"This bishop made ane banquet to the Pope and all his cardinals in one of the Pope's own palaces, and when they were all set according to their custom, that he who ought (owned) the house for the time should say the grace, and he was not ane good scholar, nor had not good Latin, but begane ruchlie in the Scottise fashione, saying Benedicite, believing that they should have said Dominus, but they answered Deus in the Italian fashioun, which put the bishop by his intendment (beyond his understanding), that he wist not well how to proceed fordward but happened in good Scottis in this manner, saying, what they understood not, 'The devil I give you all false cardinals to, in nomine Patris, Filii, et Spiritus Sancti, Amen.' Then all the bishop's men leuch, and all the cardinals themselves; and the Pope inquired whereat they leuch, and the bishop showed that he was not ane good clerk, and that the cardinals had put him by his text and intendment, therefore he gave them all to the devil in good Scottis, whereat the Pope himself leuch verrie earnestlie."
This did not prevent his Holiness, probably delighted with such a racy visitor, from making Forman Legate of Scotland; and it is to be feared that the meddling diplomatist with his want of education, was perhaps a better example of the clergy of Scotland, who about this time began to be the mark of all assailants as illiterate, greedy, vicious, and rapacious, than such a gentle soul as the other poet of the age, afterwards bishop of Dunkeld, the one mild and tranquil possessor of the great Douglas name.
WHITE HORSE CLOSE
The imbroglio of events into which it is unnecessary for us to enter grew more and more complicated year by year, until at length it came to be a struggle between France and England for the ally who could be of most assistance to the one in the special way of injuring the other, and whom it was of the first advantage to both to secure. James was bound by the treaty of permanent peace which he had made at his marriage, and by that marriage itself, and no doubt the strong inclination of his wife, to England; but he was bound to France by a traditionary bond of a much stronger kind, by the memory of long friendship and alliance, and the persistent policy of his kingdom and race. The question was modified besides by other circumstances. England was, as she had but too often been, but never before in James's experience—harsh, overbearing, and unresponsive: while France, as was also her wont, was tender, flattering, and pertinacious. Henry refused or delayed to pay Queen Margaret a legacy of jewels and plate left to her by her father, and at the same time protected certain Borderers who had murdered a Scottish knight, and defended them against justice and James, while still summoning him to keep his word and treaty in respect to England; while on the other hand not only the King but the Queen of France appealed to James, he as to an ancient ally, she as to her sworn knight, to break that artificial alliance with his haughty brother-in-law. It may well have been that James in his own private soul had no more desire for such a tremendous step than the nobles who struggled to the last against it. But he had les défauts de ses qualités in a high degree. He was nothing if not a knight of romance. And though, as the poet has said—
"His own Queen Margaret, who in Lithgow's bower
All silent sat, and wept the weary hour,"
might be more to him than the politic Anne of France, or any fair lady in his route, it was not in him, a paladin of chivalry, the finest of fine gentlemen, the knight-errant of Christendom, to withstand a lady's appeal. Perhaps, besides, he was weary of his inaction, the only prince in Europe who was not inevitably involved in the fray; weary of holding tourneys and building ships (some of which had been lately taken by the English, turning the tables upon him) and keeping quiet, indulging in the inglorious arts of peace, while everybody else was taking the field. And Henry was arrogant and exasperating, so that even his own sister was at the end of her brief Tudor patience; and Louis was flattering, caressing, eloquent. When that last embassage of chivalry came with the ring from Anne's own finger, and the charge to ride three miles on English ground for her honour, it was the climax of many arguments. "He loves war," the Spaniard had said. "War is profitable to him and to the country"—a curious and pregnant saying. James would seem to have struggled at least a little against all the impulses which were pushing him forward to his doom. He promised a fleet to his lady in France for her aid—a fleet foolishly if not treacherously handled by Arran, and altogether diverted from its intended end; finally, that having failed, James flung away all precaution and yielded to the tide of many influences which was carrying him away.
It is needless to tell over again the tale that everybody knows: how both heaven and hell were stirred by this ill-omened undertaking; how an aged saint, venerable and stately, suddenly appeared out of the crowd when the King was at his prayers in the Cathedral of Linlithgow, with a message from on high; and how when James had gone back to Holyrood, the High Street of Edinburgh resounded in the dead of night with trumpet note and herald's call from the grim Hades of mediæval imagination, summoning by name a long list of the Scottish nobility, of whom one man defied the portent and refused the call and was saved. James paid no heed to these warnings, whether supernatural or otherwise, or perhaps was too far committed to give any heed to them, carried away by the wild and fatal stream which had caught his feet, with something of that extraordinary impetus of natural tendency long restrained which acts with tenfold force when at last yielded to. It is unnecessary either to tell the story of all the foolish fatal lingerings upon the ill-omened way: trifling with treacherous ladies for whom he cared nothing, cartels from Surrey; the abandonment of a strong position, lest it should give him an advantage, in ever greater and greater folly of chivalry: the refusal to attack, or let his artillery attack, till his foes were all safely over the bridge: all exhibitions of high honour gone mad with the intoxication of fate. The Spaniard's letter comes back in full significance as we watch with aching hearts the fatal fray. "He said to me that his subjects serve him with their persons and goods, in just or unjust quarrels, exactly as he wishes, and that therefore he does not think it right to begin any warlike undertaking without being himself the first in danger." The knight-errant kept his consigne of honour to the last. He betrayed his people to the most utter defeat they had ever encountered, but he was himself the first victim.
Thus died the only Stewart king who ever seemed to have a fair prospect of escaping the fate of his unfortunate race. The worm in his conscience, the iron belt round his body, were perhaps only symptoms of a susceptible nature, of remorse which was excessive for the bewildered acquiescence in rebellion of an unawakened mind and an irresponsible age. And his life, if soiled by errors which were then and are now but lightly thought of in a prince, was in all public matters noble, honourable, and enlightened, with always the advantage of his country for its aim, even in the midst of the natural gaieties and extravagances of a happy temper and exuberant energy. He was extravagant, light-hearted, a lover of magnificence and display, all of which things, in the face of the political economist, sometimes prove themselves excellent for a country when the moment comes to press it forward into the ranks of high civilisation out of a ruder and more primitive development. The nobility with which his father struggled to the death he held in a leash of silk or of gold, often making them the instruments of the justice which they had so long resisted. There was peace in his time such as had never before been in Scotland, and redress of grievances, and extinction or suppression of mortal feuds and intestine struggles. It is sometimes given to a man in all light-heartedness, in what seems the spontaneous way of his own impulses and pleasures, to do what is best for his surroundings and his time, without any apparent strain of self sacrifice or gravity of duty. James Stewart, the fourth of his name, was one of these happy and beautiful natures: and though his life was one of almost unbroken prosperity and brightness, yet no man can say that his stewardry was not nobly held, and to the benefit of his kingdom and people. But not for this was the doom to pass by. The brightness and the prosperity came to an end in a sudden folly, infatuation, and madness, which belonged to him as his sunny nature did and his generosity of heart. And it was no evil chance, but the principle of his life, as we have seen, that in the calamity into which he drew his people he himself should be the first to fall.
[3] This name and assumed character is generally supposed to belong to James V: but all the accompanying circumstances seem to point so much more to what is recorded of James IV, that I venture to attribute them to him. If it is an error there is this, at least, to be said in favour of it, that the story is as applicable to one as to the other monarch.