Chapter II: Summary (2)

The young mother being in a desperate state of health, her royal spouse testified the greatest anxiety for her amendment--not, however, by remaining at home for the purpose of watching over her, but by performing a pilgrimage on foot to the shrine of St. Ninian, on the coast of Galloway; this, he persuaded his suffering partner, would greatly conduce to her recovery.

King James was attended by his four Italian minstrels, who, when they arrived at the shrine, were completely exhausted by their long pedestrian expedition, and were forced to be carried back to Holyrood on horses hired for the occasion. The King, who was as hardy and manly as any of his countrymen, persevered in all he had vowed, and withal in some other journeyings more than he made public. However, his loving lieges were exceedingly edified by his tender attentions in making this pedestrian pilgrimage for the benefit of Margaret’s health, especially when it was found that her recovery was perfectly coincident with the moment at which her King offered, in her behalf, at the shrine of St. Ninians.[108] Margaret had, nevertheless, subsequently reason to know that James would have shown more true love to her by staying at home; for it was on this pilgrimage that he renewed his acquaintance with the handsome Jane Kennedy, mother of his son James Stuart, then under the tuition of Erasmus at Rotterdam. James IV. afterward imposed this boy on the Church of Scotland as Primate.

Besides the usual share of trouble and crime incurred by such connections, the King of Scotland entered into a life-long enmity with Archibald, Earl of Angus, Old Bell-the-Cat, who was wooing Jane Kennedy for honorable matrimony. Notwithstanding all the scandals regarding the King and Jane, the old Earl carried her off, and actually married her, although, in the course of the contention, James IV. imprisoned him.

When the young Queen wholly recovered, she likewise made a pilgrimage of thanksgiving, on a most magnificent scale, to St. Ninians. Margaret traveled in a litter to the Galloway coast. Her baggage took seventeen pack-horses to carry it; her chapel plate and furniture, called the Queen’s “chapel-graith,” were borne in two coffers. James’s wardrobe required three horses to bear it. He, as well as the Queen, was attended by his chaplains and “chapel-gear.” The royal pilgrimage lasted twenty days.[109]

“The Queen was sore vexed with sickness that year;”[110] nor was her health amended by the loss of her first-born, who died at Stirling Castle when he was little more than a twelvemonth old, February 17, 1506–7. His preceptor, the Bishop of Galloway, expired exactly at the same time. The poor young Queen passed the first years of her marriage in a state of invalidism: moreover she had the vexation of seeing her husband’s heart disputed by a crowd of rivals.

The Christmas of 1507 was kept merrily at old Holyrood. Among other expenses for the festive proceedings of the court, thirty dozen of little bells were provided and delivered to Thomas Boswell, for the dancers at the royal revels on the last night of the old year, 1507. One of the canons of Holyrood was paid 7_d._ for his pains in mending the organ there.

The Valentine-tide was kept joyously with music, minstrels, and mummers. If Queen Margaret were ill it was for no lack of gayety. King James himself went and “fetched a female minstrel whose name (or character-name) was Wantonness, and gart her sing in the Queen’s chamber;”[111] and Wantonness received for her pains 13_s._ of the royal bounty. Again, on the following “March 6, Wantonness and her twa marrows (associates) wha sang with her, had a gratuity of 13_s._” Among the numerous minstrels entertained and paid at the court of James and Margaret may be reckoned O’Donnel, an Irish harper, to whom was given the handsome fee of seven pounds. “Ane bard-wife, called Agnes Cargill,” had 13_s._; the harper on the Erse clarcha had 9_s._; Gray Steil, the luter, had 5_s._[112]--his name of Gray Steil was probably derived from a national ballad so called, as King James gave two of his fiddlers 9_s._ for singing the song of Gray Steil to his satisfaction.

James IV. was at the height of his prosperity and good fortune in the summer of 1508. He saw his alliance sedulously courted by the King of France, Louis XII., who sent a solemn embassy to him in May, when Edinburgh was the scene of splendid fêtes, to welcome the French nobles. An unknown knight, called “the Wild Knight,” who was surrounded by attendants like “salvage men in their attire,” won great renown at the jousting held in honor of the embassy from Louis XII., June, 1508. All the French knights were reversed, one after the other, before the powerful and skillful arm of the Wild Knight, to the great satisfaction of the Queen and all Englishmen and Scotchmen present. At the giving of the prizes, the gallant King of Scotland claimed a prize as his due, “because he was the conquering Wild Knight.” The somewhat inhospitable course of cuffs, bruises, and downfalls, with which the royal James had entertained his French guests, was succeeded by their invitation to a grand festival, called a Round Table of King Arthur.

The King of Scotland remembering all the parade that his wise father-in-law, Henry VII., had made regarding the restoration of the blood of King Arthur to the throne of England, resolved to give the child, whom his Queen, Margaret, was daily expected to bring, the truly British name of Arthur. But the infant proved a girl, and Margaret languished long, in great peril of her life. Her daughter died as soon as christened.[113]

The Queen appears to have passed the autumn at Lochmaben Castle, the noble structure on the Lochmaben Lake, in Annandale, where Robert Bruce is said to have been born. It is possible that the King of Scotland took her there in hopes that their expected offspring might draw its first breath in the natal place of his renowned ancestor. The only memento of the royal sojourn at Lochmaben is a quaint entry in the King’s Compotus,[114] recording “a gratification of 14_s._ to the crooked Vicar of Dumfries, who sung to the King and Queen at Lochmaben, September 17, 1508.”

James IV. had left his Queen to keep court at Holyrood by herself, while he went in the beginning of April 1508 to perform his devotions at his favorite haunt the shrine of St. Ninians at Whitehorn, where report again whispered that the fair lady Jane Kennedy was the real attraction. During his absence Dr. West, an envoy from his father-in-law Henry VII., tired of waiting at Berwick for a safe-conduct, came to Edinburgh, where he had several interviews with the young Queen. His business was to explain why Henry VII. had arrested James’s kinsman, the Earl of Arran, and his brother Sir Patrick Hamilton--it was because they had taken the liberty of traveling through England for embarkation to France, without a passport or safe-conduct.

Queen Margaret labored in vain, when her husband returned, to procure an interview for Dr. West. James was seriously displeased with the capture of his kinsmen. He sent word to Dr. West “that he was too busy with superintending the making gunpowder, and with” the very incomprehensible occupation of “scotting hewmyss,[115] to spare time to speak to him.”

The Queen took the part of her sire with more warmth than discretion. Sir Patrick Hamilton, meantime, appeared at the Scottish court--whether he had escaped or came on his parole is not explained; but he raised doleful complaints to the King, of the ill-treatment that his brother Arran received in his place of detention in England. The Queen contradicted those who repeated this saying, affirming “that Sir Patrick had assured her that her father had entertained the Earl of Arran very well.” An inquiry took place in presence of the King, the Queen, Sir Patrick Hamilton, and Dr. West. The result was, that Sir Patrick had really told the Queen “that his brother had been very ill entreated by her royal father.”[116]

The news of the decease of Henry VII. soon afterward arrived from England. The loss of her affectionate father was the heaviest grief with which Margaret’s young life had been visited. This was soon after followed by that of her grandmother, the Countess of Richmond, who, for a few weeks, had exercised the office of regent for Henry VIII.

The marriage of Henry VIII. and Katharine of Arragon, the widow of Arthur, Prince of Wales, had taken place peacefully and prosperously. Henry VIII., Margaret, and their young sister Mary Tudor, their aunt Katharine Plantagenet, and her son, were all that remained of the once numerous descendants of Edward IV. The English and Scottish thrones, as Margaret’s children had hitherto died in their infancy, were singularly destitute of heirs-male.

In the autumn of 1509, Queen Margaret again brought forth a living son. He was born at Holyrood, October 20.[117] The young mother insisted that the heir-apparent of Scotland and heir-presumptive of England should bear the national name of Arthur, in remembrance of her favorite brother--a measure which, however, savored more of family affection and gratitude than of policy. The boy was christened Arthur, and proclaimed, with great state, Prince of Scotland and Lord of the Isles.

The legacy bequeathed by Arthur, Prince of Wales, to his sister Margaret, may be remembered. Whether Henry VII. conceived that the young Prince had no right to bequeath his personals and valuables, or whether he chose to retain them in his grasp, is not easy to define; but it is certain that Queen Margaret was in a great state of excitement concerning them. Very soon after her father’s death, she agitated the matter with her brother Henry VIII., who answered her civilly; but the goods and chattels were nevertheless not forthcoming.

The Queen lost her infant son, Arthur, in July, 1511. He died at Edinburgh Castle. Margaret and James were deeply afflicted at this loss, and left Holyrood suddenly in consequence. The unfortunate young mother was again “sore vexit with sickness.”

When the royal pair returned to the capital, among the amusements devised to divert Queen Margaret’s grief, a play was performed in her presence at Holyrood, October 12, 1511. The day is remarkable, because the illustrious poet, David Lindsay of the Mount, is first mentioned then, as one of the royal household. He acted in the play, and received from the royal stores a dress of blue and yellow taffety to attire himself for the part he performed.[118]

That year and ensuing spring were remarkably unhealthy. A comet had been seen casting beams like a sun, which glared for twenty-one nights: it frightened the King and Queen into fits of ultra devotion. Although Margaret had been thrice the mother of living children, she, like her sister-in-law, Katharine of Arragon, was still childless. By the King’s advice, she took a pilgrimage to St. Duthois of Ross, and returned to Edinburgh about July 10, to assist at the reception of her brother’s ambassadors, Lord Dacre and Sir Robert Drury. The ensuing April 11, 1512,[119] Queen Margaret was delivered at her palace of Linlithgow of “ane fair Prince,” who was shortly after baptized James, and proclaimed Prince of Scotland and the Isles. He lived to be James V.

Meantime a fierce naval contest occurred between the fleets of England and Scotland. The ground of dispute was alleged piracy; the brave Scottish Admiral Barton fell, and his ships were captured by Sir Edward Howard--terrible losses to James IV.

Lord Dacre and Dr. West came when Margaret’s infant son was about a month old, May 4,[120] to hear the statement the Queen made of her claims on the disputed legacy from her own lips. The following interview is extracted from the dispatches of Dr. West to his King, Henry VIII. She had removed from Linlithgow with her boy, to her husband’s royal seat of Stirling Castle. The conversation took place after dinner.[121] Directly Dr. West was introduced, Queen Margaret asked, writes he--

“If your Grace had sent her legacy?”

West answered, “Yea, which I was to deliver to her, so that the King of Scots would promise to keep the treaty of peace.”

“And not else?” asked Queen Margaret.

“No,” replied Dr. West. “And if the King of Scots, your husband, persists in war, the King of England, my master, will not only keep the legacy, but take from him the best towns he has in Scotland.”

What Queen Margaret would have answered to this uncivil rejoinder Dr. West declares he knew not, for King James entered her withdrawing-room, and the conversation ceased.

The war mentioned by Dr. West was on the eve of exploding between Henry VIII., and Louis XII. James of Scotland meant to rank himself among the allies of France. Henry, being young and pugnacious, had demanded of Louis XII. the payment of “the pension” for which Edward IV. had compounded his claims on the French provinces, the inheritance of his ancestress, Eleanor of Aquitaine. It amounted to about 50,000 louis; and, as if for a lesson to the destructive ambition of princes, it had cost several lives for every coin received: for it has never been paid but to three very prosperous sovereigns of England, to keep them quiet--viz. Edward IV., Henry VIII., and Charles II., and very few installments of this blood-bought annuity did either receive. Lindsay of Pitscottie, however, notices that Henry VIII. claimed his pension, and got it, from Louis XII.

As King James was resolved to adhere to the ancient alliance of France, Dr. West demanded leave to depart. The King requested him[122] “first to go and see the Queen and the young Prince at Linlithgow;” adding, “that Queen Margaret had tokens for the King her brother and Queen Katharine.”

“Item,” adds the reverend envoy,[123] “on Sunday afternoon I rode to Linlithgow, and came thither by four o’clock. As soon as I alighted, her Grace, Queen Margaret, sent Sir John Sinclair for me. Howbeit, ‘she told me she had done the best that was in her power, and would continue so to do.’ And without further communication about her legacy, or any other matter, she delivered me the tokens for your Grace, the Queen, and the Princess (her sister Mary). Queen Margaret then commanded that I should be taken to see the Prince, and so I was. Verily, he is a right fair child, and a large one for his age.”[124]

The beautiful babe that Queen Margaret displayed with pride to the English envoy was afterward James V. Even at that tender age, he had been given in charge to Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, who was appointed by James IV. to be gentleman-usher to the royal infant. He is called both “the Prince’s usher” and “the keeper of the King’s grace.” He entered on his office the day the heir of Scotland was born. Never did an infant prince receive more tender service from any nurse than the son of Queen Margaret from this noble and learned gentleman. It was doubtless owing to his judicious treatment that the infant Prince did not follow his brethren and sister to the grave.

There are few prettier passages in historical biography than the lines wherein Sir David Lindsay describes the manner in which he amused, and, at the same time, awoke the dawning intellect of the young royal Stuart, whom he bore on his arm until he could run alone. From the testimony of Sir David himself, it appears that Queen Margaret had provided her infant Prince both with nurse and governess; but their occupations must have been complete sinecures, since Sir David of the Mount did nothing but play with him by day, and watch him at night. These employments of a royal baby’s vice-chamberlain are fully confirmed by comparison with the Bruges Journal of Lewis Gruthuse,[125] who saw Sir Richard Vaughan (afterward beheaded at Pontefract by Richard III.) taking similar care of Edward V. in his infancy; like the stout Earl of Warwick, also, who did not disdain to dandle the infant Henry VI., and thought it no shame to be depicted with his King of six months old on his warlike arm.[126]

“I take the Queen’s grace, thy mother, to witness,” says Sir David Lindsay, “likewise my Lord Chancellor, your nurse, and your old governess, how, when you slept, it was nightly close to my cheek; how often, in the day, I bore your grace on my back, even as a packman. But sometimes you bestrode my neck, dancing and jumping, with many a nod and smile. Nay, the very first syllables you lisped were meant as my name, being Pa Da Lyné; and this you said that I might play on my lute to divert you.” However, it is doing great wrong to the faithful Sir David to translate into plain prose, for the benefit of those who love not the sight of metre, his naïve and pleasant lines, which, after all, give the same information, only many degrees better, as follows:--

“I entered to thy majesty
The day of thy nativity;
I pray thy grace for to consider,
Thou hast made many lords and lairds,
And given them many rich rewards,
To them which were full far to seek,
When I lay nightly by thy cheek,
I take the Queen, her grace, thy mother,
My Lord the Chancellor, and other,
Thy nurse, and thy old mistress,[127]
I take them all to bear witness.
Old Willy Dale,[128] were he alive,
My life full well he could describe,
How, as a packman bears his pack,
I bore your Grace upon my back.
Sometime you strode upon my neck,
Dancing with many a bend and beck.
The first _syllabs_ that thou didst mute,
”Were ‘Pa Da Lyné on the lute.’”

These “syllabs,” as Sir David terms the first accents of the infant Prince, were supposed to mean, “Play, Davy Lindsay, on the lute.” The affectionate David describes how thereupon he snatched up the lute, and played “twenty springs,” or tunes. But the musical faculties of his charge, when once excited, never let David have repose from the instrument:--

“From play thou’st never let me rest;
But Ginkerton[129] thou likest the best.”

The King and Queen of Scotland remained malcontent with England the whole winter. James could not forgive the loss of his favorite seaman, Barton; while Margaret led every one a weary life concerning the detention of her legacy. She was ill in health, and expected sympathy and consolation from her brother. Dr. West was sent again to confer with her on the subject of dispute. He arrived in Edinburgh, March 16, 1513.[130] He brought letters of condolence to the Queen, on her illness, from Henry VIII., and many promises respecting the legacy; but he certainly came empty-handed, and unprovided with any means of payment. Henry persisted in declaring that he would only deliver the goods to his sister in case Scotland remained at peace with him; and King James, determining to maintain his alliance with France, to appease Margaret promised “to give her as many jewels, and better and richer abuilzements,” than those her brother unjustly kept from her.

She wrote the following letter[131] to Henry VIII. by Dr. West--

“Right excellent, right high and mighty Prince, our dearest and
best beloved Brother.

“We commend us unto you in our most hartlie wise. Your
ambassador, Doctor West, delivered us your loving letters, in
which ye show us that, when ye heard of our sickness, ye took
great heaviness.

“Dearest brother, we are greatly rejoiced that we see ye have
respect to our disease; we give ye our hearty thanks, and your
writing is to us good comfort.

“We can not believe that of your mind, or by your command,
we are so unfriendly dealt with in our _Fader’s_[132]
legacy, whereof we would not have spoken nor written, had
not the Doctor spoken to us of the same in his credence. Our
husband knows it is withholden for his sake, and will recompense
us so far as the Doctor shows him.[133] _We are ashamed
therewith_, and would God never word had been thereof. It
is not worth such estimation as in your divers letters of the
same. _And we lack nothing: our husband is ever the longer
the better to us_, as knows God; who, right high and mighty
Prince, our dearest and best beloved brother, have you in
governance.

“Given under our signet, at our Palace of Linlithgow, the 9th
day of April.

“Your loving Sister,

“MARGARET.”

James IV., although resolved to support Louis XII. against his brother-in-law, was anxious for the preservation of the peace of Europe, likely to be disturbed by the perpetual requisitions of the pension Henry VIII. insisted on receiving from France, and of the legacy his queen demanded with equal pertinacity. The war between Henry and Louis had commenced with a naval action in Conquet Bay, in which the victory was dubious; but the death of the brave naval commander, Sir Edward Howard, made it disastrous to the English. James IV. regrets this loss, although Howard had slain his Admiral Barton the preceding year; and he mentions his Queen as sharing in these feelings. “Surely, dear brother,”[134] writes the crowned chevalier, when urging his earnest desire for peace in Europe, “we think there is more loss to you of your late admiral who deceased, to his great honor and laud, than the advantage that might have been to you of winning all the French galleys and their equipage. The loss is great to Christendom of that said umquhile valiant knight, and other noblemen that on both sides apparently perished. Pray you, dearest brother, to take our writings in gude part, as our own is; for verily we are sorry, and also our dearest _fallow_ (consort) for this loss, through acquaintance of his _fader_, that noble knight, the Earl of Surrey, who convoyed our dearest _fallow_ the Queen to us. Right excellent, right high and mighty Prince, our dear brother and cousin, the blessed Trinity have you in tuition. Given under our signet, at our Palace of Edinburgh, the xxiii. of May.”

Soon after the return of Dr. West to England, a decisive demand of Margaret’s legacy was made, the alternative being a declaration of war from the King of Scotland. If Lindsay of Pitscottie may be credited, a very singular dispatch, full of flattering promises, was the answer:--[135]

“My lord ambassador desires to have of me silver-work, golden work, rings, chains, precious stones, and other the abuilzements pertaining to a prince, left in legacy by my eldest brother Arthur to my eldest sister, Margaret, Queen of Scotland. I grant thereto she shall be well answered of the same, and the double thereof. And if,” concludes Henry VIII., “the King of Scotland will promise faithfully to keep his word by me, I shall incontinent, _with the consent of my nobles_, make him Duke of York and governor of England to my home-coming--for heirs of England must come either of him or me, and I have none as yet lawfully; but I hear say that Margaret my sister hath a pretty boy, likely to grow a man of estimation. I pray God to bless him, and keep him from his enemies, and give me grace to see him in honor when he cometh of age, that I may entertain him according to my honor and duty.”[136]

Subsequently, this curious passage in the history of the royal family of Scotland and England is confirmed by the pertinacity with which Queen Margaret required that her brother, when destitute of male heirs, should create her son James, Duke of York. Again, the remarkable circumstance that the legacy is always mentioned as that of Arthur, Prince of Wales, by the Scotch historians, deserves notice; while the English historians, and even the letters of their envoys, allude to it as the legacy of Margaret’s father. But the Scotch are certainly right, since Henry VII. left no such legacy.[137]

King James, finding that his brother-in-law had actually sailed to invade Louis XII. (June 1st, 1513), dispatched to the aid of his ally his two great ships, which always sailed in consort--the Margaret, which he had named after his Queen, and the James; likewise the great St. Michael, and a fleet of smaller vessels, under the command of his kinsmen, the Earls of Huntly and Arran. Like all marine expeditions under the command of soldiers, it was an abortive one; and the Earl of Arran incurred his King’s displeasure by his strange manœuvers, and excited suspicion, that if he had had sufficient seamanship, he would have run away with the fleet.

Meantime James IV. sent his Lord Lion to declare war on Henry VIII., then besieging Terouenne; and the Lord Lion, in his herald’s dress, being introduced by Garter, in his garb of solemnity, to the presence of Henry VIII., then in his camp, declared war in a set and serious oration.[138] Among the other wrongs which had induced the King of Scots to declare war, are enumerated the following:--“Because King Henry had taken various Scotchmen out of our realm, and chained them in prison by the craigs (necks); likewise withholding our wiff’s legacy (promised in divers letters) in despite of us; and slaughter of Andrew Barton, by your awn command, quha had not offended you or your lieges--breaking peace and amity by that deed.”[139]

Here was cause enough for war. The naval conflict in time of profound peace; the death, in consequence, of James’s gallant seaman, Andrew Barton--to say nothing of the cruelty of catching Scotchmen and “chaining them by the craigs”--were outrages bad enough, without the further aggravation of depriving Margaret of the legacy, regarding which she had made such ceaseless requisitions.

Nevertheless, as soon as war was actually declared against her brother, Queen Margaret began to be excessively full of lamentations for the measure she had urged on. Her jealousy was excited by the correspondence Anne of Brittany, Queen of France, commenced with James IV., urging him to do his devoir, as chevalier-errant, by invading England, and marching three days, with banners displayed, over the Borders. In token that she had chosen him as her knight, Queen Anne sent him a ring of immense value, taken off her finger.

James was eager to make a diversion in favor of his ally by invading England, but soon found that his wedded partner meant to let him have little quiet in consequence, either by day or by night; the cause of grievance being, that the Queen of France had written him “ane love-letter.”

Common sense might have represented to her that the Queen of France was a woman dying of decline. She was, withal, old enough to be her mother. King James, however gallantly disposed to the French Queen, had never beheld her; neither was he likely so to do. The ideas of the disputed jewels, and the message of the Queen of France, working together in Margaret’s irritable brain, either produced uneasy visions, or led her to feign some. The tragical events that soon after occurred, caused her to give them forth as prophetic--in which representation she was supported by certain grave chroniclers.[140] The dreams themselves are good for nothing as events in political history; but, as symptoms of the state of a person’s mind and thoughts, have a certain value in historical biography. Just as James IV. was completing his musters of feudal militia, for the purpose of invading England, Queen Margaret one night awoke him with sobs, tears, and even cries. On being awakened by her husband, she assured him that she had been frightened and perplexed by terrifying dreams. One time she thought she saw him hurled down a great precipice, and crushed and mangled at the bottom; while she lost one of her eyes. Then the scene changed; and she thought that, while she was looking at her jewels, chains, and sparkling coronets of diamonds, they suddenly turned to pearls before her face--pearls which are the emblems of widowhood and tears. James told her these were wild visions, merely produced by the vagaries of sleep, and not to be regarded. Upon which Queen Margaret commenced a curtain-lecture, by asking him “Why he preferred pleasing the Queen of France to her, his wife and the mother of his children?” She likewise insisted on going with him to the south. “If you will,” she said, “suffer me to accompany you; it may be that my countrymen will yield to a peace. I hear the Queen, my sister (Katharine of Arragon), will be there, in the army, in her husband’s absence. If we meet, who knows what God, by our means, may bring to pass?”[141]

James was incensed at her proceeding to abuse Anne of Bretagne, the Queen of France, as a woman “twice married, by means of divorces.” The royal pair had a great quarrel; and Margaret, finding that if she dreamed never so much to the purpose, she failed of having her own way, took other measures.

Indeed, the alledged supernatural occurrences which preceded the invasion of England--the principal scene of which took place at her own private dwelling of the palace of Linlithgow--when joined to her own proceedings in breaking James’s rest by dreaming alarming dreams, may very well lead to the inference that Margaret had entered surreptitiously into a series of schemes[142] for working on the prominent weakness of her husband’s mind--which was an imagination easily excited by the marvelous. Notwithstanding her aptitude to dream dreams, it is the opinion of her biographer that she was herself not only totally free from any superstitious credulity, but by no means over given to belief in the supernatural, even in the sacred truths of religion. An immense mass of her correspondence is before us. Never did any person write so many letters concerning herself with so little allusion to belief in any future state, or with such utter carelessness in regard to any world but the present. They are, at the same time, totally free from superstition: not a dream, an omen, a prediction, or even an observance of a lucky or an unlucky day, is to be found in several hundreds of very egotistical epistles now under examination.

The inference is therefore plain, that Margaret’s dreams were dreamed for the nonce, as preludes to the following incident, which was probably contrived (or at least connived at) by her.

James IV. had passed a few days at the Queen’s palace at Linlithgow, before he called together his feudal muster. At the council held in the morning, it was observed that he was out of spirits. In the evening he attended vespers at the stately abbey-church of St. Michael, adjoining to the Queen’s palace, for the purpose of praying for the success of the expedition.[143] While praying in St. Katharine’s chapel, near the porch,[144] “there came ane man, clad in a blue gown or blouse, belted about him with a roll of white linen: he had brodikins or buskins on his feet. His head was bare, bald on the top, with yellow locks hanging on each side: his age about fifty. He came fast forwards among the lords, crying and speering specially for the King, saying ‘that he wanted to speak with him.’” It seems that petitions were often presented by the people when the King was at his devotions. “At last the man reached the desk where King James was at prayers. He made no due reverence to him, or salutations; but leaned him _gruffling_[145] upon the desk, (bent down to the desk), and spoke thus--‘Sir King, my mother has sent me to thee, charging thee not to go where thou art purposed; which, if thou do, thou shalt not fare well, nor none that is with thee. Further--she forbade thee not to mell nor follow the counsel of women; which if thou do, thou wilt be confounded and brought to shame.’”

By the time these words were spoken, even-song was nearly done. The King paused, studying to give him an answer. Meantime, before the King’s eyes, and in presence of all the lords about him, “like the blink of the sunbeam or the whiff of the whirlwind, the man evanished away, and could no more be seen.” “I heard,” continues Lindsay of Pitscottie, “Sir David Lindsay and John Inglish, the marshal (who were at that time both of them young men, and special servants to the King’s grace), thought to have taken this man, that they might have speered further tidings at him; but they could not touch him.”[146]

The traditions of Linlithgow declare that another attempt being made to catch the masquerader, who seems to have assumed the character of St. John, he eluded the grasp by slipping behind a curtain which concealed a private stair leading toward the upper part of the church, and that, on leaving this place of refuge, he was seen crossing the court, and entering Linlithgow Palace by a small door under the chapel window. He was said to have been a servant of Queen Margaret.[147] Hence the report prevalent throughout all history that he was suborned by her.

The distraction of the times, and his own incessant occupations, evidently prevented the King from inquiring into this clumsy imposition, which, if cleverly sifted, might have brought down his stern displeasure on his wedded partner. Like most intrigues of the same species, it had no effect in changing the current of events; for James went immediately to Edinburgh to hasten his invasion of England.[148]

All the marvels meant to deter King James from his expedition were not yet exhausted: his artillerymen at Edinburgh worked night as well as day at bringing down military stores from the Castle. They were employed one night heaving down the cannon called the Seven Sisters, which the King had had lately cast by his master-gunner, Borthwick, when, about midnight, a strange scene took place at the Mercat Cross. A summons was shouted forth, called by the proclaimer “the summons of Platcock,”[149] which, it was implied, was the name of some fiend, “requiring certain earls, lords, barons, and gentlemen, and sundry burgesses, designating each individual by name, to appear before his master in forty days, wheresoever he might be.” But it does not appear that the person who played this audacious prank dared mention the King.[150]

The ghostly summons was evidently a parody on the recent requisition of King James to his feudal militia, which he had called out to do him their bounden service against his adversary of England for their usual forty days, bringing their arms and provision. Not only the warlike yeomanry, but those burgesses of Edinburgh who owed military service, were called upon to do their duty by the King. One of them, Mr. Richard Lawson, who either had been, or was afterward, Provost of Edinburgh,[151] being very ill at ease, probably not remarkably relishing his liege lord’s call to the battle-field, had stepped out for air on the balcony of his house, when the fiend at the Mercat Cross, just opposite, was vociferating the list of those who were to fall. Richard Lawson, to his horror, heard his own name as a summoned one; “whereupon, hearing the voice, he marveled what it should be; so he cried out to his servant to bring him his purse, and took out of it one crown, which he cast over his balcony, saying--‘I for my part appeal from your summons and judgment, and betake me to the mercy of God.’”

“Verily,” continues our author,[152] “he who caused me chronicle this was ane sufficient landed gentleman, who was in the town of Edinburgh at the time; and he swore, after the field, there was not one man whose name was called on in Platcock or Pluto’s summons that came home alive, excepting only Richard Lawson, who appealed against it.” But it is most probable that Richard Lawson was the very person who contrived the incident: as he was one of the civic authorities, he had particular opportunities of arranging aught that was done or acted at the Market Cross; he was the only witness of the matter; and he was evidently of the peace or Queen’s party.

James IV. was peculiarly liable to superstitious impressions, it is true, but only when his conscience was offended or sore on any subject. He treated the farce played at the Mercat Cross with the contempt it deserved, when it was duly related to him in the morning. “Nor,” continues our chronicler,[153] “would he give credence to sign or token that made against his purpose, but refused all advice which was for the weal of his crown and country. Neither would he listen to the counsel of his wise and prudent wife, Margaret, Queen of Scotland, for no prayer or supplication she could make him, showing ‘That he had but one son, which was o’er weak a warrant to the realm of Scotland; that it was therefore o’er soon for him to pass to battle, leaving so few successors behind him. Therefore she desired him to stay till God should send him more successors, for she could assure him that if he entered England at that time he would get battle.’ Yet this wise and loving counsel was not taken in good part by him, because she was sister to the King of England. Albeit, this noble woman, laboring as mickle (much) as she might for the weal of her husband, and as well as for the love she bore her brother the King of England, she desired that no discord should occur between the two realms in her time. But nothing could stay the King from going to the Boroughmoor (near Edinburgh), where all his earls, lords, barons, and burgesses were assembled, and all manner of their men between sixty and sixteen, spiritual and temporal, burgh and land, islesmen and others, which amount to the number of a hundred thousand, not reckoning carriage-men and artillerymen, who had the charge of fifty shot of cannons.”[154]

He was not at this time on very good terms with the Queen.[155] As the supernatural plots which beset him all the time he was preparing for the field began with the nightly disquietude he had experienced on account of her prophetic dreams, he probably guessed that she was the instigator of the celestial messenger at Linlithgow, and of the more clumsy and audacious farce performed opposite to citizen Lawson’s balcony at the Mercat Cross, Edinburgh--the scene, in truth, of many an odd political freak before and since. Margaret had, moreover, excited her husband’s displeasure by connecting herself with the Douglas party, ever inimical to the Scottish crown.

The old Earl of Angus, surnamed Bell-the-Cat, had incensed James by joining in the remonstrances his Queen made against his war with England.[156] Thus Queen Margaret’s name--and the fact ought to be noted--was identified with the Douglas faction even before the death of her first husband. It is true the infidelities of the King made Angus and the Queen make common cause together. The old earl was jealous of his gay countess, Jane Kennedy, who was likewise a cause of sore displeasure to Margaret.

Nevertheless, James IV. made up all enmities with his Queen the evening before he marched for the Border, when, according to her own words, he confided to her the place of his treasure; “in case,” as he said, “that aught happened other than good to him.” Likewise, he wrote an order, and gave her to receive in trust for his infant son the last subsidy Louis XII. had paid to him, being eighteen thousand golden sols, or crowns of the sun.[157] Besides this mass of treasure, he then gave his Queen many other valuables, as she herself acknowledges in one of her subsequent letters.[158] This trust, which has never before taken its place in history, had a remarkable effect on her future life.

The King likewise made his testament, and solemnly delivered that and his young son to the keeping of William Elphinstone, Bishop of Aberdeen, an ecclesiastic greatly venerated in Scotland.[159] In case of his own death, James constituted Margaret his Queen “tutrix” to his heir, but only as long as she remained a widow.

Having thus given all due confidence to Margaret as Queen and mother of his son, James IV. marched southward with his unwieldy feudal militia. He made no scruple of very soon wounding the feelings of Margaret as a wife, although he had paid every regard to her as his Queen. His sudden passion for the Lady Heron of Ford speedily became matter of public scandal. This lady was taken when James IV. stormed Henry VIII.’s frontier castle of Ford. The castellan, her husband, had been for some time prisoner of war at Edinburgh. The influence of the King’s beautiful captive was noticed by all his nobles; and the young Archbishop of St. Andrews (the illegitimate son whom James had forced into the primacy of the Scottish church) was supposed to have been equally charmed with her lovely young daughter.

Twenty days had elapsed since James IV. had marched for the Border, when a sudden pause occurred in the brilliant successes with which he had opened the campaign. The enchantress who had paralyzed his warlike ardor, was considered in the Scottish camp as a spy of the English general.[160]

The Earl of Surrey, the same nobleman who had escorted Queen Margaret to Edinburgh, now commanded the English army against James IV., to whose former friendship and intimacy with him on that occasion may be attributed many of the impolitic but knightly courtesies he now showed him. On the contrary, Surrey, as the general of an implacable monarch, and the defender of an invaded country, naturally took every advantage that presented itself, and more, perhaps, than an honorable man ought to have done in the case of Lady Heron’s noxious influence over her captor.

The chiefs of the King’s feudal muster openly murmured against their royal master for his neglect of his military duties; they, however, took the opportunity, headed by the Queen’s friend, Angus, of urging him to retreat back into Scotland with the credit of the mischief he had already done to the English enemy, which more than redeemed the romantic pledge he had given to the Queen of France. James, however, was intoxicated with his first successes, or else loth to restore the Lady Heron to her rightful owner. He declared “he would fight the English if they were a hundred thousand more in numbers; and as for old Bell-the-Cat, he might go back if he were afraid. For himself, when he had fought the English he would retire, and not till then.”[161]

Surrey had dispatched a herald to King James requesting “that he would appoint a day for battle,” a request with which the Scottish King, in the spirit of knight-errantry (disdaining all thoughts of advantage to be gained by military strategy), very naïvely complied, following the laws of the tournament rather than the rules of warlike science.

The battle of Flodden was lost before it was begun, by the unseasonable courtesy of King James, who prevented his able gunner, Borthwick, from demolishing the English army, as it defiled within range of his “seven sister cannon, Thraw-mouthed Meg,” and other instruments of destruction. Surrey must have calculated to a nicety on the punctilios of the crowned chevalier, before he put his army in such remarkable jeopardy. Indeed, without some previous knowledge of the personal intimacy between James and the astute English veteran on the occasion of Margaret’s marriage, many passages are unaccountable in the conduct of the latter on the memorable morning of September 9th, 1513. But he knew his man; he had probably received some chivalric pledge from James during their former intimacy, of which he now took advantage, with cunning reliance on the inviolability of his knightly word. King James followed up his first imprudence by leaving his impregnable situation on Flodden heights, and descending into the lower ground, that he might engage Lord Surrey in a fair field.

The disastrous result is universally known. No one can improve on the battle-scene in _Marmion_, which adds the faithfulness of history to its peculiar charm of true poetry. The recital of battles from a woman’s pen is almost as impertinent and out of place as disquisitions on theology; both have been sedulously avoided in these regal biographies.[162]

James IV. must therefore be left to his doubtful fate, while the narrative returns to his Queen, The following stanzas were written by a cotemporary English poet.[163] The lines he has supposed to be spoken by the brave and unfortunate King of Scotland.

“Farewell, my Queen, sweet Lady Margaret!
Farewell, my Prince! with whom I used to play:
I wot not where we shall together meet.
Farewell, my Lords and Commons! eke for aye:
Adieu! ye shall no ransom for me pay.
Yet I beseech you, of your charity,
To the high Lord merciful that ye pray,
Miserere mei Deus et salva me.”