LITMIR.BIZ

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forgetfulness, the affection of her child. When she had remained long enough in the castle to disarm any prejudices Crichton might entertain of her, and to persuade the little King to the device which was to secure his freedom, the Queen informed the Chancellor that she was about to make a pilgrimage to the famous shrine of Whitekirk, "the white kirk of Brechin," Pitscottie says, in order to pray for the repose of the soul of her husband and the prosperity of her son, and asked permission to carry away two coffers with her clothes and ornaments, probably things which she had left in the castle before her widowhood, and that means of conveyance might be provided for these possessions to Leith, where she was to embark. This simple request was easily granted, and the two coffers carried out of the castle, and conveyed by "horss" to the ship in which she herself embarked with her few attendants. But instead of turning northward Queen Jane's ship sailed up the Firth, through the narrow strait at Queensferry, past Borrowstounness, where the great estuary widens out once more, into the quiet waters of the Forth, winding through the green country to Stirling on its hill. She was "a great pairt of the watter upward before ever the keepers of the castle could perceive themselves deceived," says Pitscottie. As the ship neared Stirling, the Governor of the kingdom came out of the castle with all his forces, with great joy and triumph, and received the King and his mother. For one of the coffers, so carefully packed and accounted for, contained no less an ornament than the little King in person, to whose childish mind no doubt this mode of transport was a delightful device and pleasantry. One can imagine how the Queen's heart must have throbbed with anxiety while her son lay hidden in the bed made for him within the heavy chest, where if air failed, or any varlet made the discovery prematurely, all her hopes would have come to an end. She must have fluttered like a bird over her young about the receptacle in which her boy lay, and talked with her ladies over his head to encourage and keep him patient till the end of the journey was near enough, amid the lingering links of Forth, to open the lid and set him free. It is not a journey that is often made nowadays, but with all the lights of the morning upon Demayat and his attendant mountains, and the sun shining upon that rich valley, and the river at its leisure wending, as if it loved them, through all the verdant holms and haughs, there is no pleasanter way of travelling from Edinburgh to Stirling, the two hill-castles of the Scottish crown.

       INNER BARRIER, EDINBURGH CASTLE

      It would be pleasant to think that Queen Jane meant something more than the mere bolstering up of one faction against another in the distracted kingdom by the abduction of her son. It is very possible indeed that she did so, and that to strengthen the hands of the man who was really Regent-Governor of Scotland, but whose power had been stolen from his hands by the unscrupulousness of Crichton, seemed to her a great political object, and the recovery of the supreme authority, which would seem to have appeared to all as infallibly linked with the possession of the young King, of the greatest importance. It is evident it was considered by the general public to be so; but there is something pitiful in the struggle for the poor boy, over whose small person those fierce factionaries fought, and in whose name, still so innocent and helpless as he was, so many ferocious deeds were done.

      No sooner was he secure in Stirling than the Governor called together a convention of his friends, to congratulate each other and praise the wit and skill of "that noble woman, our soverain mother," who had thus set things right. "Whereby I understand," he says piously, "that the wisest man is not at all times the sickerest, nor yet the hardy man happiest," seeing that Crichton, though so great and sagacious and powerful, should be thus deceived and brought to shame. "Be of good comfort therefore," adds this enlightened ruler; "all the mischief, banishment, troubles, and vexation which the Chancellor thought to have done to us let us do the like to him." He ended this discourse by an intimation that he was about to besiege Edinburgh. "Let us also take up some band of men-of-war, and every man after his power send secret messages to their friends, that they and every one that favours us may convene together quietly in Edinburgh earlie in the morning, so that the Chancellor should not know us to come for the sieging of the castle till we have the siege even belted about the walls; so ye shall have subject to you all that would have arrogantly oppressed you."

      This resolution was agreed to with enthusiasm, the Queen undertaking to provision the army "out of her own garners"; but the Governor had no sooner "belted the siege about the castle," an expression which renders most graphically the surrounding of the place, than the Chancellor, taken by surprise, prostrated by the loss of the King, and finding it impossible to draw the powerful Earl of Douglas to his aid, made overtures of submission, and begged for a meeting "in the fields before the gates," where, with a few chosen friends on either side, the two great functionaries of the kingdom might come to an agreement between themselves.

      By this time there would seem to have begun that preponderating influence of the Douglas family in Scotland which vexed the entire reign of the second James, and prompted two of the most violent and tragic deeds which stain the record of Scottish history. James I. was more general in his attempt at the repression and control of his fierce nobility, and the family most obnoxious to him was evidently that of his uncle, nearest in blood and most dangerous to the security of the reigning race. The Douglas, however, detaches himself in the following generation into a power and place unexampled, and which it took the entire force of Scotland, and all the wavering and uncertain expedients of law, as well as the more decisive action of violence quite lawless, to put down. Whether there was in the pretensions of this great house any aim at the royal authority in their own persons, or ambitious assertion of a rival claim in right of the blood of Bruce, which was as much in their veins as in those of the Stewarts, as some recent historians would make out, it is probably now quite impossible to decide. The chroniclers say nothing of any such intention, nor do the Douglases themselves, who throughout the struggle never hesitated to make submission to the Crown when the course of fortune went against them. The Chancellor had been deeply stung, it is evident, by the answer of Douglas to his appeal, in which the fierce Earl declared that discord between "you twa unhappie tyrants" was the most agreeable thing in the world to him, and that he wished nothing more than that it should continue. Deprived of the sanction given to all his proceedings by the name of the King, outwitted among his wiles, and exposed to the ridicule even of those who had regarded his wisdom with most admiration, Crichton would seem to have turned fiercely upon the common opponent, perhaps with a wise prescience of the evil to come, perhaps only to secure an object of action which might avert danger from himself and bring him once more into command of the source of authority—most likely with both objects together, the higher and lower, as is most general in our mingled nature. The meeting was held accordingly outside the castle gates, the Chancellor coming forth in state bearing the keys of the castle, which were presented, Buchanan says, to the King in person, who accompanied the expedition, and who restored the great functionary to his office. The great keys in the child's hand, the little treble pipe in which the reappointment would be made, the tiny figure in the midst of all these plotters and warriors, gives a touch of pathos to the many pictorial scenes of an age so rich in the picturesque; but the earlier writers say nothing of the little James's presence. There was, however, a consultation between the two Regents, and Douglas's letter was read with such angry comments as may be supposed. The Earl's contempt evidently cut deep, and strongly emphasised the necessity of dealing authoritatively with such a high-handed rebel against the appointed rulers.

      It would appear, however, that little could be done against the immediate head of that great house, and the two rulers, though they had made friends over this common object, had to await their opportunity, and in the meantime do their best to maintain order and to get each the chief power into his own hands. Crichton found means before very long to triumph over his adversaries in his turn by rekidnapping the little King, for whom he laid wait in the woods about Stirling, where James was permitted precociously to indulge the passion of his family for hunting. No doubt the crafty Chancellor had pleasant inducements to bring forward to persuade the boy to a renewed escape, for "the King smiled," say the chroniclers, probably delighted by the novelty and renewed adventure—the glorious gallop across country in the dewy morning, a more pleasant prospect than the previous conveyance in his mother's big chest. Thus in a few hours the balance was turned, and it was once more the Chancellor and not the Governor who could issue ordinances and make regulations in the name of the King.

      Nothing,

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