"Allace the day! she is dead and in her coffin!" said Montrose, as he covered his kind old face with his hands and burst into tears.....
The unfortunate monarch was so crushed by these evil tidings, that his heart seemed almost broken, and his spirit sank lower than ever. His guiding-star was gone now, for she on whose advice he had ever relied as his most faithful friend and counsellor, during a stormy and unhappy life, was dead.
Margaret of Oldenburg, daughter of Christian I. of Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, had been a woman of great beauty and amiability, tact and discernment, and their marriage had been a happy one, though at first purely political, having been brought about by Andrew, Lord Evandale, High Chancellor of Scotland. James had loved well his beautiful Dane, and they had three children, Rothesay, Alexander, Duke of Ross, and the little Prince John, styled, for a time, Earl of Mar. For eighteen years she had been his chief comfort amid every affliction, and the partner and soother of his sorrows; for the gentle Margaret had been all to him that a wise and politic queen, a dear and affectionate wife could be.
Mistrusting even the few nobles who had joined him (the faithful Montrose excepted), James lingered in deep sorrow another day at the old tower of Alloa, and then resolved to join the prince, his son, in the Castle of Stirling, there to assure him by the most solemn vows a heart-broken man might make, that he was innocent of Margaret Drummond's abduction, and would use every means to discover her. After that, he resolved to shut himself up in the fortress until the Highland clans—ever loyal and ever true—came down from the northern hills to his succour; for now rumour said that Grant of Grant, and Sir James Ogilvie of Lintrathen (afterwards the ambassador to Denmark), Hugh, Lord Lovat, with many of the Forbesses, Gordons, Keiths, and Meldrums had risen in arms, and were marching south to defend and enforce the royal authority on the rebellious Lowland lords.
By this time sure tidings were brought to Alloa, that the Earl of Angus, the Lords Drummond, Hailes, and Home, Sir William Stirling of the Kier, Sir Patrick Gray, and many others, had set up the standard of REVOLT at the town of Falkirk, in the fertile Carse of Stirling, where all the discontented lords and landholders of the three Lothians, Galloway, and the Borders, had joined them, with all the armed men they could collect; and together they formed a league, which for strength and daring had no parallel in the previous history of the kingdom, save the raid of the Douglasses in the reign of James II.
Sir James Shaw of Sauchie, Gray of Kyneff, and their minion, the infamous Borthwick, were among the most active in creating this unwarrantable rebellion.
The ancient burgh of Falkirk, which is so beautifully situated among the lands of the now fertile carse, was then surrounded by a dense forest of oaks and beeches, and near it lay a great morass, through which the Carron—that stream so famed in Celtic song and Roman war—flowed past the old Castle of Callendar, whose lords were for centuries comptrollers to the king. This town was then little more than a village, and consisted merely of a High-street and the Kirk Wynd, which led to the church of St. Modan, the pointed spire of which rose above the antique tenements of the Knights of Rhodez, whose preceptor possessed most of the property within the rising burgh. It was surrounded by a fortified wall having ports, one of which is yet remaining in the Back Row. Being loftily situated, and commanding an extensive view in every direction, it was admirably adapted for the muster-place of the rebel lords, whose whole desire was now to lure the unfortunate king to try their strength in battle. The town was filled by their troops; the cavalry occupied the High-street and Churchyard, while the chiefs had their quarters in the Castle of Callendar, the family seat of James, Lord Livingstone, where they held council by day, and wassail by night, drinking the comptroller's wine, and broaching his Lammas ale, "to the confusion of the king and of his parasitical favourites."
Here they were visited by the venerable and valiant Sieur de Concressault, who came alone, or at least attended only by three horsemen—one who bore his banner, a second who carried his helmet, and a third who sounded a trumpet; and, penetrating into the flushed, proud, and riotous company, who were drinking and roistering in the hall of Callendar, where they
"Carved at the meal with gloves to steel,
And drank their red wine through the helmet barred,"
the marshal boldly announced to them what he had been desired to say by a mandate recently received from his master, the King of France. But before he spoke, this good soldier was shocked to perceive the young Duke of Rothesay (whom all the loyalists believed to be in Stirling) among these dark and fierce conspirators; for the false and subtle Shaw and others retained the heir of the crown among them, to give a colour and pretext to all their illegal actions—or at least, that on his young head some of the blame of revolt, and shame of defeat, should fall. He seemed pale and sad, and crushed in spirit; for he now felt convinced—thanks to the reiterations of Borthwick, Shaw, and Gray—that his father had destroyed both Margaret and her child; and as he was one of those who think it "better to have loved and lost, than never to have loved at all," his bitterness was great indeed.