CHAPTER XXVIII.

THE FIRST SCOTTISH REVOLUTION.

"Shall I resign the sceptre of my sires, And give the haughty barons leave to reign? No! perish all before that fatal hour I will sustain the majesty of kings, And be a monarch while I'm a man!"--_Runnamede_, Act 4.

It was the meridian of the 1st of June, 1488.

Partial gleams of sunlight fell or died away and flashed again alternately on the ancient town and still more ancient tower of Alloa, the stronghold of the Erskines, which crowns those strata of rock that lie between the fertile carse and the higher grounds, and break off abruptly above the harbour. The narrow and irregular streets of this picturesque little burgh were clustered round the strong donjon, the walls of which are eleven feet thick, and more than ninety feet high, and had often in Scotland's braver times repelled the chivalry of the first Plantagenets. A few crayers and barks, with their brown pitched sides and browner sails, were lying beside the rough stone quay that forms the pow or creek into which a rivulet flows.

The old lime-trees and venerable avenues of hedge, closely clipped in the French fashion, were in thick foliage around the old grey walls; the tide was full, and the Forth ran slowly past, still, calm, and waveless, as, with an imperceptible motion, the tall ships of Sir Andrew Wood warped close towards the town.

The gleam of arms was seen in the quaint old streets; steel helmets and cuirasses glittered on the quay, for armed men were watching the approaching ships, and a blue banner with a pale sable was unfurled on the tower, where Thomas, ninth Lord Erskine and second Earl of Mar, a loyal and irreproachable noble, with a numerous band of men-at-arms, drawn from his barony of Alloa, his forestry of Clackmannan, his estates of Nisbet, Pit-arrow, and Newton, awaited the landing of the king.

The nobles were everywhere rising in arms, and repairing to various muster-places, some for the king, but many more to fight for Angus, and against the court, in vindication of their imaginary rights and assumed privileges; while the hearts of the people, like their liberties, were oppressed and cast down.

It was a peculiarly close and sultry mouth, the June of 1488 and on this day in particular the air was breathless, hot, and still. Lowering thunderclouds, through the openings of which; the sunlight shot in sickly flakes, obscured the summer sky. Omens of evil preceded the coming civil war. In the fertile carse of Gowrie the peasantry had observed numbers of field-mice lying dead about the footpaths among the ripening corn--dead without any apparent cause.

A wonderful scorpion had been killed in the jousting haugh of Linlithgow; and a terrible comet--men called it a fiery dragon--passed over the Castle of Rothesay, from whence it was visible between the Polestar and the Pleiads, and for three nights this source of terror floated in the darkened sky. The stone unicorn on the cross of Stirling uttered a cry at midnight; the shadowy figures of armed knights were seen to encounter on the battleground where Wallace defeated the army of Edward I., under the brow of the Abbey Craig; the helmeted or hooded fish, called monachi marini, which never appear in the Scottish seas but as the presage of some terrible event, were seen to swarm in the firths and bays; and, to his great dismay, Jamie Gair had thrice netted an entire shoal of them. The minds of the people (naturally and constitutionally superstitious) became filled with the most dire forebodings of the great events that were at hand; and on the hearts of none did these omens fall more heavily than those of the two sisters, Euphemia and Sybilla Drummond, who were secluded in their father's solitary Castle of Drummond, where no tidings reached them of their missing Margaret, and where they could only hear vague and flying rumours of the great events which then convulsed the kingdom.

Their father's words when he left Strathearn for the insurgent camp had made them aware only of two things:--that he would fight to the death against the false king who had carried off his favourite daughter, and that _they_--on the rout of James's forces and the destruction of his favourite courtiers--should become, one Countess of Hailes, and the other Countess of Home, or he would never see their faces more.

At this time, it was not exactly known by the king and his court where the malcontent nobles held their tryst, or where the crown prince of Scotland was. Some said they were in Stirling with Sir James Shaw; others said, at Linlithgow; and many asserted they had retired as far off as the Douglasses' Castle of Thrave, in the wild and distant province of Galloway.

Many loyal and gallant gentlemen were now flocking to the royal standard with all the armed men they could muster; and with his most faithful adherents, James held a solemn conclave, or council of war, in the hall of the Castle of Alloa. On this occasion he was accompanied by the old admiral, by Sir Mathieson, Captains Barton and Falconer, than whom there were none present more eager to meet the insurgent lords in battle, that they might have an opportunity of avenging on Home and Hailes their late atrocities at Dundee. There, too, were Sir William Knollis, the preceptor of the Scottish knights of Rhodez; the old Marshal de Concressault; and young Ramsay Lord of Bothwell, with many gentlemen of his band--the Royal Guard--who wore the king's livery--red doublets, faced and slashed with yellow. These crowded around James, and on their glittering arms and excited faces the sunlight fell ill deep broad flakes of hazy radiance, through the grated windows of the old Gothic hall.

The sadness and dejection of James were apparent to all, as the noble Earl of Mar, the captain of Dunbarton--a peer whose family stood proudly pre-eminent in the annals of Scottish loyalty--conducted him to a chair on a dais at the end of the hall, over which hung a crimson cloth of state.

"On this unhappy day," said the Earl, "your majesty is more welcome to my house of Alloa than if you came to me flushed with the triumph of a hundred battles."

"I thank you kindly, my Lord of Mar," said he; "you are one of the few who know that through life I have struggled against an untoward and unhappy fate--or, as it would seem, an irrevocable destiny, which I can neither conquer nor avoid. Gladly would I change my father's crown for a shepherd's bonnet, and this lofty place for the sphere of those happy peasants who, in their narrow world, seem to pass through life without meeting an obstacle, simply because they are without ambition, and have few enemies. I never knew that the poor could be so happy till within these last few days which I spent among the brave hearts of good Sir Andrew's frigate."

"Hard work maketh a light heart at times," said the admiral, as his eyes glistened; "and I can assure your majesty, that never shipmate of mine would turn landsman again, to be bearded by every painted baron, and bullied by every cock-laird and cow-baillie whom he met at kirk or market."

"Are there no tidings yet of Rothesay?" asked James.

"None on which we can rely," replied the Earl of Mar.

"Or of Angus?"

"A body of horsemen, supposed to be his, marched eastward through the Torwood two days ago," replied the Duke of Montrose; "but whether bound for Edinburgh, or home to Galloway, no man can say; but the loyal nobles are gathering fast, and seven are now in waiting to pay their duty to your majesty."

"Seven--only seven, of all the peers of Scotland!"

"But seven is a fortunate number," said Father Zuill; "and even may prevail, when thirty might fail."

"Admit them at once, Earl of Mar," said James, "for this is not a time when a king of Scotland can trifle with his friends."

Marshalled by ushers, preceded by pages, and followed by esquires bearing their swords and helmets, there now entered seven nobles, all of whom the king knew well, and now they were the more welcome that they came completely armed. Among them were--Alexander, Earl of Glencairn, a Lord of the Privy Council, who had fought for James against the nobles in the Raid of Blackness; the aged Earl of Menteith, who in his youth had been a hostage for James I.; the Lords Graham, Ruthven, Semple, Forbess, and Gray, the High Sheriff of Forfar--a cousin of Sir Patrick, the infamous Governor of Broughty.

Though all unlettered and ignorant of scholarcraft as the most humble peasant of their time, all these lords had a high and noble bearing--for the age was one when pride of birth and long descent, with high military renown, were valued more than life; and, moreover, they were all hardy, strong, and athletic--browned by exercise, hunting, and hosting, and inured to war by the incessant feuds of the clans; thus, they wore their globular cuirasses, large elbow plates, and immense angular tuilles, or thigh-pieces, as easily as if they were garments of the softest silk. James rose up to welcome them, and each in succession knelt to kiss his hand.

"Welcome, my lords," said he; "what tidings bring you of our friends and foes?"

"I have brought your majesty three thousand good infantry from Cunninghame and Kyle," said Glencairn; "the same brave men who won me a coronet on the field of Blackness."

"A thousand thanks, brave Cunninghame! And thou, Ruthven?"

"A thousand and three brave fellows on horseback, all armed with morion, jack, and spear."

"And I, fifteen hundred archers and claymores," said the Lord Forbess, a weather-beaten and long-bearded noble, who wore the ancient Celtic lurich, with a plaid of his green clan-tartan, fastened by a silver brooch, upon his left shoulder; "I would they were as many thousands, to conquer or die in this good cause!"

All had a good report to make of their vassalage, and the king's spirit rose on finding, by computation, that these faithful peers had marched to Alloa somewhere about thirty thousand horse and foot, with many Highland archers; but these forces had very few cannon, and the only arquebussiers on whom they could rely were those of Sir Andrew Wood's ships.

"Montrose," said he, "mount messengers and despatch letters to those lairds who are captains of the Border castles; desire them to keep tryst at Melrose, and come in with all their lances and archers without an hour's delay."

Montrose, whose principal scribes were the poor poets who hovered about the court--such as William Dunbar and others--soon had the messages written and given to gentlemen of trust, who concealed them in the scabbards of their swords and poniards; and after being landed on the Carse of Stirling by the boats of the _Yellow Frigate_, they departed on the spur towards the south.

While James was taking counsel of the loyalists on what course he should pursue, the venerable Duke of Montrose-Crawford entered again, with an expression of gloom and dejection so strongly marked on his face, that all the nobles turned towards him inquiringly.

"What now, my good Montrose," said the agitated king--"you have bad tidings--but what other can come to me? Have blows been struck, or has my poor son been slain? Speak, duke, for this suspense is torture."

"I have tidings, indeed, of double evil," said the aged peer, slowly, as if considering in what terms to impart them. "The Earls of Huntly, Errol, and Marischal, and the Lord Glammis, at the head of more than ten thousand men, have crossed the Forth at Stirling--"

"To join me--well?"

"Nay, to join the Earl of Angus, it is supposed; for they marched right under the cannon of the castle, and took their route through the Torwood."

"For where?" asked James, growing pale.

"None know. The prince--"

"Was with them," said James, bitterly.

"Nay, God forbid! He is said to be with Sir James Shaw, in the Castle of Stirling."

"'Tis well; we shall join him there, and together march against these rebel peers," said James, with flashing eyes. "Errol shall tyne his constable's staff, and perhaps his head with it. Is it agreed, my lords, that we march for Stirling and leave the ships of Sir Andrew Wood to guard the passage of the Forth?"

A murmur of assent replied.

"Let us to horse, then," said the king; "I would the queen were here, instead of praying at St. Duthac's shrine, in Ross. But to horse, sirs; and now what ails thee, kind Montrose?" asked James, placing a hand on the old man's shoulder, on perceiving that amid the general bustle which ensued, the donning of helmets and buckling of swords, this most faithful and aged noble stood irresolute, with sorrow impressed in his eyes and upon his face.

"Allace, your majesty," said he, "there are tidings of serious evil; the queen----"

"Is ill--my dear and loving Margaret; she left me sick and ailing sorely," said James, clasping his hands; "she is ill, while I am loitering here to play for a glittering bauble; she is ill, and where?"

"Allace the day! she is dead and in her coffin!" said Montrose, as he covered his kind old face with his hands and burst into tears.....

The unfortunate monarch was so crushed by these evil tidings, that his heart seemed almost broken, and his spirit sank lower than ever. His guiding-star was gone now, for she on whose advice he had ever relied as his most faithful friend and counsellor, during a stormy and unhappy life, was dead.

Margaret of Oldenburg, daughter of Christian I. of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, had been a woman of great beauty and amiability, tact and discernment, and their marriage had been a happy one, though at first purely political, having been brought about by Andrew, Lord Evandale, High Chancellor of Scotland. James had loved well his beautiful Dane, and they had three children, Rothesay, Alexander, Duke of Ross, and the little Prince John, styled, for a time, Earl of Mar. For eighteen years she had been his chief comfort amid every affliction, and the partner and soother of his sorrows; for the gentle Margaret had been all to him that a wise and politic queen, a dear and affectionate wife could be.

Mistrusting even the few nobles who had joined him (the faithful Montrose excepted), James lingered in deep sorrow another day at the old tower of Alloa, and then resolved to join the prince, his son, in the Castle of Stirling, there to assure him by the most solemn vows a heart-broken man might make, that he was innocent of Margaret Drummond's abduction, and would use every means to discover her. After that, he resolved to shut himself up in the fortress until the Highland clans--ever loyal and ever true--came down from the northern hills to his succour; for now rumour said that Grant of Grant, and Sir James Ogilvie of Lintrathen (afterwards the ambassador to Denmark), Hugh, Lord Lovat, with many of the Forbesses, Gordons, Keiths, and Meldrums had risen in arms, and were marching south to defend and enforce the royal authority on the rebellious Lowland lords.

By this time sure tidings were brought to Alloa, that the Earl of Angus, the Lords Drummond, Hailes, and Home, Sir William Stirling of the Kier, Sir Patrick Gray, and many others, had set up the standard of REVOLT at the town of Falkirk, in the fertile Carse of Stirling, where all the discontented lords and landholders of the three Lothians, Galloway, and the Borders, had joined them, with all the armed men they could collect; and together they formed a league, which for strength and daring had no parallel in the previous history of the kingdom, save the raid of the Douglasses in the reign of James II.

Sir James Shaw of Sauchie, Gray of Kyneff, and their minion, the infamous Borthwick, were among the most active in creating this unwarrantable rebellion.

The ancient burgh of Falkirk, which is so beautifully situated among the lands of the now fertile carse, was _then_ surrounded by a dense forest of oaks and beeches, and near it lay a great morass, through which the Carron--that stream so famed in Celtic song and Roman war--flowed past the old Castle of Callendar, whose lords were for centuries comptrollers to the king. This town was then little more than a village, and consisted merely of a High-street and the Kirk Wynd, which led to the church of St. Modan, the pointed spire of which rose above the antique tenements of the Knights of Rhodez, whose preceptor possessed most of the property within the rising burgh. It was surrounded by a fortified wall having ports, one of which is yet remaining in the Back Row. Being loftily situated, and commanding an extensive view in every direction, it was admirably adapted for the muster-place of the rebel lords, whose whole desire was now to lure the unfortunate king to try their strength in battle. The town was filled by their troops; the cavalry occupied the High-street and Churchyard, while the chiefs had their quarters in the Castle of Callendar, the family seat of James, Lord Livingstone, where they held council by day, and wassail by night, drinking the comptroller's wine, and broaching his Lammas ale, "to the confusion of the king and of his parasitical favourites."

Here they were visited by the venerable and valiant Sieur de Concressault, who came alone, or at least attended only by three horsemen--one who bore his banner, a second who carried his helmet, and a third who sounded a trumpet; and, penetrating into the flushed, proud, and riotous company, who were drinking and roistering in the hall of Callendar, where they

"Carved at the meal with gloves to steel, And drank their red wine through the helmet barred,"

the marshal boldly announced to them what he had been desired to say by a mandate recently received from his master, the King of France. But before he spoke, this good soldier was shocked to perceive the young Duke of Rothesay (whom all the loyalists believed to be in Stirling) among these dark and fierce conspirators; for the false and subtle Shaw and others retained the heir of the crown among them, to give a colour and pretext to all their illegal actions--or at least, that on his young head some of the blame of revolt, and shame of defeat, should fall. He seemed pale and sad, and crushed in spirit; for he now felt convinced--thanks to the reiterations of Borthwick, Shaw, and Gray--that his father had destroyed both Margaret and her child; and as he was one of those who think it "better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all," his bitterness was great indeed.

"Marshal de Concressault," said he, "how did the king, my father, receive the tidings that I had left Dundee with these noble peers, and that they were in arms?"

"He wept."

"'Twas well," said Lord Drummond, sternly; "kings weep but seldom, and their tears are precious."

"Ay," added the grim and bearded Steward of Menteith; "and there be some in Scotland who shall yet greet tears of blude before this wark is owre! But what seek ye here, Laird of Pitmilty--speak! for our swords are longer than our patience?"

"My lords," said the ambassador, "the Kings of France and England declare that they consider it to be the common cause of all monarchs to protect the Sovereign of Scotland against you; for subjects must not be permitted to give laws unto a king, who, even although he were a tyrant, cannot be amenable to the authority of the people; for we have yet to learn that it is from them, rather than from God, he receives his throne and power."

All laughed loudly at this, for the "right divine" was never valued much in the Lowlands of Scotland; but Angus, who presided, struck his mailed hand like thunder on the table, and sternly imposed silence.

"Your king is not a tyrant, my lords," continued the aged marshal, warming as he spoke; "nay, we all know that no lady in the land was ever more good or gentle. And his errors, if he hath any, are the result of youth and evil counsellors----"

At this remark, a storm of angry mutterings pervaded the cuirassed and helmeted assembly.

"But suppose these men have done you wrong, my lords, is it wise, or is it noble, in a wild desire for vengeance, to endanger the safety of the most ancient kingdom in Europe, and the honour of its throne? These princes desire me to say, firmly and boldly, that no state can be so pure that corruption cannot creep into it; that you, my lords and gentles, should be cautious how ye shake the framework of the Scottish monarchy, and shatter its government, for they are ready to resent it; and, moreover, John, King of Denmark, Ferdinand of Spain, Maximilian of the Romans, the Dukes of Austria, Muscovy, Burgundy, and Brittany are ready to join France and England in punishing this revolt; and his Holiness Innocent VIII., by the voice of his legate, armed with full pontifical powers, will, ere long, pour the terrors of his indignation on all who are in rebellion against the Scottish crown."

Many a brow was knit, and many a sward half-drawn at this bold speech; but Angus waved his mailed hand, and again the multitude were still.

"Go back, De Concressault--go back to those false carles who sent you here," said he; "or, further still, to all those barbarous dukes and foreign kings, and tell them that the sacred rights of an old hereditary nobility shall not be shared with, or trampled on, by clodpoles and merchant-skippers, by hewers of wood and drawers of water, by men accustomed less to the sword than to the plough and hammer, the handloom and the tiller. Begone, I say, my Lord of Concressault; for if within another hour you are found within a mile of Callendar Yew, by the bones of St. Bryde, and by the soul of the _Dark Grey Man_, from whom my blood is drawn, I will hang you on its highest branch, as the taghairm of victory to our cause!"

"Be it so," replied the Sieur de Monipennie, as he drew himself up with an air of scorn and military pride, and closed the umbriere of his helmet, as he donned it in defiance of them all. "On a coming day, I hope to requite this foul insult, and teach thee, Lord of Angus, that a Scottish gentleman--a Marshal of France--is as good as any peer that ever came of the Douglas Blood, and better, it may be."

Turning from the hall, he left Callendar with all speed, and crossed the Carse in the direction of the Forth, to rejoin the king at Alloa.

"How happy all these titled villains will be now," said the marshal to his esquire, who was no other than David Falconer.

"Nay, they may be _glad_, but scarcely _happy_," he replied. "There are our ships. Barton sees us, and sends off a boat."

"Say nought about our having seen that madcap prince among the rebels," said the old soldier; "for his father the king hath over many sorrows already to thole."

The moment the ambassador left Callendar, Sir James Shaw summoned Borthwick, who had been duly infeft in his three tenements in the burgh of Stirling.

"Mount," said he; "mount and ride, with forty chosen men, to Linlithgow, and thence to Edinburgh; display our banners at the burgh crosses--rouse the Gutterbloods of the Good Town, and the Whelps of the Black Bitch; say that the Falkirk Bairns and the vassals of Carse and Callendar have joined us to a man. Rouse one, rouse all against the parasites of James! those base-born courtiers who oppress the people--shout fire and sword, horse and armour! It is easy to gather the rascal mob, and raise an outcry. Here are a hundred lyons and rose-nobles----"

"English?"

"Ay, English rose-nobles," replied the subtle Laird of Sauchie, with one of his snaky smiles; "scatter them among the rabble; say they are from the good and charitable nobles--ha, ha! from Angus and from Drummond! Bait and draw on the _canaille_; threaten them with war and pestilence; foretel the ruin of the burghs and the invasion of their privileges. Select villains--thou knowest many--harangue and arm them; say blood must flow. To arms by tout of horn and tuck of drum--against the court--and the muster-place is Callendar Wood. Say, to arms with Angus! who, like Warwick the Englishman, will become a maker of kings and a breaker of crowns in more ways than one. Tell the people and the poor that they must no longer be the stock-fish and foot-balls of the rich and noble; tell the rich and great that the base multitude have risen for plunder and the assumption of absurd privileges. Here, take my sword, it is a good Banffshire blade, and away to Edinburgh; see Napier, the provost, and say all I have said; for the papal legate is coming, and if once he sets his red legs on Scottish ground, the burghs are lost to the nobles for ever!"

While Sauchie repaired to his governorship in the Castle of Stirling, the firebrand Borthwick departed on his rebellious mission; for the revolted peers dreaded that, on the arrival of the Legate Adriano di Castello, who was hastening from Rome, the burgesses, and all who feared the censures of the Church, might join King James before a decisive battle was fought or a Revolution achieved.

The artful minion was very successful in his mission, and soon after, the flower of the Lothian spearmen--the finest infantry in Scotland--joined the rebel lords at Falkirk.