If these remarks be true as applied to the present times, they become still more conspicuous when we regard the troublous days of our ancestors. At one era, as in the reign of David I., we find the Scottish nation engaged, heart and soul, in one peculiar phase of religious excitement. Cathedrals and abbeys are starting up in every town. All that infant art can do—and yet, why call it infant, since, in architecture at least, it has never reached a higher maturity?—is lavished upon the structure of our fanes. Melrose, and Jedburgh, and Holyrood, and a hundred more magnificent edifices, rise up like exhalations throughout a poor and barren country; the people are proud in their faith, and perhaps even prouder in the actual splendour of their altars. A few centuries roll by, and we find the same nation deliberately undoing and demolishing the works of their forefathers. Hewn stone and carved cornices, tracery, mullions, and buttresses, have now become abominations in their sight. Not only must the relics of the saints be scattered to the winds of heaven, and their images ground into dust, but every church in which these were deposited or displayed, must be dismantled as the receptacle of pollution. The hammer swings again, but not with the same pious purpose as of yore. Once it was used to build; now it is heaved to destroy. Aisle and archway echo to the thunder of its strokes, and, amidst a roar of iconoclastic wrath, the venerable edifice goes down. Another short lapse of time, and we are lamenting the violence of the past, and striving to prop, patch up, and rebuild what little remnant has been spared of the older works of devotion.
The same anomalies will be found if we turn from the ecclesiastical to the political picture. Sometimes there is a spirit of loyalty manifested, for which it would be difficult to find a parallel. The whole nation gathers round the person of James IV.; and earl and yeoman, lord and peasant, chief and vassal, lay down their lives at Flodden for their king. His successor James V., in no respect unworthy of his crown, dies of a broken heart, deserted by his peers and their retainers. The unfortunate Mary, welcomed to her country with acclamation, is made the victim of the basest intrigues, and forced to seek shelter, and find death in the dominions of her treacherous enemy. The divine right, in its widest meaning and acceptation, is formally recognised by the Scottish estates as the attribute of James VII.; three years afterwards, a new convention is prompt to recognise an alien. Half a century further on, we are found offering the gage of battle to England in support of the exiled family.
This singular variety of mood, of which the foregoing are a few instances, is no doubt partly attributable to the peculiar relationship which existed between the crown and the principal nobility. The latter were not cousins by courtesy only—they were intimately connected with the royal family, and some of them were near the succession. Hence arose jealousy amongst themselves, a system of feud and intrigue, which was perpetuated for centuries, and a constant effort, on the part of one or other of the conflicting magnates, to gain possession and keep custody of the royal person, whenever minority or weakness appeared to favour the attempt. But we cannot help thinking, that the disposition of the people ought also to be taken into account. Fierce when thwarted, and with a memory keenly retentive of injury, the Scotsman is in reality a much more impulsive being than his southern neighbour. His sense of justice and order is not so strongly developed, but his passion glows with a fire all the more intense because to outward appearance it is smothered. His ideas of social duty are different from those of the Englishman. Kindred is a closer tie—identity of name and family is a bond of singular union. Clanship, in the broad acceptation of the word, has died out for all practical purposes; chieftainship is still a recognised and a living principle. The feudal times, though gone, have left their traces on the national character. Little as baronial sway, too often tantamount to sheer oppression, can have contributed towards the happiness of the people, we still recur to the history of these troublous days with a relish and fondness which can hardly be explained, save through some undefined and subtle sympathy of inheritance. Though the objects for which they contended are now mere phantoms of speculation we yet continue to feel and to speak as if we were partisans of the cause of our ancestors, and to contest old points with as much ardour as though they were new ones of living interest to ourselves.
We have been led into this strain of thought by the perusal of a work, strictly authentic as a history, and yet as absorbing in interest as the most coloured and glowing romance. Sir William Kirkaldy of Grange, the subject of these Memoirs, played a most conspicuous part in the long and intricate struggles which convulsed Scotland, from the death of James V. until the latter part of the reign of Queen Mary. Foremost in battle and in council, we find his name prominently connected with every leading event of the period, and his influence and example held in higher estimation than those of noblemen who were greatly his superiors in rank, following, and fortune. In fact, Kirkaldy achieved, by his own talent and indomitable valour, a higher reputation, and exercised, for a time, a greater influence over the destinies of the nation, than was ever before possessed by a private Scottish gentleman, with the glorious exception of Wallace. In an age when the sword was the sole arbiter of public contest and of private quarrel, it was a proud distinction to be reputed, not only at home but abroad—not only by the voice of Scotland, but by that of England and France—the best and bravest soldier, and the most accomplished cavalier of his time. Mixed up in the pages of general history, too often turbidly and incoherently written, the Knight of Grange may not be estimated, in the scale of importance, at the level of such personages as the subtle Moray, or the vindictive and treacherous Morton: viewed as all individual, through the medium of these truthful and most fascinating memoirs, he will be found at least their equal as a leader and a politician, and far their superior as a generous and heroic man.
His father, Sir James Kirkaldy, was a person of no mean family or reputation. He occupied, for a considerable time, the office of Lord High Treasurer of Scotland, and, according to our author—
"Enjoyed, in a very high degree, the favour and confidence of King James V.; and though innumerable efforts were made by his mortal foe Cardinal Beatoun, and others, to bring him into disgrace as a promoter of the Reformation, they all proved ineffectual, and the wary old baron maintained his influence to the last."
Old Sir James seems to have been one of those individuals with whom it is neither safe nor pleasant to differ in opinion. According to his brother-in-law, Sir James Melville of Halhill, he was "a stoute man, who always offered, by single combate, and at point of the sword, to maintain whatever he said;" a testimonial which, we observe, has been most fitly selected as the motto of this book, the son having been quite as much addicted to the wager of battle as the father; nor, though a strenuous supporter of the Reformation, does he appear to have imbibed much of that meekness which is inculcated by holy writ. He was not the sort of man whom John Bright would have selected to second a motion at a Peace Congress; indeed, the mere sight of him would have caused the voice of Elihu Burritt to subside into a quaver of dismay. Cardinal Beatoun, that proud and licentious prelate, to whose tragical end we shall presently have occasion to advert, was the personal and bitter enemy of the Treasurer, as he was of every other independent Scotsman who would not truckle to his power. But James V., though at times too facile, would not allow himself to be persuaded into so dangerous an act as countenancing prosecutions for heresy against any of his martial subjects; and, so long as he lived, the over-weening bigotry and arrogance of the priesthood were held in check. But other troubles brought the good king to an untimely end. James had mortally offended some of his turbulent nobles, by causing the authority of the law to be vindicated without respect to rank or person. He had deservedly won for himself the title of King of the Commons; and was, in fact, even in that early age, bent upon a thorough reform of the abuses of the feudal system. But he had proud, jealous, and stubborn men to deal with. They saw, not without apprehension for their own fate, that title and birth were no longer accepted as palliatives of sedition and crime; that the inroads, disturbances, and harryings which they and their fathers had practised, were now regarded with detestation by the crown, and threatened with merited punishment. Some strong but necessary examples made them quail for their future supremacy, and discontent soon ripened into something like absolute treason. Add to this, that for a long time the nobility of Scotland had fixed a covetous eye upon the great possessions of the church. In no country of Europe, considering its extent and comparative wealth, was the church better endowed than in Scotland; and the endeavours of the monks, who, with all their faults, were not blind to the advantages derivable from the arts of peace, had greatly raised their property in point of value. The confiscations which had taken place in Protestantised England, whereof Woburn Abbey may be cited as a notable example, had aroused to the fullest extent the cupidity of the rapacious nobles. They longed to see the day when, unsupported by the regal power, the church lands in Scotland could be annexed by each iron-handed baron to his own domain; when, at the head of their armed and dissolute jackmen, they could oust the feeble possessors of the soil from the heritages they had so long enjoyed as a corporation, and enrich themselves by plundering the consecrated stores of the abbeys. These were the feelings and desires which led most of them to lend a willing ear to the preaching of the fathers of the Reformation. They were desirous, not only of lessening the royal authority, but of transferring the whole property of the clergy to themselves; and this double object led to a combination which resulted in the passive defeat of the Scottish army at Solway Moss.
Poor King James could not bear up against the shock of this shameful desertion. Mr Tytler thus describes his latter moments:—
"When in this state, intelligence was brought him that his queen had given birth to a daughter. At another time it would have been happy news; but now, it seemed to the poor monarch the last drop of bitterness which was reserved for him. Both his sons were dead. Had this child been a boy, a ray of hope, he seemed to feel, might yet have visited his heart; he received the messenger and was informed of that event without welcome or almost recognition; but wandering back in his thoughts to the time when the daughter of Bruce brought to his ancestor the dowry of the kingdom, observed with melancholy emphasis, 'It came with a lass, and it will pass with a lass.' A few of his most favoured friends and counsellers stood around his couch; the monarch stretched out his hand for them to kiss; and regarding them for some moments with a look of great sweetness and placidity, turned himself upon the pillow and expired. He died 13th December 1542, in the thirty-first year of his age, and the twenty-ninth of his reign; leaving an only daughter, Mary, an infant of six days old, who succeeded to the crown."
Amongst those who stood around that memorable deathbed were the Lord High Treasurer, young William Kirkaldy his son, and Cardinal Beatoun. There was peace for a moment over the body of the anointed dead!