'Blane of that ilk and of Blanerne, madame, in the Stewartry of Kirkcudbright, Bailie of Tungland Abbey, and Captain of Carlaveroc for John Earl of Nithsdale.'
'Ma foi! he has as many guttural titles as a Spanish grandee of the first class; but pray tell me, what does that ilk mean?'
'In the Scottish language it denotes, madame, that the holder has either given his name to the territory he possesses, or has taken his name from it; moreover, that he is the head of his surname. Our old baronial houses alone bear it, for it is a custom dating from the days of king Malcolm III., and consequently is more than six hundred years old. My father's office of captainrie under the Earl of Nithsdale was, in some measure, the cause of all our misfortunes and of my exile.'
'Proceed, pray, for I am all attention.'
'He was an old adherent of the house of Nithsdale, and with the present Earl, the Lord Torthorwald, and six other gentlemen of the surnames of Maxwell, Douglas, and Blane, signed, about six years ago, a Bond of Manrent—'
'Excuse me, M. Blane—but I do not understand.'
'It means a bond of friendship and alliance, to the effect that they bound themselves to stand by each other, in peace and in war, in weal and woe, with all the might of their estates, castles, and retainers, in arms against all men; the cause of each to be the cause of all; and to this deed, which is now in the charter-room of Carlaveroc, they swore by their honours and souls, affixing thereto their signatures and seals.'
'This seemed somewhat like a league against the king.'
'Nay, madame, such bonds have been common in Scotland for ages, and have arisen from the wish to create a feudal relation between lords and vassals who have no affinity by tenure, and to strengthen the weak against the strong. Such leagues are certainly contrary to the laws of the land, yet they exist. But a time came to test the strength of my father's bond with the Earl of Nithsdale. King Charles being madly devoted to his father's rash project of assimilating the kirk of Scotland, in point of ceremony and in government, to the Church of England, with regular gradations of titled clergy, lately resolved, by an Act of Revocation, to resume and appropriate to the crown all the tithes and benefices which the barons and other laymen had seized during the plunder of temporalities at the Reformation; and from these he proposed to endow the intended Scottish episcopal bishoprics, deaneries, rectories, and so forth. The rage of our fiery barons was great, and their resolution was not less than their rage. There were many whose whole estates and possessions had been church property, and thus it was with us, for most of my father's barony of Blanerne had in ancient times been a fief of the Abbots of Tungland, and was of course comprehended in this new and most obnoxious resumption, though it had been a free gift to his grandfather by the Regent Lennox, and the Lords of the Congregation, for his valour at the great siege of Leith, where he routed and slew the Colonel-General of the Italian infantry.
'The intended Revocation was to be announced to the Convention of Estates by the king's representative in Scotland, the Lord High Commissioner, who was, unhappily for us, the Earl of Nithsdale; but certain of the Scottish lords and barons were determined to kill him before the assembled Parliament, and then appeal to arms rather than yield to a measure so impoverishing and obnoxious; and despite the Bond of Manrent, friendship, and alliance, which bound him with sword and service, soul and body to the Earl of Nithsdale, and to whatever cause he espoused, my father, Sir Arthur Blane, joined the resisting barons in their deadly purpose, and defied the Maxwells, at all times a desperate and a turbulent race. My father was wroth alike with the government of the kirk and kingdom under Nithsdale, and the suspicion of the Convention of Estates was first brought upon him thus:—Having inscribed above the door of his tower a legend which seemed to reflect upon the Presbyterian Kirk, he was imprisoned for a month in the castle of Lochmaben, because he did not know Latin.'