‘takes the friers’ antetume,[14]
Ready receivers, but to render nocht.’
On this Lord Hailes remarks: ‘The reformed clergy expected that the tithes would be applied to charitable uses, to the advancement of learning and the maintenance of the ministry. But the nobility, when they themselves had become the exactors, saw nothing rigorous in the payment of tithes, and derided those devout imaginations.’[15]
In one verse of his poem, Scott makes pointed allusion to certain prophecies which seemed to assign a brilliant future to Mary:
‘If saws be sooth to shaw thy celsitude,
What bairn should brook all Britain by the sea,
The prophecy expressly does conclude
The French wife of the Bruce’s blood should be:
Thou art by line from him the ninth degree,
And was King Francis’ perty maik and peer;