Soon after these proceedings, the Sieur Nicholas de Villegaignon, in the same ship which brought Florence from France, anchored in the Firth of Forth, to receive the queen, who, with her train, had been removed to the sequestered priory of Inchmahoma, or "the Isle of Rest" in the Loch of Menteith.
"Thus," according to one of our historians, "England discovered that the idea that a free country was to be compelled into a pacific matrimonial alliance amid the groans of its dying citizens, and the flames of its cities and seaports, was revolting and absurd!"
Such was the sequel to the campaign of 1547.
CHAPTER LVI.
THE ISLE OF REST.
This dowry now our Scottish virgin brings,
A nation famous for a race of kings,
By firmest leagues to France for ages join'd,
With splendid feats and friendly ties combined,
A happy presage of connubial joy,
Which neither time nor tempests shall destroy,
A people yet in battle unsubdued,
Though all the land has been in blood imbued.
Buchanan.
So wrote the most classic of Scottish scholars in his Epithalamium, or "Ode on the marriage of Francis of Valois and Mary, sovereigns of France and Scotland," the ungrateful Buchanan; but we are somewhat anticipating history and our own narrative in the heading of our chapter.
Inchmahoma, the secure and temporary abode of the two queens and their court, is a singularly beautiful islet, so small and so green, in the midst of the lake of Menteith, that when viewed from the mountains it resembles a large emerald in the centre of a shield of silver.
Of the Augustinian priory—which was founded in the twelfth century by Edgar, King of Scotland (the son of Cean-mhor), a prince who reigned only nine years, but lived "reverenced and beloved by the good, and so formidable to the bad, that in all his reign there was no sedition or fear of a foreign enemy,"—there remains now but one beautiful gothic arch, the dormitory, and the vaults embosomed in a grove of aged and mossgrown timber. These trees are all chestnuts, and were planted by the canons before the Reformation. A few decaying fruit trees, and traces of a terrace, show where the garden of these sequestered churchmen lay; and where, in her sportive glee, the little queen of Scots with her auburn hair streaming behind her, played for many an hour with the ladies of her mother's train; and heard the white-bearded fathers of St. Augustine tell old tales of their holy isle, and show the oak chair wherein the stout King Robert sat when, in 1310, four years before Bannockburn, he came there to visit them; and legends of the stalwart Earls of Menteith, whose ruined castle stands on the Isle of Tulla, and whose graves are in Mahoma; of Arnchly, or "the bloody field of the sword," where, at the western end of the loch, stood a little chapel, wherein a monk said mass daily for the souls of the slain. And, in that terraced garden, to lighten care and chase sad thoughts away, Florence spent many an hour with this beautiful child, whose "pure and sinless brow" was encircled by the Scottish crown of thorns, and with her four Maries, who were the daughters of four loyal lords,—all women celebrated in after life—by song, by tradition, and by Scotland's brave but mournful history.
These young ladies—to wit, Mary Fleming, daughter of that Lord Fleming who fell at Pinkey; Mary Livingstone, Mary Seaton, and Mary Beaton (a kinswoman of the murdered cardinal), all received precisely the same education as their beautiful mistress, and were taught every language and accomplishment by the same instructors, and they all loved each other with deep affection.