June 8.
Having to meet his parliament a few weeks after, the king went to Falkland to hunt. But the park of his Fife palace did not content him. Carnegie, Lord Kinnaird, son of a favourite minister of old, and himself a friend of the king, dwelt in state in a noble castle overlooking the embouchure of the South Esk in Forfarshire, with an extensive muir full of game close by—Muirthrewmont or Muirromon (as the country people call it). James gladly rode thither,[367] for the sake of the abundant sport. The house of Kinnaird was furnished on the occasion for various pleasures, and deficient in no sort of enjoyment.[368] Two poets of temporary and local fame came with courtly Latin strains suitable to the occasion.[369] His majesty tarried ten days in the district, and then came to Dundee, which welcomed him with poem and with speech. Returning to Edinburgh, he set himself to drive his ends with the clergy, who were now less able or disposed to resist his innovations than they had been twenty years before. At his command, several of the Scottish councillors and bishops received the communion in the English manner in the Chapel-royal, and William Summers, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, officiated there, ‘observing the English form in his prayer and behaviour.’ ‘On the 15th June, some noblemen and bishops who had not communicat before, communicat kneeling, yet not half of the noblemen that were required. The ministers of Edinburgh, in the meantime, were silent; neither dissuaded the king privately, nor opened their mouth in public against this innovation, or bad example.’—Cal.
On the 19th of June, the king formally visited the Castle of Edinburgh, in order to celebrate his fifty-first birthday on the natal spot. Andrew Kerr, a boy of nine years of age, welcomed him at the gate in ‘ane Hebrew speech.’ At the banquet in the great hall, the English and Scottish nobility and the magistracy of Edinburgh met in the utmost amity and satisfaction. By the desire of the king, who wished to advance his native country in the eyes of the English, the wives and children of the Scottish nobility appeared in their finest dresses, shining with jewels, and were treated with great distinction. The feast was not over till nine at night; and after its conclusion, the Castle rang with a chorus of the ladies’ voices and a band of instruments. On the return of the royal party to the Palace, a great multitude assembled there to see ‘pastimes with firework.’[370]
On the 26th, ‘there was a timber house erected on the back of the Great Kirk of Edinburgh [south side], which was decored with tapestry, where the town prepared a banquet for the king and the nobility. The day following, sundry knights and gentlemen of good note were banqueted in the same house, and made burgesses. They danced about the Cross with sound of trumpets and other instruments; throwed glasses of wine from the Cross upon the people standing about, and ended with the king’s scoll [health.]‘—Cal.
June 20.
1617.
This day is dated from Leith a satire upon Scotland, heretofore usually attributed to Sir Anthony Weldon, but upon doubtful evidence. It was entitled, A Perfect Description of the People and Country of Scotland, and was printed with the signature Johne E.
It seems the splenetic effusion of some Cockney who had been tempted to follow the king’s train into Scotland, and had found himself a smaller man there than he expected.
In the air, the soil, and the natural productions of Scotland, this railer can find nothing goodly or agreeable. The thistle, he says, is the fairest flower in their garden. Hay is a word unknown. ‘Corn is reasonable plenty at this time; for, since they heard of the king’s coming, it hath been as unlawful for the common people to eat wheat, as it was of old for any but the priests to eat the show-bread.... They would persuade the footmen that oaten cakes would make them well-winded; and the children of the chapel they have brought to eat of them for the maintenance of their voices.... They persuade the trumpeters that fasting is guid for men of their quality; for emptiness, they say, causeth wind, and wind causeth a trumpet sound sweetly.[371]...