Royal Edinburgh: Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets

by Mrs. Oliphant

OLD HOUSES AT HEAD OF WEST BOW

Thus Edinburgh breasted its ridge of rock—a fair sight across all the green country; its sentinel mountain crouching eastward between the metropolis and the sea, its suburbs growing and expanding; this full of the fine people of the Court, that of the quiet wealth and enjoyment which made no extravagant demonstration. It had never been so prosperous, never so much the centre of all that was splendid in the kingdom, as in the reign of the fourth James—the knight of romance, the gayest and brightest representative of the House of Stewart, though unable to defend himself from the tragic fate which awaited every sovereign of his name.

Among the finest sights seen in Edinburgh must have been those which occurred very early in his reign, when the great Admiral, Sir Andrew Wood, he who had met so proudly the inquisition of the lords, came from sea with his prisoners and his spoils. Wood had not pleased the reigning party by his rough fidelity to the dead King, but they could not induce the other sea captains, by any promise of reward or advancement, to attack and punish, as was their desire, the greatest sailor in Scotland. And when an English expedition began to vex the Scottish coasts, there was no one but Wood to encounter and defeat them, which he did on two different occasions, bringing the captains of the rover vessels—probably only half authorised by the astute King Henry VII, who had evidently no desire to attack Scotland, but who had to permit a raid from time to time as the most popular thing to do—as prisoners to the courteous King, who though he "thanked Sir Andrew Wood greatly and rewarded him richlie for his labours and great proof of his manhood," yet "propined (gave presents to) the English captain richlie and all his men and sent them all safelie home, their ships and all their furnishing, because they had shown themselves so stout and hardie warriours." "So he sent them all back to the King of England," says the chronicler, with full enjoyment of James's magnanimous brag and of thus having the better of "the auld enemy" both in prowess and in courtesy, "to let him understand he had as manlie men in Scotland as he had in England; therefore desired him to send no more of his captains in time coming." England was obliged to accept, it appeared, this bravado of the Scots, having no excuse for repeating the experiment, but was "discontented" and little pleased to be overcome both in courtesy and in arms.

A more serious matter than this encounter at sea, which was really more a trial of strength than anything else, was the purely chivalric enterprise of James in taking up the cause of Perkin Warbeck, the supposed Duke of York, who imposed upon all Europe for a time, and on nobody so much as the King of Scotland. This adventurer, who was given out as the younger son of Edward IV escaped by the relenting of the murderers when his elder brother was killed in the Tower, was by unanimous consent of all history a youth of person and manners quite equal to his pretensions, playing his part of royal prince with a grace and sincerity which nobody could resist. The grave Pinkerton, so sarcastically superior to all fables, writing at the end of the eighteenth century, had evidently not even then made up his mind how to accept this remarkable personage, but speaks of him as "this unfortunate prince or pretender," and of James as "sensible of the truth of his report or misled by appearance," with an evident leaning to the side of the hero who played so bold a game. The young adventurer came to James with the most illustrious of guarantees. He brought letters from Charles VIII of France, and from the Emperor Maximilian, and was followed by a train of gallant Frenchmen and by everything that was princelike, gracious, and splendid. So completely was he received and believed at the Scottish Court that when there arose a mutual love, as the story goes, between him and the Lady Catherine Gordon, daughter of the Earl of Huntly, one of the most powerful peers in Scotland, and at the same time of royal blood, a cousin of the King, the marriage seems to have been accepted as a most fit and even splendid alliance. No greater pledge of belief could have been given than this. The King of Scots threw himself into the effort of establishing the supposed prince's claims as if they had been his own. Curious negotiations were entered into as to what the pretender should do if, by the help of Scotland, he was placed upon the English throne. He was to cede Berwick, that always-coveted morsel which had to change its allegiance from generation to generation as the balance between the nations rose and fell—and pay a certain sum towards defraying the expenses of the expedition, a bargain to which Perkin, playing his part much better than any king of the theatre ever did before, demurred, insisting upon easier terms—as he afterwards remonstrated when James harried the Borders, declaring that he would rather resign all hopes of the crown than secure it at the expense of the blood and goods of his people. A pretended prince who thus spoke might well be credited as far as faith could go. The story of this strange enterprise is chiefly told in the letters to Henry VII of England of Sir John Ramsay, the same who had been saved by James III when the rest of his favourites were killed, and who had more or less thriven since, though in evil ways, occupying a position at the Court of James IV whom he hated, and acting as spy on his actions, which were all reported to the English Court. Ramsay gives the English Government full information of all that his sovereign is about to do on behalf of the fengit (feigned) boy, and especially of the invasion of England which he is about to undertake "against the minds of near the whole number of his barons and people. Notwithstanding," Ramsay says, "this simple wilfulness cannot be removed out of the King's mind for nae persuasion or mean. I trust verrilie," adds the traitor, "that, God will, he be punished by your mean for the cruel consent of the murder of his father."

Curiously enough Pitscottie, the most graphic and circumstantial of historians, says nothing whatever of this most romantic episode. Why he should have left it out, for it is impossible that it could have been unknown to him, we are unable to imagine; but so it is. Buchanan however enters fully into the tale. The wisest of James's counsellors, he tells us, were disposed to have nothing to do with this spurious young prince coming out of the unknown with his claim to be the rightful King of England; but many more were in his favour, specially with the reflection that the moment of England's difficulties was always one of advantage for the Scots. An army was accordingly raised, with which James marched into England, carrying Perkin with him with a train of about fourteen hundred followers, and hopes that the country would rise to greet and acknowledge their lost prince. But it is evident that the Northumbrians looked on without any response, and saw in the expedition but one of the many raids which they were always so ready to return on their side when occasion offered. The pretender, on whose behalf all this was done, shrank, it would appear, from the devastation, and with something like the generous compunction of a prince protested that he would rather lose the crown than gain it so—a protest which James must have thought a piece of affectation, for he replied with a jeer that his companion was too solicitous for the welfare of a country which would neither acknowledge him as prince nor receive him as citizen. Perkin must have begun to tire the patience of the finest gentleman in Christendom before James would have made such a contemptuous retort. He returned with the King, however, when this unsuccessful expedition—the only use of which was that it proved to James the fruitlessness of fighting on behalf of a pretender who had no hold upon the people over whom he claimed to reign—came to an end. It was followed by some slight reprisals on the part of the English, and after an interval by an embassy to make peace. Henry VII would seem to have been at all times most unwilling to have Scotland for an enemy, notwithstanding the strange motive suggested to him by the traitor Ramsay. "Sir," writes this false Scot, "King Edward had never fully the perfect love of his people till he had war with Scotland; and he made sic good diligence and provision therein that to this hour he is lovit; and your Grace may as well have as gude a tyme as he had." But the cunning old potentate at Westminster was not moved even by this argument. Instead of following the instructions of the virulent spy whose hatred of his native king and country reaches the height of passion, he sent a wise emissary, moderate like himself, the Bishop of Durham, to inquire into the reasons of the attack.

And Edinburgh must have had another great sensational spectacle in the arrival not only of the English commissioners, but of such a great foreign personage as the Spanish envoy, one of the greatest grandees of the most splendid of continental kingdoms, who had come to England to negotiate the marriage of Catherine of Arragon with the Prince of Wales, and who continued his journey to Scotland with letters of amity from his sovereigns for James, and with the object of assisting in the peacemaking between the two Kings. Henry required James to give up the pretender into his hands—a thing which of course it was not consistent with honour to do—but it was evident that the King of Scots had already in his own mind given up the adventurer's cause. And after the negotiations had been concluded and peace made between England and Scotland, Perkin and his beautiful young wife and his train of followers set sail from Scotland in a little flotilla of three ships, intending it is said to go to Ireland, where he had been well received before coming to the Court of James. The imagination follows with irrestrainable pity the forlorn voyage of this youthful band of adventurers: the young husband trained to all the manners and ways of thinking of a prince, however little reality there might be in his claims; the young wife, mild and fair, the White Rose as she was called, with the best blood of Scotland in her veins; the few noble followers, knights, and a lady or two who shared their fortunes, setting out vaguely to sea, not knowing were to go, with the world before them where to choose. When they got to Ireland Prince Perkin heard of an insurrection in Cornwall, and hastened to put himself at the head of it, placing his wife for security in the quaint fortress, among the waters, of St. Michael's Mount. But the insurrection came to nothing, and "the unfortunate prince or adventurer" was taken prisoner. He was pardoned it is said, but making a wild attempt at insurrection again, was this time tried and executed. His White Rose, most forlorn of ladies, was taken by King Henry from her refuge at the end of the world, placed in charge of the Queen, and never left the English Court again. There is no record that she and her husband were ever allowed to meet. So ends one of the saddest and most romantic of historical episodes.

This story takes up a large part of the early reign of James, who no doubt saw his error at the last, but in the beginning threw himself into Perkin's fortunes with characteristic impetuosity, and thought nothing too good, not even his own fair kinswoman, for the rescued prince. It was an error, however, that James shared with many high and mighty potentates who gave their imprimatur at first to the adventurer's cause. But even for the most genuine prince, when only a pretender, the greatest sovereigns are but poor supporters in the long run. James had a hundred things to do to make him forget that unfortunate adventure of Perkin. It was in the year 1497 that this incident ended so far as the Scottish Court was concerned, and James returned to the natural course of his affairs, not without occasional tumults on the Border, but with no serious fighting anywhere for a course of pleasant years. The old traditional strife between the King and the nobles no longer tore the kingdom asunder. Perhaps the first great event of his life, the waking up of his boyish conscience to find himself in the camp of a faction pitted against his own father, influenced him throughout everything, and made the duty of conciliation and union seem the first and most necessary; perhaps it was but the natural revulsion from those methods which his father had adopted to his hurt and downfall; or perhaps James's chivalrous temper, his love of magnificence and gaiety, made him feel doubly the advantage of courtiers who should be great nobles and his peers, not dependants made splendid by his bounty. At all events the King lived as no Stewart had yet lived, surrounded by all without exception who were most noble in the land, encouraging them to vie with him in splendour, in noble exercises and pastimes, and almost, it may be imagined—with a change of method, working by good example and genial comradeship what his predecessors had vainly tried to do by fire and sword—tempting them to emulate him also in preserving internal peace and a certain reign of justice throughout the country. There was no lack of barons in the Court of James. Angus and Home and Huntly, who had pursued his father to the death and placed himself upon the throne, were not turned into subservient courtiers by his gallantry and charm: but neither was there any one of these proud lords in the ascendant, or any withdrawn and sullen in his castle, taking no share in what was going on. The machinery of the State worked as it had never done before. There were few Parliaments, and not very much law-making. Enough laws had been made under his predecessors, "if they had but been kept," to form an ideal nation; the thing to do now was to charm, to persuade, to lead both populace and nobility into respecting them. It would be vain to imagine that this high purpose was always in James's mind, or that his splendour and gaieties were part of a plan for the better regulation of the kingdom. But that he was not without a wise policy in following his own character and impulses, and that the spontaneous good-fellowship and sympathy which his frank, genial, and easy nature called forth everywhere were not of admirable effect in the welding together of the nation, it would be unjust to say. If he had not the sterner nobility of purpose which made the first of his name conceive and partially carry into effect the ideal reign of justice which was the first want of his kingdom, he had yet a noble ambition for Scotland to make her honoured and feared and famous, and the success with which he seems to have carried out this object of his life for many years was great. He made the little northern kingdom known for a centre of chivalry, courtesy, courage, and, what was more wonderful, magnificence, as it had never been before. He penetrated that country with traditions and associations of himself in the character always attractive to the imagination, of that prince of good fellows, the wandering stranger, who came in unknown and sought the hospitality of farmer or ploughman, and made the humble board ring with wit and jest, and who thereafter was discovered by sudden gift, or grace, or unexpected justice, to be the King:—

"He took a bugle from his side, and blew both loud and shrill,
And four and twenty belted knights came trooping owre the hill;"

"Then he took out his little knife, let a' his duddies fa',
And he was the brawest gentleman that was among them a'."