"Ne'er should be a vassal banished,
Without time to plead his cause;
Ne'er should king his people's rights
Trample on, or break the laws:
Ne'er should he his liegemen punish,
More than to their crimes is due;
Lest they rise into rebellion--
That day sorely would he rue."
Rodrigo of Bivar.
"His eminence the cardinal, may it please your majesty," said the little Lord Claud, announcing the visitor. Setting down the lap-dog, King James started from his seat, and, without any further preamble, the tall and stately figure of Beaton approached him. James knelt for a moment to receive his blessing, and then pressed his hand in silence.
The poor king looked paler, thinner, and sadder than when the cardinal had seen him last in Holyrood, beside that grave over which a nation mourned; but this did not prevent the perfect courtier from saying--
"I rejoice to see your majesty looking so well."
"It is not merely to flatter you have disturbed my sad retirement," said James, with one of his old smiles; "but welcome heartily, Lord Cardinal; I have longed to converse with you anent many things."
The little dog whined, and the king took it again in his hands to caress it, while the page withdrew, and the cardinal seated himself. "Here are splendour and magnificence," thought he, "saloons full of guards, and chambers full of courtiers, pages, lacqueys, wealth, and rank--but where is happiness?"
"My lord," said James, "I have many questions to ask you concerning my poor Vipont, the trial of the Lady Seton, and her mad brother's invasion of Inchkeith single-handed. Faith! he is quite a devil of a fellow! But first tell me what rumour is this, of cannonading in the river Forth, which reached me this morning."
"Oh, it was merely Monseigneur Claude d'Annebault, admiral of France, who has brought the new ambassador, escorted by eight frigates, which have anchored off the Beacon rock at Leith, where they saluted the Scottish flag, and the ships of Sir Robert Barton replied by their culverins."
"France," said James, sadly; "and this ambassador?"
"Will pay his respects to your majesty to-morrow."
"By my soul, I thought it was the Lord Howard with the fleet of my uncle Henry; and that he had come to blows with stout Sir Robert."
"A new ambassador from England is also coming hither."
"Ah!--and concerning what?"
"A league with Henry. Need I implore your majesty," said the cardinal, in the most impressive tones of his persuasive voice, "need I implore you to beware! He comes to crave an interview, that Henry may instil into your heart his own hatred of France and heresy to God."
"Hatred to the France of my Magdalene--the France of Scotland's old alliance! Nay, my Lord Cardinal, I need no warnings. There is a grasping and aggressive spirit in England, of which Scotland should beware; but can my heretic uncle imagine that he will induce me to bring about here the same change of religion that he, by a single word, has wrought in England?"
"He cannot; but he thinks that England will never be thoroughly Protestant, or at least opposed to Rome, while Scotland remains Catholic and true; thus his whole soul is bent on breaking that continental alliance which aggravates, as he thinks, our old and just hostility to his people."
"Is not the alliance broken? My poor little Magdalene!"
"Thou hast most unwisely and unjustly permitted Sir David Lindesay of the Mount, George Buchanan, and others, to satirize the bishops and orders of clergy: yet, in the name of the latter, I have this day approached your majesty, to offer an annual subsidy of fifty thousand crowns from the rents of the kirk, to enable you to defend yourself more ably against England and her allies the Portuguese."
"This is well! the crowns are right welcome."
"An ambassador----"
"What--another?"
"Is coming from Rome, with a consecrated sword, which with his own sacred hands his Holiness has whetted on the altar-stone of St. Peter--yea, whetted against the English people and their king, whose fleet is now out on the high seas to intercept the envoy and his gift."
"Indeed!"
"Thou seest how far these English will dare."
"If the ambassador is taken before Barton can reach the Downs, then, d--n England--we'll go to war with her! and here into your hands I commit the books written by Henry, and brought hither by the Welsh bishop of St. David's, wherein he defends so boldly the principles of Luther."
"Good; I shall burn them on the first occasion, before my gate at St. Andrew's," replied the cardinal, as he threw them outside the chamber door to his page who waited in the gallery.
"With thy advice I broke off the meeting which Henry proposed at York; so we may now prepare for war in earnest--a war that will pour forth our Scottish blood like water; but on the plains of our hereditary foe. The Scottish people should be ever like a drawn sword--the king being the hilt, his subjects the blade."
"Gladly will I head the army," said the cardinal, whose eyes sparkled.
"Nay," replied James, dryly, and with a smile; "should war be resolved on, I shall lead the army in person, as my predecessors have always done. What say the laws of the church on prelates leading armies?"
"It is forbidden by the canons of John VIII."
"Sir Oliver Sinclair of Ravensheugh is a brave serviteur of the crown, and he may be my lieutenant-general."
"Sire, Sir Oliver of Ravensheugh is a mere laird, and no lord will follow him to the field. But we are well prepared for any emergency. The Earl of Buchan commands on the eastern marches, the Lord Sanquhar on the west; and the Lord Tester commands the middle. Their paid bands of horse and foot are ever on the alert. Our ships of war are not so numerous as they soon shall be; but they fully equal those of England in every respect, for the Unicorn, the Salamander,* the Morischer, and the Great Lion, are each as large, if not larger, than the boasted Harry. Then we have the little frigate taken by Sir Robert Barton from the Admiral Howard, in Yarmouth Roads."
* These two were burnt by the English, in 1544.
"The Mary Willoughbie?"
"Mounting twenty culverins, besides arquebuses and crossbows; and we have six others on the stocks at the New Haven. Including those which came from France," continued the cardinal, consulting his note-book, "we have one hundred and fifty pieces of cannon in our arsenal; and Scotland was never better prepared for war than at the present hour--nay, not even in the days of James IV."
"For which I thank the ability of your eminence," replied James, who cordially disliked his uncle Henry. "My father, James IV., entered England, whenever he chose, at the head of an army; but I, unfortunate! have a stiff-necked people, who, much as they love me, will not fight unless their parliament tells them to do so; and, worse than all, cardinal, the people--hate thee!"
"Faith, sire, they are ready to hate any one--the rabble."
"Impatient of thy power and princely offices, they think the royal authority will soon sink to nothing beneath the shadow of so great a minister. But what matters it? I long for war, because I am weary of life; while thou longest for it, simply because thou hatest the English. Lord cardinal, I am come of a doomed race," said James, with a shudder, as the vague terror that his house was fated to fall with himself came upon him, and a gloom spread over his manly brow. "I remember me of a prophecy that was made by a weird woman of Strathgryffe to Allan the great steward, 'that never one of his race should comb a grey head;' and fearfully hath that prophecy been verified!"
The eyes of the good king filled.
"Come my time when it may," he continued, "I know that my dear Scottish subjects will remember me long. Cardinal, my people call me king of the puir, and I am prouder of that title than the thorny crown the Alexanders, the Constantines, and the Braces have left me. The blessings of the poor and the lowly attend me when I walk abroad, without guards, without retinue, without arms. I hate the nobles, for they are ever ready to barter their country and their God for foreign gold: and Scotland's nobles will one day be Scotland's destruction. Pardon this honest vanity; but I feel that to reign in the hearts of my people is a great and glorious thing. There are many kings in Europe, but not one is called the father of his poor but James Stuart of Scotland. I am ever among them. I visit the highways and the byways, the gloomy streets, the miserable garrets, and the famished cottages where pestilence, or poverty, or tyranny have been. I know where misery is, or wrongs are endured. Disguised as a beggar, I discover them; as a king and a gentleman I alleviate or avenge them. The hard hands I have shaken, and the humble hearts I have gladdened, will serve me to the last gasp; and the ingleside where a king has sat and supped his kail with the gudeman, or toyed with his bairns, will long be remembered in tradition when the king and the clown are blended in one common dust. Thus I feel with joy that I shall go down to my grave at Holyrood with the blessings of my people, and shall be remembered long in the land, which my father bequeathed me from the Field of Flodden."
The king paused; and the cardinal, remembering his pledge to Father St. Bernard, deemed this the best opportunity for opening the trenches.
"Sire, this is a good and holy frame of mind," said he, "and I sometimes see the truth of what Buchanan teaches (heretic and republican though he is) that impulses to good or evil are common to all ranks of men, and in these respects all men are equal."
"Cardinal, all men are equal, too, in the grave. Were a beggar laid beside me at Holyrood, he would be as great as me, and I no greater than he."
The cardinal could scarcely repress a gesture of impatience.
"I fear me," said he, "that the solitude of Falkland oppresses your majesty's mind?"
"It is in solitude that God speaks most to man; and I, oh cardinal, have been in solitude since my poor Magdalene was lost," replied James, kindly caressing the little dog.
"She is not lost, but gone before."
"Cardinal," said James, looking up with his hazel eyes full of tears, "I pray for her daily."
"One act of mercy performed in her name and memory, will do more for the soul of Magdalene than a thousand prayers."
The king looked earnestly, perhaps suspiciously, in the dark and majestic face of Beaton, and said,--
"Your eminence actually means this?"
"Most solemnly!"
"Then what is this act of mercy?"
"A pardon for the Lady Jane Seton."
James's bright eyes flashed with fire, and he twisted his brown moustache with anger.
"Now, by the Holy Communion, this is too much; a pardon for the destroyer of Magdalene of France--for this daughter of a Douglas, and sought in this tower of Falkland, the very chamber where her sire the Lord John of Ashkirk, and her grandsire Sir Archibald of Kilspindie, detained me once a prisoner, with a guard of some five hundred Douglases, from whose surveillance I had to fly like a thief in the night! Lord cardinal, it is impossible."
It was seldom that James refused him a favour, and his eminence was piqued.
"There is but one day now, and I beseech your majesty to consider well."
"I have considered well. The Countess of Arran and I talked over the matter for three hours yesterday."
"The Countess of Arran!" muttered the cardinal; "women--women! there is ever mischief where they are concerned. It would have been well had they been altogether omitted in the great plan of human society."
"And to lessen this evil to the public thou keepest a dozen of them shut up in the tower at Creich, all fair and jolly damosels," said the king, with something of his old raillery; "truly, lord cardinal, my subjects of Fife are much indebted to thee."
"I assure your majesty," said the cardinal, with increasing pique, "that to the best of my knowledge the whole trial and accusation hath been the prompting of revenge in Sir Adam Otterburn of Redhall."
"Of my lord advocate? Impossible! why, the man is virtuous as Scipio, and upright as Brutus."
"But in their excessive zeal, the judges have wrongly construed the depositions. I implore you to reflect; her death will make an irreparable breach between the races of Stuart and Douglas. War alone will not make a monarch illustrious. The splendour of valour and chivalry dazzles for a time; but a noble action lives in the memory of the people for ever."
"True; but beware, lest I deem thee a follower of Angus."
"I follow a Master who is greater than all the princes of the earth," replied the stately prelate, warming; "and the opinions of the poor worms that crawl on its surface are nothing to me."
"Is this the fag-end of some old sermon?"
"Sire, thou mockest me, and I have not deserved it of thee," said the cardinal, rising with dignity; "but let not the ambassadors of foreign princes see thy weakness, and how thou carriest thy vengeance even against a helpless woman. Was it for such an act as this, that Francis the Magnanimous sent thee the collar of St. Michael; that the great Emperor Charles, the victor of sixty battles, sent thee the Golden Fleece; and English Henry, his noble Order of the Garter? I trow not. Glory and virtue cannot exist without mercy--the first is but the shadow of the other two. In this case, close thy heart against hatred, and thou wilt soon become merciful, even to these hated Setons and Douglases. Sire, sire, to thy many good actions add but this one more."
"Cardinal, thou pleadest well; but sayest nothing of my gallant Vipont, my comrade in many a hairbrained French adventure. I would have given my best horse and hound--even Bawtie, to have seen him confronting Abbot Mylne and his fourteen black caps! But the sorceries, the vile sorceries of his lady----"
"Are about as true as the miracles of Mahomet."
"How! Did she not confess them to the whole bench?"
"True," replied the cardinal, with a smile; "when her tender limbs were being rent asunder by the rack."
"The rack! the rack! Oh, was it only on the rack she confessed these things?"
"As thou, sire, or I would have done, under similar circumstances."
The king seemed thunderstruck.
"A pen! a pen! though a Seton, and a Douglas's daughter, too, I forgive her--she is saved."
A few hours after this, when the sun was setting on the East Lomond, Lewis Leslie of Balquhan, mounted on a fleet horse, with the pardon, signed, sealed, and secured in a pouch that hung at his waist-belt, was galloping through the parks of Falkland, on his way to the capital.
