Aeneas James George Mackay

“ Affectionate and somewhat melancholy in his youth, James was as a king decided, stern, severe, even cruel to enemies and breakers of the law, yet amiable and playful with friends, and, though regardless of the interests, even the rights, of the great lords, was zealous for those of the people. ”

“ The bishops, according to Knox, encouraged his amours, and the pope certainly legitimated his natural children, and promoted some of them while still minors to church benefices.
James's face was oval, his quick eyes a bluish grey, his nose aquiline, his hair red, his mouth small, his chin weak for a man, his figure good, his height about the middle size. Both Leslie and Buchanan note his good looks, and from him, rather than Mary of Guise, Mary Stuart inherited her fatal beauty. Portraits are at Windsor Castle and Castle Fraser, and two others belong to the Marquis of Hartington. ”

“ Lyndsay was a satirist, powerful in invective, fluent in style, and abounding in proverbial philosophy. But his poems were of local, and to a large extent of temporary interest. Yet these very limitations gave them an immediate fame and more extensive currency than the works of any other early Scottish poet, and render them invaluable to students of the time of James V. It passed into a proverb for what was not worth knowing, ‘You will not find that in David Lyndsay,’ and his writings were at one time in the library of every castle and the shelves of many cottages of Scotland. ”

“ Some interesting particulars as to the last years of Bruce are furnished by the Exchequer Rolls of Scotland. Enfeebled by disease he had to trust the chief conduct of the war to the young leaders he had trained, Randolph and Douglas, and he spent most of his time at Cardross, which he had acquired in 1326. He employed it in enlarging the castle, repairing the park walls, and ornamenting the garden, in the amusement of hawking, and the exercise of the royal virtues of hospitality and charity. Like other kings he kept a fool. A lion was his favourite pet, shipbuilding his favourite diversion. ”

“ From the middle of the thirteenth book to the close Buchanan's history still retains a certain value. This portion from James V to the death of Lennox, where it somewhat abruptly stops, is practically the work of a contemporary, and though it is that of a partisan who vilifies Mary, panegyrises Moray, hates all the Hamiltons, and dislikes Morton, no future historian can safely neglect the view of Scottish history which impressed such an intellect, and was the popular opinion, not merely in his own time, but for two centuries after. Of literary style Buchanan is an acknowledged master. ”

“ The expulsion, or, as the ‘Pictish Chronicle’ calls it, the deletion of the Picts, may be something of an exaggeration; but the almost total disappearance of the Pictish dialect of Gaelic, save in the place-names, the names of the old Pictish kings, and a few other words which puzzle the philologist, indicates either a complete conquest and the superinduction of the Gaelic of the west upon the Pictish Gaelic of central and northern Scotland, or a divergence of dialect so slight that the adoption of the speech of the conquerors by the conquered was almost an imperceptible transition. ”

“ The deaths within one year (1401–2) of the queen, the Earl of Douglas, and Irail, the good bishop of St. Andrews, were a fatal blow to the endeavour to restrain the ascendency of Albany. It became a proverb, says Bower, that then the glory of Scotland fled, its honour retreated, and its honesty departed. Not many months after the queen's death Rothesay was deposed from his office of regent and found first a prison at Falkland, and then an early and obscure tomb at Lindores. ”

“ The admirable portrait by Kay, the Edinburgh caricaturist, represents Hailes as short and stout, with a thick, short neck, common in persons of apoplectic tendency, and eyes of intelligence and quiet humour, set in a face whose placidity recalls that of his ancestor, Stair. It is more easy to account for this equanimity of temper in Hailes, whose life had been uniformly prosperous, than in Stair, whose career was an example of the vicissitudes of fortune. ”

“ But, says the chronicler of Lanercost, the number of those who wished Bruce to be confirmed in the kingdom increased daily, notwithstanding this severity. He might have said because of it, for now every class, nobles and gentry, clergy and commons, with only one or two exceptions, as the Earl of Strathearn and Randolph, Bruce's nephew, saw what Edward meant. Life and limb, land and liberty, were all in peril, and common danger taught the necessity, not felt in the time of Wallace, of making common cause. ”

“ A splendid architecture, of which the monuments still remain in the Scottish cathedrals of the Early English style, and the purity of the coinage, are real witnesses of the well-being of Scotland during the reigns of Alexander and his father. ”

“ Lord Hailes declared that his countrymen were reformed from popery, but not from Boece, but now that the latter reformation has been accomplished we may do justice to his real merits as we do to those of the mediæval church. His learning and zeal co-operated with the liberality of Elphinstone in laying the foundation of the university which has diffused culture in the northern districts of Britain. A love of historical studies dating from, his time has continued to mark the Aberdonian scholars, who have contributed more to Scottish history than the inhabitants of any other part of Scotland. ”

“ A singular debate, the first distinctly recorded in a Scottish parliament, is entered in the minutes as ‘The Debate and Cause of the Field of Stirling,’ ending with a declaration of the three estates, which laid the whole blame for the slaughter at the battle upon James III and his ‘perverse council.’ Embassies were to be sent to the pope, and to the kings of France, Spain, and Denmark, with a copy of the Act of Indemnity under the great seal, and were at the same time to search for a wife for the new king. ”

“ Knox was a Scottish patriot, with two important modifications. His patriotism was limited to the body of believers, and extended beyond the bounds of his own country to all of like belief. He had a strong attachment to that part of the English nation which afterwards became puritan and republican, and to the reformed churches of the continent. He carried the Scottish people with him, and for a time, during the crisis of the Reformation, he was political leader of the Scottish nobles and the guide in Scottish affairs of the English statesmen. ”

“ Before the session closed Knox preached a political sermon, recalling to the nobility how he had been with them in the hour of danger, and exhorted them to let the queen understand that they ‘would agree with her in God,’ but were not bound ‘to agree with her in the Devil.’ He concluded by saying that he heard of many suitors for the queen's hand, but if they consented that an infidel, and ‘all Papists are infidels,’ should be head of their sovereign, they would so far as in their power banish Christ from the realm, and bring God's vengeance upon the country, themselves, and their sovereign. ”

“ The natural allies at this period of the Scots were the French, not the English. In 1419, shortly before the death of Albany, the Count of Vendôme had then sent, in the name of Charles VI, but really by his son the dauphin, afterwards Charles VII, for the king was prostrated by an attack of madness, to implore the support of Scotland on behalf of its ancient ally, which had never recovered from the defeat of Agincourt, and was now in great straits. The English were in possession of most of the north of the kingdom, and scoffingly called the dauphin king of Bourges. ”

“ Knox laboured to prove that ‘to promote a woman to bear rule, superiority, dominion, or empire above any realm is repugnant to nature, contrary to God, and, finally, it is the subversion of good order, of all equity and justice.’ His work was published without his name, but the authorship was well known, and it was intimated that he would himself announce it when he blew his third ‘Blast,’ which never appeared. ”

“ The English under Edward were arrayed in three divisions, in all about 44,000. The French had the same number of divisions, but in each 15,000 men-at-arms and 20,000 foot. Though Edward was supported by the nobles of Germany, Brabant, and Flanders, besides his English vassals, Philip surpassed him in the rank as well as numbers of his followers; for besides the full array of France, dukes, earls, and viscounts, too long a list for even Froissart to rehearse, he was supported by three kings—John of Bohemia, the king of Navarre, and David king of Scotland. ”

“ As a compensation he never trenches on the coarseness to be found not only in the English, but in a worse form in some of the later Scottish poets. His range and depth of observation are also much more limited. Instead of the comedy of human nature in the ‘Canterbury Tales,’ he has given us only a drama of war with a single hero. His other poems are almost literal translations: the ‘Legends of the Saints’ from the ‘Legenda Aurea,’ and the Troy book from Guido da Colonna's ‘Historia Destructionis Troiæ.’ His imagination required facts or legends to stimulate it. He is not a creative poet. ”

“ While there he prepared and probably issued a tract, of which the first edition extant was published in 1554: ‘A Declaration what true Prayer is, how we should pray, and for what we should pray.’ On 4 April 1550 he was summoned, at the instance of Tunstall, the Romanist bishop of Durham, to answer for having upheld in his preaching ‘that the mass was idolatry.’ His defence, afterwards printed along with a letter to Mary of Guise, the queen regent, in 1556, was a syllogistic argument: ‘All service invented by the brain of man in the religion of God, without his own express command, is idolatry. ”

“ His dabbling in the black arts unfortunately made him a prey to impostors, one of whom, Damian, the abbot of Tungland, who pretended to fly, and obtained large sums to experiment on the quintessence, has been pilloried in Dunbar's verse. Another of the king's favourite pursuits was the tournament, already passing out of fashion in England, but never celebrated with more pomp in Scotland than at James IV's marriage, that of Perkin Warbeck, and the reception of D'Aubigny. The morality of James's court was as low as that of the Tudor kings, and its coarseness was less veiled. ”

“ Melville writes in his ‘Memoirs’ that Buchanan was one of James's ‘four principal masters,’ and ‘that he held the king in great awe,’ that unlike another of these masters who carried ‘himself warily, as a man who had a mind to his own weal, by keeping of his majesty's favour, Mr. George was a Stoick philosopher, who looked not far before him. A man of notable endowments for his learning and knowledge of Latin poesie. Much honoured in other countries, pleasant in conversation, rehearsing on all occasions moralities short and instructive, whereof he had abundance, inventing where he wanted. ”

“ The Scottish kings of the thirteenth century, unlike the English, were not enemies but friends of their barons and people, and under Alexander and his son Scotland enjoyed a measure of individual and national freedom and prosperity such as it had never known before, and did not again know until after the union. ”

“ Carstares was himself undoubtedly the best councillor a foreign king could have, for he was intimately acquainted with all classes of his countrymen, and gave his advice without fear, favour, or self-interest, regarding only the interests of William and of Scotland. ”

“ The legal instinct of the Norman race, to which all the competitors belonged, suggested or acquiesced in a third course, not without precedent in the graver disputes of the later Middle Ages — a reference to a third party; and who could be more appropriate as a referee than the great monarch of the neighbouring kingdom, to whom each of the competitors owed allegiance for their fiefs in England? This course was accordingly proposed by Fraser, bishop of St. Andrews, in a letter to Edward before Margaret's death, but when the news of her illness had reached Scotland. ”

“ But what made the battle famous in the annals of the military art as in those of Scotland was that the Scottish troops, taught by Wallace's tactics, fought on foot — not in single line, but in battalions, apparently of round form, with their weapons pointed outwards to receive on any side the charge of the enemy. A momentary success of the English archers commenced the battle. It was reversed by a well-directed charge on their flank of a small body of light horse under the marshal Sir Robert Keith. ”

“ The invention and persistent acceptance during so many centuries, from the twelfth to the eighteenth, of a fabulous series of kings is, though not unparalleled, a singular specimen of the genealogical myth which flatters the vanity of nations as of families. It is supposed to have been due to the desire to establish a higher antiquity for the Scottish race, royal line, and church, than could be claimed for the Irish or English. It is of course not inconsistent with the rectified chronology of Innes that even prior to 503 A.D. there may have been Celts of the Scottish race settled in Scotland. ”

“ David himself almost every year revisited England during the remainder of his reign, and his personal sympathies were so thoroughly English, that it required all the strength of the estates, and the desire of Edward for the stipulated ransom, to prevent a surrender of his own kingdom more ignominious than that of Baliol. Though his personal reign lasted for fourteen years after his return, it was entirely destitute of important events. Great difficulty was felt in raising from so poor a country the enormous ransom. ”

“ If the man hath burst out here and there into some traces of excess or speech of bad temper, that must be imputed to the violence of his humour and heat of his spirit, not in any wise to the rules of treu religion rightly by him conceived before.’ In his speech at Stirling to the university of Edinburgh James praised his Latin learning. ‘All the world knows,’ he said, ‘that my master, George Buchanan, was a great master in that faculty. ”