[425] Wight, 62, 65.
[426] Id. 69.
[427] Pinkerton, i. 373.
[428] Id. 360.
[429] Id. 372.
[430] Pinkerton, ii. 53.
[431] In a statute of James II. (1440) "the three estates conclude that it is speedful that our sovereign lord the king ride throughout the realm incontinent as shall be seen to the council where any rebellion, slaughter, burning, robbery, outrage, or theft has happened," etc. Statutes of Scotland, ii. 32. Pinkerton (i. 192), leaving out the words in italics, has argued on false premises. "In this singular decree we find the legislative body regarding the king in the modern light of a chief magistrate, bound equally with the meanest subject to obedience to the laws," etc. It is evident that the estates spoke in this instance as counsellors, not as legislators. This is merely an oversight of a very well-informed historian, who is by no means in the trammels of any political theory.
A remarkable expression, however, is found in a statute of the same king, in 1450; which enacts that any man rising in war against the king, or receiving such as have committed treason, or holding houses against the king, or assaulting castles or places where the king's power shall happen to be, without the consent of the three estates, shall be punished as a traitor. Pinkerton i. 213. I am inclined to think that the legislators had in view the possible recurrence of what had very lately happened, that an ambitious cabal might get the king's person into their power. The peculiar circumstances of Scotland are to be taken into account when we consider these statutes, which are not to be looked at as mere insulated texts.
[432] Pinkerton, i. 234.
[433] Statutes of Scotland, ii. 177.