A short history of Scotland by Andrew Lang. CHAPTER I. Scotland and the Romans. If we could see in a magic mirror the country now called Scotland, as it was when the Romans under Agricola, 81 A.D., crossed the border, we would recognize little but the familiar hills and mountains. The rivers in the plains overflowed their present banks. Dense forests of oak and pine, haunted by great red deer, elks, and boars, covered the land that has long been arable. There were lakes and lagoons where for centuries there had been fields of corn. On the oldest sites of our towns were groups of huts made of clay and wattle, and dominated perhaps by the large, stockaded house of the tribal prince. In the locks, natural islands or artificial islets made of piles, crannogs, afforded standing ground and protection to villages, if indeed these lake dwellings are earlier in Scotland than the age of war that followed the withdrawal of the Romans. The natives were far beyond the savage stage of culture. They lived in an age of iron tools and weapons and of wheeled vehicles, and were in what is called the late Celtic condition of art and culture, familiar to us from beautiful objects in bronze work, more commonly found in Ireland than in Scotland, and from the oldest Irish romances and poems. In these epics the manners much resemble those described by Homer. Like his heroes, the men in the cuckolan sagas fight from light chariots, drawn by two ponies, and we know that so fought the tribes in Scotland encountered by Agricola, the Roman general, 81 to 85 A.D. It is even said in the Irish epics that Cuckolan learned his chariotry in Alba, that is, in our Scotland. The warriors had mighty limbs and flaming hair, says Tacitus. Their weapons were heavy iron swords, in bronze sheaths beautifully decorated, and iron-headed spears. They had large round, bronze studded shields and battle-axes. The dress consisted of two upper garments. The smock of linen or other fabric, in battle, often of tanned hides of animals, and the mantle or plaid with its brooch. Golden torques and heavy gold bracelets were worn by the chiefs. The women had bronze ornaments with brightly colored enameled decoration. Agriculture was practised, and corn was ground in the circular corns of stone, of which the youth so long survived. The women span and wove the gay smocks and darker cloaks of the warriors. Of their religion we only know that it was a form of polytheism, that sacrifices were made and that druids existed. They were soothsayers, magicians, perhaps priests, and were attendant on kings. Such were the people in Alba whom we can dimly describe around Agarcolla's fortified frontier between the Firths of Forth and Clyde, about 81 to 82 A.D. When Agarcolla pushed north of the Forth and Tay he still met men who had considerable knowledge of the art of war. In his battle at Mons Grapeus, perhaps at the junction of Isla and Tay, his cavalry had the better of the native chariotry in the plain, and the native infantry, descending from their position on the heights, were attacked by his horsemen in their attempt to assail his rear. But they were swift afoot, the woods sheltered and the hills defended them. He made no more effectual pursuit than Cumberland did at Culloden. Agarcolla was recalled by Domitian after seven years' warfare, and his garrisons did not long hold their forts on his lines or frontier, which stretched across the country from Forth to Clyde, roughly speaking, from Gramsdyke, east of Barostonis, on the Firth of Forth, to old Kilpatrick on Clyde. The region is now full of coal mines, foundries, and villages, but excavations at Barheal, Castle Kerry, and Rough Castle disclose traces of Agarcolla's works with their earthen ramparts. The Roman station at Camelon, northwest of Falkirk, was connected with the southern passes of the Highland Hills by a road with a chain of forts. The remains of Roman pottery at Camelon are of the first century. Two generations after Agarcolla, about 140 to 145, the Roman governor, Lolius Urbicus, refortified the line of Forth to Clyde with a wall of sods and a ditch, and forts much larger than those constructed by Agarcolla. His line, the Antonine Vellum, had its works on commanding ridges, and fire signals, in case of attack by the natives, flashed the news from one sea to the other sea, while the troops of occupation could be provisioned from the Roman fleet. Judging by the coins found by the excavators, the line was abandoned about 190, and the forts were wrecked and dismantled, perhaps by the retreating Romans. After the retreat from the Antonine Vellum, about 190, we hear of the vigorous unrest of the Metay and Caledonians. The later people are said, on very poor authority, to have been little better than savages. Against them Severus, 208, made an expedition indefinitely far to the north, but the enemy shunned a general engagement, cut off small detachments, and caused the Romans terrible losses in this march to a non-existent Moscow. Not till 306 do we hear of the Picts, about whom there is infinite learning but little knowledge. They must have spoken Gaelic by Severus's time, 208, whatever their original language, and were long recognized in Galloway, where the hill and river names are Gaelic. The later years of the Romans, who abandoned Britain in 410, were perturbed by attacks of the Scoti, Scots, from Ireland, and it is to a settlement in Argyle of Daleriadik, Scots, from Ireland, about 500 A.D., that our country owes the name of Scotland. Rome has left traces of her presence on Scottish soil, vestiges of the forts and vallum walls between the Firths, a station rich in antiquities under the Eidans at Newstead, another Ardok, near Sheriffmure, a third near Solway Moss, Berenzark, and others less extensive, with some roads extending towards the Moray Firth, and a villa at Musselborough, found in the reign of James VI. CHAPTER II Christianity, the rival kingdoms To the Scots, through St. Colomba, who, about 563, settled in Ionia, and converted the Picts as far north as in Berness, we owe the introduction of Christianity, for though the Roman Church of St. Ninian, at Withern in Galloway, left embers of the faith not extinct near Glasgow, St. Ketidurn's country, till Colomba's time, the rites of Christian Scotland were partly of the Celtic Irish type, even after St. Wilford's victory at the Synod of Whitby. St. Colomba himself was of the royal line in Ulster, was learned, as learning was then reckoned, and if he had previously been turbulent he now desired to spread the gospel. With twelve companions he settled in Ionia, established the Cloister of Cells, and journeyed to Inverness, the capital of Pictland. Here his miracles overcame the magic of the king's druids, and his majesty, Brood, came into the fold, his people following him. St. Colomba was no less of a diplomatist than of an evangelist. In a crystal he saw revealed the name of the rightful king of the dollry at Scots and Argyle, namely Aden, and in 575, at Jumset in North Ireland, he procured the recognition of Aden, and brought the king of the Picts also to confess Aden's independent royalty. In the life of Colomba, by Adamnon, we get a clear and complete view of everyday existence in the Highlands during that age. We are among the Red Deer and the Salmon and the Cattle in the Hills, among the second-sided men too, of whom Colomba was far the foremost. We see the Saints' inkpot upset by a clumsy but enthusiastic convert. We even make acquaintance with the old white pony of the monastery, who mourned when St. Colomba was dying, while among secular men we observe the differences in rank, measured by degrees of wealth and cattle. Many centuries elapsed before, in Frossart we find a picture of Scotland so distinct as that painted by Adamnon. The discipline of St. Colomba was of the monastic model. There were settlements of clerics in fortified villages, the clerics were a kind of monks, with more regard for abbots than for their many bishops, and with peculiar taunters, and a peculiar way of reckoning the date of Easter. Each missionary was popularly called a saint, and the kill, or sell, of many a Celtic missionary survives in hundreds of place-names. The saltwater Locleven in Argyle was on the west the south frontier of Pictland, which on the east included all the country north of the Firth of Forth. From Locleven south to Kintire, a large candle, including the Isles, was the land of the Scots from Ireland, the Dahlriatic Kingdom. The south-west, from Dumbarton, including our modern Cumberland in Westmoreland, was named Strathclyde, and was peopled by British folk, speaking in ancient form of Welsh. On the east, from Ettrick Forest into Lothian, the land was part of the early English kingdom of Bernicea. Here the invading angles were already settled, though river names here remain Gaelic, and hill names are often either Gaelic or Welsh. The great northern Pictland was divided into seven provinces, or sub-kingdoms, while there was an Overking, or Ardrig, with his capital at Inverness, and later in Angus, or Forfarsure. The country about Edinburgh was partly English, partly Cymric, or Welsh. The south-west corner, Galloway, was called Pictish, and was peopled by Gaelic-speaking tribes. In the course of time and events the dynasty of the Argyle Scoti from Ireland gave its name to Scotland, while the English element gave its language to the Lowlands. It was adopted by the Celtic kings of the whole country and became dominant, while the Celtic speech withdrew into the hills of the north and northwest. The nation was thus evolved out of alien and hostile elements, Irish, Pictish, Gaelic, Cymric, English, and on the northern and western shores Scandinavian. CHAPTER III. EARLY WARS OF RACES. In a work of this scope it is impossible to describe all the wars between the Petty Kingdoms peopled by races of various languages which occupied Scotland. In 603, in the wild wars at Degg sustain, between the Little Burn and the passes of the Upper Tyne, the English Ethelfrith of Dairia, with an army of the stillpagan ancestors of the borderers, utterly defeated Aden, king of Argyle, with the Christian converted Scots. Henceforth, for more than a century, the English between Forth and Humber feared neither scot of the west nor picked of the north. On the death of Ethelfrith, 617, the Christian west and north exercised their influences. One of Ethelfrith's exiled sons married a Pictish princess, and became father of a Pictish king. Another, Oswald, was baptized at Ionia, and the new king of the northern English of Lothian, Edwin, was converted by Polynes, 627, and held Edinburgh as his capital. Later, after an age of war and ruin, Oswald, the convert of Ionia, restored Christianity in northern England, and after his fall his brother, Oswu, consolidated the northern English. In 685, Oswu's son Edphrith crossed the Forth and invaded Pictland with the Northumbrian army, but was routed with great loss, and was slain at Necton's Mere in Forfershire. Since Forth till 761, the Picts were dominant, as against Scots and north English, Angus MacFergus being then their leader, 731 to 761. Now the invaders and settlers from Scandinavia, the Northmen on the west coast, ravaged the Christian Scots of the west and burned Ionia. Finally, in 844 to 860, Kenneth McAlpine of Kintyre, a scot of Dalriata on the paternal, a Pict on the mother's side, defeated the Picts and obtained their throne. By Pictish's law the crown descended in the maternal line, which probably facilitated the coronation of Kenneth. To the Scots, and to all Europe, he was a scot. To the Picts, as a son of a royal Pictish mother, he was a Pict. With him at all events Scots and Picts were interfused, and there began the Scottish dynasty, supplanting the Pictish, though it is only in popular tales that the Picts were exterminated. According to pressure from the Northmen's sea-rovers in the west, the capital and the seat of their chief bishop, under Kenneth McAlpine 844 to 860, were moved eastwards from Ionia to Scone, near Perth, and after an interval at Dunkeld, to St. Andrews in Fife. The line of Kenneth McAlpine, though disturbed by quarrels over the secession, and by Northmen in the west, north and east, nonetheless in some way held a good grip or the gear against Vikings, English of Lothian, and Welsh of Strathclyde. In consequence of marriage with the Welsh Princess of Strathclyde, or Cumberland, a Scottish prince, Donald, brother of Constantine II, became King of that realm, 908, and his branch of the family of McAlpine held Cumbria for a century. English Claims Over Scotland In 924 the first claim by an English king, Edward, to the overlordship of Scotland, appears in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. The entry contains a manifest error, and the topic causes war between modern historians, English and Scottish. In fact, there are several such entries of Scottish acceptance of English scissor and tea under Constantine II, and later, but they all end in the statement, this held not long. The submission of Malcolm I to Edmund is not a submission but an alliance. The old English word for fellow worker or ally designates Malcolm as fellow worker with Edward of England. This word, midwerta, was translated Fidelis, one who gives fealty in the Latin of English chroniclers two centuries later, but Malcolm I held Cumberland as an ally, not as a subject prince of England. In 1092 an English chronicle represents Malcolm III as holding Cumberland by conquest. The main fact is that out of these and similar dim transactions arose the claims of Edward I to the overlordship of Scotland, claims that were urged by Queen Elizabeth's minister, Cecil, in 1568, and were boldly denied by Maitland of Lethington. From these misty pretensions came the centuries of war that made the hearty character of the folk of Scotland. The Scottish Acquisition of Lothian. We cannot pretend within our scope to follow chronologically the fightings and flockings of kites and crows, in a wolf age, a war age, when the Northmen from all Scandinavian lands, and the Danes, who had acquired much of Ireland, were flying at the throat of England and hanging on the flanks of Scotland, while the Britons of Strathclyde struck in and the Scottish kings again and again raided or sought to occupy the fertile region of Lothian between Forth and Tweed. If the dynasty of Macalpin could win rich Lothian with its English-speaking folk, they were made men, they held the granary of the North. By degrees and by methods not clearly defined, they did win the castle of the maidens, the Acropolis of Dunedin, Edinburgh, and fifty years later, in some way, apparently by the sword, at the battle of Chorum, 1018, in which a Scottish king of Cumberland fought by his side, Malcolm II took possession of Lothian, the whole southeast region, by this time entirely anglified, and this was the greatest step in the making of Scotland. The Celtic dynasty now held the most fertile district between Forth and Tweed, a district already English in blood and speech, the centre and focus of the English civilization accepted by the Celtic kings. Under this Malcolm, II, his grandson Duncan became ruler of Strathclyde, that is, practically of Cumberland. Malcolm is said to have been murdered at Haunted Glamis in Farfershire in 1034, the room where he died is pointed out by legend in the ancient castle. Its rightful heir, by the strange system of the Scots, should have been, not his own grandson, Duncan, but the grandson of Kenneth III. The rule was that the crown went alternately to a descendant of the house of Constantine, 863 to 877, son of Kenneth Macalpine, and to a descendant of Constantine's brother, oud, 877 to 888. These alterations went on till the crowning of Malcolm II, 105 to 1034, and then ceased, for Malcolm II had slain the unnamed male heir of the house of oud, a son of Boda, in order to open the secession to his own grandson, the gracious Duncan. Boda had left a daughter, Grotch. She had, by the Marmar, or under-king of the province of Murray, a son, Lulac. On the death of Marmar she married Macbeth, and when Macbeth slew Duncan, 1040, he was removing a usurper as he understood it, and he ruled in the name of his stepson, Lulac. The power of Duncan had been weakened by repeated defeats at the hands of the Northmen under Thorfin. In 1057 Macbeth was slain in battle at Lumpahnon, in Aberdeenshire, and Malcolm Canmore, son of Duncan, after returning from England, whither he had fled from Macbeth, succeeded to the throne. But he and his descendants for long were opposed by the house of Murray, descendants of Lulac, who himself had died in 1058. The world will always believe Shakespeare's version of these events, and suppose the gracious Duncan to have been a venerable old man, and Macbeth an ambitious thane, with a bloodthirsty wife, he himself being urged on by the predictions of witches. He was, in fact, more and more of Murray, and upheld the claims of his stepson, Lulac, who was the son of a daughter of the wrongfully extruded house of Oud. Malcolm Canmore, Duncan's grandson, on the other hand, represented the European custom of direct lineal secession against the ancient Scots mode. CHAPTER IV of a short history of Scotland by Andrew Lang read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. CHAPTER IV. Malcolm Canmore, Norman Conquest. The reign of Malcolm Canmore, 1057 to 1093, brought Scotland into closer connection with Western Europe and Western Christianity. The Norman Conquest, 1066, increased the tendency of the English-speaking people of Lothian to acquiesce in the rule of a Celtic king, rather than in that of the adventurers who followed William of Normandy. Norman operations did not at first reach Cumberland, which Malcolm held, and on the death of his Norse wife, the widow of Duncan's foe, Thorfin, she left a son, Duncan. Malcolm allied himself with the English royal house by marrying Margaret, sister of Edgar Ethling, then engaged in the hopeless effort to rescue Northern England from the Normans. The dates are confused. Malcolm may have won the beautiful sister of Edgar, rightful King of England, in 1068, or at the time, 1070, of his raid, said to have been of savage ferocity into Northumberland, and is yet more cruel reprisals for Gospatric's harrying of Cumberland. In either case, St. Margaret's biographer, who had lived at her court, whether or not he was her confessor, Tergott, represents the saintess of doing the savagery of Malcolm, who passed wakeful nights in weeping for his sins. A lover of books, which Malcolm could not read, an expert in the delicate and gracious and bright works of women, Margaret brought her own gentleness and courtesy among a rude people, built the Abbey Church of Dunfermline, and presented the churches with many beautiful golden reliquaries and fine sacramental plate. In 1072, to avenge a raid of Malcolm, 1070, the conqueror, with an army and a fleet, came to Abernethy on Tay, where Malcolm, in exchange for English manners, became his man, for them, and handed over his son, Duncan, as a hostage for peace. The English view is that Malcolm became William's man for all that he had, whore for all south of Tay. After various ratings of Northern England, and after the death of the conqueror, Malcolm renewed in Lothian, the Treaty of Abernethy, being secured in his twelve English manners, 1091. William Rufus then took an fortified carlile, seized part of Malcolm's lands in Cumberland, and summoned him to Gloucester, where the two kings, after all, quarreled and did not meet. No sooner had Malcolm returned home than he led an army into Northumberland, where he was defeated and slain, near Alnwick, November 13, 1093. His son Edward fell with him, and his wife, St. Margaret, died in Edinburgh Castle. Her body, under cloud of night, was carried through the host of rebel Celts and buried at Dunfermline. Margaret, a beautiful and saintly English woman, had been the ruling spirit of the reign in domestic and ecclesiastical affairs. She had civilized the court, in matters of costume, at least. She had read books to the devoted Malcolm, who could not read, and he had been her interpreter in her discussions with the Celtic-speaking clergy, whose ideas of ritual differed from her own. The famous culties, originally ascetic hermits, had before this day united in groups living under canonical rules, and, according to English observers, had ceased to be bachelors. Masses are said to have been celebrated by them in some barbarous light. Saturday was Sabbath. On Sunday men worked. Lent began, not on Ash Wednesday, but on the Monday following. We have no clearer account of the culty peculiarities that St. Margaret reformed. The hereditary tenure of benefices by lay protectors she did not reform, but she restored the ruined cells of Ionia, and established hospitia for pilgrims. She was decidedly unpopular with her Celtic subjects, who now made a struggle against English influences. In the year of her death died Photata, the last Celtic bishop of St. Andrews, and the Celtic clergy were gradually superseded and replaced by monks of English name, English speech, and English ideas, or rather the ideas of Western Europe. Scotland, under Margaret's influence, became more Catholic. The celibacy of the clergy was more strictly enforced. It had almost lapsed, but it will be observed throughout that, of all Western Europe, Scotland was leased overawed by Rome. Yet for centuries the Scottish Church was, in a peculiar degree, the daughter of Rome, for not till about fourteen seventy had she a Metropolitan, the Archbishop of St. Andrews. On the deaths in one year of Malcolm, Margaret, and Photata, the last Celtic bishop of St. Andrews, the sea for many years was vacant or merely filled by transient bishops. York and Canterbury were at feud for their superiority over the Scottish Church, and the other seas were not constituted and provided with bishops till the years 1115, Glasgow, 1150, and Argyll not having a bishop till 1200. In the absence of a Metropolitan, Episcopal elections had to be confirmed at Rome, which would grant no Metropolitan, but forbade the Archbishop of York to claim a superiority which would have implied, or prepared the way for, English superiority over Scotland. Meanwhile the expenses and delays of appeals from bishops direct to Rome did not stimulate the affection of the Scottish daughter of Rome. The rites of the chapters of the cathedrals to elect their bishops, and other appointments to ecclesiastical offices, in course of time were transferred to the Pope, who negotiated with the King, and thus all manner of jobery increased, the nobles influencing the King in favour of their own needy younger sons, and the Pope being amenable to various secular persuasions, so that in every way the relations of Scotland with the Holy Father were anomalous and irksome. Scotland was indeed a country predestined to much ill fortune, to tribulations against which human foresight could erect no defence. But the marriage of the Celtic Malcolm with the English Margaret, and the friendly arrival of great nobles from the south, enabled Scotland to receive the new ideas of feudal law in Pacific fashion. They were not violently forced upon the English-speaking people of Lothian. Dynasty of Malcolm On the death of Malcolm the contest for the crown lay between his brother, Donald Ban, supported by the Celts, his son Duncan by his first wife, a Norse woman, Duncan being then a hostage at the English court, who was backed by William Rufus, and thirdly Malcolm's eldest son by Margaret, Edmund, the favourite with the anglicised south of the country. Donald Ban, after a brief period of power, was driven out by Duncan, 1094. Duncan was then slain by the Celts in 1094. Donald was next restored, north of fourth, Edmund ruling in the south, but was dispossessed and blinded by Malcolm's son Edgar, who reigned for ten years, 1097 to 1107, while Edmund died in an English cloister. Edgar had trouble enough on all sides, but the process of anglicising continued, under himself, and later, under his brother, Alexander I, who ruled north of fourth and Clyde, while the youngest brother, David, held Lothian and Cumberland with the title of Earl. The sister of those sons of Malcolm, Edgith, Matilda, married Henry I of England in 1100. There seemed a chance that, north of Clyde and fourth, there would be a Celtic kingdom, while Lothian and Cumbria would be merged in England. Alexander was mainly engaged in fighting the more acclaimants of his crown in the north and in planting his religious houses, notably St Andrews, with English-Augustinian cannons from York. Canterbury and York contended for ecclesiastical superiority over Scotland. After various adventures, Robert, the prior of the Augustinians at Scone, was made bishop of St Andrews, being consecrated by Canterbury in 1124, while York consecrated David's bishop in Glasgow. Thanks to the quarrels of the seas of York and Canterbury, the Scottish clergy managed to secure their ecclesiastical independence from either English sea, and became, finally, the most useful combatants in the long struggle for the independence of the nation. Rome on the whole backed that cause. The Scottish Catholic Churchmen, in fact, pursued the old patriotic policy of resistance to England till the years just preceding the Reformation, when the people leaned to the reformed doctrines, and when Scottish national freedom was endangered more by France than by England. CHAPTER V. PART I. David and His Times. With the death of Alexander I, April 25, 1124, and the accession of his brother, David I, the deliberate royal policy of introducing into Scotland English law and English institutions as modified by the Norman rulers was fulfilled. David, before Alexander's death, was Earl of the most English part of Lothian, the country held by Scottish kings, and Cumbria, and resided much at the court of his brethren-law, Henry I. He associated when Earl, with nobles of Anglo-Norman race and language, such as Moorville, Umfraville, Somerville, Goss Patrick, Bruce, Valleol, and others, men with a stake in both countries, England and Scotland. On coming to the throne, David endowed these men with charters of lands in Scotland. With him came a cadet of the great Anglo-Bretain house of Fitzalyn, who obtained the hereditary office of Seneshaw or Steward of Scotland. His patronomic, Fitzalyn, merged in Steward, later Steward, and the family cognizance, the fest Chequie in Azure and Argent, represents the Board of Exchequer. The earliest Steward holdings of land were mainly in Renfresher. Those of the Bruces were in Annandale. These two Anglo-Norman houses between them were to found the Steward dynasty. The wife of David, Matilda, widow of Simon de Saint-Liz, was heiress of Walthoff, sometime the conqueror's Earl in Northumberland, and to gain through that connection Northumberland Forum's health, was the chief aim of David's foreign policy, and aim fertile in condensions. We have not space to disentangle the intricacies of David's first great domestic struggles. Briefly, there was eternal dis-peace caused by the Celts, headed by claimants to the throne, the Macchethes, representing the rites of Lulac, the Ward of Macbeth. In 1130 the Celts were defeated, and their leader, Angus, Earl of Moray, fell in fight near the North Esk in Farfersher. His brother Malcolm, by aid of David's Anglo-Norman friends, was taken and imprisoned in Roxburgh Castle. The result of this rising was that David declared the great and ancient Celtic earldom of Moray, the home of his dynastic Celtic rivals forfeit to the Crown. He planted the region with English, Anglo-Norman, and lowland landholders, a great step in the anglicization of his kingdom. Thereafter for several centuries, the strength of the Celts lay in the West in Moidart, Cnoydart, Morar, Mamor, Lacobur, and Kintire, and in the western islands which fell into the hands of the Sons of Summerlid, the McDonald's. In 1135 to 1136, on the death of Henry I, David, backing his own niece, Matilda, as Queen of England in opposition to Stephen, crossed the border in arms but was bought off. His son Henry received the honour of hunting them, with the castle of Carlyle, and a vague promise of consideration of his claim to Northumberland. In 1138, after a disturbed interval, David led the whole force of his realm, from Orkney to Galloway, into Yorkshire. His Anglo-Norman friends, the Baleals and Bruce's, with the Archbishop of York, now opposed him and his son Prince Henry. On August 22, 1138, at Cowton Moor, near North Allerton, was fought the great battle, named from the huge English sacred banner, the Battle of the Standard. In a military sense, the fact that here the men-at-arms and knights of England fought as dismounted infantry, their horses being held apart in reserve, is notable as pre-looting to the similar English tactics in their French wars of the 14th and 15th centuries. Thus arrayed, the English received the impetuous charge of the wild Galloway men, not an armour, who claimed the right to form the van, and broke through the first line only to die beneath the spears of the second. Prince David, with his heavy cavalry, scattered the force opposed to him, and stampeded the horses of the English that were held in reserve. This should have been fatal to the English, but Henry, like Rupert at Marston Moor, pursued too far, and the discipline of the Scots was broken by the cry that their king had fallen, and they fled. David fought his way to Carlyle in a series of rearguard actions, and at Carlyle was joined by Prince Henry with the remnant of his men-at-arms. It was no decisive victory for England. In the following year, 1139, David got what he wanted. His son Henry, by peaceful arrangement, received the earldom of Northumberland, without the two strong places, Bamboro and New Castle. Through the anarchic weakness of Stephen's reign, Scotland advanced in strength and civilisation despite a Celtic rising headed by a strange pretender to the rights of the Maccathes, a brother-wimmed, but all went with the death of David's son Prince Henry in 1152. Of the prince's three sons, the eldest, Malcolm, was but ten years old. Next came his brothers William, the lion, and little David, Earl of Huntingdon. From this David's daughters descended the chief claimants to the Scottish throne in 1292, namely Baleol, Bruce, and Coman. The last also was descended in the female line, from King Donald Ban, the son of Malcolm Canmore. David had done all that a man might do to settle the crown on his grandson Malcolm. His success meant that the standing curse of Scotland wove to the kingdom whose king is a child, when, in a year, David died at Carlyle, May 22, 1153. Scotland Becomes Feudal The result of the domestic policy of David was to bring all accessible territory under the social and political system of Western Europe, the feudal system. Its principles had been perfectly familiar to Celtic Scotland, but had rested on a body of traditional customs, as in Homeric Greece, rather than on written laws and charters signed and sealed. Among the Celts the local tribe had been, theoretically, the sole source of property and land. In proportion as they were near of kin to the recognized tribal chief, families held lands by a tenure of three nations. But if they managed to acquire abundance of oxen, which they let out to poorer men for rents in kind and labor, they were apt to turn the lands which they held only temporarily, in possession, into real permanent property. The poorer tribesmen paid rent and labor or services, also in supplies of food and manure. The Celtic tenants also paid military service to their superiors. The remotest kinsmen of each lord of land, poor as they might be, were valued for their swords and were billeted on the unfreer servile tenants who gave them free quarters. In the feudal system of Western Europe these old traditional customs had long been modified and stereotyped by written charters. The king gave gifts of land to his kinsmen or officers, who were bound to be faithful, fidelis, in return for the inferior did homage while he received protection. From grade to grade of rank and wealth each inferior did homage to and received protection from his superior, who was also his judge. In this process what had been the Celtic tribe became the new thanage. The Celtic king, rig of the tribe became the thane. The province or group of tribes, say, moray, became the earldom. The Celtic mormare of the province became the earl, and the crown appointed vice-comites, sub-earls, that is, sheriffs, who administered the king's justice in the earldom. But there were regions, notably the West Highlands and Isles, where the new system penetrated slowly and with difficulty through a mountainous and almost townless land. The law and written leases came slowly up that way. Under David, where his rule extended, society was divided broadly into three classes, nobles, free, and unfree. All holders of a knight's fee, or part of one, holding by free service, hereditarily and by charter, constituted the communitas of the realm. We are to hear of the communitas later, and were free, noble, or gentle, men of coat armor. The ignoble, not noble, men with no charter from the crown, earl, or thane, or church, were, if lease-holders, though not noble, still free. Beneath them were the unfree, native, sold or given with the soil. The old Celtic land-holders were not expropriated as a rule, but where Celtic risings in Galloway and Moray were put down, and the lands were left in the king's hands. Often when we find territorial surnames of families, D, of, this place or that, the lords are really of Celtic blood with Celtic names disguised under territorial titles, and finally disused. But in Galloway and Ayrshire the ruling Celtic name, Kennedy, remains Celtic, while the true highlands of the west and northwest retain their native magnets. Thus the Anglicisation, except in very rebellious regions, was gradual. There was much less expropriation of the Celt than disguising of the Celt under new family names and regulation of the Celt under written charters and leases. CHIRCHLANDS David I was, according to James VI, nearly five centuries later, a Tsar saint for the crown. He gave crown lands in the southern lowlands to the religious orders with their priories and abbeys, for example, Holy Road, Melrose, Jedborough, Kelso, and Dryborough, centres of learning and art and of skilled agriculture. Probably the best service of the regular clergy to the state was its orderliness and attention to agriculture, for the monasteries did not, as in England, produce many careful chroniclers and historians. Each abbey had its lands divided into baronies, captained by a lay church baron to lead its levies in war. The civil centre of the barony was the Great Farm or Grange, with its mill, for in the thirteenth century the lowlands had water-mills, which to the west highlands were scarcely known in 745, when the highland husbandmen were still using the primitive hand-corrent of two circular stones. Near the mill was a hamlet of some forty cottages. Each head of a family had a holding of eight or nine acres and pastridge for two cows, and paid a small money-rent in many arduous services to the abbey. The tenure of these cattars was, and under lay landlords long remained, extremely precarious, but the tenure of the bonnet-lard, house-burnas, was hereditary. Below even the free cattars were the unfree serfs or nativi, who were handed over, with the lands they tilled, to the abbeys by benefactors. The church was forward in emancipating these serfs, nor were lay landlords backward, for the freedmen was useful as a spearman in war. We have only to look at the many now-ruined abbeys of the border to see the extent of civilisation under David I, and the relatively peaceful condition, then, of that region which later became the cockpit of the English wars, and the home of the raiding clans, Lottes, Eliot's, and Armstrong's, Bell's, Nixon's, Robson's, and Crozier's. The Burras David and his son and successor, William the Lion, introduced a stable middle and urban class by fostering, confirming, and regulating the rights, privileges, and duties of the already existing free towns. These became burras, royal, seniorial, or ecclesiastical. In origin the towns may have been settlements that grew up under the shelter of a military castle. Their fares, markets, rights of trading, internal organisation and primitive police were now, mainly under William the Lion, David's successor, regulated by charters. The burgers obtained the right to elect their own magistrates and held their own borough courts. All was done after the English model. As the State had its good men, Proby Homenes, who formed its recognised community, so had the borough. Not by any means all dwellers in a borough were free burgers. These free burgers had to do service in guarding the royal castle. Later this was commuted for a payment in money. Though with power to elect their own chief magistrate, the burgers commonly took as provost the head of some friendly local noble family, in which the office was apt to become practically hereditary. The noble was the leader and protector of the town. As to police, the burgers, each in his turn, provided men to keep watch and ward, from curfew-bell to cock-crow. Each ward in the town had its own elected bailey. Each borough had exclusive rights of trading in its area, and of taking toll on merchants coming within its octroy. An association of four boroughs, Burrick, Roxborough, Eddenborough and Sterling, was the root of the existing convention of boroughs. Justice. In early societies, justice is, in many respects, an affair to be settled between the kindreds of the plaintiff, so to speak, and the defendant. A man is wounded, killed, robbed, wronged in any way. His kin retaliate on the offender and his kindred. The blood feud, the taking of blood for blood, endured for centuries in Scotland after the peace of the whole realm became, under David I, the king's peace. Homicides, for example, were very frequently pardoned by royal grace, but the pardon was of no avail unless it had been issued with the full knowledge of the kin of the slaughtered man, who otherwise retained their legal right of vengeance on the homicide. They might accept pecuniary compensation, the blood fine, or they might not, as in Homer's time. At all events under David, offenses became offenses against the king, not merely against this or that kindred. David introduced the judgment of the country, or visnet del payee, for the settlement of pleas. Every free man, in his degree, was tried by his peers, but the old ordeal by fire and trial by combat or duel were not abolished. Nor did compurgation cease wholly till Queen Mary's reign. A powerful man, when accused, was then attended at his trial by a host of armed backers. Men so unlike each other as nofs, Bothwell and Lexington took advantage of this usage. All lords had their own courts, but murder, rape, arson, and robbery could now only be tried in the royal courts. These were the four pleas of the crown. The Courts As there was no fixed capital, the king's court in David's time followed the king in his annual circuits through his realm, between Dumfries and Inverness. Later the regions of Scotia, north of Forth, Lothian, and the lawless realm of Galloway, had their grand justiciaries, who held the four pleas. The other pleas were heard in courts of royalty and by earls, bishops, abbots, down to the baron, with his right of pit and gallows. At such courts, by a law of eleven eighty, the sheriff of the shire, or an agent of his, ought to be present, so that royal and central justice was extending itself over the minor local courts. But if the sheriff or his sergeant did not attend when summoned, local justice took its course. The process initiated by David's son, William the Lion, was very slowly substituting the royal authority, the royal sheriffs of shires, juries, and witnesses, for the wild justice of revenge, and trial by ordeal, and trial by combat. But hereditary jurisdictions of nobles and gentry were not wholly abolished till after the Battle of Culloden. Where abbots held courts, their procedure in civil cases was based on laws sanctioned by popes and general councils. But alas! the abbot might give just judgment. To execute it, we know from a curious instance, was not within his power, if the offender laughed at a sentence of excommunication. David and his successors till the end of the thirteenth century made Scotland a more civilised, and kept it a much less disturbed country than it was to remain during the long war of independence, while the beautiful abbeys with their churches and schools attested a high state of art and education. CHAPTER VI The prominent facts of the brief reign of David's son Malcolm the Maiden, crowned, 1153, at the age of 11, were first a Celtic rising by Donald, a son of Malcolm MacHeath, now a prisoner in Roxburgh Castle, and a nephew of the famous summer-led McGillibride of Argyle. Summer-led won from the Norse Isle of Man and the Southern Hebrides. From his sons descend the great MacDonald Lords of the Isles, always the leaders of the long Celtic resistance to the central authority in Scotland. Again, Malcolm resigned to Henry II of England to the northern counties held by David I, and died after subduing Galloway, and on the death of Summer-led, said to have been assassinated, the tribes of the Isles in 1165. WILLIAM THE LION Ambition to recover the northern English counties revealed itself in the overtures of William the Lion, Malcolm's brother and successor, for an alliance between Scotland and France. The old alliance now dawned, with rich promise of good and evil. In hopes of French aid, William invaded Northumberland, later laid siege to Carlisle, and on July 13th, 1174, was surprised in a morning mist and captured at Onnick. Scotland was now kingless, Galloway rebelled, and William, taken a captive to Filets in Normandy, surrendered absolutely the independence of his country, which for fifteen years really was a fife of England. When William was allowed to go home it was to fight the Celts of Galloway, and subdue the pretensions in Moray of the McWilliams, descendants of William, son of Duncan, son of Malcolm Canmore. During William's reign, 1188, Pope Clement III decided that the Scottish Church was subject, not to York or Canterbury but to Rome. Seven years earlier, defending his own candidate for the Sea of St. Andrews against the Chosen of the Pope, William had been excommunicated, and his country and he had unconcernedly taken the issue of an interdict. The Pope was too far away, and William feared him no more than Robert Bruce was to do. By 1188 William refused to pay to Henry II a Saladin tithe for a crusade, and in 1189 he bought, from Richard I, who needed money for a crusade, the abrogation of the Treaty of Filets. He was still disturbed by Celts and Galloway in the North. He still hankered after Northumberland, but after preparations for war he paid a fine and drifted into friendship with King John, who entertained his little daughters royally, and knighted his son Alexander. William died on December 4, 1214. He was buried at the Abbey of Abroth, founded by him in honor of St. Thomas of Canterbury, who had worked a strange posthumous miracle in Scotland. William was succeeded by his son Alexander II, 1214 to 1249. After this prince, who successfully put down the usual northern risings, the old suit about the claims to Northumberland was finally abandoned, for a trifling compensation, 1237. Alexander had married Joanna, daughter of King John, and his brother-in-law Henry III did not press his demand for homage for Scotland. The usual Celtic pretenders to the throne were forever crushed. Argyle became a sheriffdom, Galloway was brought into order, and Alexander, who died in the Isle of Carrera in the Bay of Obann, 1249, well deserved his title of a king of peace. He was buried in Melrose Abbey. In his reign the clergy were allowed to hold provincial or synodal councils without the presence of a papal legate, 1225, and the Dominicans and Francescans appeared in Scotland. Alexander III The term king of peace was also applied to Alexander III, son of the second wife of Alexander II, Marie de Coussi. Alexander came to the throne, 1249, at the age of eight. As a child he was taken and held, like James II, James III, James V, and James VI, by contending factions of the nobles, Henry of England intervening. In 1251 he wedded another child, Margaret, daughter of Henry III of England, but Henry neither forced to claim to hold Scotland during the boy's minority, his right if Scotland were his five, nor in other respects pressed his advantage. In February 1261 to 1262 a girl was born to Alexander at Windsor. She was Margaret, later wife of Eric of Norway. Her daughter, on the death of Alexander III, March 19th, 1286, was the sole direct descendant in the male line. After the birth of this heiress Alexander I from Norway, the isles of the western coast of Scotland, in which Norse chieftains had long held sway. They complained to Hackon of Norway concerning the raids made by them on the Earl of Ross, a Celtic potentate. Alexander's envoys to Hackon were detained, and in 1263 Hackon, with a great fleet, sailed through the islands. A storm blew most of his armada to shore near Largs, where his men were defeated by the Scots. Hackon collected his ships, sailed north, and, December 15th, died at Kirkwall. Alexander now brought the island princes, including the Lord of Man, into subjection, and by treaty in 1266 placed them under the crown. In 1275 Benamon de Vici, called Bagamont, at a council in Perth, compelled the clergy to pay a tithe for a crusade, the pope insisting that the money should be assessed on the true value of benefits, that is, on Bagamont's role, thenceforth recognized as the basis of clerical taxation. In 1278 Edward I labored to extract from Alexander an acknowledgment that he was England's vassal. Edward signally failed, but a palpably false account of Alexander's homage was fabricated, and dated September 29th, 1278. This was not the only forgery by which England was want to back her claims. A series of bereavements, 1281 to 1283, deprived Alexander of all his children, save his little grandchild, the maid of Norway. She was recognized by a great national assembly at Skåne as Eris of the Throne, and Alexander had no issue by his second wife, a daughter of the Comte de Drew. On the night of March 19th, 1285, while Alexander was riding from Edinburgh to visit his bride at Kinghorn, his horse slipped over a cliff and the rider was slain. CHAPTER VII The estates of Scotland met at Skåne April 11th, 1286, and swore loyally to their child-queen, the maid of Norway, granddaughter of Alexander III. Six guardians of the kingdom were appointed on April 11th, 1286. They were the bishops of St Andrews in Glasgow, two Comans, Buchen and Betanock, the Earl of Fife, and Lord James, the steward of Scotland. No Bruce or Balliol was among the custodians. Instantly a band or covenant was made by the Bruce's, Earls of Annandale and Carrick, to support their claims, failing the maid to the throne, and there were acts of war on their part against another probable candidate, John Balliol. Edward, like Henry VIII, in the case of Mary Stuart, moved for the marriage of the infant queen to his son. A treaty safeguarding all Scottish liberties as against England was made by clerical influences at Burgum, July 18th, 1290, but by October 7th news of the death of the young queen reached Scotland, she had perished during her voyage from Norway. But war now broke out between the Bruce's and Balliol's, and the party of Balliol appealed to Edward through Frazier, Bishop of St. Andrews, asking the English king to prevent civil war, and recommending Balliol as a person to be carefully treated. Next, the Seven Earls, alleging some dim elective right, recommended Bruce, and appealed to Edward as their legal superior. Edward came to Norm on Tweed in May 1291, proclaimed himself Lord of Paramount, and was accepted as such by the twelve candidates for the crown, June 3. The great nobles thus, to serve their ambitions, betrayed their country. The communitas, whatever that term may here mean, made a futile protest. As lord among his vassals, Edward heard the pleadings and evidence in autumn 1292, and out of the descendants in the female line, of David Earl of Huntington, youngest son of David I, he finally, on June 17, 1292, preferred John Balliol, great-grandson of the Earl through his eldest daughter, to Bruce the Old, grandfather of the famous Robert Bruce, and grandson of Earl David's second daughter. The decision, according to our ideas, was just no modern court could set it aside. But Balliol was an unpopular weakling, an empty tabard, the people said, and Edward at once subjected him, king as he was, to all the humiliations of a petty vassal. He was summoned into his lord's court on the score of the bills of tradesmen. If Edward's deliberate policy was to goad Balliol into resistance, and then conquer Scotland absolutely, in the first of these aims he succeeded. In 1294 Balliol was summoned, with his peers, to attend Edward in Gascony. Balliol, by advice of a council, 1295, sought a French alliance and a French marriage for his son, named Edward. He gave the annondale lands of his enemy Robert Bruce, father of the king-to-be, to Coman, Earl of Buchen. He besieged Carlisle, while Edward took Baruch, massacred the people, and captured Sir William Douglas, father of the good Lord James. In the war which followed, Edward broke down resistance by a sanguinary victory at Dunbar, captured John Coman of Badanock, the Red Coman, received from Balliol, July 7th, 1296, the surrender of his royal claims, and took the oaths of the steward of Scotland and the Bruce's, father and son. He carried to Westminster the Black Road of St. Margaret, and the famous Stone of Scone, a relic of the early Irish dynasty of the Scots. As far north as Elgin he rode, receiving the oaths of all persons of note and influence, except William Wallace. His name does not appear in the list of submissions, called the Ragman's Role. Between April and October 1296 the country was subjugated. The castles were garrisoned by Englishmen. But by January 1297, Edward's Governor, Warren, Earl of Surrey, and Ormsby, his Chief Justice, found the country in an uproar, and at Midsummer 1297 the levees of the Northern Counties of England were ordered to put down the disorders. The Year of Wallace In May the Commune of Scotland, whatever the term may hear mean, had chosen Wallace as their leader. Probably this younger son of Sir Malcolm Wallace of Eldersley, in Renforshire, had already been distinguished for his successes in skirmishes against the English, as well as for strength and courage. The popular account of his early adventures, given in the poem by Blind Harry, 1490, is of no historical value. His men destroyed the English at Lanark, May 1297. He was abetted by Bishop, Bishop of Glasgow, and the Steward, but by July 7th Percy and Clifford, leading the English Army, admitted the Steward, Robert Bruce, the future king, and wishered to the English peace at Irvine in Ayrshire. But the North was up under Sir Andrew Murray, and that thief Wallace, to quote in English contemporary, left the Siege of Dundee Castle which he was conducting to face Warren on the North Bank of the Fourth. On September 11th the English under Warren maneuvered vaguely at Stirling Bridge, and were caught on the flank by Wallace's Army before they could deploy on the northern side of the river. They were cut to pieces, cresting him of slain, and Warren galloped to Burrick, while the Scots harried Northumberland with great ferocity, which Wallace seems to have been willing but not often able to control. By the end of March 1298 he appears with Andrew Murray as Guardian of the Kingdom for the Exiled Ballet-yall. This attitude must have aroused the jealousy of the nobles, and especially of Robert Bruce, who aimed at securing the Crown, and too after several changes of side, by June 1298, was busy in Edward's service in Galloway. Edward then crossed the border with a great army of perhaps forty thousand men, met the spearmen of Wallace and their seared phalanxes at Falkirk, broke the shiltrum or clump of spears by the arrows of his archers, slaughtered the archers of Ettrick Forest, scattered the mounted nobles, and avenged the route of Stirling, July 22nd, 1298. The country remained unsubdued, but its leaders were at odds among themselves, and Wallace had retired to France, probably to ask for aid. He may also conceivably have visited Rome. The Bishop of St Andrews, Lamberton, with Bruce and the Red Coman, deadly rivals, were Guardians of the Kingdom in 1299. But in June 1300 Edward, undeterred by remonstrances from the Pope, entered Scotland, an armistice, however, was accorded to the Holy Father, and the war, in which the Scots scored a victory at Roslyn in February 1293, dragged on from summer to summer till July 1304. In these years Bruce alternately served Edward and conspired against him. The intricacies of his profidity are deplorable. Bruce served Edward during the Siege of Stirling, then the central key of the country. On its surrender Edward admitted all men to his peace on condition of oaths of fealty, except Mr. William LeWallis. Men of the noblest Scottish name stooped to pursue the hero. He was taken near Glasgow, and handed over to Sir John Menteeth, a steward, and a son of the Earl of Monteeth. As Sheriff of Dunbartonshire, Menteeth had no choice but to send the hero in bonds to England. But if Menteeth desired to escape the disgrace with which tradition brands his name, he ought to have refused the English blood prize for the capture of Wallace. He made no such refusal. As an outlaw, Wallace was hanged at London. His limbs, like those of the great Montrose, were impaled on the gates of various towns. What we really know about the chief popular hero of his country, from documents and chronicles, is fragmentary, and it is hard to find anything trustworthy in blind Harry's rhyming Wallace, 1490, plagiarized as it is from Barber's earlier poem, 1370 on Bruce. But Wallace was truly brave, disinterested, and indomitable. Alone among the leaders he never turned his coat, never swore and broke oaths to Edward. He rises from obscurity, like Jeanne d'Arc, and like her, he is greatly victorious. Like her, he awakens a whole people. Like her, he is deserted, and is unlawfully put to death. While his limbs, like her ashes, are scattered by the English. The Ravens had not picked his bones bare before the Scots were up again for freedom. The position towards France of Edward I made it really more desirable for him that Scotland should be independent and friendly, than half subdued and hostile to his rule. While she was hostile, England, in attacking France, always left an enemy in her rear. But Edward supposed that by clemency to all Scottish leaders except Wallace, by giving them great appointments and trusting them fully, and by calling them to his Parliament in London, he could combine England and Scotland in affectionate union. He repaired the ruins of war in Scotland, he began to study her laws and customs, he hastily ran up for her a new constitution, and appointed his nephew, John of Brittany, his Governor. But he had overlooked two facts. The Scottish clergy, from the highest to the lowest, were irreconcilably opposed to union with England, and the greatest and most warlike of the Scottish nobles, if not patriotic, were fickle and insatiably ambitious. It is hard to reckon how often Robert Bruce had turned his coat, and how often the Bishop of St. Andrews had taken the oath to Edward. Both men were in Edward's favour in June 1304, but in that month they made against him a treasonable secret covenant. Through 1305 Bruce prospered in Edward's service. On February 10, 1306 Edward was conferring on him a new favour, little guessing that Bruce, after some negotiation with his old rival, the Red Coman, had slain him, an uncle of his was also butchered, before the High Altar of the Church of the Franciscans in Dumfries. Finally Bruce had tried to enlist Coman in his conspiracy, and had found him recalcitrant, or fear that he would be treacherous. February 10, 1306. The sacrilegious homicide made it impossible for Bruce again to waver. He could not hope for pardon. He must be victorious or share the fate of Wallace. He summoned his adherents, including young James Douglas, received the support of the Bishops of St. Andrews and Glasgow, hurried to scone, and there was hastily crowned with a slight cornet in the presence of but two earls and three bishops. Edward made vast war-like preparations and foreswore leniency, while Bruce, under papalate's communication, which he slighted, collected a few nobles, such as Lenox, Athol, Errol, and a brother of the Chief of the Frasiers. Other chiefs, kinsmen of the slain Coman, among them MacDowell of Argyle, banded to avenge the victim. Bruce's little force was defeated at Methvinwood, near Perth, by Amor de Valence, and prisoners of all ranks were hanged as traitors, while two bishops were placed in irons. Bruce took to the heather, pursued by the MacDowells no less than by the English. His queen was captured, his brother Nigel was executed. He cut his way to the Wild West Coast, aided only by Sir Nile Candle of Lacquah, who thus founded the fortune of his house, and by the McDonalds under Angus Og of Islay. He wintered in the Isle of Rathlin, some think he even went to Norway, and in spring, after surprising the English garrison in his own castle of Turnbury, he roamed, now lonely, now with a mobile little force in Galloway, always evading and sometimes defeating his English pursuers. At Locktruel and at London Hill, drum-clog, he dealt them heavy blows, while on June 7th, 1307, his great enemy Edward died at Borough on Sands, leaving the crown and the war to the weakling Edward II. We cannot follow Bruce through his campaign in the North, where he ruined the country of the Comans, 1308, and through the victories in Galloway of his hard-fighting brother Edward. With enemies on every side, Bruce took them in detail. Early in March 1309, he routed the MacDowells at the West End of the Pass of Brander. Edward II was involved in disputes with his own barons, and Bruce was recognized by his country's church in 1310, and aided by his great lieutenants, Sir James Douglas and Thomas Randolph, Earl of Murray. By August 1311, Bruce was carrying the war into England, sacking Durham and Chester, failing at Carlyle, but in January 1313 capturing Perth. In summer Edward Bruce, in the spirit of chivalry, gave to Sterling Castle, Randolph had taken Edinburgh Castle, a set day, Midsummer Day 1314, to be relieved or to surrender, when Bruce kept his trist with Edward II and his English and Irish levies, and all his adventurous chivalry from France, Hanalt, Britannia, Gascony, and Aquitaine. All the world knows the story of the First Battle, the Scottish Quattrobras, the success of Randolph on the right, the slaying of Bohun when Bruce broke his battle axe. Next day Bruce's position was strong, beneath the towers of Sterling the Bannockburn protected his front, morasses only to be crossed by narrow paths, impeded the English advance. Edward Bruce commanded the right wing, Randolph the centre, Douglas and the steward the left, Bruce the reserve, the Islesman. His strength flayed in his spearman's dark, impenetrable wood. His archers were ill-trained, of course he had but a handful near Keith, the marshal. But the heavy English cavalry could not break the squares of spears. Keith cut up the archers of England, the main body could not deploy, and the slow relentless advance of the whole Scottish line covered the plain with the dying and the flying. A panic arose, caused by the sight of an approaching cloud of camp-followers on the Gillies Hill. Edward fled, and hundreds of noble prisoners, with all the wagons and supplies of England, fell into the hands of the Scots. In eight strenuous years the general ship of Bruce and his war-leaders, the resolution of the people, hardened by the cruelties of Edward, the sermons of the clergy, and the utter incompetence of Edward II, had redeemed desperate chance. From a fife of England Scotland had become an indomitable nation. Later Days of Bruce Bruce continued to prosper, despite an ill-advised attempt to win Ireland, in which Edward Bruce fell, 1318. This left the secession, if Bruce had no male issue, to the children of his daughter, Marjorie, and her husband, the Steward. In 1318 Scotland recovered barric. In 1319 routed the English at Mitten on Swell. In a Parliament at Aberbrothock, April 6, 1320, the Scots announced to the Pope, who had been interfering, that while a hundred of them survived they will never yield to England. In October 1322 Bruce utterly routed the English at Byland Abbey, in the heart of Yorkshire, and chased Edward II into York. In March 1324 a son was born to Bruce, named David. On May 4, 1328, by the Treaty of Northampton, the independence of Scotland was recognized. In July the infant David married Joanna, daughter of Edward II. On June 7, 1329, Bruce died and was buried at Dumfrenling. His heart, by his order, was carried by Douglas towards the Holy Land, and when Douglas fell in a battle with the Moors in Spain, the heart was brought back by Sir Simon Lockhart of the Lee. The later career of Bruce, after he had been excommunicated, is that of the foremost knight and most sagacious man of action who ever wore the crown of Scotland. The staunchness with which the clergy and estates disregarded papal fulminations, indeed under William the Lion they had treated and interdict as waste paper, indicated a kind of Protestant tendency to independence of the Holy See. Bruce's inclusion of representatives of the boroughs in the first regular Scottish Parliament, at Cambuskeneth in 1326, was a great step forward in the constitutional existence of the country. The King in Scotland was expected to live of his own, but in 1326 the expenses of the war with England compelled Bruce to seek permission for taxation. CHAPTER IX The heroic generation of Scotland was passing off the stage. The King was a child. The forfeiture, by Bruce, of the lands of hostile or treacherous lords, and his bestowal of the estates on his partisans, had made the disinherited nobles the enemies of Scotland, and had fed too full the House of Douglas. As the star of Scotland was thus clouded, she had no strong man for a king during the next ninety years, the son of England rose red and glorious under a warrior like Edward III. The Scottish nobles in many cases ceased to be true to their proud boast that they would never submit to England. A very brief summary of the wretched reign of David II must tear suffice. First the son of John Balliol, Edward, went to the English court, and thither thronged the disinherited and forfeited lords, arranging a raid to recover their lands. Edward III, of course, connived at their preparations. After Randolph's death, July 20, 1332, when Mar, a sister's son of Bruce, was regent, the disinherited lords under Balliol invaded Scotland, and Mar, with young Randolph, mentee, and a bastard of Bruce, Robert of Carrick, leading a very great host, fell under the shafts of the English archers of Umfraville, Wake, the English Earl of Athol, Talbot, Ferris, and Zush, at Duplin, on the urn, August 12, 1332. Rolled up by arrows loosed on the flanks of their charging columns they fell, and their dead bodies lay in heaps as tall as a lance. On September 24, Edward Balliol was crowned king at Scone. Later Andrew Murray, perhaps the son of the Murray who had been Wallace's companion in arms, was taken, and Balliol acknowledged Edward III as his leech lord at Roxborough. In December the second son of Randolph, with Archibald the new regent, brother of the great black Douglas, drove Balliol, flying in his shirt, from Annen across the border. He returned, and was opposed, by this Archibald Douglas, called Tenemann, the unlucky, and on July 19, 1333, Tenemann suffered, at Halledon Hill, near Barrick, a defeat as terrible as flodden. Barrick, too, was lost practically forever. Tenemann fell, and Sir William Douglas, the knight of Lysdale, was prisoner. These Scots defeats were always due to rash frontal attacks on strong positions, the assailants passing between lines of English bowmen who loosed into their flanks. The boy king David was carried to France, 1334, for safety, while Balliol delivered to Edward, Barrick, and the chief southern counties, including that of Edinburgh with their castles. There followed internal wars between Balliol's partisans, while the Patriots were led by young Randolph, by the young steward, by Sir Arthur Murray, and the wavering and cruel Douglas, called the knight of Lysdale, now returned from captivity. In the desperate state of things, with Balliol and Edward ravaging Scotland at will, none showed more resolution than Bruce's sister, who held killed Drummy Castle, and Randolph's daughter, Black Agnes, who commanded that of Dunbar. By vast gifts Balliol won over John, Lord of the Isles. The Celts turned to the English party. Edward III harried the province of More, but in 1337 he began to undo his successes by formally claiming the Crown of France. France and Scotland together could always throw off the English yoke. Thus diverted from Scotland, Edward lost strength there while he warred with Scotland's ally. In 1341 the Douglas, knight of Lysdale, recovered Edinburgh Castle by a romantic surprise. But David returned home in 1331, a boy of eighteen, full of the foibles of chivalry, rash, sensual, extravagant, who at once gave deadly offence to the knight of Lysdale by preferring to him, as Sheriff of Tibbetdale, the brave Sir Alexander Ramsey, who had driven the English from the siege of Dunbar Castle. Douglas threw Ramsey into Hermitage Castle in Lysdale, and starved him to death. In 1343 the knight began to intrigue traiterously with Edward III. After a truce, David led his whole force into England, where his rash chivalry caused his utter defeat at Neville's Cross, near Durham, October 17, 1346. He was taken, as was the Bishop of St. Andrews. His ransom became the central question between England and Scotland. In 1353 Douglas, knight of Lysdale, was slain at William's Hope on Yarrow by his godson William, Lord Douglas. The fact is commemorated in a fragment of perhaps our oldest narrative border ballad. French men at arms now helped the Scots to recover barric, merely to lose it again in 1356. In 1357 David was set free. His ransom, 100,000 marks, was to be paid by installment. The country was heavily taxed, but the full sum was never paid. Meanwhile, the steward had been regent, between him the air of the crown falling issue to David, and the king jealousies arose. David was suspected of betraying the kingdom to England. In October 1363 he and the Earl of Douglas visited London and made a treaty adopting a son of Edward as king on David's demise, and on his ransom being remitted, but in March 1364 his estates rejected their proposal, to which Douglas had assented. Till 1369 all was poverty and internal disunion, the feud, to be so often renewed, of the Douglas and the steward, raged. David was made contemptible by a second marriage with Margaret Logy, but the war with France drove Edward III to accept a fourteen years truce with Scotland. On February 22, 1371 David died in Edinburgh Castle, being succeeded without opposition by the steward, Robert II, son of Walter, and of Marjorie, daughter of Robert Bruce. This Robert II, somewhat outworn by many years of honourable war in his country's cause, and the father of a family, by Elizabeth Muir over Wallin, which could hardly be rendered legitimate by any number of papal dispensations, was the first of the Royal Stewart line. In him a cadet branch of the English Fitz-Allens, themselves of a very ancient Breton stock, blossomed into royalty. Parliament and the Crown With the coming of a dynasty which endured for three centuries we must sketch the relations in Scotland of Crown and Parliament till the days of the Covenant and the Revolution of 1688. Scotland had but little of the constitutional evolution so conspicuous in the history of England. The reason is that, while the English kings, with their fives and wars in France, had constantly to be asking their parliaments for money, and while Parliament first exacted the redress of grievances, in Scotland the king was expected to live of his own, on the revenue of Crown lands, rents, feudal aides, and fines exacted in the courts of law, and duties on merchandise. No tenths or fifteenths were extracted from clergy and people. There could be no constitutional resistance when the Crown made no unconstitutional demands. In Scotland the germ of Parliament is the king's court of vassals of the Crown. To the assemblies, now held in one place, now in another, would usually come the vassals of the district, with such officers of state as the Chancellor, the Chamberlain, the Stewart, the Constable or Commander-in-Chief, the Justicier, and the Marshal, and such bishops, abbots, priors, earls, barons, and tenants-in-chief as chose to attend. At these meetings public business was done, charters were granted, and statutes were passed. Ascent was made to such feudal aides as money for the king's ransom in the case of William the Lion. In 1295 the seals of six royal boroughs are appended to the record of a negotiation. In 1326 Burgesses, as we saw, were consulted by Bruce on questions of finance. The misfortunes and extravagances of David II had to be paid for, when Parliament interfered with the royal prerogative in coinage and currency, directed the administration of justice, dictated terms of peace with England, called to account even hereditary officers of the Crown, such as the Stewart, Constable, and Marshal, controlled the king's expenditure, or tried to do so, and denounced the execution of royal warrants against the statutes in common form of law. They summarily rejected David's attempt to alter the succession of the Crown. At the same time, as attendance of multitudes during protracted parliaments was irksome and expensive, arose the habit of entrusting business to a mere committee of articles. Later, the lords of the articles selected in various ways from the three estates, spiritual, noble, and commons. These committees saved the members of Parliament from the trouble and expense of attendance, but obviously tended to become an abuse, being selected and packed to carry out the designs of the Crown, or of the party of nobles in power. All members of whatever estate sat together in the same chamber. There were no elected knights of the Shires, no representative system. The reign of David II saw two Scottish authors, or three, whose works are extant. Barbara wrote the chivalrous rhymed epic Chronicle, the Bruce, Wintoon, an unpoetic rhymed Cronchill, and Huchien of the All-Real produced works of more genius, if all that he is credited with be his own. CHAPTER X. EARLY STEWART KINGS, ROBERT II. CHAPTER X. EARLY STEWART KINGS, ROBERT II. In 1384 great English and Scottish raids were made, and gentlemen of France, who came over for sport, were scurvelly entertained, and 1385 saw more plundering than honest fighting under James, Earl of Douglas, who merely showed them an army that, under Richard II, burned Mel Rose Abbey and fired Edinburgh, Perth, and Dundee. Edinburgh was a town of four hundred houses. Richard insisted that not more than a third of his huge force should be English borderers, who had no idea of hitting their Scottish neighbours, fathers-in-law and brothers-in-law too hard. The one famous fight, that of Otterburn, August 15, 1388, was a great and joyous passage of arms by moonlight. The Douglas fell, the Percy was led captive away, the survivors gained advancement in renown and the hearty applause of the chivalrous chronicler, Royce Sart. The oldest ballads extant on this affair were current in 1550, and show traces of the reading of first Sart in the English chroniclers. In 1390 died Robert II. Only his youth was glorious. The reign of his son, Robert III, crowned, August 14, 1390, was that of a weakling who let power fall into the hands of his brother, the Duke of Albany, or his son David, Duke of Rothsy, who held the reigns after the parliament, a parliament that bitterly blamed the government, of January 1399. With these two princes the title of Duke first appears in Scotland. The follies of young David alienated all. He broke his betrothal to the daughter of the Earl of March. March retired to England, becoming the man of Henry IV, and though Rothsy wedded the daughter of the Earl of Douglas, he was arrested by Albany and Douglas and was starved to death, or died of dysentery, in Falkland Castle, 1402. The Highlanders had been in anarchy throughout the reign. Their blood was let in the great clan-dual of 30 against 30 on the inch of Perth in 1396. Probably clan's Cameron and Chattin were the combatants. On Rothsy's death Albany was governor, while Douglas was taken prisoner in the great border defeat of Homeildon Hill, not far from Flodden. But then, 1403, came the alliance of Douglas with Percy, Percy's quarrel with Henry IV and their defeat, and Hotspur's death, Douglas's capture at Shrewsbury. Between Shakespeare and Henry IV and Scott in the fair made of Perth, the most notable events in the reign of Robert III are immortalized. The king's last misfortune was the capture by the English at sea, on the way to France, of his son James in February, to March, 1406. On April 4, 1406, Robert went to his rest, one of the most unhappy of the faded princes of his line. The Regency of Albany. The Regency of Albany, uncle of the captured James, lasted fourteen years, ending with his death in 1420. He occasionally negotiated for his king's release, but more successfully for that of his son Murdoch. That James suspected Albany's ambition, and was irritated by his conduct, appears in his letters, written in Scots, to Albany and to Douglas, released in 1408, and now free in Scotland. The letters are of 1416. The most important points to note during James's English captivity are the lawlessness and oppression which prevailed in Scotland, and the beginning of the lawlord heresies, nascent Protestantism, nascent socialism, even free love. The parliament of 1399, which had invaded against the laxity of government under Robert II, also demanded the extirpation of heresies, in accordance with the coronation oath. One resvie, a heretical English priest, was arraigned and burned at Perth in 1407 under Lawrence of Lindors, the Dominican inquisitor into heresies, who himself was active in promoting Scotland's oldest university, St. Andrews. The foundation was by Henry Wardlaw, Bishop of St. Andrews, by virtue of a bull from the Antipope, Benedict XIII, of February, 1414. Lawlord ideas were not suppressed. The chronicler, Bower, speaks of their existence in 1445. They sprang from the envy of the wealth and indignation against the corruptions of the clergy, and the embers of lawlordism and Kyle were not cold when, under James V, the flame of the Reformation was rekindled. The Celtic North, never quiet, made its last united effort in 1811, when Donald, Lord of the Isles, who was in touch with the English government, claimed the earldom of Ross, in right of his wife, as against the Earl of Buchan, a son of Albany, mustered all the wild clans of the West and the Isles at Ard Tornish Castle on the sound of Mole, marched through Ross to Dingwall, defeated the great northern clan of McKay, and was hurrying to Sack Aberdeen when he was met by Alexander Stewart, Earl of Mar, the gentry of the northern lowlands, mounted knights, and the burgesses of the towns, some eighteen miles from Aberdeen at Harlaw. There was a pitched battle with great slaughter, but the Celts had no cavalry, and the end was that Donald withdrew to his fastnesses. The event is commemorated by an old literary ballad, and in Elfspeth's ballad in Scott's novel, The Antiquary. In the year of Albany's death, at a great age, 1420, in compliance with the prayer of Charles VII of France, the Earl of Buchan, Archibald, Douglas's eldest son, and Sir John Stewart of Dernaly, led a force of some 7,000 to 10,000 men to war for France. Henry V then compelled the captive James I to join him, and at 1421, at Beaujet Bridge, the Scots, with the famed Lahir, routed the army of Henry's brother, the Duke of Clarence, who, with two thousand of the English, fell in action. The victory was fruitless. At Cravant, 1423, the Scots were defeated. At Vernue, 1424, they were almost exterminated. Nonetheless, the remnant with fresh slavies continued to war for their old ally, and under Sir Hugh Kennedy and others suffered at Ruffrae, February 1429, and were with the victorious French at Orléans, May 1429, under the leadership of Jean Dark. The combination of Scots and French at the last push always saved the independence of both kingdoms. The character of Albany, who under his father Robert III, and during the captivity of James I, ruled Scotland so long, is enigmatic. He is well spoken of by the contemporary Wintoon, author of A Chronicle in Rhine, and in the Latin of Wintoon's continuator, Bower. He kept on friendly terms with the Douglas's, he was popular insofar as he was adverse to imposing taxation, and perhaps the anarchy and oppression which preceded the return of James I to Scotland were not due to the weakness of Albany, but to that of his son and successor Murdoch, and to the iniquities of Murdoch's sons. The death of Henry V, 1422, and the ambition of Cardinal Beaufort, determined to wed his niece Jane Beaufort to a crowned king, may have been among the motives which led the English government, their own king Henry VI, being a child, to set free the royal captive, 1424. CHAPTER X. James I. On March 28, 1424, James IV was released, on a ransom of forty thousand pounds, and after his marriage with Jane Beaufort, granddaughter of John of Gaunt, son of Edward III. The story of their wooing, of course in the allegorical manner of the age, and with poetical conventions in place of actual details, is told in James's poem, The King's Choir, a beautiful composition in the school of Chaucer, of which literary skepticism has vainly tried to rob the royal author. James was the ableist and not the most scrupulous of the words. His captivity had given him an English education, a belief in order, and in English parliamentary methods, and a fiery determination to put down the oppression of the nobles. If God gives me but a dog's life, he said, I will make the key keep the castle, and the bracken bush keep the cow. Before his first parliament, in May 1424, James arrested Murdoch's eldest son, Sir Walter Fleming of Cumbernauld, and the younger boyd of Kilmarnock. The parliament left a committee of the estates, the lords of the Articles, to carry out the royal policy. Taxes for the payment of James's ransom were imposed, to impose them was easy, a passive resistance was easier, the money was never paid, and James's noble hostages languished in England. He next arrested the old Earl of Lenox and Sir Robert Graham of the Kinkardine family, later his murderer. These were the causes of unpopularity. During a new parliament, 1425, James imprisoned the new Duke of Albany, Murdoch, and his son Alexander, and seized their castles. The Albany's and Lenox were executed. Their estates were forfeited, but resentment dogged a king who was too fierce and too hurried a reformer, perhaps too cruel and avenger of his own wrongs. Our knowledge of the events of his reign is vague, but a king of Scotland could never, with safety, treat any of his nobles as criminals. The whole order was concerned to prevent or avenge severity of justice. At a parliament in Inverness, 1427, he seized the greatest of the Highland magnets whom he had summoned. They were hanged or imprisoned, and after resistance, Alastair, the new Lord of the Isles, did penance at Holyroad, before being a mirrored in Tantalon Castle. His cousin, Donald Balak, defeated Marr at Inverlochie, where Montrose later routed Argel, 1431. Not long afterwards, Donald fled to Ireland, whence ahead, said to be his, was sent to James, but Donald lived to fight another day. Without a standing army to garrison the inaccessible Highlands, the Crown could neither preserve peace in those regions nor promote justice. The system of violent and perfidious punishments merely threw the Celts into the arms of England. Execution itself was less terrible to the nobles than the forfeiting of their lands and the disinheriting of their families. Nonetheless, James, 1425 to 1427, seized the lands of the late Earl of Lenox, made Malice Graham surrender the earldom of Strathorn in exchange for the barren title of Earl of Menteeth, and sent the sufferer as a hostage into England. The Earl of March, son of the Earl who, under Robert III, had gone over to the English cause, was imprisoned and stripped of his ancient domains on the eastern border, and James, disinheriting Lord Eschkeen, annexed the earldom of Marr to the Crown. In a Parliament at Perth, March, 1428, James permitted the minor barons and freeholders to abstain from these costly assemblies on the condition of sending two wise men to represent each sheriffdom. A speaker was to be elected, and the shires were to pay the expenses of the wise men. But the measure was unpopular, and in practice lapsed. Excellent laws were passed, but were not enforced. In July to November, 1428, a marriage was arranged between Margaret, the infant daughter of James, and the son, later Louis XI, of the still uncrowned Dauphin, Charles VIII of France. Charles announced to his subjects early in 1429 that an army of 6,000 Scots was to land in France, that James himself if necessary would follow, but Jean Dark declared that there was no help from Scotland, none save from God and herself. She was right. No sooner had she won her victories at Orléans, Jargo, Pathet, and elsewhere, May to June 1429, then James made a truce with England which enabled Cardinal Beaufort to throw his large force of anti-Hussite crusaders into France, where they secured Normandy. The Scots and France nevertheless fought under the maid in her last successful action, at Laigny, April 1430. An heir to the crown, James, was born in October 1430, while the king was at strife with the pope, and asserting for king and parliament power over the provincial councils of the church. An interdict was threatened. James menaced the rich and lax religious orders with secular reformation, settled the Carthusians at Perth to show an example of holy living and pursued his severities against many of his nobles. His treatment of the Earl of Strathen, despoiled and sent as hostage to England, aroused the wrath of the Earl's uncle, Robert Graham, who bearded James in parliament, was confiscated, fled across the Highland line, and on February 20, 1437, aided, it is said, by the Earl of Athol, a grandson of Robert II by his second marriage, led a force against the king in the monastery of the Black Friars at Perth, surprised him, and butchered him. The energy of his queen brought the murderers and Athol himself to die under unspeakable torments. James's reforms were hurried, violent, and as a rule incapable of surviving the anarchy of his son's minority. His new court of session, sitting in judgment thrice a year, was his most fortunate innovation. CHAPTER XII. James II. Skone, with its sacred stone, being so near Perth and the Highlands, was perilous, and the coronation of James II was therefore held at Holy Road, March 25, 1437. The child, who was but seven years of age, was bandied to and fro like a shadow-cock between rival adventurers. The Earl of Douglas, Archibald, Fifth Earl, died 1439, took no leading part in the strife of factions, one of them led by Sir William Crichton, who held the important post of commander of Edinburgh Castle, the other by Sir Alexander Livingston of Calender. The great old houses had been shaken by the severities of James I, at least for the time. In a government of factions influenced by private greed, there was no important difference in policy, and we'd need not follow the transference of the royal person from Crichton in Edinburgh to Livingston in Stirling Castle, the coalitions between these worthies, the battles between the boards of Kilmarnock and the Stewards, who had to avenge Steward of Dernley, constable of the Scottish contingent in France, who was slain by Sir Thomas Boyd. The Queen Mother married Sir James Steward, the Black Knight of Lorne, and, August 3, 1439, she was captured by Livingston, while her husband, in the mysterious words of the chronicler, was put in a pit and boiled. In a month Jane Beaufort gave Livingston an amnesty. He, not the Steward family, not the Queen Mother, now held James. To all this the new young Earl of Douglas, a boy of 18, tacitly assented. He was the most powerful and wealthiest subject in Scotland. In France he was the Duke de Touran. He was descended in lawful wedlock from Robert II. He might have been the King, as the ballad says of the Bonnie Earl of Moray. But he held proudly aloof from both Livingston and Crichton, who were stealing the King alternately. They then combined, invited Douglas to Edinburgh Castle with his brother David and served up the ominous bull's head at the black dinner recorded in a ballad fragment. They decapitated the two Douglas boys. The earldom fell to their granduncle, James the Fat, and presently on his death to young William Douglas, after which bans, or illegal covenants, between the various leaders of factions led to private wars of shifting fortune. Kennedy, Bishop of St. Andrews, opposed the Douglas party, now strong both in lands newly acquired, till July 3, 1449, James married Mary of Goldress, imprisoned the Livingstons, and relied on the Bishop of St. Andrews in the clergy. While Douglas was visiting Rome in 1450, the Livingstons had been forfeited and Crichton became Chancellor. Fall of the Black Douglases The Douglases, through a royal marriage of an ancestor to a daughter of the more legitimate marriage of Robert II, had a kind of claim to the throne which they never put forward. The country was thus spared dynastic wars, like those of the White and Red Roses in England, but nonetheless the Douglases were too rich and powerful for subjects. The earl, at the moment, held Galloway and Anondale. Two of his brothers were earls of Moray and Ormond. In October 1448 Ormond had distinguished himself by defeating and taking Percy, urging a raid into Scotland at a bloody battle on the water of Sark near Gretna. During the earl of Douglas's absence in Rome, James had put down some of his unruly retainers, and even after his return, 1451, had persevered in this course. Later in the year Douglas resigned and received back his lands a not uncommon formula showing submission on the vassals' favor on the Lord's part, as when Charles VII at the request of Jean Dark made this resignation to God. Douglas, however, was suspected of intriguing with England and with the Lord of the Isles, while he had a secret covenant or band with the earls of Crawford and Ross. If all this were true he was planning a most dangerous enterprise. He was invited to Sterling to meet the king under a safe conduct, and there, February 22, 1452, was dirked by his king at the sacred table of hospitality. Whether this crime was premeditated or merely passionate is unknown, as in the case of Bruce's murder of the Red Coman before the High Altar. Parliament absolved James on slender grounds. James, the brother of the slain earl, publicly defied his king, gave his allegiance to Henry VI of England, withdrew it, intrigued, and after his brothers had been routed at Arkenholm, near Langham, May 18, 1455, fled to England. His house was proclaimed traitorous, their wide lands in southern and southwestern Scotland were forfeited and redistributed, the scots of Bookluck profiting largely in the long run. The leader of the royal forces at Arkenholm, near Langham, was another Douglas, one of the Red Douglases, the Earl of Angus, and till the execution of the Earl of Morton under James VI, the Red Douglases were as powerful, turbulent, and treacherous as the Black Douglases had been in their day. When attacked and defeated, these Douglases, Red or Black, always allied themselves with England and with the Lords of the Isles, the hereditary foes of the royal authority. Meanwhile, Edward IV wrote of the Scots as his rebels of Scotland, and in the alternations of fortune between the Houses of York and Lancaster, James held with Henry VI. When Henry was defeated and taken at Northampton, July 10, 1460, James besieged Roxburgh Castle, an English hold on the border, and August 3, 1460 was slain by the explosion of a great bombard. James was but thirty years of age at his death. By the dagger, by the law, and by the aid of the Red Douglases, he had ruined his most powerful nobles and his own reputation. His early training, like that of James VI, was received while he was in the hands of the most treacherous, bloody, and unscrupulous of mankind. Later he met them with their own weapons. The foundation of the University of Glasgow, 1451, and the building and endowment of St. Salvatore's College in St. Andrews, by Bishop Kennedy, are the most permanent proofs of advancing culture in the reign of James. Many laws of excellent tendency, including sumptuary laws, which suggest the existence of unexpected wealth and luxury were passed, but such laws were never firmly and regularly enforced. By one rule, which does seem to have been carried out, no poisons were to be imported, Scottish chemical science was incapable of manufacturing them. Much later James VI, that we find a parcel of arsenic, to be used for political purposes, successfully stopped at Leith. CHAPTER XIII of a short history of Scotland by Andrew Lange read for LibriVox.org into the public domain. CHAPTER XIII James II left three sons. The eldest, James III, age nine, was crowned at Kelso, August 10, 1460. His brothers, bearing the titles of Albany and Mar, were not to be his supports. His mother, Mary of Goulders, had the charge of the boys, and as she was won over by her uncle, Philip of Burgundy, to the cause of the House of York, while Kennedy in the Earl of Angus stood for the House of Lancaster, there was strife between them and the Queen Mother and nobles. Kennedy relied on France, Louis XI, and his opponents on England. The battle of Tauton, March 30, 1461, drove Henry VI and his Queen across the border, where Kennedy entertained the melancholy exile in the Castle of St. Andrews. The grateful Henry restored Barrett to the Scots, who could not hold it long. In June 1461, while the Scots were failing to take Carlisle, Edward IV was crowned, and sent his adherent, the exiled Earl of Douglas, to treat for an alliance with the Celts, under John, Lord of the Isles, and that Donald Ballock, who was falsely believed to have long before been slain in Ireland. It is curious to think of the Lord of the Isles dealing as an independent prince, though a renegade Douglas with the English King. A treaty was made at John's Castle of Ard Tornish, now a shell of crumbling stone on the seashore of the Morvan side of the Sound of Mull, with the English monarch at Westminster. The Highland Chiefs promised allegiance to Edward, and, if successful, the Celts are to recover the ancient kingdom from Cethness to the Fourth, while Douglas is to be all-powerful from the Fourth to the Border. But other intrigues prevailed. The Queen Mother and her Son, in the most friendly manner, met the Kingmaker Warwick at Dumfries, and again at Carlisle, and Douglas was disgraced by Edward, though restored to favour when Bishop Kennedy declined to treat with Edward's commissioners. The Treaty of England with Douglas and the Celts was ratified, but Douglas, advancing in front of Edward's army to the border, met old Bishop Kennedy in Helmut and Korslett, and was defeated. Louis XI, however, now deserted the Red for the White Rose. Kennedy followed his example, and peace was made between England and Scotland in October, 1464. Kennedy died in the summer of 1465. There followed the usual struggles between confederations of the nobles, and in July 1466 James was seized, being then aged 14 by the party of the Boyds, Flemmings, and Kennedys, aided by Hepburn of Hales, ancestor of the turbulent Earl of Bothwell, and by the head of the border-house of Sesford, Andrew Kerr. It was a repetition of the struggles of Livingston and Crichton, and now the great border lords began to take their place in history. Boyd made himself governor to the King. His son married the King's eldest sister, Mary, and became Earl of Aaron. But brief was the triumph of the Boyds. In 1469 James married Margaret of Norway, Orkney and Shetland were her dower, but while Aaron negotiated the affair abroad, at home the fall of his house was arranged. Boyd fled the country, the King's sister, divorced from young Aaron, married the Lord Hamilton, and his family, who were lords of Kadzo under Robert Bruce, and had been allies of the Black Douglasses till their fall, became the nearest heirs of the royal stewards, if that family were extinct. The Hamilton's, the wealthiest house in Scotland, never produced a man of great ability, but their nearness to the throne and their ambition were storm-centers in the time of Mary Stewart and James VI, and even as late as the Union in 1707. The fortunes of a nephew of Bishop Kennedy, Patrick Graham, Kennedy's successor as Bishop of St. Andrews, now perplexed the historian. Graham dealt for himself with the Pope, obtained the rank of Archbishop for the Bishop of St. Andrews, 1472, and thus offended the King and country, always jealous of interference from Rome. But he was reported on as more or less insane by a papal nuncio, and was deposed. Had he been defending, as used to be said, the right of election of Bishop for the cannons against the greed of the nobles, the nuncio might not have taken an unfavorable view of his intellect. In any case, whether the clergy, backed by Rome, elected their bishops, or whether the King and nobles made their profit out of the Church appointments, Jobbery was the universal rule. Ecclesiastical corruption and, as a rural ignorance, were attaining their lowest level. By 1476 the Lord of the Isles, the Celtic ally of Edward IV, was reduced by Argyle, Huntley, and Crawford, and lost the sheriffdom of Inverness, and the earldom of Ross, which was attached to the crown, 1476. His treaty of art-tornish had come to light. But his bastard, Angus Og, filled the north and west with fire and tumult from Ross to Tovermore, 1480 to 1490, while James's devotion to the arts, a thing intolerable, and to the society of low-born favorites, especially Thomas Cockburn, a stone-cutter, prepared the sorrows and the end of his reign. The intrigues which follow, and the truth about the character of James, are exceedingly obscure. We have no Scottish chronicle written at the time. The later histories, by Ferraris and Italian, and much later, by Queen Mary's Bishop Leslie, and by George Buchanan, are full of rumors and contradictions, while the State Papers and Treaties of England merely proved the extreme treachery of James's brother Albany, and no evidence tells us how James contrived to get the better of the traitor. James's brothers, Albany and Mar, were popular, were good horsemen, men of their hands, and Cockburn is accused of persuading James to arrest Mar on a charge of treason and black magic. Many witches are said to have been burned, perhaps the only such case before the Reformation. However it fell out, all is obscure, Mar died in prison, while Albany, also a prisoner on charges of treasonable intrigues with the inveterate Earl of Douglas in the English interest, escaped to France. Douglas, 1482, brought him to England, where he swore allegiance to Edward IV, under whom, like Edward Ballyall, he would hold Scotland if crowned. He was advancing on the border with Edward's support and with the Duke of Gloucester, Richard III, and James had gone to lauder to encounter him, when the Earl of Angus headed a conspiracy of nobles, such as Huntley, Lennox, and Buchan, seized Cockburn and other favourites of James and hanged them over Lauder Bridge. The most tangible grievance was the increasing debasement of the coinage. James was immured at Edinburgh, but by a compromise Albany was restored to rank in estates. Meanwhile Gloucester captured Barrick, never to be recovered by Scotland. In 1483 Albany renewed with many of the nobles his intrigues with Edward for the betrayer of Scotland. In some unknown way James separated Albany from his Confederates, Athol, Buchan, and Angus. Albany went to England, betrayed the Castle of Dunbar to England, and was only checked in his treasons by the death of Edward IV, April 9, 1483, after which a full Parliament, July 7, 1483, condemned him and forfeited him in his absence. On July 22, 1484 he invaded Scotland with his ally Douglas. They were routed at Loch Mabin, Douglas was taken, and by singular clemency was merely placed in seclusion at the monastery of Lindorus, while Albany, escaping to France, perished in a tournament, leaving a descendant, who, later in the minority of James V, makes a figure in history. The death of Richard III, August 18, 1485, and the accession of the prudent Henry VII, gave James a moment of safety. He turned his attention to the church, and determined to prosecute for treasons such Scottish clerics as purchased benefits through Rome. He negotiated for three English marriages, including that of his son James, Duke of Rothsy, to a daughter of Edward IV. He also negotiated for the recovery of Barrick, taken by Gloucester during Albany's invasion of 1482. After his death, and before it, James was accused for these reasons of disloyal dinglings with England, and such nobles as Angus, up to the neck as they were in treason and rebellion, raised a party against him on the score that he was acting as they did. The most aimless treachery of the Douglasses, red or black, endured for centuries from the reign of David II to that of James IV. Many nobles had received no amnesty for the outrage of Lauderd Bridge. Their hopes turned to the air of the crown, James, Duke of Rothsy. We see them offering peace for an indemnity in Parliament of October 1487. The Estates refused all such pardons for a space of seven years. The King's party was manifestly the stronger. He was not to be intimidated. He offended home and the Humes by annexing the Priory of Culldingham, which they regarded as their own, to the royal chapel at Sterling. The inveterate Angus, with others, induced Prince James to join them under arms. James took the chancellorship from Argyle and sent envoys to England. The rebels, proclaiming the Princess King, intrigued with Henry VII. James was driven across the Forth and was supported in the North by his Uncle Athel, and by Huntley, Crawford, and Lord Lindsay of the Byers, Arrol, Glamas, Forbes, and Tilebradain, and the chivalry of Angus and Strathday. Attempts at pacification failed, Sterling Castle was betrayed to the rebels, and James's host, swollen by the loyal burgesses of the towns, met the border spears of home and Hepburn, the Galloway men, and the levies of Angus at Saatchi Byrne, near Bannock Byrne. In some way not understood, James, riding without a single knight or squire, fell from his horse, which had apparently run away with him, at Beaton's Mill, and was slain in bed at his rumored by a priest, feigned or false, who heard his confession.  Under his reign, Henryson, the greatest of the Chaucerian school in Scotland, produced his admirable poems. Many other poets whose works are lost were flourishing, and the Wallace, that elaborate plagiarism from Barbers the Bruce, was composed and attributed to Blind Harry, a paid minstrel about the court.