Thus, with few exceptions, the terms of alliance were well understood, and many of the Cumbrian barons were liegemen to both the English and Scottish kings. Scotland was in a flourishing and fast-improving condition, and there was no mutual enmity or jealousy between the two nations.
Alexander III. was the husband of Margaret, the eldest sister of Edward I., and frequently was present at the pageants of the English court. He was a brave and beloved monarch, and his wife was much honored and loved in Scotland; but, while still a young man, a succession of misfortunes befell him. His queen died in 1275, and his only son a year or two after; his only other child, Margaret, who had been married to Eric, Prince of Norway, likewise died, leaving an infant daughter named Margaret.
Finding himself left childless, Alexander contracted a second marriage with Yolande, daughter of the Count de Dreux; and a splendid bridal took place at Jedburgh, with every kind of amusements, especially mumming and masquing. In the midst, some reckless reveller glided in arrayed in ghastly vestments, so as to personate death, and after making fearful gestures, vanished away, leaving an impression of terror among the guests that they did not quickly shake off—the jest was too earnest.
Less than a year subsequently, Alexander gave a great feast to his nobles at Edinburgh, on the 15th of March, 1286. It was a most unsuitable day for banquetting, for it was Lent; and, moreover, popular imagination, always trying to guess the times and seasons only known to the Most High, had fixed on tins as destined to be the Last Day.
But the Scottish nobles feasted and revelled, mocking at the delusion of the populace, till, when at a late hour they broke up, the night was discovered to be intensely dark and stormy. King Alexander was, however, bent on joining his queen, who was at Kinghorn—perhaps he had promised to come to calm her alarms—and all the objections urged by his servants could not deter him. He bade one of his servants remain at home, since he seemed to fear the storm. “No, my lord,” said the man, “it would ill become me to refuse to die for your father’s son.”
At Inverkeithing the storm became more violent, and again the royal followers remonstrated; but the King laughed at them, and only desired to have two runners to show him the way, when they might all remain in shelter.
He was thought to have been “fey”—namely, in high spirits—recklessly hastening to a violent death; for as he rode along the crags close above Kinghorn, his horse suddenly stumbled, and he was thrown over its head to the bottom of a frightful precipice, where he lay dead. The spot is still called the King’s Crag.
Truly it was the last day of Scotland’s peace and prosperity. Thomas of Ereildoune, called the Rymour, who was believed to possess second sight, had declared that on the 16th of March the greatest wind should blow before noon that Scotland had ever known. The morning, however, rose fair and calm, and he was reproached for his prediction. “Noon is not yet gone!” he answered; and ere long came a messenger to the gate, with tidings that the King was killed. “Gone is the wind that shall blow to the great calamity and trouble of all Scotland,” said Thomas the Rymour—a saying that needed no powers of prophecy, when the only remaining scion of the royal line was a girl of two years old, the child of a foreign prince, himself only eighteen years of age.
The oldest poem in the Scottish tongue that has been preserved is a lament over the last son of St. David.
“When Alysander, our king, was dead,
That Scotland led in love and lee,
Away was sons of ale and bread,
Of wine and wax, of game and glee;
Our gold was changed into lead.
Christ, born in to virginity,
Succour Scotland, and remede
That stead is in perplexity.”