempt was made to lay down a definite boundary between the two countries. Six commissioners on either side were appointed, and though the exact course of the line was disputed, from that time it continued pretty much what it is now, though a wide tract on either side was claimed alternately by both nations and belonged in reality to neither.

20. State of the North.—A disturbance which happened during this reign shows us something of the lawless state of the northern part of the kingdom. Adam, bishop of Caithness, tried to enforce the payment of tithes in his diocese, but his people came together to consider the best way of resisting this exaction. While they were thus holding council, it is said that a voice cried out, "Short rede good rede; slay we the bishop." On this advice they acted, for without more waste of words they attacked the bishop, and burned him and his house to ashes. Shortly before this a former bishop of Caithness had been seized and had his tongue cut out by the Earl of Orkney. Alexander died on an expedition to the Western Isles, at Kerrara, a small islet off the coast of Argyle. By his second wife, Mary of Coucy, he left a son, who succeeded him. [Pg 31]

21. Alexander III., 1249-1266.—Alexander, a child of eight years, was crowned with great pomp at Scone, the ancient crowning place, where the famous stone of Destiny was kept. The tradition was that no one who had not been enthroned on this stone was lawful King of Scots. The most striking part of the coronation ceremony was the appearance of a Sennachy or Celtic bard, who greeted Alexander as King by virtue of his descent from the ancient Celtic Kings, and recited the whole list of the King's ancestors, carrying them back to the most remote ages. This might serve to remind him that after all his title of King came solely from those very Celts whom his more immediate forefathers had slighted and despised.

22. Alexander's Marriage and Homage to England.—On Christmas day, 1251, Alexander was married at York, to Margaret, daughter of Henry the Third, and at the same time he did homage for the lands he held in England, but evaded Henry's claim of homage for Scotland, pleading the necessity of consulting his advisers before giving an answer on so difficult a matter. This question was brought up again in 1278, when Alexander went to Westminster to acknowledge and to do homage to Edward the First, and he gave for answer that he did homage for his English fiefs alone and not for his kingdom. Edward asserted his right as over-lord of the kingdom, but he did not then attempt to enforce it.

23. Last Invasion of the Northmen.—In 1262 Hakon of Norway came with a great fleet to visit the Orkneys and the Western Isles, Sudereys or Southern Isles as the Northmen called them. The fleet sailed down the Western Coast, levying black mail on the islands and making divers inland raids. Among other exploits the Northmen dragged a number of their ships across the narrow neck of land that parts Loch Long from Loch Lomond, sailed down Loch Lomond, and harried the Lennox, as the fertile tract which stretches along [Pg 32] its lower end is called. Hakon sailed up the Firth of Clyde, and an attempt was made at a peaceable agreement between him and the King, who was at first willing to give up all claim to the Hebrides, but wished to keep the Cumbraes, Bute, and Arran. But the Scots purposely delayed coming to terms, as they expected that the autumn storms would soon help them to get rid of their enemy. Nor were their hopes disappointed, for, in the beginning of October, a violent tempest rose, separated the ships of the invaders, sunk some, and stranded others. On the following day the Northmen who had landed were easily beaten, near Largs, by a Scottish army hastily got together on the coast of Ayr, in 1263. Hakon died in one of the Orkneys on his way home, and his son, in 1266, agreed to give up Man and the Isles for 1,000 marks down, and the promise of 100 yearly. An amnesty was granted to the Islesmen, and it was settled that the bishopric should continue in the province of Drontheim. In 1281 the King's daughter, Margaret, married Eric, the heir to the throne of Norway. She died in 1283, leaving an infant daughter, who, a few months after, by the death of Alexander, the King's only son, became heir to the Scottish crown. Three years later, in 1286, the King himself was killed by a fall from his horse while riding by night along the coast of Fife, near Kinghorn.

24. Literature and Architecture.—No chronicles of this period, written by natives of Scotland, have come down to us. But there was one poet who was held in great repute, not only for his verses, but for his prophecies. This was Thomas Learmouth of Ercildoun, called "Thomas the Rhymer," and "True Thomas," from the general belief in the truth of his predictions. He is said to have foretold that great national calamity, the King's death, under the figure of a great storm that should blow "so stark and strang, that all Scotland sall reu efter rycht lang." Another Scotsman of [Pg 33] note was Michael Scot, the famous wizard. He travelled much in foreign lands, and was greatly renowned in them, as in his own country, as a scholar, an astrologer, and magician. The buildings of this period were chiefly the churches and abbeys founded by Margaret and her descendants. They were all in the same style as contemporary buildings in England. There were as yet very few castles, that is fortified buildings of solid masonry, in the kingdom. The great strongholds, such as Edinburgh, Stirling, and Dunbarton, were steep rocks, made so inaccessible by nature that they needed but little strengthening from art. Dwelling-houses seem to have been generally built of wood.

25. State of the Kingdom.—The second period of the national history breaks off abruptly with the death of Alexander. It had begun with the dethronement of Donald Bane, the last Celtic King, nearly two hundred years before, and during that time the boundary of Scotland had been extended by the annexation of Argyle and of the Isles, while her two dependencies of Lothian and Galloway had been drawn more closely to her, though they still remained separate and distinct. Throughout this period the influence of England, though peaceable, had been stronger than it was ever to be again. English laws and English customs had been brought in, and had, in many cases, taken the place of the old Celtic usages. The Celtic maers had been removed to make way for the sheriffs of the Crown. But, as Scotland was not divided like England into shires, the sheriffs were not, as in England, the reeves of the already existing shires, but officers who were placed by the King over certain districts. These districts or sheriffdoms became the counties of later times. Feudalism after the Norman model, with all its burthensome exactions and oppressions, had been brought in and had taken firmer root in Scotland than it ever did in England. The native chiefs had been [Pg 34] displaced by foreign nobles, so that a purely Norman baronage held the lands, whether peopled by a Celtic or a Saxon peasantry. In some cases the new owners founded families afterwards known under Celtic names; for, while the Celts gave their own names to the lands on which they settled, the Normans took the names of the lands conferred upon them and bore them as their own. The long peace with England, which had lasted unbroken for nearly a century, had been marked by great social progress. The large proportion of land that was now under the plough proves that during this untroubled time husbandry must have thriven, roads and bridges were many and in good repair, and the trading towns had made great advances in riches and power. Hitherto no one town had distinctly taken its place as the capital. Saint John's Town, or Perth, had, from its connexion with Scone, some claim to the first place, but the King held his court or his assize indifferently at any of the royal burghs. These burghs were of great importance in the state, and, as the burgesses of the royal burghs were all vassals holding direct from the Crown, they acted in some sort as a check on the growing power of the nobles. The burghers had the right of governing themselves by their own laws, and were divided into two groups. Those north of the Scots water or Firth of Forth were bound together by a league like the great continental Hansa, and known by the same name; while those in Lothian, represented by the four principal among them—Roxburgh, Stirling, Edinburgh, and Berwick—held their "court of the four burghs," which is still represented by the "Convention of Royal Burghs" which meets once a year in Edinburgh. Nor were the Scottish towns of this period in any way behind the cities of the Continent. Berwick, the richest and the greatest, was said by a writer of the time to rival London. Inverness had a great reputation for shipbuilding. A ship which was built there called forth the envy and wonder of the French nobles of that time. But this happy state of things was brought to an end by the death of the King, and the long years of war and misery that followed went far to sweep away all traces of the high state of civilization and prosperity that had been reached by the country in this, the golden age of Scottish history.

CHAPTER III.

The Regency (1)—the Interregnum (2)—Council at Norham (3)—Edward's decision (4)—John (5)—his coronation (6)—French alliance (7)—Edward's first conquest (8)—English government (9)—Wallace's revolt (10)—surrender at Irvine (11)—battle of Stirling (12)—battle of Falkirk (13)—capture of Wallace (14)—attempted union (15)—Bruce's revolt (16)—his coronation (17)—Edward's proposed revenge (18)—Bruce's struggles (19)—battle of Bannockburn (20)—results of the victory (21)—Bruce's comrades (22)—summary (23).

1. Margaret, 1286-90. The Regency.—Within a month from Alexander's death the Estates met at Scone, and appointed six regents to govern the kingdom for Margaret, the Maiden of Norway, a child of three years old, who, on the death of her grandfather Alexander, succeeded to the throne. Three of these regents were for the old kingdom, the land north of the Scots Water, and three for Lothian with Galloway. This division seems to show that the different tenure of these provinces was still understood and acted on. The Scots of the original Celtic kingdom and the Englishmen of Lothian still kept aloof from one another. In the meantime Robert Bruce, a Norman baron whose forefathers had settled [Pg 36] in Annandale in the twelfth century, made an attempt to seize the crown by force. He laid claim to it by right of his descent from Isabella, the second daughter of David Earl of Huntingdon, brother of William the Lion, and appealed to Edward the First of England as over-lord to support him in his supposed right. At the same time other appeals against him were made by the seven Earls of Scotland, by Fraser bishop of St. Andrews, and by the Community. Edward did not encourage Bruce, but on the contrary he agreed to the proposal of the Estates that the Lady Margaret should be married to his eldest son Edward. By the treaty of Brigham, in 1290, this agreement was accepted by the Clergy, Nobility, and Community of Scotland. This treaty provided that the rights and liberties of Scotland should remain untouched; that no native of Scotland was to be called on to do homage or to answer for any crime beyond the Border; in short, that Scotland was to keep all the rights and liberties which belong to a distinct national life. This union, if it had been carried out, would have been the best possible settlement for both kingdoms, but it was prevented by the death of the Maid of Norway on her way to Scotland, in one of the Orkneys, September 1290. Edward had himself sent a ship handsomely fitted out to fetch home the Maid.

2. Interregnum, 1290-92.—Margaret was the last of the legitimate descendants of William the Lion. The new King had to be sought among the heirs of William's brother David, Earl of Huntingdon. David had left three daughters, Margaret, Isabella, and Ada, and they being dead were represented by their nearest heirs,—Margaret by her grandson John Balliol, Isabella by her son Robert Bruce, and Ada by her son John Hastings. Besides these there were a host of smaller claimants whose pretensions were quite untenable; but there was one other who, though his claim was very shadowy, was first in power and position [Pg 37] among the claimants. This was Florence, Count of Holland, the great-great-grandson of Ada, the daughter of David's son Henry, who was to have had Ross as her dowry. Bruce, supported by his son, by James the Steward and by other nobles, made a bond with Florence by which each pledged himself, in case he got the kingdom, to give the other a third of it. Edward, as over-lord, was appealed to to settle the matter, as it was feared by the regents that Robert Bruce would seize the crown by force, and all the competitors seem to have acknowledged Edward's right of superiority.

3. Council at Norham.—Edward accordingly summoned his barons, amongst whom most of the claimants could be reckoned, to meet him in a council at Norham, on the northern side of the Tweed, in June 1291, to decide this important case. The real contest lay between Bruce and Balliol. Bruce, Balliol, and indeed nearly all the claimants, were Norman barons holding lands of Edward. The family of Bruce came originally from the Côtentin and had been settled in Yorkshire by William the Conqueror, towards the end of his reign. David, who had granted to them the great tract of Annandale, had also granted to the Balliols a manor in Berwick. Bruce's plea was that, though he was the child of a younger sister, still his right was better than that of Balliol, as he was one degree nearer their common forefather, and he brought forward many precedents to prove that in such a case nearness in degree was to be preferred to seniority.

4. Edward's Decision.—Edward decided with perfect justice, according to the ideas of modern law, that Balliol, as the grandson of the eldest daughter, had the best right to the throne. In early times in Scotland no one would have thought of doubting Bruce's claim as next in degree. As Edward refused to divide the dominions among the heirs of the three daughters, it is clear that he looked on Scotland as a dependent kingdom, and not as an ordinary fief, which [Pg 38] would have been shared among the three rivals. Judgment was given at Berwick, November 1292, eighteen months after the first meeting of the council. During this time the government had been nominally in the hands of the guardians of the kingdom; but Edward had the strongholds, twenty-three in number, in his own hands, and seems to have looked upon the two countries as really united. At the end of the suit he gave up the strongholds, and by so doing showed that he meant to act fairly.

5. John, 1292-96. Policy of Edward.—The great scheme of Edward's life was to unite Britain under one government, of which he himself was to be the head. He had already added to England the dependent principality of Wales. Hitherto his actions towards Scotland had been perfectly fair and upright. In placing John Balliol, the rightful heir, on the throne, he was doing no more than had been done by the King of England, acting as over-lord, in the cases of Malcolm Canmore and Eadgar: but his way of placing him there was not strictly just; the conditions which he required were such as he had no right to exact, nor John to accept. He made him do homage for his kingdom as though it had been an English fief. Now, though this was true as far as concerned Lothian, and partly true as concerned Strathclyde, as concerned Scotland it was untrue. Although Scotland had, since 924, been in some degree subject to the King of England, this dependence was no more than was implied by the "commendation," the very natural relation of the weaker to the stronger. But it must be remembered that three centuries had passed since that first commendation, and in that time the original simplicity of the feudal tenure had been altogether changed and in great measure forgotten. Edward looked on the three parts of Scotland as fiefs, and therefore subject to the same burthens as his other fiefs; the Scots knew that they were not thus subject, and they therefore [Pg 39] argued that their kingdom was in no way dependent on England: thus both parties were partly right and partly wrong. Even the amount of dependence implied in the original commendation had, in the last reign, been refused by the Scottish King, and had not been insisted on by the English one. But John Balliol was weak and foolish, while Edward was wise, strong, and determined to rule the whole country indirectly through his submissive vassal.

6. Coronation of John.—John was duly crowned and enthroned on the Stone of Destiny, after which he renewed his homage to Edward, in 1292. He then summoned the Estates at Scone. This was the first meeting of the Estates which was called a parliament. John was not popular with his subjects, who looked on him as a tool in the hands of Edward. Before many months had passed Roger Bartholomew, a burgess of Berwick, being dissatisfied with a decision given against him in Scotland, appealed to Edward, who named a council at Newcastle to hear the case. This was a direct violation of the treaty of Brigham, and Edward obliged John to sign a discharge and renunciation of this treaty and of any other document then in existence which might call in question his superiority. Another appeal was made a few months afterwards against the decision of the Estates by a Scot of the old kingdom, Macduff, the grand-uncle of the Earl of Fife, and this was followed by appeals respecting the lands of the houses of Bruce and Douglas. John was summoned to appear before the Parliament of England, was voted a contumacious vassal, and commanded to give up the three principal strongholds of his kingdom into the hands of his over-lord till he should give satisfaction.

7. French Alliance.—In 1294 war broke out between France and England, and John, with the nobles and commons of his kingdom, entered into an alliance for mutual defence with Eric of Norway and Philip of France against Edward. [Pg 40] This was the beginning of the foreign policy maintained in Scotland for several centuries, until the Reformation, when religious sympathy got the better of national hatred, and Roman Catholic France became more dreaded than Protestant England. In compliance with this treaty a Scottish army crossed the Border and swept and wasted the northern counties.

8. Edward's first Conquest.—Edward's dealings with Scotland now became those of a conqueror instead of a protector. The Scots had, without gainsaying, acknowledged his supremacy. It was the appeal of Scottish subjects which had tempted him to extend the incidents of that supremacy beyond legal limits, and now it was the Scots who began the war, and thus gave Edward the excuse, for which he was waiting, for conquering their country. He at once marched northwards with a great army, and besieged and took Berwick, a large and wealthy trading town. Provoked by the resistance and insults of the citizens, the King wreaked a fearful vengeance on them, and Berwick was reduced to the rank of a common market-town. While he was at Berwick, John's renunciation of fealty was sent to him by the party of independence, who were keeping their King in custody lest he should repent and submit. When Edward had secured Berwick, he marched to Dunbar, took the castle, and then went on to Edinburgh. He there took up his quarters in Holyrood, laid siege to the castle, took it, seized the crown jewels, and then passed on to Perth, taking possession of Stirling on the way. To crush out all idea of an independent kingdom, and to let the people see that they were conquered, he carried off from Scone the Stone of Destiny, with which the fate of the Scottish monarchy was supposed to be mystically joined. This stone was removed to Westminster, and was placed under the seat of the coronation-chair. He also took with him the Holy Rood of Queen Margaret, [Pg 41] and obliged all the nobles who submitted to him to swear allegiance on this much valued relic. Edward did not go further north than Elgin, and he returned to Berwick in 1296, having marched all through Scotland in twenty-one weeks. All the nobles and prelates did personal homage to him. John submitted himself to Edward's pleasure, and was degraded and dispossessed. He was then sent as a prisoner to England, was afterwards made over to the keeping of the Bishop of Vicenza, the Pope's representative, and at last he retired to his own estates in Picardy, where he died in 1315. Edward treated his kingdom as a fief forfeited by the treason of the vassal who held it. This notion of the thirteenth century, that the fief was forfeited by treason, would not have occurred to anyone in the tenth century, when probably John would only have been deposed, and some one else set up in his stead. The seizure of Normandy from John of England by Philip of France was a case of the same kind, and quite as unprecedented.

9. English Government.—Edward at once took measures for joining Scotland on as an integral part of the English kingdom. He took care that the strongholds should be commanded and garrisoned by persons without any Scottish connexion. He appointed John, Earl of Warrenne and Surrey, Guardian, Hugh of Cressingham, Treasurer, and Ormsby, Justiciar of the kingdom; sent them forms of writs to be used in the re-granting of lands; took measures for the establishment of Courts of Chancery and Exchequer at Berwick, and summoned a council of merchants to consider the best measures for the future conduct of the trade and commerce of the country. Cressingham was enjoined to raise all the money he could, for the maintenance of internal peace and order, and to put down the wicked rebels, homicides, and disturbers of the peace, who swarmed all over the land. [Pg 42]

10. Wallace's Revolt.—The Celts in the North looked on this change in the government with apathy. To them it probably made little difference who sat on the Scottish throne, and Edward had not entered their district. The Norman nobles quietly agreed to it, for they were afraid of losing their estates in England. But it roused a spirit of defiance and opposition where resistance was least to be looked for, among the Lowlanders. They were the descendants of the earliest Teutonic settlers, and had remained more purely English in blood and speech than their kinsfolk on the southern side of the Border. This latent feeling of discontent gradually ripened into rebellion, and the standard of revolt was raised by William Wallace, a native of Clydesdale, who, unlike most of his countrymen, had not sworn allegiance to Edward. He surprised and cut to pieces the English garrison at Lanark, and slew William Haselrig, the newly appointed sheriff of Ayr. This outbreak was followed by similar attacks on detached bodies of the troops in occupation. His little band of followers gradually attracted more, and at length they surprised the Justiciar Ormsby, while holding a court at Scone, and, though he escaped out of their hands, they secured both prisoners and booty. Anthony Beck, Bishop of Durham, was next attacked in Glasgow, and forced to flee. After these successes Wallace was joined by William of Douglas, a renowned soldier, and by Robert Bruce, Earl of Carrick, grandson of the original claimant of the crown.

11. Surrender at Irvine.—But there was a want of system and of unity of purpose in the nation, and this noble effort on the part of the people was not seconded by the nobles. A large army under Henry, Lord Percy, was sent by Edward to put down the rising; those of the nobles who had joined the popular movement deserted it, and renewed their allegiance to Edward at Irvine, July 1297. But when Edward, [Pg 43] who believed the revolt to be completely crushed, was absent in Flanders, Wallace mustered the people of the Lowlands north of the Tay and made himself master of the strongholds in that district.

12. Battle of Stirling.—The English army was now hastening northward under Cressingham and Warrenne, Earl of Surrey. Wallace resolved to give them battle on the Carse of Stirling, a level plain, across which the river Forth winds in and out among the meadows like the links of a silver chain. Wallace showed his skill as a general by the choice of the ground on which he posted his men. He drew them up within one of the links of the river, which swept round in front between them and the English, while a steep rocky hill, called the Abbey Craig, rose right behind them and protected the rear. The English had to cross the river by a narrow bridge. Wallace waited till half of them were over, and then attacked them. Taken thus at a disadvantage, they were easily routed. The panic spread to those on the opposite bank, who fled in disorder. In this action, called the Battle of Stirling, which was fought September 11, 1297, Cressingham was slain, and Surrey was forced to retreat to Berwick. After this victory the Scots recovered the strongholds south of the Forth, and Wallace acted as Guardian of the kingdom in the name of King John, and with the consent of the commons. Unhappily the Scots were not content with driving out the invaders, but carried the war over the Border, and wasted the northern counties of England with all the fierceness and cruelty of brigands.

13. Battle of Falkirk.—Edward returned from Flanders and raised a large army for the subjection of Scotland, promising pardon to all vagrants and malefactors who would enlist in it. The King himself led the army. The Scots wasted the country and retreated before him through the Lothians; and Wallace, who knew well the weakness of his [Pg 44] own force, tried to avoid a battle till the great army of Edward should be exhausted from want of food. But tidings were brought to Edward that Wallace was near Falkirk, and he marched northward in haste and forced his enemy to give battle. At Stirling Wallace had won the day by his happy choice of the ground; he now showed still greater skill by the way in which he drew up his little army. It was made up for the most part of footmen, who at that time were held of no account as soldiers. The genius of Wallace found out how they might be made even more formidable than the mounted men-at-arms, in whom at that time it was supposed that the strength of an army lay. He drew them up in circular masses; the spearmen without and the bowmen within. The spearmen with lances fixed knelt down in ranks, so that the archers within could shoot over their heads. When his men were thus placed, Wallace said to them, "I have brought ye to the ring—hop gif ye can;" that is, show how well you can fight. But, though they fought well and held their ground bravely, and the English horse were driven back by the spear-points, the Scots were at last beaten down by force of numbers, and the English won the day, 1298. After this victory Edward returned to Carlisle, and Wallace resigned the Guardianship. Edward held the country south of the Forth, but the northern Lowlands seem to have maintained their independence until the spring of 1303, when Edward marched north at the head of a great army and again subdued the whole country. He made Dunfermline, the favourite seat of the Scottish court, his head-quarters. Stirling Castle alone, under Olifant the valiant governor, held out for three months, but when it was taken the lives of the garrison were spared. All the leaders in the late rising were left unharmed in life, liberty, or estate, with the exception of William Wallace. He was required to submit unconditionally to the King's grace. [Pg 45]

14. Capture of Wallace.—Wallace had been on the Continent ever since the battle of Falkirk. He now came back and was betrayed by his servant Jack Short to Sir John Menteith, governor for Edward in Dunbarton Castle, and was sent by him to London. He was there tried, by a special commission, for treason and rebellion against Edward. He pleaded in his own defence that he had never sworn fealty to Edward. In spite of this he was found guilty, condemned to death, and hanged, drawn, and quartered according to the barbarous practice which was then coming into use in England. His head was stuck up on London Bridge, and the four parts of his body were sent to Newcastle, Berwick, Stirling, and Perth, by way of frightening the people from such attempts in future.

15. Attempted Union.—Edward then set to work to complete the union of the two kingdoms. In the meantime Scotland was to be governed by a Lieutenant aided by a council of barons and churchmen. It was to be represented in the English parliament by ten deputies,—four churchmen, four barons, and two members of the commons, one for the country north of the Firths, one for the south. These members attended one parliament at Westminster, and an ordinance was issued for the government of Scotland. John of Bretayne was named Lieutenant for the King; justices and sheriffs were appointed; the strongholds were put under governors for the King, and an inquiry was ordered into the state of the laws in order to take measures for their amendment. Edward's policy in all this was to win favour with the people and the members of the council, although many of them, such as Bruce and Wishart, Bishop of Glasgow, had taken part in the last rising. The King's peace was now offered to all rebels who would profit by it. But the great difficulty in dealing with the Scots was that they never knew when they were conquered, and, just when Edward hoped that his scheme for union was carried out, they rose in arms once more. [Pg 46]

16. Bruce's Revolt.—The leader this time was Robert Bruce, Lord of Annandale, Earl of Carrick in right of his mother, and the grandson and heir of the rival of Balliol. He had joined Wallace, but had again sworn fealty to Edward at the Convention of Irvine, and had since then received many favours from the English king. Bruce signed a bond with William Lamberton, Bishop of St. Andrews, who had also been one of Wallace's supporters. In this bond each party swore to stand by the other in all his undertakings, no matter what, and not to act without the knowledge of the other. The signing of such bonds became a prominent and distinctive feature in the after-history of Scotland. This bond became known to Edward; and Bruce, afraid of his anger, fled from London to Dumfries. There in the Church of the Grey Friars he had an interview with John Comyn of Badenoch, called the Red Comyn, who, after Balliol and his sons, was the next heir to the throne. He was the grandson of a younger sister of Balliol's mother, and the son of Balliol's sister. He had also a strong claim to the favour of the people in his alleged descent, through Donald Bane, from their ancient Celtic kings. What passed between them cannot be certainly known, as they met alone, but Bruce came out of the church saying he feared he had slain the Red Comyn. Kirkpatrick, one of his followers, then said, he would "mak sicker," and ran in and slew the wounded man. By this murder and sacrilege Bruce put himself at once out of the pale of the law and of the Church, but by it he became the nearest heir to the crown, after the Balliols. This gave him a great hold on the people, whose faith in the virtue of hereditary succession was strong, and on whom the English yoke weighed heavily. [Pg 47]

17. Coronation at Scone.—On March 27, 1306, Bruce was crowned with as near an imitation of the old ceremonies as could be compassed on such short notice. The actual crowning was done by Isabella, Countess of Buchan, who, though her husband was a Comyn, and, as such, a sworn foe of Bruce, came secretly to uphold the right of her own family, the Macduffs, to place the crown on the head of the King of Scots.

18. Edward's proposed Revenge.—Edward determined this time to put down the Scots with rigour. Aymer of Valence, Earl of Pembroke, succeeded John of Bretayne as Governor. All who had taken any part in the murder of the Red Comyn were denounced as traitors, and death was to be the fate of all persons taken in arms. Bruce was excommunicated by a special bull from the Pope. The Countess of Buchan was confined in a room, made like a cage, in one of the towers of Berwick Castle. One of King Robert's sisters was condemned to a like punishment. His brother Nigel, his brother-in-law Christopher Seton, and three other nobles were taken prisoners, and were put to death as traitors. This, the first noble blood that had been shed in the popular cause, did much to unite the sympathy of the nobles with the commons, who had hitherto been the only sufferers from the oppression of the conquerors. Edward this time made greater preparations than ever. All classes of his subjects from all parts of his dominions were invited to join the army, and he exhorted his son, Edward Prince of Wales, and 300 newly-created knights, to win their spurs worthily in the reduction of contumacious Scotland. It was well for Scotland that he did not live to carry out his vows of vengeance. He died at Burgh-on-the-Sands, July 30th. His death proved a turning-point in the history of Scotland, for, though the English still remained in possession of the strongholds, Edward the Second took no effective steps to crush the rebels. He only brought the army raised [Pg 48] by his father as far as Cumnock in Ayrshire, and retreated without doing anything.

19. Bruce's Struggles.—For several years King Robert was an outlaw and a fugitive, with but a handful of followers. Their lives were in constant danger. Whenever an opportunity offered, they made daring attacks on the English in possession; at other times they saved their lives by hairbreadth escapes from their pursuit. The Celts of the west and of Galloway, who had been won over to the English interest, were against them, and the Earl of Buchan, husband of the patriotic Countess, and his kinsman, Macdougal of Lorn, were Bruce's most deadly enemies. At one time Bruce had met with so many defeats that he left Scotland and thought of giving up the struggle and going to the Holy Land. Tradition says that the example of a spider stirred him up to fresh courage and endurance. He was in hiding in the island of Rachrin, off the north coast of Ireland. As he lay one morning in bed in the wretched hut in which he had taken refuge, he saw a spider trying in vain to throw its web across from beam to beam of the roof above his head. The insect tried six times and failed. Bruce reckoned that he had been beaten just six times by the English. He watched eagerly to see if the spider would try again. "If it does," thought he, "so will I." Once more the spider made the attempt, and this time it was successful. Bruce took it as a happy omen, and went back to Scotland. He joined some of his followers in the Isle of Arran. From the island they went to the mainland, and from that time the tide of fortune seemed to turn, and to bring him good luck instead of bad. Still he had to go through many perils. The story of his exploits has been handed down to us by John Barbour, Archdeacon of Aberdeen. As he was born soon after Bruce's death, there may be some truth in the tales which he tells, though it must be borne in mind that they are but tales. [Pg 49] He describes Bruce as a strong, tall man, so cheerful and good-humoured that he kept up the spirits of his followers no matter what mishaps befell them, always first in danger, and often owing his life to his own wit and daring. One of his best known feats happened in the country of John of Lorn. Three Highlanders, who had sworn to take his life, set upon him when he was quite alone. One seized his horse's bridle; another tried to take his foot out of the stirrup; the third, leaping on him from behind, tried to unhorse him. Bruce cut them all down and rode off triumphant. His brooch had come loose in the struggle, and was ever afterwards kept as a precious relic in the family of his enemy Macdougal of Lorn. The first decided success of Bruce was the defeat of his old enemy, the Earl of Buchan, who with his followers joined the English, and forced Bruce to right near Inverary. Bruce won the day, and his followers so spoiled the lands of the Comyn that this fray was long remembered as the "Herrying of Buchan." At length the clergy recognized Bruce as their King, and this virtual taking off the excommunication had a great effect upon the people. The little band of patriots increased by degrees. The strongholds were won back, till at last only Stirling was left to the English, and it was so sorely pressed that the governor agreed to give it up to the Scots if he were not relieved before St. John Baptist's Day, 1314. Roused by the fear of losing this, the most prized of all Edward the First's conquests, the English gathered in great force, and marched 100,000 strong to the relief of the garrison.

20. Battle of Bannockburn, June 24, 1314.—The Scots were posted so as to command the plain or carse of Stirling, which the English must cross to reach the Castle. They were greatly inferior to the English in numbers, and had scarcely any cavalry, in which the chief strength of the English force lay. Robert divided them into four battles or [Pg 50] divisions. Their leaders were Sir James Douglas; Randolf, his nephew; James the Stewart, and Bruce's own brother Edward. Bruce himself commanded the fourth division, which was placed behind the others, as in it were the men he least trusted, and a small body of cavalry. One flank of the army rested on the Bannock, a small stream or burn, from which the battle took its name. Before the battle joined, as King Robert was reviewing his line, he was challenged to single combat by Henry of Bohun, an English knight, and raised the spirit of his followers by cleaving his adversary's skull. The English began the fight by a volley of arrows, but their archers were dispersed by the small body of the Scottish horsemen whom King Robert sent to charge them. The English cavalry then charged the Scots, but they tried in vain to break the compact bristling masses of the Scottish spearmen, and themselves fell into confusion. Some Highland gillies and camp-followers just then appeared on the brow of a neighbouring hill. The English took them for a reserve of the enemy, were seized with terror, fled in wild disorder, and the defeat became a total and shameful rout. The horsemen in their flight fell into the pitfalls which the Scots had cunningly sunk in the plain. King Edward and 500 knights never drew rein till they reached Dunbar, whence they took ship for Berwick. Great spoil and many noble captives fell that day to the share of the victors.

21. Results of the Victory.—By this battle, won against tremendous odds, the Saxons of the Lowlands decided their own fate and that of the Celtic people by whose name they were called, and to whose kingdom they chose to belong. On the field of Bannockburn they gave the English a convincing proof that they preferred sharing the poverty and turbulent independence of that half-civilized Celtic kingdom to rejoining the more wealthy, prosperous, and settled country from which three centuries before they had [Pg 51] been severed. Three more centuries were still to pass before Edward the First's great idea of a Union could be carried out. Bannockburn is noteworthy among battles as being one of the first to prove the value of Wallace's great discovery that footmen, when rightly understood and skilfully handled, were, after all, better than the mounted men-at-arms hitherto deemed invincible. Like Morgarten and Courtray, the fields on which the Flemings and the Swiss about the same time overthrew their oppressors, this victory of the Scots stands forth as a bright example, showing how, even in that age of feudal tyranny, a few men of set purpose, fighting for their common liberty, could withstand a great mass of feudal retainers fighting simply at the bidding of their lords.

22. Bruce's Comrades.—The faithful friends of Bruce, those who had shared his dangers and helped him to win his crown, were no way behind their leader in courage and heroism. The most famous of them all was James of Douglas, son of that Douglas who had been the friend and supporter of Wallace. His own Castle of Douglas was the scene of one of his most daring deeds, hence called the Douglas Larder. The English held his castle, but on Palm Sunday, when the garrison were gone to church, Douglas attacked them suddenly, killed some, and took the rest prisoners. He and his men then went up to the castle, where they feasted merrily on the fare that was being made ready for the English. When they had dined, Douglas bade them bring forth all the provision of food and fuel and pile it up in the castle hall. He then killed the English prisoners and flung their bodies on the heap. Over them he poured their store of wine, which mingled with the blood that still streamed from their gaping wounds. The Scots then set fire to the whole and went off to the woods again, for the free vault of heaven was more to their minds than the constraint of castle walls. All these stories are only tales; but, whether true or not, they show the spirit of the time.

23. Summary.—In this chapter we have seen how Scotland lost her independence by the selfish quarrels of her nobles and the weakness of her King John Balliol; how the rising of Wallace, the first effort for regaining her ancient freedom, was confined solely to the people without the nobles; how it came to nothing from the want of unity of purpose in the nation; how Scotland, after the failure of this attempt, had lost her separate national life and had been united to England; how, when all hope seemed lost, the people rose under a leader who was really a Norman baron, and therefore as much a foreigner to them as any of the governors placed over them by Edward; and how by one great effort they shook off the yoke of the invaders and drove them from the soil.

CHAPTER IV.

Robert I. (1)—Chapter of Mitton (2)—Peace of Northampton (3)—Robert's parliaments (4)—his death (5)—David II. (6)—Edward Balliol's invasion (7)—battle of Halidon Hill (8)—capture of the King (9)—Robert II. (10)—the French allies (11)—Raid of Otterburn (12)—Robert III. (13)—Clan battle on the North Inch (14)—relations with England (15)—Albany's regency (16)—battle of Harlaw (17)—Scots in France (18)—death of Albany (19)—summary (20).

1. Robert I., 1314-1329.—The independence which Scotland had lost was won back on the field of Bannockburn. She was to live on as an independent kingdom, [Pg 53] not to sink into a mere province of England; but, as the English refused to acknowledge her independence, the war was carried on by repeated invasions and cruel wastings of the northern counties. Douglas, who was so popular that he was called the Good Lord James, and Randolf, whom Bruce created Earl of Moray, were the chief heroes of these raids. Edward was attacked too in another quarter, in Ireland, whither, at the call of the Celtic chiefs, Edward Bruce had gone, like his brother Robert, to win himself a crown by valour and popularity. King Robert himself took over troops to help him. Edward was crowned King of Ireland, but he was killed soon after. Meanwhile the war on the Border still went on. Each side was struggling for Berwick. The Scots won it back, and the English did all they could to retake it, but in vain.

2. Chapter of Mitton.—While the siege went on, the Border counties were so sorely harried by the Scots that at last the Archbishop of York and the clergy took up arms in their defence. But they were thoroughly beaten, and this battle was called the Chapter of Mitton, from the number of clerks left dead on the field. Edward could have ended all this by acknowledging Robert as King, but he would not. A two years' truce was made in 1319, but, as soon as it was ended, he once more invaded Scotland with a large army. He found nothing but a wasted country, for the Scots had carried both provisions and cattle to the hills, nor would they come out to fight, though they harassed the rear of the retreating army. At last the people of the northern counties of England grew weary of the constant struggle. They had suffered so much loss from the inroads of the Scots that they at last resolved that, if the King would not make peace for them, they must come to terms with the enemy on their own account. Edward, who feared that he might thus lose a part of his kingdom, agreed to a thirteen years' [Pg 54] truce, which was concluded in 1323. In this treaty Robert was allowed to take his title of King, though the English would not give it him. But when a few years later Edward was deposed and his son Edward the Third placed in his stead, his government would not confirm the truce in the form at first agreed on. The Scots upon this made another raid upon England, swept the country, and carried off their spoil before the eyes of a large English army. The Scots had in their plundering expeditions a great advantage over the English in the greater simplicity of their habits. They were mounted on small light horses, which at night were turned out to graze. They carried no provisions, except a small bag of oatmeal, which each man bore at his saddle, together with a thin iron plate on which he baked his meal into cakes. For the rest of their food they trusted to plunder. They burned and destroyed everything as they passed, and, when they seized more cattle than they could use, they slew them and left them behind on the place where their camp had been.

3. Peace of Northampton.—As by this time Robert's title had, after much strife, been recognized by the Pope and other foreign powers, the English saw that they must acknowledge it too. Therefore a treaty was confirmed at Northampton in 1328 between Robert, King of Scots, and the English King. The terms of this treaty were, that Scotland as far as the old boundary lines should be perfectly independent; that the two Kings should be faithful allies, and that neither should stir up the troublesome Celtic subjects of the other, either in Ireland or in the Highlands. As a further proof of good will, Joan, Edward's sister, was betrothed to Robert's infant son. By this treaty the original Commendation of 924, and all the subsequent submissions to England, whether real or pretended, were done away with. It placed the kingdom on quite a new footing, for now Lothian and Strathclyde [Pg 55] were as independent of England as the real Scotland had originally been. The long time of common suffering and common struggles had done for the nation what the good time before it had failed to do. It had knit together the three strands of the different races into one cord of national unity too strong for any outer influence again to sever. But during the long war there had also arisen that intense hatred of everything English which warped the future growth of the nation. This hatred drove Scotland to seek in France the model and ally that she had hitherto found in England, and the influence of France can from this period be distinctly traced in the laws, the architecture, and the manners of the people. Robert's treaty with France was the beginning of the future foreign policy of Scotland. This was to make common cause with France against England, which country Scotland pledged herself to invade whenever France declared war against it.

4. Robert's Parliaments.—Two of the meetings of the Estates or Parliaments of this reign deserve notice. That of 1318 settled the succession to the crown: first, on the direct male heirs in order of seniority; next on the direct female heirs; failing both, on the next of kin. An Act was also passed by this parliament forbidding all holders of estates in Scotland from taking the produce or revenues of these lands out of the kingdom. This law acted as a sentence of forfeiture on the so-called Scottish barons who had larger estates in England than in Scotland, and who preferred living in the richer country. In the parliament of 1326, held at Cambuskenneth, the third Estate, that is, the members from the burghs, was first recognized as an essential part of the National Assembly.

5. His Death.—King Robert owed his crown to the people and to the clergy; of the nobles but few were with him. His reign made a great change in the baronage, for with [Pg 56] the forfeited estates of his opponents he laid the foundation of other families, the Douglases for instance, who in after-times proved the dangerous rivals of his own descendants. This was partly owing to his mistaken policy in granting royalties or royal powers within their own domains to certain of his own kindred and supporters. This practice, though at the time it strengthened his own hands, in the end weakened the power of the Crown. He died at Cardross in 1329, leaving one son. He was greatly mourned by the people, for he had won their sympathy by the struggles of his early career, and had become their pride by his final victories. They were justly proud of having a king who was no mere puppet in the hands of others, fit only to wear a crown and to spend money, but a brave, wise man, who had shown himself as able to suffer want and to fight against ill-fortune as the best and bravest among themselves. After King Robert's death, Douglas, to fulfil his last wish, set out with his heart for Spain with a gallant following of the best gentlemen in Scotland. In a skirmish with the Moors, he was surrounded by the enemy, while hastening to the help of a brother knight. When he saw his danger, he took from his neck the silken cord from which hung the Bruce's heart, cast it on before him into the thickest of the fight, crying out, "Pass first in fight as thou art wont to do, and Douglas will follow thee or die." True to his word, he fell fighting valiantly, and his body was found near the casket, which held the heart of the friend and leader whom in life he had loved so well. Douglas was tall and strong, and his dark skin and black hair won him the nickname of the "Black Douglas." The English hated and feared him, but his own people loved him well and remembered him long after his death.

6. David II., 1320-1370.—David, who was only eight years old when his father died, was crowned at Scone and anointed which no King of Scots had ever before been, as this was [Pg 57] considered the special right of independent sovereigns only. The government was in the hands of Randolf, who had been appointed Regent by the Estates before the death of the late king. In the early part of the reign the country was torn by a struggle which, as it was really a civil war, was more dangerous to its independence and more hurtful to the national character than the long war with the English had been. This war was caused by those barons who, holding large estates in England, had, by marriage or by inheritance, become possessed of lands in Scotland, which they lost by the Act of the last reign against absentees. Hitherto the so-called Scottish nobles had been Norman barons, with equal interests in both kingdoms, but this act forced them to decide for one or the other. Hence it was the mere chance of the respective value of their lands that decided whether such names as Percy and Douglas should be feared north or south of the Border.

7. Edward Balliol's Invasion.—These disinherited barons gathered round Edward Balliol, the son of King John, and determined on an invasion of Scotland on their own account, giving out that they came to win back the crown for him. Just at this time of threatened danger the Regent died, and was succeeded in his trust by Donald, Earl of Mar, another nephew of King Robert. The invaders landed on the coast of Fife, and at Duplin in Strathearn they defeated a large army under the command of the Regent, who was slain. They then took possession of Perth, and crowned Balliol at Scone, September 24th, 1332. He acknowledged himself the vassal of Edward of England; but the latter did not openly take a part in the war, until the Scots, by their frequent raids across the Border, could be said to have broken the Peace of Northampton.

8. Battle of Halidon Hill.—In the spring of 1333, Edward the Third invested Berwick, and the governor agreed to give [Pg 58] it up if it were not relieved by the Scots within a given time. The new Regent, Archibald Douglas, brother to the Good Lord James, marched to raise the siege. It was very much the case of Bannockburn reversed, for now the English had the advantage of being posted on Halidon Hill, close by the town, while the Scots, the assailants, had to struggle through a marsh. The English archers won the day; the Regent was killed; Berwick was forced to yield; and Balliol gave it over to the English, and placed all the strongholds south of the Forth in their hands. For three years longer there was much fighting on the Border with pretty equal success, until the French wars drew the attention of Edward the Third from Scotland, and then the national party began to get the upper hand. David, Earl of Athole, Balliol's chief supporter, was defeated and slain at Culbleen, in the Highlands; and when Robert the High Steward became Regent in 1338, he won back the strongholds. Soon after, Balliol left the kingdom, and in 1341 David and his Queen Joan of England came home from France, where he had been sent to be out of the way of the troubles. Five years of comparative peace followed. A succession of truces were made with England, but they were not strictly kept on the Border.

9. Capture of the King.—While Edward was busy with the siege of Calais, David, to keep up the spirit of the alliance with France, broke the truce between England and Scotland by invading England. He was defeated and captured by the Archbishop of York at the head of the force of the northern counties in 1346. The battle in which he was taken was called the battle of Neville's Cross, from a cross afterwards put up to mark the field by Sir Ralph Neville. For eleven years David remained a captive, and Scotland was governed by the former Regent, the Steward. During that time Berwick was won and lost again. Edward, to whom Balliol had handed over his claim to the kingdom [Pg 59] for a pension of two thousand pounds, brought an English army as far as the Forth. As they could neither find provisions to sustain them nor an enemy to fight with, they were forced to return; but they had left such traces of their progress on churches and dwelling-houses that their inroad was remembered as the "burnt Candlemas." In 1347 David was released, the ransom being fixed at 100,000 marks. He made many after-visits to England, and proposed to the Estates, that Lionel, the second son of Edward, should succeed him, but to this they would not agree. He died in 1370, and left no children. After the death of Joan he had married Margaret Logie, a woman of obscure birth.

10. Robert II., 1370-1390.—David was succeeded by his sister's son, Robert, the Steward of the kingdom. This office was hereditary, and it gradually passed into the surname of the family who held it and became common to the different branches. The stewardship was first granted to Walter Fitz-Alan, a Breton baron, by David. Robert was allowed to mount the throne unopposed. It had been feared that William Lord Douglas, who through his mother, a sister of the Red Comyn, represented the claim that had been resigned by the Balliols, would have disputed his right to the throne, but he did not. Robert was twice married. His first wife was Elizabeth More, by whom he had four sons and several daughters. After her death he married Euphemia, daughter of the Earl of Ross, and had two sons and four daughters. The descendants of this second marriage claimed the crown on the ground that the dispensation from Rome had not been obtained, which, as Robert and Elizabeth were near of kin, was needful to make the marriage valid, and the children legitimate. Dispensations for each marriage have since been discovered, which decide the right of Robert's first family. [Pg 60]

11. The French Allies.—At the end of the truce with England, in 1385, war broke out again. The French sent a body of 2,000 men, 1,000 stands of armour, and 50,000 gold pieces to the aid of their allies the Scots. Sir John de Vienne, Admiral of France, was the leader of the French auxiliaries. Richard the Second of England, with an army of 70,000 men, invaded Scotland, and marched as far north as the Forth. But the country had been wasted before him, so that the only harm he could do was to destroy Melrose Abbey. Meanwhile the Scots had harried the northern counties of his own kingdom with their French allies. The French afterwards said that in the dioceses of Carlisle and Durham they had burned more than the value of all the towns in Scotland. But the Frenchmen despised the poverty of the Scots, and were disgusted with their way of fighting; and as the Scots in return were uncivil and inhospitable to them, they went away before long, and were as glad to get back to their own land as the Scots were to get rid of them.

12. Raid of Otterburn.—A few years later the Scots barons made another raid on the north of England. An army 5,000 strong mustered at Jedburgh. By the capture of an English spy, they learned that the English meant to keep out of their way, and, while they entered England, to make a counter-raid on the south of Scotland. To defeat this plan the Scots parted their force into two bands, one of which was to enter England on the east, the other on the west. The eastern division, under the Earls of Douglas, Dunbar, and Moray, swept the country as far as Durham. As they were returning laden with spoil, they tarried three days near Newcastle, where were gathered the English barons under Ralph and Henry Percy, sons of the Earl of Northumberland, the Warden of the Marches. Many skirmishes then took place between the two forces. In one of these Douglas took the pennon of Sir Henry Percy, surnamed Hotspur, and challenged him to come to his tent [Pg 61] and win it back. The next day the Scots moved off and encamped near Otterburn Tower. Percy hurried after them and attacked them in the night. The Scots, though fewer in number, had the advantage of being in a well-defended camp. They won the day, but the victory was dearly bought, for Douglas was slain in the fight. This battle, in which many lives were lost without any real cause, and without doing any good whatever, was reckoned one of the best fought battles of that warlike time. It was all hand to hand fighting, and all the knights engaged in it on both sides showed great valour. Their feats of arms have been commemorated in the spirit-stirring ballad of Chevy Chase. The Scots came back to their own land, bringing with them Hotspur and more than forty English knights whom they had taken prisoners. This fight, which was called the Raid of Otterburn, took place in August 1388.

Robert died in 1390. He left the country at peace; for a truce between England and France, taking in Scotland as an ally of the latter, had been made the year before.

13. Robert III., 1390-1406.—The eldest son of the late King was John, but, as Balliol had made this name odious to the people, he changed it at his coronation to Robert. The country was in a miserable state. The nobles had been so long used to war with England that they could not bear to be at peace. They fought with one another, and preyed on the peasants and burghers. As the King was too weak both in mind and body to restrain them, the Estates placed the sovereign power in the hands of his son David, who was created Duke of Rothesay. This is the first time the title of Duke appears in Scottish history. Rothesay was to act as the King's Lieutenant for three years, with the advice of a council chosen by the Estates. Meanwhile the real rulers were the King's two brothers, Robert, Duke of Albany, and Alexander, Earl of Buchan, who was master of the country [Pg 62] north of the Firths, where his ferocity won him the surname of the Wolf of Badenoch. Albany, anxious, as he gave out, to restrain the wild follies of his nephew Rothesay, seized him and confined him in Falkland Castle. There he died. Albany said that he had died from natural causes, but the people believed that he had been starved by his uncle. After his death, Albany, with his associate Archibald, Earl of Douglas, was cleared of suspicion by an act of the Estates. He was afterwards appointed Governor.

14. Clan Battle near Perth.—During this reign there was a deadly combat between two bands of Highlanders on a meadow by the Tay, called the North Inch of Perth. The King and his nobles, and a vast crowd of persons of all ranks, gathered to see them fight. There were thirty chosen men on each side, and they fought as was their wont, with axes, swords, or bows, and wore no armour. Before the fight began one man left the ranks, swam the Tay, and fled. One Henry Wynd, called "Gow Chrom," or the "Crooked Smith," was hired to fill his place. They fought with fury, and did not leave off till ten men, all wounded, were left on the one side, and one only upon the other. Gow Chrom did such good service that he is said to have won the victory for the clan that had enlisted his services, though it is said he knew so little about the matter that he was quite uncertain which side he was fighting for. Like Otterburn, this slaughter simply showed the skill of the combatants in killing one another. The name of the clans engaged, and their cause of quarrel, if they had any, have been alike forgotten.

15. Relations with England.—In 1400, soon after the end of the truce, Henry the Fourth, who by a revolution had been placed on his cousin Richard's throne, revived the old claim over Scotland in order to make himself popular with the English. He announced his intention of coming to Edinburgh [Pg 63] to receive the homage of the King and of the nobles, and to enforce his demand he marched as far as Leith at the head of an army. This was the most harmless invasion on record, for, as usual, the Scots had got out of the way, and the English had to retreat without finding an enemy to fight with. About this time George of Dunbar, Earl of March, shifted his allegiance to Henry. He was offended because Rothesay married a daughter of his great rival Douglas, instead of his own daughter Elizabeth, to whom he was betrothed. In 1402 he joined Sir Henry Percy, surnamed Hotspur, and defeated an invading body of the Scots under Douglas at Homildon. This was much such an affair as Otterburn, only this time the English won and Douglas was taken prisoner. He afterwards joined the Percies in their rebellion against Henry and fought with them at Shrewsbury. Albany had an army on the Border ready to help the rebels, but their defeat and dispersion brought his plan to nothing. But Albany hit on another way of threatening Henry. He entertained at the Scottish court a person whom he received as the dethroned Richard, who had been discovered in disguise, so the story ran, a fugitive in the Western Isles. In 1405, however, chance threw into Henry's hands an important prize. This was James, Earl of Carrick, second son of the King, and heir to the throne. He was captured by the English, in time of truce, while on his way to France, whither he was sent, nominally to be educated, but really to be out of the reach of his dangerous uncle. Thus, as the head of each government had a hostage for the good behaviour of the other, there was no open war between the two nations. In 1406 Robert died.

16. Albany's Regency.—The death of Robert made no change in the government, though the young King was acknowledged as James the First. There was nominal peace with England, but the work of winning back the Border [Pg 64] strongholds still went on. Jedburgh was retaken and destroyed, as the best means of securing it against foreign occupation in future.

17. Battle of Harlaw.—The kingdom was now threatened on the other border, the northern march which parted the Saxons of the north-eastern Lowlands from the Celtic clans of the mountains. The hatred between the hostile races had been growing more and more bitter, and was fostered by constant inroads on the one hand and cruel laws upon the other. The time seemed now to have come when there must be a trial of strength between them. The head of the Celts was Donald, Lord of the Isles, who, though he had sworn fealty to David the Second, again claimed sovereign power over all the clans of the West, and entered into treaties with England as though he had been an independent monarch. He claimed the Earldom of Ross in right of his wife, as her niece, the heiress, had taken the veil. By getting this earldom, the Lord of the Isles became lord over half the kingdom, and he resolved to invade the territory of the King, whom he looked on as a rival. Now the district that lay nearest him, the Lowlands north of the Forth, as it had not been touched by the Border wars, was at this time at once the richest part of the kingdom and the part least accustomed to self-defence. Great therefore was the terror of the burghers and husbandmen at the news that a horde of plundering savages would soon be let loose upon them. They took up arms in their own defence, and they were fortunate in finding a leader whose experience, gained in similar warfare on his own account, well fitted him to withstand the ambitious Donald. This was Alexander Stewart, Earl of Mar, the illegitimate son of the Wolf of Badenoch. He had won his reputation by valour in the French wars, and his earldom by carrying off and marrying an heiress, who was Countess of [Pg 65] Mar in her own right. The rival races met at Harlaw, in Aberdeenshire, July 24, 1411. Here, as at Bannockburn, the determination and stedfastness of each man in the smaller force decided the fortune of the day. For, though the Highlanders, reckless of life, charged again and again, they made no impression on the small compact mass that kept the way against them, and they were at last forced to retreat. This battle was justly looked on as a great national deliverance, greater even than the victory at Bannockburn, and many privileges and immunities were granted to the heirs of those who had fallen.

18. The Scots in France.—During the Regency the Scots did good service to their old allies of France, who were sorely pressed by the English. Henry the Fifth of England had conquered nearly all France, and had been proclaimed heir of the French king. A company of 700 Scots, led by John Stewart, Earl of Buchan, second son of Albany, went to the help of the French. They arrived safely in France, in spite of the careful watch upon the seas kept up by the English in order to prevent them. By their aid the French gained their first victory in this war at the battle of Beaugé in 1421. Buchan was made Constable of France. He was then sent back to Scotland on an embassy to seek the help of Douglas on the part of the King of France. An alliance was made between them in 1423, and Douglas came to France, where the rich Duchy of Touraine and many other lands were conferred upon him. But Douglas was slain not long after at the battle of Verneuil in 1424. Most of the Scots fell with him, for the English refused them quarter, as Henry had James of Scotland in his camp, and he gave orders that all the Scots bearing arms on the French side should be looked upon as traitors fighting against their King. The remnant that were left were formed into a royal bodyguard, the beginning of the famous Scots [Pg 66] Guard of the French kings. Archibald, Earl of Douglas, who fell at Verneuil, was called "Tine-man," or lose-man, because in every battle in which he took part he fought on the losing side.

19. Death of Albany.—Albany died in 1419. His son Murdoch succeeded him as Governor, but there is no record of his being confirmed in that office by the Estates. As he had not the talents of his father, he had no control over the barons. Every man was his own master, and the land was filled with violence. The obvious remedy was to bring home the King, and Douglas and some of the other nobles treated with the English government for his release.

20. Summary.—Under the immediate successors of Robert the First, Scotland nearly lost all the advantages which he had won for her. The country was torn by civil strife; the kings were weak and useless; the nobles became so strong and overbearing that their power more than equalled that of the Crown, and they set at nought the King's authority. All social improvement was at a standstill. Still we find during this period the first stirrings of a desire for increase of knowledge and greater liberty of religious thought. Two events mark this: the burning of John Reseby, with his books, on a charge of heresy, at Perth in 1408; and the opening of the first University in Scotland, founded at St. Andrews by Henry Wardlaw, the bishop, in 1410. The history of Scotland was now first written by two natives of the country; John of Fordun, who wrote the "Scotichronicon," and Andrew Wyntoun, who wrote a metrical chronicle.

CHAPTER V.

Return of the King (1)—state of the Highlands (2)—murder of James (3)—judicial reforms (4)—James II. (5)—Crichton and Livingstone (6)—the Douglases (7)—majority of James; fall of Douglas (8)—siege of Roxburgh (9)—James III. (10)—Orkney and Shetland (11)—relations with England (12)—revolt of the nobles (13)—battle of Sauchieburn (14)—Church matters (15)—James IV. (16)—English intrigues (17)—state of the Highlands (18)—differences with England (19)—battle of Flodden (20)—state of the Church (21)—James V. (22)—Albany's regency (23)—English interference (24)—the "Erection" (25)—fall of Angus (26)—internal affairs (27)—English war (28)—death of James; his character (29)—Mary (30)—treaties with England (31)—first English invasion (32)—second English invasion (33)—third English invasion; fight at Pinkie (34)—internal affairs (35)—Regency of Mary of Lorraine; first marriage of Mary Stewart (36)—social progress (37)—state of education and literature (38)—summary (39).

1. James I., 1424-1436. Return of the King.—In 1424 James came home and brought with him his English wife, Joan, daughter of the Earl of Somerset. As he had been taken in time of peace, a ransom could not decently be demanded, but the Scots were required to pay forty thousand pounds to defray the expenses of his eighteen years' maintenance and education. The King, now at last restored to his kingdom, let eight months pass quietly before taking vengeance on those who had so long kept him out of it. He spent this time in winning the confidence of the people and of the lesser barons. He then seized Albany, his two sons, and twenty-six other nobles at Perth, whither they had come [Pg 68] to attend the Parliament. Albany and his two sons were tried before a jury of twenty-one peers, many of whom sat only to secure their own safety. They were found guilty of treason and put to death at Stirling. James himself presided at the trial, thereby reviving the ancient practice of the King's personal administration of justice.

2. The Highlands.—When James had thus got rid of his dangerous cousins, he turned his attention to the Highlands and Western Isles, which presented a strange mixture of Celtic and of feudal manners. They were ruled partly by Norman barons, and partly by native chiefs, and these barons or chiefs were both alike upheld by that personal devotion of their vassals which was the strong point of Celtic clanship. James summoned the chiefs to a parliament at Inverness in 1427. They obeyed the summons, and were at once seized and imprisoned. Three of them were hanged at that time. Several others shared the same fate at a later date. Others were imprisoned, and a small remnant only allowed to go away unhurt. Alexander, Lord of the Isles, was among these last, and the first use he made of his recovered liberty was to bring his islemen down on Inverness, which they destroyed. James hurried northward again and defeated him in Lochaber. Alexander gave himself up to the King's grace, and was confined in Tantalion Castle. But his kinsman, Donald Balloch, set himself at the head of the clans and they defeated the royal army. James determined to crush the Celts once and for ever. An additional tax was levied for the purpose, and James set out once more for the north. But the chiefs, who saw that the King was just then too strong for them, met him with proffers of homage and submission. Such submissions were, however, practically worthless. In the eyes of the Celts they were just as little binding as the parchment title-deeds by which the government sought to change their chiefs into feudal barons. [Pg 69]

3. Murder of James.—The policy of James was to reduce the power of the baronage, and to balance it by strengthening the clergy and encouraging the commons. He made strict search into the titles by which the several nobles held their lands, and more especially into the actual state of the estates which had been held by the Crown in the time of Robert the First. He deprived the Earl of March of his earldom, on the ground that Albany, who had restored it to him, had not the power to confer upon him the estates which he had once forfeited by the transfer of his allegiance to England. James also took from Malise Grahame his earldom of Strathearn, which he had inherited through his mother, on the ground that it was a male fief. He therefore transferred it to the next male heir, Walter Stewart, Earl of Athole, grand-uncle of Grahame, the only surviving son of Robert the Second. These measures roused the dislike and distrust of the class they were aimed at, and a conspiracy was formed against the King. At its head was Sir Robert Grahame, uncle of Malise, who had been banished for denouncing the King's doings in Parliament. Through the connivance of the Earl of Athole, the High Chamberlain, the conspirators got entrance to the King's quarters, when he was keeping his Christmas in the monastery of the Black Friars at Perth, and there they treacherously murdered him, 1436. James left one son and five daughters. Margaret, the eldest, was married to the Dauphin, afterwards Louis the Eleventh of France.

4. Judicial Reforms.—James held many parliaments, and pretty nearly all are noteworthy for passing wise measures for the common good. In his first parliament, the "Committee of the Articles," which dated from the reign of David the Second, was acknowledged as an established part of the parliament. This committee was elected by the parliament at the beginning of its session, and nearly the whole power [Pg 70] of the Estates was made over to the persons chosen to form it, who were called the Lords of the Articles. They consulted together and considered the Articles presented to them in parliament, which were then passed by the vote of the Estates and became law. This custom, by which the business of the whole parliament was left in the hands of a committee, was afterwards found to be the weakest point of the legislature, and paved the way for a great deal of bribery and corruption. Statute law in Scotland dates from this reign, as it was James who first caused a collection of statutes to be made, and separated those that were still in force from those that had fallen out of use. He also regulated weights and measures, and fixed a standard for the coinage, so that it should be of the same weight and fineness as the money in England. From his reign also dates the appointment of the office of Treasurer; the publication of the acts of parliament in the language spoken by the people; the first effort towards the representation of the lesser barons by commissaries; and an attempt to establish a supreme court of civil jurisdiction, which was to consist of the Chancellor and three other persons chosen by the Estates, and to sit three times a year. In order that the Scottish people might learn to compete with the English bowmen, James established schools in the different parishes for the practice of archery. In short, he strove in every way to make his people profit by what he had learnt and observed during his long exile in England. He was a patron of learning, and was himself a scholar and one of the earliest and best English poets. The longest of his poems is called the "King's Quhair" or book. In it he sang his love for his fair English bride in strains that prove him to have been a true poet. It is written in stanzas of seven lines each, a very favourite measure in those days, which was afterwards called the "roial rime" in memory of this poet-king. [Pg 71]

5. James II., 1436-1460.—The young King, who was only six years old when his father was killed, was crowned at Holyrood, as Scone, the customary crowning-place, was too near the Highlands, where the conspirators had taken refuge, to be safe. He was then taken by his mother for greater security to Edinburgh Castle. The object of the murderers was to place on the throne the Earl of Athole, who, as being the son of the second marriage of Robert the Second, was looked on as the true heir by the party who held that the first marriage of that king was not valid. If this were their design, it was not seconded by the people, who were filled with sorrow and anger at the death of the King, who had made himself popular by all the good he had done for them. A hue-and-cry was raised after the murderers, who were taken and put to death with cruel tortures.

6. Crichton and Livingstone.—The first part of the reign was a struggle for the wardship of the King's person, which gave nearly royal power to whoever held it. The rivals for this honour were William Crichton, the Chancellor and governor of Edinburgh Castle; Alexander Livingstone, the governor of Stirling, the other great stronghold; and the Queen-mother. The Queen, who feared that Crichton would try to separate the young King from her if she stayed in Edinburgh, succeeded in getting herself and her child out of his hands by a stealthy flight to Stirling. But she soon found that they had only changed jailers, for Livingstone kept as strict a guard over the King as Crichton had done. A few years later she married Stewart, Lord of Lorn, after which she took no further part in public affairs. Her flight to Stirling gave Livingstone for a time the advantage in the possession of the King, till Crichton contrived to kidnap him back to Edinburgh. But as the rivals found that it would be more for the interest of each to act in concert [Pg 72] with the other, they made an agreement, by which James was sent back to the custody of Livingstone.

7. The House of Douglas.—Archibald, Earl of Douglas, was at this time the most powerful baron in Scotland. Besides holding Galloway, Annandale, and other great estates in Scotland, he had inherited the Duchy of Touraine, which had been conferred on his father by the King of France for good service done against the English, and in his foreign duchy he possessed wealth and splendour beyond anything that the Scottish king could boast. The family still had a hold on the popular favour won for them by the Good Lord James. They had also some pretensions to the crown of Scotland, for Archibald, brother and heir of the Good Lord James, had married a sister of the Red Comyn, who was slain by Bruce. The Douglases therefore represented the claim of the Comyns, which, as we have seen, was better than that of Bruce. They were also descendants of Robert the Second, through Euphemia, one of the children of his second marriage, to whom those who looked on his first family as illegitimate held that the crown ought to have gone. Douglas had been chosen Lieutenant-Governor of the kingdom, and had ample power to quiet the rival parties had he chosen to exercise it. But he did not, and his nominal government was ended by his death in 1439. William, his son, who at seventeen succeeded to all this pride and power, kept up a state and retinue almost royal, and much violence and oppression were laid to his charge. Crichton and Livingstone agreed to compass his downfall, and for this end they invited him and his brother David to visit the King at Edinburgh. They came, were seized, and, after the form of a trial, were beheaded in the Castle-yard. The power of their house was thus broken for a time. The estates were divided; part went with the title to their grand-uncle James, the male heir, while Galloway went to their sister Margaret. But on the death [Pg 73] of James they were re-united, for his son William married Margaret of Galloway, his cousin. He then went to court, to do his duty, as he said, to his sovereign, pretended that the King had chosen him Lieutenant-General of the kingdom, and got most of the power into his own hands. He and Livingstone joined, and tried to make Crichton give up the seals by besieging him in Edinburgh Castle; but he held out so well that they were forced to make terms with him. Douglas grew more proud and powerful every year. He was already lord of nearly all the southern country, and he joined in a bond with the great chiefs of the north,—the Lord of the Isles, who was now Earl of Ross, and Alexander, Earl of Crawford, the head of the house of Lindsay and representative of the fallen Earls of March. He held meetings of his vassals, to which he summoned all those who either were or, as he thought, ought to be his dependants. Nor did he scruple to put to death any who opposed him, in direct defiance of the King's commands. But as the Earl's retainers numbered 5,000, while the King had not so much as a bodyguard, his commands were not easily enforced. On one occasion the King sent Sir Patrick Gray to demand the release of his nephew, M'Lellan, tutor or guardian of the young Laird of Bunby, or Bomby, whom Douglas had put in ward because he failed to appear at one of the gatherings of his vassals. Douglas received him courteously, but said he could on no account hear the King's message till his visitor had dined. Meanwhile he had the prisoner brought out and beheaded. When he heard the King's order he feigned great respect for it, and, showing the body, said, "There lies your sister's son; he wants the head, but the body is at your service." Sir Patrick had to hide his anger as best he might till he had got safe out of his hands. [Pg 74]

8. Majority of James. Fall of Douglas.—The King's majority was soon followed by the ruin of Livingstone. Douglas was too strong to be openly attacked. He was invited to Stirling and received in a friendly way. James remonstrated with him about the bonds, and urged him to break them off. Douglas refused. James in a fit of passion cried out, "If you will not break the bonds, this shall," and stabbed him. Sir Patrick Gray, who stood by, killed him with his pole-axe. They then threw the mangled body into the courtyard. This savage deed plunged the whole country into civil war. James, the brother and heir of the murdered Earl, openly defied the King; that is, he renounced his allegiance to him as a traitor and a perjured man. His cause was taken up by the parties to the bond, the Earls of Ross and Crawford. The King, who felt himself too weak to break the confederacy, was forced to turn to his own advantage the enmity among his nobles, and to pull down one house by building up another. This policy only changed the name of the rivals of the Crown, without getting rid of them, and it laid the foundation of the like troubles in future reigns. In the north James entrusted the conduct of the war to the head of the house of Gordon, whom he created Earl of Huntly, and whose lands lay between those of the banded Earls. In the south the Earl of Angus, the head of the Red Douglases as they were called, was made use of to overthrow the Black Douglases, the elder branch of the family. The question whether James Stewart or James Douglas should wear the crown was settled by a battle at Arkinholm, in Eskdale in 1454. Douglas was forsaken by many of his followers, and was defeated and fled to England. An act of forfeiture was passed against him and all his house, and, to prevent any one family again becoming so formidable, another act was passed, which made Galloway and certain other lordships and castles inalienable from the Crown. But, in spite of this, the greater part of the lands of the fallen Douglas went to his kinsman Angus. Many other families also, among them the [Pg 75] Hamiltons, rose from the ruins of the Black Douglases. Sir James Hamilton, the head of the house, had been one of the adherents of the Earl, but he deserted to the royal side on the eve of the battle of Arkinholm.

9. Siege of Roxburgh.—As the strife which was at this time going on between the Yorkists and Lancastrians kept the English busy at home, there was comparative peace on the Border, broken only by an inroad from Percy and the banished Douglas. James took the part of Henry VI., and raised a large army with the intention of invading England in his favour. But there was no serious war, and James saw that there was now a good chance of winning back the towns which the English still held in Scotland. He therefore laid siege to Roxburgh, and was killed there by the bursting of a large cannon which he was watching with great interest. After his death the Queen urged on the siege, and Roxburgh was taken and destroyed. This siege is noteworthy as being among the first in which we hear of the use of artillery in Scotland. Another notable feature of it was the presence of the Lord of the Isles with an auxiliary force, for which service he was made one of the Wardens of the Border. James had married Mary, the daughter of the Duke of Gelders, and left four sons, the eldest only eight years old. The second university in Scotland was founded in this reign, at Glasgow, by Bishop Turnbull.

10. James III., 1460-1488.—During the first part of this reign, Kennedy, Bishop of St. Andrews, had the chief part in the government. He died in 1466, and on his death the Boyds got hold of the King and of the chief power. These Boyds were originally simple lairds, but they strengthened themselves by bonds with more powerful families, won the King's favour and finally got possession of his person, by making him come with them, partly by persuasion, partly by force, from Stirling to Edinburgh. They then obtained [Pg 76] an act of the Estates declaring that this step had been taken with the full consent and good pleasure of the King. The Lord Boyd was appointed guardian of his person and of the royal strongholds, his son Thomas was created Earl of Arran, and with the earldom the King's sister Mary was given him in marriage.

11. Annexation of Orkney and Shetland.—For many years the rent of the Western Isles had not been paid to the King of Norway. There were heavy arrears due to him which had been demanded in the last reign. It was now agreed to settle the matter peaceably by the marriage of James with Margaret, daughter of Christian of Norway, in 1469. Her dowry was the claim for the arrears and 60,000 florins, in security for which the Orkney and Shetland Isles were placed as pledges in the hands of the King of Scotland. These islands have never been redeemed by payment of the sum agreed on. Arran had been chiefly concerned in bringing about this marriage. During his absence at the court of Christian his enemies were busy in compassing his fall. His wife sent him timely warning of his danger, and he fled first to Denmark and finally to England, whither his father had also escaped. But Alexander, the younger son, was made the scapegoat for the sins of his kindred. He was seized, tried, and put to death for his share in kidnapping the King, which was now denounced as treason. The family estates were forfeited, and most of them were declared inalienable from the Crown.

12. Relations with England.—In the beginning of the reign, Edward the Fourth kept up a seeming show of friendliness, but he was secretly treating with Douglas and the Lord of the Isles to the effect that they should hold the two parts of Scotland as principalities dependent on England. The end of this underhand dealing was that John, son of the Lord of the Isles, invaded and wasted the district [Pg 77] that was to be his principality, all the country north of the Scots Water. This led to the final breaking up of the lordship of the Isles, for he was called to account for his rebellion, and was required to resign the districts of Knapdale and Kintyre, the original Scottish kingdom; the sheriffdoms of Inverness and Nairn, and the earldom of Ross, which was vested in the Crown. In exchange for his proud but doubtful title of Lord of the Isles, he was made a peer of parliament. In 1474 a marriage was arranged between Edward's daughter Cecily and James the Prince of Scotland. It was broken off owing to a quarrel between the King and his brothers, Alexander Duke of Albany, and John Earl of Mar. They were much more popular than James, and, when Mar died suddenly in Craigmillar Castle, James was suspected of having poisoned him. Albany was arrested and confined in Edinburgh Castle on a charge of treasonable dealings with Edward. He escaped to France in hopes of getting Louis the Eleventh to take his part, but he found a more willing helper in Edward. An agreement was made that Edward should place Albany on the throne of Scotland, that he should hold it, and that he should marry the Lady Cecily. After divers threatening messages had been exchanged between the two governments, and many threatenings of attack had been made, a great Scottish army was mustered to invade England in good earnest.

13. Revolt of the Nobles.—The King had always been unpopular with his nobles. His love of money and of peaceable pursuits found little sympathy with them, and they could neither understand nor tolerate his fancy for making favourites of men whom they despised. The time had now come when they could take the law into their own hands. The army raised for the invasion of England was led by the King in person, and advanced as far as Lauder in Berwickshire. There the nobles met together, with old [Pg 78] Angus at their head, to devise some way of getting rid of the most hated of these favourites. This was Robert Cochrane, a mason or architect, to whom the King had given the control of the artillery in this expedition. He had also conferred on him the revenues of the earldom of Mar, and Cochrane, going a step further, had assumed the title. While they were deliberating, the Lord Gray, so the story goes, quoted the old fable of the mice and the cat, meaning thereby that all their talk would come to nothing unless one of their number was bold enough to attack their enemy. On this Archibald Earl of Angus cried out, "Heed not, I'll bell the cat." This saying won him the nickname of "Bell the Cat." While they thus sat in council in the church, Cochrane himself knocked at the door and demanded admittance in the name of the King. The finery which he wore, the chain of massive gold thrown round his neck, the jewelled horn that dangled from it, the gilt helmet borne before him, still further heated the wrath of the lords. They seized him, and with many insults accused him of misguiding the King and the government. Meanwhile they had sent a band of armed men to the King's tent to secure Rogers, a musician, and the other favourites. They then hanged them all over Lauder Bridge. John Ramsay of Balmain was the only one of the favourites who was spared to the entreaties of the King. The triumphant barons then brought the King back to Edinburgh, 1482. Soon after this Albany came back, and demanded the release of his brother, and for a short time they lived together seemingly on good terms, while Albany really ruled. But before long he found it most prudent to return to England, and he showed his real designs by putting Dunbar Castle into the hands of the English.

14. Battle of Sauchieburn.—The King, who had not learned wisdom by the lesson of Lauder Bridge, grew more [Pg 79] and more unpopular. A confederacy was formed, and a large army was raised by the lords south of the Forth. To give a show of justice to their doings, they placed James the Prince of Scotland at their head, professing to have deposed his father, and to have accepted him as their lawful king. North of the Scots Water the country was true to James, and there he collected a considerable force. The two armies met at Sauchieburn. The King, who was not brave, turned and fled at the first sign that the day was going against him. In his flight he was thrown from his horse and carried to a mill built on the Bannock Burn, where he was murdered by an unknown hand, 1488.

15. Church Matters.—In 1471 St. Andrews was raised to an Archbishopric. Pope Sextus the Fourth sent the pallium to Robert Graham the bishop, but this increase of dignity only proved a source of torment to him, for his suffragans, out of jealousy, accused him of all manner of heresies and crimes. He was deposed and degraded, and ended his days in confinement.

16. James IV., 1488-1513.—The first thing to be done after the affair of Sauchieburn was to find out what had become of the King, and, when his death was made sure of, an inquiry was set on foot as to the cause of it. The offices of state were transferred to the party in power, and an act of amnesty was passed, to take in all persons who had taken part with the late King in the struggle which the nobles pleased to call the late rebellion. Two ineffectual risings to avenge the murder of the King were made by the Lords Lennox and Forbes, and three years later, to pacify the clamours of the people, a reward of one hundred marks was offered for the discovery of the actual murderers.

17. English Intrigues.—Just at this time Henry the Seventh of England had his hands too busy at home to allow of his making open war upon Scotland, but he carried [Pg 80] on secret schemes with Angus, Ramsay, and others for the capture of the King. James, on the other hand, upheld that Perkin Warbeck was really Richard, Duke of York, received him at his court as the son of King Edward, and gave him in marriage his kinswoman Lady Katharine Gordon. A force of French and Burgundians came to aid him, and an army crossed the Border, but it did nothing, as the rising which had been planned, and was to have been made at the same time in the north of England, did not take place. At last James got tired of Perkin, sent him off to Ireland, though with a princely escort, and renewed a truce with Henry, in 1497. The two kings were drawn still closer by the marriage of James with Margaret Tudor, eldest daughter of Henry, in 1502.

18. State of the Highlands.—James paid frequent visits to Kintyre, the Isles, and Inverness, and took measures for the building of more castles and the maintenance of garrisons in those already built. This plan might have been successful in keeping the country quiet, if the Crown had been strong enough to carry it out. As it was not, James was forced to fall back on the old policy of turning the feuds of the chiefs to their own destruction, by empowering one to act against another. Again the Gordons got a great increase of power, for their head, the Earl of Huntly, was appointed sheriff of Inverness, Ross, and Caithness, with the condition that he should finish and maintain a fortress at Inverness. In the west the charge of keeping order was put into the hands of the Earl of Argyle, the chief of the Campbells. An attempt was also made to break up the Isles into sheriffdoms, and to impose upon the Highlanders the laws of the Lowlands. A commission was issued for the banishment of broken men, as those clansmen were called who had no representative chiefs, and an Act was passed which made the chiefs responsible for the execution of legal writs upon their clansmen. But the [Pg 81] disaffected chiefs rallied round Donald Dhu, an illegitimate descendant of the last Lord of the Isles, and it took three years' fighting on the part of the King and of Huntly to reduce them. Donald was at last brought captive to Edinburgh, and the lordship of the Isles was finally broken up in 1504.

19. Differences with England.—In this reign Scotland first appears as a naval power, and this proved a new source of strife with England. One of the King of Scots' captains, Andrew Barton, bore letters of marque against the Portuguese, but the English accused him of taking English vessels also. He was attacked in time of truce by the Howards. He himself was killed in the action, and his ship, the Lion, was taken, and became the second ship in the English navy. James had also another cause of complaint against Henry the Eighth, for Henry refused to give up to his sister Margaret a legacy of jewels left to her by her father. When therefore England and France declared war, Scotland stood by her old ally, the bond between them was drawn closer, the right of citizenship in France was extended to the Scots, and Queen Anne of France made an appeal to the chivalrous feeling of James by choosing him as her knight, and calling on him for assistance. James therefore fitted out a fleet of twenty-three vessels. Among them was a very large ship called the Great Michael, which was looked on as a masterpiece of shipbuilding. This fleet was put under the command of James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, with orders to sail for France. Instead of doing this, he stormed Carrickfergus, and what became of the ships was never clearly made out.

20. Battle of Flodden.—James also determined to invade England. Though the cause was not popular, the King was, and a large army was soon mustered. The King himself led the host across the Border, and encamped on the Till, but, as he would not take the advice of Angus and others [Pg 82] who knew more of border fighting than he did, he mismanaged the whole affair. He idled away the time till his own army began to disperse and the English had time to gather; then he let them cross the river unopposed, and finally left his strong position on the hill to meet them hand to hand in the plain. The result was an utter defeat, and the King, who was more eager to display his own valour than to act the part of the general in command, was slain in the thickest of the fight. Twelve earls and thirteen barons fell round him, and every noble house in Scotland left some of its name on the fatal field of Flodden Sept. 9, 1513. The death of James the Fourth was deeply mourned, for his reign had been peaceable and prosperous. He was popular with the nobles, because he kept them round him, and freely spent his father's savings; and with the commons, because of his rigorous maintenance of justice, his encouragement of commerce and agriculture, and his easy, kindly manners. James is described as middle-sized, handsome, and well-made. Besides Latin and several other foreign languages, he could speak the Irish or Gaelic, which was the native tongue of his western subjects. During his reign Scotland was more prosperous than it had been since the days of the last Alexander. Trade was flourishing and on the increase, and large quantities of wool, hides, and fish were exported to other countries.

21. Church Matters.—In 1492, at the petition of the Estates, the pallium was sent from Rome to Robert Blackadder, Bishop of Glasgow, with licence to bear the cross and all other archiepiscopal insignia. This led to bitter strife between the two Archbishops, who referred their disputes to the Pope, to the great wrath of the Estates, who denounced and forbade all such appeals to Rome. The burning of Reseby had not put a stop to the spreading of Wickliffe's doctrines, for we find thirty persons accused of the Lollard heresy by [Pg 83] Blackadder. Two great steps towards the advancement of learning were made in this reign: the one was the foundation of a third University at Aberdeen, on the model of the University of Paris, by Elphinstone, the good Bishop of Aberdeen; the other was the introduction of the art of printing, by means of which knowledge could be extended to the people. The first press was set up by Walter Chapman, under the patronage of the King.

22. James V., 1513-1542.—The news of the defeat at Flodden spread grief and terror through the country. The citizens of Edinburgh built a wall round their city, but its strength was not tried, for the English army dispersed instead of advancing. The Estates met at Perth, and the Queen-mother was appointed Regent, for the King was an infant only two years old. But within a year the Queen married Archibald, the young Earl of Angus, and the Estates then transferred the regency to John, Duke of Albany, High Admiral of France, son of the brother of James the Third. Peace was made with England, Scotland being taken in as the ally of France in a treaty between that country and England.

23. Albany's Regency.—Albany's government was at first very unpopular, for the national jealousy was roused by the number of his French followers. The Queen at first refused to give up the King, but she was besieged in Stirling Castle and obliged to yield. The country was distracted by the brawls of the two great factions, the Hamiltons and the Douglases. The Earl of Arran was the head of the former, Angus of the latter. The Governor put them down with the help of the French: Angus was seized and transported to France; his wife fled to England, where he contrived to join her before long. The Lord Home and his brother, two of the few survivors of Flodden, and the most powerful of the Angus faction, were seized at Edinburgh and beheaded, after [Pg 84] the mere form of a trial. But Albany went back to France after he had been about a year in Scotland; and as he left a Frenchman, Anthony de la Bastie, Warden of the Border, and placed the strongholds in the hands of the French also, the Scots grew more jealous and turbulent than before. De la Bastie fell a victim to the national hatred of foreigners. He was killed in a border raid by one of the Homes, in revenge for the death of his kinsman, the Lord Home. The Celts in the west re-asserted their independence, and the feud between the Hamiltons and the Douglases broke out worse than ever. They brought their brawls into the very streets of the capital. The Hamiltons laid a plan for attacking the Douglases, and making Angus prisoner. Gavin Douglas, Bishop of Dunkeld, fearing that his kinsmen might get the worst of it, appealed to James Beaton, the primate, to stop it. Beaton solemnly declared on his conscience that he knew nothing of the matter; and to give weight to his words, laid his hand on his heart, and in so doing struck the breastplate which he always wore. On this, Douglas, who heard the ring of the armour, told him that he heard his conscience "clattering," that is, telling tales. In the fight that followed, Angus so thoroughly routed his foes that the fray was called "Clear the Causeway," and after it he held the city with an armed force. Thus five years passed, and the Regent, who had nominally gone back to France for a few months only, was still absent, and it took a great deal of urging and threatening from the Estates to bring him back to his trust.

24. English Interference.—It was now nine years since Flodden, and, as there had been peace with England during that time, the country had somewhat recovered her strength. When therefore Henry began to meddle in the affairs of Scotland, to require that Albany should be dismissed, and that the French connexion should be broken off, the Estates refused [Pg 85] and prepared for war. As the greater part of the English force was in France, the northern counties of England were comparatively unprotected, and it was just the time for striking an effective blow there. Instead of doing this, Albany came to terms with Lord Dacre, the English Warden, and the large army that had gathered round him melted away without doing anything. But the truce was not renewed. Dacre stormed Jedburgh, and the Scots mustered again. This time their numbers were increased by the presence of some French auxiliaries whom Albany had brought back from France, to which he had paid a second visit. Again the army was brought to the Border without being led any further. By this time the Scots were thoroughly disgusted with Albany, and he with them; and shortly after this second fruitless expedition, he sailed for France and took the Frenchmen with him, 1524.

25. "Erection" of the King.—No sooner was Albany gone than Henry, through his subtle chancellor Wolsey, tried to make the Scots break with France. Margaret, the Queen-mother, was the great upholder of the English interest; James Beaton, Archbishop of St. Andrews and Chancellor, was the leader of the French party. Wolsey tried hard to get hold of Beaton on various pretexts, but Beaton was too cunning for him, and held himself apart in his own strong castle of St. Andrews, where he kept up dealings with France. But the English party were for a time the stronger, and, by the advice of Henry, James, who was now twelve years old, was set up to rule in his own name, and took his place at the head of the parliament, August 1524. The only change made by this step, called the erection, was that Albany's nominal government was done away with, and the French influence much weakened. Still Henry's interference was not liked, and the capture of Francis the First at Pavia turned the tide of popular feeling back to [Pg 86] the old allies of France. Since the erection, Arran had been the nominal head of the government, but in 1526 the King, who was now fourteen, was considered old enough to choose his own guardians. He chose the Earls of Errol, Argyle, and Angus, and an agreement was made that each in succession was to have the care of the King for three months. Angus's turn came first, but at the end of it he refused to give up his charge, and for two years he tyrannized over both the King and his subjects, and successfully resisted all attempts at a rescue.

26. Fall of Angus.—James at last contrived to make his escape by riding in the night, disguised as a groom, from Falkland to Stirling Castle, 1528. Now that he was at last safely out of the hands of the Douglases, he set to work to crush them utterly. It was made treason for any who bore that name to come within six miles of the King, and an act of forfeiture was passed against them. Angus had many adherents; but as all those nobles who hoped for a share of his lands took part with the King, they proved too strong for him, and he was at last obliged to give in, and to flee for refuge to England. Thus the overthrow of the Red Douglases was as thorough as had been that of the elder branch, on whose ruin they had risen.

27. Internal Affairs.—James began his reign by executing summary justice on the lawless and turbulent part of his subjects. The Borderers were now nearly as troublesome as the Highlanders. They dwelt in the debateable ground between England and Scotland, and preyed on either country with the greatest impartiality. Certain families, as the Kerrs, Armstrongs, and Scotts, had a sort of monopoly of this wholesale thieving; and as they had taken to the clan system of the Celts, each robber chief in his peel tower could count, not only on the unquestioning service, but also on the personal devotion of every man in his following. John Armstrong [Pg 87] had made himself famous among them by his daring deeds. For this renown James made him pay dear; for judging that he, the most notorious offender, would make the most telling example of the force of justice, he had him seized and hanged like a common thief. New means were tried for quieting the disturbances in the Western Highlands and Isles. Argyle was deprived of his lieutenancy, and the government was in future to deal directly with the chiefs for the collection of taxes and of the feudal dues. Three persons were put to death in this reign for conspiracy and treason, all of whom were more or less connected with the banished Angus. These were the Lady Glammis, his sister; the Master of Forbes, his brother-in-law; and James Hamilton, the illegitimate brother of Arran, who was accused of being in league with him.

28. English War.—Though the need of a reform in the Church was felt and openly discussed in parliament, and the shortcomings of the clergy were unsparingly ridiculed by the popular poets, still neither the King nor the people were inclined to break off from Rome, as Henry the Eighth had done. But Henry was most anxious that his nephew should follow his example, and a meeting between them at York was agreed on. But James, doubtful of Henry's good faith, did not keep tryst. Henry was furious; he brought up again the old claim of supremacy over Scotland, and to enforce the claim he sent an army to invade Scotland. James prepared to avenge this attack; but when his army got as far as the Border, the nobles refused to go further, and a body of ten thousand men who had passed the Esk were surprised and scattered by Dacre, while they were contending about the chief command.

29. Death and Character of James.—The King meanwhile was waiting in Caerlaverock Castle. At the same time that he heard of the shameful defeat of his army at Solway [Pg 88] Moss, the news was brought that a daughter was born to him. This child was heir to the throne, for his two sons had died in infancy. James thought that the birth of a girl at this time was an ill omen for Scotland. He murmured, "It came wi' a lass, and it'll gang wi' a lass." By this he meant that, as it was by Marjory Bruce that the crown had first passed into the Stewart family, so with this infant it would pass from it. Eight days later he died of grief and disappointment, December 14, 1542. James is the first King of Scots of whom we have a portrait. He was handsome, but had red hair, which won him the nickname of the "Red Tod," or red fox. He was not liked by the nobles, but the commons loved him well. His habit of going about in disguise familiarly among the people, endeared him to them, and led him into many amusing adventures. James was twice married, first to Magdalen, daughter of Francis the First, King of France; secondly, to Mary, daughter of the Duke of Guise, widow of the Duke of Longueville. In character and policy James was something like James the First. Like him, he strove to curb the power of the nobles, and to win for the Crown something more than mere nominal power, by making reforms which were much needed in the administration of justice. He worked out his ancestor's idea of a supreme court of justice by founding the Court of Session, or College of Justice. This court consisted first of thirteen, afterwards of fifteen, members, half of whom were clerks, and who acted both as judge and jury. As the members of this court were chosen from the parliament, it had the power of parliament, and was supreme in all civil cases, there being no appeal beyond it. James was not only a patron of letters, but himself a poet, one of the few royal poets whose writings will bear comparison with those of meaner birth. "Christ's Kirk on the Green," and the "Gaberlunzie Man," are the titles of two poems that are ascribed to him, but on no [Pg 89] very certain proof. They are both descriptions of scenes from peasant life. If indeed they were written by him, the choice of the subjects and the way in which they are treated show how well he knew the condition of his people. They, in loving remembrance of the favour he had always shown them, gave him the title of "King of the Commons, and the People's Poet."

30. Mary, 1542-1554. Arran's Regency.—James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, next heir to the throne by his descent from James the Second, was chosen Regent, but, as it was the Scotch custom that the nearest of kin on the mother's side should have the care of the minor, the infant Queen was left in charge of her mother, Mary of Lorraine. The defeat at Solway Moss, and the death of the King, had left the people nearly as dispirited and defenceless as they had been after Flodden, and Henry the Eighth determined to get the kingdom into his power by marrying Mary to his son Edward, Prince of Wales.

31. Treaties with England.—To carry out his plans the better, he sent Angus back to Scotland, and with him the Lords Cassilis and Glencairn, and several other nobles, all pledged to do their best to place the Queen and the strongholds in the hands of Henry. These nobles were called by the English the Assured Scots, because Henry thought he could be sure of their help, but they were either unable or unwilling to give him the aid for which he had hoped. It was not till July in the next year that two treaties were drawn up at London: the one for the English alliance; the other agreeing to the English marriage of the Queen. But there was a strong national party, much set against any dealings with England; and, though the treaties were approved at one meeting of the Estates, it was plain that they would be thrown out at the next. The Regent tried to break them off, and Henry, greatly enraged, made [Pg 90] ready for war, and seized some Scotch ships which had been driven by stress of weather into English ports. This was reason enough for the rejection of the treaties by the Estates. Shortly after, the "Assured Scots" changed sides and made a bond with the Regent; but Henry got a new supporter in Matthew Stewart, Earl of Lennox, who, as he wished to marry Margaret Douglas, daughter of Angus, Henry's niece and ward, was eager to do anything to win Henry's favour.

32. First English Invasion.—War was declared at Edinburgh by an English herald, May 1, 1544, and an English army under Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, was sent by sea and landed at Granton. He was bidden to destroy Edinburgh and as many other towns and villages as he conveniently could, and he carried out his orders to the letter. He sacked and burned Leith, a wealthy trading town, set fire to Edinburgh, though no resistance had been made to him there, robbed the burghs on the coast of Fife, and then marched south to the Border, burning, slaying, spoiling, and leaving a wasted land behind him. The only resistance he met with was near the Border, where a division of his army which had been sent to Melrose to break open the tombs of the ancestors of Angus was routed at Ancrum by Angus himself and some of the Border lords. At the news of this success six hundred Borderers from the Scottish side, who had been fighting in the service of the English Wardens, changed sides and attacked their former brothers in arms. The rest of the nation then took heart, and a large force was mustered and brought to the Border, but did nothing.

33. Second English Invasion.—Before the traces of his former ravages had disappeared, just when the next harvest was ready for the sickle, Hertford appeared again at the head of a motley host, swelled by half-savage Irish and by foreign hirelings, and repeated the wild work of the year before. The [Pg 91] invaders attacked and plundered the religious houses. The ruins of Kelso, Melrose, Dryburgh, Roxburgh, and Coldingham still bear witness to their zeal in carrying out the orders of their master. Towns, manors, churches, and between two and three hundred villages were left in ashes behind them. All this misery was wantonly inflicted without winning for Henry a foot of ground or a single new subject.

34. Third English Invasion. Battle of Pinkie.—Two years passed, and again the sorely scourged country was visited by its old enemy. Hertford, now Duke of Somerset and Protector of England during the minority of Edward the Sixth, thought by one well-aimed blow to wrest from the people their proud boast, the national independence. Two armies, the one led by himself and the other sent by sea, met at Musselburgh and threatened the capital. The Regent had mustered a large force to resist them, and the two hosts faced each other on opposite banks of the Esk. But the Scots very foolishly left their strong position and forced the English to a battle, in which they were again defeated with great slaughter, at Pinkie, September 10, 1547. After the battle Somerset went back to England, and took the greater part of his army with him. As most of the strongholds were now in the hands of the English, it was thought best to send the Queen to France that she might be out of harm's way. The French sent six thousand men to help in driving out the English, a work that was not ended till 1550, when a short peace followed the nine years of cruel war. If we consider the difference of the times and the advance of civilization, the fiercest raids of Malcolm and of Wallace may be favourably compared with the misery wrought by Hertford in these three savage and unprovoked attacks.

35. Internal Affairs.—The overthrow of the monasteries, the seizure of their revenues, and the other changes in religious matters carried out by Henry the Eighth in England, [Pg 92] had been approved by a large party in Scotland. They were eager to begin the same work there, for the Church, by her abuse of power and by her persecution of all who differed from her, was fast losing her hold upon the people. The first outbreak of the popular feeling was the murder of Cardinal David Beaton, the Primate, the leader of the French party in the state and the chief mover of religious persecution. In revenge for the burning of George Wishart in 1545, for preaching what was called heresy, sixteen of Wishart's followers murdered Beaton in his own Castle of St. Andrews, which they had entered by a stratagem, and which they held for fourteen months, setting at defiance all the Regent's efforts to retake it. It was only with the help of the French that they were at last obliged to give in, and were sent to the French galleys. Among them was John Knox, who twelve years later became famous as the apostle of the Reformation among his countrymen. On the death of Beaton, Arran made his own ambitious brother John Archbishop of St. Andrews, in the room of the murdered Cardinal. The castle was destroyed.

36. Regency of Mary of Lorraine. First Marriage of Mary Stewart.—In 1554, Arran, who had been created Duke of Chatelherault by the French king, went back to France, and Mary of Lorraine became Regent. The league with France was drawn still closer by the marriage of the Queen with Francis the Dauphin. Francis became King of France in 1559. The crown-matrimonial of Scotland was then granted to him, so that the two countries were for a short time united under one crown. On the strength of this the French began to give themselves airs of superiority which the Scots could ill bear from strangers, and before long they became well-nigh as unpopular as the English had been. The Regent was unconsciously doing her best to foster this feeling of dislike by placing foreigners in offices of trust, above all by making [Pg 93] Frenchmen keepers of the strongholds. But there was another influence now at work, the desire of religious reform, which wrought a change in the national life greater than any that had been felt since the time of the first Robert.

37. Social Progress.—The intercourse with the French which arose from the close alliance of Scotland with France, influenced the social development of the nation throughout this period more strongly than during any other time either before or after it. The members of the National Council when they met in parliament were not, as in England, divided into lords and commons; the representatives of the three Estates, the Barons, the Clergy, and the Commons, assembled in one chamber, as was the French custom. All the tenants holding direct from the Crown were required to present themselves at these assemblies; but James the First released the lesser barons from this attendance, which they felt to be rather an irksome duty than a privilege, by allowing them to send commissaries in their stead. These commissaries, with the deputies from the cities and burghs, formed the Third Estate. The supreme court of justice, the Court of Session, established by James the Fifth, was formed on the model of the Parliament of Paris. The Universities were founded in the fifteenth century, at St. Andrews, at Glasgow, and at Aberdeen. Of these, Aberdeen was an exact imitation of the University of Paris. The architecture of this period, both domestic and ecclesiastical, is in many respects like the French. Melrose Abbey, and the palaces of Falkland and of Stirling, which were very richly ornamented, were built in the time of the Jameses. The houses of the nobles were also built in imitation of the French style. There are no remains of burgh domestic architecture older than the sixteenth century. Many French words also found their way into the Lowland Scotch, as the language of the Lothians came to be called. By this time there was so [Pg 94] much difference between this dialect and that spoken at the English court, that the people who spoke the one could scarcely understand the other. The foreign trade of Scotland was most prosperous during the reign of James the Fourth. Fish, wools, and hides were the principal exports. By this time coal, which is first mentioned towards the end of the thirteenth century, was in general use. There were also lead and iron mines; and gold was found, though not in any large quantities. Of this native gold James the Fourth struck some beautiful coins, which were called bonnet pieces, because they bore the image of the King wearing a bonnet. The state of the people at this time was one of almost serf-like dependence on their lords. But great as the power of the nobles was, there were no forest or game laws in Scotland, nor did they enjoy any privilege of peerage. An offender against the law, if he could be brought to justice, had to "thole an assize," like any peasant, however high his rank might be.

38. Education and Literature.—In early times all the education that was within the reach of the people had been offered to them by the Church. Schools were founded and maintained in several towns by the great monasteries, and there was provision made for the education of the choristers attached to the several cathedral churches. In later times there were Grammar Schools founded by the burgh corporations. In 1496 an Act was passed requiring all "barons and freeholders" to keep their sons at these schools until they should be "competently founded," and have "perfect Latin," under pain of a fine of twenty pounds. A book, purporting to be the History of Scotland, was written in Latin by Hector Boece, the first Principal of the University of Aberdeen. The greater part of this book is purely imaginary. The Latin "Scotichronicon" of Fordun, was continued by Walter Bower, Abbot of Inchcolm, down to the middle of [Pg 95] the fifteenth century. Besides the two kings James the First and Fifth, there were other notable poets in Scotland in the middle of the fifteenth century. Blind Harry, the Minstrel, then did for Wallace what about a century before Barbour had done for Bruce, by putting together all the popular stories of his deeds in a spirit-stirring poem that bears his hero's name. William Dunbar, a friar of the order of St. Francis, wrote a poem called The Thistle and the Rose, to celebrate the marriage of James the Fourth with Margaret Tudor. This, and the Golden Terge, and the Dance of the Seven Deadly Sins, are the best among his writings. Gawin Douglas, afterwards Bishop of Dunkeld, the son of that Earl of Angus who was nicknamed Bell-the-Cat, also wrote several poems in the beginning of the sixteenth century. Those best known are King Hart, the Palace of Honour, and a translation of Virgil's Æneid. Some years after Douglas wrote, Sir David Lyndesay, the companion of James the Fifth's childhood, and the mourner of his untimely death, directed many clever satires against the abuses in the Church, the vices of the clergy, and the follies of the court. The Dreme, the Satire of the Three Estates, and the Monarchy, are his best poems.

39. Summary.—During this period, which extends over more than a century, the country made little progress either socially or politically. Of the five kings, all bearing the same name, who in turn wore the crown, four died violent deaths; and of these four, two were treacherously murdered by their own subjects. Most of them came to the throne in childhood; not one attained old age. Their reigns were chiefly passed in struggles to put down their lawless and turbulent nobles, who in each succeeding minority waxed more powerful and more independent. In the reigns of James the Second and of James the Fifth, this contest between the Crown and the Baronage took the form of a struggle between the House of Stewart and the House of Douglas. In both cases the King compassed the fall of his rival only by placing a dangerous amount of power in the hands of the other nobles. The foreign policy of Scotland under the Jameses was very simple. It consisted in maintaining a close alliance with France and a constant quarrel with England. But the French never gave the Scots any real help, and the English were so much taken up at home with the Civil Wars of the Roses that they made no serious attacks on the independence of Scotland. Though during this period there were four long minorities, there was no attempt made to break the regular line of succession. This was due partly to the attachment of the people to the royal line, and partly to the weakness of the royal authority, for the King had so little real power that the great nobles did not think the crown worth taking. The reign of James the Fourth was the most peaceful and prosperous, but James the First did the most for the welfare of the people.

CHAPTER VI.

The Reformation (1)—state of the Church (2)—the first Covenant (3)—religious riots (4)—treaties with England (5)—Reformation statutes (6)—return of the Queen (7)—division of the Church lands (8)—fall of Huntly (9)—second marriage of the Queen (10)—murder of Rizzio (11)—flight to Dunbar (12)—murder of Darnley (13)—third marriage of the Queen (14)—surrender at Carberry (15)—captivity of the Queen (16)—James VI.; Regency of Murray (17)—escape of Mary (18)—Battle of Langside; flight of Mary (19)—the Conference (20)—state of parties (21)—murder of the Regent (22)—Regency of Lennox (23)—taking of Dunbarton (24)—Parliament at Stirling (25)—Regency of Mar (26)—Tulchan bishops (27)—death of Knox (28)—taking of Edinburgh (29)—Regency of Morton (30)—fall of Morton (31)—raid of Ruthven (32)—fall of Gowrie (33)—fall of Arran (34)—death of Mary—(35) marriage of the King (36)—abolition of episcopacy (37)—the Spanish blanks (38)—religious tumults (39)—the Gowrie Plot (40)—union of the Crowns (41)—state of the nation (42)—summary (43).[Pg 97]

1. The Reformation.—Five hundred years had gone by since the English, who fled from the Norman Conqueror, had brought about a great social revolution in the Celtic kingdom, where they found a refuge. We now find another revolution arising from a very similar cause. But there was a difference in the way in which these great changes were wrought out characteristic of the two centuries in which they took place. In the eleventh century it was the influence of the Court which little by little changed the people; in the sixteenth century, the people struggled against, and in the end overcame, the opposition of the Court. When Mary Tudor became Queen of England, she wished to place the English Church under the authority of the Pope, even more than it had been before the changes of her father Henry. All who held the Reformed doctrines were persecuted as heretics. Many of these so-called heretics sought safety across the Border, in Scotland, and were welcomed there with a kindness that would have seemed impossible but a few years before, when the deadly war was waging. But religious sympathy got the better of national hate, and thus the religious zeal of Mary Tudor may be said to have hastened the Reformation in Scotland, which the cruelties of Henry and of Somerset had for a while delayed. Still the traditional bent of the national feeling influenced the character of the new movement, and led the Scottish Reformers to mould anew the polity and form of worship of [Pg 98] their Church after the model of the French Calvinists, rather than to follow the example of the Church of England in her merely doctrinal reform.

2. State of the Church.—In Scotland, as in the other lands of Western Christendom, the clergy had lost their hold on the commons by their immorality and irreligion; their greed of money, and their abuse of their spiritual powers; while they had roused the jealousy of the nobles by their wealth, and by the influence won by their learning, which, though it was often but little, secured to them the offices of state. The hope of getting hold of some of the well-cultivated Church lands, led many lairds, as landholders are called in Scotland, to join the popular movement of Reform.

3. The First Covenant.—The friends of Reform were thus silently becoming a power in the state, and, as had been the Scottish custom for centuries, they joined themselves together by a bond, 1557. In this bond they pledged themselves to support one another, and to do their utmost for the spread of the new doctrines. This bond is called the First Covenant. By it the authority of the Pope was renounced, and the use of the English Bible and of the Prayer Book of Edward VI. was enjoined. Thenceforth the barons who had signed it, called themselves the Lords of the Congregation. The burning of Walter Mill, an aged priest of blameless life, who suffered for heresy at St. Andrews in 1558, roused them to action. They demanded of the Regent a reformation of religion after the principles of their bond. Though at first she seemed inclined to grant what they asked, she afterwards set her face against them, and cited some of the preachers of the new doctrines before the Privy Council. A great body of their followers gathered at Perth to come with them; the Regent, in alarm, begged them to disperse and promised to withdraw the citation. Instead of doing this, she outlawed the preachers for not coming. [Pg 99]

4. Religious Riots.—This breach of promise on the Regent's part provoked their followers to a breach of the peace. The mob attacked, and tried to pull down, the churches and the religious houses at Perth, May 11, 1559, and this tumult was followed by riots of the same kind in other towns. John Knox was the spiritual leader of the movement. But he only wished to destroy the images and ornaments in the churches, which he looked on as idolatrous, not the churches themselves. Nor is it to be laid to the charge of the Reformers that there is but one cathedral church left entire in Scotland; the ruin of far the greater number of the churches and religious houses is due to the English invasions, or to the neglect of later times. After this outbreak the Congregation strengthened themselves in Perth, but many of the Lords, among others the Lord James Stewart, illegitimate son of James the Fifth, joined the Regent, and, had she been true to her promises, the strife which now broke out between the two parties might have been prevented. But she led a French force against the Congregation, who were now in open rebellion. An agreement was made that the questions at issue between them should be left to be settled by the Estates, while both armies laid down their arms, and the French garrison was turned out of Perth. But the Regent did not keep to the spirit of this treaty, though she avoided breaking the letter of it by garrisoning Perth with native troops hired with French money. On this the Congregation flew to arms, seized St. Andrews, and occupied Edinburgh. There, in a meeting which they called a Parliament, they deposed the Regent, though they still professed loyalty to the King and Queen. But they were too weak to hold the advantage they had won, and as Elizabeth had now succeeded Mary in England, they looked to her for support. [Pg 100]

5. Treaties with England.—Elizabeth would not treat with subjects in open rebellion against their Sovereign, though Mary had given her good reason for offence, by quartering the arms of England on her shield, as though she were lawful Queen and Elizabeth only a usurper. At last a treaty was arranged at Berwick in 1560, between Elizabeth and the rebels. Chatelherault, the next heir to the Scottish crown, acted for the Congregation, and by this treaty Elizabeth promised to send troops to prevent the French conquering Scotland. The war that now followed presented the unwonted sight of the Scots on Scottish ground fighting side by side with the English against their old allies of France. But, before the year was out, the French were called away by troubles at home, and by the treaty of Edinburgh it was agreed that no foreigners should in future be employed in the country without the consent of the Estates. The Estates promised in the name of the King and Queen that they should acknowledge Elizabeth as lawful Queen of England, and thenceforth make no pretension to her kingdom.

6. Reformation Statutes.—Soon after the conclusion of this treaty, the Regent died. The Estates then approved the Geneva Confession of Faith, abjured the authority of the Pope, and forbade the saying of the mass, or even assisting at the mass, on pain of forfeiture for the first offence, banishment for the second, death for the third; 25th August, 1560. Thus the old ecclesiastical system, with all its rites and ceremonies, was suddenly overthrown. But this was only in name; in reality it only died out bit by bit.

7. Return of the Queen.—Just a year after this, the Queen came home, August 1561. She was now a widow, so the Scots were freed from the fear they had felt of seeing their country sink into a province of France. The people, who had an almost superstitious reverence for kingship, which was very inconsistent with their contempt for kingly authority, [Pg 101] welcomed her with open arms, and showed their good will by a greater display of discordant and grotesque rejoicing than the austere teachers of the new doctrines could approve. As yet they only saw in her the representative of that long line of Celtic kings whom they chose to look on as their own. She was the "child," for whom they had struggled so long, and had suffered so much from the English. They had yet to find out that she had come back to them French in all but birth, gifted with wit, intellect, and beauty, but subtle beyond their power of searching, and quite as zealous for the old form of religion as they were for the new one. The Queen, too, who came thus as a stranger among her own people, had to deal with a state of things unknown in former reigns. Hitherto the Church had taken the side of the Crown against the nobles; now both were united against the Crown, whose only hope lay in the quarrels between these ill-matched allies.

8. Division of the Church Lands.—The chief cause of discord between them was the property of the Church. The Reformed ministers fancied that they had succeeded, not only to the Pope's right of dictation in all matters, public and private, but to the lands of the Church as well. To neither of these claims would the Lords agree. They were as little inclined to submit to the tyranny of presbyters as to the tyranny of the Pope. They withstood the ministers who wished to forbid the Queen and her attendants hearing mass in her private chapel, and they refused to accept as law the First Book of Discipline, a code of rules drawn up by the ministers for the guidance of the new Church. As to the land, much of it had already passed into the hands of laymen, who, with the lands, generally bore the title of the Church dignitary who had formerly held them. The Privy Council took one-third of what remained to pay the stipends of the ministers, while the rest was supposed to remain in [Pg 102] the hands of the Churchmen in possession, and, as they died out, it was to fall in to the Crown.

9. Fall of Huntly.—Lord James Stewart, Prior of St. Andrews, whom the Queen created Earl of Murray, was the hope of the Protestants, but in the north the Romanists were still numerous and strong. Their head was the Earl of Huntly, chief of the Gordons, who reigned supreme over most of the north, and whose word was law where decrees of parliament would have been set at nought. As his great power was looked on as dangerous to the state, his downfall was resolved on. Murray and the Queen set out for the north to visit him, as was said, but with so large a force that he thought it expedient to keep out of their way. His Castle of Inverness was besieged and taken and the governor hanged, and his followers were defeated and he himself slain at Corrichie, near Aberdeen, in 1562. His body was brought to Edinburgh, as was the custom in cases of treason, that the sentence of forfeiture might be passed on it. His son was beheaded at Aberdeen; and thus the power of the Gordons was broken. Thus Mary during the first part of her reign showed no favour to the Romanists, but still she did not confirm the Reformation Statutes.

10. Second Marriage of the Queen.—The most interesting question now for all parties was, whom the Queen would marry. Many foreign princes were talked of, and Elizabeth suggested her own favourite, the Earl of Leicester, but Mary settled the matter herself by falling in love with her own cousin, Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley. He was son of Lennox and Margaret Douglas, and was therefore the grandson of Margaret Tudor, and was received as first prince of the blood at the English court. Mary called a special council and announced to them her intended marriage. She then raised Darnley to the Earldom of Ross, and afterwards created him Duke of Albany. They were married [Pg 103] with the rites of the Romish Church, July 29, 1565. Murray had refused his consent to the marriage. He and some others of the lay Lords now took up arms. They got into the town of Edinburgh, but were fired at from the Castle, and, as they were disappointed in their hopes of recruits, they retreated to Dumfries. There they issued a declaration that their religion was in danger, and that the Queen had acted unconstitutionally in proclaiming Darnley King of Scots without the consent of the Estates. The feudal force was summoned, and the King and Queen led it against them. On this the Lords retreated into England and disarmed their followers.

11. Murder of Rizzio.—Mary soon began to tire of her worthless husband. She had all the weakness of her family for making favourites, and no wisdom in the choice of them. At this time she had taken a fancy to an Italian, David Rizzio, who acted as her secretary, and who had great skill in music to recommend him. The nobles grew jealous of this foreigner and determined to get rid of him; but, to save themselves from any ill-consequences of the murder which they had planned, they persuaded Darnley to sign a bond promising to stand by them in anything they might do. At the same time he signed another bond for the recall of Murray and the other banished lords. The Queen summoned a parliament, which she expected would pronounce sentence of forfeiture on those banished lords. In order to secure compliance with her wishes, she interfered with the choosing of the Lords of the Articles, into whose hands all the real business of the parliament was thrown. One evening, as she was sitting at supper in the palace at Holyrood, the conspirators, who had secured the gates, burst into the room, headed by the Lord Ruthven. They seized on Rizzio, who clutched at the Queen for help; they dragged him into the outer room; killed him, and then threw the body downstairs, March 9, [Pg 104] 1566. His fate was not made known to the Queen till next day. James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, who already stood high in the Queen's favour, and the Earl of Huntly, who had been restored to the titles and estates which his father had forfeited, were in the palace when it was thus taken possession of, but they contrived to escape.

12. Flight to Dunbar.—The Queen showed no signs of anger at first. She pretended to be reconciled to Darnley, and promised pardon to the banished lords. When they appeared before her the next day, she received Murray affectionately. But the confederates soon found that they had been mistaken in their hopes of Darnley, for in the night following he fled with the Queen to Dunbar. Bothwell brought up a force for her protection, and before the end of the month she re-entered Edinburgh. Rizzio's body was taken up and buried among the kings in the palace chapel, and James Douglas, Earl of Morton, Ruthven, and others were cited to answer for the murder of Rizzio, and, as they did not appear, they were outlawed.

13. Murder of Darnley.—A new favourite soon took the place of Rizzio in the Queen's favour. This was Bothwell, who had lately done such good service in coming to her aid at Dunbar. The abbey-lands of Melrose and Haddington were given to him. He was made Lord High Admiral, and Warden of the Borders, and it was noticed that it was he and not Darnley who played the principal part at the baptism of her son, the Prince of Scotland. Darnley was hated by everyone; by his wife, because he had connived at the murder of her favourite, and by his accomplices for his treachery in deserting them. Shortly after this he fell ill of the small-pox, and was taken to Glasgow, to be tended by his father, Lennox. There, when he was getting better, the Queen paid him a visit, and proposed that he should be taken to Craigmillar Castle, in [Pg 105] order to hasten his recovery; but this plan was afterwards changed, and he went instead to a house called the Kirk-o'-Field, close to Edinburgh. This house was blown up on the night of February 9, 1567, while the Queen was present at a ball at Holyrood, and the bodies of Darnley and of his page were found in a field hard by, as though they had been killed while trying to make their escape. It was commonly believed that Bothwell was guilty of the murder, and it was suspected that he had done it to please the Queen and with her consent. This suspicion was strengthened by her conduct. She made no effort to find out the murderer and to bring him to punishment, and on the day of the funeral she gave Bothwell the feudal superiority over the town of Leith. Lennox now came forward and demanded that Bothwell and the other persons suspected of the murder should be tried by the Estates. This was granted, and a day was fixed for the trial. But as Lennox was forbidden to bring any but his own household when he appeared as the accuser of the murderer, while Bothwell had a great following, he thought it more prudent not to appear. As no one came forward to bring evidence against Bothwell, he was acquitted, and he offered to give wager of battle to anyone who should still accuse him.

14. Third Marriage of the Queen.—Bothwell was now determined on marrying the Queen, and, after the parliament rose, he got many of the nobles to sign a bond agreeing to help him to do so. As he was already married to Huntly's sister, his wife had to be got rid of first. This was not now such an easy matter as it had been in former times. The canon law had been done away with along with the old Church; the Reformers had set up a court of their own to try such cases, while the Queen had lately restored the old one. To make the matter sure Bothwell's marriage was dissolved in both these courts. As the Queen was coming back from [Pg 106] Stirling, where she had been to visit her child, Bothwell met her and carried her off to Dunbar, and on the day the divorce was sent they came back to Edinburgh together. He was created Duke of Orkney and Shetland, and they were married by Adam Bothwell, who had been Bishop of Orkney, but was now one of the ministers of the new Church, May 15, 1567.

15. Surrender at Carberry.—A fortnight later Mary called out the feudal force for an attack on the Borderers, but the barons did not answer to her summons. On this the Queen and Bothwell, alarmed at the increasing signs of discontent, shut themselves up in his strong castle of Borthwick, but they were scarcely there before an army with the Lords Morton and Home at its head appeared at its gates, and they fled to Dunbar. The barons then entered Edinburgh; the governor of the Castle gave it up to them. They had the Prince in their hands, and they took measures for carrying on the government, though they still professed to act in the Queen's name, and to be only striving to free her from Bothwell. He meanwhile had mustered his followers, who, though nearly equal in numbers, were in discipline far inferior to their opponents. The two armies came in sight near Musselburgh, but there was no battle, for the Queen surrendered to William Kirkcaldy of Grange, who had been sent out with a body of horse to cut off her retreat to Dunbar, at Carberry, June 15, 1567, on condition that Bothwell should be allowed to return to Dunbar unhurt. Bothwell escaped first to his own dukedom of Orkney, and afterwards to Denmark, where he died about ten years later.

16. Captivity of the Queen.—Just a month after her third marriage the Queen was brought back to Edinburgh, to be greeted by the railings of the mob, who now openly accused her as a murderess, and paraded before her eyes a banner, [Pg 107] showing the dead body of her husband; her infant son on his knees, as though praying for justice against the murderers of his father, and the words, "Judge and avenge my cause, O Lord," embroidered upon it. From Edinburgh she was taken to a lonely castle built on a small island in the centre of Loch Leven. A few days later a casket containing eight letters was produced. These letters, it was said, Bothwell had left behind him in his flight, and they seemed to have been written by Mary to him while Darnley was ill in Glasgow. If she really wrote them, they proved very plainly that she had planned the murder with Bothwell. They are called the "casket letters," from the box or casket in which they were found. The confederate barons acted as if they were really hers. The Lord Lindsay and Robert Melville were sent to her at Loch Leven, and she there signed the demission of the government to her son, and desired that Murray should be the first Regent. From that time Mary ceased to be Queen of Scots. Her beauty, talents, and misfortunes have won her much pity and many champions, but it was her own folly and sin that changed the love of her people into hate, and their rejection of her stands out as one of the facts in their history that does most honour to the nation.

17. James VI., 1567-1625. Regency of Murray.—The infant King who was now to be set up in the room of his mother was crowned and anointed at Stirling. By his sponsor Morton he took an oath to uphold the Reformed, or as its supporters called it, the true Church, and to root out all heretics and enemies of the same. Murray was recalled from France, whither he had gone soon after the murder of the King. He made some objection to accepting the regency, and would not do so till he had had an interview with his sister. At last he agreed to take it, to comply with her wishes, as he said. As the country was crying out for [Pg 108] vengeance on the murderers of the King, four of Bothwell's creatures who had aided in his crime were hanged at Edinburgh, but no steps were taken to punish the lords who had joined themselves by a bond with Bothwell.

18. Escape of Mary.—But there was a large party of the nobles, with the Hamiltons at their head, who were opposed to the new government and kept themselves apart at Hamilton. Before a year of her captivity had passed, Mary escaped and joined them there, and again took up the sceptre which she had so lately laid down. Eighteen lords of parliament and many lesser barons signed a bond to uphold their Queen, and she sent a message from her court at Hamilton to Murray, who was at Glasgow almost unguarded, commanding him to resign the regency. Instead of obeying, Murray seized the herald who had come to proclaim the Queen; sent to Stirling for cannon, and called out the feudal force in the name of King James.

19. Battle of Langside.—The Castle of Dunbarton Rock, the strongest fortress in the kingdom, was held for the Queen, and to it she determined to go for greater safety. To get there she had to pass close by Glasgow, where Murray was. At Langside, on the southern shore of the Clyde, her way was barred by the King's army, which, though not so large as her own, had much better leaders. The fight that followed settled the fate of Scotland, May 13, 1568. Few lives were lost, for at the first charge the spears of the front rank got locked in the jacks of their opponents. They could thus neither go backward nor forward, and kept those behind from coming within arm's length of one another. Grange turned the day by charging the Queen's force with his cavalry. They fled in confusion, and Mary rode with all speed to the Border; crossed the Solway, and going straight to Carlisle, threw herself on the protection of Elizabeth. But Elizabeth had not forgotten how Mary had assumed her arms and had [Pg 109] given herself out as the real Queen of England; and as she knew that Mary, if left at liberty, would plot with the English Roman Catholics, she put her in ward in Bolton Castle, and refused to see her till she cleared herself of the suspicion under which she lay of having been concerned in her husband's death. But at the same time Elizabeth would not acknowledge the government of Scotland, nor approve the conduct of the lords who had set up King James, for she did not like the doctrine that princes, however badly they had acted, might be judged and punished by their subjects.

20. The Conference.—To give both parties a chance of saying what they could for themselves, it was agreed to hold a conference, to which Murray came in person, and Mary and Elizabeth each sent commissioners. The conference met at York in October. On opening it the Duke of Norfolk required that Murray should do homage in the name of his King to the Queen of England. On this, William Maitland of Lethington, the Scottish Secretary of State, a very subtle man, said that if England liked to give up again the northern counties, once held by Scotland, their King would gladly do homage for them; but as for the kingdom it was as free, or more so, than England itself. This he said to show that they did not ask Elizabeth to judge between them because she had any right to interfere, but only because she was their nearest neighbour. Before the end of the month the conference was removed to Hampton Court, and held before the Queen in Council. The lords brought forward the "casket letters," as a proof against Mary, and she refused to vindicate herself, but ordered her commissioners to withdraw. Thus the conference ended, leaving matters much as they were before, for Elizabeth decided that nothing had been brought forward to the dishonour of Murray, nor anything proved against Mary. At the same time she lent Murray five thousand pounds for the maintenance of peace [Pg 110] and order between the two countries, which was an indirect acknowledgment of his government.

21. State of Parties.—The Hamiltons and Huntly were the chief upholders of Mary's interest. The Hamiltons wished to keep Mary on the throne, because they were the next heirs to Mary, and in the event of her son dying before her, Chatelherault could claim the crown. But as they were not the next heirs to James, they were naturally opposed to the revolution which had placed him on the throne, for they feared that if he died when actually reigning, the crown would pass to his heir, Charles Stewart, his father's brother. Huntly held out, from hatred of Murray and love of the old Church, which was still strong in his county. A compromise was at last made between the two parties. Murray promised a pardon for all past offences and a reversal of forfeitures if the other party would promise to obey King James. To make matters more sure, when the Duke of Chatelherault went up to Edinburgh, Murray put him in ward in the Castle. Just at this time there was a great rising of the Roman Catholics in the north of England, Murray marched southward, in order to be ready to put down any disturbance on the Border. There he seized as his prisoner the Earl of Northumberland, the head of the Romanists in England, who had come to seek a refuge on the Scottish side among the Borderers, many of whom still clung to the old Church.

22. Murder of the Regent.—The Hamiltons had determined on Murray's death. Though the Duke was in prison, John, the archbishop, the constant stirrer up of strife, was at liberty, and he was popularly supposed to be the contriver of a plot against the life of the Regent. Murray was murdered by James Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, who shot at him as he was riding in state through that town on his way from Stirling to Edinburgh, February 23, 1570. This foul murder, the third which had disgraced Scotland within the last [Pg 111] quarter of a century, was a great misfortune for the country, for Murray had ruled well and wisely, he had put down the Highlanders and the Borderers, and had enforced justice and order with a strong hand. In his time the land was visited by a famine and a plague, evils for which the people are ever apt to blame their rulers, but, in spite of these calamities, he was popular during his life, and was remembered after his death as the Good Regent.

23. Regency of Lennox.—While the government was thus without a head, and the country was in confusion, two English armies invaded Scotland to punish the Borderers for the shelter which they had given to the leaders of the late rising in England. One of these armies came north as far as the Clyde and wasted the Hamilton country. Hitherto the Queen's party had been chiefly made up of nobles with but a small following, but this attack on the part of the English aroused the old hatred of England and drove a large mass of the people to join them. The choice of Lennox, the King's grandfather, as the new Regent, did still more to divide the nation, for not only was he the subject of Elizabeth and recommended by her, but also, when he came to Scotland, it was as joint leader of one of these invading armies. Now, for the first time, the nation was truly divided against itself. The war which followed was the first real civil war in the annals of Scotland. It was no strife of class against class, or of one chief against another, but a war in which the commons were severed into two parties by the great questions of loyalty, national honour, and religion. Grange, whom Murray had made governor of Edinburgh Castle, declared for the Queen, and Lethington, who was there in ward on a charge of having had some part in the King's murder, followed his example.

24. Taking of Dunbarton.—This castle, the strongest in the kingdom, was the chief strength of the Queen's party, and [Pg 112] in it was the moving spirit of the Hamiltons, John, the much hated and feared archbishop. Both fell during this regency. Crawford of Jordanhill, a retainer of Lennox, took the castle by subtlety with but a handful of men. He scaled the steep rock on which the castle is built under cover of the night, and when he had gained the highest point he turned the guns on the garrison below, who had no choice left but to give in, April 2, 1571. Five days later, the archbishop was hanged at Stirling, after the form of a trial had been hurried through, on a charge of having planned the murder of the King and of the Regent.

25. Parliament at Stirling.—The other noteworthy event during the regency of Lennox was the holding of a parliament, for the first time since 1567. It met at Stirling, and the young King, who lived in the castle under the care of the Earl of Mar, was himself present. While the Regent and all the leaders of his party were thus gathered in the town, a body of four hundred men, sent out by the Queen's party in Edinburgh Castle, came down upon them suddenly, swept the streets, and captured Morton and the Regent; and though the latter was afterwards rescued, he had been mortally wounded in the scuffle, and died after lingering a few hours, September 4, 1571. It was then remembered how the little King had spied a hole in the cloth with which the board whereon he sat was covered, and, trying to poke his finger into it, had said, "There is a hole in this parliament." This was looked on as a prophecy of the violent death of the Regent, and laid the foundation of that reputation for wisdom and acuteness which clung to James all his life.

26. Mar's Regency.—John Erskine, Earl of Mar, governor of Stirling, was chosen Regent the very next day. As the Queen's party, who held Edinburgh, had held a rival parliament in her name in the Parliament House, it was clear [Pg 113] that all efforts must be made to get the castle out of their hands. Mar therefore began the siege, and open war broke out. The West, the North, and the Border were for the Queen, the eastern Lowlands for the King; the latter looked to England for help, but got none; the former appealed to France with not much better success. After much useless bloodshed, a truce of two months was agreed on, August 1, 1572.

27. Tulchan Bishops.—Under Mar episcopacy was set up again. At least it was settled that the titles and dignities of bishops and archbishops were to stay as they were before the Reformation till the King's majority, but they were shorn of their old authority, and were to be subject to the General Assembly, which now managed all church matters. The people thought so little of them that they called them in mockery "Tulchan" bishops: the word "Tulchan" meaning a sham calf which it was the custom to place before a cow to make her give milk when the real calf had been taken from her. About this time there came the news of the massacre of all the Protestants in Paris, on St. Bartholomew's Day. This roused a general horror of Romanists and created a reaction in favour of Presbytery, for the Scots wished to be more like the French Protestants, who had no bishops. It also made many of the Queen's party go over to the other side.

Mar died after being little more than a year in office, and Morton, who had latterly directed everything, was chosen Regent in his place, November 24, 1572.

28. Death of Knox.—On the same day died John Knox, who for thirteen years had been the leader of religious reform in Scotland. He spent his life and his wonderful talents in striving for what he believed to be truth and sound doctrine. One of the finest traits in his character was his moral courage, which enabled him to speak the truth boldly [Pg 114] to those who stood highest in rank or power. To this Morton himself bore witness, saying, as he looked on the dead body of Knox, "There lies he who never feared the face of man." His zeal sometimes led him to turn against the Romanists their own weapons of intolerance and persecution, but he lived in times when men had not yet found out that it was best to let one another alone in the matter of religion. In those days any one who had shown himself tolerant of the errors of others would have been looked on either as a hypocrite or as an unbeliever. But Knox was not so much opposed to bishops and to a set form of prayer as his followers afterwards became. He drew up a prayer-book for daily use called the Book of Common Order, which was pretty nearly a translation of the book of the church at Geneva, and was what he had himself used when ministering to the English Protestants who in the reign of Mary Tudor had taken refuge at Frankfort.

29. Taking of Edinburgh.—With the new year the war began again. Morton was now in possession of the town of Edinburgh, and he held a meeting of the Estates there. But the castle still held out, and it was only by bringing against it an English force of fifteen hundred men that Elizabeth had at last sent, that its defenders were reduced to such straits that they were compelled to surrender. Grange gave himself up to the English general and appealed to the English Queen. But she either could not or would not protect him. His gallant defence of the castle for Mary was looked on as treason against the government of James, which Elizabeth had in a manner acknowledged. He was given up into the hands of Morton, his bitter enemy, and hanged at Edinburgh, August 3, 1573, in spite of all the efforts of his many friends to save him. Brave, gallant, and unselfish, he was distinguished among a greedy generation by his contempt alike of money and of place. In this he was a great [Pg 115] contrast to his companion, the clever, unprincipled, selfish Lethington, who died by his own hand.

30. Morton's Regency.—Morton had now got all his old enemies out of the way, but he soon made more; partly by his avarice, partly by the firmness with which he insisted that the crown property should be restored. He offended Argyle by making him give back some crown jewels that had come into his possession by his marriage with Murray's widow; and, by trying to stop a feud between him and Athole, he made enemies of them both. To make his power complete Morton longed to get the King into his own hands, but he was kept apart in Stirling, under the care of Erskine the Governor, and while there Morton had no more power over him than any of the other nobles. He tried to persuade James, who was now twelve years old, that he was old enough to rule alone, but Argyle and Athole, who were both in the castle at the time, found out his plan and outwitted him. A proclamation was suddenly issued by them, setting forth that the king would now take the government into his own hands, and would act by the advice of a council, March 4, 1578. A time of great confusion followed. Morton, who at first had seemed to lay down his power with a good grace, before long was up in arms, got into Stirling Castle, dispersed the new council, and again directed everything just as he pleased.

31. Fall of Morton.—About this time Esmé Stewart, Lord of Aubigny, and nephew of the late Earl of Lennox, came from France and became a great favourite with his cousin the king. Aubigny was stirred up by James Stewart of Ochiltree, another favourite, to do his utmost to turn the king against Morton, whom he already disliked. At length Ochiltree accused Morton before the Council of having been a party in the king's murder, and on this charge he was condemned and beheaded at Edinburgh. After his death the two [Pg 116] favourites rose still higher. Aubigny was made Duke of Lennox, and Keeper of Dunbarton Castle; and a royal bodyguard was set up in order to give him the dignity of commander. Stewart, whose mother was a Hamilton, was raised to their Earldom of Arran.

32. Raid of Ruthven.—Certain of the old nobles, who were displeased and alarmed by the power exercised by these upstarts, bound themselves together to displace them both, and to get the King by a bond into their own power. The time they chose for carrying out their plan was when the King went on a hunting party into the Highlands. The Earl of Gowrie, one of the confederates, son of that Ruthven who had played the chief part in the murder of Rizzio, invited him to the castle of Ruthven. James went, and found himself a prisoner in the hands of the barons, August 22, 1581. They then made him declare that he was well pleased with what they had done, and was not under any restraint. Lennox was ordered to leave the kingdom, and after wandering about in poverty and distress till the end of the year, he went back to France, where he died before long. But before the Ruthven Lords had been a year in power, another change came. The king escaped disguised as a groom, rode to St. Andrews, where the nobles who were not in the bond gathered round him in such force that the Confederates were obliged to yield.

33. Fall of Gowrie.—At first James acted moderately and wisely, for he promised to pardon all those who had taken part in the Raid of Ruthven; but when Arran got back his old power over him he turned about and declared them all traitors, who must submit to his grace. Upon this most of them fled to England, but Gowrie submitted to the King and was pardoned. Arran had however determined on his fall, and Gowrie was so much insulted and slighted at Court that he made up his mind to leave the country. Just before he [Pg 117] sailed, he heard that his old comrades had contrived another plot, and he delayed his setting out in order to have a share in it. Before anything was done, news of it got abroad, Gowrie was seized and, after a very unjust trial, beheaded at Stirling. The other conspirators made off to England again and were outlawed, and their estates were forfeited.

34. Fall of Arran.—Arran's triumph did not last long. A fray took place on the Border in which an Englishman, Lord Russell, was slain. Arran was accused of having been the chief cause in this affair, and he was ordered to withdraw from Court. Then the banished lords, thinking this a good opportunity for them to return, went northward, joined the Hamiltons and Maxwells on the Border, came to Stirling and made their way into the presence of the king, who was forced to seem pleased to see them, as they had eight thousand men to support them, November 4, 1585. A Parliament was called soon after, in which three important pieces of business were done. Gowrie's children were restored to the honours forfeited by the treason of their father; Arran was stripped of all his dignities, and a new league was made with England.

35. Death of Mary.—The captive Queen, whose influence in the affairs of her own country had ceased with the surrender of Edinburgh, had, during her long imprisonment, been the cause of many plots against the peace of England and the life of Elizabeth. For her share in Babington's Plot, the object of which was the assassination of Elizabeth, she was tried, found guilty, and condemned to death. She was beheaded at Fotheringhay, February 8, 1587. Though James made some show of feelings of grief and anger at the news of his mother's death, no steps were taken to avenge it, and the matter soon seemed to be forgotten.

36. Marriage of the King.—As James was now of age, his counsellors were looking about for a suitable wife for him. [Pg 118] Frederick the Second King of Denmark had lately sent offering to pay up the money for which the Orkney and Shetland Isles had been given in pledge, and as Scotland had no wish to give them back, it was thought that the difficulty might be got over by choosing one of his daughters, who would most likely bring the islands as her dowry. This proposal was agreed to by Frederick. His daughter Anne was betrothed to James, and Keith, the Earl Marshal, was sent to Copenhagen to act as proxy for the King in the marriage ceremony and to bring home the bride. On their way home the wedding party were storm-stayed and obliged to put into a Norwegian Port, and the King, to the surprise of every one, suddenly made up his mind to go himself to fetch his bride. He joined her at Upslo, but as nothing could make him brave the long sea voyage again till the winter was over they returned together to Copenhagen, and did not come to Scotland till the next spring, May 1, 1590.

37. Abolition of Episcopacy.—For some time the government and the church had been at variance about the bishops. The General Assembly of 1581 had declared the episcopal order to be contrary to the Word of God, and had adopted the Second Book of Discipline as the rule of the government of the Church. This book was drawn up by Andrew Melville, who had succeeded Knox as the spiritual leader of the reformed Church. He was a zealous presbyterian, and it was mainly owing to him that the Scottish Church adopted that form of church government. The Ruthven lords had been the champions of the presbyterian or no-bishop party, and, while they were in power, the ministers upheld by them had taken more and more authority upon themselves. In theory they placed the church far above the civil power, and they taught that the chief magistrate, the King, ought to be subject to them in all matters of conscience and religion. They also claimed the right of the old Church in interfering [Pg 119] with people's private affairs. Each minister looked on himself as bishop over his own flock, and would not submit to having any overseer set over him again. But, as the removal of the bishops as spiritual peers would have been the removal of one of the three Estates—that one too that had always been on the side of the crown—and as their existence served as a pretext to the nobles for drawing their revenues, it was clearly the interest both of the crown and of the nobles to maintain them. In 1588 Philip of Spain fitted out a great fleet for the invasion of England. This caused a great panic throughout Scotland. The people feared that Philip might conquer England and bring it again under the dominion of the Pope, in which case the subjection of Scotland must soon follow. The Covenant for the maintenance of the Protestant religion, which had been signed in 1581, was renewed and signed all over the land. So great was the dread of the bishop of Rome that the people looked on all bishops with suspicion, and in 1592 an act was passed by which the whole order was swept away and the presbyterian polity established. Thenceforth the church was to be governed by a series of courts, the members of which were presbyters. The ministers of several parishes formed a presbytery, these again were grouped together into synods, while supreme over all was the General Assembly, composed of ministers and lay elders from the several presbyteries, which was to meet once a year at Edinburgh, and at which the King or his commissioner was to be present.

38. The Spanish Blanks.—Still a large party adhered to the old Church. The chiefs of this party were Huntly in the north and the Maxwells on the Border. They were always suspected of scheming for its restoration, and, as the King could not or would not proceed against them, he was supposed to favour their plans. In 1592 eight suspicious papers were seized on the person of George Kerr, the Lord [Pg 120] Newbottle's brother, who was leaving Scotland by the western coast. These papers, called the Spanish blanks, were signed by Huntly, Errol, and Angus, but had no other writing on them. Kerr, after being put to the torture, declared that these blank papers were to be filled up by two Jesuits who were commissioned to offer the services of the nobles who had signed them to the King of Spain, to aid him in the re-establishment of the old religion. This discovery filled every one with horror. Angus was seized; but as Huntly retreated to his own country in the north, Argyle, his rival in the Highlands, was sent with full power against him. The two armies met at Glenlivat, not far from the scene of the well-remembered fight of Harlaw. Huntly had but two thousand men, raised chiefly in the northern Lowlands, but they defeated Argyle's swarm of Highlanders, October 1594. But the Romish party was too weak to follow up the victory, and in 1597 Huntly and Errol publicly renounced their old faith, and joined the established Church.

39. Religious Tumults.—The King and the Church were not long at peace. He called certain of their ministers to account before the council for what they had said in the pulpit. The ministers looked upon this interference as an attack on their privileges. The people supported them, and the result was a riot, so serious that the Court had to flee to Linlithgow. Upon this the King threatened to take away the courts of justice from Edinburgh. The fear of this damped the spirit of the mob, and after the return of the Court the ministers who had withstood the King fled to England. The Estates soon after passed an act by which the King might confer on any minister the title of bishop or abbot, but only so as to give him a seat in Parliament; the title was not to imply any lordship over his brethren.

40. The Gowrie Plot.—On the morning of the fifth of August, 1600, as James was setting out hunting from Falkland [Pg 121] Palace, he was met by Alexander Ruthven, the younger brother of the Earl of Gowrie, who told him with a great air of mystery that he had discovered a man burying a pot of money in a field, and that he thought the affair so suspicious that he had taken him prisoner, and begged the King to come to Gowrie House in Perth to see him. James went, taking with him Mar, Lennox, and about twenty other gentlemen. After dinner Alexander took the King aside, and, when his attendants missed him, they were told that he had gone back to Falkland. They were preparing to follow him there when some of them heard cries from a turret. They recognized the King's voice, and they presently saw his head thrust out of a window calling for help. They had much ado to make their way to him, but they found him at last in a small room struggling with Alexander, while a man dressed in armour was looking on. Alexander Ruthven and Gowrie were both killed in the scuffle which followed. A tumult rose in the town, for the Earl had been Provost and was very popular with the townsfolk, and the King and his followers had to make their escape by the river. The doom of traitors was passed on the dead men, and their name was proscribed, but, as no accomplice could be discovered, it was hard to say what was the extent or object of their plot. The whole affair was very mysterious, the only witnesses being the King himself and Henderson the man in armour. Some of the ministers thought it so suspicious that they refused to return thanks for the King's safety, as they thought the whole affair an invention of his own. Eight years later some letters were discovered in the hands of one Sprot, a notary at Eyemouth, which threw some more light on the mystery. They were written by Logan of Restalrig, and revealed a plan between him and the Ruthvens for bringing some prisoner, who was not named, but might possibly be the King, to Fast Castle, a fortress belonging to Logan, standing on a rock at [Pg 122] the entrance to the Forth. Sprot was found guilty of treason, and was put to death for not revealing all he knew about the plot long before.

41. Union of the Crowns.—When Elizabeth died, James was the nearest heir to the throne of England by right of descent from Margaret, elder daughter of Henry the Seventh. But her right had been passed over by Henry the Eighth, who had in the will, which he was empowered by Parliament to make, settled the succession on the heirs of his younger sister, Mary. As it was politically convenient to the English Privy Council that James should succeed Elizabeth on her death, they sent off post haste to summon him to come and take the crown. His questionable right was made good by the voice of the people in his first Parliament. He entered London May 6, 1603. Hitherto he had had less money and less power than almost any other prince in Europe; he now became suddenly one of the richest and most powerful among them. This union of the crowns made the third break in the history of Scotland. The gallant struggle for freedom which had drawn forth all the energies of the nation during the past three centuries was now over. It was now to be united to the powerful neighbour that had so long threatened its independence. The representative of the ancient royal Celtic line, which the national reverence for hereditary royalty had upheld unbroken through the strain of seven long minorities, now became king of the larger and richer kingdom of England, which had been ruled by one foreign dynasty after another ever since the Norman Conquest.

42. State of the Nation.—In Scotland the feudal system was still unshaken. To it the great barons owed their power, and the Reformation, which in England had strengthened the crown, had in Scotland only thrown more wealth and more power into the hands of the nobles. Hitherto the people had been only dependents of the great feudal barons, whose [Pg 123] burthens they bore in return for their protection. Still they could not have been very badly off, for in Scotland there were no peasant wars, as in France and England. It was the Reformation which first brought them out as a separate body in the state. Their condition was now much worse than it had formerly been. The crown brought its increased power to bear upon the nobles, who in their turn, slaves and flatterers at the foreign Court and tyrants at home, used their feudal rights for the oppression of the people, who could hope for no redress from their absent King.

43. Summary.—We have, in this chapter, traced the progress of the Reformation, and noted the changes which it made in the state of the nation. Though the Reformation did not begin so soon in Scotland as in Germany and England, it made more striking changes and overthrew the old Church more completely than it did in either of those countries. It first gave to the people an independent national life. Until it roused them to separate action, they had been swayed by no party feelings, but had blindly followed the lead and fought in the feuds of their feudal superiors, without paying any heed to the cause for which they laid down their lives. The Reformation also broke off the alliance with France which had subsisted ever since the War of Independence. All the events of this period are closely connected with the change of religion, and it is marked by more civil war, more bloodshed, more crimes of violence, more party strife, more treachery and wrong and robbery, than any other period in the history of Scotland. It was the bad faith of Mary of Lorraine which first drove the Reformers to take up arms in defence of their opinions. Under their own native queen they hoped to enjoy liberty of conscience, and as they looked to her to redress their grievances they welcomed her return with much loyal feeling. By the craftiness and dissimulation of her policy in public affairs, and by the scandals of her private life, [Pg 124] she changed their loyal affection into loathing and contempt, and finally forfeited the crown. During the long minority which followed, the country was desolated by a civil war, and the crown was impoverished by the grasping greediness of the nobles. When the King came of age, he showed himself quite unequal to the task of ruling and uniting the different rival factions in the church and in the state, and allowed himself to be governed by one worthless favourite after another. Nor were the ecclesiastical affairs of this period at all more settled than the secular. The form of church government was changed four times before the presbyterian polity was finally established in 1592. The lands of the old Church had been seized by the most worthless of the nobles instead of being set apart for the support of the new Church, so that the ministers could with difficulty secure a bare subsistence. During such an unhappy state of affairs there could be little social or intellectual development. There were however among the Reformers many men distinguished for their learning and brilliant talents. Of these the most conspicuous were George Buchanan, tutor to the young king, who wrote a fabulous history of Scotland and other books in very elegant Latin, and John Knox, who wrote a History of the Reformation, remarkable for the vigour, clearness, and simplicity of its style. Sir James Melville, who was also an accomplished courtier, and stood high in favour both with Mary and with James, gives an excellent picture of these disturbed times in his very entertaining memoirs. The Prayer Book of the Reformed Church was also translated into Gaelic. It was published in 1567, and was the first Celtic book that had ever yet been printed.

CHAPTER VII.

James VI.; results of the Union (1)—restoration of Episcopacy (2)—planting of the Highlands (3)—Articles of Perth (4)—founding of Nova Scotia (5)—the King's death (6)—Charles I.; resumption of benefices (7)—King's visit and coronation (8)—Book of Canons (9)—Liturgy tumults (10)—the Tables (11)—renewal of the Covenant (12)—Hamilton Commissioner (13)—Glasgow Assembly (14)—war in the north (15)—pacification of Berwick (16)—Assembly and Parliament (17)—invasion of England (18)—Treaty of Ripon (19)—war breaks out (20)—Montrose's campaign (21)—dealings with the king (22)—the Engagement; Whiggamores' raid (23)—Directory; confession of faith (24)—the king's death (25)—Charles II.; fate of Hamilton and Huntly (26)—Montrose's rising (27)—arrival of Charles (28)—Cromwell's conquest (29)—the coronation (30)—battle of Worcester (31)—union with England (32)—Glencairn's expedition (33)—the Restoration (34)—episcopacy re-established (35)—fate of Guthrie and Argyle (36)—the Ejection (37)—western rising (38)—the Persecution (39)—the Indulgence (40)—murder of Sharp (41)—Sanquhar Declaration (42)—Drumclog (43)—Bothwell Bridge (44)—Test Act (45)—Argyle's opposition (46)—James VII.; the Killing Time (47)—Argyle's rising (48)—the Indulgence (49)—deposition of James (50)—William and Mary; the Convention (51)—the Rabbling (52)—Dundee's revolt (53)—battle of Killiecrankie (54)—attack of Dunkeld; Buchan's attempt (55)—dealings with the chiefs (56)—Massacre of Glencoe (57)—Darien Scheme (58)—William's death (59)—Education Act (60)—Anne; Act of Security (61)—trial and death of Captain Green (62)—the Union (63)—literature and art (64)—summary (65). [Pg 126]

1. James VI., 1603-1625. Results of the Union. —Immediately after the Union of the Crowns, the Border laws on each side were repealed, and it was settled that subjects of either country born after the Union should no longer be looked on as aliens in the other, but should have the undisputed right of inheriting property in either. A Lord High Commissioner was appointed to represent the King in Scotland, and there was some talk of an union of the parliaments, but it was not carried out.

2. Restoration of Episcopacy.—The great desire of the King was to bring the Church of Scotland into conformity with the Church of England. To bring this about, he summoned some of the ministers to England, in the hope that he should be able to persuade them to agree with him. Melville, their leader, spoke out so plainly against episcopacy before the bishops in the Privy Council that he was sent to the Tower and finally banished. But the King carried his point, and in 1606 the Estates passed an act for the restoration of the bishops. No acts of church government were in future to be lawful without their consent, and though the General Assembly was still to go on, its power was to be very much lessened. As the old line of Scottish bishops had died out, John Spottiswood, Andrew Lamb, and Gavin Hamilton were consecrated by English bishops at London House to the bishoprics of Glasgow, Brechin, and Galloway. To avoid all dispute about the old claim of supremacy, neither of the English archbishops was present. But these bishops had a very hard time of it, for they did not get the lands of their sees restored to them as had been promised, and many of them had hard work to get a living at all. In 1610, two Courts of High Commission were set up. These courts were afterwards united into one, but, as this court was under the control of the Court of Session, it could never be so tyrannical as the Court of High Commission in England.

3. Planting of the Highlands.—In the early part of his reign James had tried to do something to improve the state of the Highlands. To this end three new burghs were founded, [Pg 127] and the lands of all chiefs who could not show written titles were declared forfeited. These lands were given to Lowland colonists, who were however soon glad to give up any attempt at settling among their lawless neighbours. The MacGregors, whose district lay close on the Lowland border, had shown themselves the most savage and lawless of all the Highland clans. Argyle was commissioned to hunt them down, but they beat the Lowlanders with great slaughter in a battle at Glen Fruin in 1604. Their chief was afterwards taken and hanged, and the name proscribed, but that was only breaking the power of one clan, whilst the others remained as formidable as ever. To prevent such outbreaks in future, Argyle and Huntly were entrusted with full powers to carry on the planting of the Highlands. Three conditions were required of those chiefs who were suffered to stay in possession of their lands. That they should give sureties for the good order of their clans; promise to let their land for a fixed rent in money instead of all other exactions, and agree to send their children to school in the Lowlands. These changes not only strengthened the Government, but made united action on the part of the clans more difficult.

4. Articles of Perth.—The King only paid one visit to Scotland after his accession to the throne of England. He then gave great offence by introducing ceremonial vestments at the service in his own chapel. These vestments and other ornaments which were customary in England were hateful to the presbyterians. The passing of the "Five Articles" by a General Assembly held at Perth completed their dismay, and plainly showed the King's intention to impose upon them the ceremonies which they so much disliked. By those Articles the private administration of the sacraments was allowed, all persons were enjoined to kneel at the Sacrament of the Lord's Supper, to bring their children to the Bishops [Pg 128] for confirmation, and to observe the five great festivals of the Christian Church as holidays.

5. Founding of Nova Scotia.—The poverty of their country and the love of adventure had made the Scots from the earliest times ever ready to seek their fortunes abroad. They had won themselves renown as soldiers or traders in nearly all the countries of the Old world, but they had not as yet any colony of their own in the New one. Hitherto these emigrants, though they were called Scots, had been chiefly Saxons from the Lowlands, but in the beginning of this reign bodies of Celts had gone back to the original Scotia, and in Ulster, their old home, they won back settlements from the kindred Celtic race who now looked on them as intruders. But while some of the wanderers thus went back to the old country, others were founding a New Scotland beyond the sea. This, the third land to which the wandering people gave its name, was called by the Latin form of the name, Nova Scotia. It was granted by a Royal Charter to Sir William Alexander, afterwards Earl of Stirling, the projector of this scheme of emigration in 1621. This new settlement was divided into 1,000 parts, and every adventurer who was willing to brave the hardships of an uncleared country, and resist the encroachments of the neighbouring settlers, was rewarded with the rank and title of baronet. About the same time too the Lowlanders were encouraged to go over to the North of Ireland, and to take up the lands from which the Irish chiefs had been driven. As the soil there was much better than that which they had left, they gladly agreed to the change, and passed over in great numbers, more than ten thousand going in two years.

6. The King's Death.—On the twenty-seventh of March, 1625, the King died. He had governed Scotland during his twenty-two years of absence with a much firmer hand than [Pg 129] in the troubled time of his personal rule. He had then been quite at the mercy of his ministers and of the nobles. The wealth and power of his larger kingdom made him now able to deal with the smaller one pretty much as he liked, and the nobles were too eagerly seeking favour and place at the richer court to be willing to risk the loss of them by opposing his will. James was quite unlike all his forefathers. He had good abilities and an unusual amount of learning, besides a good deal of common sense and shrewdness, which he sometimes made use of, but his repulsive appearance and manners, and his want of self-reliance, exposed him to ridicule and contempt. He had none of the courage, high spirit, graceful tastes and ready wit that spread a veil over the faults and vices of his ancestors. Yet he alone escaped the tragic fate that seemed the doom of all the Stewart line, and was singled out from among them for an almost fairy-like change and advance of fortune.

7. Charles I., 1625-1649. Resumption of Benefices.—Charles, who succeeded James as King of the two kingdoms, had even more exalted ideas than his father of the power of the prerogative. It fell to the lot of the Scots to take the lead and set an example to the English in resisting his arbitrary measures. Before he had been a year on the throne, it was clear that he meant to carry out his father's plan of making the Scotch Church as like the English Church as possible. He issued a proclamation recalling all the church lands which were in the hands of laymen, whether they had been granted by the crown or not. The holders protested against this injustice, and at last a compromise was made by which they agreed to give up part of the lands they held on condition of having their claim to the rest made good.

8. King's Visit and Coronation.—In 1633 Charles came to Scotland, and was crowned with great pomp in the Abbey church of Holyrood. The vestments that were worn on [Pg 130] this occasion by the clergy gave great offence to the people. Their discontent was increased by an order from the King enjoining their own ministers to wear surplices, and the bishops to wear rochets and sleeves, instead of the Geneva cloak as heretofore. While Charles was in Scotland, a meeting of the Estates was held, in which he met with no opposition, owing to a new arrangement in choosing the Lords of the Articles. Formerly this committee had consisted of eight members from each Estate chosen by their own peers; but now the bishops were first chosen, they again chose the barons, and barons and bishops together chose the commons, so that all those chosen were really the allies of the bishops. A supplication was drawn up to remonstrate with the King about this interference, but, instead of taking it in good part, Charles was very angry, treated their remonstrance as a political offence, and put the lord Balmerinoch, who had revised the supplication which was presented to him, in prison. He was afterwards pardoned, but this did not make the King any more popular, as it was thought that he had only liberated Balmerinoch from fear and not from goodwill. While in Scotland he founded a new bishopric at Edinburgh, which had formerly formed part of the diocese of St. Andrews.

9. Book of Canons.—The discontent and distrust of the people which had been roused by the introduction of vestments, by the increase in the number of the bishops, and by the appointment of the primate as chancellor were now brought to a head by the appearance of a Book of Canons, or rules for the government of the Church. This book they were called on to accept in place of the Book of Discipline, on the authority of the King alone, unconfirmed by the Estates, and not long after the King attempted to change their form of worship as well. Through the influence of Laud, Archbishop of Canterbury, a Liturgy was drawn up on the plan of the first book of Edward the Sixth. From [Pg 131] this Liturgy the Scotch clergy were commanded by the King to read prayers in the churches, instead of from the book of Common Order which was still in general use.

10. Liturgy Tumults.—The imposition of this book roused the old national jealousy. The people thought that to have an English service book forced upon them would be a mark of subjection; and on the day named by the King for bringing it into use, July 16, 1637, when the Dean of Edinburgh tried to read the prayers from it in St. Giles' Church, a riot broke out. Stools and books were thrown at the Dean, the Archbishop, and the Bishop of Edinburgh, who had great difficulty in escaping out of the hands of the mob. And this tumult was but a sign of the common feeling throughout the country. The King was highly incensed and ordered the offenders to be brought to punishment, and the use of the liturgy to be enforced. Numberless petitions against it from all ranks of the people poured in on the Privy Council, or were sent up to London to the King, while Edinburgh was thronged with the petitioners from all parts of the country waiting for the answer which they hoped would be favourable. No answer was given to them, but the King issued a proclamation ordering them all to return to their homes, and threatening to remove the courts from Edinburgh to Linlithgow if the disturbance continued, as had been done in the late reign. But this had no effect. The bishops and the other members of the Council were mobbed, and the supplicants joined in a common petition to the King, called the Great Supplication.

11. The Tables.—The Council finding it impossible to treat with a turbulent mob which increased instead of diminishing, persuaded the malcontents to choose representatives to act in their names, four from each class, nobles, lesser barons, clergy, and burgesses. The rest were to return peaceably to their several homes. But this committee, known as [Pg 132] The Tables, gave the Council more trouble than the unruly mob had done, for they made their way into the Council chamber, insisted on debating there, and demanded that the bishops should be turned out.

12. Renewal of the Covenant, 1638.—Still the King would not give in, and he met a less submissive protest on the part of his subjects by another threatening proclamation. On this the Tables renewed the Covenant, with a clause added to it aimed at the bishops. At the last renewal of the Covenant, only notable persons had put their names to it, but this time it was signed by every one throughout the land, rich and poor alike. There was the greatest excitement and enthusiasm about it all over the country, and from this time the popular party became known as the Covenanters.

13. Hamilton Commissioner.—A few months later the Marquess of Hamilton came to Scotland as Commissioner with full power, it was said, to settle everything. The demands of the Covenanters were that the Court of High Commission, the Canons and the Liturgy should all be done away, and that a free Assembly and a free Parliament should be summoned. But Hamilton, acting on the orders given him, kept putting them off with promises till the King should be ready to put them down by force, when suddenly the King turned about, promised all they asked, and agreed that the Assembly should be called, and that the bishops should be tried by it.

14. Glasgow Assembly.—The Assembly met in the Cathedral Church at Glasgow, November 21, 1638. Hamilton opened it as the Royal Commissioner. But after a few days, when the attack on the bishops began, he withdrew and ordered the members to disperse. They paid no heed to this order, but went on with the trial of the bishops, who were all deposed, and eight of them excommunicated. The Canons [Pg 133] and the Liturgy were then rejected, and all acts of the Assemblies held since 1606 were annulled.

15. War in the North.—In the North, where Huntly was the King's Lieutenant, the Covenant had not been received, and the Tables resolved to enforce it with the sword. Scotland was now full of trained soldiers just come back from Germany, where they had learnt to fight in the Thirty Years war, and as plenty of money had been collected among the Covenanters, an army was easily raised. Their banner bore the motto, For Religion, the Covenant, and the Country, and their leader was James Graham, Earl of Montrose, one of the most zealous among the champions of the cause. Aberdeen, Huntly's capital, dared make no resistance, for the soldiers occupied the town and the ministers the pulpits, and Montrose brought Huntly himself back to Edinburgh in his train. But in the first brush of actual war the King's party, the Cavaliers, or Malignants as their opponents called them, had the advantage, for they surprised and scattered the Covenanters of the North at the little village of Turriff, which they had made their trysting place. In this action, called the Trot of Turriff, the first blood was shed in the great Civil War. The Cavaliers were the first to draw the sword. Though Huntly had been taken out of the way by his removal to Edinburgh, his two sons, the Lord Aboyne and Lewis Gordon, supplied his place and called out the Highlanders. Aberdeen changed hands, and again Montrose was sent to subdue the North before the expected struggle with England should begin. At the Bridge of Dee he defeated the Malignants, and once more entered Aberdeen in triumph. Just after this entry the news was brought that peace had been made between the King and the other army of the Covenant on the Border. June 1639.

16. Pacification of Berwick.—While Montrose had been thus busy for the Covenant in the North, the King had been [Pg 134] making ready to put down his rebellious Scottish subjects with the sword. Early in May a fleet entered the Forth under the command of Hamilton. But the Tables took possession of the strongholds, and seized the ammunition which had been laid in for the King. They then raised another army of twenty-two thousand foot and one thousand two hundred horse, and placed at its head Alexander Leslie, a veteran, trained in the German war. Their army they sent southwards to meet the English host which the King was bringing to reduce Scotland. The two armies faced each other on opposite banks of the Tweed. The Scots were skilfully posted on Dunse Law, a hill commanding the Northern road. To pass them without fighting was impossible, and to fight would have been almost certain defeat. The King seeing this agreed to treat. By a treaty called the "Pacification of Berwick," it was settled that the questions at issue between the King and the Covenanters should be put to a free Assembly, that both armies should be disbanded, and that the strongholds should be restored to the King. June 9, 1639.

17. Assembly and Parliament.—The Assembly which met at Edinburgh repeated and approved all that had been done at Glasgow. When the Estates met for the first time in the New Parliament-house, June 2, 1640, they went still further, for they not only confirmed the Acts of the Assemblies, but ordered everyone to sign the Covenant under pain of civil penalties. Now for the first time they acted in open defiance of the King, to whom hitherto they had professed the greatest loyalty and submission. Three times had they been adjourned by the King, who had also refused to see the Commissioners whom they sent up to London. Now they met in spite of him, and, as in former times of troubles and difficulties, they appealed to France for help. When this intrigue with the French was found [Pg 135] out, the Lord Loudon, one of their Commissioners, was sent to the Tower, and the English parliament was summoned to vote supplies for putting down the Scots by force of arms. But by this time the English were beginning to see that the cause of the Scots was the cause of freedom. There was much difficulty in raising an army to march against them, and when raised it was discontented and mutinous.

18. Invasion of England.—As for the Scots they mustered stronger than before, and, on August 20, 1640, they crossed the Tweed, and entered England. At Newburn they defeated a body of English, and crossing the Tyne, marched on to Newcastle, which yielded to them without offering resistance. They then took Durham, Tynemouth, and Shields without a struggle. Meanwhile news came from Scotland that the two great strongholds of the East and of the West, Edinburgh and Dunbarton, had again fallen into their hands.

19. Treaty of Ripon.—Once more they sent to the King, who was then at York, a supplication in which they declared that all they wanted was satisfaction to their just demands. The King laid the matter before a great council of peers which he had called at York. By their advice it was decided to treat with the Scots. Eight Commissioners from their army came to Ripon, and the treaty which was begun there was not ended until nearly a year afterwards at London. All that they asked was granted, and they were promised three hundred thousand pounds to defray the expenses of this war, into which they said they had been driven. The armies were then disbanded, and peace seemed to be restored. The King came to Scotland once more, and a meeting of the Estates was held in which he let the members have their own way in everything. He also confirmed the right of the Estates to meet once every three years, and fixed the next meeting for June, 1644. [Pg 136]

20. Breaking out of the War.—This seeming peace was but the lull before the storm, and, before one year had passed, the English had followed the example set them by the Scots in resisting the unlawful exactions of the King; the Long Parliament had brought his minister Strafford, the chief agent of his despotism, to the scaffold, and had called on the people to arm in defence of their rights and liberties. When the great Civil War began in earnest, each side was eager to secure the help of the fine army which the Scots had at their command. Religious opinion decided the matter. The Parliament, which was as much opposed to episcopacy as the Scots were, adopted the solemn League and Covenant, and ordered every one to sign it, and by so doing induced the Scots to join them. The army was raised again, and put under the command of the two Leslies, Alexander, now Earl of Leven, and his nephew David, who soon proved the better soldier of the two. A second time they entered England, January 19, 1644, and leaving a part of their force to besiege Newcastle marched on into Yorkshire, and joined the troops of the Parliament in time to share their victory at Marston Moor. Newcastle was taken by storm, October 19.

21. Montrose's Campaign.—Meanwhile Montrose, whose zeal for the Covenant had now changed into zeal for the King, was taking advantage of the absence of the Covenanting force in England to win back the North for Charles with an army of Celts alone. It was the first time that the Highlanders had been turned to account in regular war. Hitherto they had been thought only capable of preying upon one another, but now, under a General who knew how to handle them, they did wonders. The Lowlanders who had hastily mustered to oppose them were beaten at Tippermuir. Montrose then took Perth, marched northward, again defeated the Covenanters, took Aberdeen once more, and held for the King this town which twice before he had held for [Pg 137] the Covenant. He then turned to the West, wasted the country of his great enemy Argyle, pounced down upon and scattered the force gathered to oppose his own on the shore of Loch Linnhe; kept his army in the Highlands during the winter, and early in the spring took Dundee. He twice defeated the Covenanters in the country north of the Forth, and once south of it at Kilsyth. Thus in a wonderfully short time he won back nearly the whole country for the King. But the secret of his success had lain in the rapid marches and sudden attacks that kept his men busy. When the fighting was over, the Highlanders, as was their wont, went off in large numbers to take home their spoil. In this way his army was diminished. David Leslie, who had been summoned home to oppose him, brought some cavalry from the southern army against his weakened force, and won a complete victory at Philiphaugh, near Selkirk, September 12th, 1645. Montrose retreated with the small remnant that was left to him, but he found it impossible to reassemble his scattered force. His campaign had lasted little more than a year, and a few months later the King, who had thrown himself on the protection of the Scots army at Newark, ordered him to lay down his arms. Montrose obeyed and left the country.

22. Dealings with the King.—While the Scots army was lying before Newark, Charles, whose cause was now nearly hopeless, secretly left Oxford, where he was besieged by the army of the Parliament, and sought protection in the camp of the Scots. A few days afterwards Newark surrendered, and they returned with the King to Newcastle. He stayed in their hands eight months. During this time, though they behaved towards him with respect and courtesy, he was really their prisoner, and they were busy treating with the Parliament for the terms of his surrender. If he had turned Presbyterian and signed the Covenant, no doubt [Pg 138] they would have protected him, but after many arguments with Henderson, a noted divine of their party, he still remained unconvinced. In the end they agreed to leave England on payment of 400,000 pounds arrears of pay that were due to them. When they returned to their own country, they left the King to the mercy of the English Parliament.

23. The Engagement.—A few months later, when Charles was a prisoner at Carisbrooke, he made a secret treaty with the moderate party in Scotland, to the effect that, if they would help him to win back his power, he would confirm the Covenant and would make a trial of the presbyterian Church in England. On this the Committee of Estates, in whose hands the government was, raised an army and sent it into England, with Hamilton, who had been created a Duke, at its head. They were defeated at Preston by Oliver Cromwell, lieutenant-general of the parliamentary army. The Duke marched on to Uttoxeter. There he and his army laid down their arms, and yielded themselves prisoners, August 25, 1648. But the extreme party in Scotland were very wroth against the Engagers, as they called those who had made this "engagement" with the King. They thought that the taking of the Covenant by the King was a mere pretence, and that Hamilton's expedition was a sinful helping of the Malignants. A change in the government was the result. Argyle, the head of the extreme Covenanters, raised his followers, while from the Western Lowlands, which were just waking to zeal for the Covenant, a body of men, with Lord Eglinton at their head, marched on Edinburgh. This was called the Whiggamores' Raid, from Whig, a word used in the Westland for urging on horses. This was the origin of the word Whig, which gradually became the nickname of a political party. Argyle and his party came to terms with Cromwell, and formed a new Committee of [Pg 139] Estates. Cromwell then marched to Edinburgh, and made them give him an assurance that none of the Engagers should be allowed to take any part in the government. By the Act of Classes which was then passed, all profane persons and enemies of the Covenant were likewise shut out from holding office.

24. The Directory and Confession of Faith. —The Scots now hoped to see their Church and their Covenant adopted over all three kingdoms. In this hope they were disappointed, for the most of the parliamentary party were Independents, who had no idea of exchanging the tyranny of bishops for that of presbyters. An Assembly of Divines met at Westminster, June 12, 1643, to settle religious matters. They adopted the Covenant, and the Scots in return accepted their directory of public worship, and the Confession of Faith drawn up by them in place of their own Books of Discipline and Common Order. But though the Covenant was thus nominally accepted in England, the different English sects were allowed far more liberty than the strict Covenanters thought right.

25. The King's Death.—On the thirtieth of January, 1649, the King was beheaded at Whitehall. With the court of justice which professed to try him, with the sentence which it passed, and with the execution of that sentence, the Scots had nothing whatever to do. As they had no idea of the existence of their kingdom without a king, nor of having any other king than the hereditary one, no sooner was the news of the King's death known in Edinburgh, than Charles his son was proclaimed King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland.

26. Charles II., 1649-1685. Fate of Hamilton and Huntly.—Hamilton, who was a prisoner in England, was brought to trial as an English subject by his English title of Earl of Cambridge; he was found guilty of treason in invading [Pg 140] the country, and was beheaded. Huntly met with a like fate in Scotland. He was also charged with treason in having made war for the King against the Covenanters.

27. Montrose's Rising.—-Meanwhile in the north Montrose made one more effort for the king. With a small army of foreigners which he had gathered on the Continent he landed in Orkney, and from thence passed over to Scotland early in 1650. But his followers were dispersed by a detachment from the Covenanting army. He himself wandered for a while in the Highlands, but was at last taken prisoner, brought to Edinburgh, and hanged there without a trial. He was lying under sentence of death for treason, which had been passed against him five years before, when he first took up arms for the King.

28. Arrival of Charles.-—But while the Estates were thus dealing with the leaders of the Malignants, they were busy on their own account treating for the return of Charles. They looked on him as their lawful King, and they were ready to be faithful to him if he would sign the Covenant and promise to submit to the dictates of the Assembly. These promises he made, and, before he landed, he signed the Covenant, in July, 1650, while the courtiers whom he had brought with him were nearly all sent away as being either Malignants or Engagers.

29. Cromwell's Conquest.—-No sooner did the news of these doings reach London than Cromwell was sent northward with a large army to put a stop to them. The old hatred of England was rekindled by this invasion, and numbers of recruits flocked round the banner of the Covenant. The army thus brought together was made up of good soldiers who made no pretences to piety, and of would-be saints who knew nothing of fighting. But the saints drove from their ranks all whom they suspected of lukewarmness in the cause and therefore looked on as sinners, and thus weeded out their [Pg 141] best soldiers. Those who were left were put under the command of Leslie, and the King was not suffered to go out with the host. They took up a strong position on the hills south of the Firth of Forth, and for some time Cromwell tried in vain to bring them to a battle, but at last Leslie was persuaded against his better judgment to go down into the plain and meet the enemy. A battle was fought near Dunbar, September 3, in which the Scots were thoroughly beaten.

30. The Coronation. —-Meanwhile Charles was in Dunfermline, in old times the royal city, under care so strict and watchful that it was very much like imprisonment. The life which he led there was so distasteful to him that he made his escape, in hopes of joining the northern chiefs. But their plans were badly laid. He found no one to meet him as he had expected, and he was pursued and brought back by his former guardians. According to the ancient custom, Charles was crowned at Scone by the hands of the Marquess of Argyle.

31. Battle of Worcester.—-While Cromwell was busy in Scotland the Scots army marched into England. This time they took the King with them. But Cromwell hastened after them, came up with them at Worcester, and defeated them there, September 3, 1651, exactly a year after his victory at Dunbar. This was the last battle fought in the Civil War. The Scots had been the first to take up the sword, and they were the last to lay it down. Charles, after wandering about for some time in danger, and in want, escaped to the Continent. Meanwhile General Monk, who had been left in Scotland with an army of five thousand men, was reducing the country to subjection. The public records deposited in Stirling Castle were sent to the Tower of London. The Regalia, the Honours of Scotland as they were called, the Crown, the Sword, and the Sceptre, had [Pg 142] been taken to Dunnottar, one of the strong fortresses in Scotland, which stood on a ledge of rock overhanging the sea. The Castle made a gallant resistance, but was at last obliged to yield, but the Honours were not found in it. They had been taken secretly from the Castle by Mrs. Granger, the wife of the minister of the parish. She rode through the camp with the Crown on her lap hidden in a bundle of lint, and the sceptre in her hand in the guise of a distaff, with the flax she was spinning wound round it. She and her husband buried the Honours under the floor of the church, and they kept their secret so well that no one knew what had become of them.

32. Union with England.—Cromwell, now Lord Protector of England, Scotland, and Ireland, set to work to carry out Edward the First's idea of a legislative union of England and Scotland. This Union was ratified by the Council, in 1654. It was then settled that Scotland should be represented by thirty members in the English Parliament. Free-trade was established between the two countries. Great changes were also made in the Church Government. The Assembly was closed, and the power of the Church-courts was done away with. The country was divided into five districts, and the care of providing ministers to the different parishes was laid upon a certain number of ministers to be chosen from these districts. In order to improve the state of the people, all feudal dues were taken away. A fixed rent in money was substituted for all the services and restrictions to which the land had hitherto been liable. The Highlands were kept in order by the founding of garrisoned Forts.

33. Glencairn's Expedition.—Once only was the peace and order thus well established broken in favour of the Stewarts. A rising was made in the Highlands by William Cunningham, Lord Glencairn, who acted under a commission from Charles. More than five thousand men gathered round him. They [Pg 143] were dispersed by a detachment of Monk's troops under General Morgan at Loch Garry before they had come down from the Highlands.

34. The Restoration.—The Protector, whose conquest had made Scotland prosperous, died September 3, 1658. His son Richard succeeded him in office, but he was not strong enough to keep order, as his father had done. A time of great confusion followed, which ended in the recall and Restoration of Charles. This was chiefly the work of General Monk. He was Commander of the Army in Scotland, during the Protectorate. Some time after Cromwell's death he called together a Convention of the Representatives of the Counties. Whether they knew of his intention of restoring Charles or not is not certain. But they aided him with a large sum of money. In November, 1659, he set out with the army for London, and in about six months' time Charles returned in triumph to England. In Scotland, where Charles had been already crowned, his return was celebrated with great rejoicings by the people, who hoped that he would uphold the Covenant which he had signed. Before long, they found out how much they had been mistaken. In the very first English Parliament, an Act was passed which took from Scotland the privilege of free-trade with England, which she had enjoyed under Cromwell. This was the Navigation Act, by which the exporting and importing of merchandise into England, or any of her colonies, was forbidden to any but English vessels.

35. Episcopacy Re-established.—John Middleton, a soldier of fortune, who had been taken prisoner at Worcester, and who had afterwards taken an active part in Glencairn's expedition, was now made Earl of Middleton, and was sent to Scotland as Commissioner. When the Estates met, an Act called the Act Rescissory was passed. By this Act, all the Acts passed since 1633 were cut out of the Statutes; [Pg 144] nearly all the concessions wrung from Charles the First were recalled. The causes of dispute between the King and the people were thus restored to the state in which they had been before the great struggle began. In this same year Episcopacy was re-established by the Estates, and the Covenant was publicly burned by the hangman. As there was but one of the old bishops still alive, three new ones were consecrated in England. James Sharp was the Primate. He had gone up to London to plead the cause of the Covenant and of Presbyters; he came back an Archbishop, and was thenceforward foremost in persecuting the cause he had deserted.

36. Fate of Argyle and of Guthrie.—The government of Scotland was entrusted to a Privy Council. Its authority was supported by a standing lifeguard, the troop that former kings had often asked for in vain. To this Council were entrusted the supreme powers of the Estates during the intervals between the Sessions. An Act of Indemnity was promised, but before it was passed several persons suffered death. Two of those who thus fell were specially distinguished. The one was Argyle, whose great power made him a dangerous rival to the King. He was treacherously seized in London, whither he had gone to pay his court to Charles. He was sent down to Edinburgh, where he was tried for treason, found guilty, and beheaded, May 27, 1661. But the victim who was most regretted and whose fate called forth the most pity was James Guthrie, a noted divine, the leader of the extreme party among the Covenanters. This party, who were called the Remonstrants, had prepared a Remonstrance to be presented to the King directly after his return, praying that no form of worship but their own might be suffered within the realm. This remonstrance was drawn up by Guthrie. It was never presented, and those who had projected it were put in prison. Guthrie was now brought [Pg 145] to trial on a charge of spreading abroad sedition and treason against the Government. He refused any legal defence, and avowed and justified all that he had done. He was found guilty and beheaded. He was looked on by the Covenanters as a martyr for his faith, and his last words were treasured up with special veneration.

37. The Ejection.—The promised Act of Indemnity was not passed till 1662, and it was not a free pardon, as had been looked for. Between seven and eight hundred persons were heavily fined. In this same year an Act was passed requiring all persons holding any public office to sign a Declaration that the Covenant was an unlawful oath; and lastly a law was passed that all ministers presented to livings since 1639 should be turned out, unless they would agree to be collated or instituted by the new bishops. The ministers who refused to consent to episcopal collation were required to remove with their families out of their parishes within a month from the date of the passing of this Act. The meeting of the Council in which it was passed was called the Drunken Parliament, from the condition of the members present. Sooner than submit to this, three hundred and fifty ministers resigned. Most of their parishioners followed them, and the churches were left empty, while the people flocked to the open-air services of their former pastors. To prevent this an Act was passed for levying fines on all persons who did not go to their parish church on the Lord's Day. Another Act, called the Mile Act, was also passed, which forbade the recusant or refusing ministers to come within twenty miles of their former parishes, or within three miles of any royal burgh. The Court of High Commission was revived, and empowered to proceed against all dissenters from the Episcopal (now the Established) Church, whether they were Romanists or Presbyterians. But this tyranny drove the people to revolt, and a third [Pg 146] Religious War began. In the first the people had taken up arms for a question of doctrine; the second arose from disputes about a form of prayer; this, the third, was caused by enforcing a form of Church-government specially disliked by the nation. In the conduct of public prayer no change was made. As there had been in James's reign a Presbyterian Church with a Liturgy, so now there was an Episcopal Church without one. But, though the cause of dispute seemed this time of less importance than in the two former wars, the zeal on the one side and the persecution on the other were greater than they had been in the former struggles. Then Edinburgh and the Eastern Lowlands had borne the brunt of the battle; now it was in the West, where it was latest kindled, that religious zeal flamed fiercest and lasted longest.

38. Western Rising.—In spite of fines and penalties the churches still remained empty, while the people went long distances to gather round their "outed" ministers. On the hill-sides, wherever in short they were least likely to be dispersed by the dragoons, they met to hear the sermons of their favourite preachers. But so great was the danger incurred by thus worshipping God according to their consciences that sentries were stationed on the hill-tops round to give warning of the approach of danger, and the men stacked their muskets so that they could seize and use them on a moment's notice. Such meetings were called Conventicles, and to hunt them down bands of soldiers scoured the country in all directions. In the south-west the troops were under the command of Sir James Turner, and it was his severity that drove the people to actual revolt. The immediate cause of the outbreak was the rescue of an old man from the clutches of a group of soldiers who were ill-using him. In the scuffle one of the soldiers was wounded. This affair happened at Dalry, in Ayrshire. A large body of peasants soon gathered [Pg 147] to protect their conventicles. They seized Turner at Dumfries, and, when their numbers had increased to nearly three thousand, they set out for Edinburgh, expecting the people of the Eastern Counties to show their former spirit by rising to join them. General Thomas Dalziel, who had made himself a reputation by fighting for the Czar of Russia against Turks and Tartars, was sent to bar their way. But they avoided and passed him. He had to come back after them as far as the Pentland Hills, where they were so well posted that the troops could only break and disperse them by repeated attacks. But the feeling of this district had changed so much that the peasantry now turned against these wild Whigs of the Westland, and treated them nearly as badly as the troopers had done.

39. The Persecution.—This rising did no real good, for after the defeat at Pentland in 1666 the tyranny became even more cruel than before. The trials which followed were infamous, from the shameful and constant use of torture. The instruments used for this purpose were the thumbkin, a screw applied to the thumb-joint, and the boot, a cylinder in which the leg of the victim was crushed by hammering in wedges. Both inflicted the most fearful pain without destroying life. Twenty men were hanged in different places. The fines and forfeitures inflicted were given as rewards to soldiers and lawyers who might get them out of the offenders as they best could. At this time certain bonds called law-burrows were originated. These were bonds by which all the principal men in a district pledged themselves to prevent those beneath them in rank from breaking the peace.

40. The Indulgence.—But these measures only increased the disorders they were intended to quiet, and the Government tried a new system of greater toleration. An Indulgence was issued, by which those of the outed ministers who could prove that they had lived peaceably and had not held [Pg 148] conventicles since they had been turned out of their livings, were allowed to go back to their parishes, provided no one else had been put in their place. Some few took advantage of it; but the greater number would not, and looked on their indulged brethren as nearly as bad as the prelatists. But this semblance of yielding was more than balanced by new exactions. Intercommuning—that is, having anything to do with any persons who had in any way broken any of the many laws against conventicles—was denounced as a criminal offence. Lauderdale, who succeeded Middleton as Commissioner in 1669, brought an army of Celts down on the Lowlands, which they pillaged at pleasure, carrying back rich spoils to their native mountains.

41. Murder of Sharp.—Sharp, the Primate, who was looked on as the originator of all the persecutions, was bitterly hated. He was shot at in Edinburgh while getting into his carriage, but was not hurt. Some time after he recognized the man who had thus tried to take his life. Mitchell the assassin was tried, and being bribed by a promise of pardon, freely confessed that he had fired the shot. Instead of receiving the promised pardon, Mitchell was sent to prison, tortured, and finally put to death in 1678. But the very next year Mitchell's attempt was repeated with better success. As Sharp was driving with his daughter across Magus Moor, near St. Andrews, he fell into the hands of a party of men who were lying in wait there for one Carmichael, the Sheriff-substitute, a wretch who had made himself specially hated. When they heard that the Archbishop's coach was coming that way, they looked on it as a special act of Providence by which the Lord delivered him into their hands. They fired into the coach, but did not hit him. He sheltered himself behind his daughter, but they dragged him out, and hacked him to death on the heath in a very barbarous way, May 3, 1679. It had long been believed that Sharp was in [Pg 149] league with the Devil. To find proof of this they had no sooner slain him than they began to search everything he had with him. At last they opened his snuff-box, when a bee flew out. This they agreed must have been his familiar spirit. Every effort was made to track the murderers, among whom were Hackston of Rathillet and Balfour of Burley, but they escaped to the West.

42. Sanquhar Declaration.—The straitest sect of the Covenanters now put forth a protest called the Sanquhar Declaration. Their leaders were Donald Cargill and Richard Cameron, after whom they were called Cameronians. Their openly avowed intention was to free the country from the tyranny under which it was groaning. They held that Charles had by his perjury forfeited the crown. They excommunicated both him and his brother James, Duke of York, who was the Commissioner, and surpassed both Middleton and Lauderdale in cruelty. To kill either the King or his brother, or both of them, the Sanquhar men declared would be perfectly justifiable. They joined themselves together by one of the old bonds for mutual defence and support. Hackston of Rathillet, who had been present at the death of Sharp, was a chief man among them. With him as their leader they sought a refuge from the troopers who were out after them in Airds Moss, in Ayrshire. There they were attacked, and, though they fought bravely, were overcome by the soldiers.

43. Drumclog.—The hill-country between Lanark and Ayr was the favourite haunt of the Covenanters. Here they held great conventicles, to which the men came armed. One of the largest of these meetings was gathered at Drumclog, near Loudon Hill, when they were attacked by a body of dragoons under John Graham, of Claverhouse. But Claverhouse was unaccustomed to this irregular way of fighting, and he was defeated. The Covenanters, wild with joy, thought that [Pg 150] they saw the special hand of Providence in this success. They gathered in great numbers, and marched on Glasgow. But they did no harm to either the city or the citizens; they only took down from the gates the heads and limbs of their friends who had suffered for their faith, and buried them.

44. Bothwell Bridge.—To put down this revolt, Charles sent his illegitimate son, James, Duke of Buccleuch and Monmouth, with an army of fifteen thousand men. The zeal of the Covenanters was great, but their resources were few, and their leaders unskilful. It was therefore an easy matter for a well-trained army to defeat them, and at the Bridge over the Clyde at Bothwell they were beaten with great slaughter. Twelve hundred fell into the hands of the victors. Seven of these were put to death, some were released on giving sureties for their future good conduct, and the rest were shipped off to the plantations. Cameron fell in this fray. Hackston and Cargill were taken, and brought to trial at Edinburgh, found guilty, and put to death afterwards.

45. Test Act.—While the Duke of York was Commissioner, an Act was passed to the effect that all persons taking office, whether under Government or from the Corporation of Burghs, should take the Test, an oath for the maintenance of the Protestant Faith as it had been established in the first Parliament of James the Sixth. At the same time the King was declared supreme in Church and State, and the hereditary succession was declared to be unchangeable. Now, as it was well known that James, the King's brother and the heir to the throne, was a Romanist, it was clear that the Test gave no security to the Protestant Faith, if James, when King, could make what changes he pleased in the Church.

46. Argyle's Opposition.—Archibald, Earl of Argyle, who had been restored to his father's earldom, was the most powerful chief in the kingdom. His father had lost his life for his attachment to the Covenant, but he himself had [Pg 151] hitherto upheld the Government, and had even offered to bring his Highlanders to its support. Now, however, he showed signs of opposition, for he would only take the Test with the protest that he did so only in so far as it was consistent with itself and with the safety of the Protestant Faith. For this reservation he was accused of leasing-making, that is, of making mischief between the King and his people. This offence had, by a most unjust law passed in the reign of James the Sixth, been made treason. By this law Argyle was condemned to death. He escaped and fled to Holland, where he became the centre of a party of his fellow-countrymen who had also left their country because of their political opinions. After this unjust attack on Argyle no one could be sure of his liberty, and a scheme was got up for emigration to Carolina. One Robert Ferguson was connected with this scheme. As this man was concerned in an English plot against the life of the King, called the Rye House Plot, all who had any dealings with him were suspected of being art and part in that too, and were called to account before the Council. Baillie of Jerviswood, a man much beloved and respected, was tried on an accusation of conspiracy, was found guilty, and put to death. His death greatly increased the popular discontent.

47. James VII. 1685-1688. The Killing Time.—The death of Charles and the accession of James rather made matters worse than better for the people. Another defiance from the Cameronians, called the Apologetical Declaration, was met by an Act which gave the soldiers power at once to put to death anyone who would not take the Abjuration Oath; that is, swear that they abhorred and renounced this treasonable Declaration. A time of cruel slaughter followed, in which Claverhouse was the chief persecutor. Many heartrending tales are told of the sufferings of the poor creatures whose fanaticism led them to persist in refusing to [Pg 152] take this oath. There is a story told that one John Brown, known as the "Christian Carrier," a man of great repute among them, was shot dead by Claverhouse himself, almost without warning, before the eyes of his wife. At another time two women, Margaret Maclauchlan and Margaret Wilson—one old, the other young—were, it is said, tied to stakes on the Solway shore, that they might be drowned by inches by the flowing tide. These tales and others of a like sort, bear witness to the brutality of the one side and to the constancy of the other. Early in James's reign an Act was passed by which attending a Conventicle became a capital crime.

48. Argyle's Rising.—Monmouth was in Holland when his father died, and many refugees from England and Scotland were there with him. Among them they got up a scheme for placing him on the throne in place of his uncle James, who was hated, while Monmouth was very popular. To carry this out they planned a rising, which was to have taken place at the same time in both kingdoms. Argyle was to take the lead in Scotland, but he was subject to the interference of a Committee chosen from among the others. The Government was informed of this intended outbreak, and all the clans that were known to be hostile to Argyle were roused against him. Early in May he landed in Kintyre, and sent out the fiery cross to summon his clansmen, who mustered to the number of 1800. But the quarrels and the jealousy of the Committee placed over him overthrew all his plans. By their advice he marched into the Lowlands, where the people were little disposed to join him. The fort where he had stored his arms and ammunition was seized by the King's men. His men were starving. They deserted in large numbers, and were at last dispersed by a false alarm as they were marching on Glasgow. Argyle himself was taken while trying to escape. He was still lying under the [Pg 153] old sentence of death, which had been passed against him for leasing-making. This sentence was executed without any further trial, and with a repetition of all the indignities which had been heaped upon Montrose. After his death the vengeance of the Government fell on his clansmen. The country round Inverary was wasted, while great numbers of the clan were transported to the plantations, many of them having been first cruelly mutilated. At the first alarm of the invasion a large body of prisoners for religious opinion, of all ages and both sexes, had been sent to Dunnottar, a strong castle on the coast of Kincardine, where they were so closely crowded together in one dungeon that many died there. Most of the survivors were also sent to the plantations.

49. The Indulgence.—Up to this time the Council had blindly followed in the lead of the King. They would now do so no longer, as they feared that he meant to restore the Roman Catholic Faith. The Duke of Queensberry, the Commissioner, was deprived of his office, and James Drummond, Earl of Perth, a convert to Romanism, was placed in his stead. James next tried to get a Bill passed by which all the penalties against the Roman Catholics should be done away, while those against the Covenanters should remain in force. To this Bill even the bishops objected, and James saw that there was nothing for it but to treat all sects alike. He published several Indulgences, but it was only the last, in 1688, that was full and complete. It extended toleration to all, even to the Quakers, who had up to this time been as much despised and persecuted as the Covenanters.

50. Deposition of James.—This change of policy on the part of the King had come too late. His attack on the liberties of the Church in England had been resisted by seven of her bishops; and before long his English subjects resolved to bear his tyranny no longer. They invited his nephew and son-in-law, William, Prince of Orange, to come [Pg 154] to their aid. He came, and was by common consent invited to mount the throne abdicated by James. When the news of William's entry into London reached Edinburgh, a deputation, headed by Hamilton, was sent to him, to pray him to call a Convention of the Estates, and, till it met, to take the government of Scotland into his own hands, Jan. 7th, 1689.

51. William and Mary, 1689-1702. The Convention. —When the Convention met there was a large Whig majority. They passed a resolution that James by his misgovernment had forfeited the throne; they therefore deposed him, and offered the crown to William and his wife Mary, the daughter of James, on the same terms as had been made in England. The Convention then turned itself into a Parliament, which went on to the end of the reign. The members went in procession to the Cross of Edinburgh, where their vote was read. William and Mary were then proclaimed; and the ministers of parishes were ordered to pray publicly for the King and Queen, on pain of being turned out of their livings. To the Claim of Right, which was much the same as the English one, a special clause was added, declaring prelacy to be an intolerable burthen which had long been hateful to the people, and which ought to be swept away. Three Commissioners were sent with the Instrument of Government to London. Argyle administered the coronation oath; but William, while taking it, declared that he would not become a persecutor in support of any sect.

52. The Rabbling.—The fall of James was followed by the fall of the Episcopal Church, which had made itself hateful to the greater number of the people. They took the law into their own hands, and on Christmas Day, 1688, a general attack was made on the curates or parish priests in the Western Lowlands. About two hundred curates with their families were at once driven out of their houses with every sort of insult and abuse. William did not approve of these [Pg 155] excesses, but he had no means of putting a stop to them, for there was no regiment north of the Tweed. He put forth a proclamation ordering all persons to lay down their arms, but it was little heeded. The rabbling and turning out went on much as before. If the bishops would have taken the oaths, William would most likely have protected them; but they remained true to their old master, and shared his fall. For a time all was disorder. In some parishes the curates went on ministering as heretofore, while in others the Presbyterian divines held services in tents, or illegally occupied the pulpits. It was not till June 1690 that the Presbyterian Church was re-established by law. Sixty of the ministers who had been turned out at the Restoration were still living, and to them was given authority to visit all the parishes, and to turn out all those curates whom they thought wanting in abilities, scandalous in morals, or unsound in faith. Those livings from which the curates had been rabbled and driven away were declared vacant. This way of dealing with the Church gave offence both to the Episcopalians and to the extreme Presbyterians, who did not approve of the interference of the King in Church matters. Both these parties continued to look on William and Mary as usurpers.

53. Dundee's Revolt.—When the Convention first met, each party, Whigs and Jacobites alike, had dreaded an outbreak on the part of the other. In the cellars of the city were hidden large numbers of Covenanters, who had been brought up from the West to overawe the Jacobites, while the Duke of Gordon held the Castle for James, and he could, if he had so chosen, have turned the guns upon the city. But the Jacobites, finding themselves in the minority, determined to leave Edinburgh, and to hold a rival Convention at Stirling; while it was agreed that the Marquess of Athole should bring a body of his Highlanders to protect them. But this plan was so ill concerted that Claverhouse, now Viscount [Pg 156] Dundee, left hastily before the others were ready, an alarm was given, and they were all secured. Dundee withdrew to his own house in the Highlands, and stayed there quietly for some time. But a few months later certain letters written to him by James fell into the hands of the Government, and an order was sent out for his arrest. Thus roused to action, he summoned the clans for King James. Many of them joined him, more from hatred of Argyle than from love for James. General Mackay, who had come North with three regiments, was sent against him; but he was not used to the Highland way of fighting, and wasted some weeks in running about after an enemy who always kept out of his way. Dundee had no regular troops, but, as Montrose had done before him, he showed what good soldiers the Celts can make with a good leader. As both Dundee and Montrose were Lowlanders, they could not excite the jealousy of the chiefs, and were all the better fitted for the supreme command of a Celtic army. Each clan in such an army formed a regiment bound together by a tie of common brotherhood, and all bound to live or die for the colonel their chief; and so long as the clans could be kept from quarrelling all went well. Dundee wrote to James, who was now in Ireland, for help; but he only sent three hundred miserably-equipped foot, under an officer named Canon. The hopes of the Whigs were placed in Argyle and the western Covenanters, but neither of these did all that was expected of them. Argyle could not, because his country had been so lately wasted; and the Covenanters would not, because the more part of them thought it a sin to fight for a King who had not signed the Covenant. Some of them however thought otherwise, and of these a regiment was raised, and placed under the command of the Earl of Angus. This regiment was called the Cameronians.

54. Battle of Killiecrankie.—The war now broke out again. It was the great aim of each party to win over the [Pg 157] adherents of Athole. The Marquess himself, to keep out of harm's way, had gone to England, and of those whom he had left to act for him some were for James, others for the King and Queen. It was of importance to both sides to secure the castle of Blair, which belonged to Athole, and near there the two armies met, at Killiecrankie, a pass leading into the Highlands. Here the Celts won a brilliant and decided victory. The clansmen charged sword in hand down the pass with such fury that they swept their foes before them; and Mackay, with a few hundred men, all he could gather of his scattered army, was forced to flee to Stirling, July 27, 1689. But this success had been dearly bought by the death of Dundee. Thus left without a leader, the victors thought more of plunder than pursuit; nor was there anyone among them fitted to fill Dundee's place, and to follow up the advantage he had won. Recruits came in, their numbers increased, but this only made the disorder greater.

55. Attack on Dunkeld. Buchan's Attempt.—A month later they attacked the Cameronian regiment stationed at Dunkeld. They took the town at the first attack, but the soldiers defended themselves in the church and in a house belonging to Athole in the town with such spirit, that the Highlanders were driven back. They blamed the Irish for the defeat, and the Irish blamed them, and the end of it was that the clans dispersed, and Canon and his Irish withdrew to Mull. In the spring of the next year the clans gathered again, under an officer named Buchan, who came from James with a commission to act as his commander-in-chief in Scotland. But they were surprised and scattered in the strath of the Spey, by Sir William Livingstone, who held Inverness for William. This action ended the Civil War in Scotland, for Gordon had long since given up Edinburgh Castle. To keep the western clans in order, Mackay built [Pg 158] a fort in the west of Invernesshire, which was called Fort William, in honour of the King. The castle on the Bass, a rock in the Firth of Forth, was the last place which held out for James, but the garrison were at last obliged to give in, from want of food.

56. Reduction of the Highlands.—Still the chiefs did not take the oaths to William, and were clearly only waiting for the appearance of a new leader to break out again. To win them over to the Government a large sum of money was put into the hands of John Campbell, Earl of Breadalbane. He was accused of cheating both the clans and the King by keeping a part of this sum himself, and he never gave any clear account of what he had done with it. At the same time a proclamation was put forth which offered pardon to all the rebels who should take the oaths to William and Mary before or on December 31, 1691. All who did not take advantage of this offer were after that day to be dealt with as enemies and traitors, and warlike preparations were made for carrying out the threat.

57. Massacre of Glencoe.—By the day named the clans had all come in, except MacIan, chief of a tribe of MacDonalds, who lived in Glencoe, a wild mountain valley in the northwestern corner of Argyleshire. On the last day, December 31, MacIan and his principal clansmen went to Fort William to take the oaths, but found that there was no one there who had authority to administer them. There was no magistrate nearer than Inverary, and, as the ground was deeply covered with snow, it was some days before MacIan got there. But the sheriff, in consideration of his goodwill and of the delay that he had met with, administered the oaths, (January 6,) and sent an account of the whole affair to the Privy Council at Edinburgh. Unfortunately for Glencoe, Breadalbane was his bitter personal enemy, and along with Sir John Dalrymple, the Master of Stair, he determined on [Pg 159] his destruction. An order for the extirpation of the whole tribe was drawn up and presented to William, who signed it, and it was carried out with cold-blooded treachery. A party of soldiers, under the command of Campbell of Glenlyon, appeared in the Glen. They gave out that they came as friends, and as such they were kindly welcomed, and shared the hospitality of the MacDonalds for a fortnight. Without any warning they turned on their hosts, and before dawn of a winter's morning slew nearly all the dwellers in the valley, old and young together, February 13, 1691. They then burnt the houses, and drove off the cattle, so that nothing was left for the few wretched beings who had escaped death but to perish miserably of cold and hunger. Whether William knew the whole state of the case or not when he signed the warrant is not certain, but he did not punish those who had dared to commit this wholesale murder in his name. And though four years after, when a stir was made about it, he did grant a commission to the Privy Council to inquire into the matter, he did not bring to judgment the Master of Stair, who was very clearly pointed out as the guilty person.

58. Darien Scheme.—Just at this time the public attention was taken up with a scheme for founding a new colony on the Isthmus of Darien, and people's minds were so full of it that nothing else was thought of. It was got up by William Paterson, who is to be remembered as the originator of the Bank of England. He fancied that he had found, what Columbus and the other navigators of his day had sought in vain, a short cut to the Indies. His plan was to plant a colony on the isthmus which unites North and South America, and to make it the route by which the merchandise of the East should be brought to Europe, thereby shortening the long sea-voyage. He drew glowing pictures of the untold wealth that would thus fall to the lot of those who were [Pg 160] clear-sighted enough to join in the venture. A charter was granted to the new Company, which gave them a monopoly of the trade with Asia, Africa, and America for a term of thirty-one years, with leave to import all goods duty free, except foreign sugar and tobacco. Never had project been so popular. Every one was anxious to take shares. Half the capital of Scotland was invested in it, and poor and rich alike, deceived by Paterson's lying stories of the healthiness and fertility of the soil and climate, were eager to hasten to the new colony. A few vessels were bought at Hamburg and Amsterdam. In these twelve hundred emigrants set sail on the 25th July, 1698, and arrived safely on the shore of the Gulf of Darien. They named the settlement which they founded there New Caledonia, and built a town and a fort, to which they gave the names of New Edinburgh and St. Andrews. But, to set up such a trading market with any hopes of success, they ought to have had the good will and help of the great trading countries of Europe. Instead of this, England and Holland were much opposed to the scheme, as being an interference with their trading rights. The East India Company looked on the bringing in of Eastern merchandise to Scotland as an infringement of their privileges. Spain too claimed the Isthmus as her own, and seized one of the Scottish ships; while the Governor of the English colonies in North America refused to let them have supplies. In addition to these difficulties from without, the climate was wretchedly unhealthy. Disease quickly thinned their ranks, till at last the miserable remnant whom it spared were glad to flee from almost certain death. They deserted the new settlement, and set sail for New York. Meanwhile such glowing reports of the success of the venture had been spread abroad at home, that a second body of thirteen hundred emigrants, ignorant of the fate of those who had gone before them, set sail in August of the next year. They found the colony deserted, [Pg 161] and the colonists gone. They themselves fared no better than the first settlers, and were in a few months driven out by the Spaniards. The Scottish people were deeply mortified and much enraged by the failure of this scheme. They blamed William for all the disasters of the colonists, because he had done nothing to help them, nor to prevent the interference of Spain. The Charter had been granted by the Government of Scotland without the King's knowledge when he was in Holland; and though he could not recall it, it would have been unjust to his English subjects to show any favour to a scheme which, had it succeeded, might have proved the ruin of their East Indian trade. So much bad feeling arose out of this unfortunate affair between the two nations, that it was plain that if there was not a closer union between them there would be a breach before long.

59. William's Death.—Just as the project of an Union was about to be considered in the English Parliament, William died, March 8, 1702. Since the death of Mary, in 1690, he had reigned alone. Both crowns now passed to Anne, the younger daughter of James VII.

60. Education Act.—It was in this reign that the system of national education which has made the Scotch, as a people, so intelligent and well-informed, was re-cast. An Act was passed, in 1696, by which every parish was required to provide a suitable schoolhouse, and to pay a properly qualified schoolmaster for the instruction of the children of the parish.

61. Anne, 1702-1714. Act of Security.— James VII. had died in France a few months before his nephew, and his son had been proclaimed there as James VIII. This made the Whigs anxious to have an Act passed in Scotland similar to the English Act of Settlement. By this Act the Parliament of England had settled that, if Anne died without heirs, the crown should pass to the nearest Protestant heir, Sophia, [Pg 162] Electress of Hanover, grand-daughter of James the Sixth, or to her descendants. But the Estates still felt injured and angry about the late differences with England, and passed an Act of Security, which made express conditions that the same person should not succeed to the throne of both kingdoms, unless, during Queen Anne's reign, measures had been taken for securing the honour and independence of the Scottish nation against English influence. The right of declaring war against England at any time was to remain with the Scottish Parliament.

62. Trial and Death of Captain Green.—Just at this time an event happened which tended to increase the bad feeling between the two countries. An English ship, the Worcester, was driven by stress of weather into the Firth of Forth. It was seized by the Scots, because the East India Company had some time before detained a Scotch ship. From the talk of some of the crew it was suspected that they had murdered the captain and crew of one of the Darien vessels which was missing. On this charge Captain Green of the Worcester, his mate and crew, were brought to trial before the High Court of Admiralty. On the evidence of a black slave they were found guilty and condemned, and Green, his mate, and one of the crew were hanged. It was afterwards found out that the crime for which they had suffered had never been committed. The missing ship had gone ashore on the island of Madagascar, where Drummond, the captain, was then living. Whatever wrongs the Scots had suffered, the English had now, after this unlawful deed, a very reasonable cause of complaint against them.

63. The Union.—It was clear that, if the two kingdoms were to go on together in peace, it could only be by joining their Parliaments and their commercial interests into one. Commissioners from both sides were appointed to consider the best way of effecting this union. Godolphin, [Pg 163] the Treasurer of England, and the Duke of Queensberry, the Royal Commissioner in Scotland, were its chief promoters. The Commissioners drew up a Treaty of Union, which was approved by the Parliaments of both countries. By the Articles of Union the succession to both crowns was settled in the Protestant heirs of Sophia; and each country was secured in the possession of her national Church as then established. Scotland was to send sixteen Representative Peers, elected from the whole body of Peers, and forty-five members from the Commons, to the Parliament at Westminster, henceforth to be called the Parliament of Great Britain. It was further settled that one seal, with the arms of both kingdoms quartered upon it, should serve for both countries, that both should be subject to the same Excise duties and Customs, and should have the same privileges of trade. The same coins, weights, and measures were to be used throughout the island. The law-courts of Scotland, the Court of Justiciary and the Court of Session, were to remain unchanged, only there was now a right of appeal from the Court of Session, which had hitherto been supreme in all civil cases, to the House of Lords. In addition to the twenty-five Articles of Union, a special Act was passed for securing the liberty of the Church of Scotland as it then stood in all time coming, and declaring that the Presbyterian should be the only Church government in Scotland. The first Parliament of Great Britain met October 23, 1707.

64. Results of the Union.—Twice before this time the Legislature of the two kingdoms had been thus joined together into one, under Edward I. and under Cromwell. But these two unions, each the result of conquest, had lasted but a little while. This Union was destined to be more enduring, and to lead to increased prosperity in both kingdoms. For Scotland it was the beginning of quite a new state of things. [Pg 164] Hitherto the struggle for national life had left her no leisure for internal development, and at the time of the Union she was without manufactures, shipping, or commerce. With the end of her independent nationality a new social life began, and a spirit of industry and enterprise was awakened, which has since raised her people to their present eminence in trade, manufactures, and agriculture. The Union struck the last blow at the power of the Scottish nobles. They were not placed by any means on the same level with the Peers of the sister kingdom. It brought to the Commons, who during this period had been much despised and oppressed, an increase in dignity and independence, by admitting them to a share in the liberty and privileges which the Commons of England had won for themselves with the sword. But what did even more for the prosperity of Scotland was the removal of all restrictions on her trade, which was now placed on the same footing as that of the larger kingdom. For half a century after the union of the crowns she had enjoyed free trade with England and her colonies; but that was brought to an end by the Navigation Act, passed soon after the Restoration, which forbade the importing of any foreign goods into England except in English vessels, and which was, as the Scots justly complained, the ruin of their rising commerce.

65. Literature and Art.—Between the union of the Crowns and the union of the Parliaments there was but little advance in literature or art. This was in great part owing to the fact that, just when all other nations had taken to writing in their own tongues in place of Latin, the Scottish Court migrated to London. There the Northumbrian English, which was the common speech of the Lowlands of Scotland, was despised as a provincial dialect, in which no educated man would write if he wished his writings to be read. During this period, the talent that was to be found in the country was [Pg 165] enlisted in the religious struggle, which occupied all men's minds, and it produced many divines eminent for eloquence and learning. The literature of the times was, like the fighting, the tyranny, and the persecutions, chiefly of a religious character. There were many men of learning and talent, renowned either for their writings or from their eloquence, to be found among the leaders of the different sects. Among the Presbyterians the most eminent were John Welch, the son-in-law of Knox; Alexander Henderson; Guthrie, the martyr of the Remonstrants, and George Gillespie, who, from his gift for argument, was called the "Hammer of the Malignants." The Episcopal Church could boast of some scholarly divines, such as John and Patrick Forbes, and Leighton, Archbishop of Glasgow. Of poets there were but few; none who could bear comparison with those of an earlier time. Drummond of Hawthornden is chief among them, but his genius is obscured by an imitation of the dialect and style then prevalent in England. Many of the beautiful ballads and songs of which Scotland may justly be proud, must have been composed about this time, but the authors are unknown. Unknown also, or forgotten, are the musicians to whom Scotland owes the wild, sweet strains to which those songs were sung, those pathetic melodies which make the national music so peculiar and characteristic in its exquisite beauty. The oldest collection of these airs is in a manuscript which seems to date from the sixteenth century. To George Jameson, the earliest Scottish painter of note, we owe the life-like portraits of the heroes of these times. He was born at Aberdeen and in 1620 he settled in his native town as a portrait-painter. But the spirit of the Covenant was opposed to art. Though it inspired to heroic deeds, there were no songs made about them. Architecture fared even worse than poetry, for while churches, the work of former ages, were pulled down, any [Pg 166] new ones that were put up were as ugly and tasteless as it was possible to make them. Napier of Merchiston, a zealous reformer, the writer of an Explanation of the Apocalypse, is known in the world of science as the inventor of Logarithms, a clever and easy way of shortening difficult numerical calculations.

66. Summary.—The union of the crowns of England and Scotland put a stop to the constant skirmishing on the Border and to the devastating inroads which had for centuries embittered the two countries against one another. It might therefore have been expected that Scotland, during the century which passed between the union of the Crowns and the union of the Parliaments, would have made great social advances. This was prevented by the ceaseless party strife which disgraced the century, and made this period one of the most disastrous and oppressive to the people in the whole history of the nation. James the Sixth had found the strict discipline and constant interference of the ministers so irksome, and the turbulent independence of his nobles so little to his mind, that he was delighted to escape from both to the richer kingdom to which his good fortune called him. The severe training of his childhood had made him hate the Presbyterian polity with all his heart. As soon as he had the power, he changed the government of the Church, and introduced various observances which were hateful to the people. His son Charles went a step further, and by his attempt to substitute an English for a Scottish Liturgy, drove the people to revolt. The war thus begun, by an effort to force on the hereditary kingdom of his race the customs of the larger kingdom which his father had acquired, ended in his losing both. Scotland enjoyed a short gleam of prosperity from the conquest of Cromwell till his death. Under the next Stewart, Charles the Second, the King to whom she had always been loyal, the government was entrusted to a council, which exercised a cold-blooded tyranny against which the people had no redress. This reign of terror only rooted their religious prejudices the more firmly in their minds. When the tyrant James was deposed, the reaction of popular feeling fell heavily on the clergy of the Established Church, who individually were no way accountable for the crimes which had been committed under the mask of zeal for Episcopacy. Under William the Presbyterian polity was re-established, and the Episcopal clergy had in their turn to suffer many hardships from severe laws and the intolerance of party feeling, though nothing to compare with the bloody persecution under the form of law which had disgraced the reigns of Charles and James.

CHAPTER VIII.

Discontent with the Union (1)—change of dynasty (2)—Jacobite rising (3)—measures of the Government (4)—rising in the North of England (5)—battle of Sheriffmuir (6)—arrival of James (7)—trials and penalties (8)—malt-tax riots (9)—Porteous riots (10)—the Forty-five (11)—taking of Edinburgh (12)—battle of Preston-pans (13)—battle of Falkirk (14)—battle of Culloden (15)—Charles's wanderings (16)—penalties after the Forty-five (17)—abolition of slavery (18)—attacks on the Romanists (19)—trials for sedition (20)—Reform Bill (21)—religious sects (22)—the Disruption (23)—social progress (24)—literature and art (25)—summary (26). [Pg 168]

1. Discontent with the Union.—Though the Union was such a good thing for Scotland, the people were a long time in finding this out. The old national jealousy was roused; they thought that their dearly loved independence was being sacrificed. There were riots in different places; and though the people were quieted by the assurance that the insignia of loyalty, the regalia or crown jewels, should not be carried out of the kingdom, for long afterwards the Union was very unpopular, and had to bear the blame of everything that went wrong. There was still too a large party, chiefly in the Highlands, attached to James Stewart, known as the Chevalier de St. George or the Old Pretender, as the Whigs called him. Jacobitism, which was in England a mere empty word used to express any sort of discontent with the existing state of things, meant something more in Scotland. There it was the traditionary feeling of loyalty and love towards the ancient line of kings; and for James, their representative, there were many who were ready to venture their lands, or their life if need were. As long as Anne lived there was no excuse for an outbreak, for she too was a Stewart, and it was hoped that her brother might succeed her.

2. Change of Dynasty.—When Anne died, the son of Sophia, George, Elector of Hanover, succeeded without opposition, according to the Act of Settlement. Before long, he and his German favourites became very unpopular. This gave the Jacobites hopes that, if they raised the standard for James, all the discontented in both kingdoms would join them in an attempt to restore him to the throne of his fathers.

3. Jacobite Rising.—To give to such an attempt the least chance of success, three conditions were necessary. Firstly, that the rising should take place at the same time in both kingdoms; secondly, that it should be helped by France; and thirdly, that the prince for whom it was made should come among his people, and lead them in person. All three were wanting in this unfortunate rebellion. James made no personal effort to get the crown on the death of his sister, [Pg 169] though six weeks passed before George came over from Hanover. During this interval James issued a manifesto from Plombières, August 29, 1714. In this manifesto he asserted his right to the crown, and explained that he had remained quiet while his sister lived, because he had no doubt of her good intentions towards him. A year, however, was allowed to pass before any active steps were taken. Just when the plans for the rising were all made, Louis XIV. of France, who was the best friend the Chevalier had, died, and was succeeded by the next heir, his great-grandson, an infant. The Duke of Orleans, who became Regent, was disposed to be friendly to the Government of England; indeed his regency was one of the few times when there was any real friendliness between the two countries. By his order some ships lying at Havre, which had been fitted out for James, were unloaded, and the arms stored in the royal magazines. These ships were intended for the succour of the rebels in Scotland, where the standard was raised for James by John Erskine, Earl of Mar, at the junction of the Clung and the Dee, September 6, 1715. Mar had begun life as a Whig, but had changed sides so often that he was nicknamed "Bobbing John." He had addressed a loyal letter to King George on his accession, but as, by the change of ministry, he lost his office of Secretary of State for Scotland and saw no hope of getting it back again, he became an ardent Jacobite, and the leader of the party in Scotland. The very day before he set off to raise the Highlands for James he attended a levee of the King. Before his coming north he sent letters to the principal Jacobites, inviting them to a hunting-match. This meeting was attended by the Marquesses of Huntly and Tullibardine, the eldest sons of the Dukes of Gordon and Athole, by the Earl of Southesk, by Glengarry, the chief of the MacDonalds, and many others. They all swore to be true to one another, and to Mar, as James's general, and then [Pg 170] returned to their several districts to raise their followers. Only sixty men gathered at the raising of the standard, but before the end of the month the northern clans had risen. James was proclaimed at Aberdeen, Brechin, and Dundee, and nearly all the country north of the Tay was soon in the hands of the rebels. They laid a plan for seizing Edinburgh Castle, but this was found out and defeated.

4. Measures of the Government.—There were at this time not more than between eight and nine thousand troops in the whole island. Of these not more than fifteen hundred were in Scotland; and no more were sent there, for an expected rising in the south-western counties of England was then thought much more dangerous than the rising in the North. In Scotland the chief command was given to the Duke of Argyle, whose family were deadly enemies of the Stewarts, and whose almost princely power over a large tract of country made him the most likely person to counteract their influence. The Earl of Sutherland, who was also a friend of the Government, was sent to raise his followers in the North. The Habeas Corpus Act was suspended by Act of Parliament, a reward of 100,000l. was offered for seizing the Pretender, dead or alive, and the King was empowered to seize all suspected persons. A great number of suspected persons were summoned to Edinburgh to give security for their good conduct, but none of them came; indeed some were by this summons induced to take arms for James. Several noted Jacobites were put in ward in Edinburgh Castle.

5. Rising in the North of England.—The active measures taken by the Government had put down the intended rising in the West of England, but in the North they had only hurried it on. An order was sent down for the arrest of Mr. Forster, member for Northumberland, and James Radcliffe, Earl of Derwentwater. On hearing this, Forster and Derwentwater took up arms at once, and soon mustered three hundred [Pg 171] horse. About the same time Lord Kenmure proclaimed James at Moffat, and was joined by the Earls of Nithsdale, Wintoun, and Carnwath, and several other persons of note. He joined his force, about two hundred horsemen, with that of Forster, and they marched to Kelso, to wait there for the arrival of Brigadier MacIntosh, who was marching southward with a detachment of about fourteen hundred men, from Mar's army, which he brought over the Firth of Forth in safety, in the face of three English men-of-war. The combined force, about two thousand strong, marched along the Border. After much debate and hesitation, their leaders at last decided to enter Lancashire, where they expected the Roman Catholic gentry to rise and join them. The posse comitatus, or general muster, which had been raised by the Bishop of Carlisle and Lord Lonsdale, fled before them at Penrith, leaving a number of horses in their hands. After this success the rebels marched on, proclaiming James as they went, and levying money. On the 9th November they reached Preston, where they were joined by an ill-armed, undisciplined rabble of recruits. But on the appearance of the King's troops Forster made no effort to defend the town. He was seized with a panic, and surrendered with his followers, to the number of fourteen hundred, November 12.

6. Battle of Sheriffmuir.—Meanwhile Mar was managing the affairs of James almost as badly in Scotland. He entered Perth September 28 with a force of 5,000. On the 2nd of October a detachment of eighty horse captured a vessel with 300 stand of arms, which were intended for the Earl of Sutherland in the North. The vessel had been driven by stress of weather to seek shelter at Burntisland, on the coast of Fife. Instead of pushing on while his followers were inspirited by this success, Mar stayed at Perth doing nothing. The Duke of Argyle, who was sent to oppose him, arrived in Scotland and marched to Stirling in the middle of [Pg 172] September. He had then only 1500 men at his command, but before Mar made any attempt to engage him his army had been more than doubled by reinforcements from Ireland. It was not till November 10 that Mar left Perth. He marched south as far as Ardoch. Argyle brought his troops forward to Dunblane. On Sunday the 13th, the two armies advanced to meet each other, and a battle was fought at Sheriffmuir, a moor on the slope of a spur of the Ochils. The result was doubtful. Each army defeated and put to flight the left wing of the other and then drew off the field, the rebels to Ardoch, Argyle to Dunblane, and both lost about the same number of men. Each side claimed the victory, but Argyle took possession of the field the next day. After the battle Argyle went back to Stirling and Mar to Perth. There the clans began to desert him, going home as usual with their plunder, while Argyle's force was increased by six thousand Dutch troops.

7. Arrival of James.—James at last made his appearance, but not till his followers had been taken prisoners in the one country and had lost their spirit in the other. He landed at Peterhead, December 22, attended by only six persons. He was met by Mar, and went on to Scone, whence he issued six proclamations, and fixed his coronation for January 23. The news of his landing had somewhat revived the spirit of his followers, but, when they met, both parties were disappointed; James with their scanty numbers, and they with his heaviness and stupidity. Soon after, a vessel coming from France with gold for the rebels was stranded and the money lost. At last Argyle began to advance against James, who retreated from Perth, greatly to the disgust of the clans. From Perth they went to Dundee, and from thence to Montrose. Twelve hours after they had left Perth Argyle entered it, but he was so slack in his pursuit of the rebels as to give rise to suspicions of his own loyalty. A few days later, February 4, [Pg 173] James set sail secretly for France with Mar and several other nobles. He left a letter for Argyle, and all the money he had with him for the benefit of the poor people in the villages round Perth, which had been burnt by his order. His men, grieved and disappointed to find that their leader had deserted them, went back to their native glens. Most of the officers escaped to the Orkneys, and from thence to the Continent.

8. Trials and Penalties.—Few prisoners had been made in Scotland. Of those taken at Preston, the half-pay officers were at once shot as deserters, the common soldiers were imprisoned in Chester and Liverpool, while their leaders were taken up to London, which they entered with their hands tied behind them and their horses led. Six nobles, the Earls of Nithsdale, Wintoun, and Carnwath, Viscount Kenmure, and the Lords Widdrington and Nairn, were arraigned before the House of Lords on a charge of treason. All except Wintoun pleaded guilty, and threw themselves on the King's grace; but they were all condemned to death. This sentence was executed on Derwentwater only. Kenmure and Nairn and Carnwath were reprieved, while Nithsdale escaped by the help of his wife the night before the day on which he was condemned to die; and Wintoun, though found guilty on his trial, escaped also. Forster, MacIntosh, and several others, had the same good fortune. Of those lower in rank, twenty-two were hanged in Lancashire and four in London. An Act of Grace, passed in 1717, released Carnwath, Widdrington, Nairn, and all others who were still in prison; but it did not restore the estates which they had forfeited by their treason. The following year another Jacobite conspiracy was got up. In this both Spain and Sweden were concerned; Spain promised to help with money, while Charles the Twelfth of Sweden was to invade Scotland with twelve thousand soldiers. It was discovered, and prevented by the arrest of the persons suspected of sharing in it. [Pg 174]

9. Malt-tax Riots.—In 1713 it was proposed to extend the malt-tax which was paid in England, to Scotland. But this measure met with such strong opposition on the part of the Scotch members as almost to threaten a dissolution of the Union. At length, in 1724, a duty of threepence on every barrel of ale was laid on instead of the malt-tax. But though this time the members agreed to the new tax, the people would not, and a serious riot broke out at Glasgow. Two companies of foot were sent from Edinburgh to put down the tumult, under the command of Captain Bushell, who ordered his men to fire, whereby nine persons were killed and many more wounded. This only made the rioters more furious. Bushell narrowly escaped being torn in pieces by the mob, and had to seek refuge in Dunbarton Castle. The tumult was not put down till General Wade brought up a force large enough to overawe the mob, and sent the magistrates prisoners to Edinburgh. There they were tried and acquitted. To avoid paying the tax, the brewers of Edinburgh made a compact to brew no more beer if the duty were not taken off. In consequence of these disorders the office of Secretary of State for Scotland was done away with, because the Duke of Roxburgh, who held it, was suspected of encouraging the discontent. At length the Earl of Islay was sent down to Edinburgh, and succeeded in restoring quietness. Bushell was tried for murder and found guilty, but was afterwards pardoned and promoted.

10. Porteous Riots: 1736.—Twelve years later the peace was again broken by a tumult at Edinburgh. One Wilson, a smuggler, lying under sentence of death for having taken part in a fray in which a Custom-house officer was killed, had won the sympathy of the people by the clever way in which he had managed the escape of a fellow-prisoner. When he was hanged at the Grass Market, the mob pelted the guard with stones. On this Porteous, Captain of the [Pg 175] City Guard, ordered his men to fire, and several innocent persons in the crowd were killed and wounded. Porteous was tried, and condemned to death as a murderer, but a reprieve was sent down from London. Then the people, remembering the case of Bushell, determined to take the law into their own hands. On the evening before the day which had been fixed for the execution of the sentence, while Porteous was feasting with his friends to celebrate his escape from danger, they gathered in great numbers. To ensure against surprise they disarmed the city guard, took their weapons, and themselves guarded the gates, so as to prevent any tidings being carried to the regiment quartered in the suburbs. They then marched to the Tolbooth, formerly the Parliament-house, but now used as a prison. The door was so strong that it defied all their efforts to burst it open. They set fire to it, upon which the jailer threw out the keys. Leaving the doors open to let the other prisoners escape, they then went straight to Porteous' cell, dragged him out of the chimney where he was hiding, and carried him to the Grass Market, the place of public execution. There they hanged him to a dyer's pole, with a rope which they had taken from a dealer's stall on the way, and in payment for which they had left a guinea. They then dispersed, without noise or further violence. The ringleaders were never discovered, though all ministers of parishes were required to read from their pulpits once a month for a year a proclamation calling on their congregations to give them up. The Government brought in a Bill for disgracing the city by the loss of the charter and the razing of the gates. But this measure was not carried, and the only penalties inflicted were that Wilson, the Provost, was declared incapable of holding office in future, and that the city was fined 2,000l. for the benefit of Porteous' widow. [Pg 176]

11. The "Forty-five."—In 1719 there was a small attempt made to get up another Jacobite rising. This attempt was favoured by Spain, which, just at this time, under the guidance of Cardinal Alberoni, minister of Philip the Fifth, once more began to take an active part in European affairs. England had joined the Quadruple Alliance against Spain, which was therefore ready to help in an attempt to overthrow the English Government. The Marquess of Tullibardine landed on the Lewis with a body of three hundred Spanish soldiers. But the stores and arms which were to have been sent to him were lost on the way, and, though about two thousand Highlanders mustered, they were defeated at Glenshiels by the regular troops. The Highlanders fled to the hills, while the Spaniards surrendered, and thus the attempt came to nothing. But the clans were still unsubdued, and were ready to break out again at any time. General Wade, who had been commander-in-chief since the 1715, made excellent roads in many places where there had been none before, and an Act was passed for disarming the Highlanders. But this did more harm than good. The clans that were faithful to the Government gave up their arms; but this only made them unable to resist the rebels, who kept theirs hidden and ready for use when occasion should come. England was now engaged in a continental war; most of the troops were out of the kingdom, and the time seemed favourable for another effort. France too promised help. Early in 1744 an army of 1,500 men under the command of Marshal Saxe, one of the most skilful generals in the French service, was collected at Dunkirk, and embarked in French transports for the invasion of England. But the fleet was dispersed by a storm, and the French were unwilling to give any further help. The next year Charles Edward, son of the Old Pretender, called the Young Chevalier, who was to have led this expedition, determined to make a venture on his own account. Without [Pg 177] money, without arms, with only seven followers, he landed at Moidart, on the west coast of Inverness, and called on the Jacobite clans to muster and follow him: July 25, 1745. In vain their chiefs, headed by Cameron of Lochiel, pointed out to him the rash folly of such an enterprise, he persisted, and they, letting loyalty get the better of common sense, took up the cause and summoned their clansmen. The standard of James was raised at Glenfillan, August 19, and the commission, naming Charles Regent in his stead, was read to about a hundred motley but enthusiastic followers. Already a small band of them had had a foretaste of victory. On their way to the muster they had compelled two companies of regular troops, which they had intercepted on their way to relieve the garrison of Fort William, to lay down their arms. This was followed by a series of successes as unlooked for as they were extraordinary. Sir John Cope was sent to oppose the rebels with all the troops that the Government could raise. But he mismanaged matters, and, instead of bringing the enemy to a battle, he let the Highland army, which was gathering like a snowball on its way, pass him. While he went northward, it came down unopposed upon the Lowlands, entered Perth, and advanced towards Edinburgh, where James was proclaimed.

12. Taking of Edinburgh.—The citizens were in the greatest alarm when they heard that the Highlanders had crossed the Forth. A small band of volunteers and a regiment of dragoons under Colonel Gardiner marched out to meet the rebels as far as Colt Bridge. But when the first shots were fired by a small reconnoitring party from the Highlanders, they turned and galloped back to Edinburgh. This shameful flight was called the Canter of Coltbrigg. Charles summoned the city to surrender; the perplexed magistrates, not knowing what to do, tried to win time by sending repeated messages to Charles. But early the following [Pg 178] morning a body of five hundred Camerons under Lochiel surprised and entered one of the city gates. They then secured the watchmen, opened the other gates, and thus the city was in the hands of the rebels. At noon of the same day the heralds and pursuivants were obliged to proclaim James at the Cross as King James the Eighth, and to read his Royal Declaration and the Commission of Regency. Charles entered the city the same day, September 17, and took up his quarters in the Palace of Holyrood. That night all the Jacobites in the city gathered at a ball to celebrate his arrival.

13. Battle of Preston-pans.—Meanwhile Cope had brought back his troops by sea and landed them at Dunbar. Charles marched out from Edinburgh to meet him. At a village near Preston-pans, so called from the pans used there for crystallizing the sea-salt, the Highlanders defeated the regular troops, and came back triumphant to Edinburgh with the money and the cannon which they had taken, September 20. In this battle Colonel Gardiner was killed close to his own park wall. Charles lingered at Edinburgh, holding his court at Holyrood, till November 1, when he began his march towards England, at the head of an army of five to six thousand men. Carlisle surrendered to Charles, who left a garrison to defend the castle, and marched on unresisted through Preston and Manchester, as far as Derby, which he reached on December 4. Charles was now two days' march nearer London than the army under William Augustus, Duke of Cumberland, son of George the Second, which had been sent to oppose him. A panic prevailed in London, where the citizens expected hourly to see the wild Highlanders enter and spoil the city. Their fears were, however, unfounded. Jealousies and discord were rife among the rebel chiefs. At Derby Charles held a council of war. Some of his officers advised one thing, some another. But as they would [Pg 179] not agree to march on to London without delay, Charles, sorely against his will, was obliged to give the order for retreat, and to lead his dispirited followers back again as quickly as they had come. Cumberland followed close on their rear. At Clifton Moor, near Penrith, there was a slight skirmish, in which the rebels had the advantage. But they did not wait to risk a battle there, but hurried north, passing on their way through Dumfries and Glasgow, where they levied contributions.

14. Battle of Falkirk.—When Charles reached Stirling, his army was joined by reinforcements which raised its number to eight or nine thousand. He prepared to lay siege to the Castle. General Hawley was seat from Edinburgh with a nearly equal force to relieve it. The two armies met on Falkirk Moor, January 17, 1746. Hawley was as totally and shamefully beaten as Cope had been at Preston. Instead of following up his advantage by pursuing and destroying the royal army, Charles remained inactive in the field, and allowed his followers to plunder the bodies of the slain. The next day he went on with the siege of Stirling. The Duke of Cumberland was now sent north, with full power to put down the rebellion as he pleased. He reached Edinburgh January 30, and the very next day set out at the head of an army in quest of the rebels. Charles raised the siege of Stirling, and hurried north. He entered Inverness, and took Forts George and Augustus, where he found supplies of food, guns, and powder, of which his army stood in great need.

15. Battle of Culloden.—Meanwhile the King's troops were closing round the rebels, who, cooped up in the barren mountains, were reduced to the greatest straits. All supplies sent from France were cut off before they reached them, and for several days they had no food but a little raw oatmeal. It was plain that the battle that was unavoidable must be a defeat. [Pg 180] Culloden Moor was the scene of this the last battle fought on British ground. The rebels, who were nearly starving, and who had been worn out by a long march and an attempted night-attack that had altogether failed, soon gave way, and were easily routed by the Duke's well-disciplined and nearly twice as numerous army: April 16, 1746. The French auxiliaries fled towards Inverness, where they laid down their arms. The rebels lost one thousand men, a fifth of their whole number; the victors only three hundred and ten. About twelve hundred of the fugitives rallied at Ruthven; but Charles begged them to disperse, and every man sought his own safety as he best might. The after measures of the victors were disgraceful to all concerned. No quarter was given; the wounded were slaughtered in cold blood, or burnt in the houses to which they had crawled for shelter. For three months martial law prevailed; the country was wasted, the houses burnt, the cattle lifted, the people left to perish. It was not till July that the Duke, who in Scotland was called the Butcher, went back to London, where he was hailed as the deliverer of his country, and rewarded with a pension of 25,000l. a year.

16. Charles's Wanderings.—Charles, whose foolhardy ambition had brought all this misery on his simple followers, passed five months in perilous wanderings. A great price was set on his head; but, poor as the Highlanders were, not one of them would stoop to win it by betraying him. At one time, when he was tracked by the soldiers, he was saved by a young lady called Flora MacDonald, who got a passport for him under the name of Betty Burke, her maid. In this disguise he escaped to Skye. After this he came back to the mainland, and lived for some time with seven robbers in a cave. They kept him hidden and supplied his wants as well as they could, and used to go in disguise to the nearest town to pick up what news they could. One day, as a great [Pg 181] dainty, they brought him back a pennyworth of gingerbread. When he left them Charles joined two of his adherents, MacPherson of Cluny and Lochiel, and he and they stayed in a strange hiding-place called the Cage on the side of Ben-alder, till two French vessels appeared on the coast. In one of these he embarked, September 20, at Lochnannagh, the same place where, fourteen months before, he had landed. Thus Charles escaped to the Continent, but his memory was long cherished in the country that had suffered so much for him. He was compelled to leave France after the Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle, and ended an unsettled, discontented, dissipated life at Rome in 1788. His brother Henry, called the Cardinal of York, the last of the Stewart line, survived him nearly twenty years.

17. Penalties after the "Forty-five."—There was much greater severity shown after this rebellion than there had been after that in 1715. The Scottish prisoners were brought for trial to England for fear that they might meet with too much partiality in their own country. John Murray, of Broughton, who had been Charles's secretary, turned informer. Through him the secrets of this conspiracy which had been going on ever since 1740 were brought to light. Charles Radcliffe, brother to the Earl of Derwentwater, who had been beheaded in 1716, who had then escaped from prison, was retaken on board a French vessel carrying supplies to the rebels, and was put to death on his former sentence. The Earls of Cromarty and Kilmarnock and Lord Balmerino were brought up for trial before the House of Lords. Cromarty and Kilmarnock pleaded guilty; Balmerino tried to save himself by a quibble about a flaw in the indictment, but this was overruled, and they were all three condemned to death. Cromarty was pardoned, but Kilmarnock and Balmerino were beheaded. Nearly a year after, Simon Fraser, Lord Lovat, was brought up for trial; he was found guilty, chiefly [Pg 182] on the evidence of Murray, was condemned, and beheaded. He had acted a double part throughout, for, though he had taken part in all the plans of the rebels, he had taken care not to join them in person. Of those lower in rank about eighty were condemned to death, and great numbers were sent to the plantations. The last sufferer for the Jacobite cause was Dr. Cameron, brother of Lochiel. He escaped after 1745, but when he returned to England in 1753 he was seized and suffered death as a traitor, though he protested that he had never borne arms against the King, and had been with the rebel force only as a surgeon and not as a soldier. An Act of Indemnity was at length passed, in 1747, from which, however, eighty persons were excepted. Though the end of this unjustifiable and unfortunate rebellion was what every one must have foreseen, its temporary and unlooked-for success showed how necessary it was to take strong measures for breaking up the old Highland system. A Bill was passed for disarming the clans, and to forbid the wearing of the Highland dress, and at the same time heritable jurisdictions were done away with. The Episcopal Church, whose attachment to the Stewarts was well known, suffered severely. The Episcopal churches were destroyed, and the ministrations of the Episcopal clergy forbidden. Duncan Forbes, of Culloden, the President of the Court of Session, though a firm friend of the Government, distinguished himself throughout the rebellion by his efforts in the cause of humanity and justice. Before it broke out, he had done more than any other man to keep the rising down, and, after it had been crushed, he did all in his power to lessen the sufferings of the rebels and the severity of the Government. To the discredit of the ministry and of the country, his services were left unrewarded.

18. Abolition of Slavery.—In 1756 the lawfulness of negro slavery was first questioned in Scotland, and twenty years [Pg 183] later it was settled that negro slavery should exist no longer. There were still, however, some natives of the soil who were in a state very little better. The colliers and salters were sold like serfs with the works in which they toiled. This shameful servitude was not the remains of ancient villanage, but had simply arisen out of custom. So strong, however, had the force of custom made it, that Parliament did not venture at once to sweep it away. It was settled that all the colliers and salters born after a certain date should be free, and those then at work after a certain term of service. In 1799 their freedom was established by law.

19. Attacks on the Romanists.—When the penal laws against the Roman Catholics in England were repealed in 1778, Henry Dundas, the Lord Advocate, proposed a similar measure for Scotland. On the strength of this, riots broke out in Edinburgh and Glasgow. In Edinburgh the mob destroyed the Roman Catholic chapels and the houses of several persons who were suspected of being Romanists. In Glasgow they destroyed a factory belonging to a Romanist. So great was the excitement raised throughout the country by the fanatics, who bound themselves together in Protestant Associations, and the property and persons of the Roman Catholics were treated with such violence, that they themselves petitioned that the Bill might be dropped. It was not till 1793 that a Bill was brought in and passed without opposition to relieve the Roman Catholics in Scotland from the penalties to which they were liable on account of their religious opinions.

20. Trials for Sedition.—The excesses of the French Revolution led to a reaction of feeling in Great Britain against all liberal opinions, as being likely to bring about a similar revolution in this country. This led to much injustice and oppression. Persons were charged with stirring up sedition on the slightest grounds, or on no grounds at all; were [Pg 184] found guilty, and punished on the most scanty evidence. In Scotland the panic was even greater than in England, and the proceedings of justice more unjust. In 1793 Thomas Muir, an advocate, and Fyshe Palmer, a clergyman, were tried, and sentenced to transportation, the one for fourteen years, the other for seven, for no other crime than that of discussing Parliamentary Reform. Others suffered a like fate; and though these cases were brought before the House of Commons, and though the sympathy of the people was with them, they met with no redress. Braxfield, the Lord Justice Clerk, gained an infamous notoriety by his violent language towards the prisoners, and by the illegal sentences which he passed against them.

21. Reform Bill.—It was not till nearly forty years had passed, that the reforms, for suggesting which these men had suffered, and the need of which had long been felt, were at last carried out by the passing of the Reform Bill in 1832. By it the entire representation was remodelled. Up to this time the County franchise had depended not on the possession of land, but on the right of superiority over land which might be held by others. This right could be bought and sold, and was quite independent of property or residence in the county, so that in most cases there were but a handful of electors, in one county only one, to return the member. The franchise was now extended to all persons having property in the county to the value of 10l. yearly, and to certain classes of leaseholders. The case of the Burghs was even worse. Only the royal burghs were represented at all, and these were grouped together and returned one member only for each group. This member was elected by delegates chosen from the Town Council of each burgh, so that the election was really and truly in the hands of the Corporations. By the new Bill, Edinburgh and Glasgow were each to send two members to Parliament, the five towns next in importance were each to send [Pg 185] one, while some changes were made in the grouping of the smaller burghs. The members for the burghs were to be elected by householders in the burghs paying 10l. yearly rent. The number of members was increased from forty-five to fifty-three.

22. Religious Sects.—When the Presbyterian polity was re-established by law in 1690 the Episcopalians took in some degree the place which had been held by the Covenanters. As they would not acknowledge William and Mary as lawful sovereigns, they were looked on as a dangerous and obstinate sect of dissenters, just as the Cameronians had been considered in the reign of James. They had been turned out of the churches, but they were forbidden to have private meeting-houses. In Queen Anne's reign an Act of Toleration was passed to protect such of them as would use the English Liturgy and pray for the Queen in the course of the service. After the Rebellion of 1715 new laws were passed against them; the validity of orders from Scottish bishops was called in question, and the ministration of all clergymen who were not licensed was forbidden. After the Rebellion of 1745 they fared still worse; many of their meeting-houses were burned or dismantled by Cumberland's soldiers. An Act was passed forbidding any clergyman to read the service to more than five persons at once, and no letters of orders were considered valid unless given by some Irish or English bishop. In 1755 a clergyman named Connacher was accused of illegally celebrating marriages, and, by an Act passed against the Covenanters in the reign of Charles the Second, he was banished, and forbidden to return on pain of death. Hence it came to pass that, just after the two kingdoms were politically united, they were more widely severed in religious opinion than they had ever been before, so that a conscientious member of the Church established by law in the one kingdom would have been looked on as a dangerous [Pg 186] dissenter in the other. It was not till 1792 that an Act was passed relieving the Episcopalians from the penal laws in force against them. In 1784 Dr. Samuel Seabury, from Connecticut, was consecrated by three Scottish bishops, Petrie, Skinner, and Kilgour the primus, at Aberdeen, so that the Episcopal Church of America is an offshoot from the once proscribed and persecuted Episcopal Church in Scotland. Besides the Episcopalians there were many sects of Presbyterians who seceded from the Establishment chiefly on the question of patronage. At last, in 1843, the Church of Scotland split into two parties. This is called the Disruption. About ten years before this time Edward Irving, Minister of the Scotch Church in London, a very eloquent preacher, was forced to secede from the Presbyterian Church for holding extravagant views with regard to the power of speaking in unknown tongues and working miracles. His followers founded a new sect, which has since won many adherents in both kingdoms. In its rites and ceremonies it now resembles much more nearly the Roman than the Presbyterian Church.

23. The Disruption.—This division was brought about by a dispute about the right of patrons to force ministers on parishes, whether the congregations objected to them or not. The spirit of the Presbyterian Church had always been opposed to patronage. By the First Book of Discipline it had been laid down that the people should elect their own ministers; by the Second Book of Discipline, that they should at least have the right of objecting to any chosen for them by the heritors or landowners in the parish. After the Revolution, an Act of 1690 confirmed them in this privilege, but after the Union in 1712 the heritors, eager to regain what they thought their rights, obtained a repeal of this Act and the restoration of their former powers. In spite of the protests of the people and of the Church, this Act gradually became custom [Pg 187] as well as law, and led to several schisms; for those congregations who did not choose to have ministers forced on them whom they did not approve, broke off, and founded separate sects. At length, in 1834, the Non-intrusion party, as those who were opposed to patronage were called, had a majority in the Assembly, and passed the Veto Act. This Act declared it to be "a fundamental law of the Church that no pastor shall be intruded on a congregation contrary to the will of the people," and that, if the heads of families object to any candidate presented by the patron, the Presbytery shall reject him. In the same year, Mr. Young was presented to the parish of Auchterarder, in Perthshire. Several persons objected to him, and the Presbytery, acting on the Veto Act, rejected him. The patron, Lord Kinnoul, appealed to the Court of Session for the enforcement of his civil rights and obtained a verdict in his favour; but the Presbytery appealed to the House of Lords. Here too it was given against them, but they still refused to make trial of Mr. Young. In another parish, Strathbogie, the presentee, Mr. Edwards, was objected to by the congregation, and the Presbytery refused to admit him to the parish. He also obtained a decree in his favour from the Court of Session, when the Presbytery yielded, and for this they were suspended and deposed by the General Assembly. From this it was clear that the majority in the Assembly were determined to go all lengths in resisting the civil power. In the end the Church had to yield, and to recall the illegal Veto Act. Rather than agree to this, in 1843, more than a third of the clergy left the Church. Their leaders were Dr. Chalmers and Dr. Candlish. Great numbers of the people went "out," as it was called, with their ministers, and the Free Church which was thus originated has ever since been the successful rival of the Establishment. [Pg 188]

24. Social Progress.—The removal of the Government to London attracted thither not only all the Scottish nobles, but also all the wealthy and the ambitious commoners. Thus Edinburgh lost much of its importance through the Union, though it still remained the intellectual capital, where the members of the Courts of Law and of the University took the lead in society. Meanwhile Glasgow, the capital of the west, where the manufactures which were first introduced by Duncan Forbes had taken firm root, gradually rose to much greater importance in wealth and commerce. During this period two great elements of civilization, productive industry and intellectual culture, have done much to improve the Lowland population, among whom book-learning has always been in advance of material comfort. It was not till after the Rebellion of 1745 that the spirit of industry first began to animate the people. But the Highlands remained for some time in a very bad state. The spirit of the people was broken, and the severe climate, barren soil, and lack of minerals left them no resource but the fisheries. The Highland Society, founded in 1784, did much to improve the state of agriculture, by reclaiming the waste districts; and latterly great numbers of the people have emigrated. At the time of the Union Scotland was without agriculture, manufactures, or trade; since then she has risen to excellence in them all, and has produced some of the most useful inventions of modern times. James Watt, who perfected the invention of the steam-engine, and thus placed a new power in the hands of man, was born at Greenock in 1736. It was in Scotland that this power was first put to use for traffic by steam navigation. A small pleasure-boat, worked by a steam-engine, was tried on Dalswinton Loch in Dumfriesshire in 1788; another effort was made on the Forth and Clyde Canal in 1802; but the first steamboat actually used for traffic was the Comet, which began to ply on the Clyde in 1812. It was [Pg 189] projected by Henry Bell, a house-carpenter in Glasgow. Many improvements in calico-printing and dyeing, and in all sorts of machinery, are likewise due to Scotchmen. Among others Macadam is noteworthy for originating that system of road-making which is now known by his name.

25. Literature and Art.—After the Union, the English dialect of the Lowlands ceased to be the language of literature and of the upper ranks in society. Thus the national literature of the country came to an end, and the works of Scotchmen went to swell the mass of English Literature. But even in this period Scotland has had, besides many smaller songsters, two poets peculiarly her own, who have sung in the dialect still spoken by the people. Allan Ramsay, born in Clydesdale in 1685, began life as a barber's boy in Edinburgh; he then turned poet and bookseller, and besides his own poems, which were very popular, he collected and published the songs and ballads of the forgotten bards of earlier days. Nearly a century later lived Robert Burns, the peasant poet, a cotter's son, born in Ayrshire in 1759. His genius overcame the disadvantages of his humble birth, and inspired innumerable songs, which place him in the first rank among poets of all nations, and will win for him an abiding place in the hearts of his fellow-countrymen as long as a Scottish tongue is left to sing them. Adam Smith, who by his "Wealth of Nations," published in 1776, may be said to have founded the science of Political Economy, was born at Kirkaldy, and was Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Glasgow; and about the same time Dr. Robertson, Principal of the University of Edinburgh, wrote several historical works of great merit. David Hume, the infidel philosopher, was born at Edinburgh in 1711. He is best known as the author of a popular but untrustworthy History of England. Tobias Smollett, the humourist, was a native of Cardross. Besides several very clever novels, the best of which are "Humphrey [Pg 190] Clinker" and "Roderick Random," he wrote a complete History of England from the first historical mention of Britain down to the year 1768. The latter part of this history is now generally added to the History by Hume, who did not carry his work down to later times than the Revolution. Hugh Blair, a Presbyterian divine, wrote "Lectures on Belles Lettres" and several volumes of sermons which are still highly esteemed. Dugald Stewart, Professor of Moral Philosophy in the University of Edinburgh, was distinguished as a scholar and philosopher. His chief works are the "Philosophy of the Human Mind" and "Outlines of Moral Philosophy." Among Scottish artists who rose to eminence during this period are Allan Ramsay, the son of the poet, Runciman, Raeburn and Sir David Wilkie, born in Fifeshire in 1785. He chiefly excelled in painting scenes from rural life, and was limner to the King for Scotland. Of poets who wrote in the English of the south, Scotland can lay claim to James Thomson, the author of "The Seasons," "The Castle of Indolence," and some tragedies; to Beattie, the author of "The Minstrel;" and to Thomas Campbell, born at Glasgow in 1777. His imaginative poem, "The Pleasures of Hope," laid the foundation of his fame. It is written in a graceful and highly-finished style, but is far surpassed in originality and spirit by the ballads which he wrote to commemorate the "Battle of the Baltic" and the other actions of the French war. John Galt deserves to be remembered as the author of some clever novels, the best of which are the "Ayrshire Legatees" and "The Entail." Nearer to our own time Walter Scott, the poet and romancist, gave to English literature its best works of fiction, and at once introduced and perfected the modern novel. Among writers of fiction Miss Ferrier must not be forgotten. In her witty, satirical novels, "Marriage," "Destiny," "The Inheritance," she has left admirable pictures of Scottish life and manners. [Pg 191] John Lockhart, the son-in-law and biographer of Scott; John Wilson, Professor of Moral Philosophy in Edinburgh, the Christopher North of the "Noctes Ambrosianæ;" his friend and contemporary James Hogg, the poet, better known as the "Ettrick Shepherd;" the two Alisons, father and son, the elder the author of the "Essay on Taste," the younger of the "History of Europe," may all be reckoned among Scotchmen who have done honour to their country by their literary labours. In the world of science Scotland has been represented by James Ferguson, the astronomer, Hugh Miller, the great geologist, who began life as a stonemason; Sir David Brewster, who is famous for his discoveries in optics, and many others. Mungo Park, the African explorer of a past day, and Dr. Livingstone, who in our own time has worked so long in the same field of discovery, were both also born in Scotland. But now that the two nations have become so closely united, national jealousy and national pride are both alike well-nigh forgotten, and Scotchmen are content to throw their energy and talents at home and in the colonies into the common stock of British glory.

26. Summary.—The separate History of Scotland, which may be said to have ceased with the Union, is chiefly remarkable from its unconnected and fragmentary character. Each of the periods into which it is naturally divided breaks off abruptly, and exercises little or no influence on the period which comes after it. The Celtic system comes to an end with the last of the Gaelic kings. During the English period English laws and English customs are introduced, but this English influence is suddenly checked by the War of Independence, and the period which begins with the independent kingdom is no more the natural result of the second than the second is of the first. During the third period the Roman Law is introduced, and France takes the place of [Pg 192] England as the model for imitation. The Scottish system of representation, which became fixed during this period, had much more in common with the French National Assembly than with the English Parliament. The Three Estates, which met in one chamber, were the Church, the barons, that is the tenants holding direct from the Crown, and the burghers. The Commons as a class were not represented at all. It is the Reformation which first brings the Commons into notice. The feudal character of the legislature and of the national representation drove the energies of the people into the only channel that was left open to them—that of religious thought. Hence it came that in Scotland the great struggle for political freedom was fought out under the cloak of a contest for liberty of conscience. From the Reformation to the Union the history of the country is little but the record of a series of religious wars. The history of Scotland also gives us a picture of pure and unmixed feudalism. The feudal system which was introduced under the sons of Malcolm and Margaret took much firmer root in Scotland than it ever did in England; and, as it was here untouched by the Common Law and the growth of the constitution which acted as checks upon it in England, it grew to such an excess of power that it quite overshadowed the power of the Crown. The practice of making hereditary jurisdictions, and of granting powers of regality, still further increased the influence of the feudal nobles. Feudalism existed in Scotland long after it had been overthrown in England. Its power was first broken by the Act which was passed in 1748 for abolishing heritable jurisdictions, and even after that Act it continued to influence the representation. Feudalism in Scotland was not finally overthrown till the passing of the first Reform Bill in 1832. Nor was it till after that reform that the Commons of Scotland were represented at all in Parliament The rebellions in favour of the Stewarts in 1715 [Pg 193] and 1745, though they were the cause of much useless bloodshed, led to very happy results as far as the social prosperity of the country was concerned. The abolition of the heritable jurisdictions did much good, for it placed agriculturists in a much freer position, while the money which was paid to the great proprietors as a compensation for their feudal rights gave a fresh spring to the circulation of the country. At the time of the Union Scotland was without agriculture, manufactures, shipping, or commerce. Since then she has risen to excellence in them all. [Pg 194]

INDEX.

A.
Abjuration Oath, 151.
Agricola, Julius, invasion of, 4.
Aidan founds Lindisfarne, 9.
Albany, Robert, Duke of, 61;
his regency, 63;
his death, 66.
Alexander I., 20
defeats the men of Moray, ib.;
defends the liberty of the Church, 21.
Alexander II., invades England, 29;
his marriage, 30;
his death, 31.
Alexander III., his coronation, 31;
his death, 32.
Ancrum, rout of the English at, 90.
Angus, Archibald, Earl of (Bell the Cat), 78.
Anne, 161.;
her death, 168.
Arbroath Abbey founded, 29.
Argyle, Archibald, Earl of, refuses to take the Test, 151;
his rising, ib.;
is beheaded, 152.
Argyle, Archibald, Marquess of, his government, 138;
crowns Charles II., 141;
is beheaded, 144.
Arkinholm, battle of, 74.
Armstrong, John, his hanging, 87.
Arran, James Hamilton, Earl of, 81;
his power, 83;
his regency, 89.
Arran, Ochiltree, created Earl of, 115.
Auchterarder, case of, 187.

B.
Baillie, of Jerviswood, his death, 151.
Balliol, Edward, his invasion, 57.
Balliol, John, his claim to the throne, 36;
his coronation, 39;
his alliance with France, ib.;
his submission to Edward, 41.
Balmerinoch, John Elphinstone, Lord, his imprisonment, 130.
Bannockburn, battle of, 50.
Barbour, John, Archdeacon of Aberdeen, biographer of Bruce, 48.
Barton, Andrew, his death, 81.
Bass Castle holds out for James, 158.
Beaton, Cardinal David, his murder, 92.
Beaton, James, Archbishop of St. Andrews, his conscience, 84.
Beaugé, battle of, 65.
Beck, Anthony, his flight, 42.
Bell, Henry, his steamboat, 188.
Berwick, importance of, 34;
siege of, 40;
treaty of, 100.
Blackadder, Robert, first Archbishop of Glasgow, 82.
Blanks, Spanish, 119.
Boece, Hector, his fabulous history, 94.
Bothwell, Adam, Bishop of Orkney, 106.
Bothwell Bridge, battle of, 150.
Bothwell, James Hepburn, Earl of, 104;
marries Queen Mary, 105;
his flight, 106.
Boyd, Thomas, created Earl of Arran, 76.
Boyds, power of, 76.
Brechin, bell-tower of, 18.
Brigham, treaty of, 36.
Brown, John, story of, 152.
Bruce, grant of Annandale to, 36.
Bruce, Robert, one of the claimants of the crown, 36.
Bruce, Robert, Earl of Carrick, his coronation, 47;
his reverses, 48;
his victory at Bannockburn, 50;
his comrades, 51;
his parliaments, 55;
his death, 56.
Brunanburh, battle of, 12.
Bunby, tutor of, Laird of, slain by Douglas, 73.
Buchan, Alexander, Earl of, Wolf of Badenoch, 62.
Buchan, Countess of, crowns Bruce, 47;
caged by Edward, ib.
Buchan, Herrying of, 49.
Buchan, John Stewart, Earl of, 65.
Buchanan, George, his works, 124.
Burns, Robert, the poet, 189. [Pg 196]

C.
Cambuskenneth, Parliament of, 55.
Cameron, Richard, leader of the Cameronians, 149.
Candlemas, burnt, 59.
Carberry, surrender at, 106.
Carham, battle of, 12.
Casket letters, 107, 109.
Chapman, Walter, sets up first printing press, 83.
Charles Edward Stuart (the Young Pretender), his landing, 176;
his Court at Edinburgh, 177;
his invasion of England, 178;
his perils, 180.
Charles I., his resumption of Benefices, 129;
his visit to Scotland, 130;
his double dealing, 132;
his appeal to the Scots, 137;
his treaty with the Engagers, 138;
his death, 139.
Charles II., proclamation of, 139;
his arrival in Scotland, 140;
his coronation, 141;
his defeat at Worcester, ib.;
his restoration, 143;
his misgovernment, 144-151;
his death, 151.
Charles XII. of Sweden, his project of invasion, 173.
Claverhouse, James Graham of, beaten at Drumclog, 149;
his revolt, 155;
is beaten at Killiecrankie, 157.
Cnut, invasion of, 13.
Colliers and salters, slavery of, 183.
Cope, Sir John, his flight, 177.
Coltbrigg, canter of, 177.
Columba, comes from Ireland, 6;
founds Iona, 7;
converts Picts, ib..
Committee of Articles, its origin, 69.
Common Order, Book of, 114.
Comyn, John, the Red, his murder, 46.
Constantine I., his reign, 10.
Constantine II., commendation of, 11.
Constantine III., reign of, 12.
Conventicles, 146;
laws against, 148.
Court of Session, founding of, 88.
Covenant, first, 98;
renewals of, 119, 132.
Culloden Moor, battle of, 179.
Cumberland, William Augustus, Duke of (the Butcher),
victor at Culloden, 180.

D.
Dalriada founded, 6.
Darien scheme, 159.
Darnley, Henry Stewart, Lord, 102;
his murder, 105.
David I., Prince of Strathclyde, 20;
encourages Normans, 22;
invades England, ib.;
character of, 25..
David II., first anointed King of Scots, 56;
taken prisoner, 58.
Discipline, books of, 101, 118.
Disruption, causes of, 186.
Donald I., King of Scots, 10.
Donald Bane seizes the throne, 17.
Donald, Dhu, last Lord of the Isles, 81.
Douglas, Archibald, Earl of (Tine-man), slain at Verneuil, 66.
Douglas, Earl of, slain at Otterburn, 61.
Douglas, Gavin, Bishop of Dunkeld, 84;
his poems, 95.
Douglas, James of, his larder, 51;
his raids into England, 53;
his death, 56.
Douglas, James, Earl of, defeated at Arkinholm, 74.
Douglas, William, Earl of, beheaded, 72.
Douglas, William, Earl of, his murder, 74.
Drumclog, Conventicle at, 149.
Drummond of Hawthornden, his poems, 165.
Drummond, James, Earl of Perth, 153.
Drunken Parliament, 145.
Dunbar, William, his poems, 95.
Dunbarton, taking of, 111.
Duncan I., death of, 13.
Dunfermline Church founded by Margaret, 17.
Dunkeld, attack on, 157.
Dunnottar, regalia sent to, 142;
Covenanters imprisoned in, 153.
Duplin, battle of, 57.

E.
Eadgar, reign of, 19.
Eadgar the Ætheling, comes to Scotland, 14;
overthrows Donald Bane, 17.
Eadmer, Bishop of St. Andrews, 21.
Eadmund joins Donald Bane, 17.
Education Act, passing of, 161.
Edward I., holds a Council at Norham, 37;
first conquest of Scotland, 40;
second conquest, 44;
attempts to unite Scotland to England, 45;
his death, 47.
Edward II., his invasion of Scotland, 49;
his defeat and flight, 50.
Edward III., his invasion of Scotland, 59.
Ejection, 145.
Elphinstone, Bishop, founds University at Aberdeen, 83.
[Pg 197]

F.
Falaise, convention of, 27.
Falkirk, battle of, 44.
Falkirk Moor, battle of, 179.
Flodden, battle of, 81.
Forbes, Duncan, of Culloden, his philanthropy, 182.
Fordun, John of, writes Scotichronicon, 66.
Forster, Thomas, his rebellion, 170.
Fort William, building of, 158.
"Forty-five," rebellion of, 175.

G.
Galloway, final subjection of, 28.
George I., 168.
Glasgow, founding of University at, 75.
Glencoe, massacre of, 158.
Glen Fruin, battle at, 127.
Glenfillan, standard of rebellion raised at, 177.
Glenlivat, battle of, 120.
Gordon, rise of the House of, 74.
Gowrie Plot, 120.
Grahame Malise, his conspiracy, 69.
Grange, William Kirkcaldy of, 106;
declares for the Queen, 111;
his death, 114.
Gray, Sir Patrick, wrath of, 73.
Green, Captain, trial of, 162.
Grig seizes the throne, 11.
Gruach, her claims to the throne, 13.
Guthrie, James, his fate, 144.

H.
Hadrian, wall of, 4.
Halidon Hill, battle of, 58.
Hamilton, James, of Bothwellhaugh, murderer of the Regent, 110.
Hamilton, Marquess of, Commissioner, 132;
his invasion of England, 138;
his death, 139.
Harlaw, battle of, 65.
Hawley, General, his defeat, 179.
Henry, son of David I., death of, 24;
his children, 25.
Hertford, Edward Seymour, Earl of, his invasions, 90-1.

I.
Ida founds Northumberland, 6.
Indulgence, the passing of, 153.
Intercommuning, law against, 148.
Inverness, its importance, 35.
Irvine, surrender at, 42.
Irving, Edward, his schism, 186.

J.
James I., his capture, 63;
his return, 67;
his treatment of the chiefs, 68;
his murder, 69;
his judicial reforms, ib.;
his poems, 70.
James II., his accession, 71;
murders Douglas, 74;
his death, 75.
James III., 75;
his marriage, 76;
his favourites, 78;
his death, 79.
James IV., 79;
his marriage, 80;
his fleet, 81;
his alliance with France, ib.;
his invasion of England, 82;
his character and death, ib..
James V., 83;
his erection, 85;
war with England, 87;
his death, 88;
his judicial reforms, ib.;
his poems, 89.
James VI., his coronation, 107;
his favourites, 115;
his imprisonment at Ruthven, 116;
his marriage, 117;
his contest with the ministers, 120;
his accession to England, 122;
his restoration of episcopacy, 126;
his visit to Scotland, 127;
his death, 128.
James VII., his conduct as Duke of York, 150;
his persecutions, 151;
his deposition, 153.
James Stuart, Chevalier de St. George, Old Pretender, 168;
his rebellion, 169;
his landing in Scotland, 172.
Jameson, George, noted painter, 165.
Jedburgh, destruction of, 64.
John of Bretayne, Lieutenant of Scotland, 45.

K.
Kentigern, Apostle of Strathclyde, 8.
Killiecrankie, battle of, 157.
Kilsyth, battle of, 137.
Knox, John, first mention of, 92;
leader of the Reformers, 99;
his death and character, 113.
[Pg 198]

L.
Langside, battle of, 108.
Lennox, Matthew Stewart, Earl of, his marriage, 90;
his regency, 111;
his death, 112.
Leslie, David, leader of the Covenanters, 137.
Lethington, William Maitland of, 109;
his death, 115.
Liturgy tumults, 131.
Lorn, John Macdougal of, Bruce's enemy, 48.
Lulach, son of Gruach, 14.
Lyndesay, Sir David, his poems, 95.

M.
MacAlpin, Kenneth, first King of Picts and Scots, 9.
Macbeth, reign of, 13.
Macduff, appeal of, to Edward I., 39.
Maclauchlan, Margaret, death of, 152.
Malcolm I. obtains grant of Strathclyde, 12.
Malcolm II. gets Lothian, 13.
Malcolm III., Canmore, marries Margaret, 15;
meeting with William, ib.;
raids into England, ib., 16;
death of, 16.
Malcolm IV. subdues Galloway, 26;
meets Henry at Chester, 27.
Malt-tax riots, 174.
Mar, Alexander Stewart, Earl of,
defeats the Highlanders at Harlaw, 64.
Mar, John Erskine, Earl of, Regent, 113.
Mar, John, Earl of (Bobbing John), his rebellion, 169.
Margaret, the Maid of Norway, her death, 36.
Margaret, St., her reforms, 16.
Mary, Princess of Orange, 154.
Mary Stewart, her birth, 88;
her removal to France, 91;
her first marriage, 92;
her return to Scotland, 100;
her second marriage, 102;
her favourites, 103;
her flight to Dunbar, 104;
her third marriage, 105;
her surrender, 106;
her escape from Loch Leven, 107;
her flight into England, 109;
her death, 117.
Matilda, daughter of Malcolm, marries Henry of England, 20.
Middleton, Earl of, Commissioner, 143.
Mile Act, the, 145.
Milton, chapter of, 53.
Mitchell, his attempt on the life of Sharp, 148.
Moidart, landing of the young Chevalier at, 177.
Monk, General, his reduction of Scotland, 141;
his share in the Restoration, 143.
Montrose, James Graham, Earl of, takes up arms for the Covenant, 133;
joins the King, 136;
his rising for Charles II., 140;
his death, ib..
Moray, extent of, 10.
Mormaers, their office, 9.
Morton, James Douglas, Earl of, his regency, 115.
Murray, James Stewart, Earl of, 102;
his regency, 107;
his murder, 110.

N.
Napier, of Merchiston, his writings, 166.
Nectansmere, battle of, 9.
Neville's Cross, battle of, 58.
Norham, Council at, 37.
Northampton, Council at, 28;
peace of, 54.
Northmen, first coming of, 10;
settle in the Sudereys, 11;
invasion of under Magnus, 19;
last invasion of, 31.

O.
Olifant, Sir William, defender of Stirling Castle, 44.
Otterburn, raid of, 60.

P.
Penrith, skirmish at, 171.
Perth, Clan battle at, 62;
murder of James at, 69;
Articles of, 127
Philiphaugh, battle of, 137.
Picts united to Scots, 9.
Pinkie, battle of, 91.
Porteous riots, 174.
Preston, battle at, 171.
Preston-pans, battle of, 178.

R.
[Pg 199] Rabbling, 154.
Ramsay, Allan, his poems, 89.
Ramsay, Allan, the painter, 189.
Randolf, Earl of, of Moray, 53.
Reform Bill, passing of, 184.
Reformation, causes of, 97;
statutes passed, 100;
results of, 123.
Regalia, story of, 142.
Reseby, John, burning of, 66.
Rizzio, murder of, 103.
0 Robert I., see Bruce.
Robert II., his marriages, 59;
his death, 61.
Robert III., his change of name, 61;
his imbecility, 61;
his death, 63.
Rothesay, David, first Duke of, 61.
Roxburgh, siege of, 75.
Ruthven, Lord, his share in the murder of Rizzio, 103.
Ruthven, raid of, 116.

S.
St. Andrews, founding of University at, 66.
Sanquhar, Declaration of, 149.
Sauchieburn, battle of, 79.
Scotia, Nova, founding of, 128.
Scott, Sir Walter, 190.
Scots, first coming of, 6.
Seabury, Dr. Samuel, his consecration, 186.
Sedition, trials for, 183.
Severus, invasion of, 5.
Sharp, James, Archbishop of St. Andrew, his consecration, 144;
murder of, 148.
Sheriffmuir, battle at, 171.
Siward defeats Macbeth, 14.
Slavery, abolition of, 183.
Smith, Adam, his "Wealth of Nations," 189.
Smollett, Tobias, the novelist, 189.
Solway, Moss, defeated at, 87.
Spider, Bruce's, 48.
Standard, battle of, 23.
Stewart, origin of the name, 59.
Stirling, battle of, 43.
Stirling, Earl of, founder of Nova Scotia, 128.
Supplication, Great, 131.

T.
Tables, choosing of, 131.
Test Act, passing of, 150.
Theodosius makes Valentia a Roman province, 5.
Thomas, the Rhymer, his predictions, 32.
Tippermuir, battle of, 136.
Toleration, Act of, 185.
Touraine granted to Douglas, 65.
Treasurer, first appointment of, 70.
Tudor, Margaret, marries James IV., 80.
Tulchan Bishops, 113.
Turriff, Trot of, 133.

U.
Union, 163;
results of, 164;
discontent with, 167.
Uttoxeter, surrender at, 138.

W.
Wallace, William, his rising, 42;
his victory at Stirling, 43;
his defeat at Falkirk, 44;
his military genius, ib.;
his betrayal and death, 45.
Warbeck, Perkin, his reception in Scotland, 80.
Watt, James, his inventions, 188.
Whiggamores' Raid, the, 138.
William of Orange, 154;
his reduction of the Highlands, 158;
his death, 161.
William the Lion, his capture, 27.
Wilson, Margaret, death of, 152.
Wyntoun, Andrew, his chronicle, 66.

Transcriber Notes:
1. Obvious misspellings and omissions were corrected.
2. Uncertain misspellings or ancient words were not corrected.

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