Thus by dawn next day the whole of Scotland was in arms! The barons and chiefs were all on the march, from every point, for Edmondstone Edge, the royal muster-place; while in every walled city and town throughout the realm the armed burghers kept watch and ward, or filled the great castles in the neighbourhood with men, cannon, and all the munitions of war. The military measures of the Regent Arran, at this important crisis, reflected the greatest credit upon his personal activity, and upon his government, which had hitherto been as weak and vacillating as his religious opinions, which wavered alternately between the new and stern, bare creed of Calvin, and the pictorial splendours of the Church of Rome.
On learning the tragic event which occurred in the church of Tranent, Claude Hamilton of Preston became reanimated by what he had striven to forget, or commit to oblivion, his feud with the Fawsides; and a longing for the direst vengeance on Dame Alison and on her son inspired him and all his followers. He would have attacked, sacked, and rased her little fortalice to its foundations, had not the Albany herald arrived, bearing a special message from his lord and chief, the Regent Arran, commanding him to forget his feud for the time, and to bring his vassals to the muster-place to aid the general cause; after the triumph of which, he should have all the satisfaction the power of the Justician of Scotland could award.
His summons to attend the array of the kingdom ran thus, as we render it in English.
"REGINA. Well-beloved friend, we greet you well. For so much as our dearest cousin the regent, and the lords of our council, are surely informed that our old enemies of England tend to invade our realm; he resolves, with the support of all true barons and faithful lieges, to resist them in our just defence. It is our will, and we pray you, to address you incontinent with your honourable household, all bodin in array of war, to attend our royal standard, in all haste, at Edmondstone Edge, as ye love the defence and common weal of our realm, and under the pain and tynsale of life, lands, and goods; and as regards your outstanding feud with the Fawsides of that ilk, and the cruel and bloody deed of the widow of the umquhile Sir John Fawside, we promise you all manner of vengeance at the hands of the Earl of Argyle, our lord justice general, and gage the honour of our crown therein. Written under our signet at Edinburgh, the 3rd day of September, 1547.[*]
JAMES REGENT."
"To our well-beloved friend, the Laird of Preston—These."
[*] Father John's MSS.
Sternly Claude Hamilton read this missive, and gulping down his anger and grief—for he dearly loved his beautiful kinswoman,—he stifled his furious passion for a time; and, meanwhile, the grim Dame Alison, with Roger of Westmains acting as her lieutenant-governor, watched well in her moated tower, with gates barred, and every falcon and arquebuse loaded; and though she secluded herself in her bower-chamber, it is to be doubted whether, even in her quietest hours of reflection, amid the still calm sleepless hours of the long night-watch, she felt any remorse for the terrible deed she had done. If she did feel it, she carefully veiled it under an exterior that to ordinary eyes was unreadable and impenetrable.
Animated by a horror of his mother—an emotion too strange and terrible for analysis or description,—sick at heart, and crushed in spirit, poor Florence returned to Fawside tower no more; but resided with Dick Hackerston, the hospitable and sturdy burgher, who occupied a mansion in a broad-wynd on the north side of the city, nearly opposite the hospital and chapel of La Maison Dieu, and the Black Turnpike, so famous in the annals of 1567, all of which have now been removed. There he was provided with suitable arms and armour for man and horse, and, until the army took the field, there he remained, tended as a brother would have been, by the worthy merchant's wife, who saw there was something noble and poignant in his sad and silent sorrow, which held communion with none; and being young, handsome, and gallant in bearing, it impressed her all the more.
But to return to the Regent Arran: by the grey dawn of that day, on which the alarm of the coming foe first crossed the land with giant strides of fire from mountain-top to mountain-top, the lords of the royal privy council assembled in the tower of James V. at Holyrood. There came the earls of Huntly, Mar, Argyle, Cassilis, and Glencairn; the lords of Lyle, Fleming, and Kilmaurs (with his sinister visage, his glistening eyes and teeth), and many other peers—those who were loyal and true, and those who were base and venial—to reconsider and debate upon the measures to be taken at the present emergency. Despite their bonds and promises, when the hour of danger came, and all the land was armed or arming, Glencairn, Cassilis, and others of their infamous and corrupt faction, found themselves swept away by the loyalty of the commons, as by a sea, the waves of which there was no resisting; and they were compelled to lead their vassals to the field, and to unsheath their swords, against those with whom they were in secret league, and whose gold they had hoped to pocket; but to that foul political leprosy—that inborn spirit of treason and anti-nationality, which was characteristic of too many of the Scottish nobles, and which they inherited with their titles and their blood—were the future disasters of Pinkey, like too many other national woes and degradations, distinctly traceable.