I 9 8 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. verse split through both halves, insomuch that there were the Old-Light Burghers and the New-Light Burghers, the Old-Light Antiburghers, and the New-Light Antiburghers. Each protested in a general way against Popery and Prelacy, but was very vehement against the three quarters of what had once been itself, reserving its special anathe- mas for that from which it had just separated. 1 A deal of curious matter about the disputes among the Scots Protestants in France will be found in M. Michel's second volume. It was in reference to their contentious- ness that Andrew Rivet, a native of Poitou, himself a pretty eager controversialist, used an expression which has come into household use in the shape of the prcefervi- dum ingenium Scotomm, a slight variation of the original. 2 I propose now to leave the religious bodies themselves, and glance at a topic which will bring up the nature of the places in which they worshipped. Architecture, especially if it be of stone, is the most enduring memorial of the social conditions of any country. The buildings scattered over the surface of Scotland attest to this day 1 The Scots are called a priest - ridden people, yet their most esteemed jests are against the clergy, and the vehemence of the native sectarianism. Perhaps this is one of the benefits of competi- tion. When I name the late Alexander Stewart Logan, the Sheriff of Forfar, I will recall a sad remembrance of many a hearty laugh. He was a man of strange grotesque genius, and held a large social place ; yet he has left no mark behind him, save in the genial pages of Dr John Brown. Logan had good opportunities of picking up such stories, as he was the son of a Relief minister. One of them I remember, a very curious example of how far down sectarianism can go. Some boys were rioting in a Burgher church whether Old or New Light not known. The person in charge of the building having seized one of them, a shrill youthful cry comes from a corner " Hit him hard hit him hard ; his father's an ^w/z'-burgher ! " 2 After alluding to the acridness of the Scots controversies, Rivetus says, "Id praeterea observandum est, siquse durissimis persecutionum temporibus a Scotis et Anglis nonnullis temere scripta fuerunt, ea posse imputari non tam religioni quam nationum illarum, Scoticanse prsesertim fervido ingenio et ad audendum prompto ; quod tantum valde mitigatum fuisse accensa veritatis evangelicae luce, ex eo constat quod ex centum quinque regibus suis, usque ad Mariam, tres exaut- orarant, quinque expulerunt, et triginta duos necarunt." ' Riveti Jesuita Vapulans,' ch. xiii. 14. ARCHITECTURE. 199 with extraordinary precision the long severance from England and attachment to France. We have seen that when the Normans came to Scotland, they left their mark there, as they did everywhere, in feudal castles, bearing special types of the architecture of the period at which they penetrated so far northwards. These are just like the English castles of the same period. The churches, too, built before and during the war of independence, are the brethren of the English-Norman, and first pointed. The existing remains, as well as the local histories, show that the war and the poverty it caused throughout the land brought castle and church building to a stop for many a year, and when it was resumed, it diverged towards the example of France. For instance, among those re- mains of church architecture in Scotland which have not been adulterated by bad restorations, there are no in- stances of the Tudor, third pointed, or perpendicular style, so prevalent everywhere in England. This style came into use in England in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and continued until it was gradually absorbed by the revival of the classical forms. It has been called oc- casionally the Tudor or the Elizabethan style ; but these names were applied to it rather in its application to civil than to ecclesiastical buildings. Mr Rickman gave it the name of perpendicular, from the propensity of all the lines, whether those of pillars or of mullions, to go straight up and meet some arch or transom, instead of spreading themselves in the easy floral forms of the preceding age. It has also been called the third pointed, because the two epochs which preceded had got the name of the first and second pointed; and it is sometimes called depressed, because the favourite form of arch adapted to it has the ogee shape, as if it were the old pointed arch pressed down at the apex. Lastly, it is called the degenerate Gothic ; but people sometimes object to the applicability of the term, when they remember that Henry VII.'s Chapel, the hall of Christ Church, and many of the orna ments both of Oxford and Cambridge, have been built after this style. It will make the exclusion of this style from Scotland more distinct, to mention the one building THE LIBRARY OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA Withdrawn .- BY JOHN-HILL URTON H C L M, L-L-D AUTHOR OF A HISTORY OF SCOTLAND THE BOOK HUNTER* THE REICN OF QbEE-V.Ahfttf ETC, WILLIAM BL-ACKWOOD: SONS : EDINBURGH LONDON S&*& MDCCCC a : ,-' , V 1 : ADVERTISEMENT. THE growth of this volume is similar to that of its predecessor, ' The Book - Hunter,' which was received with unexpected favour. The Author had at various times, through peri- odical literature and otherwise, offered some sug- gestions on the existence and character of certain unexplored recesses in historical literature. He found himself backed by friendly advisers in the opinion that it would be worth while to go over the ground more systematically, bring his suggestions to clearer conclusions, and see how far they could be assorted in systematic groups. The project was rendered all the more attractive by the new light thrown into corners previously obscure by the noble collection of documents issued under the direction of the Master of the Rolls in this country, and the investigations of accomplished archaeologists abroad. The Author found that the result could neither be reached in so brief a time nor packed in so small b VI ADVERTISEMENT. a compass as he expected, since new vistas, ever opening up, lured him further on. The book thus greatly changed its nature after the title had been announced. But although the first part, given up to an account of ' The Ancient League with France/ is passed before ' The Scot Abroad ' strictly commences, yet the title is not so illogical as it may seem, since the whole book refers to the relations of Scotland and Scotsmen with foreign countries. To go abroad merely for the purpose of dealing with one's countrymen dispersed in foreign lands, may appear as egregious an instance of nationality as any of those which the Author has hunted up for the amusement of his reader. He pleads as his excuse that, having devoted the time at his disposal to the reconstruction, from the beginning, of the History of Scotland in its present received shape, he has been tempted to leave from time to time the beaten road, and follow up the nearest openings into districts where he could wander at large, free from the responsibilities for exhaustive complete- ness which attend on history-making. He will be glad if the good-natured reader takes his offering in the same spirit, and treats it as a holiday ram- ble through some secluded scenes in history and literature. CONTENTS. THE ANCIENT LEAGUE WITH FRANCE. CHAPTER I. PAGE The Charlemagne and Achaius question settled The War of Independence The established quarrel with Scotland and England Its consequence in the League with France Wallace's share in the transaction The old treaties Social life in France during the Hundred Years' War The Con- stable Buchan The battles of Bauge, Crevant, and Verneuil The establishment of the Scots Guard Some of their feats, ....... 1-40 CHAPTER IT. Personal anecdotes of the Scots immigrants The Wolf of Badenoch's son The Albany and Darnley Stewarts The Hamiltons and Douglases Investment of the Scotch Duke of Touraine Notices of Scotsmen settled in France, and the families founded by them The settlement of the Scots com- pared with that of the Normans, . . . 41-73 CHAPTER III. The other side of the reciprocity Contrast between the Scot in France and Le Francais en Ecosse An ambassador snubbed French chevaliers treated to a Border raid The Admiral Vienne's expedition, and how it fared with him and viii CONTENTS. his followers The gladiatorial spectacle on the Inch of Perth Ferdinand of Spain's dealings with Scotland Rule of Albany, and its results A story of ecclesiastical patron- age The foreign friar of Tongueland The slaughter of La Bastie, ....... 74-105 CHAPTER IV. The birth of Queen Mary French writers on her life and character Her influence on the fate of Europe Catherine of Medici Their strife Mary's bequest to Philip The ap- parent supremacy of the Old League The underworkings that were destroying it French government in Scotland Reaction Recent revelations The Reformation in Scot- land, and how it came about The winding-up, . 106-160 CHAPTER V. Relics of the League in Scots habits and practices The law The Bonnet Vert and the Dyvour's Habit The States-Gen- eral and the Three Estates The Huguenots and the Cove- nanters Religious architecture The chateau and the castle The Eguimene and the Hogmanay The Fetes des Foux and the Daft Days French education and manners, 161-223 THE SCOT ABROAD. CHAPTER I. THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. Justice to Ireland and her monks John Duns The Scotists and the Thomists Hector Boece and the fabulous histories Buchanan Thomas Dempster Specimens of the ardent nationality of Scots authors The effect of this on Scotland's position in history John Knox and his followers The writers on the other side Ecclesiastical squabbles A ramble among miscellaneous authors Scotsmen in for- eign universities Jurists Medical men The Aberdeen school, ... . 227-314 CONTEXTS. IX CHAPTER II. THE SOLDIER. The Dugald Dalgettys The divisions at home carried out abroad Scotsmen on both sides of the Thirty Years' War Monro Grey Hepburn The Leslies The Jacobite refu- geesThe Keith family The Earl Marischal The Field- Marshal The Seven Years' War and Frederick the Great Scotsmen in Russian adventures Patrick Gordon in search of employment His eminence in the Russian service Peter the Great Admiral Greig, .... 315*377 CHAPTER III. THE STATESMAN. Reputations, living and dead Gustavus Adolphus's Secretary- at-War Sir William Lockhart Lord Stair John Law William Paterson, ..... 378-435 CHAPTER IV. THE ARTIST. Glimpses of early art George Jamesone and his contempor- aries Aikman Hamilton Allan Ramsay Martin Jacob More Runciman Sir Robert Strange Early architects James Gibbs, ...... 436-477 INDEX, ....... 478 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE WITH FRANCE A SCOTS GUARD. THE ANCIENT LEAGUE WITH FRANCE. CHAPTER I. THE CHARLEMAGNE AND ACHAIUS QUESTION SETTLED THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE THE ESTABLISHED QUARREL WITH SCOTLAND AND ENGLAND ITS CONSEQUENCE IN THE LEAGUE WITH FRANCE WALLACE'S SHARE IN THE TRANSACTION THE OLD TREATIES SOCIAL LIFE IN FRANCE DURING THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR THE CONSTABLE BUCHAN THE BATTLES OF BAUGE, CREVANT, AND VERNEUIL THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE SCOTS GUARD SOME OF THEIR FEATS. I HAVE long thought that the story of the old League between France and Scotland is so significant of national character, is so fruitful in romantic personal incident, and held so powerful an influence on the destinies of Europe, that an account of it could not fail of interest in the hands of any one content merely to tell the facts and briefly explain the political conditions out of which they arose. Its own proper interest is so deep and true as to gain rather than lose when its history is stripped of the remote antiquity and other fabulous decorations by which enthusiastic national historians have attempted to en- hance it. We are told how the Emperor Charlemagne, having resolved to establish a vast system of national or imperial education, looked around for suitable professors A 2 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. to teach in his universities ; and perceiving Scotland to be the most learned of nations, and the most likely to supply him with t\\f-. r.oraoiodity he desired, he forthwith entered into a league with Achaius, the then ruling mon- arch of tljcat. 'ancient kingdom. Such is the account of the origin of the League with France, as told by Boece and our other fabulous chroniclers, and courteously ac- cepted on the side of France by Mezeray and his breth- ren, who seem gladly to welcome so valuable a piece of authentic information. No doubt one finds, on minute inquiry, that, contemporary with the reign of the Charle- magne of France and the Kaiser Karl of the Germans, there flourished a chief or a king, if you will called Eochy or Auchy, holding sway over some considerable portion of the Celtic people of the west, and probably living in a sort of kraal built of mud and wattles. But that the Emperor ever knew of his existence is not very probable ; and instead of receiving an embassy from Charlemagne as a contemporary monarch seeking the friendship of an honoured and powerful fellow-sovereign, Eochy doubtless owed it to his own insignificance, and his distance from the centre of European power, that he was not called upon to acknowledge the supreme authority of him who had resumed the empire of the world. In reality, it spoils the interest and significance of the alliance to attempt to trace it further back than those political conditions which, four hundred years later, gave it efficient purpose. These were the war of independence against the dominion of England, and the contemporary claims of the English kings on the succession to the throne of France. These concurring sources of contest rendered the League the most natural thing in the world. It enabled the kings of the house of Valois to fight their battle on British ground without sending an army there ; it provided to the Scots, whenever they could safely leave their homes, an opportunity for striking a blow at the enemy and oppressor of their land. To see the influence of this adjustment, not only on the nations immediately concerned, but on Europe at large, let us look a little more closely into details. Tak- EARLY SCOTLAND. 3 ing any old-established state, with a fixed natural boundary and distinct institutions of its own, it is difficult to realise in the mind the same area of territory and its people at a time when neither the boundaries nor the institutions existed. Our natural indolence makes us lean on these specialties as a means of obtaining clearness at an easy price to the intellect; and rather than leave them and grope at the truth, we carry them back step by step, until they have gone infinite ages beyond their real beginning. There is retribution for this as for other instances where indolent reliance supersedes independent judgment. Those of our historians who have had too much honesty to go headlong into the accepted fables of their prede- cessors, have had cruel difficulties in identifying ancient Scotland. At one time they find the territories of some Saxon king stretching to the Tay ; at another, the King of Scots reigns to the Humber, or farther. It would have saved them a world of trouble and anxiety to come at once to the conclusion that Scotland was nowhere that the separate kingdom marked off against England by a distinct boundary on the physical globe, as well as by a moral boundary of undying hatred, did not then exist. A common language stretched along from north to south, varying perhaps in its substance and tone by im- perceptible degrees in the ears of the travelling stranger, as the language of each of the two countries now does. Unfortunately, this simple view brings us to the verge of a perilous controversy. There are some topics which the temper and reason of the human race seem not to have been made strong enough to encounter, so invari- ably do these break down when the topics in question are started. Of such is the question, To which of the great classes of European languages did that of the people called Picts belong? The contest, like a duel with revolvers over a table, has been rendered more awful by the narrowness of the field of battle, since some time ago the world possessed just one word, or piece of a word, said to be Pictish, and now one of the most accomplished antiquarians of our day has added another. 4 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. Keeping clear of this scene of peril, let us content our- selves with the obvious fact, that at an early age the eastern and northern parts of what now is Scotland were peopled by a race of very pure Teutonic blood and tongue. They formed a portion of that brotherhood of Saxon states, among which the amalgamations and split- tings, and the drifting-in of fresh swarms among old settlers, make so complex and confused a web of Anglo- Saxon history. It would happen, in these gains and losses of territory, that some ambitious Bretwalda of the south would extend his dominion or his influence far northward ; and from such incidents the pedants of the feudal law, who could not look beyond their own forms and nomenclature into the conditions of an age when there was neither feudality nor a Scotland to be feudal- ised, invented a feudal superiority in the Saxon kings over the kingdom of Scotland. The conquest of the south, of course, changed its position towards the north. England became Nor- manised, while Scotland not only retained her old Teu- tonic character, but became a place of refuge for the Saxon fugitives. The remnants of Harold's family the old royal race of England came among the other fugi- tives to Scotland, and took up their position there as an exiled court awaiting their restoration, and looking to their brethren of Scotland to aid them in effecting it. At the head of these princely exiles was Edward the ^Ethel- ing. His sister, the renowned St Margaret, married Malcolm the King of the Scots, who thus became more than ever the hope of the Saxon party. The names of their children have a thoroughly Anglo-Saxon sound: Edgar, the eldest, who succeeded to the throne; Edward, named after his maternal relation the Confessor; Edmond, and Ethelred. King Malcolm, in his marriage, is not to be altogether viewed as having, with chivalrous generosity, made a home for a persecuted princess in the only way in which such an arrangement could be decorously ac- complished. He had hopes of solid results from the brilliant connection, and made a bold effort to render them good by an invasion of England ; for there can be THE NORMANS IN SCOTLAND. 5 little doubt that Harding is right when he says of that fierce raid into Cumberland which ended in the battle of the Standard, that " King Malcolm of Scotland warred in England for his wife's right, pretending that she was right heir of England." During the interval of two hundred years between their invasion of England and their invasion of Scotland, the Normans had been gradually extending their social influence northward. As the flower of chivalry and the leaders of fashion they were personally popular in Scotland, where many of them became favourites at court, and formed rich matrimonial alliances. It is pos- sible that the wise men of the day may have deemed it a good policy to plant in the country offshoots of that mighty race who seemed destined to rule mankind wher- ever they went ; but if they thought that they would thus establish a Norman aristocracy, who in time would have a patriotic interest in the soil, and protect it from the designs of the aggrandising kings of England, their policy in the course of events turned out to be a failure. In the meantime the country saw chiefly the bright side of the Norman character ; for it is observable that the settlers had not so deeply rooted themselves as to cover the land with those castles which are everywhere the most remarkable and enduring memorials of their presence. Fortresses, no doubt, existed before their day, but these were generally mounds or ramparts, within which people inhabited open dwellings of wood, turf, or wattles. The Norman was the first to plant the feudal castle a building comprising within its four thick stone walls a rich man's dwelling, a fortress, and a prison, signi- fying that he who built it intended to consume the fruit of the soil, to make war upon his enemies, and to ad- minister his own justice among the people. The castles scattered over Europe not only show how far the Nor- mans have penetrated, as the shingle on the beach marks the height of the tide; but their various architectural types indicate, like those of fossils in geology, the histori- cal period of deposit. The annalists tell us how, after William's arrival, England was covered with Norman 6 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. strongholds ; and that country is rich in remains of the earliest type of castle the great square block, destitute of the later adjunct of flanking works, and the round arch, marking the lingering predominance of Roman forms. If there ever were castles of this sort in Scotland, they were at least so rare that no specimen now remains at least I can find none after diligent search. On the other hand, of the later and richer type of feudal architec- ture the pointed Gothic buildings with outworks, pecu- liar to the reigns of the Edwards there are many fine specimens. The same phenomena may be seen in Ire- land and Wales. Over all three countries the tide of Norman conquest had rolled; and though in Scotland the tide was driven back, it left these characteristic relics behind. Luckily for England, and for the liberties of the world, there were elements of national strength which in the end worked the tyranny of Norman rule out of the constitu- tion. Of the misery which the Saxon people had to endure under the earliest Plantagenet monarchs we have scanty traces, for such things are not with safety com- mitted to writing ; but what we have is sufficiently ex- pressive. Perhaps the following, taken from that sober unobtrusive narrative, the * Saxon Chronicle,' may suffice for this occasion : " They cruelly oppressed the wretched men of the land with castle-works. When the castles were made, they filled them with devils and evil men. Then took they those men that they imagined had any property, both by night and by day, peasant men and women, and put them in prison for their gold and silver, and tortured them with unutterable torture, for never were martyrs so tortured as they were. They hanged them up by the feet, and smoked them with foul smoke; they hanged them by the thumbs, or by the head, and hung fires on their feet ; they put knotted strings about their heads, and writhed them so that it went to the brain. They put them in dungeons in which were adders and snakes and toads, and killed them so. Some they put in a ' crucet hus ' that is, in a chest that was short and narrow and THE NORMANS IN ENGLAND. 7 shallow and put sharp stones therein, and pressed the man therein, so that they brake all his limbs. In many of the castles were (instruments called) a ' loathly and grim ; ' these were neck-bonds, of which two or three men had enough to bear one. It was so made, that is (it was) fastened to a beam ; and they put a sharp iron about the man's throat and his neck, so that he could not in any direction sit, or lie, or sleep, but must bear all that iron. Many thousands they killed with hunger. I neither can nor may tell all the wounds or all the tortures which they inflicted on wretched men in this land ; and that lasted the nineteen winters while Stephen was king, and ever it was worse and worse. They laid imposts on the towns continually, and called it ' censerie.' When the wretched men had no more to give, they robbed and burned all the towns, so that thou mightest well go all a day's journey and thou shouldst never find a man sitting in a town, or the land tilled. Then was corn dear, and flesh, and cheese, and butter ; for there was none in the land. Wretched men died of hunger ; some went seeking alms who at one while were rich men ; some fled out of the land." l This is set down to the reign of Stephen, just about the time of the battle of the Standard, and about half-way between the conquest of England and the war of resistance in Scotland. Seeing this going on more or less for two hundred years, it is not wonderful that the Scots, contin- uing and flourishing under their old Saxon institutions, were grimly resolved to fight to the death against such a rule. The representative of this national feeling was the renowned William Wallace. Of him so much old romance and modern nonsense has been uttered, that cautious people are apt to shun his name in history, as, like Arthur, Merlin, Roland, and Odin, that of a mythical person not susceptible of articulate identification. But few historical figures come out so distinctly and grandly when stripped of the theatrical properties. He was a skilful and brave general, an accomplished politician, and a public man of unstained faith and undying zeal. ' 'Saxon Chronicle:' Record Edition, ii. 230, 231. 8 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. Nor is it at all necessary, in vindicating his fame, utterly to blacken those who would not co-operate with him. The Normans, who had acquired recent wealth and rank in Scotland, were not zealous in standing up for the independence of the people of the country and their protection from Norman tyranny how could they be expected to be so? One name among them has been consigned to eminent historical infamy, and for centuries has borne the burden of the ardent hatred of all true- hearted Scots the elder Baliol. I remember our being taught at school carefully to avoid confounding his name with another specially dedicated to infamy the Belial of Scripture. It is lucky for those who thus lie under historical ban that they are generally beyond the con- dition of suffering, either in body or spirit, from the execrations heaped upon their memory. And if we should say that even the fame of the departed has a right to be protected from injustice to receive due praise if its owner has done service to mankind, and at least quiet oblivion if he has done no harm a more easy consola- tion for the injustice done comes in the reflection that, under the same name, the demon of the historians is a different being from the harmless commonplace man who owned the name in the flesh. So this Baliol, while in history he stands forth as the foul betrayer of his country's independence as traitor to the vile allegiance he had sold himself to as guilty of every political crime which historical magniloquence can express was, in the flesh, a very ordinary sort of man, who, in agreeing to do homage for a territory to the monarch who had preferred him to it, acted on much the same principle as the holder of a snug office at the present day who sides with the statesman who has appointed him to it. And if he was at one time, under sore temptation, guilty of tampering with his allegiance, he did the best he could afterwards to put matters right. Looking to the social and political conditions of him and his class, it would be difficult to find a proposition that would have seemed more pre- posterous to them than that they should sacrifice the prospects of a good fief for the preservation either of a THE WAR OF INDEPENDENCE. 9 separate nationality or the liberties of a truculent, self- willed people. The Bruces themselves belonged to the same set ; but ere the grandson of the original claimant gained his great victory, the lapse of a quarter of a cen- tury of animosity may have nourished a sense of national- ity towards the people for whom he fought; and even if he was, after all, only the Norman adventurer, who saw a grand career of ambition as the leader of a people who would not be enslaved, he fairly won the crown he wore. The battle of Bannockburn, in being the conclusive act which relieved Scotland from the domination of the English King, became also the crisis at which France and Scotland became united in fast friendship. This friend- ship had been growing during the war of independence, but it could exist as a permanent European institution only after that was over. And at this point arises one of those occasions for rendering history distinct by unravel- ling minor confusions, which sometimes bring those who do the work of unravelling under suspicion as lovers of paradox. We shall all the more clearly understand the nature and tendency of the alliance by starting with the fact that, before a thorough external union with France, Scotland cast forth certain French characteristics which had found their way into the elements of her political and social condition. The rule of the Normans was the rule of a race who had made themselves French ; however rapidly, among a kindred Teutonic people, they were returning to their old Norse character. Of the Norman families which had established themselves in the country, Scotland retained but a small minority after the war of independence, for the obvious reason that the great majority had cast their lots with their natural leader, the King of England. The topographical antiquary, tracing the history of the early ownership of estates in Scotland, sees the change expressed with a distinctness plainer than any historical narrative. The early charters are rich in such a courtly Norman nomenclature as De Quincey, De Vere, De Vipont, D'Umfraville, Mortimer, and De Coucy. When order is restored, and the lands are again recorded as having lords, there are Johnstons, Bells, Armstrongs, 10 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. Scots, Kerrs, Browns, and suchlike, telling at once of their native Saxon origin. The loss of their estates, indeed, was a substantial grievance to the Norman holders, who would not relinquish them without a struggle j and in their effort to get them back again, under Edward Baliol, whom they had set up as King of Scotland for that purpose, they were very nearly suc- cessful in crushing the newly-bought independence of the land. Thus the extinction of the English rule had at first the effect of removing French elements out of Scotland. In England, the language of France, being the language of the Court, became that of the law, in which it has left to our own day some motley relics, remaining imbedded in it like grotesque organic remains. If, along with the influx of Normans, their language may have at one time been creeping into legal practice in Scotland, the efforts of the Edwards to enforce the English forms of law throughout the country made their technicalities especi- ally odious. All the way from the Border to the High- land line, the people, high and low, came to speak in very pure Teutonic ; for it is curious that the language of the Lowland Scots has not received the slightest tinge from close contact with the Celtic. Whatever it may have been among the common people, the literary lan- guage of England became afflicted with Gallicisms ; and so it came to pass that Barbour sang the liberation of his country from the English kings in purer English, accord- ing to the canon of the present day, than his contem- porary Chaucer, whose more finished verses are not so easily read by Englishmen as those of the Aberdonian. England in the end outgrew these French elements, but Scotland cast them forth at once. And we shall find that, however close became the intimacy of the two nations, and however powerful the influence of the greater on the destinies of the less, the symptoms of that influence were ever external and superficial it never penetrated to the national heart. After the expulsion of the English or, more properly, of the Normans from the north, it becomes a key-note in French history that England is to WALLACE. 1 1 be fought from Scotland ; while, on the English side of European history, the response is that everything must be right on the Border before it will be prudent to send an expedition to the Continent. When we have a clear hold on those great national conditions of which the League was an inevitable result, it is of less moment to know the minute particulars about the dates and tenor of the treaties, and the statesmen who negotiated them. But these too have their interest. The first name practically connected with them is Wallace's ; and there is some reason, besides his renown as a warrior, and an organiser and governor of his fellow-men, to award to him the reputation of a successful diplomatist. The legendary chroniclers, such as Blind Harry the minstrel, tell us that he frequented France ; that he became a respected friend and a favoured counsellor of the French monarch ; that he performed valorous feats on French soil, and that he chased pirates on French waters. These stories have been discredited by the grave, to whom it did not commend them that one of his feats was the hunting and slaying of a lion in Guienne. But there is an odd tenacity of life in the fundamentals of even the most flagrant legends about the Scottish hero. Few names have been so saturated with nonsense in prose and verse ; and the saturation seems to be ceaseless, having developed a formidable access in our own very times. Yet when we come to documents and other close quarters, we generally realise in some shape or other almost all the leading events of his wonderful legendary career. The statements of the graver of the old Scots historians are sufficient to convince the man who has worked hardest of all in clearing up the history of the League, that he was received at the French Court. 1 For those of narrower faith there is one little scrap of what lawyers call real evidence, worth more than all the narra- tives of the chroniclers. When Wallace was apprehended and taken to London for trial, after the fashion of dealing 1 "II se refugia en France, ou il fut honorablement accueilli et traite par le Roi. "Michel, Les Ecossais en France, i. 46. 12 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. with other criminals he was searched, and the articles in his possession duly removed and inventoried. Among these were letters of safe-conduct from King Philip his French passport, in short ; a valuable piece of evidence, had any been needed, of practices hostile to the King of England. 1 That he should, at the Court of Philip, have forgotten the great cause to which he was devoted, is an inadmissible supposition ; and he is at least as likely as any one to have suggested that the common interest of France and Scotland lay in enmity towards England. But we find more distinct traces of Wallace having dealt with France through a diplomatic agent. When he held the office of Governor of Scotland, like every other man in power he required conformity in those who worked with him; and when they would not conform, displaced them. If he needed an excuse for strong measures, he had it in the urgency of the question at issue the preservation of the national independence. Accordingly, he drove out the primate who leaned to the Norman side, and got William Lamberton, a partisan of the national independence, elected Archbishop of St Andrews. Certain articles presented against this arch- bishop to his ecclesiastical superior, the Pope, by King Edward, bear that "Being thus made bishop, Lamberton continued at the Court of France with other the great men of Scotland, the King's enemies, labouring continually to do all the harm and injury in his power against his liege lord, until the peace was finally concluded between France and England. And after the conclusion of such treaty, he, Lamberton, by letters -patent under his seal, urged and excited the prelates, earls, barons, and all the common- alty of Scotland (these being the King's enemies), to carry on the war vigorously until the bishop and the other lords in France could return to Scotland. . . . Moreover, the bishop addressed his special letters, sealed 1 Palgrave, 'Documents and Records illustrating the History of Scotland, and the Transactions between the Crowns of Scotland and England, ' cxcv. NEGOTIATIONS WITH FRANCE. 13 with his seal, to the traitor Wallace, and prayed that, for the love of him the bishop, he, Wallace, would do all possible hurt and damage to the King of England. And Lamberton also wrote to his officers in Scotland to em- ploy a portion of his own provision for the sustenance of Wallace." 1 Soon afterwards Scotland was too effectually subdued to hold independent diplomatic relations abroad. In a curious way, however, the thread of the negotiations so begun may be traced through the intervening confusions, until the whole was resumed when France and Scotland could speak to each other both as separate indepen- dent kingdoms, and both having deep cause of enmity against England. 2 In the meantime, between Philip of France and Edward of England there was enacted a series of feudal pedantries which were the farce to the tragedy going on in Scotland, Edward reversing his posi- tion, and acting the truculent vassal. Both affairs arose out of those curious conditions of the feudal system which made monarchs do homage to each other for the sake of little additions to their available territories. Thus had the King of the Scots done homage at Windsor for the fief of Huntingdon and several other benefices held within the kingdom of England; and so, when the opportunity came, the King of England called this homage -doing king his vassal. In like manner, Ed- ward himself acknowledged the feudal superiority of the King of France in respect to his Continental possessions. So it came to pass that, as some English sailors com- mitted acts of piracy against French subjects, Philip of France called on Edward of England to come to Paris and do homage, and stand trial for misconduct as a disobedient vassal to his liege lord, just as Edward him- self had called on Baliol to come to Windsor. But the 1 Palgrave, clxv. a In one of the monkish chronicles (Lanercost, 182) it is narrated that, when Edward had penetrated, in 1296, as far as Aberdeen, he there found emissaries from Philip of France, with letters to Baliol and to many leading men of Scotland. 14 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. total disproportion between the demand and the power to enforce it made the summons of the French King ridiculous. It would have been a sight to behold the countenance of the fierce and determined long-legged Edward when he received it. The foolish bravado brought on the first English war in France, making way for those which followed it. The French were too glad to get out of the affair by the treaty of 1303 ; but, hard pressed as they then were, they tried to keep true faith with their friends of Scotland. Somewhat to the surprise of Edward, they introduced the Scots, their good allies, as a party to the negotiations ; and when Edward said that if there ever were an alliance of Scotland and France his vassal Baliol had freely resigned it, the French told him that Baliol, being then a prisoner of war, was no free agent, and could renounce nothing for the kingdom of Scotland. This time, however, the support of France availed nothing, for Scotland was speedily afterwards blotted for a time out of the list of independent nations. It is under the year 1326 twelve years after the battle of Bannockburn that in Rymer's great book of treaties we read the first articulate treaty between France and Scotland. There the French monarchs came under obligation to those of Scotland, " in good faith as loyal allies, whenever they shall have occasion for aid and advice, in time of peace or war, against the King of Eng- land and his subjects." On the part of the Scots kings it is stipulated that they shall be bound " to make war upon the kingdom of England with all their force, when- soever war is waged between us and the King of Eng- land." In 1371, when the alliance was solemnly re- newed, a hundred thousand gold nobles were advanced to Scotland on curious and shrewd conditions. The money was to be employed for the ransom of King David from custody in England. Should, however, the Pope be pleased to absolve the Scots Government of that debt, then the gold nobles were to be employed in making war against England. When proffers were made to France for a'separate truce, not including Scotland, they were gallantly rejected. On the other hand, when Scotland was sorely STATE OF FRANCE. 15 tempted by the Emperor Maximilian, and by other poten- tates from time to time, to desert her ally France, she refused. It endeared the alliance to both nations to sanctify it with the mellowness of extreme antiquity, and references to its existence since the days of Charlemagne find their way even at an early period into the formal diplomatic documents. There are two sides in the history of an alliance as in that of a war. Of the history of the ancient League, how- ever, the first chapter belongs almost entirely to France. Some Scotsmen went thither and influenced the political condition of the country long before France impressed the policy of Scotland. It will clear the way for what follows, to take a glance at the social condition of the land to which the Scots refugees flocked, after their country had established itself in hostile independence of the Plantagenet kings. In later times people have been accustomed to seek the politics of France in Paris, giv- ing little heed to the provinces ; but at the accession of the house of Valois, the contrast between the eminence of the one and the insignificance of the other was still greater. Paris was at that time, indeed, as much beyond any other European capital in extent, in noble buildings, and in luxurious living, as it is now beyond the second- ary towns of France. The fruitfulness of the reigning family provided it with a little mob of native royalties, who made it so attractive that not only did all the great feudatories of the Crown flock thither, but even indepen- dent monarchs preferred playing the courtier there to reigning in their own dingy capitals. One finds the kings of Navarre, of Sicily, and of Bohemia perpetually in the way, and turning up upon the surface of history when anything notable occurs in the French Court ; they could not tear themselves from the attractions of the place. The populousness and luxurious living of Paris are attested in a not pleasant or dignified fashion by the large number of butchers necessary to supply the city. They formed, when combined, a sort of small army; large enough, however, to be estimated by the thousand. 16 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. They were often used as a powerful but a dangerous political engine. By bullying bravado and violence they held a sort of corporate power when almost everything else of the kind had been annihilated. This power they used according to their nature. It was they who did the professional part of the business when the prisons were broken open by the Burgundian party, and the throats of the prisoners cut, making a scene in the year 1418 which was exactly repeated in the year 1792. The allusion to these brutes brings one naturally from the concentration of luxury, wealth, and rank in Paris, to the horrible abyss by which it was all surrounded. It is difficult to conceive the wretchedness and degradation of France at that time still more difficult, when it is fully realised, to understand by what steps the great nation of Henry IV. and Louis XIV. the still greater nation of later times arose to such a height of lustre and triumph. Whatever other elements were at work in the long event- ful regeneration, it may surely be permitted to our national pride to count that the infusion of Scottish blood into the veins, as it were, of the country, must have had some share in the change. There was at that time throughout the land neither sturdy independence nor affectionate, trusting dependence. Everything was thoroughly wrong. The great showed their superiority only in acts of injustice, insult, and cruelty ; the poor were servile and abject in subjection, and brutal, treacherous, and ungrateful when the iron rule was for a moment evaded. A sort of mortifying process was killing all the elements of independent constitutional action one by one, and approaching the heart. The ju- risdictions and privileges which the municipalities had inherited from the Roman Empire were crushed out. The lower feudatories were absorbed one by one, and the higher followed. By a curious fatality it fell to the family of Valois to unite the characteristic defects of a centralised despotism with those of an oligarchy. The great provinces came gradually one by one into the hands of the King ; but instead of being united to the Crown so as to make a compact and symmetrical empire, they STATE OF FRANCE. I/ were given to the princes of the blood and their de- scendants. Hence arose a class of nobles or territorial aristocracy, who formed a separate caste, looking down upon and bearing enmity to all owners of territory who were not of the blood - royal. Such were the lords of Burgundy, Orleans, Anjou, Bourbon, Berri, La Marche, and a crowd of others. The tendency of things was towards not only a divine right in the Crown to govern, but a divine right in the blood-royal to possess all things. The law was gradually withdrawing its protection from those who were not either themselves of the royal stock, or protected in a sort of clientage by one of the princes of the blood. Men in the highest places who did not belong to the sacred race might be pitched from their chairs of state to the dungeon or the scaffold, with that reckless celer- ity which characterises the loss of influence in Eastern despotisms. One of the few men in that disastrous period who was enabled to afford to France some of the services of a real statesman was the Sieur de Montagu. He had been raised to influence under Charles V., and became Comp- troller of Finances under his mad successor, Charles VI. He was a little, smooth-spoken, inoffensive man, who had the art of making friends ; and few positions would have appeared in any tolerably well-governed state more firm and unassailable than his. He had two brothers invested with rich bishoprics, one of them also holding civil office, and rising to be Chancellor of France \ while his daughters were married into the first families among the nobles of France below the rank of royalty. Of course he had not neglected the opportunity which a supervisance of the wretched and ruined finances of the nation afforded him for enlarging and consolidating his own fortunes. He had enormous wealth to fall back upon should he ever be driven from office. In too fatal a reliance on the security of his position, he made an im- prudent display of his worldly goods, on the occasion of the advancement of one of his brothers from the shabby- ish bishopric of Poitiers to the brilliant see of Paris. Mon- B 1 8 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. tagu resolved to give an entertainment, and to do the thing in style. The company who were invited and who attended proved at once his greatness and his popularity. The list of distinguished guests would dazzle the eyes of the most fashionable penny-a-liner of the ' Morning Post.' It included the King and Queen of France, the King of Navarre, and the royal dukes in a bundle. They were feasted from a service of gold and silver such as, it was significantly remarked, none of their own palaces could produce. The magnificence of an entertainment is not always so exceedingly satisfactory to the entertained as the confid- ing landlord expects it to be. On this occasion one of the guests John the Fearless, Duke of Burgundy took offence at the profuse magnificence which surrounded him, and argued himself into the conclusion that it would more aptly become his own palace than the hotel of the parvenu. A few days afterwards, when Montagu was decorously walking to morning mass with one of his bishop brothers, Pierre des Essarts the Prevot of Paris crossed his path and laid a hand on his shoulder. The great statesman, highly indignant at such a familiarity, cried out, " Ribaud, es-tu si hardi que de me toucher ? " but Essarts had a warrant, and in fact the affair was serious. Montagu was arrested and thrown into a dungeon in the Petit Chat- elet The next step was to get up a feasible accusation against him. Doubtless his methods of amassing money, like those of every other statesman of the day, would not stand a very severe scrutiny ; but proceedings in this direction would be slow, petty, and inconclusive ; and as any chance might turn the tables in the victim's favour, it was necessary to get up something more astounding, odious, and conclusive. He was therefore charged with sorcery and magic ; and, to bring the accusation to a def- inite and practical conclusion, it was alleged that by these illegal arts he had produced the King's insanity. He was put to the torture, and after giving his tormentors hard work, he confessed whatever they pleased. The instru- ments being removed, he retracted, and appealed to his dislocated wrists and wrenches of the body, ending in STATE OF FRANCE. 19 hernia, as the real causes of his confession. But he was in hands where his wealth, not the punishment of a guilty man, was wanted. The affair had to be got over before the King should have a lucid interval ; so the tortured mangled body was relieved of its miseries by the headsman's axe. The King, when the lucid interval came, was indignant at the usage his faithful servant had received : but there was no remedy. John the Fearless was not the man to loose his grip on what he had touched, and, unless the head could also have been restored to its old owner, how was resto- ration to be made of the estates ? It is one of the most significant marks of a Providence overruling the affairs of man, that such acts are calculated, in some shape or other, to retaliate on their doers. When the princes of the blood established practices of cruelty and perfidy, they were unable absolutely to exempt them- selves, and establish as an unfailing rule that the con- sequent calamities should be restricted entirely to inferior persons. The Dukes of Burgundy and of Orleans, the King's nearest relations, were rivals for that supreme power which somebody or other must wield in the name of the madman. The former took a short way of settling the question. Orleans was murdered in the streets of Paris by the direction of Burgundy. The clergy and the savants of the day were called upon to applaud the deed as a wholesome act of tyrannicide. The opportunity was a good one for propitiating clerical influences. It was the time when rival popes were bidding for support, and stretching points with each other; so, what the one scrupled at, the other was delighted to oblige with. The sinuosities of the discussion on the slaughter of Orleans, influenced as they were by the duplex action of the Pope- dom and the oscillations of the two contending civil parties, would make an amusing history of ups and clowns. To-day a consistory applauds the act as a ser- vice to God and the King next a synod brings the con- sistory to task for maintaining a doctrine so revolting ; and, anon, a higher authority justifies the consistory and rebukes the synod. 20 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. This affair caused great uneasiness throughout the whole privileged class of royal scions. Attacking and killing one of their own number in the open street was treating him no better than a common seigneur, or even a roturier. The Duke of Burgundy should not have acted so by one of themselves it was an ungentlemanly thing. Upon the other hand, were he to be subjected to legal responsibility for what he had done, this would in- volve the admission that the royal class could be liable to the jurisdiction of the ordinary tribunals an alter- native too horrible and preposterous to be indulged in for a moment. Altogether the question was indeed in a fix. The end illustrated the spirit expressed in the Psalms, " Bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days." The death of their leader did not immediately ruin the Orleanists, who continued the struggle under his relation the Count of Armagnac. Year after year went on the ceaseless contest, each up and down alternately, while their wild struggle crushed and ruined every sur- rounding object they came in contact with. Nor when Henry V. was thundering at the gate could they hear the warning voice of conquest over the horrid din of their own quarrels, or relax their hold of each other to turn an arm against the invader. To be sure, they met and tried to come to an under- standing. One meeting was held on an island in a small lake with a barrier across it, so that but few could be assembled on either side, and these few could not touch each other. The results of this meeting were not very satisfactory, but the next was more conclusive. It was held on the long bridge of Montereau, where the Yonne meets the Seine. A complex barrier was erected to obviate treachery. The Orleanists, however, had the last handling of it, and the Duke of Burgundy, with the small body of attendants admitted on the bridge, found themselves somehow face to face with the Orleanists, while a bar clicked behind them and cut off their com- munication. John the Fearless made the best of things, clapped his greatest enemy, Tanguy du Chatel, on the STATE OF FRANCE. 21 shoulder, and called him a good guarantee for his safety. As he knelt to the young Dauphin, the hilt of his sword incommoded him, and he touched it to move it aside. Those who surrounded him, waiting the first good oppor- tunity for their work, pretended that they believed he was drawing his sword, and immediately hacked him to pieces. Comines drew from this incident the moral that rival kings and great heads of parties should not attempt to hold personal interviews. The temptation on such occasions to settle all old scores by a single coup, he counted too great for ordinary flesh and blood. While such was the nature of things at the top of the social tree, to convey an impression of the wretchedness and degradation at its other extremity is beyond the power of general terms. The details themselves make the reader at last callous with their weary monotony of torture, starvation, and slaughter. The stories told to inflame the sans-culottes of the Revolution how that a feudal lord coming home from the chase would rip up the venires of a couple of serfs, and warm his feet in their reeking vitals such things were no exaggeration of the reality, and, indeed, no imagination could exaggerate it. From the frequency with which whole districts are ren- dered pestilential by the thousands of dead, starved, or slaughtered, one wonders how the land kept up its popu- lation, and how the scanty remnant of inhabitants had heart to renew the race, and bring into the world fresh victims of such horrors. When Henry V. came over to make his conquest, his captains excited curiosity at first, until they knew better the habits of the country, by ab- staining from an established practice both of Orleanists and Burgundians, which required that when any peasant had been caught, and compelled to act as guide, to bury the dead, or perform any enforced services, he should, when no longer of use, be stripped of any clothing worth removing, and then be hung up by the heels before a fire, where, whether with the refinement of basting or not, he was roasted until he gave the clue to any hoard of silver pieces he might have saved, or until he died, if he could or would give no such clue. 22 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. The English victories in the Hundred Years' War, which seem so astounding, are but natural results to those who are in the habit of contemplating, through contemporary documents, the abjectness of the French peasantry or villeinage of the period. The great masses brought into the field were so far from being trained to war, either as soldiers of the crown or followers of their seigneurs, that they were denied the use of arms, unless when marshalled in an army. The English bow and bill men were, on the other hand, sturdy knaves, well fed, free within cer- tain limits, and expert at handling their weapons. In fact, between them and their Norman masters, after the lapse of centuries, a sort of surly compact had been formed as between those who knew each other to be sterling stuff, for they were kindred in character, and had both sprung from the same hardy Scandinavian stock. The English bow and bill men were nearly as good as mailed men-at-arms ; and one of these fully equipped and mounted was among a crowd of serfs like a ship of war in a fleet of fishing-boats he could go about unharmed, slaughtering all he could come at, until he became tired. So little of common cause was there between them, that the French men-at-arms on some provocation would set to slaughtering among their starving crowd of followers, or would let the enemy do so without taking umbrage. The Captal of Buch gained great honour by a bloody attack on a large body of the Jacques, who were doing no creditable work, certainly, yet it was on his own side. In their great battles with the English invaders, the French men-at-arms were nearly as much occupied in chastising their own serfs as in fighting with the enemy ; and at Agincourt the leaders would not condescend to act at the head of their men, but formed themselves into a separate battel, apart from the great mass, who became consequently a chaotic crowd, not only useless but detri- mental. According to a very offensive practice of those chivalrous times, the chances of safety to a vanquished foe depended on what he was likely to fetch in ransom : in some instances a rich or royal captive was in danger from a contest among his captors for the monopoly of his THE HUNDRED YEARS' WAR. 23 capture and the corresponding ransom-money. Alas for the poor French serf ! there was little chance of making anything of him; nor, in the distracted state of the country, was he worth preserving as a slave. He was put to the most valuable use when his carcass manured the ground on which he fell. So much for the social condition of the French people during the early part of the Hundred Years' War with the English kings. To the political condition of France as a nation, and one of the European community, perhaps the best key may be found in the remark of Sismondi, that the contest was not in its origin a national one between France and England. It was a question of disputed succession, in which the competitors for the crown were the only persons ostensibly interested. The nobles took their side according to their calculations, founded on interest or connection, as the smaller European princes have done in the great wars of later times. As to the serfage, if they thought at all, the tendency of their thoughts would probably be that they could not be more miserable than they were, whoever was their king ; and we may be pretty sure that they did not attempt to solve the question about the prevalence of the old Salic code within the soil of France. In fact, the invaders, accustomed to treat their neighbours at home as fellow-beings, were, as we have seen, kinder to the poor peasantry than their armed countrymen. But a conquering class or race will ever become insolent and exasperating ; and, after a time, the oppression and insolence of the invaders sent the healthy blood of patriotism to the heart of the people, where it aroused that cohesive natural energy which swept the enemy from the land, and made France the great empire it became. With the Scots, on the other hand, the war, though waged on French soil, was national from the beginning. It was thus the fortune of their allies to secure a body of men-at-arms who were not only brave men and thoroughly trained soldiers, but who brought with them still higher qualities in that steadfast faith which had been hardened on the anvil of a war for national freedom. Nominally 24 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. entering the French service as mercenary troops, there never were soldiers less amenable to the reproachful application of that term. Of all the various elements which a French army then contained among the Italian and German hirelings among native men-at-arms who had been fighting but the other day against their existing leader and cause, and might in a few days do so again among the wretched serfage who were driven into the field and did not even know what side they were on, among all these, the Scots alone had a cause at heart. France was the field on which they could meet and strike the Norman invaders who had dealt so much oppression on their paternal soil, and had run up so long an account of injuries and cruelties ere they were driven forth. The feeling, no doubt, was an unamiable one, according to modern ethics. It came to nothing that can be expressed in gentler language than the Scot's undying hatred of his neighbour to the south of the Tweed. The many terrible incidents in the long war of Scottish independence testify the sincerity of this hatred. But as motives went in those days, it was among the most sterling and honest going, and served to provide the French kings with a body of men hardy and resolute, steady and true ; and possessing so specially these qualities, that even Louis XI. perhaps of all monarchs whose character is well known to the world the most unconfiding and most sceptical of any- thing like simple faith and honesty was content, amid all his shifting slippery policy and his suspicions and pre- cautions, to rely implicitly on the faith of his Scots Guard. The English army had been twelve years in occupation. Agincourt had been fought, the infant heir of the house of Lancaster had been proclaimed at Paris with the quiet decorum that attends the doings of a strong government, when Scotland resolved to act. In 1424, John Stewart, Earl of Buchan, arrived in France with a small army of his fellow-countrymen. Accounts of the numbers under his command vary from 5000 to 7000. This seems but a small affair in the history of invasions, but, looking at the conditions under which it was accomplished, it will turn out to be a rather marvellous achievement. It is THE SCOTS AUXILIARIES. 25 only necessary to look at the map of Europe to see that from whichever side of our island the Scots attempted to approach France, they must pass through the narrow seas in which England even then professed to have a naval superiority. A steamer now plies from Leith to Dunkirk for the benefit of those who prefer economy and a sea voyage to a railway journey ; but from the union of the crowns down to the establishment of that vessel a year or two ago, the idea of going from Scotland to France other- wise than through England would have been scouted. The method of transferring troops, too, in that period, was by galleys, rowed by galley-slaves, little better than mere rafts for sea-going purposes, and ever requiring in foul weather to hug the shore. Scotland could not have afforded vessels to transport this force ; it was taken in hand by France, Castile and Aragon offering, as we are told, to assist with forty vessels. Henry V. of England, then ruling in France, naturally felt the seriousness of an infusion of such fresh blood into the distracted and ruined country ; and he instructed his brother, the Duke of Bedford, acting as viceroy, to put on the screw at all the English seaports, and do whatever the old traditional prerogatives of the Crown, in purveying vessels and seamen, was capable of doing, in order that a force might be raised to intercept the Scots expedition. Bedford lost the opportunity, however. The Scots troops debarked at La Rochelle, and, passing towards the valley of the Loire, encamped at Chatillon. These rough northern foreigners were not received by the natives without invidious criticism. Two or three instances occur in which the simple parsimony of the commissariat of the Scots camp has astonished the people of more luxurious countries. But it became a second nature with the wandering man-at-arms to bear enforced starvation at one time, and compensate it by superfluous indulgence at another. The Scots probably took their opportunity in a country which, desolated though it was by warfare, was a Garden of Eden after their own desolate bogs, and they earned for themselves the designation of sacs a vin et mangeurs de moutons. 26 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. But an opportunity occurred for wiping off such a reproach. The Scots and some French, all under the command of Buchan, approached the old town of Bauge. in Anjou, on one side of the stream of the Cauanon, while Clarence and the great English host were encamped on the other. The Scots, just in time to save themselves, discovered their danger. The English were crossing the river by a narrow bridge when Buchan came up and fought the portion of the army which had crossed over. As M. Michel remarks, it was the same tactic that enabled Wallace to defeat Surrey and Cressingham at Stirling it might also be described as a seizing of the opportunity that was afterwards so signally missed at Flodden. Then took place one of those hand-to-hand conflicts, in which the highest-spirited and best-mounted knights of the age encountered in a mingled turmoil of general battle and single combat. The great host meanwhile struggled over, and was attacked in detail. It was a victory attended, from its peculiar conditions, with more than the average slaughter of the conquered. In the words of Monstrelet, " The Duke of Clarence, the Earl of Kyme (?), the Lord Roos, Marshal of England, and, in general, the flower of the chivalry and esquiredom, were left dead on the field, with two or three thousand fighting men." Henry V. was naturally provoked by a defeat that so strongly resembled those he had been accustomed to inflict ; and his anger, sharpened by grief for the death of his brother, tempted him into one of those unworthy acts which great conquerors sometimes commit when thwarted by defeat. He had then in his possession the young King of the Scots, James I. With his consent, or in his name, an instruction was issued to the Scots army no longer to fight in the cause of France against England. Buchan protested that the orders of a monarch not at freedom were of no avail. Henry then thought fit to treat the Scots as rebels, not entitled to the courtesies of war. To make the case more clear, he took his captive to France. James was in the English camp when Melun was taken, and therefore Henry hanged twenty Scotsmen found among the garrison. On the surrendering of Meaux, too, THE SCOTS AUXILIARIES. 2/ there were especially excluded from the conditions of the capitulation all the Welsh, Irish, and Scotch as if all these were alike rebels. It is generally said that Buchan got the baton of High Constable of France as a reward for the victory of Bauge', though Monstrelet speaks of him as Constable when he fought it. At all events, he held this high office an office so very high that his poor countrymen at home cannot have easily seen to the top of it. We are told that, in Court precedence, it ranked next after the blood- royal ; that an insult to the holder of it, being equivalent to one on royalty itself, was similarly punished ; and that he was the highest military authority in the kingdom, having at his disposal all its warlike resources the commander-in-chief, in short. Moreri, who tells us this, also, to be sure, tells us that when a king of England dies, the lord mayor of London acts as interim king until another is fairly settled on the throne; but it is to be presumed that Moreri had a better knowledge of the practices on the banks of the Seine than of those on the banks of the Thames. In this country we are familiar with the title chiefly through the great names coupled with it the Constable de Luxemburg, the Constable Montmorenci, Du Guesclin, and the terrible Bourbon. Among such names, to stumble on the Constable Buchan sounds quite homely, as we say in Scotland. The con- stabulary was considered too formidable an office to be always full, and seems to have been reserved for emer- gencies, like the Roman dictatorship ; and that hour of emergency and of destitution of native spirit must have been dark indeed, when its highest dignity, and also the custody of the honour of the nation, were together con- ferred upon a stranger. The dignity was balanced by princely domains and castles stretching over the territory between Avranches and Chartres. These the new-comer seems to have almost taken into his own hand, for the French authorities speak of his putting himself in pos- session of the castle at Chartres after the battle of Baugd After that battle Buchan was joined by his father-in- law, Archibald Earl of Douglas, who brought with him a 28 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. reinforcement of four or five thousand Scots. Douglas, among other honours and substantial rewards, was in- vested with the great dukedom of Touraine. There was almost a rivalry in the royal munificence to the two leaders, and their followers were not forgotten, as we shall afterwards see ; but they left on bloody battle-fields a record that their honours and emoluments were well paid for, and but briefly enjoyed. Though Bauge had taught the wholesome doctrine to the French that their enemies were not unconquerable, and had put the house of Valois in sufficient heart to renew the struggle, it was yet uphill work. In the battle of Crevant in 1424 the Scots were the chief sufferers. In one brief sentence Monstrelet testifies to their devotedness, and narrates their fate : " The English and Burgundians won the day and the field ; the greater part of the Scots, amounting to three thousand, who were in the front ranks, were either killed or taken." 1 The remnant of the Scots auxiliaries, though thus thinned and weakened, bore the chief weight of the bloody battle of Verneuil a year afterwards. 2 This is one of the many battles in which defeat has been attributed to misunderstandings and mistakes among allies, for there were there men of three nations on one side French Lombards, and Scots. Wherever the blame lay, the penalty was paid by the Scots, of whom all but a few lay dead where they fought. It has been said that their fate was of their own seeking, for, on meeting face to face with their mortal enemies of England, they sent Bedford a message that they would neither spare nor be spared neither give nor take quarter. 8 Buchan, the High 1 ' Monstrelet, ' by Johns, vi. 48. 2 Sismondi says of the marshalling of the French army, "Les Ecossais, qui faisoient le nerf de leur armee." xiii. 34. 8 " Un ecrivain contemporain, se faisant 1'echo d'un bruit repandu a 1'epoque, signale la fierte ecossaise comme la principale cause du desastre de Verneuil, qu'il considere comme un evenement heureux pour la France: 'Les Ecossais,' dit-il, ' sont d'habitude ardents et solides au combat, mais temeraires et fiers a 1'exces. ' Puis, apres un recit sommaire de cette journee, il continue ainsi ' C'etait un spec- THE POLITICAL SITUATION. 29 Constable, and Douglas, the Duke of Touraine, were found among the dead. They had not given their lives an utterly vain sacrifice to the cause of their adoption. Though Verneuil is counted among the English victories, it had no resemblance to the sweeping triumphs of Crecy, Poitiers, and Agincourt. It was so tough an affair, and was so near to the defeat of Bedford and Salisbury, that they became really alarmed about the stability of the su- premacy of the house of Lancaster in France. We cannot rightly estimate the influence over the des- tinies of Europe of the events which severed Scotland from England and allied her to France, without remembering that it was long the aim of every powerful European mon- arch to follow the example of Charlemagne, and restore the Roman Empire. People have been so much occupied in discussing the religious hierarchy bequeathed to the world by the old Empire, that they seem to have for- gotten how much of its political organisation remained to influence mankind. Roman institutions, in fact, live and influence our everyday habits and customs, and many of our greatest political organisations have their root in the established practice of the Empire. It is there, for instance, that we shall find how, in European diplomacy and international law, there are rules obeyed by nations, obligations performed by them, and rights exacted by them, without any paramount authority to enforce obedi- ence. The paramount authority existed once in the person of the Emperor of the world ; and though it has departed, the practices and traditions which kept the various states of Europe together have remained in force, tacle affreux a contempler que celui des monceaux de cadavres entasses et presses sur ce champ de bataille, la surtout oil la lutte avail eu lieu avec les Ecossais ; car pas un d'eux ne fut epargne a litre de caplif. .... La cause de cet acharnemenl et de ce carnage sans merci fut la fierte des Ecossais : avant 1'engagement, le Due de Bedford leur ayant envoye demander quelles seraient les conditions du combat, ils repondirent qu'ils ne voulaient pas, ce jour-la, faire de prisonniers aux Anglais, ni que les Anglais leur en fissent ; reponse qui, en allumant centre eux la fureur de 1'ennemi, les fit exterminer.'" Michel, i. 148, quoting from Meyer, 'Annales Rerum Belgicarum.' 3O THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. and have been worked by " the great powers," who may be said to hold the functions of the old Empire in a sort of commission. It is observable that at the present day the established rules of diplomacy have scarcely extended beyond the bounds of the old Empire, except by includ- ing Russia; but though the greater part of the Russian territory was beyond the pale, there is no Court in Europe where the traditions of the Empire are so religiously maintained as in that of Russia where, indeed, the ambition which made the monarchs of the middle ages aim at the restoration of the empire of the world is be- lieved still to guide the policy of the house of Romanoff. We cannot get the oriental nations to accept of our system of diplomacy, except by sheer force. An am- bassador they count an intruder and a spy, and they preserve no treaty which they can break. Even in the American States, where diplomacy and international law are studied more than anywhere else, it seems impracti- cable to apply those old traditional rules called the laws of war and peace, which have kept Europe together. The municipalities which have so deeply influenced the history of Europe are a section of the institutions of the Empire. There are towns whose existing governments were given to them by the Caesars ; and it was a signal testimony to the vitality of these institutions, that in the late reconsolidation of Italy they formed the means of dovetailing together the fragments which had been so long separated. In some countries the Justinian collections are the only absolute authorities in the law in all they have more or less a place. In England even, for all the abuse it has met with from the common-lawyers, the civil law has an acknowledged place in Equity, the Ecclesias- tical courts, and the Admiralty jurisdiction; and large masses of it have, surreptitiously and under false names, been brought into the sacred precinct of the common law itself. It would be difficult to say of the laws which adjust rights and obligations between man and man in England, whether one would find a greater quantity in the Statutes at large than in the Pandects. The political machinery of the imperial system, though THE POLITICAL SITUATION. 3 1 broken into fragments, remained in its several parts so compact and serviceable for centuries as to be available for consolidating the power of Napoleon. It may easily be understood, then, how readily it would serve any monarch of the thirteenth or fourteenth century, who felt strong enough to use it. Hence these monarchs were not merely excited by vague notions of influence and con- quest with indefinite results, but saw a distinct, recognised office, supreme among worldly monarchies in dignity and power, which had been held of old, and might be aspired to again, as a legitimate object of ambition. The double- eagle in the achievement, figurative of the conjoined em- pires of the East and of the West, indicates powers which -have some time or other aspired at the empire of the world at renewing the conditions under which Cassar could decree "that all the world should be taxed." It is curious to see how the newly-grown feudal system, with its fictions and pedantries its rights of property and possession, for instance, as separated from its rights of superiority aided the influence of the imperial organ- isation in the hands of clever and vigilant princes. A troublesome territory would be handed over by a great king to some smaller neighbour, who, nearer the spot, was better able to govern it, and who, if it were not handed over to him, might take it. He came under obligation to do homage for it to the giver, but the practical result of this obligation would depend on subsequent events. If generation after generation of his house were gradually acquiring such fiefs, they might soon possess a power .sufficient to defy the feudal superior. On the other hand, the practice of doing homage for a part of their posses- sions might taint a decaying house with the sense of in- feriority, and bring them in at last for homage for the whole. When Edward I. summoned Baliol to come to Windsor and give account of his conduct, and when that same Edward was himself cited by Philip of France to kneel before him and answer for certain piracies com- mitted by Englishmen, the feudal formalities were the same, but behind them were certain realities which made the two affairs very different. Thus Europe presented to 32 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. the able and ambitious among her monarchs two kinds of apparatus of aggrandisement. In the one, a vassal house, gaining fief after fief, would work its way to the vitals of a monarchy, and extinguish its life ; in the other, a great power would crush one by one its smaller neighbours, by gradually enlarging the prerogative of the lord paramount. Whoever would wish to see this sort of game played with the most exquisite skill and the most curious turns of luck, should study closely the history of the absorption of Burgundy into France. In our own country the play was more abrupt and rough. It was handled with a brute force, which succeeded in Ireland and Wales, but drove Scotland to effective resistance. The significance of this resistance was not limited to this island. The Normans were then bearing it with a high hand over all the nations of Europe. If the Empire was to be restored, he who should be chief among the Norman rulers would be the man to restore it. Had Henry V. been King of all Britain, it would have been the most natural of effects to such a cause that he should also have been undisputed King of France ; and with such a combination of powers in his hand, what was to prevent him from being the successor of Charlemagne? The battle of Bannockburn was the ostensible blow which broke this chain of events. It was not the only interruption which Norman aggrandisement had then to encounter. Only twelve years earlier than Bannockburn, the Flemings had gained a popular victory over the chivalry of France at Courtrai ; within a year after the defeat of Edward, the Swiss bought their independ- ence in the terrible battle of Morgarten. The coincidence is not purely incidental. The three battles were types of a general revulsion against Norman aggrandisement arising in the hearts of the oppressed in various parts of Europe. As part of an empire which included France and Scot- land, with whatever else so much power might enable its owner to take, it is hard to say how it would have fared with the liberties of England, governed perhaps from Paris rather than London; and some have thought that the enjoyers of these liberties owe a debt to the victors at Bannockburn. THE SCOTS GUARD. 33 Everybody has heard of the famous Scots Guard of France. The same authorities that carry back the League to the days of Charlemagne, make him the founder of this force. It is a pity that we have no distinct account of its origin, and can only infer from historical probabilities that Claude Fauchet is right in saying that it was formed out of that remnant of the Scots who survived the slaughter at Verneuil, and did not desire to return home. 1 If Charles VII. was not the founder of the Guard, it is pretty certain that he adjusted its organisation as a permanent institu- tion of the French Court. This easy, lucky monarch was so thoroughly the parent of the Scots Guard, that they wept for him in a demonstrative manner, which induced an old chronicler to say " Et les Escossoys hault crioient Par forme de gemissement. " The Scots Guard consisted of one hundred gens cTarmes and two hundred archers. They had a captain who was a high officer of state. The first captain of the Guard who appears in history and probably the first person who held the office was John Stewart, lord of Aubignd, the founder of a great Scots house in France, of which more hereafter. By a chivalrous courtesy the appointment to this high office was confided to the King of Scots. This was an arrangement, however, that could not last. As the two nations changed their relative position, and the Guard began to become Scots only in name, it be- came not only out of the question that the captain should be appointed by a foreign government, but impolitic that he should be a foreigner. It is curious to notice a small ingenious policy to avoid offence to the haughty foreigners in the removal of the command from the Scots. The first captain of the Guard who was a native Frenchman, was the Count of Montgomery, who, for his patrimonial name, which corresponded with that of an old Scots family, passed for a man of Scots descent. It was thought prudent that his son should succeed him ; but the selection was 1 ' Origines des Dignitez et Magistrats de France, ' p. 39. C 34 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. not fortunate, for he was the same Montgomery who hit King Henry II. at the jousts in honour of his daughter Elizabeth's marriage to Philip II., and so made Mary Stewart Queen of France. According to the old courtly creed of France, the privileges of the Scots Guard had an eminence that par- took of sacredness. Twenty-four of them were told off as the special protectors of the royal person. They took charge of the keys of the chamber where the King slept, and the oratory where he paid his devotions. When, on a solemn progress, he entered a walled town, the keys were committed to the custody of the captain of the Guard. They guarded his boat as he crossed a ferry, and were essential to the support of his litter when he was carried. On ordinary occasions two of them stood behind him ; but in affairs of great ceremony the recep- tion of embassies, the conferring high honours, the touch- ing for the king's evil, and the like six of them stood near the throne, three on either side. It was deemed a marked honour to them that the silk fringe with which their halberts were decorated was white the royal colour of France. There is something melancholy beyond description in contemplating the condition of a country, the vital treas- ures of which had to be confided to the fidelity and bra- very of hireling strangers. If there was a fault in the affair, however, it was not with the Scots : they were true to their trust, and paid faith with faith. On their side of the bargain, too, there is something touching in the picture of a hardy high-spirited race robbed of their proper field of exertion at home, and driven to a foreign land, there to bestow the enterprising energy that might have made their own illustrious ; and serving a foreign master with the single-minded fidelity that had been nourished within them by the love of their own land and kindred. But it must be admitted that their hospitable patrons made their exile mighty comfortable. When the lank youth left behind him the house of his ancestors, standing up grey, cold, and bare, on the bleak moorland, it was not to pass into hard sordid exile, but THE SCOTS GUARD. 35 rather to exult in the prospect of a land of promise or El Dorado : and faithfully was the promise kept ; for the profuse hospitality and lavish generosity of France to her guests is a thing hardly to be elsewhere paralleled in his- tory. It was but just that it should all be requited with sound fidelity and ardent devotion. The trust which Louis XI. reposed in the Guard has been already referred to. It was not their blame that he took their assistance in grubbing up the roots of all the political institutions which checked or modified the supreme authority of the Crown. If we were to suppose, indeed, that they passed beyond the routine of duty to think of the political results of the affairs in which they were engaged, they would find a good many partisans in the present day, had they adopted the designs of their crafty master as their own, and backed them as the soundest policy for the future of France and of Europe at large ; for Louis XI. is by no means championless. In one of the most amusing of all the chronicles ever written that of Comines the Scots Guard figure fre- quently, and always creditably. Louis, who was reputed to trust no other creatures of human make, appears to have placed entire reliance on them. They saved him at a crisis of great peril in his renowned attack, along with the Duke of Burgundy, on the city of Liege. Both poten- tates were deeply plotting the one to bring, the Burgun- dian territories directly under the crown of France, the other to change his dukedom for a kingdom, which might in the end comprise France itself. Both were of one mind, for the time, in deadly malice and murderous pro- jects against the industrious burghers of the city. By a concurrence of events which broke through the fine tex- ture of his subtle policy, Louis found himself in the hands of his fierce rival ; for he was within the lines of Bur- gundy's army, with no other resource or protection appa- rently but his Scots Guard. There was to be a storming of Liege, which was anticipated by the citizens breaking out and attacking the camp of the Duke. In the con- fusion of such an affair at such a juncture, it is easy to suppose that Louis could not know friends from enemies, 36 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. and had reason to believe the enemies to be far the more prevalent of the two. Comines gives this distinct and homely narrative of what he saw of the affair, for he was present : " I, and two gentlemen more of his bedchamber, lay that night in the Duke of Burgundy's chamber (which was very small), and above us there were twelve archers upon the guard, all of 'em in their clothes, and playing at dice. His main guard was at a good distance, and towards the gate of the town ; in short, the master of the house where the Duke was quartered, having drawn out a good party of the Ltigeois, came so suddenly upon the Duke, we had scarce time to put on his back and breast plate and clap a steel cap upon his head. As soon as we had done it, we ran down the stairs into the street ; but we found our archers engaged with the enemy, and much ado they had to defend the doors and the windows against 'em. In the street there was a terrible noise and uproar, some crying out, ' God bless the King ! ' others, ' God bless the Duke of Burgundy ! ' and others, ' God bless the King, and kill, kill ! ' It was some time before our archers and we could beat the enemy from the doors and get out of the house. We knew not in what condition the King was, nor whether he was for or against us, which put us into a great con- sternation. As soon as we were got into the street, by the help of two or three torches we discovered some few of our men, and could perceive people fighting round about us ; but the action there lasted not long, for the soldiers from all parts came in thronging to the Duke's quarter. The Duke's landlord was the first man of the enemy's side that was killed (who died not presently, for I heard him speak), and with him his whole party (at least the greatest part of them) were cut in pieces. " The King was also assaulted after the same manner by his landlord, who entered his house, but was slain by the Scotch Guard. These Scotch troops behaved them- selves valiantly, maintained their ground, would not stir one step from the King, and were very nimble with their bows and arrows, with which, it is said, they wounded and killed more of the Burgundians than of the enemy. Those THE SCOTS GUARD. 37 who were appointed made their sally at the gate, but they found a strong guard to oppose them, which gave 'em a warm reception and presently repulsed 'em, they not being so good soldiers as the others. As soon as these people were repulsed, the King and Duke met, and had a confer- ence together. Seeing several lie dead about them, they were afraid their loss had been greater than really it proved to be ; for upon examination they found they had not lost many men, though several were wounded ; and without dispute, if they had not stopped at those two places, and especially at the barn (where they met with some small opposition), but had followed their guides, they had killed both the King and the Duke of Burgundy, and in prob- ability would have defeated the rest of the army. Each of these princes retired to his quarters greatly astonished at the boldness of the attempt ; and immediately a council of war was called to consult what measures were to be taken the next morning in relation to the assault, which had been resolved upon before. The King was in great perplexity, as fearing that if the Duke took not the town by storm, the inconvenience would fall upon him, and he should either be kept still in restraint, or made an abso- lute prisoner, for the Duke could not think himself secure against a war with France if he should suffer him to de- part. By this mutual distrust of each other one may clearly observe the miserable condition of these two princes, who could not by any means confide in one another, though they had made a firm peace not a fort- night before, and had sworn solemnly to preserve it." J French historians are tolerably unanimous in their tes- timony that the Guard were faithful fellows. As a small select body of men. highly endowed with rank and remun- eration, they were naturally the prize-holders of a consider- able body of their countrymen, who in the army of France strove to prove themselves worthy of reception into the chosen band. Thus the Scots in the French army carried the spirit of the service beyond the mere number selected as the Guard; and there was among them a fellow-feeling, 1 'Memohs of Philip de Comines,' book ii. chap. 12. 38 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. mixed with a devotion to the Crown of France, of a kind which there is no good term for in English, while it is but faintly expressed by the French esprit de corps. A few of the facts in the history of the Scots troops employed by France bring it closer home than any generalisation can ; for instance, after other incidents of a like character, M. Michel quotes from D'Auton's Chronicle, how, in a con- test with the Spaniards in Calabria, in 1503, the banner- bearer, William Turnbull, was found dead with the staff in his arms and the flag gripped in his teeth, with a little cluster of his countrymen round him, killed at their posts, " et si un Ecossais etait mort d'un cote, un Espagnol ou deux Tetaient de 1'autre." The moral drawn from this incident by the old chronicler is, that the expression long proverbial in France, " Fier comme un Ecossais," was because the Scots "aimaient mieux 'mourir pour hon- neur garder, que vivre en honte, reprochez de tache de lascheteV" When the two British kingdoms merged towards each other in the sixteenth century, the native element was gradually thinned out of the Scots Guard. When Scotland became part of an empire which called France the natu- ral enemy, it seemed unreasonable that her sons should expect to retain a sort of supremacy in the French army. But there are no bounds to human unreasonableness when profitable offices are coming and going, and many of our countrymen during the seventeenth century were loud in their wrath and lamentation about the abstraction of their national privileges in France. Some Scotsmen, still in the Guard in the year 1611, had a quarrel with the French captain, De Montespan, and brought their com- plaint before King James. As French soldiers appealing to a foreign monarch, they were very naturally dismissed. Of course they now complained at home still more loudly, and their cause was taken up by some great men. The French behaved in the matter with much courtesy. The men dismissed for a breach of discipline could not be replaced at the instigation of a foreign Court, but the Government would fill their places with other Scotsmen duly recommended. So lately as the year 1642, demands THE SCOTS GUARD. 39 were made on the French Government to renew the ancient League and restore the " privileges " of the Scots in France, including the monopoly of the appointments in the Guard. But though made in the name of King Charles I. by the Scots Privy Council, these demands were, like many of the other transactions of the day, rather made in hostility to the King than in obedience to his commands. Louis XIV. gave a brief and effective answer to them. He said that he would renew the League only on the condition that the Scots should cease to act as the ally of England, either by giving obedience to the King of that country, " or under pretext of religion, without express permission from the King, their master " a pretty accurate diplomatic description of the position of the Covenanting force. 1 Down to the time when all the pomps and vanities of the French Crown were swept away along with its sub- stantial power, the Scots Guard existed as pageant of the Court of France. In that immense conglomerate of all kinds of useful and useless knowledge, the ' Dictionnaire de Trevoux,' it is set forth that "la premiere compagnie des gardes du corps de nos rois " is still called " La Garde Ecossaise," though there was not then (1730) a single Scotsman in it. Still there were preserved among the young Court lackeys, who kept up the part of the sur- vivors of the Hundred Years' War, some of the old formalities. Among these, when the Clerc du Guet challenged the guard who had seen the palace gate closed, " il repond en Ecossois, I am hire c'est a dire, me voila ; " and the lexicographer informs us that, in the mouths of the Frenchmen, totally unacquainted with the barbarous tongue in which the regimental orders had been originally devised, the answer always sounded, " Ai am hire." In some luxurious libraries may be found a gorgeous volume in old morocco, heavily decorated with symbols of royalty, bearing on its engraved title-page that it is 1 See ' Papers relative to the Royal Guard of Scottish Archers in France : ' Maitland Club, 1835. 40 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. " Le Sacre de Louis XV., Roy de France et de Navarre, dans 1'Eglise de Reims, le Dimanche, xxv. Octobre, MDCCXXII." After a poetical inauguration, giving assur- ance of the piety, the justice, the firmness, the devotion to his people, of the new King, and the orthodoxy, loyalty, and continued peace that were to be the lot of France, with many other predictions, wide of the truth that came to pass, there come a series of large pictures, representing the various stages of the coronation, and these are followed by full-dress and full-length portraits of the various high officers who figured on the solemn occasion. Among these we have the Capitain des Gardes Ecossois in full state uniform. This has anything but a military aspect; it is the single-breasted broad-flapped coat of the time, heavily embroidered, a short mantle, and a black cap, with a double white plume. The six guards are also represented in a draped portrait. It is far more picturesque than that of their captain, yet in its white satin, gold embroidery, and fictitious mail, it con- veys much less of the character of the soldier than of the Court attendant, as will be seen by the inventorial description given below. 1 In the original engraving, by the way, the artist has thrown an air of absorbed devoted- ness into the very handsome countenance drawn by him, which is at variance, in some measure, with the tone of the attitude and costume, as pertaining to a mere figure in a state pageant. 1 " Un habit de satin blanc ; par dessus une cotte d'armes en broderie d'or. Sur le corselet, les armes de France, surmontees d'un soleil, avec le devise : le tout brode en cartisanne d'or sur un fond de trait d'argent, formant des mailles ; les manches et basques de la cotte d'armes brodees en or, sur un fond blanc ; un chapeau blanc, garni d'un bouquet de plumes blanches a deux rangs ; la par- tuisannea la main." CHAPTER II. PERSONAL ANECDOTES OF THE SCOTS IMMIGRANTS THE WOLF OF BADENOCH'S SON THE ALBANY AND DARNLEY STEWARTS THE HAMILTONS AND DOUGLASES INVESTMENT OF THE SCOTCH DUKE OF TOURAINE NOTICES OF SCOTSMEN SETTLED IN FRANCE, AND THE FAMILIES FOUNDED BY THEM THE SETTLEMENT OF THE SCOTS COMPARED WITH THAT OF THE NORMANS. THE arrival of the Scots auxiliaries, the battles in which they were engaged, and the formation of the Scots Guard from the remnant, make an episode in history which I have thought it best to keep by itself. There were constant migrations, however, of Scotsmen to France, from the commencement of the Hundred Years' War downwards, and I now propose to give a few character- istics of the men who went thither, of the reception they met with, and of the destinies of their descendants. King Robert III. had a younger brother Alexander, who was made lieutenant of the northern part of the kingdom. His royal birth and breeding were insufficient to control the temptation of using his opportunities to collect a Highland following, and setting them to their natural work, which was mischief. He became, of course, the terror of all the well-disposed within the district he was set to rule over, and they complimented him with the title of "The" Wolf of Badenoch." He set his eye on some lands on the Spey belonging to the Bishop of Moray, and sent a few hundreds of his gallow-glasses to take possession. The bishop had recourse to his own peculiar artillery, and excommunicated the Wolf. One would have thought this mattered little ; but besides being the wolf beyond the Grampians, Alexander Stewart was prince and courtier at Holyrood, where the condi- 42 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. tion of excommunication carried with it many social inconveniences, not to speak of the insolence of the prelate, who dared to cast such a slur on a man of his condition. He therefore, to give the bishop a foretaste of what might follow, sent down a few handy lads to the plains of Moray, where they burnt the choir of the church of Forres and the house of the archdeacon. As this had not the desired effect, he collected a larger force of ruffians, and, descending on the Lowland like an ava- lanche, fell on the episcopal city of Elgin and burned its noble cathedral. This was going rather too far. The Wolf had not only to disgorge, but to propitiate the Church with gifts, and do penance until the Pope set him right by absolution. His ashes repose in the Cathe- dral of Dunkeld, where may be seen his recumbent effigy, with arms folded, in serene peace looking to another world, while, in a Gothic inscription, the forgiv- ing Church records that here lies Alexander Stewart, Lord of Buchan and Badenoch, of good memory. This worthy had a favourite illegitimate son, also called Alexander. He, as was natural, followed his father's footsteps, and collected a troop of bare-legged ruffians, who reived and ravaged far and near. The Lindsays, Ogilvies, and other gentlemen of Angus, resolved to put a stop to this, and collected a body of men-at-arms and Lowland bowmen, a sort of force which held the High- land caterans in utter scorn as a set of rabble to be swept before them. The Wolf cub, however, alighted on the tactic which, in later times, made a Highland force terrible a concentrated rush on the enemy. This the small body of Lowlanders caught on the rugged banks of the Isla, and they were at once swept away, mail-clad horsemen and all, before the horde of savages they had despised. A little incident in this battle is thus described by a bard who might have been present, and probably had it from an eyewitness. Sir David Lyndsay, trying to make head against the torrent as a mounted man-at-arms, had trodden several of the Highlanders down, and had one of them pinned to the earth with his long lance. Thereupon, in the words of old Wyntoun THE WOLF CUB. 43 " That man held fast his own sword Into his nieve, and up thrawing He pressed him, not again standing That he was pressed to the earth ; And with a swake there of his sword, Through the stirrup-leather and the boot Three ply or four, above the foot, He struck the Lyndsay to the bone. That man no stroke gave but that one, For there he died. " i Nestling in a valley close to the mountain-range where the father and son held rather a roving commission than a right either of property or government, stood the castle of Kildrummy. As its ruins still attest, it was not one of those grim, gaunt, starved-looking square towers which the impoverished nobility of Scotland were fain to hide themselves in, but a vast and beautiful Gothic fortress erected in the time of the great war of independence, probably by the English. This desirable residence the youth set his eye on ; so with his Highland host he stormed and took it. It belonged to the widowed Countess of Mar. The country was not so absolutely without any nominal law that territory could be acquired in this way; at all events, it was prudent to have the military title of conquest fortified by some civil formal- ities to prevent future cavilling. The victor, therefore, married the widow, obtaining from her a conveyance of her property to himself and his heirs. Some formalist having probably put him up to the notion that the transaction, as it stood, was still open to question, a second deed bears record how that the hus- band resigned the whole property back to the wife, and in token thereof approached the castle, and humbly placed the key in her hand, telling her to take possession 1 Scott could not but see the value of such an incident in heroic narrative, and accordingly, in the ' Lord of the Isles, ' he brings it in at the death of Colonsay's fierce lord : " Nailed to the earth, the mountaineer Yet wreathed him up against the spear, And swr:jg his broadsword round ; Stirrup, steel boot, and cuish gave way Beneath that blow's tremendous sway." 44 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. of the castle, the furniture therein, and the title-deeds of the domain ; whereupon she gave the whole back to be enjoyed by her husband and the heirs of the marriage. Still again the dread of the red-tapism of the day haunted the prudent marauder, and a scene occurred which must have been exceedingly amusing to all concerned. In presence of the Bishop of Ross and of the feudatories of the domain, assembled in general council in the fields beyond the walls of the castle of Kildrummy, the Count- ess again executed an investiture of her husband in all her estates and properties, especially including those of which she was unjustly deprived, a gift which opened up indefinite fields of enterprise to so active a husband. The deed is so profuse in its attestations of the perfect freedom and absence of all restraint and intimidation wherewith the Countess acted, that one's suspicion would naturally be raised even without a knowledge of the antecedents. Such was the career of one who afterwards made a brilliant figure at the Court of France. His reception there, or rather the position he took up, is recorded in his homely rhymes by the contemporary Wyntoun ; and as M. Michel adopts his account, so may we. Here it is, with the spelling a little modernised, as in the preced- ing passage from the same rather wordy chronicle : " The Earl of Mar passed in France, In his delight and his pleasance, With a noble company Well arrayed and daintily, Knights and squires great gentlemen, Sixty or more full numbered there, Men of council and of virtue, Of his court and retinue. In Paris he held a royal state At the Syngne, knowen the Tynny Plate, 1 All the time that he was there Biding, twelve weeks full and mare, Door and gate both gart he Aye stand open, that men might se (so) Enter all time at their pleasance Til eat or drink, or sing or dance." 1 M. Michel calls it Plat d'Etain. SCOTS MEN-AT-ARMS. 45 The Earl of Mar for he was now firmly established in that dignified position took part with some companions- at-arms of the best blood in Scotland, at the battle of Liege, fought on the i4th of September 1407 : it was one of the contests in which the Duke of Burgundy had to back the Prince-Bishop against the powerful corporation of that almost sovereign city. M. Michel cites an old French chronicler, a good pendant to Wyntoun, who, after Messieurs Guillaume Hay, and Jacques Scringour, and Helis de Guenemont, expands concerning the feats of other heroes, whose names, slightly disguised, will readily be recognised by their countrymen. " Sire Alexandra en son droit nom De Commech, qui ot cuer entier, Ce jour y fut fait chevalier, Et Messire Andrieu Stievart Fu chevalier de belle part. De Hay sire Guillebert Fut ce jour en armes appert, Com bon et hardi combattant. Sire Jehan de Sidrelant Doy bien en honneur mettre en compte* Car il est fiz d'un noble conte. Sire Alexandre d'lervin, Qui le cuer ot humble et benin, En ce jour monstra hardie chiere; Et cil qui porta la baniere Du conte qui est tant prisiez Ce fu sire Jehan de Miniez. " Here are many familiar Scots names, some of them, it is true, a little disguised. Guenemont is Kinninmond, the name of a good old stock sometime decayed, and now, it is believed, unrepresented in Scotland, though it is sup- posed to be alive both in Sweden and France. Sidrelant is Sutherland, and Miniez Menzies, the laird of that terri- tory which bears the queer-sounding name of Pitfoddles. De Commech is puzzling, but M. Michel boldly trans- poses it into Keith. Alexandre d'lervin, who represents the true knight of chivalry a lamb at home, a lion in the field is the same who gets like praise in the rude Scots ballad which details so accurately the great battle of Harlaw: 46 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. " Gude Sir Alexander Irvine, The much-renowned Laird of Drum, Nane in his days was better seen, When they were sembled all and some, To praise him we should not be dumb, For valour, wit, and worthyness, To end his days he there did come, Whose ransome is remeediless. " The same companions-at-arms, indeed, who fought with him in Flanders, followed Mar to victory in the great battle of Harlaw. The Continental campaign had there- fore a great influence on British history. There, doubt- less, the Scots knights obtained that consciousness of the prowess of trained, mail-clad men-at-arms, which prompt- ed them with confidence and success to fight a host many times as large as their own. That critical day brought to an end what our common historians call the Rebellion of Donald of the Isles. The question it really decided was, whether the representative of the Norse race, which had founded an empire in the islands and western Highlands, should continue to be an indepen- dent monarch, ruling Scotland as far as the Forth, and perhaps as far as the English border. Here the roistering leader of ragamuffins, coming home with his foreign experience, became a mighty general and sage statesman ; and like many others who pass from disreputable into creditable and profitable courses, he achieved the suppression of those who, while he was sowing his wild oats, were his companions and tools. 1 Most conspicuous and illustrious among the emigrants to France were those who belonged to the royal race of Stewart : and here let me offer an explanatory protest for 1 It is curious to find the demure Fordun from his quiet cell, in dog Latin gently referring to the indiscretions of this hero's youth, as in contrast with the honoured decorum of his other years, thus In juventute erat multum indomitus et diictor catervanorum that is to say, of caterans or Highland thieves. But afterwards in virum alterum mutatus placenter trans monies quasi totum aquilonem guber- nabat. THE CONSTABLE BUCHAN. 47 spelling the name in this unfashionable manner. It is the old Scots spelling, the other namely, Stuart hav- ing been gradually adopted in deference to the infir- mity of the French language, which is deficient in that sinewy letter a half-breed between vowel and conso- nant which we call W. This innovation stands in the personal nomenclature of our day, a trivial but distinct relic of the influence of French manners and habits over our ancestors. For all their illustrious birth, these Stewarts went forth like the others, wandering unfortunates, with no hold upon the world but that which their heads and hands, and perhaps the lustre of their descent, gave them, and in the end they rooted themselves as landed Lords and Princes. John Stewart, Earl of Buchan, the High Con- stable, whose deeds and fate have been already recorded, was a son of the Regent Albany, and grandson of King Robert II. Alexander Stewart, Duke of Albany, a brother of James III., cuts a rather ugly figure in the history of his own country. He set up as king, calling himself Alex- ander IV., and agreed to do homage and acknowledge the old supremacy of England if Edward IV. would assist him, and make his nominal title a reality. After a rather adventurous life he went over to France. His antece- dents did not in the least prejudice the tolerant heart of Louis XL against him ; on the contrary, he was a man very much after that monarch's own heart. He acquired great lordships in France, and thoroughly assimilated himself to the Continental system. He married Anne de la Tour, daughter of the Count of Auvergne and Bou- logne, of a half-princely family, which became afterwards conspicuous by producing Marshal Turenne, and at a later period the eccentric grenadier, Latour d' Auvergne, who, in homage to republican principles, would not leave the subaltern ranks in Napoleon's army, and became more conspicuous by remaining there than many who escaped from that level to acquire wealth and power. The sister of Anne de la Tour married Lorenzo de Medici, Duke of Urbino. From this connection Albany was the uncle of Catherine de Medici, the renowned 48 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. Queen of France, and, in fact, was that nearest relation, who, as folks used to say in this country, "gave her away " to Henry II. On this occasion he got a cardinal's hat for Philip de la Chambre, his mother's son by a second marriage. He lived thoroughly in the midst of the Continental royalties of the day, and had the sort of repute among them that may be acquired by a man of great influence and connection, whose capacity has never been tried by any piece of critical business a repute that comes to persons in a certain position by a sort of process of gravitation. Brave he seems to have been, like all his race, and he sometimes held even important commands. He accompanied his friend, Francis I., in his unfortunate raid into Italy in 1525, and was fortunately and honour- ably clear of that bad business, the battle of Pavia, by being then in command of a detachment sent against Naples. His son, a thorough Frenchman, became after- wards regent of Scotland ; but though he acted in the way of legitimate business, he was not, as we shall find, a much better friend to his country than his father had been. Well scolded as they have been through all legitimate history, it has been the fortune of M. Michel to show that to the Albanys Scotland owes a boon which would have gone far to retrieve their character a century ago the use of and taste for French wines. This specialty as a national taste is not even yet dead ; for every Englishman who gets at good tables in Scotland, remarks on the pref- erence for the French wines over those of Spain and Por- tugal, although, until the other day, the duties, which in old Scotland had been greatly in their favour, were rather against the French. The following details about the commerce of the Scots in France seem interesting. " During his residence in France, the Duke of Albany occupied himself actively, as it would appear, in favour of the Scotch merchants trading in our country, all the more that they were undoubtedly commissioned by the nobility. His efforts were crowned with success; and Francis I. gave at Amboise, in the month of May 1518, an order to free these foreigners from the dues to which foreign merchandise was subjected at Dieppe, the usual WINE TRADE. 49 place of their disembarkation ; which, however, did not prevent fresh demands on the part of Scotland some years after. "What commodities could the Scotch bring to our country ? " Probably the same which they sent to Flanders, and of which we have a list in the great book of Andrew Halyburton, one of the first merchants of his time, who filled the high office of Conservator of the Privileges of the Scottish Nation in the Low Countries or, as we should now say, Scottish Consul at Middleburg. There was, in the first place, salmon, which came even to the inland towns, such as Reims, where a municipal order of 1380 regulated the sale of it; then herrings, cod, and other fish, for the common people ; lastly, wool, leather, and skins. "Afterwards this catalogue increased so much that a rhymer of the seventeenth century could say to a courtier ' Tury, vous quittez done la cour, Pour vous jeter dans le negoce : Ce n'est plus celui de 1' amour, Mais celui d'Espagne ou d'Escosse.' Spain and Scotland, it seems, were the countries in which commerce was most lucrative, as there also seems reason to believe that the Spaniards and the Scotch were the foreigners best known in France, when we find another poet make an actor say 'Je passe quand je veux, bien que je sois Fran9ais, Tantot pour Espagnol, tantot pour Escossois. ' " In exchange for the goods which they brought us, the Scotch received from us the products of a more advanced civilisation, not only by regular commerce, but by dip- lomacy, the agents of which, as it seems, had the privi- lege of bringing in goods free of tax. On the 8th May 1586, Henry III. wrote to M. de Chateauneuf, his am- bassador at the Court of Elizabeth : ' I beg of you also to mention to her the depredation which some of her sub- jects have committed near Dieppe on a Scotch vessel, D 50 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. which was returning to Scotland, in which there were, to the value of sixteen hundred crowns, wines, silken cloths, sugar, spices, and other things which the said Sire Esneval had caused to be purchased, and was having carried for his use into Scotland, by one of his people named Captain James. They had the cruelty to remove the sails of the said vessel, and to leave it and also another Scotch vessel at the mercy of the wind and sea ; but God helped them so much that they were thrown upon the coast by the reflux of the tide there, where they were known and suc- coured.' " The place occupied by wines in this enumeration of goods destined for Scotland shows the importance of the consumption of them by our allies in the sixteenth cen- tury. Even in the thirteenth, Henri d'Andeli describes the Scotch and some other Northern nations as drinking abundantly of the wines of La Rochelle ; and in the following century Froissart shows us their ships coming into the port of Bordeaux to load with wine, at the risk of being captured in going out of the river, as happened under rather singular circumstances related by Cleirac, who supposes the master of a Scotch vessel, laden with wine for Calais, in connivance with Turkish pirates. A letter of James IV. to the first president of the parliament of Bordeaux recommending to him the affair of his sub- ject George Wallace, master of the ship Volant, seized for theft imputed to Robert Gardiner and Duncan Campbell tells us that in 1518 the Scotch continued to come in quest of our wines, and did not always behave themselves in an exemplary manner. "We know by President de Thou, that in his time, towards the end of the sixteenth century, Scotch wine- merchants came annually to Bordeaux; and we have a decree of the Council of State of the $d June 1604, granting indemnification of 18,000 livres to John Anderson and John Williamson, Scotch merchants, from whom they had confiscated two hundred tuns of wine at Havre." * The Darnley branch of the Stewarts had a destiny in 1 Michel, i. 357'36i. THE DARNLEY STEWARTS. 51 France which belongs to European history. Sir John Stewart of Darnley was one of Buchan's heroes, and fought at Baugd and Crevant, where he was wounded and taken. He was exchanged for the Earl of Suffolk's brother, Lord Pole. He was rewarded with the lands and lordships of Aubigny, Concressault, and Evereux, with the privilege of quartering the arms of France on his achievement. In 1427 he visited his own poor country in great state, with no less a function than that of ambassador from the Court of France. His mission was to negotiate a marriage between Louis the Dauphin and Margaret of Scotland. A year afterwards he and his brother were both killed in battle before Orleans, and were laid together in the cathedral of that memorable city. John Stewart's representatives merged all their other titles in that of Lennox, which his marriage brought to the family. The fifth in descent from him, Matthew Earl of Lennox, who succeeded to the title in 1526, served under the French banner in the Italian wars, and though he hardly reached historic fame, is recorded in the books of genealogy as that respectable personage " a distinguished officer." Coming to Scotland in all his foreign finery, he made love to Mary of Guise, the widow of James V., a pursuit in which, by the oddest of all coincidents, he was the rival of the father of that Bothwell who settled all questions of small family differences by blowing his son into the air. This Lennox achieved, as every one knows, a more fruitful alliance with royalty through a daughter of Margaret, the sister of Henry VIII. Returning to Sir Alexander Stewart, we find that his second son, John, founded a great house in France. The titles of John's son and representative, Bernard, were, " Viceroy of Naples, Constable of Sicily and Jerusalem, Duke of Terra Nova, Marquis of Girace and Squillazo, Count of Beaumont, D'Arcy, and Venassac, Lord of Aubigny, and Governor of Melun." 1 He commanded the army of Charles VIII. which invaded Naples, and 1 Douglas's 'Peerage,' ii. 93. 52 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. gained the victory of Seminara, an achievement which Sismondi thus describes : " D'Aubigny, who commanded in Calabria, resolved to arrest the progress which King Ferdinand was making in his territories, seconded by Gonzalvo of Cordova ; and although he could not collect more than 400 mounted men-at-arms, twice the number of light cavalry, and a small body of Swiss infantry, he crossed the river between Terra Nova and Seminara before the enemy, and attacked them on the opposite bank, although their number was at least three times as great as his. The Calabrians, who had forced Ferdinand and Gonzalvo to accept the battle, did not wait for the first attack, but fled as soon as they saw the French advance. Ferdinand would have been taken had not John of Altavilla given him his horse, at the sacrifice of his own life : he was killed shortly after. Gonzalvo, Hugh of Cordova, Emmanuel Benavides, Peter de la Paz, Spanish captains who all, at a later period, became famous at the expense of the French, would have been taken prisoners the following night in Seminara, if D'Aubigny, who was enfeebled by the Calabrian fevers, and sick all the time during which he was fighting, had been able to attack that town immediately. The gates were opened to him the next day." * Seven years later he was overpowered by numbers, and had to capitulate on the same spot; so that there is occasional confusion in history about the battle of Semin- ara, which is sometimes spoken of as a victory by, and sometimes as a defeat of, the French. Between these two conflicts there were many gallant feats of which he was the hero ; and he was as renowned for gentleness as for bravery. He was the companion of Bayard, and his rival in fame as a chivalrous soldier. 2 He died at Cor- storphine, near Edinburgh. One of the recumbent stone figures in the picturesque little Gothic church of that village is reputed by tradition to represent the great Lord 1 Sismondi, ' Hist, des Frar^ois, ' ch. xxvi. f " Le Sire d'Aubigny dont la loyaute etoit celebree dans tout le royaume de Naples." Sismondi, ch. xxix. DUCHY OF TOURAINE GIVEN TO DOUGLAS. 53 of Aubigny, Marischal of France ; but heraldry does not confirm this. Next to the royal family of Scotland in France were the houses of Hamilton and of Douglas, who at times almost rivalled them at home. The French dukedom of Chatel- herault is a name almost as familiar in history as the home title of the Hamiltons. By the side of the Scottish Constable of France rode a countryman scarcely less powerful the lord of the vast province of Touraine, which had been conferred on the gallant Douglas. It may interest some people to read an official contempor- ary account of the pomps and ceremonies, as also of the state of public feeling, which accompanied the investiture of the territory in its new lord. It is clear from this document that the people of Touraine took with signal equanimity the appointment of a foreigner from a distant land to rule over them. " Four days after the date of the letters -patent, the news of the change which they celebrated reached Tours. Several ecclesiastics, burghers, and inhabitants assembled in alarm in the presence of Jehan Simon, lieutenant of the Bailli of Touraine, William d'Avaugour, and charged Jehan Sain tier, one of their representatives, and Jehan Gamier, King's Sergeant, to go to Bourges, to William de Luce, Bishop of Maillezais, and to the Bailli, to learn whether the King intended to give and had actually given the Duchy of Touraine to the Earl of Douglas, of the country of Scotland ; and, if it was true, to beg of them to advise the said churchmen, burgesses, and inhabitants, what course they ought to pursue, and what was to be done in the circumstances, for the honour and advantage of this town of Tours and country of Touraine. " The which Jehan Saintier and Gamier brought back for answer, that the said nobles above mentioned said to them that it was true that the King has given the said Duchy of Touraine to the said Earl of Douglas, and that they should not be at all alarmed at it, and that the people of the said Tours and country of Touraine will be very gently and peaceably governed; and that before the said Earl of Douglas shall have, or shall go to take possession 54 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. of, the said Duchy, the King will send letters to the said churchmen, burgesses, and inhabitants, and each of his officers commissioned to make over to him the said pos- session, and that my Lord Chancellor and the said Bailli would in a short time be in the said town, the which would tell them at greater length what they had to do in the circumstances, and the causes by which the King had been moved to give him the said Duchy ; and also the said Saintier and Gamier brought the copy of the letter of gift of the said Duchy to the said Earl. "As soon as they knew at Tours that the King had given the Earl of Douglas the Duchy of Touraine, and that the new Duke was preparing to set out to take pos- session of it, they assembled at the Hotel de Ville to consider whether they would go to meet this stranger, and whether they would make him the customary pres- ents, which consisted of six pipes, that is twelve barrels, of wine, six measures of oats, fifty sheep, four fat oxen, and a hundred pounds of wax in torches. " They deputed two churchmen and four of the most considerable citizens to go to Loches to compliment the Duke in name of the town, ad they formed a company of mounted burghers to go to meet him. Having found him at a certain distance from the town, it accom- panied him till his arrival at Tours, into which he made his entry on the 7th of May, by the gate of Notre Dame la Riche. There he was received by the four represen- tatives of the town, and by all the burgesses, in arms. Martin d'Argouges, principal representative, spoke on presenting him the keys, and begged of him to maintain the inhabitants in their privileges, franchises, and liber- ties. The Duke promised, and the representatives took note of his consent, by three notaries, whom they had brought for the purpose. The Duke having then taken the keys, restored them immediately to the first represen- tative. Then he entered the town, where he was received by the people with acclamation. The streets were hung with tapestry and strewed with flowers. He went straight to the cathedral, at the great door of which he found the archbishop and all the canons in canonicals. The dean SCOTS FAMILIES IN FRANCE. 55 presented to him a surplice, an amice, and a breviary. The Duke, having taken the oaths at his hands, was received as a canon, and installed in the choir in pres- ence of Louis of Bourbon, Count of Vendome, grand chamberlain of France ; of John of Bourbon, his brother, Prince of Carency; of Francis of Grigneux; and of several other noblemen. Next day he went to the church of St Martin, where he was similarly received as honorary canon. After these ceremonies he established his cousin, Adam Douglas, governor of the town and castle of Tours, according to his letters of the 27th May. The inhabitants, after deliberation by their representa- tives, made a present to the new governor of two pipes of wine and a measure of oats." l So ends the history of the public inauguration of Douglas in his Duchy of Touraine, the extent of which one may see by looking at any old map of France in Provinces. Another ceremony, however, awaited him ere long. He paid for his honours with his gallant blood. He and the Constable Buchan were laid down together in one grave in the chancel of the cathedral church of Tours, the capital of his domain. Passing from the great houses which were royal, or nearly so, the researches of M. Michel have brought out a vast number of Scotsmen of the more obscure families, whose condition was materially improved, to say the least of it, by migration to La Belle France. Conspicuous for his good fortune among those who had reason to lament the kindly King Charles VII., was Nicholas Chambers, e'cuyer d'ecurie du roi, who, in 1444, obtained the seig- neury of Guerche, in Touraine, the district of the Douglases. Then follow certain Coninglants, Coigans, Coningans, Cogingands, and Conyghans, clustered to- gether as variations on Cunningham ; to these are set down certain gallant achievements, escapes, and fatalities, but nothing very specific for the genealogist, until one of them is run to earth in acquiring the lands of Arcenay, in 1 Extrait des Deliberations Municipals de la Ville de Tours- Michel, i. 139. 56 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. Burgundy, by union with the heiress, Martha of Louvois. After this the family is traced through many distinguished members to the first Revolution, when it disappears ; but it reappeared, it seems, in 1814, and is supposed still to exist. In tracing the alliances of the Lords of Arcenay, another Scots family of like origin turns up in the marriage of one of them to Marguerite de Humes, daughter of Jean de Humes, Seigneur de Cherisy. This Jean's mother was the daughter of a Guillaume Stuart, supposed to be of Scots origin ; and his grandmother, before her marriage to his grandfather Humes, had been the widow of a George de Ramsay, " probablement Ecossais lui-meme," as M. Michel says. Next come the Quinemonts or Kinninmonds, also established in Burgundy and Touraine. Their estate in Touraine alone may stand as a sample of the lists, long to tediousness, of the domains attached to the names of Scots families by the French heralds. They were Seigneurs "de Saint-Senoch, de la Roche-Aymer, de Varennes, des Cantelleries, de Bauge, de la Guenerie, de la Houssiere, de Vauguerin, de Paviers," &c. Next in order comes La Famille Gohory. To them L'Hermite-Souliers dedicates a chapter of his * History of the Nobility of Touraine,' wherein he derives them from the Gori of Florence ; but M. Michel triumphantly restores them to their true distinction as Scots Gorrys or Gowries. 1 Among the noble houses of Touraine, follows that of Helye Preston de la Roche Preston, married to Dame Eleanor Desquartes, eminent in its 1 Perhaps Goreeus may be a variation of the same name, but this is merely a guess. Johannes Gorseus, a celebrated physician in Paris, left a posthumous work, published at Frankfort in 1578, called ' Definitionum Medicarum Libri xxiiii.' It is in the form of a dictionary, the heads under which each matter is treated having the peculiarity of being in Greek. It professes to deal with all knowledge connected with medicine, but medicine at that time was discursive over all nature ; and, in fact, the book which is a bulky folio may be considered one of the earliest scientific cyclopaedias. SCOTS FAMILIES IN FRANCE. $? own province from its nobility, and illustrious as the stock of the great Descartes. It is questioned whether the husband was a son of Edward Preston, who took to wife Pregente d'Erian, or of Laurent Preston, married to another daughter of the same house. These Erians seem to have had a decided partiality for the bonny Scots, since the widow of Edward Preston married the Seigneur of Ponceau and La Menegauderie, who, having been an archer of the Scots Guard under the name of De Glais, is with reasonable probability supposed to have been a Douglas from Scotland ; while another daughter is allied to the Seigneur de la Guenaudiere, named Maurigon, supposed to be a form of Morrison. There are still among other branches of the D'Erian race "plusieurs alliances avec des gentilshommes Ecossais de la garde du roi." One falls to Guillaume Dromont or Drummond, another to Guillaume le Vincton the nearest approach which French spelling and pronunciation can make to Swinton, though one might think it more akin to Living- ston. Another is destined to Henri de Crafort or Crau- furd, Sieur de Longchamp et de la Voyerie. Passing from the husbands of the D'Erians, the next Scot endowed by marriage is Andre* Gray, a name that speaks for itself. There are two noble archers of the Guard called Bourtic probably they were Bourties, the difference being a clerical error rather than a corruption ; and these are followed by a group of distinguished Livingstons converted into Levistons. Passing into Champagne, we have the coats armorial and some genealogical particulars of the houses of Berey, D'Handresson, Locart, Tournebulle, and Montcrif the origin of these is obvious. The last was probably an ancestor of that Moncriif who shines so brilliantly among the wits of the Grimm and Diderot school one of the forty immortals of the Academy, and a popular dramatist. The next name does not so obviously belong to us Val- Dampierre and one can only take M. Michel's word for it. It may perhaps be resolved into its familiar original by a process such as that applied to its owner's neighbour as a great territorial lord in the land of vineyards namely, 58 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. the Sieur Devillengon. When we go back a step to Vullengon, and then to Villamson, something not un- familiar dawns upon us, and at last we are landed in the homely surname of Williamson very respectable in many instances, but distinguished among ourselves by no greater celebrity than that of poor Peter Williamson, who was kidnapped and sold as a slave in the plantations, whence he escaped to tell his adventures to the world. It is quite delightful to see how this ordinary plant flourishes and blooms in Champagne. According to tra- ditions of the family, collected by La Chenaye-Desbois, Thomas Williamson, second of the name, archer of the Guard in the reign of Charles VIII., was allied to the royal house of Stewart. This may be true, but it was a current mot among the French of old that every Scotsman was cousin to the king. Whatever they may have been, however, the Williamsons or D'Oillengons, with many ter- ritorial branches, clustered round "les terres de Saint- German-Langot, de Lonlai-le-Tesson, et de la Nocherie." They preserved their highly characteristic native motto, "Venture and win," which had, no doubt, been their guiding principle from generation to generation. Their blazon, too, is ambitious, and strange to behold: a double-headed eagle, like the Austrian, grasping in its claws something like a small beer -barrel ; in scientific language a spread eagle argent, membered and beaked, poised on a casquet of the same, hooped argent It would be easy to cull similar particulars about the house of Maxuel; Herisson or Henryson, metamorphosing itself into D' Arson ; Doddes or Dods ; Estud from Stud, a name now scarcely known among us; the De Lisles, viscounts of Fussy, who are identified with our northern Leslies; Vaucoys, which is identified with Vauxe or Vans ; Lawson, which turns itself into De Lauzun ; D'Espences or Spences, who further decorate their simple native surnames with the territorial titles, De Nettancourt, de Bettancourt, de Vroil and de Villiers-le-Sec, de Launoy-Renault, de Pomblain, de Ville Franche, de St Sever, and many others. Surely the Spences, left behind in cloudy, sterile Scotland, ploughing sour moorlands, or SCOTS FAMILIES IN FRANCE. 59 drawing meagre profits from the retail counter behind the half-door of the burgh town, would have found it hard to recognise their foreign cousins fluttering thus among the brilliant noblesse of sunny France. The changes, indeed, which our harsh, angular sur- names undergo to suit them to the lazy liquid flow of the French utterance, are such as to give tough and tantalising work to the genealogical investigator ; and it is difficult to appreciate the industry which M. Michel has bestowed in the excavation of separate families and names from the great mass of French genealogical history. We all know the lubricity of the French language at this day in the matter of names, and how difficult it is to recognise the syllables of one's own name even where it is read off from one's own visiting-card, if the reader be a Frenchman. Such a name as Halliday is easily reclaimable, even though its owner may flame in the territorial patronymic of Vicomte de Pontaudemer. Folcart and Le Clerk are resolvable into Flockhart and Clerk. In deriving D'Ang- lars from Inglis, however, as others have done, M. Michel acknowledges that the circuit is considerable, if not im- practicable : " La distance nous parait trop grande pour qu'un rapprochement soit possible." The name of Wil- liam Stuyers, too, puts him at defiance, although in an old writ he is mentioned as an officer of the Guard, and designed a "natif du royaume d'Escosse." Sinson is, without much stretching, traced to Simpson. The name Blair appears in its native simplicity, only attaching itself to the titles Fayolles and L'Estrange, in preference to the territorial titles of Pittendriech or Balthayock enjoyed by the most eminent members of the house in Scotland. Wauchop transposes itself into Vaucop and Vulcob. Per- haps, however, the respectable but not dignified name of Monypenny owes the greatest obligation to change of climate. Even in its own original shape, when trans- ferred to a country where it does not signify a large store of copper coinage, it floats down the mellifluous flood of the noblesse quite naturally in company with the territo- rial titles of Varennes and Concressant ; but when altered into Menypeny, it might return home, as indeed it did, 6O THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. in the possession of a French ambassador, without risk of detection. The change is but slight, and shows how much may be accomplished by the mere alteration of a letter in removing vulgar and sordid associations. Another remarkable type of the Scots emigrant families is that of Blackwood. It suffers little more by transfer- ence than the necessary remedy for the want of the w, in which it partakes with the royal house of Stewart. The French Blackwoods were of the later Scots emigrants fleeing from the Reformation, and their rewards in the country of their adoption were rather from offices than from lands. It would be difficult to find the distinction between the territorial aristocracy and the noblesse of the Robe better exemplified than in comparing the fortunes of the Blackwoods with those of the other families just spoken of. Adam Blackwood, the head of the house, held a judicial office which gave him the title of Conseiller au siege de Poitiers. His grandfather fell at Flodden. His father had been killed in the wars of Henry VIII., probably at Pinkie, when he was ten years old, and his mother died soon after, a widow broken hearted. The boy, tended by relations whose religion gave them more influence in other countries than at home, was sent early abroad. He became a thorough Frenchman, studying at Paris, and spending his days at Poitiers. He was a champion of the old Church and the divine right of kings, and wrote with the controversial vehemence of the age against the opinions promulgated by Buchanan in his ' De Jure Regni apud Scotos.' But that for which he chiefly claims remembrance is his ' Martyre de la Royne d'Escosse, Douairiere de France,' &c., with an account of the "mensonges, calomnies, et faulses accusations dressees centre ceste tresvertueuse, trescatholique et tresillustre princesse." It is most easily to be found in the reprint of tracts on Queen Mary, by Jebb. Blackwood hit the key-note of that kind of chivalrous rejection of sublunary testimony, and deification of the accused, which have characterised the subsequent vindicators of Queen Mary's innocence ; and there is in his resolute singleness of pur- pose, and energy of championship, the charm which, SCOTS FAMILIES IN FRANCE. 6 1 when one can forget the facts, pervades the writings of this class. Blackwood married Catherine Courtinier, daughter of the Procureur du Roi of Poitiers. She bore to him four sons and seven daughters a progeny so ab- normal in France, that it induces M. Michel to express admiration at his continuing the pursuit of letters, " malgre' ses devoirs de magistral, d'e'poux, et de pere." He pub- lished a collection of pious meditations in prose and verse, of which M. Michel tells us that, paying a visit to London, where he was presented at Court, King James showed him a copy of his ' Meditations ' in the royal library. One of Blackwood's sons became a judge at Poitiers. His son-in-law, George Crichton, was professor of Greek "au colle'ge de France." His brother Henry taught philosophy in the University of Paris ; another brother, George, "fit un chemin assez brillant dans 1'eglise de France." This was a method of enrichment which could not give a territorial hold to a family ; and whether it was from a distaste towards acquisitions which could not be made hereditary, or to difficulties in the way of a foreigner rising in the Church, it is observable that the ecclesiastical is the department in which the Scots took the least portion of the good things going in France. Yet some of them drew considerable temporal prizes in the profession which deals with our eternal destiny. A certain priest named John Kirkmichael, or Carmichael, seems to have had an eventful history, of which but the outline remains. As he is said to have escaped from the carnage of Verneuil, it is to be presumed that he fought there, and was not in orders. But he afterwards became Bishop of Orleans, and is known in French ecclesiastical history as Jean de St Michel. It is a question whether it is he who estab- lished in his cathedral church the messe bcossaise for his countrymen slain at Verneuil. The great Cardinal Beaton, Bishop of Mirepaux, was an ecclesiastical prince in France, whence great portion of his lustre was reflected on his own poor country. His nephew James, a far worthier man, had a different career, spending his old age in peace among his French endowments, instead of coming home 62 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. to fall in the wild contests of his native land. He was employed as Queen Mary's ambassador in France, and continued ever faithful to her cause. He saw, as the shadow of the change of rule and religion in his own country, a like change come over the fortunes of the Scot in France. His countrymen were now no longer adven- turers seeking the region best fitted for pushing their for- tunes, but poor refugees seeking bread or a place of hiding and refuge. Yet a gleam of patriotic feeling came over the old man when he heard from his retirement that the son of his old mistress heretic though he was had succeeded to the broad empire of Britain ; and he caused fire on the occasion certain feux de joie at St Jean de Lateran. Several of the Kennedys, predominant among the hard-fighting clans near the Border, obtained distinctions in France, where the sharp contour of their name was smoothened into Cenedy. Thomas de Houston is pleased to accept from Louis XI. the seigneury of Torcy in Brie, in place of the ch&tellenie of Gournay, which he resigns. Robert Pittilloch, a Dundee man, seems to have first entered the service in the humblest rank, and to have worked his way up to be captain of the Guard, and to enjoy the nickname of Petit Roi de Gascogne, along with a more substantial reward in the lordships of Sauveterre. One could go on at great length with such an enumera- tion, but it is apt to be tiresome. This is not intended as a work of reference or a compendium of useful know- ledge, and I must refer the reader who, either for histori- cal or genealogical purposes, wishes to find all that is known about the settlements of the Scots families in France, to go to M. Michel's book. The names and titles thus casually brought together, will serve to show how thoroughly reviving France was impregnated with good Scots blood. The thorough French aristocratic ton characterising the numerous ter- ritorial titles enjoyed by the adventurers, may strike one who meets the whole affair for the first time as mightily resembling the flimsy titles by which men of pretension SCOTS FAMILIES IN FRANCE. 63 beyond their caste try to pass themselves off for some- bodies. But everything about these Scots was real and substantial, in as far as the fortunes they achieved were the fruit of their courage and counsel, their energy and learning. The terrible slaughter among the French aris- tocracy in the English battles made vacancies which came aptly to hand for the benefit of the enterprising strangers, and of course they could not do otherwise than adopt the custom of the country, with its complex system of territorial titles, in which men's proper names got swamped and buried, in so far that half-a-dozen Frenchmen, all brothers born of the same father and mother, will be commemorated under names totally distinct. It was during the Hundred Years' War that this colony, as it might almost be termed, of Scots settled in France. The affair bears a striking resemblance to the influx of Northmen, or Normans, five hundred years earlier, with this grand distinction, that these came as enemies and depredators, seizing upon their prey, while the Scots came as friends and champions, to be thankfully re- warded. The great similarity of the two migrations is in the readiness with which both sets of men settled down, assimilating themselves with the people. The assimilation, however, was not that of slave or follower in the land of adoption not even that of equal, but partook of leadership and guidance. Both were received as a sort of aristocracy by race and caste ; and hence it came to be a common practice for those who were at a loss for a pedigree to find their way to some adventurous Scot, and stop there, just as both in France and England it was sufficient to say that one's ancestors came in with the Normans. Colbert, who has left his mark on history as the most powerful of financiers, when he became great, got the genealogists to trace his family back to the Scots, as many a man in England, on rising to distinction, has spanned over intervening obscurities and attached his pedigree to a follower of the Norman. The inscription, 64 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. indeed, on his Scottish ancestor's tomb will be found in Moreri " En Escosse j'eus le berceau, Et Rheims m'a donne le tombeau." Moliere professed Scots descent, to cover, as the in- vidious maintained, the vulgarity of the sound of his paternal name of Poquelin. A mystery worth clearing up surrounds a suggestion sometimes made about the great Sully, that he professed relationship with the Beatons of Scotland to bring him rank. What makes such hints appear rather invidious is, that he claimed for his own family of Bethune a lustre which could get no aid from Scotland. He arrogated descent for it from the house of Austria, and specifically warned the public against the supposition that he meant the existing im- perial house of Hapsburg, whose ancestors were but private gentlemen a century or two ago his ancestors were of the old reigning house. There seems, however, to have been some hitch in his pedigree ; for, in the notes to the common editions of his memoirs, allusion is made to a process "unjustly" disputing his right to bear the name of Bethune, in which a writer on his side mentions his connection with the Beatons of Scotland ; l and M. Michel cites from a standard genealogical and heraldic authority the dictum that the Bethunes were of Scottish origin. 2 So little, by the way, did Sully know 1 Memoirs, book vi. 2 "Bethun, originaire d'Ecosse, mais etabli en France: ecartele, au I et 4 d'argent, a la fasce de gueules, accompagnee de trois macles de meme ; au 2 et 3 d'or, au chevron de sable, charge en chef d'une hure de sanglier d'argent. " From Saint Allais, ' Armorial General des Families Nobles de France' (Michel, ii. 136). To the accom- plished herald there will be much suggestive both in the identities and the marks of difference between this blazon and that of the head of the Scots family of Beaton : " Quarterly, I and 4 azure, a fesse between three mascles or ; 2 and 3 argent, on a chevron sable an otter's head erased of the first." Nisbet's 'Heraldry,' i. 210. The mascle, by the way, is supposed to be a peculiarly French symbol, being taken from a kind of flint found in Bretagne. Nisbet remarks that it had been sometimes mistaken for the lozenge. SCOTS FAMILIES IN FRANCE. 65 of the geographical relations of the archbishop, that he speaks of his diocese of Glasgow as a place in Ireland. To return to the comparison with the Normans. Sir Francis Palgrave set all his learning to work with sedu- lous diligence to find out some of the antecedents, in their own northern land, of the illustrious houses of Normandy and England, but without success ; all was utter darkness, as if one had passed from the unsetting sun into the arctic winter. The failure was more in- structive than many a success. It showed emphatically how those brilliant adventurers, the Frenchest of the French, had cast their chrysalis when they spread their wings in the new land of their adoption. And some- what similar it seems to have been with our Scots, who at once take their place with all proper national charac- teristics in the fastidious aristocracy of the most polished people in the world, preserving no traces of the influence of their native bogs and heaths and hard upbringing, and equally hard uncouth phraseology. On one point, however, the Scots must have differed from their Scandinavian prototypes they must have owned to pedigrees, whether fairly obtained or not. The specialty of the Northmen, on the other hand, at the com- mencement of their career, appears to have been to abjure pedigree with all its vanities, and start as a new race in competition with the old worn-out aristocratic Roman world. The old world professed to despise the rough barbarians of the new; but these gave scorn for scorn, and stood absolutely on their strength, their daring, and their marvellous capacity to govern men. It is among the most singular of social and historical caprices, that the highest source to which, in common estimation, a family can be traced, is that which is sure to come to a stop at no very distant date. Of families not Norman it may be difficult to trace any pedigree beyond the era of the Norman migrations; but of all Norman houses we know that the pedigree stops there absolutely and on principle. The illimitable superiority assumed over the rugged adventurers by the great families of the old world seems not to have rested so much on the specific pedigree 66 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. of each, as on the fact that they were of the old world that their roots were in the Roman empire that they belonged to civilisation. But so utterly had the historical conditions here referred to been inverted in popular opin- ion, that it was usual to speak of the house of Hanover as in some way inferior to the Stewarts, who, in reality, were mere mushrooms beside the descendants of the Guelphs. It would be too heavy a responsibility for the most patriotic among us to guarantee the unexceptionable re- spectability and good conduct of all those countrymen of ours who built up their fortunes under the auspices of our munificent ally. It would be especially perilous to guar- antee that they all held that social position at home which they asserted and maintained abroad. All the world knows how difficult it is to adjust the equivalents of rank between nations, and to transfer any person from one social hierarchy into his exact place in another. There are specialties social, hereditary, and official, to be dealt with, some of them having nothing equivalent in the other hierarchy, some with the same name, but a totally dif- ferent meaning, others fictitious or casual in the one, while they have a fixed, distinctive, even legal meaning in the other. To interpret, but far oftener to confuse, these difficult and distracting elements of identification, there are the variations in etiquette, in domestic usage, in cos- tume, in physical condition and appearance, which would all teach towards a certain conclusion were men omnis- cient and infallible, but lead rather to distraction and blunder in the present state of our faculties. It was one of Hajji Baba's sage observations, that in England the great personages were stuck on the backs of the carriages, while their slaves or followers were shut inside to prevent their escape. How many people, supposing that, in a solemn, bearded, turbaned, and robed Oriental, they have had the honour of an interview with some one of princely rank, have been disgusted with the discovery that they have been doing the honours of society to a barber or a cook ! There are some Eastern titles of mysterious grandeur which are yet far from impressing the auditor with any sense of dignity in their mere sound as, for instance, SCOTS FAMILIES IN FRANCE. 6? Baboo, Fudky, Maulvee, and the like. There is the great Sakibobo, too, of tropical Africa ; how would his title sound at a presentation ? and how can we translate it into English? To come to Europe, what notion of feudal greatness do we imbibe by hearing of the Captal of Buch, the Vidam of Amiens, the Ban of Croatia, and the Stavost of Olxstern? To come nearer home still, what can Garter or Lyon make of the Captain of Clanranald, the Knight of Kerry, The O'Grady, and The O'Donoghue? Is it not on record that a great Highland potentate, hav- ing in Paris presented a card bearing that he was Le Chef de Clandonochie, was put in communication with the chief of the culinary department of the hotel where he visited ? Even some of the best established and most respectable titles have difficulty in franking themselves through all parts of the country. Has not an Archbishop of York been suspected of imposture on presenting his cheque on a Scotch bank with the signature of Eborac ? and have not his countrymen had their revenge on the Scots Judges and their wives, when Mrs Home travelled in charge of Lord Kames, and Lord Auchinleck retired with Mrs Boswell? We may see, in the totally different uses of the same term, how subtle a thing titles are. The Sheriff of Mecca, the Sheriff of London, and the Sheriff of Lanarkshire, are three totally different sorts of personage, and would be troubled how to act if they were to change places with each other for a while. It is said to depend on niceties in its use whether the Persian Mirza expresses a Prince or a mere Mister. But, after all, where can we go for a greater social puzzle within the compass of three letters than in our own Sir, which is at once the distinctive form of addressing royalty, the exclusive title of knight- ship, the common term which every man gives another in distant polite communication, and an especial form of ex- pressing haughty contempt, when communications are not intended to be polite ? There being thus, in fact, in titles of all sorts, consider- able room to come and go upon, it is probable that the Scots adventurers made* the best of the very considerable number of rather empty titles scattered over their barren 68 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. acres. An instance of their assumption has been recorded as a flagrancy. A certain Monteith of obscure origin having got access to Richelieu, the Cardinal asked him which family of Monteiths he belonged to. As the story goes, remembering that his father was a fisherman on the Forth, he said he was " Monteith de Salmonnet ; " and the anecdote is verified by the existence of a solid folio volume, first printed in French and afterwards translated into English, being a history of the civil wars of Britain in the seventeenth century, by Robert Monteith de Salmonet a title as emphatic and distinct as that of the proudest De Chateau Rouge or De la Tremouille. But even this audacious case is not entirely beyond vindication. The right to a cast of a net was a feudal privilege or servitude inheritable by the head of the family, like any seignorial right ; and, in a country where people spoke of the suc- cession to the hereditary gardenership of the lordship of Monteith, it was not necessarily an act of flagrant im- position to make something dignified out of the piscatory privilege. The history of almost every man's rise in the world con- sists of a succession of graspings and holdings of posi- tions taken up timidly and uncertainly, and made by degrees secure and durable. In the development of this tendency, it will be the policy of the immigrant to find, for any social title of a dubious or fugitive character which he may enjoy in his own country, some seeming equivalent, but of fixed character and established value, in the land of his adoption. Scotland, with its mixed and indefinite nomenclature of ranks, would thus afford good opportunities for the ingenuous youth transferring himself from his dubious home-rank into something more specific in the symmetrical and scientifically adjusted Court precedency of France. The practice of the Lairds and Goodmen of presenting themselves by the territorial names of their estates, with or without their family pat- ronymics, gave an opportunity for rendering the posses- sion something equivalent to the French De and the German Von. The families that had lost their estates adhered to the old title with the mournful pride of de- SCOTS FAMILIES IN FRANCE. 69 posed monarchs. If these had often the sympathy of their peculiar world with them, yet no one could, with a shadow of justice, blame the actual possessors of the solid acres for also claiming the honours attached to them. John Law of Lauriston, who ruled France for a few months with the capricious haughtiness of an Eastern despot, among the many strange chances which led to his giddy elevation, owed much to that which gave uniform- ity and consistency to the others namely, that, although he was an Edinburgh tradesman, his possession of a small estate, happily named, in the neighbourhood of his busi- ness, enabled him to take rank in the noblesse. History affords one very flagrant case of the potent uses of the territorial Of. In Galloway there long existed a worshipful family called the Murrays of Broughton. They were not ennobled by a peerage, but belonged to the opulent and proud class of territorial aristocracy who often do not con- sider the peerage any distinction, and so they were thor- oughly entitled to consider themselves within the category of noble in France and Germany. There happened also to be a small croft or paddock on the wayside between Noble- house and Dumfries called Broughton, and its owner, some say its tenant only, being named Murray, took on himself very naturally and fairly the style and title of Murray of Broughton. Having found his uses in this title, he left it dedicated to perpetual infamy ; for he it was who, having incited poor Prince Charles Edward to the Scottish ex- pedition, and by his zeal obtained the office of " Secretary to his Royal Highness the Prince of Wales," afterwards used the information he had thus obtained to buy his own personal safety, by bringing his companions in re- bellion to the block. So thoroughly had his notoriety impressed on the contemporary mind the notion of his representing the old Galwegian house of Murray of Broughton, that it is believed even by local antiquaries. It will not do too rigidly to sift the pretensions by which men, young, poor, obscure, and struggling, have sought notice in early life, and found their way to honours and pos- sessions which they have worthily and honourably enjoyed. Imagination is strong and criticism weak in matters of 7<D THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. genealogy ; and doubtless many of the adventurers who planned and built their fortunes in France, as fully be- lieved themselves cadets of the noblest family bearing their name, as if they had carried with them the certifi- cate of the Lyon Office. Whatever social position the Scottish adventurer might assume, there is little doubt that his claim to be some- body would be pretty substantially maintained by the proud reserve which naturally belongs to his race. We can, in fact, see at the present day the qualities which made the fortunes of these men. These qualities are now exercised in another sphere in England, in the colonies, and especially in our Indian empire, where Scotsmen are continually rising from obscurity into eminence. On the brow of the industrious crofter on the slopes of the Grampians we may yet see the well-becoming pride and self-respecting gravity that, in the fifteenth century, took the honours and distinctions of France as a natural right. Whence comes his pride ? He has no rank he is poor and he is no representative of an illustrious house. No, but he is founding a house. He rises up early, and late takes rest, that his son may go to college and be a gen- tleman ; and when he reads contemporary history in the public press, he knows that the grandfather of the emi- nent law lord, or of the great party leader, or of the illustri- ous Eastern conqueror, whose name fills the ear of fame, laboured like himself in the fields close at hand. It may be surely counted not without significance among ethnical phenomena, that though France has all along shown in her language the predominance of the Latin race, three infusions of northern blood had been successively poured into the country ; first, the Franks next, the Normans and lastly, the Scots. It seems not unreasonable that these helped to communicate to the vivacity and impetuosity of the original race those quali- ties of enterprise and endurance which were needed to make up the illustrious history of France. The more, however, that the standard of national character was raised by the new element, the more would it revolt at a continued accession of foreign blood. A country, the SCOTS FAMILIES IN FRANCE. 71 highest distinctions and offices of which were given by the despotic monarch to strangers, to enable him to keep down the native people, could not be sound at heart; and one hails it as the appearance of a healthy tone of nationality when murmurs arise against the aggrandising strangers. It was not, indeed, in human nature, either that the French should not murmur at the distinctions and sub- stantial rewards bestowed on the strangers, or that they themselves should not become domineering and exacting. M. Michel quotes some very suggestive murmurs of the time, in which it is questioned whether the slaughter of the Scots at Verneuil was not to be set down as a piece of good fortune to France in breaking the power of a set of masters likely to be more formidable even than the English. 1 But of some of the characteristic blemishes of a mercenary foreign force the Scots were free. They did not go to France to act the mendicant or marauder, but to be teachers and leaders; and the evil of their presence was not that their wretchedness made them a nuisance, but that their ambition and haughtiness made them a reproach to the native French. Hence there were occa- sional disagreeables and bickerings between the favoured foreigners and the natives, especially when these began to gain heart and recover from the abjectness they lay under during the great war. The following is a little incident connected with these affairs so very like the beginning of ' Quentin Durward,' that it surely must have been running in Scott's mind when he framed the events of that romance : 1 "Cet echec tourna a Tavantage de la France; car tels etaient et 1'orgueil des Ecossais et le mepris dans lequel ils tenaient les Franais, que s'ils fussent sortis vainqueurs de cette lutte, ils eussent complete d'egorger toute la noblesse de 1'Anjou, de la Touraine, du Berry, et des provinces voisines, pour s'emparer eux-memes de leurs maisons, de leurs femmes, de tous leurs biens les plus precieux ; ce qui, certainement, ne leur cut pas etc bien difficile, une fois vain- queurs des Anglais, comme ils 1'avaient espere. " Contemporary Chronicle in Meyer, ' Annales Rerum Belgicarum/ quoted in Michel, i. 149. 72 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. " Michael Hamilton, who had a share in the affair, re- lates that in Holy Week of the year 1429, he and several of his companions-in-arms were lodged in a village named Vallet, not far from Clisson, and threatened by the Bre- tons, who held the country in considerable number. A spy sent to report on the Scots having fallen into their hands, they made him inform them, and then hanged him. They then took to flight, but not without leaving some of their people in the power of the peasants. Amongst the prisoners was Hamilton, the weight of whose cuirass had prevented his flight ; he was brought to Clisson and hanged by the very hand of the son of the spy, eager to avenge his father. From the moment that he had seen himself taken he had invoked St Catherine, and made a vow to go to thank her in her chapel of Fierbois, if she would preserve him from death. He was successful ; for he, having been hanged, on the following night the curate of the town heard a voice which told him to go and save Hamilton. " He paid little attention to it, and it was only on a re- iterated order that he made up his mind to bid one of his parishioners go to the gibbet and look whether the wretch was dead or not. After having turned him again and again, the messenger, to assure himself fully, bared the right foot of the culprit, and pricked the little toe in such a manner as to make a large wound, from whence blood sprang. Feeling himself wounded, Hamilton drew up his leg and moved. At this sight, terror took possession of the messenger ; he fled, and in all haste bore to the curate an account of what had passed. He perceiving in the whole affair an interposition from on high, related the facts to the people who were present ; then having arrayed himself and his clergy in sacerdotal vestments, they went in procession to the place of execution, and cut down Hamilton. All this passed in the presence of him who had hanged him : furious at seeing that his victim was on the point of escaping him, he struck him on the ear with a sword, and gave him a great wound an act of barbar- ity which is not to be commended. " Then Hamilton is laid upon a horse and taken to a SCOTS FAMILIES IN FRANCE. 73 house and given into care ; soon after the Abbess of the Regrippiere, having heard of what had taken place, sent in quest of our Scot to have him treated in her convent : he is taken there; and as he was ignorant of French, the charitable lady gives him a fellow-countryman for his sick-nurse. He had just related his adventures to him when a voice reminded him that he had a vow to fulfil. Unable then to walk, he waited a fortnight, then set off for Fierbois, but not without finding by the way compan- ions, with whom he remained some days to recover his strength. In this history, as in another of the year 1423, in which we find Scots in Berry hanging eight poor peasants to revenge themselves for having been robbed not far from there, and as also in the history of Captain Boyce Glauny, I see the faithful picture of the miseries which, during the Hundred Years' War, desolated our central provinces, become the prey of undisciplined hordes; but I find also that the Scots figure there in great numbers." 1 1 Michel,!. 163-165. 74 CHAPTER III. THE OTHER SIDE OF THE RECIPROCITY CONTRAST BETWEEN THE SCOT IN FRANCE AND LE FRANAIS EN ECOSSE AN AMBASSADOR SNUBBED FRENCH CHEVALIERS TREATED TO A BORDER RAID THE ADMIRAL VIENNE'S EXPEDITION, AND HOW IT FARED WITH HIM AND HIS FOLLOWERS THE GLADIATORIAL SPECTACLE ON THE INCH OF PERTH FERDINAND OF SPAIN'S DEALINGS WITH SCOTLAND RULE OF ALBANY, AND ITS RESULTS A STORY OF ECCLESIASTI- CAL PATRONAGE THE FOREIGN FRIAR OF TONGUELAND THE SLAUGHTER OF LA BASTIE. BEFORE coming to the later history of the League, let us take a glance at the reciprocity from the other side, and having seen what a good thing our wandering Scots made of it in France, see how the French got on in Scotland. We must prepare for differences which are not unlike some that we now see in ordinary social life. Suppose the common case of two friends, each having an indepen- dent position, and each useful to the other, but, from specialties in his private affairs, the one keeps a dinner- giving house, the other does not. It need not necessarily follow that the one is the other's inferior or dependant he who goes to dinner perhaps thinks he is giving more favour and honour than he receives ; but the conditions on which the friends will meet each other in their respec- tive dwelling-houses will take a decided colour from the distinction. In the one house all will be joviality and social enjoyment in the other, hard business, not per- haps altogether of the most agreeable kind. For centu- ries the French could expect no enjoyment in Scotland. The country was, on the whole, not poorer than then own perhaps not quite so poor but there was no luxu- THE FRENCH IN SCOTLAND. 75 rious class in it ; all was rough, hard, and ungenial. Some of them had to come over on embassies and warlike ex- peditions, but they would as soon have sought Kamt- chatka or Iceland, as a place wherein to pitch their taber- nacle and pursue their fortune. Many a Scot had sought his fortune in France; and names familiar to us now on shop-signs and in street- directories had been found among the dead at Poitiers, before we have authentic account of any Frenchmen having ventured across the sea to visit the sterile territory of their allies. Froissart makes a story out of the failure of the first attempt to send a French ambassador here. The person selected for the duty was the Lord of Bour- nezel, or Bournaseau, whose genealogy is disentangled by M. Michel in a learned note. He was accredited by Charles V. in the year 1379, and was commanded to keep such state as might become the representative of his august master. Bournezel set off to embark at Sluys, and there had to wait fifteen days for a favourable wind. The ambassador thought there was no better way of beguiling the time than a recitation among the Plat Deutsch of the splen- dours which he was bound in the way of public duty to exhibit in the sphere of his mission. Accordingly, " dur- ing this time he lived magnificently ; and gold and silver plate were in such profusion in his apartments as if he had been a prince. He had also music to announce his dinner, and caused to be carried before him a sword in a scabbard richly blazoned with his arms in gold and silver. His servants paid well for everything. Many of the townspeople were much astonished at the great state this knight lived in at home, which he also maintained when he went abroad." This premature display of his diplomatic glories brought him into a difficulty highly characteristic of one of the political specialties of France at that period. It was the time already spoken of when the nobles of the blood- royal were arrogating to themselves alone certain prerog- atives and ceremonials distinguishing them from the rest of the territorial aristocracy, however high these might 76 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. be. The Duke of Bretagne and the Count of Flanders, who were near at hand, took umbrage at the grand doings of Bournezel, and sent for him through the bailiff of Sluys. That officer, after the manner of executive func- tionaries who find themselves sufficiently backed, made his mission as offensive as possible, and, tapping Bour- nezel on the shoulder, intimated that he was wanted. The great men had intended only to rebuke him for playing a part above his commission, bat the indiscretion of their messenger gave Bournezel a hold which he kept and used sagaciously. When he found the princes who had sent for him lounging at a window looking into the gardens, he fell on his knees and acknowledged himself the prisoner of the Count of Flanders. To take prisoner an ambassador, and the ambassador of a crowned king, the feudal lord of the captor, was one of the heaviest of offences, both against the law of nations and the spirit of chivalry. The Earl was not the less enraged that he felt himself caught ; and after retorting with, " How, rascal, do you dare to call yourself my prisoner, when I have only sent to speak with you ? " he composed himself to the delivery of the rebuke he had been preparing in this fashion : "It is by such talkers and jesters of the Parlia- ment of Paris and of the King's chamber as you, that the kingdom is governed ; and you manage the King as you please, to do good or evil according to your wills : there is not a prince of the blood, however great he may be, if he incur your hatred, who will be listened to ; but such fellows shall yet be hanged until the gibbets be full of them." Bournezel carried this pleasant announcement and the whole transaction to the throne, and the King took his part, saying to those around, " He has kept his ground well : I would not for twenty thousand francs it had not so happened." The embassy to Scotland was thus for the time frus- trated. It was said that there were English cruisers at hand to intercept the ambassador, and that he himself had no great heart for a sojourn in the wild unknown northern land. Possibly the fifteen days' lording it at Sluys may have broken in rather inconveniently on his THE FRENCH IN SCOTLAND. // outfit ; but the most likely cause of the defeat of the first French embassy to our shores was, the necessity felt by Bournezel to right himself at once at Court, and turn the flank of his formidable enemies ; and Froissart says, the Earl of Flanders lay under the royal displeasure for hav- ing, in his vain vaunting, defeated so important a project as the mission to the Scots. A few years afterwards our country received a visit, less august, it is true, than the intended embassy, but far more interesting. In 1384, negotiations were exchanged near the town of Boulogne for a permanent peace between England and France. The French demanded concessions of territory which could not be yielded, and a permanent peace, founded on a final settlement of pending claims, was impossible. A truce even was at that time, however, a very important conclusion to conflict ; it sometimes lasted for years, being in reality a peace under protest that each party reserved certain claims to be kept in view when war should again break out. Such a truce was adjusted between England on the one side and France on the other conditional on the accession of her allies Spain and Scotland. France kept faith magnanimously, in ever refusing to negotiate a separate peace or truce for herself; but, as the way is with the more powerful of two partners, she was apt to take for granted that Scotland would go with her, and that the affair was virtually finished by her own accession to terms. It happened that in this instance the Duke of Burgundy took it on him to deal with Scotland. He had, however, just at that moment, a rather important piece of business, deeply interesting to himself, on hand. By the death of the Earl of Flanders he succeeded to that fair domain an event which vastly influenced the subsequent fate of Europe. So busy was he in adjusting the affairs of his mccession, that it was said he entirely overlooked the small matter of the notification of the truce to Scotland. Meanwhile, there was a body of men-at-arms in the French service at Sluys thrown out of employment by the truce with England, and, like other workmen in a like position, desirous of a job. They knew that the truce 78 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. had not yet penetrated to Scotland, and thought a journey thither, long and dangerous as it was, might be a pro- mising speculation. There were about thirty of them, and Froissart gives a head-roll of those whose names he remem- bered, beginning with Sir Geoffry de Charny, Sir John de Plaissy, Sir Hugh de Boulon, and so on. They dared not attempt, in face of the English war-ships, to land at a southern harbour, but reached the small seaport called by Froissart Monstres, and not unaptly supposed by certain sage commentators to be Montrose, since the adventurers rode on to Dundee and thence to Perth. They were received with a deal of rough hospitality, and much commended for the knightly spirit that induced them to cross the wide ocean to try their lances against the common enemy, England. Two of them were selected to pass on to Edinburgh, and explain their purpose at the Court of Holyrood. Here they met two of their country- men on a mission which boded no good to their enter- prise. These were ambassadors from France, come at last to notify the truce. It was at once accepted by the peaceable King Robert, but the Scots lords around him were grieved in heart at the prospect that these fine fel- lows should come so far and return without having any sport of that highly flavoured kind which the Border wars afforded. The truce they held had been adjusted not by Scotland but by France ; and here, as if to contradict its sanction, were Frenchmen themselves offering to treat it as naught. There was, however, a far stronger reason for over- looking it. Just before it was completed, but when it was known to be inevitable, the Earls of Northumberland and Nottingham suddenly and secretly drew together two thousand men-at-arms and six thousand bowmen, with which they broke into Scotland, and swept the country as far as Edinburgh with more than the usual ferocity of a Border raid ; for they made it to the Scots as if the devil had come among them, having great wrath, for he knew that his time was short. It was said, even, that the French ambassadors sent to Scotland to announce the truce, had been detained in London to allow time for THE FRENCH IN SCOTLAND. 79 this raid coming off effectively. " To say the truth," says Froissart, mildly censorious, " the lords of England who had been at the conference at Bolinghen, had not acted very honourably when they had consented to order their men to march to Scotland and burn the country, knowing that the truce would speedily be concluded : and the best excuse they could make was, that it was the French and not they who were to signify such truce to the Scots." Smarting from this inroad, the Scots lords, and especi- ally the Douglases and others on the Border, were in no humour to coincide with their peaceful King. They desired to talk the matter over with the representatives of the adventurers in some quiet place; and, for rea- sons which were doubtless sufficient to themselves, they selected for this purpose the Church of St Giles in Edinburgh. The conference was highly satisfactory to the adventurers, who spurred back to Perth to impart the secret intelligence, that though the King had accepted the truce, the lords were no party to it, but would im- mediately prepare an expedition to avenge Nottingham's and Northumberland's raid. This was joyful intelligence, though in its character rather surprising to followers of the French Court. A force was rapidly collected, and in a very few days the adventurers were called to join it in the Douglases' lands. So far Froissart. This affair is not, so far as I remem- ber, mentioned in detail by any of our own annalists writing before the publication of his Chronicles. Every- thing, however, is there set forth so minutely, and with so distinct and accurate a reference to actual conditions in all the details, that few things in history can be less open to doubt. We come to a statement inviting ques- tion, when he says that the force collected so suddenly by the Scots lords contained fifteen thousand mounted men ; nor can we be quite reconciled to the statement though their steeds were the small mountain horses called hackneys. The force, however, was sufficient for its work. It found the English border trusting to the truce, and as little prepared for invasion as Nottingham and Northumberland had found Scotland. 80 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. The first object was the land of the Percys, which the Scots, in the laconic language of the chronicler, " pillaged and burnt." And so they went onwards ; and where peasants had been peacefully tilling the land or tending their cattle amid the comforts of rude industry, there the desolating host passed the crops were trampled down their owners left dead in the ashes of their smoking huts and a few widows and children, fleeing for safety and food, were all of animal life left upon the scene. The part taken in it by his countrymen was exactly after Froissart's own heart, since they were not carrying out any of the political movements of the day, nor were they even actuated by an ambition of conquest, but were led by the sheer fun of the thing and the knightly spirit of adventure to partake in this wild raid. To the Scots it was a substantial affair, for they came back heavy- handed, with droves and flocks driven before them pos- sibly some of them recovered their own. The King had nothing to say in his vindication touch- ing this little affair, save that it had occurred without his permission, or even knowledge. The Scots lords, in fact, were not the only persons who had broken that truce. It included the Duke of Burgundy and his enemies, the Low Country towns ; yet his feudatory, the Lord Destour- nay, taking advantage of the defenceless condition of Oudenarde during peace, took it by a clever stratagem. The Duke of Burgundy, when appealed to, advised Des- tournay to abandon his capture ; but Destournay was wilful : he had conquered the city, and the city was his so there was no help for it, since the communities were not strong enough to enforce their rights, and Burgundy would only demand them on paper. What occasioned the raid of the Scots and French to be passed over, how- ever, was that the Duke of Lancaster, John of Gaunt, who had the chief authority over the English councils, as well as the command over the available force, was taken up with his own schemes on the crown of Castile, and not inclined to find work for the military force of the country elsewhere. The truce, therefore, was cordially ratified ; bygones were counted bygones ; and the French THE FRENCH IN SCOTLAND. 8 1 adventurers bade a kindly farewell to their brethren-in- arms, and crossed the seas homewards. Driven from their course, and landing at the Brille, they narrowly escaped hanging at the hands of the boorish cultivators of the swamp ; and after adventures which would make good raw materials for several novels, they reached Paris. There they explained to their own Court how they found that the great enemy of France had, at the opposite extremity of his dominions, a nest of fighting fiends, who wanted only their help in munitions of war to enable them to rush on the vital parts of his dominions with all the fell ferocity of men falling on their bitterest feudal enemy. Thus could France, having under consideration the cost and peril of galleying an invading army across the Straits, by money and management, do far more damage to the enemy than any French invading expedition was likely to accomplish. In an hour which did not prove propitious to France, a resolution was adopted to invade England at both ends. Even before the truce was at an end, the forges of Ren- ault and Picardy were hard at work making battle-axes ; and all along the coast, from Harfleur to Sluys, there was busy baking of biscuits and purveyance of provender. Early in spring an expedition of a thousand men-at-arms, with their followers, put to sea under John of Vienne, the Admiral of France, and arrived at Leith, making a voyage which must have been signally prosperous, if we may judge by the insignificance of the chief casualty on record concerning it. In those days, as in the present, it ap- pears that adventurous young gentlemen on shipboard were apt to attempt feats for which their land training did not adapt them in nautical phrase, " to swing on all top-ropes." A hopeful youth chose to perform such a feat in his armour, and with the most natural of all re- sults. " The knight was young and active, and, to show his agility, he mounted aloft by the ropes of his ship, completely armed ; but his feet slipping he fell into the sea, and the weight of his armour, which sank him in- stantly, deprived him of any assistance, for the ship F 82 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. was soon at a distance from the place where he had fallen." The expedition soon found itself to be a mistake. In fact, to send fighting men to Scotland was just to supply the country with that commodity in which it supera- bounded. The great problem was how to find food for the stalwart sons of the soil, and arms to put into their hands when fighting was necessary. A percentage of the cost and labour of the expedition, had it been spent in send- ing money or munitions of war, would have done better service. The scene before the adventurers was in lamen- table contrast to all that custom had made familiar to them. There were none of the comfortable chateaux, the abundant markets, the carpets, down beds, and rich hangings which gladdened their expeditions to the Low Countries, whether they went as friends or foes. Nor was the same place for them in Scotland, which the Scots so readily found in France, where a docile submissive peasantry only wanted vigorous and adventurous masters. "The lords and their men," says Froissart, "lodged themselves as well as they could in Edinburgh, and those who could not lodge there were quartered in the different villages thereabout. Edinburgh, notwithstanding that it is the residence of the King, and is the Paris of Scotland, is not such a town as Tournay and Valenciennes, for there are not in the whole town four thousand houses. Several of the French lords were therefore obliged to take up their lodgings in the neighbouring villages, and at Dun- fermline, Kelso, Dunbar, Dalkeith, and in other towns." When they had exhausted the provender brought with them, these children of luxury had to endure the miseries of sordid living, and even the pinch of hunger. They tried to console themselves with the reflection that they had, at all events, an opportunity of experiencing a phase of life which their parents had endeavoured theoretically to impress upon them, in precepts to be thankful to the Deity for the good things they enjoyed, but which might not always be theirs in a transitory world. They had been warned by the first little band of adventurers that Scotland was not rich; yet the intense poverty of the THE FRENCH IN SCOTLAND. 83 country whence so many daring adventurers had gone over to ruffle it with the flower of European chivalry, astonished and appalled them. Of the extreme and special nature of the poverty of Scotland, the great war against the English invaders was the cause. It has been estimated, indeed, by those devoted to such questions, that Scotland did not recover fully from the ruin caused by that conflict until the Union made her secure against her ambitious neighbour. It was the crisis referred to in that pathetic ditty, the earliest specimen of our lyrical poetry, when " Away was sonse of ale and bread, Of wine and wax, of gaming and glee ; Our gold was changed into lead ; Cryst borne into virginity, Succour poor Scotland and remede, That stad is in perplexity." The alliance between the two powers was not so un- equal in the fourteenth as it became in the sixteenth century. On the map of Europe the absolute dominions to which the house of Valois succeeded occupied but a small space in comparison with the kingdom of Francis I. Scotland, on the other hand, had a respectable position among the European powers. It was larger than many of them ; and although the contest with England was bring- ing it to beggary, it had still the repute of recent wealth and prosperity. Not a long period had passed since Berwick-upon-Tweed, the capital, took rank with Ghent, Rotterdam, and the other great cities of the Low Coun- tries, and was almost the rival of London in mercantile enterprise. Stately edifices, baronial and ecclesiastical, still stood, testifying to a people equal in wealth to the English when they were built, though they were doomed to fall into decay and be succeeded by sordid hovels, when the weight of a long war against a powerful and oppressive empire had impoverished the people. Before the French came over and made acquaintance with their allies at home, that poverty had set its desolating mark all over the land, and the French saw and felt it. 84 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. The poverty of the Scots proceeded from a cause of which they need not have been ashamed ; yet, with the reserve and pride ever peculiar to them, they hated that it should be seen by their allies, and when these showed any indi- cations of contempt or derision, the natives were stung to madness. Froissart renders very picturesquely the com- mon talk about the strangers, thus : " What devil has brought them here ? or, who has sent for them ? Cannot we carry on our wars with England without their assist- ance ? We shall never do any good as long as they are with us. Let them be told to go back again, for we are sufficient in Scotland to fight our own battles, and need not their aid. We neither understand their language nor they ours, so that we cannot converse together. They will very soon cut up and destroy all we have in this country, and will do more harm if we allow them to re- main among us than the English could in battle. If the English do burn our houses, what great matter is it to us ? We can rebuild them at little cost, for we require only three days to do so, so that we but have five or six poles, with boughs to cover them." The French knights, accustomed to abject submission among their own peasantry, were unable to comprehend the fierce independence of the Scots common people, and were ever irritating them into bloody reprisals. A short sentence of Froissart's conveys a world of meaning on this specialty : " Besides, whenever their servants went out to forage, they were indeed permitted to load their horses with as much as they could pack up and carry, but they were waylaid on their return, and villanously beaten, robbed, and sometimes slain, insomuch that no varlet dare go out foraging for fear of death. In one month the French lost upwards of a hundred varlets; for when three or four went out foraging, not one re- turned, in such a hideous manner were they treated." As we have seen, a not unusual incident of purveying in France was, that the husbandman was hung up by the heels and roasted before his own fire until he disgorged his property. The Scots peasantry had a decided pre- judice against such a process, and, being accustomed to THE FRENCH IN SCOTLAND. 85 defend themselves from all oppression, resisted even that of their allies, to the extreme astonishment and wrath of those magnificent gentlemen. There is a sweet unconsciousness in Froissart's indig- nant denunciation of the robbing of the purveyors, which meant the pillaged peasantry recovering their own goods. But the chronicler was of a thorough knightly nature, and deemed the peasantry of a country good for nothing but to be used up. Hence, in his wrath, he says : " In Scot- land you will never find a man of worth ; they are like savages, who wish not to be acquainted with any one, and are too envious of the good fortune of others, and suspicious of losing anything themselves, for their country is very poor. When the English make inroads thither, as they have very frequently done, they order their provisions, if they wish to live, to follow close at their backs ; for nothing is to be had in that country without great diffi- culty. There is neither iron to shoe horses, nor leather to make harness, saddles, or bridles; all these things come ready-made from Flanders by sea; and should these fail, there is none to be had in the country." What a magnificent contrast to such a picture is the present relative condition of Scotland and the Low Countries ! and yet these have not suffered any awful reverse of for- tune they have merely abided in stagnant respectability. It must be remembered, in estimating the chronicler's pungent remarks upon our poor ancestors, that he was not only a worshipper of rank and wealth, but thoroughly English in his partialities, magnifying the feats in arms of the great enemies of his own country. The records of the Scots Parliament of 1395 curiously confirm the infer- ence from his narrative, that the French were oppressive purveyors, and otherwise unobservant of the people's rights. An indenture, as it is termed the terms of a sort of compact with the strangers appears among the records, conspicuous among their other Latin and vernacular contents as being set forth in French, in courtesy, of course, to the strangers. It expressly lays down that no goods of any kind shall be taken by force, under pain of death, and none shall be received without 86 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. being duly paid for the dealers having free access to come and go. There are regulations, too, for suppressing broils by competent authority, and especially for settling questions between persons of unequal degrees ; a remedy for the practice of the French, who left the settlement entirely with the superior. This document is one of many showing that, in Scot- land, there were arrangements for protecting the personal freedom of the humbler classes, and their rights of pro- perty, the fulness of which is little known, because the like did not exist in other countries, and those who have written philosophical treatises on the feudal system, or on the progress of Europe from barbarism to civilisation, have generally lumped all the countries of Europe to- gether. The sense of personal freedom seems to have been rather stronger in Scotland than in England; it was such as evidently to astound the French knights. At the end of the affair, Froissart expresses this surprise in his usual simple and expressive way. After a second or third complaint of the unreasonable condition that his countrymen should pay for the victuals they con- sumed, he goes on, "The Scots said the French had done them more mischief than the English ; " and when asked in what manner, they replied, " By riding through the corn, oats, and barley on their march, which they trod under foot, not condescending to follow the roads, for which damage they would have a recompense before they left Scotland, and they should neither find vessel nor mariner who would dare to put to sea without their permission." Of the military events in the short war following the arrival of the French, an outline will be found in the ordinary histories ; but it was attended by some con- ditions which curiously bring out the specialties of the two nations so oddly allied. One propitiatory gift the strangers had brought with them, which was far more highly appreciated than their own presence ; this was a thousand stand of accoutrements for men-at-arms. They were of the highest excellence, being selected out of the store kept in the Castle of Beaute for the use of the THE FRENCH IN SCOTLAND. 87 Parisians. When these were distributed among the Scots knights, who were but poorly equipped, the chronicler, as if he had been speaking of the prizes at a Christmas-tree, tells how those who were successful and got them were greatly delighted. The Scots did their part in their own way : they brought together thirty thousand men, a force that drained the country of its available manhood. But England had at that time nothing to divert her arms elsewhere, and the policy adopted was to send northwards a force sufficient to crush Scotland for ever. It consisted of seven thou- sand mounted men-at-arms, and sixty thousand bow and bill men a force three or four times as large as the armies that gained the memorable English victories in France. Of these, Agincourt was still to come off, but Crecy and Poitiers were over, along with many other affairs that might have taught the French a lesson. The Scots, too, had suffered two great defeats Neville's Cross and Halidon Hill since their great national triumph. The impression made on each country by their experi- ences brought out their distinct national characteristics. The French knights were all ardour and impatience ; they clamoured to be at the enemy without ascertaining the amount or character of his force. The wretched internal wars of their own country had taught them to look on the battle-field as the arena of distinction in personal conflict, rather than the great tribunal in which the fate of nations was to be decided, and communities come forth freed or enslaved. To the Scots, on the other hand, the affair was one of national life or death, and they would run no risks for distinction's sake. Picturesque accounts have often been repeated of a scene where Douglas, or some other Scots leader, brought the Admiral to an elevated spot whence he could see and estimate the mighty host of England ; but the most picturesque of all the accounts is the original by Froissart, of which the others are parodies. The point in national tactics brought out by this incident is the singular recklessness with which the French must have been accustomed to do battle. In total ignorance 88 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. of the force he was to oppose, and not seeking to know aught concerning it, the Frenchman's voice was still for war. When made to see with his own eyes what he had to encounter, he was as reluctant as his companions to risk the issue of a battle, but not so fertile in expedients for carrying on the war effectively without one. The policy adopted was to clear the country before the English army as it advanced, and carry everything port- able and valuable within the recesses of the mountain- ranges, whither the inhabitants not fit for military service had gone with their effects. A desert being thus opened for the progress of the invaders, they were left to wander in it unmolested, while the Scots army went in the opposite direction, and crossed the Border southwards. Thus the English army found Scotland empty the Scots army found England full. The one wore itself out in a fruitless march, part of it straggling, it was said, as far as Aber- deen, and returned thinned and starving, while the other was only embarrassed by the burden of its plunder. Much destruction there was, doubtless, on both sides, but it fell heaviest where there was most to destroy, and gratified at last in some measure the French, who " said among themselves they had burned in the bishoprics of Durham and Carlisle more than the value of all the towns in the kingdom of Scotland." But havoc does not make wealth, and whether or not the Scots knew better from experience how to profit by such opportunities, the French, when they returned north- ward, were starving. Their object now was to get out of the country as fast as they could. Froissart, with a touch of dry humour, explains that their allies had no objection to speed the exit of the poorer knights, but resolved to hold the richer and more respectable in a sort of pawn for the damage which the expedition had inflicted on the common people. The Admiral asked his good friends the Lords Douglas and Moray to put a stop to those demands ; but these good knights were unable to accom- modate their brethren in this little matter, and the Admiral was obliged to give effectual pledges from his Government for the payment of the creditors. THE FRENCH IN SCOTLAND. 89 There is something in all this that seems utterly un- chivalrous and even ungenerous ; but it had been well for France had Froissart been able to tell a like story of her peasantry. It merely shows us that our countrymen of that day were of those who " know their rights, and, knowing, dared maintain them ; " and was but a demon- stration on a humbler, and, if you will, more sordid shape, of the same spirit that had swept away the Anglo-Norman invaders. The very first act which their chronicler records concerning his knightly friends, after he has exhausted his wrath against the hard and mercenary Scot, is thor- oughly suggestive. Some of the knights tried other fields of adventure, " but the greater number returned to France, and were so poor they knew not how to remount them- selves, especially those from Burgundy, Champagne, Bar, and Lorraine, who seized the labouring horses wherever they found them in the fields" so impatient were they to regain their freedom of action. So ended this affair, with the aspect of evil auspices for the alliance. The adventurers returned " cursing Scot- land, and the hour they had set foot there. They said they had never suffered so much in any expedition, and wished the King of France would make a truce with the English for two or three years, and then march to Scot- land and utterly destroy it ; for never had they seen such wicked people, nor such ignorant hypocrites and traitors." But the impulsive denunciation of the disappointed ad- venturers was signally obliterated in the history of the next half- century. Ere many more years had passed over them, that day of awful trial was coming when France had to lean on the strong arm of her early ally; and, in fact, some of the denouncers lived to see adventurers from the sordid land of their contempt and hatred command- ing the armies of France, and owning her broad lord- ships. It was just after the return of Vienne's expedi- tion that the remarkable absorption of Scotsmen into the aristocracy of France, already spoken of, began to set in. This episode of the French expedition to Scotland, small though its place is in the annals of Europe, yet go THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. merits the consideration of the thoughtful historian, as affording a significant example of the real causes of the misery and degradation of France at that time, and the wonderful victories of the English kings. Chivalry, courage, the love of enterprise, high spirit in all forms, abounded to superfluity among the knightly orders, but received no solid support from below. The mounted steel-clad knights of the period, in the highest physical condition, afraid of nothing on the earth or beyond it, and burning for triumph and fame, could perform miracu- lous feats of strength and daring; but all passed off in wasted effort and vain rivalry, when there was wanting the bold peasantry, who, with their buff jerkins, and their bills and bows, or short Scottish spears, were the real force by which realms were held or gained. An affair occurred in Scotland in the year 1396, which is not naturally associated with the French alliance. It has usually been spoken of, indeed, as a phenomenon of pure Scottish barbarism. But M. Michel, in looking at it from the French side, suggests some considerations which may possibly give help in the solution of a mystery. The affair referred to is that great battle or tournament on the North Inch of Perth, where opposite Highland factions, called the Clan Quhele and Clan Chattan, were pitted against each other, thirty to thirty an affair, the darker colours of which are lighted up by the eccentric movements of the Gow Chrom, or bandy-legged smith of Perth, who took the place of a defaulter in one of the ranks, to prevent the spectacle of the day from being spoilt. That such a contest should have been organised to take place in the presence of the King and Court, under solemnities and regulations like some important ordeal, has driven historical speculators to discover what deep policy for the pacification or subjugation of the High- lands lay behind it. The feature that gives it a place in M. Michel's book is the briefest possible notification, taken from one of the chroniclers, that a large number of Frenchmen and other strangers were present at the spectacle. This draws us back from the mysterious arcana of CONFLICT ON THE NORTH INCH. 91 political intrigue to find a mere showy pageant, got up to enliven the hours of idle mirth an act, in short, of royal hospitality a show cunningly adapted to the tastes of the age, yet having withal the freshness of originality, being a renaissance kind of combination of the gladiatorial con- flict of the Roman circus with the tournament of chivalry. The Highlanders were, in fact, the human raw material which a King of Scots could in that day employ, so far as their nature suited, for the use or the amusement of his guests. Them, and them only among his subjects, could he use as the Empire used the Transalpine barbarian " butchered to make a Roman holiday." The treatment of the Celt is the blot on that period of our history. Never in later times has the Red Indian or Australian native been more the hunted wild beast to the emigrant settler than the Highlander was to his neighbour the Low- lander. True, he was not easily got at, and, when reached, he was found to have tusks. They were a people never permitted to be at rest from external assault; yet such was their nature that, instead of being pressed by a common cause into compact union, they were divided into communities that hated each other almost more bitterly than they did the common enemy. This internal animosity has suggested that the King wanted two factions to exterminate each other as it were symbolically, and accept the result of a combat between two bodies of chosen champions, as if there had been an actual stricken field, with all the able-bodied men on both sides engaged in it. It was quite safe to calculate that when the representatives of the two contending factions were set face to face on the greensward, they would fly at each other's throats, and afford in an abundant manner to the spectators whatever delectation might arise from an intensely bloody struggle. But, on the other hand, to expect the Highlanders to be fools enough to accept this sort of symbolical extinction of their quarrel was too preposterous a conclusion for any practical states- man to adopt. They had no notion of leaving import- ant issues to the event of single combat, or any of the other capricious rules of chivalry, but slew their 92 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. enemies where they could, and preferred doing so secret- ly, and without risk to themselves, when that was practicable. Meanwhile, as the centuries followed each other, changes came over the condition of the European nations and their position towards each other, as over all human things. Scotland was gradually recovering from prostra- tion, and England was shaken by the Wars of the Roses, to the dire calamities of which it was some offset that they enfeebled the Crown of England for mischief, whether against its neighbours or its own people. In the balance of Europe in the reign of Henry VII., England was counted with Spain and Scotland with France. Both the British countries were in some measure subsidiary and protected states, Scotland being nearly as powerful as her neighbour. Her hold on France, indeed, was something like an incorporation, while the relation of Spain to Eng- land was suspicious and fidgety. The sagacious and grasping Ferdinand looked with respect and sympathy to a prince so like himself as Henry VII. ; but he would have fain had a more securely-seated father-in-law for his daughter. He had an ambassador in Scotland who had two alternative jobs on hand either to get the influence of Scotland over France to operate in his favour, or to detach these sworn friends and make a powerful European alliance, including Spain, England, and Scotland. Fer- dinand, indeed, was not very sure whether, if he could not unite with both, Scotland might not be the more valu- able friend. The intrigues, as historians term it, at the Court of James IV., are highly amusing, and have a special liveliness imparted to them by both monarchs playing the card they called " Him of York," being the Perkin Warbeck, who professed to be, and made many people believe him to be, the younger of the princes reputed to have been murdered in the Tower. Ferdinand regretted that he had not a daughter to give to James, and instructed his ambassador to try whether it would be practicable to pass off one of his natural children as a legitimate daughter of the house of Castile ; but he was told that such a trick would be a very dangerous one, for ROYAL POLITICS. 93 the Scots were a proud people, and fierce in their resent- ment of slights and injuries. 1 To watch in history the action and counteraction of opposing forces which have developed some grand result, yet by a slight and not improbable impulse the other way might have borne towards an opposite conclusion equally momentous, is an interesting task, with something in it of the excitement of the chase. In pursuing the traces which brought Scotland back to her English kindred, and saved her from a permanent annexation to France, the arrival of John Duke of Albany in Scotland, in 1515, is a critical turning-point. Already had the seed of the union with England been planted when James IV. got for a wife the daughter of Henry VII. It would serve pleas- antly to lighten up and relieve a hard and selfish reputa- tion, if one could figure this King, in the depths of his own heart, assuring himself of having entered in the books of fate a stroke of policy that at some date, however dis- tant, was destined to appease the long bloody contest of two rival nations, and unite them into a compact and mighty empire. The prospects of such a consummation were at first anything but encouraging. The old love broke in, counteracting prudential policy ; and, indeed, never did besotted lover abandon himself to wilder folly than James IV., when, at the bidding of Anne of France as the lady of his chivalrous worship, he resolved to be her true knight, and take three steps into English ground. When a chivalrous freak, backed by a few political irrita- tions scarce less important, strewed the moor of Flodden with the flower of the land, it was time for Scotland to think over the rationality of this distant alliance, which deepened and perpetuated her feud with her close neigh- bour of kindred blood. Well for him, the good, easy. 1 There is an immense deal of new light thrown on the relations of Spain, England, France, and Scotland during the reign of Henry VII. in the 'Calendar of Letters, Despatches, and State Papers,' printed by Mr Bergwroth, from the archives of Simancas, for the series of papers and chronicles issued under the auspices of the Master of the Rolls. 94 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. frank, chivalrous monarch, that he was buried in the ruin he had made, and saw not the misery of a desolated nation. Of the totally alien object for which all the mis- chief had been done, there was immediate evidence in various shapes. One curious little item of it is brought out by certain researches of M. Michel, which have also a significant bearing on the conflict between the secular and the papal power in the disposal of benefices. The Pope, Julius II., was anxious to gain over to his interest Mathew Lang, bishop of Gorz, and secretary to the Emperor Maximilian. The bishop was consequently called to Rome and blessed by the vision of a cardinal's hat, and the papal influence towards the first high pro- motion that might open. The archbishopric of Bourges became vacant. The chapter elected one of our old friends of the Scots emigrant families, Guillaume de Monypeny, brother of the Lord of Concressault ; but the King, Louis XII., at first stood out for Brillac, bishop of Orleans, resisted by the chapter. The bishop of Gorz then came forward with a force sufficient to sweep away both candidates. He was favoured of the Pope : his own master, Maximilian, desired for his secretary this foreign benefice, which would cost himself nothing ; and Louis found somehow that the bishop was as much his own humble servant as the Emperor's. No effect of causes sufficient seemed in this world more assured than that Mathew Lang, bishop of Gorz, should also be archbishop of Bourges ; but the fortune of war rendered it before his collation less important to have the bishop of Gorz in the archiepiscopate than another person. The King laid his hand again on the chapter, and required them to postulate one whose name and condition must have seemed somewhat strange to them Andrew Forrnan, bishop of Moray, in the north of Scotland. There are reasons for all things. Forman was ambassador from Scotland to France, and thus had opportunities of private communication with James IV. and Louis XII. This latter, in a letter to the chapter of Bourges, explains his signal obligations to Forman for having seconded the allurements of the Queen, and instigated the King of AN ECCLESIASTICAL JOB. 95 Scots to make war against England, explaining how iceluy Roy (TEscosse Jest ouvertement declare vouloir tenir nostre party etfaire la guerre actuellement contre le Roy cT Angleterre. Lest the chapter should doubt the accuracy of this state- ment of the services performed to France by Forman, the King sent them le double des lectres que le diet Roy d?Escosse nous a escriptes, et aussy de la defiance qu'il a faite au diet Roy d 1 Angleterre. The King pleaded hard with the chapter to postulate Forman, representing that they could not find a better means of securing his own countenance and protection. The Scotsman backed this royal appeal by a persuasive letter, which he signed Andre, Arcevesque de Bourges et Evesque de Morray. Influence was brought to bear on the Pope himself, and he declared his leaning in favour of Forman. The members of the chapter, who had been knocked about past endurance in the affair of the arch- bishopric from first to last, threatened resistance and martyrdom ; but the pressure of the powers combined against them brought them to reason, and Forman entered Bourges in archiepiscopal triumph. But the ups and downs of the affair were as yet by no means at an end. That great pontiff, who never forgot that the head of the Church was a temporal prince, Leo X., had just ascended the throne, and found that it would be convenient to have this archbishopric of Bourges for his nephew, Cardinal Abo. By good luck the see of St Andrews, the primacy of Scotland, was then vacant, and was given as an equivalent for the French dignity. Such a promotion was a symbolically appropriate reward for the services of Forman ; his predecessor fell at Flodden, and thus, in his services to the King of France, he had made a vacancy for himself. He kept for some time in his pocket, afraid to show it, the Pope's bull appointing him Archbishop of St Andrews and Primate of Scotland. This was a direct act of interference contrary to law and custom, since the function of the Pope was only to collate or confirm, as ecclesiastical superior, the choice made by the local authorities. These had their favourite 9$ THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. for the appointment, Prior Hepburn, who showed his earnestness in his own cause by taking and holding the Castle of St Andrews. A contest of mingled ecclesiasti- cal and civil elements, too complex to be disentangled, followed ; but in the end Forman triumphed, having on his side the efforts of the King of France and his servant Albany, with the Pope's sense of justice. The rewards of this highly endowed divine were the measure alike of his services to France and of his injuries to Scotland. He held, by the way, in commendam, a benefice in England ; and as he had a good deal of diplomatic business with Henry VIII. , it may not uncharitably be supposed that he sought to feather his hat with English as well as French plumage. It was in the midst of these affairs, which were bringing out the dangerous and dis- astrous elements in the French alliance, that Albany arrived. We have seen how Albany's father, the younger brother of James III., lived in France, getting lordships there, and how the son became a thorough naturalised French- man. There are men who, when they shift their place and function, can assimilate themselves to the changed elements around them who can find themselves sur- rounded by unwonted customs and ways, and yet accept the condition that the men who follow these are pursuing the normal character of their being, and must be left to do so in peace, otherwise harm will come of it ; and in this faculty consists the instinct which enables men to govern populations trained in a different school from their own. Albany did not possess this faculty. He appears to have been ignorant of the language of Scotland, and to have thought or rather felt that, wherever he was, all should be the same as in the midst of Italian and French court- iers; and if it were not so, something was wrong, and should be put right. It was then the commencement of a very luxurious age in France an age of rich and showy costumes, of curls, perfumes, cosmetics, and pet spaniels and Albany was the leader of fashion in all such things. It is needless to say how powerfully all this contrasted with rough Scotland what a shocking set of barbarians REGENT ALBANY. 97 he found himself thrown among how contemptible to the rugged Scots nobles was the effeminate oriental luxury of the little court he imported from Paris, shifted northwards as some wealthy luxurious sportsman takes a detachment from his stable, kennel, and servants' hall, to a bothy in the Highlands. He arrived, however, in a sort of sunshine. At that calamitous moment the nearest relation of the infant king, a practised statesman, was heartily welcome. He brought a small rather brilliant fleet with him, which was dignified by his high office as Admiral of Frances he brought also some money and valuable trifles, which were not unaccept- able. Wood, in his ' Peerage,' tells us that " The peers and chiefs crowded to his presence : his exotic elegance of manners, his condescension, affability, and courtesy of demeanour, won all hearts." If so, these were not long retained. He came, indeed, just before some tangible object was wanted against which to direct the first sulky feelings of the country towards France; and he served the purpose exactly, for his own handiwork was the cause of that feeling. In a new treaty between France and England, in which he bore a great if not the chief part, Scotland was for the first time treated as a needy and troublesome hanger-on of France. Instead of the old courtesy, which made Scotland, nominally at least, an independent party to the treaty, it was made directly by France, but Scotland was comprehended in it, with a warning that if there were any of the old raids across the Border, giving trouble as they had so often done, the Scots should forfeit their part in the treaty. This patron- age during good behaviour roused the old pride, and was one of many symptoms that Albany had come to them less as the representative of their own independent line of kings, than as the administrator of a distant province of the French empire. The humiliation was all the more bitter from the deep resentments that burned in the people's hearts after the defeat of Flodden ; and it was with difficulty that the Estates brought themselves to say that, though Scotland believed herself able single-handed to avenge her losses, yet, out of respect for the old friend- G 98 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. ship of France, the country would consent to peace with England. Setting to work after the manner of one possessed of the same supreme authority as the King of France, Albany began his government with an air of rigour, insomuch that the common historians speak of him as having resolved to suppress the turbulent spirit of the age, and assert the supremacy of law and order. He thus incurred the reputation of a grasping tyrant. The infant brother of the King died suddenly ; his mother said Albany had poisoned the child, and people shuddered for his brother, now standing alone between the Regent and the throne, and talked ominously of the manner in which Richard III. of England was popularly believed to have achieved the crown by murdering his nephews. It is from this period that we may date the rise of a really English party in Scotland a party who feared the designs of the French, and who thought that, after having for two hundred years maintained her independence, Scotland might with fair honour be combined with the country nearest to her and likest in blood, should the succes- sion to both fall to one prince, and that it would be judi- cious to adjust the royal alliances in such a manner as to bring that to pass. Such thoughts were in the meantime somewhat coun- teracted by the light-headed doings of her who was the nation's present tie to England the Queen -Dowager. Her grotesque and flagrant love-affairs are an amusing episode, especially to those who love the flavour of ancient scandal. But more serious agencies came in force, and any gracious thoughts that had turned themselves towards England were met in the teeth by the insults and injuries which her savage brother, Henry VIII., continued to pile upon the country. Up to this point I have not observed any instances of offices of emolument in Scotland given to Frenchmen, and the fuss made about one instance of the kind leads to the supposition that they must have been rare. Dun- bar the poet, who was in priest's orders, was exceedingly clamorous, in prose and in verse in the serious and in REGENT ALBANY. 99 the comic vein for preferment. Perhaps he was the kind of person whom it is as difficult to prefer in the Church as it was to make either Swift or Sydney Smith a bishop. His indignation was greatly roused by the ap- pointment of a foreigner whom he deemed beset by his own special failings, but in far greater intensity, to the abbacy of Tongueland ; and he committed his griefs to a satirical poem, called 'The fenyet Freir of Tungland.' The object of this poem has been set down by historians as an Italian, but M. Michel indicates him as a countryman of his own, by the name of Jean Damien. He is called a charlatan, quack, and mountebank, and might, perhaps, with equal accuracy, be called a devotee of natural science, who speculated ingeniously and experimented boldly. He was in search of the philosopher's stone, and believed himself to be so close on its discovery that he ventured to embark the money of King James IV., and such other persons as participated in his own faith, in the adventure to realise the discovery, and saturate all the partners with riches indefinite. It might be a fair question whether the stranger's science is so obsolete as the social tone of the literature in which he is attacked, since Dunbar's satirical poem, among other hints that the precedents of the adventurer unfitted him for the higher offices in the Christian ministry, in- sinuates that he had committed several murders ; and although the charge is made in a sort of rough jocularity, the force of it does not by any means rest on its absurdity and incredibility. He was accused of a mad project for extracting gold from the Wanlockhead Hills in Dumfries- shire, which cannot be utterly scorned in the present day, since gold has actually been extracted from them, though the process has not returned twenty shillings to the pound. This curious creature completed his absurdities by the construction of a pair of wings, with which he was to take a delightful aerial excursion to his native country. He proved his sincerity by starting in full feather from Stir- ling Castle. In such affairs it is, as Madame du Deffand said about that walk taken by St Denis round Paris with his own head for a burden, le premier pas qui coute. The 100 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. poor adventurer tumbled at once, and was picked up with a broken thigh-bone. Such is the only Frenchman who became conspicuous before Albany's time as holding rank and office in Scotland. Albany had not long rubbed on with the Scots Estates when he found that he really must go to Paris ; and as there seems to have been no business concerning Scot- land that he could transact there, an uncontrollable yearn- ing to be once more in his own gay world is the only motive one can find for his trip. The Estates of Scotland were in a surly humour, and not much inclined to allow him his holidays. They appointed a council of regency to act for him. He, however, as if he knew nothing about the constitutional arrangements in Scotland, ap- pointed a sort of representative, who cannot have known more about the condition and constitution of Scotland than his constituent, though he had been one of the illus- trious guests present at the marriage of James IV. He is named, in the chronicle called Pitscottie's, " Monsieur Tilliebattie," but his full name was Antoine d'Arces de la Bastie, and he had been nicknamed or dis- tinguished, as the case might be, as the Chevalier Blanc, or White Knight, like the celebrated Joannes Corvinus, the knight of Wallachia, whose son became King of Hun- gary. M. Michel calls him the " chevalresque et brillant La Bastie, chez qui le guerrier et Vhomme d'etat etaient encore superieurs au champion des tournois" He was a sort of fanatic for the old principle of chivalry, then be- ginning to disappear before the breath of free inquiry, and the active useful pursuits it was inspiring. M. Michel quotes from a contemporary writer, who describes him as perambulating Spain, Portugal, England, and France, and proclaiming himself ready to meet all comers of sufficient rank, not merely to break a lance in chivalrous courtesy, but a combattre a Poutrance an affair which even at that time was too important to be entered on as a frolic, or to pass an idle hour, but really required some serious justification. No one, it is said, accepted the challenge but the cousin of James IV. of Scotland, who is said to have been conquered, but not killed, as from the nature SLAUGHTER OF LA BASTIE. IO1 of the challenge he should have been; but this story seems to be a mistake by tile , contemporary,, ' ancl M. Michel merely quotes it without committing himself. Such was the person left by the Regent as^is veprescji- tative, though apparently with no spec ; fic office cr'pcv/ers acknowledged by the constitution of Scotland. Research may perhaps afford new light to clear up the affair; but at present the only acknowledgment of his existence bearing anything like an official character, are entries in the Scots treasurer's accounts referred to by M. Michel, one of them authorising a payment of fifteen shillings to a messenger to the warden of the middle march, " with my lord gover- nor's letters delivered by Monsr. Labawte ; " another pay- ment to his servant for summoning certain barons and gentlemen to repair to Edinburgh ; and a payment of twenty shillings for a service of more import, thus entered, " Item, deliverit be Monsieur Lawbatez to Johne Lang- landis, letters of our sovereign lords to summon and warn all the thieves and broken men out of Tweeddale and Eskdale in their own country quhilk letters were pro- claimed at market-cross of Roxburgh, Selkirk, and Jed- wood." This proclamation seems to have been the deadly in- sult which sealed his fate. The Borders had hardly yet lost their character of an independent district, which might have merged into something like a German mar- gravate. There had been always some family holding a preponderating and almost regal power there. At this time it was the Homes or Humes, a rough set, with their hands deeply dipped in blood, who little dreamed that their name would be known all over Europe by the fame of a fat philosopher sitting writing in a peaceful library with a goosequill, and totally innocent of the death of a fellow-being. It was one of Albany's rigorous measures to get the leaders of this clan brought to justice, or, in other words, executed. This was a thing to be avenged ; and since La Bastie was taking on himself the responsi- bilities of Albany, it was thought as well that he should not evade this portion of them. To lure him within their reach, a sort of mock fight IO2 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. was got up by the Borderers in the shape of the siege of one of their peel towers. ' Away went La Bastie in all his bravery, 'dreaming, simple' soul, as if he were in Picardy or Tourer- e', that' the mete name of royalty would at once secuie' p'eace and 'submission. His eye, practised in scenes of danger, at once saw murder in the gaze of those he had ventured among, and he set spurs to his good horse, hoping to reach his headquarters in the strong castle of Dunbar. The poor fellow, however, ignorant of the country, and entirely unaided, was over- taken in a bog. It is said that he tried cajoling, threats, . and appeals to honour and chivalrous feeling. As well speak to a herd of hungry wolves as to those grim minis- ters of vengeance ! The Laird of Wedderburn, a Home, enjoyed the distinction of riding with the Frenchman's head, tied by its perfumed tresses at his saddle-bow, into the town of Dunse, where the trophy was nailed to the market -cross. As old Pitscottie has it, "his enemies came upon him, and slew and murdered him very un- honestly, and cutted off his head, and carried it with them ; and it was said that he had long hair platt over his neck, whilk David Home of Wedderburn twust to his saddle-bow, and keeped it." This affair brought Scotland into difficulties both with England and France. Henry VIII. professed himself displeased that a French adventurer should have been set up as ruler in his nephew's kingdom ; and Francis I., who had just mounted the throne of France, demanded vengeance on the murderers of his distinguished subject, with whose chivalrous spirit he had a congenial sym- pathy. There is an exceedingly curious and suggestive correspondence between France and Scotland at the commencement of M. Teulet's volumes. 1 It closely resembles the papers that might be returned to Parlia- ment by our Indian Government on the negotiations with 1 ' Relations Politiques de la France et de 1'Espagne avec 1'Ecosse au xv. siecle : papiers d'etat, pieces, et documents inedits ou peu connus tires des bibliotheques et des archives de France,' public par Alexandre Teulet, archiviste aux archives de 1'empire, i. 9-16. SLAUGHTER OF LA BASTIE. 103 some wily Affghan or Scinde chief, in which reparation is demanded for outrages on a British subject. There is much fussy desire to comply with the demands of the great power, but ever a difficulty, real or pretended, in getting anything done. Proclamations and other denunciatory documents were issued in the loudest and angriest terms against the traitors and foul murderers of the representative of the illustrious ally of Scotland. Francis was told that a great army was organised to march to the Borders, and utterly annihilate the criminals and their faction ; and to give the expedition all the more thorough an aspect of serious business, it was accompanied by actual artillery a new device in the art of war but little known up to that time in Scotland. But when this powerful host arrived at the country of the Homes, the lords had fled to England. What more could be done? The correspondence con- cludes with a suggestion close on sarcasm, if not intended for it, that Francis had better demand the criminals from Henry VIII. It is not necessary, however, to suppose that trjere was absolute perfidy in all this. It may have been then in Scotland as probably it often is in the East, that the difficulty in punishing a set of powerful culprits has a better foundation in their capacity for self-defence than the government is inclined to acknowledge. But Francis was not in a condition to press the matter so far as to risk a quarrel with an old friend. Evil days, indeed, were coming to both kingdoms, and they were knit together again by the ties of a common adversity. Albany gave great provocation to Henry VIII. by joining in, if he did not organise, a project by which France, the northern powers, and Scotland were to unite for the restoration of the house of York in England through its representative, Reginald de la Pole. The wrath of Henry fell heavily on the land, and appeal after appeal was made to Francis for assistance. But his hands were full. He had to keep up three great armies one in Italy, another in Picardy, and a third in Guienne and was in great alarm for the safety of his own frontiers. He sent first M. le Charron, and then M. de Langeac, 104 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. as his ambassadors, with supremely kind and sympathis- ing messages, recommending Scotland to keep up heart until better days should come, but he could give no material assistance. Driven to extremes, the Scots repre- sented that they had been offered peace with England on the condition of abandoning the French alliance. They had sternly refused this humiliating condition ; but they now put it to France, whether, being quite unable to give them assistance, she would resign, for a time at least, her claims to the exclusive friendship of the Scots, and let them make peace with England. But Francis was in the climax of his adversity. The great battle of Pavia had just been fought. The Scots were asked if it was a time to desert steady old friends when their King was defeated and a captive in the enemy's hands ? The chivalry which ruled the diplomacy of that day prevailed, and the request was withdrawn. The two nations, in externals, became faster friends than ever. 1 In 1537 there was a gallant wedding, when James V. went to bring home Madeleine of France. He received special royal honours, not known before to have been conferred on foreigners. According to the documents given by M. Teulet, the officers charged with the tradi- tions of state precedents grumbled about this prince of a northern island, who knew no civilised language, receiv- ing honours which had heretofore been deemed sacred to the royal blood of France, the Parliament being specially aggrieved by having to walk in procession in their scar- let robes, carrying their mantles and velvet caps. The national policy that held by this marriage would have had but a frail tenure, for poor Madeleine soon drooped and died. She had said, as a girl, that she wanted to be a queen, be the realm she ruled what it might ; and so she had a brief experience this word seems preferable to enjoyment of the throne of cold uncomfortable Scot- land. There was speedily another wedding, bearing in the direction of the French alliance, for that was still uppermost with the governing powers, whatever it might 1 Teulet, 'Relations Politiques,' i. 43-55. SCOTLAND AND HER ROYAL ALLIANCES. 105 be with the English and Protestant party, daily acquiring strength among the district leaders, nobles or lairds. It may have seemed to these, that when the queen was no longer a daughter of France, but a young lady, the child of one feudatory and the widow of another, with no better claim to share the throne than her beautiful face, there was no further danger from France. But the young queen was a Guise one of that wonderful race who seemed advancing onwards to a destiny of which it was not easy to fix the probable limits. Scotland, by her royal alliances, might now be said to have hold of England with one hand and France with the other. The question came to be, which would pull hardest? io6 CHAPTER IV. THE BIRTH OF QUEEN MARY FRENCH WRITERS ON HER LIFE AND CHARACTER HER INFLUENCE ON THE FATE OF EUROPE CATH- ERINE OF MEDICI THEIR STRIFE MARY'S BEQUEST TO PHILIP THE APPARENT SUPREMACY OF THE OLD LEAGUE THE UNDER- WORKINGS THAT WERE DESTROYING IT FRENCH GOVERNMENT IN SCOTLAND REACTION RECENT REVELATIONS THE REFORMATION IN SCOTLAND, AND HOW IT CAME ABOUT THE WINDING-UP. ON the 7th of December in the year 1542 was born the infant afterwards renowned over the world as Mary Queen of Scots. The heir to the throne of England was a boy five years older Edward, the son of her grand- uncle, Henry VIII. They were in the degree of what is called first and second cousins. Nothing seemed so rational as that these two should be united, and so heal the wounds of two bleeding countries. It was indeed so extremely reasonable, that Henry VIII., to prevent any possibility of its falling through, resolved to effect it at once by force the most dangerous of all means for accomplishing any object with the Scots. He demanded the personal custody of the royal child ; and when this was refused, he restored the old claims of superiority, and sent an army to fetch her. Here again history is over- loaded with the cruel feats of one exterminating army following on the heels of another, and all set to their bloody work because their passionate tyrant had resolved to cut the child out of the very heart of her people. He had almost accomplished his object, and Scotland seemed but a step from annexation, when, on the i6th of June 1548, strange sails were seen in the Firth of Forth, and, to the joy of high and low, the Sieur d'Esse*, a tried QUEEN MARY. IO/ soldier, landed with a small army in the pay of France, accompanied by a field-train of unusual strength for the times. These men were of all nations soldiers by trade, and ready to fight for any paymaster. They were well ac- customed, of course, to all sort of scenes of ruffianism; but they had yet to know, and they did so with some twinges of revulsion, the ferocity imparted to those who fight for their homes against the invader. When the mercenaries took prisoners from the English, they were of course ready to sell them, by way of ransom, to the highest bidder friend or enemy. The highest bidders were in many instances the Scots, who thus invested their scant supply of money that they might have the gratification of putting the hated invaders to death. These were symptoms of a spirit that snapped at once all the ties of diplomacy and royal alliances. The great object now was how to render Henry's object impossible. This was done by spiriting the royal infant off to France a feat skilfully and gallantly accomplished with the assistance of the French vessels. We now approach the time when the destinies of Europe depended on the character and actions of three women a sort of three Fates who spun and cut the threads of nations. These were Catherine of Medici, Queen Eliza- beth, and Mary of Scotland. It is with the last that we have chiefly to do here. The story of the alliance be- tween France and Scotland had reached its climax when both had the same queen. Her influence on the two nations is not alone historical : it has affected the tenor of French literature, and the eye with which it has re- garded Scotland; and in this respect the position of the two countries towards each other can be exemplified among the people of our own generation. French authors have indeed lately thrown themselves, with their natural impetuosity, on the great problems of Mary's character and actions. 1 And though we claim 1 Besides Mignet's beyond any question the best Life of Queen Mary and also, besides, the works of Teulet and Michel, a con- siderable portion of which applies to her, we have, ' Etudes sur W. Shakspeare, Marie Stuart, et L' Aretin Le Drame, IO8 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. credit for more coolness and historical impartiality than our neighbours, yet it may be that those qualities which we count defects in them, enable them to take a more genial and natural view of such a nature as hers. With nothing but our plain black and white to paint with, we are unable to impart to our picture the rich blending of hues which harmonises the light with the shade, and im- parts a general richness to the tone of the composition throughout. It will require a hardish course of reading in the Causes Cdlebres, the Me'moires, and the recent school of French novels, to give a native of this country a conception of the assimilation of French people's le Moeur, et la Religion au xvi. Siecle,'par M. Chasles-Philarete, 1854. * Marie Stuart et Catherine de Medicis, etude historique sur les Relations de la France et de 1'Ecosse,' 1858. ' Histoire de Marie Stuart, ' par J. M. Dargaud. 'Les Crimes Celebres,' par Alexandre Dumas Marie Stuart. ' The Life of Mary Stuart, ' by Marie Louis Alphonse Prat dc Lamartine. 'Marie Stuart et le Comte de Both well,' par L. Wiesener, Pro- fesseur d' Histoire a Lycee Louis-le-Grande, 1863. * Lettres de Marie Stuart, publiees avec summaires, traductions, notes, et fac-simile,' par Jean Baptiste Alexandre Theodore Teulet. The last is intended as a supplement to the collection by Prince Labanoff, with which my reader either is or is not acquainted. This venerable member of the select circle of Russian grandees, claiming descent from the pristine Rurik, stands conspicuous as a living illus- tration of the fascinations of our northern Cleopatra. It is related among the triumphs of Ninon de 1'Enclos, that she had lovers among the contemporaries of her grandchildren, one of them, according to a questionable legend, turning out to be an actual descendant in that degree. But the fascinations of Mary present to us a far more potent testimony in a living lover, who loves and must love on, as some of the sentimental songs say, down into the third century after that in which the object of his passion breathed the breath of life. The Prince has spent a great portion of a long life in the functions of a knight-errant, vindicating the spotless honour of the lady of his love. If it has not been his lot to put the spear in rest against the caitiff maligners, or to knock on the shield hung outside the gate of the castle where the object of his vows lies captive, he has performed the drearier, if less dangerous, task of ransacking every library in the world for evidence of the innocence of his peerless lady, and has pub- blished the result of his labours in seven dense octavo volumes. They are a curious and valuable collection, but rather dryish on the whole ; QUEEN MARY. 1 09 thoughts to such a topic to let one see how thoroughly, and almost devoutly, they would relish the story of her beauty, her wit, her lively vitality, her marvellous capacity for fathoming the human heart, her equally marvellous power of allurement, and her perfect good sense, good taste, and good humour. And indeed these qualities were rather enhanced than blotted by the one prevailing weak- ness a submission to the empire of the master- passion so entire, that under its relentless rule no duty to God or man was powerful enough in restraint ; and if such a thing as the life of a wretched poltroon calling himself husband stood in the way, why, let it go. When we convince ourselves, as in the story of Chatelar, that the and though the price of the volumes is considerable, I have little doubt that they have been paid for by many more people than they been read by. The Prince's labours were not directed to the end of discovering the truth that was already fixed and indubitable as divine truth ; he sought in his humble devotion only to collect and record the documents calculated to illustrate it, and bring it home in its full lustre to careless or obdurate hearts. Accordingly, he rejected from his collection as spurious, and in a manner blasphemous, those docu- ments which, in the view of the impartial, throw doubt on the purity of his bright particular star. M. Teulet observes, with a sort of dry sarcasm, "C'est Ik sans doute une conviction aussi sincere que re- spectable ; malheureusement tout le monde ne la partage pas ; " and he remarks very justly, that to those acquainted with the Prince Labanoff it is quite unnecessary to explain that he is a complete stranger to the volume issued to the world for the purpose of completing his col- lection. There is, in fact, a sort of Quixotism in M. Teulet himself, and one cannot help being amused by the enthusiasm for historical accuracy, which has set the one collector and editor to dog the steps, as it were, of the other, and supply his rejections and omissions, in order that the world may know die real truths. There is no getting off with a fond hallucination, or a well-pleaded one-sided theory, while there are archaeological detectives to track our steps in this fashion. The two editors are not only honest, but disinterested, each in his own peculiar way. To the affluent and distinguished Prince, the cost of printing seven volumes for an unappreciating public would be a trifling addition to the sacrifices made by him in his laborious search over the world for their contents. It is questionable whether his sacrifice is nearly so great as that of the distinguished archaeologist ; since any man, master of the abilities and industry embarked on the supple- mental volume, might surely, had he desired it, have found a more profitable and a more distinguished method of employing them. 110 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. resources of the siren's fascinations are drawn upon to awaken wild hopeless love in a poor youth until he is driven frantic, and rushes into such scrapes that he must be killed out of the way, we get angry and use hard words, instead of looking at the affair in a purely artistic aspect. 1 Hence one set of our writers will have it that she was a meek and injured angel, the other that she was a remorseless and cruel demon. Unless Mr Froude is to be counted an exception, our writers have made coarse work of this delicate his- torical morsel. We cannot enter into the spirit of that long, patient, noble supplice we have not a word for it in our own language which dignifies guilt. Once be- lieving in what we call the guilt, we cast the unclean thing away, and will give it no place in our heart. It is very difficult for us, indeed, to understand how lightly murder would lie on a conscience trained under the shadow of Catherine of Medici, and how consistently a laxness about it might coexist with beauty, gentleness, and kindness. The ethics, indeed, which ruled that Court were deeper and more devilish than anything of native-born French origin. They were Italian the 1 There is something, too, in the intense silliness of Chatelar's con- duct which our insular natures cannot away with, and so scarce any one has raised a voice against his cruel death. It is a pity that the process against him has been lost, were it only to remove curious doubts as to the portion of the royal premises in which he was hidden. If we adopt a very plain-spoken statement in a letter from Randolph to Cecil, the poor youth's account of the place he went to, and his reason for going to it, is so gross an outrage at once on the dignity of history and the ideal purity of romance, that one cannot wonder at both having passed it by in ignominious silence (see Von Raumer's ' Contributions to Modern History, ' p. 22). It is, by the way, a misapprehension to suppose that Chatelar's position was so humble as to make his aspirations, had he conducted himself decorously, an utter misconception and a symptom of insanity. He was a youth of birth and condition otherwise Brantome would not have spoken of him as he does and related to the chivalrous Bayard. No doubt, an alliance with one in whom the destinies of Europe were so heavily involved, would have been a mightily presumptuous expectation for him to form. But he was in the position in which a lift in the world by marriage with a supernumerary daughter of some secondary royal family might not have seemed utterly preposterous. QUEEN MARY. Ill views which the Borgias practised, and Machiavelli taught. Among the small states of their native growth they might be used for the slaughtering of half a village, or the poisoning-off of a family : imported to the mighty kingdom of France, their fruit expanded into the great battue of St Bartholomew's Day. The Florentine's pre- cepts were intended for the private use of the Medici family; and there was something so self - contradictory in their publication to the world, that he was supposed to be in jest, like Swift with his advice to servants ; for it is the ruling spirit of all such policy that it is personal to the owner, hidden within the dark recesses of his own breast, and concealed for use against the scrutiny of the keenest adversary. There was no better place of con- cealment for it than behind youth, beauty, genial court- esy, and gaiety of heart. In addition to a more genial appreciation of the nature of the heroine, the French were placed in a better posi- tion to see the whole expanse of the stage on which she acted. Our own historians, dealing with but a corner of the world, are not prepared duly to estimate the expan- sive scene which Mary's peculiar position opened up. I propose, in a few words, before winding up the " Ancient League," to sketch the chief conditions of which she was in the several steps of her career the centre. 1 1 Along with their tact in appreciating the spirit of their heroine, the more ambitious of these French authors are sometimes amusingly inaccurate in minute matters of fact. M. Chasles opens thus : " II y a un nom qui semble destine a servir d'anneau brillant et douloureux entre la civilisation du Midi et le rude esprit du Nord pendant le xvi* siecle. Ce nom e'clatant et voile de pleurs est le plus tragique des temps modernes ; tragique surtout par 1'obscurite equivoque et le bruit confus de ses fautes, de ses talents, et de ses angoisses ! Jamais on ne pourra rever de roman plus pathetique que le sien : c'est une femme voluptueuse, gaie comme le soleil de France, passionnee comme le ciel d'ltalie ; faible et forte ; entouree d'hommes sauvages, qui poignardent son ministre dans ses bras. Captive dans un donjon humide et mal- sain, elle, habituee a toutes les recherches ; elle brave du fond de ce cachot Elisabeth vieillie dans le despotisme ; enfin elle tend au bourreau sa tete royale et catholique, qui n'a pas plie devant sa rivale." This is no doubt well turned, but the turning-point about the death of Rizzio is inaccurate. He was not stabbed in her arms he was not 112 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. It was not alone her queenly rank, her extraordinary beauty, and her mental gifts, even accompanied as these were by the more potent gift of an irresistible seductive- ness, that gave her the influence she held over her age, as the manner in which these fine court cards were played. They happened to be in the hand, or rather in the several hands, of a house which counted within its own family circle a group of the most accomplished, daring, and successful political gamesters of the day. killed in her presence ; she did not know of his death till some time after the deed. In fact, her conduct during the interval between his removal and her knowledge of his fate furnishes some of the most significant conjectures about her concern in the tragedy next to come off. The mistakes in the book of another Frenchman, M. Dargaud, are the more amusing from his almost chivalrous efforts to be quite accurate. He tells us that he explored the collections, the museums, the ancient portraits, the rare engravings, the traditions, the ballads, the lakes, the sea and its shores, the mountains and plains, the fields of battle, the palaces, the prisons, all the ruins, all the sites, and all the innumerable traces of the past the enumeration is the author's own, not a travesty of it. He then explains how lifeless all history is without topography ; and thus, with much simplicity, sets the reader on the watch to find whether his own topography is quite accurate. We begin with Mary, a happy child in the island of Inch Mahome, in the Lake of Menteith. That she enjoyed the national ballads and legends, and listened with delight to the pibroch, ' ' sorte de melodic guerriere executee sur le cornemuse," is a statement which it would be difficult to disprove were it worth while ; but the author, when he describes her bounding over the rocks at early dawn, is at once con- tradicted by the fact that the island is a bit of meadow as flat as a carpet. There is no doubt a great contrast, especially in these days of tile-draining, between the fruitful plains of the Lowlands and the Highland Grampians. But the author's vivid picture of Queen Mary's enjoyment of the contrast in the northern tour ending in the battle of Corrichie is utterly thrown away, since in the course of that journey the country she passed over is an almost continuous tract of bleak, low, uniform acclivities. This author tells us of peculiarities in the habits of John Knox which, had they been known to his biographer, Dr M 'Crie, would have changed the tone of his book, and, indeed, have slightly per- plexed that grave and earnest biographer. It seems that the great preacher frequented the Pentland Mountains, where " tous les soirs tres tard, il s'endonnait au bruit d'une cascade de la montagne. La chute harmonieuse et monotone de cette grande nappe d'eau pouvait seule calmer 1 agitation formidable de ses pensees" (p. 193). There QUEEN MARY. 113 The fortune which made Mary the daughter of a Guise, put a character on the events of the time. Had she been the daughter of her father's first wife, poor gentle Madeleine of Valois, whatever destinies might have awaited her, it is not likely that they would have been so high. It was not the greatness of her mother's family, but its character- istic of being a pushing rising family, that gave her name its wide influence. During that period and for some time later so late, indeed, as the construction of the Prussian is something exceedingly comical in the idea of Knox thus posed. If the practice could be established, it might add to the renown of the only waterfall on the Pentlands the much-infested Habbie's Howe. But there is evidently some confusion in the author's mind between our great Reformer and Brian, the Celtic seer in the * Lady of the Lake:' " Couched on a shelve beneath its brink, Close where the thundering torrents sink, Rocking beneath their headlong sway, And drizzled by the ceaseless spray, 'Midst groan of rock and roar of stream, The wizard waits prophetic dream." M. Dargaud derived some valuable ideas from the "statuette du docteur " which he saw in the High Street a well-known piece of rude carving by some ambitious mason, who intended to symbolise Moses. A picture in Holyrood is pronounced to be the veritable "docteur imperieux et terrible de 1'idee nouvelle ; " and doubtless, among the rubbish of odds and ends collected in Holyrood, there is a picture which it is the rule of the house to call a portrait of Knox, though every observing onlooker, seeing the compasses in the hand, pronounces it to be the portrait of an architect or a geometrist. But M. Dargaud met with wonders in Edinburgh denied to the eyes and ears of the common herd even of tourists. He gives a succinct account of the manner in which Darnley was put to death before the house of the Kirk-o'- Field was blown up to conceal the deed. This account is carefully culled from the traditions which he collected "au pied de 1'eglise expiatoire batie sur ce funebre lieu." This statement suggests uneasy suspicions as to the stories that may be palmed off by guides upon confiding tourists. Monstrous false- hoods are told by the whole class ; and it is a signal exemplification of their resolution utterly to abandon their sense and discretion along with their work, that holiday tourists should take instructions in the most abstruse portions of archaeology from the most ignorant of the human race. The " rises " which this class of public instructors take out of their victims are in the general case extravagant enough. Yet the guide who so far fathomed the French historian's appetite and discretion as to show him the expiatory church on the scene of the H 114 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. kingdom the regal duchies which fell into the hands of clever ambitious families had a way of expanding into kingdoms and empires. The King of France represented but a Duke of Paris, and the Czar a Duke of Mus- covia. It seemed clear to contemporaries that the Guises of Lorraine were to aggrandise themselves into a royal house. They fell by their too eagerly grasping at a great crown, and the ambition that o'erleaps its sell. Their aim was to rule over France, if not farther; and how death of Darnley, must have been an honour to his profession. M. Dargaud is an inveterate hunter after traditions, and finds them in the most unpromising ground. Thus, he found among the cottars of the counties of York, Derby, Northampton, and Stafford, a well-preserved description of Queen Mary riding along, surrounded by her maids of honour, and followed by the ferocious dragoons of Elizabeth. He might about as well go to the coast of Kent and gather an account of the appearance and costume of Julius Caesar on the occasion of his celebrated landing in Britain. On matters of historical opinion every man is free. M. Dargaud looked with mysterious awe in Hamilton Palace on the identical hackbut with which Bothwellhaugh shot the Regent Murray. Hav- ing also seen this weapon, I take it, notwithstanding an inscription on it engraved in brass by some eminent maker of door-plates, to have been constructed by some Brummagem rifle -manufacturer about the period of the American War, or perhaps a little later. There is a curious harmony between this author's notions about the assailant's weapon and the defence of the assailed. The Regent Murray, it seems, would not have been pierced by Bothwellhaugh's bullet, if he had had the precaution to put on the ' ' souple et impenetrable cotte de mailles," the work of Henry Wynd, the celebrated armourer of Perth. This coat of mail must be about as imaginary an article as a sermon by the celebrated hypocrite Tartuffe, or a cameo from the collection of the Count of Monte Christo. If we are to have history founded on such materials, it were well to put the right tradition in the right place. So when we have Queen Mary at Hamilton with her followers, after her escape from Loch Leven, displeased with their inactivity, she resolves to rouse them by one of those " symboles familiers au genie des peuples du Nord." Accordingly, she sets be- fore the assembled barons a dish prepared by her own royal hands. The cover is lifted, and behold a pair of spurs ! Universal applause and enthusiasm follow the war-cry is sounded, and all leap to the saddle to conquer or die for their Queen. Everybody is familiar with this, as a Border legend of the method which the goodwife took to remind her husband of an empty larder. There is a certain licence, perhaps, to be permitted to an author of rhetorical and popular ten- dencies, who is speaking of a foreign country, and is apt to get in- QUEEN MARY. 115 near they were to accomplishing that object we can only now judge by looking back on that age by the light of the present, in which the experiment which was then made, but failed, has been successful. What the Buonaparte dynasty has done for itself, was in fact pretty nearly anticipated by the dynasty of Guise. It is extremely interesting to compare, at the two extremes of such a stretch of time, conditions so unlike in their veigled between the real and the ideal. There are other little inac- curacies which some of the author's friends will no doubt consider ornaments, in as far as they exemplify a sort of scorn of minute accuracy in the matters of foreign countries, which, in French litera- ture, is something like the inability of great people to remember the personal histories and genealogical connections of their inferiors. Hence French literature seems to cultivate a sort of imbecility in foreign nomenclature be it applicable to institutions, persons, or places. There is a rather preposterous instance of this assumptive inaptness in M. Dargaud, when he gives us his brilliant description of the marriage of Mary and Darnley, where the Queen is served by "les Comtes Athoil, Sewer, Morton, Caver, et Crawford." One might attribute the appearance of the Earls Sewer and Caver to extremely careless correction of the press ; but there is something about the tone of the passage tending to leave it doubtful whether its author had so read his authorities as to be aware that on that occa- sion Athoil performed the part of sewer, and Morton of carver. There are surely not many British readers of French books who would suppose that a mattre (Thdtel is a personage like the Master of Ravenswood, or that a chef de cuisine indicates the chief of some Gallic clan. It will not disturb this author's equanimity, that he has made mistakes of this kind, should they come to his knowledge. But there are other points coming in contact with French literature, on which even so ambitious a writer as M. Dargaud might be expected to take the trouble of being precise. Doubtless the pretty lines begin- ning " Adieu, plaisant pays de France, O ma patrie La plus cheVie," were long attributed to Queen Mary, and cited as critical evidence of the impossibility of her having written other things so far lower both in morality and genius. But a French writer ought to have known that the piece was written by Meunier de Querlon, a clever miscel- laneous author of the middle of the last century. I feel some regret in yielding to a malicious temptation, in noticing these trifling inaccuracies in a book which has much interest, and also a deal of historical truth, as distinct from mere accuracy in detail. Il6 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. mere external and incidental characteristics, yet possessing so much unity in their real essence. There was the same restlessness and fickleness among all classes of the French people, the same vibration between anarchy and abject submission, the same insane determination to drive the one principle uppermost for the time to its most relent- less conclusions; and, what is more to the point, the same thirsting for a leader brave, strong, relentless, and successful. Since the tide turned against Francis I. since the date of the battle of Pavia, we may say the French were losing conceit of the house of Valois. They did not satisfy the national craving for brilliancy and suc- cess, for the satisfaction of which Frenchmen will at once cheerfully abandon their liberties. France, indeed, was waning in the eyes of Europe before the rising influence of Spain and England, the great representatives of the two contending forces of the age. She thus continued in im- minent peril of revolution, until Henry IV. gave the crown the lustre of heroism. Immediately afterwards Richelieu handed over a well-drilled territory to Louis XIV., by whose brilliant career of victories and unjust aggrandise- ments the lease was effectually renewed, and the Revolu- tion postponed. Le Balafre', or the Scarred, the head of the Guises, had in the period of weakness and despondency performed the one redeeming achivement which was glorious to his coun- trymen, in the capture of Calais from the English. He was the most popular man of his day, and he knew how by a subtle diplomacy to make that as well as every other element of his strength tell. There can be no doubt that he was the supreme guiding spirit in that bold movement by which the precious infant was spirited out of Scotland, and carried far beyond the reach of Henry VIII., and the influence of his plans for uniting England and Scotland under his son and her. The next great step was her marriage with the Dauphin. Fortune favoured them mightily at one stroke, when Montgomery poked out the eye of Henry II. in the tilt-yard. A member of the house of Guise was now Queen of France. It does not seem probable that then they looked to sovereignty in QUEEN MARY. II? France. They were but increasing their power by every feasible means that offered, and the displacement of their niece's husband was not to be so denned. Indeed it is not likely that the Balafre' himself ever thought of the throne of France. It was on his more unscrupulous and restless son that that consummation of their power seems to have dawned. To the world in general it seemed as if all this fabric of power had toppled down at once with the death of the poor feeble King of France. Queen of France and Queen of Scotland the two things were as far apart in power and brilliancy as the palace from the cottage, and the latter now only remained. To these restless and am- bitious spirits, however, the game was by no means up. The court card was still in their hands to be played again ; and though they lost the fortune that seemed secured, there were others even greater within the range of possi- bilities. No time was lost before their busy brains were at work devising a new alliance. The several available monarchs and heirs to thrones were scrutinised. Den- mark and some of the smaller German states were lightly passed over by an eye that looked ever upwards, and at last rested on the supreme pinnacle of European power the Spanish empire. It was there that whatever France lost had been gained. It was the empire whose monarch boasted that the sun never set on his dominions. As his ambassador Don Ferdinand de Mandosa put it, "God was supreme in heaven, but the King of Spain was su- preme on earth." He had brought under his feet the independent states of Spain, snatched Portugal, ruled the greater part of Italy; and though the Dutch were then working out their independence, they were, in the eye of Spain and the greater part of Europe, merely a handful of rebels struggling in a swamp, and earning for themselves condign punishment. He crushed the Moors, and in the conflict afterwards crowned at Lepanto he had proved himself the champion and protector of Christendom against the domineering Turk. To preserve a full impression of the mighty position of Spain under Philip II., it is necessary to remember that Il8 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. the revival of the Empire was the aim of every great Con- tinental power. Spain seemed marching on to this high destiny. France was thrown out in the misfortunes of Francis I. Germany, though nominally in possession of the Caesarship, had not throughout her scattered states concentrated power to give it vitality. The greatness of England was of another kind a fresh growth, totally apart from the remains of the imperial system, and sup- ported by the separate vitality of its energetic, free, in- dustrious people. Thus the Spanish monarch had no effective rival in the ambitious course which he was slowly, but cunningly and resolutely, pursuing; and when he finally succeeded, his would be a greater empire than ever Roman eagle soared above : for had there not been found a new world on the other side of the Atlantic the yet undeveloped empire called " the Indies " ? What a position, then, for these ambitious princes of Lorraine, could they get their niece, with her possession of Scotland and her claims to the succession of England, made Queen of Spain ! With such sources of influence in their hands, it would go hard but that the head of the house of Lorraine ruled in France, be it as Mayor of the Palace, as deputy of the Emperor of Europe, or as actual King. And then there was the Empire itself to look for- ward to. It is significant of the reach of their ambition that the great Duke, when, as head of the League, he was more powerful than any contemporary monarch except the King of Spain, had it spoken of that he was a descend- ant of Charlemagne. The pedigree was not very accu- rate, but it was as good as that which served the turn of the Lorraine Hapsburgs. The spirit of his policy is reflected in the 'Argenis' of Barclay, who was a keen observer, and designed to leave behind him in his book a closer view of the inner intricacies of the statecraft of the age than the common histories afforded. He wanted to do the difficult duty of speaking to posterity without letting his own generation hear what he said, and so he wove his revelations into a ponderous allegory. In his Lycogenes, however, the great Duke was at once recog- QUEEN MARY. 119 nised. His talk is exactly that of his position and views. He is not himself a king, but is at the head of a kingly family. So, when a relation, in the course of some flatter- ing talk, rails against monarchs, Lycogenes rebukes him: None should govern but those of kingly race ; but they should not be absolutely hereditary ; there should be a choice, and the best man among them should get each vacant throne precisely the doctrine to suit his position and views. 1 It has often been maintained that he was not sincere in the Popish fanaticism which he professed. He knew, however, that the Pontificate and the Empire were necessary to each other, as the two orbs of one system Pope and Emperor being as natural a conjunc- tion as Church and King. Accordingly a marriage was projected, and all but con- cluded, with Don Carlos, the heir to the Spanish crown. The project suited admirably with the ambitious notions of Philip II. In fact, like the Guises on the death of King Francis, he had just lost by death the hold he had on England through his marriage with Henry VIII.'s daughter, Mary ; and here was another available in its place ; for with all the Roman Catholics there was no doubt that Queen Mary of Scotland was the true heiress of the throne of England, and that the overthrow of Elizabeth the usurper was to be brought about by Provi- dence in its own good time, with such judicious aid from the sword as Philip was able and very willing to supply. There was a dark and subtle spirit, however, which in close quarters might come to be more powerful than the Guises or the King of Spain either, dead against the match. This was our friend Catherine of Medici, the mother-in-law of Mary. The motives of this terrible woman have been an enigma to historians. And yet 1 ' ' Timerat Lycogenes invidiam, quod ab suo nepote oppugnaretur jus regium. Nam et hoc inutile suis cceptis facinus erat, qui non delete sed habere sibi regnum optaert. Aliud commodius visum : quandoquidem ille sermo incideiat arguere gentium ritum, quas uni se stirpi in hereditatem permiserant, cseterasque extollere post singu- lorum obitum regum in comitia et suffragia euntes." ' Argenis,' lib. i. ch. 15. 120 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. there is a view of them simple enough, which tallies pretty well with the facts of history : it is, that she had no scruples of any kind, and let nothing stand between her and her object. If lies could accomplish her object, tell them ; if life were in the way, out with it, by bullet, steel, or poison, as may be most convenient, considering time and purpose. Her policy was an engine to be kept going, though nothing but human blood should be avail- able for working it ; and as to the nature of her policy, it was not that of despotism or of liberty, of the Church of Rome or of freedom of conscience, but the enjoyment of self-centred power. It seems to add a new shade to one of the darkest pictures of human wickedness, to say that the author of the Massacre of St Bartholomew had no fanaticism or religious zeal in her; but so it was. As to Philip, he was a thorough bigot, who consoled himself on his deathbed by reflecting on the numbers he had put to death, and the quantity of human agony he had inflicted for the sake of the Church ; but as to his rival in bloodshed and cruelty, she would have become a Huguenot or a Mohammedan could it have served her purpose. At a celebrated conference at Bayonne, on the frontier, whither she went professedly to meet her daughter, she met also with the Duke of Alva and other historic personages. It was a general opinion that there, in dark conclave, a league was formed for the extirpation of the Protestants, of which Catherine honestly observed her part on St Bartholomew's Day. But in their recently published state papers the French Government have given the world a full and particular account of the sayings and doings at this conference, and represent to us Catherine cool and politic, sarcastic almost, at the fiery enthusiasm of Spain, and absolutely charged with a secret partiality towards the Huguenots. 1 She had no love for Mary Stewart. The day on which she, the mother of the king, had to give precedence to the young beauty who had become reigning queen, stamped its mark on her black heart. Mary stung the 1 *Papiers d'Etat du Cardinal de Granville,' ix. 319. QUEEN MARY. 121 dowager occasionally with her sarcastic tongue; for few were better adepts at that dangerous accomplishment which torments and makes enemies. For all its illus- trious history, the house of Medici was an anomaly among the feudalities, from having founded its wealth and power on commerce instead of rapine, and it lay open to sneers as not legitimately regal ; hence Mary called her mother- in-law the fille de Marchand a sneer which Catherine committed to her dangerous and retentive memory. She was pretty freely accused, indeed, of having shortened her son's life, because she thought she would have more power were he out of the way ; and no doubt she was quite cap- able of the deed. The only thing in which she showed any of the confiding weakness of mankind was in being a devotee of astrology and divination ; but these, if they were supernatural, yet were agencies put in the power of man which she might turn to her own immediate purpose, and which were therefore far more to be respected than the religion which belonged to another world, in which she could not command obedience. Well, Catherine was against the Spanish match, for the obvious reason that it would render the power of the Lor- raine Guises preponderant over that of herself and her sons. She was indefatigable in carrying her point. M. Che'ruel has published some of her letters on the affair to the Bishop of Limoges, the French ambassador in Spain. Strange documents they are, subtle almost to unintelligi- bility, full of ingenious suggestion and eager pleading, with a shadowy half-hidden under-current of menace. It was difficult to bring very powerful arguments to bear against an arrangement so advantageous to both the parties concerned. She tried to make out that it would be extremely detrimental to the Catholic cause, because, if her hand were weakened by the aggrandisement of the Guises, it would be the Huguenot King of Navarre, and not she, who would really obtain the chief influence in France. She endeavoured to work through King Philip's confessor and several of his confidential advisers. Her daughter was Philip's third wife to her the most plausible arguments were addressed. 122 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. It was proposed that Don Carlos, instead of having Mary, should be married to the younger sister of his step- mother, the Queen of Spain. Thus that Queen would have a sister with her, and her position would be strength- ened by an alliance with the heir to the throne, on whom her own personal claim as his stepmother would be but small. Catherine even endeavoured to move Queen Eliza- beth to her ends by presenting to her a prospect, no doubt sufficiently alarming, both for the cause of Protestantism and her own personal interest. But how Elizabeth could have acted in the matter save through the influence of Murray, afterwards the Regent, on his sister, is not very clear. The match, however, was defeated. People so unscrupulous as Catherine are very successful in accom- plishing their ends. She had in her employment a countryman of her own, one Bianci, or Blanc, as the French annalists call him, an expert confectioner, who got the title of Queen Catherine's poisoner that being the function by which he was reputed to gain his liv- ing. A powerful effect would be produced on the mind by such a thought passing over it as " Well, if I push her to the wall, that woman will poison me." From whatever cause, however, she had her way on this oc- casion, and one of the most brilliant of the dreams of ambition was dispersed. So ends the first act ; but the tragedy in which the King of Spain, the Lorraine Guises, and Queen Mary, continue to be the chief characters, is not yet acted out. The first casualty is among the Guises. Mary has not long endured her dreary banishment to her own kingdom, when a despatch arrives telling her how the brave Balafre has been murdered by the fanatic Poltrot. The blow is a severe one. The uncle and niece had an abundant fund of common sympathies. Both were princely, not alone by descent and conventional rank, but by the original stamp of the Deity, which had given them majesty and beauty in externals, balanced by bravery, wit, geniality, and high spirit as their intellectual and moral inheritance. She was proud of the great warrior and the wise statesman who had guided her youthful QUEEN MARY. 123 steps to greatness, and he was proud to be the parent and instructor of the most fascinating princess of her age. It was just after his death that the dark days of Mary came upon her. Her maternal house still kept up a close intercourse with her, but personally their relation had wid- ened. They were cousins now, not uncle and niece, and their intercourse was rather diplomatic than affectionate. Upwards of twenty years have passed, and preparation is made for the chamber of execution at Fotheringay, yet still the chief persons in the drama are the same. A whisper arises and passes over Europe, Is a King of France, a descendant of Saint Louis, a grandson of the great Francis, going to permit his sister-in law, who wore the crown, and yet bears the title of a Dowager Queen of France, to be put to death like a felon ? Certainly not. There is a certain Monsieur Bellievre accredited to the Court of Elizabeth, for the purpose of bringing her to reason, and stopping any attempt at violence. He seems to have acted in some degree like the consul who quoted Bynkershook and Puffendorf and Grotius, and proved from Vatel, &c. ; and in the text of the inviola- bility of princes, he quoted Cicero, and referred to Mark Antony, Mutius Scaevola, and Porsenna with such apt diplomatic scholarship, that De Thou thought his speeches to Elizabeth, as reported by the speaker, worthy of being incorporated in full in his great History. But in reality Bellievre had a wondrously difficult part to perform, and his big classic talk was all intended to blazon over and hide his real helplessness. Had the King of France determined to act ? that was the critical question. He had come to no such determi- nation; or rather he had determined, if such a term is appropriate, not to act, and Elizabeth knew it. His object in the embassy was to hide his real abandonment of his sister-in-law from the eye of Europe. The ambassador, however, had personally too much chivalry for such a task. When he was done with his classical citations, at a long personal interview he at last distinctly threatened Elizabeth, should she persist, with the vengeance of the French Government. The virago fired up at this ; 124 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. she put it sharply to Bellievre, had he the authority of the King her brother to hold such language to her ? Yes, he had, expressly. Well, she must have a copy of this, under the ambassador's own hand. If Bellievre gave her the genuine instructions communicated to him, they would be found but faintly to warrant his brave words of defiance ; for after some rather unchivalric proposals for adjusting the affair without the necessity of a behead- ing, they contain a vague sort of threat of resentment if they be not adopted. 1 Elizabeth, after the tragedy was over, wrote a jeering letter to King Henry about this threat, showing how lightly she esteemed it if not, indeed, showing that there was a common understanding between them on the point. After the execution, which was supposed to take every- body by surprise, the next question was, whether the King of France would avenge it. M. Che'ruel, who has the inner history of the French part of the affair ready to his hand, says the country was filled with cries of venge- ance. He selects as the key-note of this sentiment the words in which it was echoed by 1'Ecossais Blackwood : " Le Roi, parent et beau-frere de cette dame, laissera-t-il son meurtre impuni ? il ne souffrira jamais que cette tache deshonore son tres illustre nom, ni que telle infamie tombe sur le royaume de France." 2 But he was just going, with his own hands, to drop a darker blot on his illustrious name. M. Che'ruel notices the significant little fact, that when Renaud de Beaurne, Archbishop of Bourges, preached a funeral sermon on Queen Mary, in which he called her relations, the Guises, foudres de guerre^ or thunderbolts of war, he was required to suppress this expression when he published the sermon. The question between the Guises and the house of Valois was coming to an issue; within a few months after the execution of Mary, the first war of barricades was fought 1 " Si la Reine d'Angleterre ne les met en aucune consideration, mais veut faire proceder a 1'execution de si rigoureux et si extra- ordinaire jugement, il ne se pourra qu'il ne s'en ressente comme de chose qui 1'offense fort particulierement. " Cheruel, 165. * Quoted, Cheruel, p. 171. QUEEN MARY. 125 on the streets of Paris ; a month or two later the Duke of Guise was murdered in the King's audience-chamber, and the family broken. Henry's lukewarmness to Queen Mary had its practical explanation he was not going to commit himself against a powerful monarch like Eliza- beth, either to frustrate or to avenge the fate of a member of the detested family doomed by him to destruction. The drama is not yet entirely played out. A great scene remains before the curtain drops, in which Spain has to play a part j it has been dictated by the departed enchantress, and is the last, as it is the grandest, instance of her power. The history of this affair, as now pretty well filled up by the documents printed by the French- men, is extremely curious, both for the minuteness of the particulars, and the vastness of the historical events on which they bear. It will be remembered that, in her latter days, Queen Mary rested her hopes on the King of Spain, feeling that, unless her cousins the Guises were successful, she need expect nothing from France, and conscious, at the same time, that countenance and help from Spain would be the most powerful means of accom- plishing their success. Accordingly, with marvellous per- severance and adroitness, she kept up a close correspon- dence during her imprisonment with Philip II., and every new document discovered renders it clearer than ever that it was at her instigation chiefly that Philip undertook the invasion of England. Mary left behind her a last will, which Ritson the antiquary said he saw, blotted with her tears, in the Scottish College at Paris. It was, like her ostensible acts, a monument of kindness and generosity, performed with a mournful dignity becoming her rank and her mis- fortunes. All who had been kind and faithful to her, high and low, were gratified by bequests, which were precious relics, more dear than the riches she could no longer bestow. She had, however, issued another will of a more important character, which, with her other papers, was seized at Chartley. This will contained such strange and ominous matter that it was deemed wise at once to burn it ; and lest there should be any doubt that 126 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. it was effectually destroyed, or any suspicion that its pur- port had gone abroad, Elizabeth burnt it with her own hands. It gave its warning it showed the enemy it should go no further on its mischievous path ; so thought Cecil and his mistress. But they had to deal with one not easily baffled in the accomplishment of her fixed de- signs. She confided her testamentary bequests verbally to two different persons, on whose fidelity she could rely. Her executor was the King of Spain. The nature of these bequests had not been entirely concealed. James himself, in his lubberly schoolboy-like complaints about his mother, showed that he knew about them. They now make their appearance in the shape of a statement of the reception which the King of Spain gave to the testamen- tary injunctions. If we are to suppose which we are at liberty to do that they were utter falsehoods, invented by the persons who pretended to be accredited to the King of Spain, there is, at all events, this much of fact in the whole affair, that the King of Spain believed them to be genuine, and acted on them fully and emphatically. It is the record of his so acting that we now possess. Gorion, Queen Mary's French physician, was one of the recipients of this deposit. He was commissioned to convey to the King of Spain her desire that he would pay certain debts and legacies, and distribute pensions and other rewards among her more faithful adherents. As to the debts and the smaller recompenses of services, the Queen appealed to his religious feeling, on the ground that to leave the world without the prospect of these things being paid, pressed heavily on her conscience. The sums of money absolutely named in these requests were considerable; and in asking that the pensions of the English Catholics, including the Earl of Westmoreland, Lord Paget, Charles Arundel, Charles Paget, Throckmor- ton, and Morgan, might be continued, she evidently drew upon a liberal hand. Philip appears not only to have unhes- itatingly met the larger and ostensible demands thus made on him, but with a religious zeal to have sought out the more obscure objects of Mary's goodwill, that he might rigidly perform her injunctions to the utmost farthing. QUEEN MARY. 127 One great injunction still remained it was that, not- withstanding her death, he would not abandon his enter- prise on England an enterprise devised in the cause of God, and worthy of a true Catholic king. This bequest also, as all the world knows, the King of Spain did his best to carry into effect. There were some little sub- sidiary services to be performed by him when he had accomplished it. Mary's account with the world had a debtor as well as a creditor side. If the King of Spain could reward friends, it was also hoped that he would be in a position to punish enemies : her last request, there- fore, was, that when once master of England, he would not forget how she had been treated by Cecil, Leicester, Secretary Walsingham, Lord Huntington, Sir Amyas Paulet, and Wade, the clever Secretary of the Council, who had discovered the designs of Spain by putting the fragments of a torn letter together. While the French physician bore to the King of Spain what might be termed the burdens and obligations of the testament, it was commissioned to other messengers being the Queen's two faithful attendants, Elizabeth Curie and Jane Kennedy to intimate what may be called the beneficial portion, which was no less than the bequeath- ing to the King of Spain the crowns of Scotland and Eng- land, in the event of her son James continuing obstinate in his heresy. It is with almost ludicrous gravity that M. Teulet says, " Philippe II. accepta sans he'siter les charges d'une succession qui lui offrait des eventualites si avantageuses." Advantageous eventualities indeed but, as they proved to the executor, calamitous realities. Within eighteen months after the death of Mary, the Armada was in the Channel. It was the last grand ex- plosion of the ancient crusading chivalry, an expedition to restore the Catholic Church to its supremacy, and at the same time to carry out the dying wish and avenge the wrongs of an injured woman and a holy martyr. The great actual drama is now completed, and it is wonderful with what a close contiguity in time its long-suspended issues complete themselves. Early in the year 1587 Queen Mary is executed ; in the summer of the ensuing 128 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. year the Armada comes forth and is destroyed. That winter the Duke of Guise is murdered and his family crushed ; and again, before another year passes, the per- fidious perpetrator of the deed, Henry III., is murdered by a Popish fanatic, who thus clears the throne for the tolerant monarch who did more than any other for the real greatness of France. From this great epoch history starts afresh with new actors, who are to bring out a new development of events. The mighty empire of Spain from that period collapses like the bankrupt estate of an over-sanguine trader, who has risked all his capital on some great adventure ending in shipwreck. A powerful little colony of industrious Protestants rises up where her yoke has been thrown off in Holland. France is no longer in the hand of the Guise or of the Medici, but is ruled by one who, if he dare not be Protestant, will at all events be tolerant, and in the balance of the European powers, Protestantism, if not predominant, is at least made secure. In the great recast- ing of the position of the European powers, Scotland's relations to France and England respectively have under- gone a revolution. Let us take a glance backwards, then, and sketch the events which bring our own special story that of the Ancient League to its natural conclusion. The firm footing of Protestantism in the north of Europe, and the fusion of England and Scotland, must have seemed among the most unlikely of human events, on that loth of July 1559, when Henry II. died of the wound he got in a tournament, and his son Francis suc- ceeded him, with Mary of Scotland for queen. Elizabeth had not been quite eight months on the throne of Eng- land. She had kept her leaning towards Protestantism it was little more than a leaning so close, that foreign nations seem for some time to have known nothing of it Philip II., the widower of her Popish sister Mary, had no conception of the change that was coming. He could see nothing in the general state of Europe, except the symptoms that things were righting themselves again, after the partial storm of the Reformation, and settling quietly under the wings of the Popedom. He looked on Eng- QUEEN MARY. 129 land, next to his own dear Spain and the Netherlands, as the most Catholic kingdom in Europe. He wished the English crown to have been entailed on him in case of his surviving his wife. He thought it strange and rather unreasonable that this should not have been done ; but he took the personal disappointment with magnanimity, intimating that he would still take a paternal interest in his late wife's dominions. He was prepared, if duty re- quired him, to marry Elizabeth on a dispensation from the Pope, and was astonished beyond measure when he heard that a hint of the possible distinction in store for her had not been received by the eccentric young Queen with the grateful deference which it should have com- manded. But it was long before he could permit himself to doubt that her kingdom would stand by him for the Popedom, against the lax notions which the monarchs of France had allowed to arise in the Gallican Church. In the calculations of the Continental powers, the prospect of England continuing at the command of Philip and the Court of Rome was a thing so probable, that, in the nego- tiations for the great treaty of Chateau Cambresis, France, when called on to give back Calais to England, had the face to plead as a reason for declining, at least deferring this sacrifice, the probability that this fortress might thus be put at the command of the King of Spain, and help him to invade France from his Flemish dominions. Some of the most picturesque movements of the dip- lomacy of the day wind round the affair of Calais. France, ^having got it, was determined to keep it. Elizabeth and her advisers were determined to get it back by any means short of capture, but that was just short of the only means by which it was to be had. Elizabeth pleaded, rather ludicrously, that the English people considered it so essen- tial a possession of the English crown that they would not submit to its loss. It was maintained rather more reason- ably on the other hand, that, as part of the soil of France, it would be a dangerous offence to the French people to give it up. The argument more to the point on the present occasion, however, was one that carried keen alarm to Elizabeth's Court. It was thus briefly put by i I3O THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. the French to the English commissioners at Chateau Cambresis : " Put the case that Calais was to be re- delivered, and that we did owe such debts to the Crown of England, to whom shall we deliver Calais ? to whom shall we pay the debts ? Is not the Queen of Scots true Queen of England? Shall we deliver Calais and those debts to another, and thereby prejudice the rights of the Queen of Scotland and the Dauphin, her husband ? " l When such words could be spoken while the young couple were waiting for the death of a man in the prime of life to succeed to the throne of France, it was to be expected, when the succession suddenly opened to them, that there would be more audacious pretensions still. The affair was no empty bravado, such as the pretensions of the Tudors to the throne of France had come to be. With Roman Catholics at home as well as abroad, Mary was the heiress to the throne of England. A large por- tion of England was still Romanist, and it was not yet known what effect Elizabeth's Reformation tendencies might have on the popular mind. The pretensions of the young couple to the throne of England were not the less ominous that they were made in coinage and heraldry, in a very quiet way, and as a matter of course. The English ambassador observed it all, reporting home in angry let- ters to his angrier mistress. It came to the climax of insult when he had either to abstain from the good things at state banquets, or eat off platters on which the arms of England were quartered with those of France and Scot- land. 2 1 Stevenson, ' Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 2d March 1559-' 2 The quartering was noticed by Throckmorton on a memorable occasion the tournament in which Henry II. received his fatal wound. ' ' When the Dauphin's band began the jousts, two heralds which came before the band were Scots, fair, set out with the King and Queen Dauphin's arms, with a scutcheon of England, set forth to the show, as all the world might easily perceive ; the same being em- broidered with purple velvet, and set out with armoury upon their breasts, backs, and sleeves. "The 29th, the bands of the Prince of Conde, of the Dukes of Longueville and Buillon, ran against the challengers, at which tri- FRENCH AGGRESSION. 131 Few things in the uncertain future of the destinies of nations had ever approached nearer to a certainty than the steadfastness at that juncture of the Old League between Scotland and France ; and yet within it elements of polit- ical decomposition were at work, which might bring it dr.wn with a crash, as a fair building consumed by dry rot is in a condition to fall to pieces, and is most likely to do so when it is most relied on and put to most trying use. Two hundred years had changed the France which re- ceived Buchan's detachment as the rescuers and guardians of the land. By the acquisition of Burgundy, Brittany, Maine, Anjou, Guienne, and other fiefs, the territories absolutely ruled by the house of Valois had increased some fourfold. Scotland had improved in wealth, yet the relative proportions of the two countries had vastly altered. umph were the Pope's Nuncio, the Ambassador of Venice, and the writer, in a place appointed by the Constable. The Ambassador of Portugal was there, not in their company, but stood in a house right over against them, which was of his own provision. "The 30th, the Prince of Nevers, called Count d'Eu, came to the tilt with his band ; no other ambassador besides himself was there to see them run. Whereat it happened that the King, after running a good many courses well and fair, meeting with young M. de Lorges, Captain of the Scottish Guard, received at his hand such a counter- buff as, first lighting on the King's head and taking away the pan- nage (whereupon there was a great plume of feathers), which was fastened to his headpiece with iron, did break his staff ; and with the rest of the staff hitting the King's face, gave him such a counterbuff as he drove a splinter right over his eye on the right side, the force of which stroke was so vehement, and the pain so great, that he was much astonished, and had great ado to keep himself on horseback, and his horse also did somewhat yield. Whereupon, with all expe- dition, he was unarmed in the field, even against the place where Throckmorton stood, as he could discern. The hurt seemed not to be great, whereby he judges that he is but in little danger. Marry, he saw a splint taken out of a good bigness. Nothing else was done to him upon the field, but he noted him to be very weak, and to have the sense of all his limbs almost benumbed ; for being carried away as he lay along, nothing covered but his face, he moved neither hand nor foot, but lay as one amazed. Whether there were any more splints entered in (as in such cases it happens), it was not known. There was marvellous great lamentation and weeping, both of men and women, for him. Thus God makes Himself known, that in the very midst of these triumphs suffers this heaviness to happen. " 132 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. Their diplomatic relations had changed, at least on the French side, in the assumption of a protecting and patron- ising nomenclature. There was offence to Scotland even in the marshalling of arms that had enraged England, since the lion occupied the subsidiary quarterings on the royal shield, as indicating a territorial possession, instead of being charged on a pale or some honourable ordinary, as a merely personal difference derived from a matri- monial alliance. But the mere assumption of superiority was not all, in fact, the assumption was concealed as well as such a thing could be, under decorous externals, beneath which there were designs to accomplish something far more effective than a magnanimous protectorship. The papers revealed to the world by M. Teulet show that from the time when the heiress to the crown of Scot- land came into the possession of her ambitious kinsfolk, they were laying plans for governing Scotland in Paris, and annexing the country to the throne of France. Dated in the year 1552 is a "Declaration" or Memorandum of the Parliament of Paris on the adjustment of the govern- ment of Scotland. 1 In this document one can see, under official formalities, the symptoms of an almost irritable impatience to get the nominal government vested in the young Queen, in order that the real government might be administered by her kinsfolk. She had then entered on her twelfth year. That she ought to take the sovereignty into her own hands is a proposition reached by two steps, which may be denned as a long and a short. The long step reaches the position, that when twelve years old she would be entitled to govern a proposition fortified by a curiously tortuous application of precedents from the sovereignty of France, to which male heirs only could succeed. A Roman maxim which imports that a day begun is to be counted in law as completed, is then brought up, and it is shown that in proper logical consist- 1 ' Declaration du Parlement de Paris sur le Gouvernement de 1'Ecosse,' Teulet, 8vo ed., i. 274. FRENCH AGGRESSION. 133 ency the maxim should apply to a year. Along with the technical argument came two of a wider and more states- manlike character, which are, however, signally open to the charge of being inconsistent with each other. The one was, that the Deity, in consideration of the heavy responsibilities devolved on them, had endowed young royal personages with precocious capacities ; the other was, that, however youthful a sovereign may be, there are always at hand wise and clever persons to govern the realm and this, in fact, pointed to the real object. The document was no doubt drawn up by the persons who were ready to take the responsibility of governing Scotland on themselves. 1 A plan was, however, found for accomplishing the de- sired end more simple and practical than the devices of the civilians and feudalists. The Governor of Scotland was the head of the house of Hamilton, who held that office as next in hereditary succession to the crown if the young Queen should die. This office was taken from him, and he was compensated for the loss by the Duke- dom of Chatelherault. Mary of Guise became Regent of Scotland, under the direction of her brothers, the great Duke and the great Cardinal. The Scots lords now saw sights calculated, as the Persians say, to open the eyes of astonishment. A clever French statesman, M. d'Osel, was sent over as the ad- viser of the Regent, to be her Prime Minister, and enable her to rule Scotland after the model of France. A step was taken to get at the high office of Chancellor by ap- pointing Monsieur de Rubay to be Vice-Chancellor, with possession of the Great Seal. The office of Comptroller of the Treasury was dealt with more boldly, and put into the hands of M. Villemore. At Eyemouth, near the east 1 " II y a done grande difference entre la tutelle d'un prive* et le gouvernement d'un royaulme ; mesmement que les rois, en quelque aage qu'ilz soient, sont accompagnes de princes, grands seigneurs, et gens de grand S9avoir et experience, par le conseil desquelz ilz ont administre les royaulmes." Teulet, 8vo ed., i. 277. 134 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. border, a great fortress was erected, on the new plans of fortification, to confront the English fortress of Berwick, and a Frenchman was appointed its governor. The Regent cast an eye on the strongholds of the great lords, determining to fill them with garrisons more obedient to the Crown than their existing occupants. When she began with Tantallon, which, by its situation and strength, would be a desirable acquisition, the Earl of Angus, with epigrammatic point worthy of her own nation, said his house was at her service, but assuredly he should remain governor, for no other could hold it so well. Suspicious surveys and inventories were made of pro- perty, and it was declared, almost more to the amaze- ment than to the indignation of the country, that a tax was to be levied for the support of a standing army. Now the feudal array, which by old custom could be called by the sovereign, each freeholder contributing to it so many men-at-arms for a short period, was the only military force known in Scotland, and any attempt to create a royal army in any other shape was always re- ceived with the most nervous jealousy. On this occa- sion three hundred of the chief persons interested as- sembled in the church of Holyrood and declared re- sistance. There were ugly stories afloat about attempts, on the occasion of the Queen's marriage, to juggle with the official nomenclature which represented the independence of Scotland as a sovereignty. It was requested that the crown and other "honours," as they were termed, might be sent to Paris ; but there was suspicion about the use these might be put to such as crowning the Dauphin, perhaps and the request was refused. It was said that Mary had been required to sign a deed importing her husband's absolute right to the crown on survivorship ; and, whether true or not, belief in such a story had its influence. It is certain that an expression which after- wards gave a deal of trouble was then used in conferring on the Dauphin the "crown matrimonial." It was stated by the Lords of the Congregation in Scotland to have been an invention of the Guises, who had some hidden DIFFICULTIES WITH FRANCE. 135 meaning in it. 1 When the question of its meaning after- wards came up in the refusal of the crown matrimonial to Darnley, it was explained that it would pervert the line of succession that the crown matrimonial meant the sovereignty in the survivor and the survivor's heirs, whether descendants of Queen Mary or of another wife. In this sense, the arrangement was equivalent to the kind of entail which Philip thought it so unreasonable that he did not get of the crown of England. The state papers of France at that time speak of Scot- land as of a highly favoured dependency. An act of the French Government, which externally was one of grace and free - hearted generosity, did not mend matters. There had been many acts of naturalisation in favour of Scotsmen, and now, by one sweep of hospitality, the whole nation was naturalised. The privilege was a large one, for France, by her droit tfaubame, was conspicuously inhospitable to unprivileged foreigners ; but the phrase- ology of the document made its object too plain, and some comments referring to the practice of the Roman empire in admitting the inhabitants of distant provinces to a limited citizenship did not improve its effect. 2 When the eight commissioners sent from Scotland to assist at the marriage were on their way home, a special epidemic seemed to break out among them, which killed four out of the eight at Dieppe, and their death was as naturally attributed to poison as the disappearance of watches in a London mob is attributed to pocket-picking; it was maintained that they knew some facts about the affairs of the marriage which it was desirable that they should not have an opportunity of communicating to the Scots Estates. These facts fitting in with the method of the Regent's government in Scotland, resistance and war came at last. 1 Teulet, ii. 10: "Honoris causa diademate matrimonial! ornare: ad rem, quse exemplum apud historicos scripteres nusquam habet, novato usu vocabili quo nobis oculos perstringerent." ^ The letters were addressed "a tous les habitans du.dit royaume d'Escosse subjectz de nostre filz Roy-Dauphin et nostre fille son espouse. " 136 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. The Regent, finding at the commencement that she might have the worst of it, accepted in a very frank manner of a treaty, which she broke on the first opportunity, and with a rapidity which had in it a sort of deliberateness, since it showed that she did not yield reluctantly to sore temptation, but acted on deliberate design. This united those who were otherwise shy of each other, and a war, the events of which are well known in history, broke forth against Popery and French influence. The great turning-point in the destinies of the British empire had now come, and to bring it on with the tide depended on the skill of the English Government. The wounds of Henry's tyrannous invasions were still fresh. How narrowly England escaped the wrong tack is shown in the later revelations from the State Paper Office, which set forth a plan for declaring and enforcing the old feudal claim of superiority over Scotland. So was that poor country pulled on the other side. But, fortunately, the new Queen of England had advisers about her who could read the tenor of old experience, and see that force was not the way to make good the precious opportunity. Indeed it behoved them to be rid of their own fears before they bullied others. England was in imminent danger. France had grand designs of annexation and empire ; Spain was relaxing her friendly grasp ; and if these two Popish powers, with Scotland at their service, fell on England, where would Elizabeth's throne be ? The instructions to the English commissioners at the great treaty of Chateau Cambresis might have given comfort to the Scots, had they known the anxiety of their power- ful enemy for peace with them. "We think the peace with Scotland of as great moment for us as that with France, and rather of greater; so, as to be plain with you, if either there should not be a peace there fully con- cluded betwixt us and Scotland, we see not but it were as good to leave the matter in suspense with the French as to conclude with them, and to have no other assurance of the French but a bare comprehension of Scotland." The French, it seems, were ready in their haughty man- ner to stipulate for Scotland, but Cecil knew the temper TURNING TO ENGLAND. 137 of his neighbours too well to be content with such an assurance. The instructions come back to the topic, and press it on the commissioners : " And for our satis- faction beside the matter of Calais, nothing in all this conclusion with the French may in surety satisfy us, if we have not peace with Scotland : and so we will that ye shall plainly inform our said good brother's commis- sioners, and that with speed." l The Queen reminds her trusty counsellors that they, " not ignorant of the state of our realm having been much weakened of late with sickness, death, and loss by wars, can very well consider how unmeet it is for us to con- tinue in these manner of wars, if we may be otherwise provided of a peace like to continue ; and how fit it is and necessary to have peace." The commissioners are directed at great length to bully powerfully for the res- toration of Calais. But the real dangers visible, and the acute hungering for peace, squeeze out a brief and agonis- ing permission to sacrifice everything for peace : " We do give you authority at the very last end, being as loath thereunto as may be desired, rather than continue these wars, to make the peace as you best and most honourably may, and as the difficulty of the time may serve, so that we may have certainly peace with Scotland, with reser- vation of our claims as well to Calais as to all other our titles, pensions, and arrearages heretofore due by France." 2 The negotiation of the treaty was attended by some incidents, ludicrous in themselves, and far beneath the dignity of history, yet curious as indicative of that stub- born pride which bore up the Scots in all their difficulties and calamities. Where was the treaty to be negotiated? Of course, England, the greater power, was not to go to Scotland ; but, on the other hand, Scotland refused so far to acknowledge a superiority as to step over the border into England. On the i2th of May 1559, Bishop Tunstall writes to say, that they had extreme difficulty in 1 'Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 1558-59,' p. 151. 2 Ibid., p. 139. 138 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. being absolutely certain of neutral ground, and " our first meeting was in the midst of the river between us both ; for the Scots do regard their honour as much as any other king doth ; " and he rather naturally adds, that he will not fail to be at the next meeting, " God granting him health." 1 In some inexplicable manner the Scots seem to have pulled too strong in the matter of the meeting-place for their diplomatic opponents, for on the 5th of January the Earl of Northumberland makes this ludicrous complaint to Cecil : " They were ready to meet the Scottish com- missioners on the first day, on the bounders that are in the mid-stream; but they claimed customs, and caused the messengers to go to and fro so often, that they forced the English commissioners to come over the water into Scottish ground, or else would not have met at all." 2 Peace being established, the next step was the dissolu- tion of the old French League and a fusion of interests with England. We have now, thanks to the documents published by Mr Stevenson, a minute insight into the difficult and perilous course of hints and promises and bargains which constitute the diplomacy of this revolu- tion. The gradual unfolding of the mysteries is exceed- ingly curious, and so exciting as to carry a reader with ease over the six hundred pages already issued, and make him long for the rest. The general picture left in the mind is a vision of the cluster of sagacious men who surrounded the young Queen's throne, discovering in the condition of Scotland a tower of strength which had only to be honestly occupied in that hour of peril, but baffled and paralysed by the perfidy and caprices of their mistress. She wanted them to do everything, but to do it on their own responsibility without any authority from her ; and, indeed, with the certainty that at any moment, when it suited her policy or caprice, she would assert that they acted the part of rebels and traitors, and " untop " them, to use a favourite expression of hers, without remorse. Cecil was provoked almost beyond endurance and proper 1 Calendar, p. 251. 2 Ibid., p. 300. TURNING TO ENGLAND. 139 respect to his royal mistress, when he found that a few thousand pounds would do the business, yet could not get them. 1 Hints, indeed, were thrown out that it would be good service in her advisers to invest some of their own cash in the adventure ; but their patriotism was not strong enough to induce them to part with what under no circumstances would be repaid, while it suspended over their heads a charge of treason. There was one feature, indeed, in the affair, which the Queen intensely disliked. It had a very ugly resemblance to the backing of subjects in rebellion against their sover- eign a kind of proceeding against which she had funda- mentally rooted objections. She tried in vain to get the matter put into the shape of a war of succession, in which she could advocate the cause which she might acknow- ledge as the rightful sovereign's. The heir of the house of Hamilton, who, as the descendant of James II., was next heir to the crown, had many allurements thrown in his way to start as king ; but he was unequal to the occa- sion. Murray afterwards the Regent was spoken to, and it is pretty clear that that sagacious and cautious statesman, had he chosen to run risks before his sister's 1 " The man is poor and cannot travail in these matters without charges, wherein he must be relieved by the Queen if these proceed- ings go forwards and so must as many as be principal doers have relief. They be all poor, and necessity will force them to leave off when all they have is spent, and you know in all practices money must be one part." P. 401. Knox, who knew very well how to wield the arm of the flesh, writes to Crofts on 3Oth July 1559: " Not only must the Queen and her council have respect that soldiers must be laid in garrison among us, and that men and ships must be in constant readiness if we be assailed, but also that some respect must be had to some of the nobility, who are not able to sustain such households as now in the beginnings of these troubles are requisite. For the practice of the Queen Regent is to stir up enemies against every nobleman particu- larly, even in the parts where he remaineth." P. 431. On the 29th of September Sadler and Crofts write to Cecil that certain leaders cannot keep their men together unless they get pecuniary relief, and how "four or five thousand pounds would be well spent in their cause, and save the Queen men ; for how near it would touch Eng- land if the French had the upper hand of Scotland they refer to her wisdom." 140 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. return, might have had a chance of gaining a crown about equivalent to his chance of retaining a head to wear it on. Among the somewhat clumsy projects for giving un- acknowledged assistance to the Protestant and English party in Scotland was to get a body of English soldiers induced to cross the Border, and then to proclaim them rebels for breaking the peace with France and Scotland rebels who must needs fight where they were, since they could not return to England. One cheap and rather effective method of stirring up the Scots was to ply them with news of the bloody intentions of France ; and, so far as intentions went, they could not well be too highly coloured. 1 Kirkaldy of Grange, who afterwards cut some figure in politics, is revealed in these papers as one of the most active and ingenious agents in the national revolution. His hand appears before the conclusion of the treaty of Chateau Cambresis. The Earl of Northumberland wrote, on nth February 1559, to Queen Elizabeth, that "one William Kirkaldy, a Scotchman, came to his brother to Norham and entered into communication for abstinence of wars, to the intent that peace might follow." Three months afterwards, when matters had practically advanced a step or two, we find him writing to Sir Henry Percy that the Protestant gentry, after the Queen Regent, Mary of Guise, had played them false, " have gathered themselves together, and have pulled down all the friaries within their bounds." " Herefore," he continues, " I pray you let me understand what will be your mistress's part, if we desire to be joined in friendship with her ; for I assure 1 Throckmorton writes from France to Cecil : "The news touch- ing Scotland are come to the Court, whereupon it is said that the King minds forthwith, under colour to suppress the Protestant preachers, to send thither a number of men. . . . It is discoursed here that all sects of religion, as they call it, shall be utterly sub- verted, and that the French King minds to use all extremity against the Protestants immediately after the triumph. It will not be amiss to do the Protestants in Scotland to understand that there is meant tuter destruction to their houses, that they may provide for the worst, and make themselves strong." P. 301. TURNING TO ENGLAND. 14! you there was never a better time to get our friendship nor at this time; therefore make labours, and lose no time when it is offered." 1 Two months afterwards, when the rising against French influence was in still better shape, he wrote to Cecil intelligence thus rendered : " At present they dare not make the matter known to many, for fear of sudden disclosing the secrecy of their pur- pose ; for the Queen Regent already suspects that there is some intelligence with England in this case, insomuch that she has spoken openly that there is a servant sent from the Earl of Northumberland to the Earl of Argyle and the Prior. Also some of their number are poor, and corruption by money is feared, but in the end they fear them not. If these latter were removed from their coun- cil, they would not be much weaker, as the hearts of the whole barons and commonalty are so bent to this action, and so influenced against France, that if any of the no- bility would decline of which they see no appearance they could not withdraw their friends nor servants from the professing of Christ and the maintaining of the liberty of their country." 2 Co-operating with Kirkaldy was a more potent spirit the great John Knox, who had just returned from tasting the tender mercies of France as a galley-slave. In July, while Cecil had still no others but Kirkaldy and Knox committed to him, he wrote an extremely cautious letter to Sir Henry Percy, observing that it was misliked that no better personages had opened themselves than these two, being private persons; though Knox had got to himself a position of no small credit. Of him it is said, " He desireth, in his letter to me, to have licence to come hitherward, wherein it is ordered that he should thus use it. ... For his coming hitherward, it may be permitted to him, so as it be used with secrecy and his name altered; for otherwise the sequel will be fruitless, yea, very hurtful. Ye may appoint him to come to my house, called Burley, near Stamford (where I mean to be about the 24th or 25th inst.) If he come, changing his name, 1 Calendar, p. 278. 2 Ibid., p. 385. 142 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. he may be directed not to come through Stamford, but on the back side. If his chance should be to come before my coming thither, he may have this paper in- cluded, whereby he shall be there used to his conten- tation." l It would have been of questionable safety to himself and his friends had Knox ventured upwards of three hundred miles into England to negotiate, having to return again to Scotland, The first embassy, however, was conducted by him. We have his powers in eleven articles of a very distinct and practical kind, without too much admixture of religion. In the most comprehensive and emphatic of them he is authorised to say for his countrymen "That they and their posterity will bind themselves to be enemies to the enemies and friends to the friends of the English, if they thoroughly agree in this league; and that they will never contract with France without the consent of the English, so as to be united with them in one body, so that neither can make war nor peace without the consent of the other." 2 With credentials of this momentous import in his pocket, Knox touched English ground by taking boat to Holy Island, where Crofts picked him up, taking him for secret conference to Berwick, whence his entertainer wrote to Cecil, giving as much of the matter as he could trust to a despatch, and observing that it could not be carried out "without charges and, peradventure, cum sudore et sanguine; therefore the matter requires good deliberation, and what aid to be given, and what charges, and when to spend and when to spare." 3 It confers a touch of humour on these grave and mo- mentous proceedings, that Queen Elizabeth at that time hated Knox personally in her own hearty manner. He had written his * First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women ; ' and though he pro- fessed to let fly his shafts at Popish women only, yet, as " Many a shaft at random sent, Finds mark the archer little meant," 1 Calendar, p. 371. * Ibid., p. 431. 8 Ibid., p. 446. TURNING TO ENGLAND. 143 some ot his left their barbs sticking deep in the most sensitive parts of the Protestant Queen's public and private character. Her wise men had much ado to get her to receive his advances with patience ; but his power was great, and he must be put up with. When his name comes up in their secret correspondence, Throckmorton says to Cecil " Though Knokes the preacher did here- tofore unadvisedly and fondly put his hand to the book, yet, since he is now, in Scotland, in as great credit as ever man was there with such as may be able to serve the Queen's turn, it were well done not to use him other- wise than for the advancement of her service." l It will be worth while even to be domestically civil, and so Throckmorton again writes to the purport that "the wife of Knokes the preacher and her mother are at Paris, who shortly depart into England. They have made means to apply to him for letters in their favour, which he has promised to send by them to Mr Secretary. The Queen should consider what Knokes is able to do in Scotland, which is very much all the turmoil there being by him stirred up as it is. His former faults should be forgotten, and no means used to annoy him for the same, but that his wife should perceive, before she depart into Scotland, that there is no stomach borne to her hus- band therefore, but that he may have good hope rather to look for favour and friendship at her hands than other- wise, which may work somewhat to good purpose." 2 A humble follower of Knox, called Sandy Whylowe or Whitlaw, taking credentials from Throckmorton to Cecil, is represented as one " who has done and may do good service to the Queen;" and the sealed document he carried with him contained this double admonition : "This bearer is very religious, and therefore you must let him see as little sin in England as you may. He seemeth to me very willing to work what he can that Scotland may forsake utterly the French amity and be united to England. Sir, in these services and occa- sions, to preserve you from farther inconveniences, the 1 Calendar, p. 306. * Ibid., p. 310. 144 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. Queen's purse must be open, for fair words will not serve." 1 It was on the 4th of July that, in an extremely cau- tious and yet somewhat decided tone, English assistance was promised, Cecil telling Percy that he may assure Kirkaldy "that, rather than that Scotland should be oppressed with a foreign nation, and deprived of the ancient liberties, and the nobility thereof (and especially such as seek to maintain the truth of the Christian re- ligion) be expelled, the authority of England would adventure with power to aid that realm against any such foreign invasion wherein upon farther certainty ' under- stand' thence, there may be showed in plain manner more particularly of this offer." 2 The almost simultaneous arrival of an English and a French force in Scotland, and the contest that followed, are well known in history. Two treaties, one called the treaty of Berwick, between the Scots Protestants and Elizabeth the other the treaty of Edinburgh, between France and England, ended all. Queen Mary's friends considered that she had been betrayed in this pacifica- tion, because her claim to the English throne was aban- doned, and Elizabeth made secure ; but there were others who thought it well that a mere personal claim, pregnant with endless strife and bloodshed, should be expunged. The 24th of August 1560 was a wonderful day for Scotland. It dawned on the Romish hierarchy, still nominally and legally entire, with all its dignities and wealth. Ere eve the whole had been cast down, and to adhere to that Church was a crime. The Acts of Parlia- ment making " the Reformation " passed on that day in an " Act for abolishing the Pope and his usurped author- ity." They had to pass through the necessary routine, and were not therefore quite unexpected. Still there is a suddenness in the carrying of the Reformation in Scot- land which arises from this, that it was a declaration of triumph over enemies, and these not domestic but foreign the French, with whom the Scots had been in close and 1 Calendar, p. 340. 2 Ibid. r p. 359. TURNING TO ENGLAND. 145 devoted alliance for more than two hundred years. It is a common mistake to say, that while in other countries the Reformation was partly a secular and partly a re- ligious movement, in Scotland it was wholly religious. On the contrary, it was probably in no other country so thoroughly secular and political in the hearts and objects of those who carried it, though no doubt they subsidised religious influences to aid them. Since the recon- struction of the Popedom in its old completeness had become the great mission of the Guises, Popery became irretrievably mixed up with arbitrary power and the annexing designs of France. The great prelates were becoming French courtiers. Increasing in wealth and power, they imported from their allies practices of tyr- anny and cruelty at which the Scots nature revolted. The Church, a vast, compact corporation, ever getting and never giving up, was eating away the territorial wealth of the temporal barons to enrich the haughty pre- lates. From the same cause there crept in a social deg- radation humiliating to the landed gentry in this shape, that the poorer among them were content to let their daughters become companions to the affluent dignitaries; and although an attempt was made to give a kind of established character to the connection, especially in the rank allowed to the offspring, yet it could not be made the same as honest wedlock. When, therefore, there was seen arising in the land a set of divines who maintained that these haughty prelates were wolves who had broken into the fold, and should be immediately deprived of their ill-gotten spoil, the barons immediately said, " That's the religion for us ! " Among the Protestant clergy there was, no doubt, a deep fund of religious zeal, supported by austere purity of life, and it might be possible to pick out one or two of their lay allies participating in some measure in these qualities ; but, generally speaking, a set of men wilder and rougher, and more devoted to immediate gross and secular objects, than the " Lords of the Congregation," is not easily to be found in history. When the affair was finished, and Knox and his brethren, having waited in meek expectation for K 146 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. some time, reminded their active coadjutors that what had been taken from the false Church belonged to the true, the Lords of the Congregation laughed in their faces, and told them they were under the hallucination of "fond imaginations." Knox could only scold them, and that he did with his own peculiar heartiness and emphasis. So, when his cele- brated ' Book of Discipline ' did not go down with them, he came out with, " Others, perceiving their carnal liberty and worldly commodity somewhat to be impaired, thereby grudged, insomuch that the name of the ' Book of Discipline' became odious unto them. Everything that impugned to their corrupt affections was called, in their mockage, ' devote imaginations.' The cause we have before declared. Some were licentious ; some had greedily gripped to the possessions of the Kirk; and others thought that they would not lack their part of Christ's coat yea, and that before that ever he was hanged, as by the preachers they were oft rebuked. . . . Assuredly some of us have wondered how men that pro- fess godliness could, of so long continuance, hear the threatenings of God against thieves and against their houses, and knowing themselves guilty in such things as were openly rebuked, and that they never had remorse of conscience, neither yet intended to restore any things of that which long they had stolen and reft." 1 Queen Mary always evaded any acknowledgment of the treaty which left Elizabeth's title undisputed, and of the Reformation statute. Her policy about the statute, indeed, developed a quiet profundity of duplicity, which makes a beautiful antithesis to the noisy brazen mendac- ity of the other Queen. Mary solemnly engaged not to interfere with the religion established by law. Almost every one knew what she meant, and that when the time suited she would hold that an Act of Parliament which had not the royal assent was no law. Yet it would have been impolitic to push the point by requiring her assent to the Act, since an ultimate refusal might make it more 1 History, ii. 128, 129. TURNING TO ENGLAND. 147 unsatisfactory than it was. Her policy, however, after- wards cut both ways ; for the treaty and the Act were productive of highly important political effects, being brought up as precedents to the effect that the Estates of Parliament could enter on treaties and pass laws with- out the consent of the Crown. When Murray came into power, he thought it judicious to fortify the Act by another. To us who look back upon the time with the advantage of having seen the plot worked out, it becomes clear at this juncture that the French alliance is gone for ever, and England and Scotland are to be one. But between the return of Queen Mary and the death of Elizabeth there was a deal of hard critical work to be gone through in Scotland, and much of it was connected with the efforts of France to renew the old friendship. Of the labours of Queen Elizabeth's emissaries in Scot- land Throckmorton, Walsingham, Sadler, and Randolph we have full accounts which have been well ransacked and instructively commented on. But the no less inter- esting negotiations of the French emissaries in Scotland have hitherto been little studied ; nor, indeed, could they easily have been so until they were gradually brought forth from their hiding-places in foreign libraries and public offices by the zeal of the archaeologists of France, They are not less interesting from the glimpses which they afford of the designs of France, than from the pic- turesque descriptions which they contain of events which it is profitable to see from as many sides as possible, and which certainly often acquire a new shape and character when seen through the eyes of the accomplished and acute foreigner employed to report on them to the Guises or Catherine of Medici. The most remarkable in accomplishments and wisdom of these French ambassadors, Michel de Castelnau de Mauvissiere, was alike conscious of the importance of the Scottish alliance and of the almost hopelessness of recovering it. After a lively description of the miseries of the country when tortured in the terrible wars and plunderings of Morton, he says, " Je suis et serais tou- 148 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. jours d'opinion qu'il n'y a nulle alliance au monde que la France doive avoir plus chere que celle de ce petit pays d'Ecosse." 1 Castelnau was one of the really great men whose eminent labours, wasted on tough and hopeless materials, can only be estimated by close inspection. As M. Che'r- uel well observes, we will find more of the true spirit of the actions of the day, and the men engaged in them, in his letters and memoirs, than almost anywhere else. He was one of those statesmen whose fate it is to struggle for great ends, which their masters, the heads of the govern- ment, will not back through with the necessary energy. As M. Che'ruel says, he had in the interests of France to fight Elizabeth in Scotland, and Philip of Spain in the Netherlands. His memoirs show that he beheld with a grave sorrow, partaking of despondency, the exterminat- ing spirit and bloody deeds of both the parties, the League and the Huguenots, who each struggled in his own country, not merely for existence, but for mastery ; and his experience of this rude contest gives an air of practical wisdom and staid sagacity to his remarks on our own quarrels, which, fierce as they were, hold altogether a smaller space in the world's history than the contem- poraneous quarrels of the French. Hence he narrates some of the most marvellous incidents of Scottish his- tory with a quiet distinctness, which, instead of sub- duing, rather tends to give power and emphasis to the narrative, when it is felt throughout that it is by an onlooker deeply grounded in a practical knowledge of similar events. He it was who came to Britain charged by Catherine of Medici with two matrimonial missions whether they were sincere or sarcastic, let him tell who can. In the one, she proposed to the austere Elizabeth an alliance with Charles IX. of France, then a boy of thirteen. Whether Catherine knew it or not, the virago had that peculiar weakness when anything matrimonial was pro- posed, that she would play with the suggestion as long 1 Chlrud, p. in. LATTER DAYS. 149 as it would keep alive without serious discussion. She remarked cleverly enough to Castelnau, that the King of France was both too great and too little a match for her too great in his power, too little in his youth. But she did not let the affair drop for some time, writing herself to Catherine, and otherwise bandying it about in a manner sometimes bordering on, but never transgress- ing, the serious. His other matrimonial commission was to offer Mary the Duke of Anjou as a husband. It was not very well received, and he observed in the beautiful widow the haughty and restless spirit of her uncle the Cardinal. She was angry, he thought, with the Court of the French Regent, for having come between her and the match with Don Carlos. While it was in her mind to make an ambitious match, she would have none but a truly great one, and she freely spoke of Don Carlos's younger brother, who was subsequently offered to her, as the selfish fortune - seeking beauties in fashionable novels speak of detrimental second sons. To drop from the heir of the Spanish empire to a prince with neither do- minions nor prospects, was not a destiny to which she could reconcile herself. Yet it was while Mary was dealing in this way with a second offer of the same kind, that the acute diplomatist saw growing in her bosom an attachment for a far more obscure youth, whom his mother the Countess of Lennox had brought up very oddly, having taught him from his youth to dance and play on the lute. The man of the world was puzzled somewhat by this phenomenon, and looked for an explanation of it to a cause deemed in his day, among sensible men, a very practical one he thought that there was some influence d ' enchantements artificiels in the passion of Mary for Darnley. Of the sad and tragic events which followed he was a careful observer, and in some respects indeed he was an actor in them, having frequently to attempt the vain task of the peacemaker. La Mothe Fenelon, an ancestor of the great bishop, is another French diplomatist whose papers contain I$0 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. interesting vestiges of the history of the period. He it was who was received, after the Massacre of St Barthol- omew, at the Court of Elizabeth with a solemn and ominous gloom, which had more effect on him than all the virago's furious scoldings. He was a personal friend of Queen Mary, holding a kindly intercourse with her in her captivity. It was from him that she commissioned the costly foreign tissues which she employed in her renowned needlework; and he performed for her many other little services. Some of the letters relating to such matters are a refreshing contrast with the formidable documents among which they are scattered. Casual mention of Castelnau and Fe'nelon may be found in our ordinary histories. In these the reader will probably look in vain for anything whatever about Charles de Prunele', Baron of Esneval and Vidame of Normandy. Yet he was sent to Scotland on a mission so critical, that, as far as externals go, the subsequent fate and history of the British empire might be said to turn on its results. He was sent over to Scotland in the critical year 1585, to make a last effort to continue the ancient alliance of Scotland and France. Were it merely as the parting scene between two old national friends, the last effort to keep up the friendship of France would have its interest. But in reality it was a mission of real practical importance, since it put the question to issue, as lawyers say, which was to fix the destinies of Scotland, and in a great meas- ure those of England. That such a mission should pass unnoticed by historians, and wait for centuries to be spoken of, is one of the illustrations of the truth that the tendency of history is not fully seen by contemporaries ; the importance of many events has to be fixed by the posterity which sees the development, and can proportion to each other the relative importance of the several parts. The instructions to D' Esneval urge on him with reit- erated emphasis the support, or rather the restoration, of "Pantienne amytie', alliance et voisinance qui ont toujours estd entre la France et PEscosse." The tone of the docu- ment partakes somewhat of the patronising spirit which had characterised the French treatment of her ally for LATTER DAYS. 151 some half- a -century. The ambassador is not merely accredited to a sovereign prince ; he has to do with the people too, as if he were sent from a superior authority entitled to adjust their relations to each other; and he is directed to use his influence to bring the people to obedience, and a proper sense of their duty to their sovereign. This effort was made at a juncture when the French Government could not afford to quarrel with England, and was in mortal terror of the Guises at home. It came upon King James at that ticklish time when his mother was in imminent danger, and yet when there were strengthening in his favour the chances that, if he be- haved well, and committed no piece of folly, he would some day be King of England. In the whole affair, as in all others, he behaved like an exaggeration of a heart- less, greedy, grasping schoolboy, snatching at whatever he could get without caring for consequences. He had half-authorised emissaries at the Courts of France and Spain, and at several other places Romanists who could not obtain actual diplomatic credentials, and whose acts he could disavow if he thought fit ; nor was it all to his inconvenience that these zealous men were apt to go far beyond the bounds of his dubious verbal instructions, since that gave him the better excuse for repudiating their proceedings when it was necessary. Not a year before the mission of D'Esneval, the Lord Seton, the ardent, uncompromising supporter of Mary and Catholicism, appeared at the French Court, com- missioned, as he maintained, by the actual ruling power in Scotland, to ask certain aids and concessions from France. He pleaded that the old League should be restored, and that France, like an honest, faithful ally, should rescue the Scottish Queen from her captivity. Among other stipulations were the restoration of the Scottish Guard to the full enjoyment of those privileges in France which they had bought with their blood, the payment by France of a body of Scotsmen serving in Scotland a very unreasonable -looking proposal and certain privileges of trading. 152 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. These proposals were coldly received ; all that Henry III. would give to the juvenile Solomon was a pension of twenty thousand livres, which M. Cheruel, who has seen the brevet granting it, supposes was very ill paid. This embassy, whatever was the authority for it, took place a year before D'Esneval's to Scotland. There had been great changes in the meantime, which, if they rendered Mary's condition more dangerous, had increased the chance of her son's succession to the throne of England. The same series of events the fall of Arran, namely, and the league with England alarmed the Court of France, by pointing to the total extinction of the French alliance ; and it was hence that D'Esneval was sent to offer as much of the rejected Scottish demands as France could afford to give. It will be of course remarked that, in all these matters, there were longer heads at work than those of the youth- ful King; but the instincts of his selfish, narrow heart taught him to co-operate in them. He could, if he had thought fit, have broken through all the diplomatic tram- mels surrounding him, and struck a blow for his mother's life. He had no conscientious principle to restrain him from such an act, though he had a strong dislike for Popery on the ground on which he hated Presbyterianism because it interfered with the will of kings. His ruling principle was well enough expressed in his remarks to Courcelles interim ambassador in the absence of D'Es- neval that he liked his mother well enough, but she had threatened, if he did not conform with her religious views, that he should have nothing but the lordship of Darnley like his father that she must drink the ale she had brewed that her restless machinations had nearly cost him his crown and he wished she would meddle with nothing but prayer and serving God. The chief figure in this group of selfishness, meanness, and cruelty, has to be supplied in Queen Elizabeth seizing and committing to the dungeon an unfortunate who had fled to her for protection grudging her the expense of suitable clothing and food in her captivity insulting her religion want- ing to get somebody to assassinate her; and at length, LATTER DAYS. 153 when the wished-for death could not be brought about without the forms of law, pretending that she desired it not, and endeavouring to throw on others the blame of the deed. And yet how wonderfully has all this, which seems so foul and unseemly in romance, tended to one of the most wonderful and blessed of historical developments ! Let us suppose King James, under the generous impulse of youthful heroism, drawing the sword in his mother's cause, and France, with chivalrous devotion, sending her armies to avert insult and cruelty from one who had sat as a queen on the throne of St Louis. Let us imagine Queen Elizabeth, endowed with the natural instincts and impulses of her sex, kindly disposed to a persecuted sister, and, in obedience to the impulses of her heart, marrying, and leaving a progeny behind her. Had the dark annals of the age been thus brightened, the glorious history of British power and progress would have remained un- written at least in its present shape. With how much longer waiting through what series of events the two kingdoms would have fulfilled their natural destiny and come together, are speculations in the world of the unreal which can receive no definite answer. We only know that, however it might have otherwise come to pass, the beneficent conclusion arose out of acts of baseness, self- ishness, and cruelty, as a tree grows from decay and putrescence. It is fortunate, after all, that those who like to see a little of the good that is in the world can pass over that fermentation of the evil passions and selfish propensities, and look back upon the long, stern, honest struggle for independence which was the real operative cause of the desired result. Had it been otherwise, Scotland may read the fate she would have had in Ireland. The Scots repaid the oppressors in the bloody retaliation of the three hundred years' war the Irish are still taking it out. A sort of general balance of victories and defeats of in- juries and retaliations put the two enemies in a position for bargaining, which they did with surly suspicion at first, with cordiality when they came better to know each 154 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. other as friends. Their amity was recorded in a state paper such as no other part of the world can show a fusion, by mutual consent, between two nations, the one six or eight times as powerful and populous as the other, with no other inequality save the placing of the centre of government in that spot within the larger of the two to which it would naturally have gravitated. There are some less reasonable ethnological theories afloat in the world, than that we may to some extent attribute to this long struggle the national characteristics which make the Scots appear a dry, hard, stern, un- amiable, practical people, with little capacity for cheer- ful enjoyments or susceptibility to the lighter and more transient excitements. Perhaps the original nature of the people, and the work they had to do, may have reacted on each other, leaving these characteristics deep- ened and hardened in the end. That the people had a nature susceptible to the deeper enthusiasm, the char- acter of the struggle itself sufficiently tells. And in the tragedies and bereavements that it caused, the devotion it demanded, and the deep love for home and country to which it testified, we may, perhaps, attribute a certain sweetness and plaintive tenderness in the lyrical literature of the country, a vein of gentleness and beauty running through her rugged nature, like the lovely agates which nestle in the hollows of the black trap-rocks, or the purple amethysts that sparkle in her granite corries. So came the kindly old French alliance to its natural conclusion. It was nominally re-established in a friend- ship between King James and Henry IV., who established a special company of Scots gens d'armes, and afterwards there were some curious dealings between Cardinal Rich- elieu and the Covenanters ; but these were casual affairs having no influence on national destinies. The story of the alliance is now an old one, but it leaves a mellow tinge upon the long annals of medieval brutality and violence. Scotland at last became reconciled to that great relation which, let us suppose, in the usual misun- derstanding which creates the quarrels in the romances, had treated her as an alien enemy. But while the recon- ITS HISTORIANS. 155 ciliation has been long consolidated, and has proved as natural a national adjustment as the restoration of an exiled child is a natural family adjustment, there is still a pleasing sentiment in recalling the friends found in the wide world when kindred were unkind; and the hospi- table doors opened to our wandering countrymen among those who stood at the head of European civilisation in the middle ages, must ever remain a memorable record of the generosity of the patrons, and of the merits of those who so well requited their generosity by faithful and powerful services. 1 It is a significant token of the enduring interest of this episode in history, that, besides lighter memorials, to many of which I have referred, two eminent French archaeologists have bestowed what must have been a large portion of the labour of their days to the production each of a great book after his own kind, bearing on the old relations between France and Scotland. 2 To the volumes 1 M. Cheruel (p. 175) puts the sentiment of the conclusion very effectively : " L'Ecosse s'est de plus en plus identified avec 1'Angle- terre, et, il faut bien le reconnaltre, toutes deux y ont gagne. L'Ecoss? a re9u, en compensation de 1'independance nationale, une puissattie impulsion : Industrie, sciences, litterature, philosophic, tout y a pros- pere. Une sage regularite, une observation patiente et ingenieuse, une probite proverbiale, ont remplace' la loyaute un peu sauvage, le fanatisme puritain, la fougue indisciplinee des anciens Ecossais. De son cote" 1'Angleterre a conquis la securite : tranquille dans son fie, elle a pu porter au loin son activite" guerriere et commerciale. Une alliance de moins pour la France, une province de plus pour 1'Angle- terre, voil le re"sultat d'une politique tour k tour faible ou passionnee, fanatique ou indifferente. " In strict propriety, the import of these remarks should have suggested the metamorphosis of 1'Angleterre into Grande Bretagne before their conclusion ; but where there is so much that is honest and generous in sentiment, it would be invidious to criti- cise the nomenclature too closely. 2 ' Relations Politiques de la France et de 1'Espagne avec 1'Ecosse au xvi e Siecle Papiers d'e'tat, Pieces, et Documents inedits ou peu connus, tires des Bibliotheques et des Archives de France. Public's par Alexandre Teulet, Archiviste aux Archives de 1'Empire.' Nou- velle edition, 5 vols. Paris Renouard : Edinburgh Williams & Norgate. 'Les Ecossais en France Les Fran$ais en Ecosse.' Par Fran- cisque Michel, Correspondant de 1'Institut de France, &c. &c. 2 vols. London : Triibner & Co. 156 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. which contain the record of this attachment, something more is due than the mere recognition of their literary merits they deserve at the hands of our countrymen an affectionate recognition as national memorials. The quantity of curious and interesting matter contained in them, but for the special zeal of the two men who have thus come forward, might have remained still buried under archaeological rubbish might have remained so for ever, even until oblivion overtook them. Setting before one on the library table the two volumes of M. Michel, and the five of M. Teulet, is a good deal like receiving one guest in full court costume, prepared to meet distinguished company, while another comes to you in his lounging home vestment of serge, with slippers and smoking-cap, as if he had just stepped across the way from the scene of his laborious researches. There is throughout M. Michel's two brilliant-looking volumes the testimony to an extent of dreary reading and searching which would stimulate compassion, were it not that he who would be the victim, were that the proper feeling in which he should be approached, evidently exults and glories, and is really happy, in the conditions which those who know no better would set down as his hardships. There are some who, when they run the eye over arrtis and other formal documents, over pedigrees, local chronicles telling trifles, title-deeds, and suchlike writings, carry with them a general impression of the political or social lesson taught by them, and discard from recollection all the details from which any such impression has been derived. M. Michel is of another kind ; he has that sort of fond- ness for his work which induces him to show you it in all stages, from the rude block to the finished piece of art, so far as it is finished. You are entered in all the secrets of his workshop you participate in all his dis- appointments and difficulties as well as his successes. The research which has had no available result is still reported, in order that you may see how useless it has been. One who has not much sympathy with this kind of literature, would yet not desire to speak profanely of it, since some consider it the only perfect method of writing ITS HISTORIANS. 157 books on subjects connected with history or archaeology. The " citation of authorities," in fact, is deemed, in this department of intellectual labour, something equivalent to records of experiments in natural science, and to demon- strations in geometrical science. Those whose sympathy is with the exhibition rather of results than of the means of reaching them, have not that high respect for footnotes filled with accurate transcripts of book-titles which is due to the high authorities by whom the practice has been long sanctioned. They can afford it, however, the sort of dis- tant unsympathising admiration which people bestow on accomplishments for which they have no turn or sympathy as for those of the juggler, the acrobat, and the ac- countant. M. Michel's way of citing the books he refers to, is, indeed, to all appearance, a miracle of perfection in this kind of work. Sometimes he is at the trouble of denoting where the passage stands in more than one, or even in every, edition of the work. He gives chapter or section as well as page and volume. In old books counted not by the page but the leaf, he will tell you which side he desires you to look at, right or left ; and where, as is the way in some densely printed old folios, in addition to the arrangement of the pages by numeration, divisions on each page are separated by the letters A B C, he tells you which of these letters stands sentry on the paragraph he refers to. There is, at all events, a very meritorious kind of literary honesty in all this, and however disinclined to follow it, no one has a right to object to it. And after all, a man who has gone through so much hard forbidding reading as M. Michel has, is surely entitled to let us know something about the dreary wastes and rugged wilder- nesses through which he has sojourned all for the pur- pose of laying before his readers his two gay attractive- looking volumes. Towards his foreign reading, I in the general instance lift the hat of respect, acknowledging, without professing critically to test, its high merits. Upon the diligent manner in which he has, in our own less luxu- riant field of inquiry among Scots authorities, turned over every stone to see what is under it, one can speak with more distinct assurance. Take one instance. The young 158 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. Earl of Haddington, the son of that crafty old statesman called Tarn o' the Cowgate, who scraped together a for- tune in public office under James VI., was studying in France, when he met and fell in love with the beautiful Mademoiselle de Chatillon, granddaughter of the Ad- miral Coligny. When only nineteen years old he went back to France, married her, and brought her home. He died within a year, however; and the Countess, a rich, beautiful widow, returned to her friends. She was, of course, beset by admirers, and in reference to these, M. Michel has turned up a curious passage in 'Les His- toriettes de Tallemant des Rdaux/ which, if true, shows the persevering zeal with which our Queen, Henrietta Maria, seized every opportunity to promote the cause of her religion. The Countess being Huguenot, and of a very Huguenot family, the Queen was eager that she should be married to a Roman Catholic, and selected the son of her friend Lady Arundel. The dominion over her affec- tions was, however, held by "un jeime Ecossois nomme Esbron, neveu du Colonel Esbron." The name is French for the Chevalier Hepburn, one of the most renowned soldiers in the French service in the early part of the seventeenth century. The mamma Chatillon was dead against either connection. She got a fright by hearing that her daughter had been carried off to the Tenebres, or the services of Easter-week which inaugurate Good- Friday ; she consequently gave her a maternal box on the ear, carried her off, and, to keep her out of harm's way, forthwith married her to the Count de la Suze, tout borgne, tout ivrogne, et tout indettk qrfil etoit. M. Michel's purpose is not with this desirable husband, nor with his wife after she ceases to be connected with Scotland, but with the young Hepburn who comes cas- ually across the scene. Following in his track entirely, the next quarter where, after appearing in the * Histo- riettes,' he turns up, is Durie's ' Decisions of the Court of Session.' This is by no means one of the books which every well-informed man is presumed to know. So tough- ly is it stuffed with the technicalities and involutions of old Scots law, and so confused and involved is every ITS HISTORIANS. 159 sentence of it by the natural haziness of its author, that probably no living English writer would dare to meddle with it No Scotsman would, unless he be a lawyer nor, indeed, would any lawyer, unless of a very old school welcome the appearance of the grim folio. In citing from it the decision of Hepburn contra Hepburn, i4th March 1639, even the courageous M. Michel subjoins: "Si j'ai bien compris le texte de cet arrtt congu dans une langue particuliere." This peculiar arret begins as follows : "The brethren and sisters of umquhile Colonel Sir John Hepburn having submitted all questions and rights which they might pretend to the goods, gear, and means of the said umquhile Sir John, to the laird Wauchton and some other friends, wherein the submitters were bound and did refer to the said friends to determine what proportion of the said goods should be given to George Hepburn, the son of the eldest brother to the said Sir John, which George was then in France at the time of the making of the said submission and bond, and did not subscribe the same, nor none taking the burden for him; upon the which submission, the said friends had given their decreet arbitral. The living brethren and sisters of the said Sir John being confirmed executors to him, pursue one Bea- ton, factor in Paris, for payment of 20,000 pounds ad- debted by him to the said umquhile Sir John, who, sus- pending upon double poinding," &c. Perhaps enough has been said to exemplify the daunt- less nature of M. Michel's researches. It is impossible to withhold admiration from such achievements, and I know that, in some quarters, they are deemed the highest to which the human intellect can aspire. But I confess that, to my own taste, the results of M. Teulet's labours are more acceptable. True, he does not profess to give the world an original book. He comes forward as the mere transcriber and editor of certain documents. But in the gathering of these documents from different quarters, through all the difficulties of various languages and alpha- bets, in their arrangement so as to bring out momentous historical truths in their due series, and in the helps he has afforded to those who consult his volumes, he has l6o THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. shown a skill and scholarship which deserve to be ranked with the higher attainments of science. Reference has already been made to his volume on Queen Mary. Among not the least valued of the contents of any good historical library, will be six octavo volumes containing the correspondence of La Mothe Fe'ne'lon. and the other French ambassadors to England and Scotland during the latter years of Queen Elizabeth's reign, for which the world is indebted to M. Teulet's researches. The book at pres- ent especially referred to is a reprint, with some additions, of the papers at least all that are worth having which were previously an exclusive luxury of the Bannatyne Club, having been printed in three quarto volumes, as a gift to their brethren, by certain liberal members of that Club. These papers go into the special aifairs of this country as connected with France and Spain from the beginning of our disputes with our old ally down to the accession of James VI. In the hands of the first historian who has the fortune to make ample use of them, these documents will disperse the secluded and parochial atmosphere that hangs about the history of Scotland, and show how the fate of Europe in general turned upon the pivot of the destinies of our country. It is here that, along with many minor secrets, we have revealed to us that narrow escape made by the cause of Protestantism, when the project on the cards was the union of the widowed Queen Mary to the heir of Spain, and those political combinations already referred to as centring round the interests and the fate of the Queen of Scots, which led to the more signal and renowned escape realised in the defeat of the Armada. CHAPTER V. RELICS OF THE LEAGUE IN SCOTS HABITS AND PRACTICES THE LAW THE BONNET VF.RT AND THE DYVOUR'S HABIT THE STATES- GENERAL AND THE THREE ESTATES THE HUGUENOTS AND THE COVENANTERS RELIGIOUS ARCHITECTURE THE CHATEAU AND THE CASTLE THE EGUIMENE AND THE HOGMANAY THE FETES DBS FOUX AND THE DAFT DAYS FRENCH EDUCATION AND MANNERS. THE long and close connection with France could not fail to leave some specialties in the constitution and social con- dition of Scotland. A glance at these may prove curious, and may also be instructive as showing how far a political alliance with a nation essentially differing in character will go, in changing the fundamental nature of a people. However much the infusion of Scots blood into her veins may have affected the inner life of France, in ex- ternals the great central territory, the inheritor of Roman civilisation, was naturally the teacher the rude northern land the pupil. France thus infused into Scotland her own institutions, which, being those of the Roman Empire, as practised throughout the Christian nations of the Con- tinent, made Scotsmen free of those elements of social communion of that comitas gentium from which Eng- land excluded herself in sulky pride. This is visible, or rather audible, at the present day, in the Greek and Latin of the Scotsmen of the old school, who can make them- selves understood all over the world ; while the English pronunciation, differing from that of the nations which have preserved the chief deposits of the classic languages in their own, must as assuredly differ from the way in which these were originally spoken. L 1 62 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. The Englishman disdained the universal Justinian juris- prudence, and would be a law unto himself, which he called, with an affectation of humility, "The Common Law." It is full, no doubt, of patches taken out of the ' Corpus Juris,' but, far from their source being acknow- ledged, the civilians are never spoken of by the common- lawyers but to be railed at and denounced ; and when great drafts on the Roman system were found absolutely necessary to keep the machine of justice in motion, these were entirely elbowed out of the way by common law, and had to form themselves into a separate machinery of their own called Equity. Scotland, on the other hand, received implicitly from her leader in civilisation the great body of the civil law, as collected and arranged by the most laborious of all la- bouring editors, Denis Godefroi. There came over also an exact facsimile of the French system of public prosecu- tion for crime, from the great state officer at the head of the system to the Procureurs du Roi. It is still in full practice, and eminently useful ; but it is an arrangement that, to be entirely beneficial, needs to be surrounded by constitutional safeguards; and though there has been much pressure of late to establish it in England, one can- not be surprised that it was looked askance at while the great struggles for fixing the constitution were in progress. Saying that Scotland took from France the civil law entire, supersedes all particulars as to the similarity of the forms of the administration of justice in the two countries, unless one were writing an extensive work dedicated to the comparative anatomy of the civil law as exemplified in both. In such a pursuit the closest parallel might be found in books without any resemblance whatever in practice. It was long an almost necessary qualification for the bar in Scotland, that one had studied the civil law abroad. There are, perhaps, lawyers old enough to re- member when the saying of some Continental civilian of the sixteenth or seventeenth century, Viglius Zuichemus, Rittershusius, Puffendorf, Noodt, Voet, and the like, might be cited just as aptly as a decision a few years old, in some case about a breach of warranty in the insurance INFLUENCE OF MANNERS. 163 of a vessel, or the import of a contract for the sale of goods in a bonded warehouse. Such things are typical of the sort of law that the French alliance brought to Scotland. It was all words and scholarship not reality. Of the Code and the Pandects, and of the hundred and fifty thousand volumes calculated to be about the sum total of the commentaries on them, all the intricacies and wanderings were more or less law in Scotland ; but at the same time, with so tremendous a mass of written law, there was very little real and practical law. The Roman law, in fact, from its exceeding sym- metry and minute logical organisation, has proved ex- tremely ductile and accommodating. Whether or not it be because it grew in a republic and was perfected in a despotism, it has been practically found that it suits ad- mirably for either. It has just three grades : an emperor over all ; the free citizens ; and the slaves, who are dis- posed of as property. In a country like Scotland, where there was neither an absolute emperor nor slavery in the old Roman sense, and where feudal institutions broke in upon the symmetry of the analytical adjustments of the civilians, there was room for a great deal of freedom ; and the fact is, that the Scots, being fond of it and unruly, got rather more freedom under the law of the despotic Roman Empire than the English achieved by that laborious struc- ture, their Common Law. In other respects it is curious to observe with what nicety, when they were about it, our lawyers would adopt some small specialty of practice from France. Before leaving the department of jurisprudence, let me mention just one little example of this. Long before England had an insolvency statute there existed in Scotland the " ces- sio," or cession to his creditors of all his worldly means by a prosecuted and persecuted debtor, who in return obtained a protection from further personal pursuit. By an old regulation, put into shape in an Act of Sederunt, or rule of court, in the year 1606, dyvours or debitors, when they obtained this protection, had "to caus mak and buy ane hatt or bonnet of yellow coloure," to be worn " in all tyme thairefter, swa lang as they remane and abide 164 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. dyvoris ; with speciall provision and ordinance, if at ony tyme or place efter the publication of the said dyvoris at the said mercat-croce, ony person or personis declarit dyvoris beis fundin wantand the foresaid hatt or bonnet of yellow colour, toties it sail be lawful to the baillies of Edinburgh, or ony of his creditoris, to tak and apprehend the said dyvor," &c. This cap was called the dyvour's habit, and may be traced in use after the middle of last century. In France there was the " cession " a pretty exact parallel to the Scots cessio. There, too, a special head- covering was worn by the privileged debtor to distinguish him from those who either were not in debt, or, being so, had no special protection from the inflictions of their creditors. There was, however, a difference, as if to rebut the charge of slavish imitation : in Scotland, as we have seen, it was a yellow cap ; in France, whence the example was taken, the cap was green. 1 Since the Union, legislation for Scotland has been adapted to the old practice of the English Parliament ; anything derived by the old Scots Parliament from French practice cannot, therefore, be spoken of as an existing influence of France, yet this is the place in which a word or two may be most appropriately said about it. The Parliament of Scotland, when it came to an end at the Union, differed in constitution from that of England, having three estates the nobles, the county members, and the representatives of the municipal corporations all sitting together in one nouse. This came from the old practice of the States-General of France ; but so little 1 "Le bonnet vert est le marque de ceux qui ont fait cession. L'usage du bonnet vert n'a & introduit en France par aucunes or- donnances, mais par les arrets des cours superieures, notamment par celui du parlement du 26 juin 1582 en forme de reglement : cet arret ordonne que ceux que seront admis au benefice de cession, apres avoir justifie la perte de leurs biens sans fraude, seront tenus de porter le bonnet vert : et que s'ils sont trouves ne 1'ayant pas, ils seront deboutes du benefice de la cession, et permis a leur creanciers de les empris onner." Denisart, 'Collection de Decisions Nouvelles,' voce Bonnet vert. 1 INFLUENCE OF MANNERS. 165 could the shape thus given to the institution affect the condition of the community, that had the shape of the English Parliament been substituted for that of the French States-General, the country could not have been freer than it was. In fact, there arose this mighty difference between the French institution and its Scots offspring, that the parent died, while its progeny lived. The practice of the long-forgotten States-General of France was an object of rather anxious inquiry at the re- assembling of that body in 1789, after they had been some four centuries and a half in a state of adjournment or dissolution. The investigations thus occasioned brought out many peculiarities which were in practical observance in Scotland down to the Union. All the world has read of that awful crisis arising out of the question whether the Estates should vote collectively or separately. Had the question remained within the bounds of reason and regu- lation, instead of being virtually at the issue of the sword, much instructive precedent would have been obtained for its settlement by an examination of the proceedings of that Parliament of Scotland which adjusted the Union an exciting matter also, yet, to the credit of our country, discussed with perfect order, and obedience to rules of practice which, derived from the custom of the old States- General of France, were rendered pliant and adaptable by such a long series of practical adaptations as the country of their nativity was not permitted to witness. 1 1 "The riding of the Parliament," as it was called the procession with which a session opened and closed was a great state ceremony, with many minute and strict traditional details which it behoved Lyon King-at-Arms to be minutely acquainted with. I do not know how far a comparison of these with the formalities of the old French States- General might reward research. The only attempt to repre- sent the ceremonial of the Scots Parliament I have ever met with is in a French book, the beautiful 'Atlas Historique' of Guendeville (II. No. 56) ; we have here the procession and the sitting, and each figure with robes, insignia, and appropriate gesture separately articu- lated. There is enough of special costume and other characteristics to let one see that, although not taken from life, the picture was done at the direction of one acquainted with the reality. Though published in the year 1718, eleven years after the Parliament of Scotland had 1 66 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. There was a very distinct adaptation of another French institution of later origin, when the Court of Session was established in 1533. Before that year, the king's justices administered the law somewhat as in England, but there was an appeal to Parliament ; and as that body did its judicial work by committees, these became virtually the supreme courts of the realm. Their proceedings, under the title of ' The Acts of the Lords Auditors of Causes and Complaints,' may be purchased from the Govern- ment, with the other volumes issued by the Record Com- mission. The Court of Session, established to supersede this kind of tribunal, was exactly a French parliament a body exercising appellate judicial functions, along with a few others of a legislative character. These were few in this country, but in France they became sufficiently exten- sive to render the assembling of the proper Parliament of the land the States-General unnecessary for all regal purposes. Let us turn now to the Universities. It was undoubt- edly the influence of France that stamped on those of Scotland the form and character of their Continental parentage, so accurately that to this day they supply the best living specimens from which we may study the struc- ture of the medieval university. The University of King's College in Aberdeen was constructed on the model of that of Paris, the metropolitan of the universities of the world, whose usages were the authority in all questions of form and practice. 1 There the founder of King's College, ceased to exist, it must have been made up from materials some forty years earlier, since we have "les archevesques " and "les evesques. The bulk of the procession is made up of "le commissaires des contez, et de bourgs, et des villes. " The national emblems, besides the heraldic lion, are a gigantic thistle surmounted by an armed Pallas, who has quietly deposited on her knee ' ' le chapeau de la liberte" the same Phrygian nightcap which subsequently had so horrible a renown in France. 1 In 1634, when Charles I. noted Presbyterian innovations in King's College, and expressed a desire "for re-establishing of this university in her jurisdiction, conservation, and privileges, according to her ancient rights granted thereanent," application was directed to be made to ' ' the rector and University of Paris for a just and perfect THE UNIVERSITIES. 167 Bishop Elphinston, had taught for many years ; so had the first principal, Hector Boece, of whom hereafter. The transition from the Paris to the Aberdeen of that day must have been a descent not to be estimated by the present relative condition of the two places; and one cannot be surprised to find Hector saying that he was seduced northwards by gifts and promises. Yet it is probable that we would find fewer actual living remnants of the old institution in Paris itself, than in this northern offspring and its brother universities in Scotland. In these the forms, the nomenclature, and the usages of the middle ages are still preserved, though some of them have naturally changed their character with the shifting of the times. Each of them has still its chancel- lor, and sometimes a high state dignitary accepts of the office. It was of old a very significant one, for it was the link which allied the semi-republican institutions of the universities to the hierarchy of St Peter. The bishop was almost invariably the chancellor, unless the university were subordinated to some great monastic institution, the head of which became the chancellor so in Paris the Prior of St Genevieve held this high office. In ' the Scottish universities the usual Continental arrangement seems to have been adopted prior to the Reformation as a matter of course, the bishop was the chancellor. But while the institution was thus connected through a high dignitary with the Romish hierarchy, it possessed, as a great literary community with peculiar privileges, its own great officer electively chosen for the preservation of those privileges. It had its Rector, who, like the chief magistrate of a municipal corporation, but infinitely above him in the more illustrious character of the functions for which his constituents were incorporated, stood forth as the head of his republic, and its protector from the invasions either of the subtle churchmen or the grasp- written double of the rights and privileges of that University of Paris, for the better clearing and setting in good order the rights and privi- leges belonging to this University of Aberdeen." ' Fasti Aberdon- enses,' p. 400. 1 68 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. ing barons. The rector, indeed, was the concentration of that peculiar commonwealth which the constitution of the ancient university prescribed. Sir William Hamilton has shown pretty clearly that, in its original acceptation, the word Universitas was applied, not to the compre- hensiveness of the studies, but to that of the local and personal expansion of the institution. The university despised the bounds of provinces, and even nations, and was a place where ardent minds from all parts of the world met to study together, and impart to each other the influence of collective intellect working in combina- tion and competition. The constitution of the Rector- ship was calculated to provide for the protection of this universality, for the election was managed by the Pro- curators or Proctors of the Nations, or geographical clusters into which the students were divided, generally for the purpose of neutralising the naturally superior influence of the home students, and keeping up the cosmopolitan character imparted to the system by its enlightened founders. Hence in Paris the nations were France, Picardy, and England, afterwards changed to Germany, in which Scotland was included. Glasgow is still divided into four nations : the Natio Glottiana, or Clydesdale, taken from the name given to the Clyde by Tacitus. In the Natio Laudoniana were originally in- cluded the rest of Scotland, but it was found expedient to place the English and the colonists within it ; while Al- bania, intended to include Britain south of the Forth, has been made rather inaptly the nation of the foreigners. Rothesay, the fourth nation, includes the extreme west of Scotland, and Ireland. In Aberdeen there is a like divi- sion into Marenses, or inhabitants of Mar, the central or metropolitan district; Angusiani, or men of Angus, which, however, includes the whole world south of the Gram- pians; while the northern districts are partitioned into Buchanenses and Moravienses, the people of Buchan and Moray. The Procurators of the Nations were, in the University of Paris, those high authorities to whom, as far separated from all sublunary influences, King Henry of England THE UNIVERSITIES. 169 proposed, in the twelfth century, to refer his disputes with the Papal power. In England they are represented at the present day by the formidable Proctor, who is a terror to evil-doers without being any praise or protection to them that do well. But it may safely be said that the ingenious youths who in Glasgow and Aberdeen go through the annual ceremony, as procurators nationum, of tendering the votes of the nations in the election of a rector, more legitimately represent those procurators of the thirteenth and fourteenth century, who maintained the rights of their respective nations in the great intel- lectual republic called a Universitas. The discovery, indeed, of this latent power, long hidden, like some palaeozoic fossil, under the pedagogical innovations of modern days which tended to make the self-governing institution a school ruled by masters created astonish- ment in all quarters, even in those who found themselves in possession of the privilege. In Aberdeen especially, when some mischievous antiquary maintained that, by the charter of the younger college, the election of a lord rector lay with the students themselves, the announce- ment was received with derision by a discerning public, and with a severe frown, as a sort of seditious libel en- ticing the youth to rebellion, by the indignant professors. But it turned out to be absolutely true, however astound- ing it might be to those who are unacquainted with the early history of universities, and think that everything ancient must have been tyrannical and hierarchical. The students made a sort of saturnalia of their fugitive power, while the professors looked on as one may see a solemn mastiff contemplate the gambols of a litter of privileged spaniel pups. Those who are logically the very worst distributors of patronage or honours sometimes turn out to be the best, because, distrusting their own capacity to judge correctly, they fix their choice so high up in the hierarchy of merit as to be beyond cavil. Hence the catalogue of Lord Rectors soars far above respectability and appropriate- ness : it is brilliant. From Burke to Bulwer Lytton and Macaulay, they have, with a few exceptions, been men of I/O THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. the first intellectual rank. What is a still more remark- able result than that they should often have been men of genius, there is scarcely an instance of a lord rector having been a clamorous quack or a canting fanatic. In Edinburgh there was no such relic of the ancient university commonwealth, and the students had instinc- tively supplied the want by affiliating their voluntary societies, and choosing a distinguished man to be the president of the aggregate group. The constitution of the College of Edinburgh, indeed, was not matured until after the old constitution of the universities had suffered a reaction, and, far from any new ones being constructed on the old model, the earlier universities with difficulty preserved their own constitutions. It is a tribute to the worth of these, that their example has been followed in the late readjustments in Edinburgh. That principle of internal self-action and independence of the contemporary constituted powers, of which the rectorship and some other relics remain to us at this day, is one of the most remarkable, and in many respects admirable, features in the history of the middle ages. It is involved in mysteries and contradictions which one would be glad to see unravelled by skilful and full in- quiry. Adapted to the service of pure knowledge, and investing her with absolute prerogatives, the system was yet one of the creatures of that Romish hierarchy, which at the same time thought by other efforts to circumscribe human inquiry, and make it the servant of her own am- bitious efforts. It may help us in some measure to the solution of the phenomenon to remember that, however dim the light of the Church may have shone, it was yet the represent- ative of the intellectual power, and was in that capacity carrying on a war with brute force. Catholicism was the great rival and controller of the feudal strength and tyranny of the age. As intellect and knowledge were the weapons with which the blind colossus was to be attacked, it was believed that the intellectual arsenals could not be too extensive or complete that intellect could not be too richly cultivated. Like many combat- THE UNIVERSITIES. 17 1 ants, the churchmen perhaps forgot future results in the desire of immediate victory, and were for the moment blind to the effect so nervously apprehended by their successors, that the light thus brought in by them would illuminate the dark corners of their own ecclesiastical system, and lead the way to its fall. Perhaps such hardy intellects as Abelard or Aquinas may have anticipated such a result from the stimulus given by them to intel- lectual inquiry, and may not have deeply lamented the prospect. But however it came about whether in the blindness of all, or the far-sightedness of some the Church, from the thirteenth to pretty far on in the fifteenth century, encouraged learning with a noble reliance and a zealous energy which it would ill become the present age to de- spise or forget. And even if it should all have proceeded from a blind confidence that the Church placed on a rock was unassailable, and that mere human wisdom, even trained to the utmost of its powers, was, after all, to be nothing but her handmaiden, let us respect this unconscious simplicity which enabled the educational institutions to be placed in so high and trusted a position. The Church supplied something then, indeed, which we search after in vain in the present day, and which we shall only achieve by some great strides in academic organisation, capable of supplying from within what was then supplied from without. What was thus supplied was no less than that cosmopolitan nature, which made the university not merely parochial, or merely national, but universal, as its name denoted. The temporal prince might endow the academy with lands and riches, and might confer upon its members honourable and lucrative privileges ; but it was to the head of the one indivisible Church that the power belonged of franking it all over Christendom, and establishing throughout the civilised world a freemasonry of intellect which made all the universities, as it were, one great corporation of the learned men of the world. It must be admitted that we have here one of those 1/2 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. practical difficulties which form the necessary price of the freedom of Protestantism. When a great portion of Europe was no longer attached to Rome, the peculiar centralisation of the educational systems was broken up. The old universities, indeed, retained their ancient privi- leges in a traditional, if not a practically legal shape, carrying through Lutheranism and Calvinism the char- acteristics of the abjured Romanism, yet carrying them unscathed, since they were protected from injury and insult by the enlightened object for which they were established and endowed. When, however, in Protes- tant countries, the old universities became poor, or when a change of condition demanded the foundation of a new university, it was difficult to restore anything so simple and grand as that old community of privileges which made the member of one university a citizen of all others, according to his rank, whether he were laureated in Paris or Bologna, Upsala or St Andrews. The English universities, by their great wealth and political influence, were able to stand alone, neither giv- ing nor taking. Their Scottish contemporaries, unable to fight a like battle, have had reason to complain of their ungenerous isolation ; and as children of the same parent- age, and differing only from their southern neighbours in not having so much worldly prosperity, it is natural that they should look back with a sigh, which even orthodox Presbyterianism cannot suppress, to the time when the universal mental sway of Rome, however offensive it might be in its own insolent supremacy, yet exercised that high privilege of supereminent greatness to level secondary inequalities, and place those whom it favoured beyond the reach of conventional humiliations. Besides that great officer the rector, we have in Scot- land a Censor too ; but for all the grandeur of his etymo- logical ancestry in Roman history, he is but a small officer in stature sometimes, as well as dignity. He calls over the catalogue or roll of names, marking those absent a duty quite in keeping with that enumerating function of the Roman officer, which has left to us the word census as a numbering of the people. THE UNIVERSITIES. 1/3 So lately as the eighteenth century, when the monastic or collegiate system which has now so totally disappeared from the Scottish universities yet lingered about them, the censor was a more important, or at least more labori- ous officer, and, oddly enough, he corresponded in some measure with the character into which, in England, the proctor had so strangely deviated. In a regulation adopted in Glasgow in 1725, it is provided "that all students be obliged, after the bells ring, immediately to repair to their classes, and to keep within them, and a censor be appointed to every class, to attend from the ringing of the bells till the several masters come to their classes, and observe any, either of his own class or of any other, who shall be found walking in the courts during the above time, or standing on the stairs, or looking out at the windows, or making noise." l This has something of the mere schoolroom characteristic of our modern university discipline ; but this other paragraph, from the same set of regulations, is indicative both of more mature vices among the precocious youth of Glasgow, and a more inquisitorial corrective organisation : " That for keeping order without the College, a censor be appointed to observe any who shall be in the streets before the bells ring, and to go now and then to the billiard-tables, and to the other gaming-places, to observe if any be playing at the times when they ought to be in their chambers ; and that this censor be taken from the poor scholars of the several classes alternately, as they shall be thought most fit for that office, and that some reward be thought of for their pains." 2 In the fierce street-conflicts to which we may have occasion to refer, the poor censors had a more perilous service. In the universities of central Europe, and that of Paris, their parent, the censor was a very important person ; yet he was the subordinate of one far greater in power and influence, the Regent or monarch of a department." 8 1 'Munimenta Univ. Glasguensis, ' ii. 429. * Ibicl., 425. 3 In the words of the writers of the 'Trevoux,' so full of know ledge about such matters, " Un regent est dans sa classe comme un THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. The regents still exist in more than their original po- tency; for they are that essential invigorating element of the university of the present day, without which it would not exist. Of old, when every magister was en- titled to teach in the university, the regents were persons selected from among them, with the powers of govern- ment as separate from the capacity and function of in- structing; at present, in so far as the university is a school, the regent is a schoolmaster and therefore an essential element of the establishment. The term Regent, like most of the other university distinctions, was origin- ally of Parisian nomenclature, and there might be brought up a good deal of learning bearing on its signification as distinct from that of the word Professor now so dese- crated in its use that we are most familiar with it in con- nection with dancing-schools, jugglers' booths, and veter- inary surgeries. The regency, as a university distinction conferred as a reward of capacities shown within the arena of the university, and judged of according to its republican principles, seems to have lingered in a rather confused shape in our Scottish universities, and to have gradually ingrafted itself on the patronage of the profes- sorships. So in reference to Glasgow, immediately after the Revolution, when there was a vacancy or two from Episcopalians declining to take the obligation to ac- knowledge the new Church Establishment, there appears the following notice : "January 2, 1691. There had never been so solemn and numerous an appearance of disputants for a regent's place as was for fourteen days before this, nine candidates disputing; and in all their disputes and other exercises they all behaved themselves so well, as that the Faculty judged there was not one of them but gave such specimens of their learning as might deserve the place, which occa- sioned so great difficulty in the choice that the Faculty, choosing a leet of some of them who seemed most to excel and be fittest, did determine the same by lot, souverain ; il cree des charges de censeurs comme il lui plait, il les donne a qui il veut, et il les abolit quand il le juge a propos." THE UNIVERSITIES. 175 which the Faculty did solemnly go about, and the lot fell upon Mr John Law, who thereupon was this day established regent" 1 The term Regent became obsolete in other universities, 1 ' Munimenta, ' iii. 596. Sir William Hamilton explains the position of the regents with a lucid precision which makes his state- ment correspond precisely with the documentary stores here referred to. "In the original constitution of Oxford, " he says, "as in that of all the older universities of the Parisian model, the business of in- struction was not confided to a special body of privileged professors. The university was governed, the university was taught, by the graduates at large. Professor, master, doctor, were originally syn- onymous. Every graduate had an equal right of teaching publicly in the university the subjects competent to his faculty and to the rank of his degree ; nay, every graduate incurred the obligation of teach- ing publicly, for a certain period, the subjects of his faculty for such was the condition involved in the grant of the degree itself. The bachelor or imperfect graduate, partly as an exercise towards the higher honour, and useful to himself, partly as a performance due for the degree obtained, and of advantage to others, was bound to read under a master or doctor in his faculty a course of lectures ; and the master, doctor, or perfect graduate was in like manner, after his promotion, obliged immediately to commence (incipere), and to continue for a certain period publicly to teach (regere) some at least of the subjects appertaining to his faculty. As, however, it was only necessary for the university to enforce this obligation of public teach- ing, compulsory on all graduates during the term of their necessary regency, if there did not come forward a competent number of volun- tary regents to execute this function ; and as the schools belonging to the several faculties, and in which alone all public or ordinary in- struction could be delivered, were frequently inadequate to accom- modate the multitude of the incepters, it came to pass that in these universities the original period of necessary regency was once and again abbreviated, and even a dispensation from actual teaching during its continuance commonly allowed. At the same time, as the university only accomplished the end of its existence through its regeiiiS, they alone were allowed to enjoy full privileges in its legislature and government ; they alone partook of its beneficia and sporlula. In Paris the non-regent graduates were only assembled on rare and extraordinary occasions : in Oxford the regents consti- tuted the house of congregation, which, among other exclusive pre- rogatives, was anciently the initiatory assembly through which it behoved that every measure should pass before it could be admitted to the house of convocation, composed indifferently of all regents and non-regents resident in the university." 'Dissertations,' pp. 39i 392. THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. while it continued by usage to be applied to a certain class of professors in those of Scotland. Along with other purely academic titles and functions, it fell in Eng- land before the rising ascendancy of the heads and other officers of the collegiate institutions colleges, halls, inns, and entries. So, in the same way, evaporated the Facul- ties and their Deans, still conspicuous in Scottish aca- demic nomenclature. In both quarters they were derived from the all-fruitful nursery of the Parisian university. But Scotland kept and cherished what she obtained from a friend and ally ; England despised and forgot the example of an alien and hostile people. The Decanus seems to have been a captain or leader of ten a sort of tithing-man; and Ducange speaks of him as a superin- tendent of ten monks. He afterwards came into general employment as a sort of chairman and leader. The Doyens of all sorts, lay and ecclesiastical, were a marked feature of ancient France, as they still are of Scotland, where there is a large body of lay deans, from the lawyer, selected for his eminence at the bar, who presides over the Faculty of Advocates, down to "my feyther the deacon," who has gathered behind a " half- door " the gear that is to make his son a capitalist and a magistrate. Among the Scottish universities the deans of faculty are still nearly as familiar a title as they were at Paris or Bologna. Their exemption from the authority of the ordinary legal or correctional tribunals was one of the remarkable features of the ancient universities, and the relics of it which have come down almost to the present day in Scotland are very curious. The university was a state in itself, where the administrators of the ordinary authority of the realm had no more power than in a neighbouring independent republic. So jealously was this authority watched and fenced, that usually when the dispute lay between the liegemen of the university and those of the state between gown and town the university haughtily arrogated the authority over both. To be sure, it was very much the practice of the age to adjust rights and privileges by balancing one against another by letting THE UNIVERSITIES. 1/7 them fight out, as it were, every question in a general contest, and produce a sort of rude justice by the antag- onism and balance of forces, just as in some oriental states at this day the strangers of each nation have the privilege of living under their native laws; a method which, by pitting privilege against privilege, and letting the stronger bear down the weaker, saves the central government much disagreeable and difficult work in the adjustment of rights and duties. So, in the middle ages, we had the ecclesiastical com- peting with the baronial interests, and the burghal or corporate with both. Nay, in these last there was a subdivision of interests, various corporations of craftsmen being subject to the authority of their own syndics, deans, or mayors, and entitled to free themselves from any interference in many of their affairs by the burghal or even the royal courts. Ecclesiastical law fought with civil law, and chancery carried on a ceaseless undermin- ing contest with common law ; while over Europe there were inexhaustible varieties of palatinates, margravates, regalities, and the like, enjoying their own separate privi- leges and systems of jurisprudence. But over this Babel of authorities, so complexly established in France that Voltaire likened it to a traveller changing laws as often as he changed horses, what is conspicuous is the hom- age paid by all the other exclusive privileges to those of the universities, and the separation of these grand institu- tions by an impassable line of venerated privileges from the rest of the vulgar world. Thus, the State conceded freely to literature those high privileges for which the Church in vain contended, from the slaughter of Becket to the fall of Wolsey. In a very few only of the states nearest to the centre of spiritual dominion could an ex- clusive ecclesiastical jurisdiction extending to matters both spiritual and temporal be asserted ; and France, which acknowledged the isolated authority of the uni- versities, bade a stern defiance to the claims of the Popedom. It can hardly be said that, invested with these high powers, the universities bore their honours meekly. Re- in 178 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. spected as they were, they were felt to be invariably a serious element of turbulence, and a source of instability to the government of the cities in which they were. In the affairs of the League, the Fronde, and in the various other contests which, in former days as in the present, have kept up a perpetual succession of conflicts in tur- bulent Paris, the position to be taken by the students was extremely momentous, but was not easily to be cal- culated upon ; for these gentry imbibed a great amount both of restlessness and capriciousness along with their cherished prerogatives. During the centuries in which a common spirit pervaded the whole academic body, the fame of a particular university, or of some celebrated teacher in it, had a concentrating action over the whole civilised world, which drew a certain proportion of the youth of all Europe towards the common vortex. Hence, when we know that there were frequently assembled from one to ten thousand young men, adventurous and high- spirited, contemptuous of the condition of the ordinary citizen, and bound together by common objects and high exclusive privileges well armed, and in posses- sion of edifices fortified according to the method of the day we hardly require to read history to believe how formidable such bodies must have proved. Although the Scottish universities never boasted of the vast concourse of young men of all peoples, nations, and languages, which sometimes flocked to the Continental schools, and thus, with their great privileges created a formidable imperium in imperio yet naturally there has existed more or less of a standing feud between the citi- zen class and the student class. Their records show repeated contests by the authorities of universities, against an inveterate propensity in the students to wear arms, and to use them. The weapons prohibited by the laws of King's College, Aberdeen, are so varied and pe- culiar that one need not attempt to convert them into modern nomenclature, but must be content to derive, from the terms in which they are denounced, a general notion how formidable a person a student putting the law at defiance must have been. The list reminds one THE UNIVERSITIES. 179 of Strada's celebrated account of the armature of the Spanish Armada. 1 As to the rights of exclusive university jurisdiction which made the turbulent students of old so formidable, the universities of Scotland were not strong enough to retain so much of them as their English neighbours have preserved. There are curious notices, however, here and there, of efforts to maintain them. In Glasgow, in the year 1670, a sudden and singularly bold attempt appears to have been made for their revival, a court of justiciary being held by the university, and a student put on trial on a charge of murder. The weighty matter is thus in- troduced : " Anent the indytment given in by John Gumming, wryter in Glasgow, elected to be Procurator- Fiscal of the said university; and Andrew Wright, cor- doner in Glasgow, neirest of kin to umquhile Janet Wright, servetrix to Patrick Wilson, younger, gairdner there, killed by the shot of ane gun, or murdered within the said Patrick his dwelling-house, upon the first day of August instant, against Robert Bartoun, son lawful of John Bartoun, gairdner in the said burgh, and student in the said university, for being guilty of the said horrible crime upon the said umquhile Janet." 2 A jury was impannelled to try the question. The whole affair bears a suspicious aspect of being precon- certed to enable the accused to plead the benefit of ac- quittal ; for no objection is taken on his part to the com- petency of the singular tribunal before which he is to be tried for his life ; on the contrary, he highly approves of them as his judges, and in the end is pronounced not guilty. Half a century later, in the year 1721, the ' Glasgow 1 " Gladios pugiones sicas machseras rhomphseas acinaces fustes, prsesertim si prseferrati vel plumbati siut, veruta missilia tela sclopos tormenta bombardas balistas, ac anna ulla bellica nemo discipulus gestato." ' Fasti Aberdonenses, ' 242. The Glasgow list is less for- midable : "Nemo gladium pugionem tormenta bellica aut alind quodvis armorum et telorum genus gestet ; sed apud prefecture omnia deponat." 'Instituta,' 49. a 'Glasgow Records,' ii. 341. 180 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. Records ' bear that, "The faculty, being informed that some of the magistrates of Glasgow, and particularly Bailie Robert Alexander, has examined two of the members of the university viz., William Clark and James Macaulay, students in the Greek class for certain crimes laid to their charge some time upon the month of February last, and proceeded to sentence against these students, contrary to and in prejudice of the university and haill members, do therefore appoint Mr Gershom Carmichael, &c., to repair to the said magistrates of Glasgow, and particularly Bailie Alexander, and demand the cancelling of the said sentence, and protest against the said practice of the said bailie, or any of the mag- istrates for their said practice, and for remeid of law as accords." l It was the principle, not the persons the protection of their privileges, not the impunity of their students that instigated the faculty on this occasion, since in their next minute they are found visiting William Clark and James Macaulay with punishment for heavy youthful offences. Cesar Egasse du Boulay, commonly called Bulaeus, in the vast labyrinth of documents running through six folios which he was pleased to call a History of the University of Paris, has much to say here and there about the Bur- sus and the Bursarius the bursary and its holder. The word comes from the same origin, indicative of connec- tion with money, as the French " bourse " and our own " purse." The term has various meanings in ecclesiasti- cal history, but in the universities it referred to endow- ments or scholarships. In nothing, perhaps, is the old spirit of the university the spirit of opening the fountain of knowledge to all who are worthy of it and desire it more conspicuous than in the bursary system which has existed in Scotland, and especially in that northern insti- tution formed on the Parisian model, and its neighbour. These foundations, some of them of ancient date unless some recent change has crossed them are open to gen- 1 ' Glasgow Records,' p. 422. THE UNIVERSITIES. l8l eral competition, and those who gain them obtain what carries them through the curriculum of the university, and supplies them during the course with an annual surplus, less or more. When I remember the competition for bur- saries, the door was open to all comers. It was curious to see at the long tables the variety in the tone and char- acter of the intellectual gladiators, each trying his strength against the rest long, red-haired Highlanders, who felt trousers and shoes an infringement on the liberty of the subject square-built Lowland farmers flaxen-haired Or- cadians and pale citizen's sons, vibrating between schol- arship and the tailor's board or the shoemaker's last. There was nothing to prevent a Bosjesman, a Hottentot, or a Sioux Indian from trying his fortune in that true republic of letters. Grim and silent they sat for many an hour of the day, rendering into Latin an English essay, and dropped away one by one, depositing the evidence of success or failure as the case might be. There was an instruction that each should write his name on his thesis, but write nothing behind the name, so that it might be cut off and numbered to tally with the thesis a pre- caution to make sure that the judges who decided on the merits of each performance should be ignorant of its author's name. 1 1 There are, besides these competitive bursaries, others endowed for students of specific names or qualities. Some Highland endowments of this kind are curious. Thus the Laird of Macintosh, who begins in the true regal style, " We, Lachlan Macintosh of that ilk," and who calls himself the Chief and Principall of the Clan Chattan probably using the term which he thought would be the most likely to make his supremacy intelligible to university dignitaries dispenses to the King's College two thousand merks, "for maintaining hopeful students thereat." He reserves, however, a dynastic control over the endowment, making it conducive to the clan discipline and the support of the hierarchy surrounding the chief. It was a condition that the beneficiary should be presented "by the lairds of Macintosh successively in all time coming ; that a youth of the name of Mac- intosh or of Clan Chattan shall be preferred to those of any other name," &c. 'Fasti, '206. This document is titled in the records, "Macintosh's Mortification," according to a peculiar technical ap- plication of that expression in Scotland, to the perpetuity of posses- sion which in England is termed mortmain. 1 82 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. The employment in the universities of a dead language as the means of communication was not only a natural arrangement for teaching the familiar use of that lan- guage, but it was also evidently courted as a token of isolation from the illiterate, and a means of free com- munication throughout the learned, world. In Scotland, as perhaps in some other small countries, such as Hol- land, the Latin remained as the language of literature after the great nations England, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, were making a vernacular literature for themselves. In the seventeenth century the Scot had not been recon- ciled to the acceptance of the English tongue as his own ; nor, indeed, could he employ it either gracefully or accurately. On the other hand, he felt the provincial- ism of the Lowland Scottish tongue, the ridicule attached to its use in books which happened to cross the Border, and the narrowness of the field it afforded to literary ambition. The records just cited afford some amusing instances of the anxious zeal with which any lapse into the vernac- ular tongue was prevented, and conversation among the students was rendered as uneasy and unpleasant as pos- sible. In the visitorial regulations of King's College, Aberdeen, in 1546, it is provided that the attendant boys the gyps, if we may so call them shall be expert in the use of Latin, lest they should give occasion to the mas- ters or students to have recourse to the vernacular tongue. 1 If Aberdeen supplied a considerable number of waiting- boys thus accomplished, the stranger wandering to that far northern region, in the seventeenth century, might have been as much astonished as the man in ' Ignoramus/ who tested the state of education in Paris by finding that even the dirty boys in the streets were taught French. It would, after all, have perhaps been more difficult to find waiting-boys who could speak English. The term by which they are described is a curious indication of the French habits and traditions of the northern uni- 1 " Ne dent occasionem magistris et studentibus lingua vernacula, uti." THE UNIVERSITIES. 183 versities : they are spoken of as gardones a word of obvious origin to any one who has been in a French hotel. The object of these regulations seems to have been not so much to teach the Latin as to discountenance the ver- nacular language of the country. In some instances the language of France is admitted; and here the parallel with the parent University of Paris is lost, by the neces- sity that the language could not there have the privilege of a foreign tongue. The reason for the exception in favour of this modern language was the ancient French League. 1 It would be easy to note several other relics of French university phraseology which still cling round the usages of our humble institutions in Scotland. The Lauration is still preserved as the apt and classical term for the cere- mony of admission to a degree ; and even Dr Johnson, little as he respected any Scottish form, especially when it competed with the legitimate institutions of England, has given in his dictionary the word Laureation, with this interpretation attached thereto : " It denotes in the Scot- tish universities the act or state of having degrees con- ferred, as they have in some of them a flowery crown, in imitation of laurel among the ancients." Elsewhere we are honoured in the same work with a more brief but still a distinctive notice. Among the de- finitions of " Humanity," after " the nature of man," " humankind," and " benevolence," we have " Philology grammatical studies ; in Scotland, humaniores litcrcz" The term is still as fresh at Aberdeen as when Maimbourg spoke of Calvin making his humanities at the College of La Mark. The " Professor of Humanity " has his place in the almanacs and other official lists as if there were nothing antiquated or peculiar in the term, though jocu- lar people have been known to state to unsophisticated Cockneys and other simple persons, that the object of the 1 " Sermo omnium et singulorum ubique Latinus, Grsecus, aut Hebraeus esto : propter antiquum inter Scotos et Gallos foedus Gal- licum nostra addit fundatio." ' Fasti Aberd.,' 241. 1 84 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. chair is to inculcate on the young mind the virtue of exer- cising humanity towards the lower animals ; and it is be- lieved that more than one stranger has conveyed away, in the title of this professorship, a standing illustration of the elaborate kindness exercised towards the lower animals in the United Kingdom, and in Scotland especially. Accuracy is tested by the smallest particulars. To find if it is in a gazetteer, you look up your own parish in a book of genealogy, you search for your own respectable relations. Having noticed a parallel with .Parisian prac- tice in the higher dignitaries of the northern universities, I propose to go to the humblest grade the fresh new- comer and find it as distinct there as anywhere. During the first year of attendance, the student in Aberdeen is called a Bejeant ; three hundred years ago he was called in Paris a Bejaune. He frequently comes up in the pages of Bulaeus. Thus, in the year 1314, a statute of the university is passed on the supplication of a number of the inexperienced youths, qui vulgo Bejauni appellebantur. Their complaint is an old and oft-repeated tale, common to freshmen, greenhorns, griffins, or by whatever name the inexperienced, when alighting among old stagers, are recognised. The statute of the Universitas states that a variety of predatory personages fall on the newly arrived bejaune, demanding a bejaunica, or gratuity, to celebrate a jocundus adventus ; that when it is refused, they have recourse to insults and blows ; that there is brawling and bloodshed in the matter, and thus the discipline and studies of the university are disturbed by the pestiferous disease. It is thence prohibited to give any bejaunica, except to the bejaune's companions living in the house with him, whom he may entertain if he pleases ; and if any efforts are made by others to impose on him, he is solemnly enjoined to give secret information to the pro- curators and the deans of the faculties. 1 1 'Hist. Univ. Paris,' iv. 266. The etymology attributed to the word bejaune is rather curious. It is said to mean "yellow neb" bc jaunem allusion to the physical peculiarity of unfledged and inex- perienced birds, to whose condition those who have just passed from the function of robbing their nests to the discipline of a university are THE HUGUENOT AND COVENANTER. 185 We have elsewhere come across a few specialties about the connection of the old Church with France. Many changes, known to every one, intercepted the descent to modern times of any peculiarities that can through this channel be traced to France. I do not think, however, that sufficient emphasis has hitherto been given to the influence which the French Huguenots had on Presby- terianism in Scotland. The system, both in its doctrines and its forms, was brought over ready-made, and the root of it is still to be found in the Synodicon, or ' The Acts, Decisions, Decrees, and Canons of those famous National Councils of the Reformed Churches in France/ gathered together through the diligent zeal of the English Non- conformist John Quick. Passing over, as unsuitable for discussion here, the larger matters of coincidence or of special difference, advisedly adopted by those who ad- justed the Continental model for use in Scotland, some of the trifling details may be aptly referred to as evidence of accuracy in the adaptation. "The Moderator" is to this day the head of every Presbyterian ecclesiastical body in Scotland. There is the Moderator of the presbytery, the Moderator of the synod, and the great temporal head of the Church for the time being, " the Very Reverend the supposed to have an obvious resemblance. " Ce mot," says the ' Trevoux,' " a etc dit par corruption de bee jaune, par metaphore de oisons et autres oiseaux niais qui ont le bee jaune ce qu'on a ap- plique aux apprentis en tous les arts et sciences rudis tiro imper- itus. " Yet in the same dictionary there are such explanations about the use of the words begayer, to stutter, and begayement^ stuttering, as might have furnished another origin. " Les enfans," we are told, "begayent en apprenant a parler. Ceux qui ont la langue grasse begayent toute leur vie. Quand un homme a bu beaucoup il com- mence a begayer" But it is used also figuratively: " Des choses qu'on a peine d'expliquer, ou de faire entendre Ce commentateur n'a fait que begayer en voulant expliquer 1'Apocalypse. " The gene- alogy of the word is, unfortunately, rather perplexed than cleared up by Ducange carrying it into Germany. He tells us that Beanus means a new student who has just come to the academy, and cites the statutes of the University of Vienna, like that of Paris prohibiting all persons from cheating or overcharging the new-comers, who are called Beani, or assailing them with other injuries or contumelies. Lambecius, in the ' Epistolse Obscurorum,' finds Beanus in an acros- tic " Beanus Est Animal Nesciens Uitam Studiosorum." 1 86 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. Moderator of the General Assembly." The term has scarcely a native tone. It was of old use in specialties in the Gallican Church. There was, for instance, a Mode- rateur of the celebrated Oratory in Paris ; but after the Reformation the name came to be almost exclusively ap- plied to the presidents of the Huguenots' ecclesiastical courts or assemblages. 1 So, too, the form in which any legislative measure is initiated in the General Assembly is "an overture" a term still more expressive of foreign origin. It is used as foreign terms are in our tongue, and made a verb of, without consideration for its native struc- ture ; and so a motion is made in a presbytery " to over- ture " the General Assembly. This is the direct descen- dant of the solemn " ceuverture J> by which important pieces of business were opened in the Parliament of Paris and other august bodies. 2 The term has had an odd history, having split, and divided in two opposite direc- tions the one attaching itself to ecclesiastical business entirely, the other to the initial steps of certain theatrical performances. I think it is to its source among these Huguenots, chiefly the children of the fiery south of France, that we must attribute some puzzling inconsistencies in the reli- gious history of Scotland, and among them an intolerance and ferocity in profession and language which were not carried into practice, because they were inconsistent with the nature of the people. Scarcely any religious body has lifted up more intolerant testimonies than the Cove- nanters, yet it would be difficult to point to any other large communion save the Church of England with fewer stains of blood upon it than Presbyterianism in Scotland. Had the Huguenots ever possessed the opportunity for vengeance enjoyed by " the wild Whigs of the West " at 1 " Ce mot est plus Latin que Frar^ois, pour signifier le president d'un assemble. II etoit surtout en usage par les Reformez de France, pour signifier le president de leurs synodes. Us elisoient le moderateur a la pluralite des voix." ' Diet, de Trevoux.' 2 Whoever wants to know all about it may read a thick quarto, called ' Les Owertvres des Parlements faictes par les Roys de France tenant pour Lict de Justice, &c.,' par Lovys d'Orleans 1612. THE HUGUENOT AND COVENANTER. 1 8? the Revolution, they would have made an anti-Bartho- lomew of it. There is an old homely metaphor applied to men with sharp tongues or pens but soft hearts, that with them " the bark is worse than the bite." It has been much so with Presbyterianism in Scotland. 1 There is hardly a more liberal ecclesiastical body to be found any- where than the United Presbyterian Church. Yet on coming forth it lifted its testimony against what it called " the almost boundless toleration " which was vexing its righteous heart, and rendering the Established Church a hissing and a reproach. It is conspicuous among strange historical contradic- tions, that in the country supposed to be the least earnest and the most apt to take all things with an easy, light epicureanism, intolerance should have broken forth in so many and so powerful shapes as to seem a nature of the people. At one period aristocracy and government are intolerant of the poor and of liberty at another, the pop- ulace are intolerant of rank and order. At one period the Church is domineering and persecuting at another, it is trodden under bloody feet, and religion with it. The philosophers of the Encyclopedia themselves were intol- erant of seriousness and religion ; and any one admitted within their circle who happened to retain a turn for de- votion, had to slink secretly to his place of worship like a dram-drinker to his tavern. It is the intolerance on both sides that communicates so much of the horrible to the French wars of religion. The Huguenots were not less bloody and ferocious than their opponents. Of liberty of conscience they had not the faintest notion. Of internal intolerance " discipline," 1 Witness the doctrine thus announced in the ' Cloud of Witnesses ' as something so palpably evident that even a reasonable opponent cannot reject it as a basis of discussion : " It is acknowledged by all rational royalists that it is lawful for any private person to kill an usurper or a tyrant sine titulo, and to kill Irish rebels and Tories, or the like, and to kill bears and wolves, and catch devouring beasts, because the good of his action doth not only redound to the person himself, but to the whole commonwealth, and the person acting incurs the danger himself alone." 1 88 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. as it was termed or compulsory conformity with their own special sectarian rules, they had a far larger share than the Church of Rome. They held the internal rule all the more severely the more they were persecuted, for it is incident to persecuted bodies to be more relentless among each other than the prosperous. A persecuted Church is like an army passing through an enemy's country, in which difference from the opinion of the leaders is mutiny and desertion. The Edict of Nantes was not an act of toleration it was a compulsory paci- fication between two hostile forces, each ready when the opportunity came to fly at the other's throat. To keep them from doing so, each was assigned its own place, with barriers between them. The Huguenots had their own fortified towns, their own municipalities, their own universities ; and, what is so difficult to comprehend as a working machinery, their own courts of justice. The "Revocation" was, no doubt, a crime and a folly, but it was an act which the sufferers in it would have done had they got an opportunity. There was something, indeed, in the profession of the new Church more tyrannical than that of the old. The Papal hierarchy drew a line between its own function, which was spiritual, and that of the State, which was temporal a line, doubtless, not always observed. The Church of Calvin, however, as enacted for a short time on its small stage of Geneva, professed to rule everything. It was a theocracy dictating to all men the rule of the Deity as to their daily life and conversation through His ministers. Hence the domineering propensities of the church courts of Scotland, which have made so many people angry, are but a poor and ineffectual mimicry of the iron rule of Calvin and Farel. Knox, the fiercest and hottest of their Scots followers, though in the spirit of party he vindicated many a rough act, was not a man of blood. It was not in his nature to have tracked like a detective a controversial opponent through obscure acrimonious criticisms hidden in corners, to have lured their writer within his reach, and then to have put him to death. Thus were there many things done which the THE HUGUENOT AND COVENANTER. 189 Scots followers of the school, though themselves incapable of committing, had yet, with a sort of heroic devotion to their party, to vindicate in others a practice which has brought on them much undeserved odium. 1 Knox brought over with him the words, perhaps in some measure the thoughts, of his cruel teachers, but not their natures. His cry was, that "the idolatrous priest shall be slain at the altar," but he did not bring the threat to the test of practice. It is one of the most curious instances of human frailty and inconsistency, that he afterwards professed bitterly to repent of his modera- tion, mentioning, as an aggravation of his offence, that he had credit with many who would have enforced God's judgments had he urged them to the task, but he held back, and so had from the bottom of his heart to ask God's pardon that he did not do what in him lay to suppress the idol from the beginning. He would have found the sort of work he referred to, however, more difficult to accomplish than he supposed. The elements he had to deal with were far more worldly and selfish than the fiery zeal he had witnessed in the south. Away from that furnace into which he had gone hardened by persecution, he chafed furiously against the Laodicean latitudinarianism of his lay followers, who flung his ' Book of Discipline' back with contempt, and poured out the vials of his wrath copiously on those rags of Popish mummeries which Elizabeth permitted to hang round the Reformation in England. It is pretty clear that he and others of the fiery spirits 1 It is difficult to estimate the extent of heroic generosity which must have actuated an amiable and accomplished divine of the present day in prevailing on himself to say of the burning of Servetus : " Ac- cording to modern opinions, such a sentence was too severe; but when it is remembered that only a few years have passed since, in the most enlightened countries in Christendom, it was deemed proper to inflict capital punishment for such offences as forgery and robbery to a small amount, it will not, perhaps, appear so surprising that pious and earnest men three centuries ago should have thought it right to deal in the same way with an offence greatly more wicked in itself and more injurious to society than any act of dishonesty how- ever great." 'Enc. Brit.', article "Calvin." I9O THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. of the age liked France, where they found themselves among hearts full of the zeal that was lacking at home. It was somewhat the same on the other side ; so, as the valorous supporters of either cause found fields of battle in the French wars, the hot controversialists found there also a congenial arena of strife. Some of the Popish refugees let fly from the safe distance of French soil a few pungent arrows, which they dared not have shot nearer home, and they did not hesitate to make the powerful John Knox their peculiar aim. Among these John Hamilton, a restless and versatile priest not to be confounded with his namesake the Archbishop in a general volley against the reformers at large, states with much succinctness, and less than the usual indecorum, a favourite charge of that day against Knox. 1 In literature as well as religion Hamilton affected the part of the conservative, who stood on old assured stand- 1 "A facile traictaise, contenand first ane infallible reul to discerne trew from fals religion ; nixt a declaration of the nature, numbre, vertew, and effects of the sacraments, togiddir with certain prayers of devotion, be Maister Jhone Hamilton, Doctor in Theologie at Lovan. Imprinted be Laurence Kellam. " The first autheurs of thir neu sectes war of this qualitie, to wit, Martin Luther, a privat monk in Germanic : Zuinglius, a particular preist in Sweisseland : Caluin, a privat chanoine of Noyon in France : Beze, a prieur of Longemean, besyde Paris, vvha sauld his priorie tuyse and tuike Candida a mans wyf with him to Geneue. Knox, a renegat prest of Haddintoun, in Scotland, vvha was excomunicat for having ado with the mother and the daughter in ane killoggy, and theireftir was banisit for the assisting to the murthere of the Cardinal Beton in the castel of Saint Andres ; and his predecessor, Paul Methuen, a privat baxter in Dundie : and Willie Harlay, a tailzour in Edinbourg : sik lyk the first autheurs of al vther particular sectes erectit within thir three or four scoir zearis, war priuat men, vvha maed apostacie frem the Catholik, Apostolik, and Romane Kirk, and forgit new opinions in religion." Had Hamilton waited a little, he would have had a far stronger case against Paul Methven than his humble origin. He became a sadly fallen star, and the story of his lapse, which blazes in Knox's history and the Protestant works of the day, is significant in a way different from the usual influence of scandals, in making the impartial reader feel that, where so tremendous a fuss was made about the sin of one man, there must have been a remarkable amount of moral purity, unless in the supposition of a hypocrisy too great for belief. THE HUGUENOT AND COVENANTER. 191 ards. But like many others assuming that character, he made his protest against the movement onwards more emphatic by going backwards. In his controversial tracts, such as his * Catalogue of ane hundret and sixty -seven heresies, lies, and calumnies, teachet and practicit by the ministers of Calvin's sect,' after exhausting his polemical rage, he girds himself anew for frantic attacks on the innovations brought by Knox and others from the English idiom of the day, and in scolding them for "knapping saddrone," as he chose to call their use of a southern idiom, he used a form of expression which seems to have become obsolete in his own country. A gentler oppo- nent of Knox, Nynian Winzet, twits him with the southern affectation of his style, calling it " quaint inglis." The whirlwind of the Reformation seems to have stirred the vernacular languages of the day. Luther's Bible makes an epoch in the formation of the German language, and Pasquier, no partisan of Calvin, admits the great debt to him of the French language. 1 Hamilton, by the way, was a man violent in his actions as well as his words, and had his right place in the midst of the contests of the League. The student of history is probably acquainted with an erudite work on the mon- archy of ancient Persia, by a certain Barnabas Brissonius. The student of jurisprudence, digging to the roots of the civil law, as practised throughout Europe, is likely to be still more familiar with the great folio dictionary of law terms a work of overpowering erudition, which bears the same name on its ample title-page. To few who turn the teeming pages of the laborious student, does it occur that he is the same President Brisson whose stir- ring life and terrible death are conspicuous even in the bloody annals of the League ! When they had chased Henry IV. and his Court from Paris in 1591, they made Brisson first president of their Parliament. No one knows exactly how it came to pass, whether he really 1 " Auquel nostre langue Fran9oise est grandement redevable pour Vavoir enrichee d'une infinite de beaux traicts." ' Recherches de la France,' 769. 192 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. attempted to sell the cause of the League, or was un- justly suspected, but he came under the denunciation of the Council of Ten a committee of public safety which might have made the model for that other which worked two hundred years later. He got the popular nickname of Barabbas, and became a doomed man. When the Burger Guard were called out to line the streets for the capture of several traitors to the cause, Brisson, who was one of them, had to be dragged from a sick-bed. Con- spicuous among the clerical orators of the League who lashed the fanatic mob to fury by street orations against the heretics, was John Hamilton, the curate of Saint Come. He was equally conspicuous, armed from head to heel, in the processions of the Leaguers ; and in this form it was that he dragged Brisson from his bed. The poor scholar put in a touching plea for life, which he might as well have told to the elements he was just finishing a new book might he not be allowed to com- plete it? No. They hanged him from a beam in the council chamber. Even in those wild days, when it must have been hard for any man to get ahead of his neighbours, Hamilton became a character. In his humble sphere of a parish priest he made himself conspicuous in French history by the noisy ferocity of his zeal for the old religion and the audacity of his acts. He managed to escape when the Duke of Mayenne hanged the others concerned in the death of Brisson, but he turned up when Henry IV. abjured the Reformation. An act so likely to lead to peaceable results was not to Hamilton's taste, and he put himself at the head of a party of desperadoes, who were to attack the grand procession, in which the monarch was to reconcile himself to the Church, and take peace- ful possession of the hearts of the Parisian mob. Hamil- ton was unable, however, to get a sufficient force even to disturb the general peace and joy of the occasion. Whether or not his doings on that occasion reminded people of his precedents, sentence was afterwards passed on him to be broken on the wheel for the affair of Brisson. He wisely permitted the sentence to be ex- THE HUGUENOT AND COVENANTER. 193 ecuted on his effigy, and sought refuge under the genial shadow of Philip II. in his Flemish dominions. He afterwards visited his native country, where the powerful influence of his relations of the Haddington family seems both to have protected him and kept him quiet. David Chambers, in his book upon the departed glory of his country, repeats Hamilton's scandal against Knox, couched in Latin a form which would only give it more publicity in those days. 1 There is a little volume called ' Mr Nicol Burne's Disputation,' which, although a rarity hunted after by collectors, and therefore in common estimation worthless for literary purposes, will be found by any adventurous reader to contain some rather curious matter, and among them certain particulars regarding John Knox not to be found in the biographical diction- aries. 2 The book is a Parisian publication, and will be 1 "Clam a monasterio profugit, et ad clomum paternam regressus, cum noverca, vivo adhuc patre rem habuit Camerarii de Scotorum fortitudine, " p. 276. See also Reynolds's ' Calvino-turcismus,' p. 260, and the quotations from Laing and others in Appendix GGG to M'Crie's ' Life of Knox. ' 2 Passing over a preliminary passage rather more indecorous, I offer with some hesitation the following specimen : ' ' Heauing laid asyd al feir of the panis of hel, and regarding na thing the honestie of the varld, as ane bund sklaue of the Deuil, being kendillit vith ane inquenshibil lust and ambition, He durst be sua bauld to interpryse the sute of Mariage vith the maist honorabil ladie my ladie Fleming, my lord Dukes eldest dochter, to the end that his seid being of the blude Royal, and gydit be thair fatheris spirit, micht haue aspyrit to the croun. And becaus he receauit ane refusal, it is notoriouslie knauin hou deadlie he hated the hail hous of the Hamiltonis, albeit being deceauit be him traittorouslie it vas the cheif vpsettar and protector of his hseresie : And this maist honest refusal could nather stench his lust nor ambition, bot a lytil eftir he did perseu to haue allyance vith the honorabil hous of Ochiltrie of the kingis M. auin blude, Rydand thair vith ane gret court on ane trim gelding, nocht lyk ane prophet or ane auld decrepit preist as he vas, bot lyk as he had bene ane of the blude Royal, vith his bendis of taffetie feschnit vith Goldin ringis and precious stanes : And as is planelie reportit in the cuntrey, be sorcerie and vitchcraft did sua allure that puir gentil voman, that sho could not leue vithout him : quhilk appeiris to be of gret probabilitie, sho being ane Damosel of Nobil blud, And he ane auld decrepit creatur of maist bais degrie of onie that could be found in the cuntrey : Sua that sik ane nobil hous N 194 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. seen, like Hamilton's, to have had a struggle with the difficulties of the foreign press. It is possible that some respectable Protestants may be so little acquainted with the fashion of polemical contro- versy in the sixteenth century, as to be shocked by the passages concerning Knox to which I have referred. But there is no occasion for their losing a particle of their faith in their particular saint. These things were matters of routine ; controversy was not complete without them. It was as necessary to accuse the adversary of some monstrous crime, as in later times it was to charge him with stupidity, dishonesty, and imbecile malevolence. Moreover, they have the comfort of knowing that the malignant Papists by no means had it all their own way. Among the champions on the other side, we cannot call up a more appropriate one than Knox's own son-in-law, famous Mr John Welch. He lived much in France, and was thoroughly at home among the fierce Huguenots, for whom, indeed, he held a pike in the defence of St Jean d'Angely. There is a story, believed by his followers, could not haue degenerat sua far, except lohann kmnox had inter- posed the pouar of his Maister the Deuil, quha as he transfiguris him self sumtymes in ane Angel of licht : sua he causit lohann kmnox appeir ane of the maist nobil and lustie men that could be found in the varld : Bot not to offend zour earis langar vith the filthie ab- hominationis of Schir lohann kmnox, and to returne to tha thingis quhilk ar common to the sect of the Protestaons, lyk as S. lohne descryuis the Antichrist to haue ane blasphemous mouth aganis god, his sanctis, and halie tabernacle quhilk is his kirk Catholik, Euin sua the blasphemeis ar maist horribil quhilk thir gvishopperis and maist noysum serpentis the sonis of Martin Lauter speuis out of thair venemous mouthis, maist impudentlie defending the sam, as gif thay var headdis and articlis of healthsum doctrine." 'The Dis- pvtation concerning the Controversit Headdis of Religion, haldin in the Realme of Scotland, the zeir of God ane thousand, fyue hundreth fourscoir zeiris. Betuix. The prsetendit Ministeris of the deformed Kirk in Scotland. And, Nicol Burne Professor of philosophic in S. Leonardis college, in the Citie of Sanctandrois, brocht vp from his tender cage in the peruerfit sect of the Caluinistis, and nou be ane special grace of God, ane membre of the halie and Catholik kirk. Dedicat to his Souerane the kingis M. of Scotland, King lames the Saxt. Imprented at Parise the first day of October 1581.' Pp. 143, 144- THE HUGUENOT AND COVENANTER. 195 and strangely enough also by M. Michel, to the effect that Louis XIII. was mightily charmed by the earnest boldness wherewith he preached the truth. He was not content with ministering to his own people, but made aggressive attempts on the great enemy Popery, with results so little to his satisfaction, that he concluded the devil to have entered into the hearts of the people and hardened them against the truth, notwithstanding its plentiful outpouring. A Protestant even can imagine this outpouring to have been unsavoury to those on whom it fell, without any intervention of the devil, by a peep into his ' Popery Anatomised.' If there are some passages from the other side that one might hesitate to publish, there are many here that one dare not publish the compositors would not set them up. Hence the two sides are pitted against each other unfairly, the one having, as it were, a hand tied. It is one of those pro- voking books in which, if some one in a mixed company begins to read a grotesque and pithy passage, he finds himself brought to a sudden stop, probably with a red face, and then takes a leap onward, but with no better success for instance, in the little biographical notices by which he makes out the Pope to be Antichrist. " Steven VI. He caused to take out of the grave the carcass of Formosus, who had mansworn himself, and spoils it of the pontifical habit, and commands it be buried again to the burial of the laicks, cuts off two of his fingers and casts them into the Tyber, and abrogates his decreets, and decreed that the ordnance of Formosus should be void, whilk is a point of Donatism, as Sigebert, a monk, noteth. But Romanus I. and Theodosius II., Popes, his successors, they allow Formosus, and abrogate the acts of Stephanus ; and so did John X. by a council of seventy-four bishops, restored the acts of Formosus to the full, and abrogated the acts of Stephanus and con- demned them. Yet, for all this, Sergius III. having casten down Christopher I. out of his papal seat, after- wards did cast him in prison, where he died, and so obtained the Satanical seat by the help of Marosia his harlot ; he causes to take out the body of Formosus, 196 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. which had lyen eighteen years in the grave, degrades it from the pontifical honour, cuts off the three fingers which Stephanus VI. had left, and with them casts the carcass in the river Tyber, and abrogates his acts, and ordained anew them that was ordained by Formosus (?), whilk is a point of Donatism. And this most filthy " Here come a set of naughty words which cause a sudden stop. Try again. "Sextus IV., that vile and beastly monster. Wesselus Groningensis, in his 'Treatise of the Pope's Pardons,' writes of him that he permitted the whole family of Cardinal Lucia " Stop again. " Benedictus IX. He was so skilled in devilish arts of magic, that before he was made Pope, in the woods he called upon these evil spirits, and by his devilry [here the reader, being on his guard, may get on by slipping over a word or two], obtains the Popedom, and makes his former companions magicians, and his most familiar councillors. But he fearing himself, sold the Popedom unto his fellow-magician, called Joannes Gratianus, who was afterwards called Gregory VI., for ^1500. Platin saith, that by the judgement of God he is damned for the selling of his Popedom. So after he is deposed, he is suffocate by the devil in the woods, and so he perisheth. Of whom it is reported, that after his death he was seen monstrously to appear to a certain hermit, in his body like a bear, in his head and tail like an ass," &c. One cannot help admiring the sagacity of the hermit who recognised the deceased pontiff in this sort of mas- querade. It is possible to read in peace a full page about the great Hildebrand, how he poisoned his six prede- cessors, "that he was a notable magician, that when it pleased him he would shake his sleeves and sparks of fire would come out, whereby he deceived the minds of the simple. Of whom Cardinal Benno reports, that coming to Rome at a time he left his book of magical and devilish arts behind him through forgetfulness, and, remembering himself, he sends two of his most faithful servants about it, charging them straitly that they opened THE HUGUENOT AND COVENANTER. 197 not the book. But they, the more they were forbidden, were the more curious, and so opening the book and reading it, behold, the angels of Satan appeared to them in such a multitude, that scarcely could the two young men remain in their wits." Proceed we now to " John, whom some call the thirteenth of that name. He is such a monster, that I know not if ever the earth did bear a greater, who had sold himself to all sorts of licentiousness " (skip a word or two). " Luitprandus, in lib. 6, declares that, of his cardi- nals, of some he cuts out their tongues ; of some he cuts off their hands ; of some their noses ; of some " Pulled up again ; and so the book is stowed away in a corner of the library, carefully selected as out of reach of the children. 1 Among the preachers whom we sent to France, there were many who not only did battle with the common enemy, but fought among themselves. This feature seems to have surprised the French Huguenots, who gave im- plicit submission to their clerical masters. These Scots clergy, in fact, carried with them that disputatious prag- matic spirit of their native land, a climax of which is fur- nished by the Secession Church, while yet a small obscure body. The question of administering a burgher's oath after the Porteous Mob split it in two, and then it got a trans- 1 The author of these flowers of rhetoric was something closer to a canonised saint than appears quite consistent with sound Protestant- ism. A brother rummager has given me the following extract from the Wodrow MSS. in the University of Glasgow : "One night Mr Welch was watching and praying in his own garden, at Air, very late. Some freinds wer waiting upon him in his house, and they beginning to weary upon his long stay, one of them chanced to open a window towards the place wher he walked, and saw clearly a strange light surround him, and heard him speak strange words about his spirituall joy. And tho' these appearances of light may seem strange, and to many may savour of enthusiasme and delusion, yet ther are not a feu creditable instances of them with extraordinary persons, and extra- ordinary cases. " Wodrow's ' Life of Mr John Welch, ' written in 1724. This would give an iconographer a very good hint for a nimbus. To many this will be a far sounder certificate of sancti- fication than the Acts of the Holy College, or the Records of the Bollandists. IQS THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. verse split through both halves, insomuch that there were the Old-Light Burghers and the New-Light Burghers, the Old-Light Antiburghers, and the New-Light Antiburghers. Each protested in a general way against Popery and Prelacy, but was very vehement against the three quarters of what had once been itself, reserving its special anathe- mas for that from which it had just separated. 1 A deal of curious matter about the disputes among the Scots Protestants in France will be found in M. Michel's second volume. It was in reference to their contentious- ness that Andrew Rivet, a native of Poitou, himself a pretty eager controversialist, used an expression which has come into household use in the shape of &\z prafervi- dum ingenium Scotorum, a slight variation of the original. 2 I propose now to leave the religious bodies themselves, and glance at a topic which will bring up the nature of the places in which they worshipped. Architecture, especially if it be of stone, is the most enduring memorial of the social conditions of any country. The buildings scattered over the surface of Scotland attest to this day 1 The Scots are called a priest - ridden people, yet their most esteemed jests are against the clergy, and the vehemence of the native sectarianism. Perhaps this is one of the benefits of competi- tion. When I name the late Alexander Stewart Logan, the Sheriff of Forfar, I will recall a sad remembrance of many a hearty laugh. He was a man of strange grotesque genius, and held a large social place ; yet he has left no mark behind him, save in the genial pages of Dr John Brown. Logan had good opportunities of picking up such stories, as he was the son of a Relief minister. One of them I remember, a very curious example of how far down sectarianism can go. Some boys were rioting in a Burgher church whether Old or New Light not known. The person in charge of the building having seized one of them, a shrill youthful cry comes from a corner " Hit him hard hit him hard ; his father's an Anti-burgher ! " 2 After alluding to the acridness of the Scots controversies, Rivetus says, "Id prseterea observandum est, siquse durissimis persecutionum temporibus a Scotis et Anglis nonnullis temere scripta fuerunt, ea posse imputari non tarn religioni quam nationum illarum, Scoticanae prgesertim fervido ingenio et ad audendum prompto ; quod tantum valde mitigatum fuisse accensa veritatis evangelicse luce, ex eo constat quod ex centum quinque regibus suis, usque ad Mariam, tres exaut- orarant, quinque expulerunt, et triginta duos necarunt." ' Riveti Jesuita Vapulans,' ch. xiii. 14. ARCHITECTURE. 199 with extraordinary precision the long severance from England and attachment to France. We have seen that when the Normans came to Scotland, they left their mark there, as they did everywhere, in feudal castles, bearing special types of the architecture of the period at which they penetrated so far northwards. These are just like the English castles of the same period. The churches, too, built before and during the war of independence, are the brethren of the English-Norman, and first pointed. The existing remains, as well as the local histories, show that the war and the poverty it caused throughout the land brought castle and church building to a stop for many a year, and when it was resumed, it diverged towards the example of France. For instance, among those re- mains of church architecture in Scotland which have not been adulterated by bad restorations, there are no in- stances of the Tudor, third pointed, or perpendicular style, so prevalent everywhere in England. This style came into use in England in the beginning of the sixteenth century, and continued until it was gradually absorbed by the revival of the classical forms. It has been called oc- casionally the Tudor or the Elizabethan style ; but these names were applied to it rather in its application to civil than to ecclesiastical buildings. Mr Rickman gave it the name of perpendicular, from the propensity of all the lines, whether those of pillars or of mullions, to go straight up and meet some arch or transom, instead of spreading themselves in the easy floral forms of the preceding age. It has also been called the third pointed, because the two epochs which preceded had got the name of the first and second pointed ; and it is sometimes called depressed, because the favourite form of arch adapted to it has the ogee shape, as if it were the old pointed arch pressed down at the apex. Lastly, it is called the degenerate Gothic ; but people sometimes object to the applicability of the term, when they remember that Henry VII.'s Chapel, the hall of Christ Church, and many of the orna ments both of Oxford and Cambridge, have been built after this style. It will make the exclusion of this style from Scotland more distinct, to mention the one building 20O THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. that most nearly approaches to it, the church of Melrose Abbey. But even here the dominant feature of the style the depressed arch, as it is called by archaeologists, the four-centred arch, as it is termed in architects' offices is not to be found. At the time when it came into use in England, we here evidently adopted the contemporary style of France, called the flamboyant, from the flame-like shape and character of its details, especially conspicuous in the compartments of the windows when a bright even- ing sunshine passes through them. In the baronial or military branch of architecture, the influence of the alliance was still more emphatic. The poverty of their employers compelled Scots masons to go back to the beginning, and produce the mere square block, such as the Normans had raised two centuries earlier. Hence strangers have found puzzling anachronisms in Scots architecture ; and in such instances as Borthwick, Elphinston, Niddrie, and Broughty, have only been con- vinced that they were not looking on ancient Norman work, when, on close examination, they have seen none of the round pillars, ribbed arches, and cheveron or dog- tooth decorations which mark the transition between the classic and the Gothic. The natural development of castle - building is into flanking works. The owner or other person responsible for the defence wants something beyond the mere wall- plate, with the enemy outside and himself inside. He desires outworks, that he may protract the enemy's approach, and assail him, when he has come up, upon both sides as well as in front. When he has built his first flanking works, he wants to protect these works in the same way and so the affair has gone on, from those noble round towers which the architects of the Edwards clustered round the square tower of earlier days, to the long ranges of bastions and redans which covered miles of land under the constructive genius of Vauban and Coehorn. The Scots laird was too poor to build the flanking round towers of his English neighbours, but he found a cheap substitute for them, which does credit to his in- ARCHITECTURE. 2OI genuity. He perched projecting crenelations or bastions on the top corners of his tower. If he could afford one at each of the four corners, it was well ; if not, he put up two at opposite angles of the square, so that each could rake two sides of it. Meanwhile in France the practice was adopted of top- ping the flanking round towers with conical roofs, giving their form an approach to that of the steeple; any bastions or other petty flanking structures that were wanted were topped in the same manner. This has given a peculiar airy richness to French chateau architecture which every traveller notices, both in France and the countries where French taste or influence has predominated. The Scots laird, when he grew rich, enlarged his bastion, and topped it after the French manner. As he grew still richer, he built flanking towers of the same character. So at last his castle, from the original grim square block, sprouted up into a fanciful coronet of lofty crow-stepped gables, high chimneys, and turret-tops, such as we see in Glammis, Pinkie, Fyvie, Midmar, and a hundred other specimens. Indeed two, and perhaps the two finest of those I have named Fyvie and Pinkie were built by Seton, Earl of Dunfermline, who came to Scotland, after a foreign edu- cation, full of French law and French tastes. 1 Heriot's Hospital, in Edinburgh, is a daring and beautiful at- tempt to bring the architecture which had thus irregu- larly grown, into system and symmetry. There has been much random discussion about its architect, who certainly deserves not to be forgotten. It is generally said to have 1 The family historian, who says ' ' he was well versed in mathe- matics, and had great skill in architecture," describes his solemn inauguration to his profession in the bonnet quarre of the French bar : ' ' Shortly after that he came to Scotland, he made his public lesson of the law before King James the VI., the Senators of the College of Justice, and advocates present in the Chapel Royal of Holyroodhouse, in his lawer goun and four-nooked cap, as lawers use to pass their tryalls in the universities abroad, to the great ap- plause of the King and all present." Also, " He acquired the lands of Pinkie, where he built ane noble house, brave stone dykes about the garden and orchard, with other commendable policies about it." Kingston's Continuation of 'Maitland's House of Seyton.' 202 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. been designed by Inigo Jones, because it is so like the Castle of Friedriksborg, which he undoubtedly designed; and again, it is said that Friedriksborg was certainly the work of Jones, because it is so like Heriot's Hospital. When we get out of this circle, we find that the architect was William Aytoun of Inchdairnie, a namesake and an- cestor of our own lyrical poet, so justly loved and lauded. It is a social specialty of Scotland, that castles after the French fashion were built there long after private dwellings had ceased to be fortresses in England. The wide stretch of area, the broad hospitable doorways, and the cheerful oriel windows of the Tudor architecture pre- valent in England, spoke of a country where the law was strong enough to put down private warfare. Though richly decorated externally, however, every passage into the Scots mansions by door or window was dark and intricate. A Tudor oriel or bow window would have been as absurd a thing there as in the embrasure of a fortress the inmates would have been in constant risk of being fired at through it by their neighbours and hereditary enemies. Down nearly to the Union the Scotsman's house was his castle, not metaphorically or by fiction of law, but by strength of building. It was almost the same in street architecture, where the houses were lofty, inaccessible, and easily forti- fied. And to this day, in the larger towns of Scotland, house is piled above house in a manner which makes Edin- burgh as anomalous to the Englishman as Paris ; where the Scot, on the other hand, is surprised to find a close parallel to one of the special practices of his own country. I now propose to bestow a few pages on the examina- tion of a less solemn, but, in its own way, curious and emphatic relic of the French connection. In Scotland, as in France, the day of chief mark in the winter festi- vals is the first day of the year, while in England it is Christmas. Scotland too, following the example of France, adopted the ist of January as the beginning of the year early in the seventeenth century ; while in England the 25th of March was the beginning of the year down to the year 1753. Neither of these, however, is the point to which I wish to draw special attention. THE EGUIMEN AND HOGMANAY. 203 The eve that ushers in the new year is called in Scot- land Hogmanay Night. The young folks then go about soliciting gifts, with a rhyme in their mouths, of which the most accepted form is " Hogmanay, Trollollay, Give us of your white bread, and none of your grey. " An amount of austere learning, which it is painful to con- template, has been exhausted in a vain search after the parentage of these words. Attempts have naturally been made to trace the first to the Greek word which charac- terises the virtues of the saints ; but no further help could be found in that quarter, for the most daring etymologists could find nothing in it to serve as pedigree for the sec- ond word. All the fertile resources of Celtic etymology were next let in by the coincidence between the first word and the name which Lucian says the Celts gave to their Hercules namely, Ogmios and this gives the etymolo- gist the rare privilege of getting into that magnificent Irish literary system, the Ogham alphabet and the Ogham in- scriptions, of which it is the delightful peculiarity that you can read in them anything you please. Without considerable perversion, however, the Celts could make nothing of the second word, which was readily seized on by the northern antiquaries as having something to do with those beings, of no good repute, known as Trolls. But, indeed, all that has been discovered savouring of the reality in this direction is a memorandum of Torfaeus regarding the old heathen festival of mid-winter called Jol merged by the Christians into Christmas : it is, by the way, in Scotland now called Yule. The day which divides the winter, he tells us, is by one old chronicler called Haukunott, and by another called Hekunott. With a candour, however, which affords alike a good example and a striking contrast to our own archaeologists, he says he is totally ignorant both of the etymology and the rea- son of the term. 1 1 " Cujus ut etymon ita et rationem ignore, neque enim alibi legisse memini." ' Historia Rerum Norvagicorum,' ii. 215. 204 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. Not having courage enough for etymological warfare, I feel much satisfaction in shifting the responsibility, as official people say, and landing it in France, whence we seem to have imported the term, and the curious customs that cluster round it. In two numbers of the French paper ' L'lllustration/ I happen to have seen a repre- sentation of children going about on New Year's Eve, demanding their eguimene, as it is in some districts, while in others it is eguinene, or eguilane. The word had a sort of rattling accompaniment not unlike our own thus, " Eguimene', rollet follet, Tiri liri ; " and as an equivalent to some petitory lines, which with us generally terminate with, " Oh, give us our hogmanay ! " there were verses, of which the following is a specimen : .*' Le fils du roi s'en va chasser, Le fils du roi s'en va chasser, Dans la foret d'Hongrie ; Ah donnez-nous la guillanee, Monseignieur, je vous prie." 1 There is in the writings of Frenchmen of learning, in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a free-and-easy dealing with contemporary matters of common life, rarely to be found among the Scots authors of the period, scarcely to be found at all among the English. It would seem as if our insulars were afraid of their scholarship being questioned if they descended to common things. It gives a charm to the books of even the driest old French writers, that they speak with freedom of national and provincial customs, and thus keep up their history. While there are abundant notices of the corresponding festival in France, as I shall presently show, the only notice behind the present century, which I can find, of the Hogmanay, is in that collection of ribaldry called 'Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence Displayed,' which will 1 The date of these numbers of ' L' Illustration ' is, as far as I remember, 1850. I regret that I cannot now lay hands on them. The passage was, however, quoted by me in an article in the ' North British Review' for Feb. 1856, in which I took occasion to notice the coincidence of the terms. What follows about the French festival has turned up in the course of subsequent miscellaneous reading. THE EGUIMENfi AND HOGMANAY. 205 not carry us further back than the middle of the seven- teenth century. In this passage the etymology is very summarily disposed of in two different ways : " It is ordinary among some plebeians in the south of Scotland to go about from door to door, on New Year's Eve, crying ' Hogmana ! ' a corrupted word from the Greek hagia mene, which signifies the holy month. John Dickson, holding forth against this custom once in a sermon at Kelso, says, 'Sirs, do you know what Hog- mana signifies? It's the devil be in the house that's the meaning of its Hebrew original.'" Of the French equivalent I shall have presently to say how far it is traced back in practice. Its oldest use in literature, so far as I am aware, is in Rabelais. While the original might be a little hard on the gentle reader, it is always audacious and generally useless to attempt to explain in one's own terms what Rabelais means, and one is best sheltered by taking the ordinary translation. The eleventh chapter of the second book opens thus : "Then began Kissbreech in manner as folio weth : ' My lord, it is true that a good woman of my house carried eggs to the market to sell.' ' Be covered, Kissbreech,' said Pantagruel. 'Thanks to you, my lord,' said the Lord Kissbreech; 'but to the purpose. There passed betwixt the two tropics the sum of three pence towards the zenith, and a halfpenny, forasmuch as the Riphcean Mountains had been that year oppressed with a great sterility of counterfeit gudgeons, and shows without sub- stance, by means of the babbling tattle and fond fibs, sedi- tiously raised between the gibble-gabblers and Accursian gibberish-mongers, for the rebellion of the Switzers, who had assembled themselves to the full number of the bum- bees, and myrmidons, to go a-handsel-getting at the first day of the New Year, at that very time when they give brewis to the oxen, and deliver the key of the coles to the country girls, for serving in of the oats to the dogs.' " 1 1 In the original, " Au nombre de bombies pour aller a 1'aguillan- neuf le premier tru de Tan. " There is here a subsidiary etymologi- cal difficulty in the "bombies." I take it one may search French dictionaries in vain for the meaning of this word. The translator of 206 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. The words here translated u to go a-handsel-getting" are aller a f aguillan-neuf. Here the translator, Sir Thomas Urquhart, has not actually hit the point, though he has come close to it. The aguillan-neuf belonged to the old year, just as the new was coming ; the handsel-day belongs to the New Year itself. It is still in full practice in Scot- land as a day of largess. Though there is a natural vigi- lance on the part of the beneficiaries, which saves institu- tions of this kind from falling to decay, yet the handsel, which was an old custom in England, has fallen into disuse, having been superseded by that great institution the Box-day. In Scotland, both of the old taxative terms are observed ; but as the tax-payer will only give once, it has been necessary to make a division, so that youth takes the one and maturity the other. We shall see that the term is of ancient use in the ecclesiastical records of France, and its etymology and import were critically dis- cussed by French authors as far back as the seventeenth century. It will be seen that in these discussions, and in the older extracts from ecclesiastical records, the Scots word Hogmanay is approached from all points, although there is in no instance a parallel to it letter by letter. The most significant French comment I have found my way to, is that of Menage in his great etymological dictionary. All the world knows him to have been a master of learned gossip, and the very man to pour curious light on such a topic. Under the word Haguign- etes he quotes information furnished by M. de Grande- mesnil, who says he remembers in his youth that, in Rouen, the word was pronounced hoguignetes^ and gives his own theory of the reason for the variation ; and he Rabelais, Sir Thomas Urquhart, having the privilege of being an Aberdeen-awa man, was familiar with the bum-bee as the equivalent of the English humble-bee. He may even have "herreit a bum- bee's byke." But before admitting that his translation is true, one would require some information from France, since Rabelais did not go to Aberdeenshire for a term, just that it might suit a north-country laird. There is a confusion here, reminding one of a juvenile class in natural history, where to the question, " Where do bees get their wax?" the answer comes, " From their ears." THE EGUIMENE AND HOGMANAY. 207 gives a specimen of the way in which he remembers the boys in his own quarter singing it as they solicited their New Year's Eve gifts : *' Si vous veniez a la depense, A la expense de chez nous, Vous mangeriez de bons choux, On vous serviroit du rost Hoquinano." Menage is further informed by his correspondent that, in Bayeux and Les Vez, the pronunciation is hoguign- ames, and then gives a specimen of the way in which he had himself heard it sung in the streets, when practising as an advocate before the Parliament of Rouen. He had very little practice, by the way, being apt, as in the present instance, to occupy himself with matters not relevant to the case before him. The specimen he gives is *' Donnez-moi mes Haguignetes, Dans un panier que voici Je 1'achetai samedi D'un bon homme de dehors, Mais il est encore a payer Haguinelo." Menage records his correspondent's theory of the origin of the word, without either impugning or adopting it. The root is hoc in anno in this year as inferring a hint that it is still time before the year expires to do a small act of generosity to the suppliant, so that the giver may pass into the new year with the benefit of his gratitude. 1 1 "A Rouen ils disoient en ma jounesse non pas Haguignetes, mais Hoguignetes ; et peut-etre a-l-on dit Haguignetes, pour eviter 1'equi- voque de la signification obscene que les Picards donnent au mot de Hoguigner. Ce mot de Hoguignetes venoit de hoc in anno: car c'est un present que Ton demande au dernier jour de 1'annee, Don- nez-moi quelque chose hoc in anno : encore une fois cette annee." A traditional rumour appears to have existed that the ceremony came from France, and those who desired to find etymology for that view derived the lines from " L'homme est n Trois Rois la." The writer of an oppressively learned paper in the second volume of the 'Transactions of the Antiquaries' Society of Scotland,' "On the 2O8 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. Court de Gebelin, in his ' Monde Primitif,' quotes a portion of Menage's information, and gives as his own derivation a gui ran neuf. This brings us to the border of a vast theory which Cotgrave, in that dictionary so useful to all readers of old French books, thus distinctly announces : "Au GUY- L'AN- NEUF. The voice of country people begging small presents or New Year's gifts on Christmas. An ancient tearm of rejoicing derived from the Druides, who were wont the first of January to goe unto the woods, where, having sacrificed and banqueted together, they gathered mistletow, esteeming it excellent to make beasts fruitful, and most soveraigne against all poyson." The earliest assertions I happen to have noticed of this theory belong to the middle of the seventeenth century. 1 We have now got back among the Druids, Cry of the Maskers at Christmas or Yule" which, by the way, is not the correct time gets deep into Norse lore ; and in reference to the rumour of a French origin, says, "Had it been in such general use as has been pretended, some vestige of it would have been pre- served to the present age ; or at least it would have been mentioned by some of the French historians or antiquaries, as Mezerai, Menage, or Pasquier. But these writers, as well as every other whom I have had occasion to consult, are totally silent as to this usage." It is rash in any one positively to pronounce on what may not be found in a book, lest some other searcher may be more fortunate ; but a writer is surely specially unlucky who singles out, as in naming Menage, the very author who gives us a quantity of curious informa- tion on a topic, for the purpose of telling that he is "totally silent on it. " In Mezerai one would not expect to find anything about it ; yet, as if to confound this learned author, Mezerai does go out of his way to speak of the grotesque ceremonies accompanying the Eguimene, to be presently noticed. I am inclined to concur in Pasquier's silence, having rummaged his ' Recherches de la France ' the book of all others from which I expected most without rinding anything on this topic. 1 Du Chesne, 'Antiquitez' (164), under the description of Dreux, supposed to have been the Rome or metropolis of the Druids. It is more fully developed a few years afterwards by Borel. " Aguilanleu au guy Can neuf, cri retenu en certaines villes de France, depuis les Druides, qui alloyent couper le guy de chesne avec une serpe d'or en faisant un divinite. Les enfans crient Aguilanneu a Dreux et autres lieux, au premier jour de 1'an pour demander les estrennes, selon Du Chesne en ses Antiq. de France. Et Ovide confirme 1'antiquite de THE EGUIMENE AND HOGMANAY. 209 and therefore at an end both of common sense and common honesty, for it is the fatal effect of any literary dealing with this mysterious fraternity to render some men reckless and mendacious who otherwise are found to be cautious and truthful. This phenomenon might be worthy the investigation of psychologists; in the mean- time, I am content to attribute it to that awe and rever- ence accorded by general consent to a set of people of whom so little is known, if they be not almost altogether creatures of imagination. The investigator who lands his difficulties among them is at once relieved by a sort of supernatural influence, which enables him at once to subdue all the impediments which he would in vain have offered battle to by honest investigation and fair induction. So corruptive is this influence that the com- pilers of the Trevoux Dictionary, in general so cool and sagacious, have at once abandoned themselves to it on coming alphabetically to the heading Aguillanneuf, and have, with a minute precision worthy of a Court news- man, given an account of Druidical processions and other ceremonies, for which there is no more authority in any authentic shape than there is for the occurrences narrated in the tales of the Thousand and One Nights. 1 To this place of refuge in the sacred groves of the cette coustoume, lors qu'il dit, ' Ad viscum Druydae, Druydse cla- mare solebant.'" ' Tresor de Recherches et Antiquitez Gauloises est Francises, 1655.' 1 "AGUILLANNEUF, s.m. Vieux mot qu'on crioit autrefois le premier jour de Janvier, en signe de rejouissance. Ce mot vient d'une ancienne superstition des Druides. Les Pretres alloient, au mois de Decembre, qu'on appeloit sacre, cueillir le gui du chene en grande ceremonie. Cela se faisoit avec beaucoup de solennite. Les devins marchoient les premiers, chantant des hymnes, en 1'honneur de leurs divinites. Ensuite venoit un heraut, le caducee en main ; apres lui suivoient trois Druides de front, portant les choses necessaires pour le sacrifice. Enfin, paroissoit le chef, ou le Prince des Druides, accom- pagne de tout le peuple. Le chef des Druides montoit sur le chene, & coupoit le gui avec une faucille d'or. Les autres Druides le rece- voient, & au premier jour de 1'an on le distribuoit au peuple, comme une chose sainte, apres 1'avoir beni, & consacre, en criant, Ati gui, Van netif, pour annoncer une annee nouvelle. On fait encore ce cri O 2IO THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. Druids the French archaeologists have found their way through a narrow enough path. It is all along of " guy " or "gui," meaning mistletoe; which we are told by one of the most credulous of authors, Pliny junior, that the Druids cut with a golden sickle. With the French writers who believe in the Druidical connection, it is unfortun- ately necessary to be sceptical about everything, and especially about their spelling of the New Year's Day festival itself. It is refreshing to pass from such company into that of the accurate Charpentier, who, in his supplement to Du- cange, with something like a gentle sneer, refers to the authorities just cited for an account of the Druidical antiquity of the ceremony, and contents himself with quoting the earliest authentic records in which it is mentioned. Thus, he finds that in Boissiere, in Poitou, a vigil was held with lamps and lanterns in the year 1480, and the bachelors of the parish collected an aguillanneuj to defray the cost of the affair. He mentions some in- stances still earlier, and gives the various readings of Aguilloneu, Aguillenneu, Guillenlieu, Haguirenleux, and Haguimenlo. A word now about some other practices about the New Year, which I cannot help believing to be faded relics of the French connection. On Hogmanay Night it is customary for the young folks to wear masks and offer petty dramatic surprises. The height of this sort of effort is to get into a friend's house, without recog- nition, in personation of some very astounding character far away from the position of the youth who assumes it ; en Picardie, ou on ajoute, Plantez, plantez, pour souhaiter une annee abondante & fertile. Dela est venu le nom d'un fauxbourg de Lyon, qu'on nomme encore a present la Guillottire. En Bourgogne, a Dreux, & autres lieux, les enfans crient, Aguilannatf, pour de- mander leurs etrennes. "On donna depuis le nom de Aguilanneuf a une quete qui se faisoit le premier jour de I'an, dans quelques dioceses pour les cierges de 1'eglise. Elle se faisoit par des jeunes gens de Tun & de 1'autre sexe. Les Synodes ont aboli cette quete, a cause de la licence & du scandale dont elle etoit accompagnee. " THE EGUIMENfi AND HOGMANAY. 211 but this is a feat rarely accomplished. 1 Those who thus go a-masking on New Year's Eve, or Hogmanay Night are called guisards or guizers. There is very little on record about their mummeries, but we shall presently see that those of their French teachers were an important and formidable affair. 2 While the children thus went a-mumming, it became the practice of their fathers and other male seniors to take to drinking at the close of the year with a zeal and devotedness reminding one of those ancient rites dedi- cated to Saturn, from which the practice is said to have arisen. When any man belonging to what are called " the working classes " has a slight touch of dissipation in his temperament, the passing of the New Year is always a serious ordeal. It may chance to send him off into the whirl of eternal dram-drinking, and it seldom fails to start him on a career from which he is not easily recovered. It is usual to call this time of peril " the daft days." 3 1 For the fullest account of these saturnalia, reference may be made to the conclusion of Chambers's ' Book of Days. ' 2 Of anything I have heard of the theatrical literature of our Scotch guisards, there is little but sheer common city vulgarity, and little worth noting even for its grotesqueness. An ingenious friend remembers in his youth the beginning of a sort of Hogmanay drama, in which there enter three boys, as appropriately armed and cos- tumed as a village can afford, and commence a trialogue, thus : i. " I am Bol Bendo who are you?" z. " I am here, the King of France, Come for a battle to advance." 3. "I am here, the King of Spain, Come for a battle to maintain." In any country with less schooling and history-reading than Scotland, there might be something significant in the place where this mum- mery was noted being in the same parish with "Little France," so called from a tradition that Queen Mary's French attendants lived there in a small colony, at a time when the great contest between France and Spain was the latest important chapter in history. 3 The temptations of the season, and their influence, are capitally recorded in the following lyric of the late Robert Gilfillan of Leith : " I've aye been fou sin' the year cam' in, I've aye been fou sin' the year cam' in ; It's what wi' the brandy, an' what wi' the gin, I 've aye been fou sin' the year cam' in ! 212 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. Our old allies, if they had not so much steady business- like drinking, were, however, in some other respects, still dafter in their Fetes des Foux. Of these strange affairs it is difficult to give anything like a distinct conception. We cannot easily, in the Britain of the present day, enter into the solemn earnest- ness with which the wildest ribaldry and buffoonery were systematised as a direct burlesque not only of the high- est solemnities of the old Church, but the most sacred mysteries of Christianity. There was in many places a traditional right to perform these fantasies within the Our Yule friends they met, and a gay stoup we drank ; The bicker gaed round, and the pint-stoup did clank ; But that was a' naething, as shortly ye'll fin" I've aye been fou sin' the year cam' in ! Our auld timmer clock, wi* thorl an' string, Had scarce shawn the hour whilk the new year did bring, Whan friends an' acquantance cam' tirl at the pin An' I've aye been fou sin' the year cam" in ! My auld aunty Tibbie cam' ben for her cap, Wi' scone in her hand, an* cheese in her lap, An' drank c A gude New Year to kith an' to kin ' Sae I've aye been fou sin' the year cam' in ! My strong brither Sandy cam* in frae the south There's some ken his mettle, but nane ken his drouth ! I brought out the bottle losh ! how he did grin ! I've aye been fou sin' the year cam' in ! Wi' feasting at night, an' wi' drinking at morn, Wi' here ' Tak' a kaulker,' an' there T Tak' a horn,' I've gatten baith doited, an' donnert, an' blin' For I've aye been fou sin' the year cam' in ! I sent for the doctor, and bade him sit down ; He felt at my hand, an' he straiket my crown ! He ordered a bottle but it turned out gin ! Sae I've aye been fou sin' the year cam' in ! The Sunday bell rang, an' I thought it as weel To slip into the kirk, to steer clear o' the deil ; But the chiel at the plate fand a groat left behin' Sae I've aye been fou sin' the year cam' in ! 'Tis Candlemas time, and the wee birds o' spring Are chirming an" chirping as if they wad sing ; While here I sit bousing 'tis really a sin ! I've aye been fou sin' the year cam' in ! The last breath o' winter is soughing awa', An' sune down the valley the primrose will blaw ; A douce sober life I maun really begin, For I've aye been fou sin' the year cam' in ! ' THE EGUIMENE AND HOGMANAY. 213 churches, and even in their choirs ; and the more blas- phemous and brutal the exhibition was, the more was a sort of antithetic holiness attached to it. 1 The only necessary limit to the licence of the occasion was, that what was selected for ludicrous travesty must be some- thing either in the Bible itself, or in the solemnities of the Church. If advantage were taken of the excellent opportunity to make the foul fiend or the great traitor excessively ridic- ulous or offensive, it was, of course, a service to religion. 2 The animals mentioned in Scripture had their share in these ceremonies, and, according to some of the cen- sorious, behaved themselves more discreetly than their human abettors. The whale which gave a lodging to Jonah, and the herd of swine which the evil spirit had entered into, were of course largely available for the objects of these entertainments. Balaam's ass had in some places a special festival of his own. The whole ceremonies attending it, with the ribald hymns and choruses, the processions and the costumes, are described at length by Ducange, under the head "Festus Asin- orum ; " and the description is almost as motley a con- trast to his solemn comments on feudal usages and medieval dignities, as the scene itself must have been 1 "Mais encore quelles folies? telles, en verite, qu'elles seroient incroyables, si nous n'avions les eveques et les docteurs de ce tems- 1& pour temoins, qui disent que c'etoient d'horribles abominations, des actions honteuses et criminelles, melees par un infinite de fola- treries et d'insolences, car il est vrai que si tous les diables de 1'enfer avoient & fonder une fete dans nos eglises, ils ne pourraient pas ordonner autrement que ce qui se faisoit alors." Jean Beleth, cited by Du Tilliot, 'Memoires pour servir a 1'Histoire de la Fete des Foux, 1751,' p. 19. In the same book (p. 51), Gerson, the French Thomas-a-Kempis, is referred to as saying, " qu'on avoit preche de son terns, que cette fete des foux etoit autant approuvee de Dieu, que la fete de la Conception de le Vierge Marie." 2 " Nee prsetermissus ipse Judas marsupii sollicitus custos. Per- quam graphice illic quoque sustinebat ejus personam valentissemus rusticanus, truci vultu, elato supercilio, torvo aspectu, flammantibus, oculis, frendenti ore, gressu prsecipiti, gestu feroci, aliisque multis truculentiae signis, quibus se quandoque prodit nefarie subdola pro- ditorum indoles. " Neurei Querela ad Gassendum, ibid., p. 38. 214 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. in the great Gothic churches where it was enacted. The " innocents " that is to say, the children of the district had their share in these mummeries, and no doubt enjoyed it. Their function was to pay off old scores with Herod, their great enemy ; and when the whole of the " innocents " of a large town were let loose among the reliquaries, missals, paintings, and imagery of a cath- edral, they were likely to leave some emphatic mark of their presence. 1 Among the strange shapes taken by these exhibitions, one is signally inexplicable as a feature of Catholicism the exhibition of the Merefolle. It was, in fact, a travesty of the Virgin and Child, throwing, on her whom the Ro- manists are charged with venerating too much, a scur- rility which even the most vehement Calvinists would scarce approve. In some places, round the title of the Mere folle there seems to have clustered a sort of body of revellers like the Calves' Head Club. They had banners, images, and paintings of the Mere folle, and various properties solemnly grotesque, which may be found represented in the curious plates of Du Tilliot, who also gives their macaronic poems, and the docu- ments, in mockery of state papers and ecclesiastical edicts, contained in their muniments. 2 In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries there were many ecclesiastical denunciations of these practices. The following is the tenor of one of the most ample and descriptive of these documents an ordinance by the Synod of Angers against the Aguillanneuf and its concomitants: "Whereas the mortal enemy of mankind 1 " La fete des innocens ou la fete des enfans. . . . Mais cette fete meritait bien mieux d'etre appelle la f tie du diable, a cause des insolences effroiables et des scandales horribles, et des turpitudes ex- ecrables qui s'y faisoient." Baptiste Thiers, ' Traite des Jeux,' &c. f p. 441. - For instance, ' Acte de reception de Henri de Bourbon, Prince de Conde premier prince du sang, en la compagnie de la Mere-folle de Dijon, 1'an 1626.' It begins, " Les superlatifs, mirelifiques, et scientifiques Loppinans de 1'infanterie Dijonnoise, Regens d'Apollo et des Muses." THE EGUIMENfi AND HOGMANAY. 215 tries always with his usual cunning to suggest to the minds of men, under the appearance of some good, things of which the fine and holy beginnings change afterwards into sad and wicked effects : Among the rest this instance is not to be despised, that by virtue of a certain custom of antiquity observed in some places in our age, princi- pally in the parishes which are under the Deans of Craon and of Cand, the day of the Feast of the Circumcision of our Lord, which is the first day of the year, and others following, the young people of the said parishes, belong- ing to both sexes, go to the churches and houses, begging certain alms which they call Aquilanneuf, the proceeds of which they promise to spend on a candle in honour of Our Lady, or of the patron of their parish. " Herein we are assured that under cover of some little good much scandal is committed. For, besides that of the said proceeds and other things accruing from the said begging, not a tenth part is spent in the honour of the Church, but consumed almost entirely in banquets, drunkenness, and other debauches, one amongst them, whom they call their Pallet, under this name takes the lib- erty, as do also those who accompany him, to do and say in the church, and other places, things which cannot decently be uttered, written, or listened to, even often addressing themselves with great insolence to the priest at the altar, and imitating, by divers monkey-tricks, the holy ceremonies of the Mass and other observances of the Church ; and under colour of the said Aquilanneuf, seize and take from the houses which they enter what- ever seems good to them, of which people dare not complain and cannot prevent, because they carry sticks and offensive arms. And besides the above, there are a variety of other scandals. This having come to our knowledge by the remonstrances and complaints which have been made to us by certain ecclesiastics and others, we desiring, in the duty of our charge, to remedy such disorders, considering that our Lord severely, and with blows of a whip, drove from the Temple those who in it sold and bought things necessary for the sacrifices (how much less should they commit such wickednesses 2l6 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. as those !), reproaching them, that of the house of prayer they had made a den of thieves. "Following His example, urged by His Holy Spirit, and by the authority which it has pleased Him to give us, we very positively forbid all persons, whether male or female, and of whatever quality or condition they may be, under pain of excommunication, to perform hence- forth the said begging of the Aquilanneuf in the church, or in the manner above mentioned, or to make any assembly for this purpose of more than two or three persons at most, who, in performing it, shall be accom- panied by one of the Procureurs de Fabrique, or by some other person of full age, not choosing that otherwise they shall perform the said begging, and under engagement to spend in wax for the service of the Church all the pro- ceeds which shall accrue from it, not retaining nor spend- ing a single farthing for any other purpose. We com- mand and enjoin all rectors and curates of churches and parishes, and others having care of souls in this diocese, under pain of suspension a divinis for a month, and of greater penalties in future if this fails, that they neither have, nor permit, nor suffer such things to be done in their said parishes, otherwise than we have declared above." 1 In defiance of repeated clerical denouncements, these practices retained so strong a hold, that a certain Mathurin de Neure, who wrote a very angry Latin letter about them to Gassendi, already referred to, described the following as a scene to be witnessed in the middle of the seventeenth century : " Neither the priests nor the guardians go to the choir that day. The lay brothers, the porters, the scullions, the gardeners, the cooks and kitcheners, occupy their places in the church, and say that they perform the office suitable for such a festival, when they play at being fools and madmen, which indeed they really are. They dress themselves up in sacerdotal ornaments, if they can find them, but all torn, and turned outside in. They hold in their hands books upside down and absurdly, in which 1 Du Tilliot, pp. 68, 69. THE EGUIMENE AND HOGMANAY. 2 1/ they pretend to read with spectacles, from which they extract the glasses, substituting in their places orange- peel, which makes them look more hideous and frightful than one could believe without seeing them, particularly after they have blown the censers which they hold in their hands, which they do in derision, and made the ashes fly in their faces and cover each other's heads with them. In this guise they sing neither the usual psalms, nor hymns, nor the Mass; but they mutter certain confused words, and utter cries as foolish, as disagreeable, and as discordant as those of a herd of grunting pigs, so that brute beasts might perform the office of that day as well as they do. It would be better, indeed, to bring brute beasts into the churches to praise their Creator after their manner; it would certainly be a more holy custom than to permit such sort of persons to be there, who mock God by try- ing to sing His praises, and are more senseless and fool- ish than the most foolish and senseless animals." 1 A certain ' Lettre Circulaire de la Faculte" de Paris,' of the fifteenth century, in which the Fetes des Foux are discussed, gives the following mildly philosophic rationale of them : " Our predecessors, who were great people, permitted this feast ; let us live like them, and do as they did. We do not do all these things seriously, but only for play, and to divert ourselves, according to the old custom ; in order that folly, which is natural to us, and which seems born with us, should escape and run away thereby at least once each year. Wine-barrels would burst if the bung or sluice were not sometimes opened to give them air. And we are old vessels, ill-bound barrels, which the wine of wisdom would burst if we were to let it boil constantly by incessantly addicting ourselves to devotion. We must give it some air and relaxation, for fear that it should be lost and spilt to no profit. It is for that that we give some days to games and buffooneries, that we may afterwards return with more joy and fervour to the study and exercises of religion." 2 1 Querela ad Gassendum, cited in Du Tilliot. 2 Cited in Du Tilliot, p. 51. 21 8 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. It is evident, however, that practices at once so offen- sively antagonistic to the prevailing sentiments of their times, and so obstinately retentive of life, must have had deeper roots than any such mild philosophy could nourish. Some seek for them in the Roman saturnalia, others in the heathenism of the northern nations. Both supposi- tions are mere guess-work, and the field appears to be open to the first thoroughly industrious inquirer. When it is undertaken, there will naturally be associated with it those relics of sculptural ribaldry, a sort of antithesis to all religious solemnity and reverence, to be found in the decorations of old ecclesiastical buildings. There is reason to believe that the relics of the stone caricatures, numerous as they are, are but a small percentage of the examples in the same spirit uttered by medieval art. Several of the ecclesiastical writs, denouncing the ribald ceremonies above referred to, are moved with equal indignation by indecent decorations in sculpture, paint- ing, and tapestry. 1 It is quite natural, in the course of 1 In the statutes of the Synod of Angers (1678), an ordinance on reverent behaviour denounces, in the churches, ' ' tapisseries qui representent quelquefois des choses si indecentes et si deshonnetes, qu'elles ne sembleroient pas meme assez modestes pour une salle de bal, ou un theatre de comedie." In a manual of ceremonials it is laid down that, " II faudra bien se donner garde qu'il n'y ait rien de profane ou d'indecent dans le peinture, ou dans le broderie qui sera sur ces tapisseries. . . . Sur tout on n'y mettra aucune image, si ce n'est des saints ou des souverains pontifs." Passages cited by Thiers, ' Traite,' pp. 473, 474. The title of this book is, ' Traite des Jeux et des Divertissemens qui peuvent etre permis, ou qui doivent etre defendus aux Chretiens selon les Regies de 1'Eglise et le senti- ment des Peres, par M. Jean Baptiste Thiers, Docteur in Theologie, et Cure de Champroud : Paris, 1686.' The book must be rare, as it cost me a hard run to get a sight of it. It was not to be found in any library I had access to in Scotland, nor in the British Museum. An Edinburgh dealer, who sometimes remembers that his books are literature as well as merchandise, recollected that it had passed through his hands ; and I thus traced it to the London Library in St James's Square, from which it was liberally lent to me. The author wrote other books on out-of-the-way matters, one of them a history of periwigs. There is much curious matter in his quotations, but he is a dry, stupid writer, and is addicted to carelessness and inaccuracies privileges to which stupidity has no title, though it often usurps them. Du Tilliot corrects some some of his blunders. THE EGUIMENfi AND HOGMANAY. 219 things, that the offensive paintings and tapestry should disappear, while a portion of the sculpture remained. I have enlarged on the French source of our New- Year's-Day rites because the matter seems to be curious, and the connection is peculiarly distinct. There are perhaps other features on the face of our national man- ners that might be traced to the same home, though with less certainty. Some have attributed the propensity in Scotland to indulge in territorial titles to the French connection. There was a long contest with the lairds to make them sign with the Christian and surname, instead of the name of the estate ; and it was only accomplished by an Act rendering the territorial signature naught. The name of the estate still lingers in some districts, as a more courteous way of addressing its owner in familiar talk than by his own name ; and in the same places formal com- munications are made to him by both names, with the "of" between them, like the "de" of France and the " von " of Germany. This is a matter in which the rights of women are stronger than those of men ; for whereas, among brothers, the eldest, as proprietor, is the only one who can fitly take the name of the estate, it is common for elderly unmarried daughters of lairds to take the title of the estate which may belong to their brothers, or even to their nephews or grand-nephews. It was natural that the Scots gentry, after the Union, proud and sensitive as they were, should keep up the foreign connection. So far as they differed from their English neighbours in home language and manners, they were provincial. A Continental tinge, on the other hand, removed the homespun characteristics, and perhaps gave them a touch of superiority. The five French Protestant universities Montauban, Sedan, Montpelier, Nismes, and Saumur were frequented by them till the revocation of the Edict of Nantes. The Protestants then flocked to Leyden, which sent many of them back as scholars and accomplished gentlemen. The foreign tone has been often observed by strangers in Scotland, and was thus especially noted by Defoe : " There was a consort of musick when I was at Stirling, where the ladies from the 220 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. neighbourhood made a very good appearance. The young gentlemen in everything imitate the French, and have a hauteur which makes good the French saying l jter comme un Ecossais. ' Their education being in France, and the title of Laird like Marquis in France being their general appellation, gives them these French airs. 371 Any one well acquainted with the Scotland of that period will see in this, not that the Scots, as a people, had imbibed French manners, but that Defoe had met with many who had been themselves educated abroad, or had picked up their tone from assimilation to relations who had so acquired foreign manners. Here, as in all things, the influence of the French connection was super- ficial and incidental; and in nothing is this more dis- tinctly perceptible than in the scraps of French preserved in the language of Scotland. As I have already remarked, it is of a purer Teutonic tone than the English, which took a tinge of French from the Norman influence. There are many good stories of Scotsmen wandering in Holland, or the Scandinavian countries, finding them- selves direly perplexed for a medium of communication with the people, until, in their despair, they tried the broadest of broad " Buchan," and found that successful. There are no such anecdotes of Scotsmen getting through in France by the aid of their peculiar dialect. The French terms, encased as it were in the common tongue of Scotland, are thoroughly exotic, and have been brought into it to express the special articles to which the foreigners applied them like cheroots, mullagatawny, chatny, and suchlike terms, at the present day brought over with oriental articles of luxury. There is something transcendentally Scotch about a haggis ; and Burns, in his stalwart lines, has proclaimed its nationality in a 1 ' A Journey through Scotland, in Familiar Letters from a Gen- tleman here to his Friend Abroad,' by the author of the 'Journey through England,' p. 198. This book was so much altered in the subsequent editions which are the easiest to be had that it has become a mere statistical compilation rather than a book of travels. THE EGUIMEN AND HOGMANAY. 221 defiant spirit, as if he had a misgiving that it might be questioned : "Is there that owre his French ragout, Or olio that wad staw a sow, Or fricassee wad mak her spew \Vi' perfect scunner, Looks down wi' sneering, scornfu' view On sic a dinner ? Poor devil ! see him owre his trash, As feckless as a wither'd rash, His spindle-shank a guid whip-lash, His nieve a nit ; Through bloody flood or field to dash, Oh, how unfit ! But mark the rustic, haggis-fed, The trembling earth resounds his tread ; Clap in his walie nieve a blade, He'll mak it whissle ; An' legs, an' arms, an' heads will sned, Like taps o' thrissle. Ye powers wha mak mankind your care, An' dish them out their bill o' fare, Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware That jaups in luggies ; But, if ye wish her gratefu' prayer, Gie her a Haggis ! " Yet there can be no question that this potent pudding, which I have heard likened to a boiled bagpipe, is the lineal descendant of the French hachis, which Cotgrave interprets as " a sliced gallimaufry, or minced meat." Our hodge-podge is a gift from the same quarter. A term resembling it is in use in English law : but there is no resisting Cotgrave's " hochepot ; a hotch-pot, a galli- maufry, a confused mingle-mangle of divers things jum- bled or put together." 1 A special delicacy from the 1 Oddly enough, this dish also is not without its sacred poet, ve- hemently protesting its Scotchness : " O leeze me on the canny Scotch, Wha first contrived, without a botch, To mak the gusty, good Hotch-Potch, That fills the \vame sae brawly : There's carrots intill't, and neaps intill't, There's cybies intill't, and leeks intill't, There's pease, and beans, and beets intill't, That soom through ither sae brawly. 222 THE ANCIENT LEAGUE. poultry-yard is known by the very Scotch-like name of howtowdy; and this is a special gift from the land of cocks, being no other than the hutaudeau, which Cotgrave says is " a cockerell, or big cock chick." In Burns's inven- tory of the contents of Grose's museum, we have " Parritch-pats an' auld saut-backets Afore the Flood. " The French mounseer, and English loon, When they come daunderin' through our town. Wi' smirks an' smacks they gulp it down. An' lick their lips fu' brawly : For there's carrots intill't, and neaps intill't, And cybies intill't, and leeks intill't, There's mutton, and lamb, and beef intill't, That maks it sup sae brawly. And Irish Pat, when he comes here, To lay his lugs in our good cheer, He shools his cutty wi' unco steer, And clears his cogue fu' brawly : For there's carrots intill't, and neaps intill't, There's pease, and beans, and beets intill't, And a' good gusty meats intill't, That grease his gab fu' brawly. A dainty Dame she cam' our way, An' sma' soup meagre she wad hae : ' Wi' your fat broth I cannot away, It maks me scunner fu' brawly : For there's carrots intill't, and neaps intill't, There's cybies intill't, and leeks intili't, And filthy, greasy meats intill't, That turn my stamach sae brawly * She gat her soup : It was unco trash, And little better than poor dish-wash ; 'Twad gie a man the ivater-brash To sup sic dirt sae brawly : Nae carrots intill't, nor neaps intill't, Nae cybies intill't, nor leeks intill't, Nor nae good gusty meats intill't, To line the ribs fu' brawly. Then here's to ilka kindly Scot ; Wi' mony good broths he boils his pot, But rare hotch-potch beats a' the lot, It smells and smacks sae brawly : For there's carrots intill't, and neaps intill't, There's pease, and beans, and beets intill't, And hearty, wholesome meats intill't, That stech the kite sae brawly." Tliese lines are taken from a privately printed collection of poems written by my late accomplished and venerable friend, Archibald Bell, the Sheriff of Ayrshire ; and I think some of those who merely knew him as a man of business will be a little surprised, if not scan- dalised, to know that he was capable of such an effusion. THE EGUIMENE AND HOGMANAY. 223 The saut-backct, or salt-cellar, is from the French bacquet, just as our old term for a dinner-plate, an ashet, is from assiette, and basnatis, or small bowls, from bassinet. Among Grose's accomplishments as an antiquary, " The knife that nickel Abel's craig He'll prove you fully, It was a faulding jocteleg, Orlang-kail gully." The origin of this word jocteleg was long a puzzle, until Lord Hailes solved it by attesting the existence of a large knife with the maker's name on it, "Jacques de Liege." The ancient allies have left among us a more formid- able memorial in the " bastle-house," or " bastle-tower," generally the name given to the small fortresses built for their protection by the inhabitants of small towns or ham- lets near the Border. A considerable number of such coincidences may be found, but I shall content myself with one as a last word. I hope the novels of John Gait, and their descriptions of Scotch life true, warm, and genial, like the pictures of David Teniers are not yet forgotten. One of the best of them, 'The Ayrshire Legatees/ gives us the adventures of a country clergyman and his wife, who have gone to London to secure a large inheritance unexpectedly open- ing to them by the death of a rich relation. Among the many types of civilised comfort which Mrs Pringle left behind her when she sojourned in that "ausome place," she informed her favourite gossip, who was fortunate enough to be within reach of the luxuries of the nearest "burgh toon," that "there wasna a jigot o' mutton to be had within the four wa's o' Lunnon." It might, perhaps, have consoled her for the ridicule bestowed by her city friends on her barbarous method of applying for that universal commodity, a leg of mutton, had she remem- bered that her own special term for it was a bequest by the politest nation in the world, and was the way in which the French courtiers of Queen Mary would give their orders in the victualling-shops of Edinburgh. THE SCOT ABROAD THE SCOT ABROAD. CHAPTER I. THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. JUSTICE TO IRELAND AND HER MONKS JOHN DUNS THE SCOTISTS AND THE THOMISTS HECTOR BOECE AND THE FABULOUS HISTORIES BUCHANAN THOMAS DEMPSTER SPECIMENS OF THE ARDENT NATIONALITY OF SCOTS AUTHORS THE EFFECT OF THIS ON SCOT- LAND'S POSITION IN HISTORY JOHN KNOX AND HIS FOLLOWERS THE WRITERS ON THE OTHER SIDE ECCLESIASTICAL SQUABBLES A RAMBLE AMONG MISCELLANEOUS AUTHORS SCOTSMEN IN FOREIGN UNIVERSITIES JURISTS MEDICAL MEN THE ABERDEEN SCHOOL. A COMMON mistake, against which Ireland protests with justice, but not always with success, induces me, before entering on the history of the Scots who distinguished themselves abroad, to give some preliminary explana- tions. In the earlier centuries of our era, every Scot or Scotus whom we meet with, either in political or literary history, was an Irishman. For some time the term in- cluded both Irishmen and natives of North Britain, but it was not probably until the thirteenth century that the word Scot or Scotsman was exclusively used in its present sense. There are reasons for this as for all other such phenomena, and when dug up and examined, they pre- sent themselves in the shape of causes naturally adapted to produce such effects. 228 THE SCOT ABROAD. It is well known that the inhabitants of the south-west- ern Highlands are of Irish descent. It was in the year 502 that a chief or prince called Fergus Mor Mac Earca, at the head of a band of followers, emigrated from the district in northern Ireland, generally spoken of as the Irish Dalriada. The Venerable Bede, striking the key- note to the tone in which his countrymen afterwards spoke of "the mere Irish," called these emigrants "im- pudent Irish vagabonds;" at least his expression may admit of a more opprobrious, but it cannot of a milder interpretation. 1 They founded in Argyleshire a colony, which, as it expanded, took the permanent name of Dalriada. It happened that about fifty years after this migration, at a great public meeting of princes, ecclesi- astical dignitaries, great bards, and other eminences of various kinds, the Abbot of Burrow attended, bringing with him his friend and connection, a son of Aodh, King of Connaught. There was a " difficulty " at the time between Aodh and Dermot M'Kerval, lord of the southern Hy Nial, who was at that time the Ardriagh, or President of the Kings of Ireland. The Abbot of Dur- row expected that his sanctity would prove a protection to his young friend, even among these enemies; but it did not, and the son of Aodh was put to death. This, of course, cried for vengeance, and the King of Con- naught, bringing a host against the Ardriagh, defeated him at the battle of Culdruihm. The Ardriagh, in his wrath at the Abbot of Durrow for the share he took in this punishment, got him excom- municated by the clergy of the district, and managed to make Ireland too hot for him. Now this affair became of mighty importance, in as far as the Abbot of Durrow was no other than Columba, the founder of lona, the con- verter of the Picts, and the apostle of the north. It was the wrath of the Ardriagh that drove him to his mission and his subsequent triumphs. He got lona from his rela- tion the chief of the Dalriads of Scotland, and there founded the seat of learning and piety that became so renowned 1 "Impudentes grassatores Hiberni." Historia, i. 14. THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 229 The Dalriads, though a small colony, had the advantage from the beginning that they were Christians, and in some respects civilised, in the midst of a people who, as heathens and barbarians, were vastly their inferiors. They now had the advantage of being the centre whence Christianity spread over North Britain. New immigrants joined them, and they became a great Celtic race ; it is easy to realise the importance of that state which had lona for its ecclesiastical capital. There was never any nearer approach to a monarch of all Ireland than the Ardriagh, whose superiority over the others was of a very limited and fugitive kind. The country was divided into a number of monarchies or chiefships, ever shifting in extent and power, and per- petually quarrelling with each other. The Dalriada on this side of the water, sometimes called Alba, appears to have become more powerful than any one of them, and to have exercised a high influence in Ireland ; and its king at last became so powerful and ambitious, that he formed the design of subduing the petty kings of Ireland, and ruling there supreme. When the term Scot was used for an Irishman, it was extended to Dalriada, and there came thus to be Albanian Scots as well as the Hibernian. We thus have the term legitimately trans- ferred to Scotland, and no more was necessary but acci- dent and custom to make it in the course of ages lose its original hold and take its place there. There are persons who have heard of Lord Moira the general, and Lord Moira the statesman, who are yet utterly ignorant of the battle of Moyra or Magrath, as it was spelt of old, fought in the district which holds this title in the year 637. It was to Ireland what Bannock- burn was to Scotland the defeat of a powerful invader. The invader was Eochaidh Buidhe, King of Alba, or the Scots Dalriada, who brought with him a vast host, not only of his own Celtic people, but of Picts and Saxons over whom his influence extended. The battle went on, it is said, for seven days, and in the end the invaders were defeated. This was one of the great historical battles for centuries afterwards, but the English invasions 230 THE SCOT ABROAD. blotted out its significance in Irish history. It was im- portant enough, however, to be celebrated in a great epic poem, which has lately come to light under the auspices of the Irish Archaeological Society. 1 1 ' The Banquet of Dun-Na N-Gedth, and the Battle of Magh- Rath ; an ancient Historical Tale.' Edited by John O'Donoven, 1842. There was, it appears, a prophecy by Columba, a century earlier, that such a battle was to be, and the bard surrounds it with many other marvels. What made Congal Claen, King of Ulster, incite the King of Alba to the invasion, was the following series of events : Domhnall, or Donald, the lineal descendant of Nial of the Nine Hostages, King of Erin, gave a grand banquet to all his royal rela- tions, and all the princes of the land, in celebration of his accession to the throne, and the completion of his palace. An extensive forag- ing was carried on around to provide goose eggs, which, it seems, were to be the standing delicacy of the banquet. The emissaries found a considerable nest of the commodity in the possession of an old woman, and carried them off, although she told them that they were the property of a saint "namely, Bishop Ere of Slaine ; and his custom is to remain immersed in the Boyne up to his two armpits, from morning till evening, having his Psalter before him on the strand, constantly engaged in prayer ; and his dinner every evening, on returning home, is an egg and a half and three sprigs of the cresses of the Boyne." The purveyors, however, who seem to have had no more veneration for the Boyne Water than many of their countrymen at the present day, desolated the saint's larder. When he returned and found himself eggless, he had recourse to the usual weapons of his order. In the words of the chronicle, ' ' The righteous man then became wroth, " and ' ' he cursed the banquet as bitterly as he was able to curse it." This affair, following upon the back of Columba's old prophecy, brought matters to an alarming crisis. The outward and visible portents through which the curse began to work have a certain wild and eldrich picturesqueness. Thus, for instance : " As the king's people were afterwards at the assembly, they saw a couple approaching them namely, a woman and a man. Larger than the summit of a rock on a mountain was each member of their members ; sharper than a shaving-knife the edge of their shins ; their heels and hams in front of them. Should a sackful of apples be thrown upon their heads, no one of them would fall to the ground, but would stick on the points of the strong bristly hair which grew out of their heads. Blacker than the coal, or darker than the smoke, was each of their members ; whiter than snow their eyes. A lock of the lower beard was carried round the back of the head, and a lock of the upper beard descended so as to cover the knees. The woman had whiskers, but the man was without whiskers. They THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 2$ I This affair is referred to here merely to render distinct how part of Scotland was virtually a very eminent and influential portion of the Irish community of nations, so that it is by no means wonderful that a term applied to the people of the one should travel to those of the other. So long did the term Scot remain common to both countries, that in the Chronicle of Marianus Scotus, who died immediately before the beginning of the year noo, when he speaks of himself mentioning, for instance, that he had to leave his native country on account of religious carried a tub between them, which was full of goose-eggs. In this plight they saluted the king. * What is that ? ' said the king. ' It is plain,' said they, ' the men of Erin are making a banquet for thee, and each brings what he can to that banquet ; and our mite is the quantity of eggs we are carrying. ' '' I am thankful for it, ' said the king. They were conducted into the palace, and a dinner sufficient for a hundred was given to them of meat and ale. This did not con- tent them. On asking for more, however, they were informed by Casciabhach the butler that they should have nothing more till the men of Erin had feasted ; so they told him that the banquet was doomed to be a banquet of strife ; for they were ' the people of in- fernus,'and thereupon they 'rushed out and vanished into nothing.'" Thus driven to extremities, King Donald did his best. He re- solved that the twelve chief saints, called the Twelve Apostles of Ireland, should partake of the feast before it was touched by the kings and nobles, and leave on it the type of their sanctity. The twelve came, each with a hundred hungry followers ; but all was of no avail, on account of a little incident that preceded and counter- acted their mission. Congal Claen, King of Ulster, King Donald's foster-son, had, according to a not uncommon weakness of the flesh, taken a private peep at the good things in store for the banquet before the revered guests arrived. As will happen, too, in such cases, he could not entirely resist the tempting sight. " He laid his eye upon the goose-eggs he saw there, for he marvelled at them, and he ate a part of one of them, and took a drink after it. " This decided the destiny of Congal and of Ireland. The first alarming symptom of its approach was, that at the banquet he did not occupy the place proper to his rank. When all were seated, and the banquet begun, the curse manifested itself in an appalling phenomenon. "Meat and drink were afterwards distributed to them, until they became inebriated and cheerful ; and a goose-egg was brought on a silver dish before every king in the house ; and when the dish and the egg were placed before Congal Claen, the silver dish was transformed into a %vooden one, and the goose-egg into the egg of a red-feathered hen. " 232 THE SCOT ABROAD. troubles he leaves it doubtful whether that country is Ireland or Scotland. There is a page in his Chronicle in which he refers to several Scots. There was Helias the Scot, who died on the 2d of the ides of April, in the year 1042. Next year there was Annuchudus, a monk of Fulda, over whose grave, where a lamp burned, he, Marianus, a Scot, himself a monk in the same monastery, had day by day, for ten years, taken his part in the per- formance of mass. In the same page is told an event to which literature has given a grander significance than it could have had in history the death of Duncan, and the accession of Macbeth ; and the place where this occurred is called Scotia. 1 Since, then, Ireland and the western Highlands were inhabited by the same people, known by the same name, why count every distinguished Scot down to the eleventh century as an Irishman? Giving justice, and nothing but justice, to Ireland, should not the Highlands have their share ? In lona the Albanian branch of the Scots were rearing an institution as great as the most illustrious of the native monastic colleges, and likely to compete with them as a centre for the radiation of religion and civilisation over the world. The light in Albania, however, was extinguished. Just when Ireland was distributing her most illustrious missionaries over the continent, the Northmen had completed the subjugation of the Alban- ian Scots, and all but suppressed, if they did not entirely suppress, Christianity among the people. Albania be- came a Norse kingdom in which the Celts were serfs. We are thus saved the trouble of dividing the great names with an equitable appropriation. Ireland kept them all until the inhabitants of the Scotland of later times made a world of enterprise and fame for themselves. Probably from its utter antithesis to modern practical associations, one of the most picturesque chapters in the history of the world is that of Christianity and Roman 1 Marianus 's record of the affair is in these words : " Donchad Rex Scotise occiditur a duce suo, Magfinloech successit in regnum ejus." Marianus, apud Pistorii ' Rerum a Germanis gestarum Annales,' 451. THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 233 civilisation finding a refuge at the back of the world as it were, during the convulsions which followed the break- ing-up of the Empire, and then coming forth to enlighten continental Europe. From this illustrious position have fallen the family of our poor relations to what they now are, our burden and dragdom, which we speak of as infesting us with poverty, crime, and all kinds of degrada- tion. It is difficult to realise the typical Irish immigrant, with his sinister animal features, and his clothing a thatch of glutinous rags, as the lineal representative of the stately scholar who went forth from the lettered seclusion of his monastic college to carry the light of its learning and the authority of the Church into a barbarous world. There is more chance of the Highlands having been the birthplace of any of the very earliest distinguished Scots than of those subsequent to the Norse invasions. Adamnan, for instance, the biographer of Columba, and the author of a curious account of the Holy Land, a man of the seventh century, might, from the ordinary features of his life, have been born near lona, had it not been shown by that inexorable scholar Dr Reeves that he was born in Ireland, and was the son of Ronan, a chief or prince occupying the territory of Tirhugh, in Donegal, whose pedigree can be traced step by step to the royal family of Nial. 1 The great historian Marianus, already referred to, was undoubtedly an Irishman. Sedulius, the poet, always spoken of as a Scot, was, I doubt not, also an Irishman. He is a person of considerable mark in literature as the author of the earliest hymn-book, and the founder of the peculiar kind of Latinity of the choral worship of the Ro- man Church, though he did not depart quite so far from classical models. 2 It is necessary also to surrender to 1 Edition of Adamnan's Columba, p. xl. 3 Sedulius is, so far as I know, to be counted in military phrase "unattached." Trittenhem, the author of the very oldest biograph- ical dictionary, says he flourished in the year 430, and that he was a pupil of Hildebert, " Scotorum Archiepiscopus." Bayle drops a doubt on this antiquity by mentioning a second Scots Sedulius of the 234 THE SCOT ABROAD. Ireland the fame of John Scotus, or Erigena, the eminent divine of the ninth century, whose fame reached a high point of eminence in heterodoxy, when, in the middle of the eleventh century, his treatise on the Eucharist was condemned to the fire by the council of Rome. We may also abandon the illustrious geometrician John Holybush, or Joannes de Sacrobosco, leaving England and Ireland to fight, as they have done, for the possession of his birthplace. Other celebrated missionary monks, as St Kilian of Wurzburg, and St Gall of that ilk, are identified as sons of Erin. So was the elder Marianus, who founded the great Monastery of St James, at Ratisbon, which has left us those fine specimens of Norman stone-work, in the Kirche des Schotten-Klosters. From this great establish- ment ramified a whole network of others, filled with zealous Irish anchorites. The fact is, that those of the monk and eremite were not ways of life in which the Lowland Scot, given more to practice than to dream- ing, excelled, and the preponderance of monachism lay decidedly with Ireland, whose race it seems to have suited. Yet the establishment of Ratisbon became after- wards appropriated to British Scotland. It went over just as the name did. The niceties of the etymological process which brought it home to Ireland were too much for the Germans. The Scots built it, and the Scots should have it, and who could be counted Scots save the inhabitants of Scotland ? These naturally, of course, eighth, and a third of the ninth century, with whom he is confounded. Here is a specimen of his hymns. It rings well, and reminds one of Heber's " From Greenland's icy mountains." " A soils ortus cardine Ad usque terras limitem, Christum canamus principem, Natum Maria Virgine. Beatus Autor seculi Servile corpus induit, Ut carne carnem liberans, Ne perderet quos condidit." The initial of each quatrain makes a kind of acrostic, following the letters of the alphabet. The author was hard pressed at K and Y. THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 235 acquiesced in so beneficial a conclusion. But there was not the slightest tinge of duplicity in their doing so. From the fifteenth century down to the other day, every Scotsman devoutly believed that the whole fabric of renown raised by the Scots of Ireland belonged to his own nation ; and not only was there no question about the matter among themselves, but it would have been dangerous for any other person to express a doubt of it 1 When we come to proved facts, however, it becomes needless to seek for Scotsmen, in the common sense of the term, seeking and obtaining eminence abroad until the period of that unhappy struggle which destroyed their home. Thus we are ever, as the leading influence of all the specialties of the career of our countrymen, led back to the old story of the determination of the Norman kings of England to take Scotland, and the still more absolute determination of the people that their country should not be taken. Among a people never allowed any rest from the contest for bare existence, there was neither time nor opportunity to cultivate the soil on which literature and art would grow ; and those who desired those conditions of wealth and security essential to the development and maturity of their studies, had to go elsewhere. Having cheerfully resigned Scot Erigena to Ireland, I stand up for the retention of a more illustrious name, sometimes confounded with his, John Duns Scotus. Early Continental writers seem never to have doubted his Scottish origin ; and Rabelais, to clench one of those monstrous propositions which make one wonder how he escaped the stake, says in profane scorn, " Et celle est 1'opinion de Maistre Jehan d'Ecosse." Moreri assigns him to us with a brief distinctness, which leaves nothing to be doubted: " Dit Scot," says this impartial judge of international claims, " parce qu'il etait natif d'Ecosse." 1 See a spirited history of the Ratisbon establishment in the article " Scottish Religious Houses Abroad " in the * Edinburgh Review ' for January 1864 an article which induces one to regret that the right reverend gentleman to whom it is attributed has not favoured the public with more elucidations of the history of the early Church. 236 THE SCOT ABROAD. Nor is the wide grasp of his capacities less emphatically attested by him who undertook to measure all human merits, and give to each illustrious name its proper meed of fame : " Avoit un marveilleuse facilite a comprendre toutes choses," is his character of Duns Scotus. The great intellectual gladiators of the day received names descriptive of their predominating characteristics, just as favourites of the ring have been designated at the present day. If it were right to apply such a term to ex- pressions which formed the watchword of literary hosts in the great intellectual contests of the middle ages, they might, for the sake of brevity, be called nicknames. There was the Seraphic doctor, the Divine doctor, the Acute doctor, the Most Orderly doctor, the Irrefragable doctor, the Solemn doctor, and the Solid doctor. Ac- cording to Moreri, Duns monopolised two characteristics. He was the Subtle doctor, in honour of his acuteness in dealing with metaphysical subtleties; and he was the doctor trh resolutif, from the hardihood with which he advanced bold and original opinions, and resolved them without the aid of authority, and independently of the established methods of reasoning. We may laugh as we will at these schoolmen and their systems. We may admit, if you please, the sarcastic ety- mology which derives the English word dunce from the fellow-countryman of whom we are now speaking. But those who led the intellect of mankind for centuries were great among men overtopping the wide mob of their brethren in intellectual stature. We have no absolute criterion of greatness among us we can but be measured by our relation to each other. There may be some ab- stract standard, comprehensible to us when we have shaken off this mortal coil, by which Julius Caesar, Napoleon, Aristotle, and Shakespeare, shall appear very small men ; but in this parochial world of ours they are great by comparative eminence. Had it been the lot of us of the present day to have lived as highly educated men of the fifteenth century, we would have seen two great names looming large in their distant altitude Thomas Aquinas, the leader of the THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR 237 Thomists, and John Duns Scotus, the leader of the Scotists and would have been obliged to enrol ourselves with the one or the other ; for that man was, in the intel- lectual wars, a mere straggler, a poor wanderer, unpro- tected by a leader, and unowned by fellow-combatants, who did not fight beneath the banner of one or other of these illustrious leaders. If we drag down from their eminence, as great in their day and place, all those whose thoughts and actions do not concur with our own views of what is good and true, we shall soon empty the biographical dictionaries. It is the smallest of pedantries to deny the strength and capacity of the conspicuous men of other times or places, because there is something we know that they did not know. To detract from the lustre of Aquinas and Scotus because they were not acquainted with the electric telegraph and photography, were uncon- scious of statistics, and never thought of the difference between a metallic and a paper currency, is about as rational as to deny the generalship of Hannibal or Caesar, because they had no Congreve rockets or Shrapnel shells. But it is not fair to consider the mental influence of the great rivals as a thing utterly departed, and belonging only to the history of dead controversies. In some shape or other, Nominalism and Realism still divide between them the empire of thought. They go to the root of the German division into subjective and objective elements. It is true that the * In quatuor Sententiarum libros Questiones subtilissimae ' are not to be found in every circulating library, and are not so extensively read as the latest productions of the prevailing popular divine. But they are perused by those who teach the teachers of the people ; and from his inner judgment-seat Duns Scotus still holds sway over the intellect of men, even in this active, conceited, and adventurous age. Could it be maintained that no one opinion promulgated by him is now believed, yet his thoughts are the stages by which we have reached our present position. He who ruled one-half of the intellectual world for centuries, necessarily gave their shape and consistency, not only to the views of those who implicitly followed him, but to those of the 238 THE SCOT ABROAD. later thinkers who superseded him ; for there is nothing that more eminently moulds the character of opinions, than the nature of those which they supersede. But unfortunately we are not, in this nineteenth cen- tury, beyond the practical grasp of the great schoolman's intellectual tyranny. The question of the Immaculate Conception has just resounded again throughout Roman Catholic Europe ; and those conclusions have been again triumphantly asserted, which, in the year 1307, were triumphantly carried by Duns Scotus in the University of Paris. He demolished, on that occasion, two hundred of the knottiest syllogisms of his adversaries, resolving them, as a bystander said, as easily as Samson unloosed the bands of Delilah. His proposition was made a funda- mental law of the great university, and no man dared enter the door without acknowledging its truth. This is getting on delicate ground. One would find his steps still more perilously placed were he to trace other great theological questions in the writings of Duns Scotus. It is sufficient to say, that in questions of liberty and neces- sity of election and reprobation controversialists of the present day may there find controversial weapons; and in so elementary a work as Sir James Mackintosh's ' Disser- tation on the History of Ethical Philosophy/ the opinions of the great Scottish schoolman on these subjects are weighed and examined, not as curious relics of a dark age, but as the authorised enunciations of a master whose authority yet lives and influences the thoughts of men. And indeed, on such matters, who can say that we have made progress, and have passed beyond the range of the schoolmen, as the chemists have passed beyond that of the alchemists ? A reputation such as this man's is not a trifle to be thrown away. There has been no country too great to have proudly recorded such a name in the list of her sons. He began the series of learned Scotsmen who became eminent abroad. He studied at Oxford, while those events which alienated his countrymen from England were yet incomplete. He left Oxford in 1307 just after Bruce had raised the standard. He went to the Uni- THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 239 versity of Paris, the chief school where aspiring Scotsmen were thenceforward to seek scholarship and fame. After a short and brilliant career as a lecturer there, he was directed by his superior he belonged to the Franciscan order to found the University of Cologne. There he soon afterwards died ; and his tomb is still shown to the visitors of the ecclesiastical city. There is a legend spoken of as if it were a malicious invention of his ene- mies that he was buried alive ; and that on his grave being subsequently opened, the traces were distinct of the desperate efforts which he had made to get out of his coffin. It would be easy to set forth a long array of his countrymen both among his pupils and his impugners ranked, in short, on either side in the great mental war of the times, were one content with mere names without knowing any significant events or specialties of character by which they can be realised and identified. If we take all the eminences which our biographers have manufac- tured or have made prey of from other countries, we shall have all our own at least. M'Kenzie, in his 'Lives and Characters of the most eminent Writers of the Scots Nation,' gives a long account of John Bassol, a country- man of Duns', and his favoured pupil. Such a person lived, was a pupil of Duns Scotus, wrote commentaries on the 'Sentences,' and earned for himself the title of Doctor Ordonatissimus ; but I am aware of no evidence that he was a Scotsman. The most celebrated of the immediate pupils of Duns Scotus, if those may be called pupils who in some measure controverted the doctrines of their master, were Occam and Bradwardine, both Englishmen. One Scotsman at least, however, became distinguished in Paris as a scholastic writer, John Mair, or Major, chiefly known as the author of a history of Great Britain, but who also wrote on the ' Sentences.' He was a doctor of the Sorbonne, and his style has been sarcastically spoken of as Sorbonnic. Buchanan stands under the accusation of having been educated and fed by his bounty, and of having, when he became illustri- ous, satirised his benefactor as one whose greatness was 240 THE SCOT ABROAD. nowhere but in his name, Solo cognomine Major. The expression of apparent contempt, however, is of Major's own selecting; he employs it as a jest which may be safely uttered of himself by one whose fame was so secure as his. And indeed a general notion that all who wrote on scholastic divinity were to be deemed foolish men, could alone have brought people to look on such an author with feelings other than respectful. His small history is full of very valuable matter. He was a bold thinker on subjects both political and ecclesiastical, and from the Sorbonne he wrote in favour of the limitation of the papal power. This book is a history not of Scotland alone, but of Britain, including England and Scotland. As the author requires to give a distinct narrative of the history of each, he goes on, period after period, conceding with a becom- ing courtesy at each change the precedence to England as the stranger. An English writer of the same period professing to tell the history of Britain, would have given its tone from England, making the affairs of Scotland a sort of provincial matter, even if he did not insist on the feudal superiority. Mair, speaking from the smaller country, could not take this tone, but he is true to his nationality in giving more of the emphasis and bearing of his narrative to Scotland than to England. So it was that the decorous schoolman, trained in the formal ways of the brethren of the Sorbonne, showed his nationality in a less obtrusive way than some others of his country- men whom we shall presently make acquaintance with. By the law of association we are thus brought from the schoolmen to the historians, who have a still more sig- nificant place in the specialties of the influence of the Scottish mind abroad, since they carried with them not only their own specific learning and genius, but were the interpreters and representatives of the nation whose glories they recorded. Hector Boece, professor of the College of Montacute, published his History of Scotland at Paris in the year 1526. This exuberant narrative thus burst forth on the world four years later than the decorous and colourless THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 241 work of Major. It is observable, too, that it came just nine years after the not less renowned British history of Geoffrey of Monmouth issued from the same great fountain of the fashionable literature of the day. Wondrous as the story told by the Scot may seem to modern readers, it contrasted favourably with the incoherent marvels of the Welshman with the wearisomely grotesque prophecies of Merlin the story of the dragons which shook the foundation of the tower, and the dancing giants, which, after capering away on the Curragh of Kildare, were con- solidated on Salisbury Plain, where they are known by the name of Stonehenge. In the artistic consistency of his narrative, too, there is something far more reasonable than the egregious Irish legends long afterwards collected by Dr Keating. Boece does not attempt, like them, to get across the Flood, whether by hiding the Firbolg in the Ark or giving him a boat of his own. He adheres to the simple story established by the monks before him how Gathelus, a prince of Greece, left that country in an unfor- tunate family difference with his father, Miol, and seeking refuge in Egypt, there married Scota, the daughter of that same Pharaoh who was drowned in the Red Sea. Wan- dering through Europe by the great peninsula, where on the way they founded Portugal so named as the port of Gathelus they reached Scotland, bringing with them the fatal stone yet to be seen in Westminster. Their descend- ant, Fergus, " father of a hundred kings," founded the monarchy of Scotland. Boece had two veracious author- ities to whom he referred in all matters hard of belief; they were named Veremund and Campbell : and never did unsuccessful efforts by detectives to find the referees of any noted rogue approach in diligence and duration the search after these respectable authors. So it came to pass that Boece has been one of the most successful of impostors. He took the world by a kind of calm insolence essential to great success in the function called humbugging. He found in the arid pages of his predecessors the raw outline of a fabulous history of Scotland, and he filled it up with so much life and character that the world could not help believing in Q 242 THE SCOT ABROAD. it. Even the sarcastic Erasmus put faith in Boece, and Paulus Jovius thought him equally eloquent and erudite. He abounded, no doubt, in the supernatural, but it was in the manner suited to the age. To its aptness there is this supreme testimony, that Shakespeare wove the threads of his weird narrative into the tragedy of ' Macbeth.' His influence on our history has been wonderful. As we shall see, Buchanan adopted his luxurious pictures, chastening the language in which they were narrated, and adapting them by an occasional twist to the exemplification of his own political and ecclesiastical doctrines. This fictitious history found its way into all foreign works of historical reference, when the fictitious histories of other nations had been curtailed, and it came to be the fashion that Scotland was looked on as the most ancient of the European nations, carrying the dynasty of her kings, and a connected series of political events, far before the birth of Christ. 1 After Boece the next obvious step is to the illustrious name of Buchanan, whose works, issuing in numerous editions from the presses of France and Holland, were in 1 A second edition of Boece's ' Scotorum Historise a prima gentis origine, cum aliarum et rerum et gentium illustratione non vulgari, libri xix.,' appeared at Paris in 1572. This is the completed edition, and the proper one for literary purposes, but the collector generally affects the other as the princeps^ and also for the device on its title- page of the pressman at work on the screw-press of the day. The book was translated, or, more properly speaking, paraphrased, into excellent idiomatic Scots vernacular, by Archdeacon Bellenden. In this shape the ' Hystory and Croniklis of Scotland ' was published in Edinburgh ten years after the original appeared in Paris. The two Latin editions are in the market, and to be had at moderate prices ; but the first edition of the vernacular version has, by constant read- ing, been gradually worn down to some half-dozen of copies, re- ligiously preserved in distinguished libraries. A metrical version of Boece's book, identified as the work of a William Stewart, a descend- ant of our old friend the Wolf of Badenoch, lay dormant until it was resuscitated among the chronicles and memorials issued by the Master of the Rolls. The editing of the ' Buik of the Croniclis of Scotland ' was one of the labours of poor Turnbull, whose devotion to pursuits generally considered so harmless was sadly disturbed by a determina- tion to drag him into living contests. THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 243 every library. 1 He studied at Paris, and became a pro- fessor of the College of St Barbe. He resided in France during several of his early years of obscurity and study, as the tutor and companion of a fellow-countryman, the young Earl of Cassilis. The flattering attentions of James V., whom he met in Paris, whither the Scottish monarch had gone to bring home his bride, Magdalene of France, induced him to return to his native country. But he had accustomed himself to intellectual luxuries such as Scot- land could not then effectually furnish, and he soon went back to the Continent. He was fifty-five years of age before he again resided in Scotland. He was for several years Professor of "the humanities" in the College of Guienne, at Bordeaux, where he had for his pupil the essayist Montaigne, who spoke Latin as the language of his childhood, and afterwards learned his native tongue as an accomplishment. Here Buchanan was the neighbour and friend of the elder Scaliger, who was fifteen years older than himself; and saw Joseph Justus, destined to the throne of European scholarship, a child in his father's house at Agin. The younger Scaliger was probably not uninfluenced by his childish recollections of his father's friend, when he maintained Buchanan's superiority over all the poets of the age who wrote in Latin. Buchanan appears to have remained longer at Bordeaux than in any other place; but the vagrant habits of his class took him, after a few years, to Paris, and thence from place to place in France, 1 M. Che'ruel, in his clever book ' Marie Stuart et Catherine de Medicis,' is found perturbed in spirit because, having searched every accessible edition of Buchanan's Poems, he has been unable to find the beautiful epigram on Queen Mary beginning "Nympha Caledonise, quae nunc feliciter orae Missa per inn timer es sceptra tueris avos " Let him try again. To be sure, it is in an unlikely corner, and the cleverest person trying to get at it by diving here and there may miss it for ever. But it were sin to hint to M. Cheruel or any other person where to find it, so much intellectual benefit will he derive by reading honestly through the whole of Buchanan's Poems, not omitting the Psalms. 244 THE SCOT ABROAD. where his biographers with difficulty trace him by the offices held by him in the universities. He was about forty years old when he appeared to have finally established himself in life as a professor in the newly founded University of Coimbra, in Portugal. He had then as his fellow-professor his brother, Patrick Buchanan, unknown to fame. The state which is gener- ally reputed to be among the most restless in Europe offered to the two Buchanans, and several other scholars who accompanied them, a retreat from the conflicts then shaking the other European nations. But the tranquillity of Portugal seems to have been more inimical to the body of men who went to constitute the university than the turbulence of other places. Buchanan was subjected to inquisitorial coercion to an extent not precisely ascertained, though there is no reason to believe that he was under any of the horrible tortures always associated with the word Inquisition. Yet, were we to accept a belief popu- larly entertained, the Inquisition had inflicted on him a punishment as potent as it was original, in compelling him to write his renowned translation of the Psalms. We know little of his true position in Portugal, save that he was actually there, occupied in his translation, and that in leaving the country he considered that he had accomplished an escape. He afterwards sojourned in the family of the Marshal de Brissac (le beau Brissac), one of the last of those great French captains who held their batons as sceptres, and stood on a rank with princes. The young Prince Henry said that, if he were not the Dauphin of France, he would choose to be the Duke de Brissac; and when the king desired promotion in the army for a favourite, he had to put his request to Brissac like one gentleman to another. The Scottish historian must have seen much to teach him real history under such a roof. Yet it is not easy to suppose that so close a contact with a formidable op- ponent of the Huguenots, and a colleague of the Guises, could have been very gratifying to Buchanan's Protestant predilections. Such was the varied and stirring life led by this great man before he devoted his services to his THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 245 own country ; and we cannot doubt that in those days, when no newspaper's " own correspondent " made people familiar with the daily proceedings in distant courts and camps, the wide practical insight into human affairs thus acquired by him must have given him a great superiority to the world of provincial statesmen in which he found himself. It has sometimes been regretted that Buchanan did not give his great powers to the beautifying of his own lan- guage ; but the regret is useless. If he was to speak to an audience worth collecting, it must be in Latin. It is a question whether the language of his youth was Gaelic or Scots. It is equally dubious whether we have a fair specimen of his Saxon style in 'Ane Detectioun of the Doingis of Marie Quene of Scottis twitching the Murther of hir Husband.' It is certain, however, that had he at- tempted to appeal to an English audience in what he had at his command of the language of the Anglo-Saxon race, he would have been received with ridicule, instead of the homage he achieved in the language of the learned world. A free access to this great medium for the exchange of thought was indeed one of the compensating benefits which the Scots derived from the contest with England. The exclusion of the Scots scholars from English ground only prompted their aspiring spirits to seek a wider arena of distinction, and they found it in securing to themselves as an audience the learned men of all the world. When there arose two distinct languages, an English and a Scottish, the latter afforded a far too limited intellectual dominion to satisfy the ambition of Scottish men of let- ters. Hence they had recourse to Latin ; and Buchanan, as the first among them in the use of this language, was at the same time the first of Latin narrators throughout the world since the days of Tacitus. It is not correct to speak of the Latin as a dead language among Scots scholars. They did not, perhaps, treat it with the strict accuracy which English scholarship had attained; that would, indeed, have been to treat it as a dead language, which cannot move. Buchanan, Bellenden, and Johnston 246 THE SCOT ABROAD. had their provincialisms and peculiarities, as Livy the Paduan, and Sallust the Sabine had; and in the same manner they could afford to have them, since, instead of adjusting their sentences to the precedents laid down for them by the sentences of other authors not like-minded with themselves or living under the same mental condi- tions, they drew, in their own way, on the resources of the language used by them, adapted it to the purposes of a new order of society, and made it the vehicle of original and striking thoughts. 1 The Scotsmen who wrote much, and had a large foreign correspondence, overcame the great barrier to the free use of a foreign tongue by actually thinking in Latin. We find it manifest that they did so, by the greater freedom with which they are found to write when they abandon the vernacular and adopt the ancient tongue. One may find them, in their familiar epistles to each other, running into Latin as a relief, just as any one when speaking a foreign tongue rests for a moment on a sentence of his own. True, they were not so familiar with the language in which they composed as those to whom the colloquial language is also that of literature ; but were the authors of Rome in any better position ? Have we any reason to suppose that the plebs spoke in the streets of Rome in that form of speech with which our youth try to be familiar through the exercises in their grammars ? Can we, indeed, believe that literary Latin could ever be a common colloquial 1 I remember Professor Pillans telling how he had once spoken to Person about Buchanan, and found, much to his surprise and a little to his indignation, that the. arch-critic had never heard of such a name in letters. It would not do, however, to take credit for ignorance about one whose works came through the classic presses of Stephens and Wetsten, and whose text was sifted and purified of casual inac- curacies by the skilled eye of Burmann, not to speak of the like homage paid to him by Ruddiman, a mere Scotsman. So Person condescended to take a glance. It was very brief. His instincts at once led him to the unpardonable crime, and roaring out, " Ugh ! a false quantity ! " he flung the little Wetsten from him as if it had stung him. It is said that Lord North, sound asleep during one of Burke's philippics on him, started awake when the orator used a false quan- tity in the word vectigal. THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 247 tongue, or anything more to the Roman historian than it became to the Scottish the language in which he marched, with solemn stride, through great events, an- nouncing the moral as he went in well-poised sentences ? There are not, perhaps, above three or four other names holding so proud a place in the homage of his country- men as Buchanan's. His, indeed, is the only one among the learned names in Scottish literature which has got a place in the familiar memory of the people, unless we may except the wizard Michael Scott, whose memory can scarcely be said to stand in good esteem. The traditional fame of Buchanan, though kindly, is grotesque. He is the parent of a multitude of witty and proverbial sayings a sort of Lokman or ^Esop ; but a still better type of him may be found in the Eulen-spiegel or Owl-glass of the Germans. Among his other services he caused a reformation in the prevailing dramatic literature, which would have been of more mark than it retains at the present day, had it not been immediately obliterated by greater changes. He had a mastery over the Greek lan- guage very uncommon in that age, especially in Britain ; and this, co-operating with his versatile power of Latin versification, enabled him to charm the reading world of the day with delightful translations of the choice works of the Greek dramatists. Spreading over Europe in the common language of the educated world, these would have superseded the remnants of the old religious mys- teries, had not a greater change been at hand, in the rise, in England, Spain, and ultimately in France, of a vernac- ular dramatic literature, which, in its sturdy home vitality, was to outgrow all foreign exotics. His rich genial mind was coated with a sort of crust of austerity. It was not in his nature to be a fanatic, but he took to the Presbyterian side as the opponent of royal prerogative and a vainglorious hierarchy. He was much about courts and royal personages so close was his con- tact with them, that he was reproached with the personal chastisements which, after the manner of ordinary peda- gogues, he had inflicted on the royal stripling committed to his charge but his nature assimilated very little to the 248 THE SCOT ABROAD. courtier's. He was full, indeed, of the proud conscious- ness more rife in the days of Erasmus and the Scaligers than in later times that an intellectual supremacy like his was something to which the compliments and distinc- tions at the disposal of princes could add no lustre. Like all men who are great masters of their matter and their pen, he could adjust the nature of institutions and the tenor of history to his preconceived notions. When there is one able to take rude inconsecutive events, and half-formed institutions still liable to the action of caprice and accident, and to present these in a complete sym- metrical form, with a prevailing theory or cohesive law throughout, sufficient to explain all their phenomena, it is difficult to contradict his conclusions. The tone of Buchanan's mind was in everything to level factitious and social distinctions and overruling individual powers. Hence, by manipulating the incoherent history and half- formed institutions of his country, he made out a powerful case for fixed popular rights vested in the people of Scot- land, and the spirit diffused by his writings had a visible influence in helping on the great popular conflict of the ensuing century. The luxurious and portly narrative of Boece afforded him materials which he could cut down into anything he liked ; and when he produced out of it a fluent symmetrical history, it was fashioned after his own taste. The long array of supernumerary kings was especially adapted to his purpose. Where no authentic records could be brought to check him, the most fluent and polished narrator, the best historical artist, of course had the ear of the world ; and it was useless to contradict what Buchanan said about them, until these kings were knocked off the historical stage in a bundle. Each of them had his moral. If he misbehaved and turned tyrant, he came to grief and ignominy; if he were liberal, en- lightened, and just, he was equally certain to come to glory and success : it was all as infallible as the fates in the Minerva Press novels and the good-boy books. His celebrated History thus exhibited to the world two grand features : one was the story of an ancient nation, going back into the very roots of the world's history, and THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 249 passing onwards century after century in continuous lustre and honour, until an envious neighbour, far humbler in historic fame, but better endowed with the rude elements of power more populous and more rich endeavours by sheer force and cruelty to tread down and extirpate the ancient nation. The next story is that of triumph, when the high spirit, nourished by centuries of glorious recol- lections, arose in its true majesty, and cast back the gigantic oppressor crushed and bleeding into his own den. The use of Buchanan's works as text-books gave thus a vitality to the teaching of the Latin language in Scot- land which it could not easily achieve in other countries. Taught to consider his Latinity equal to that of any of the ancient classics, the schoolboys of a naturally patriotic race could read in him the stirring story of their country's foul wrongs and glorious retribution. Another thing made his works useful in education. In his version of the Psalms, he supplied the demand for something of a reli- gious tone to modify the mythological tendency of classic poetry. In the intellects of those who were so taught, something else, too, was modified the lumbering vernac- ular version of the same sacred lyrics which the young scholar would hear aggravated by every form of disson- ance in his parish church on Sunday. 1 1 It was a fine intellectual feast to find the late Dr Melvin of Aber- deen exercising his first "faction," or form, on Buchanan's Psalms, though perhaps a stranger, ignorant of all he had trained his favourite pupils to, might have said the feast was made of meats too strong for the youthful company assembled round it. With subtle ease he could show how it was that each collocative idiomatic term and curious felicity of expression was truly in the spirit of the old Roman litera- ture, though it was no servile mimicry or exact imitation of any pre- cedent. True, the poet sometimes tripped, but did not Homer take a nap, and was it not the specialty of high and secure genius to be careless ? There was that flagrant instance where Buchanan, not only forgetting that he was repeating the prayer of so improper a per- son as the goddess of love, but losing hold of the first principle of the Christian faith, began the 4th Psalm with a line from the tenth " O pater ! O hominum divumque seterna potestas ! " But would Buchanan have for a moment contemplated theft in the case, any more than the millionaire who takes a better hat than his THE SCOT ABROAD. The position of Scotland among eminent nations was now safe. No foreign writer spoke about history or poli- tics at large without giving a large place to our country, and paying due respect to her eminences. Still, however, her own sons were not inclined to leave the world unre- minded of her claims, and there is throughout all their literature a sort of fidgety anxiety to keep her distinctions continually in view, which might argue a misgiving about their own sufficiency to support themselves. It was all along the same old influence that of the English claims and quarrel. Scotland, the poor relation, was braving it to the world against the rich oppressor, and fighting for a own from the lobby table ? It was an instance of the negligence of supreme genius the line was running in his head, and he thought he had composed it. The coincidents of this kind, called parallel passages, are among the accepted curiosities of literature. Some have taken in this way even from themselves, and none oftener than Virgil. I believe there is a considerable number of men now in middle life, who, if they were to recall their earliest impulse towards the emula- tion and intellectual enthusiasm which has brought them to eminence, would carry it back to the teaching of Melvin. I was delighted the other day to see justice done to the great powers of Dr Melvin, by a distinguished pupil of his, Professor Masson, who says : "Melvin, it is now the deliberate conviction of many besides myself, was at the head of the Scottish Latinity of his day. How he had attained to his consummate mastery in the Latin tongue and literature how, indeed, amid the rough and hasty conditions of Scottish intellectual life, there could be bred a Latin scholar of his supreme type at all is somewhat of a mystery." ' Macmillan's Magazine' for January 1864. But Melvin's scholarship arose neither from ambition to rise by it nor from a peculiar call to the dry analysis of a dead language. He was a man of bright active intellect and fine taste, and that he should have come to use, as the tool of his intellectual activity, the language of Rome instead of that of his own country, was probably incidental ; possibly it may have been from a remnant of the shyness of competing in the language of England with Englishmen, which lingered long in Scotland, especially with those whose oppoitunities of mingling with the world happened to be limited. However it was, Melvin, like the great master he revered, made for himself an intellectual home in the language of Rome, and became as familiar with everything written by Roman writers, or about them, as the old frequenter of a town is with the houses and the stones he passes daily. His edition of ' Horace for every Day in the Year ' was merely a variety of the con- ditions under which he kept up constant companionship with an old ever-welcome friend. THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 251 position as great as his. But that it had a patriotic spirit at its foundation, the tone of these Scots authors might be termed arrogant assumption ; and it must be admitted that, on some occasions, the patriotic enthusiasm was overdone. Among these patriotic historians, Lesley, the good Bishop of Ross, had his History of Scotland printed for him in Rome in 1578, and another edition followed a century afterwards. Though, like Boece's work, it was translated, yet, printed abroad, and written in the Latin tongue, it appealed rather to the general scholarship of Europe than to the author's own country. There is a Scotsman named Robert Johnston of whom little is known beyond two facts. He was one of George Heriot's executors, and exerted himself bravely to get the old jeweller's bequest and project for the maintenance of a hospital carried into effect. The other fact known of him is, that he wrote a History of Britain from the year 1572 to the year 1628, in which his own country holds a fully more prominent place than " that part of Great Britain called England." It rendered the position of his native country all the more important, that from it as a centre he took a general survey of human affairs. He published a portion of his book during his lifetime, but the completed edition came forth from the press of Rave- steyn of Amsterdam in 1655. 1 Our old friend Monteith of Salmonet did not fail to dedicate the territorial title he had so ingeniously achieved to the glory of his country. The title-page of his book is indeed a very fair display of the spirit which actuated his literary countrymen. He is on the same cavalier side of the great question which Clarendon held, but that does not hinder him from bring- ing the English historian to task for injustice to the weight and merits of Scotland thus : " The History of the Troubles of Great Britain, containing a particular account 1 ' Historia Rerum Britannicarum ; ut et multarum Gallicarum, Belgicarum, & Germanicarum, tarn Politicarum quam Ecclesiastica- rum, ab anno 1572 ad annum 1628. Auctore Roberto Johnstono, Scoto Britanno.' 252 THE SCOT ABROAD. of the most remarkable passages in Scotland, from the year 1633 to 1650, with an exact relation of the wars carried on, and the battles fought, by the Marquis of Montrose (all which are omitted in the Earl of Clar- endon's History) ; also a full account of all the transac- tions in England during that time : written in French by Robert Monteith of Salmonet." The same specialty of giving mark and emphasis to the particular affairs of Scot- land characterises a book still later in literature the ' History of Great Britain from the Revolution of 1688 to the Accession of George I.,' by Alexander Cunning- ham. Little is known of the author, except that he was a Scot by birth, and the representative of Britain at the Venetian republic. He wrote his book in Latin, and a translation of it was printed in London in two quartos. The same tone of feeling can be traced through smaller channels of literature. In 1579, a David Chalmers or Chambers published in Paris an abridged history of the kings of France, England, and Scotland, in chronological order. He also brings in the successive popes and em- perors ; but a stranger to the European history of the time would come away from the little book with a decided impression that Scotland was the most important among the powers with which it deals ; and to keep her claims all the more fully in view, there is an express discourse about the Ancient League. 1 This David Chambers had to do with affairs less innocent than the exaltation of his country. He was a fast friend of Bothwell, and though 1 ' Histoire Abbregee de tous les Roys de France, Angleterre, et Escosse, mise en ordre par forme d 'harmonic : contenant aussi vn brief discours de 1'ancienne alliance, et mutuel secours entre la France et 1'Escosse. Plus, 1'epitome de 1'histoire Romaine des Papes et Empereurs y est adiouste, et celle d'iceux roys augmentee selon la mesme methode. Dedie au treschrestien Roy de France et de Pol- ongne, Henry III. Le tout recueilli et mis en lumiere, auec la recerche tant des singularitez plus remarquables concernant 1'estat d'Escosse : que de la succession des femmes aux biens, et gouuerne- ment des Empires et Royaumes. Par David Chambre, Escossois, conseiller en la cour de Parlement & Edinbourg, ville capitale d'Es- cosse. A Paris, chez Robert Coulombel, rue S. lean de Latran, a 1'enseigne d'Alde, 1579. Auec priuilege du Roy.' THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 253 a judge of the Court of Session, he was much more likely to break the laws than justly to enforce them. When placards were set up about the murderers of Darnley, and the voices which the widowed Queen would not hear denounced the murderers, the name of Chambers was among the foremost. Of nearly the same period, and not to be confounded with this man, is another David Chambers, who lived a quieter life so quiet, indeed, that there is nothing to identify him, save what may be inferred from a book which he wrote on the bravery, the learning, and the piety which distinguished his countrymen before they lapsed into the prevailing heresy. 1 His mind seems to have been coloured with the stoicisms and asceticisms of the Spartan and Roman heroic periods, and he enlarges on the temperate and hardy habits of his countrymen how their mothers do not, as in other lands, give their infants to be fostered by others how their clothing is systematically limited to what decorum requires, and they eat and drink not for luxury, but for strength and warlike spirit. One can find the district to which he belongs, by the weight of his eulogiums gravitating as it were to Aberdeen. 2 His account of the university there is rather flagrant. He multiplies the two colleges into six, and gives a swollen account of King's College, just as a speci- men of their character, and not as constituting, along with the meagre shell of the other, the whole of the university edifices of the place. He makes his four supernumerary colleges out of the classes for medicine, law (of which he has two, canon and civil), and divinity. This book is a sort of small calendar of the saints special to the Church in Scotland, and contains some curious biographical matter about them : of course all those of Irish birth are duly claimed. 1 ' Davidis Camerarii Scoti de Scotorum Fortitudine, Doctrina, et Pietate, ac de Ortu et Progressu Hseresis in regnis Scotise et Anglise. ' 8 "Civitas duplex est, situs amoenitate ac aeris salubritate nulli secunda. Episcopatu Celebris, salmonum captura uberrima, portu navali peropportuna, magna civium frequentia nobilis, inter duos fluvios navigabiles Donam et Devam posita." P. 56. 254 THE SCOT ABROAD. A certain George Conoeus, or Cone, a Scot, published at Rome a small book, on the condition of his Roman Catholic brethren undergoing persecution in Scotland. 1 The tenor of his story is the lustre and eminence of his native land while it adhered to the old faith, and to this text he preaches on the lives and triumphs of Erigena, Marianus, and many of the others already referred to. He mentions many of his countrymen, eminent members of his own Church abroad, who perhaps had interesting histories if one knew a little more than this author's brief reference to them such are Georgius Mortimerus, For- besii Fratres, Rogerus Lyndessius, Gulielmus Mordocus, &c. Most of these had undergone some hardship for the truth ; and of Gulielmus Jonstonus it is said that he was poisoned by the heretics in his native land. He tells, per contra, how some of these heretics were punished, by burning or otherwise, for the abominable opinions enter- tained by them, and how they were nevertheless called martyrs by their benighted fellow-heretics. And here he brings in certainly one of the oddest ideas that one-sided ingenuity ever brought to its aid in polemical contest : there never is any grand work of the Deity but the enemy of mankind imitates it, and so the holy and purifying in- stitution of martyrdom being founded, the devil forthwith sets to and gets up a spurious imitation of it. James Laing, or Langius, another of the vehement Scots controversialists on the same side, devotes the concen- trated power of his wrath on Luther, Calvin, and the Continental reformers. He looks across occasionally, however, to his old home, from which he was a refugee, and in the middle of a few bitter enough execrations against those who have the upper hand, he laments the departed glory of his country with a kind of fervid grief. 2 1 ' Georgii Conoei de Duplici Statu Religionis apud Scotos libri duo, ad illustrissimum Principem Franciscum, S.R.E. Card. Bar- berinum, Magnae Britanniae Protectorem Romae. Typis Vaticanis, MDCXXVIII. Superiorum permissu.' See about Cone farther on, in a quotation from Sir Thomas Urquhart, page 273. 2 " Scotia . . . viros gloria rei militarse insignes, pietate vitae et omni fere disciplinarum genere caeteris gentibus praestantes nutrivit." THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 255 I hope Sir Thomas Urquhart requires no introduction to the reader as a genial and accomplished writer, how- ever much his dealings with Rabelais in the capacity of translator may have twisted both his method of thought and his style of writing into a circuitous kind of eccen- tricity. His books are saturated throughout with nation- ality, and the spirit in which he wrote is transparent enough in this short passage. He says that when, in passing through France, Spain, and Italy, " for speaking some of these languages with the liveliness of the country accent, they would have had him pass for a native, he plainly told them, without making bones thereof, that truly he thought he had as much honour by his own country, which did countervalue the riches and fertility of those nations by the valour, learning, and honesty wherein it did parallel, if not surpass them ; which assertion of his was with pregnant reasons so well backed by him, that he was not much gainsaid therein by any in all those kingdoms." This spirited passage is to be found in his ' Discovery of a most exquisite Jewel, more precious than diamonds enchased in gold' the work which contains his notices of Crichton. In his ' Logopandecteision ' we find him repeating his pregnant reasons, and affording examples of his method of backing them : "Since ever I understood anything, knowing that the welfare of the body of a government consisteth in the entireness of its noble parts, I always endeavoured to employ the best of my brain and heart towards the furtherance of the honour of that country unto which I did owe my birth. In prosecuting whereof, as the heart is primum vivens, so was it my heart which, in my younger years, before my braines were ripened for eminent under- ' De Vita et Moribus atque Rebus Gestis Haereticorum nostri tern- poris, authore Jacobo Laingeo, Scoto, Doctore Sorbonico.' He was then paying court to King James, who was coquetting with the Rom- anists ; and along with the usual praise for wisdom and learning, which the young Solomon got nearly as much of as he wanted, Laing goes out of the usual path to compliment him on his beauty his "pulchritude." THE SCOT ABROAD. takings, gave me courage for adventuring in a forrain climat, thrice to enter the lists gainst men of three several nations, to vindicate my native country from the calum- nies wherewith they had aspersed it." He was, of course, victorious and magnanimous. It was from the hands of Sir Thomas Urquhart that the world accepted of an idol which, after a period of worship, it cast down, but so hastily, as it was discovered, that it had to be again set up, but rather in surly justice than the old devout admiration. It was that strange flighty turgidness of style which Urquhart had caught by working so much on Rabelais, that for a time eclipsed his hero in the public estimation. The word went forth that the whole affair was a piece of nonsense. I refer to that James Crichton who is commonly called " the Ad- mirable," although the title admirabilis conferred on him by the University of Paris is better translated by his biographer Urquhart in the term wonderful. He came of a remarkable race, who at that time promised, like the Douglases in earlier, and the Campbells in later days, to overshadow Scotland. Near the capital, their power and magnificence are still attested by the ruins of Crichton Castle, so expressively described in * Marmion.' James Crichton came of a branch established beside the Loch of Cluny, on the eastern verge of the Perthshire High- lands ; another detachment of the family, posted at Fren- draught, in Aberdeenshire, continued a deadly struggle for supremacy with the Gordons, until, in the mysterious tragedy known as "the burning of Frendraught," they dug the grave of their own fortunes. The supposition entertained for a brief period, that Crichton was a merely mythical personage, has been so thoroughly dispersed by Mr Fraser Tytler, backed by other inquirers, that the doubts about his existence, and even about the extent of his accomplishments, have dropped out of literature ; and the biographical diction- aries restore the champion to his old place. Of course, every one is free to deny that any of his achievements as a scholastic disputant, a mime, or a swordsman, were gained in a sphere of exertion worthy of a great man. THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 257 But it may be said of these, as of the writings which created the scholastic philosophy, that they were great deeds in their day, and that he who performed them best was greatest among his fellows. We cannot doubt the wonderful and totally unrivalled feats of the Scottish wan- derer, since they were attested by contemporaries whose praises were quite spontaneous, and who had no preju- dices or partialities to be gratified by his elevation. To hold that in going from place to place challenging in a public manner all who ventured to dispute with him, he showed arrogance and ostentation, is to overlook a promi- nent feature of the times. The publication of a pamphlet announcing bold opinions which challenge controversy, is not more arrogant at the present day, than the post- ing of theses challenging a disputation on the gate of a university, was counted to be in the sixteenth century. Robert Reid, a Scotsman, and an ancestor of Thomas the Metaphysician, collected and published the theses he had maintained among the Continental universities. The practice has been rendered memorable by the theses plastered by Luther on the gates of Nuremberg Church. No doubt we can now see how open such a practice was to ridicule ; and indeed it came under the wild lash of Rabelais, who laughed at things centuries before they became ridiculous to other people. For a purpose which will presently appear, I quote the history of PantagruePs challenges, written a few years before those of Crichton : " Thereupon in all the Carrefours that is, throughout all the four quarters, streets, and corners of the city he set up conclusions to the number of nine thousand seven hundred and sixty-foure, in all manner of learning, touch- ing in them the hardest doubts that are in any science. And first of all, in the Fodder Street, he held dispute against all the regents or fellowes of colledges, artists or masters of arts, and oratours, and did so gallantly, that he overthrew them and set them all upon their tailes. He went afterwards to the Sorbonne, where he maintained argument against all the theologians or divines, for the space of six weeks, from four o'clock in the morning until six in the evening, except an interval of two hours R 258 THE SCOT ABROAD. to refresh themselves and take their repast. And at this were present the greater part of the lords of the court, the masters of requests, presidents, counsellors ; those of the accompts, secretaries, advocates, and others ; as also the sheriffs of the said town, with the physicians and pro- fessors of the canon law. Among which it is to be re- marked, that the greater part were stubborn jades, and in their opinions obstinate : but he took such course with them, that for all their ergo's and fallacies, he put their backs to the wall, gravelled them in the deepest questions, and made it visibly appear to the world that, compared with him, they were but monkies, and a knot of muffled calves. Whereupon every body began to keep a bustling noise and talk of his so marvellous knowledge, through all degrees of persons in both sexes, even to the very laundresses, brokers, roast-meat sellers, penknife makers, and others, who, when he passed along the street, would say, 'That is he,' in which he took delight, as Demos- thenes, the prince of Greek orators, did, when an old crouching wife, pointing at him with her fingers, said, 'That is the man.'" Now, observe, this passage is quoted from the transla- tion of Rabelais made by that Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty, who gives us the most full and picturesque account of Crichton. When, therefore, he describes, in the following terms, the manner in which his hero con- ducted himself on the same spot, one cannot help believ- ing that he must have had Rabelais's ridicule in view; and it is difficult to escape the impression that, through all his laudations, we can see his tongue in his cheek. Sir Thomas tells us : " To so great a height and vast extent of praise did the never-too-much-extolled reputation of the seraphic wit of that exirnious man attaine, for his commanding to be affixed programmes on all the gates of the schools, halls, and colleges of that famous university, as also on all the chief pillars and posts standing before the houses of the most renowned men for literature, resident within the precincts of the walls and suburbs of that most populous and magnificent city, inviting them all (or any whoever THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 259 else versed in any kind of scholastick faculty) to prepare, at nine o'clock in the morning, of such a day, month, and year, as by computation came to be just six weeks after the date of the affixes, to the common school at the College of Navarre, where (at the prefixed term) he should (God willing) be ready to answer to what should be propounded to him concerning any science, liberal art, discipline, or faculty, practical or theoretic, not ex- cluding the theological or jurisprudential habits, though grounded but upon the testimonies of God and man ; and that in any of these twelve languages Hebrew, Syriack, Arabeck, Greek, Latin, Spanish, French, Italian, English, Dutch, Flemish, and Slavonian, in either verse or prose, at the discretion of the disputant; which high enterprise and hardy undertaking, by way of challenge to the learnedest men in the world, damped the wits of many able scholars to consider, whether it was the attempt of a fanatick spirit, or lofty design of a well-poised judgment ; yet, after a few days' inquiry concerning him, when infor- mation was got of his incomparable endowments, all the choicest and most profound philosophers, mathematicians, naturalists, mediciners, alchymists, apothecaries, surgeons, doctors of both civil and canon law, and divines, both for controversies and positive doctrine, together with the primest gramarians, rhetoricians, logicians, and others, professors of arts and disciplines at Paris, plyed their studys in their private cells, for the space of a month, exceeding hard, and with huge paines and labour set all their brain es awork how to contrive the knottiest argu- ments and most difficult questions could be devised, thereby to puzzle him in the resolving of them, meander him in his answers, put him out of his medium, and drive him to a nonplus." 1 This passage will serve a purpose as much in the man- ner of the saying as in what is said, since it was written by a Scotsman who wandered through many of the Con- 1 Urquhart's 'Jewel,' p. 66. Among the hero's linguistic accom- plishments, Gaelic, which must have been talked at his own door, does not appear. 260 THE SCOT ABROAD. tinental nations, and who indeed appears to have aimed at a reputation very like that of his hero. Sir Thomas Urquhart of Cromarty gives us some idea of his familiarity with Continental nations, in the account of his library what a delightful library it must have been! to be found in his ' Logopandecteision.' " There were not," he says, "three works therein which were not of mine own purchase, and all of them together, in the order wherein I had ranked them, compiled like to a complete nosegay of flowers which, in my travels, I had gathered out of the gardens of sixteen several kingdoms." We shall yet again have to meet with its owner and his vivid nationality. In the meantime I call up another figure. The climax of preposterous nationalism, and, I fear I must say, of insolent mendacity, was reached by the pen of Thomas Dempster. He was evidently a man cut out for extremes. His contemporaries bear an almost fright- ened-looking testimony to his size and strength, and the marks of ferocity stamped upon his dusky visage. 1 One of the events of his varied life at once introduces us to a man who would not stand upon trifles. Once, in the course of his Continental wanderings, he found himself in possession of power as sub-principal, it has been said, of the College of Beauvais, in the University of Paris. Taking umbrage at one of the students for fighting a duel one of the enjoyments of life which Dempster desired to monopolise to himself he caused the young gentleman's points to be untrussed, and proceeded to exercise discipline in the primitive dorsal fashion. The aggrieved youth had powerful relations, and an armed attack was made on the college to avenge his insults. But Dempster armed his students and fortified the col- lege walls so effectively, that he was enabled not only to hold his post, but to capture some of his assailants and 1 "Cseterum (inquit Matthaeus Peregrinus Italus) fuit Dempsterus, vir corpore et animo egregius : altitude illi supra mediocrum vulgaris hominis magnitudinem : coma subnigrior, et cuti color non longe dispar : caput magnum, ac totius corporis habitus plane regius ; robur et ferocitas quibus vel prsestantissimum militem praestare posset, reque ipsa saepius se talem exhibuit." Camerarius, p. 45. THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 26 1 commit them as prisoners to the belfry. It appears, however, that, like many other bold actions, this was more immediately successful than strictly legal; and certain ugly demonstrations in the court of the Chatelain suggested to Dempster the necessity of retreating to some other establishment in the vast literary republic of which he was a distinguished ornament welcome wherever he appeared. His experience in the scholar life of the age was ample and varied. He imbibed a tinge of the Anglican system at Pembroke Hall, Cambridge. Besides serving and commanding in different colleges at Paris, he held office at Louvain, Rome, Douay, Tournay, Navarre, Toulouse, Montpelier, Pisa, and Bologna. A man who has per- formed important functions in all these places may well be called a citizen of the world. At the same time, his connections with them were generally of a kind not likely to pass from the memory of those who came in contact with him. He was a sort of roving Bentley, who, not contented with sitting down surrounded by the hostility of nearly all the members of one university, went about like a roaring lion, seeking whom he might attack and insult, and left behind him wherever he went the open wounds of his sword, or of his scarcely less direful pen, scattered thickly around him. He was one of those who, as Anthony Arnauld said of himself, are to expect tran- quillity only in a removal from that sublunary world in which, like pieces of clockwork wound up, they are doomed to a ceaseless motion during their vitality. He wrote some minor works pretty powerfully tinged with nationality. 1 His great triumph was, however, the bio- graphical dictionary, which he was pleased to call a literary history of Scotland. 2 1 Their titles are sufficient to indicate an uncompromising and ex- alting national vindicator. Take, for instance, ' Scotia illustrior, sieu Mendicabula repressa, ' published at Leyden in 1620, and 'Asserti Scotiae cives sui, Sanctus Bonifacies rationibus IX., Joannes Duns rationibus XII.,' published at Bologna in 1623. 8 ' Thomae Dempsteri Historia Ecclesiastica Gentis Scotorum sive de Scriptoribus Scotis.' It was reprinted by the Bannatyne Club. 262 THE SCOT ABROAD. Such an array of illustrious names was probably never elsewhere attributed to one nation. He not only sweeps in the whole flock of Irish saints, but makes a general raid on the Bollandists, and carries off all the names that suit his fancy. He not only was not fastidious about the evidence of their Scottish birth, but would have found it hard to prove, in many instances, that they ever had existence ; and perhaps, in the choice of fabulous names, he had the better chance of evading detection, since there was no other country to which they could be revindicated. Following the course of the alphabet, his first names are St Abel, St Adam, St Adamnan, St Adalbertus, St Adelmus, St Aidanus, St Adalgisus, and St Antbodus ; and some hundred or so of such exotic names have we to encounter ere we come to such as Alexander Alesius, Alexander Abernethasus, and Robertus Aitonus. There are, besides the doubtful and fabulous names, some that notoriously belong to our neighbours as the venerable Bede, St Bruno, Bcethius the Roman moralist, and Macrobius being tempted in this last case probably by the home sound of the first syllable, which, however, he knew very well to be Greek. Take him away from his nationalities, and Dempster pre- sented himself as a great scholar digging to the heart of many difficult parts of learning. It must indeed have been difficult for Italian scholars to refuse assent to anything said about his own country by the first writer of the age on the history and antiquities of theirs by the author of the * Calendarium Romanum ' and the ' Etruria Regalis,' and the editor of the Roman Anti- quities of Rosinus. The rather audacious but always real and scholar-like vauntings of Dempster were subsequently vulgarised and caricatured by a blundering blockhead, "George Mac- kenzie, M.D., Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in Edinburgh." He burdened literature, with three por- tentous folios, which he called ' The Lives and Characters of the most Eminent Writers of the Scots Nation, with an abstract and catalogue of their works, their various edi- tions, and the judgment of the learned concerning them.' THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 263 His method of filling his pages is not uncommon, though few have carried it to so extravagant an excellence. He gets his hand on a monk, supposed to have such-and- such a name, supposed to be born at such a date, and supposed to be a native of Scotland an identification utterly vague and unsatisfactory. He manages, however, to keep it down to the solid earth by attaching to it a long history of monachism and the several monastic orders, injudiciously plagiarised from the commonest authors who had previously dealt with that matter. In his life of James Bassantin, professor in the University of Paris in the early part of the sixteenth century, and a great mathematician and astronomer according to the light of his times, it is pleasant enough to find the bio- grapher, in much reverence and amazement, repeating Sir James Melville's story of his astrological predictions about Queen Mary's journey into England. 1 But he be- 1 ' ' This puttis me in remembrance of a taill that my brother Sir Robert tald me the tym that he wes busyest dealing betwen the twa quenis, to interteny ther frendschip, and draw on ther meting at a part besyd York callit . Ane Bassentin, a Scottis man, that had bean trauelit, and was learnit in hich scyences, cam to him and said : 'Gud gentilman, I hear sa gud report of yow that I loue yow hartly, and therefore can not forbear to schaw yow how that all your vprycht dealing and your honest trauell wilbe in vain, wher ye beleue to obtean a weall for our Quen at the Quen of Englandis handis. Ye bot tyn your tym ; for first they will neuer meit togither, and nyst ther will neuer be bot discembling and secret hattreut for a whyll, and at length captyuite and vtter wrak for our Quen be England.' " My brother's answer again was, that he lyked not to heir of sic deuelisch newes, nor yet wald he credit them in any sort as false vngodly and vnlawfull for Christiens to medle them with. Bassentin answerit again : ' Gud Master Meluill, tak not that hard oppinion of me. I am a Christien of your religion, and feares God, and purposes neuer to cast my self in any of the vnlawfull artis that ye mean of, bot sa far as Melanthon, wha was a godly theologue, has declaired and wreten anent the naturell scyences, that ar laufull and daily red in dyuers Christien vniversites ; in the quhilkis, as in all vther artis, God geues to some les, to some mair and clearer knawlege then till vthers ; be the quhilk knawledge I haue also that at lenth, that the kingdome of England sail of rycht fall to the crown of Scotland, and that ther ar some born at this instant that sail bruk landis and heri- tages in England. Bot alace it will coist many ther lyues, and many bludy battailes wilbe fochten first or it tak an satteled effect ; and 264 THE SCOT ABROAD. comes intolerable when, after announcing the branches of exact science in which Bassantin wrote, he proceeds as if taking credit for moderation : " We shall only take notice of the rise and progress of astronomy, in which our author exceeded all the mathematicians of his age." One of his great efforts he calls ' The Life of Clement, the First Founder of the University of Paris,' of whom he says, It is certain " that he was born and had his educa- tion in Scotland" a statement altogether about as true as any of the tales of the ' Thousand and one Nights.' But we could take all such romancing in good part, like that of Boece and his brethren, were it not that it brings you to, " During his residence at the Court of France he was engaged in two controversies the one concerning images, and the other about Arianism ; " and so he gives us the history of the Iconoclast and Arian controversies. He goes not beyond reasonable bounds, perhaps, in giv- ing an account of the Council of Basle as appropriate to the Abbot of Dundrennan, who was the Scots representa- tive there. But the same cannot be said for his gravely incorporating the fabulous Boetian history of this country, although he seems to take credit for giving it only once, saying, " Since I am to give an account of several authors that have written the history of our nation, that I may avoid needless repetitions, I shall here give the reader an abridgment of our history from the first foundation of our monarchy," &c. Towards the conclusion of his third volume there is an announcement of a rather men- acing tendency, but containing the comforting elements of futurity and uncertainty. He says : "I designed, in the account of this learned linguist's life, to have inserted a dissertation on the origin, progress, and different dia- lects of the most ancient and useful languages ; but this volume having already swelled to a sufficient bulk, and many persons of quality and learning urging the publi- cation of it, I am forced to delay it till an opportunity be my knawlege,' said he, 'the Spainiartis wilbe helpers, and will tak a part to themselues for ther labours, quhilk they wilbe laith to leaue again." 'Sir James Melville's Memoirs,' pp. 202, 203. THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 265 offers in the fourth volume." The world is under some obligation to these persons of quality and learning, as well as to whatever accidents may have concurred to stifle that fourth volume. Let us amuse ourselves with one specimen one is quite enough of the manner in which Dr George Mac- kenzie dresses up a Scottish celebrity. The instance, James Bonaventura Hepburn, was born, it appears at his father's rectory of Oldham stocks in Haddingtonshire, in 1573. He entered a monastery of the Minims or Ere- mites in Avignon, and became librarian of the oriental books and manuscripts of the Vatican. " He could have travelled," says Mackenzie, " over the whole earth, and spoke to each nation in their own language." Yes, and if the biographer's whole story were true, in a good many more languages than ever were listened to on earth. His chief performance was the ' Golden Branch/ which Mac- kenzie says he saw. His description is full enough, and becomes tedious; so the concluding portion of his enumeration of the seventy-two languages in which the Virgin's praises are sung may suffice : " The fourth column contains the Chaldaick, the Palaestin, the Cananaan, the Persian, the African, the Arabick, the Indian, the Turkish, the Rabinical, the German-Rabinical, the Galilean, the Spanish-Rabinical, the Afro - Rabinical, the Hebrao - Arabick, the Syro- Hebraick, the Mystical. " In the fifth column are the Seraphic, the Supercelestial, the Angelical, the Enochean, the Punick, the Hebrew, the Samaritan, the Mosaick, the Judaeo-Samaritan, the Idumsean, the Halo-Rabinick, the Brachman, the Adam- aean, the Solomonick, the Noachick alphabets. " Our author was so expert in all these languages, so as to be able to write in each of them. " Now, these are all the languages (and they are the most of the known habitable world) in which our author has given us a specimen of his knowledge, and which evidently demonstrates that he was not only the greatest linguist of his own age, but of any age that has been since the creation of the world ; and may be reckoned 266 THE SCOT ABROAD. amongst those prodigies of mankind that seem to go beyond the ordinary limits of nature. Dempster says that he is mentioned with great honour by Vincentius Blancus, a noble Venetian, in his ' Book of Letters ; ' and, as we have already observed, he is highly com- mended by that learned Doctor of the Canon Law, James Gaffarel, in his book of ' Unheard-of Curiosities/ published in Latin at Hamburg, anno 1676." Something answering to the ' Book of Letters/ by the noble Venetian, does exist ; it seems to be a commentary on the letters upon the handle of a knife which had belonged to St Peter no doubt a valuable relic preserved in some religious house. I profess no further acquaint- ance with this work no doubt very curious in its way except the finding of its title in the catalogue of the British Museum. 1 The other source of information, Gaffarel's * Unheard-of Curiosities/ may be said, on the other hand, to belong to popular literature. It is a favourite with all admirers of the kind of credulousness that becomes picturesque by its sheer excess. It is to be found in many languages, and some of its admirers do not regret that English is among them. I suspect, however, none of them have found in it anything about James Bonaven- tura Hepburn. It may, perhaps, be to the point that Gaffarel refers several times to Heurneus, a name which represents a certain learned Otho van Heurn of Utrecht. Now, though the whole character might seem an impudent fabrication, there really was such a person as this James Hepburn. He published a small Hebrew Lexicon, which, for aught that I know to the contrary, may have its merits. As to the truth of the assertion that he published anything containing a piece of fine writing in each of the seventy-two languages referred to which was, perhaps, within the capacity of the intellec- tual digestive powers of Mackenzie's contemporaries at the present day let any one who pleases try if he can swallow it. 1 ' Parere intorno alii caratteri che sono sopra il manico del coltello di S. Pietro. By Vincent Bianci. Venice, 4to, 1620.' THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 267 But, in fact, down to the period when they began to com- pete with their English fellow-citizens in vernacular liter- ature, Scottish authors, even if their proper labours were not historical, seem as if they could scarcely avoid some boastful reference to " the ancient nation." Take up, for instance, a stolid quarto on the philosophy of medicine, by William Davidson. 1 There is a world of wandering theories and analogies taken from astrology, alchymy, necromancy, and all the imaginative sciences now ex- ploded ; and, in exemplification of some of the recondite principles laid down in the more than 600 preceding pages, we have a scientific adjustment a sort of horo- scope of the course of events which placed the ancient race of the kings of Scotland on the throne of England, where they have their proper place as the representatives of his brave countrymen. Thomas Bell, a scholar who no doubt belonged to the old fighting Border clan of that name, wrote a text-book in Latin on the institutions of the old Romans. 2 When expounding the nature of their warlike operations, he thinks it proper to give the young student an opportunity of knowing the victorious career of the most ancient and illustrious nation in the world his own ; which, not content with its victories over England, has carried the terror of its arms into every land ; like old Rome herself, casting down the tyrant and succouring the oppressed. 3 1 ' Commentariorum in sublimis Philosophi et incomparabilis viri Petri Severini Dani Ideam Medicinse Philosophies prope diem pro- diturorum Prodromus, &c., opere et studio Wilhelmi Davissoni, nobilis Scoti. Hagse comitis, 1660.' I can find nowhere an account of the Petrus Severinus to whom Davidson is content to be com- mentator, nor can I find the book mentioned in any catalogue or bibliography. A reprint of it is bound up with my copy of David- son's commentary, containing an intimation by its printer that the Basle and Erfurt editions are so rare that they can hardly be bought at any price. The commentary is nearly four times as large as the book commented on. 2 ' Roma restituta sive Antiquitatum Romanorum compendium absolutum ex optimis authoribus in usum studiosse juventutis collec- tum. A Thomo Bell, Philologo, Edinburg, Scoto. 1672.' 3 " Scotorum regnum omnium totius terrarum orbis longe antiquis- 268 THE SCOT ABROAD. Any one who has pottered among old Continental works of reference historical, geographical, biographical, and the like will have noticed how large and respectable a place Scotland, with all her counties, towns, institutions, and celebrities, holds in them. This may be in some measure accounted for by the fervent perseverance with which our countrymen have beaten into the European mind the importance of their mother country; but it also, perhaps, owes something to the vigilance with which Scots scholars have looked after the fame of their country when they found such works in preparation. A sight of that wonderful book, Bleau's Atlas, is enough to convince any one of the wide and catholic spirit of the Dutch men of letters in the seventeenth century, while it also shows that they looked for support to a large community who filled their libraries with costly books. The * Theatrum Scotiae ' fills one of Bleau's great folios, except a little bit at the end conceded to Ireland. It is in the Dutchman's maps that country gentlemen look for the condition of their estates in the seventeenth century, and local antiquaries hunt out topographical changes. Many a space now covered with thickly-peopled streets was then bare moor- land; and at the same time, what one is less likely to expect, many a mountain district is strewed with names now forgotten, because, as sheep-walks or deer-forests, they are emptied of the inhabitants whose dwelling-places were grouped into separate hamlets and granges. This volume is the result of a conjunction of fortunate accidents. Robert Pont, renowned in the ecclesiastical politics of the sixteenth century, had a son, Timothy, smitten with a sacred rage for topography. He spent his days wandering over his native country, taking notes and measurements, which, aided by such science as the simum. . . . Bellum ubique victoriam undique querens illustrem armorum gloriam foris, per Angliam, Hiberniam, Belgium, German- iam, totum septentrionem, Italiam, Galliam, Hispaniam, Libyam, Cretam, Rhodum, Syriam, Borussiam, late circumtulit, sibi gloriam et honorem, sociis spem opem victoriam salutem commodum adferens hostibus terrorem damnum ignominium. " P. 214. THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 269 age afforded, he projected into maps. Those labours, which anticipate the wants of after generations, are of course neglected in their own, if their authors be not even despised and spitefully entreated as monomaniacs. Font's maps would have been annihilated by the various forms of enmity to which anything committed to paper is liable, if they had not found a protector in Sir John Scott. He is best remembered by the alliterative title of a very sar- castic little book, known as ' Scott of Scotstarvet's Stag- gering State of Scots Statesmen ; ' but in his own day he was known over the learned world for better things, and he held a close correspondence with the first scholars of the time. He opened communications between the Dutch publisher and Sir Robert Gordon of Straloch, who, with the assistance of his son James, a clergyman, dressed up the topographical drafts of Pont into engraved maps, and accompanied them with a due proportion of Latin letterpress, descriptive and historical. It has been noticed that Bayle is very full and accurate in all matters relating to Scotsmen and their country. We get readily at the secret of this in a passage of a letter by the Earl of Perth, who was Chancellor of Scot- land, and had to take flight at the Revolution, accom- plishing his escape with better success than his brother chancellor, Jeffreys. " There is a bookseller in this town a genteel, well-bred man, who keeps his coach, &c. He's both very learned and a mighty virtuoso : he is causing make a Dictionnaire Historique, like that of Moreri's, but it will be incomparably finer. One Monsieur Baile works hard to have it fine and true. This Mr Baile is a most knowing man ; both he and Leers, who is the bookseller, are my friends, and would fain oblige me by giving an account of my family and those of my nearest relations. I hope you will give me a short one of my Lord ErrolPs, and get my Lord Keith to do as much for him, and it will enrich the book, and do us no dishonour. Pray let this be done, and sent over with the first Scotch fleet, directed for me, either by Mr Thomas Graham, factor, or by Mr Pan ton, by them to be given to Dr Carny, in the West Wagen Street at Rotterdam. Fail 2/0 THE SCOT ABROAD. not in this." 1 So, like many a work that has immortal- ised its author, the great dictionary was the project of a publisher who knew where to find " a good hand " for his special work. To him fame has been especially unjust, for his name has dropped out of the biographical diction- aries, and in bibliography people are told that the more valuable editions of Bayle are those of Prosper Marchand of Rotterdam and Brandmuller of Basle. In quarters, however, where there is no reason to sup- pose that the hand of a Scot has actually interfered, it is easy to notice the influence of the determined and per- severing nationality. Moreri, Hoffman, Lamartiniere, and the other encyclopedists, are very respectful to Scot- land, and make way for all relevant matters which concern that nation. In Hoffman's four ponderous Latin folios you will find all the monarchs, from Fergus downwards including some forty or fifty who never existed all chronicled as duly as the Roman emperors. Among the tiny volumes published by the Elzeviers a series called the * Respublicae ' are separate accounts of the various nations of the earth. They are much coveted by collectors when they can be had complete and uniform in old red or blue morocco. In these there is a portion meted to Scotland, in which the full lustre of the ancient kingdom is reflected implicitly from Boece and Buchanan. On the title-page of the * Descriptio Scotiae' there is an emblematic figure a hard-featured trooper, with buff- coat, steel hat, and broadsword an accurate representation, doubtless, of the Scottish soldier of the Thirty Years' War. There came, during the early part of last century, from the French presses, a set of very pleasant books called 'Delices.' They might be termed guide-books to the various countries they treated of; but they were both more discursive and more complete than modern guide- books, giving a good deal of history along with such physical geography as their period possessed. Among these are 'Les Delices de la Grand Bretagne et de 1 'Letters of James, Earl of Perth,' p. 15. THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 2/1 Tlrlande/ in eight volumes, of which Scotland has two. These are filled with pictures of towns and public build- ings, being in a great measure transcripts, much improved in accuracy of perspective and otherwise, of a set of gaunt clumsy engravings made by a Dutchman called Captain John Slezer. The Frenchman makes some shrewd re- marks among others, that the wind is so unceasing with us that we deserve to be called Le Royaume des Vents. He politely adopts the compliments paid by Boece, Camerarius, and others to the temperance and hardy virtues of their countrymen, but is a little doubtful about the wonderful antiquity of the kingdom. And now since this train of printed gossip started with the fabulous historians, it may not be unapt to introduce the man who first broke up their romances, and examined with something like a critical and scientific spirit the foundations of our history ; for he comes within the scope of our tattle as a wanderer in foreign parts. This was Father Innes, of the Scots College in Paris, whose * Critical Essay on the Early Inhabitants of Scotland ' was published in 1729. Father Innes lived at a time when the law and public opinion in Scotland rendered it unsafe for people of his profession and religion to be conspicuous, and his sceptical inquiries into the early history of Scot- land, published in English, were not likely to attract much attention among his fellow - priests in France. Hence, until very lately, there were no accessible means of know- ing where he was born, or when he died. Mr Grub, the author of the erudite ' Ecclesiastical History of Scotland/ a curious investigator in all matters connected with that and kindred topics, has done good service by tracking the uneventful tenor of Father Innes's life. He was the son of a northern laird, born in Aberdeenshire in the year 1662, and he died in the Scots College in 1744. The rest is soon told. "In 1677, Thomas Innes, then fifteen years of age, was sent to Paris, and pursued his studies at the College of Navarre. He entered the Scots College on the i2th of January 1681, but still attended the College of Navarre. On the 26th of May 1684, ne received the clerical tonsure, 2/2 THE SCOT ABROAD. and, on the loth March 1691, was promoted to the priest- hood. After this he went to Notre-Dame des Vertues, a seminary of the Oratorians, near Paris, where he con- tinued for two or three months. Returning to the Scots College in 1692, he assisted the Principal, his elder brother Lewis, in arranging the records of the Church of Glasgow, which had been deposited partly in that College, partly in the Carthusian Monastery at Paris, by Arch- bishop James Beaton. In 1694 he took the degree of Master of Arts in the University of Paris, and, in the following year, was matriculated in the German nation. " After officiating as a priest for two years in the parish of Magnay, in the diocese of Paris, he came again to the Scots College in 1697. In the spring of 1698 he returned to his native country, and officiated for three years at Inveravon as a priest of the Scottish Mission. The church at Inveravon was the prebend of the Chancellor of the diocese of Murray, and he alludes to the circum- stance, and to his three years' residence in that parish, in his dissertation on the reception of the use of Sarum by the Church of Scotland. He again went to Paris in October 1701, and became Prefect of Studies in the Scots College, and mission agent." In the year 1724 he came to Scotland, when he was met by Wodrow, the historian of the Covenanters, when both were making researches in the Advocates' Library in op- posite directions. The two men, following to a certain extent the same pursuit, must have felt utterly alien to each other. Wodrow, a thoroughly homespun western Whig of the most rigid order, went no farther back than the two or three generations of the Scottish clergy im- mediately behind his own, and looked on all things beyond the ecclesiastical circle of the western Presby- terians as idle and unprofitable vanity, unworthy of his research. The Jacobite priest, on the other hand, saw nothing genuine or worthy of a good man's reflections save in the records of the past, and lived only in the hope that all the existing fabric of heresy and innovation would, after its brief hour of usurpation was fulfilled, fall again to pieces, and open up the good old ways. Each did service THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 2/3 in his own way. The Covenanter was a prejudiced, but, in a great measure, a trustworthy narrator of things within the scope of his narrow inquiries ; the priest of the Scots College at Paris was far better occupied in the past than the present, and bequeathed to us a noble monument of historical criticism, while his brethren were busily em- ployed in plots and conspiracies to plunge the nation in a civil war. Wodrow, though he had few sympathies with a Romish priest, looked on the scholar with a kindly feeling, and records in his note-book thus, " He is not engaged in politics, as far as can be guessed ; and is a monkish, bookish person, who meddles with nothing but literature." This scene recalls the ecclesiastical contests which brought Scotsmen much in contact with foreigners, since the conspicuous men of each party had in turn to take refuge abroad. We have seen something already of the tone and temper of the controversy. I propose now to look a little to the literature of the disputants, prefacing what I have to say with a general remark by Urquhart, containing a good deal of the spirit in which his country- men, while maintaining their respective sides in the great dispute, could not entirely forget that they were " brother Scots," and must stand up for the dear old country. " Here nevertheless it is to be understood, that neither these dispersedly-preferred Scots were all of one and the same religion, nor yet any one of them a Presbyterian. Some of them were, and are as yet, Popish prelates, such as the Bishop of Vezon, and Chalmers, Bishop of Neems, and Signer Georgio Con (who wrote likewise some books in Latin) was by his intimacy with Pope Urban's nephew Don Francesco Don Antonio, and Don Tadseo Barbarini, and for his endeavouring to advance the Catholico-Ponti- fical interest in Great Britain, to have been dignified with a cardinal's hat, which (by all appearance) immediately after his departure from London, he would have obtained as soon as he had come to Rome, had death not pre- vented him by the way in the city of Genua : but had he returned to this island with it, I doubt it would have proved ere now as fatal to him, as another suchlike cap s 2/4 THE SCOT ABROAD. in Queen Mary's time had done to his compatriot Car- dinal Betoun. " By this as it is perceivable that all Scots are not Presbyterians, nor yet all Scots Papists, so would not I have the reputation of any learned man of the Scottish nation to be buried in oblivion, because of his being of this or this, or that or yon, or of that other religion ; no more than if we should cease to give learning and moral virtues their due, in the behalf of pregnant and good spirits born and bred in several climates ; which to with- hold from them (whether Poriscians, Heteroscians, or Amphiscians), would prove very absurd to the humane ingenuity or ingenuous humanity of a true cosmopolite." Foremost among the champions of the new faith stands, of course, the name of John Knox, and though his fame rests in general on other grounds, he was no mean repre- sentative of the scholarship of Scotland in other lands. His first acquaintance with the French was neither of his own seeking nor to his own edification and enjoyment. He was seized in the midst of the piratical band who held the Castle of St Andrews, after the murder of Beaton, and had to endure penal slavery in the galleys. The observa- tions of the great Reformer on the life and manners by which he was surrounded, if he had favoured the world with them, must have been eminently curious and instruc- tive. We can imagine such experiences preparing him with examples of life and conversation which would enable the Scottish preacher to startle his French and Swiss congregations. It is a pity, too, that, for the sake of knowing the extent to which man can injure and degrade his fellow-man, we should not have had some account of his own treatment from so intelligent a galley- slave. The condition of such a being is something which the improvements in prison discipline, and the unrevenge- ful spirit of the present age, preclude us from realising. We can only darkly guess at its horrors, by considering the structure and other conditions of a galley. There were other persons in it, of course, besides the slaves who pulled the oars if not passengers of more or less rank, at all events persons in command and these might be THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 275 expected for their own sakes to preserve a little decorum and cleanness; but they inhabited raised galleries com- pletely partitioned off, so that the rowers' benches were unseen. They were separated from the living machinery and its horrors, as the saloon of a steam- vessel is, at this day, from the danger and filth of the machinery and the furnace. Each galley-slave was secured by a chain nailed to the deck, and there he remained, night and day, sur- rounded by such conditions as the human animal is sub- ject to when he has neither freedom to serve himself, nor the services of others. A storm, with its dangers and drenching, was sometimes welcome as a cleanser; but most welcome of all must have been the approach of the death which was to release the worn-out body from the tyranny of his fellow-man, before he pitched it into the sea. Who knows how much of the acerbity of Knox's temperament may have been caught by him in that dreadful ordeal ! How he got his liberty is a mystery but he was in the galleys altogether for nineteen months. The readi- ness with which he undertook his foreign ministrations is one of the incidents creditable to the general scholarship of the Scots at that period. For reading of the narrative kind, there is none more delightful to be found anywhere than Knox's ' History of his own Times.' It is a racy, vigorous narrative, crowded with pictures in rich and powerful colouring like a gallery of historical paintings by Rubens. What chiefly, however, fascinates the reader, is the unrivalled potency of its vituperative rhetoric. His scolding is sublime and awful. But throughout there is a sort of noble fairness in it. Of course, all who with- stood him and called forth his wrath were in some form or other knaves and ruffians. How could it be otherwise with those who had set themselves against him, the Deity's representative on earth the head of the theoc- racy ! But he was not given to the practice so common in his day of assassinating reputations by those vile im- putations, the touch of which leaves a taint which all the perfumes of Arabia are insufficient to sweeten out. The tenor of his wrath was ever for a fair stand-up fight ; and 276 THE SCOT ABROAD. in his wordy battles he was a champion few would care to join issue with. But his History has many other things in it besides the brawling of an angry priest. He was a great statesman in his way a one-sided one, no doubt, without breadth of view or sympathies, but endowed with one of the statesman's next prime qualities, a sagacity in penetrating the policy and designs of his enemies that looked like inspiration. Its extent is perhaps better known now than it was even by his contemporaries, from the light which the excavation of state papers has thrown on the vast designs of the Papal powers of his day, for crushing the new and formidable heresy. From the skilful organi- sation of the Huguenots, and their ramification of corre- spondence everywhere, he was fully instructed in facts, and his sagacity enabled him to see the spirit that influ- enced them. He knew the imminent peril of himself and his friends from these great combinations, and knew that his own amiable and lovely mistress was deep in all their intricacies, and as hard and resolute in carrying their designs to a conclusion as the sternest despot in beard and mail. When he speaks about these things with his own peculiar uncompromising vehemence, his words might seem the ravings of a monomaniac, were it not that we know them to have been founded on menacing facts. He is one of the most accurate and honest of narrators. His honesty, indeed, proceeded from a source which put it far above the impartiality which a modern historian may assume upon principle it had an absolutism in it, for it proceeded of his own infallibility. He was right in all his actions, and therefore courted an inspection of them. The opinion of the world was nothing after his conduct had passed with approval the greatest of human ordeals, his own appreciation. His dialogues with Queen Mary have the stamp of thorough truth. In fact, they show that he had the worst of the contest, though he does not himself see that, his mind being entirely absorbed in the one great object, the uprooting of her idolatry from her heart. He probably fought at disadvantage. Mary had but slight command over her native tongue until THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 277 some years afterwards. Knox was master of French, and it was likely that the conversation was conducted in that language. But however nearly the two might be thus on a par in command of the language, they had learned it in widely different schools. Knox's experience of it be- sides the galleys had been in discussions with Huguenot divines, or disputes with Popish enemies. One must needs believe that his opponent was thoroughly accom- plished in the Court speech. By the help of Brantome and Ronsard, this was acquiring that subtle finesse which would enable the accomplished beauty, with gentle dex- terity, to inflict mortal wounds without appearing to strike. There is a sort of magnanimity sometimes in his can- dour, since it brings him in for the support of very ques- tionable acts, to which he could easily have given the go-by. He was not in that ugly affair, Rizzio's murder ; and if he knew that it was to come off, he might have shaken his head and kept silence with a good grace. But this was not his way with those who were on his own side. So, in his History, he has some moralising, in which it is pretty easy to see that he laments the sad fate of those who have to live away from their native country, for no other reason than the good service they have done to it by putting the Italian to death. But fearing that he has not made his meaning quite distinct enough, he raises his voice, saying: "And, to lett the world understand in plane terms what we meane, that great abusar of this commoun-wealth, that pultron and vyle knave Davie, was justlie punished, the nynt of Merch, in the year of God iMVc threescore fyve, for abusing of the commoun-wealth, and for his other villany, which we list not to express, by the counsall and handis of James Dowglas, Erie of Mor- ton, Patrik Lord Lyndesay, and the Lord Ruthven, with otheris assistaris in thare cumpany, who all, for thare just act, and most worthy of all praise, ar now unworthely left of thare brethrein, and suffer the bitterness of banishe- ment and exyle. But this is our hope in the mercyes of our God, that this same blynd generatioun, whither it will or nott, shalbe compelled to see that he will have respect to 2/8 THE SCOT ABROAD. thame that ar injustlye persewed ; that he will apardoun thare formar offenses ; that he will restore thame to the libertie of thare country and common-wealth agane ; and that he will punish (in dispyte of man) the head and the taill, that now trubles the just, and manteanes impietie. The head is knawin : the taill hes two branches ; the tem- porall Lordis that manteane hir abhominationis, and hir flattering counsallouris, blasphemous Balfour, now called Clerk of Register, Sinclair Deane of Restalrige and Bis- chope of Brechin, blynd of ane eie in the body, but of baithe in his soule, upoun whome God schortlie after took vengeance; (John) Leslye, preastis gett, Abbot of Lon- dorse and Bischope of Ross, Symon Preastoun of Craig- myllare, a right epicureane, whose end wilbe, or it be long, according to thare warkis. Butt now to returne to our history e." 1 The immediate colleague of Knox, John Craig he whose denunciatory sermons afterwards frightened King James from his propriety underwent, before he became a minister in Edinburgh, adventures which seem to have been still more marvellous and perilous than those of his leader. It is said, though the story is rather improbable, that he was converted by a perusal of a copy of Calvin's Institutes in the library of the Dominicans of Bologna, among whom he held an office of high trust. The legend proceeds to say that he avowed his opinions, and was con- 1 Works, Laing's edition, i. 235, 236. It is an instructive fact that, of a man so powerful in his day as Knox, and so popular through subsequent generations, Scotland has preserved no remem- brance, either in painting or sculpture. It shows, too, in a very striking shape, how entirely the great scholars and teachers of the age were driven to the Continent for the more affluent adjuncts of art and literature, that the only portrait of the Scottish Reformer having any claim to authenticity, is the small cut in the work of his friend, Theodore Beza ' Icones Virorum Doctrina simul et Pietate Illus- trium,' of Joannes Cnoxvs. It is the prototype of the well-known portrait which shows a thin hard face, high cheek-bones, with a long wiry beard a Geneva cap on the head, and a high - shouldered Geneva gown. It is necessary for the very fallible race of book- collectors to keep these characteristics in remembrance, since, in the French edition of Beza, the portrait of some other man has been sub- stituted for that of Knox. THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 279 demned to death at Rome, but that he was released by a general breaking-open of the prisons on the death of Pope Paul IV. The next act of the drama finds him in the hands of a band of robbers, one of whom recognising him, and remembering to have been helped by him when a destitute wanderer at Bologna, induces his companions to aid instead of robbing the wanderer. Compelled to seek refuge in Geneva, he was on his way thither, passing in disguise through bypaths; and hunger and prostration having overtaken him, he had sat down patiently to await the end, when a dog approached him and laid a piece of money at his feet. Such were the stories believed of the minister of Edinburgh, who had been so long a wanderer from home, and had so entirely forgotten his native lan- guage, that he required to preach in Latin to a select audience in the Magdalen Chapel in the Cowgate, until he found time to acquire a sufficient knowledge of his native tongue. Alexander Ales, some four years older than Knox, has an authentic history as strange and eventful as almost any that even the shifting age of the Reformation can show. He was among the earlier preachers against the Romish hierarchy, and after being three times imprisoned he es- caped to England in 1534, and thence to Germany. He came back to England, carrying with him an introduction from Melanchthon to Cranmer. He was much liked both by the Archbishop and by Cromwell, and even advanced so far as to get within the favour of Henry VIII. a danger- ous position, apt to wax from pleasant warmth into deadly heat. Seeing the approach of his patron Cromwell's fall, and disliking the Act of Supremacy and some other eccle- siastical measures of that wild reign, he fled to Germany again. In a document to be presently noticed, he gives the following account of his flight : "When I could not bear these with a good conscience, nor could my profession allow me to dissemble them (for I was filling the office of the ordinary reader in the cele- brated University of Cambridge by the King's orders), I came to the Court, and asked for my dismissal by means of Crumwell. But he retained me for about three years 280 THE SCOT ABROAD. with empty hopes, until it was decreed and confirmed by law that married priests should be separated from their wives and punished at the King's pleasure. But before this law was published, the Bishop of Canterbury sent Lord Pachet [Paget] from Lambeth to me ajt London. (I understand that he afterwards attained a high position in the Court of your sister, Queen Mary.) He directed me to call upon the Archbishop early in the morning. When I -called upon him, ' Happy man that you are/ said he, ' you can escape ! I wish that I might do the same ; truly my see would be no hindrance to me. You must make haste to escape before the island is blocked up, unless you are willing to sign the decree, as I have, com- pelled by fear. I repent of what I have done. And if I had known that my only punishment would have been de- position from the archbishopric (as I hear that my Lord Latimer is deposed), of a truth I would not have sub- scribed. I am grieved, however, that you have been deprived of your salary for three years by Crumwell ; that you have no funds for your travelling expenses, and that I have no ready money. Nor dare I mention this to my friends, lest the King should become aware that warning had been given by me for you to escape, and that I have provided you with the means of travelling. I give you, however, this ring as a token of my friendship. It once belonged to Thomas Wolsey, and it was presented to me by the King when he gave me the archbishopric.' " When I heard what the Bishop had to say, I imme- diately caused my property to be sold, and I concealed myself in the house of a German sailor until the ship was ready, in which I embarked, dressed as a soldier, along with other German troops, that I might not be detected. When I had escaped a company of searchers, I wrote to Crumwell (although he had not behaved well towards me), and warned him of the danger in which he stood at that time, and about certain other matters. For this I can vouch the testimony of John Ales, Gregory, and the Secretary, and Pachet himself. But Christopher Mount said that Crumwell did not dare to speak to me when I was going away and soliciting my dismissal, nor could he THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 28 1 venture to give me anything, lest he should be accused to the King, but that he would send the sum that he owed me into Germany." He became Professor of Theology at Frankfurt-on-the- Oder, but getting up a great quarrel there, he found it convenient to go to Leipzig, refusing to take a chair offered to him at Konigsberg. He was active in the great ecclesiastical council at Naumburg, and other simi- lar affairs. His pen had its own share in the business of his busy life ; and the titles of his various theological and polemical works, about thirty in all, would fill a good many pages. Instead of enumerating them, however, I shall ask attention to a small fragment from his pen, lately brought to light, relating to certain momentous occur- rences which passed under his eyes. English history has the privilege of possessing an event which may stand as a fair rival to the murder of Darnley in tragic mystery the execution of Anne Boleyn. Mr Froude got access to the Baga de Secretis itself, that secret depository of proceedings against royal personages, the keys of which are guarded by the Lord Chancellor and the Attorney-General ; but he there found only ma- terials for strengthening and deepening the mystery, and left it to the alternative either that the vain beauty was guilty of the horrible crimes laid to her charge, or that some sixty or seventy English gentlemen of high repute conspired to slander her character and put her to death. Ales saw at least a part of this tragedy. On the accession of Queen Elizabeth, he wrote to her a full account of it. He said he had been admonished in a vision that it lay upon him to write the history of the tragedy of the death of the Queen's most holy mother, to illustrate the glory of God and afford consolation to the godly. Whether he ever wrote a book of this kind or not, it has not appeared to the world, and we must accept with thankfulness some- thing that may be called an epitome of its contents, sent for the Queen's immediate satisfaction. He sets down, in the first place, with great distinctness, his own view of the cause of the tragedy : " I am persuaded that the true and chief cause of the 282 THE SCOT ABROAD. hatred, the treachery, and the false accusations laid to the charge of that most holy Queen, your most pious mother, was this, that she persuaded the King to send an embassy into Germany to the Princes who had embraced the Gos- pel. If other arguments of the truth of this were wanting, a single one would be sufficient namely, that before the embassy had returned, the Queen had been executed. "On account of this embassy, the Emperor Charles (who formerly had been so hostile to your most serene father, with whom he had a suit before the Pope and the Papal Legate in England, Campegio, on account of his aunt, Queen Catherine, whom the King had divorced, and because he had married your mother, and honoured her with the regal crown) most grievously threatened the Princes of Germany who were associated in the defence of the Gospel. " It was chiefly on account of this embassy that he pre- pared for hostilities, and invoked the aid of the Pope, King Ferdinand, the nobles of Italy, Spain, Hungary, Bohemia, Lower Germany, and other nations. " On account of this embassy all the Bishops who were opposed to the purer doctrine of the Gospel and adhered to the Roman Pontiff, entered into a conspiracy against your mother." To those who have often regretted that there was no one present to sketch the secondary adjuncts when any great act in the historical drama is passing, the following record of minute particulars will have its due value : " At this time I was in attendance upon Crumwell at the Court, soliciting the payment of a stipend awarded to me by the most serene King. I was known to the Evan- gelical Bishops, whom your most holy mother had ap- pointed from among those schoolmasters who favoured the purer doctrine of the Gospel, and to whom she had intrusted the care of it. I was also upon intimate terms with the Archbishop of Canterbury and Latimer, to whom your most holy mother was in the habit of confessing when she went to the Lord's Table. He it was for whom she sent when she was in prison and knew that she should shortly die. Although this most holy Queen, your very THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 283 pious mother, had never spoken with me, nor had I ever received ought from any one in her name, nor do I ever expect any such thing (for all royal Courts have hitherto been opposed to me), yet in consequence of what I had shortly before heard respecting as well her modesty, prudence, and gravity, as her desire to promote the pure doctrine of the Gospel and her kindness to the poor, from the Archbishop of Canterbury, Bishop Latimer, and even from Crumwell himself, I was deeply grieved in my heart at that tragedy about to be enacted by the Emperor, the Pope, and the other enemies of the Gospel, whose inten- tion it was, along with her, to bury true religion in England, and thus to restore impiety and idolatry. " Never shall I forget the sorrow which I felt when I saw the most serene Queen, your most religious mother, carrying you, still a little baby, in her arms, and entreat- ing the most serene King, your father, in Greenwich Palace, from the open window of which he was looking into the courtyard, when she brought you to him. " I did not perfectly understand what had been going on, but the faces and gestures of the speakers plainly showed that the King was angry, although he could con- ceal his anger wonderfully well. Yet from the protracted conference of the Council (for whom the crowd was wait- ing until it was quite dark, expecting that they would return to London), it was most obvious to every one that some deep and difficult question was being discussed. "Nor was this opinion incorrect. Scarcely had we crossed the river Thames and reached London, when the cannon thundered out, by which we understood that some persons of high rank had been committed to prison within the Tower of London. For such is the custom when any of the nobility of the realm are conveyed to that fortress, which is commonly called the Tower of London, there to be imprisoned. " Those who were present (of whom, by God's mercy, many are still alive, and have now returned into England from banishment) well know how deep was the grief of all the godly, how loud the joy of the hypocrites, the enemies of the Gospel, when the report spread in the morning thai 284 THE SCOT ABROAD. the Queen had been thrown in the Tower. They will remember the tears and lamentations of the faithful who were lamenting over the snare laid for the Queen, and the boastful triumphing of the foes of the true doctrine. I remained a sorrowful man at home, waiting for the re- sult ; for it was easy to perceive that, in the event of the Queen's death, a change of religion was inevitable. " I take to witness Christ, who shall judge the quick and the dead, that I am about to speak the truth. On the day upon which the Queen was beheaded, at sunrise, between two and three o'clock, there was revealed to me (whether I was asleep or awake I know not) the Queen's neck, after her head had been cut off, and this so plainly that I could count the nerves, the veins, and the arteries. "Terrified by this dream or vision, I immediately arose, and crossing the river Thames I came to Lambeth (this is the name of the Archbishop of Canterbury's palace), and I entered the garden in which he was walking. "When the Archbishop saw me he inquired why I had come so early, for the clock had not yet struck four. I answered that I had been horrified in my sleep, and I told him the whole occurrence. He continued in silent wonder for a while, and at length broke out into these words, ' Do not you know what is to happen to-day?' and when I answered that I had remained at home since the date of the Queen's imprisonment, and knew nothing of what was going on, the Archbishop then raised his eyes to heaven and said, l She who has been the Queen of England upon earth will to-day become a Queen in heaven.' So great was his grief that he could say nothing more, and then he burst into tears. " Terrified at this announcement, I returned to London sorrowing. Although my lodging was not far distant from the place of execution, yet I could not become an eye- witness of the butchery of such an illustrious lady, and of the exalted personages who were beheaded along with her. "Those persons, however, who were present (one of whom was my landlord), and others, told me at noon, that the Earl of Wiltshire (the Queen's father) had been commanded to be an assessor along with the judges, in THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 285 order that his daughter might be the more confounded, and that her grief might be the deeper. Yet she stood undismayed ; nor did she ever exhibit any token of im- patience, or grief, or cowardice. " The Queen was accused of having danced in the bed- room with the gentlemen of the King's chamber \curn cubiculariis regis], and of having kissed her brother, Lord Rochfort. When she made no answer to these accusa- tions, the King's syndic or proctor, Master Polwarck, produced certain letters, and bawled out that she could not deny she had written to her brother, informing him that she was pregnant. Still she continued silent. "When the sentence of death was pronounced, the Queen raised her eyes to heaven, nor did she condescend to look at her judges, but went to the place of execution. Kneeling down, she asked that time for prayer should be granted her. When she had ceased praying, she herself arranged her hair, covered her eyes, and commanded the executioner to strike. " The Queen exhibited such constancy, patience, and faith towards God, that all the spectators, even her ene- mies, and those persons who previously had rejoiced at her misfortune out of their hatred to the doctrine of the religion which she had introduced into England, testified and proclaimed her innocence and chastity." He then narrates the conversation at table, which would require more comment than can be here afforded to ren- der it distinct. Then "While the guests were thus talking at table in my hearing, it so happened that a servant of CrumwelPs came from the Court, and sitting down at the table, asked the landlord to let him have something to eat, for he was exceedingly hungry. " In the meantime, while the food was being got ready, the other guests asked him what were his news ? Where was the King ? What was he doing ? Was he sorry for the Queen ? He answered by asking why should he be sorry for her? As she had already betrayed him in secrecy, so now was he openly insulting her. For just as she, while the King was oppressed with the heavy 286 THE SCOT ABROAD. cares of state, was enjoying herself with others, so he, when the Queen was being beheaded, was enjoying him- self with another woman. " While all were astonished, and ordered him to hold his tongue, for he was saying what no one would believe, and that he would bring himself into peril if others heard him talking thus, he answered, ' You yourselves will speedily hear from other persons the truth of what I have been saying.' " The landlord, who was a servant of Crumwell's, hear- ing this, said, 'It is not fitting for us to dispute about such affairs. If they are true they will be no secret. And when I go to Court I will inquire carefully into these matters.' " The person, however, who had first spoken, answered that he had the King's orders that none but the councillors and secretaries should be admitted, and that the gate of the country-house should be kept shut in which the King had secluded himself. "Some days afterwards, when the landlord returned from the Court, before any one asked him a question, he called out with a loud voice, ' I have news to tell you.' The guests anxiously waited to know what he had to say ; whereupon he added, that within a few days the King would be betrothed, and shortly afterwards would be married, but without any state, in the presence of the councillors only ; for he wished to delay the coronation of his new spouse until he should see whether she would give birth to a boy. "The issue of events proved that this was the truth, for the Lady Jane was crowned Queen when she was upon the eve of the confinement in which she died. " The birth of a son gave immense satisfaction to the King. But as he was afraid that he himself would not live so long as to see the child grown up, he removed out of the way all those persons of whom he was apprehensive, lest, upon his death, they should seize the crown." l 11 Calender of State Papers (Foreign), 1558-1559,' No. 1303. The public are under obligation to Mr Joseph Stevenson not only THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 287 So much for the exiled Scottish clergyman's account of what he saw in the shifting Court of Henry VIII. The early Reformers, and the leaders of the predom- inant ecclesiastical party in Scotland for a considerable period after the Reformation, were eminently learned. The example of a foreign education was set to them by their political head, the Regent Murray, who studied in Paris under the renowned Peter Raraus. Something of John Welch, Knox's son-in-law, we have seen already. Alexander Arbuthnot, Principal of King's College in Aberdeen, and an ecclesiastical leader of emi- nence in the reign of King James, studied under Cuja- cius at Bourges. Erskine of Dun, one of the early lay leaders of the Reformation, studied under Melanchthon at Wittenberg, and passed over to Denmark. Here we are told that he attended the lectures of John Maccabeus, a Scotsman, of whom we would know scarcely anything, had he not been excavated by the labours of the inde- fatigable Dr M'Crie, who makes out that he was a Mac- alpine who changed his name, and served with credit as a professor in the University of Copenhagen. Andrew Melville, not less known to fame from his place in ecclesi- astical history than from the excellent biography of him by Dr M'Crie, studied at Paris, and went afterwards to Poitiers, where he became regent in the College of St Marceau. He succeeded Knox in the friendship of Beza, and was so sedulously the disciple of the venerable scholar, that his enemies called him Beza's ape. Several of the succeeding leaders of the Scottish Church, such as Boyd of Trochrig, Thomas Smeton, Robert Baillie, Alexander Henderson, and William Spang, had intimate relations with Continental scholars. Baillie published his folio on Scriptural and Classical Chronology at Amsterdam. 1 Con- cerning Spang, it is necessary to lift up a protestation, for finding this document, but for translating a large portion of it into English. 1 ' Opens Historic! et Chronologici Libri duo, in quibus historia sacra et profana compendiose deducitur ex ipsis fontibus, a Creatione Mundi ad Constantinum Magnum, &c. Per D. Robertum Ballium, 1668.' 288 THE SCOT ABROAD. since a great historian of our age, who is rather fond of wakening with a rattling peal of thunder any contem- porary whom he finds napping, has endeavoured to deprive him of existence, suggesting that he is altogether a mistake for Strang. 1 But Spang was the respected name of a very considerable scholar and an acute observer, as any one will find who chooses to peruse his ' Rerum nuper in Regno Scoticse Gestarum Historia/ &c., published at Dantzic in 1641, of which the present writer has the privilege to possess a tall clean copy bound in vellum. The Covenanting contest was doubtless inimical to learning, but there was more of it among the Covenanters themselves than they generally get credit for. The letters of Samuel Rutherford have a hold on the affections of two classes of people : the one, those like-minded with himself, who enjoy the excessive luxuriance of his meta- phorical piety, and the free-and-easy way in which he claps on the shoulder and takes a chat with the exist- ences most sacred in the thoughts of Christian people ; the other class are those who are in search of the scan- dals of Puritanic literature, for the purpose of holding them up to odium or ridicule. In this way Rutherford was very valuable to the compiler, whoever he was, of the * Scotch Presbyterian Eloquence Displayed, or, The Folly of their Teaching Discovered;' and he was not unacceptable to the late Mr Buckle, who would have 1 Perhaps the fine Roman hand in which this doubt is raised can be recognised : ' ' As in this museum manuscript, otherwise of good authority, the name of the principal correspondent is not ' Spang, ' but ' Strang/ and we learn elsewhere that Baillie wrote the miser- ablest hand, a question arises whether Strang be not once for all the real name, and Spang from the first a mere false reading, which has now become inveterate? Strang, equivalent to Strong, is still a common name in those parts of Scotland. Spang which is a Scot- tish verb, signifying leap violently, leap distractedly, as an imprisoned terrified kangaroo might leap we never heard of as a Christian person's surname before. 'The reverend Mr Leap -distractedly,'' labouring in that dense element of Campvere, in Holland ? We will hope not, if there be a ray of hope ! The Bannatyne Club, now in a manner responsible, is able to decide." Article on "Baillie the Covenanter," 'Westminster Review ' April 1842. THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 289 thought such writings as his less amazing if he had been more accustomed to them. Rutherford, no doubt, was an ardent fanatic, but this did not prevent him from being a scholar, known abroad by his work on Armenianism, which was carefully re-edited at Utrecht. 1 His familiars might have questioned whether the author of the 'Examen' would have rested peacefully in his grave had he known that his Dutch editor dedicated the book to so heterodox a person as that female Crichton, the celebrated Anna Maria Schurmann. The Dutch seem to have taken a strong liking to him. He was offered a professor's chair at Harderwyck, which he declined ; and afterwards his brother, Captain James Rutherford, garrisoned with the Scotch Dutch contingent at Grave, was sent over to press him to accept the Pro- fessorship of Divinity at Utrecht, vacant in 1651 by the death of the celebrated Dematius, or Charles de Maets. His reasoning for declining foreign employment is ex- pressed in his own peculiar way in one of his letters, in which he urges a brother clergyman to follow his example : " Let me entreat you to be far from the thoughts of leaving this land. I see it and find it, that the Lord hath covered the whole land with a cloud in His anger ; but though I have been tempted to the like, I had rather be in Scotland beside angry Jesus Christ, than in any Eden or garden in the earth." And here I am reminded of the illogicality of discoursing under the title of the Scot abroad, concerning a Scotsman who would not go abroad. My excuse is, that his fame and his works travelled afar, and created a desire for his presence. 1 'Examen Arminianismi conscriptum et discipulis dictatum a doctissimo clarissimoque viro D. Samuele Rhetorforte, S.S. TheoL in Academia Scotiae Sanctandreanl Doctore et Professore, 1668.' The transformation of his name into Rhetorfortis, though not an equivalent in translation, is not so perplexing as many of the classify - ings which tease one so much in following up the names of that period. Another Scotsman, for instance, is known in the world of letters as Theagrius. His name was David Hume, and he wrote a history of the house of Douglas. But how connect Hume with Theagrius ? He was the laird of a piece of ground called Godscroft, or God's field. T 29O THE SCOT ABROAD. John Brown of Wamphray was a voluminous writer on religion and theology. His books may still be picked up, sorely thumbed and stained, and odorous of peat-reek, after the fashion of seventeenth-century religious literature in Scotland. Whoever would know thoroughly the his- tory of the time, must follow for information on the steps of those who have read such books with the relish of devotees ; for how shall we know the nature of a people unless we trace their religious influences to the very fountain-heads ? Perhaps the most animated of his works is the quarto, in which he lifts his testimony against the Quakers, proving that they are on the highway to pagan- ism. He is known through foreign printing-presses as Joannes Broun, Scoto-Britannus. He died minister of the Scots Church at Amsterdam, some years before the Revolution, and was zealous against Erastianism a favourite enemy of the Scottish Presbyterian pulpit attacking it even within the native stronghold of the Dutch vernacular, and dragging it into the light of the language of learning for just condemnation. 1 There was, in fact, a little nest of Covenanting refugee clergy at Rotterdam, whose mouths Charles II. had in- fluence enough in Holland to stop. Two of them M'Ward, a great correspondent of Baillie's, and John Nevay, the author of a Latin paraphrase of the Song of Solomon were considerable scholars, and as such es- teemed among the scholarly Dutch. But King Charles would not probably have repented of the Act which put them to silence, if he had read M< Ward's lamentation over the event, meekly though it is expressed " Oh ! when I remember that burning and shining light, worthy and warm Mr Livingstone, who used to preach as within the sight of Christ and the glory to be revealed ; acute and distinct Nevay; judicious and neat Sympson; fervent, 1 ' Libri duo. In priori, Wolzogium in libellis duobus de inter- prete scripturarum causam orthodoxam prodidisse demonstratur. In posteriori, Lambert! Velthusii Sententia Libertino Erastiana, in libello vernaculo de idolatria et superstitione nuper proposita, detegitur et confutatur. Authore Joanne Broun, Scoto Britanno, V.D.M., Amstelodami, 1660.' THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 29 1 serious, and zealous Trail. When I remember, I say, that all these great luminaries are now set," &C. 1 A Robert Douglas served as chaplain to the Scots troops in the army of Gustavus Adolphus. The tradition of his birth is one of the most romantic on record. He was esteemed to be a son of Mary Queen of Scots and George Douglas her admirer, born during her captivity in Loch- leven Castle. The Swedish warrior was said to have had a high esteem for him, saying he was fit to be a prime minister as well as an ecclesiastical leader ; nay, that he would trust his army in the hands of Robert Douglas : but these testimonials are vouched for only by Wodrow, who thought there was nothing beyond the capacity of "a great state preacher," as he calls Douglas a term very expressively applicable to a class of men whose ser- mons shook thrones and sent armies to battle. All these spiritual heroes were on the side of Calvinism. The old Church, however, was not entirely without testi- fiers. Hamilton, Chambers, Cone, Laing, Dempster, and Burne, have already stepped across the stage, and we have seen in some measure how Knox fared at the hands of some of these. One of his chief controversial op- ponents was Ninian Winzeat or Wingate, Abbot of the Scots Monastery of St James, at Ratisbon, already re- ferred to. To this office he was driven by losing one that sounds lowly enough beside it that of parish school- master in Linlithgow. But he seemed to carry with him regrets for his severance from that, "his kindly town," and a lively sense of the importance of the functions there fulfilled by him, judging " the teaching of the youth- head in virtue and science, next after the authority with the ministers of justice, under it and after the angelical office of godly pastors, to obtain the third principal place most commodious and necessary to the Kirk of God." Winzeat was the author of the ' Flagellum Sectariorum/ and of a precious tract called * The Last Blast of the Trompet of Godis Worde aganis the vsurpit auctoritie of 1 'The History of the Scottish Church, Rotterdam,' by the Rev. William Steven, M.A., p. 54. 2Q2 THE SCOT ABROAD. Johne Knox, and his Caluiniane Brether.' This, of course, was not a kind of production to be published with impunity in the sixteenth century, in a place where the object of the attack was supreme in power; and it completed that measure of Winzeat's iniquity which com- pelled him to seek safety and find promotion abroad. Another opponent figures in Knoxian literature as Tyrie the Jesuit. Little is known of him but the fact that he belonged to the great Society of Jesus, unless we accept also as a fact the statement of his friend George Cone, whom we have already met with, that his accom- plishments exhausted all human knowledge. His tone is moderate, and in his gentleness he administers some hard hits. He possessed the vantage-ground which the early defenders of Catholicism held, in the fact that most of their opponents were converts, and he knew how to touch this chink in his antagonists' armour. Had they not been dealt with otherwise, Blackwood and the worthy Bishop Leslie might have been brought in here as champions of the old Church. Another Scots- man of the same family name, George Leslie, enjoyed a more astounding but less substantial fame than the bishop's as a champion of Catholicism. John Benedict Rinuccini, Archbishop of Fermo, wrote his life and marvellous adventures under the name of the " Scottish Capuchin" II Cappucchine Scozzese; who, returning to his native towers at Monymusk, there executed mirac- ulous conversions, for the particulars of which we refer, as official people say, to the document itself. It was trans- lated into several languages, dramatised, and acted ; and an abridgment of it by Lord Hailes, written with his usual dry succinctness, is to be found among his bio- graphical tracts. The shortness of the period during which Episcopacy was the Establishment in Scotland after the Reformation, afforded few opportunities for its clerical members con- necting themselves with foreign countries, before the period when Scotland became less conspicuous for the migration of her sons. Yet the Episcopal Church showed the Continent more than one eminent ecclesiastic. Pat- THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 293 rick Adamson, a man highly unpopular in ecclesiastical politics, in his latter days wrote some clever Latin poems at Bourges, to beguile his time while in hiding from the slaughterers of St Bartholomew. Dr John Forbes, of Corse, whose 'Tractatus de Simonia,' and other works, in two portly folios, are an element in every complete theological library, left his paternal acres in Aberdeen- shire, and for some years wandered among the univer- sities of France, Germany, and Holland, passing so far north as Upsala. He married at Middelburg a Dutch wife, bearing the name of Soete Roose Boom, which, being translated, means, it appears, Sweet Rose Tree. Spottiswood, the historian-archbishop, adapted himself so much to the customs of Paris, that he was under the accusation of having there attended Mass. The good Bishop Leighton lived long enough in France to speak like a Frenchman. Burnet, who belongs more to litera- ture and history than to theology, had more to do than he desired with the other side of the Channel. He is not the only man whom Scotland sent, with the advan- tages of foreign intercourse and training, to get prefer- ment in the English Church. One very eminent instance may be taken. Patrick Young (Patricius Junius), the great Biblical critic, who introduced the Alexandrian version of the Bible to the learned world, lived much in Paris, and corresponded with fellow-labourers in Hol- land and Germany. As these sketches profess to be entirely free from the despotism of systematic arrangement, and licensed to wander at their own sweet will, I feel that I should compromise the privileges claimed for them were I to continue to arrange them, as the last groups have been, under religious or professional denominations. Let us, then, before running into any more classifications, take a brief ramble into the republic of letters. First, I shall call up Florence Wilson, or Florentius Volusinus, who commemorates with pleasant pensiveness his early child- hood on the banks of the Lossie, while he writes on the consolations of philosophy in the old cathedral town of Carpentras, of which he is as much a denizen as if his 294 THE SCOT ABROAD. ancestors had lived there for many generations. A learned and accurate scholar, who has done much to clear pathways through the jungles of this kind of litera- ture, gives the following pleasant account of some of the steps upwards in Wilson's career : " He prosecuted his studies in the University of Paris, and was there employed in the capacity of tutor to a son of Cardinal Wolsey's brother. Such an appointment might have led to much higher honour and emolument ; but the death of the cardinal, which took place in the year 1530, compelled him to search for new employment. Another cardinal, Jean de Lorraine, encouraged him in the pur- suit of learning by assigning to him an annual pension, of which, however, the amount was probably small, nor does it appear to have been punctually paid. He like- wise obtained the favour of Jean du Bellay, Bishop of Paris; and in the year 1534, when that prelate was em- ployed on an embassy to Rome, Wilson was included in his train, and had proceeded as far as Avignon, when he was arrested by a malady which compelled him to re- linquish his engagement. In addition to his bodily ail- ments, he had now to complain of the exhausted state of his purse ; and thus he was again left to seek a new path of preferment. From two of his letters which have been preserved in the Cotton Library, we learn that he had visited London, and was personally acquainted with several persons of distinction. One of these letters, written in his native language, is somewhat mutilated by fire, and is without the superscription; it seems, however, to have been addressed to Thomas Cromwell, subsequently Earl of Essex, and is chiefly occupied with details of ecclesiastical proceedings in Paris. In the other, written in Latin and addressed to Dr Starkey, he sends his salutations to Cromwell, then Secretary of State, as well as to Edward Fox, Bishop of Hereford; and the famous Bishop of Winchester, Stephen Gardiner, is there mentioned as one particularly interested in the writer. Both letters are undated; but, from internal evidence, this last appears to have been written in the year 1535. He alludes to his having been in London THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 295 during the preceding summer ; and he reminds his cor- respondent Starkey, that while they were walking in the garden of Antonius Bonvisius, he recommended the city of Carpentras, in the south of France, as a place where he might find a pleasant retreat. As he was anxious to visit Italy, he did not at that time feel inclined to avail himself of this suggestion ; but after he had proceeded as far as Lyons, where he met his friend Bonvisius, and was still doubtful whither he should direct his course, he resolved that he would at least take Carpentras in his route. When he arrived at Avignon, he received infor- mation that the bishop of the diocese was anxious to find some person properly qualified to teach the public school of Carpentras. This prelate was the celebrated Cardinal Sadoleto, who was himself distinguished for his Latinity; a qualification which had recommended him to the office of Apostolical Secretary under two successive pontiffs. Wilson lost no time in proceeding to the episcopal resi- dence, where he experienced a very gracious reception. The cardinal was one evening engaged in his studies, when a servant announced that a stranger, wearing a gown, requested permission to wait upon him. The wayfaring scholar was admitted without delay; and on being questioned as to his country, his profession, and the occasion of his visit, he answered with so much modesty of sentiment and propriety of expression, that Sadoleto was immediately impressed with a most favour- able opinion of his character and attainments. His nice ear was gratified with Wilson's classical Latinity; nor was he a little surprised on learning that his visitor was a native of a country so wild and remote as Scotland. At an early hour of the following morning, having sent for one of the chief magistrates of the city, together with another functionary apparently concerned in the manage- ment of the school, he communicated to them his strong prepossessions in favour of this candidate. He had re- quested his nephew, Paolo Sadoleto, to inquire in Italy for a person duly qualified to undertake the charge of the school ; but he was now persuaded that he could scarcely expect to find in an Italian the same modesty, prudence, 296 THE SCOT ABROAD. and propriety of address and demeanour. Being invited to dine at the cardinal's with the chief magistrates and other guests, he conducted himself with so much de- corum, and displayed so much knowledge, as well as modesty, in the discussion of some questions of natural philosophy, that the patrons of the school thought it unnecessary to seek any other evidence of his qualifi- cations. The magistrates immediately took him aside, and he was appointed master of Carpentras school, with an annual salary of seventy crowns. When we estimate the comparative value of money, this may be considered as no despicable sum ; and it may be supposed that he was entitled to some additional emolument arising from fees. Sadoleto was much gratified to find that he was qualified to initiate his pupils in the Greek language." x How pleasant it would be if we could trace a few others in this way, and see the steps by which they mounted upwards ! There was a James Martin, who was professor at Rome and Turin, and remembered his far-off Scots home among the wooded valleys of Dunkeld, as Wilson remembered his in Morayshire who would perhaps have afforded as distinctive a narrative had we now any memo- rial of him beyond his book professing to clear up physio- logical difficulties which still puzzle the learned. 2 William Hegate and Robert Balfour were simulta- neously professors at Bordeaux ; and it is of them that Vinetus is supposed to write to Buchanan when he says, " This school is rarely without a Scotsman ; it has two at 1 Irving's ' Lives of Scotish Writers,' i. 24-28. There is a great question, by the way, on which I shall not venture to enter as a com- batant whether we should say Scottish or Scotch. A third method is Scots ; and I fear my own principles are so loose that all three forms may be found in these pages. The learned author just quoted took up his testimony upon a different form from any of these Scotish, with one t ; and from some little knowledge of him, I be- lieve he would have suffered martyrdom in the cruelest form that the genius of torture could devise, rather than assent to the double t or the ch. 2 ' Jacobi Martini Scoti Dunkeldensis Philosophise Professoris pub- lici in Academia Taurinensi de Prima Simplicium et Concretorum Corporum Generatione Disputatio.' THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 297 present one of whom is professor of philosophy, the other of the Greek language and mathematics : both are good, honest, and learned men, and enjoy the favourable opinion of their auditors." The same university was for some time the theatre of the celebrity of John Cam- eron, whose life, as written by Bayle, affords us an excel- lent specimen of the vagrant Scottish scholar, filling successively a chair in half the universities of western Europe. The great sceptic records the astonishment of the French, who found in this youth, raw from Glas- gow, " que dans un age si peu avancd, il pariait en Grec sur le champ avec la meme facilite', et avec la meme purete', que d'autres font en Latin." Sir Robert Ayton, whose monument is in Westminster Abbey, wrote many of his sweet poems in France, and frequented several of the German courts. David Panther whose 'Literse Regum Scotorum ' were thought worthy of publication at a period comparatively late, on account of the excel- lence of their Latinity was a wanderer abroad, and acquired a knowledge of foreign countries which marked him out as a proper representative of the Crown of Scot- land at the French Court. It would be unpardonable to omit William Bellenden, of whose life scarcely anything is known, save that he spent the greater part of his days in Paris, where he is spoken of as an advocate, and a professor of humanity. His works are remarkable for their pure Latinity and their searching analytical criticism of the indications of ancient life and government afforded by the classical writers, and especially by Cicero. A set of his tracts, clustered together under the title of ' De Statu, 7 was re- edited by Samuel Parr, with a Latin preface in his usual style, bristling with Greek quotations, and allusions to Foxius and Northius. The chief object of the publication was to show how largely Conyers Middleton, in his * Life of Cicero,' was indebted to Bellenden. Every one is familiar with the ' Argenis ' of Barclay. Many have been tempted by the aspect of the compact Elzevier in the book-stalls to transfer it to their library. Few, however, notwithstanding the eulogium of Cowper, 298 THE SCOT ABROAD. have had intrepidity enough to read this dense little romance. Prose works of fiction have never had a strong popular vitality. The 'Telemaque' has lived under the protection of the birch as a useful schoolbook ; and, by the way, in its turnings of historical allegory it has more analogy to the 'Argenis' than any other book I could point to. It remains to be seen whether Scott is to retain his fame on higher sanctions, but the fate of his predecessors is unpromising. Richardson, over whose melting pages our grandmothers cried their eyes dry and feverish, is now voted a bore. Even Fielding and Smollett, though respected as wit and humorist, are rather shunned ; and the ' Mysteries of Udolpho ' no longer draw the evening circle nearer to the fire, their hearts beating with the terror of mysterious sounds in dark corners. It requires some reading to inform one that the world was once mad about 'Artimenes, or the Grand Cyrus.' Hence we can form little notion of the popularity to which the ' ArgemV was entitled as a ro- mance. But it has its merits of another kind worth looking into. The hints it gives about the designs of the Guises have been already referred to. 1 The strange complexity and rather tiresome absence of all touches of nature in the narrative arise from the peculiarity and dif- ficulty of the task which the author had set before himself. He resolved to leave a transcript of his insight into the secret politics of the time without saying anything which could be taken hold of as dangerous criticism and reve- lation. Accordingly, he told a long story as far apart from ordinary or even possible human events as possible. And yet in his characters the critic has gradually worked out Henry III. of France, Henry IV. and his father of Navarre, Philip II. of Spain, Queen Elizabeth, the Guises including the Duke of Mayenne and their follower Vil- leroi, Bethlehem Gabor prince of Transylvania, Cardinal Barberini, who became Pope Urban VIII. , John Calvin, and many minor political celebrities. Still many people prefer his secondary work, called the * Satyricon Euphor- 1 See ante, p, 118. THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 299 mionis/ on account of its curious notices of the condition of Britain. A question here arises, Was Barclay a Scot? One's conscience might easily be set at rest by the brief state- ment in the Life prefixed to the best edition of his works, that he was born at Aberdeen. 1 My own belief is that he was born while his parents sojourned in France. He came, however, of an Aberdeenshire family, the same whose old fortalice of Towie enabled the Rus- sian general to take the name of Barclay de Tolly. The father of the author of ' Argenis,' William Barclay, was born in Aberdeenshire, in the year 1546. After sitting at the feet of Cujacius, and learning from Don- nellus and Contius, he became professor of civil law in the University of Pontamousson in Lorraine. He wrote some jurisprudential works, chiefly with a political ten- dency, and might have been cited among the opponents of Buchanan. William Barclay and his contemporary Peter Ayrault had each a contest with the Jesuits, which has associated them with each other in the amusing pages of Menage. It was the practice of the Society of Jesus to look out for young men of high ability and absorb them out of the world into their own order to fight as spiritual soldiers, with a grasp on their absolute devotedness stronger even than that which held the priesthood at large ; for while these had no wife and offspring to divide their affections, the youth enlisted in the army of Loyola were children so obtained and trained as to be ignorant of their ancestry, their parentage, and the very existence of their family. It was the policy on which the Egyptian Government embodied the Mamelukes. It was thus that Peter Ayrault lost his son Rend He made all Europe ring with his lamentations. As the Lieutenant-Criminel of Angers, he was notorious for the severe discharge of his duties, but he stretched them to their utmost against the Jesuit brethren in vain. He used every engine which 1 "Natus est Aberdoniae ex antiquissima Scotorum familia." Leyden edition, 1664. 300 THE SCOT ABROAD. connection, political influence, and sympathy with his wild grief could move, but all was naught. He published a book for helping the youth, should he alight on it, to find his father, to whom he was implored to reveal himself and return. He executed a public document of paternal disownment. Everything was in vain ; and whether his offspring was dragging out a life of miserable drudgery, or was high in fame and power as an illustrious member of his powerful order, the father never knew, though the industry of subsequent biographers revealed the story of Rene's life, and found it to be a rather com- monplace one. 1 Barclay's affair with the Jesuits was the antithesis of this. They wanted his son John, but the father put them at defiance. After both toil and danger, he was just suc- cessful in keeping the author of the ' Argenis ' for the ordi- nary world. The stories, however, were parallel in showing the great power of the new Order. Barclay was driven from his lucrative office in Lorraine, where the Duke, who had warmly befriended him, became either afraid or unwilling to back him against his powerful enemies. A time of retribution was recorded, though the sufferers did not see it. The wrongs of the father bereaved, and of the father oppressed, went forth together into the world of letters, and had their weight in that accumulating storm of fear and hatred which crushed the Order. The elder Barclay naturally suggests to us a special class of authors, the jurists. Some of them have already been spoken of for their labours in other spheres. As a practical lawyer, Robert Reid, the second President of the Court of Session, was enabled to adjust the procedure in that tribunal to the foreign model on which it was founded, by much sojourning among the Italian and French lawyers. He was a patron of letters, and de- 1 It is curious to observe how, in the byways of literature as in those of social life, some slight chain of connection is found between persons and events naturally distinct and disconnected. Ayrault was a pupil of the Barnaby Brisson whose fate has been mentioned in connection with the adventures of another Scotsman. See ante, p. 192. THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 3<D1 sired to infuse new intellectual blood into his country, by inducing eminent foreign scholars to reside in Scot- land. He brought with him from France, and placed as a monk in the retired monastery of Kinloss, Ferrerius the Piedmontese, who continued Boece's History. Among his contemporaries several Scotsmen held the chairs of jurisprudence in the Continental universities. Edward Henryson, who wrote a tract ' De Jurisdictione,' preserved in Meerman's * Thesaurus/ and who was em- ployed in editing and consolidating the Scottish Acts in the reign of James VI., was for some time a professor of civil law at Bourges. Peter Bissat was professor of canon law in Bologna, and wrote some works, jurisprudential and literary, with which I profess no acquaintance be- yond the titles attributed to them in works of reference. William Wellwood, of a family afterwards distinguished in literature, and in many other paths to eminence, pub- lished at Porto Ferrara a work on International Law, as connected with ocean rights one of the books which helped Grotius to frame his great system. He published at Leyden, before the end of the sixteenth century, a parallel between the French and the Roman law. Henry Scrimgeour, of the house of Dudhope, gained a high fame among Continental civilians by his Greek version of the ' Constitutions Novelise ' : he lived the greater part of his days at Augsburg and Geneva. Sir Thomas Craig, the great feudalist, though he lived a good deal in Scotland, drew the resources of his work from his intercourse with the Continental jurists, the next genera- tion of whom referred to it as an authority. Sir John Skene, a lawyer at the height of his fame about the turning of the seventeenth into the eighteenth century, performed a more enlightened task than that of the commentators or the civilians. He was the first in any systematic way to collect the Acts of Parliament and other native laws of his own country. But he had been a considerable wanderer in most parts of Europe, and recalled the reminiscences of his foreign experiences evidently with enjoyment. In a passage in his Dictionary of Law Terms, which I remember reading long ago, but 3O2 THE SCOT ABROAD. cannot now find, he refers, as an example of something he has to say, to the great Alpine horn on which the Swiss shepherds seem to have performed in his day, as every traveller there knows that they do in this ; and in reference to the customs of pedlars, he refers to his ex- perience in Poland. Sir James Melville wanted to take Skene as his legal adviser when he went to adjust the terms of the marriage of King James with Anne of Denmark, saying of him "that he was best acquainted with the condition of the Germans, and could mak them lang harangues in Latin, and was a gude true stout man lyk a Dutch man." 1 Were this an exhaustive catalogue of the Scottish jurists, it would be necessary to include in it the eccentric Mark Alexander Boyd, the friend of Cujacius, who found himself, although a Protestant, fight- ing against his own friends. Drummond of Hawthornden, too, studied civil law at Bourges, with the intention of practising on his return ; but Themis was not the muse in whose train he was destined to march. 2 1 Memoirs, p. 366. 2 I am loath entirely to pass over one of Sir Thomas Urquhart's favourites ; but he comes up in such a questionable shape that I must shove him into a note, lest he should render the rest of the company questionable by his companionship. "There was another, called Doctor Seaton not a doctor of divinity, but one that had his degrees at Padua, and was doctor utriusque juris ; for whose pregnancy of wit, and vast skill in all the mysteries of the civil and canon laws, being accounted one of the ablest men that ever breathed, he was most heartily desired by Pope Urbane the Eighth to stay at Rome ; and, the better to encourage him thereto, made him chief professor of the Sapience (a colledge in Rome so called), where, although he lived a pretty while with great honour and reputation, yet at last (as he was a proud man), falling at some odds with il collegia Romano, the supreamest seat of the Jesuites, and that wherein the general of that numerous society hath his constant residence, he had the courage to adventure coping with them where they were strongest, and in matter of any kind of learn- ing to give defiance to their greatest scholars ; which he did do with such a height of spirit, and in such a lofty and bravashing humour, that (although there was never yet that ecclesiastical incorporation wherein there was so great universality of literature or multiplicity of learned men) he nevertheless, misregarding what estimation they were in with others, and totally reposing on the stock or basis of his THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 303 Having got again into the groove of "the departments," medicine should have its share. The well-earned renown of Scotland as a medical school belongs to that later period when she was enabled to keep her distinguished sons at home. If one were very anxious to catch at own knowledge, openly gave it out, that if those Teatinos (his choler not suffering him to give them their own name of Jesuites) would offer any longer to continue in vexing him with their frivolous chat and captious argumentations, to the impugning of his opinions (and yet in matters of religion they were both of one and the same faith), he would (like a Hercules amongst so many myrmidons) fall in with- in the very midst of them, so besquatter them on all sides, and, with the granads of his invincible arguments, put the braines of all and each of them in such a fire, that they should never be able (pump as ihey would) to find in all the celluls thereof one drop of either reason or learning wherewith to quench it. " This unequal undertaking of one against so many, whereof some were greater courtiers with his Papal Holiness then he, shortened his abode at Rome ; and thereafter did him so much prejudice in his travels through Italy and France, that when at any time he became scarce of money (to which exigent his prodigality often brought him), he could not, as before, expect an ayuda de costa (as they call it) or viaticum from any prince of the territories through which he was to pass, because the channels of their liberality were stopped by the rancour and hatred of his conventual adversaries. ' ' When, nevertheless, he was at the lowest ebb of his fortune, his learning, and incomparable facility in expressing anything with all the choicest ornaments of, and incident varieties to, the perfection of the Latin elocution, raised him to the dignity of being possessed with the chair of Lipsius, and professing humanity (in Italy called buone letere] in the famous University of Lovan : yet (like Mercury) unapt to fix long in any one place, deserting Lovan, he repaired to Paris, where he was held in exceeding great reputation for his good parts, and so universally beloved that both laicks and churchmen, courtiers and scholars, gentlemen and merchants, and almost all manner of people willing to learn some new thing or other (for, as says Aristotle, every one is desirous of knowledge), were ambitious of the enjoy- ment of his company, and ravished with his conversation. For besides that the matter of his discourse was strong, sententious, and witty, he spoke Latin as if he had been another Livy or Salustius ; nor, had he been a native of all the three countryes of France, Italy, and Germany, could he have exprest himself (as still he did when he had occasion) with more selected variety of words, nimbler volu- bility of utterance, or greater dexterity for tone, phrase, and accent in all the three languages thereto belonging. ' ' I have seen him circled about at the Louvre with a ring of 304 THE SCOT ABROAD. names, we might claim one of the early lords of the fantastic science, which was the medical science of its day, in "the wondrous Michael Scott." But within the period of more authentic biography, if not of more legiti- mate science, we are not unrepresented abroad in this department. Duncan Liddel, the son of a respectable citizen in Aberdeen, where he was born in the middle of the sixteenth century, ambitious for a wider field than his native town afforded, took his staff in his hand and wandered to Frankfurt- on -the -Oder, where he found a friend and guide in his countryman, John Craig, profes- sor of logic and mathematics. After trials of his fortune in several places, he became professor of physic in the University of Helmstadt, where he was revered as the founder and maintainer of a distinguished medical school. His professional works had a great European reputation in their day. Henry Blackwood, the brother of the vin- dicator of Queen Mary, was dean of the faculty of medicine in the University of Paris. Peter Lowe, who French lords and gentlemen, who hearkned to his discourse with so great attention, that none of them, so long as he was pleased to speak, would offer to interrupt him ; to the end that the pearles falling from his mouth might be the more orderly congested in the several treasures of their judgements : the ablest advocates, barristers, or counsellors at law of all the parlement of Paris, even amongst those that did usually plead en la chambre doree, did many times visit him at his house, to get his advice in hard debatable points. He came also to that sublime pitch of good diction even in the French tongue, that there having past, by vertue of a frequent intercourse, several missives in that idiom betwixt him and le sieur de Balzak, who by the quaintest romancealists of France, and daintiest complementers of all its lushious youth, was almost uncontrollably esteemed in eloquence to have surpassed Ciceron ; the straine of Seaton's letters was so high, the fancy so pure, the words so well connected, and the cadence so just, that Balzak (infinitely taken with its fluent yet con- cise oratory), to do him the honour that was truly due to him, most lovingly presented him with a golden pen, in acknowledgment of Seaton's excelling him both in rhetorick and the art of perswa- sion ; which gift proceeding from so great an orator, and for a su- pereminency in that faculty wherein himself, without contradic- tion, was held the chiefest of this and all former ages that ever were born in the French nation, could not chuse but be accounted honourable." THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 305 wrote a book no less comprehensive than 'The whole Course of Chirurgie' in 1597, styled himself "Arellian Doctor in the Faculty of Chirurgie in Paris," and became physician in ordinary to Henry IV. A life of Marc Duncan, who was a practising physician at Saumur, will be found in Moreri. He obtained so high a professional reputation that King James I. of England endeavoured to bring him to St James's, but he had married and settled himself in France. He wrote a pamphlet, taking the bold and merciful view of the celebrated persecution of Urban Grandier, the events connected with which came under his immediate notice but he is chiefly re- membered as the author of the ' Institutiones Logicse.' He was Principal of the University of Saumur. Another multifariously endowed Scottish physician, Walter Donald- son, an Aberdonian, is commemorated at length by Bayle. In the University of Sedan he was professor of physics, ethics, and Greek. Dr Pitcairn, now better known as a sarcastic Jacobite author than as a scientific physician, was a professor in Leyden before he took up his residence in Edinburgh. Patrick Anderson, a physician, born some time after the middle of the sixteenth century, acted a part very similar in externals to that of a quack vendor of pills in the nineteenth. He advertised as a sovereign remedy for all ills his angelic grains or pills. It may be pleaded in his defence, however, that his advertisement was in the form of a Latin exposition. It was probably not very extensively read in its own day, and is now so rare that a copy of it is worth much more than its weight in gold. 1 He professed to bring the art of compounding these pills from Venice. Probably no patent medicine in this coun- try has lived so long. Its vitality is connected with im- portant constitutional adjustments. In consequence of the formidable protestations by the House of Commons against monopolies, the Act of 1623 was passed for abol- ishing them. This Act, by reserving the power to grant 1 ' Grana Angelica, hoc est pilularum hujus nominis insignis utilitas,' &c. 1635. U 306 THE SCOT ABROAD. for fourteen years a monopoly to inventors, founded the law of patents. Now Anderson had got a patent for his pills before the passing of the Act, and it was not liable to the abbreviation. It still, I presume, exists. I re- member an old " land " in the High Street of Edinburgh, dedicated to the sale of " Anderson's Pills," a popular medicine in the early part of the present century. There was a portrait of Anderson on the wall, which must have been durably painted on hard materials, for after it was neglected it required several years of the east winds and drifting showers of Edinburgh to obliterate it ; and many persons may still remember how odd it was to see a por- trait of a man with a high forehead and peaked beard, in the costume of the age of Shakespeare, and not unlike the usual portraits of him, staring out like a family portrait in a dining room, from the grey cold walls of the High Street. I happen to know that, some twenty years ago, the pro- perty in " Anderson's Pills " was litigated in the Court of Session as a question of hereditary succession under an entail. By the law of Scotland, the privilege of making them would descend like landed property or any heredi- tary dignity. 1 One of the Barclays was a physician, and appears to have lived about half his life abroad. The editor of one of his little medical tracts says he had it "from a sober person of good note, to whom the gentleman who had it out of Lipsius's mouth told it," how that great scholar said, " if he were dying he knew no person on earth he would leave his pen to but the Doctor." This Barclay, influenced by devotion to scientific truth, was so disloyal as to publish a tract on the many beneficent in- fluences of tobacco, though the weed had been solemnly condemned by his monarch in his celebrated ' Counter- blast.' Barclay tells us, in his ' Nepenthes, or Virtues of Tobacco/ that " it hath certain melifluous delicacy which deliteth the senses and spirits of man with a mindful oblivion, in so much that it maketh and induceth the for- 1 During the printing of this, and before final correction, I have noticed a fresh advertisement of " Anderson's Pills." THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 307 getting of all sorrows and miseries. There is such hos- tilitie between it and melancholic, that it is the only medicament in the world ordained by nature to entertain good companie." And in the climax of his laudation he says epigrammatically, " I durst be bold to say that to- bacco is the mercure of vegetals, and mercure is the tobacco of minerals." He was one of the earliest of scien- tific Scotchmen who ventured to tell his science in the vernacular language. He wrote poems and literary criti- cism, but these works he would not trust to the rude medium of his native tongue, so they are conserved in Latin. His poems may be found in that collection of which it is said of Samuel Johnson, that although he knew it to be of Scotland, he admitted that it would be a credit to the scholarship of any country the ' Delicise Poetarum Scotorum.' This Barclay, like the rest of his name, including the apologist and the pugilist, was of Aberdeen, and so was the Davidson whose patriotic ebullitions, rising up in the midst of his alchymy and astrology, have been already spoken of. He calls himself " nobilis Scotus," but had he been of any worshipful family he would have had local celebrity, which he has not. He says that he began his great book on philosophical medicine when enjoying a peaceful and rather important position as Curator of the Jardin des Plantes of Paris, while he held the title of Physician to the King of France. He tells how he con- tinued at his work while tossed about in voyages on the German Ocean and the Baltic and the Euxine, the Elbe, the Oder, the Bug, and the Dniester, through the roar of cannon, the tumult of advancing and retreating armies, and all the miseries, dangers, and difficulties of war, until he again found patronage and a peaceful retreat with John Casimir, the King of Poland. Among professional criticisms on his works it is noted that he denies the existence of the plica polonaica, a horrible and incurable disease, in which the blood passes out through the hair acting as small ducts ; and his testimony is considered the more valuable that he lived in Poland and Russia, where the malady is reported to prevail. Of him and 308 THE SCOT ABROAD. another native of the same district Sir Thomas Urquhart says "The excellency of Doctor William Davidson in al- chymy above all the men now living in the world, whereof by his wonderful experiments he giveth daily proof, al- though his learned books published in the Latin tongue did not evidence it, meriteth well to have his name re- corded in this place j and after him, Dr Leeth (though in time before him), designed in Paris, where he lived, by the name of Letu ; who, as in the practice and theory of medicine he excelled all the doctors of France, so in tes- timony of the approbation he had for his exquisiteness in that faculty, he left behind him the greatest estate of any of that profession then ; as the vast means possessed by his sons and daughters there as yet can testify." Having thus got somehow among Aberdonians, it occurs that a good way of winding up this chapter with some kind of completeness would be to settle down on the dis- trict to which these belong, and offer something approach- ing to a full enumeration of the more remarkable of those born in or connected with it who represented their coun- try in foreign lands. And here aptly enough comes up the name of one who, like Barclay, was a physician, a poet, and an Aberdonian Arthur Johnston. His literary characteristics have a curious parallel with those of Au- sonius, who was a physician of Bordeaux. Both seem to have turned aside from the ordinary topics of heroic or lyric poetry to indulge in genial reminiscences of the men or the places they were personally interested in. Among Johnston's epigrams, as he called them, though many of them stray out of that term in its strict sense, one dwells on the delights of his own dear paternal home of Caskie- ben, on the banks of the little river Urie or Urius. Here he notices a phenomenon which doubtless enlivened many an evening ramble, that at the time of equinox the domain is touched by the shadow of the hill of Benochie the same hill that is commemorated in the beautiful Scotch song " I wish I were where Gadie rins, At the back o' Benochie." THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 309 His reputation is said to have budded at Rome, and his poems touch on friendships with many Continental celebrities. He did much injury to his own fame by his most elaborate work, which was the fruit of a preposterous ambition. George Eglisham, an Englishman, wrote a book to show that Buchanan was an overpraised man, especially as to his version of the Psalms; and for the purpose of proving his case he showed how he could do the thing better by giving a specimen of his own handi- work in the translation of the io4th Psalm. A contro- versy arose, in which Johnston, with others, poured abun- dance of contumely on Eglisham's effort. But while ex- posing another's incapacity for such a flight, he discovered his own ; and actually set about not merely a specimen, as Eglisham had given but a complete rival version to Buchanan's Psalms. Here, of course, there was no op- portunity for awarding distinctive merits to the two efforts, and pronouncing how far each was " good of its kind." Johnston challenged Buchanan upon every line, otherwise he had no excuse for offering to the world a different one. Each was in a manner chained to the other, and the stronger would prevail throughout. But in the very method in which he set about his work he acknowledged the presence of a master ; for while Buchanan revels with a sort of luxurious ease in all varieties of measure, as if each came to him in companionship with the tone and tenor of the special psalm, Johnston nailed himself down to the hexameter and pentameter couplet. There was an exception the ngih Psalm in which he ran over the gamut of Latin metre, as if to show that he could do so. But he is not without his champions. The Dutch are said to have preferred him to Buchanan. Hebrew schol- ars say he is a more faithful translator, showing great skill in expressing Biblical conditions without departing from the course of pure Latinity ; and it is easy to see that his work has a more quiet devotional air than the other, re- minding one less of a heathen classic. But Johnston's fame was afterwards irretrievably injured in the house of his friends by an attempt to lift him far above his master. This was the doing of a citizen of 3IO THE SCOT ABROAD. London, Mr Auditor Benson, who strove to get into a little niche in the temple of Fame by spending money on the printing of grand editions of great authors. By the bad advice of that William Lauder who charged Milton with plagiarism, and forged passages in confirmation of the charge, Benson sent forth no less than three fine editions of Johnston's Ps-alms, accompanied by Lauder's eulogistic proclamations, which far overshot their mark. A long tedious controversy then broke out, and the whole affair brought a shot from the ' Dunciad,' which, in the opinion of the polite world, extinguished Johnston's fame for ever, though aiming at Benson's taste : " On two unequal crutches propt he came, Milton's on this, on that one Johnston's name. " It is an awful testimony to the despotic power of ruling geniuses, that though a man may have filled a high place in the serviceable literature of his age, and reaped solid rewards in the shape of wealth and honour, yet more than for anything of his own doing he is remembered by pos- terity through some sting from Dryden or Butler. "There was an ancient sage philosopher Who had read Alexander Ross over ; " and many a sage philosopher has spent his time to less profit. Ross's ' View of all Religions in the World ' is full of matter. It carries the reader over a vast tract of diver- sified knowledge, without leading him through the dreary wastes of discussion to which divines are often addicted ; and the book has a strong claim on collectors, by its quaint biographies and portraits of illustrious fanatics. Ross was the neighbour of Arthur Johnston, but long after both were dead their names became associated as fellow-instruments in the perverse machinations of William Lauder. Ross was the author of the l Christiados/ which may safely be pronounced one of the queerest books ever brought into existence. 1 By a marvellous ingenuity he strings together on a new sequence nearly every line that 1 'Virgilii Evangelisantis Christiados libri xiii., in quibus omnia quse de Domino nostro Jesu Christo in utroque testamento vel dicta THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 311 Virgil wrote, adapting it sometimes with the change of a word sometimes with no change at all to what may be termed a poetical exposition of Christianity. One could easily suppose that if Virgil has devotees as Horace has, the jingle of this ringing of the changes might drive such a one to insanity. When Lauder brought his charges of plagiarism against Milton, he put Ross forward as one of the pillaged authors ; and certainly in his opening there is a ludicrous incidental similarity to that of ' Paradise Regained.' 1 From the same root as Arthur came another poet, John Johnston, who, after studying at Aberdeen, is found successively in the universities of Helmstadt and Ros- tock. Gilbert Jack born, says the complimentary Fre- her, in Aberdeen, a place illustrious for the capture of salmon 2 taught philosophy at Herborn and Helmstadt, and became professor of philosophy at the University of Leyden, where he gave forth some disquisitions on physics and metaphysics. John Vaus, whose works on grammar are published by Ascensius, describes the diffi- culties of his journey to Paris to correct the press. 8 Of Robert Baron we do not know even so much, but some of his works on philosophy and divinity were published abroad, and all of them were in the hands of foreign scholars. James Gregory, the discoverer of the reflect- ing telescope, has only to be named : he is qualified for reception into the present company by living at Padua. vel prsedicta sunt, altisona Divina Maronis tuba suavissime decantan- tur, inflante Alexandro Rosaso. Arma virumque Maro cecinit, nos acta Deumquc, Cedant anna viri, dum loquor acta Dei. Roterodami, 1653. 1 " Die ego qui quondam gracili modulatus avena Carmen, et ^Egypto egressus per inhospita saxa Perque domos Arabum vacuas et inania regna Deduxi Abramidas ; at nnnc horrentia Christ! Acta Deumque cano, coeli qui primus ab oris Virginis in laetse gremium descendit," &c. 8 In the ' Theatrum Clarorum Virorum. ' 8 See all that is known of him in Innes's * Sketches of Early Scotch History,' p. 270. 312 THE SCOT ABROAD. where he published his quarto on that troublesome ad- justment, the quadrature of the circle. He was married to the daughter of a David Anderson, called, from the multi- plicity of his petty accomplishments, "Davy-do-a'-things ;" and this Davy was a cousin of Alexander Anderson, an- other Aberdonian, who was professor of mathematics in Paris, and the author of a multitude of works on algebra and the other exact sciences which have excited the keen interest of adepts. Of him the unfailing translator of Ra- belais says that he "was, for his abilities in the mathe- matical sciences, accounted the profoundlyest principled of any man of his time : in his studies he plyed hardest the equations of algebra, the speculations of the irrational lines, the proportions of regular bodies, and sections of the cone ; for though he was excellently well skilled in the theory of the planets and astronomy, the opticks, catop- tricks, dioptricks, the orthographical, stereographical and schemographical projections ; in cosmography, geogra- phy, trigonometry, and geodesic ; in the staticks, musick, and all other parts or pendicles, sciences, faculties, or arts of or belonging to the disciplines mathematical in gene- ral, or any portion thereof in its essence or dependances : yet taking delight to pry into the greatest difficulties, to soar where others could not reach, and (like another Ar- chimedes) to work wonders by geometry and the secrets of numbers ; and having a body too weak to sustain the vehement intensiveness of so high a spirit, he dyed young, with that respect nevertheless to succeeding ages, that he left behind him a posthumary book, intitled 'Andersoni Opera/ wherein men versed in the subject of the things therein contained will reap great delight and satisfaction." Among the plethoric volumes which slumber in decor- ous old libraries may sometimes be found the bulky Greek grammar of a certain Alexander Scot. 1 We only know personally of him that he wrote certain other books ; that he was an Aberdonian, and that he held a 1 ' Universa Grammatica Grseca, ex diversis Auctoribus, per Alexandrum Scot, Scotum, J. U. D. Nunc ejusdem auctoris fecunda cura facta politior, et locis necessariis non paucis, auctior. Lugduni, 1614.' THE SCHOLAR AND THE AUTHOR. 313 judicial office of some kind or other at Carpentras. His grammar, lying like some helmless hulk on the great sea of literature, might probably, on a week or two's careful and exclusive study, give forth some value to the modern inquirer. In its day the book had at least so much vitality as to be brought up on the side of Reuchlin in the controversies about the Erasmian innovations on the pronunciation of the Greek. Under associations other than topographical we have already come in contact with several names connected with Aberdeen as Bishop Elphinstone, Hector Boece, Bishop Leslie, Alexander Arbuthnot, Father Innes, Thomas Dempster, the two Chamberses, George Cone and James Laing, Sir John Skene, the Barclays, Gordon of Straloch, the theological Forbeses, and the physicians Duncan Liddel and Walter Donaldson. To go centuries further back to one whose literary fame is entirely of a home cast : John Barbour, Archdeacon of Aberdeen, the author of the heroic poem called ' The Bruce,' went at least three times to France, for so many times had he letters of safe-conduct to pass through England thither, and one of these declares his purpose to be study. Let me conclude this chapter with another patriotic chronicler of his times, not unlike him, though writing in prose, and coming down to that more fortunate era when his patriotism could include England. The Burnets, like the Barclays, were a branching family, with many members of more or less distinction, but rooted in this district. Thomas, a physician, the brother of the bishop, wrote medical books, which passed through several Continental presses; but whether he went himself into other lands, or stayed at home, is not known. The bishop's eldest son studied at Leyden, and became Governor of Massachusetts. He had a younger son in some measure eminent in literature ; but whether he qualified for a place here by crossing the Channel I am unable to say. It is of more consequence that a man of such mark as the bishop himself had a good deal to do abroad. Some of his wanderings were on business, and that of a not agreeable kind ; but some of them were for 314 THE SCOT ABROAD. enjoyment. His 'Tour in Switzerland, Italy, and Ger- many,' now little known, is a very amusing book, full of sagacious observation. It had the honour rarely con- ferred then on an English book of travels of being translated into German. 1 He was a very distinguished man, and yet somehow his name is seldom mentioned without a slight smile of derision. This cannot be caused by falsities in the foundations of his fame, for they were thoroughly sound. He was steady and brave as a politician, and narrowly escaped the thumbkin or the boots. He was a clear and vivid historian. I have the bad taste to think him a better writer than Clarendon, preferring his distinct unaffected story to the weighty woolsack magniloquence of the chancellor's stately sentences. Of his works on divinity, one at least, the ' Treatise on the Thirty-nine Articles,' has become a standard book. He was a mighty pulpit orator ; and his audience, instead of contemplating with nervous anxiety the increase of the pile of leaves on the left-hand side of the cushion and their corresponding de- crease on the right, felt as if they had lost something when his longest sermon was finished. The world in general is not afflicted with the cynicism that made Paley say of a friend, that he knew nothing against him except that he was a popular preacher ; on the contrary, such an adept is often raised to an elevation too high and giddy for the ordinary understanding to bear steadily. How, then, with all his claims on admiration, has Burnet been somewhat under sneer? It is because he was a meddler in matters that he had no call to interfere with, and incontinent of tongue a gossip and tattler, whose talk filled with dismay the hard, dry, serious persons engaged in games in which fortune and life were the stakes. The world has a desperate prejudice against men of this stamp. Had he been very profligate, or a tyrant, or a traitor, it would have been more easy to assimilate him to the dignity of history. 1 'Des beruhmten Englischen Theolog., D. Gilbeiti Burnets, durch die Schweiz, Italien, &c., Reise. Leipzig, 1688.' 3*5 CHAPTER II. THE SOLDIER. THE DUGALD DALGETTYS THE DIVISIONS AT HOME CARRIED OUT ABROAD SCOTSMEN ON BOTH SIDES OF THE THIRTY YEARS' WAR MONRO GREY HEPBURN THE LESLIES THE JACOBITE REFU- GEESTHE KEITH FAMILY THE EARL MARISCHAL THE FIELD- MARSHAL THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR AND FREDERICK THE GREAT- SCOTSMEN IN RUSSIAN ADVENTURES PATRICK GORDON IN SEARCH OF EMPLOYMENT HIS EMINENCE IN THE RUSSIAN SERVICE PETER THE GREAT ADMIRAL GREIG. THESE chapters are not arranged on any principle of pre- cedence or order among the classes of men who figure in them. We had a good deal of soldiering in the first part of the volume; and now having had an interval of literature, it may be as well to get back to the field, were it only to be rid of the dust of the book-shelves. The greater and far the more important portion of the military services of Scotsmen in foreign countries belongs to the history of the Old League, so that this chapter is much shortened by what has been already said. We have seen how in that contest the Scots troops were purified of the taint that attaches to absolutely mercenary soldiers, because they were fighting the sworn enemy of their country on foreign soil. Their successors, who con- tinued to swarm into other countries, could scarcely claim so high a place in the scale of motives ; but even they stood in a higher place than absolute mercenaries, like the Italian condottieri, who were trained to the trade of serving any master who paid them, and killing any persons they were paid to kill, without any question 316 THE SCOT ABROAD. as to the religion or the nationality of either side, or the question at issue between them. The Scots generally enjoyed the respectability of being engaged in their own quarrel. The union of the crowns could not entirely obliterate the old feuds, and the contests between the Cavaliers and their opponents were in Scotland tinged by the influence of the old feud with England and the friendship with France. In the next political epoch the Jacobites represented the French party, and the Hanover- ians the English. From those who went into foreign battle-fields under such influences the dignity of the old ardent nationality had departed. They were fighting for a party, not for a country, and carried abroad with them the unseemly characteristics of civil strife. Sir Thomas Urquhart, the most delightfully sanguine of authors, is fain to derive consolation from this peculiarity it helps him to the conclusion that the Scots are an unconquered people ; for wherever, in any great battle in the Thirty Years' War, they are beaten on one side, they must, for that very reason, have been victorious on the other. It scarcely reconciles one to this theory to recall the powerful picture presented in Scott's Dugald Dalgetty. It is not from an uninstructed or inaccurate hand, for Scott's fictions contain fuller revelations on many fea- tures in the career of his own country than the histories of the gravest and dreariest of her investigators. Severity towards his countrymen is not a charge that can with any sincerity be brought against him ; but if he had his allegiance to nationality, he had also his allegiance to art to give effect to. He had to make a picture he made it without positive departure from the truth; but still Dugald who is not without his virtues either is taken from a rather extreme type of the Scots trooper of the Thirty Years' War. I am not, therefore, inclined to accede to the truth and justice of the denunciation put into the mouth of the young Earl of Menteith, when he says, "Shame on the pack of these mercenary swordsmen ! They have made the name of Scot throughout all Europe equivalent to THE SOLDIER. 317 that of a pitiful mercenary, who knows neither honour nor principle but his month's pay; who transfers his allegiance from standard to standard at the pleasure of fortune and the highest bidder; and to whose insati- able thirst for plunder and warm quarters we owe much of that civil dissension which is now turning our swords against our own bowels." Sir James Turner, it is true, speaks of having imbibed a touch of this spirit in foreign warfare. But even he, though somewhat notorious as a rough-handed and un- scrupulous leader, alludes to it, with regret and penitence, as an error of his youth. " I had swallowed," he says, " without chewing, in Germanic, a very dangerous maxime which militarie men there too much follow, which was, that soe we serve our master honestlie, it is no matter what master we serve." 1 But no vestiges of such lax morality will be found in the ' Expeditions ' of old Robert Monro, whence Scott drew his materials for the character and habits of the Rittmaster. Other defects it has in abundance. The title-page, beginning with " Monro, his expedition with the worthy Scots regiment (called M'Keyes regiment) levied in August 1626 by Sir Ronald M'Key, Lord Rhees, colonel for his Majesty's service of Den- mark, &c. &c.," is of itself a piece of tough and tedious reading. The confusion, ambiguity, and verbose pro- lixity of the narrative, involve the reader in immediate hopelessness, and keep him in perpetual doubt of the period, the persons, and the part of the world to which his attention is called. Far from being the production of an illiterate soldier who despises learning, it is satu- rated in a mass of irrelevant erudition. But it affords fine clear glimpses here and there of the character and habits of the Scottish cavalier of fortune ; and on these Scott has seized with his usual practical sagacity. " Sir," says 1 ' Memoirs of his own Life and Times,' p. 14. Turner was the author of a very learned book, full of curious information on the antiquities of the art of war and the practice of his own day, called ' Pallas Armata Military Essays of the ancient Grecian, Roman, and Modern Art of War,' written in the years 1670 and 1671, by Sir James Turner, Knight. 318 THE SCOT ABROAD. our friend Dugald, "I have been made to stand guard eight hours, being from twelve at noon to eight o'clock of the night, at the palace, armed with back and breast, headpiece and bracelets, being iron to the teeth, in a bitter frost, and the ice was as hard as ever was flint." These words are taken precisely from Monro, with a material alteration to heighten the picture for northern readers, after the example of the Greenland missionary in his description of the place of torment. Instead of a "bitter frost," Monro says "in a hot summer-day, till I was aweary of my life ; " and oddly enough adds, " which ever after made me the more strict in punishing those under my command." So wholesome, we suppose, had he found the lesson. But while there are such resemblances and identities as this, we shall search in vain through Monro's prolixi- ties for the greedy and mercenary spirit which is made to inspire the talk of the otherwise single-minded and honourable soldado^ as if it were the current slang of his trade, which he could not help mechanically imbibing. Monro has a thorough, and perhaps a rather ludicrous, sense of the worth of himself and his comrades. He speaks of " my Lord Spynie being present with his regi- ment, consisting of brave and valorous officers, being all worthy cavaliers of noble descent and of good families, having action, valour, and breeding answerable to their charges : they were desirous to gain honour and credit against a powerful enemy with whom they were engaged." " It is the property of our nation," he says, " an army being near, in time of alarm to be in readiness before any other nation." And when Stralsund obtains Sir Alexander Leslie for a governor, instead of luxuriating, after Dalgetty's manner, in a contemplation of that for- tunate soldier's privileges and allowances, he enlarges on the special blessing bestowed on the community in hav- ing obtained a Scotsman for their ruler: "And what a blessing it was to get a good, wise, virtuous, and valiant governor in time of their greatest trouble ; which shows that we are governed by a power above us." And so, becoming more eloquent by degrees on the good fortune THE SOLDIER. 319 of Stralsund and the merits of his countrymen, he con- cludes : " It faring then with Stralsund as with Sara : she became fruitful when she could not believe it, and they became flourishing, having gotten a Scots governor to protect them, whom they looked not for, which was a good omen unto them to get a governor of the nation that was never conquered ; which made them the only town in Germany free as yet from the imperial yoke by the valour of our nation, which defended their city in their greatest danger." But there are better things even than this nationality in Monro's unreadable book. The sentiments following appear to be just and commendable, and in every way honourable to the heart and head of the person uttering them : "Continency is a virtue very necessary for a soldier, for abstaining from many inordinate appetites that follow his profession, that he may the better suffer hunger, cold, thirst, nakedness, travel, toyl, heat, and what else, patient- ly, never mutinying for any defect, for it is the greatest victory we can attain unto, to overcome ourselves and our appetites." " It is also very necessary, at such service, if we have time, that we be careful to bring off our comrades' bodies killed on service, that died honourably before their ene- mies, to be laid in the bed of honour, in burying their bodies as becomes Christians. We are also tied in duty to our comrades that were with us in danger, if either they be wounded or mutilated, to care for their safeties so far as lieth in our power. And we must not prefer the safety of our own bodies to the public weal of our comrades or countrymen dead or living, but we ought, with the hazard of our own lives, to bring off the dead and hurt." The contest which ended in the independence of the United Provinces saw Scot contending with Scot, and fighting out in the Dutch marshes the bitter animosities which desolated their own mountain homes. The Scots in the service of the States were formed into a separate body, known in their own country as the Dutch Regi- ments, and in Holland as the Scottish Brigade. In the 32O THE SCOT ABROAD. curious annals of the house of Seton there is an account of the adventures of George Lord Seton, who, an enthusi- astic follower of Queen Mary, was found by the Govern- ment of the States endeavouring to seduce the Scottish troops over to the side of Spain and the Queen of Scots. "The rebellous States of Holland," says the indignant family historian, "did imprison and condemn the said George to ride the cannon ; " and he only escaped a worse fate through the earnest intervention of his country- men, who would not see a kindly Scot sacrificed to for- eign vengeance, however readily they would themselves have cut him down in fair contest. In this Scottish corps, a short time before the Revolution, there were, if we may believe an anecdote which rests chiefly on tradition, two rival claimants for promotion, of totally opposite genius and character, whose rivalry was extin- guished in a memorable contest John Grahame of Claverhouse, and Mackay of Scourie, the leader of the Revolution army at the battle of Killiecrankie. Mackay, though he showed himself so far inferior to his opponent in the genius of war, was a man of remarkable attain- ments in the organisation of warfare. We owe to him one of the greatest improvements of modern warfare the fixed bayonet, which enabled the soldier to charge immediately after fire, instead of waiting to be cut down in the attempt to screw the blade upon the barrel. The cause of the Elector Palatine the husband of the daughter of King James attracted the national sym- pathies of the Scots. In 1620, a considerable body of adventurers, recruited to that service by Sir Andrew Grey, found their way to Bohemia through marvellous difficul- ties. But the cause to which they had devoted them- selves was abandoned by its head, and they found them- selves in the forlorn and alarming position of an army without a leader, and, what was worse, without a pay- master. Their position, in its difficulties, was not unlike that of the Ten Thousand. But while the Greeks were so totally alien in personal and national habits from the oriental tribes whose territories they required to pierce, that an amalgamation with them was not to be antici- THE SOLDIER. 321 pated, Sir Andrew Grey's contingent, mixing with mer- cenary soldiers of all countries, would undoubtedly have been individually absorbed into corps belonging to other nations, but for their peculiar nationality, which kept them together as a separate body. They served for some time under the banners of Mansfeldt, then assisted the Dutch against Spinola, and passed into the hands of the King of Denmark. They at last found their true master in Gustavus Adol- phus, who knew their qualities well, and made full use of them in building up the great fabric of his fame. Mr Grant enumerates thirteen regiments of Scottish in- fantry in his service ; and many other corps in his great army, where the pikemen were Swedes, English, or Ger- mans, had Scottish officers. The great events of later warfare have not eclipsed the brilliant achievements of this host, or rendered less wonderful the stride in effec- tive discipline accomplished under the command of the King of Sweden. And if we are not to concentrate the glory, as well of every dashing enterprise as of the great advancement in discipline and strategy, entirely upon the crowned leader of this wonderful army, Scotland is entitled to a large perhaps the chief share in its aggre- gate fame. 1 " The misfortune," says Colonel Mitchell in his ' Life of Wallenstein,' "which befell a detachment of seven hundred Scotch soldiers, under the command of Colonel Robert Monro, deserves to be recorded, as it shows what courage and resolution can effect even in situations that appear hopeless." While on their way to join the Swed- ish army they were shipwrecked. Managing to get ashore on rafts, they found that they were eighty miles from the Swedish outposts, and on the island of Rugen, all the fortresses of which were in the hands of Imperialists. 1 Those who desire a separate narrative of the services of the Scots under Hepburn, Hamilton, Turner, Lumsden, Forbes, Ruthven, Grant, the Leslies, the Lindsays, and the other innumerable Scottish leaders who served the Lion of the North, must read the zealous and affectionate narrative given by Mr Grant in his ' Memoirs and Ad- ventures of Sir John Hepburn. ' X 322 THE SCOT ABROAD. They had landed their arms, but they had no ammuni- tion; and, as Monro remarks, "the enemy being near, our resolution behoved to be short." He managed to find an old dismantled castle, which seems to have been left in the hands of its feudal owner, found to be a secret partisan of Gustavus. For some powder and shot, if he could furnish it, Monro offered to clear away the Im- perialists. Getting into the old castle secretly, the Scots pounced, in the middle of the night, on the Imperialists, prepared for attack from without, but not from within ; and as the nature and quantity of the force so unex- pectedly appearing could not be estimated, the usual effect of a panic followed, and Monro performed his promise of clearing off the Imperialists. When the island was deserted by them, he managed to hold it against all comers, and it was a very valuable acquisition to the side of the Swedes. He made good the post till relieved by his countryman, Sir John Hepburn, and then both were in a position to act with effect. 1 Hepburn blockaded Colberg. The great Montecuculi was sent to relieve the place, and it was important that he should be stopped on his way. Monro, with some companies of Scottish infantry, found a defensible post in Schevelin, on the Rega". Montecuculi, with his large force, haughtily called on them to capitulate, and not interrupt his passage. Monro, inspired with an epigram- matic spirit, answered that he did not find the word " capitulation " in his instructions. The Scots defended the place bitterly. They were obliged to burn the town ; but they held the castle until the exasperated Italian abandoned the attack and retired. Thus, in Colonel Mitchell's words, "the future rival of Turenne, having lost both time and men before an old ruinous castle, was unable to relieve Colberg, which surrendered shortly after." Their gallant efforts were not always so fortunate. A thousand of them served with an equal number of Swedes in the defence of New Brandenburg. With a 1 See Harte's ' History of Gustavus Adolphus, ' i. 232. THE SOLDIER. 323 wall in ruins, a moat nearly filled up, and only a couple of falconets, or two-pounders, as their whole artillery, they were surrounded by Tilly's army, provided with a perfect battering-train. An accidental blunder made them deem it their duty to hold out. Instructions to capitulate on terms had been transmitted, and mis- carried. It cost Tilly a long contest and two thousand men, and he took payment in the slaughter of the gar- rison. Colonel Mitchell, to whose investigations our knowledge of this incident is owing, tells us that " in the old town records, which give an afflicting account of the cruelty exercised towards the citizens, a Scotch nobleman, called Earl Lintz [Lindsay?], is mentioned as having de- fended his post long after all other resistance had ceased. " " This nine days' defence," he says, " of an old rampart without artillery, proves how much determined soldiers can effect behind stone walls ; and is exceedingly valu- able in an age that has seen first-rate fortresses, fully armed, surrender before any part of the works had been injured often, indeed, at the very first summons." In no way, perhaps, can a better general idea of the im- portance of the Scottish troops in the wars of Gustavus be formed than by a perusal of the * Memoirs of a Cavalier/ attributed in the critical world by a sort of acclamation to De Foe. Some have maintained, to be sure, that it must have been printed off from the actual diary or memorandum-book of an English gentleman volunteer. But as evidence that it has been corrected by a descrip- tive pen, one little particular will be sufficient. Ignorant ot the provincial character of the force which entered England under Leslie, before the treaty of Berwick, as Lowland Scottish Covenanters, the author, under the supposition that they were Highlanders, gives a very picturesque description of them, drawn from the experi- ence of the march to Preston in 1715. This alone is suf- ficient to show that, if the narrative be taken from the memoranda of one who actually served, it has been decorated for the press ; and where was then the pen save De Foe's that could have given it so searching and specific an individuality ? 324 THE SCOT ABROAD. The Scottish contingent holds the first place through- out the narrative, and the presumption that it was per- fected by De Foe probably from the rude journal of some soldier unskilled in letters does not incline me to question the justice of the merit assigned to our country- men. De Foe was not their friend ; he was a thorough "true-born Englishman;" and when we read his distinct and animated account of the services of the Scots, we must presume that he is communicating the actual state- ments contained in the journal of an English cavalier; or, in the supposition of the narrative being purely invent- ive, that its ingenious author constructed it out of such materials as would be capable, from their substantial truthfulness, of standing the test of investigation. The Castle of Marienburg, for instance, is to be attacked. It stands on a steep rock, with strong outworks, and the garrison is large and well found. The cavalier, when describing its capture, says : " The Scots were chosen out to make this attack, and the King was an eyewitness of their gallantry. In this action Sir John [Hepburn] was not commanded out, but Sir James Ramsay led them on : but I observed that most of the Scotch officers in the other regiments prepared to serve as volunteers, for the honour of their countrymen, and Sir John Hep- burn led them on. I was resolved to see this piece of service, and therefore joined myself to the volunteers. We were armed with partisans, and each man two pistols at our belt. It was a piece of service that seemed per- fectly desperate : the advantage of the hill ; the precipice we were to mount ; the height of the bastion ; the resolute courage and number of the garrison, who from a complete covert made a terrible fire upon us, all joined to make the action hopeless. But the fury of the Scots mus- keteers was not to be abated by any difficulties : they mounted the hill, scaled the works like madmen running upon the enemy's pikes ; and after two hours' desperate fight, in the middle of fire and smoke, took it by storm, and put all the garrison to the sword." The cavalier tells us that he was, on Sir James Ramsay being disabled, intrusted with the command of 200 Scots, " all THE SOLDIER. 325 that were left of a gallant regiment of 2000 Scots which the King brought out of Sweden with him under that brave colonel." Along with the remaining 200 there were thirty officers, who, having lost their men, " served as reformadoes with the regiment." They were in the town of Oppenheim, which they were instructed to hold, while Gustavus and Hepburn attacked the castle garri- soned by 800 Spaniards. The cavalier says that the reformadoes came running to him, saying that they believed, if he would give them leave, they could enter the castle by a surprise, and take it sword in hand. " I told them I durst not give them orders, my commission being only to keep and defend the town ; but they being very importunate, I told them they were volunteers and might do what they pleased, that I would lend them fifty men, and draw up the rest to second them or bring them off as I saw occasion, so as I might not hazard the town. This was as much as they desired. They sallied im- mediately, and in a trice the volunteers scaled the port, cut in pieces the guard, and burst open the gate, at which the fifty entered." "The Spaniards were knocked down by the Scots before they knew what the matter was ; and the King and Sir John Hepburn, advancing to storm, were surprised when, instead of resistance, they saw the Spaniards throwing themselves over the wall to avoid the fury of the Scots." Even the iron rigidity of Gustavus must unbend to so brilliant a disregard of discipline. His reception of the successful storming- party is told briefly enough, but with much character. * The King came on and entered on foot. I received him at the head of the Scots reformadoes, who all saluted him with their pikes. The King gave them his hat, and, turning about * Brave Scots, brave Scots,' says he, smiling, ' you were too quick for me.' " He had a speedy opportunity, according to the cavalier, of seeing the mettle of these restless spirits in the attack on Creutz- nach. "The first party," says the cavalier, "were not able to make anything of it ; the garrison fought with so much fury that many of the volunteer gentlemen being wounded, and some killed, the rest were beaten off with 326 THE SCOT ABROAD. loss." The King was displeased, and ordered the assault to be renewed. It was now the turn of the reformado Scots volunteers. " Our Scots officers," says the cavalier expressively, " not being used to be beaten, advanced im- mediately," and the work was accomplished. They were not so satisfactory in the execution of some of the work which Gustavus wanted done, and the national pride came out occasionally in a way which so rigid a disciplinarian did not like. At the siege of Frankfort he ordered Monro one evening to construct a mining line of approach before morning. The General kept his men at work as well as he could, but Gustavus was much displeased at the scant progress they had made, and forgetting his usual caution in such matters, he gave utterance to a general remark that " the Scots, however excellent in the open field, were too lazy and too proud to work, even in cases of the utmost extrem- ity, which abated more than one-half of their military merit." 1 The army of Gustavus sent back to Scotland many a military commander trained and instructed to bear a share in the wars that were to desolate Britain. Among these were the two Leslies Alexander, who led the Covenanting troops to the English border ; and the far more skilful David Leslie, Lord Newark, who divided with Cromwell the fame of victory at Marston Moor. The distance by which Scotsmen were in that age severed from each other in opinion and party, is forcibly recalled by the recollection that the name of Leslie was nearly as memorable in the Imperial camp as in that of the Swede. Near the hill of Benochie stands the ruined Castle of Balquhain a stern, simple, square block, as destitute of decoration or architectural peculiarity as any stone boulder on the adjoining moor. A cadet of the Leslies of Balquhain became a Count of the Empire, and Imperial ambassador to Constantinople. The service which proved the foundation of his eminent fortunes is not one to be dwelt on with satisfaction. His name is 1 Harte, i. 283. THE SOLDIER. 327 too well known in connection with the death of Wallen- stein. His son James, who succeeded to his hereditary honours and his lordship of Neustadt, gained a worthier fame in the defence of Vienna against the Turks. I here, before stepping onwards to a later period, offer an enumeration of Scotsmen in the German wars by the loquacious Sir Thomas Urquhart. It is not liable, by the way, to the reproach of his usual wandering profuse- ness of language its leading defect, on the other hand, is its too great resemblance to a muster-roll. It is after he has been enlarging on the older services of his country- men that he winds up : " Nor did their succession so far degenerate from the race of so worthy progenitors, but that even of late (although before the intestine garboyles of this island) several of them have for their fidelity, valour, and gallan- try, been exceedingly renowned over all France, Spaine, the Venetian territories, Pole, Muscovy, the Low-coun- tryes, Swedland, Hungary, Germany, Denmark, and other states and kingdoms; as may appear by General Rutherford, my Lord General Sir James Spence of Wor- miston, afterwards by the Swedish king created Earl of Orcholm; Sir Patrick Ruthven, governor of Ulme, general of an army of High-Germans, and afterwards Earl of Forth and Branford ; Sir Alexander Leslie, gover- nor of the cities along the Baltick coast, field-marshal over the army in Westphalia, and afterwards intitled Scoticani faderis supremus dux ; General James King, afterwards made Lord Ythen; Colonel David Leslie, commander of a regiment of horse over the Dutch, and afterwards in these our domestic wars advanced to be lieutenant-general of both horse and foot; Major-General Thomas Ker ; Sir David Drummond, general- major, and governor of Statin in Pomerania; Sir George Douglas, colonel, and afterwards employed in embassies betwixt the sovereigns of Britain and Swedland ; Colonel George Lindsay, Earl of Craford; Colonel Lord Forbes; Colonel Lord Saint Colme ; Colonel Lodowick Leslie, and in the late troubles at home, governor of Berwick and Tinmouth- sheels ; Colonel Sir James Ramsey, governor of Hanaw ; 328 THE SCOT ABROAD. Colonel Alexander Ramsey, governor of Crafzenach, and quartermaster-general to the Duke of Wymar; Colonel William Baillie, afterwards in these our intestine broils promoved to the charge of lieutenant-general ; another Colonel Ramsey besides any of the former two, whose name I cannot hit upon; Sir James Lumsden, colonel in Germany, and afterwards governor of Newcastle, and general-major in the Scottish wars ; Sir George Cunning- ham, Sir John Ruthven, Sir John Hamilton, Sir John Meldrum, Sir Arthur Forbes, Sir Frederick Hamilton, Sir James Hamilton, Sir Francis Ruthven, Sir John Innes, Sir William Balantine ; and several other knights, all colonels of horse or foot in the Swedish wars. " As likewise by Colonel Alexander Hamilton, agnamed Dear Sandy, who afterwards in Scotland was made General of the Artillery, for that in some measure he had exerced the same charge in Dutchland, under the command of Marquis James Hamilton, whose generalship over six thousand English in the Swedish service I had almost forgot, by Colonel Robert Cunningham ; " but I must really spare the reader two-thirds of this portentous list, and skip for him to the conclusion. " Colonel Alexander Cunningham, Colonel Finess Forbes, Colonel David Edinton, Colonel Sandilands, Colonel Walter Leckie, and divers others Scottish colonels, what of horse and foot (many whereof, within a short space thereafter, attained to be general persons) under the command of Gustavus the Csesaromastix, who confided so much in the valour, loyalty, and discretion of the Scottish nation, and they reciprocally in the gallantry, affection, and magnanimity of him, that immediately after the battle at Leipsich, in one place, and at one time, he had six- and- thirty Scottish colonels about him; whereof some did command a whole brigade of horse, some a brigade composed of two regiments, half horse, half foot ; and others a brigade made up of foot only, without horse : some again had the command of a regiment of horse only, without foot : some of a regiment of horse alone, without more ; and others of a regiment of dragoons : the half of the names of which colonels are not here THE SOLDIER. 329 inserted, though they were men of notable prowess, and in martial achievements of most exquisite dexterity; whose regiments were commonly distinguished by the diversity of nations of which they are severally com- posed ; many regiments of English, Scots, Danes, Sweds, Fins, Liflanders, Laplanders, High -Dutch, and other nations serving in that confederate war of Germany under the command of Scottish colonels." It were idle to follow up the history of the Jacobite refugees, driven out by the Revolution of 1688, after what Aytoun has said for them both in prose and song. I shall therefore take a step onwards to the period of those later civil contests in which the older among us have felt something like a practical interest, not so much from zeal in the cause of either side, as from actual intercourse with persons in whom that zeal had once burned with expectations of practical result. There are no more delightful recollections to be called up than those of the departing spirit of Jacobitism, exhibited in the talk of old people who had led many years of quiet peaceful life cherishing the recollections of their youth. The air and tone of thorough gentlefolks belonged to them, softened down by a tinge of the sadness borne by those who "have seen better days." For if they had not absolutely felt the fall from affluence to poverty, nor remembered the sudden flight from the dear old tower of their fathers to seek a distant home, yet in their child- hood these things were so vividly remembered as domestic specialties that they left something like the impression of realities. It is from this that the romance of ' Waverley/ when it burst on the world, shot a thrill through many a heart in Scotland, such as people elsewhere cannot have experienced or conceived such as genius alone is incap- able of achieving. Of " the Jacobite relics " among us no other is prob- ably so remarkable as the ruined Castle of Dunnottar. To the sea-borne traveller it is the most conspicuous stronghold along the east coast, for it is higher perched and more extensive than its rival Tantallon. Crowning a bluff peninsula which drops to the sea in precipices of 330 THE SCOT ABROAD. ragged conglomerate, its indented and scattered outline is more like the ruin of a town or a national fortress than of a private dwelling-place. No other feudal castle in Scotland, indeed, appears to have covered so wide a space of ground, or to have been capable of receiving within the cincture of its defences so large a garrison. Generally the remains of Scottish strongholds have a lean and gaunt aspect, as if their strength depended on the narrow front to be defended rather than on the numerous garrison; but here there are vestiges of a widespread magnificence, more beseeming a royal than a baronial establishment. And perhaps the effect of the scene is rather heightened by a certain air of modernness in the buildings. They do not entirely belong to a past historic period, severed by intervening centuries from our sym- pathies. There doubtless is the old square keep, the relic of the primitive age of baronial architecture, frown- ing in austere gloom over all. But among the ruins scattered around we see the traces of modern comfort and social habits. The deserted mansion-house is com- bined with the ruined fortalice, and tells us not only ot ancient feudal power decayed, but of modern wealth and hospitable profusion suddenly stopped. Comparing it with anything that may be seen in England, it thus eloquently informs the traveller that he is in a country where the traces of civil tumult are more recent, and where the passing over them of centuries has not entirely softened down the traces of conflict, as in the halls devastated by the Wars of the Roses, with the mellow- ness of antiquity. Yet the ruin speaks to us from a period sufficiently remote to keep clear of the living political excitements of this age. Very nearly a century and a half have now passed since the chimneys ceased to smoke, and the whole busy world of life deserted that vast range of edifices. The impression natural to such a scene is deepened and strengthened when we associate it with the career, spent so far away, and in scenes so different, of the two young men who were the last to lord it within those wasted walls. When George I. ascended the throne, the THE SOLDIER. 331 head of the house of Keith, and the inheritor of the title of Earl Marischal, was a young man of two-and-twenty, and his brother James, afterwards Frederick the Great's Field - Marshal, was some three years younger. They were nearly related to Mar, the leader of the insurrection, and were sharers in the official proscription which created so many enemies to the new dynasty. The Earl was deprived of his commission, and, returning home to Dunnottar, to wait events in his own stronghold, he met his brother James, who was going southwards to seek service under the new king. The news which the Earl had to tell about himself were not propitious to such an object, and the brothers returned to Scotland together. Nothing was more natural than that they should join in the outbreak ; and whatever may be said of their cousin Mar, and of other veteran politicians who had deliberately offered their services to the Hanoverian before they dis- covered that their allegiance was due elsewhere, it would be as unjust to attribute selfish motives as it would be unreasonable to attach serious political convictions to the conduct of the two young men who, in the impulse of the moment, threw themselves into the cause of their kindred. When ruin fell alike on their adopted cause and their own fortunes, it is pleasant to contemplate the manly resoluteness with which the two young men set them- selves to the creation of their own fortunes, without cast- ing back an enervating thought to the sure fortune and the brilliant prosperity that had departed from them. Each of them made for himself a place in history, and achieved a fortune far above the home respectability, affluence, and rank from which calamity had driven them. There are considerable materials for the history of the public life of both. A fragment of an autobiography left behind by the younger will enable the biographer to trace him through the period of his early struggles down nearly to the point at which he is taken up by fame, and his personal adventures become a part of European history. On the dispersal of the Jacobite army at Perth, the two brothers wandered to the Western Isles with the 332 THE SCOT ABROAD. Clanranald Highlanders. After remaining for some months in hiding, they were removed by a French ves- sel, "and, after a very pleasant passage, arrived the i2th May, new style, at St Paul de Leon, in Brittany," and thence went to Paris. Their prospects at first were dim enough. "I lived/' says James, "most of that time in selling horse- furniture, and other things of that nature which an officer commonly carries with him ; and though I had relations enough in Paris who could have supplied me, and who would have done it with pleasure, yet I was then either so bashful, or so vain, that I would not own the want I was in." Next year he "thought it high time, being about twenty years old," that he should have some distinct position in the world. In 1718 the Spanish war opened a prospect to him, of which he confesses that he did not take immediate advantage, because "I was then," he says, " too much in love to think of quitting Paris ; and though shame and my friends forced me to take some steps towards it, yet I managed it so slowly that I set out only in the end of that year; and had not my mistress and I quarrelled, and that other affairs came to concern me more than the conquest of Sicily did, it is probable I had lost many years of my time to very little purpose so much was I taken up with my passion." This is the sole faint tinge of romance in the career of Marshal Keith ; the rest of it is all hard work and successful ambition. His desire to take service in Spain suited precisely the views of Cardinal Alberoni, who had quarrelled with Eng- land, and projected an expedition to Britain in aid of the Stewarts. Through the Duke of Ormond, the leader of the exiled Jacobites, the two Keiths were sent on a secret mission to Madrid. They arrived together at Palamos, on the coast of Catalonia. The authorities received them at first with surly suspicion, which, suddenly thaw- ing, was converted into a mysterious courtesy and re- spectfulness, little less embarrassing. Thus, at Barce- lona, having sent to request of Prince Pio, the captain- general of the province, that they might be exempt from the usual examination at the ports, they were surprised presently to see "a coach with six mules," carrying the THE SOLDIER. 333 prince's livery, arrive at the door of their inn, containing a personage whose respect for the two strangers was more deep and profound than all they had yet encountered. The mystery was speedily explained. The Cardinal had imparted to the captain-general the confidential in- formation that the Chevalier de St George or the King of England, as he was of course termed was likely to pass incognito through Catalonia ; and when two hand- some, noble-looking young Scotsmen entered the territory with high credentials, and no ostensible title or function, who could they be but the exiled monarch and his con- fidential attendant? The discovery of his mistake, of course, made the captain-general feel a little ridiculous. " I believe," says Keith, "he was sorry to have given himself so much trouble about us when he knew who we were; yet he received us very civilly, though with some embarras." The two young men were intrusted with eighteen thousand crowns by the Cardinal, who engaged to put at their disposal six companies of foot. The elder brother remained in Spain, and sailed with the expedition when it was completed, while the younger undertook to visit the Jacobite exiles dispersed through France, and make arrangements for their secretly leaving the country and joining the expedition, a delicate and difficult duty, which was fraught with extreme risk, at a time when France and Spain were at war, and when, consequently, the young diplomatist must have carried everywhere with him the evidence that he was in correspondence with the enemy. James Keith at last left Havre with his Jacobite friends in a small vessel, which narrowly escaped the English fleet, and he found his brother with the Spanish troops at Stornoway. Their attempt led to the incident in history called the battle of Glenshiel. The project was acutely conceived. It was intended that, while Ormond landed with a large expedition in England, the little body of Spaniards and Scottish Jacobites should march through the glens and surprise Inverness ; but an unexpected attack by Wightman, with a superior force, on the borders of the wild Loch Duich, crushed the attempt at its open- ing. The battle was not in itself decisive ; and had there 334 THE SCOT ABROAD. been ulterior hopes for the Jacobites, they might have defended the narrow gorge running through a range of the loftiest and most precipitous mountains in Scotland ; but news had come of the failure of Ormond's expedition, and after a consultation the Spaniards surrendered as prisoners of war, " and everybody else took the road he liked best" "As I was then," says James Keith, "sick of a fever, I was forced to lurk some months in the mountains; and in the beginning of September, having got a ship, I embarked at Peterhead, and four days after landed in Holland at the Texel, and from thence, with the Earl Marischal, went to the Hague, to know if the Marquis Beretti Landi, then the King's minister at that Court, had any orders for us ; and his advice being that we should return with all haste to Spain, we set out next day by the way of Liege, to shun the Imperial Netherlands, and enter France by Sedan, judging that route to be the least suspected." But this proved a miscalculation. On their arrival at Sedan, the town-major, finding them without credentials or passports, ordered them to be carried to prison, "which," says Keith, "was executed with the greatest exactitude." They had just time to destroy their com- missions from the King of Spain, which might have brought them to the gallows as spies, when they were searched. The only available document found on them appears to have been a complimentary and familiar letter from the Princess of Conti, which bore so strong a testi- mony to their rank and favour at Court that they were at once liberated. They returned to Spain, to find the Cardinal prostrate and powerless. This event affected them in a manner curiously illustrative of the Cardinal's suspicious policy. The commissions, as we have seen, had been destroyed, and no record of them could be found in the proper office; "the reason of which was, that the Cardinal kept always by him a certain number of commissions already signed by the King, and filled them up himself without acquainting the minister of war, for those whom he did not wish should be seen publicly." For a few years James Keith led a wandering, restless THE SOLDIER. 335 life. He " knew nobody, and was known to none ; " and admits that he was for some time glad of a seat at the table of a certain Admiral Cammock. He discovered that, as a heretic, he could never hope for promotion in Spain; but when the war with Britain broke out in 1725, he obtained temporary employment, conscious at the same time that he owed it entirely to " the mere necessity to be revenged on the English." He was immediately connected with a piece of service, of which his account is interesting, as it shows how nar- rowly we escaped losing Gibraltar by such a chance blow as that by which it was originally acquired. Troops were gradually marched to St Roque, within a league of the fortress, until the number of all classes there concentrated was 20,000. Keith thought that, had their commander been more enterprising or less formal, the place might have been seized; but the Count de las Torres would take no fortress otherwise than in a legitimate manner by a practicable breach. The garrison was but 1000 strong, "and the service of the place was so negligently observed, that very often the guard of the port was not above a dozen men. They allowed our soldiers to come into the town in what num- bers they pleased, without ever searching them for hidden arms ; and at less than 400 yards from the place there are sandbanks, where a thousand men may lie concealed, and which they then had not the precaution to make re- connoitre in the morning." "How easy," continues the young soldier, "would it have been to have rendered ourselves master of the gate (for sometimes we had above two hundred soldiers and forty or fifty officers at a time in the place), and then have made our grenadiers, hid among the sandbanks, advance ! " The formality of the old general was by no means justified by the effective precision of his arrangements. The army was all assembled, and the trenches should have been opened ; " but very misfortunately," as Keith says, "we had no cannon." So soon as the artillery was brought up, Admiral Wager arrived with his fleet, and the fortress was saved to Britain. 336 THE SCOT ABROAD. Finding no scope for his ambition under so sickly a government, the young man offered his services to Russia, where they were accepted with the readiness of a govern- ment which had had experience of the value of Scottish heads and hands. He arrived in time to witness the strange scene of intrigue, political restlessness, and bar- baric extravagance which opened on the death of Peter the Great, who, as Keith says, "loved more to employ his money in ships and regiments than sumptuous build- ings, and who was always content with his lodging when he could see his fleet from his window." The young Scot looked about him with an observant eye, and his few dry notices of passing scenes would be valuable to a historian of Russia. He remained three weeks at Cronstadt before proceeding to Moscow to have an audience of the Em- peror. But "the Emperor was not then in that city, having gone some days before a-hunting," and he did not return for three weeks. Even in this little statement there was much significance. The young monarch was in the hands of the Dolgorouskis, who, to serve their ends and seduce him from state affairs, kept him in the field until they literally hunted him to death and lost their prize. His marriage with a Dolgorouski daughter was in the meantime their great object; " and that the affectionate councils of Count Osterman might not obstruct their private interest, they kept the Emperor hunting most of that summer and harvest at a distance from Moscow and Count Osterman ; and having carried their whole family along with him, they used all possible methods to hasten the projected match, which, soon after the Emperor's return, was publicly declared, to the grief of the greatest and best part of the empire, who saw the schemes of Peter the Great neglected and like to be forgot, and their prince governed by one much fitter to direct a pack of hounds which had been his study the greatest part of his life than such a vast empire." Whatever rottenness he saw in the state of Russia can- not have been the result of disappointed expectations, for promotion came on him so rapidly as to take away his breath. At the end of a year he found himself one of the THE SOLDIER. 337 three inspector-generals of the Russian forces, having for his department "the frontier of Asia along the rivers Volga and Don, with a part of the frontiers of Poland about Smolensko." In his first year of duty he passed in review thirty-two regiments, and travelled 1500 leagues. In 1734 he had to give his assistance in the coercion of Poland. He served unwillingly, not deeming the duty " a very honourable one ; " and he describes with some indignation the heartless agrarian devastation accompany- ing the movements of the Russian troops. His next work was on the other side, when Russia was pressing in upon the Turkish empire, ever standing the insults of the Tartars to a certain point, then quarrelling with them, and coming off with " a material guarantee." In 1737, Azoff on the Black Sea was stormed by a large Russian force, commanded by Munnich, with Keith, and Lacy an Irishman, under him. According to the accounts we have of this affair, an aide-de-camp came to Keith, directing him to advance within musket-shot, to which he answered that he had been so for some time ; a second direction came to advance within half-musket- shot ; he did so, but at the same time sent a remon- strance to Munnich against the aimless sacrifice of life incurred. A third message came to say that Munnich expected Keith to co-operate with him in an escalade. When he went on to climb, he found a ditch twelve feet broad, with no available means for crossing, and no shelter ; and after his men had been thinned by the fire, they dropped away. Meanwhile a house had been set on fire, and the flames spread till they blew up a powder- magazine. The town was taken, much to the surprise, apparently, of the besieging general. He complimented Keith as having been by his firmness the real cause of the success ; but Keith was angry at the waste of life and general recklessness shown in the affair, and said he had merit for nothing but obeying orders. 1 He caught in this affair a wound in the knee, which 1 * Leben des Feldmarshalls Jakob Keith. Von K. A. Varnhagen von Ense,' p. 59. Y THE SCOT ABROAD. gave him more trouble than he at first expected. His body was recognised by it when found stripped on the bloody field of Hochkirche. His elder brother, hearing of it, came to visit him. They had a delightful meeting, and adjourned to Paris, the brother insisting that he had no trust in Russian medical skill. James Keith broke away from the Russian service in 1747, and was readily caught up by Frederick the Great, then organising his grand project. A letter published by Lord Dovor explains the cause of his quarrel with the Russian service. The chief burden of his complaint is that which ever touches the soldier most keenly a com- mand, to which he thought himself entitled, given to another. But he founds also on the Russian Govern- ment having refused to receive his brother. Now, how- ever, whether as a burden to be borne for the sake of James, or for his own value, Frederick accepted the elder brother. He became an eminent favourite was ap- pointed governor of Neuchatel, and overloaded with dis- tinctions. It has fallen to the lot of few, indeed, to be so widely and so ardently beloved. D'Alembert bestowed on him an eloge. Frederick, it is said, never tired of him, or gave him impertinence. But, what is far more wonderful, Rousseau, when he was snarling at all the world, and biting those who comforted or caressed him, licked one hand alone, that of his venerated and patri- archal patron, Le bon Milord Marechal. It is stated in several histories and biographies that he bought his peace with the British Government by reveal- ing to them the family compact of the Bourbons, which he had learned as ambassador from Prussia to the Court of Madrid in 1759. I never could find any distinct authority for this statement. It is certain, however, that in the following year his disabilities were removed by Act of Parliament, and he succeeded to the estate of Kintore, which had been preserved in a collateral branch of his family by an entail. He purchased another of the family estates, where he desired to shelter Rousseau ; but that troublesome visitor took flight before the arrange- ments for receiving him at Keith Hall could be com- THE SOLDIER. 339 pleted, otherwise he might have lived long enough under his patron's roof to find that there was another enemy leagued against him. The Earl Marischal had lived too much in foreign courts and among French philosophers to relish the climate or the society of Aberdeenshire. He wrote some complaining and amusing letters to his friends, commencing sometimes in English, but generally lapsing into French, as a relief to the labour of compos- ing in the forgotten language of his boyhood ; and at last he found it better for "an old Spaniard, and a sort of Guebre in religion," as he called himself, to creep back "nearer to the sun." Before leaving him to go back to the more active career of his younger brother, the opportunity is taken to mention a sentimental affair with which a French lady of celebrity has invested him. Although the heroine of it is that Madame de Crequy, of whom the reminiscences given to the public have been maintained by the critics to be a collection of fictions and forgeries, there seems to be no harm whatever in believing the story, professed to be delivered to her grandchildren, of her girlish attach- ment to Milord Marechal she says it was the only pre- dilection she ever had in her life, except for Monsieur de Crequy, to whom she thought fit to impart the love-pas- sage as something that concerned him. "If you wish," she tells the grandchildren, " to have an idea of his face, you must look at that charming portrait of the handsome Caylus, the favourite of Henry III., which you inherited from the Constable de Lesdiguieres." And there is a full-length portrait of the Earl Marischal in the college founded by his ancestor, which, in its youthful beauty and candid mildness of expression, justifies the old lady's romantic description. "We began," she continues, "by looking at one another, first with surprise, then with in- terest, and at last with emotion. Next we used to listen to the conversation of each other, without being able to answer a word, and then neither could speak at all in the presence of the other, owing to our voices at first trem- bling, and then failing us altogether." All this is common enough, and quite French. What 340 THE SCOT ABROAD. follows is French also in its general characteristics, but it is a morsel of the purest and sweetest kind of French sentiment, and will strike every one who reads it with its resemblance to Thackeray's story of the youthful re- miniscences communicated by the Countess de Florae to Colonel Newcome. When the young people had ar- ranged all for themselves, their union was abruptly and remorselessly stopped because the Earl was a heretic. The young lady, though she had overlooked the im- pediment, could not question the justice of the sentence. " I refused," she says, the hand of Milord Mare'chal, and two days afterwards he set out to return to his own country; from whence he wrote to say that grief and despair would lead him to acts that might bring him to the scaffold." When next they met her grandchildren were born, and the Earl had passed his seventieth year. He presented her with some French verses the only poetry, as he told her, that he had ever written about white hairs cover- ing an old wound. But Madam e's own remarks on the meeting conveyed more subtle sentiments better ex- pressed. "When we met again," she says, "after the lapse of many years, we made a discovery which equally surprised and affected us both. There is a world of difference between the love which had endured through- out a lifetime, and that which has burned fiercely in oui youth and then paused. In the latter case, time has not laid bare defects, nor taught the bitter lesson of mutual failings ; a delusion has subsisted on both sides, which ex- perience has not destroyed ; and, delighting in the idea of each other's perfections, that thought has seemed to smile on both with unspeakable sweetness, till, when we meet in a grey old age, feelings so tender, so pure, so solemn, arise, that they can be compared to no other senti- ments or impressions of which our nature is capable." During those years of dignified quiet which fell to the lot of his elder brother, James was gaining a name in history by his share in the Seven Years' War. The his- torian of Frederick the Great stops for a minute to say of him : " Highly respectable too, and well worth talking to, THE SOLDIER. 341 though left very dim in the books, is Marshal Keith; who has been growing gradually with the King, and with everybody, ever since he came to these parts in 1747. A man of Scotch type : the broad accent, with its sagac- ities and veracities, with its steadfastly fixed modera- tion, and its sly twinkles of defensive humour, is still audible to us through the foreign wrappings. Not given to talk unless there is something to be said, but well capable of it then. On all manner of subjects he can talk knowingly, and with insight of his own." 1 Keith shared with the King the responsibilities of the battle of Lowositz the first in the Seven Years' War. He had afterwards much work of various kinds on his hands ; and, among others, there was one affair in which he and his master got a good deal of historical obloquy the celebrated seizure of the secret papers in the archives of Dresden, when the Queen stood with her back to the cabinet in which they were, and said she would resist their seizure. On this the German bio- grapher says, "There is no ground for the story, that during this transaction Keith used personal violence to the Queen of Poland, and gave her a push when she objected to his intention of opening the archives; in- asmuch as not he, but a person commissioned by him, demanded the key of the archives from the Queen ; and it was most probably through Major Wangenheim's urgent solicitations that she was at last persuaded to withdraw from the door of the archives, the entrance to which she had prepared to defend in person. But, naturally, Keith would have been obliged to order the removal of the Queen by force, had it been necessary ; and her threat, that he would be disgraced before the eyes of all Europe after such treatment, and would be abandoned to shame by his own king, would have failed to make any impression on the experienced soldier." 2 Carlyle has looked at the official account of this trans- action furnished to his own Court by Steinberg, the 1 Carlyle's ' Frederick the Great/ iv. 389. 2 Von Ense, pp. 117, 118. 342 THE SCOT ABROAD. Austrian ambassador. Though Keith was in command, it appears that the officer told off for the special duty of opening the cabinet was Wangenheim. The Queen stood before the door, and said that, if violence were to be used, it had best begin with her ; but on being assured that force actually would be used, she gave way, and avoided actual handling. 1 The German biographer tells us that " Keith continued to enjoy the King's entire confidence and favour, and re- commended himself by many services not within the class of duties for which his services were retained. At one time we find him interceding for an English manufacturer of woollen goods to be allowed to settle in Prussia ; at another time seeking to open the East Indian trade to Prussian industry. He takes the trouble to translate the debates of the British Parliament for the King's perusal." We are then told of designs furnished by Keith for massive bridges over the Spree, which had to be post- poned while the King organised his larger projects; and then come some little affairs, which show, what is not generally known in this country, that the Field-Marshal was an authority on matters of art. "In March 1756 the King found time, and was in the humour, to listen to proposals addressed to his artistic taste. Keith became the medium of ordering pictures from the Italian painters, Pompeo Battoni and Constanzo; also from the then celebrated Mengs, whom the King wished to paint for him two pictures, for which he pro- poses as suitable subjects 'The Education of Adonis' and 'The Judgment of Tiresias.' The prices to be paid, and the conclusion of the business, he leaves alto- gether to Keith's decision and judgment ; who in April, during his journey through the country to Karlsbad, arranges the affair in Dresden, and sends the pictures, together with the correspondence about them, to the King. On this Frederick answers : ' My dear Field- Marshal, I send you back your correspondence about the pictures, thanking you for the trouble you have taken 1 Carlyle, iv. 524. THE SOLDIER. 343 in the affair. Would you have the kindness to order the two pictures from Mengs, and to tell me to whom and by whom I should have the money placed, so that I may pay in advance on my return from Magdeburg ? I hope with all my heart that the waters may do you all the good possible, assuring you of the high esteem and friendship which I shall preserve for you all my life.' " J The soldier who puts his sword at the command of a foreign power, whether from merely mercenary or from higher motives, cannot expect that lofty fame which attends the patriot hero. There are few interested in immortalising him. It is not a pleasant task to the his- torian of the country he has served, to dwell on the merits and achievements of the stranger, and give him the fame of their national victories. The enemy cannot be expected to sound his praise ; and to his own country- men he is in some measure a deserter. Whether it be from the natural propensity of the biographer to construct a hero, or from the influence of honest truth, the German biographer gives Keith a far more important place in the Seven Years' War than one finds usually assigned to him. He felt as every native of this country should feel, a loathing at the waste of human life he had seen in Russian operations; and from Frederick's difficulty of getting troops, and his policy of making them valuable by train- ing, an economical commander was a great object to him. Here are some of the incidents of the campaign of 1757. When Frederick had recovered from his great disaster, had fought the battle of Prague, and was besieging that town, Keith's division was seriously endangered by an attempt at a surprise. "During the night between the 23d and the 24th of May, Prince Charles of Lorraine, with 12,000 men, made a violent attack on Keith's post. The best Austrian troops were chosen for this purpose; the greater part of their cavalry, the whole of the grenadiers, and sixteen volunteers out of each ordinary company, had formed before the ramparts, to 1 Von Ense, pp. 109-113. The King's letter, like all the others from him quoted in this little book, is in French. 344 THE SCOT ABROAD. take immediate advantage of every success, and to cut their way through the Prussian line. Brandy was dis- tributed to the men, and the assurance was given at the same time that a French army would attack the Prussian rear. In dead silence the troops marched out of the camp under the command of General Laudon, arranged themselves in battle array, and then pressed forwards towards the left wing of the Prussian army. At about half -past one the first shots were fired. Keith was immediately on horseback, and gave orders; in fifteen minutes the Prussians stood ready. The troops in the intrenchments, which were first stormed, fought bravely, and kept the enemy's superior force at bay until they received support. Reiterated assaults were vigorously driven back. At three o'clock Keith himself appeared on the front, and flung the Austrians back, with the loss of 1000 killed and wounded. . . . The King, who heard of the battle in his camp at Saint Michael, on the other side of the Moldau, without being able to par- ticipate in it, was much delighted at Keith's victory, and hoped to reap great results from it. He wrote, May 24, in his own handwriting : * My dear Field- Marshal, The night of the 23d will prove as decisive as the day of the 6th. I thank Heaven for the advantages which you have gained over the enemy above all, for the slight loss which we have sustained. I hope now, more than ever, that all that race of Austrian princes and gueux will be obliged to lay down their arms. It is possible for 4000 men to attack Kirschfeldt ; but the Austrians from Prague undertake more than their forces are capable of accomplishing in attacking a corps of my alert and well -posted troops. I believe that the honour of the generals will force them to make another attempt on my position ; but if that fails, and if the bombardment makes some progress, all will be well. I salute you, my dear Field-Marshal, with all my heart. FREDERICK/" In a postscript he again refers with glee to le peu dt perte. J 1 Von Ense, pp. 151-153' THE SOLDIER. 345 The ordinary histories state how, in October 1757, Keith was driven into Leipzig, and there held out till relieved by the King ; but the biographer tells us a good deal more. " On October the 22d, Keith informed the King that the enemy were advancing towards Leipzig both French and Imperialists. It appeared impossible to hold the town against such a superior force. But Frede- rick wrote from Grochwitz on the 2$d: ' You will not be attacked by these people at Leipzig ; they fear destroying the town ; but as they are growing audacious now, I flatter myself that, in marching towards them, a battle may ensue which will rid me of them.' Besides this the King pro- mises speedy help ; Prince Ferdinand of Brunswick is advancing round by Halle, and he himself only waits for Prince Maurice of Dessau to march on Leipzig also. Keith promised to hold out, although he did not conceal the fact that, in the case of a serious attack, he would be lost ; for the place had scarcely any fortifications left, and he was destitute of ammunition even cartridges. On the 24th of October, Austrian hussars appeared, against whom Keith sent a party, who skirmished with them for three hours. On the same day a division of the enemy's army, consisting of more than 8000 men, followed, and summoned the Prussians to surrender in the name of the Prince of Hildburghausen, who commanded the Imperial army. Counting all the men hurriedly collected by Keith out of Halle, Merseburg, and Weiszenfels, his forces scarcely amounted to 4000 men. The Prince of Hildburg- hausen and the Prince of Soubise had already been in- formed at Nuremberg, on the 22d, that the number did not exceed this, and had joked a great deal about that ' army ; ' they scarcely expected resistance. But Keith let them know, through the commandants of the town, that he would defend it to the last man, and in his own name he added : ' Tell the Prince of Hildburghausen that by birth I am a Scotsman, by choice and duty a Prussian ; and I am determined so to defend the town that neither the Scotch nor the Prussians shall be ashamed of me. The King my master has commanded me to keep the place, and I shall keep it.' The next morning early he 346 THE SCOT ABROAD. assembled the town-council before him, and made the following address to them : ' I must inform you, gentle- men, that the Prince of Hildburghausen has sent me a summons to surrender the town to him, which, however, I am not going to do. He threatens, in case of a refusal, to resort to extreme measures. Thus he sets me an ex- ample to do so likewise ; and so to him you must impute the misfortune to which your town is exposed. If you wish to avoid this, I advise you to go to him, and per- suade him, for your sakes, and those of the rest of the inhabitants, to spare the town, for otherwise I will burn the suburbs on the first news of his attack ; and if that will not stop him, I shall go and not even spare the town.' The delegates could make nothing of the Prince ; he would grant no more than permission to the Prussians to leave the town unhindered. When Keith rejected a second summons, and also this degrading offer, the Prince was enraged, and sent him a message to say, that if Leipzig was set on fire he would lay Berlin and Potsdam in ashes. Keith laughed at this threat, and made every preparation for defence, had trenches dug, ramparts raised, and set hussars and riflemen to skirmish with the enemy. Frederick wrote to Keith from Eulenberg, Oc- tober 25th : 'Be easy ; the Prince of Hildburghausen will not eat you ; I will answer for it.' And Keith answered on the 26th : ' I have just received the letter in which your Majesty tells me that you are going to bring me powder, artillery, and everything needful. When I have that, he who wishes to eat me will perhaps find me a very tough morsel/ " l There is not perhaps very much colour in the following sketch of Keith's social character, but it gives glimpses of a fine nature : " The friendly intimacy between Keith and the King was never shaken, unless that sometimes the press of business and the emergencies of warfare called forth a hasty or harsh word, which, however, never awakened anger in Keith, and was soon followed by ex- pressions of confidence and affection from the King. All 1 Von Ense, pp. 181-183. THE SOLDIER. 347 Frederick's generals had to suffer from his bad humour, but he no less from their touchiness and jealousy. Win- terfeldt and Keith were exceptions ; and Keith was the least burdensome to the King through discontent and ambition, agreed with his brother officers, obeyed and commanded with the same zeal, and led the smallest corps as willingly as he would a whole army. He stood on amicable terms with Schwerin. Schmettau was devoted to him ; Winterfeldt enjoyed his esteem ; Seydlitz and Zieten seemed, without any near personal relation, to hold by him. The only person spoken of as really an enemy of Keith is Prince Maurice of Dessau, who tried secretly to slander him to the King ; but that brave, but at the same time unsociable and reckless prince, who could not speak French, and only stuttered German, had conse- quently very few collisions with Keith; and when he once, in Dresden, in a fit of hypocrisy or humour, showed Keith the most enthusiastic devotion, and even kissed his saddle-cloth, Keith responded only with a smile, and the words ' Good, good ! ' which Kalckreuth interprets as, 'Be off! I don't believe you.'" 1 His end was that which the true soldier desires. He was killed by a cannon-shot in the great battle of Hoch- kirche in 1758. Besides other and more conspicuous commemorations, his monument, with Metastasio's inscrip- tion, was placed in the village church of Hochkirche by his cousin Sir Robert Murray Keith, who thus writes about it : " Lord Marischal has agreed to my erecting a decent gravestone to the memory of his late brother, and in the place where he fell. They sent me two inscrip- tions, but they were long and languid. I have engaged Baron Hagen and his friend Metastasio to touch me up something manly and energetic ; and in the course of this summer my tribute of veneration for the memory of a brave and honest man will be recorded in monumental marble." 2 1 Von Ense, p. 271. 1 'Memoirs of Sir R. Murray Keith,' i. 151. The inscription is : 1 Jacobo Keith, Gulielmi Comitis Marescalli hereditarii regni Scotiae, 348 THE SCOT ABROAD. Besides Keith, there were many one is inclined to think, too many Scotsmen employed in the construction and consolidation of the power of Russia. Our old friend Sir Thomas Urquhart, writing before the middle of the seventeenth century, professes to give a list of " those Scottish colonels that served under the great Duke of Muscovy against the Tartar and Polonian." Of these, one very conspicuous man, Thomas Game or Garden, was elected king of Bukharia "for the height and gross- ness of his person being in his stature taller, and greater in his compass of body, than any within six kingdoms about him." Urquhart, who professes to have been ac- quainted with this giant, and who maintains that his mental was as conspicuous as his corporeal superiority, states that, on account of a small personal sacrifice that was required of him, he declined the Mohammedan prin- cipality, and remained in the Muscovite service. The bearded grim old Dalyell of Binns was bred in the same service, and hence his paroxysm of rage on being called at the council-board " a Muscovy beast, who had roasted men." Gordons seem to have been in great force in the court and camp of Peter the Great. One of them, a general, wrote a life of the Czar ; another wrote what is far more interesting, his own life in the form of a diary, from which I have drawn the following sketches : 1 Gordon was a native of Buchan. Washington Irving attributed in a great measure to the influence of the fine scenery of the Hudson, that genial and imaginative turn of mind which has made his works so pleasing. Perhaps the scenery of Buchan had its influence in toning the in- tellect of Patrick Gordon. The staple of the district is a et Marise Drummond filio, Frederic! Borussorum regis summo exer- citus Prsefecto, viro antiquis moribus et militari vertute claro, qui dum in praelio non procul hinc inclinatam suorum aciem mente, manu, voce, et exemplo restituebat, pugnans ut heroes decet, occubuit et xiv. Octobris, anno MDCCLVIII. " 1 * Passages from the Diary of General Patrick Gordon of Auch- leuchries, A.D. 1635 A. D. 1699.' Printed for the Spalding Club, 1859- THE SOLDIER. 349 flat cake of granite, which nature has clothed inland with heather and seaward with sand, although the indomitable perseverance of the inhabitants has made many an acre smile in grain and pasture. How hard their struggle has been is exemplified by one parish, which, after being rescued from barrenness, was again, in one night, covered deep in sand ; the walls of the church may be seen peep- ing through the yellow waste. This unlovely district sig- nally contradicts the theory that grand scenery is neces- sary to the production of great men. Perhaps it has not given much to the world in the shape of aesthetics or the lyre though there are a set of curious poems in "broad Buchan." But it has supplied men of the clearest brains, the strongest arms, and the most determined wills, to a country in which these commodities have never been wanting. There is something savouring of granite and east wind in the harsh nomenclature of Gordon's surroundings. The paternal estate dreary and sterile enough, no doubt bore the name of Auchleuchries, of old a dependency of the barony of Ardendraught. Then we have among his ancestry Ogilvy of Blarac, and the Gordons of Pitlurg, of Straloch, and of Coclarachy, and their feudal foe, Strachan of Achnagat, and Patrick's neighbour, Buchan of Auchmacoy, with whom, after he has become a great man, he has a merry rouse and a reminiscence of auld langsyne at my Lord Chancellor's table. To such topo- graphical characteristics might be added Bothmagoak, Ardendracht, Auchmedane, Auchmyliny, Kynknoky, Auch- quhorteis, Creichie, Petuchry, and others equally adapted for pronunciation by Cockney lips. Patrick was born in 1635. ^is father was not the laird but " the gudeman " of Auchleuchries an import- ant distinction in the homely hierarchy of ranks beyond the Grampians. An estate held directly of the Crown was a lairdship ; when lands were held of any of the great families, such as the Dukes of Gordon or Earls of Sutherland, they were but a gudemanship. In 1640, on Lammas-day, he was sent to school at Grochdan, "and put to lodge and dyet by a widow called Margaret Allan." 350 THE SCOT ABROAD. Four years afterwards he migrated to a school at Achridy; and then, the great troubles of the seventeenth century having broken out, "all public schools were abandoned;" so he went to live with his father at Achmade, the genius of the Buchan guttural seeming still to guide his steps. In 1651, being sixteen years of age, he entered on the great resolution which decided his destiny. He belonged to a family, or to " a house," as he calls it for it was not becoming to apply the humble word family to his illus- trious ancestors who followed the old faith, the prospects of which were becoming darker every day ; and so, after giving certain reasons for the step he was going to take, he says " But most of all, my patrimony being but small, as being the younger son of a younger brother of a younger house, I resolved, I say, to go to some foreign country, not caring much on what pretence, or to which country I should go, seeing I had no known friend in any foreign place." Patrick being obstinate, his father and uncle accompanied him to Aberdeen, where, with a pro- vision in clothes and money, he went on board a mer- chant-ship belonging to Danzig, David Bartlman, skipper. The vessel touched at Elsinore, where, he says, "we went ashore, and dined in a Scotsman's house very well for twelvepence a man, and at night returned to the ship." On reaching his destination at Danzig, he "lodged in a Scotsman's house, in the Holy Ghost Street, our land- lord being called John Donaldson." As he began, so he went on, finding fellow-countrymen dotted here and there at convenient posting distances, on through Austria and Russia, to the very extremities of European civilisa- tion. He set off for Konigsberg with another country- man of his own, Thomas Menzies, and on the way met with Father Blackball, also a native of Scotland, eminent among the Jesuits. l Another countryman and Jesuit 1 See 'A Brief Narrative of the Services performed to Three Noble Ladies.' By Gilbert Blackball. Printed for the Spalding Club. It is so full of interesting incidents, both in France and Scotland, that I have been afraid to begin with it, lest it should add to an unexpectedly enlarging book. THE SOLDIER. 351 priest, named Alexander Michael Menzies, now casts up ; and Gordon finds himself how, he does not explain, nor does he seem to have himself known in the toils of this scheming and zealous order. He found himself a student at a college they had at Branensburg, near Konigsberg ; but, though a zealous Romanist, this was far from being the destiny he desired : " albeit," he says, " I wanted not for anything, the Jesuits always bestowing extraordinary pains, and taking great care in educating youth ; yet could not my humour endure such a still and strict way of living." He resolved to be off. It is evident that a feeling of respect prevents him from explaining that he was in some shape under restraint, since the method of his departure was an escape, planned with a special view to avoid the vigilance of Father Blackball. Not seeing any other path open to him, it was his intention to return home an intention in which he was frustrated by his destiny. He thus rather picturesquely describes his departure : " On a Tuesday, about ten o'clock, I took my journey on foot to save expenses, for I had no more money left than seven rixdollars and a half, and one suit of clothes which I had on. So, taking my cloak and a little bag, wherein were my linens and some books, with a staff in my hand, I pilgrim' d it away all alone. I had not learned any Dutch, by reason of our speaking Latin in the college, but had acquired and written down some words necessary for asking the way, victuals, and suchlike. My port- mantel I carried for ease on my back betwixt villages, or when I did see nobody; but, coming to any village or meeting anybody, I took it under my arm. Thus accoutred, I went privately round the old town, P. Menzies only convoying me to the highway. I walked the well-known way through the wood to Frawensberg, pleasing myself either with trifling fancies, or such objects as offered on the way." It was all very pleasant at first, and until the hardships and dangers of such an enterprise began to press upon him. After a while, he came to that established curse of the pedestrian's existence a severance of the roads to 352 THE SCOT ABROAD. right and left, with nothing whatever except a fortunate guess to indicate the one he ought to take. To add to the unpleasantness of the difficulty, he had entered a forest ; but there was nothing for it save to choose the likelier of the two ways. It was then that the first cloud passed over the boy's heart. "After I had gone a pretty way into the wood, and doubting whether I was right or not, I began with serious thoughts to consider my present condition, calling to mind from whence I was come from my good, loving parents and friends and where I was now, among strangers whose language I understood not, travelling, myself knew not well whither, having but seven dollars by me, which could not last long, and when that was gone I knew not where to get a farthing more for the great journey and voyage which I intended. To serve or work I thought it a disparagement ; and to beg, a greater. With these and suchlike thoughts, I grew so pensive and sad, that, sitting down, I began to lament and bewail my miserable condition. Then, having my recourse to God Almighty, I, with many tears, implored His assistance, craving also the intercession of the blessed Virgin and all the saints in heaven. Then, getting up, I went forward, continuing in prayer with great fervency, when on a sudden, from the right hand, came an old man riding, whose grey hairs might exact and force reverence from the haughtiest heart. He, seeing me crying in crossing my way, said to me in Dutch, which I understood so ' Cry not, my child; God will comfort you.' I was very astonished at his sudden appearance and words, and also ashamed that anybody should see me in such a plight. However, keeping on my way, I began to recollect myself, and to think that God had sent this old man of purpose to direct me from such passionate fits, the conceit whereof made me rouse up myself and walk on more cheerfully." He does not tell how it was that the old man spoke in a language understood by him; but the passage is sufficient to show how, even when he feels himself sub- dued by the overwhelming conditions he is surrounded THE SOLDIER. 353 by, the natural pride and self-reliance of the Scot break forth. Far from seeking help or protection from the august stranger, he is ashamed that human eyes should have beheld him in his moment of transitory weakness. At night he comes to a village, and lodges in the cruc, the term by which he almost always designates an ale- house or village tavern : it is a variation of the Low Dutch kroeg, which has the same signification. The landlord asked him various questions, to which he returned no answer, for the satisfactory reason that he did not under- stand them. However, they sat at meals together, and he indulged in half a stoup of beer. When he asked for a sleeping-place, he was shown an empty waggon in the stable, and then he laid his cloak one half above and one half under him, with his coat and portmanteau under his head; and so (being exceedingly wearied) he laid him down. A good-natured maid of the inn had already shown the boy some kindness; and ere he went to sleep, "by-and- by came the maid, and, reaching me a pillow, began to laugh downright, then jumped away in such haste, as if she had been afraid of some infection. I made but one sleep the whole night, and got up half an hour before the sun, and, bringing my pillow to the room, asked what I had to pay. The landlady told me a stoup of beer, which I paid; and then asked what I had to pay for victuals, and she answering, Nothing, I thanked, and went on my way." The full significance of such a picture of sordid hard- ship can only be felt by keeping in view the climax to which the narrative is gradually coming. The poor youth, who endures all that is endured by the beggar's brat, except that he will not beg, rises to an eminence which, in power and external pomp, far excels that of the greatest nobles in his own poor but free country. Covered with the many honours and decorations of the barbarian Court of the Czar invested with vast estates and feudal powers he becomes more like a petty sov- ereign than a subject. In his next day's journey he fell in with two "sturdy Z 354 THE SCOT ABROAD. fellows," both professing to be, like himself, on their way to Danzig. They pestered him with questions, against which he had his old defence ; and although he appears to have believed that they had evil designs, and was warned against one of them as a professed robber, he seems to have thought that the meagreness of his purse would protect him against this, as his deficiency in lan- guage protected him from the lesser evil. Two days being passed, he says, "The next morning I was not able to go farther. My feet, not being used to such hard travel, were full of blisters, and the skin off in many places." He got a cast in a waggon, and at last reached Danzig, where he found his old landlady. Poor comfort awaited him here, however : he was told that the last ship of the season bound for the British Isles had sailed, and he must have to wait some ten months for the next year's fleet. What was he to do? His countrymen seem to have swarmed in the district, for his landlady had only to let it be known that she had a Scottish youth on her hands who seemed in great per- plexity, and was, as she feared, in need of money, to bring a crowd of them to her table. They offered aid to their countryman, but not in the direction of his am- bition, for they had followed the arts of peace, but his selected destiny was war. Yet they were kind in advis- ing him, and it was his interest as well as his desire to be civil to them. "So, the next day at dinner, these merchants began to persuade me to turn merchant, to the which I, finding my nature averse, answered in fair terms however, not being willing to disoblige any." The practical conclusion of the advice he received was, that his best chance was in Poland ; and he set out, con- sequently, on a devious journey to Warsaw. He was recommended to take on his way a countryman, of his own clan, "living in a town called Culm, about twenty miles off, who was a very civil man, and would be very glad of my company." He sailed along the Vistula in a flat-bottomed barge. There was no room for stepping about ; he could only crouch in one position ; and his sole relaxation was an THE SOLDIER. 355 occasional walk on the bank, as the lazy vessel sweltered along. But the view, whether from the vessel or the towing-path, was not interesting, for the river was lined with high embankments, over which nothing could be seen but the occasional top of a house. At Culm his countryman received him, and harboured him during the winter months, when travelling was im- practicable. His impatience to start for Warsaw was excited by the welcome news that the Duke Ivan Radze- vill "had a life-company, all or most Scotsmen," which he might pretty securely calculate on entering. He arrived at Warsaw when the Seym, or national par- liament, was sitting, and took a lodging in the Lescziniski suburb. There was no Radzevill with his life-company of Scots there, however ; and, bitterly disappointed, Gor- don again thought there was nothing for it but to return to Scotland. There were many of his countrymen in Warsaw, but his pride would not permit him to approach them in his penury and dejection, for he had but eight or nine florins left, wherewith, as he justly remarks, he " was not able to subsist long in Warsaw, nor travel far either." He got an opportunity of being franked to Posen, by a man who went thither in charge of several horses, and seems to have worked his way by assisting in driving the horses. Posen is one of the few places which have tempted him out of his Spartan or Buchan brevity: "The buildings are all brick more after the ancient form, but very convenient, especially those lately builded. The market-place is spacious, having a pleasant fountain in each corner ; the shops all in rows, each trade apart, and a stately Radthouse, &c. There are divers mon- asteries of both sexes and several orders, and a vast cathedral, which make a stately show. The suburbs are large, and decored with churches and monasteries. The city is fortified with a brick wall, yet very tenable by reason of its vastness. But that which surpasseth all is the civility of the inhabitants, which is occasioned by its vicinity to Germany, and the frequent resorting of strangers to the two annual fairs, and every day al- most. The Poles also, in emulation of the strangers THE SCOT ABROAD. dwelling amongst them, strive to transcend one another in civility." There he immediately met a fellow-countryman named Lindsay, whose conduct put the youth's pride and saga- city both to the test. " He was imperiously inquisitive of my parents, education, travels, and intentions." On being told of his birth, the stranger exclaimed " Gordon and Ogilvie ! ! these are two great clans ; sure you must be a gentleman." Patrick knew this to be said in de- rision of his sordid condition ; but he sagaciously made answer, that he hoped he " was not the worse for that." The kindness he received at Posen probably gave him his favourable impression of the place, for he was seized on by a swarm of his fellow-Scots "Robert Farquhar, James Fergusson, James Lindsay, James White, James Watson, and others." They recommended him to the good graces of a young nobleman named Oppalinski, with whom he travelled, in what capacity does not clearly appear, to Hamburg. This was in the year 1655, when Hamburg, like many towns in Northern Germany, was filled with emissaries recruiting for the great Swedish army, and all the inns were full of cavaliers "ranting and carousing." Patrick evidently felt, though he does not tell, that as this great mustering and marshalling afforded various opportunities, differing greatly from each other, for effecting his design, he must be cautious, and pick his footing warily. He was strongly tempted by the talk of two recruiting officers, a cornet and quartermaster, who, knowing wnence he came and what his views were, showed him much kindness and attention, he permitting them no opportunity for fixing their society on him save at meal-time. The recruiter is probably much the same all the world over, and the following is as good a specimen of him as Sergeant Kite : " In all their discourses they extolled a soldier's life, telling that riches, honours, and all sorts of worldly blessings lay prostrate at a soldier's feet, wanting only his will to stoop and take them up ; then falling out in commendation of our countrymen, than whom no better ' sojers ' were of any nation to be found, and that THE SOLDIER. 357 albeit nature had endowed them with a genius fit for anything, yet did they despise the ease, advantage, or contentment any other trade might bring, and embraced that of a soldier, which, without all dispute, is the most honourable." No compliments could be more skilfully put, and no sentiments could have been expressed more in harmony with those which were fermenting in the mind of the am- bitious young Scot ; but he believed he could make a better bargain for himself than these men could give him, and he held on till, one day at dinner, the quartermaster electri- fied him by the information that there was in the city a Scotsman a neighbour in fact, a member of the wor- shipful family of Gordon of Troup, in Banffshire, holding the rank of Rittmaster. This was conclusive, and away the youth hied to pay his respects where they were so eminently due. " I told him that, hearing of a person of such quality as he was being come to this city, I could not be satisfied with myself until I had paid my respects to him with a visit, hoping that he would pardon my abrupt intruding myself," &c. There was much coming and going of military people, and trampling to and fro, in the Rittmaster's house. At a carouse where they "were all pretty well warmed," the important question was opened : but he was still cautious, and mumbled something about his intention of returning home. They laughed at him, and insisted that his friends would say he had gone to the Continent to see what o'clock it was, and returned as wise as he went. " But what needed," he says, " many persuasions, it being a course to the which I was naturally inclined ? So that without any further circumstance, I gave my promise to go along, so ignorant I was of such matters at that time/' His career at this juncture was interrupted by a remit- tent fever, which threatened abruptly to close it. On the 1 5th of July 1656 he joined the Swedish army, encamped on a large meadow near Stettin. " It consisted of thirty brigades of foot and 7000 Reiters, being in all about 17,000 men, with a gallant train of artillery. It was a most delightful and brave show, the Reiters being very 358 THE SCOT ABROAD. well mounted, and the foot well clothed and armed, and above all, the officers in extraordinary good equipage." It has doubtless been seen already, and will presently become more apparent, that Patrick Gordon did not shackle himself with the higher motives professed by Monro and his school. The soldiering of the day was no longer in conflicts of principle like the struggle for freedom in Holland and the Thirty Years' War, but had become a mere scramble for territory among greedy kings. A youth struggling upwards from sheer want, could not stand on the dignity of his position and exercise a restraining in- fluence on the rapacity of his royal employer as the Earl Marischal or his brother might. Gordon went into the system as he found it, pretty heartily ; and he affords us a genuine, and perhaps a favourable, picture of the supe- rior officer in the Continental wars, such as he was from that day down to the first French Revolution. He now held a command in that foolish invasion of Poland, the first of those aggressive acts of Sweden which gave her a bad character throughout Europe, and brought her ultimately to grief. Patrick Gordon had perhaps as much right, in consideration of his pay and rank, to plead an honest espousal of the cause he was fighting for as any other of its promoters, from the King of Sweden down- wards. Professing no devotion to any higher motive for his own conduct than a selfish ambition an aspiration after military renown, rank, and pay, combined in large and due proportions he took the measure of his master's conduct in the following terms, which embrace his own private opinion, as distinguished from the views adopted by the philosophers and politicians of the age : " But, to tell you briefly, the main reason was this. The Swedish King having been bred a soldier, and having now obtained the crown by the resignation of his cousin, Queen Chris- tiana, would needs begin his reign by some notable action. He knew that the remembrance of the honours and riches obtained by many cavaliers in the German wars, under the Swedish conduct, would bring great confluence of soldiers to him when it should be known that he was to arm, which, by reason of the late universal peace in Ger- THE SOLDIER. 359 many and the many forces lately disbanded, would be more easily effectivated. Having in his conceit already formed an army, there was no prince or people except Poland to which he could have the least pretence albeit princes indeed never want pretensions to satisfy their ambition, and will have their pretences looked upon as solid and just reason." We shall see that Patrick Gordon practised and avowed a code of political ethics which responded pretty accu- rately to those of the ambitious king. But first I give a passage which tells in a few words its own story, and fur- nishes a powerful exemplification of the ferocity generated by the contemporary civil conflicts in Britain : the date is 1658. "Whilst we lay in this Werder, an English ambassador called Bradshaw, having been on his journey to Moscovia, and not admitted, returned this way, and was lodged in Lamehand's tavern. We getting notice thereof, and judging him to be that Bradshaw who sat president in the highest court of justice upon our sov- ereign King Charles I. of blessed memory, were resolved, come what will, to make an end of him ; and being about fifteen with servants, six whereof might be accounted trusty weight men, the others also indifferent, we con- cluded that, doing the feat in the evening, we could easily make our escape by benefit of the strait ground and dark- ness of the night, and so, being resolved, we took our way thither. Being come near, and asking a boor come from thence some questions, he told us that just now some officers were come from Elbing to the ambassador, and some forty dragoons who were to guard and convey him to Marienburg, which made us despair of doing any good, and so we returned. We had resolved to make our addresses to him, as sent with a commission from Field- Marshal Von der Linde to him; and being admitted seven or eight of us, to have gone in and stabbed him, the rest guarding our horses and the door ; and so, being come to horse, make our escape to Danzig." Even if they had been successful, they would have found that they had not done " any good " in their own sense of the term, for the Bradshaw they were to put to death was 360 THE SCOT ABROAD. not the Eradshaw who had committed the mortal offence. If they had slain him, no doubt they would have been disappointed that they had thrown away their exertions and peril in extinguishing the wrong life ; but Gordon has not the affectation to express a word of thankfulness for not having done it. He seems, on the whole, rather to regret that a project so well planned should have come to nothing. So long as it remains a fixed principle that every writer of biography is to bring his hero through, attributing to him all the virtues under heaven, and fighting with sple- netic bitterness against every accusation against him, it is fortunate that we have autobiographies in which people speak about their own conduct in a sensible, practical, business-like way, without attempting to make themselves better than the best men of their day, or even very much better than they are. It is from good sort of fellows not wiser than their neighbours, and not pretending to be better telling a few facts without much consciousness of their significance, that we know the truth about history and the condition of governments and peoples. Take up any ordinary history, and see what it says about any cam- paign, in the European wars of the seventeenth century, for instance. There are sentences duly turned and bal- anced, about ravaging a territory from one extremity to the other, sweeping away the fruits of the soil and the ac- cumulated produce of industry, subjecting the people to the horrors of military havoc, without respect for age or sex, &c. ; and yet, if we read a memoir of any actor in such scenes, we find him accredited to the world by his biographer as everything that is disinterested and gentle- manly, according to our modern notions of "an officer and a gentleman." Hence the use of people telling their own story in their own way, and according to the lights conferred upon them. If Gordon ever perpetrated what would have been a crime in his own social circle, of course he would not have told it, for his autobiography is not a confession ; and except an occasional hard boose, with its consequent headache, mentioned with an apologetic explanation that THE SOLDIER. 361 it was against his nature and forced upon him, he sets forth his practice like a man who has nothing to be ashamed of. The editor of the volume justly remarks that, in some instances, he appears to have aided the natural rapacity of the German mercenaries by what might be called " a wrinkle " from Highland practice. Thus he levies a sort of black-mail by engaging for certain dollars to protect certain cattle ; and in other instances with the full knowledge that the beasts have been driven away by men under his own command, he claims and pockets tribute for their restitution. The way in which Gordon dealt with employers for his services as a military commander would shock " the ser- vice " at the present day ; but it is nevertheless as well that we should know it from the statement of one who practised it, and was so little ashamed of it as to be very explicit about his method of transacting business. He was repeatedly taken prisoner by the Poles, and on each occasion tempted to serve with them; but he always declined, and went back to the Swedes on exchange of prisoners. At length, in 1659, after he had been four years in the service, having come to the conclusion that the Swedish cause was not likely to be a propitious one, and being a prisoner in the hands of the Poles, who, somewhat conveniently, refused in this instance to ex- change him, he began to listen to the proposals made to him. He was offered by John Sobieski, whom he calls "a hard bargainer, but courteous," the command of a body of troops permanently stationed on the Sobieski domains a sort of household regiment apparently. This offer did not suit his views, as he found that, how- ever high and lucrative the appointment might be, it shelved him out of the way of promotion. He preferred, therefore, the next appointment offered to him, that of quartermaster. He had not been long in the Polish ser- vice ere he heard of the restoration of the Stewart dynasty, and naturally thought of Britain as the proper field for his ambition. " But," he says, " my father informing me that the armies were disbanded, and that only a few troops were continued in pay, and that the charge of 362 THE SCOT ABROAD. these was given to the nobility, and to such persons as had extraordinarily deserved and suffered for his Majesty, and that without a good stock it was very hard living in Scotland," he remained where he was, but not con- tentedly, for the Polish army and the Diet were at feud, and Gordon's sagacity taught him that the service was not one of sufficient force and compactness to offer scope for the genius of a great commander an outlook in the direction of ambition, rare, it may be supposed, among young soldiers just entering on their career, and glad to have secured the first step. He had an eye then on the service in which he finally distinguished himself. " I had great temptation from the Muskovitish ambassa- dors ; for having by order conducted some of their chief officers to them about their ransom, as also they having ransomed two officers from me, they very earnestly de- sired their colonels to engage me in the Tzaar's service, to the which I seemed to give half a willing ear. So they promised that I should not be longer detained than three years one year whereof to serve as major, and two for lieutenant-colonel. Yet did I not accept of these offers, but only kept them in hand to have another string for my bow." Meanwhile a prospect opened to him of service under the head of all the Christian kings. "The Roman emperor's ambassador, the Baron d'Isola, got orders from the emperor to engage officers to levy a regiment of horse; to which purpose he engaged Lieutenant- Colonel Gordon, commonly called Steelhand, who, using all the pressing reasons he could to persuade me to engage with him, telling me of the honourable service, the good pay, with the advantage and easiness of the levies at this time ; wherewith being overcome, after mature consider- ation I resolved to engage; and so we entered into a stipulation, four of us, to levy a regiment of eight hundred horse." The person called Steelhand was another Patrick Gordon, who frequently figures in his namesake's narra- tive. He was excommunicated in Scotland by his title of "Patrick Gordon of the Steelhand" a designation which he obtained doubtless not without fitting reasons, THE SOLDIER. 363 though they are not explained ; he was to be the colonel, and, besides our hero, the other two field-officers were to be John Watson and Major Davidson Scotsmen all. This brilliant prospect was, however, immediately blighted. "The tenth of July, by an express from Vienna, the Roman emperor's ambassador received an order not to engage any officers, or to capitulate for the levying of men ; and if he had engaged any already, to discharge them the handsomest way he could." Gordon was retained in the service he had adopted, but not in a shape suited to his ambition. He was to hold a second- ary rank on a peace establishment, instead of casting his lot into the chances and changes of the mighty contest with the Turks, which was unfortunately, as he felt, com- ing to a close. He lets us into his secret estimate of his position, and it seems to have been sagaciously taken. "Soldiers of fortune," he says, " unless of great merit and long stand- ing in that service, would be hardly admitted and little regarded ; " and thus, if he were at last to obtain a com- pany, he would be thrown an unoccupied stranger among "men of great birth and rents, or well stocked and ac- quainted with the ways of that country, where quarters, accidencies, and shifts are the greatest part of their sub- sistence." He then bethought himself of the proffers which had been made to him by his friend Zamiaty Fiodororovitz Leontiuf, the Russian ambassador, and resolved to join that service, if, on close examination, he should find it adapted to his views. But he was ordered by the im- perial authorities to go to Vienna, on duty, with de- spatches -, and the question was, "how to come hand- somely off" from the service he had so adopted. There might be differences of opinion as to his method of "coming handsomely off:" it involved a profession of sickness, which, by the way, to the comfort of his con- science if not of his body, ended in a real illness. After many adventures he reached Riga, still feeling his way before committing himself to the Russian service. He was in search of General Douglas, who had, however, 364 THE SCOT ABROAD. just marched onwards ; and the next statement shows, in a characteristic light, how his countrymen dropped in wherever he went. " I was very sorry, and so went into the town to look for acquaintance. Coming to the market-place, I did meet with my old comrades and friends, Alexander Landells and Walter Airth, with whom I went to a tavern and took a glass of wine, to whom I revealed my intentions. These being out of service themselves, having been lately disbanded by the Swedes, were in a poor condition, and willing to engage any- where; and told me that no service was to be had among the Swedes; and besides, that it was so poor, they having but pitiful allowance, that it was not worth the seeking; that they had heard that the Muscovites' pay, though not great, was duly paid, and that officers were soon advanced to high degrees ; and many of our countrymen, of great quality, were there, and some gone thither lately; that they themselves, with many others of our countrymen, and strangers, were resolving to go thither, not knowing how to do better : so that the con- sideration of a certain, at least, livelihood, preferment, good company, and my former promises and engage- ments, confirmed me in my resolution to go to Moscow." So onward they went, having settled among each other the relative ranks they were to accept in the service, until at last " we came to Moscow, and hired a lodging in the Slabod, or village where the strangers live. We were admitted to kiss his Tzarasky Majesty's hand at Colu- minsko, a country-house of the Tzaar's, seven versts from Moscow, below the village of the same name. The Tzaar was pleased to thank me for having been kind to his subjects who had been prisoners in Poland ; and it was told me that I should have his Majesty's grace or favour, whereon I might rely." It was on the 5th of September 1661 that the event took place which not only decided the fate of the poor wandering Scot, but had no little influence on the sub- sequent destinies of Europe ; since, after his friend and master Peter the Great, it may be questioned if any other one man did so much for the early consolidation of the THE SOLDIER. 365 Russian empire as Patrick Gordon. His great services date at a far later period ; but at the very beginning we find him engaged in the faint remnant of a contest which, though he seems to have been unconscious of it, was really a life and death struggle of the imperial power for predominance in its old domain of Muscovy. It is a phase of European history not often kept in view, that the corporate influence of the great towns maintained a long contest with the predominant royal houses of Europe, and that this contest had its very highest development in Russia. The corporations, indeed, with Novgorod at their head now that we look back on their power, and compare it with other institutions commemorated in his- tory were evidently so far the predominant power, that had they been led by a few great men, they might have kept out the empire, and preserved a rule over Russia more like that of the East India Company's in Hindostan than perhaps any other method of government on record. It was to be otherwise, however ; and, as history tells us, the great men came on the side of the empire, not of the corporate republic. When Gordon joined the service, the contest with the corporations was nearly over. His " Tzaric Majesty " was in a state of transition from " the Duke of Muscovia " of old to " the Emperor of Russia " of our own day. It was not long since the power of the corporations had been so great, however, as to give significance to the old Russian proverb, " Who can resist the great God and Novgorod?" The annual market, drawing its traders from the extremity of the empire, and from other empires, is the only existing relic of its greatness. When Gordon and his companions passed through it, he jotted down the following memor- andum : "The town of Novgorod, called 'the Great,' having been one of the greatest market-cities of Europe, giveth name to a large dukedom, the greatest of all Russia, where Rurick, from whom all the Russian princes and dukes draw their original, did reign ; " and then he refers to the ordinary histories for the cruelties which Ivan the Terrible inflicted on the inhabitants when he got access to the town. Another municipal relic which had 366 THE SCOT ABROAD. " been a free principality in former times, until subdued by the Tzar Ivan Vasiliovitz," attracted him by its faded though not entirely ruined splendour. "About mid-day," he says, "we had a sight of Plesko or Opsko, which had a glorious show, being environed with a stone wall and many towers. There are many churches and monasteries, some whereof have three, some five steeples or towers, whereon are round globes of six, eight, or ten fathoms circumference, which, being covered with white iron or plate, and thereon great crosses covered with the same, make a great and pleasant show. One of these globes, being the largest, is over-gilt." That the municipal spirit, though broken, still lingered among the people, is shown by such incidents as the follow- ing, in which Gordon showed an early appreciation of the approved Russian method of treating difficulties with the ordinary citizen : " Some contentions did fall out betwixt the officers and sojours with the rich burgesses, who would not admit them into their houses. Among the rest, a merchant, by whom my quarters were taken up whilst my servants were cleaning the inner room ; he broke down the oven in the utter room which served to warm both, so that I was forced to go to another quarter. But, to teach him better manners, I sent the profos (provost-marshal) to quarter by him, with twenty prisoners and a corporal- ship of sojours, who, by connivance, did grievously plague him a week; and it cost him near a hundred dollars before he could procure an order out of the right office to have them removed, and was well laughed at besides for his incivility and obstinacy." This was very early in his career, and shows how quickly he had learned that in Russia there was no jus- tice to be got but what could be taken or bought. His proud Scottish spirit, however, revolted against the slights and impositions to which he was himself subjected, and nothing but a threat to leave the service would bring " the chancellor, being a most corrupt fellow," and his subor- dinates, to acknowledge his position and claims. The Russians had not yet been much accustomed to see the adventurers from Scotland step in among them as their THE SOLDIER. 367 natural lords and masters ; and Gordon spoke of the ca- lamity of leaving those countries, "where strangers had great respect, and were in a great reputation, and even more trust as the natives themselves ; and where a free passage for all deserving persons lay open to all honour, military and civil ; " and coming to a land where he per- ceived " strangers t-o be looked upon as a company of hirelings, and at the best (as they say of women) but neces- saria mala; no honour or degree of preferment here to be expected but military, and that with a limited command, in the attainment whereof a good mediator or mediatrix, and a piece of money or other bribe, is more available as the merit or sufficiency of the person ; a faint heart under fair plumes, and a cuckoe in gay clothes, being as ordin- ary here as a counterfeited or painted visage." A certain Boyar to whom he made his complaint, "being vexed, caused stop his coach, and caused call the Diack ; whom being come, he took by the beard, and shaked him three or four times, telling him, if I complained again he would cause knout him." Notwithstanding this broad hint, the Diack showed no great improvement either in civility or honesty when the Boyar's back was turned; but when he heard one man in the rank of a gentleman talk to another who happened to be his inferior in this fashion, the Scot was fain to suppose that there was an intention to propitiate him according to the national manner. Here is the way in which he entered on his duties. " 1 66 1, September 17. I got orders to receive from a Russ 700 men to be in our regiment, being runnaway sojours out of several regiments, and fetched back from divers places. Having received these, I marched through the Sloboda of the strangers to Crasna Cella, where we got our quarters, and exercised these soldiers twice a-day in fair weather. September 20. I received money twenty-five roubles for my welcome, and the next day sables, and two days thereafter damask and cloth. Sep- tember 25. I received a month's means in cursed cop- per money, as did those who came along with me." Gordon had roughed it for a quarter of a century in 368 THE SCOT ABROAD. the service before he met his illustrious master Peter the Great, with whose name his later achievements are his- torically connected. Characteristically enough for one who became notorious in later life as a lover of strong drink, the young prince presented him, at their first meet- ing, with a glass of brandy at least it is likely that no smaller measure of the liquid is referred to in the follow- ing notandum : " 1686, January 26, was at their majesty's hands receiving a charke of brandy out of the youngest his hand, with a command to return speedily." Peter was then a boy fourteen years old ; but three years only were to elapse ere a crisis, in which events, directed by the sagacious old Scot to whom he presented a dram, were to secure to him the throne he made so renowned. The service by which Gordon set his mark on the his- tory of Russia and of Europe was the subjugation of the Strelitzers. These were a power more immediate and menacing than the corporations, if not in reality so deeply founded ; and it was necessary that this power should be broken before the autocracy of the empire could be fully developed. The Strelitzers were the guards or household troops of Muscovy, and in their constitution and fate they have often been compared with the Janissaries of Turkey. They had been created by Ivan the Terrible, in the middle of the sixteenth century, for the purpose of breaking the power of the independent Boyards. Their distinctive peculiarity that they were solely under the command of the Czar himself intended to make them potent agents of despotism, enabled them in reality to set up on their own account. In their desire to take their orders immediately from their master, they refused obedience to the officers set over them ; and on some occasions showed their zeal for their master by taking the labour and responsibility of punishment out of his hands, and knouting, shooting, or hanging those officers who had not, in their opinion, acted faithfully in the discharge of their duty to the Czar. It was a corollary, and a very formidable one, to such principles of duty, that it lay with themselves to decide who was the proper Czar from whom they were to take their instructions. Such was the body with whom Peter THE SOLDIER. 369 had to deal in the early and unstable period of his reign. Immediately before its commencement, they had per- formed one of their most terrrible outbreaks of loyalty, ending in the slaughter of several officers ; while others, probably to save their lives, were knouted in the presence of the Strelitzers to appease their just indignation, which, like that of the Sepoys, arose out of a religious difficulty : their consciences had been violated by their being ordered on duty during Easter week. Gordon's first affair with them appears to have given its turn to the memorable struggle between Peter and his sister Sophia for the actual government, while their imbecile brother Ivan still lived and held nominal office as senior Czar. The princess got the ear of the Strelitzers, who prom- ised to surprise and slay her brother. According to Gordon's account, they were as close to success as failure could well be. He describes how his young master he was then but seventeen hearing at dead of night that the bloody band were surrounding him, sprang out of bed, and, without waiting to dress himself, leapt upon a horse and galloped to the nearest wood. There, waiting a short time for clothing, he pursued his flight, and reached the monastery of the Troitzca, or Holy Trinity, about six o'clock in the morning. Here he was pro- tected by the sanctity of the place, and issued his orders to the officers of the Strelitzers, and to the foreign officers in the Russian service. The former had taken their course; the critical point lay with the foreigners. Gor- don took a short time to consider and inquire. He then said he had made up his mind : whatever orders came from the Kremlin, he was to march to Troitzca, and take his own orders there. This decided the others ; and the foreign officers, with their troops, made their welcome appearance at the gates of the monastery. The contest was thus decided. Two days afterwards, the youth who became Peter the Great entered Moscow in triumph; and then of course came the usual conclusion of the drama in torturings and executions. The Strelitzers, as a body, conformed outwardly to the new order, and remained composed and powerful as ever. 2 A 370 THE SCOT ABROAD. It was in the year 1697 that Peter left his home on his celebrated ramble among the working districts of Europe ; and if he had not left Gordon with four thousand troops under his separate command to guard the Kremlin, he would probably have found a change of occupancy on his return, and a difficulty in getting access to his own house. The main army of Russia was then stationed on the frontiers of Poland, for the purpose of influencing the election of a king to succeed John Sobieski. A rumour spread through the ranks of the Strelitzers that the Czar had died abroad; and as they always felt it their duty to see the right per- son placed on the throne, they resolved, without consult- ing the Commander-in-chief, to march to Moscow, for the purpose of installing the heir, Alexis Petrowich, and appointing a regent during his minority. There were thus eight thousand troops, in high discipline and com- pact order, approaching the capital, and only four thou- sand to defend it. Gordon seems to have at once re- solved to save the town the horrors of a siege by meeting the enemy at a distance. He had an element which compensated the inequality of numbers, in the possession of twenty-seven field-pieces six to ten pounders. He intrenched himself strongly on the road which the muti- neers must pass, never hesitating in the resolution to sub- due them, or doubting his ability to do so. He parleyed with and exhorted them over and over again to return to their duty, and there is no doubt that he was sincere in recording the sorrow he says he felt in the contemplation of their fatal obstinacy. When he was driven to action, he took that most humane of all courses when an irra- tional and helpless mass of men are to be brought to a sense of their position he made quick and sharp work of it. His own brief and practical account of the con- clusion is : " I brought up the infantry and twenty-five cannon to a fit position, surrounded their camp on the other side with cavalry, and then sent an officer to summon and exhort them once more to submit. As they again de- clined, I sent yet another to demand a categorical de- cision. But they rejected all proposals of compromise, THE SOLDIER. 371 and boasted that they were as ready to defend themselves by force as we were to attack. Seeing that all hope of their submission was vain, I made a round of the cannon be fired. But, as we fired over their heads, this only em- boldened them more, so that they began to wave their colours, and throw up their caps, and prepare for resist- ance. At the next discharge of the cannon, however, seeing their comrades fall on all sides, they began to waver. Out of despair, or to protect themselves from the cannon, they made a sally by a lane, which, however, we had occupied by a strong body. To make yet surer I brought up several detachments to the spot, so as to command the hollow way out of which they were issuing. Seeing this, they returned to" their camp, and some of them betook themselves to the barns and outhouses of the adjoining village. At the third discharge of the guns, many of them rushed out of the camp towards the infan- try and cavalry. After the fourth round of fire, very few of them remained in their waggon rampart ; and I moved down with two battalions to their camp, and posted guards round it. During this affair, which lasted about an hour, a few of our men were wounded. The rebels had twenty -two killed on the spot, and about forty wounded, mostly mortally." So far as open contest was concerned, the affair was at an end. The conquest was obtained, one would say, at a small sacrifice of life. But while, in ordinary warfare, slaughter is at an end for a time when the battle is over, and the victors are then occupied in saving the lives and alleviating the sufferings of their enemies in such an affair as this the slaughter and suffering were only in a manner inaugurated by the battle; and the subsequent journal, which records, not the victorious general's doings, but other people's, has such entries as " To-day seventy men were hanged, by fives and threes, on one gallows." I must send the reader to the Diary itself for the suc- cessive events of Gordon's long professional career. He died on the 2Qth November 1699 ; and we are briefly but effectively told by the editor of the Diary that " the Czar, who had visited him five times in his illness, and had 372 THE SCOT ABROAD. been twice with him during the night, stood weeping Dy his bed as he drew his last breath and the eyes of him who had left Scotland a poor unfriended wanderer were closed by the hand of an emperor." At a much later period Samuel Greig, another Scots- man, gave a helping hand to the waxing power of Russia. He appears to have been the son of a merchant sea- captain or skipper in Inverkeithing, where he was born in 1735. He was bred to the sea-service, but seems to have been amphibious in his combative capacities, as his most important service to Russia lay in military engineering. His entrance into the Russian service was quite legiti- mate. He was a lieutenant in the British navy at the peace of 1763, with fair chances of moderate promotion, when the Russian Government applied to the British for the loan of a few officers to help to improve their own navy. Greig, one of these, soon made his capacity felt, and was intrusted with high commands. The old Fife- shire skipper's name of Charles was dragged out of its obscurity to give the usual Russian patronymic of nobility, and the young officer became Samuel Carlovich Greig. It is odd to find one of the few notices of this remarkable man in the Memoirs of the late Rev. Christopher Ander- son, the historian of the English Bible. Mr Anderson's mother was a relation of the Greigs, and was able to cer- tify of the old skipper's wife, after her son had gone on a career so widely different from his early surroundings, that "his mother's supplications in his behalf had fol- lowed him in that career so perilous to piety; and she lived to hear from his own lips, on a visit he paid her late in life, that he had not forgot a father's instruction or a mother's prayer." He was made Commodore of the Russian fleet in the Mediterranean in the war with the Turks in 1769, and thus became a great, perhaps the greatest, instrument in the annexation of the Crimea, where so many of his coun- trymen were to leave their bones after fighting to undo what he had done. At the battle of Scio in 1770, Greig, with four ships of the line and two frigates, bore in upon the Turkish fleet THE SOLDIER. 373 in harbour, and burned them with fire-ships. It is re- corded that this operation was so new and terrible to the Russian sailors, that the British officers required to hold pistols to the heads of the steersmen to keep them to their duty. After the fleet was destroyed, the town was bombarded; and so effectively did Greig perform his work, that ere nine o'clock at night there was scarcely a vestige of the town or fortress, or of the fleet that had existed at mid-day. In the subsequent war with Sweden he commanded at the battle of Hogeland in 1788. The affair is remark- able among sea-battles, not only for the determined and obstinate fighting on either side, but for being fought in a storm, and in a narrow sea full of shoals, currents, and other perils. In one of the German collections of favour- ite passages I have found the following account of this affair, written by an author favourable to the Swedish side, and I insert it because so little can be discovered about the services which a man like Greig performed for a government which permitted the world to know only what it thought politic to tell : " The great Russian fleet, seventeen ships of the line and seven large frigates strong, sailed from Cronstadt under the command of a most experienced seaman, Admiral Greig, a Briton. They encountered the Swedish fleet of fifteen ships of the line and five large frigates, under the High Admiral Prince Charles of Sudermann- land and Admiral Count Wrangel (i;th July), seven miles westward of the island of Hogeland. " Greig had been commanded by his Empress first to destroy the Swedish fleet, and then without delay to pursue his voyage to the Archipelago ; and if ever there was one, he was the man to be honoured by such a com- mission. He was at home on the sea, he had been present at the celebrated capture of the Havannah (1761), and he had led the terrible combat at Tschesme. " Between four and five o'clock in the afternoon he bore down before a favourable wind on the Swedes. The thunder of war began on both sides with terrible fury. " The Swedes, who now again for the first time since 3/4 THE SCOT ABROAD. the remotest ages had taken rank as a naval power, showed in the advance of their fleet an accuracy of line and an ease in evolutions seldom excelled even in man- oeuvres of a peaceful kind at sea. After the lapse of an hour, the Russian leader, and two other Russian ships, were so damaged that they were obliged to be withdrawn behind the line. But again did the Russians concentrate their greatest strength against the Swedish van; the Swedes grounded in their manoeuvres in the stream at Eckholm, and all efforts to bring them into the wind were in vain. In this perilous position the Swedish Admiral's ship, Gustav III., of 68 guns, which proudly displayed the national flag, and was commanded by the High Admiral Charles of Sudermannland, with Admiral Count Wrangel under him, was so furiously attacked by the Russian Admiral's ship, of 108 guns, in which Greig him- self was, and by two other Russian ships, each of 74 guns, that it was easy to see that the Russian Admiral's chief object was to make the Duke himself his prisoner. Peace might then, no doubt, have been obtained on easier terms; but the Duke, preserving his coolness, gave his people the example of the most astonishing bravery. From all quarters the deadly mouths of the Russian cannon blazed on his ship while he coolly smoked his pipe ; a cannon-ball slew his servant close by him, but he did not leave the deck, and strove, by his constant cry of ' Conquer or die !' to inspire his soldiers and sailors with his own courage. Some of the sailors, who considered farther resistance useless, began to speak of striking, ' Rather let us be blown into the air,' cried Charles, in his sternest voice, ' than surrender ! ' Accordingly, he snatched his match from an artilleryman, took his place by the powder-magazine, then asked Admiral Wrangel whether he thought there was no farther chance of saving the ship ? A no from Wrangel, and the ship would have been scattered in fragments to the wind. ' It will be tough work,' said the Admiral, * but we will do our ut- most.' The fire was now kept up with the most extreme vehemence, till the other Swedish ships coming up made the combat more equal. The Russians had a long list of THE SOLDIER. 375 killed ; Greig himself was severely wounded, and his ship was obliged to leave the line. " Meantime the darkness of night came over the sea. At ten o'clock the firing ceased. The Russians had taken a Swedish ship of the line, Prince Gustav, of 68 guns, in which the Swedish Vice- Admiral Count Wachtmeister had led the Swedish van during the combat, and which, after miracles of heroism, was drifting about with 300 killed and wounded on board, pierced everywhere with shots, and without a flag. The Swedes, in return, had seized a Russian ship of the line, the \yiadislaus, of 74 guns, had run two others aground, and, on the whole, had inflicted much more injury on the Russian fleet than it had sus- tained from it ;< Both parties spent the night over against each other, and not far from the place of battle. The Swedes had nearly shot away all their powder. Not an hour could they have kept up fire if the enemy had renewed the combat next day, yet they dared not attempt to reach the harbour of Sweaborg before daybreak, the wind not being quite favourable ; and it seemed likely that if they had given the least suspicion of an intention to enter it, the enemy would have pursued them. There was nothing for it but patient courage. To show this, signal-guns were fired regularly the whole night, as if they only waited for daylight to begin the combat more terribly than ever. The Russians, indeed, gave signs of a renewed attack next morning. The Swedes formed in line immediately, with what feelings may be imagined. But Greig, whose retreat was favoured by the wind, now thought good, instead of a harbour in the Archipelago, to seek that of Cronstadt; and the Swedish High Admiral brought his fleet under the guns of Sweaborg. " Such was the battle of Hogeland, the first sea-fight in which the Swedes had been engaged for a very long time, and in which they fought with the courage and discipline of veteran seamen, far surpassing the expectations of their enemy and of all Europe. Both parties claim the victory of this bloody day ; hi Petersburg as in Stockholm the Te Deum was chanted. * Is it not generous/ says a witty 3/6 THE SCOT ABROAD. writer, ' in Providence to have so arranged it as to suit both parties, and so earned, there a Greek, here a Lutheran song of praise ? ' " 1 The ' Annual Register ' for the year says : " Admiral Greig is said to have declared, in the account published by authority in St Petersburg, ' that he never saw a fight better sustained than this was on both sides.' This, how- ever, accords but badly with the number of delinquent officers (of whom seventeen were captains), loaded with chains, whom he sent home in a frigate for ill behaviour in this action." As he died a few weeks afterwards, on the 26th of October 1788, in his own ship, the Rotislow, it must be presumed that the wound he received in this fight proved mortal. So ends the career of the Inverkeithing skipper's son, Admiral Samuel Carlovich Greig. governor of Cron- stadt, and Chevalier of the Orders of St Andrew, St Alex- ander Newski, St George, St Vladimir, and St Anne. Every journal in Europe repeated the account of the gorgeous funeral bestowed on him by the Empress, though little is generally known of the man who enjoys the repu- tation of having made the Russian navy. He made some- thing else, too. As governor of Cronstadt he was the author of the fortifications there ; and, as a French writer remarks, the Scotsman built those walls which years after- wards checked the career of his fellow-countryman Sir Charles Napier. It is not, after all, an entirely satisfactory task to cele- brate services like these. A nation that can show un rivalled courage and endurance in the defence of its own independence, need not covet the lustre of success in foreign causes. Boasting of such renown in quarrels selected by and not forced upon the heroes, has some- thing akin to the bully in it. That so many Scotsmen should have thus distinguished themselves abroad was the fruit of their country's sufferings rather than its success. The story of it all reminds one how dreary a thing it is 1 Translated from an extract from Possel's ' History of Gustavus III. of Sweden,' in Lehman's Lesebuch. THE SOLDIER. 377 that a community should have to dismiss the choice of its children from its own bosom, and how happy is the con- dition of that compact and well-rounded state which, under a strong and free government, productive of co- operation and contentment, has resources enough to keep its most active and adventurous citizens at work on national objects, and neither lends its children to the stranger, nor calls a foreign force into its own soil. There is little ultimate satisfaction in stranger laurels. Those who are the children of liberty themselves, such as the Scots and Swiss, have seen their services, by the obdurate tendency of historical destiny, almost ever assisting tyranny; and thus the sword of the freeman has done the work of the despot. The prowess and skill of our mili- tary leaders have given an undue preponderance to the strength of barbarism, and enabled it to weigh too heavily against the beneficent control of civilisation. The foreign despot is deceived with the notion that the system arti- ficially constructed for him by strangers represents a per- manent, well-founded, national power ; he becomes inso- lent in the confidence of its possession ; and the fabric of power raised up by one generation of freeborn auxiliaries, costs the blood of another generation to keep it from destroying freedom and civilisation throughout the world. Even while this is passing through the press, the question vibrates at the conference-table, whether we are to have a struggle with another great power which several Scots- men helped to consolidate. 3/8 CHAPTER III. THE STATESMAN. REPUTATIONS, LIVING AND DEAD GUSTAVUS ADOLPHUS'S SECRE- TARY-AT-WAR SIR WILLIAM LOCKHART LORD STAIR JOHN LAW WILLIAM PATERSON. OF all forgotten celebrities, the author has been, at least since the invention of printing, the most easily tracked by the biographical detective ; what of himself he has let out in his books is always available, if we have nothing else. The soldier has less chance of resuscitation. If he has been a patriot hero, his name does not require it. His image lives in the eyes of all his countrymen, at least as large as life, and each successive generation proclaims, with louder and louder tongue " Though thou art fallen while we are free, Thou shalt not taste of death ; The generous blood that flowed from thee Disdained to sink beneath. Within our veins its currents be, Thy spirit in our breath. Thy name our charging hosts along, Shall be the battle- word ; Thy fate the theme of choral song From virgin voices poured. To weep would do thy glory wrong Thou shalt not be deplored. " On such an idol the detective generally, indeed, has to do the unpleasant duty of stripping him of false plumage. It is an entirely different affair, as we have seen, with the soldier who has lent his arm to the THE STATESMAN. 379 stranger. The materials which heap themselves over and bury his memory have already been considered; and I refer to the matter here, only to remark that they generally bury the memory of the statesman still more effectually. In the warrior's career there are battles and other stormy events that cannot be entirely con- cealed ; but of the man of council who " shapes the whisper of the throne," it may be said, as Sergeant Pike said of the collier, that he has no visible "occupation, but works under ground. There is, for instance, in the possession of some col- lectors, an engraved portrait of a hard-featured, sagacious- looking Scot, the Latin inscription around which makes it valuable as identifying a frequent name in the history of Europe during the Thirty Years' War. It is Alexander Erskine, who was eminent both in camp and council. He was minister-at-war to Gustavus Adolphus no trivial function and a representative of Sweden in the con- ferences about the Treaty of Westphalia. He held many governorships and other offices was a patron of letters, and had a magnificent library. Yet no biographical dictionary, so far as I am aware, affords him a square inch ; and in Ersch and Grubers' Encyclopedia where one finds everything that is neglected elsewhere the perfection of German diligence has been able to add nothing material to what the ordinary historians tell us of him, except that he studied at Konigsberg, and that he died childless in the campaign of 1657, at Zamosc, whence his body was brought and buried in great state in the Cathedral of Bremen. Another Scotsman of the same name, who represented Russia in some of her Eastern negotiations, and had vast influence at the Court of the Czar, has left still scantier traces in accessible sources of biographical information. He belonged to the family of Erskine of Alva, in Clackmannanshire, a fact which I discovered one day by noticing the extreme richness of the crimson silk window-curtains in the draw- ing-room of one of his descendants. These were the hangings of a tent given to him by one of the Tartar princes with whom it was his function to treat. 380 THE SCOT ABROAD. It is against the chance of any country presenting a distinguished list of statesmen who have won their repu- tations abroad, that the services of foreigners are more unwillingly received in the cabinet than even in the camp. No nation in a healthy condition, indeed, tolerates the interference of foreign influence at its very heart. To whisper a suspicion of such a thing has always been sufficient to set England in a blaze. Poor Lord Bute was almost ostracised because he was so much of a foreigner as to have been born in Scotland a nation not so well amalgamated with its neighbour a hundred years ago as it is now. The protests of Scotland against foreign administration were pretty well expressed in the history of Mary of Medici and the fate of La Bastie. We have seen that Albany failed as Governor of Scotland because he had too much of the Frenchman in him j and we have also seen that he and his father, though they had still more of the Scot the father, indeed, was a pure native had great influence at the French Court. In peering into the minute specialties of his position, it is suggestive to find him acting the part of the statesman on an occasion when there was outbreak against some illegitimate influence being at work in the state, while his own, though that of a foreigner, seems to have passed unquestioned. We are told by Felibien, in his profuse circumstantial History of Paris, that Louis de Berquin was sacrificed as the person who introduced des livres dangereux de Luther, and that there was an insurrection in the streets of Paris, with bloodshed, because the munic- ipality thought fit to resist the royal decree raising to the great office of Lieutenant-General of the Isle of France, a prelate and a courtier of the Pope Pierre Filhoti, Arch- bishop of Aix. Then we are told the King held a lit de justice, in which the Duke of Albany, Prince of Scotland, was inaugurated, and sat between the Duke of Alengon and the Bishop-duke of Langres. On that occasion, the King spoke of removing the Parliament to Poitiers, on account of the turbulence of the Parisian mob, and the perversity of the municipality. It would be difficult, as we read the story in Felibien' s circumstantial narrative, to THE STATESMAN. 381 invent a closer parallel to the scene in Edinburgh, some fifty years later, when James VI. was scared away by the vehement clergy, and threatened to take the Parliament, with its appurtenances, to that quiet and decorous place, Stirling. At the crisis of the battle of Pavia, Albany was sent on a mission to bring over Naples to the cause of France ; or perhaps it might more accurately be said, to create a revolution there in favour of the French interest. 1 These things took place in one of vFrance's many periods of difficulty and danger. We have seen that, in the time of her greatest strait of all the Hundred Years' War the Constable Buchan, and Douglas Duke of Tou- raine, had great influence in the national councils. At periods subsequent to the history of the Ancient League, the destinies of France were occasionally ruled by for- eigners, and among these Scotland had, as we shall pres- ently see, a good share more, perhaps, than Italy, deemed the workshop of statesmen, had in Cardinal Mazarin ; unless, indeed, we shall count that the empire is at present under the rule of an Italian dynasty. Oliver Cromwell has the reputation of disliking Scot- land, but he was in some respects a good friend to the country. True, he closed the door of the General As- sembly, and placed a couple of troopers to keep it shut ; 1 There is a good deal of mystery and suggestion connected with this embassy. Belcarius, in his ' Commentarii Rerum Gallicarum, ' thinks it of importance to say that, while the French historian Bellay, and the Italian Capella, consider that the embassy was suggested by Pope Clement, he, Belcarius, must support Guicciardini in the con- trary belief, because his brother, John Belcarius, who was a domestib in the Duke of Albany's family, told him that he there learned how the Pope had ever advised Francis not to divide his army until he had entirely subdued Milan. The question might afford room for a valuable archaeological paper. A second might be made out of an- other French embassy into Italy that of Everard Stewart, Lord of Aubigny, in 1594. It was preparatory to the invasion of Italy for the purpose of conquering Naples, and was, it must be confessed, an attempt to bully some of the smaller Italian states, as Comines lets us see, by the gently sarcastic turns with which he mentions the modest disinclination of the Venetians and Florentines to offer any counsel, or profess to provide any warlike assistance worthy of accep- tance, to so great a man as the King of France. 382 THE SCOT ABROAD. but there are other statesmen who would do the same service to ecclesiastical bodies if they had the power. A service it was, for it prevented two opposite protest- ing and detesting parties from rushing into contest, and tearing away till the one had annihilated the other. It is usually said that he put Scotland under the English judges; but, on finding that the Court of Session was thoroughly corrupt, what he really did was to appoint a commission of justice to supersede it. On this com- mission there were some English names; but that was part of his system of amalgamation. He professed to fill his offices impartially from the United Protectorate, and, in fact, made one of the Scots judges, Johnston of Warriston, chairman of his House of Lords. Within his deep mind he had shaped the policy of appointing a Scotsman to represent the Commonwealth at the Court of France. It was the best tie that he could establish between the new republic and the ancient monarchy, that one from the nation who had ever been so much at home in France should now go thither. He found the proper man in Sir William Lockhart, the brother of that Lord President Lockhart who was slain in the High Street by Chiesly of Dairy, for compelling him to support his family. The ambassador had a turn of character still more naughty, brave, and independent, even than the judge. He was on his way to France to seek his fortune, disgusted by what he considered the conversion of his country into a mere province, when Oliver caught him up. He probably thought it a very fair acknowledgment of the equality and independence of his countrymen, that he should be himself chosen for the most important mission which the Protector had to give. He came afterwards into closer alliance with his master by marrying Miss Rubina Sewster, a niece of the Protector. The authorship of the following testimony to the character of the ambassador, in a recent work on Cromwell, will be at once recognised. It is what, in the author's native language, is expressively called "ken- speckle:" "It is thought that in Lockhart the Lord Protector had the best ambassador of that age ; . . . THE STATESMAN. 383 a man of distinguished qualities, of manifold adventures and employments ; whose biography, if he could find any biographer with real industry instead of sham industry and, above all, with human eyes instead of pedant's spec- tacles, might still be worth writing in brief compass." It was in 1656 that Lockhart went over as ambassador from the republic to the Court of France, and his prin- cipal function was to make the influence of Cromwell supreme at the Cabinet of Paris, and crush any effort to co-operate with the exiled children of Charles I. Clarendon tells us that "he was received with great solemnity, and was a man of great address hi treaty, and had a marvellous credit and power with the Cardinal Mazarin." His negotiations may be pretty completely traced through the fifth and sixth volumes of Thurloe's State Papers. It was part of the policy of the Cardinal that Cromwell's ambassador should at all events be re- ceived with distinguished courtesy on his touching the shore of France. Lockhart describes his landing at Dieppe on the 24th of April, and his reception by the Governor. "He said that he had commands from the Duke of Longueville to receive me with as much respect as possibly he could ; that all Englishmen were likewise welcome to this port, but more especially a person com- ing from his Highness the Lord Protector, qualified with a public character; and that he did very much rejoice it was his good fortune to be the first to have an oppor- tunity to testify to me the readiness of the French nation to express the good correspondence and amity they de- sired to hold with England. With these and several other the like discourses he did entertain me till we came to my lodging to which there had been a great difficulty of access, through the multitude of people who flocked out to see me land, with great acclamations in their mouths of welcome, and desires that God might preserve me and mine from all danger, had not the Governor's servants made way for my passage." The ovation accompanied him to the foot of the throne, and did not stop there. But Lockhart had gone not to be covered with honours and distinctions, but to do busi- 384 THE SCOT ABROAD. ness, and that of a very serious kind. The continued distinctions received by him, especially when they were driven to the length of compelling him in the service of his country to attend balls on the " Lord's Day," irritated instead of conciliating him, and he soon suspected that these profuse distinctions and kindnesses were heaped on him to stifle his utterance. But both from temper and sagacity he was eminently a man not to be trifled with. " Remember he is a courtier and Italian," is the policy towards Mazarin which he impressed on others and prac- tised himself. He allowed the minister no repose. On the 28th of June we find him writing: "All my late addresses to his Eminence for audience have brought me no other return but delays and new promises, which are paid in no better coin than that of renewed excuses." And on the 24th July : " It seems the Court here will spend so much time in resolving what to do next, that they will lose all opportunity of doing anything, and I am even wearied out with their delays and excuses." At length he got his opportunity, and employed it to some purpose. Though he finally devoted himself to the promotion of national interests, his first efforts were in favour of a poor and persecuted people; it was by his bold diplomacy that Britain was enabled to stretch out a helping hand to the Protestants of Piedmont. When he passed from this matter to the more immediate relations of France and England, the French had nothing of a practical nature to propose. No matter ; Lockhart himself had a proposition of a very specific character. The Protector was ready to aid France in her war with Spain for a consideration. A French army under Turenne, with an English auxiliary force, would take Mardyke and Dunkirk from the Spaniards, and these acquisitions should be given over to the Protector. The Cardinal was stag- gered by the distinctness and greatness of the demand. Compromising offers were made for a division of the spoil, but the ambassador was obstinate. These two forti- fied towns were what the Protector especially demanded, and France must let him have them, or look to it. Even after a concession of Lockhart's demand, one difficulty THE STATESMAN. 385 following another intercepted its fulfilment. Turenne, whom Lockhart claimed as the right man for the work, "did absolutely refuse to undertake the siege of Dun- kirk," but was brought to reason. To the question, Who should command the English on the occasion? there was a simple and immediate answer Lockhart undertook it himself; and he seems to have done so jn the conviction that no other person could be trusted to play out any part of the game with the wily Italian. At length, in the words of Clarendon, after "such lively instances with the Cardinal, and complaints of their breach of faith, and some menaces that his master knew where to find a more punctual friend" an allied army under Turenne and Lockhart besieged Dunkirk. The French appear to have sent at first ten thousand men. Lockhart's force numbered six thousand, and it was remarked that none of them were the countrymen of the commander, who were in use to serve with the French, but all were Englishmen, acting for the time in alliance with their old hereditary foes, " their natural enemies." It is extremely curious, after the history of our latest European war, to peruse even the dull official records of a siege in which Frenchmen and Englishmen fought side by side almost exactly two hundred years before they were to do so again. It is, for instance, incidentally curious to find in Lockhart's despatches such an appre- ciation of the prowess of his allies as they have rarely received from a British pen until the Russian war. In a common attack made by the French and English, each on the counterscarp opposite to their own approach, he says that "the French, at their lodging upon their point of the counterscarp, were discovered to our men that were lodged upon the Fort Leon ours was not so ; and to give your lordship a true account of what passed, I must say the French made the better lodgment, though that we made stood us dearer than theirs did them ; how- soever, I thank God for it, both goes on reasonable well now ; for when we came short of them in the night, we made up by working in the day. The seamen, from whom I expected much, did nothing extraordinary : and 2 B 386 THE SCOT ABROAD. indeed our people wanted several things that would have contributed to their cheerful going through with their business, for which I could not prevail, though twice or thrice I importuned M. Turenne about it. I am this day preparing a battery and platform for our mortar pieces," &c. And so it was in 1658 as in 1856; the English soldier is deficient in many things needful to his achieve- ments, but one thing he always has and gives freely, his own blood ; and he makes his lodgment as effectually as his better-provided ally, though it costs him dearer. Lockhart's own letters convey unmistakable evidence that he was a vigilant purveyor. " If eight hundred or one thousand beds could be sent, it would be a great accommodation to our soldiers, of whom a great many sicken daily." Again : " We have not here one bit of coals : the soldiers cannot be restrained from burning the deal-boards that are in their houses ; to send them a few coals will save his Highness treble their price in boards." There is much solicitude about the supply of hay, as to which Lockhart distrusts the French promises. "The Cardinal promised to send me an express from England to-morrow, who shall see the hay shipped, and will bring a list of such provisions as they will need, and bills of exchange upon London to pay for them : but that must not be trusted to, for the Cardinal being ready to depart, he is so pressed with multiplicity of business, as seldom he remembers anything, save just in the moment he is spoke to. So that if this express do not come, I must beseech your lordship to take care that the hay be at Mardyke by the ist of May, new style, and I must beg the same thing for the recruits." The next demand is for three ministers, who are to have ;i8o a-year each, which he thinks is encourage- ment enough to any honest man who hath zeal for his Master's service; and he is of opinion that "the Popish priests who go a-begging to vend their errors, will rise up in judgment against our ministers, who cannot be yet persuaded, even upon reasonable terms, to preach the glad tidings of salvation to their poor countrymen, who have some longing after the ordinances of God." THE STATESMAN. 387 After the fashion of the period, his piety is minutely dovetailed into his practical sagacity. " There is one part," he says, " of the general of ammunition that I must speak particularly to, and that is hand-grenades. I know they have not been much used in our English war, but I can assure your lordship and my former opinion is con- firmed by my present experience that nothing can be more essential either as to attack or defence ; and if you have not any considerable number of these shells in store, two or three thousand can be bought in Holland, till you can provide more at your iron- works. A soldier, with half -a- score grenades in his scrip, looks like a David, before whom a Goliath, though armed, cannot stand." And continuing his detailed criticism on garrison stores, he says all signifies little if there be not sufficient tools and material for temporary fortification; "and I can reckon nothing on this head so material as palisadoes; it's one of the best magazines can be in garrison ; and he that hath men and store of them, may dispose of every inch of ground under the command of his cannon : and the spirit which must move and inform this confused and great body, composed of a great many more individuals than I can at present muster up, must be money which, as Solomon saith, under the protection and blessing of God, will answer all things." On the 3d of June there was a great battle Condd, Don John of Austria, and the exiled Duke of York head- ing an attack for the relief of the garrison, on the besieger's army, led by Turenne and Lockhart. This brought on a battle, eminent in the French histories as the battle of the Dunes, because it was fought among the long range of sandhills eastward of Dunkirk. It is seldom recognised in history as one of the battles from which England de- rives honour. Yet the contemporary French accounts of which Sismondi provides a good abridgment describe the sanguinary and obstinate nature of the conflict on the fortified ridge of the principal sandhill, stormed by the English, who there began the battle, and astonished both their Spanish opponents and their French allies by the resolute and persevering obstinacy with which they 388 THE SCOT ABROAD. struggled through the natural difficulties in the ascent of a sandhill, and fought at the summit, when they should have been exhausted with their labours. The allies were victorious; and as the official report says, "the French acknowledged to our nation the honour of this victory." "As to the siege of Dunkirk," says Lord Fauconberg, writing to Thurloe, " by the little discourse I have had with the Duke de Crequi, Chevalier Gramont, and others, I find they infinitely esteem my Lord Lockhart for his courage, care, and enduring the fatigue beyond all roen they ever saw." On the 25th of June, Lockhart writes conclusively, in that godly style which had become official among the Crbmwellian generals : " By the goodness of God your servant is now master of Dunkirk and indeed it is a much better place than I could have imagined blessed be God for His great mercy ; and the Lord continue His protection to his Highness, and His countenance to all his other undertakings." But final success only renewed the diplomatic disputes with the ally, who acted as if the acquisition were common to both nations. Lockhart met this claim in the face, and extracted from the Car- dinal an acknowledgment that "his Highness (the Pro- tector) had the only title to all that can be claimed of jurisdiction over the town, as prince and sovereign ; and that he alone hath right to all the powers, profits, and emoluments that were due to any of their former princes." It is picturesquely told, in Kennet's History, how one morning Cromwell sent suddenly to desire the presence of the French ambassador at Whitehall, where he was upbraided with the treachery of his master, in having given secret instructions to Turenne "to keep Dunkirk from the Englishman if he could." The ambassador, with truth, protested his innocence and his ignorance; " upon which," we are told, " Cromwell, pulling a paper out of his pocket, l Here,' says he, ' is the copy of the Car- dinal's order ; and I desire you to despatch immediately an express to let him know that I am not to be imposed upon ; and that if he deliver not up the keys of the town of Dunkirk within an hour after it shall be taken, tell him THE STATESMAN. 389 I'll come in person and demand them at the gates of Paris.'" 1 This is one of the Mephistopheles stories which frightened our great-grandfathers into superstitious fancies about the ubiquity of Old Noll. Whether there is any truth in it or not, it is pretty certain, from the documentary evidence, that Lockhart put the matter right at his own hand. Indeed, few men have better exemplified the house- hold precept that he who would have a thing done well should do it himself. That there might be no question about the vigilance and sagacity of the besieging general, the ambassador, as we have seen, took that office on him- self. After the place was taken and a governor was re- quired, he took that office also. He wrote to Thurloe a long anxious letter about the proper person to appoint as fort-major, and about the difficulty of finding a deputy- governor who should act for the governor if he fell ill, or had important calls elsewhere; but he seems never to have supposed it an open question, that any one could be governor of the new acquisition but he who had been the means of acquiring it. Since the fall of Calais, England had possessed no spot of earth on the European continent, and the government of a province which might possibly be the nucleus of further British acquisitions, was an important matter. Lockhart reported to Secretary Thurloe administrative arrangements to which few in the present day would object. He says he considers himself bound to " reserve to the inhabitants the enjoyment of their property, the liberty of their conscience, and the administration of justice according to their usual laws and customs, in all matters of difference between man and man. This," he continues to say, " is all his Highness is bound to by his treaty with France ; which being just in itself, I make it my study that all their privileges of this nature be in- violably preserved and in so doing, give full satisfac- tion both to the magistrates and inhabitants." A body of " Jesuites, Capauchins, and Recollects," troubled him 1 ' Complete History, ' iii. 208. 390 THE SCOT ABROAD. with difficulties about the oath to reveal all plots against the supremacy of the Protectorate, and its inconsistence with the privileges of the Confessional. But they found themselves in honest hands, and gave little annoyance. In the governor's practice the soldier and the gentleman got the better of the Puritan. He kept his bargain ap- parently both in letter and in spirit, and the Romish priests could not be safer, for all temporal purposes, than in the hands of their honest religious enemy. As ambassador he seems to have had his share of the troubles caused by the pertinacity of the Quakers, who were then in a very restless state, spreading themselves over the world in search of martyrdom, and generally succeeding in finding it. The historian of their persecu- tions praises him for the protection extended by him to one of their number, who, exceedingly indignant that cer- tain amusements should be tolerated by law, lifted up his testimony against such toleration. " At Morlaix, another of them (William Salt) being in prison for reproving their maskings which are tolerated by law, and his life vehe- mently sought after by the bailiff of the town for so do- ing : I shall find the King, upon the information thereof by the English ambassador Lockhart, by means of a merchant of that town whom God stirred up in the thing I say I shall find the King sending a letter, under his hand and seal, to set him presently at liberty taking notice, in the said letter, that he was imprisoned for re- proving of maskings tolerated by law ; and when the King was informed that he was not set at liberty, I shall find him sending another letter to the Duke of Millan to see it effected : and that upon it he was freed ; he being, as it were, become but as the shadow of a man through the hardship of his sufferings." l 1 Bishop's 'New England judged by the Spirit of the Lord,' p. 19. Here the conduct of the French and other nations is in this matter favourably contrasted with that of the Puritans, who sought refuge for their tender consciences in New England, and there faith- fully put to death every man who came among them with a broad- brimmed hat. There is no justification for severity like this ; but there is something to be said for people fleeing into the wilderness to THE STATESMAN. 391 At the treaty of the Pyrenees, to which Charles II. came as a humble suppliant, Lockhart was received with high distinction as the representative of a great European power. But the times were soon to change, and it was to be seen who should revolve with the wheel, and who should remain steadily anchored to their own fixed prin- ciples. None came better forth from the revolution of the Restoration than Lockhart. Disregarding self-interest, and those abstract questions about monarchy and re- publicanism which can be so easily bent to the service of self-interest, he threw himself on the simple code of military fidelity. Dunkirk was the place where Charles desired to meet his friends , and Lockhart, by receiving him there, might have rivalled Monk in his claims on the new monarch. But he answered with brief simplicity that he had been trusted with the fortress by the republic, and he would hold it for the republic; and the joyful band of royalists had to seek a less convenient place of assemblage at Breda. Hume, who says that Lockhart was nowise averse to the King's service, and that he resisted very urgent persuasions, says, rather character- istically, *' This scruple, though on the present occurrence it approaches towards superstition, it is difficult for us entirely to condemn." There were, according to Clarendon, other overtures which he probably had still less hesitation in rejecting. get rid of the offences of the times, and being forthwith pursued thither by the most flagrant of them. Those who must needs go and lift up their testimony in such questions must accept the conditions of doing so ; and what the rest of the world feels is, that it is good for peace that elements so incompatible should be kept as far apart as possible. Bishop sets up, in favourable contrast to the conduct of the Puritans, that of the Sultan, when Mary Fisher, a maiden Friend, being moved by the Lord to deliver His word to him, sent him a message that "there was an Englishwoman had something to declare from the great God to the great Turk." But the visit from the maiden Friend was, no doubt, a very amusing episode in the life of the great Turk, who had not been brought up from in- fancy in any special loathing and hatred of the people with the peculiar dress as if they were unclean animals, but looked on them as he did on all the rest of the infidel world. 392 THE SCOT ABROAD. It would have been extremely convenient to France to have got possession of Mardyke and Dunkirk in the mttk of the Restoration : " Certain it is," says Clarendon, " that at the same time that he refused to treat with the King he refused to accept the great offers made to him by the Cardinal, who had a high esteem for him, and offered to make him Marshal of France, with great appointments of pensions and other emoluments, if he would deliver Dun- kirk and Mardyke into the hands of France ; all which overtures he rejected." And yet, strangely enough, it had been better for the subsequent honour of England if he had acceded to them. His opinions and his early training inclining him to royalty, he resolved to lead the life of a quiet loyal sub- ject. He began to teach his countrymen the English method of agriculture, but afterwards settled in Hunting- donshire, apparently to be far away from the wretched disputes which were tearing his own country. Proffers were made to him by the revolutionary party; if we may take Burnefs authority. Algernon Sidney himself took pains to secure the co-operation of one whose courage was so valuable, and whose adherence to the cause of the Commonwealth had been so tenacious. All their proffers, however, were quietly but steadily rejected. This honesty had the good fortune, rare in that age, not to go unrewarded. He was employed at the Courts of Brandenburg and Nuremberg at the time when King Charles entered on his celebrated secret alliance with Louis XIV. for the destruction of Holland. It is said that he suspected his mission to be virtually, though not avowedly, subservient to this alliance ; and Burnet attri- butes his broken health, and his death a few years after- wards, to his mortification on this discovery. It is perhaps scarcely consistent with this supposition, that he was soon afterwards sent as King Charles's ambassador to Paris. Again, as in the days of Dunkirk, he showed his high spirit as a public man, and his determination that the honour of England should not suffer in his hands. Two characteristic anecdotes have been preserved of this mis- sion. According to one, he resolved to put down a prac- THE STATESMAN. 393 tice of the French privateers in seizing English merchant vessels, and obtaining condemnation of them as Dutch vessels sailing under a fraudulent flag. Such a seizure had just been made, and the vessel lay at Dunkirk. Lockhart went to Court for an audience, and demanded her release. But the claim of the British Government was disavowed to the French ambassador at the recom- mendation of Pepys, the Secretary of the Admiralty, who said merchants were all rogues, and the British Govern- ment admitted the prize to be fair. A very black charge stands against the most candid and amusing of diar- ists, and it is said that he had actually an interest in the French privateer, which was built out of British navy stores purloined by him. It is very unlikely that Lock- hart knew anything about such malicious gossip he knew only that the majesty of England was insulted in his per- son, and he begged to be recalled if his own Court de- clined to support him in the position he had taken up The Court of England did support him, and the vessel was restored. Another story of his last mission to France I shall give in the words of Burnet : "Lockhart had a French Popish servant who was dying, and sent for the sacrament, upon which it was brought, with the procession ordinary in such cases. Lockhart, hearing of this, ordered his gates to be shut ; and upon that many were inflamed, and were running to force his gates ; but he ordered all his family to stand to their arms, and if any force was offered to fire. There was a great noise made of this, but no force was offered. He resolved to complain first, and so went to Court and expostulated upon it. He said his house was his master's house, and here a public triumph was attempted on his master's religion, and affronts were offered him ; he said, if a priest had brought the sacrament privately he would have connived at it, but he asked reparation for so public an injury. The King of France seemed to be highly dis- pleased at this, calling it the greatest indignity that had ever been done to his God during his reign. Yet the point did not bear arguing ; so Lockhart said nothing to that. When Lockhart went from him, Pomponne followed 394 THE SCOT ABROAD. him, sent after him by the King, and told him he would force the King to suffer none of his subjects to serve him. He answered he would order his coachman to drive the quicker to Paris to prevent that, and left Pomponne to guess the meaning. As soon as he came to his house he ordered all his French servants to be immediately paid off and dismissed. The Court of England was forced to justify him in all this matter. A public letter of thanks was written to him upon it; and the Court of France thought fit to digest it ; but the French King looked on him ever after with great coldness, if not with aversion." 1 He died at his post as English ambassador to the Court of France, in the year 1675. The only portrait of Lockhart I ever happen to have seen is in Harding's * Biographical Mirror.' Though, like the other engravings in that curious book, a meagre stipple, the attention of a casual inspector is sure to be arrested by the fine fore- head, the full expressive eyes, the haughty intellectual lip, and a general air of handsome grandeur, which would remind one of the portraits of Marlborough, were there not more candour and earnestness in the expression. A logically-minded reader will at once feel that a man like Lockhart does not come within the category of Scots abroad, as dealt with in my previous chapters. These were Scotsmen who had found employment among for- eigners, and their respective careers are a united testimony to the propensity and qualifications of their countrymen to seek their fortunes in other lands. An ambassador, on the other hand, must of necessity be a man doing business in a foreign country while he is in the employment of his own. It is quite true I admit the logical aberration, and have only to plead in excuse for having committed it with the intention of repeating it, that it led me to some picturesque little historical scenes which seemed worth noticing. One might, by the way, in the instance of Lockhart, escape on a technicality. He was doing one at least of his missions, in the service of a state foreign from his own, though both were under the same monarch, 1 Burnet's * Own Time, ' B. III. THE STATESMAN. 395 When he was sent by Charles II. to the Court of France, he represented England only ; Scotland, though still a separate nation, with separate and even hostile interests, was too poor to have an ambassador of her own. Another diplomatist whom I propose to call up, repre- sented the United Kingdom of Great Britain ; and it is curious enough that, after the lapse pf half a century, during which the power of Louis XIV. had waxed and waned, we find the story of Dunkirk taken up and con- tinued by a Scottish diplomatist. The lamentable trans- action by which the fortress was sold to France is only too well known. The great Vauban soon afterwards ex- pounded his system of fortification, which, by inexhaustible flanking works, was to render any swamp impregnable, if sufficient money and skill were expended on it. Colbert, whom we have found boasting of his Scottish descent, resolved to employ the great resources of France in rais- ing a fortress at every extremity of the scattered empire of Louis. Besides the states it had absorbed in central Europe, it had a footing in Hindostan; and in the New World it bade fair for pre-eminence. Quebec, and the other Canadian forts, with the vast deserted ruins still visible in Nova Scotia, are remnants of the great works which, by fortifying the extremity of her frontier, seemed to be the steps by which France was gradually marching to the dominion of the world. If the distant extremities were protected by works so costly, those opposite to the state which rivalled France and domineered over the sea were of course still more elaborately fortified. The works at Dunkirk became the wonder of the day ; and topographical writers luxuriate in the description of the ten bastions, the half-moons, the great circumvallation of sand-mounds, and the ship-canal, uniting to form what Cherbourg became a hundred and fifty years afterwards. It was built to command the Channel, by affording an impregnable refuge to the fleets and the privateers of France. It was the natural resource of a nation unable to cope with us on sea, but strong on shore, to have places of refuge for her ships a policy indeed so sound, that in the late war it saved for Russia 396 THE SCOT ABROAD. all that she preserved of her marine force behind the walls built by a Scots engineer. The fortifications of Dunkirk were an object of strong alarm to Britain. At the treaty of Utrecht, while many more conspicuous advantages were abandoned by Britain, the destruction of these works was demanded and conceded. But it was believed that the French were again warily reconstructing them, and Lord Stair was sent to Paris to insist that the works should be stopped. Old age had crept on the Grand Monarque, accompanied by many humiliations ; but this seemed the worst of all, that he should be controlled in the operation of ordinary public works, as if he were a sharp tenant on a building lease, who desired to overreach his landlord. Yet too many incidents in his brilliant history show that his observance of treaties was only to be relied on when he did not dare to violate them. Stair insisted on the works being stopped. The ambassador's pertinacity was extremely irritating to Louis. He became petulant and querulous ; said he had heretofore ruled the affairs of his own dominions, sometimes those of others, and was he to be controlled in the execution of certain canal and harbour works, cal- culated for the benefit of his poor subjects? But the ambassador was firm : there were many other shapes in which works beneficial to the subjects of France might be carried out ; these had the unfortunate effect of giving alarm to the merchants of England, and they were con- trary to treaty they must be abandoned. Louis sulkily yielded, leaving certain incompleted works to bear testi- mony against the rigidity of British diplomacy. It was the fortune of Lord Stair's embassy to exercise a considerable influence over the destinies of France. He was instrumental in the establishment of the Duke of Orleans as Regent. Louis XIV., in the fulness of his divine right, had settled the government of the kingdom by bequest. His will was set aside by the Parliament of Paris. It was thought that the States-General which was the nearest parallel to a parliament in the British sense of the term should have been summoned on such an occasion, and that the adjustment should not have THE STATESMAN. 397 been left to a mere executive or official body like the Parliament of Paris. In truth, however, it was like many other events in French history a coup, executed by the Duke of Orleans in the plenitude of his influence. Lord Stair was conspicuously present in one of the lanterns, or enthroned seats ; and it was said by some of the contem- porary annalists that this was suggested by the Abbd Dubois, for the purpose of proclaiming the support of Britain to the claims of the Duke. The assertion of some annalists of the period, that the Duke carried his point by intimidation, and that he brought with him an over- whelming armed force, is contradicted flatly by Voltaire, who says he was present, that there was no more than the usual ceremonial display of military force, and that the Duke took his place as one who held it by etiquette and natural right. By some writers the influence which Stair exercised on this occasion has been carried far beyond the bounds of mere ceremonial countenance. It is said that, as the representative of the house of Hanover, which superseded the house of Stewart, he whispered into the ear of the ambitious Duke that it would be the interest of the new line of British monarchs to countenance a new line of French monarchs, which the junior branch of the house of Bourbon might begin in the person of the Duke him- self. There is no doubt that the Duke often consulted Stair ; that the British ambassador had a greater influ- ence with him than the old French party liked. It is curious to connect the accounts rendered by men who died before the first Revolution of the advice given by the ambassador, with the career of Egalite', and with the actual possession of the crown of France for eighteen years by Louis Philippe, the grandson of the Regent. Stair had disagreeable duties to perform. He repre- sented that first Government of the Hanover dynasty which, by its jealous severity towards its parliamentary opponents, created the Jacobite insurrection. He was enabled to provide his Government with information which, had they been active, might have enabled them to put down the attempt without either the soldier or THE SCOT ABROAD. the hangman. His precautionary warnings would have been a more agreeable duty had they been more success- ful, but the duty that remained was eminently unpleasant Knowing that the Chevalier was going to pass through France on his way to Scotland, he demanded that the French Government should intercept him. He obtained an order from his friend the new-made Regent ; but, as Sismondi says, " Contades, charge de cet ordre, etoit bien resolu a ne pas trouver celui qu'il cherchoit" Stair knew this very well, and made his own arrangements, through a man named Douglas, to catch the Prince; but the emissary and his followers were baffled by the dexterity of a maitresse de poste ; and the Chevalier, after trying several points in vain, reached Dunkirk, where he was probably all the more easily enabled to embark, from the dismantling and abandonment of the fortifications which his pursuer had so rigidly carried out. After the failure of the Chevalier's enterprise, the dis- agreeable duties had to be resumed. There can surely be nothing more uncongenial to a fair and generous mind than to drive a fallen exile from his chosen place of re- treat, and yet sometimes this must be done. To France the possession of the exiled British Court was the pos- session of a political weapon, by which Britain might at any time be threatened, or, if need be, wounded. It was a weapon which the rulers of France used entirely for present objects, and who shall blame them? Without committing some great crime, it was impossible to pre- vent foreign nations from including the cause of the exiled Stewarts in their game. But it was possible to keep the exiles at a distance from those courts with which their immediate connection was chiefly dangerous. It was the first point of all the most important, yet the most difficult to be attained that they should not remain within the soil of France. Such was the demand, and the Regent was obliged to comply. No doubt throughout the tone of Lord Stair's embassy there is a character of haughtiness and harshness not im- mediately reconcilable with the character earned by that ambassador, of having exceeded the most courtly French- THE STATESMAN. 399 man of his day in polished suavity and thorough know- ledge of court etiquette ; x but he had an object before him which, under whatever suavity it was varnished, could not be accomplished without thefortiter in re. He had to bring Britain up to a par, in European consideration, with the position which the victories and fame of the Great Louis had achieved for France ; and the task was all the more arduous, since the opportunity of accomplishing it, so signally afforded by Marlborough's victories, had been lost at the treaty of Utrecht. Britain owes him a good deal. He gave her diplomacy that manly tone which, when in proper hands, separates it entirely from the trickery of the Italian school. He taught practically that, at the conference-table, Britain must trust, not to skilful evasion, or happy dubiety of tone, but to her own strength, and the just moderation with which it is used. He taught that the true spirit of British diplomacy was plainly to ask what the country demanded, and to obtain fulfilment of that demand, neither abating it because the opponent is found to be strong, nor increasing it because he is found to be weak. The French disliked him cordially. In the success with which he exacted the fulfilment of offensive de- mands, they saw the humiliation of their own rulers. Many offensive stories were mixed with his name. It was the fate of Britain at that time to have two represen- tatives abroad whose ancestral names were associated with a great political crime still fresh in men's minds, and well known wherever there were any adherents of the 1 There are two common anecdotes bringing out this characteristic : one represents Louis XIV. testing his breeding by offering him the pas in entering the royal carriage. Stair made his bow and stepped in. "A vulgar man," said Louis, " would have teased me with hesi- tations and excuses." The other rests on his remarkable resemblance to the Regent Orleans, who, desiring to turn a scandalous insinuation or jest on it, asked the ambassador if his mother had ever been in Paris ? The answer was, ' ' No, but my father was ! " There is perhaps no other retort on record so effective and so beautifully simple. If the question meant anything, that meaning was avenged ; if it meant nothing, there was nothing in the answer. 400 THE SCOT ABROAD. Stewarts the massacre of Glencoe. Lord Glenorchy, the representative of the old wolf Breadalbane was am- bassador first to Denmark, and afterwards to Russia. Lord Stair was the son of the politic instigator of his Highland vengeance. Gloating over such a precedent, some letter-writers of the day accused Stair of what surely it is safe to call a crime that no British ambassador could be guilty of a design to assassinate the Chevalier. To show the spirit that was in his blood, a story was invented how an ancestor called, in ignorance of the family name, Sir George Stair had, from sheer love of a bloody gratification of his vengeance, obtained the privilege of acting the part of the masked executioner who beheaded Charles I. But, assailed as he was by a powerful French combination, it was the lot of the man who had bullied Louis XIV., and bent the Regent to his will, to fall be fore the predominance of an Edinburgh silversmith. He was recalled because he would not recommend himself to the countenance of John Law. This seems the right time for bringing that notorious celebrity himself on the stage. The French, who are said to forget their great men after a generation has passed over their tombs, still take a lively interest in the history of John Law. Probably there is something peculiarly adapted to their ardent taste in its meteoric character. Every historian who tells them the history of the regency, from Voltaire to Sis- mondi, braces himself up to the full tension of his powers of description and excitation as he approaches the great Mississippi scheme. But it is perhaps the most remark- able testimony to the popularity of the subject, that one should be able to pick up for a couple of francs, in the French Railway Library (the Bibliotheque des Chemins- de-fer), an amusing volume called ' Law son Systeme et son Epoque,' par P. A. Cochut. It must be admitted that the French historians are not always complimentary to the pilot of that storm. They had many provocations to attack him, and he offered, in the conditions by which he was surrounded, many avenues of attack. If a nation will submit to feel grateful for the services of a foreigner. THE STATESMAN. 401 it will never patiently endure injuries or calamities at his hands. The social position of John Law was not fixed on a sufficiently lofty pedestal tcTstand the fastidious criti- cism of a people who were the most aristocratic in Europe, down to the period of reaction, when it became a sin against democracy to speak of a Regent and Comptroller- general. M. Cochut says, " Etait-il ou non gentilhomme?" a question which, he says, caused much serious and de- termined debate at one time, and is not without its inter- est now. The fact is, that he was in the position which we so well understand in this country, but which foreigners cannot comprehend, where a person is a gentleman or not, just as he possesses, or is deficient in, certain qualities of the head and heart, promoted by certain petty indefin- able social advantages. To those who chose to believe in him as a gentleman, he was Law de Lauriston, with a significant patronymic title ; while his enemies could say, that any man rich enough to buy an estate in Britain could call his land and himself by what name he pleased. He was an Edinburgh silversmith, which sounded ill abroad, but had little significancy here. As in some other trades, it did not tell whether its owner was a mere retailer, or a merchant who dealt in large affairs, and was more likely than a provincial squire to be a gentleman. He might be a mere vendor of tooth-picks and pencil-cases ; but, on the other hand, he might be a large dealer in bullion and money, whose transactions affected the monetary system in his country. George Heriot, his predecessor in his profession, married into the titled family of Rosebery ; and Law married, without apparently any consciousness of inequality, the Lady Catherine, daughter of the Earl of Banbury; while, in the days of his pride and power, the house of Argyll was glad to claim kindred with him through his mother, who was a Campbell. After his fall, it was, however, ominously remarked against him that, even during the height of that pride and power, one fellow-countryman kept at haughty distance from him, and it was significant that this was the British 2 C 402 THE SCOT ABROAD. ambassador. Stair thought at one time that the schemer was likely to make France too powerful a rival in trade and colonisation to England. He thought subsequently that the system was to ruin a country which he wished to see kept under the level of Britain, but not utterly de- stroyed. He adhered to his opposition with honourable firmness, alike disdaining the allurements of advantageous allocations which had bought over the greatest men in France, and coolly defying the threats of his own Court, which, protesting that it could not afford to be offensive to so great a man as the Comptroller-general, threatened to recall him. On the whole, it was a sight flattering to the pride of Scotland, to see in this conspicuous arena two of her sons rising so high above the level of all around them, and bidding each other stern defiance, each from the standard of his own fixed principles. But leaving the question of Law's family and social position where we found it, let us cast a glance on a few of those incidental characteristics of the greatness of his talents, the boldness of his policy, and the vastness of his influence, which are shown to us by the results of late inquiries. It is a historical vulgarism to speak of this man as a gambling adventurer, capable only of imposing on a confiding public with a glittering and hollow plan for making money. An adventurer perhaps he must be ad- mitted to have been, but in the sense in which Caesar, Artevelde, Wolsey, and Napoleon were adventurers. He was a statesman who looked far into the distant future for the results of all his acts an erring statesman, if you will, but still a great one. He firmly believed that he would raise up in France a power that would struggle with and put down the waxing commercial greatness of England. Nor can we well charge the project as criminally unpatri- otic. Scotland and England had not been so long in union as to feel themselves one people ; and when Law threw his interests into another nation, the old ally of Scotland, he did what in his father's day would have been deemed an act of patriotism. In the course of a series of letters to the English Court, full of alarming prognostications, we find the British am- THE STATESMAN. 403 bassador saying, " You must henceforth look upon Law as the first minister, whose daily discourse is that he will raise France to a greater height Chan ever she was, on the ruins of England and Holland." And again : " He in al! his discourse pretends he will set France much higher than ever she was before, and put her in a condition to give the law to all Europe ; that he can ruin the trade of Eng- land and Holland whenever he pleases; that he can break our bank whenever he has a mind, and our East India Company. He said publicly the other day at his own table, when Lord Londonderry was present, that there was but one great kingdom in Europe, and one great town and that was France and Paris. He told Pitt that he would bring down our East India stock ; and entered into articles with him to sell him, at twelve months hence, ^"100,000 of stock at n per cent under the current price. You may imagine what we have to apprehend from a man of this temper, who makes no scruple to declare such views, and who will have all the power and all the influence at this Court" 1 Such pas- sages have not inaptly been compared with the boast- ings of Napoleon when he issued the Berlin and Milan decrees. It involves no approval of the Mississippi Scheme, or even of the conduct of its founder, to say that there was more soundness in Law's views, and even in his practical proposals, than the world has been disposed to concede to them, and that many of the calamitous results of the affair were caused by their not obtaining fair play; or, perhaps it might be better said, because they got too much play. In reading that eventful chapter in history, it is but justice to separate two things from each other what Law proposed, from what the French Government and people did. All his suggestions were subjected to that " ergoism," as it is aptly termed, of the French, which makes them drive every opinion ruthlessly to its utmost logical conclusion, that spirit so well exemplified in Robespierre, when it was said that he would slay one 1 Hardwicke's State Papers, ii. 593. 404 THE SCOT ABROAD. half of mankind to get the other half to follow his prin- ciples of rigid virtue. Hence whatever Law commenced was carried out to its utmost extreme ; and when there arose the faintest reactive misgiving, the foundations of his complicated structure were at once kicked away, and the whole toppled down in ruin. The utter prostration of the patient's condition when the new physician took her in hand, is not to be con- ceived. Louis XIV., with his costly triumphs, and the dire vengeance taken for them, had left the country desti- tute of ships, of commerce, of agriculture, of money, of hope itself. There had just been a savage hunting-down of farmers-general, monopolists, and other persons who were supposed to have enriched themselves at the public expense. But the slaughter and pillage of a few million- aires would not make up for the prostration of enterprise and industry. The foreigner who offered to cure these constitutional disorders did not come as a nameless and needy wanderer. He was a favourite among the European courts, where he had dazzled the eyes of the smaller monarchs with visions which they sighed to reflect that they had not ready capital sufficient to realise. He is described as very handsome, very accomplished, and of marvellously fascin- ating address. More than all, he did not come empty- handed. He was in possession of a sum said to be a hundred thousand pounds in English money, which, with his usual sanguine impetuosity, he threw into his own scheme, and there lost. He was accused of having real- ised this money at the gaming-table. No doubt Law gambled ; it was a prevalent vice of the day, only too congenial to a temperament so vivacious and susceptible. But he does not appear to have ever condescended to petty dissipated gambling. His practices had more of the character of stock-jobbing. He played with princes and ministers that he might strengthen his hand to hold a political part in European history; and he was rather too successful in accomplishing his object. I am not going to offer a new history of the " system," but shall here notice only those incidents of violent oscil- THE STATESMAN. 405 iation, which show how remorselessly the complex plans of the ingenious speculator were dashed backwards or forwards, according to the prevalent humour or panic of the moment. When he had gathered together the threads of all the various funds and projects which were absorbed within the mighty system, it was announced that the company could pay 200 livres on the shares which had cost 1000 livres. c This was 20 per cent a very pretty dividend, which, with interest at 4 per cent, made each 1000 livres' share worth 5000. But the public would not leave them at this humble figure; and though there was no promise of a prospective enlargement of the already enormously enhanced dividend, they bade them up, in the mad con- tests so often described by historians, until they reached 10,000 livres ; an increase in their original value of 900 per cent. The impetuosity with which the " actions " rose was such, that ere two men could conclude a bargain for sale with the utmost possible rapidity, a difference of some thousands of livres had arisen in the value of the article sold ; and in- this way, messengers who were sent to sell stock at eight thousand, for instance, found that, if they could but linger a few minutes at the mart, the stock would rise to nine thousand, and they might pocket the difference. There has been wild enough work of this sort in our own country; but the peculiarity of the great French system was, that whenever the popular mania took a par- ticular direction, the Government beckoned it, urged it nay, coerced it on to the utmost extreme. The public mind was so well saturated with Law's aversion to the precious metals and preference for paper money, that for once gold became a drug in the market. People who chose might hoard it, but none, save a few eccentric ex- ceptions to the prevailing opinions, then wished to hoard. All were under a sort of trading fever; they must be speculating and increasing their wealth ; and with so worthless a thing as gold there was no use of trading, for no one would take it. Thus, to the eminent satisfaction of the leaders of opinion, the precious metals were rapidly 406 THE SCOT ABROAD. streaming out of the kingdom into countries still so be- nighted as to deem them worthy of possession Still there were a few a very few people of sceptical and saturnine temperament, who, distrusting the system, were suspected of having secret hoards of the precious metal in their possession. This was a sort of treason against the system, and must not be permitted. Accord- ingly, that celebrated edict was issued, which required that no person or corporation could legally possess more than 500 livres in specie, whether it were in coined money or in the shape of plate or ornaments. A sort of insane aversion to the precious metals a simple desire to put them out of existence is the best account that history gives of this affair. But we can suppose that the design of Law himself was to bring the bullion into his bank, and make a metallic basis, somewhat on Sir Robert Peel's system, for his paper currency. Bullion did, in fact, flow into the bank, to the extent, in three weeks, of 44 millions of livres about 5^ millions sterling; but it passed through as from a sieve, not apparently in the slightest degree to the regret of the Regent and his courtiers. The dilapidation which the law of confiscation created among the family plate in the great houses may easily be imagined; but such a trifling inconvenience was not to be permitted to impede the onward progress of the system. The law was carried out with rigour and cruelty. The police were directed to make domiciliary visits, and the informer received one half of the forfeited treasure. It would appear, from an anecdote, that whoever had served the public by denouncing a bullion-keeper, might retain what he had so worthily acquired. One day the President Lambert de Varmon appeared before the chief of police, and stated that he was prepared to denounce a criminal possessed of 5000 livres' worth of bullion. The chief was shocked somewhat; he thought the rage for denunciation was spreading far indeed, when so ami- able and excellent a man was infected by it. "Whom was he to denounce?" Himself. He knew no other way of saving a moiety of his plate. As part of his grand project for resuscitating France, THE STATESMAN. 407 and lifting her to a height of greatness far above that achieved by the great monarch who had just passed to his account, Law proposed to carry out the greater por- tion of those internal reform^ which France has sub- sequently adopted ; having effected some of them by peaceful degrees, and others by sudden violence. But the relentless vehemence with which the Government proposed immediately to enforce all these radical changes effectually defeated them. It was part of his plan to abolish the infamous corvk, with all the multitudinous feudal taxes, and to establish a capitation and property tax. Doubtless the exemptions enjoyed by the nobility would have been swept away before the paper hurricane as they fell in the great day of sacrifices at the commencement of the Revolution, and the Government again was not to impede the system on so trifling a consideration; but the reaction postponed the sacrifice for half a century. Farther, Law anticipated the beneficent policy of Turgot, in a proposal to abolish the provincial restrictions and monopolies which inter- rupted the trade of the country, and made Frenchmen strangers to each other. He had a vast colonisation scheme, which was to serve two objects. It was to raise up a French empire in America, which, beginning in the valley of the Mississippi, should radiate thence and per- vade the whole of the western hemisphere. It was to be at the same time a means of removing the damaged and surplus population of France, and sweetening the blood of the country. No sooner was the scheme proposed than the Govern- ment plunged into it with its wonted impetuosity. On the morning of the ipth September 1719, the bells of St Martin gave forth a wedding-peal; it was no mere private joy-peal, but something that might announce a royal wedding or some other important ceremony. All the people are on the alert ; and behold, there wind through the street one hundred and eighty damsels, dressed in white, with garlands of flowers, each attended by a bridegroom suitably apparelled. They move onwards with signal regularity and precision ; and no wonder, 408 THE SCOT ABROAD. they are chained together with iron fetters, and on each side of them marches a file of musketeers. These are the female convicts of the prison of St Martin des Champs, each mated with a suitable husband from one of the other prisons, and the whole are to be shipped off to form an earthly paradise in the West. It had been well had matters stopped with the prisons ; but a kind of emigration rapacity seized upon the Government. They looked around with greedy eyes, finding this or that damaged part of the population, and immediately am- putating it for removal. It was as if a universal press-gang were abroad. People hid themselves, and were dragged forth from their hiding- places, lodged in some prison, and marched down in chains to a vessel. At Rochelle a gang of one hundred and fifty women fell on their keepers and tore them. The guard fired on the amazons, killing six and wound- ing many others. At the same time the wildest exaggera- tions were published, to encourage voluntary emigration. Some deep politicians thought it would assist the progress of French aggrandisement in the West, and make the Parisian empire that was to cover the new hemisphere arise more rapidly, were some French blood infused into the native royal races of North America. Accordingly the Queen of Missouri was induced to come to Paris to select a husband. The fortunate object of her choice was a stalwart sergeant in the Guards, named Dubois. A disagreeable condition said to be attached to the new dignity probably impeded more distinguished candidates. The Queen of Missouri, being a Daughter of the Sun, was entitled to cut off her husband's head if he displeased her; and rumour went that Dubois the First actually suffered the penalty of this rigid discipline. But all distinct record of his fate was lost in the tangled mixture of wild adventures encountered by the thousands who were unshipped on the desert shore shovelled, as it were, into a strange land swarming with savages, and left there to struggle for life and food. The Government was ready to do anything to banish the Parliament from Paris to hang a member of one of THE STATESMAN. 409 the first families in Europe to confiscate fortunes and abolish powers and privileges if it appeared that the act was likely to have the faintest efficacy in establishing the universal dominion of the system. In the same man- ner, when the first breath was blown on it, instead of leaving it to struggle on or die naturally, they turned on it and rent it. The first symptom of alarm was the high price of commodities. They mounted, though not by such extravagant leaps, as rapidfy as the value of the "actions," doubling, trebling, and quadrupling. This was just the natural effect of an excessive and valueless cur- rency. If the Government could have reduced that currency by buying it in, they might have made it rather more appropriate to its object. But short, violent remedies were the rule under the Regent's Government, and a decree was issued reducing the nominal value of notes to one -half. It reduced their actual value to nothing. They were something to be got rid of on any terms. Had the French Revolution taken place before the verdict of a jury of historians had been passed upon John Law, they would have found no true bill against him, but, after the laudable fashion of English grand juries, would have vented round opinions on all the defects in public affairs which had rendered their assembling together necessary. To have made all the madness of those times was beyond the capacity of any human being, however malignantly he were inclined. There is indeed, throughout all the narratives of the affair, a signal and almost appalling parallelism with the earlier symptoms of the great Revolution. It looks as if the long latent disease had endeavoured to break out, but had been thrown back into the constitution to gather power and malignity. There was much dire misery among the humbler people ; and many who belonged to the com- fortable classes, whose dissatisfactions are generally sup- posed to proceed less from destitution than unsatisfied ambition, felt the gripe of hunger and the want of a roof. Amid all this misery, and at the times when it was at its very worst, it was noticed by thoughtful bystanders, as it 410 THE SCOT ABROAD. afterwards was noticed during the Reign of Terror, that the theatres never were so well filled, or all the usual novelties of Paris so eagerly pursued. Frondes and mots abounded, and the rapidity of the ruin which fell on thousands was improved in multitudinous pasquinades, such as "Lundi, j'achetai des actions, Mardi, je gagnai des millions, Mercredi, j'ornai mon menage, Jeudi, je pris un equipage, Vendredi, je m'en fis au bal, Et Samedial'hopital." Along with this well and ill timed gaiety, crime in- creased rapidly ; at all events, it was supposed to increase. The administration appears to have been too deeply absorbed otherwise to pay much attention to it. The bodies of the murdered seem, however, to have been thought worth counting, and they were so numerous as abundantly to alarm the living. On one occasion, the thousands of Paris gathered in insurrection, carrying with them the bodies of those who had been killed in the crush before the bank. They sang " Franais, la bravure vous manque, Vous etes pleins d'aveuglement ; Pendre Law avec le Regent, Et vous emparer de la Banque, C'est 1'affaire d'un moment." They rushed on the palace, just as their grandchildren did on the renowned loth of August. So far as history speaks, architecture seems to have postponed the catas- trophe. The old Palais Royal was a vast square or place, bordered by straight lines of high, many- windowed houses. These had gradually been filled with soldiers. Thus when the mob came to the point of attack, they found themselves in the position in which the military have so frequently found themselves in the streets of Paris sur- rounded by buildings garrisoned by the enemy. While the wheel of fortune thus revolved amid storm and fire, there was, so far as we can infer from history, in THE STATESMAN. 411 the conduct of the presiding genius, serenity and haughty calmness. He was the most wonderful, if not the most powerful, man in the world ; and the humiliations under- gone by the greatest people of France to propitiate him call up a blush for human nature. It was scoffingly said of him that he gave a blandly condescending reception to his countryman the Duke of Argyll ; but the Duke was a mere provincial respectability beside the triumphant Comptroller-general, and he knew it. To others of his countryman of very humble rank, Law appears to have been kind and affable. He stands entirely free from the taint of mercenary premeditation. He could have fortified himself by investments to any extent in England, and many other places, had not his faith or his allegiance bound him to his own system. When it broke he scattered everything from him, as one to whom the preservation of a mere private fortune was felt as infinitely despicable. There was perhaps some- thing more of recklessness than of virtue in this ; yet it would have been more painful to have found him in search of some little prize for himself among the ruins. While the house was falling he was often exposed to personal danger, and he gained respect by his haughty defiance of it. Once he seems to have lost his temper. A mob follow- ing his carriage with fierce cries, he stepped out and faced them, saying, " Vous etes canailles," and walked on. " Soit," says M. Cochut, " que le mot se fut perdu dans le tumulte, soit qu'un majestueux sang-froid cut impose a la multitude, 1'Ecossais put gagner le Palais Royal sans accident." Not so with the coachman. He, inspired with sympathetic fervour, repeated his master's scornful epithet, and the canaille, in consequence, tore him from his seat, and stamped him to death, while they broke the carriage in pieces. The Premier-President de Mesme, who beheld this little incident, acquired much fame by relating it to his brethren, thus "Messieurs, messieurs, bonne nouvelle, La carosse de Law est reduit en cannelle." 412 THE SCOT ABROAD. In the fictions, and perhaps in the realities of the East, when the favourite of the caliph, who has sprung from nothing, forgets himself in his overweening pride, and abuses the royal confidence, he is at once hurled from his height of power, and sits a beggar at the corner of the market-place, to bear the gibes and cuffs of those who used to court him. In like manner the popular concep- tion of John Law is, that, when his meteoric flight was over, he became extinguished to sight in some jeweller's stall or petty gambling-house. But he was still a per- sonage, carrying about him the faded lustre of a deposed prince ; or, perhaps, more fitly speaking, the repute of a fallen minister, of whom it is not to be forgotten that he may rise again. As he left France his carriage was fol- lowed by another in hot pursuit. It contained, not an officer of justice, but M. Pressy, the agent of the Emperor of Russia come to solicit the aid of the great financier for the adjustment of the pecuniary affairs of the em- pire ; but the ex-Comptroller-general does not appear to have encouraged the proposal. Alberoni went to Venice to meet him, and for some time he carried about in his wanderings a sort of shifting levee of ministers and petty princes. Desiring to return to Britain, Sir John Norris, who commanded the Baltic fleet, thought it due to so eminent a person to give him a passage in the admiral's own ship. The courtesy with which the Government received him created some excitement in the Opposition ; and the last time when Law's name was brought con- spicuously before the world, was in a debate in the House of Lords. What a wild world it would be if economic schemers even the most moderate among them had absolute des- potic powers put into their hands wherewith to give effect to their own schemes ! This reflection comes up as ap- propriate to the difficulty that any reader would feel in discovering the seeds of so tremendous an affair as the Mississippi Scheme in Law's writings. He will find in them, indeed, many views of undisputed soundness. Law's ideas of the nature of metallic money correspond with the prevalent political economy of the present day. THE STATESMAN, 413 He seems, indeed, to have been the first to disperse the theory, entertained by Locke and many others, that the precious metals are endowed, by the general consent of mankind, with an imaginary Value ; and he shows that their universal employment as a circulating medium de- pends on their real value, arising from their ornamental and portable character, their indestructibility, and, above all, the nearly uniform amount of labour that it ever costs to bring them into the market. His notion of the real value of the precious metals was the antinome, as it were, of his view that their cost prevented the supply of money ill sufficient abundance ; that they were too dear, in short, and ought to be discarded for a cheaper and more pro- lific medium. The main tenor of his theory was, that when a country is exhausted, it can only be resuscitated by an infusion of fresh financial blood in the shape of easy issues of money. Voltaire, in his 'Age of Louis XV.,' testifies that, in the end, it was successful, and that, through all the misery and ruin she endured, the country was the better for the Mississippi Scheme, deriving from it an elasticity of movement which led her on to subsequent prosperity. Many people will doubt this view ; but it is rather remarkable that Law's scheme was considered by the French themselves so fundamentally sound that they virtually repeated it in the celebrated issue of assignats, in which the French Convention played over again the same desperate piece of gambling. It has obtained a higher sanction still. In this present year (1864) the people who enjoy the reputation of being the acutest and " smartest " in the world are hard at work playing the desperate game, and will bring it to its inevitable results. When a suspension-bridge breaks down or a boiler ex- plodes, engineers avoid the method of construction which leads to such a calamity. It is otherwise in the social machinery, where all the passions and prejudices of man- kind are the materials used in the construction. Events have their actions and reactions going on, re-echoing each other into after generations, under so many different forms, that people question if the beginning of all really was a calamity. The echoes of this Mississippi affair 4H THE SCOT ABROAD. itself are not yet dead. It was followed immediately by the South Sea storm in England, and a similar catas- trophe in Holland. The Scheme left the French Govern- ment burdened with the colony of Louisiana. It was sold in 1803 to the United States for fifteen millions of dollars cash down. It was this purchase that created the pre- ponderating influence of the slaveholding States of the Union and what that has done and is now doing we all know. Again, the Scheme left France in the possession of an East India Company which rivalled our own, but of that rivalry came the great contest in which Clive and Hastings asserted the superiority that made the British Eastern empire : but for this contest, and the military position it gave us in the East, it is possible that our country might have known nothing of Hindostan save as a field of trade. One thing that makes the world respect political and commercial schemers is their power ; and there is some- thing fascinating in the contemplation of power, whether used for good or for bad ends. The ideas of Law have supporters in the present day in those economists who vehemently urge the extension of credit as a means of multiplying capital of doubling, trebling, or quadrupling it. And yet credit operations are but a form of gambling, and should be so treated. The lower form of gambling at the gaming-table has sometimes great results, not always entirely pernicious. A renowned professional gambler once made a large fortune by his pursuit an extremely uncommon result. His daughter was married to a man of genius, who, backed by her wealth, became prime minister of Britain and a prime minister who put his mark upon his age. A man found wasting his brains and his health at rouge et noir, however, would hardly get credit for sincerity if he said he was working to get a good prime minister for the country. Be the end of it in the far future what it may, every act of gambling, whether in the share-market or at the gaming-table, is not an operation for the benefit of the human race, but an act done through the influence of a selfish passion ; and, like THE STATESMAN. 415 all other selfish passions, it should be the duty of those who take upon them the function of instructors rather to repress than encourage it. On the Plutarchian system of comparison, John Law and William Paterson should pair off together the one, as having ruined France with the Mississippi Scheme, the other as having ruined Scotland with the Darien Scheme. They had other parallel conditions in life, in that they wei e competitors in laying-schemes before their own countrymen. Law had proposed certain projects to the Parliament of Scotland, which, being in a cautious humour, they declined to adopt, and he then carried his genius abroad. Paterson's schemes were all directed to the aggrandisement of his own country, and therefore he does not appear, at first sight, within the category of those Scotsmen whose genius and achievements have been exhibited among foreigners. But Paterson during a large part of his life was busy abroad. His practical information on foreign countries guided the Darien Com- pany and the Scottish Parliament in all their operations. The way in which he obtained this information was con- nected with two rather inconsistent-looking accusations touching the occupations of his earlier days. The one was that he had obtained it as a buccaneer or pirate on the Spanish main; the other, that he picked it up while acting as a canting missionary in communication with the Puritans of New England. When we think of men and their actions, we should always endeavour to see them by the light of their own times. The two profes- sions were not so utterly inconsistent in the seventeenth as they are in the nineteenth century. Paterson's corre- spondence shows him to have been slightly pious. But a good deal of piety need not have been inconsistent with the transaction of business after the usual manner on the Spanish main. Few commanders of vessels who found themselves strong enough to get off with it could then resist the temptation to mix up a little buccaneering with legitimate commerce. Sea rights and sea ethics were by no means so distinctly defined as they now are. The 416 THE SCOT ABROAD. rule then was that good old rule which Wordsworth ad- mired so much for its patriarchal simplicity "That he should take who has the power, And he should keep who can." Once in blue water, the Tarpaulin, as the rough-handed skipper of that day was called, considered that he was free of land-laws and diplomatic obligations a sort of separate self-acting power; and as there was generally some war or other going on, he was free to take either side and plunder the enemy, and to change sides as op- portunity suggested. Paterson's own colony was con- sidered a nest of buccaneers by the Spaniards, and indeed their conduct was not calculated to rebut the charge. They seized all the Spanish vessels they could lay hand on, as those of enemies ; but having on one occasion mistaken an English vessel for a Spanish and seized it, they could not be prevailed on to rectify the mistake by a restoration. People open their eyes at the great buccaneer, Henry Morgan, having been knighted ; but there was nothing anomalous had he even also, as the biographer of Pater- son says he was, been made governor of Jamaica. He was so great a leader of ruffians as to be almost an inde- pendent sovereign, like the Dey of Algiers. He would have boasted of his feats at Court. Perhaps a day may come when it will be considered flagitious to appoint an aristocratic blackleg to a post of trust ; and Thackeray's promotion of Rawdon Crawley to the government of a colony may be cited as a type of the habits of our generation, as De Foe's Colonel Jack exemplifies the time not much more than a century old when young men were kidnapped on the streets of Newcastle or Aberdeen, and sold as slaves to very respectable houses concerned in the plantation trade. Paterson's zealous biographer, Mr Saxe Bannister, re- pudiates the charge against him, saying that it rests on no better authority than Burnet's general observation, "There was one Paterson, a man of no education, but of great notions, which it was generally said he had learned from THE STATESMAN. 417 the buccaneers, with whom he had consorted for some time." And certainly, as nothing more specific can be discovered about his early pursuits, we have no right to hold that they must have been tinged with piracy. His later transactions with foreign countries are suffi- ciently ostensible. When his scheme was at its climax, he directed some very important negotiations on the Conti- nent, where he in some measure tried his strength against the power of William III. The cause of the calamities of Scotland at that time was the datermination of the Dutch King to sacrifice everything to his European system. To this end, when he had to consider whether he should be just to Scotland, or propitiate the great trading interests of England, he chose the latter alternative. The Darien Scheme, as most people are aware, was a plan to enable Scotland to have a foreign trade and colonies of her own, since the Navigation Act made her a foreign country to England, not entitled to participate in the English ship- ping privileges and colonial trade. The projectors of the Darien Scheme naturally enough courted English capital, and established an office in London. This was denounced as a breach of the privileges of the East India Company, as well as in various other shapes offensive, and the emi- nent men who represented the Company in London were hunted out of England as criminals. Paterson conceived that, as Scotland was deemed a foreign country, incapable of participating in the trading privileges of England, she was, as a converse, not only entitled, but invited to treat with her old friends on the Continent, without asking leave of her imperious yoke- fellow. It was arranged that the Company should fill up the shares which the English merchants had subscribed, but were obliged to abandon, in that old burghal commu- nity which had been long associated with Scotland the Hanse Towns. But that foreigners should enter in the field of enterprise from which their own jealous laws ex- cluded themselves, was intolerable to the English capi- talists, and they had interest enough to get instructions issued to the representatives of England in foreign courts Scotland could not afford to have representatives that 2 D 41 8 THE SCOT ABROAD. the Company disposing of its shares was not countenanced by the King, and any communities giving encouragement to it would encounter his displeasure. The Burgomasters of Hamburg indignantly repudiated the King of England's right to menace them, and said they traded as they pleased; but the Hamburgers did not take stock. The flow of capital from Northern Europe was in fact effectually checked by the intervention of William. Pat- erson showed on the occasion his versatile resources, and looked at once to the other side of the Continent. He proposed terms to the Armenian merchants, the great masters of Eastern trade, whose chain of connections passed from Hindostan to Lapland. These men, so remarkable for their honesty, sagacity, and substantiality, would fain have aided the Scots, had they not, through their subtle channels of intelligence, known that the Darien Company was not countenanced by the King who reigned over Scotland. Thus was frustrated a plan by which Paterson and his friends projected an overland traffic to India, and the establishment in the Eastern Peninsula of factories which should rival those of the East India Company of England. It is matter for much regret that both the beginning and the conclusion, with many portions of Paterson's life, are so dark to the world. This is not for want of any deficiency in biographical zeal, though it came too late to be effectual. Still there is much for the world to be grateful for in the fruit of the long labours of Mr Saxe Bannister. If he has not done much to clear up the events of Paterson's life, he has given the clearest pos- sible rendering of his opinions and projects, by discover- ing and printing all his works. 1 It is a sufficient hint that the contents of these volumes are important, to say that they give forth the earliest practical exposition of the doctrines of free trade, and that they enlarge on the illim- 1 * The Writings of William Paterson of Dumfriesshire, and a citi- zen of London, founder of the Bank of England and of the Darien Colony.' Edited by Saxe Bannister, M-A. of Queen's College, Ox- ford ; with Biographical Notices, Fac-similes, and Portrait. 1859. THE STATESMAN. 419 itable character of commerce when protected from inter- ference. The editor, among the many vast schemes of his master, has found one of a smaller character, but curious and interesting a design to found a public library, to consist solely of books bearing on trade. He collected the nucleus of it himself; and if he could read the books he thus bought, which are enumerated in a catalogue made by him, he must have been free, or must have freed himself, from Burnet's charge of being unedu- cated. * If it be open, by ingenious special theories, to prove that the Mississippi Scheme was not in the end disastrous, it is quite clear that Paterson's was in the end beneficent. In the first place, Scotland compelled restitution by Eng- land of the loss caused to the shareholders of the Darien Company. The amount paid up in calls was refunded to each up to the last penny, from the fund called "The Equivalent." Having tasted the benefits of a free trade with England during Cromwell's time, the country was determined to have it again, or set up an opposition in- terest to England by an alliance with France or some other great foreign power. The breaking -down of the dynasty of the daughters of King James, by the death of all Anne's children, gave Scotland her opportunity. Whatever way England settled the succession, Scotland would settle it otherwise, unless she were made a partici- pator in the English privileges of trade. An Act was passed to arm the country in case England should at- tempt to force through the Scots Parliament a concur- rence in the Hanover succession. As one of the ships of the Darien Company had been seized for a breach of the privileges of the English African Company, an English vessel was seized in the Forth by way of reprisal. On suspicion of having committed piracy on a Scots ship, the English captain and crew were tried and condemned to death. The proof against them was very defective in any eyes not obscured by national wrath, and the Crown wished to spare the men's lives, but dared not do it in the face of the temper shown by the country. The men were hanged, to express the country's sense of the grasp- 420 THE SCOT ABROAD. ing selfishness of the English merchants. It was now clear that there was nothing for it but to concede to Scotland the full privilege of participation in English trade, and so came the Treaty of Union. By a natural transition from that portion of the connec- tion of Scotland with other countries which associates itself with the career of Paterson, we might get among the Hanse Towns, and other trading districts of the north of Europe, where Scots merchants appeared to have swarmed. They had established special privileges in the Low Countries, which they kept a kind of ambassador or consul to protect. He was the " Lord Conservator of Scots privileges at Campvere j " and the office, having be- come a sinecure, was given to John Home by way of compensation and consolation when he was deprived of his office as a parish minister for writing * Douglas.' There were a number of merchants in Sweden, who, with the remnant of the Scots soldiers of Gustavus Adolphus, merged into what were called the thirty- six noble Scots houses there. I have in my hand a book by a member of one of them named Andrew Murray ; it is a Treatise on the History and Whereabouts of those Kenites who were prophesied against by Balaam, and told that "though strong was their dwelling-place, and they put their nest in a rock, yet they should be wasted until Ashur should carry them away captive." The author dedi- cates his book to three noble merchants of Prussia two of them his relations and Murrays John in Memel and Thomas in Danzig, where there was a considerable fra- ternity of Scots merchants. 1 Among the Slavonians who do not take to commerce, and have their merchandise done by other races, the Scots seem to have supplied all grades, from the merchant princes to the pedlars, so called from walking about with their available stock in trade. The vacuum they left when the Union opened up the home market to Scots enterprise, seems to have been filled by Jews. Sir John Skene, who put into his Law Dictionary a quantity of the little specialties of per- 1 'Andrese Murray, Commentatio de Kinseis.' Hamburg, 1718. THE STATESMAN. 421 sonal knowledge which are so valuable when found in old books, but so little likely to be found in law dictionaries, says of pedlars, " Ane pedder is called ane merchand or cremar, quha bears ane pack or crame upon his back, quha are called bearars of the puddill be the Scottesmen in the realme of Polonia, quhairof I saw ane great multi- tude in the town of Cracovia, anno Dom. 1569." I have little doubt that a deal of matter both valuable and curious might be found by an investigation into the conditions which created the class of trading Scots. The present object is, however, rather to tell what has fallen in the writer's way than to search out new matter ; and as I do not happen to possess any notices of them suffi- ciently picturesque for the present purpose, I again take advantage of the licence to bring forth any occurrences in the career of Scotsmen in the diplomatic service, when these happen to go beyond the ordinary beaten circle of diplomatic functions. The scene opens in a State to which the world has lately been looking with unusual interest Denmark in the remote palace of Fredericksberg, about the year 1771. The notorious Struensee, who, with a few long strides, passed from the function of a German village- doctor to that of prime minister, or, more properly, dictator of Denmark, has just reached the climax of his meteoric career. He was a prodigious reformer ; but it is useless to discuss the merit of his projects. If there was any nation in Europe at that time where the Pombals, Josephs, or Potemkins could take great social systems to pieces and reconstruct them scientifically, without mis- chief or danger, Denmark was not that nation. It is quite different now; but at that time before the first French Revolution, remember in no European country was there a harder system of immovable uniformity and routine, protected by a powerful aristocratic order whose existence depended on its being executed to the minut- est tittle. The old Norse freedom and heartiness were entirely gone, and everything was frozen into an icy per- manence by the frigid influence which the Russian autoc- racy and bureaucracy were then exercising over the north- 422 THE SCOT ABROAD. ern nations. But however judicious or acceptable in them- selves Struensee's reforms might have been, they came from a poisoned fountain. He was one of that most odious of all classes of statesmen, a royal favourite ; and of the two kinds of royal favouritism his was by repute the more odious the favouritism of a woman. The young Queen of Denmark, Caroline Matilda, the sister of George III., was reared in a Court where a prin- cess was certainly not likely to imbibe profligacy ; and it is difficult to conceive any one brought up under the same auspices as her rigid brother, becoming even amen- able to a charge of levity. Her possession of remarkable beauty and great powers of fascination is scarcely less easily reconcilable with that generation of the royal family. That she had these powers of fascination seems, however, to be beyond a doubt. It can be as little doubted that she was wayward and indiscreet ; and in- deed her own family did little to vindicate her fame from graver charges. If it were any vindication of her con- duct, it is certain that her husband Christian was as con- temptible and odious a being as ever lived in a sty of profligacy a sort of vulgarised Darnley, in a single- breasted coat and powdered wig. Struensee was originally his own favourite, and was dragged by him, with that indecorous vehemence with which weak men tug at their favourites, into the inmost recesses of the palace. He was highly educated, hand- some, clever, and agreeable. The Queen certainly liked him; and she had some good substantial reasons for awarding him a decorous preference. He took in hand the charge of the young Crown Prince's health, as a physician, and superintended the training both of his body and mind. A mother might have sympathy for all reasonable dispensations of kindness to such a person, and Struensee had claims perhaps of a still more touching kind, in being the means of reconciling the royal couple to each other of exacting promises of reformation from the King, and pardon of his past profligacy from the poor Queen. It is difficult to say which of the three the King, the THE STATESMAN. 423 Queen, or their favourite acted the maddest part in the political saturnalia which followed. Struensee's certainly was the guiding hand, so far as there was guidance. Step by step he rose in political power, each step being at- tended by an excess of folly and presumption. At length, when he had the fate of Denmark in his hands, he scat- tered to the winds at one blast the old Council of State, in which the representatives of ih& chief families of Den- mark held absolute oligarchical rule. He transferred the power of government to a ministerial board subservient to his own bidding. It was scarcely consistent with human nature that the discharged statesmen should bear this act with Christian meekness. At the same time, the favourite could not so easily make good harvests, and abolish idle habits among the people, as he could dismiss the Council. The times happened to be hard, and the people made common cause with the nobles, charging the favourite with their calamities. Drunk with power, he did many frantic and wicked things ; but of all his follies and vices, the least defensible part of his conduct was his treatment of the Queen. With such a husband as she had, and with all the Court against her, she unfortunately was too solely dependent on the favourite. He exulted in his strength, and proclaimed, as it were, his triumph in conduct which would have been despicable if the poor woman had been erring, and was fiendish if she were innocent. At length a blow was struck. The Queen was arrested, so were Struensee and his friend Brand. The triumph- ant party were madder with success than even the fallen favourite had ever been. They fiercely demanded blood. Struensee was at once hurled with oriental precipitancy from the throne to the scaffold, and was executed with every concomitant of ignominy and horror. There is little doubt that the Queen would have been a victim had not a hand been stretched out to save her. The whole wild history was watched by the calm observ- ant eye of a young Scot Colonel Robert Keith, who, though a novice in diplomacy, was deemed suitable to be trusted with so quiet a post as the Danish mission. But 424 THE SCOT ABROAD. few veteran ambassadors have ever been more sorely tried, Was he to see the sister of his sovereign put to death ? and if not, where were the means by which he could avert her fate ? No doubt, national wars had often been caused by acts far more trifling. Philip V. of Spain had de- clared that rivers of blood would not wash out an in- cidental slight thrown on his family, and he would not have thought thousands of lives unduly wasted in such a cause. But it was not to be concluded that Britain would plunge into a European war for the fate of one person, though that person were a Princess. These were the diplomatic difficulties which would surround such a question at the conference-table. The young ambassa- dor solved them all by an act of wise heroism. He was free at all events to sacrifice his own personal safety in the cause. He took it on himself to denounce any act of violence to the Queen as an act of war with England, and to strike his flag as one who was no longer an am- bassador protected by the law of nations, but a prisoner in the hands of the enemies of his country. A little examination will show that this step was as wise as it was disinterested. If it proved successful, and the revolutionists spared the Queen, it would be for the con- sideration of the British Government whether or not they should punish the successful blusterer for an excess of his constitutional powers as a British ambassador. If he were unsuccessful if the Danish Cabinet defied the rep- resentative of Britain, and sacrificed the Queen to their vengeance it was still in the power of the British Gov- ernment to repudiate the act of the ambassador, and be at peace with Denmark. The question fortunately did not arise in its more for- midable shape. No violence beyond enforced seclusion was offered to the Queen. An uncertainty, which may be called unsatisfactory rather than mysterious, hangs over the subsequent intercourse of the two Governments about her destination. The history of the time does not speak of war with Denmark as one of the perils of Britain, but the diplomacy refers to a formidable naval force pre- pared to rescue the Queen from the hands of her enemies. THE STATESMAN. 425 In the * Annual Register ' for the year, there is a pretty full history of the revolution, followed by an account of the conclusion of the contest between Denmark and the Dey of Algiers. About the position of the Queen of Denmark, the writer of the chronicle for the year speaks as one who desired information, but had it not to give. Nothing is said of an armed force being fitted out, yet the following passage of a letter from Lord Suffolk, the Foreign Secretary, has an air as if Britain had made pre- paration for war. "The national object," he says, "of procuring the liberty of a Daughter of England, confined in Denmark after her connection with Denmark was dis- solved, is now obtained. For this alone an armament was prepared, and therefore, as soon as the acquiescence of the Court of Copenhagen was known, the preparations were suspended, that the mercantile and marine inter- ests of this kingdom might be affected no longer than was necessary by the expectation of a war. Instead of a hostile armament, two frigates and a sloop are now ordered to Elsinore. One of them is already in the Downs, the others will repair thither immediately, and as soon as the wind permits they will proceed to their destination. 3 ' 1 The small force was sent as a sort of guard of honour to accompany the Queen to her place of retreat at Zell, known from its tragic"*association with another princess connected with the house of Hanover. The allusion to the larger force which might have been fitted out, but was not, may be suspected to have been a small diplo- matic expedient for imparting a wholesome alarm to the ruling powers in Denmark. The shape in which the acknowledgments of his Court seem to have been conveyed to the spirited young am- bassador has the same unsatisfactory mystery or uncer- tainty which characterises the whole conduct of the British Court in this matter. The anxiously awaited despatch, in which his conduct was to be approved or 1 'Memoirs and Correspondence of Sir Robert Murray Keith, K.B.' 2 vols. : 1849. Vol. i. p. 287. 426 THE SCOT ABROAD. condemned, contained, if we may believe the laborious editor of his papers, neither approval nor condemnation ; but " the parcel flew open, and the Order of the Bath fell at his feet ! The insignia had been enclosed by the King's own hands, with a despatch commanding him to invest himself forthwith, and appear at the Danish Court." 1 It had got wind among the gossips of the day that there was something peculiar in the acknowledgment of Keith's services, for Horace Walpole is found writing: " Mr Keith's spurt in behalf of the Queen has been re- warded. The red ribbon has been sent him, though there was no vacancy, with orders to put it on directly himself, as there is no sovereign in Denmark to invest him with it." A letter from Lord Suffolk to the father of the new-made knight enlarges on the eminence of the distinction conferred. " The dispensation with ceremonies is carried further than usual ; " the dependence of negotia- tions is chosen as the time for conferring the decoration, because his Majesty wishes it to be the reward of merit, independently of success ; it is the King's own personal act ; and " Sir R. Keith is not to inquire into the expenses of the present his Majesty has made." So the Secretary parades the reward, carefully avoiding any reference to the nature of the service for which it is conferred. I admit that something like an idle curiosity has led me into these piebald criticisms on the conduct of the British Government with reference to the history of Queen Ma- tilda. When the subject is old enough, and the state papers bearing on it are freely published, it will doubtless afford matter for a curious secondary chapter in British history. The young knight, whose mission it appeared to be to revive the institutions of ancient chivalry, by winning his spurs in the defence of injured and imperilled beauty, had very little romance in his character, but a great fund of Scottish shrewdness, tempered by honourable upright- ness, and put to good service by various qualifications, in 1 ' Memoirs, ' i. 250. THE STATESMAN. 427 which we may fairly include the pen of a ready writei. His father, Robert Keith of Craig, in Kincardineshire, the country of the Keiths, was also a diplomatist. He rose from the office of Lord Stair's military secretary to be Under Secretary for Foreign Affairs, and afterwards Ambassador at Vienna and at St Petersburg. Both the father and the son witnessed, and were more or less concerned in, several of the historical events marking the progress of the northern courts events which, though they seem to have been -buried under the more convul- sive revolutions of later times, are yet eminently deserv- ing of careful study, as the organic elements out of which several of the states of Europe have grown, and from which they take their political character and destiny. The elder Keith thus describes a great revolution in Russia. On Friday, the i3th day of July 1762, he had an appointment to meet the Emperor. It was thus in- terrupted : " About nine o'clock one of my servants came running into my bed-chamber, with a frighted counte- nance, and told me that there was a great uproar at the other end of the town ; that the guards, having mutinied, had assembled, and talked of no less than dethroning the Emperor. He could tell me no other circumstances, nor could give me any answer to the only question I asked namely, if the Empress was in town : but about a quarter of an hour after, one of the gentlemen of our factory came in, and informed me that the Empress was in town ; that she had been declared by the guards and the other troops of the garrison their Empress and Sovereign ; and that she was then actually at the Casansky church to hear Mass and the 'Te Deum' sung on the occasion/' 1 The colleges of the empire and all the great people were pressing to take the oaths, like people crowding to a fashionable singer or a popular preacher. The whole affair occupied two hours, during which the quarter of the town where the English resided "was as quiet as if nothing extraordinary had happened; the only novelty to be seen was some pickets placed at the bridges and 1 ' Memoirs,'!. 53. 428 THE SCOT ABROAD. corners of the streets, and some of the horse-guards patrolling in order to preserve the public tranquillity." To make clean work of it, in the evening the Empress was seen marching forth "at the head of ten or twelve thousand men, with a great train of artillery, on the road to Peterhoff, in order to attack the Emperor, whether at Peterhoff or Oranienbaum ; and the next day, in the afternoon, we received the accounts of his Imperial Ma- jesty having, without striking a stroke, surrendered his person and resigned his crown." Such was the installa- tion of the Semiramis of the North, the great Catherine an event pregnant with great results both to Europe and Asia. A considerable number of letters by the elder Keith, and a far greater number of his son's, are to be found in the two octavo volumes just referred to. To people who are fond of reading old family papers in fluent print, with- out floundering through the blots, or stumbling over the crabbed cacography of the original manuscript, the vol- umes will have an interest ; and the historian who gropes diligently through them will find a few facts. Some of the best letters in the collection were addressed to "Sis- ter Anne," Mrs Murray Keith, a lady occupying a niche in literature as the Mrs Bethune Baliol of Scott, who says of her, in a letter printed with pardonable pride by the editing relation : " I never knew any one whose sun- set was so enviably serene; and such was the benevo- lence of her disposition that one almost thought time re- spected a being so amiable, and laid his hand upon her so gradually, that she reached the extremity of age, and the bowl was broken at the cistern before she experienced either the decay of her organs or of her excellent intellect. The recollection of her virtues and her talents is now all that remains to us ; but it will be a valued treasure to all who shared her esteem." Throughout these Keith papers there are pleasant glimpses of a Scottish family of gentlefolks of the old school. The men, all brave and persevering, are scat- tered over the world, bettering the fortunes of their house, and raising the national character. The women are THE STATESMAN. 429 gentle and domestic, with a strong sense both of humour and pathos, with a certain Scottish liveliness, too, and those profuse and friendly manners, said to have been derived from the long intercourse with the French, of which I have had so much to say. Middle-aged people have seen specimens of it in very old women. It was something which, though totally different from the man- ners of the English gentry, Jiad an unmistakable character of high breeding. To the young ambassador it was a sad change to pass from his own genial circle into the cold routine of diplomatic life at so obdurately formalised a Court as that of Denmark. V He wailed loudly from time to time about his lot, after this fashion : " The nonsense of etiquette has already thrown a stum- bling-block in my way, by a new, and, I believe, unpre- cedented regulation with respect to private audiences. But as I have preserved all possible respect towards this Court, and made my report with fairness and temper to my own, I can be under no uneasiness with regard to my share of the innovation and its consequences. A shut or an open door for that is the point is a subject to be canvassed by the higher powers. My duty is to wait for instructions, and adhere to them quietly. In the mean time I heartily consign that old harridan Etiquette, with all her trumpery, to the lowest underling of all possible devils After looking round me with an anxious yet a benevolent eye, for anything that may be called a society, or even a single friend, male or female, I am forced to own to myself that there is not any hope of succeeding. I do not mean to asperse a whole nation, in which there are undoubtedly many worthy people j but such is the shyness of all those I have seen to each other, and still more to men of my cloth, that meeting them now and then at dinner, or in a public place, forms not a more intimate connection than that of three or four Dutchmen who have crossed in the same doit-boat at Rotterdam. . . . . A Monsieur and Madame Juel are just come to town, with a sweet little cherub of a daughter just fifteen ; consequently just the very thing that can be turned to no earthly advantage by 430 THE SCOT ABROAD. a gentleman of my years. These good people curtsied to me very politely at my presentation ; and as they are renowned for hospitality, I have since had the happiness of seeing the outside of their street door, which is of strong handsome oak, and painted yellow Our week is now going to be parcelled out in plays and operas, and there will be at least a place of rendezvous every evening. Yet are we starched and demure even in our playhouses, for every human being has his or her place allotted by the Book of Etiquette, and sticks to it during the whole performance. Those who are two boxes from me might as well be in Norway, for any man- ner of communication I can have with them. My little Juel is within five seats of being as great a lady as Ma- dame de Blosset ; and as I squat next to Madame L'Am- bassadrice, I can, at least twice in an evening, see the tip of my cherub's nose. Were she to marry into the third class of grandees, I should see no more of her during my stay in Denmark. It is really ridiculous to see how the world is parcelled out here into no less than nine classes, six of whom I must never encounter without horror. Yet my opera-glass tells me that numbers eight and nine beat us all hollow as to flesh and blood." 1 Sir Robert's next embassy was to Vienna \ and it will show that diplomacy had done little to conventionalise his British feelings, to give a few sentences expressing his sensations on hearing of the American revolutionary war. He writes from Vienna, on the 5th of February 1775 : "^ think next post will bring me a handsome sheet of day- light into American matters, which to me are hitherto all mirk and mystery. I am out of all patience with the six hundred congresses of as many American villages, and I long to hear old Mother England hold to them the lan- guage of affectionate authority and dignified firmness. I would not hurt a hair of their crazy heads if I could help it ; but I would enforce the laws with temper and moder- ation, in order to impress upon their memories this first salutary lesson of filial obedience The fero- 1 'Memoirs,' i. 220, 221. THE STATESMAN. 431 cious miscreants who inhabit the outskirts of our colonies in America may be guilty of all the crimes you ascribe to them, without their affecting my opinions concerning the bulk of the community, and I'll tell you why : because when I buy a large piece of broadcloth, and convince myself by a thorough examination that it is well spun, well woven, and warm and durable through nine-tenths of the web, I don't value it fe. pin the less because it has been fretted and moth-eaten within two inches of the selvage. I love mankind ancLour own home-spun part of it from the bottom of my heart ; and it would be a pretty thing indeed if a fellow like me, who has his Suf- folks, his Chamiers, his Drummonds, his Campbells, and his Conways to boast of, should lay thorns upon his own pillow, because there are thieves and pickpockets in the purlieus ofSt Giles." 1 Sir Robert Keith is one of the many Scotsmen who saw Frederick the Great, and left notes of their impres- sions of one whom it was so great a thing to have seen. Fritz might have supposed that Scotsmen formed the greater portion of the inhabitants of Britain, and that the predominating name among the Scots was Keith, or Kite, as it was pronounced in Prussia. There were the two Roberts, the father and son the Earl Marischal of Scotland, and his own field-marshal. There were two other Keiths brothers intimately connected with the adventures of Frederick's early life. One of them appears with the title of Lieutenant, the other of Page. They were the chief abettors of his attempt to escape or de- sert, as it was called in the Prussian official documents at Steinfurth, when travelling with his tyrant father in 1730. These Kites had for their accomplice a Lieu- tenant Katt, who, until the story came to be fully unrav- elled by Carlyle, was often confounded with them. Katt was hanged with ignominy, but the two Keiths escaped. The page, in fact, confessed the whole affair. The lieu- tenant, who was waiting at Wesel to give assistance, was warned in time ; and so one evening Lieutenant Keith, 1 'Memoirs,' ii. 45. 432 THE SCOT ABROAD. " doubtless smelling something," saddled his horse, and " decided to have a ride in the country this fine evening, and issued out at the Brunnen Gate of Wesel. He is on the right bank of the Rhine ; pleasant yellow fields on this side and on that. He ambles slowly for a space, then gradually awakens into speed into full speed; arrives within a couple of hours at Dingden, a village in the Munster territory, safe over the Prussian border by the shortest line; and from Dingden rides at more leisure, but without losing time, into the Dutch Overyssel region." l He was taken in hand by Chesterfield, the British ambassador at the Hague, who sent him to England. The old King had to content himself with symbolical redress, and sentenced him " to be hanged in effigy, cut in four quarters, and nailed to the gallows at Wesel." 2 As intimately as with any of the Scotsmen in his own employment was Frederick connected with the British ambassador, Sir Alexander Mitchell, of the Mitchells of Thainston in Aberdeenshire. Frederick talked specula- tive republicanism and speculative virtue to him; and when the Scotsman seemed to show a dangerous inclina- tion for putting the speculative virtues into a practical shape, he could say : " I have no doubt of your good and honourable sentiments, my dear Mr Mitchell. I could wish that everybody thought in the same manner : the world would be all the happier for it, and men more virtuous." 3 In his now never-perused Epistle on the Origin of Evil, he could speak of " mon cher Mitchell " as " Ministre vertueux d'un peuple dont les lois Ont a leur sage frein assujetti les rois." He is said to have wept whether sincerely or not as he saw Mitchell's funeral procession pass. And he might well have been sincere, for he was under many obligations 1 ' History of Frederick the Great,' ii. 264. 2 Ibid., ii. 287. 3 'Memoirs and Papers of Sir Andrew Mitchell.' By Andrew Bisset. Vol. i. p. 160. THE STATESMAN. 433 to the Scot As we have seen some of his countrymen sent abroad to intimidate aggressive powers, so Mitchell was sent to cheer and to help a struggling cause with which Britain had more sympathy than it was expedient for her rulers to show. He did his mission bravely and honourably. Whatever our general view over the field of past history reveals to us^ about a policy for the aggran- disement of one house, by % squeezing out one small state after another, the position in which the British people at that time saw Frederick was tife same that the gods love to look on a brave man struggling against fate in the shape of enemies stronger than himself. It was as the representative of British sympathy with this that Mitchell went over. One who seems to have inherited the ancient spirit of his countrymen, ever to give a good word in the go-by to any respectable brother Scot casually met in the course of his inquiries, gives this testimony to Mitchell : " One wise thing the English have done sent an Excellency Mitchell, a man of loyalty, of sense, and honesty, to be their resident at Berlin. This is the noteworthy, not yet much noted, Sir Andrew Mitchell, by far the best Excellency England ever had in that Court; an Aberdeen Scotsman, creditable to his country, hard-headed, saga- cious, sceptical of shows, but capable of recognising sub- stances withal, and of standing loyal to them stubbornly if needful; who grew to a great mutual regard with Friedrich, and well deserved to do so : constantly about him during the next seven years, and whose letters are among the perennially valuable documents in Friedrich's history." 1 A life more at variance with the placid luxurious ease of an embassy to some great court cannot well be conceived. It was a mission, indeed, not to a court, but to a camp. In critical times Mitchell was ever present. Whether when abandoned by the world, and seemingly by Prov- idence, Frederick sat in his old coat, in a dirty hovel writing French poetry, or stood exulting over the wondrous 1 Carlyle's Frederick the Great,' iv. 537, 538. 2 E 434 THE SCOT ABROAD. field of Rosbach Mitchell was at his side, not a cold diplomatist watching and reporting, but a friend and champion, sharing his dangers and helping to over- come them. He is even now and then actually under fire; then he makes a narrow escape from capture, be- cause, in his eagerness to join his royal friend, he passes too near the enemy's lines. At another time he has to endure the hardships of a disastrous march, want of food included. "The Prussian camp," he says, "is no place of pleasure. Neither convenience nor luxury dwell here. You are well provided with everything, if you bring it along with you. I find I must increase my equipage or starve. All my family are like spectres. . . . Pray let me know if my long letter of the 2ist was intelligible. It cost me much labour. I was twelve hours on horse- back in one day. I understand nothing by description. I must see it, and therefore I fear what I write is not intelligible." Where is the Secretary for Foreign Affairs who has been accustomed to receive from his own ambassador such a hint as the following, written on the 28th of August 1757, to Lord Holderness, and explaining suffi- ciently the juncture to which it refers? " England is cheated and ministers duped by Hanover. What a pitiful figure will they make in Europe ! The most notorious breach of faith has been wantonly com- mitted to support a weak, ill-judged, and ineffectual measure. You know what has happened. Why was not the King of Prussia previously consulted ? I can answer with my head he would have yielded to any reasonable proposition for the safety of Hanover. What will pos- terity say of an Administration that made the Treaty of Westminster for the safety of Hanover, and suffered the Hanover ministers to say openly that they have no treaty with the King of Prussia, nay, have suffered them to betray that prince who has risked his all to save them, and whose misfortunes are owing to his generosity and good faith ? . . . Let us have done with negotiating. After what has happened, no man will trust us. I know THE STATESMAN. 435 not how to look the King of Prussia in the face ; and honour, my lord, is not to be purchased with money." l To one by. whom he was backed in this fashion, Fred- erick might well afford a little licence of remonstrance and sarcasm. Mitchell was celebrated for the broad, strong censures which he often levelled against the King's acts of cruelty and aggression, and there is no doubt that Frederick stood in awe of his honest, observing eye. He could be sarcastic and epigrammatic too, and one of his retorts has been often repeated. Discussing the disaster of Port-Mahon, Mitchell remarked, in a manner not congenial with the usual conversation of Sans Souci, that Britain must place her trust in God. The King was not aware that Britain had such an ally. " He is the only ally," said Mitchell, "who requires no sub- sidies from us." 1 Memoirs,' i 268, 269. 436 CHAPTER IV. THE ARTIST. GLIMPSES OF EARLY ART GEORGE JAMESONE AND HIS CONTEMPOR ARIES AIRMAN HAMILTON ALLAN RAMSAY MARTIN JACOB MORE RUNCIMAN SIR ROBERT STRANGE EARLY ARCHITECTS JAMES GIBBS. THIS is a department of intellectual labour in which there is little to be said for Scotland by one whose notice is entirely confined to the past, and the rather far past There are certain conditions of the possession of a school of art which Scotland has never enjoyed until very late times. The arts have sometimes flourished amid turbu- lence and vice, but never could they gain root in a coun- try disturbed and impoverished by a perpetual struggle with powerful neighbours for independence and bare national existence. To the hardier virtues such arid and storm-swept soil was congenial. It was the natural nur- sery of military leadership it was favourable to strong- headed and strong-willed statesmanship it made bold, ambitious, hard-working scholars, who scorned delights and lived laborious days. But the artist is not autoch- thonous-, he grows in a garden, of which not only the original plants are imported and carefully nurtured, but the very mould itself is artificial : hence, that Scotland should have produced artists and sent them abroad as missionaries to lead on the great schools of foreign art, would have been as absurd an expectation as to anticipate such a service from Iceland or Vancouver Island at the present day. THE ARTIST. 437 There are conditions, indeed, so critical in their bearing on existence itself, that the mere statesman will attend to them alone, and forego the decorations of life. Music is a great humaniser and solacer of existence, but the kings who take to the fiddle when their Rome is burning, how- ever skilfully they may have performed, have not reached a high character in their profession as rulers of men. James III. of Scotland was not placed in a favourable position for encouraging art in any prominent shape; and that the nobles of his realm should have been such barbarians as to hang his favourite companions over the bridge of Lauder, only shows us that he did not act the part of a wise governor in raising artists to a high rank among his rough-handed nobles, and making them his exclusive companions, and, in fact, his counsellors on state affairs a function for which, had they been thoroughly devoted to art, they were not fitted, and to which they would not have aspired. A statesman's destiny is a hard one in this as perhaps in other matters : he must not pursue, like the vagabond world, his own inclinations and instincts, but must study other people's. The failing of James III. seems to have been, that he consulted his own enjoyment in art, instead of trying how much of it he could get others to enjoy and follow him in. His favour for art was, as we have seen, fatal to the poor artists. By the chroniclers it is only referred to, with more or less of charitable excuse, as a vice ; and of the real fruits of his encouragement of the arts we would know nothing, were it not for the zeal of recent inquirers. It appears to have been in his reign that the impulse to architecture, both civil and ecclesiastical, on the French model, as already referred to, began. There stood until very recently in Edinburgh a noble remnant of this re- vival the history of which, perhaps, points to the source whence the King inherited his love of art. The Trinity College Church was built in the early part of his reign by his mother, Mary of Gueldres, the granddaughter of John Duke of Burgundy. It was but a fragment of a church, being little more than the chancel and transept ; but it THE SCOT ABROAD. was sufficient to develop the prevailing French style with extraordinary beauty and richness, and it contained a sufficiency of types of the architect's intentions to permit of its being finished as it had been begun. There it stood, left incompleted, like many another Gothic fragment, by builders who, having exhausted their own resources, left their handiwork in the assured faith that when wealth and opportunity sufficed it would be reverently completed. It is a wonderful illustration of how a stratum of bar- barism often runs through a state of high civilisation, that, just after the middle of the nineteenth century, this pre- cious work of art was deliberately obliterated, and that in the face of day, and in the midst of protests by the lovers of art and the students of archaeology throughout the land. The act, indeed, was perpetrated with a sort of cynical contempt of their outcries, as if the doers were actuated by the spirit which sometimes prompts people to outrage the prejudices of their neighbours. In general such acts are hidden under the common barbarism of the times, and the actual perpetrators of the offence rest un- known ; in this instance everything is known of the sev- eral steps which led to the conclusion, and the men engaged in them. If they have any of the aspirations after notoriety which inspired the burner of Diana's temple, they are very likely to be gratified ; for an inquis- itive posterity will be pretty sure to demand a full and complete history of one of the most remarkable outrages that has occurred since art began. Let us hope that it may become a prominent event as the last great instance of Vandalism perpetrated within the United Kingdom. It seems a coincidence worth noting, that as all hope of the retention of the massive stone edifice disappeared, the labours of zealous lovers of art and antiquity became successful in the recovery of a fragile but precious work of art which had evidently decorated the interior of the church. Among the odds and ends of art casually pre- served at Kensington Palace, were two large panels, with scenes partially at least sacred painted on them, so as to render it likely that they were compartments of an altar- piece. They attracted notice by the clearness and cold- THE ARTIST. 439 ness of outline, the fresh brightness of colour, the gentle earnestness, not like the ideal of the Italian, and the general air of a struggle with the difficulties of primitive art, which belong to the Van Eyck school. Yet there is a degree of full drawing, and a wonderful compass of colouring, as if of a later school. The minever and ermine furs, the silks and the jewellery, are almost as real as Ter- bourg's. There was a monarch at devotion with a patron saint, and a young prince in royal robes behind him, on one panel ; on another was a queen at prayer, with a mailed figure, also supposed t^> be a patron saint, standing behind her. To those who got access to the other sides of the panels, there were revealed on the one a representa- tion of the Trinity, and on the other St Cecilia playing on an organ, while an angel listens, and a man with strange expressive Scotch features, in rich ecclesiastical robes, kneels in devotion. It was evident that several of the figures here were portraits, and some heraldic devices connected the whole both with Scotland and Denmark. It has been shown by a process of induction, which has a distinctness unfortunately not often realised in such in- quiries, that these panels had been the altar-piece of the Trinity Church. The praying King is James III., the praying Queen his wife, Margaret of Denmark, who is identified by the blazon of the three Scandinavian states, then ruled by one monarch. The St Cecilia is identified as the King's mother, Mary of Gueldres, the foundress of the Church. A point was still wanting to connect this piece of art with the Church, and heraldry came in aid when all other sources failed. This often happens, compelling the archae- ologist to pay respect to the fantastic science. It may be all a vain show, ministering to human vanity and folly ; but this is true of many other things that have to be re- corded of the ways of the human race. In fact, man is a blazoning animal ; and if we would know his history, we must accept such his propensity just as, in conchology, we deal with the nautilus spreading his sail, and find in ornithology that the member of the Pavonidae family called the peacock is addicted to fanning out his many- 440 THE SCOT ABROAD. coloured tail to the sun. Of the ecclesiastic who is kneel- ing in presence of St Cecilia, Pinkerton, the first to suggest the accepted tenor of the piece, observes, with some disappointment, that "his heraldry of three buckles and a chevron can hardly be traced, except to the obscure family of Bonkil in the Mearns." But the next investi- gator neatly clenches the link that shall join this obscure family to a courtly pageant, by finding that one of them, Edward Bonkil or Boncle, was the first provost of the foundation, and the confessor of the foundress. 1 And by the way, if all tales told of that Queen be true, he must have had duties tending sorely to try the mettle of a court confessor. Whatever may have been the claim of the representative of St Cecilia to a share in her divine art, Mary of Gueldres had poor claims to sanctity, if we ac- cept the grotesque and outspoken account of her conduct in the Pitscottie Chronicle an account unfortunately too distinct and specific to admit of public repetition at the present day ; and in her face there is more of the kind of flesh and blood in which the human passions and failings reside, than of the meek piety of the saint. There would be no use attempting to make out that this fine piece was painted by a Scot, whether abroad or at home. But before concluding that in that day, and indeed earlier, there was no art in the land, let us listen to the curious plea put in by a foreigner, to the effect that a picture, perhaps the most remarkable in its his- torical conditions that the world has seen, was probably painted by one of our countrymen. Such a picture was actually in the possession of a Scot abroad and this is something. Among the many strange questions put to poor Joan of Arc by her inquisitors, one was, Whether she had ever seen, or caused paint, a picture of herself? She answered, Yes. She had seen at Reims, in the posses- sion of a Scotsman, a picture of herself, in armour, kneel- 1 See David Laing's ' Historical Description of the Altar- Piece, painted in the reign of King James III. of Scotland, belonging to her Majesty, in the Palace of Holyrood.' THE ARTIST. 44! ing on a hassock, and presenting a letter to the King. 1 It is not in evidence that the Scot painted the picture he possessed, nor is it known who painted it ; but, as M. Michel justly remarks, it is lawful to guess at the artist. There was at that time a painter who attended the camp of the Pucelle. It is known that he painted her banner for her that banner also described in her inquisition as white, seme with fleurs-de-lis, with a world and two angels painted on it, and the motto "Jhesus Maria." The name of the painter of this banner, who is also likely enough to have painted the portrait, is recorded as Hames Poulevoir, whose daughter was an intimate friend of the heroine. No one will readily dispute with M. Michel the opinion that this does not sound like a French name ; and he will be readily supported here, when holding that a name it much resembles, and of which he supposes it may be a corruption, Polwarth, is familiar in Scotland. He mentions that the names of Scottish Jameses are often made Hames in old French. 2 Is it fair to suggest a nearer way to the conclusion that the painter was a Scotsman? Suppose Hames a mistake for Hume or Home : Polwarth was an old patronymic of that family. Sir Alexander Hume, the head of the house, was one of the Scots followers of Douglas, killed at Verneuil. He left behind him three sons; but whether any of them remained in France, or, remaining, gave himself to art, I do not know. David Hume was a descendant of the hero of Verneuil. I wonder if he could have been per- suaded that an ancestor of his painted a portrait of Joan of Arc ? There was a Scot who steadily followed Joan's career, and witnessed her last agonies in the fire. He returned to Scotland, where it is believed that he ended 1 "Interrogee se elle avoit point vu ou fait faire aucunes images ou peintures d'elles . . . respond qu'elle vit a Reims une peinture en la main d'un Escossois ; et y avoit la semblance d'elle, toute armee, qui presentoit une lettre a son roy, et estoit agenouillee d'un genouil, &c. L'edition du proces de condamnation donne'e par M. J. Quicherat porte Arras au lieu de Reims. Voyez t. i. p. loo (Quoted, Michel, i. 174.) 2 'Les Ecossais en France,' i. 174, 175. 442 THE SCOT ABROAD. his days as a monk in the abbey of Dunfermline. He wrote an account of the career of Joan, which, to the great misfortune of historical literature, has been hitherto undiscovered. M. Michel supposes that this man may have been the owner of the picture and this is not impossible. Leaving these fields of idle conjecture, let us dwell on the significant and honourable fact, that Scotland pro- duced the first eminent British portrait-painter. When Charles I. revisited the country of his birth in 1633, just after he had brought over Vandyck to fill the vacuum of art in England, he had the gratification of sitting to a native Scottish artist George Jamesone. Few reputa- tions stand in more isolated solitude, and few histories have been more mysterious than this man's. The stormy age, so many of whose great actors he has given us to know face to face, had too much bloody and feverish work to do to pay him much attention, and any memorials now possessed of him have been dug up, fragment after frag- ment, with much industry. His father was a burgess of guild of the city of Aberdeen, his mother the daughter of a bailie thereof. What peculiar train of circumstances can have induced people of this kind, shortly after the end of the sixteenth century, to send their son abroad to study art, it is difficult to conceive ; and if it was from the pure impulse of enlightened ambition, it may be counted that this worthy couple were at least two cen- turies before their age. I am not sure that at this day an Aberdeen bailie would consider it quite consistent with sanity to send a son to Antwerp to be educated as a painter. Jamesone was born some twelve or thirteen years be- fore the end of the sixteenth century. It has always been held as an established fact that he studied along with Vandyck under Rubens, and competent critics have declared that his style sufficiently vouches for his train- ing that there is no mistaking in his thinly painted portraits the animated flesh -tints of his master. This may be sufficient to establish the fact that he adopted Rubens's method. That he was the pupil of this master, THE ARTIST. 443 is asserted in the anecdotes of Horace Walpole, who simply states the fact, mentioning that he received his in- formation about George Jamesone from James Jamesone, a merchant in Leith. A hundred years after the painter's death, Walpole was but eighteen years old, so that the tradition must be supposed to have been transmitted through two or three generations. The amount of evi- dence, however, demanded for any such fact, depends on its weight. If one shows you a coal which he extracted from the granitic rocks of Devonshire, you would require some evidence of so startling^an assertion ; but if he says he got it at Newcastle, it is not worth while proving that it did not come from North Shields or Wallsend. Had Jamesone been a self-created artist, his style would have been as different from others as the methods of the founders of the Italian, the German, and the Flemish schools respectively. But his pictures are Flemish, as broad as they can stare. He learnt to paint, therefore, in the school where Rubens was supreme ; and whether he frequented the potentate's studio or not, is a trivial matter. Local tradition goes farther even than Walpole has followed, and connects Jamesone with the domestic his- tory of his illustrious instructor. All men know the lovely picture known as the "Straw Hat" the portrait of Rubens's second wife, whom he married when he was fifty-four and she sixteen. Some of the French Lives call her Helena Fremont, but the more accurate Germans give her name as Forman. This is a common north- country name, and the tradition is, that she was an Aber- deenshire girl, and a relation of Jamesone's. Waagen says she belonged to a distinguished family in Antwerp, but his authority for this seems only to be of a semi- traditional character. I asked him about it. The Aber- deen story, however, will not hold its own ground. It represents Helena Forman as rising from the humble position of a house-maiden in the artist's family, and then bringing her kinsman to participate in her fortunes. But it happens that her marriage with Rubens occurred in 1631, after Jamesone had returned with his training to his native town. 444 THE SCOT ABROAD. Jamesone, like his father, was a burgess of Aberdeen, and seems to have lived in affluence and comfort, since a few notices preserved of him are chiefly taken from the recorded settlements in which he disposed of his pro- perty. Among the topographical memoranda in that valuable little itinerarium so full of amusing learning, called ' The Book of Bon Accord/ there are some curi- ous memoranda of his house and garden. The old local writer there quoted says : " Upon the west side of the town, at a small distance, there is a little green swelling hill to be seen, corruptly called the Woman Hill, but more properly the Woolman Hill, because it is affirmed that in old tymes the sellers of wool quho came frome the neirest pairts about the towne took ther stand ther upon merkat days. Under the verie hill there runs a stream of water, and another veyne of the same water in the midst of the channel of a little brook running south- ward close under the foot of that hill, yet it is easilie distinguyshed both by its taste and colour from the waters of the brook. This spring is known by the name of the Wall of Spaa. Hard by it to the westward there is a four-squair feild, which of old served for a theater, since made a gardyne for pleasure by the industrie and expense of George Jamesone, ane ingenious paynter, who did set up therein ane tymber house, paynted all over with his own hand." In the town-garden and pleasure-house, or Lust Haus> we may trace Jamesone's adoption of the habits he saw in the Netherlands. They are commemorated in one of the curious topographical epigrams of Arthur Johnston, of whom and his rivalship with Buchanan something has already been seen. His tribute to the painter's pleasure- garden is not one of his most successful efforts ; and it is not improved in the translation of a local bard of some half a century later, whose lyre was inspired by the genius of municipality reform : " The Woolman Hill, which all the rest outvies In pleasantness, this city beautifies ! There is the well of Spa, that healthful font, Where yr'ne-brewed water celoureth the mount. THE ARTIST. 445 Not far from thence a garden's to be seen, "Which unto Jamesone did appertain, Wherein a little pleasant house doth stand, Painted (as I guess) with its master's hand. " x Some documents connected with Jamesone's acquisition of his little suburban paradise show more distinctly still the influence of ""Flemish habits on the painter. The ground where the old Catholic rhysteries used to be per- formed having fallen into the offensive condition in which suburban public grounds, when not carefully tended, are sure to fall, while at the mercy of a turbulent burn, he resolved to beautify it according to the Flemish fashion at his own proper charges. He represented to the magis- trates, "That for as meikle as agreeit part of the playfeild belonging to the toune quhair comedies were wont to be acted of auld beside the wall of Spay, is spoiled, broken, and carried away in speat and inundation of water, and is liable to the same danger and inconvenience hereafter, so that, unless some course be taken to withstand such speats and inundation, the whole playfeild, within a short space of time, will all utterlie decay, and serve for no use. And the said George Jamesone, taking notice of the toun's prejudice therein, and withall haveand considera- tion how this litil plot of ground may be useful to the toune heirefter ; out of his naturall affectioun to this his native citie, he is content, upon his own charges, not only to make some fortification to restrain the violence of the speattis in tyme cuming, bot lykewayes to make some policie and planting within and about the said playfeild for the publict use and benefit of the toun." The condi- tion on which he offered to lay out the pleasure-ground 1 ' Memorials for the Government of the Royal Burghs in Scotland, with some Overtures laid before the Nobility and Gentry of the several Shyres in this Kingdom ; as also a History of the City of Aberdeen ; with the Epigrams of Arthur Johnstoun, Doctor of Medi- cine, upon some of our chief Burghs, translated into English by J. B. 1685.' The original reads : " Hanc quoque Lanaris mons ornat, amcenoir illis, Hinc ferrugineis Spada colorat aquis, Inde suburbanum Jameson! despicis hortum Quern domini pictum suspicor esse manu." 446 THE SCOT ABROAD for the future use of the public was, that he should himself retain it for the remainder of his days at a nominal rent, and the offer was thankfully acceded to. Such trivial details have surely a significance entitling them to be preserved. They show the hopeful readiness with which the foreign notions of the travelled artist were received among his fellow-burgesses in the short breath- ing-time of peace which followed the union of the crowns. It will easily be believed especially when the troublous time that immediately followed on the artist's setting up of his tabernacle is remembered that little of his garden finery remained down to late times. A stone arch over the chalybeate spring, still called the Well of Spa, is the sole relic of his public benefactions. The stream that threatened to destroy the playground is well barricadoed, but it runs blue and red with the refuse of dyers' vats, mixed with elements still more offensive : the very site of the pleasure-house is forgotten, and the old garden is covered with a filthy suburb. One who had lived in the house of Rubens must have seen something like princely grandeur : it was the way in Flanders, as well as in some of the Italian states, practi- cally to reverence high art, by letting it open the way to power and wealth. Whether this was a more enlightened principle than that of permitting every artist to advance himself as well as he can, by selling his works to the pub- lic at large, and endeavouring to give them cheaper than his neighbours, I am not going to inquire. Jamesone may or may not have sighed for the sort of artistic court which he left behind him at Antwerp. Certainly, however, if he did not find himself where art held its proper supremacy, and where he might reverentially fol- low masters or ambitiously cope with rivals, he was in the middle of a set of trained scholars and clever men even when at home in his garden-house ; and we know that he frequently resided at Edinburgh, and travelled about. The names of some of those whose portraits he painted will show that he enjoyed no mean share of the artist's privilege, to meet face to face the great men of his age. He painted Charles I., Montrose, Rothes, old THE ARTIST. 447 Leslie the Earl of Leven, the Chancellor Loudon, the Marquesses of Hamilton and Huntly, Bishop Forbes, Andrew Cant, Gordon of Straloch, Urquhart of Cromarty, Sir Thomas Hope, Gregory, Richard Baxter, George Heriot, Arthur Johnston, and Sir Thomas Nicolson. We have already made acquaintance with the remark- able group of men renowned for literature and science who then clustered round the old northern city which boasted of the united attractions of a cathedral and a university. When an artist of the Flemish school settled down among the other celebrities of the place, it might have been held a token that civilisation was ripening apace up to the standard of the foreign seats of learning, and that the Scot would no longer be driven abroad to seek a field for intellectual supremacy. But darker days than ever were at hand, and the frail fabric of civilisation was shaken by hands ruder than even those of a foreign enemy. The place where Jamesone had set up his taber- nacle was peculiarly under the curse of the civil war. Being tainted with Episcopacy and Royalism, Montrose, when he was himself a zealous Covenanter, came down on it, and forced on the community the iron rule of the Covenant ; at that juncture, among other revolutions, we learn that Jamesone's portrait of the provost was re- moved from the session-house, as "savouring of Popery." After Montrose had made his great apostasy he came back, bringing seven devils worse than himself in the shape of his Celtic hordes ; and finding the town under the rule he had himself imposed on it, burned and slaugh- tered all around, as if he were taking vengeance on the poor citizens for his own fit of disloyalty. It was not a time for the encouragement of the fine arts when the one party had made camp-fires of the carvings of the cathe- dral, and the other left the streets strewed with the un- buried dead. It was a fortunate thing, however, for the commemora- tion of the features hardened in that great conflict, that the brief sunshine of peace should have nourished an artist, to pursue his peaceful labours among the men at work with head and hand in the mighty storm. To see 443 THE SCOT ABROAD. their portraits after their manner in the flesh hanging on the walls of old houses gives a liveliness to our book- knowledge of the wars of the Covenant, which we owe entirely to the chances that set down in the midst of them an artist trained abroad. The traces of Jamesone's movements, at a time when people had so many other things to think about, are naturally but scanty. Sir Thomas Hope, a lawyer and professional champion of the Covenanters, who had the reputation of having helped materially in the drafting of the Solemn League and Covenant itself, takes time, just as the storm is coming to its height, to make the following entries in his diary : "20 Julji 1638, Fryday. * ' This day William Jamesoun, painter (at the ernest desyr of my sone Mr Alexander) was sufferit to draw my pictur. "27julji 1638. "Item, a second draught be William Jamesoun." Making allowance for the busy statesman forgetting the artist's Christian name, it is inferred from this that the rather majestic-looking portrait of Hope in the Par- liament House of Edinburgh is the work of Jamesone, though some think it must be a mere copy, since it fails in conquering so well as Jamesone in other instances did, that great difficulty of the portrait -painter the giving flesh and muscle and the proper pose to the hand. Jamesone had one munificent, and, it might be said, princely patron, Sir Colin Campbell of Glenurchy, who united the educated and refined gentleman with the feudal baron and Highland chief, brought arras hangings and damask napery out of Flanders, and " bestowet and gave to ane Germane painter, whom he entertainet in his house aught month, the soume of ane thousand pundis." Some of Jamesone's letters to this potent chief still exist. On the 1 3th of October 1634, he writes from Edinburgh to acknowledge the receipt of a hundred merks, and ex- plains that it will be the month of January before he be- gins his pictures, " except that I have the occasione to meet with the parties in the north, quhair I mynd to stay THE ARTIST. 449 for tuo moneths." In the ensuing month of June he refers to sixteen pictures of which he has got " a not ; " and, in reference to pecuniary considerations, says : " The pryce quhilk ewerie ane payes to me abowe the west [above the waist] is twentie merkis, I furnishing claith and coulleris ; bot iff I furniss ane double-gilt muller, then it is twentie poundis. Thes I deall with all alyk; bot I am moir bound to hawe ane gryte cair of your worship's service, becaus of my gouid payment for my laist imployment. Onlie thus your worship wold resolve at quohis charges I mist go throwe the countrey to maik thir picturis/for all that are heir in town neidis onlie your worship's letter to theam to cause theam sitt." He con- cludes by saying, " Iff I begin the picturs in Julii, I will hawe the sextine redie about the laist of September." l The execution of sixteen portraits between July and the end of September looks like industrious application and rapid execution ; but he followed a master whom he had seen sweep the canvas with tempestuous brush, and his portraits show a characteristic tendency to broad effects in preference to elaborate finishing. The class of persons called Tourists are familiar with the long line of portraits of the kings of Scotland, from Father Fergus downwards, which decorate the narrow gallery of Holyrood. It has been remarked how, through century after century, they carry so strong a family like- ness ; and the spectator may also observe that there is a sort of unity, with judicious variations, in the nature of their costume, such as may be seen in the characters of a well-adjusted play. Jamesone was naturally the man to whom tradition pointed as the painter of these portraits. But there is no evidence that he gave himself to the pious fraud of setting forth likenesses of men whose features such of them as ever existed had been per- mitted to pass into oblivion. Whoever commenced the gallery, the artist who is known to have made a complete job of it was a Dutchman named De Wit ; and, for the credit of art, it is a pleasant thing to know that his name 1 ' Black Book of Taymouth,' Bannatyne Club, page 441. a r 45O THE SCOT ABROAD. was Jacob, and that there is no excuse for throwing the scandal of his paltry forgeries on that passionate devotee of art, Emanuel De Wit, whose crowded interiors are the very soul of truth and distinctness. Jacob De Wit, in- deed, appears to have been a mechanic and an artist by turns, as he was hired. The job of painting the kings he completed in 1686; and some ten years earlier we find him drawing coats of arms, graining chimney-pieces in imitation of marble, and doing " ane piece of history " for the ceiling of the royal bedroom. 1 There is a landscape picture of King's College in Aberdeen, attributed, but without distinct authority, to Jamesone. If it be truly his, it shows that he was wise in restricting himself in general to portraiture, though the piece has its value, as informing us of the nature of the architectural character of some portions of the building which have since disappeared. In that edifice there hangs a collection of strange, musty, decayed pictures, also attributed to Jamesone, which have a curious fas- cination in their quaint and almost eldritch character. They are called "the Sibyls," and all represent female heads, yet certainly not ordinary female portraits, for there is an airy, wild fantasticalness of expression mixed with beauty in them, and in some instances peculiarities of corporeal structure not quite human. A general deli- cacy and sweetness of tone distinguishes them from the Temptations of St Anthony, and other fantasies of the contemporary Flemish school. Walpole, who was pleased, in one of his complimentary 1 The national arms over the great entrance to Holyrood House, also the blazon in the quadrangle, were designed by De Wit. There are the following entries of payments to him in the accounts of Sir William Bruce, the Surveyor- General of Royal Works, preserved in the General Register House : " 1674, February 7. Item, payed to Jacob De Wett, Dutch paynter, ,98, 12s. (Scots), for two several chimney-pieces paynted by him, and for paynting in marble colour ane chimney. 1675, Julii 31. Item, payed to Mr De Wett, paynter, ji2o Scots, for ane piece of historic, paynted and placed in the roofe of the King's bed-chamber in the 2d storie to the east quarter on the syde towards the Privie Garden." 'Proceedings of the Antiquaries of Scotland,' iii. 113. THE ARTIST. 45! moods, to call Scotland " the most accomplished nation in Europe the nation to which, if any one country is en- dowed with a superior portion of sense, he should be in- clined to give the preference in that particular" had the merit of first drawing attention to the works of Jamesone, as the first eminent British portrait - painter that is, the first inhabitant of Britain who painted, like a trained artist, life-size portraits in oil. The great critic says of him : " His excellency consists in delicacy and softness, with a clear and beautiful colouring ; his shades not charged, but helped by varnish, with little appear- ance of the pencil. He had much of Vandyck's second manner; and to Sir Anthony some of his works have been occasionally imputed." Walpole, in his Anecdotes, re-engraved an old plate from one of Jamesone's pictures, representing an extremely pleasing family group. It is the artist himself his hat on his head, after the practice of his master and his colleague, and his palette in hand. Beside him stands the faithful partner of his days, Isabella Tosh by name, and their round-cheeked child drops roses on the mother's lap. There is a delightful repose and simplicity in the whole, accompanied by perfect truth. Isabella has her head covered with the modest plaid or "screen" long worn in the north, and has a feminine beauty which the first artists of that age could rarely im- part to their female faces. The child is the perfection of health, vivacity, and reverential affection. It is a strange contrast this peaceful little group with the array of the warriors and statesmen of that stormy age, por- trayed by the same pencil. The plate thus resuscitated by Walpole was originally engraved by John Alexander, a grandson of Jamesone, who might also, if there were sufficient materials at hand concerning him, exemplify the Scottish student of art in foreign countries. He seems to have been the first among them who studied in Italy, for the little that is known of him is that he lived a long time in Florence. On his return to Britain he enjoyed some fashionable repute in his day. It is said that he worked chiefly at Gordon Castle, where probably some of the pictures which, in 452 THE SCOT ABROAD. great houses, after a generation or two, lose their artistic genealogies, might be traced to him, were it a sufficiently important object to ascertain the fact, either on account of the merits of the pictures or the celebrity of the artist. His fame indeed has lain under a sort of artistic scan- dal, which cannot recommend it to association with high and worthy names in honest art. The possession of a genuine ancestral portrait of Queen Mary has always been, in advertising phraseology, " a desideratum " in old Scottish families. Two painters of the early part of last century, this Alexander and a dissipated son of Sir John Medina, are said to have competed with each other in the trade or mystery of producing the kind of article called " a genuine and original portrait of Mary Queen of Scots." A very different person from either of these worthies comes next before us in chronological order, yet he is one of whom little can be said. The name of William Aikman, celebrated in its day by more than one distin- guished poet, is now forgotten. But his character, as exemplified in his personal history, will deserve the sym- pathy of the lovers of art so long as the sacrifice of all worldly advantages at this shrine, and a simple devotion to art for itself, pursued in defiance of conventional pre- judices, are respected. Aikman was born some twelve years before the end of the seventeenth century, and he was then born a laird, being come of a worshipful an- cestry, who left him, as their representative, heir to the estate of Cairnie. There are several Cairnies in Scotland, and it is not very surprising that it should be a question which of them owned one who was so little conscious of the importance of his possession. He resolved very early in life to sell his estate and become a student of art in Italy. After living and work- ing for some time in Rome, he paid a visit to Constanti- nople and Syria, and returned to Rome to pursue his studies. Towards the end of Queen Anne's reign he came to Britain, and found immediate admission to the brilliant London intellectual circle ever associated with that reign. It was breaking up, but not yet gone, and THE ARTIST. 453 Aikman was the means of in some measure conveying its mantle to such successors of that intellectual hierarchy as the reign of the Georges afforded. As a kindred spirit free of the corporation of Pope, Swift, and Arbuthnot, he was enabled to introduce to fashionable fame his country- man James Thomson the poet, and to do many acts of patronage to authors, who commemorated his merits in abundant rhymes. Another Scottish artist, who belongs to a period about a quarter of a century later, is better known to fame Gavin Hamilton. When he came to manhood he went abroad, and lived almost entirely in Italy, where he held his state like one of the great old masters, and Scotland saw no more of him save when he appeared on an occa- sional visit, prompted by a lingering desire to settle in his native county, Lanark, a design always protracted by the coldness of the climate, or some other uncongeniality, when it came to a practical issue. He was a very learned and industrious worker in what may now be termed the aesthetic department of archaeology, and the services performed by him for the Italian collections of antiques are to be found recorded in all the proper authorities. He executed some stately portraits, one of which, rep- resenting the Duchess of Hamilton with a greyhound, is pretty well known in an engraving once very popular. Hamilton saturated himself with classicality. He aimed high, and in his day had a reputation somewhat akin to that subsequently enjoyed by the French David. Efforts so rigidly conventional in this direction are not popular at present, yet the system has had its great advocates ; and no one can deny that Hamilton, whether he rightly or wrongly understood the mission of the artist, did his work nobly, and carried the palm of a victor. Look at his "Andromache weeping over the Body of Hector." There she is in full attitude, like Clairon in one of her most felicitous classical inspirations, while Dumesnil might have personified the decorously solicitous attend- ant. The whole group is, in short, intensely theatrical, or, if one may make a word more suitable to the purpose, attitudinary ; yet it exhibits a profusion of energy and 454 THE SCOT ABROAD. conventional skill which must commend it as a great work to the devotees of that style of art. Another picture by Hamilton excited a melancholy interest in its day. It represented Achilles dragging the body of Hector round the walls of Troy. It was pur- chased by the Duke of Bedford. The tragic fate of the young heir of that house became some time afterwards the talk of all England, and the object of many a sym- pathising echo to the grief of the bereaved parents, not unaccompanied by apposite reflections on the incapacity of temporal greatness and wealth to save us from the common lot. The youth fell from his horse, and was dragged by the stirrup till death relieved him from tor- ture. The canvas, full of energy and terrible action, so vividly recalled the character of the calamity that it was ejected from the collection of the ducal house, and fell, if I mistake not, into the hands of General Scott, the father-in-law of Canning. If it were desirable to fill the present rapid sketch with all available names, it would be easy to bring forward many secondary Scottish artists who studied and worked on the Continent ; such, for instance, as Thomas Murray, whose portrait is in the Florentine Gallery, and William Ferguson, a painter of still life, who seems to have lived so much of his life in Italy that scarcely anything is known of him in his own country but the general reputa- tion of his paintings for vigour and natural truth. Leav- ing the completion of such inquiries to all who are patri- otic enough for the task, I profess only to touch and that fugitively the names that hold a conspicuous place in the general history of art; and so let us pass to a name which has acquired a renown amply deserved that of Allan Ramsay. Every one, of course, is acquainted with the fame of his father, the author of the ' Gentle Shepherd.' It was one quite alien from the purpose of these papers, for he was eminently a Scot at home his birthplace in the Lanarkshire hills, and his house on the Castlehill of Edinburgh, forming the limits of his migrations. He confesses to an early propensity for art; and in some of THE ARTIST. 455 his manuscripts which I have seen, there are impatient dabbings of grotesque heads and angular fragments of rock and tree scenery, dashed off to occupy the pen while the brain was elaborating the poetic thought. About the year 1736 the poet writes to a friend that young Allan (he was born in 1713) had been sedu- lously pursuing art since he was thirteen years old ; " has since been painting here like a Raphael," and " sets out to the seat of the Beast beyond the Alps within a month hence to be away two years." " I am sweer," continues the father, " to part with him, but cannot stem the current which flows from the advice of his patrons and his own inclination." On this his first visit to Rome he remained for three years, and on his return home he painted a well-known portrait of his father, and others of his relations and near friends. Very much to the poet's satisfaction, the artist showed a decided disposition to re-establish the gentility of the family ; for old Allan, much as he had been tossed about in the world, and hard as was his struggle for decent subsistence, never forgot that he was come of the Ramsays of Dalwolsey and the Douglases of Muthill. His position speaking of him as a tradesman, not as a poet was common to members of the best Scottish families in his age. The country was not rich enough to afford two classes of traders ; the larger, who, as exten- sive dealers, might be counted gentlemen by profession the smaller, who were mere retailers. All trade was looked askance on; but when it was necessary to find a living by commerce, we see the best families at once accepting the humblest position in its ranks. Old Allan united in his person three rather incongru- ous social conditions. He was by descent a country gentleman ; by personal qualification a man of genius ; by profession the keeper of a bookstall and circulating library. In his old age, when he had conquered his difficulties, and was gathering in a harvest of wealth and fame, it was not without satisfaction that he saw his son although following a pursuit which, like his own, some- times led its votaries into an erratic career holding his 456 THE SCOT ABROAD. head high in the social circle, and likely to keep up the old gentility of his race. The young artist greatly strengthened his position by his marriage with the heiress of the Lindsays of Eyvelic, whose domain, perched on the ridge of the line of hills running from Perth eastward, overlooks the rich Carse of Gowrie, and the river Tay widening into the sea. Of his wife he painted a portrait, of which it may safely be said that no other, painted in the same half-century in Britain, can have excelled it for artistic truth of drawing and sweetness of sentiment. It represents a fair-haired bright- cheeked Scottish damsel, simply dressed, and with an expression full of earnestness and innocence, carrying a basket of flowers. The attitude and the general tone are quite natural, and borrowed from none of the standard portraits, which relieved secondary artists from the labour of thinking and the responsibility of novelty. It perhaps enhances the pleasantness of this picture that it is still fresh as if it had been painted yesterday, and has suffered none of the cadaverous ravages with which Reynolds's unfortunate method of preparing his colours has afflicted his beauties. It may be a farther reason why it is so pleasant to look upon, that the artist, while exerting all his skill, was at his ease, and did not require to give his sitter either a state dress or a state attitude. Too much state is undoubtedly the defect, in a wide sense, of Allan Ramsay's painting. The success with which he brought out Lord Bute's immaculate legs be- neath the canopy of his rich Treasury robes, has been the object of much half-sarcastic laudation. But if it be a defect in an artist to succumb to conventionalities, and give prominence to robes and decorations at the sacri- fice of the individual character, yet painting of this kind admits of being well done and ill done. In the common run of such state pictures the robes and decorations are the fabric on which a human face or something as like a human face as the artist could create is plastered. But with Ramsay, Lord Bute, in all his glory, is still Lord Bute, from his powdered hair through the easy bend of his body and the renowned calves of his legs to the toes. THE ARTIST. 457 And so of all Ramsay's paintings; they may generally have too much silk and velvet, and too much attitude but they are pieces of thorough art. Before returning to Rome, about the year 1754, he had socially allied himself, not only with many men of rank, but with a far higher circle in the permanent estimate of such matters the leaders of the intellect of the age. He left behind him a literary association, which he had founded in Edinburgh, called the " Select Society." All inquirers into the history of British literature at that period must be familiar with its influence over at least the Scottish department not a small one. 1 David Hume is found writing to his friend Allan of the progress and prospects of the little flock left behind him in the wilder- ness : " It has grown to be a national concern. Young and old, noble and ignoble, witty and dull, laity and clergy all the world are ambitious of a place amongst us, and on each occasion we are as much solicited by candidates as if we were to choose a member of Parlia- ment." Then of individualities, " Our friend young Wed- derburn has acquired a great character by the appearance he has made." This refers to him who became Lord Loughborough. " Wilkie the minister has turned up from obscurity, and become a very fashionable man, as he is indeed a very singular one. Monboddo's oddities divert Sir David's [Lord Hailes] zeal entertains Jack Dal- rymple's rhetoric interests. The long drawling speakers have found out their want of talents, and rise seldomer. In short, the House of Commons was less the object of general curiosity at London than the Select Society at Edinburgh. < The Robin Hood/ ' The Devil,' and all other speaking societies, are ignoble in comparison. Such felicity has attended the seed which you planted. But what chiefly renders us considerable is a project of en- grafting on the Society a scheme for the encouragement of arts and sciences and manufactures in Scotland, by 1 An account of the Select Society the parent of a numerous progeny of debating societies in Edinburgh will be found in the first volume of Tytkr's ' Life of Kames.' THE SCOT ABROAD. premiums partly honorary, partly lucrative. A box is opened for donations, and about one hundred guineas have been given in. We hear of considerable sums in- tended by Lord Hopetoun, Morton, Marchmont, &c., who desire to be members. Nine managers have been chosen ; and to keep the business distinct from our rea- soning, the first Monday of every month is set apart for these transactions, and they are never to be mentioned in our Wednesday meetings. Advertisements have been published to inform the public of our intentions. A premium, I remember, is promised to the best discourse on Taste, and on the Principles of Vegetation. These regard the belles lettres and the sciences ; but we have not neglected porter, strong ale, and wrought ruffles, even down to linen rags." Then follows a good-natured word on the collection of Essays published by Ramsay, which carried a considerable reputation in their day: "Your 'Investigator' has been published this spring, and I find that it has met with a very good reception from the wits and the critics. In vain did I oppose myself, and assert it was not just meta- physics. They did nothing but laugh at me, and told me it was very entertaining, and seemed very reasonable." 1 The artist, writing back from the Mons ViminaUs, showed that he could hold his own against the great author, even with the pen. "Can a man, O philosopher, be both sorry and glad at the same time ? If the thing is possible, I am in these circumstances ; for I am glad to hear that there is any society of men amongst you, who give a particular attention to the improvement of the arts of luxury, so conducive to the riches, the strength, and liberty of our dear country ; but I am afraid, at the same time, that this scheme, by bringing in a new set of mem- bers of another species, will destroy that which we had set on foot; and I could have wished that some other way had been fallen upon by which porter might have 1 The author got access to the letters from which these passages are taken subsequently to his publication of the 'Life of David Hume. ' THE ARTIST. 459 been made thick, brick thin, and the nation rich, without our understanding being at all the poorer for it. Is not truth more than meat, and wisdom than raiment ? . . . Have your rewards produced an essay on Taste ? If they have, and it is printed, I should be glad to see it. Millar would send it to me, some way or other, if you desire him. I am satisfied with my own dialogue, though I find I shall make but few proselytes. It has always been my hard fate in these matters to pass for a very comical dog when I meant to get the fame of a deep philosopher ; but I am comforted again when I consider that the same has been the lot of my favourite Lucian ; and that to write like a deep philosopher, we must write like Turnbull or Plato." This letter gives shape to a practical joke which must have cost Ramsay an enormous deal of labour. It is embodied in a long fabricated Greek inscription, profess- ing to aiford evidence in refutation of Hume's scepticism, " which," says its author, " I found, while I was looking for bas-reliefs, in a lumber-room of the Palace Farnese." He conveys the result of his observation on the three popular horrors of the day in these terms : " The Pope himself is short and fat, the Pretender is long and lean, which is all I am able to inform you with regard to either. As to the Devil, I have not yet seen him, and am too diffident of reports, especially when they concern heads of parties, to send you any description of his person by hearsay." That Ramsay was a pretty genial representa- tive of the philosopher in " the seat of the Beast," may be inferred from the manner in which Hume communicates to him his own embroilments with the ecclesiastical au- thorities. He begins by telling about Kames, against whom the General Assembly were undoubtedly urged strongly by a party in the Church to proceed. " They will not," he says, " at once go to extremities with him, and deliver him over to Satan, without any preparation or precaution. They intend to make him be prayed for in all the churches of Scotland during six months, after which, if he do not give signs of repentance, he is to be held as anathema maranatha" And then he takes a com- THE SCOT ABROAD. placent view of his own prospects : " Meanwhile I am preparing for the day of wrath, and have already bespoken a number of discreet families, who have promised to admit me after I shall be excommunicated." And again : " You may tell that reverend gentleman the Pope that there are many here who rail at him, and yet would be much greater prosecutors had they equal power. The last Assembly sat on me. They did not propose to burn me, because they cannot. But they in- tend to give me over to Satan, which they think they have the power of doing. My friends, however, prevailed, and my damnation is postponed for a twelvemonth. But next Assembly will surely be upon me. Anderson the godly, spiteful, pious, splenetic, charitable, unrelenting, meek, persecuting, Christian, inhuman, peace-making, furious Anderson is at present very hot in pursuit of Lord Kames. He has lately wrote a letter to his son, which they say is a curiosity. He mentions his own great age, which leaves him no hopes of being able long to survive the con- demnation of that atheistical, however just judge. He therefore leaves me as a legacy to his son, and conjures him, as he expects his blessing, or the blessing of Heaven, never to cease his pursuit of me till he bring me to con- dign punishment. Is not this somewhat like Hamilcar, who swore Hannibal on the altar to be an eternal enemy to the Roman people ? " These were the characteristic home-memorials which broke in on the dreamy luxurious- ness of an artist-life in Rome ; recalling the memories of that healthy warfare of the mind, which, in the city of the Republic, the Caesars, and the Vatican, had long been dead and buried. Ramsay's mantle fell on one of his countrymen who studied under him at Rome David Martin. There is a good deal of his master's touch in his portraits, and the same affection for velvet and state finery. A portrait- painter takes rank in a great measure by the importance of his sitters. Martin has thus possession of two of the most remarkable statesmen of his day. The one was a great lawyer perhaps the greatest Britain ever saw Lord Mansfield. There he is spread before you in bland THE ARTIST. 461 breadth, the warm glow of red velvet toning his ruddy, good-humoured, powerful face. *One may see in it some- thing of the epicureanism which made him decline to wrinkle it with the cares of the woolsack. Like Ramsay's Lord Bute, this portrait goes somewhat to legs, but then they are also well-drawn and well-set legs. The painting has the specialty that its artist made the best engraving we have of it. The other eminent statesman painted by Martin was a man at the opposite extreme of eminence Benjamin Franklin. This portrait is known to the world by a dark mezzotint, and is reputed to be the best likeness of Franklin. Martin painted David Hume and Rousseau, too. He could not have had access to " the self-torturing sophist " except through the fat philo- sopher ; and it is odd that among the charges made by Rousseau against Hume, that of being compelled or fraud- ulently induced to sit for his portrait is not included. Martin preserved the likeness of another man who left the chief evidence of his talents to posterity Dr Car- lyle. His autobiography, recently published, was accom- panied with an engraving of this fine portrait, which one can easily believe to have meted out full justice to the reverend dignity and beauty for which Carlyle was famed. Such are a few stray notices of the artists whom Scot- land sent forth, most of them before England could point to her great Reynolds. They were not sufficiently strong in their home influence to found a school. The artistic character which they conferred on their country was fed, as it were, from hand to mouth by foreign supplies. Each stood alone on his merits, such as they were ; but it may be safely attributed to the genial influence of that connec- tion with foreign countries which the enterprise of Scottish warriors and scholars had created, that down to the middle of the last century we could boast of an array of artists such as England, with all her numerical superi- ority of population, her riches, and her pecuniary patron- age of art, could not match. For Jamesone, Aikman, Hamilton, and Ramsay, she can show only such names as Dobson, Thornhill, and Hudson; and that after her 462 THE SCOT ABROAD. affluence had set before her artists the examples of Hol- bein, Rubens, Vandyck, Lely, Kneller, and a host of painters second to these eminences. Of Jamesone, our old friend Allan Cunningham says, in his ' Lives of British Painters : ' " That he stands at the head of the British school of portrait - painting there can be no question ; nor had England an artist of her own worthy of being named above him, in his own walk, before the days of Reynolds." Here it comes to one's remembrance that Hogarth also was an occasional portrait-painter, and that he was anterior to Reynolds. And without disputing the merits of his portraits, or detracting from the rank of his trans- cendent genius, I yet hold that the lofty isolation and entire solitude of his position in the world of art, is in itself a curious record of the reserved ungeniality which prevented England from imbibing any artistic spirit or practice out of the opportunities afforded by the presence of great foreign artists and the purchase of great paint- ings. It is common indeed to deny that Hogarth was, properly speaking, an artist. It is impossible to wish him to have been an artist, in the conventional sense, if his being so must have deprived the world of those wonder- ful tragedies and comedies which he has performed for us on paper. But his genius had all the rugged indi- viduality that characterises a single creative mind arising in the midst of surrounding intellectual barrenness. And he became himself, through the power of his self-achieved position, the trumpet of the vulgar English prejudice against high art. He could not endure anything foreign. All Frenchmen he held in such hatred, that in his short sojourn among them he could not restrain ebullitions which, towards a less polite people, might have been dangerous. He embodied his contempt of high art in those hideous nightmare groups which he thought would demonstrate how easily he could excel Michael Angelo, Correggio, or Rembrandt, if he condescended to abandon London life and adopt their conventionalities. Hogarth was perhaps as far above William Aikman as Burns was beyond Darwin or Glover ; yet the Scottish painter's THE ARTIST. 463 career was a type of national conditions more conducive to the cultivation of art, in that catholic spirit which goes through the whole world to discover whatever is best and greatest in the achievements of those who have gone before. Down to Ramsay's epoch, our Scottish painters had been persons of family and station. It shows perhaps the germinating of something like a national school, when we find men of obscure condition struggling into the ranks of fame. Jacob More was a house-painter's ap- prentice in Edinburgh. Through the aid of some en- lightened patrons he went to Italy, and there remained, unknown among his countrymen save by the general European celebrity of his landscapes. In other instances, the descent of artistic ambition to a humbler grade was accompanied by the dawning of a national spirit in the objects of the artist. David Allan, though he studied in Italy, had the boldness to devote his genius to the illus- tration of Scottish life, and painted such scenes as would have made the classic Hamilton shudder. But far above Allan high indeed in the great republic of genius was the ill-starred Runciman. He was one of those who had not the good fortune, or the skill, as it may be, to make their light shine before men ; and it is in obscure corners that people stumble on his best works, wondering whence came the deep artistic power, and the noble simplicity, of pictures so unknown to fame. I have seen portraits of his own esteemed friends of some of those, for instance, who made his student circle at Rome which I question if even Raeburn who took his tone from Run- ciman, and is generally reputed to have greatly improved on it could have excelled in truth and dignified sim- plicity. Let us now step over to another department of art one lower than painting, in general estimation, and ancil- lary to it, yet which it was the function of one of our countrymen to elevate to a rank very little under that of the higher walks of design. Sir Robert Strange's en- gravings look like the works of a man who could do everything that the human hand, aided by the head, is 464 THE SCOT ABROAD. capable of achieving. There is not an effect in the whole range of painting which he has not shown his capacity to shadow forth with his magic graver. Beginning with the restless cheerful sky, and the energetic white horse of Wouvermans's Market-Cart, he advances with immediate perfection to the rugged grandeur of Salvator's Belisarius, the soft smooth fleshes of Guido Reni, and the heavenly countenances of the Correggios. There is surely no sweeter production that can be looked upon in un- coloured art than the Parce somnum rumpere, whether we prefer to rest the eye on the health and innocence radiating from the babe, or the absorbing love of the graceful mother, or on the tender beaming excitement of the beautiful onlooker. From these features, which arrest even the uninitiated eye, the adept will turn to the per- fection of detail in the drapery, and the gossamer light- ness of the veil which the mother gently removes. Nor less perfect is he in representing the stately dignity of Vandyck's Charles L, and the pleasant mixture of childish simplicity and princely consciousness in the royal children with their dogs. There are few things more calculated to awaken a train of pensive reflection than to find hang- ing, perhaps in some quiet bedroom in a remote coun- try-house, the portraits of the stately monarch and the unconscious group of children, with their silky -haired spaniels, when one contemplates them with time and inclination to recall the tragic and eventful history through which they all passed. There never was a nobler and more unselfish devotion to art than Strange's adoption of his great object in life. With genius enough to have achieved a separate reputa- tion as a creative artist, he resolved to devote his rare powers to the promulgation of the beautiful forms which others had created, rather than attempt to add to their number. He knew that aloft in the domes of great cathedrals, or remote in private mansions, or in the ex- clusive recesses of palaces, were those wondrous produc- tions of the great masters which hitherto had received but unworthy interpreters to the world, or none at all; and he resolved that his mission through life should THE ARTIST. 465 be so to devote those powers which he knew he was endowed with, as to become the great teacher of art, as it were, among the nations, by promulgating abroad its unknown treasures. The difficulties he had to undergo show, when com- pared with the life of the ordinary engraver, who copies what he is employed to copy, and does it as accurately as his opportunities permit, how arduous is the task of the engraver who sets before himself a higher object who is bent on copying certain pictures, because they are the best and none others will satisfy him, and who must have a full opportunity of rendering all their characteristics on his plate ere he ventures to interpret them to the public. In one instance, perhaps, there are political or ecclesi- astical difficulties in the way. Certain cardinals and bishops have to be consulted ere access can be obtained to the picture. There perhaps is a high altar-piece : to remove it would be sacrilege, were it practicable, which it often is not ; and raising a scaffolding before it, which was not unfrequently Strange's proposal, was something nearly as offensive. Less truthful engravers would have been content with such flying opportunities as they could catch, hoping that no others would be enabled, by a closer inspection of the original, to detect their slovenly workmanship. But Strange set out with a resolution to copy the best pictures in the world, and to copy them faithfully; and his resolute perseverance was rewarded with marvellous success. It is fortunate for the memory of Strange, and for those who love to dwell on such a history as his, that it has been recorded by one whose naturally fastidious and highly cultivated taste made him a worshipper at the same shrine of high Italian art. Though the work fell to his hands nearly a century after it should have been performed by others, James Dennistoun, with a zealous devotion which the fatal progress of disease could not quench, collected the fragments of the artist's history scattered as they were, minute and scarcely perceptible, all over Europe and massed them together in a book, which, if it do not afford an exciting narrative to the 2 G 466 THE SCOT ABROAD. common reader, must be full of interest to the collector and the critic of art. 1 The artist, casually referring in a letter to the impulse under which he devoted himself, says : " Since the time of the memorable revival of the arts in the fifteenth century, Italy, without doubt, is the country which has produced the most celebrated painters. There are none who have penetrated so deep as they into the secret of this art, or reached to such a height in the sublime. A purity and correctness of design, the most noble expres- sions, elegant forms, just proportions, elevated ideas, and a fertility of genius, give a superiority to their productions which no other artist would have been able to attain. It is only by studying and meditating upon the works of the Italian masters that we can reasonably expect to form a true taste, and to defend ourselves against the destructive and capricious sorcery of fashion, which changes almost with the seasons, and of which the most applauded and finest efforts in the space of a few years generally appear to be, what they really are, unnatural and ridiculous." How very true is this reference to "the capricious sorcery of fashion ! " How imperfectly have mental philosophers yet expounded that specialty in the human intellect that carries it off in aesthetic epidemic, to hold that the prevailing fashion, and nothing else, is graceful or beautiful, and to feel that when a change has come, nothing can be more hideous and odious than the pre- vailing fashion last deserted ! Perhaps this, like all other indications of barbarism, is getting chastened down as the world grows older. Certainly the multiplication through 1 ' Memoirs of Sir Robert Strange, Knight, and of his Brother-in- law, Andrew Lumisden, Private Secretary to the Stuart Princes. By James Dennistoun of Dennistoun. 1855.' All who knew James Dennistoun will recognise in his own life, and in these two volumes, something of that unselfish enthusiasm which inspired Strange him- self. He could not have expected the life of the engraver to be popular, nor did he write it as one courting popularity. Placed, however, from family conditions, in a position to be acquainted with the beautiful history of the great artist, he thought it his duty to let the world have an opportunity of knowing what he knew. THE ARTIST. 467 the world of the forms destined to everlasting homage for their grace and beauty was likely to be a counteracting balance-wheel to such oscillations. And in this the world's debt of gratitude to Strange is very great. Few men can possess the paintings of the great masters. Their possession is indeed not always a privilege to be envied, since, if honourably and kindly used, it must admit of participation by others. It is, perhaps, hard that because a man is wealthy and can buy great pictures he should become a showman ; yet con- cealing them from the sight of those worthy of beholding them is something like a crime. Humbler devotees of art, collecting scraps of paintings, enjoy the notion that though not great works there is here a special artistic touch, and there a happy combination of colours, that, after frequent study, in the end endear to them the possession. So in paintings. But in engravings there is no excuse for decorating the wall with anything that does not repeat the forms adjusted by the great masters. Believing in the education of the eye by training it to beauty, I cannot but also believe that the being habitually surrounded by such forms gives a capacity for finding and enjoying beauty, to the eyes of children, and when, in maturity, they see the great paintings themselves, the engraved copies at home recall all the relish of the sight. Since, then, Strange seems to have rendered these great works as fully as an inspiration can be rendered, I have often thought that it would be a wholesome arrangement that places frequented by young people should be deco- rated by the best Stranges, and perhaps a few other engravings of like eminence, such as Morghen's of the smaller Raphael Madonna, or Mullens of the larger. They would be all the better a safeguard to the eyes of the young, that at present there exists a school which, determining to pit the ideal ugly against the ideal beau- tiful, has worked for the degradation of the popular taste with an amount of zealous energy, and also of suc- cess, which are, taken together, among the wonders of the age. To come to Strange's personal history : he was de- 468 THE SCOT ABROAD. scended of a somewhat worshipful family in Orkney, his father leaving some landed property and sheep, with " twelve double-silver spoons," " a knock [clock] and case thereof," and a wainscot cabinet. His mother's name was Scollay, and the paternal name was originally the Norwegian Strang or Strong. The artist, disliking its northern harshness, softened it by the addition of an e, and thus carried it into a totally different line of etymo- logical descent the French etrange. There is a tradi- tional story I remember being told it by Dr Chalmers that soon after the metamorphosis he happened to meet a traveller, who, hearing his name, said : " Ah, sir, you call yourself Strange, but the strangest part of it is that your name is only the letter e" The artist's guilty conscience smote him with the idea that the traveller in- tended to be sarcastic on his addition to the patronymic ; but he was only an etymological enthusiast, who derived the word, very inaccurately, by increment from the Latin preposition e. Thus e, ex, extra, extraneous, whence comes the French etrange. With a sort of instinct that he was some day or other to be great, he began at an early period an account of his own progress. It dropped, suddenly interrupted by the labours of a busy life ; and the artist-like clearness of his account of whatever passed around him in his early humble phase of life, makes the reader regret that it is so brief. He underwent some training in one of the humbler departments of the law, but apparently with a hopeless restlessness; and the bent of his genius drove him to an engraver of the name of Cooper, whose apparently wealthy circumstances show how considerable a field was then open in Edinburgh to one of that profession who was little above a trading mechanic. The young artist joined the insurgents of 1745 fortunately for himself and art, not so effectually distinguishing himself by his warlike prowess as to encounter the vengeance of the victors. His chief service to the cause was characteristic. At the camp at Inverness, and just before the battle of Cul- loden, he engraved at the Prince's desire a plate for THE ARTIST. 469 bank-notes, payable at the Restoration. The excellence of the engraving, however, could not make up for the want of assets ; and doubtless, if one of the notes thrown off could now be recovered, it would bring far more as a relic of art than its original value in the money market. Making his escape, like many others, from the broken army through terrible hardships, he reached France, and studied engraving with Le Bas. It would have been difficult to find a better master. His clearness and quiet sweetness make him still a favourite, whether the collector prefers his fresh sunny seaports with their lazy life, or the warm interiors, where the solemn Dutch alchemist blows his bellows, and imparts wisdom to his pupils. But as Strange acquired technical skill in secondary work, higher aspirations dawned on him, and a visit to Italy confirmed him in the great project of his life. With the devotion of the monk or the crusader in the pursuit of his mission, he made sacrifices to his pursuit, some of them trivial, others deep and real. His adher- ence to the Jacobite cause has been attributed with considerable foundation to his love for Miss Lumisden, the sister of the accomplished secretary of the exiled Court in Italy. She was one of the arbitrary and enthusi- astic Jacobite beauties who would tolerate no lover unless he first proved himself a true knight by wearing the white rose. Strange obtained his reward, and they were married; but art stepped in to claim her votary, and years after years of absence from her husband, all-ab- sorbed in the pursuit of his mission, joined to the pro- tracted hopelessness of her darling cause, turned her enthusiasm into acidity. Her growing fretfulness and ardent Jacobitism to the end make the letters and conversation of this strong- charactered woman very amusing. When it came to her ear that her brother, after a quarter of a century of endurance, must at last leave the Prince's service, and the announcement came along with rumours not complimentary to the habits and conduct into which the object of her devoted loyalty had fallen, she cannot 4/0 THE SCOT ABROAD. show the letter to her husband, so filled is it with matter of overwhelming grief. " If ever," she says, " anything in prejudice of my darling's [the Prince's] character is suggested, I deny it, or find an excuse for it. Oh, he has had much to disturb his brains ! I am perfectly satisfied, my dearest Andrew, that you have not failed in your duty, for which I thank God. Believe me, I would sooner wish to hear of your death than blush for anything you ever did in your life. Suffer I can, but sin I will not. Honest principles were the noble legacy our dear parents left us ; while we live we will display them when called on to do so. All I beg is secrecy. Four-and-twenty years' faithful service cannot be rewarded with a frown : no, you must be mistaken. If you are not, at least be advised. 'Tell it not in Gath, publish it not in the streets of Askelon ; lest the uncircumcised rejoice, and the daughters of the Philistines be glad' this was our good grandfather's text for many years on the 3oth of January." And on another occasion : " If my twenty years' old acquaintance [the Prince] is now at your house, on your knees present my most respectful duty, nor blush to think a lady bid you do so. Oh, had I been of a more useful sex ! Had my pen been a sword, I had not been here, sitting tamely by my fireside, desiring you to do me a sim- ple office like this. In those years, so many and so long, I have not been altogether idle, for I have made three fine boys, who, I hope, will do me credit : they'll be re- cruits when I am gone I hope they'll all have Roman spirits in them. I'll instruct them that their lives are not their own when Rome demands them." Afterwards send- ing one of these young Gracchi to Paris, she insists that he is not to wear ruffles, silk, or lace, or any other orna- ment, however imperiously dictated by fashion : she will give her reasons when she sees her brother they are doubtless founded on the calamitous condition of her favourite Court, and not to be casually committed to writing even in the year 1770; and she characteristically winds up her injunction, " If he appears awkward, say he does so by the positive command of his worthy old THE ARTIST. 471 mother, who never did or said anything but what she had a good reason for therefore you comply without ask- ing a single question." A common tradition attributes the commencement of Strange's prosperity to the courtly dexterity of his wife. A rumour of the excellence of his engraved portrait of "the Prince" had, according to the tradition, reached the palace, and some royal relation called at Strange's work- shop desirous to see it. Mrs Strange, who was there alone, knowing that the portrait by her husband was of the wrong Prince, took care that amid the other works with which she entertained the visitor it should not be found, and fixed a time for a second visit, before which she got her obedient husband to have in tolerable pro- gress an engraving of the right Prince. It is very clear that Mrs Strange, or "Bella," as she was called, was not a person to perform such a feat. It was known, indeed, to those conversant with the artistic gossip of the time, that Strange had received proffers from the royal family very early in his career, and that he had repelled them with a surly abruptness, which was supposed too clearly to indicate the motives of " the brother-in-law of the Pretender's secretary." The documents published by Mr Dennistoun make this affair very clear. A proffer had been made to him by Allan Ramsay to engrave his own portrait of the Prince of Wales, just before he be- came George III. But Strange was then full of his great Italian projects. His allegiance was for his own chosen sovereign, high art, and he cared for neither of their houses. But it was not necessary to go into large questions there was a sublunary and immediate shape assumed by the offer. The payment was to be ;ioo, and Strange, saying that to do justice to the subject would occupy him fifteen months, said he could not afford to engrave the picture at the price offered. Other people would, of course, naturally look to the consequent patronage of the Court as the ultimate bribe to such an undertaking. But Strange had built his ultimate hopes elsewhere the only question about the offer was whether the immediate re- muneration might bribe him to postpone for a time his 4/2 THE SCOT ABROAD. nobler studies. It would not ; and so the matter ended. But public fame naturally rumoured disaffection as his motive, and the consequences of this, coupled with his exclusion from the Royal Academy as an engraver, excited bitter feelings. He wrote a fierce letter to Ramsay, saying, " Did I ever, directly or indirectly, hint that it was from the least disaffection I declined at that time to engrave the picture you had painted ? Speak the truth, and the whole truth, so help you God." Ram- say, thus pressed, answered very bluntly that there had been no hint whatever of disaffection, " the reasons you gave me were all of the money-getting kind." There was something in an expression of this sort not calculated en- tirely to secure the friendship of a man actuated by such motives and aims as those which governed Strange, and the apparent conclusion of the whole history was not likely to cool the ardour of Bella's Jacobitism. She con- tinued to pray for an heir to the exiled house, after the greater portion of her most zealous allies were comforting themselves that the improbability of such an event was a fortunate conclusion of all difficulties. Yet this mother of the Gracchi stands as an illustration of that sarcastic philosophy which says that all have their price if one knew the coin to pay it in. She was ready for all forms of martyrdom, and direct bribery of any kind she would have thrown back with scorn. But when one day rather unexpectedly she found that Robbie was knighted, and that she was Lady Strange, all reminiscences from across the water seem to have been swept away in a gush of gratitude. Let us have a few words before parting on a depart- ment of art proverbial for leaving the artist forgotten, while his work remains to create wonder and admiration. The world is filled with buildings of which the architects are unknown, but which yet are found by the careful student to contain enough to show the character of their acquirements, and sometimes the school in which they must have studied. I have already had to show how, after the rupture with England, Scotland took her ecclesi- astical and baronial architecture from the Continent, and THE ARTIST. 473 chiefly from France. 1 The process by which the rich turreted chateaus of France were transferred to the moorlands of the north and the braes of the Grampians, could not fail to be extremely interesting, if we could remove from it the veil which shrouds it in the mystery common to so large a portion of the architectural history even of civilised times. How much of it was brought over by foreigners? how much learned in France by Scotsmen who returned to practise at home ? are ques- tions that must be asked in vain. We have no clue to the studies which induced Aytoun, by decorating the bulky framework of a German palace with a beautiful coronet of turrets and decorated chimneys, to conceive the plan of Heriot's Hospital. Even so late as the time of Sir William Bruce, who worked into the last century, we are not aware how far his conversion of Holyrood into a French chateau of the sixteenth century was founded on a practical acquaintance acquired in the land of its origin with that style of building. And yet he was a person of worshipful condition, whose lands and inheritances are set forth in genealogical books. We know, however, too much of the poverty of the coun- try at the time of the reconstruction of the palace in 1674. From the accounts still preserved, every kind of work above that which supplied the sordid needs of a poor people had to be brought from other lands. 2 In 1 P. 198. 2 "The mason, Robert Mylne, was a Scot; and so were the wrights, the smiths, the glaziers, the plumbers, and the painters, at least of common work. But much of their material had to be sought elsewhere than in Scotland. Lead was brought from New- castle. The glass was either English or French ; white-lead and linseed-oil were imported from Holland. The 'sex hundreth fyne large wanscott planks, readie sawen for lyneing severall of the roomes of the King's owne appartment, ' were bought in Rotterdam, at a cost, including freight, of \2iJ (Scots). They were put up by a Scottish carpenter, but the nicer woodwork had to be done by foreign hands. There is a payment of 400 (Scots) to John Vansantvort, carver of timber, for cutting, carving, and upputting of severall pieces of carved work upon severall of the chimney and door pieces of his Majesty's apartments in the east quarter of the pallace. " ' Proceedings of the Antiquaries,' p. 115. 474 THE SCOT ABROAD. far later times we know that Robert Adam, also a man of considerable territorial position, studied the architec- tural remains of the Roman empire with a devoted zeal attested by his great work on the ruins of Diocletian's mighty palace at Spalatro. But there was a Scotsman before the period of Robert Adam, whose pilgrimage among classical remains pro- duced results not to be so briefly passed by. James Gibbs was born in Aberdeen about the year 1674. He was the son of a substantial tradesman, and rinding him- self at twenty without parents, and possessed of some money and a good useiiil Scottish education, he made up his mind to qualify himself as an architect. He went first to Holland, where, save the State House of Amster- dam, he can have found little adapted to his peculiar taste; but what he did consider worth studying, he ex- amined laboriously and practically. By mere accident he was found there by the Earl of Mar, who felt an interest in the quiet persevering youth who had come forth from his own peculiar district in the north to push through the world. Whatever were the Earl's defects of character, he is generally admitted to have had fine taste. Whether for assistance received at that time, or for subsequent patronage in his profession, Gibbs was so grateful to Mar, that, when he had realised fame and fortune, and the family of his patron were precarious exiles, he bequeathed a considerable fortune to his bene- factor's son. After the commencement of the century he spent ten years in Italy, studying, searching, and treasuring up the practical results of his labours for future use. He returned at a favourable juncture. The great church-extension scheme for London had developed itself in an arrange- ment for building fifty new churches, and his friend Mar being in power, the young architect had an excellent op- portunity of bringing forward his claims, and obtained a considerable share in the execution of the undertaking. Gibbs accomplished a sufficient number of works to make an era for himself in English architecture, and his name came so readily upwards, that poor Savage, in his wild THE ARTIST. 475 forgotten poem of * The Wanderer,' naturally calls on it When he passes from the ancient fanes, where time's hand leaves its print of mossy green, it is to cry " Oh Gibbs ! whose art the solemn fane can raise Where God delights to dwell and man to praise} When mouldered thus, the column falls away, Like some great prince majestic in decay ; When ignorance and scorn the ground shall tread Where wisdom tutored and devotion prayed Where shall thy pompous work our wonder claim ? What but the muse alone preserve thy name ? " His many works were by no means equal in merit. The Radcliffe Library at Oxford probably the most ambitious justifies the borrowed remark of Walpole, that it looks as if it had sunk a stage into the earth. Yet Allan Cunningham, speaking of its general effect on the landscape, says : " The Radcliffe dome, in fact, con- veys to every distant observer the idea of its being the air-hung crown of some gigantic cathedral or theatre. It is perhaps the grandest feature in the grandest of all English architectural landscapes. It rises wide and vast amidst a thousand other fine buildings, interrupts the horizontal line, and materially increases the picturesque effect of Oxford." He completed the quadrangle of All- Souls, where Walpole gives him credit for stumbling upon a sort of Gothic picturesqueness ; and made additions to King's College, Cambridge, which have been censured for subdivision of detail. The work, however, on which his fame rests as the embodiment of a great thought, unbroken by partial defects, is the Church of St Martin's-in-the-Fields, fortun- ately opened up to the admiration of the present genera- tion by the works in Trafalgar Square. It was a bold and original idea, greatly censured in its day as a bar- barous combination of two distinct and antagonistic types of architecture, and a rank rebellion against the first Hora- tian rule of taste. The spire or steeple had been held peculiar to Gothic architecture, and was deemed the natural terminus of the aspiring character of the pointed arch. Yet Gibbs placed a spire on a pediment, supported 476 THE SCOT ABROAD. by Corinthian columns. It was, however, no mixture of styles in luxurious confusion, like the efforts of the French Renaissance. The edifice in itself was untainted by Gothic ; and even on the spire, that architecture had no more claim than merely as it was a spire, since its details were carefully and severely classic. Illegitimate or not, it was a great hit in architecture something like Michael Angelo's mounting the dome in air and became so prevalent that it is now never deemed an anomaly. For the general merits of the building, it may be truly said that it is one of the chief architectural glories of London. Formerly buried in a mass of obscure streets and lanes, its thorough architectural character has been tested by the severest ordeal to which the innate character of a building can be trusted a general clearing away, which lays it bare for full inspection, and either close or distant criticism. To try how it bears this, look first upon St Martin's, and then turn to the costly modern edifice to the right, built as a suitable repository for the artistic treasures of the British empire ! Of course it has its enemies among those who are inimi- cal to the classic forms, but I hope we are getting more tolerant in aesthetics, as in other things, and that the day may come when people will be content to enjoy each in its own way all the forms in which high intellect is de- veloped in stone structure, just as in going over a picture- gallery we can pass from the divine loveliness of the Raphaels and Correggios to enjoy the riotous vitality of Rubens, the solemn gloom of Teniers, and the perfect velvets and satins of Terbourg. There is a good deal, no doubt, of intolerant sentiment against the classic forms. Such terms as "dishonourable "and "sensual "are levelled at them, as if those who esteem them might be capable of forging a bill on you, or ruining the peace of your family. But all is mere scolding, and there is no one eloquent enough to deal towards the classic that utter intolerance which, in our grandfathers' days, held down the Gothic under the level of art. Even during the revival, this oppression has a mis- chievous influence, like that of their former life on emanci- THE ARTIST. 477 pated slaves. Its own admirers treat the Gothic with a disrespectful familiarity. They forget that it is the oldest art in existence, for it lived by the influence of the clergy when other arts perished, and so it is legitimately de- scended from the age of the Pyramids, having passed through the rigid Greek to the ductile Roman, from which all the steps to the pointed arch are distinct Too many of its votaries are unconscious how much reverend study it should take to become master of the art which it took three hundred years of the labours of the most accom- plished artists in their several generations to develop. Every draughtsman and mere builder thinks he can flounder through the details of the Gothic, and hence every religious denomination is doing its most desperate to rear a set of structures, which can but torture every eye in which the sense of the symmetrical and appropriate is not utterly dead. INDEX. ABERDEEN, calamities to which ex- posed during the civil war, 447 ; King's College modelled on Univer- sity of Paris, 1 66. Achaius, the alleged league between Charlemagne and, 2. Adam, Robert, the architect, 474. Adamnan, the biographer of Columba, an Irishman, 233. Adamson, Patrick, residence of, abroad, Aguillan-neuf, the, in France, 208 et seq. Aikman, William, a Scottish artist, 452. Albania, the Scots kingdom of, con- quered by the Norsemen, 232. Albany, Alexander Duke of, his career, &c., 47 et seq. Albany, the Regent, his character and rule in Scotland, 96 et seq. ; his ser- vices in France, 381 et seq. Alberoni, the Cardinal, connection of Marshal Keith with, 332, 333. Ales, Alexander, sketch of his career, 279 et seq. ; his account of the tra- gedy of Anne Boleyn, 281. Alexander, John, a Scottish artist, 451. Allan, David, the painter, 463. Alva, the Duke of, his interview with Catherine of Medici, 120. Anderson, Alexander and David, 312. Anderson, Patrick, and his pills, 305. Anderson's ' History of the Bible,' no- tice of Admiral Greig from, 372. Angers, the Synod of, denunciation of the Fetes des Foux by, 214 ; and of the architectural profanities, 218 note. Anjou, the Duke of, proposed marriage between Mary of Scotland and, 149. Anne Boleyn, mystery attending the case of, and contemporary account of it, 281 et seq. Annuchudus, a monk of Funda, 232. Aodh, King of Connaught, notices of, 228. Arbuthnot, Principal, educated abroad, 287. Architecture, influence of the French alliance on, in Scotland, 198 ; Scot- tish, its characteristics, 472. Ardriagh, the, President of the Irish Kings, 228 ; nature of his authority, 229. Argyleshire, early Irish settlement in, 228. Armada, the, its origin, &c., 127. Art, sketches of early, in Scotland, 436. Aubigne, the Lord of, the first captain of the Scots Guard, 33. Aubigny, the lords of (Stewart of Darn- ley), S 1 . 5 2 - Ayrault, Peter, his contest with the Jesuits, 299, 300. Ayton, Sir Robert, 297. Aytoun, W., the architect of Heriot's Hospital, 202, 404. Azoff, Marshal Keith at the storming of, 337- BAILLIE, Robert, 287. Balfour, Robert, Professor at Bor- deaux, 296. Baliol, national hatred of, 14. Bannister, Mr Saxe, his life of William Paterson, 416, 418. Bannockburn, effect of the battle of, as regards the French and Scottish league, 14. "Banquet of Dun-Na N-Gedth and battle of Magh-Rath, the," account of, zy>etseq. Barbour, John, the author of 'The Bruce,' 313. Barclay, the ' Argenis ' of, 297 ; his birthplace, &c., 299 ; extracts from his 'Argenis' on the Guises, 118. Barclay the physician, defence of to- bacco by, 306. Barclay, William, career of, 298; his contest with the Jesuits, 299. Baron, Robert, 311. Baronial architecture, Scottish, its character, 200. Bassantin, James, 263. INDEX. 479 Bassol, a pupil of Duns Scotus, 239. Bauge", the battle of, 26. Bayle, account of John Cameron, by, 297 ; contemporary account of the origin, &c., of his Dictionary, 260. Bejeant and Bejaune, origin of the term, 184 et seq. Beaton, Cardinal, 61 ; James, ib. Bell, Archibald, Sheriff of Ayrshire, 222 note. Bell, Thomas, ' Roma restituta, ' &c. , by, 267. Bellenden, William, 297 ; paraphrase of Boece's History by, 242 note. Bellievre, M., mission of, to England as regards the execution of Mary of Scotland, 123. Berey, family of, 57. Berquin, Louis de, 380. Berwick, its former commercial import- ance, 83. Bethunes, the, their Scottish parentage, 64. Bianci or Blanc, poisoner to Catherine of Medici, 122. Bianci, Vincent, ' Parere intorno alii caratteri,' &c., by, 266. Bissat, Peter, Professor at Bologna, 301. Bisset's ' Memoirs of Sir Andrew Mit- chell,' 432. Blackball, Father, a Jesuit, 350. Blackwood, the family of, in France, 60 et seq. ; Adam, 60. Blackwood, Henry, 304. Blairs, the, in France, 59. Bleau's Atlas, the 'Theatrum Scotise' in, 268. Boece, Hector, first Principal of King's College, Aberdeen, 167 ; the career and history of, 240 et seq, l his ac- count of the Ancient League between France and Scotland, 2. Boulay*s ' History of the University of Paris,' 180. Bourges, the archbishopric of, intrigues regarding, 94. Bournezel or Bournaseau, the lord of, ambassador to Scotland, 75. Bourtic or Bourtie, an archer of the Guard, 57. Boyd of Trochrig, 287. Boyd, Mark Alexander, the Jurist, 302. Bradshaw, an English ambassador, ad- venture of, 359. Bradwardine, a pupil of Duns Scotus, *39- Brissac, the Marshal de, connection of Buchanan with, 244. Brisson, President, the career and death of, 191 Brown, John, of Wamphrey, and his works, 290. Bruce, Sir William, the architect, 473. Buchan, the Earl of, leader of the Scots auxiliaries in France, 94 ; his victory at Bange", 26; High Con- stable of France, 27 ; killed at Ver- neuil, 29 ; his origin, 41. Buchan, the scenery of, 348. Buchanan, George, the career and works of, 242 et seq. ; his traditional reputa- tion in Scotland, 247 ; character of his writings, 248 ; effect of the use of his works as class-books in Scotland, 249. Buchanan, Patrick, 244. Burgundians and Orleanists, the, their struggle in France, 20. Burgundy, John the Fearless of, mur- ders the Sieur de Montagu, 18 ; and the Duke of Orleans, 19 ; his own murder, 20. Burne, Nicol, charges against Knox by, 193. Burnet, Bishop, residence of, abroad, 293 ; notices of, 313 et seq. ; anecdote of Sir W. Lockhart from, 393. Bursaries, what, and the old competi- tions for them, 180; example of a Highland, 181 note. CALAIS, negotiations between France and England regarding, 129. Calvin, theocratic claims of, in Geneva, 188. Cameron, John, 297. Campbell, Sir Colin, of Glenurchy, his patronage of Jamesone, 448. Carlos, Don, projected marriage of Mary Queen of Scots to, 119. Carlyle, character of Field - Marshal Keith by, 341 ; notice, &c., of Sir W. Lockhart by, 383 ; character of Sir Andrew Mitchell, 433. Caroline Matilda, Queen of Denmark, the case of, 422 et seq. Castelnau, Michel de, his mission to Scotland, character, &c., 147 et seq. Catherine of Medici, opposition of, to the schemes of the Guises, 119; her character and policy, 120 ; her hatred to Mary of Scotland, 121 ; sets aside the Spanish match, 122 ; matrimonial alliances proposed by her to Eliza- beth, 148. Catherine, the Empress, account by an eyewitness of her elevation to power, 428. Cecil, difficulties of, regarding the Scot- tish alliance, 138 et seq. Celt, treatment of the, by the Lowland- ers, 91. Censor in the Scottish universities, the, 172. Cessiobonorum, the, in Scotland, 164. Chalmers or Chambers, David, hU ' History of the Kings of France,' &c., 252. 480 INDEX. Chambers, David, ' De Scotorum For- titudine,' &c. by, 253 ; charges against Knox by, 193. Chambers, Nicholas, lord of Guerche, Chancellors of the Scottish and French universities, the, 167. Charlemagne, the fabulous league be- tween, and Achaius, i, 2. Charles VII. of France, consolidation of the Scots Guard by, 33. Charles IX., proposed marriage between Elizabeth and, 148. Charles II., services of Sir Wm. Lock- hart under, 392. Charles of Burgundy, the storming of Charles, Prince, of Sudermannland, at the battle of Hogeland, 373. Charpentier on the French Hogmanay, 2IO. Chasles, M., extracts from his life of Queen Mary, in note. Chatelar, the fate of, his position, &c., no and note. Cheruel on the union of Scotland and England, 155. Christian, King of Denmark, the hus- band of Caroline Matilda, 422. Christianity, the establishment, &c. , of, in Ireland, 233. Church, the, the representative of Intel- lect during the Middle Ages, 170; its early encouragement of learning, 171. Clarence, the Duke of, killed at Bauge", 26. Clarendon, notices of Sir W. Lockhart from, 383, 391. Claverhouse, services of, in Holland, 320. Clerks or Le Clerks, the, 59. Cochut, P. A., his work on Law of Lauriston, 400. Colbert, alleged Scottish descent of, Columba, expulsion of, from Ireland, and his settlement, &c., in lona, 228. Comines, notices of the Scots Guard by, 35 5 his account of the storming of Liege, 36. Commerce, the early, between Scotland and France, 48. Conoeus or Cone, George, work by, 254. Covenanters, the, influence of the French Huguenots on them, 186. Crafort or Craufurd, Henri de, Sieur de Longchamp, 57. Craig, John, sketch of the career of, 278 et seq. Craig, Sir Thomas, 301. Cre"quy, Madame, and the Earl Maris- chal Keith, 339. Crevant, the Scots auxiliaries at the battle of, 28. Crichton, George, 61. Crichton, James (the Admirable), 256. Crichton Castle, the ruins of, 256. Cromwell, services rendered to Scot- land by, 381 ; Sir W. Lockhart his ambassador to France, 382. Cronstadt, the fortifications of, designed by Admiral Greig, 376. Cunningham, lord of Arcenay, 55. Cunningham, Alex., History of Great Britain by, 252. Cunningham, Allan, on Jamesone, 461. "DAFT DAYS" in Scotland, the, 211. Dalgetty, Sir Walter Scott's, as the representative of the Scots mercen- ary, 316. Dalriada, the Scottish kingdom of, 228, 229 et seq. Dalyell, General, his services in Rus- sia, 348. Damien, Jean, Dunbar the poet's at- tack on. 98. Dargaud, M., errors in his 'Life of Queen Mary,' 112 note. Darien Company, the, and causes of its failure, 415. Darnley Stewarts, the, in France, &c., 50 et seq. Davidson, William, work on the ' Phil- osophy of Medicine ' by, 267 ; his career, &c., 307. Deans of Faculties, the, in the Scot- tish universities, 176. Debtors, old laws regarding, in Scot- land and France, 163. Defoe on Scotland, 219 ; his ' Memoirs of a Cavalier,' extracts from, &c., 323. De Glais or Douglas, an archer of the Guard, 57. 'Delices de la Grand Bretagne,' &c., portion devoted to Scotland in, 270. Dempster, Thomas, the career and writings of, 260 ; his ' Literary His- tory of Scotland,' 261. Denmark, Sir R. Murray Keith as am- dassador to, &c., 423 et seq., 428 et seq. Dennistoun, James, his ' Life of Sir R. Strange,' &c., 465. Destournay, the Lord, seizure of Oud- enarde by, 80. Devillengon, the Sieur, 58. De Wit, Jacob, the portraits in Holy. Dods or Doddes, family of, 58. Donaldson, Walter, 305. Douglas, Archibald Earl of, joins Buchan in France and is created duke of Touraine, 27 ; killed at Ver- neuil, 29 ; his installation into his dukedom of Touraine, 53. Douglas, Robert, Scots chaplain to INDEX. 481 Gustavus, tradition regarding birth of, 291. Doyens, the, in France, 176. Dromont or Drummond, Guillaume, Drummond of Hawthornden, residence of, abroad, 302. Ducange, his account of the Festus as- inorum, 213. Du Chesne, on the Aguilanleu in France, 208 note. Dunbar the poet, his " Fenyet Freir of Tungland," 99. Duncan, Marc, 305. Dunes, battle of the, and Sir W. Lock- hart's services at it, 387. Dunkirk, the acquisition of, by Eng- land under Cromwell, 385 et^ seq. ', Lockhart's administration of it, 389 Dunnottar, ruins of the castle of, 329 ; its last possessors and their career, 330 et seq. Duns Scotus, nationality of, 235 ; the party headed by him, 237 et seq. ; his career, 238. Durrow, the Abbot of, tradition re- garding, 228. Dyvour's habit, the, in Scotland, 164. EDICT of Nantes, its true character, 188. Edinburgh University, constitution, &c., of, 170. Edward I., notices of, 12 ; summoned before Philip of France as his feudal superior, 13. Edward VI., birth, &c., of, 106 ; views of Henry VIII. regarding his mar- riage to Mary Queen of Scots, ib. et seq. Eglisham, George, the assailant of Buchanan, 309. Eguimene' in France and Hogmanay in Scotland, connection between, 204 et seq. Elizabeth, Queen, her policy toward Scotland, negotiations with France, &c., 136 et seq. ; her hatred of Knpx, 142 ; matrimonial alliances with France proposed to, 148; her con- duct toward Mary, 152. Elphinstone, Bishop, founder of King's College, Aberdeen, 167. England, the common hostility of France and Scotland to, as the cause of the Ancient League, 2 ; the Nor- man rule in, 5 et seq. ; and France, true nature of the contest between, 23 ; circumstances which brought about the alliance of Scotland with, 136 et seq ; rejection of the Roman jurisprudence by, 162 ; contrast be- tween its architecture and that of Scotland, 198. 2 English and French armies, contrast between them during the hundred years' war, and cause of the victories of the former, 22 et seq. English merchants, the, their opposi- tion to the Darien scheme, 418. English party, first rise of the, in Scot- land, 98. Eochaidh Buidh, King of the Scottish Dalriada, his invasion of Ireland and its defeat, 229 et seq. Eochy or Auchy, the supposed Achaius, 2. Erian, marriages of Scotsmen into family of, 57. Erigena, nationality of, 234. Erskine of Dun, a pupil of Melanch- thon's, 287. Erskine, Alexander, minister-at-war to Gustavus Adolphus, career of, 379. Erskines, services of one of the, in Russia, 379. Esneval, the Baron of, ambassador to Scotland, 130 et seq. Espence or Spence, family of, in France, 58. Esse, the Sieur d', the expedition under him, 106. FACULTIES, the Deans of, in the Scot- tish universities, 176. Ferdinand of Spain, intrigues of, with England and Scotland, 92. Fergus Mor Mac Earca, founder of the Scottish Kingdom of Dalriada, 228. Ferguson, W., a Scottish artist, 454. Ferrerius, the continuator of Boece, 301. Fetes des Foux, the, in France, 212 et seq. Feudalism, influences of, in medieval Europe, 31. Filhoti, Pierre, 380. Flockharts or Folcarts, the, 59. Flodden, the battle of, and its effect on the French alliance, 93. Forbes, Dr John, of Corse, 293. Forman, Andrew, Bishop of Moray, 94; becomes Archbishop of St Andrews, 96. Forman, Helena, the wife of Rubens, tradition regarding her, 443. France, picture of its early social con- dition, 15 et seq.; successive northern immigrations into, and their influence, 70; illustrations of social state of, during the English wars, 89 ; in- creased power of, as compared with Scotland in the sixteenth century, 131 ; Scotland treated as a depend- ency, 134 ; circumstances which led to the disruption of the Ancient League, 135 et seq. ; influence of the alliance with, on law, manners, &c., H 482 INDEX. in Scotland, 161 et seq. ; Lockhart as ambassador in, 383 et seq. ; and Lord Stair, 396 et seq, ; Law and the Mis- sissippi scheme, 401 et seq. Francis I., demands of, in regard to the murder of La Bastie, 102; re- newed league with Scotland, 104. Frederick the Great, services of Mar- shal and Ambassador Keith under, 338 et seq. ; notices of, 431 ; Sir R. Mitchell as ambassador to, 432. French religious wars, cruelties on both sides during the, 187. Froissart, account of French adven- turers in Scotland from, 78 ; and of Vienne's expedition and its reception, 82, 83 et seq. Froude, Mr, on the case of Anne Boleyn, 281. Fyvie Castle, the builder of, &c., 201. GAFFAREL'S 'Unheard-of Curiosities,' 266. Galleys, Knox's life in the, 274. Garciones, the, at the Scottish univer- sities, 182. Garden or Game, Thomas, 348. Gebelin, Count, on J.he French Hog- manay, 208. Genevan Church, arrogant spirit and claims of the, 188. Gibbs, James, the architect, and his works, 474. Gibraltar, narrow escape of, from cap- ture in 172^, 335. Glasgow University, duties of the Cen- sor in, 173 ; recent claims by it to in- dependence of the ordinary tribunals, 179. Gohory, Gorry, or Gowrie, family of, in France, 56. Gordon, General Patrick, extracts from his autobiography and sketch of his career, 348 et seq. Gordon, Patrick, of the Steel-hand, 362. Gordon, Sir Robert, o_f Straloch, 269. Gorion, French physician to Mary of Scotland, 126. Gorry or Gowrie, family of, in France, 56. Grahame of Claverhouse, services of, in Holland, 320. Gray, Andre, 57. Gray, Sir Andrew, the Scottish adven- turers under, 320. Greek, the English pronunciation of, 161. Gregory, James, the discoverer of the reflecting telescope, 31 1. Greig, Admiral, sketch of his career in the service of Russia, 372 et seq. "Gudeman," a, in Scotland, 349. Guendeville's Atlas Historique, 165 note. Guisards or Maskers of Scotland, their probable French origin, 211. Guises, ambition of the, 114; their ob- jects and policy in pursuit of them, 116 et seq. I Le Balafre, ib, ; their policy after the death of Francis II., 117; their plans as regards Scotland, 132. Gustavus Adolphus, the Scottish troops in his service, 321 ; Scotch officers trained under, 326. HAGGIS, the, derived from France, 221. Haguignetes, Menage on the, 206. Hallidays, the, in France, 59. Hamilton, Gavin, the career and works of, 453. Hamilton, John, his charges against Knox, 190; sketch of his career, 191 et seq. Hamilton, Michael, an archer of the Guard, curious adventure of, 72. Hamilton, Sir W. t on the Regents of the universities, 175. Handsel -gathering, the custom of, in Scotland, &c., 206. Harding's Biographical Mirror, por- trait of Lockhart in, 394. Harlaw, the battle of, 45. Hegate, William, professor at Bor- deaux, 296. Helias the Scot, 232. Henderson or D'Handresson, family of, Henderson, Alexander, 287. Henry V., measures of, after the defeat of Bauge, 26. Henry VII., his alliance with Ferdi- nand of Spain, 92. Henry VIII., indignation of, at the elevation of La Bastie, 102 ; demands of, regarding Mary Queen of Scots, and war which followed, 106 ; con- temporary notices of, and Anne Boleyn's death, 281 et seq. Henry II., of France, an eyewitness's account of the tilt in which he was wounded, 130 note. Henry III., conduct of, on the execu- tion of Mary of Scotland, 123 et seq. ; murder of the Guises, 125 et seq. Henryson, Herisson, or D'Arson, family of, 58. Henryson, Edward, 301. Hepburn or Esbron, the Chevalier, 158. Hepburn, James Bonaventura, Mac- kenzie's account of, 265 ; his true his- tory, 266. Hepburn, Sir John, notices of, 321, 322, 325- Heriot's Hospital, the architecture of, 201. Highland bursaries, example of, 181 note. INDEX. 483 Highlanders, animosity between, and the Lowlanders, 91. Hogarth, peculiarities of, as an artist, 462. Hogeland, the naval battle of, -473. Hogmanay, origin of the name and usage, 203 et seq Holland, services of Scotsmen on both sides in, 319. Holybush, John, nationality of, 234. Hplyrood, the painter of the portraits in, 449. Homes, the, slaughter of De la Bastie by, 102. Hotch-Potch, derived from France, 221. Houston, Thomas de, 62. Huguenots, influence of the, on Scottish Presbyterianism, 185 ; their influence on the character of the Covenanters, 186; their intolerance and ferocity, 187. Humanity, the Professors of, in the Scottish universities, 183. Hume, David, or Theagrius, 289 note. Hume, David, correspondence of, with Ramsay the painter, 457 et seq. Humes, Marguerite de, &c., 56. IMMACULATE Conception, the, first maintained by Duns Scotus, 238. Inch of Perth, Highland combat on, 90. Inglis or d'Anglars, family of, 59. Innes, Father, his career, and ' Critical Essay on the early Inhabitants of Scotland,' 271. Inquisition, the, and George Buchanan, 244. Intolerance, universal, in France, 187. lona, settlement of Columba in, 228. Ireland, contrast between her fate and that of Scotland, 153 ; the first migra- tion into Scotland from, 228 ; the early missionaries, though called Scots, natives of, 232 et seq. ; the establishment of Christianity in, 233. Irvine, Sir Alexander, of Drum, 45, 46. Irving, Dr, sketch of Volusinus from, 293 et seq. ; his spelling of Scotish, 296 note. Ivan the Terrible, the Strelitzers or- ganised by, 368. JACK, Gilbert, 311. Jacobite refugees, the, and Jacobitism, 3 2 9- James III., patronage of art by, 437. James IV., intrigues of Ferdinand of Spain with, 92 ; his death at Flodden, 94 James V. , marriage of, to Madeleine of France, 104 : and to Mary of Guise, 105. James I., conduct of, as regards his mother's death, 151 et seq. Jamesone, George, the painter, his career and works, 442 et seq. Jesuits, the, early connection of Patrick Gordon with, 350. Joan of Arc, portrait of, supposed by a Scotchman, 441. Jocteleg, origin of the name, 223. John of Burgundy, murder of the Sieur de Montagu by, 18 ; and of the Duke of Orleans. 19 ; his own murder, 20. John de Vienne, the auxiliary force sent into Scotland under, their re- ception, treatment, &c., 81 et seq. Johnston, Arthur, sketch of the career of, 308 et seq. ; his Latin version of the Psalms, 309 ; epigram by, on Jamesone, 444. Johnston, John, 311. Johnston, Robert, ' History of Britain ' by, 251. Julius II., intrigues of, with Matthew Lang, 94. KEITH, the Earl Marischal, 331 ; sketch of his career. 331 et seq. ,' enters the service of Prussia, 338 et sea; his attainder reversed, 338 ; his after life, Keith, Field - Marshal, 331 ; extracts from his autobiography, and sketch of his career and character, 331 et seq. ; his death, 347. Keith. Sir R. Murray, 347; his conduct in the affair of Queen Caroline Mat- ilda, 423 et seq. ', sketch of his career, 427 et seq. ; extracts from his letters, 428. Keith, Robert, of Craig, the career of, 427 ; his account of the elevation of the Empress Catherine, ib. Keith, Mrs Murray, 428. Keiths, the family of, 331 ; connection of two, with Frederick the Great's attempt to escape from his father, 431. Kennedys, the, in France, 62. Kennet, anecdote regarding Cromwell's acquisition of Dunkirk from, 388. Kildrummy, castle of, seized by Stewart of Badenoch,.43 et seq. King's College, Aberdeen, modelled on the University of Paris, 166. Kinnimonds, the, in France, 56. Kirkaldy of Grange, notices of. 140. Kirkmichael or Carmichael, John, 61. Knox, John, errors of Dargaud regard- ing, 113 note; engaged in the nego- tiations for the English alliance, 141 et seq. ', his attacks on the Lords of the Congregation, 146; his intoler- ance in words, and moderation in act, 189 ; notices of his residence abroad, &c., 274 ; his ' History of his own Times,' 275; absence of portraits, &c., of, 278 note. INDEX. LABANOFF, Prince, his ' Letters of Mary Qxteen of Scots,' 108 note. La Bastie, the Chevalier, the slaughter of, in Scotland, 100 et seq, Laing or Langius, James, 254. Lamberton, archbishop of St Andrews under Wallace, 12. La Mothe Fenelon, M., 149 et seq. Lang, Mathew, bishop of Gorz, 94. Latin, the English pronunciation of, 161 ; regulations regarding, at the Scottish universities, 182 ; familiarity of the early Scots scholars with, and reason for their writing in it, 245. Lauder, William, the assailant of Mil- ton, 310. Lauration, the, at the Scottish univer- sities, 183. Law of Lauriston, his territorial desig- nation, 69 ; sketch of his career and " System," 400 et seq. Law, influence of the French alliance on it in Scotland, 161. Lawson or De Lauzun, family of, 58. League, the Ancient, between Scotland and France, circumstances which originated it, 2. Learning, early encouragement of, by the Church, 171. Leeth, Dr, 308. Leighton, bishop, 293. Lennox, Matthew, earl of, 51. Leslie, bishop of Ross, his history of Scotland, 251. Leslie, George, the Scottish Capuchin, 292. Leslie of Balquhain, connection of, with the death of Wallenstein, 326. Leslies or De Lisles, the, 58. Leslies, the, trained under Gustavus Adplphus, 326. _ Le Vincton or Swinton, Guillaume, 57. Liddell, Duncan, the career of, 304. Liege, the storming of, by Charles of Burgundy, 36 ; the battle of, Scots- men present at, 45. Lockhart or Locart, family of, 57. Lockhart, Sir William, sketch of the career of, 382, Logan, A. S. , 198 note. Louis XL, his confidence in the Scots Guard, and uses he made of them, 35; at the storming of Liege, ib. et seg. Louis XIV., claim made to, for restora- tion of the Scots Guard, 39; anec- dotes of Lord Stair and, 396. Louis XV., the costume of the Scots Guard at his coronation, 40. Louisiana, origin of the French colony of, 414. Lowe, Peter, 304. Lumisden, Miss (Lady Strange), ex- tracts from letters of, 470. Lyndsay, Sir David, his encounter with a Highlander, 42. MACCABEUS, John, sketch of, 287. Machiavelli, the political code of, in. Macintosh's mortification, conditions attached to, 181 note. Mackay, General, services of, in Hol- land, 320 ; the inventor of the fixed bayonet, ib. Mackenzie's eminent writers of the Scots Nation, account of, 262 et seq. Mackintosh, Sir James, on Duns Scotus, M'Ward, a refugee Covenanter, 290. Madeleine of France, marriage of James V. to, 104. Magrath or Moyra, the battle of, 229 et seq. Malcolm of Scotland, connection of, with the Anglo-Saxons, 4. Mair or Major, John, 239 ; his History, 240. Mar, the Earl of (Alexander Stewart of Badenoch), his career, &c., 42 et seq. Mar, the Earl of, connection of the Keiths with him and his rebellion, 331 ; patronage of James Gibbs by, Mar, the Countess of, married to Stewart of Badenoch, 44. Margaret, widow of James IV., the successive marriages of, 98. Marianus Scotus, 231 ; the chronicle of, 232 ; really an Irishman, 233. Marianus the elder, an Irishman, 234. Marienburg, the Scots at the capture of, 324. Martin, David, the Scottish painter, 460. Martin, James, professor at Rome, &c. , 296. Mary of Gueldres, foundation of Trinity College Church by, 437. Mary of Guise, marriage of James V. to, 105 ; her elevation to the Regency, and its effects, 133 et seq. ; her policy, 136. Mary Queen of Scots, birth of, 106 her influence on European history, 107; French writers on her, ib. and note ; sketch of her career, &c., in ; her pretensions to the English crown, 129 et seq.; her duplicity regarding the church, 146 ; the last scene and its attendant circumstances, 123 et seq. ; her testament, &c., 125. Mathurin de Neure on the Fete des Foux, &c., 216. Maurice, Prince, of Dessau, and Mar- shal Keith, 347. Maurigon or Morrison, an archer of the Guard, 57. INDEX. 485 Maxwells or Maxuels, the, 58. Mazarin, Cardinal, and Sir W. Lock- hart, 383 et seq. Melville, Andrew, educated abroad, 287. Melvin, Dr, of Aberdeen, and Buch- anan's psalms, 249 note ; his character as a scholar, 250 note. Memoirs of a Cavalier, the, 323. Menzies, Alexander, a Jesuit, 351. Mere folle, the festival of the, in France, 214. Michel's ' Les Ecossais en France,' &c., account of, 155 et seq. ; account of De la Bastie by, 100. Mississippi scheme, the, and its origin- ator, 401 et seq. Missouri, the Queen of, and her hus- band, 408. Mitchell, Sir Robert, ambassador to Frederick the Great, character, &c., of, 432 et seq. Mitchell, Colonel, notices of the Scots in the service of Gustavus from, 321, 323. Moderators in the Scotch Church, origin of, 185. Moliere, alleged Scottish descent of, 64. Monachism, early prevalence of, in Ireland, 234. Mpncrieff, Montcrif, or Moncriff, fam- ily of, 57. Monro, Robert, extracts from his work, 317 et seq. / notices of him, 321 et seq. ; his heroic defence of Schevelin, 322. Montagu, the Sieur de, his career and fate, 17. Montaigne, a pupil of George Buch- anan's, 243. Montecuculi, defeat of, by the Scots, 322. Monteith of Salmonet, origin of his title, 68 ; ' History of the Troubles of Great Britain' by, 251. Montgomery, the Count of, captain of the Scots Guard, 33. Monypenny or Menypeny, family of, 59* More, Jacob, the career and works of, 463- Moreri on the nationality of Duns Scotus, 235 ; space devoted to Scot- land in, 270. Moyra or Magrath, the battle of, 229 et seq. Munich, Marshal, storming of Azoff by, Municipalities, the, originated with the Roman Empire, 30 ; of Russia, their former power, 365. Murray, the Regent, educated under Peter Ramus, 287. Murray, Andrew, author of the ' Com- mentatio de Kinaeis,' 420. Murray, Thomas, a Scottish artist, Murray of Broughton, the family of, 69. " NATIONS" of the Scottish universities, the, 1 68 et seq. Nevay, John, 290. New Brandenburg, defence of, by the Scots, 322. New England, persecution of the Puri- tans in, 390 note. Nobility of France, their rise, privileges, &c., i jr. Nominalists and Realists, the, 237. Norman Conquest, the, its effects as re- gards Scotland, 4. Normans, the, their claims to supre- macy in Europe, &c., 31 ; in Scotland, 5 ; their oppressions in England, 6. Norsemen, extinction of the Scots Kingdom of Albania by the, 232 ; crushed by the battle of Harlaw, 45. North, Lord, anecdote of, 246 note. Northumberland and Nottingham, the Earls of, their raid into Scotland, 78. Novgorod, former power of, 365, 366. OCCAM, a pupil of Duns Scotus, 239. Oillencons, the, in France, 58. Oppenneim, storming of the castle of, by the Scots, 325. Orleans, the Duke of, his murder by John of Burgundy, 19. Orleans, the Regent, and Lord Stair, 396 et seq. Orleanists and Burgundians, the strug- gle between the, 20. Overture, origin of the term, 186. PANTHER, David, 297. Paris, social condition of, in the four- teenth century, 15. Parliament, the old Scottish, taken from the States-General of France, 164. Parr, Dr, his preface to Bellenden, 297. Paterspn, William, originator of the Darien Company, &c., sketch of his career, 415 et seq. Peasantry, the, their early state in France, 21 et seq. Pepys, anecdote of, 393. Perth, the Earl of, account of the origin of Bayle's Dictionary by, 269. Peter the Great, Patrick Gordon's first introduction to, and his services un- der, 368 et seq. Philip of France, his claim of feudal superiority over Edward I , 12. Philip II., position of Spain under, and scheme for the marriage of his son to Mary Queen of Scots, 117; Mary's 486 INDEX. bequest to, 125 et seq. ; his views with regard to England, 128. Pinkie House, the architecture of, 201. Pitcairn, Dr, 305. Pitscottie, account of the slaughter of De la Bastie by, 102. Pittilloch, Robert, 62. Poland, adventures of Patrick Gordon ' n > 354 > his services with the Swedes there, 358 ; Scottish merchants in, 421. Pont, Timothy, his maps of Scotland, 268. Person, anecdote of, in connection with Buchanan, 246 note. Portugal, residence of Buchanan in, 244. Posen, General Gordon's account of, Preston, family of, in France, 56. Proctors of the English universities, the, 169. Procurators of the " Nations," the, in the universities, 168, 169. Protestantism, effect of, on the univer- sities, 172. Puritans, the, their treatment of the Quakers, 390 note. QUAKERS, the, in the time of Cromwell, 390 ; their treatment by the Puritans in New England, ib. note. Quhele and Chattan, clans of, the duel between, on the Inch of Perth, 90. RABELAIS, reference to the French Hogmanay in, 205 ; on the nation- ality of Duns Scotus, 235 ; extract from, 257. Ramsay, Sir James, one of the Scots officers under Gustavus, 324, 325. Ramsay, Allan, the painter, his career, &c., 454 et sea. Ratisbon, the Monastery of St James at, an Irish establishment, 234. Rebellion of 1715, connection of the Keiths with, 335. Rectors of the Scottish universities, the, 167. Reformation, the, in Scotland, 144 ; its secular and political character, ib. et seq. Regents, the, in the Scottish univer- sities, 173. Reid, Robert, an ancestor of the meta- physician's, 257. Reid, Robert, President of the Court of Session, 300. 1 Respublicae ' of the Elzeviers, the, the part devoted to Scotland in, 270. " Riding of the Parliament, the," in Scotland, 165 note. Rinuccini's Life of George Leslie, and Lord Hailes's abridgment of it, 292. Rizzio, David, Knox on the murder of, 277, 278. Roman Empire, the medieval efforts to re-establish it, 29 ; its wide and per- manent influence, 30. Roman jurisprudence, its adoption by Scotland, and rejection by England, 162. RosSj Alexander, his ' View of all Re- ligions,' &c., 310 ; his ' Christiados,' ib. Rubens, supposed connection of Jame- sone with, 442. Russia, services of Marshal Keith un- der, 336 et seq. ; services of Patrick Gordon in, 363 et seq. ; and of Ad- miral Greig, 372 et seq. Rutherford, Samuel, and his works, 288 et seq. SACROBOSCO, Joannes de, nationality of, 234. Sadoleto, Cardinal, patronage of Vol- usinus by, 295 St Gall, nationality of, 234. St Kilian of Wurzburg, an Irishman, 234- St Margaret, parentage, &c., of, 4. Saxon Chronicle, the, account of the oppressions of the Normans from, 6. Scaligers, connection of Buchanan with the, 243. Scholastics, the, their merits, &c., 236 et seq. Scio, Greig's defeat of the Turks at, 372. Scot or Scotus, name of, at first applied to Irishmen, 227. Scot, Alexander, the Greek grammar of, 312. Scotists, the, among the Scholastics, Scotland, notices of the French in, their position, treatment, &c. , 74 ; first French ambassador to, 76 ; impover- ishing effect of the English wars on, 83 ; animosity between the Highland- ers and Lowlanders, 91 ; first rise of an English party in, 98 ; changed position of, as regards France in the sixteenth century, 131 ; treated as a dependency of France, 134 ; circum- stances which led to the disruption of the Ancient League, 135 et seq. ; the Reformation Act in, 144 et seq. ', con- trast between her fate and that of Ire- land, 153 ; effect of the struggle with England on the national character, 154 ; influence of the French league on manners, &c., 161 et seq. ; the first Irish migration into, 228 ; Bleau's maps of, 268 ; ultimate advantage of the Darien scheme to, 419 ; early ob- stacles to art in, 436. Scots, jealousy with which regarded in INDEX. 487 France, 71 ; the early so-called really Irishmen, 231 et seq. Scots Guard in France, origin, &c., of the, 33; their duties and privileges, 34 ; their conduct at the storming of Liege, 35 ; their fidelity, 37 ; gradual disappearance of Scotsmen from it, 38 ; claim for its restoration in 1642, 39 ; its nominal retention to the Re- volution, id. ; their costume under Louis XV., 40. Scotsmen, military services of, abroad, 315 et seq. Scott, Sir John, of Scotstarvet, 269, Scottish architecture, peculiarities of, 198. Scottish brigade in Holland, the, 319, 320. Scotus, Duns, 235 et seq. Scotus, John, or Erigena, really an Irishman, 234. Scrimgeour, Henry, 301. Seaton, Dr, Sir Thomas Urquhart's account of, 302 note. Sectarianism, prevalence of, in Scot- land, 197. Sedulius the Latin hymn writer, nation- ality of, 233, and note. Select Society, the, of Edinburgh, 457. Seminara, the battle of, 52. Servetus, Calvin's conduct toward, 188. Session, the Court of, borrowed from France, 166. Seton, Lord, embassy of, to France, 151. Seton, Earl of Dunfermline, 201. Seton, George Lord, adventure of, in Holland, 320. Simpson or Sinson, family of, 59. Skene, Sir John, 301. Smeton, Thomas, 287. Sobieski, John, offers made to Patrick Gordon by, 361. Sophia, the sister of Peter the Great, her struggle with him for power, 369 et seq. Spain, alliance between, and England under Henry VII., 92 ; supremacy of, and plans of the Guises regarding, 118 ; collapse of, after the defeat of the Armada, 127 ; adventures, &c., of Marshal Keith in, 333, 335. Spang, Robert, 287. Spottiswood, Archbishop, his residence abroad, 293. Stair, Lord, notices of, as ambassador to France, 396 et seq. ; his opposition to Law, 400, 402. States-General of France, analogy of the Scottish Parliament to the, 164. Statesmen, Scottish, and their services abroad, 379. Stephen, picture of England under, 7. Stewart, John, lord of Aubigne, the first captain of the Scots Guard, 33. Stewart, Alexander, the Wolf of Bade- noch, 41 ; the younger, his career, 43 et seq. Stewart, Alexander, Duke of Albany, 47. Stewart, Sir John, of Darnley, 51. Stewart, W., metrical version of Koece's History by, 242 note. Strange, Sir Robert, the career and works of, 463 et seq. Strelitzers, the, the suppression of their revolt by General Gordon, 368 et seq. Struensee, sketch of the career of, 422 et seq, Stud or Estud, family of, 58. Students of Paris, their ancient lawless- ness, 178. Stuyers, William, 59. Suffolk, Lord, letter from, regarding Queen Caroline Matilda, 425. Sully, connection with Scotland claimed by, 64. Sweden, the corporation of Scottish merchants in, 420. TANGUY DU CHATEL, murder of John of Burgundy by, 21. Territorial titles, uses made of, by emigrant Scotsmen, 68 ; rage for, in Scotland, 219. Teulet's ' Lettres de Marie Stuart,' 108 note ; ' Relations Politiques,' &c., account of, 155 et seq. Theagrius, real name of, 289 note. Thesis, the old system of, 257. Thomas Aquinas, the opponent of Duns Scotus, 237. Thomists, the, among the Scholastics, 2 37- Throckmorton, notices of, 143; account by, of the wound and death of Henry II., 130 note. Titles of honour, varieties and peculi- arities of, 67. Touraine, dukedom of, conferred on the Earl of Douglas, 28; ceremonial of his installation, 53. Trevoux Dictionary, the, on the Aguil- laneuf, 209, and note. Trinity College Church, the, 437; the altar-piece of, 439 et seq. Turenne, notices of, at the siege, &c., of Dunkirk, 385. Turnbuil, William, death of, 38. Turnbulls or Tournebulles, the, in France, 57. Turner, Sir James, his ' Memoirs of his Life and Times,' 317. Tyrie the Jesuit, works of, 292. UNIVERSITIES, the Scottish, resem- blances between, and the French, 166 ft seq. ,* the ancient, their independ- ence of the ordinary tribunals, 176 ; recent claims to it in Glasgow, 179. 488 INDEX. University, Sir W. Hamilton on the meaning of, 168. Urquhart, Sir Thomas, and his works, 255; his account of the Admirable Crichton, 258; and of his own library, 260; on the ecclesiastical differences of the Scots abroad, 273 ; account of Dr Seaton by, 302 note ; and of Dr Davidson, 308 ; his account of Alex- ander Anderson, 312 ; list of Scots officers who served in the German wars from, 327 ; account of Scotsmen in the service of Russia by, 348. VARNHAGEN VON ENSE, extracts from his Life of Keith, 341 et seq. Vaus, John, 311. Verneuil, the Scots auxiliaries at the battle of, 28. Vienne, the Admiral, the expedition into Scotland under, 81 et seq. Volusenus, sketch of the career of, 293. WALLACE, Sir William, the representa- tive of Scottish nationality, 7 et seq. ; his visits, &c., to France, u ; his dip- lomatic relations with that country, Walpole, notices of Jamesone from, Wauchop, Vaucop, or Vulcob, family of, 59. Welch, John, Knpx's son-in-law, his career, and specimens of his ' Popery Anatomised,' 194 et seq. Wellwood, William, a writer on inter- national law, 301. Whylowe or Whitlaw, a follower of Knox, 143. William III., his opposition to the Darien scheme, 417. Williamson, family of, in France, 58. Wilson, Florence, or Florentius Volu- sinus, sketch of, 293. Wine, early trade of Scotland with France in, 48. Winzeat or Wingate, Ninian, Knox's opponent, 191, 291. Wodrow, story of John Welch from, 197 note ; account of Father Innes by, 271. Wolf of Badenoch, the, his career, &c. , 41. Wrangel, Admiral Count, 373. YOUNG, Patrick, 293. LOAN DEPT. GENERAL LIBRARY - U.C. BERKELEY