256

ANDREW MELVILLE TO THE RESCUE.

of £500 to George Douglas, son natural of the Regent." 18 On the other side, the conduct of Andrew Melville and other opponents of Prelacy was marked by courage rather than by amenity and sweet reasonableness. The men were fighting for the Revolution of 1560, and as time went on, and James became king in earnest, they were fighting against foreign and Catholic intrigue. Melville was a warrior: he could wear corslet and carry spear like any old martial bishop of medieval times. The rudeness of his manners repels sympathy, and the theocratic pretensions of the Kirk, which revived under his influence, were incompatible with the legitimate freedom of the individual citizen, and with the political supremacy of the laity in the State. The questions at issue could only be settled in a struggle for existence, which practically lasted for a hundred years. Out of the clash of these two forces, both fierce and intolerant, a modus vivendi was evolved after the fall of the Stuarts, whose tyranny, subduing the wild "high-flying" temper of the Kirkmen, made compromise possible.

The leader but for whom the Kirk might have sunk into a listless tool of the State, or rather of the party in power, must be described. Andrew Melville, son of a Fifeshire laird slain at Pinkie (1547), was born at Baldovy in 1545. At Montrose he learned Greek under Marsillier, and in 1559 proceeded to the University of St Andrews. Here he alone, in the university, read, not in Latin translations but in Greek, the Ethics of Aristotle, "which are the best." He appears to have known George Buchanan, and at twenty was the subject of Latin Elegiacs by a wandering Italian scholar, Pietro Bizzari. His "honeyed words" are praised: they were not his most notable characteristic. Proceeding to Paris, he read under Turnebus, and the revolutionary logician, Ramus. Edmund Hay, a Jesuit who was in Scotland at the time of Darnley's murder, and who had no illusions about Queen Mary, was organising the College of Clermont, and put Melville on his mettle. In 1568 Melville was at Poictiers during the siege, whence he went to Geneva, and was associated with Beza. He pursued his Greek and oriental studies, returning to Scotland, an accomplished scholar and ardent Calvinist, in July 1574. He was offered the place of tutor to Morton's children, but preferred the Principalship of Glasgow University, for which he secured new endowments, reorganising the studies, and establishing discipline. Spottiswoode's story about his desire to destroy the cathedral is not corroborated by records, though it has a strong hold

RAID OF THE REIDSWIRE (1575).

257

on tradition. A man of extraordinary energy, wedded to his own opinions, and better fitted to support them by scholarly argument than any other in Scotland, Melville in 1575, as a member of the General Assembly, and a member of the committee which met Morton's commissioners, "stirred up John Drury. . . to propound a question touching the lawfulness of the episcopal function, and the authority of chapters in their election." 19 Melville advanced the usual arguments about the episcopos and the presbyter. The chief result of the discussion was to allow for the present the name, and to curtail the authority, of bishops, who must each take charge of a particular "flock" and kirk within their dioceses. This Boyd, Archbishop of Glasgow, declined to do. There being a vacancy at St Andrews, Morton had Patrick Adamson, a man of some learning, and of an unhappy future, elected: the Assembly found that he refused their conditions, and meanwhile suspended him. Matters remained unsettled till the Assembly at Dundee (July 1580), for new troubles were vexing the State.

It is now necessary to glance back at the secular affairs since 1574. They are of an incidental sort, with little bearing on the main tendency of things. Killigrew in 1574-75 made no speed in "the great matter" of handing over Cecil's "bosom-serpent," the Queen of Scots, to execution in her own country. Elizabeth was coquetting with the Alençon marriage: her attention was distracted by the death of Charles IX., and in April 1575 Walsingham feared that Morton, neglected by England, was favouring the Hamiltons and looking towards France. 20 Killigrew and Davison, the secretary, later so unhappily connected with the execution of Mary, were on their way to Scotland when the Border peace was broken on July 7 by the raid of the Reidswire. 21

At a Warden court, Sir John Forster and Sir John Carmichael presiding, a brawl arose among their followers; the Scots had the worse, but were reinforced from Jedburgh; Sir John Heron was slain, and the English Warden, with many gentlemen and some 300 followers, was captured. Sir John Forster behaved with tact and good sense, refusing to make a national quarrel out of a chance onset, but Elizabeth ordered Morton to meet Huntingdon in England. This Morton refused to do, and Elizabeth compromised for a meeting at the "Bond Rode" on the frontier, near Berwick.22 Huntingdon, like Foster, was pacific, and sensible.23 The affair, he said, was but "a brauble." Nobody was certain whether the Jed

VOL. II.

R

258

STRONG RULE OF MORTON.

burgh people first called "A Jeddart! a Jeddart!" or whether the Tynedale men began to shout and shoot. Elizabeth's fiery messages were not delivered to Morton, who patched the quarrel up with Huntingdon on August 16-19.

Killigrew had entered on his embassy, and sent in a long report of Scottish affairs.24 There was a kind of renewal of the king's and queen's parties. The laird of Lochleven, William Douglas, who sold the Earl of Northumberland, had laid an ambush for the Hamiltons, to avenge Murray on Bothwellhaugh; and Arbroath, son of Châtelherault, was in fear of his own responsibility for Murray's murder. He therefore aimed at marrying the widow of Buccleuch, a sister of Morton's nephew, the Earl of Angus, and at thus allying the Hamiltons with the Regent. This placed Argyll and Atholl, Buchan and Mar, in opposition to Morton and the Hamiltons, while old Châtelherault died, after a long and varied career of good-humoured and fickle incapacity. Arran was still confined in Draffen Castle as a lunatic; meanwhile Morton temporised as to the Hamilton-Angus marriage. Sir James Balfour was still tolerated by Morton, after his countless treacheries, and was used when the Regent "would contrary the ministers" or the citizens of Edinburgh. Morton, though not popular, was fearless, and went shooting or enjoying the contemplative recreation of angling almost unattended. The Esk at Dalkeith was not yet poisoned, and the Regent must have found it an ideal stream for trout and sea-trout. Because he "contraried" the burgesses, Morton, naturally, was popular with the working classes, whom Killigrew reckoned much more important. Morton's enemies admitted that "they could not find his like" as a ruler. Bothwell, in Denmark, was now reported to be "greatly swollen" and near his death. He had still a stroke at Morton in him, if his dying confession be authentic, and, if not, it was still useful. The country was peaceful and prosperous, and it is almost a comfort to learn that, in days when river-pollution was unknown, and Tweed poachers less skilled than in our day, "the fishing of salmon is this year utterly failed in Scotland, and at Berwick also." Corn was never so plentiful, so the want of rain cannot have been the cause of this dispensation, though a dry autumn may have prevented fish from running up. Our comfort lies in thinking that, as bad fishing seasons of old were followed by good, so it may be again, "who live to see it."

HE INCLINES TO MARY (1576-77).

259

Killigrew found Morton apparently strong and prosperous. But the affair of the Hamilton marriage already indicated the chance of an Argyll and Atholl opposition. Spottiswoode also tells us that the Regent's cruelties were disliked. One of the queen's Maries, Mary Livingstone, had married John Semple of Beltrees. Morton tried to wring from him some lands given by Mary to his wife, and Semple had said something perilous. It was suspected that the Hamiltons had instigated him and his nephew, Whitford of Milnton, to shoot Morton. Threatened with torture, Semple, not a brave man, confessed; but Milnton, even under torture, denied the charge, and had public opinion on his side.25 Whatever truth there may be in this anecdote, we observe after the Reformation the increased employment of torture to extract evidence. In the earlier part of Scottish history we seldom hear of this cruel and detestable practice, at least as exercised on gentlemen.

We now find Morton conscious that his position was imperilled. As early as November 1574 he was reported by the Spanish Ambassador to intend to marry Queen Mary.26 He now looked in the same direction. On April 15, 1577, Lord Ogilvy wrote to Archbishop Beaton, Mary's ambassador in France, a letter unknown. to Mr Tytler and earlier historians. It contained matter already touched on in July 1576 by Beaton of Balfour. Morton, in short, was anxious to deal with, or pretended to be anxious to deal with, Mary and France. When James should come to power Morton had reason for anxiety. He knew what befell the Boyds when the young James III. came to his own. He knew that his enemies would put at him, and use as their instrument his connection with Darnley's murder. Sir James Balfour, with Beaton, was intriguing for the queen, and as to Darnley's murder, Balfour knew everything. "Ane schamful bruit" as to Morton's guilt prevailed among the populace. Therefore Morton in 1577 spoke "reverently" of Mary, desiring her restoration, if James died. He would rather serve her and her race than any of the world, as God was his judge. Granted an amnesty, he would work for a restoration of the queen. Sir James Balfour was as friendly as Morton. Both only wanted assurances from Mary. The queen put no more confidence in Morton's professions than did her descendant, the King over the Water, in those of Robert Walpole when that Minister's power decayed. She feared a trap. But the advances of Morton prove that he knew the dangers of his position.27

260

ARGYLL WORKS AGAINST MORTON (1578).

We have already seen indications of a coalition between Atholl, Argyll, and Mar against the Regent, to whom Argyll was hostile because of the forced surrender of Mary's jewels. Atholl, too, could not well be content, as he was threatened with excommunication for idolatry. Mar, a very young peer, had not been intrusted with the guardianship of James, who was in the hands of his father's brother, Alexander Erskine. But for a while Argyll and Atholl were quarrelling, and attacking each other's countries, Argyll about the same time being at feud with Clan Donald. In this affair Argyll incurred Morton's displeasure, so he and Atholl again drew together.28 Alexander Erskine also began to distrust Morton's intentions as to seizing James. He induced Argyll and Atholl to visit him at Stirling, where Argyll appealed directly to the boy king against the tyranny of Morton, and asked for an assembly of the nobles. Atholl urged the same advice: troubles were brewing, and Elizabeth, through Bowes and Randolph, attempted to reconcile all parties (January 30, 1578). In March Lady Lennox, the mother of Darnley, died in England, to all appearance reconciled with Mary, and a believer in her innocence. To Elizabeth Lady Lennox concealed this change of mind, if a change there was, but that she would have done in any case. We are left to conjecture as to whether the reconciliation was sincere, or whether Lady Lennox feigned cordiality for the sake of advantages to be drawn from Mary.29 In any case, she had given Mary written assurances of belief in her innocence. The death of this lady opened the path for Stewart d'Aubigny in France, whom James later created Duke of Lennox. Meanwhile, in England, her granddaughter, Arabella Stewart, child of Charles, younger brother of Darnley, was to inherit the sorrows of the line. The Lennox estates in England remained for many years the desire of James's heart.

On March 4, 1578, the intrigues of the nobles against Morton came to a head. They had of their party the king's tutor, George Buchanan, who had quarrelled with Morton, says Sir James Melville, about a favourite horse, which the Regent seized. On March 4, Argyll at Stirling, backed no doubt by Buchanan, requested James to call a convention of nobles. Alexander Erskine, who held Stirling Castle, was of the same mind, with Atholl, Montrose, Livingstone, Lindsay, Ruthven, Ogilvy, the Chancellor (Glamis), the comptroller (Tullibardine), and the secretary, the lay Abbot of Dunfermline. Morton sent Angus, Herries, and Ruthven: he