volume as a whole, but we shall notice some parts of it in their bearing upon Scottish history. The continual inroads of the English had, as Mr. Buckle justly observes, kept the Lowlands of Scotland in a very poor condition; had checked the growth of the towns; had ruined the Crown, and had made the nobility almost uncontrollable. Mr. Buckle, however, takes too gloomy a view of Scotch affairs when he says that' even late in the sixteenth century skilled labour was hardly known, and honest industry was universally despised.' It is true that the country was very poor, if measured by a modern standard, and we should no doubt feel very uncomfortable if we were suddenly reduced to the condition of the fifteenth century; yet it appeared to the people of those times that they were living in a highly advanced and luxurious, though a very artificial and wicked state of society; much fallen off from the good old times when 'men were of better conscience than they are now.' Let us take for example Dunbar, the poet of the Court of James IV. Dunbar was no optimist, as appears by his address to the merchants of Edinburgh on the defects of the conservancy department; and yet he writes enthusiastically of the splendid reception given in 1511 to Queen Margaret, by the burgh of Aberdeen, which was only a town of the second class; of the rich array of the burgesses, the pall of velvet cramasé which was borne above the Queen's head, The sound of minstrels blawing to the sky,' as she passed along; the pageants and pictures exhibited in the streets, among others the figure of Bruce, 'Right awful strong, and large of portraiture, the young maidens all clad in green, of marvellous beauty, with white hats broidered bravely, playing on timbrels, and singing right sweetly; the streets hung with tapestry; the wine running abundantly at the Cross, and the rich present offered to the Queen at her lodgings, to wit, 'Ane costly cup that large thing wald contain, The ladies, too, whom he describes in his poem of 'The Twa Maryet Wemen and the Wedo,' are represented as beautifully arrayed. The King's court is said to contain various persons whom the poet does not consider useful or creditable, such as 'Monsours of France,' and 'inopportune askers of Ireland kind'—a race now happily happily extinct, as Lord Palmerston knows. But Dunbar like wise enumerates other servitors of the court, whose presence there seems inconsistent with the notion that even late in the sixteenth century skilled labour was hardly known, to wit:— Kirkmen, courtmen, and craftsmen fine, Diviners, rhetors, and philosophers, Men of arms and valiant knights, Coiners, carders, and carpenters, Masons laying upon the land, And shipwrights hewing upon the strand; Which pleasant are and honourable, But all this time the poet found foreigners, however unworthy, constantly preferred to him, on the principle that 'Aye fairest feathers has farrest fowls, Suppose they have no song but youls.' However objectionable the preference of foreigners to natives may have been-however superficial the accomplishments by which some of them obtained the royal favour, Dunbar's lines afford unquestionable proof that the Scottish king not only appreciated the culture of other countries, but was bent upon introducing it among his own people. James IV. and all his chivalry perished on Flodden Field: there died together the true and the false, the successful courtier and the despised suitor; and Scotland was cursed with another and yet another of her disastrous royal minorities, only to emerge amid the deadly struggle of the Reformation. Mr. Chambers's Annals' commence with Queen Mary's return from France. She was received in Edinburgh with pageants and solemnities, splendid as the taste of the age could devise. But, according to John Knox,‡ * Vessels of war. † Apothecaries. Chambers, i. p. 11. The The very face of heaven, the time of her arrival, did manifestly speak what comfort was brought unto this country with her; to wit, sorrow, dolour, darkness, and all impiety; for in the memory of man, that day of the year, was never seen a more dolorous face of the heaven than was at her arrival, which two days after did so continue; for beside the surface weet and corruption of the air, the mist was so thick and so dark, that scarce might any man espy ane other the length of twa butts. The sun was not seen to shine two days before nor two days after. That forewarning gave God unto us; but, alas, the most part were blind.' Rough and severe was the whole tone of society. The very schoolboys could not have a barring-out without manslaughter. Great lords, meeting each other in the street, engaged in murderous conflict. Queen's messengers had to eat their own writs, and were sometimes flogged into the bargain. Borderers and Highlanders were hanged without mercy-when they could be caught. For three months together the Kingsmen and Queensmen gave each other no quarter. When the house of Towie, belonging to Alexander Forbes, was maintained by his lady against Adam Gordon, brother of the Earl of Huntly, who had risen for the Queen; on Gordon's sending to demand its surrender, the brave dame answered, that she could not give it up without directions from her husband. Gordon then set fire to it, and burnt the heroic woman, her children, and servants— twenty-seven persons in all. This outrage forms the subject of the well-known ballad of Edom o' Gordon.' The Regent Morton was very greedy and extortionate. He erected at Dalkeith a magnificent palace, richly adorned with pictures and tapestries, and fitter for a king than a subject. Here he lived in an appropriate style. All this he did at the expense of his enemies. He kept a fool, named Patrick Bonny, who, seeing him one day pestered by a concourse of beggars, advised him to have them all burnt in one fire. What an impious idea!' said the Regent. 'Not at all,' replied the jester ; 'if the whole of these poor people were consumed, you would soon make more poor people out of the rich.' It was usual for the King, or the Regent in the King's name, to write to the Court of Session, in furtherance or hindrance of' civil or criminal matters pending before them. The practice was very profitable to those who exercised the influence of the Crown. An instance of this may be seen in the mode by which Lord Somerville obtained a hearing of a suit respecting land in which he was engaged with his cousin Somerville of Cambusnethan, but which was still postponed by the moyen and interest of Cambusnethan and the lady.' Acting upon the advice of one who well knew knew the temper and avarice of Morton, the Lord Somerville, being prepared timely in the morning, waited upon the Regent with his principal advocate, and informed him of the case, of course without any result. On taking leave, however, he drew out his purse on the pretext of giving a fee to the doorkeeper, and left it, as if unconsciously, upon the table. He went quickly down stairs, and took no notice of the Regent's still crying after him, 'My Lord, you have forgot your purse.' Whereupon the Regent sent a man after him to 'desire that he would return and breakfast with him, which accordingly the Lord Somerville did, knowing weel that his project had taken effect.'* Nor was it safe to criticise such proceedings: Twa poets of Edinburgh, remarking some of Morton's sinistrous dealing, did publish the same to the people by a famous libel written against him; and Morton, hearing of this, causit the men to be brought to Stirling, where they were convict for slandering ane of the King's councillors, and were there baith hangit. . Which was thought a precedent, never one being hanged for the like before.' † Nor (to go back for a few years) could the pulpit protect those who took upon them to rebuke the sins of the Regent : There was ane minister [named Robert Waugh] hangit in Leith (and borne to the gibbet, because he was birsit [bruised] with the boots). The principal cause was that he said to the Earl of Morton, that he defended ane unjust cause, and that he wald repent when nae time was to repent. And when he was required by whom he was commanded to say the same, he answered and said: "By the haly spreit." In the same year, Mr. Andrew Douglas, minister of Dunglass, was first tortured, and then hanged, for publicly rebuking Morton on account of his living with the widow of Captain Cullen.'‡ But there were men whom this tyranny could not daunt. Regent Morton said to Andrew Melville, 'There will never be quietness in this country till half-a-dozen of you be hangit or banishit the country.' Tush, sir,' says Mr. Andrew, 'I have been ready to give my life where it was not half sae weel wared [expended] at the pleasure of my God. I lived out of your country ten years as weel as in it. Let God be glorified: it will not lie in your power to hang or exile his truth.' And King James was obliged to endure language from the pulpit such as would never have been tolerated by Morton. We must not, however, commit the error of supposing, as Mr. Buckle apparently does, that there was nothing but wickedness and violence in those days. Hear Home of Godscroft's description of his father: § * Chambers, i. p. 115. + Ibid., p. 126. Ibid., p. 79. § Ibid., p. 96. ' David Home of Wedderburn was a man remarkable for piety and probity, ingenuity [candour], and integrity; neither was he altogether illiterate, being well versed in the Latin tongue. He had the Psalms, and particularly some short sentences of them, always in his mouth; such as: "It is better to trust in the Lord than in the princes of the earth" "Our hope ought to be placed in God alone." He particularly delighted in the 146th Psalm, and sung it whilst he played on the harp with the most sincere and unaffected devotion. He was strictly just, utterly detesting all manner of fraud. I remember, when a conversation happened among some friends about prudence and fraud, his son George happened to say that it was not unlawful to do a good action, and for a good end, although it might be brought about by indirect methods, and that this was sometimes necessary. "What," says he, "George, do you call ane indirect way? It is but fraud and deceit covered under a specious name, and never to be admitted or practised by a good man.' He himself always acted on this principle, and was so strictly just, and so little desirous of what was his neighbour's, that, in the time of the civil wars, when Alexander, his chief, was forfeit for his defection from the queen's party, he might have had his whole patrimony, and also the abbacy of Coldingham, but refused both the one and the other. David's first wife, of the Johnstons of Elphinston, in Haddingtonshire, was a paragon of benevolence. She not only supplied the poor bountifully, but often gave large help to superior people who had fallen back in the world. She would give the clothes of her own children to clothe the naked and friendless. Yet, such was her good management, that she left at her death 3000 merks in gold-" a great sum in those days." Everything in the family had a splendid appearance; and this she affected in compliance to her husband's temper. As she was herself, so she instructed her children in the fear of God, and in everything that was good and commendable. To sum up her whole character, she obtained from all the appellation of the Good Lady Wedderburn.' Hugh Rose of Kilravock, another worshipful country gentleman, being asked by King James 'How he could live amongst such ill turbulent neighbours?' made this reply,-"That they were the best neighbours he could have, for they made him thrice a day go to God upon his knees, when, perhaps, otherways he would not have gone once.' * We will not follow Mr. Buckle through his angry denunciation of the spiritual tyranny which prevailed during the seventeenth century. It is well known how the Kirk domineered when it had the upper hand, and also what heroic constancy it displayed when cruelly oppressed by the Government; but we cannot help remarking the indiscriminate animosity with which Mr. Buckle seizes hold of everything which is alleged *The Family of Kilravock, Spalding Club, 4to., Edinburgh, 1848. against |