Oh, gentlemen of Scotland! oh, chevaliers of France!
How each and all had grasp'd his sword and seized his angry lance,
If lady-love, or sister dear, or nearer, dearer bride,
Had been like me, your friendless queen, insulted and belied!
Bon Gaultier.
This meeting took place in that magnificent hall which was built by James III. for banquets and the meeting of parliament. It is one hundred and twenty feet long; and to the taste for architecture, which led him to embellish it in a style of the most florid beauty (long since destroyed by the utilitarian barbarism of the Board of Ordnance), with his love for painting, poetry, music, and sculpture, he owed much of that malignity which embittered his short life, and ultimately led to his fatal and terrible end in the adjacent field of Sauchieburn.
Unlike the rough, rude tower which crowns the tremendous precipice that overhangs the valley, and from the small windows of which our earlier monarchs, such as the four Malcolms, the three Alexanders, and the three Roberts, were wont to survey the mighty landscape of wood and wold, mountain and rock, through which the snaky Forth winds far away to sea,—with the giant Grampians, deep, dark, and purple, cut by the hand of God into a hundred splintered peaks, mellowing in distance amid the skies of gold and azure,—unlike this rude tower, we say, from the battlements of which men had seen Wallace win his victory, by the old bridge, and Bruce sweep Edward's host from Bannockburn,—the buildings of James III. in Stirling Castle are covered by quaint pilasters, deep niches, elaborate carvings, and rich mouldings; by columns and brackets, supporting statues of Venus, Diana, Perseus, Cleopatra, James V., and Omphale.
The hall had a lofty roof of oak, from which hung English, Moorish, and Portuguese banners, taken in battles at sea by the gallant Bartons; by Sir Andrew Wood, of Largo, in his famous Yellow Frigate; and by Sir Alexander Mathieson, the "old king of the sea." Its walls were covered by gaudy frescoes, or pieces of tapestry, the work of Margaret of Oldenburg and the ladies of her court. At the upper end stood the throne, under the old purple canopy of James IV., until whose reign the royal colour in Scotland had been purple; and on a table, before this lofty chair, lay the sceptre, the sword of state, and the crown,—that crown of thorns, and of sorrow, which more than one valiant king of Scotland has bequeathed to his son on the battlefield,—the fatal heritage of a fated line of kings.
During a flourish of trumpets, the little queen was placed upon the throne, where she gazed about her smiling, while a mixture of childlike wonder, alarm, and drollery glittered in her dark and dilating eyes. On her left hand sat Mary of Lorraine, a step lower down; on her right stood the Regent, in his shining doublet, leaning on his long sword. Behind the former were grouped the Countesses of Yarrow, Mar, Huntly, Errol, and Orkney, in their long dool-cloaks; behind the latter was a gay suite of lesser barons and gentlemen of the surname of Hamilton, gorgeously attired and armed.
With an emotion of irrepressible sadness, Mary of Lorraine gazed round the beautiful hall, and on the splendid but silent crowd which filled it; glittering in armour, lace, velvet, silk, jewellery, plumage, and embroidery. Then her fine eyes drooped on the child by her side.
To her, Stirling Castle was a place of many sad and stirring associations. There, her husband, the magnificent and gallant James V., was born, and crowned in the same year in which his father fell in battle. It was his favourite residence, and the scene of many of his merry frolics, as the gudeman of Ballengeich; and there their only surviving child, Queen Mary, had been crowned in 1543, when only nine months old,—crowned queen of a people who were to cast her forth as a waif upon the sea of misfortune; but on whose annals the story of her sorrows, and of their shame has cast a shadow that may never fade.
Many conflicting public and private interests were involved in the result of this convention of estates, or conference at Stirling.
The marriage of the young queen with the heir of France, or with the boy Edward VI.; and hence the great question of peace or war with England; involving the lives of thousands, who were doomed never to see the close of autumn.
Bothwell looked forward with confidence to the rejection of the French marriage, and to himself obtaining the hand of an English princess, when he could exult over Mary of Lorraine, who had trifled with his love, as with the love of many others, as already related, for reasons of her own, and slighted him in the end.
M. d'Oysell, the ambassador of Henry II., confidently anticipated the successful issue of that diplomacy which would ultimately make him a peer of France, knight of St. Michael, and perhaps lord of some forfeited Huguenot seigneurie.
M. Grimani, the patriarch of Venice, had also in view the maintenance of the ancient league between France and Scotland; that the hydra-headed heresy of the latter might be destroyed by fire and sword, if the power of the preacher failed.
Claude Hamilton, of Preston, already saw in imagination his coming patent of the earldom of Gladsmuir, as others of his faction—Cassilis, Glencairn, and Kilmaurs—did their pensions, places, and profits, if the English marriage was achieved.
Edward Shelly, somewhat to his own surprise, felt a combination of selfishness and delight, at the prospect of winning a rich and beautiful wife—a young countess, and perhaps an earldom, as the reward of his diplomacy; while poor Florence Fawside, ignorant of all these secret springs of action, which moved the wise and good, or the titled knaves around him, looked gloomily forward to the sequel of the feud he had yet to foster, and to the consequent loss, for ever, of a love that was all the more seductive and alluring because such a passion was new to his heart, and that she who was its origin, had thrown much that was romantic around it. Although the poor lad knew it not, on the decision of these lords and barons, loyal and true, or rebel and false, depended, perhaps, the sequel of his love; for the object of it was to be bartered, as Shelly phrased it, "like a bale of goods," to a foreign emissary, as the price of his services in assisting to subvert the liberties of Scotland. In his sudden grief, on discovering the abyss of old hereditary hate that yawned between himself and Madeline Home, he forgot even the wrongs he had to avenge upon the Laird of Champfleurie and others, who had plotted for his destruction. He forgot all but her presence, and that she was lost to him!
All Lowland Scotland stood on tiptoe, watching with anxiety the result of a debate that was to give her an English king, or was still further to cement the league of five hundred years, by placing the French dauphin on the throne of the Stuarts; we say Lowland Scotland, for the Celts, ever at war among themselves, viewed with disdain or heeded not whatever was done, beyond their then impassable boundary, the Grampians.
Arran looked forward to having the regency placed more securely in his hands, and resolving that, if it passed, as ultimately it did, into the firmer grasp of Mary of Lorraine, to resort at once to arms, and hoist the standard of revolt on his castle of Cadzow.
Let us see how all this ended.
The debate was stormy, for many of the speakers were rude and brief in speech, rough, unlettered, fierce, and turbulent. Frowns were exchanged, gauntleted hands were clenched, and more than once the pommels of swords and poniards were ominously touched, among both parties; for though the proud spirit and patriotism of many were roused to fiery action by the great event at issue, there were others, whom we need not name—the Scottish utilitarians of 1547—whose cupidity and selfishness alone were enlisted in the cause; but vain were their exertions. The letter of Henry of Valois, the production of which caused many an eye to lour on Florence, who, absorbed in his own thoughts, was all unconscious that he was observed at all,—the energy of his ambassador, M. d'Oysell, and the eloquence of Mary of Lorraine, when united to her own beauty and her husband's memory, bore all before them! Hence the proposals of the English Protector, Somerset, were abruptly rejected, with something very much akin to disdain. In his letters there was assumed a dictatorial tone, which could not fail to offend the loyal portion of the Scottish noblesse.
"By his holiness Pope Julius II.," said Arran with a kindling eye, "it was ordained in 1504, that at his court the king of Scotland should take precedence of the kings of Castile, of Hungary, Poland, Navarre, of Bohemia, and Denmark; and that he should recognize no superior but God and His vicegerent on earth: then whence this grotesque loftiness of tone from a regent of England?"
The patriarch of Venice and the French ambassador beheld this growing indignation with evident satisfaction; while glances of ill-concealed anger and dismay were exchanged by those whose names were affixed to the indenture which, at that moment, Shelly carried in the secret pocket of his jazarine-jacket. Cassilis, who had little patience and less politeness, openly insulted the legate by terming Pope Julius "a shaveling mass-monger and pagan priest."
"My lord, my lord!" exclaimed the Archbishop of St. Andrew's, growing pale with anger; "beware lest he excommunicate thee with bell, book, and candle!"
"I care not," replied the sullen earl, frowning at the primate under the aventayle of his helmet; "for I am ready to maintain, wi' the auld Lollards o' Kyle, that the pope is a pagan, who exalteth himself against God, and above Him; that he can neither remit sins nor the pains of purgatory by mumbling Latin, or scribbling on a sheep-hide; that the blessing of a bishop is worth less than a brass bodle, and that Paul III. is the head o' the crumbling kirk of Antichrist!"
The sallow Venetian trembled with horror and anger at these words, and raised his thin white tremulous hands to heaven.
"Sancta Maria!" he exclaimed; "silence, thou false peer, lest I have thee burned quick!"
Cassilis laughed aloud, till every joint in his armour rattled.
"I am Gilbert Kennedy," said he, "and can betake me to my auld house in the wilds o' Carrick; so send your faggots there; and, hark ye, sir legate, I, who have hanged a monk, may feed the crows with a patriarch."
Cassilis was a stern and ferocious lord, so none dared to reply. He was a tyrant over his vassals, who found his avarice insatiable; yet it was always exerted in form of feudal law. Thus, on the marriage of each of his daughters (he had two—Jean, married to the Earl of Orkney, and Catherine, to the Laird of Banburrow), or the knighting of his sons, the master, and Sir Thomas of Colzean; or for the maintenance of feuds with his neighbours, he had mulcted them heavily by the ordinance which made it "lesome to the lord to seek sic help frae his men conforme to their faculties and the quantitie of their lands;" in short, to tax them, and seize the best of the goods in stable, byre, roost, and cheese-room, whenever the lord pleased, or found an urgent necessity for so doing.
The arguments and energy of this avaricious peer, of Glencairn, Kilmaurs, and others, who were in secret the agents or adherents of Somerset, if they failed to convince the mass who heard them, of the advantages that might accrue from a nuptial and political union with England, succeeded at last in filling with undefined alarm the bosom of Mary of Lorraine, whose finely nervous and aristocratic, yet soft temperament, was as ill calculated to withstand the turbulence, cupidity, and savagery of these atrocious peers, as in after-times her daughter to withstand their sons. She knew the falsehood of those with whom she had to contend, and who were now collected in a gloomy group near the council-table. Her soft cheek, from having the pink tinge of a sea-shell, crimsoned; her beautiful eyes filled with light, and, with a hand white as marble, grasping an arm of her innocent daughter's throne, she rose to speak, and then all were hushed to silence, and every eye was turned towards her.
"My lords and gentlemen," said she, gathering courage from the emergency of the moment and the presence of M. d'Oysell and the patriarch of Venice, "the holy religion which was planted in this soil a thousand years ago, and which flourished so broadly and so well, yielding good fruit, has been all but uprooted! A cardinal priest, a prince of the Church, has been barbarously murdered in his own archiepiscopal palace, and, gashed by wounds, his naked corpse has been suspended from its ramparts in the light of noon! Already, by this tremendous act, the altar of God has been defiled and the temple shaken to its foundation. Through the dim vista of events to come, I look forward with fear and sorrow to the future reign of my little daughter, the child of the good King James V.—that King James whom Pope Julius made defender of the faith, and girt with a sword sharpened by his holy hand on the altar-stone of St. Peter, against all heretics, especially those of England,—that James V., whose young and noble heart was broken by the rebel spirit of his peers, by their treason to Scotland in the cabinet, and their cowardice at the battle of Solway. Nay, never frown on me, or rattle your swords, my lords of Cassilis and Glencairn," she added, waving her small white hand, on which the jewels flashed like the scorn that lighted up her eyes; "I am a woman, and claim a woman's privilege to speak; and thus I repeat again, that I anticipate the future of my daughter, a Stuart and a Guise, among you with grief and horror! The Earls of Bothwell and Glencairn have spoken well and plausibly; but apart from all, the Duke of Somerset's conditions, which are unworthy the Scottish crown and degrading to the Scottish people, what happiness could be my daughter's in wedding the son of the apostate Henry,—he who was the horror of all modest women,—he who espoused Anne Boleyn, knowing her to be his own daughter, and yet laid her head on the block; who violated his promises to Anne of Cleves, and sent her fair successor also to the block; who murdered the aged Countess of Salisbury, and sent more than seventy thousand of his subjects to await his appearance before the judgment-seat of God; he who, by his lusts, and by his treason to the Holy See, made all England turn, in one day, heretic! Yet it is to the son of this man you would wed her in helpless infancy; and to the custody of his creature Somerset you would yield her, the daughter of Scotland and of France!"
A deep silence succeeded this outburst. At last Arran spoke.
"Fear not, madam," said he; "being the next kinsman to the crown, I am, by the ancient custom of our mother country, the tutor or custodian of its infant sovereign, and, with God's will, I shall remain so!"
"None dare dispute this right, Lord Earl," said Mary.
"None, save the king of England or his representative," urged Glencairn; "and he does so by the right of a treaty for the marriage of Edward with the daughter of King James, a treaty——"
"Which we do not recognize," interrupted Arran.
"What cared Henry of England for treaties?" exclaimed Arran's brother, the Archbishop of St. Andrew's,—"he who trampled on all laws, human and divine?"
"He hath gone to the place of his reward, sir priest," replied the rude Glencairn; "and now we have to deal, not with a dead king, but with the Duke of Somerset."
"A heretic as stout," continued the incensed primate, "though perhaps less lecherous and lustful."
"Lustful enough of our Scottish blood," said the gallant Earl of Huntly, with a smile, "if we may judge of his campaign among us here in '44, when we knew him as Edward Earl of Hertford."
"The result of all this chattering will be that we shall have war," said Glencairn. "The English will come——"
"With their Spanish and German auxiliaries——"
"Well, let them come," retorted Arran. "Our hills are steep, our streams are deep and swift, our hearts, I hope, as stout, and the swords bequeathed to us by our sires from a thousand bloody fields, are sharp and sure as ever! Let Somerset come, with his English billmen, his German pikes, and Spanish arquebuses: when true to herself, Scotland is unconquerable!"
"Thou art right, my lord," added the patriarch of Venice; "her people are unconquerable. But among her nobles are men ever ready to bend their necks to any chain of gold, or sell their faith and honour to the highest bidder!"
Perceiving that their design of having the English marriage accomplished was on the eve of being hopelessly frustrated,—that the proposals of the Valois were all but formally accepted by the regent and Mary of Lorraine, those who were in secret league with England became desperate, and Kilmaurs at last conceived the artful idea of embroiling Arran with the Queen-mother on a point concerning which he knew them to be remarkably sensitive. The smile of this crafty young lord was a mere twitch of the mouth, an unpleasant grimace at best; yet such a smile his visage wore when, during a pause in this strangely-conducted controversy, he said to Arran, in a low and stern voice,—
"Beware, my lord regent, lest this French marriage be not a plot of the Guises merely to involve us in a war with England."
"For that I care little. But to what end would it be?"
"An alteration in the regency."
Arran changed colour, and eyeing the young lord askance, asked, through his clenched teeth,
"That I may be succeeded by whom?"
"The Queen-mother, very probably."
"'Tis false, my Lord Kilmaurs!" exclaimed Mary of Lorraine, haughtily, "I say so—I, Mary, Queen of Scotland!"
"Under favour, madam," said Arran, reddening with annoyance, "you are neither Queen of Scotland nor the Scots, but simply queen-mother of the sovereign. There is a difference, you will pardon me. Henry of Valois is king of France; Edward VI. is king of England; but our monarchs have ever been kings of the Scots; for the SOIL belongs to the people."
"That whilk they soak so readily wi their gude red bluid, may weel be theirs," said the aged Earl of Mar.
"Bravade as ye may," urged Kilmaurs, "'tis all a plot of the Guises; and such I will maintain it to be."
"Now, grant me patience to scorn this base calumny!" said Mary of Lorraine, growing alternately red and pale with anger; for though she coveted this post in her heart, she knew too well the danger of making an enemy of Arran. "Good, my lords; I have made no struggle for the regency, nor have ever ventured to compete with my cousin Arran."
"Madam," said Arran coldly, "what right could you have pled?"
"Right enough," replied the Queen, veiling her anger by a smile; "nor am I quite without precedents either."
"Indeed!" said Arran, while Kilmaurs twitched the velvet mantle of Cassilis, and smiled to see the train on fire; "will you please to state this right?"
"A mother's right to rear her tender offspring; and Heaven knows that thought engrossed my whole heart, after the death of my two sons at Bothesay, and of my late husband and beloved king."
"God sain him! God rest him in his grave at Holyrood!" muttered the loyal old Earl of Mar, raising his bonnet; "he was the father of the poor."
"Lord earl, I thank you," said Mary, whose eyes filled with tears, and whose daughter, on perceiving this emotion, gently stole her little hand within hers; "after his death, I might have urged the parliament to remember that Mary of Gueldres, the widow of James II., and Margaret Tudor, the widow of James IV., were both regents of Scotland; then why not I, Mary of Guise and Lorraine, widow of their descendant, James V.? Yet, I asked you not for this. I love my kinsman Arran; but I better love my little daughter—the child your monarch left me. Is it not so, my good Lord Regent?"
"It is, madam; you speak most fairly and truly," replied Arran, whose smile belied the admission.
"I call God and His blessed Mother to witness, if I had then a thought in the world, but to rear my babe, as I was reared by my father, René of Lorraine, a good Catholic, and to guard her from the intrigues of those who would destroy the liberties of her country and her hope of salvation, by giving her in marriage to the heretic son of a heretic king."
"And while united to resist this object," said Arran, courteously kissing her white hand, "we are invincible; so long live the Dauphin of France, who shall one day be Francis I., king of the Scots."
A loud burst of applause shook the hall, while the malcontent lords exchanged glances of fury.
"Beware, my Lord of Arran, beware," said Glencairn; "last year, '46, Francis I. of France was glad to purchase a peace with England at the expense of eight hundred thousand crowns."
"We will purchase it at the expense of a few superfluous lives," retorted Arran, with a glance of stern significance, which made the sombre earl yet more grim and sullen; and now Bothwell began to fear that his chance of obtaining an English princess to grace his castle of Hermitage, was about as slender as Master Edward Shelly's hope of obtaining a Scottish countess, for better or worse.
The general result of this conference, or convention of the lords spiritual and temporal, was a unanimity of sentiment on the part of the regent and of the queen-mother to promote internal peace and public order. The former, for the common weal, formally renounced the contract of marriage between the young queen and his son the Lord Hamilton, in favour of the Dauphin of France, and annulled all the bonds given by various powerful peers, who pledged themselves to see that alliance effected.
The Earl of Angus and the Lord Maxwell, stung with shame, publicly and solemnly repudiated all promises of loyalty or fealty to England; and the peer last named was made warden of the western marches. Bothwell, Cassilis, and Glencairn, with others of their party, were left in a state of doubt, irresolution, and fear; for there was now at hand a crisis which would force them to arms, either for Scotland or against her.
The convention dissolved, and from that hour Scotland and England prepared for open war!
During the debate the eyes of Florence and of the countess met repeatedly, and each time she trembled, coloured deeply, and looked aside. Then, after a time, she durst not turn towards him. She knew that now he must have discovered her name, and who she was; and her heart seemed to shrink and wither up within her, in dread lest his love might turn to indifference, if not to hatred; for she knew the depth of abhorrence excited by the memory of the death-feud, inculcated by Lady Alison, in the two sons of Sir John Fawside.
Meanwhile, ignorant of what was passing in the minds of his niece and his soi-disant enemy, the old Laird of Preston had more than once surveyed the latter with somewhat of melancholy interest; for he knew the wild, stern spirit which this youth inherited from his father—and the ideas he had imbibed with the milk and blood of his mother; but poor Florence, overwhelmed by varied emotions, and by the secret he had so recently learned, avoided altogether the keen grey eye of Hamilton.
The queen-mother made a low reverence to the lords of convention, and while the sharp trumpets flourished bravely, withdrew with her daughter and ladies of honour. The eye of Florence followed sorrowfully the sombre group in their doole-cloaks (for Mary of Lorraine in public still wore the garb of mourning), and in imagination he seemed to be bidding adieu for ever to his love, and the hope it had kindled within him.
In presence of this beautiful girl the young man seemed to be alike without words or thoughts that had any coherence.
So absorbing was the emotion, that he was quite unconscious of the insolent and defiant glances levelled at him by Glencairn, by his son Kilmaurs, and others, as they brushed past and left the hall, to scheme further plots for vengeance or for safety; for these lords and their followers were only restrained by a knowledge of the locality, of its sanctity, and of the high powers of the Lord High Constable, from assaulting and slaying him, sword in hand, within the precincts of this royal castle and palace; for princely Stirling, in Scotland's earlier days, was both.
Within an hour after the convention broke up two horsemen were seen passing eastward, through the Torwood, at full speed, to lessen as much as possible the eighty Scottish miles or so that lay between them and the frontiers of England.
They were the valiant captain of the Boulogners and Master Patten, the emissaries of the Duke of Somerset, on the high-road for Berwick and London, to announce that England had no argument left her now but a sharp and dangerous one—the sword!
The loyal and true foresaw the evils to come with sincere sorrow; and, under their silvery beards, old men muttered that ancient prophecy so fatally and so frequently applicable to Scotland:—
Woe unto the land whose king is a child!