Chapter VI (2)

But another event, which occurred soon afterwards, left no doubt in the mind of Kirkaldy as to the nature of Moray's policy. Maitland of Lethington, unquestionably the ablest Scottish diplomatist of his time, but unstable and shifting, as diplomatists often are, had seen cause to adopt very different views from those which he formerly professed. Whilst Mary was in power, he had too often thrown the weight of his influence and council against her: no sooner was she a fugitive and prisoner, than his loyalty appeared to revive. It is impossible now to say whether he was touched with remorse; whether, on reflection, he became convinced that he had not acted the part of a patriotic Scotsman; or whether he was merely led, through excitement, to launch himself into a new sea of political intrigue. This, at least, is certain, that he applied himself, heart and soul, to baffle the machinations of Elizabeth, and to deliver the unhappy Mary from the toils in which she was involved. It was Lethington who conceived the project of restoring Mary to liberty, by bringing about a marriage between her and the Duke of Norfolk; and the knowledge of his zeal on that occasion incensed Elizabeth to the utmost. That vindictive queen, who had always found Moray most ready to obey her wishes, opened a negotiation with him for the destruction of his former friend; and the regent, not daring to thwart her, took measures to have Maitland charged, through a third party, of direct participation in the death of Darnley, whereupon his arrest followed.

Kirkaldy, who loved Maitland, would not allow this manœuvre to pass unnoticed. He remonstrated with the regent for taking such a step; but Moray coldly informed him, that it was out of his power to save Lethington from prison. The blunt soldier, on receiving this reply, sent back a message, demanding that the same charge should be preferred against the Earl of Morton and Archibald Douglas; and he did more--for, Maitland having been detained a prisoner in the town of Edinburgh, under custody of Lord Home, Kirkaldy despatched at night a party of the garrison, and, by means of a counterfeited order, got possession of the statesman's person, and brought him to the castle, where Chatelherault and Herries were already residing as guests. Next morning, to the consternation of Moray, a trumpeter appeared at the cross, demanding, in name of Kirkaldy, that process for regicide should instantly be commenced against Morton and Douglas; and, says our author,--

"Remembering the precepts of the stout old knight his father,
who always offered 'the single combate' in maintenance of his
assertions, he offered himself, body for body, to fight Douglas
on foot or horseback; while his prisoner, the Lord Herries,
sent, as a peer of the realm, a similar cartel to the Earl of
Morton. The challenges bore, 'that they were in the council, and
consequently art and part in the king's murder.'

In vain did Moray try to wheedle Kirkaldy from his stronghold--in vain did the revengeful Morton lay plots and bribe assassins. The castle of Edinburgh had become the rallying point for those who loved their queen. An attempt was made to oust Kirkaldy from the provostship; but the stout burghers, proud of their martial head, turned a deaf ear to the insidious suggestions of the regent. Yet still the banner of King James floated upon the walls of the castle, nor was the authority of Mary again proclaimed by sound of trumpet until after the shot of the injured Bothwellhaugh struck down the false and dangerous Moray in the street of Linlithgow. Then the whole faction of Chatelherault, the whole race of Hamilton, rose in arms, and prepared to place themselves under the guidance of Sir William Kirkaldy. The following is, we think, a noble trait in the character of the man:--

"The latter mourned deeply the untimely fate of Moray: they
had been old comrades in the field, stanch friends in many a
rough political broil; and though they had quarrelled of late,
he had too much of the frankness of his profession to maintain
hostility to the dead, and so came to see him laid in his last
resting-place. Eight lords bore the body up St Anthony's lofty
aisle, in the great cathedral of St Giles; Kirkaldy preceded it,
bearing the paternal banner of Moray with the royal arms; the
Laird of Cleish, who bore the coat of armour, walked beside him.
Knox prayed solemnly and earnestly as the body was lowered into
the dust; a splendid tomb was erected over his remains, and long
marked the spot where they lay."

Lennox succeeded Moray as regent of Scotland, but no salute from the guns of the grim old fortress of Edinburgh greeted his inauguration. Henceforward Kirkaldy had no common cause with the confederates. Maitland had revealed to him the whole hidden machinery of treason, the scandalous complexity of intrigues, by which he had been made a dupe. He now saw that neither religion nor patriotism, but simply selfishness and ambition, had actuated the nobles in rebelling against their lawful sovereign, and that those very acts which they fixed upon as apologies for their treason, were in fact the direct consequences of their own deliberate guilt. If any further corroboration of their baseness had been required in order to satisfy the mind of Kirkaldy, it was afforded by Morton, who, notwithstanding the defiance so lately hurled at him from the castle, solicited, with a meanness and audacity almost incredible, the assistance of the governor to drive Lennox out of the kingdom, and procure his own acknowledgement as regent instead. It is needless to say that his application was refused with scorn. Kirkaldy now began to doubt the sincerity of Knox, who, although with no selfish motive, had been deeply implicated in the cruel plots of the time; some sharp correspondence took place, and the veteran Reformer was pleased to denounce his former pupil from the pulpit.

Edinburgh now was made to suffer the inconveniences to which every city threatened with a siege is exposed. The burghers began to grumble against their provost, who, on one occasion, sent a party to rescue a prisoner from the Tolbooth, and who always preferred the character of military governor to that of civic magistrate. Knox thundered at him every Sabbath, and doubtless contributed largely to increase the differences between him and the uneasy citizens. The later might well be pardoned for their apprehensions. Not only were they commanded by the castle guns, but Kirkaldy, as if to show them what they might expect in ease of difference of political sentiment,--

"Hoisted cannon to the summit of St Giles's lofty spire, which
rises in the middle of the central hill on which the city
stands, and commands a view of it in every direction. He placed
the artillery on the stone bartizan beneath the flying arches
of the imperial crown that surmounts the tower, and thus turned
the cathedral into a garrison, to the great annoyance of Knox
and the citizens. The latter were also compelled, at their own
expense, to maintain the hundred harquebussiers of Captain
Melville, who were billeted in the Castlehill Street, for the
queen's service; and thus, amid preparations for war, closed the
year 1570."

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.

The career of Kirkaldy was rapidly drawing towards its close. During the life of Mar, who succeeded Lennox in the regency, the brave governor succeeded in maintaining possession not only of the castle, but of the city of Edinburgh, in spite of all opposition. But Morton, the next regent, was a still more formidable foe. The hatred between this man and Kirkaldy was mutual, and it was of the most deadly kind. And no wonder. Morton, as profligate as cruel, had seduced the fair and false Helen Leslie, wife of Sir James Kirkaldy, the gallant brother of the governor, and thereby inflicted the worst wound on the honour of an ancient family. A more awful story than the betrayal of her husband, and the seizure of his castle of Blackness, through the treachery of this wretched woman, is not to be found in modern history. Tarpeia alone is her rival in infamy, and the end of both was the same. The virulence of hereditary feud is a marked feature in our Scottish annals; but no sentiment of the kind could have kindled such a flame of enmity as burned between Morton and Kirkaldy. From the hour when the former obtained the regency, the war became one of extermination.

Morton, it must be owned, showed much diplomatic skill in his arrangements. His first step was to negotiate separately with the country party of the loyalists, so as to detach them from Kirkaldy; and in this he perfectly succeeded. The leading nobles, Huntley and Argyle, were wearied with the war; Chatelherault, whom we have already known as Arran, was broken down by age and infirmities; and even those who had been the keenest partisans of the queen, Herries and Seton, were not disinclined to transfer their allegiance to her son. The treaty of Perth left Kirkaldy with no other adherents save Lord Home, the Melvilles, Maitland, and his garrison. The city had revolted, and was now under the provostship of fierce old Lord Lindesay of the Byres, who was determined to humble his predecessor. Save the castle rock of Edinburgh, and the hardy band that held it, all Scotland had submitted to Morton.

Killigrew, the English ambassador, advised him to yield. "No!" replied Kirkaldy. "Though my friends have forsaken me, and the city of Edinburgh hath done so too, yet I will defend this castle to the last!" The man whom Moray thought a tool, had expanded to the bulk of a hero.

Meantime, English engineers were occupied in estimating the capabilities of the castle as a place of defence. They reported that, with sufficient artillery, it might be reduced in twenty days; and, accordingly, Morton determined to besiege it so soon as the period of truce agreed on by the treaty of Perth should expire. Kirkaldy was not less resolute to maintain it.

At six o'clock, on the morning of 1st January 1573, a warning gun from the castle announced that the treaty had expired, and the standard of the Queen was unfurled on the highest tower, amidst the acclamations of the garrison. Four-and-twenty hours previously, Kirkaldy had issued a proclamation, warning all loyal subjects of the Queen to depart forthwith from the city; and terrible indeed was the situation of those who neglected that seasonable warning. Morton began the attack; and it was answered by an incessant discharge from the batteries upon the town.

Civil war had assumed its worst form. By day the cannon thundered; at night the garrison made sorties, and fired the city: all was wrack and ruin. Morton, bursting with fury, found that, unassisted, he could not conquer Grange.

English aid was asked from, and given by, the unscrupulous Elizabeth. Drury, who had helped Morton in his dishonourable treason at Restalrig, marched into Scotland with the English standard displayed, bringing with him fifteen hundred harquebussiers, one hundred and fifty pikemen, and a numerous troop of gentlemen volunteers; while the train of cannon and baggage came round by sea to Leith, where a fleet of English ships cruised, to cut off all succour from the Continent.

The English summons to surrender was treated by Kirkaldy with scorn. Up went a scarlet banner, significant of death and defiance, on the great tower of King David. Indomitable, as in the days of his early youth, when the confederates of St Andrews defied the universe in arms, the Scottish champion looked calmly from his rock on the preparations for the terrible assault.

Five batteries were erected around the castle, but not with impunity. The cannon of Kirkaldy mowed down the pioneers when engaged in their trenching operations; and it was not until Trinity Sunday, the 17th of May, that the besiegers opened their fire.

"At two o'clock in the afternoon, the five batteries opened a
simultaneous discharge upon the walls of the castle. Bravely
and briskly its cannoneers replied to them, and deep-mouthed
Mons Meg, with her vast bullets of black whin, the thundering
carthouns, basilisks, serpents, and culverins, amid fire
and smoke, belched their missiles from the old gray towers,
showering balls of iron, lead, and stone at the batteries;
while the incessant ringing of several thousand harquebusses,
calivers, and wheel-lock petronels, added to the din of the
double cannonade. From the calibre of the great Mons Meg, which
yet frowns _en barbe_ over the ramparts, one may easily imagine
the dismay her enormous bullets must have caused in the trenches
so far below her.

"For ten days the furious cannonade continued, on both sides,
without a moment's cessation. On the 19th, three towers were
demolished, and enormous gaps appeared in the curtain walls;
many of the castle guns were dismounted, and destroyed by the
falling of the ancient masonry: a shot struck one of the largest
culverins fairly on the muzzle, shattering it to pieces, and
scattering the splinters around those who stood near. A very
heavy battery was discharged against King David's Tower, a great
square bastel-house, the walls of which were dark with the lapse
of four centuries. On the 23d, a great gap had been beaten in
its northern side, revealing the arched hall within; and as the
vast old tower, with its cannon, its steel-clad defenders, and
the red flag of defiance still waving above its machicolated
bartizan, sank with a mighty crash to shapeless ruin, the wild
shriek raised by the females in the castle, and the roar of the
masonry rolling like thunder down the perpendicular rocks, were
distinctly heard at the distant English camp."

One hundred and fifty men constituted the whole force which Kirkaldy could muster when he commenced his desperate defence. Ten times that number would scarcely have sufficed to maintain an adequate resistance; but high heroic valour in the face of death is insensible to any odds. After a vigorous resistance, the besiegers succeeded in gaining possession of the Spur or blockhouse--an outer work which was constructed between the fortress and the town; but an attempt to scale the rock on the west side utterly failed.

The blockade had for some time been so strict, that the garrison began to suffer from want of provisions; but their sorest privation was the loss of water. Although there are large and deep wells in the Castle of Edinburgh, a remarkable peculiarity renders them useless in the time of siege. To this day, whenever the cannon are fired, the water deserts the wells, oozing out of some fissures at the bottom of the rock. There is, however, a lower spring on the north side, called St Margaret's Well, and from this the garrison for a time obtained a scanty supply. Under cloud of night a soldier was let down by a rope from the fortifications, and in this manner the wholesome element was drawn. This circumstance became known to the besiegers; and they, with diabolical cruelty, had recourse to the expedient of poisoning the well, and permitted the nocturnal visitor to draw the deadly liquid without molestation. The consequences, of course, were fearful. Many expired in great agony; and those whose strength enabled them to throw off the more active effects of the poison, were so enfeebled that they could hardly work the heavy cannon, or support the fatigue of watching day and night upon the battlements.

"Maddened by the miseries they underwent, and rendered desperate
by all hopes of escape from torture and death being utterly cut
off, a frenzy seized the soldiers; they broke into a dangerous
mutiny, and threatened to hang Lethington over the walls, as
being the primary cause of all these dangers, from the great
influence he exercised over Kirkaldy, their governor. But
even now, when amid the sick, the dying, and the dead, and
the mutinous--surrounded by crumbling ramparts and dismounted
cannon, among which the shot of the besiegers were rebounding
every instant--with the lives, honour, and safety of his wife,
his brother, and numerous brave and faithful friends depending
on his efforts and example, the heart of the brave governor
appears never to have quailed even for an instant!"

At length, as further resistance was useless, and as certain movements on the part of the enemy indicated their intention of proceeding to storm the castle by the breach which had been effected on the eastern side, Kirkaldy requested an interview with his old fellow-soldier Drury, the Marshal of Berwick. This being acceded to, the governor and his uncle, "Sir Robert Melville of Murdocairnie, were lowered over the ruins by cords, as there was no other mode of egress, the flight of forty steps being completely buried in the same ruin which had choked up the archways, and hidden both gates and portcullis. The Castlehill, at that time, says Melville of Kilrenny, in his Diary, was covered with stones, 'rinning like a sandie bray;' but behind the breaches were the men-at-arms drawn up in firm array, with their pikes and helmets gleaming in the setting sun."

Kirkaldy's requests were not unreasonable. He asked to have security for the lives and property of those in the garrison, to have leave for Lord Home and Maitland of Lethington to retire to England, and, for himself, permission to live unmolested at the estate in Fife. Drury might have consented, but Morton was obdurate. The thought of having his enemy unconditionally in his hands, and the prospect of a revenge delicious to his savage and unrelenting nature, made him deaf to all applications; and the only terms he would grant were these,--

"That if the soldiers marched forth without their armour, and
submitted to his clemency, he would grant them their lives; but
there were ten persons who must yield _unconditionally_ to him,
and whose fate he would leave to the decision of their umpire,
Elizabeth. The unfortunate exceptions were--the governor, Sir
James Kirkaldy, Lethington, Alexander Lord Home, the Bishop
of Dunkeld, Sir Robert Melville of Murdocairnie, Logan of
Restalrig, Alexander Crichton of Drylaw, Pitarrow the constable,
and Patrick Wishart.

Kirkaldy returned to the castle, resolved to die in the breach, but by this time the mutiny had begun. The soldiers insisted upon a surrender even more clamorously than before, and several of them took the opportunity of clambering over the ruins and deserting. It would have been madness under such circumstances to hold out; yet still Kirkaldy, jealous of his country's honour, could not brook the idea of handing over the citadel of Scotland's metropolis to the English.

"Therefore, when compelled to adopt the expedient (which is
supposed to have originated in Lethington's fertile brain) of
admitting a party of the besiegers within the outworks, or
at least close to the walls, he sent privately in the night
a message to Hume and Jordanhill, to march their Scottish
companies between the English batteries and the fortress, lest
the old bands of Drury should have the honour of entering first."

Next morning he came forth, and surrendered his sword to Drury, who gave him the most solemn assurances that he should be restored to his estates and liberty at the intercession of the Queen of England, and that all his adherents should be pardoned.

Drury, probably, was in earnest, but he had either overstepped his commission, or misinterpreted the mind of his mistress. Morton had most basely handed over to Elizabeth the person of the fugitive Earl of Northumberland, whom she hurried to the block, nor could she well refuse to the Scottish regent a similar favour in return. Morton asked for the disposal of the prisoners, and the gift was readily granted.

Three of them were to die: for these there was no mercy. One, William, Maitland of Lethington, disappointed the executioner by swallowing poison, a draught more potent than that drawn from the well of St. Margaret. The vengeance of Morton long kept his body from the decencies of the grave. Of the two Kirkaldys, one was the rival of the regent, who had foully wronged the other, and, therefore, their doom was sealed.

One hundred barons and gentlemen of rank and fortune, kinsmen to the gallant Kirkaldy, offered, in exchange for his life, to bind themselves by bond of manrent, as vassals to the house of Morton for ever: money, jewels, lands, were tendered to the regent; but all in vain. Nothing could induce him to depart from his revenge. Nor were others wanting to urge on the execution. The Reformed preachers, remembering the dying message of Knox, were clamorous for the realisation of the prophecy through his death; the burghers, who had suffered so much from his obstinate defence, shouted for his execution; only stout old Lord Lindesay, fierce as he was, had the magnanimity to plead on behalf of the unfortunate soldier.

Then came the scaffold and the doom. Those who are conversant with Scottish history cannot but be impressed with the remarkable resemblance between the last closing scene of Kirkaldy, as related in this work, and that of Montrose, which was exhibited on the same spot, in another and a later age.

So died this remarkable man, the last of Queen Mary's adherents. If, in the course of his career, we can trace out some inconsistencies, it is but fair to his memory to reflect how early he was thrown upon the troubled ocean of politics, and how difficult it must have been, in such an age of conflicting opinions and desperate intrigue, to maintain a tangible principle. Kirkaldy seems to have selected Moray as his guide--not penetrating certainly, at the time, the selfish disposition of the man. But the instant he perceived that his own aggrandisement, and not the welfare of Scotland, was the object of the designing Earl, Grange drew off from his side, and valorously upheld the cause of his injured and exiled sovereign.

We now take leave of a work which, we are convinced, will prove of deep and thrilling interest to every Scotsman. It is seldom indeed that we find history so written--in a style at once vigorous, perspicuous, and picturesque. The author's heart is thoroughly with his subject; and he exhibits, ever and anon, flashes of the old Scottish spirit, which we are glad to believe has not decayed from the land.

_Printed by William Blackwood and Sons, Edinburgh._

* * * * *

Transcriber's note:

Minor typographical errors have been corrected without note. Irregularities and inconsistencies in the text have been retained as printed.

Mismatched quotes are not fixed if it's not sufficiently clear where the missing quote should be placed.

The cover for the eBook version of this book was created by the transcriber and is placed in the public domain.

The transcriber has supplied footnote anchors for the following footnotes:

Page 20: Footnote 10 _A Campaign in the Kabylie._ By DAWSON BORRER, F.R.G.S., &c. London, 1848.

Page 47: Footnote 15 _Expedition zur Entdeckung der Quellen des Weissen Nil_, (1840-1841,) von FERDINAND WERNE. Mit einem Vorwort von CARL RITTER. Berlin, 1848. _La Kabylie._ Par un Colon. Paris, 1846.

_La Captivité du Trompette Escoffier._ Par ERNEST ALBY. 2 vols. Brussels, 1848."

Page 63: Footnote 16 _Annals of the Artists of Spain._ By WILLIAM STIRLING, M. A. 3 vols. London: Ollivier.

Page 81: Footnote 19 _The Dodo and its Kindred; or, the History, Affinities, and Osteology of the Dodo, Solitaire, and other Extinct Birds of the Islands Mauritius, Rodriguez, and Bourbon._ By H. E. STRICKLAND, M.A. F.G.S., F.R.G.S., President of the Ashmolean Society, &c., and A. G. MELVILLE, M.D., Edinburgh, M.R.C. . One vol., royal quarto: London, 1848.

Page 112: Footnote 24 _Memoirs and Adventures of Sir Wm. Kirkaldy of Grange, Knight, &c. &c._ WM. BLACKWOOD & SONS, Edinburgh and London.