Sir Patrick Gray and Sir James Shaw rose with much real and more feigned respect, as the swarthy Earl of Angus, still clad as usual in his armour, the statesman-like Lord Drummond, wearing a suit of black velvet edged with corded gold, the Lords Hailes, Home, Stirling of Keir, and the Hereditary Forester of Drum, all partially clad in buff and steel, and the grim old Steward of Menteith, with his long Highland cliob, and portentous beard that reached nearly to the top of his kilt, entered the apartment, making a great clatter with their long steel Rippon spurs, and those enormous swords, for the manufacture of which the sword slippers of Banff bade fair to rival those of Cologne and Toledo, and which were of such preposterous length, that they were generally worn across the back, with the hilt at the left shoulder, over which they were unsheathed when necessary.
Now, since James had declined his pilgrimage to Amiens, and Angus, leader of the peers, was quite averse to the invasion of Brittany, to destroy Montrose, Wood, and other favourites of the king, there seemed to be no other resource but a general appeal to arms; and yet the malcontent barons were perhaps loth to engage again in a project so desperate.
"I ken o' nocht for us but an open raid and massacre o' the king's garrisons, if they hauld aloof," said the stern Steward of Menteith. "Those paid soldiers are but an insolent curb upon the auld and inborn power of the nobles."
"Massacre!" reiterated Angus, with one of his dark smiles; "and what then, Steward of Menteith? The king can readily find new garrisons and new favourites, who will again keep the power in their own hands, to the exclusion of our interests."
"Then let us dethrone the king," growled the Forester of Drum.
"And crown young Rothesay in his stead, whether he will or not," added the Laird of Keir.
"I like not the project," said Drummond, who was the most politic and least violent noble there; "dethrone! it hath a new and strange sound, sirs, to a Scottish ear."
"Dethrone—and why not, my lord?" asked Sir James Shaw, who was now flushed with wine; "in our past history there are precedents enough even for the most unscrupulous. Without going back to that barbarous age when Fergus II. restored the monarchy, have we not had Constantine I., who was slain by a Lord of the Isles; and Ferquhard I., who fell into the errors of the Pelagians, and for his contempt of all holy rites was dethroned by his nobles, and cast into a dungeon, where he died like a Roman of old; Malduin, who was strangled by his queen; and the son of Findon, who was shot by an arrow? Had we not Ewen VIII., 'who was slain for having wicked favourites,' all of whom ended their lives on a gallows, around which the people held jubilee as round a maypole? And did not Eth, Malcolm I., and Colin, all die at the behest of an insulted people? And last of all, was there not Duncan II., whom the Earl of Mearn slew by one stroke of his dagger?"
"The last you have named reigned four hundred years ago Sir James," replied Lord Drummond, coldly; "but I do hope in my heart, that the measures which suited the thanes of the eleventh century and their more barbarous predecessors, are altogether antagonistic to the sentiments of the Scottish peers of James III."
A partial murmur of pretended assent responded to this reply, and thus encouraged, the old lord continued—