For many hundred years a curse, or rather a fell spirit, hovered over Scotland, and time seems never to have lessened its force, or the evil produced by the blighting breath of that yellow slave, of which he who found a grave so far from her shore—poor Leyden, one of the sweetest of our bards—has sung, in his beautiful Ode to an Indian coin of gold. This curse has been the mal-influence of a party within the Scottish nation, whose interests were separated from its common weal, who throve on its ruin and disgrace, and have ever been the ready instruments of oppression, neglect, and misrule: I mean that party distinguished in the darkest pages of our annals as the English fiction—usually a band of paid traitors, whom even the Union could not abolish; men who surrendered themselves to work out the evil, disastrous, and insidious projects of the sister kingdom, for the purpose of weakening the power of the Scottish people; and thus, as Schiller says, "never has civil war embroiled the cities of Scotland, that an Englishman has not applied a brand to the walls."
To the patricidal efforts of this faction, which for many hundred years proved the bane of Scotland, our historians lay the blame of every dark and disastrous transaction that blackens the page of Scottish history.
Their intrigues brought on the troubles of Alexander III.; the betrayal of Wallace; and that long war, which even Bannockburn did not end; the early misfortunes of James I. and those of James III., when England intrigued with Albany to gain the town of Berwick, and marry a prince of Scotland to Margaret Tudor. We recognise the same corrupt faction in those ignoble peers who pledged themselves to the English king after the fight at Solway Moss, and thus broke the heart of James V., the most splendid of our monarchs; who plunged Scotland in bloodshed under the Regents Murray, Mar, and Morton; who betrayed Kirkaldy of Grange, and, after a life of woe, surrendered their sovereign to the axe of an English executioner. Again we recognise them, when "the master fiend, Argyle," and his compatriots, betrayed her misguided grandson to Cromwell, and when their more sordid successors sold their country at the Union; when they betrayed our Darien colonists to the Spanish allies of England, and the Macdonalds of Glencoe to the barbarous assassins of William of Orange.
Sir James Shaw of Sauchie, Sir Patrick Gray of Kyneff, and the despicable swashbuckler, Borthwick, in the days of James III., represented the ignoble Scots of 1488. They were conducted by a page to the great cabin of the English frigate, in which several gentlemen, all richly dressed, were lounging on the cushioned lockers, and drinking Canary and Rochelle wine out of silver-mounted horns. A lamp, having a globe of pink-coloured glass, swung from a beam, and diffused a warm light around the cabin, which was all wainscoted, and hung with armour and weapons of various kinds.
On the entrance of the three visitors, all the English officers withdrew, save Edmund Howard, the captain, who wore a scarlet cassock coat, richly furred with miniver, and a diamond sword-belt; and his secretary, Master Quentin Kraft, a London attorney, who was attired in plain blue broadcloth, trimmed with black tape, and who immediately produced writing materials, clean drinking horns, and more wine.
"Welcome on board the royal ship, Harry!" said Edmund Howard, bowing, without rising, while a sneer of ill-disguised contempt curled his handsome mouth, over which hung a dark mustachio; for, like a noble cavalier and honest mariner, he had an unmitigated aversion to the duty on which King Henry had sent him, and for the three Scotsmen, with whom he had to conduct a court intrigue. "I am glad you have come off at last; but why all rigged in armour—aloft and alow, from head to heel, eh?"
"In Scotland, men go not abroad without their harness," replied the Laird of Sauchie, haughtily.
"By St. George," said Howard, "four hours ago I was sick of knocking about in the offing, and then having to creep in, like a thief in the nightfall, between the Inchcape Rock and yonder devilish sands. A fine business 'twould have been to have found myself beached in the shoal water, and just after this hot affair of ours with Sir Andrew Barton in the Channel. Be seated, Sir James; Sir Patrick, the Canary stands with you; come to anchor, Master Borthwick—cannot you find a seat? By the bye, talking of Barton, I owe thee a hundred crowns, Borthwick. Kraft, hand this gentleman a hundred crowns, and be sure to get his quittance for them, ere they are stowed away."
While this transaction passed, and the price of Barton's blood was being paid to Borthwick, the two rebellious barons divested themselves of their ample cloaks and masks, and each presented an athletic figure, completely cased in iron, save the head, and armed with daggers and long swords of a famous kind, then made and tempered at Banff.
Shaw of Sauchie was older, less bloated, and less dissipated in aspect than Gray; but he had the same cunning eyes, large mustachios, and bullying or imperious aspect.