King of Scotland

“ The heroic generation of Scotland was passing off the stage. The King was a child. The forfeiture by Bruce of the lands of hostile or treacherous lords, and his bestowal of the estates on his partisans, had made the disinherited nobles the enemies of Scotland, and had fed too full the House of Douglas. As the star of Scotland was thus clouded—she had no strong man for a King during the next ninety years—the sun of England rose red and glorious under a warrior like Edward III. The Scottish nobles in many cases ceased to be true to their proud boast that they would never submit to England. ”

“ Likewise there is a manifest practice in Scotland, by D’Aubigny, to alienate the young King of Scotland, both from favouring the Protestant religion and from amity to her Majesty and her realm, notwithstanding that he hath only been conserved in his crown at her Majesty’s charges. ”

“ The blessings of the poor and the lowly attend me when I walk abroad, without guards, without retinue, without arms. I hate the nobles, for they are ever ready to barter their country and their God for foreign gold: and Scotland's nobles will one day be Scotland's destruction. Pardon this honest vanity; but I feel that to reign in the hearts of my people is a great and glorious thing. There are many kings in Europe, but not one is called the father of his poor but James Stuart of Scotland. ”

“ And all the battle the next day, until King Edward rides hot-trod to Berwick, leaving half his host dead upon this pleasant green field that lies so unremembering to the south of the castle. There is no more splendid moment in human history, unless all battles seem to you too barbaric to be splendid. But it made possible a nation—and, I take it, Scotland has been necessary to the world. ”

“ The execution of the king, among its other bad effects, put enmity between the ruling powers of Scotland and England. A set of Scottish commissioners protested against it before the English parliament—were slighted, and turned out of the country under a guard. The leaders at Edinburgh, notwithstanding their condemnation of the late ‘Engagement,’ upheld monarchy in principle; and therefore, while England was declaring itself a commonwealth or republic, Scotland proclaimed the late king’s son—a youth of nineteen, living in exile—as Charles II., King of Great Britain, France, and Ireland. ”

“ People flocked from all quarters to see the novelty of a court which had not been held in Scotland for sixty years, and from its splendour, and the air of satisfaction which appeared in every person’s countenance, one would have thought the king was already restored, and in peaceable possession of all the dominions of his ancestors, and that the prince had only made a trip to Scotland to show himself to the people, and receive their homage. ”

“ And by these presents we denounce and demit to the King of Scotland, his heirs and successors, whatsoever right we or our predecessors have put forward in any way in bygone times to the aforesaid Kingdom of Scotland. And, for ourselves and our heirs and successors, we cancel wholly and utterly all obligations, conventions and compacts undertaken in whatsoever manner with our predecessors, at whatsoever times, by whatsoever Kings or inhabitants, clergy or laity, of the same Kingdom of Scotland, concerning the subjection of the realm of Scotland and its inhabitants. ”

“ Truly the condition of the land invites him to conquest. The Scottish king, on a night ride along the cliffs of the Fifeshire coast, has fallen over the black rocks, and he is no more. The sceptre passes to a frail little grandchild in far-off Norway; but ere she can tread the soil of her kingdom, she too has gone the way of all flesh. The royal line is extinct, and the throne of Scotland is without an heir.
Forthwith a round dozen of eager aspirants set up their claims to the vacant throne. All save two are men of straw, with hardly the colour of a right to the kingship. ”

“ Soon after this event, we have a formal demand of feudal homage made by John on William king of Scotland, with which the latter promised promptly to comply. The two monarchs met at Lincoln, and, on an eminence near that city, in the presence of the assembled nobles of both kingdoms, the king of Scotland swore fealty of life and limb to John—against all men, saving his own right. ”

“ The Scots desired to see a King of Scottish extraction on the English throne, and they wished also that a system of spiritual and temporal government, such as they had extorted from the King, should be supreme in England also, if only to prevent the possibility of a reaction from thence influencing Scotland. They adhered to hereditary monarchy as a fundamental point: long and bitterly as they had contended against Charles I, they would not let him be overthrown. ”

“ For it is not glory, nor riches, {270} nor honor, but it is liberty alone, that we contend for, which no honest man will lose but with his life."
The spirit manifested in this had its effect, and the Pope consented to address Bruce by his title, "King of Scotland." After delaying the evil day as long as possible, England at last, in 1328, concluded a treaty recognizing Scotland as an independent kingdom, in which occurred these words: "And we renounce whatever claims we or our ancestors in bygone times have laid in any way over the kingdom of Scotland." ”

“ Every man was his own master, and the land was filled with violence. The obvious remedy was to bring home the King, and Douglas and some of the other nobles treated with the English government for his release.
20. Summary.—Under the immediate successors of Robert the First, Scotland nearly lost all the advantages which he had won for her. The country was torn by civil strife; the kings were weak and useless; the nobles became so strong and overbearing that their power more than equalled that of the Crown, and they set at nought the King's authority. All social improvement was at a standstill. ”

“ A corresponding degree of magnificence was encouraged amongst the courtiers, foreign traders were invited to bring their rich and varied wares to Scottish ports, whilst it was signified that all who wished to earn the royal favour must become purchasers of the costly novelties. [180] In short, to the influence of Margaret may be attributed the foundation of that change, which gradually converted the king of Scotland from a rude and simple chieftain, surrounded by congenial and semi-barbarous followers, into a feudal monarch in the midst of a knightly and chivalrous court. ”

“ Scotland had but little of the constitutional evolution so conspicuous in the history of England. The reason is that while the English kings, with their fiefs and wars in France, had constantly to be asking their parliaments for money, and while Parliament first exacted the redress of grievances, in Scotland the king was expected “to live of his own” on the revenue of crown-lands, rents, feudal aids, fines exacted in Courts of Law, and duties on merchandise. ”

“ His dark eyes were full of animation, and the ringlets of his rich brown hair fluttered in the breeze as he waved his plumed cap to the people who loved him well, for he was better pleased to be thought the king of the poor than king of the peers of Scotland. He was surrounded by all the great officers of state and household; Robert, abbot of Holyrood, bearing his high treasurer's mace with its beryl ball, rode beside Colville of Culross, the great chamberlain of Scotland. ”

“ Yes; the very men who had defied their king, burnt his Prayer Book, and excommunicated the Bishops, went out from their Assembly with the submission of sheep, and never met again for forty years.
For twelve of these years, Scotland groaned under the heel of the Republican despot, whose little finger it found heavier than the King's hand. England at its core, however, and we may say the same of Scotland, was loyal. As happens in most revolutions, it was a bold, determined, and noisy faction, a minority of the nation, that overthrew the Government in Church and State and slew the King. ”

“ The literature of the subject of the relation of the king to the people, which now holds its place triumphantly in England, shows that this theory, regnant in the twentieth century, originated and was elaborated in Scotland. The idea that the royal government arises from popular electoral choice, and that for a king to break his part of the contract makes him forfeit his right and justifies war against him,—which has always been the American idea,—was first wrought out in Scotland. ”

“ But a bold stroke was made for the King. John Graham of Claverhouse, now Lord Viscount Dundee, clothed with the exiled King's commission and authority, hastened to Scotland to arm its loyalty and chivalry. How he fought, and how he won, and how he fell in the moment of victory on the field of Killiecrankie, it boots not to tell. What Scottish Churchman does not know it? His battle cry on that field was, " King James, and the Church of Scotland!" And nobly did the clansmen, and many a loyal lowlander besides, respond to the cry. ”

“ Alexander the Second, the successor of William, followed out the same policy, but during his reign, notwithstanding the increase in the number of the earldoms, and the feudalisation of some of the older ones, we find the seven earls of Scotland frequently making their appearance, apparently as a constitutional body whose privileges were recognised. They 72first appear as taking an important part in the coronation of Alexander as king of Scotland, and then consisted of the earls of Fife, Stratherne, Atholl, Angus, Menteath, Buchan, and Lothian. ”

“ In 1072 William the Conqueror compelled the Scottish King to acknowledge him as Overlord, and eventually so many Norman nobles established themselves in Scotland that they constituted the chief landed aristocracy of the country. The modern Scottish nation, though it keeps its Celtic name (Scotland) , is made up in great measure of inhabitants of English descent, the pure Scotch being confined mostly to the Highlands, and ranking in population only as about one to three of the former. ”

“ These words were no sooner uttered, than the duke started from the stool on which he sat, and showed strong indications of surprise and confusion. His belief in the predictions of a seer was, as was common in that age, unbounded, and when he heard himself pronounced King o' Scotland his mind, freed from all manner of scepticism or doubt, reverted to the circumstance of the doubtful legitimacy of his half-brothers; the aspirations and day-dreams he had so long indulged seemed in an instant to have received the stamp of truth ”

“ But Scotland had not only lost the best and bravest of her sons; the King's death left the Crown to a babe not eighteen months old, and the government of the country to the babe's mother, Margaret, the sister of Henry VIII., and to a group of nobles, to whose personal feuds and rivalries, constantly fomented by English diplomacy, the interests of the Scottish nation were completely subordinated. ”

“ The representative of the ancient royal Celtic line, which the national reverence for hereditary royalty had upheld unbroken through the strain of seven long minorities, now became king of the larger and richer kingdom of England, which had been ruled by one foreign dynasty after another ever since the Norman Conquest. ”

“ The conquest of Scotland proved a far more difficult matter than that of Wales. The early history of the kingdom of [Pg 279] Scotland is a complicated one. When the Angles and Saxons landed in Britain, a great part of the mountainous region north of the Firth of Forth was inhabited by a Celtic tribe, the Picts. There was, however, on the west coast a little kingdom of the Irish Celts, who were then called Scots. By the opening of the tenth century the Picts had accepted the king of the Scots as their ruler, and the annalists begin to refer to the highland region as the land of the Scots. ”

“ The regency of Scotland entered into a congress with the ministers of the king of Norway and with those of England, for the establishment of good order in the kingdom of the infant princess. Shortly afterwards, Edward I. conceived the idea of matching his eldest son, Edward, Prince of Wales, with the young queen of Scotland. The plan was eagerly embraced by the Scottish nobles ”

“ The King’s chief object was to content the Scots, and separate their cause from the English. The events of the last year had convinced him that the connexion of Scottish and English affairs had involved him in all his troubles. The late projects, which were so contrary to his views, especially the attack made by Parliament on the bishops, he ascribed to Scottish influence. He believed that he could manage to resist in England if he could only pacify Scotland, but for this purpose concessions were indispensable. ”

“ He made him do homage for his kingdom as though it had been an English fief. Now, though this was true as far as concerned Lothian, and partly true as concerned Strathclyde, as concerned Scotland it was untrue. Although Scotland had, since 924, been in some degree subject to the King of England, this dependence was no more than was implied by the "commendation," the very natural relation of the weaker to the stronger. ”

“ Attempt to conquer Scotland, 1294-1307.With Scotland Edward just failed, and his failure brought a terrible retribution on both countries. For nearly a century before this time Scotland had been at peace with England, and its southern half had been growing richer and happier. Prosperity of Scotland before Edward I’s wars.Many Norman and English barons owned lands on both sides of the border and so were ‘vassals’ of the Kings of both countries. Even the Scottish King held a small English earldom, and for that he was, of course, the ‘vassal’ of King Edward. ”