Thy shoes on thy feet, when thou camest from plough,
Were made of the hide of an old Scots cow;
But now they are turned to a rare Spanish leather,
And decked with roses altogether.
Thy sword at thy back was a great black blade,
With a great basket-hilt of iron made;
But now a long rapier doth hang at thy side,
And huffingly doth this bonny Scot ride.’[339] &c.
Even Osborne acknowledges that the ordinary conceptions as to the enrichment of the Scots courtiers were exaggerated. He says: ‘If many Scots got much, it was not more with one hand than they spent with the other;’ and he explains how Cecil, Earl of Salisbury, the king’s English treasurer, ‘had a trick to get the kernel, and leave the Scots but the shell, and yet cast all the envy on them. He would make them buy books of fee-farms, some £100 per annum, some 100 marks; and he would compound with them for £1000 ... then would he fill up this book with such prime land as should be worth £10,000 or £20,000, which was easy for him, being treasurer, so to do.... Salisbury by this means enriched himself infinitely.’ The case is a significant one. The experience by the Scots, a simple rustic people, of the superior mercantile sharpness of the English, on coming into business relations with them, is probably the main cause of that dry cautious manner which the English censure in them as a national characteristic.