Chapter V: The Marriage (4)

To the Scots, on the other hand, the affair was one of national life or death, and they would run no risks for distinction’s sake. Picturesque accounts have often been repeated of a scene where Douglas, or some other Scots leader, brought the Admiral to an elevated spot whence he could see and estimate the mighty host of England; but the most picturesque of all the accounts is the original by Froissart, of which the others are parodies. The point in national tactics brought out by this incident is the singular recklessness with which the French must have been accustomed to do battle. In total ignorance of the force he was to oppose, and not seeking to know aught concerning it, the Frenchman’s voice was still for war. When made to see with his own eyes what he had to encounter, he was as reluctant as his companions to risk the issue of a battle, but not so fertile in expedients for carrying on the war effectively without one. The policy adopted was to clear the country before the English army as it advanced, and carry everything portable and valuable within the recesses of the mountain-ranges, whither the inhabitants not fit for military service went with their effects. A desert being thus opened for the progress of the invaders, they were left to wander in it unmolested while the Scots army went in the opposite direction, and crossed the Border southwards. Thus the English army found Scotland empty—the Scots army found England full. The one wore itself out in a fruitless march, part of it straggling, it was said, as far as Aberdeen, and returned thinned and starving, while the other was only embarrassed by the burden of its plunder. Much destruction there was, doubtless, on both sides, but it fell heaviest where there was most to destroy, and gratified at last in some measure the French, who “said among themselves they had burned in the bishoprics of Durham and Carlisle more than the value of all the towns in the kingdom of Scotland.” But havoc does not make wealth, and whether or not the Scots knew better from experience how to profit by such opportunities, the French, when they returned northward, were starving. Their object now was to get out of the country as fast as they could. Froissart, with a touch of dry humour, explains that their allies had no objection to speed the exit of the poorer knights, but resolved to hold the richer and more respectable in a sort of pawn for the damage which the expedition had inflicted on the common people. The Admiral asked his good friends the Lords Douglas and Moray to put a stop to these demands; but these good knights were unable to accommodate their brethren in this little matter, and the Admiral was obliged to give effectual pledges from his Government for the payment of the creditors. There is something in all this that seems utterly unchivalrous and even ungenerous; but it had been well for France had Froissart been able to tell a like story of her peasantry. It merely shows us that our countrymen of that day were of those who “knew their rights, and, knowing, dared maintain them;” and was but a demonstration on a humbler, and, if you will, more sordid shape, of the same spirit that had swept away the Anglo-Norman invaders. The very first act which their chronicler records concerning his knightly friends, after he has exhausted his wrath against the hard and mercenary Scot, is thoroughly suggestive. Some of the knights tried other fields of adventure, “but the greater number returned to France, and were so poor they knew not how to remount themselves, especially those from Burgundy, Champagne, Bar, and Lorraine, _who seized the labouring horses wherever they found them in the fields_,” so impatient were they to regain their freedom of action.

So ended this affair, with the aspect of evil auspices for the alliance. The adventurers returned “cursing Scotland, and the hour they had set foot there. They said they had never suffered so much in any expedition, and wished the King of France would make a truce with the English for two or three years, and then march to Scotland and utterly destroy it; for never had they seen such wicked people, nor such ignorant hypocrites and traitors.” But the impulsive denunciation of the disappointed adventurers was signally obliterated in the history of the next half-century. Ere many more years had passed over them, that day of awful trial was coming when France had to lean on the strong arm of her early ally; and, in fact, some of the denouncers lived to see adventurers from the sordid land of their contempt and hatred commanding the armies of France, and owning her broad lordships. It was, in fact, just after the return of Vienne’s expedition, that the remarkable absorption of Scotsmen into the aristocracy of France, referred to in our preceding paper, began to set in.

This episode of the French expedition to Scotland, small though its place is in the annals of Europe, yet merits the consideration of the thoughtful historian, in affording a significant example of the real causes of the misery and degradation of France at that time, and the wonderful victories of the English kings. Chivalry, courage, the love of enterprise, high spirit in all forms, abounded to superfluity among the knightly orders, but received no solid support from below. The mounted steel-clad knights of the period, in the highest physical condition, afraid of nothing on the earth or beyond it, and burning for triumph and fame, could perform miraculous feats of strength and daring; but all passed off in wasted effort and vain rivalry, when there was wanting the bold peasantry, who, with their buff jerkins, and their bills and bows, or short Scottish spears, were the real force by which realms were held or gained.

The next affair in which M. Michel notes his countrymen as present among us, was a very peculiar and exceptional one, with features only too like those which were such a scandal to the social condition of France. It was that great battle or tournament on the North Inch of Perth, where opposite Highland factions, called the clan Quhele and clan Chattan, were pitted against each other, thirty to thirty—an affair, the darker colours of which are lighted up by the eccentric movements of the Gow Chrom, or bandy-legged smith of Perth, who took the place of a defaulter in one of the ranks, to prevent the spectacle of the day from being spoilt. That such a contest should have been organised to take place in the presence of the king and court, under solemnities and regulations like some important ordeal, has driven historical speculators to discover what deep policy for the pacification or subjugation of the Highlands lay behind it. The feature that gives it a place in M. Michel’s book, is the briefest possible notification by one of the chroniclers, that a large number of Frenchmen and other strangers were present at the spectacle. This draws us back from the mysterious arcana of political intrigue to find a mere showy pageant, got up to enliven the hours of idle mirth—an act, in short, of royal hospitality—a show cunningly adapted to the tastes of the age, yet having withal the freshness of originality, being a renaissance kind of combination of the gladiatorial conflict of the Roman circus with the tournament of chivalry. The Highlanders were, in fact, the human raw material which a king of Scots could in that day employ, so far as their nature suited, for the use or the amusement of his guests. Them, and them only among his subjects, could he use as the Empire used the Transalpine barbarian—“butchered to make a Roman holiday.” The treatment of the Celt is the blot in that period of our history. Never in later times has the Red Indian or Australian native been more the hunted wild beast to the emigrant settler, than the Highlander was to his neighbour the Lowlander. True, he was not easily got at, and, when reached, he was found to have tusks. They were a people never permitted to be at rest from external assault; yet such was their nature that, instead of being pressed by a common cause into compact union, they were divided into communities that hated each other almost more bitterly than the common enemy. This internal animosity has suggested that the king wanted two factions to exterminate each other as it were symbolically, and accept the result of a combat between two bodies of chosen champions, as if there had been an actual stricken field, with all the able-bodied men on both sides engaged in it. It was quite safe to calculate that when the representatives of the two contending factions were set face to face on the green sward, they would fly at each other’s throats, and afford in an abundant manner to the audience whatever delectation might arise from an intensely bloody struggle. But, on the other hand, to expect the Highlanders to be fools enough to accept this sort of symbolical extinction of their quarrel was too preposterous a deduction for any practical statesman. They had no notion of leaving important issues to the event of single combat, or any of the other preposterous rules of chivalry, but slew their enemies where they could, and preferred doing so secretly, and without risk to themselves, when that was practicable.

As we read on the history of the two countries, France and Scotland, we shall find the national friendship which had arisen in their common adversity gradually and almost insensibly changing its character. The strong current of migration from Scotland which had set in during the latter period of the hundred years’ war stopped almost abruptly. Scotsmen were still hired as soldiers—sometimes got other appointments—and, generally speaking, were received with hospitality; but in Louis XI.’s reign, the time had passed when they were accepted in the mass as a valuable contribution to the aristocracy of France, and forthwith invested with titles and domains. The families that had thus settled down remembered the traditions of their origin, but had no concern with Scotland, and were thoroughly French, nationally and socially. France, too, was aggregating into a compact nationality, to which her sons could attach themselves with some thrill of patriotic pride. She made a great stride onward both in nationality and prosperity during the reign of that hard, greedy, penurious, crafty, superstitious hypocrite, Louis XI. By a sort of slow corroding process he ate out, bit by bit, the powers and tyrannies that lay between his own and the people. Blood, even the nearest, was to him nowise thicker than water, so he did not, like his predecessors, let royal relations pick up what territorial feudatories dropped; he took all to himself, and, taking it to himself, it became that French empire which was to be inherited by Francis I., Louis XIV., and even the Napoleons; for he seems to have had the principal hand in jointing and fitting in the subordinate machinery of that centralisation which proved compact enough in its details to be put together again after the smash of the Revolution, and which has proved itself as yet the only system under which France can flourish.

Scotland was, at the same time, rising under a faint sunshine of prosperity—a sort of reflection of that enjoyed by France. The connection of the poor with the rich country was becoming ever more close, but at the same time it was acquiring an unwholesome character. The two could not fuse into each other as England and Scotland did; and, for all the pride of the Scots, and their strong hold over France, as the advanced-guard mounted upon England, the connection could not but lapse into a sort of clientage—the great nation being the patron, the small nation the dependant. Whether for good or evil, France infused into Scotland her own institutions, which, being those of the Roman Empire, as practised throughout the Christian nations of the Continent, made Scotsmen free of those elements of social communion, that _amitas gentium_, from which England excluded herself in sulky pride. This is visible, or rather audible, at the present day, in the Greek and Latin of the Scotsmen of the old school, who can make themselves understood all over the world; while the English pronunciation, differing from that of the nations which have preserved the chief deposits of the classic languages in their own, must as assuredly differ from the way in which these were originally spoken. The Englishman disdained the universal Justinian jurisprudence, and would be a law unto himself, which he called, with an affectation of humility, “The Common Law.” It is full, no doubt, of patches taken out of the ‘Corpus Juris,’ but, far from their source being acknowledged, the civilians are never spoken of by the common lawyers but to be railed at and denounced; and when great draughts on the Roman system were found absolutely necessary to keep the machine of justice in motion, these were entirely elbowed out of the way by common law, and had to form themselves into a separate machinery of their own, called Equity. Scotland, on the other hand, received implicitly from her leader in civilisation the great body of the civil law, as collected and arranged by the most laborious of all labouring editors, Denis Godefroi. We brought over also an exact facsimile of the French system of public prosecution for crime, from the great state officer at the head of the system to the Procureurs du Roi. It is still in full practice and eminently useful; but it is an arrangement that, to be entirely beneficial, needs to be surrounded by constitutional safeguards; and though there has been much pressure of late to establish it in England, one cannot be surprised that it was looked askance at while the great struggles for fixing the constitution were in progress.

The practice of the long-forgotten States-General of France was an object of rather anxious inquiry at the reassembling of that body in 1789, after they had been some four centuries and a half in a state of adjournment or dissolution. The investigations thus occasioned brought out many peculiarities which were in practical observance in Scotland down to the Union. All the world has read of that awful crisis arising out of the question whether the Estates should vote collectively or separately. Had the question remained within the bounds of reason and regulation, instead of being virtually at the issue of the sword, much instructive precedent would have been obtained for its settlement by an examination of the proceedings of that Parliament of Scotland which adjusted the Union—an exciting matter also, yet, to the credit of our country, discussed with perfect order, and obedience to rules of practice which, derived from the custom of the old States-General of France, were rendered pliant and adaptable by such a long series of practical adaptations as the country of their nativity was not permitted to witness.

There was a very distinct adaptation of another French institution of later origin, when the Court of Session was established in 1533. Before that, the king’s justices administered the law somewhat as in England, but there was an appeal to Parliament; and as that body did its judicial work by committees, these became virtually the supreme courts of the realm. If the reader wants to have assurance that there is something really sound in this information, by receiving it in the current coin of its appropriate technicalities, let him commit to memory that the chief standing committee was named that of the _Domini auditorii ad querelas_. When he uses that term, nobody will question the accuracy of what he says. The Court of Session, established to supersede this kind of tribunal, was exactly a French parliament—a body exercising appellate judicial functions, along with a few others of a legislative character—few in this country, but in France sufficiently extensive to render the assembling of the proper Parliament of the land and the States-General unnecessary for all regal purposes.

In other institutions—the universities, for instance—we find not merely the influence of French example, but an absolute importation of the whole French structure and discipline. The University of King’s College in Aberdeen was constructed on the model of the great University of Paris. Its founder, Bishop Elphinston, had taught there for many years; so had its first principal, Hector Boece, the most garrulous and credulous of historians. The transition from the Paris to the Aberdeen of that day, must have been a descent not to be estimated by the present relative condition of the two places; and one cannot be surprised to find Hector saying that he was seduced northwards by gifts and promises. It is probable that we would find fewer actual living remnants of the old institution in Paris itself than in the northern imitation. There may be yet found the offices of regent and censor, for the qualities of which one must search in the mighty folios of _Bullæus_. There survives the division into nations—the type of the unlimited hospitality of the university as a place where people of all nations assembled to drink at the fountain of knowledge. There also the youth who flashes forth, for the first time, in his scarlet plumage, is called a _bejeant_, not conscious, perhaps, that the term was used to the first-session students of the French universities hundreds of years ago, and that it is derived by the learned from _bec jaune_, or yellow nib. If the reader is of a sentimentally domestic turn, he may find in the term the conception of an _alma mater_, shielding the innocent brood from surrounding dangers; and if he be knowing and sarcastic, he may suppose it to refer to a rawness and amenability to be trotted out, expressed in the present day by the synonymous _freshman_ and _greenhorn_.

There is a still more distinct stamp of a French type, in the architecture of our country, so entirely separate from the English style, in the flamboyant Gothic of the churches, and the rocket-topped turrets of the castles; but on this specialty we shall not here enlarge, having, in some measure, examined it several years ago.[8] It was not likely that all these, with many other practices, should be imported into the nation, however gradually, without the people having a consciousness that they were foreign. They were not established without the aid of men, showing, by their air and ways, that they and their practices were alike alien. He, however, who gave the first flagrant offence, in that way, to the national feeling, was a descendant of one of the emigrant Scots of the fifteenth century, and by blood and rank closely allied to the Scottish throne, although every inch a Frenchman.

To watch in history the action and counteraction of opposing forces which have developed some grand result, yet by a slight and not improbable impulse the other way might have borne towards an opposite conclusion equally momentous, is an interesting task, with something in it of the excitement of the chase. In pursuing the traces which bring Scotland back to her English kindred, and saved her from a permanent annexation to France, the arrival of John Duke of Albany in Scotland, in 1515, is a critical turning-point. Already had the seed of the union with England been planted when James IV. got for a wife the daughter of Henry VII. Under the portrait of this sagacious king, Bacon wrote the mysterious motto—_Cor regis inscrutabile_. It would serve pleasantly to lighten up and relieve a hard and selfish reputation, if one could figure him, in the depths of his own heart, assuring himself of having entered in the books of fate a stroke of policy that at some date, however distant, was destined to appease the long bloody contest of two rival nations, and unite them into a compact and mighty empire. The prospects of such a consummation were at first anything but encouraging. The old love broke in counteracting the prudential policy; and, indeed, never did besotted lover abandon himself to wilder folly than James IV., when, at the bidding of Anne of France as the lady of his chivalrous worship, he resolved to be her true knight, and take three steps into English ground. When a chivalrous freak, backed by a few political irritations scarce less important, strewed the moor of Flodden with the flower of the land, it was time for Scotland to think over the rationality of this distant alliance, which deepened and perpetuated her feud with her close neighbour of kindred blood. Well for him, the good, easy, frank, chivalrous monarch, that he was buried in the ruin he had made, and saw not the misery of a desolated nation. Of the totally alien object for which all the mischief had been done, there was immediate evidence in various shapes. One curious little item of it is brought out by certain researches of M. Michel, which have also a significant bearing on the conflict between the secular and the papal power in the disposal of benefices. The Pope, Julius II., was anxious to gain over to his interest Mathew Lang, bishop of Gorz, and secretary to the Emperor Maximilian, who was called to Rome and blessed by the vision of a cardinal’s hat, and the papal influence in the first high promotion that might open. The archbishopric of Bourges became vacant. The chapter elected one of our old friends of the Scots emigrant families, Guillaume de Monypeny, brother of the Lord of Concressault; but the King, Louis XII., at first stood out for Brillac, bishop of Orleans, resisted by the chapter. The bishop of Gorz then came forward with a force sufficient to sweep away both candidates. He was favoured of the Pope: his own master, Maximilian, desired for his secretary this foreign benefice, which would cost himself nothing; and Louis found somehow that the bishop was as much his own humble servant as the Emperor’s. No effect of causes sufficient seemed in this world more assured than that Mathew Lang, bishop of Gorz, should also be archbishop of Bourges; but the fortune of war rendered it before his collation less important to have the bishop of Gorz in the archiepiscopate than another person. The King laid his hand again on the chapter, and required them to postulate one whose name and condition must have seemed somewhat strange to them—Andrew Forman, bishop of Moray, in the north of Scotland. There are reasons for all things. Forman was ambassador from Scotland to France, and thus had opportunities of private communication with James IV. and Louis XII. This latter, in a letter to the Chapter of Bourges, explains his signal obligations to Forman for having seconded the allurements of the Queen, and instigated the King of Scots to make war against England, explaining how _icelui, Roy d’Escosse s’est ouvertement declaré vouloir tenir nostre party et faire la guerre actuellement contre le Roy d’Angleterre_. Lest the chapter should doubt the accuracy of this statement of the services performed to France by Forman, the King sent them _le double des lectres que le dict Roy d’Escosse nous a escriptes et aussi de la defiance q’il a fait au dict Roy d’Angleterre_. The King pleaded hard with the chapter to postulate Forman, representing that they could not find a better means of securing his own countenance and protection. The Scotsman backed this royal appeal by a persuasive letter, which he signed Andrè, _Arcevesque de Bourges et Evesque de Morray_. Influence was brought to bear on the Pope himself, and he declared his leaning in favour of Forman. The members of the chapter, who had been knocked about past endurance in the affair of the archbishopric from first to last, threatened resistance and martyrdom; but the pressure of the powers combined against them brought them to reason, and Forman entered Bourges in archiepiscopal triumph. But the ups and downs of the affair were as yet by no means at an end. That great pontiff, who never forgot that the head of the Church was a temporal prince, Leo X., had just ascended the throne, and found that it would be convenient to have this archbishopric of Bourges for his nephew, Cardinal Abo. By good luck the see of St Andrews, the primacy of Scotland, was then vacant, and was given as an equivalent for the French dignity. Such a promotion was a symbolically appropriate reward for the services of Forman; his predecessor fell at Flodden, and thus, in his services to the King of France, he had made a vacancy for himself. He had for some time in his pocket, afraid to show it, the Pope’s bull appointing him Archbishop of St Andrews and Primate of Scotland. This was a direct act of interference contrary to law and custom, since the function of the Pope was only to collate or confirm, as ecclesiastical superior, the choice made by the local authorities. These had their favourite for the appointment, Prior Hepburn, who showed his earnestness in his own cause by taking and holding the Castle of St Andrews. A contest of mingled ecclesiastical and civil elements, too complex to be disentangled, followed; but in the end Forman triumphed, having on his side the efforts of the King of France and his servant Albany, with the Pope’s sense of justice. The rewards of this highly endowed divine were the measure alike of his services to France and of his injuries to Scotland. He held, by the way, _in commendam_, a benefice in England; and as he had a good deal of diplomatic business with Henry VIII., it may not uncharitably be supposed that he sought to feather his hat with English as well as French plumage. It was in the midst of these affairs, which were bringing out the dangerous and disastrous elements in the French alliance, that Albany arrived.

Albany’s father, the younger brother of James III., had lived long in France, got great lordships there, and thoroughly assimilated himself to the Continental system. He married Anne de la Tour, daughter of the Count of Auvergne and Boulogne, of a half princely family, which became afterwards conspicuous by producing Marshal Turenne, and at a later period the eccentric grenadier, Latour d’Auvergne, who, in homage to republican principles, would not leave the subaltern ranks in Napoleon’s army, and became more conspicuous by remaining there than many who escaped from that level to acquire wealth and power. The sister of Anne de la Tour married Lorenzo de Medici, Duke of Urbino. From this connection Albany was the uncle of Catherine de Medici, the renowned Queen of France, and, in fact, was the nearest relative, who, as folks used to say in this country, “gave her away” to Henry II. On this occasion he got a cardinal’s hat for Philip de la Chambre, his mother’s son by a second marriage. He lived thoroughly in the midst of the Continental royalties of the day, and had the sort of repute among them that may be acquired by a man of great influence and connection, whose capacity has never been tried by any piece of critical business—a repute that comes to persons in a certain position by a sort of process of gravitation. Brave he seems to have been, like all his race, and he sometimes held even important commands. He accompanied his friend, Francis I., in his unfortunate raid into Italy in 1525, and was fortunately and honourably clear of that bad business, the battle of Pavia, by being then in command of a detachment sent against Naples.

There are men who, when they shift their place and function, can assimilate themselves to the changed conditions around them—who can find themselves surrounded by unwonted customs and ways, and yet accept the condition that the men who follow these are pursuing the normal condition of their being, and must be left to do so in peace, otherwise harm will come of it; and in this faculty consists the instinct which enables men to govern races alien to their own. Albany did not possess it. He appears to have been ignorant of the language of Scotland, and to have thought or rather felt that, wherever he was, all should be the same as in the midst of Italian and French courtiers; and if it were not so, something was wrong, and should be put right. It was then the commencement of a very luxurious age in France—an age of rich and showy costumes, of curls, perfumes, cosmetics, and pet spaniels—and Albany was the leader of fashion in all such things. It is needless to say how powerfully all this contrasted with rough Scotland—what a shocking set of barbarians he found himself thrown among—how contemptible to the rugged Scots nobles was the effeminate Oriental luxury of the little court he imported from Paris, shifted northwards as some wealthy luxurious sportsman takes a detachment from his stable, kennel, and servants’ hall, to a bothy in the Highlands.

He arrived, however, in a sort of sunshine. At that calamitous moment the nearest relation of the infant king, a practised statesman, was heartily welcome. He brought a small rather brilliant fleet with him, which was dignified by his high office as Admiral of France; he brought also some money and valuable trifles, which were not inacceptable. Wood, in his ‘Peerage,’ tells us that “The peers and chiefs crowded to his presence: his exotic elegance of manners, his condescension, affability, and courtesy of demeanour, won all hearts.” If so, these were not long retained. He came, indeed, just before some tangible object was wanted against which to direct the first sulky feelings of the country towards France; and he served the purpose exactly, for his own handiwork was the cause of that feeling. In a new treaty between France and England, in which he bore a great if not the chief part, Scotland was for the first time treated as a needy and troublesome hanger-on of France. Instead of the old courtesy, which made Scotland, nominally at least, an independent party to the treaty, it was made directly by France, but Scotland was comprehended in it, with a warning that if there were any of the old raids across the Border, giving trouble as they had so often done, the Scots should forfeit their part in the treaty. This patronage during good behaviour roused the old pride, and was one of many symptoms that Albany had come to them less as the representative of their own independent line of kings, than as the administrator of a distant province of the French empire. The humiliation was all the more bitter from the deep resentments that burned in the people’s hearts after the defeat of Flodden, and it was with difficulty that the Estates brought themselves to say that, though Scotland believed herself able single-handed to avenge her losses, yet, out of respect for the old friendship of France, the country would consent to peace with England.

Setting to work after the manner of one possessed of the same supreme authority as the King of France, Albany began his government with an air of rigour, insomuch that the common historians speak of him as having resolved to suppress the turbulent spirit of the age, and assert the supremacy of law and order. He thus incurred the reputation of a grasping tyrant. The infant brother of the king died suddenly; his mother said Albany had poisoned the child, and people shuddered for his brother, now standing alone between the Regent and the throne, and talked ominously of the manner in which Richard III. of England was popularly believed to have achieved the crown by murdering his nephews. It is from this period that we may date the rise of a really English party in Scotland—a party who feared the designs of the French, and who thought that, after having for two hundred years maintained her independence, Scotland might with fair honour be combined with the country nearest to her and likest in blood, should the succession to both fall to one prince, and that it would be judicious to adjust the royal alliances in such a manner as to bring that to pass. Such thoughts were in the mean time somewhat counteracted by the lightheaded doings of her who was the nation’s present tie to England—the Queen-Dowager—whose grotesque and flagrant love-affairs are an amusing episode, especially to those who love the flavour of ancient scandal; while all gracious thoughts that turned themselves towards England were met in the teeth by the insults and injuries which her savage brother, Henry VIII., continued to pile upon the country.

Up to this point it does not happen to us to have noted instances of offices of emolument in Scotland given to Frenchmen, and the fuss made about one instance of the kind leads to the supposition that they must have been rare. Dunbar the poet, who was in priest’s orders, was exceedingly clamorous in prose and in verse—in the serious and in the comic vein—for preferment. Perhaps he was the kind of person whom it is as difficult to prefer in the Church as it was to make either Swift or Sydney Smith a bishop. His indignation was greatly roused by the appointment of a foreigner whom he deemed beset by his own special failings, but in far greater intensity, to the abbacy of Tungland; and he committed his griefs to a satirical poem, called ‘The fenyet Freir of Tungland.’ The object of this poem has been set down by historians as an Italian, but M. Michel indicates him as a countryman of his own, by the name of Jean Damien. He is called a charlatan, quack, and mountebank, and might, perhaps, with equal accuracy, be called a devotee of natural science, who speculated ingeniously and experimented boldly. He was in search of the philosopher’s stone, and believed himself to be so close on its discovery that he ventured to embark the money of King James IV., and such other persons as participated in his own faith, in the adventure to realise the discovery, and saturate all the partners in riches indefinite. This was a speculation of a kind in which many men of that age indulged; and they were men not differing from others except in their scientific attainments, adventurous propensities, and sanguine temperaments. The class still exists among us, though dealing rather in iron than gold; as if we had in the history of speculation, from the alchemists down to Capel Court, something that has been prophesied in that beautiful mythological sequence liked so much at all schools, beginning—

“Aurea prima sata est ætas, quæ vindice nullo
Sponte sua sine lege fidem rectumque colebat.”

It might be a fair question whether the stranger’s science is so obsolete as the style of literature in which he is attacked, since Dunbar’s satirical poem, among other minor indications of a character unsuited to the higher offices in the Christian ministry, insinuates that the adventurer committed several murders; and although, the charge is made in a sort of rough jocularity, the force of it does not by any means rest on its absurdity and incredibility. He was accused of a mad project for extracting gold from the Wanlockhead Hills, in Dumfriesshire, which cannot be utterly scorned in the present day, since gold has actually been extracted from them, though, the process has not returned twenty shillings to the pound. This curious creature completed his absurdities by the construction of a pair of wings, with which he was to take a delightful aerial excursion to his native country. He proved his sincerity by starting in full feather from Stirling Castle. In such affairs it is, as Madame du Deffaud said about that walk taken by St Denis round Paris with his own head for a burden, _le premier pas qui coute_. The poor adventurer tumbled at once, and was picked up with a broken thigh-bone. Such is the only Frenchman who became conspicuous before Albany’s time as holding rank and office in Scotland.

Albany had not long rubbed on with the Scots Estates when he found that he really must go to Paris, and as there seems to have been no business concerning Scotland that he could transact there, an uncontrollable yearning to be once more in his own gay world is the only motive we can find for his trip. The Estates of Scotland were in a surly humour, and not much inclined to allow him his holidays. They appointed a council of regency to act for him. He, however, as if he knew nothing about the constitutional arrangements in Scotland, appointed a sort of representative, who cannot have known more about the condition and constitution of Scotland than his constituent, though he had been one of the illustrious guests present at the marriage of James IV. He was called by Pitscottie ‘Monsieur Tilliebattie,’ but his full name was Antoine d’Arces de la Bastie, and he had been nicknamed or distinguished, as the case might be, as the Chevalier Blanc, or White Knight, like the celebrated Joannes Corvinus, the Knight of Wallachia, whose son became king of Hungary. M. Michel calls him the “_chivalresque et brillant La Bastie, chez qui le guerrier et l’homme d’état etaient encore supérieurs au champion des tournois_.” He was a sort of fanatic for the old principle of chivalry, then beginning to disappear before the breath of free inquiry, and the active useful pursuits it was inspiring. M. Michel quotes from a contemporary writer, who describes him as perambulating Spain, Portugal, England, and France, and proclaiming himself ready to meet all comers of sufficient rank, not merely to break a lance in chivalrous courtesy, but _à combattre à l’outrance_—an affair which even at that time was too important to be entered on as a frolic, or to pass an idle hour, but really required some serious justification. No one, it is said, accepted the challenge but the cousin of James IV. of Scotland, who is said to have been conquered, but not killed, as from the nature of the challenge he should have been; but this story seems to be a mistake by the contemporary, and M. Michel merely quotes it without committing himself.

Such was the person left by the regent as his representative, though apparently with no specific office or powers acknowledged by the constitution of Scotland. Research might perhaps afford new light to clear up the affair, but at present the only acknowledgment of his existence, bearing anything like an official character, are entries in the Scots treasurer’s accounts referred to by M. Michel, one of them authorising a payment of fifteen shillings to a messenger to the warden of the middle march, “with my lord governor’s letters delivered by Monsr. Labawte;” another payment to his servant for summoning certain barons and gentlemen to repair to Edinburgh; and a payment of twenty shillings, for a service of more import, is thus entered:—“Item, deliverit be Monsieur Lawbawtez to Johne Langlandis, letters of our sovereign lords to summon and warn all the thieves and broken men out of Tweeddale and Eskdale in their own country—quhilk letters were proclaimed at market-cross of Roxburgh, Selkirk, and Jedwood.”

This proclamation seems to have been the deadly insult which sealed his fate. The borders had hardly yet lost their character of an independent district, which might have merged into something like a German margravate. There had been always some family holding a preponderating and almost regal power there. At this time it was the Homes or Humes, a rough set, with their hands deeply dipped in blood, who little dreamed that their name would be known all over Europe by the fame of a fat philosopher sitting writing in a peaceful library with a goosequill, and totally innocent of the death of a fellow-being. It was one of Albany’s rigorous measures to get the leaders of this clan “untopped,” to use one of Queen Elizabeth’s amiable pleasantries. This was a thing to be avenged; and since La Bastie was taking on himself the responsibilities of Albany, it was thought as well that he should not evade this portion of them. To lure him within their reach, a sort of mock fight was got up by the borderers in the shape of the siege of one of their peel towers. Away went La Bastie in all his bravery, dreaming, simple soul, as if he were in Picardy or Tourain, that the mere name of royalty would at once secure peace and submission. His eye, practised in scenes of danger, at once saw murder in the gaze of those he had ventured among, and he set spurs to his good horse, hoping to reach his headquarters in the strong castle of Dunbar. The poor fellow, however, ignorant of the country, and entirely unaided, was overtaken in a bog. It is said that he tried cajoling, threats, and appeals to honour and chivalrous feeling. As well speak to a herd of hungry wolves as to those grim ministers of vengeance! The Laird of Wedderburn, a Home, enjoyed the distinction of riding with the Frenchman’s head, tied by its perfumed tresses at his saddle-bow, into the town of Dunse, where the trophy was nailed to the market-cross. As old Pitscottie has it, “his enemies came upon him, and slew and murdered him very unhonestly, and cutted off his head, and carried it with them; and it was said that he had long hair platt over his neck, whilk David Home of Wedderburn twust to his saddle-bow, and keeped it.”

This affair brought Scotland into difficulties both with England and France. Henry VIII. professed himself displeased that a French adventurer should have been set up as ruler in his nephew’s kingdom, and Francis I., who had just mounted the throne of France, demanded vengeance on the murderers of his distinguished subject, with whose chivalrous spirit he had a congenial sympathy. There is an exceedingly curious and suggestive correspondence between France and Scotland at the commencement of M. Teulet’s papers, which has been aptly compared to the papers that have been returned to Parliament by our Indian Government on the negotiations with some wily Affghan or Scinde chief, in which reparation is demanded for outrages on a British subject. There is much fussy desire to comply with the demands of the great power, but ever a difficulty, real or pretended, in getting anything done; and probably it often is in the East, as it then was in Scotland, that the difficulty in punishing a set of powerful culprits has a better foundation in their power of self-defence than the government is inclined to acknowledge. Evil days, however, for a time clouded the rising sun of France. The battle of Pavia seemed to set her prostrate for the time; and when Scotland, having then many inducements the other way, was reminded of the old alliance, she answered the appeal with her old zeal.

This article does not aspire to the dignity of history. It has dealt chiefly with the under current, as it were, of the events connected with the doings of the French in Scotland—the secondary incidents, which show how the two nations got on together in their familiar intercourse. Their intercourse, however, now developes itself in large historical features, to which it is thought fitting to offer, in conclusion, a general reference, merely hinting at their connection with the preceding details. Ostensibly, and as matter of state policy, the old alliance was so strong that it seemed as if Scotland were drifting under the lee of France to be a mere colony or dependency of that grand empire—though there were influences at work which, in reality, utterly defeated this expected consummation. There was a brilliant wedding when James V. went to bring home Madeleine of France; and was so honoured that, according to the documents given by M. Teulet, the officers charged with the traditions of state precedents grumbled about this prince of a northern island, who knew no civilised language, receiving honours which had heretofore been deemed sacred to the royal blood of France. The national policy that held by this marriage would have had but a frail tenure, for poor Madeleine soon drooped and died. She had said, as a girl, that she wanted to be a queen, be the realm she ruled what it might; and so she had a brief experience—this word seems preferable to enjoyment—of the throne of cold uncomfortable Scotland. There was speedily another wedding, bearing in the direction of the French alliance, for that was still uppermost with the governing powers, whatever it might be with the English and Protestant party daily acquiring strength among the district leaders, nobles or lairds. It may have seemed to these, that when the queen was no longer a daughter of France, but a young lady, the child of one feudatory and the widow of another, with no better claim to share the throne than her beautiful face, there was no further danger from France. But the young queen was a Guise—one of that wonderful race who seemed advancing onwards, not only to the supreme command of France, but to something still greater, for they have been known in their boasting to speak of their house being directly descended from Charlemagne. When the daughter was Queen of France, and the mother ruled Scotland, the time for the final annexation seemed close at hand; but, in reality, the climax had been reached, and the French interest was near to its downfall. While the queen-mother was taking possession of the feudal strongholds, and placing all the high offices of state in the hands of Frenchmen—D’Oysells, de Rubays, Villemores, and the like—in France the proper method of governing Scotland was considered in council as a matter of French policy; and the question was discussed whether Scotland should have the honour of belonging to the crown of France, or should be a provision for a younger son of the house of Valois.

Those busy politicians, called the Lords of the Congregation, knew these things, and were stimulated to exertion accordingly. Hence came it to pass that the Reformation was so sudden an event in Scotland. On the morning of the 1st of August 1560 the people of Scotland awakened under the spiritual dominion of the Pope—ere evening his hierarchy was abolished, and to own it was criminal. The work of that day was not a deliberative act of legislation, but the announcement of the triumph of a party. After a long deadly contest the English party had gained a complete and final victory. It almost enhanced the triumph over French principles that the Acts of this Parliament never received the royal assent. Legislation without the intervention of the crown, was flat rebellion in the eyes of France, and not very reconcilable even with English decorum. It was owing to this specialty that, when Queen Mary engaged to support the religion established by law in Scotland, she was suspected, and not without reason, of stowing away, among the secrets of her heart, the consideration likely to be some day available, that Protestantism, not having the sanction of the crown, was not the religion established by law. If we were to enter with any fulness on this great passage in history, and to view it through the rich new light poured upon it by the documents collected by M. Teulet, we would require more room than the quite sufficient space which this article occupies. We have opportunity only for this brief reference to them, as the winding-up and conclusion of that interesting episode in history—the old alliance between France and Scotland.

Before parting, let us say a word on the personal character and other merits of the volumes which have led us on this occasion to look into the connection of our ancestors with the French, and have furnished us with the greater portion of the material for our two articles. To see two men of learning, research, and various special abilities, devoting what must be no inconsiderable portion of a life’s labour to the connection of our country with the great French empire, is interesting and pleasant, to say the least of it. We are a nation disposed to court the light; we are never afraid of the effect that revelations of our antecedents may have; we are sure of coming well out in all inquiries into our history and connections; and the present elucidation has not stripped a leaf from the national laurels—indeed, we take it to have only removed some of the dust that covered them, and revealed their real freshness and brightness. To the labourers in such a task we should feel that we owe a debt of kindly gratitude, and this should not the less impress us that the work has been done by citizens of that great old European central power which befriended the poor children of our soil in the days of their poverty and danger. New interests and attachments, more suitable to the position of Scotland on the map of Europe, and to the origin of her people, afterwards arose. When centuries of cruel wrong and alienation and wrath had passed away, she became reconciled to that great relation which, let us suppose, in the usual misunderstanding which creates the quarrels in the romances, had treated her as an alien enemy. But while the reconciliation has been long consolidated, and has proved as natural a national adjustment as the restoration of an exiled child is a natural family adjustment, there is still a pleasing sentiment in recalling the friends found in the wide world when kindred were unkind; and the hospitable doors opened to our wandering countrymen, among those who stood at the head of European civilisation in the middle ages, must ever remain a memorable record of the generosity of the patrons, and of the merits of those who so well requited their generosity by faithful and powerful services. To the volumes which contain the record of this attachment something more is due than the mere recognition of their literary merits—they deserve at the hands of our countrymen an affectionate recognition as national memorials. The quantity of curious and interesting matter contained in them, but for the special zeal of the two men who have thus come forward, might have remained still buried under archæological rubbish—might have remained so for ever, even until oblivion overtook them. It is surely right to hope that the zeal and labour embarked by the adventurers will not be thrown away; and that our countrymen will take to the volumes, both of M. Michel and of M. Teulet, as works which it is becoming for them to possess and read as patriotic Scotsmen. If readers have found any interest in the casual glimpses of their contents supplied by the present sketch, they may be assured of finding much more matter of the same kind should they undertake an investigation of the volumes themselves.