ARMS OF JAMES IV OF SCOTLAND
(From King's College Chapel, Old Aberdeen)
CHAPTER IV
JAMES IV: THE KNIGHT-ERRANT
The graver records of the nation pause at the point to which we have arrived. The tale leaves both battlefield and council chamber, though there is an inevitable something of both in the chronicle as there is something of daily bread in the most festive day. But it is not with these grave details that the historian occupies himself. The most serious page takes a glow from the story it has to tell, the weighty matters of national life and development stand aside, and it is a knight of romance who stands forth to occupy the field. The story of James, the fourth of the name, is one of those passages of veritable history in which there is scarcely anything that might not be borrowed from a tale of chivalry. It is pure romance from beginning to end.
Of the character and personality of the boy whose education was carried on under strict surveillance at Stirling we know nothing whatever, until he suddenly appears before us in the enemy's camp, whether with his own consent or not, or how much, if with his own consent, with any knowledge of what he was about, it is difficult to tell. His mother had died while he was still a child, and probably for the last few years of his much disturbed life James III had but little attention to spare for his son. If there is any truth in a curious story told by Pitscottie of a search on board Sir Andrew Wood's ship for the murdered King, while yet the fact of his death was unknown, and the Prince's wistful address to the great sailor, "Sir, are ye my father?" we might suppose that the boy had been banished altogether from his father's presence. But perhaps this is too slender a foundation to build upon. There can be no doubt, however, that after the battle, little honourable to either side, and lost by the King's party almost before begun, from which he fled in a panic so ignominious and fatal, there was a moment of great perplexity and dismay, when King James's fate remained a mystery, and the rebel nobles with the boy-prince among them knew not what to do or to say, in the doubt whether he was dead or alive, whether he might not reappear at any moment with a host from the Highlands or from France, or even England, at his back. When they had fully realised their unsatisfactory victory they marched to Edinburgh, with the Prince always among them and a chill horror about them, unaware what way to look for news of the King. The rush of the people to watch their return with their drooping banners and faces full of consternation, and wonder at the unaccustomed sight of the young Prince which yet was not exciting enough to counterbalance the anxiety, the wonder, the perpetual question what had become of the King—must have been as a menace the more to the perplexed leaders, who knew that a fierce mob might surge up into warfare at any moment, or a rally from the castle cut off their discouraged and weary troops. Where was the King? Had he perhaps got before them to Edinburgh? was he there on that height, misty with smoke and sunshine, turning against them the great gun, which had been forged for use against the Douglas: or ready to appear from over the Firth terrible with a new army; or in the ships, most likely of all, with the great admiral who lay there watching, ready to carry off a royal fugitive or bring back strange allies to revenge the scorn that had been done to the King? The lords decided to take their dispirited and broken array to Leith instead of going to Holyrood, and there collected together to hold a council of war. Among the confused reports brought to them of what one man and another had seen or heard was one, more likely than the rest, of boats which had been seen to steal down Forth and make for the Yellow Carvel lying in the estuary, with apparently wounded men on board. They sent accordingly to summon Sir Andrew Wood to their presence. The sailor probably cared nothing about politics any further than that he held for the King—and furious with the Lords who had withstood his Majesty declined to come unless hostages were sent for his safety. When this was accorded, the old sea-lion, the first admiral of Scotland, came gruffly from his ships to answer their questions. Whether there was any resemblance between the two men, as he stood with his cloak wrapped round him defiant before the rebel lords, or if the Prince had, as is possible, been so long absent from his father that the vague outline of a man enveloped and muffled deceived him, it is impossible to say. But there is a tone of penetrating reality in the "Sir, are ye my father?" of the troubled boy, perhaps only then aroused to a full comprehension of his position and the sense that he was himself guiltily involved in the proceedings which had brought some mysterious and unknown fate upon the King. It is difficult to see why, accepting from Pitscottie all the rest of this affecting narrative, the modern historian should cut out this as unworthy of belief, "Who answered," continues the chronicler, "with tears falling from his eyes,"
"'Sir, I am not your father, but I was a servand to your father, and sall be to his authoritie till I die, and ane enemy to them that was the occasion of his doon-putting.' The lords inquired of Captain Wood if he knew of the King or where he was. He answered he knew nothing of the King nor where he was. Then they speired what they were that came out of the field and passed into his ships. He answered: 'It was I and my brother, who were ready to have waired our lives with the King in his defence.' Then they said, 'He is not in your ships?' who answered again, 'He is not in my ship, but would to God he were in my ship safelie, I should defend him and keep him skaithless frae all the treasonable creatures who has murdered him, for I think to see the day when they shall be hanged and quartered for their demerites.'"
The lords would fain have silenced this rude sailor, but having given hostages for his safe return were obliged to let him go. There could not be a more vivid picture of their perplexity and trouble. They proceeded to Edinburgh after this rebuff, coming in, we may well believe, with little sound of trumpet or sign of welcome, and with many a threatening countenance among the crowds that gazed wistfully upon the boy in their midst, who, if the King were really dead, was the King—another James. There might be old men about watching from the foot of the Canongate the silent cortege trooping along the valley to Holyrood—men who remembered with all the force of boyish recollection how the assassins of James I. had been dragged and tormented through Edinburgh streets, and might wonder and whisper inquiries to their sons whether such a horrible sight might be coming again, and what part that pale boy had in the dreadful deed? It was but fifty years since that catastrophe, and already two long minorities had paralysed the progress of Scotland. How the crowding people must have eyed him, as he rode along, the slim stripling, so young, so helpless, in the midst of all these bearded men! What part did he have in it? Was his father done to death by his orders? Was he consenting at least to what was done? Was he aware of all that was to follow that hurried ride with the lords, into which he had been beguiled or persuaded? James III had to some degree favoured Edinburgh, where, notwithstanding his long captivity in the Castle, he had found defenders and friends. And there must have been many in the crowd who took part with the unfortunate monarch, so mysteriously gone out of their midst, and who looked with horror upon the boy who had something at least to do with the ruin and death of his father. It was a sombre entry upon the future dwelling to which this young James was to bring so much splendour and rejoicing.
How these doubts were cleared up and certainty attained we have no sure way of knowing. Pitscottie's story is that when the false priest murdered the King, he took up the body on his back and carried it away, "but no man knew what he did with him or where he buried him." Other authorities speak of a funeral service in the Abbey of Cambuskenneth on the banks of the Forth—a great religious establishment, of which one dark grey tower alone remains upon the green meadows by the winding river; and there is mention afterwards of a bloody shirt carried about on the point of a lance to excite the indignant Northmen to rebellion. But notwithstanding these facts no one ventures to say that James's body was found or buried. Masses for the dead were sung, and every religious honour paid; but so far as anything is told us, these rites might have been performed around an empty bier. At last however, in some way, a dolorous certainty, which must by many have been felt as a relief, was attained, and the young King was crowned in Edinburgh in the summer of 1488, some weeks after his father's death. At the same time a Parliament was called, and the Castle of Edinburgh, which all this time seems to have kept its gates closed and rendered no submission, was summoned by the herald to yield, "which was obediently done at the King's command," says the chronicle. There was evidently no thought of rebellion or of resisting the lawful sovereign, so soon as it was certain which he was. The procession of the herald, perhaps the Lord Lyon himself, with all his pursuivants, up the long street to sound the trumpets outside the castle gates and demand submission, must have brightened the waiting and wondering city with the certainty of the new reign. But the bravery and fine colours of such a procession, though made doubly effective by the background of noble houses and all the lofty gables and great churches in the crowded picturesque centre at the foot of the Castle Hill, were not then as now strange to the "grey metropolis of the North." No country in Christendom would seem to have so changed under the influence of the Reformation as Scotland. The absence of pageant and ceremonial, the discouragement of display, the suppression of the picturesque in action, in the midst of one of the most picturesque scenes in the world, are all of modern growth. In the fifteenth century, and especially in the reign that was now begun, the town ran over with bright colour and splendid spectacle. When the lists were formed upon the breezy platform, overlooking the fair plains of Lothian, the great Firth, and the surrounding circle of hills, at the castle gate—how brilliant must have been both scene and setting, the living picture and the wonderful frame, and how every window would be crowded to see the hundred little processions of knights to the jousts and ladies to the tribunes, and the King and Queen riding with all their fine attendants "up the toun" all the way from Holyrood! Nor would the curiosity be much less when, coming in from the country, with every kind of quaint surrounding, the great nobles with their glittering retinue, the lairds each with a little posse of stout men-at-arms, as many as he could muster, the burgesses from the towns, the clergy from all the great centres of the Church, on mules and soft-pacing palfreys, would gather for the meetings of Parliament. It scarcely wanted a knight-errant like the fourth James, with his chivalrous tastes and devices, to fill the noble town with brightness, for all these fine sights were familiar to Edinburgh. But the brightest day was now to come.
OLD HOUSE IN LAWNMARKET
The Parliament which assembled in all the emotion of that curious crisis, while still the wonder and dismay of the King's tragic disappearance were in the air, was a strange one. It was evidently convened with the intention of shielding the party which had taken arms against James III, while making a cunning attempt to throw the blame on those who had stood by him: these natural sentiments being combined with the determination, most expedient in the circumstances, to reconcile all by punishing none. The young King and the power now exercised in his name were in the hands of the lords who had headed the rebellion, Angus, Home, Bothwell, and the rest; and while their own safety was naturally their first consideration, they had evidently no desire to stir up troublesome questions even for the fierce joy of condemning their opponents. At one or other of the early Parliaments in this reign, either that first held by way of smoothing over matters and preparing such an account of all that had happened as might be promulgated by foreign ambassadors to their respective Courts—or one which followed the easy settlement of an attempt at rebellion already referred to, when the Lord of Forbes carried a bloody shirt, supposed to be that of King James, through the streets of Aberdeen, and raised a quickly-quelled insurrection—there occurs the trial of Sir David Lindsay, one of the most quaint narratives of a cause célèbre ever written. The chronicler, whom we may quote at some length—and whose living and graphic narrative none even of those orthodox historians who pretend to hold lightly the ever-delightful Pitscottie, upon whom at the same time they rely as their chief authority, attempt to question in this case—was himself a Lindsay, and specially concerned for the honour of his name. The defendant was Lindsay of the Byres, one of the chief of James III's supporters, he who had given the King that ominous gift of a fleet courser on the eve of the battle. When he appeared at the bar of the house so to speak—before Parliament—the following "dittay" or indictment was made against him:—