Scottish Poetry of the Sixteenth Century

by Unknown

In 1552 Maitland was one of the commissioners appointed to settle the differences with England on the subject of the Debateable Land on the Borders, and it is believed that the successful issue of this undertaking was the occasion of his receiving the honour of knighthood. At anyrate, two years later, upon his appointment as an Extraordinary Lord of Session he is called Sir Richard Maitland.

Again, in 1559, he was employed as one of the commissioners to England in a conference upon the state of the Borders; Sir Ralph Sadler, one of the delegates on the other side, mentioning him then as “the olde Larde of Lethington, the wisest man of them.” The sudden termination of his stay in England at this time, and the substitution of his eldest son William in his place, has been attributed to the rapid approach of the affliction which was to darken the remainder of his life. It is at least certain that he had completely lost his sight before the arrival of Queen Mary in Scotland in 1561, as in his poem of welcome he mentions the piteous fact.

Under this terrible privation, which, with the circumstance of advancing years, most men would have considered sufficient reason for retirement from active life, Maitland seems in no way to have let his heart sink or his energies abate, and nowhere in his work does there appear a peevish or despondent note on the subject. The affliction which added his name to the honourable roll of blind Homers did not prevent his continuing to fulfil the duties of his position; and he remains one of those examples, in which the history of the blind is peculiarly rich, of men who have encountered extraordinary difficulties only to surmount them. In November, 1561, he was admitted an Ordinary Lord of Session under the title of Lethington, his son being permitted the privilege, by a special regulation, of accompanying him within the bar. In 1562 Queen Mary appointed him Keeper of the Privy Seal for life; and in the following year he and his second son, John, were “conjunctlie and severally made Factouris, Yconomuss, and Chalmirlans of hir hienes Abbacie of Haddingtoun.” The former office he resigned in 1567 in favour of this son, who by that time had obtained the Priory of Coldingham in commendam; but for seventeen years longer he retained his seat on the bench, where he appears to have performed his duties to the last without fear and without reproach.

The troubles which assailed Maitland’s later years came, not from his own acts, but mostly from the restless and ambitious character of his eldest son, the too famous Secretary Maitland of Mary’s reign and the succeeding regencies. The constantly changing part played by this politician in the highest events of his time has been recorded in literature by Buchanan’s biting satire, The Camæleon, written in 1571. Made Secretary of State by that Catholic of Catholics, James the Fifth’s widow, Mary of Guise, he nevertheless presently became one of the Protestant “Lords of Congregation”; and after taking part in the negotiations with Elizabeth as to the terms upon which she would aid the Reformers, he again, with characteristic paradox, turned round in the General Assembly of 1564 to accuse Knox of teaching sedition. Made a Lord of Session by Mary Stuart, he was, notwithstanding, implicated in the murders both of Rizzio and of Darnley; and after signing the document accusing the queen of the latter crime, and after fighting against her at Langside, he strangely enough saw fit to take her part to some extent in the conference at York, and presently united with Kirkaldy of Grange in holding Edinburgh Castle in her interest against the Regents. Finally, upon the surrender of that stronghold in May, 1573, he was taken prisoner, with his brother John and other refugees of the Queen’s party, and being conveyed to Leith, died there, not without suspicion of having poisoned himself.

This erratic policy of the son naturally brought trouble upon his father. The hardest blow which the latter received was from an act of parliament obtained by the Regent Morton as head of the king’s party in 1571. This act declared the secretary and his two brothers rebels, and forfeited their lands and property. Upon the strength of it the house and estate of Lethington, then occupied by the Secretary, were seized, spoiled, and withheld from the poet for a number of years, and his second son was left at liberty only under heavy penalties. These proceedings seem to have roused the old knight to all the indignation of which he was capable. He made earnest appeals to law and to the interest of Queen Elizabeth with the Regent. Nevertheless justice was not accorded him until the year 1581. Upon the downfall of Morton in that year his house and lands were restored to him, and under the patronage of James VI. his son John was appointed an Ordinary Lord of Session. He himself further, in 1584, was allowed the unique privilege of resigning the duties of the Bench in favour of a nominee, retaining at the same time the emoluments of the office; and presently, under the government of the young king, he obtained an act of parliament indemnifying all his losses.

This satisfaction did not, indeed, arrive too soon, for his death occurred on 20th March, 1586, when he was in his ninetieth year. His wife, the partner of his joys and sorrows for sixty years, is said to have died on his funeral day.

Maitland’s life, apart from its literary interest, possesses value for the example which it affords of private family history of the time. He was founder of the first of those great Scottish houses, the Maitlands, Dalrymples, and Dundases, which have risen one after another to the highest rank and influence by the profession of the law. His two sons and his grandson in succession occupied seats upon the bench, and in 1624 the last-named was raised to the peerage by the title of Earl of Lauderdale. John, the son of this earl, and great-grandson of the poet, was from 1663 virtually ruler of Scotland, and in 1672 was created Duke of Lauderdale by Charles II. Maitland’s third son, Thomas, was the author of several Latin poems,[1079] but is best remembered as one of the interlocutors in Buchanan’s famous treatise De Jure Regni apud Scotos.

The manuscript collection of ancient Scottish poems which forms Maitland’s best-known claim to regard, and upon which he is understood to have been engaged from 1555 onwards, is contained in two volumes, a folio and a quarto. Of the folio, believed to have been written by Sir Richard himself, “a very few parts,” says Pinkerton, “are in a small hand; the remainder is in a strong Roman hand.” The quarto consists chiefly of transcripts of Sir Richard’s own original pieces from the folio, and is in the handwriting of Miss Mary Maitland, third daughter of the collector, the first page bearing her name and the date 1585. It appears therefore to have been transcribed in the last year of Maitland’s life. After descending in the family for three generations, these manuscripts were bought, at the sale of the Duke of Lauderdale’s library, by Samuel Pepys, Secretary of the Admiralty to Charles II. and James II., and he in 1703 bequeathed them to Magdalen College, Cambridge. The value of the collection was first discovered by Bishop Percy, who printed a specimen in his Reliques; one also appeared in Allan Ramsay’s Evergreen; and a selection, including twenty-six of Sir Richard Maitland’s original compositions, was published by Pinkerton in 1786 under the title of Ancient Scottish Poems. Another quarto MS., bearing the title The Selected Poemes of Sir Richard Metellan of Lydington, was presented to the library of Edinburgh University by Drummond of Hawthornden; and from this, with the addition of the single composition which it omits, the Maitland Club printed Sir Richard’s poems complete in 1830.

Besides his original poems and his poetical collections, Maitland is known to have written a History of the House of Seytoun and a volume of Decisions collected by him from 1550 till 1565. The former was printed by the Maitland Club in 1829, and the MSS. of both are preserved in the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh.