CHAPTER V.
JAMES III.
"Who ever approached me, but for some private object, or with some private passion to gratify? Hatred, ambition, and cupidity form round me a circle without issue, and as a victim is ever needed for each violence—that victim is ever myself."—JOAN OF NAPLES.
Next day, the second of August, the sun rose above Dundee in the same unclouded splendour, and again the green hills, the ancient burgh, with its spires and castle, the bannered ships, and all the wide panorama of the Tay, were mirrored in its clear and waveless depths.
Bells were tolling merrily in the tall spire of the great church, then designated the Kirk of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the Fields, as it stood without the portes of the burgh; and a wreath of those sacred lilies which still form the armorial bearing of Dundee, encircled the now mouldering statue of our Lady, which, with the little infant Jesus in her arms, has survived the storms of seven centuries and the rough hands of the Scottish Iconoclasts, and still adorns the western gallery of that stupendous tower which overlooks the "Gift of God."
Almost drowning the peals that jangled from the belfries of the Grey Franciscans in the Howff, the Dominicans in the Friars Vennel, the Mathurins, and the nuns of St. Clare, the great bell of St. Mary (which was rent when too joyous a peal was rung for Prince Charles, in 1745,) rolled a flood of iron sound above the town, and summoned all the burgesses to meet a monarch whom the people loved, but whom the nobles hated—James III.—who was now approaching by the road from Perth.
Beyond the western porte, and all the streets that led thereto, this road was crowded by the populace; and there might be seen the merchants and burgesses, clad in plain broadcloth, with steel-hilted poniards in their girdles. By law, neither they nor their wives could wear scarlet, silk, or furring, and the females of their families were restricted to short curches with little hoods, after the Flemish fashion; and the ladies of poor gentlemen, whose property was under forty pounds, had to content them with the same. There, too, were officials of the church, doctors, and gentlemen, (having two hundred marks per annum,) in cloaks of scarlet, laced and furred; and labourers, who had exchanged their work-dresses of grey frieze and Galloway white for the holiday attire of red and green.
From the eight stone gurgoyles of the market-cross, which, as usual in Scotland, was surmounted by a tall octagonal column, bearing the unicorn sejant, resting its forepaws on the imperial scutcheon, wine was flowing, and a noisy contest waging among the young gamins, seamen, and others, who struggled and thrust each other aside, not always with good humour, to fill their quaighs, cups, and luggies with the generous Rhenish and claret, which gushed forth alternately from the mouths of the dragons and wyverns; but order was stringently kept by the constable of Dundee, Sir James of Dudhope, who had brought into the burgh five hundred of his troopers from the Howe of Angus—all sturdy yeomen, who wore black iron casquetels, with oreillets over the cheeks and spikes on the top, and were armed with that deadly weapon the ghisarma, which had been but recently introduced.
Escorted by a numerous retinue of well armed serving men, all of whom had the sleuthhound embroidered on the sleeves of their gaberdines, and were accoutred with jacks and bonnets of steel, two-handed swords, and wooden targets covered with threefold hide, the daughters of Lord Drummond, with their aunt the Duchess of Montrose, the Lady of Strathmartine, and many other noble dames from the Carse of Gowrie, were grouped together on horseback, awaiting the king. Robert Barton, Sir David Falconer, and other gentlemen, attended them on foot, and held their bridles, having assigned their own horses to the care of the pages, who carried their swords and helmets,—for a page was at that time indispensable to every gentleman of pretensions.
Conspicuous amid all was the old Duchess of Montrose, a tall and noble-looking matron, whose height on horseback, when her stupendous coif was added, became almost startling; for, like old people generally, "being behind her age," she still retained one of those enormous head-dresses which our ladies had copied from the French, and which had been introduced by Isabel of Bavaria, consort of Charles VI., who had to enlarge all the doors in the Palace of Vincennes after the arrival of his bride.
Nor must we forget that redoubtable Knight of the Post and Chevalier d'Industrie, Sir Hew Borthwick, who loitered near, bowing and smiling to people who knew him not, or knowing, who disdained him. After completely failing to attract the attention of Falconer or Barton, he swaggered through the crowd, clinking a pair of enormous brass spurs, and exhibiting a new scarlet cloak, which he had procured by the recent replenishing of his exchequer; he tilted up the tail of this by his long sword, pointed his mustachios, and from time to time turned up his eyes complacently, to watch the nodding of an absurdly long feather that drooped from his head-dress; and the latter being a velvet hat, like that of an Englishman, the people murmured, and made angry observations about it.