We may fairly suppose, that the cannon of the governor were more obnoxious than a modern annuity-tax can possibly be; yet no citizen seemed desirous of coming forward as a candidate for the crown of martyrdom. The bailies very quietly and very properly succumbed to the provost.
It must be acknowledged that Edinburgh was, in those days, no pleasant place of residence.
Next, to the alarm of the citizens, came a mock fight and the roar of cannon, intended to accustom the garrison to siege and war, which latter calamity speedily commenced in earnest. No possible precaution was omitted by Kirkaldy, whose situation was eminently critical; and he had received a terrible warning. On the last day of truce, the strong castle of Dumbarton was taken by surprise by a party under Captain Crawford of Jordanhill. Lord Fleming was fortunate enough to effect his escape, but Hamilton, archbishop of St Andrews, was made prisoner, and immediately hanged by Lennox over Stirling bridge. An archbishopric never was a comfortable tenure in Scotland.
Lennox and Morton now drew together. The former from Linlithgow, and the latter from Dalkeith, advanced against the city, then occupied by the Hamiltons: skirmishes went on under the walls and on the Boroughmuir, and the unfortunate citizens were nearly driven to distraction. The following dispositions of Provost Kirkaldy were by no means calculated to restore a feeling of confidence, or to better the prospects of trade:—
"He loop-holed the spacious vaults of the great cathedral, for the purpose of sweeping with musketry its steep church-yard to the south, the broad Lawnmarket to the west, and High Street to the eastward; while his cannon from the spire commanded the long line of street called the Canongate—even to the battlements of the palace porch. He seized the ports of the city, placed guards of his soldiers upon them, and retained the keys in his own hands. He ordered a rampart and ditch to be formed at the Butter Tron, for the additional defence of the castle; and another for the same purpose at the head of the West Bow, a steep and winding street of most picturesque aspect. His soldiers pillaged the house of the regent, whose movables and valuables they carried off; he broke into the Tolbooth and council-chamber, drove forth the scribes and councillors, and finally deposed the whole bench of magistrates, installing in the civic chair the daring chief of Fermhirst, (who had now become the husband of his daughter Janet, a young girl barely sixteen;) while a council composed of his mosstrooping vassals, clad in their iron jacks, steel caps, calivers, and two-handed whingers, officiated as bailies, in lieu of the douce, paunchy, and well-fed burgesses of the Craims and Luckenbooths."
The Blue Blanket of Edinburgh—that banner which, according to tradition, waved victoriously on the ramparts of Acre—had fallen into singular custody! John Knox again fled, for in truth his life was in danger. Kirkaldy, notwithstanding their differences, exerted his authority to the utmost to protect him, but the Hamiltons detested his very name; and one night a bullet fired through his window, was taken as a significant hint that his absence from the metropolis would be convenient. Scandal, even in those times, was rife in Edinburgh; for we are told that—
"John Low, a carrier of letters to St Andrews, being in the 'Castell of Edinburgh, the Ladie Home would neids threip in his face, that Johne Knox was banist the toune, because in his yard he had raisit some sanctis, amangis whome their came up the devill with hornes, which when his servant Richart saw he ran wud, and so deid.'"
It is hardly credible, but it is a fact, that a meeting of the Estates of Scotland, called by Lennox, was held in Edinburgh at this very juncture. Kirkaldy occupied the upper part of the town, whilst the lower was in the hands of the regent, protected, or rather covered, by a battery which Morton had erected upon the "Doo Craig," that bluff black precipice to the south of the Calton Hill. The meeting, however, was a short one. "Mons Meg" and her marrows belched forth fire and shot upon the town, and the scared representatives fled, in terror of the falling ruins. A sortie from the castle was made, and the place of assembly burned.
Kirkaldy now summoned and actually held a parliament, in name of Queen Mary, in Edinburgh. The possession of the Regalia gave this assembly a show of legality at least equivalent to that pertaining to its rival, the Black Parliament, which was then sitting at Stirling.
We must refer to the work itself for the details of the martial exploits which followed. So very vividly and picturesquely are the scenes described, that, in reading of them, the images arise to our mind with that distinctness which constitutes the principal charm of the splendid romances of Scott. We accompany, with the deepest personal interest, the gallant Captain Melville and his harquebussiers, on his expedition to dislodge grim Morton from his Lion's Den at Dalkeith—we follow fiery Claud Hamilton in his attack upon the Black Parliament at Stirling, when Lennox met his death, and Morton, driven by the flames from his burning mansion, surrendered his sword to Buccleugh—and, amidst the din and uproar of the Douglas wars, we hear the cannon on the bastion of Edinburgh castle battering to ruin the gray towers of Merchiston.