There are, on the other hand, among the early criminal records, two instances of conspiracy against the life of the monarch, of which the particulars are not sufficiently ample to give them the interest of mystery. To excite curiosity, we must see a certain way, while we are unable to see so far as we desire: but in these cases we have little more than the accusation and the condemnation. One of the sufferers was Janet Lady Glammis, condemned to be burned on the 17th of July 1537; we find her name in the criminal record five years earlier, charged with "art and part of the intoxication of John Lord Glammis her husband." The charge has not a very formidable sound, but it doubtless meant either poisoning or sorcery or both; for they were then held to be one concern, as the Romans showed that they deemed them by the title they conferred on the witch, "venefica." This trial is remarkable from the circumstance of a number of gentlemen having preferred paying a penalty to acting on the jury. Perhaps they were inclined, as a later bulwark of our constitution is said to have done, to find a verdict of 'sarved him right.' It was through the instrumentality of poison that the unfortunate lady was charged with intending to effect her design against the life of the king; but of her motive, or ultimate object there is no indication, beyond her relationship to the Douglas family, and probable connexion with their intrigues. The other charge of treason occurred so closely at the same juncture, that for this reason alone historians have supposed that they had both some untraced connexion with a common plot. The culprit in this instance was John Master of Forbes, who was charged with a design to shoot the king as he passed through the town of Aberdeen. It was a service which he was likely to have performed as successfully as Bothwellhaugh, for he had already shown his abilities in the murder of his neighbour, Seton of Meldrum. In those days, the people who took upon them to fire at kings—very different from the maudlin wretches whose diseased brains conceive such horrid projects in a civilised age—knew what they were about, and were generally successful. They were well accustomed to "break into the bloody house of life;" and the attempt on a crowned monarch was merely a higher range of practice, tasking their best abilities. The simple truth is this: that in the present age we are not accustomed to shooting people, and therefore, when any wretch takes into his frenzied brain a design to fire at a Louis Philippe, he gets confused and makes a bungle of it. It is not a practice suited to the age, and no man of any sense would adopt it.
The earliest of the Scottish criminal records that have been preserved begin in the reign of James IV., about the year 1488. Mr Pitcairn, who has generously laid these early records before the public, not at the expense of the record commission but at his own, says of them,—"The books of adjournal and minute books of the supreme criminal tribunal of Scotland, as well as the records of the Justice Aires, &c. at these remote periods, were kept in an obscure forensic Latin. This circumstance, added to the well-known difficulty of deciphering the ordinary MSS. of these centuries, and the fact of the books now preserved being generally mere scrolls and memoranda, written with many contractions and evidently during the hurry of the court proceedings, have hitherto rendered the task of examining them, and presenting the public with the more important cases, a labour of a peculiarly irksome and repulsive kind." We do not doubt it, and hence our gratitude to Mr Pitcairn, for not only deciphering these discouraging manuscripts, but translating the Latin into English. Those indeed who, like ourselves, have perused his volumes—if any other person has perused them—owe a double debt of gratitude to Mr Pitcairn; for he has enabled us to read, in excellent type, what we would otherwise have had to decipher in distressing MS., and he has given us the means of pursuing the task of research by our own fireside, instead of in the interior of the Register House; while we have the satisfaction to feel, in perusing his quartos, that the number of people to whom, in common with ourselves, they have laid the field open, is a very limited one indeed—so limited, that we shall consider every quotation we make from his volumes as select and valuable as if we were able to subjoin MS. penes auct. to it.
The earliest of these translations from the old Latin records contain the minutes of circuit courts on the Borders. The entries are as like each other as those of a police charge book. Plunder of cattle is the perpetual theme, and the quantity of business done by individuals is sometimes startling. Here is an ordinary specimen:—
"Walter Scott of Howpaslot, allowed to compound for treasonably bringing in William Scott, called Gyde, John his brother, and other traitors of Levyn, to the Hereship of Harehede. Item, for theftuously and treasonably resetting of Henry Scott and other traitors of Levyn: item, for the treasonable stouthrief of forty oxen and cows, and two hundred sheep, from the tenants of Harehede, at the same time. Robert Scott of Quhitchester became surety for his entry at the next Justice Aire."
Such were the gentry who, in the words of the namesake of Howpaslot,
"Drove the beeves that made their broth,
From England and from Scotland both."
Another entry like the former, containing more names that will sound not unfamiliar, may be given as a further specimen. The two, from their similarity, will satisfy the reader that it would tend little to edification to make a more extensive selection.
"John Scott of Dalloraine, allowed to compound for art and part of the resetting of John Rede and John Scott in Tushielaw in his theftuous deeds; and especially the time that the said John Scott stole a 'drift' of sheep from Thomas Johnson forth of Quhithop. Item, for treasonably resetting Hector Armstrong, a traitor of Levyn, in his theftuous deeds and treasons, &c., &c. Item, for common oppression of the lieges, in taking and plundering them of their horses and goods by his own authority. Item, for intercommuning with the English in treasonable manner. Item, for common reset of the thieves of Liddesdaile, Eskdale, and Ewesdale. Item, for slaughter of one called Colthride, &c., &c. Robert Scott of Quhitchester became surety to satisfy the parties."
The reader of Scottish history knows that, in the year 1530, James V., finding that by Circuit Courts of Justiciary he produced little more effect upon these Border depredators than if he had made a gratuitous distribution of Cicero de Officiis among them, made war on them, by leading an army through their country, and destroyed their strong-holds, as the German free cities destroyed the castles of their professional brethren on the Rhine. It was on this occasion that Johnny Armstrong visited him with twenty-four armed "gentlemen," according to Pitscottie, "very richly apparelled," and that the king, turning haughtily round from the freebooter's proffered courtesy said, "What wants yon knave that a king should have?" There is something sad in Armstrong's fate. He appears almost to have considered the king one of his own class,—a leader of men, but a greater leader. Somewhat pompous and conceited he appears to have been;—somewhat too trustful in the effect of his hearty hail-fellow-well-met way of approaching the royal presence. In fact, Johnny Armstrong "did not know his place," and treated the king too much like a brother freebooter, of a higher standing than himself. But, in his apprehension and execution, there is something that makes the nearest possible approach to treachery; and we can imagine a blush rising in the royal cheek, when the robber captain turned haughtily round and said, "I am but a fool to seek grace at a graceless face." The entry regarding the redoubted leader, in these records, is as brief as it is humiliating, for the lion had not the telling of the tale;—"John Armstrong, alias BlakJok, and Thomas his brother, convicted of common theft, and reset of theft, &c., hanged."
During the same reign, outbreaks in the Highlands assumed a somewhat similar character to those of the Border rievers; but the Celts conducted their operations on a much larger scale, and we intend to devote to them a separate paper.