Regent of Scotland

“ The date, above hinted at, seems to be 1549, when the Scottish regent, by means of some succours derived from France, was endeavouring to repair the consequences of the fatal battle of Pinkie. Allusion is made to the supply given to the "Moldwarte" (England) by the fained "hart" (the Earl of Angus) . The regent is described by his bearing the antelope; large supplies are promised from France, and complete conquest predicted to Scotland and her allies. ”

“ Early in Elizabeth's reign, however, events occurred in Scotland which threatened to sever the links between that country and France. The Regent, Mary of Guise—mother of the absent queen and sister of the Duke of Guise, the French conqueror of Calais, and leader of the French Catholics—was hostile to the Protestants not only by conviction, but because there had long been a close alliance between the bishops and the Scottish kings in their struggle with the turbulent nobles. ”

“ The Regent was very wroth, she deposed the Protestant provost of the city, and threatened it with French troops. The Congregation raised troops and appealed to Elizabeth, now on the English throne, for aid. Elizabeth sent some troops, and there was fighting with varied successes, until, by a treaty made in Edinburgh, the French agreed to abandon Scotland, and the Protestants were to be allowed the free exercise of their religion. In the Scottish Parliament of 1560 there was a solemn abjuration of the Pope and the mass. ”

“ The first years of her regency conformed to the advice of the Duke of Guise in 1655, 'to deal in Scotland in a spirit of conciliation, introducing much gentleness and moderation into the administration of justice,' which she reformed with the advice of Henry Sinclair, dean of Glasgow, in a parliament at Edinburgh in the following June (Teulet, i. 721; Tytler, vi. 63) . It was not until Philip of Spain in 1557 drew Mary of England into his war against France that the regent's French policy brought her into conflict with the Scots. ”

“ Between 13 and thrice three the threip shal be ended,
The Saxons sall never recover after.
There cannot be any doubt, that this prophecy was inten [Pg 193] ded to excite the confidence of the Scottish nation in the Duke of Albany, regent of Scotland, who arrived from France in 1515, two years after the death of James IV. in the fatal field of Flodden. The regent was descended of Bruce by the left, i.e. by the female side, within the ninth degree. His mother was daughter of the Earl of Boulogne, his father banished from his country—"fleemit of fair Scotland." ”

“ A Regent must take the oaths of the Sovereign, except the Coronation Oath, and may exercise any of the powers of the Sovereign, except assent to any bill for changing the order of succession to the Crown as defined by the Act of Settlement 1700 or for repealing or altering the Act preserving the presbyterian system of Church government in Scotland. ”

“ 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. ”

“ A great personality, like that of Robert the Bruce, could over-master the discordant elements, and make his own authority paramount; but amongst his successors there were several weak monarchs, unable to beat down personal rancour and ambition in the council and in the camp. And one great curse to Scotland in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, was the comparatively large number of regencies, from the under ages of monarchs at their accession to the throne,—thus creating jealousy, rivalry, and partizanship amongst the more powerful nobles. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Yet, though Scotland was growing in wealth, and the authority of the Crown was increasing, the nation, during the last years of this reign, abounded in discontent and disorder. The Scots seem to have felt bitterly the transference of their ancient Royal House to an alien and lately hostile country; and though they had no affection for James, they resented the visible loss of the monarchy. A High Commissioner and Council at Edinburgh could not supply the place of the sovereign ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ If the King of Scotland can scarcely make head against his nobles, even now when he can hold up before them an unsullied and honourable banner, who would follow a prince that is blackened with the death of an uncle and the imprisonment of a father? Why, man, thy policy were enough to revolt a heathen divan, to say nought of the council of a Christian nation. Thou wert my tutor, Ramorny, and perhaps I might justly upbraid thy lessons and example for some of the follies which men chide in me. ”

“ What a perfidious violation of the established constitution of the two kingdoms! In 1690 the Scottish Parliament makes over patronages to the heritors and kirk-sessions. In 1707 it secures unalterably the government of the church of Scotland. By the Treaty of Union, England binds itself to preserve inviolate this arrangement. Patronages are to remain for ever in statu quo. But, lo! in 1711, the Parliament of the United Kingdom divests the heritors of their right of patronage, and restores it to its original holders. ”

“ But it was not to be in the power of the Estates to choose the successor to the throne of England as successor to that of Scotland, ‘nor shall the same person be capable, in any event, to be King or Queen of both realms,’ unless there were established, to the satisfaction of the Scottish Parliament, free home and colonial trade, and also such conditions of government as would secure the Crown, the Parliament, the religion, and the liberty of Scotland from English or any foreign influence. ”

“ He was never weary of reminding men like Argyle and Loudon that they themselves and the Scots in general were pledged to the King, that he had fallen into all his difficulties through them, and that it would redound to their everlasting honour if they rescued him from them. It appears that their representations were not altogether fruitless. The two other leaders at least assented to his wish that the Queen should come to Scotland. The Privy Council, which conducted the government there, had been for a long time more favourable to the King than to the Parliament. ”

“ The monarch having thus opened a levee for the honour of his Scottish subjects generally, and allowed her official men to drop their honeyed papers and parchments at the court and in the closet,—having devoted two whole days to the hard hands of country lairds, and the greasy lips of parsons and bailies, it was naturally to be concluded, that he would be pretty well saturated of salutation from the men of Scotland, and long for the approach of Scottish women, as the traveller, in the sandy desert, longs for the green spot and the glassy spring. ”

“ 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. ”

“ After the coronation, coming to the King of England, who was keeping the Festival of the Nativity of our Lord at Newcastle-on-Tyne, he did homage in these words: "My lord, lord Edward, King of England, I, John Balliol, King of Scotland, acknowledge myself your liege vassal for the whole kingdom of Scotland, with its appurtenances and all belonging to it, which kingdom I hold and claim by right to hold hereditarily, from you and your heirs, Kings of England, as regards life and limb and earthly honour, against all men who live and die." ”

“ The history of the Scottish Reformation is an entirely different one. Instead of being originated and fostered by State authority, it was a fierce and obstinate battle with such authority. Scotland was then under one of its disastrous regencies, that of Mary of Guise, the widow of King James V., acting for her infant daughter Mary, known afterwards in history as the beautiful and unfortunate Queen of Scots. ”

“ Ever since the Revolution, there had been a large party, mainly composed of the upper classes, in favour of the exiled dynasty. It was largely reinforced, and its views were generally much promoted, by the odium into which the government of William III. had fallen, and by the feelings of jealousy and wrath which had been kindled against the whole English nation. This was not a natural state of things for Scotland, for the bulk of the people, Presbyterian at heart, could have no confidence in a restored sovereign of the House of Stuart ”

“ With James the First began the work of building the monarchy up again from this utter ruin; but the wresting of Scotland from the grasp of its nobles was only wrought out in a struggle of life and death. Few figures are more picturesque than the figures of the young Scotch kings as they dash themselves against the iron circle which girds them round in their desperate efforts to rescue the Crown from serfdom. They carry their life in their hands; a doom is on them; they die young and by violent deaths. ”

“ They shall be enemy to all such Scotsmen and French as shall in anywise show themselves enemies to the realm of England in respect of the aiding and supporting of the said Duke and nobility in the delivery of the realm of Scotland from conquest. They shall never assent nor permit that the realm of Scotland shall be conquered, or otherwise knit to the Crown of France than it is at this present time only by the marriage of the Queen their Sovereign to the French King, and by the laws and liberties of the realm, as it ought to be.... ”

“ The office of heralds, in feudal times, being held of the utmost importance, the inauguration of the Kings-at-arms, who presided over their colleges, was proportionally solemn. In fact, it was the mimicry of a royal coronation, except that the unction was made with wine instead of oil. In Scotland, a namesake and kinsman of Sir David Lindesay, inaugurated in 1502, “was crowned by King James with the ancient crown of Scotland, which was used before the Scottish Kings assumed a close Crown;” ”

“ It might be easily shown that, in his political and civil condition, every baron in Scotland is much happier now, and much more independent, than the highest was under that constitution of government which continued in Scotland even after the expulsion of King James II. The greatest enemies to the union are the friends of that king in whose reign, and in his brother’s, the kingdom of Scotland was subjected to a despotism as arbitrary as that of France, and more tyrannically administered. ”

“ 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. ”