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DUNFERMLINE – BORN

PRINCE &

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DUNFERMLINE – BORN

PRINCE & PRINCESSES

BY

J. B. MACKIE, F.J.I.,

Author of

“Life and Work of Duncan McLaren.” “Modern Journalism.” “Margaret Queen and Saint.” &

Dunfermline;

DUNFERMLINE Journal Printing Works.

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RUINS OF THE CHOIR, AULD KIRK, & DUNFERMLINE.

CIRCA A.D. 1570.

(From Old Sketches and Plans.)

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PREFACE.

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These Sketches were written for the Dunfermline Journal for the purpose of quickening local interest and pride in the history of the ancient city. They are now published in book form in the hope that they may prove not an unwelcome addition to the historical memorials cherished by lovers of Dunfermline at home and abroad, and be found helpful to the increasing number of visitors, attracted by the fame of the city, so greatly enhanced within recent years by than princely benefactors of one of its devoted sons.

J. B. M.

Dunfermline, November, 1910.

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Contents.

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Chapter 1. - The Children of the Tower. Page 6

II. Edgar the Peaceable. 11

III. Alexander the Fierce. 15

IV. David “the Sair Sanct.” 23

V. Queen . 29

VI. Prince and the Empress 35 Matilda.

VII. Mary of Boulogne and her Daughter. 40

VIII. James I. 45

IX Elizabeth of Bohemia, “Queen of Hearts.” 54

X Charles I. 61

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DUNFERMLINE BORN

PRINCES AND PRINCESSES .

CHAPTER 1

THE BIRTHPLAE OF ROYALTY – MALCOLM AND MARGARET’S FAMILY.

Dunfermline has frequently been spoken and written about as a burial place of Scottish Royalty. In the eleventh century the centre of ecclesiastical power transferred from Iona to Dunfermline, after the Culdee leadership had been overpowered by the authority of the Roman Church, and Malcolm and Queen Margaret had made the seat of their Court the leading centre of religious worship. The fame of Malcolm and the sanctity of Margaret. The founders of the Abbey, prolonged its prestige; and the splendid fane, the peculiar sacredness of whole attraction felt and acknowledged, continued to be recognized and used as a fitting burial place of Royalty, until the removal of the Court to consequent on the succession of James VI to the Throne of . Dunfermline, however, is quite as much entitled to distinction as the birth place of Royalty. Here were born, there is reason to believe,

COMPOSITION VIEW OF MALCOLM’S TOWER By J. Baine, C.E., , 1790. 7

Duncan, the son of Malcolm Canmore by his first wife, Ingiborg; the six sons and two daughters of Malcolm and Margaret – “children of Dunfermline,” as an old author described them; David, son of King Robert the Bruce; James I of , the son of Robert III and of Queen Annabella Drummond; Elizabeth, daughter of James VI who because Queen of Bohemia and foundress of the Hanoverian House; Charles I the unhappy successor of the first Sovereign of the , and his younger brother, Robert, who lived only a few weeks. Most of the Royal Families of can claim an ancestral connection with Dunfermline –born and Princesses. As long ago as 820 years or so, what is now the priceless heritage of the people of Dunfermline, formed the home and the playground of Royal children. The means of enjoyment provided for them must have been few and rude compared with those brought within the reach of the boys and girls of the ancient city in these days, by the splendid benefactions of Dunfermline’s devoted and most famous son, Mr . Their playground must have been limited and not quite free from peril in the thick wood, or on the side of the precipitous ravine, or as they attempted to cross the unbridged streams, which, in times of spate at all events, must have “raged like the for its prey.” Nor is it likely their companionship were mainly or particularly acceptable. In all probability, they saw more solemn-faced monks, given to fasting and penance, than happy sportive children of their own age. The boy princes may have had true and kindly friends among the Royal retinue, who were loyal to their father and who found delight in training them in hunting and military exercises. Yet not unlikely among those men-at-arms and other servants were some who resented their mother’s reforming and civilizing ways, who cherished a native antipathy to the half-Saxon children, and who regarded their elder brother Duncan, the son of Malcolm’s first wife, Ingiborg, the widow of Thorfinn, of , as the rightful and, as a pure-born Northerner, the more desirable heir- apparent. Possibly their sharp eyes and ears made them aware of the existence of contention between the representatives of the Celtic and Roman Churches, and they may have noticed and heard things which in after years enabled them to understand more readily, and to regard with more sympathy, the patriotic sentiments which made their father’s chiefs and men, and their sons prefer the Culdee to the Roman worship, and distrust the changes wrought by 8 the influence of Saxon civilization fostered by the King and the Queen. Whatever may have been the relations of the young Princes and Princesses with the members of the Court, with the clergy, and with the warriors, and whatever effect these associations may have had on their training and their character, the predominating influence was certainly that of their saintly mother. No one can doubt that in the midst of her exacting devotions as an intensely religious woman, conscious of her responsibility to God, she forgot or minimized her duties to her children. The family life must have been sweetening and refining. It was beautified by the ceaselessly enriching of father and mother, closely knit together by mutual faith and aim; by the conscientious discharge of daily duties of beneficence; by the cultivation of the taste for the things that are lovely, in all forms of Court Service. The moral atmosphere was pure and exhilarating. In Dunfermline , if anywhere, about the close of the eleventh century, Princes and Princesses were reared “in the nurture and admonition of the .” Judging from a story which tells of a temporary banishment of th two daughters for some fault – or possibly for protection against suspected momentary temptation or danger – to the gloomy Campbell, near Dollar, with the streams of Grief and Care flowing around it and uniting in Doulour – the family discipline cannot have been over-indulgent. Strenuous studies, fitted to make the sons skilled in all knightly accomplishments of the time while as learned as churchmen and the daughters adepts in needlework and all the feminine graces most appreciated in courtly life, must have been maintained. Malcolm and Margaret took care that their children should be taught that life is earnest and real, with Heaven and not the grave as its goal; and tough their sons and daughters were not in their future life exempted from peril and trial, the fruits of their wise, pious training and of their learned studies were in due time abundantly displayed in rich blessings or themselves and for Scotland – and for England, too. “Never,” says William , in his of David and in his reference to him and his predecessors, Alexander and Edgar – “Never have we been told among the events of history of three , and at the same time brothers, who were of holiness so great, and savoured so much of the nectar of their mother’s godliness. For, besides their feeding sparingly, their plentiful alms-giving, their zeal in prayer, they so thoroughly subdued the vice that haunts kings’ houses that never was it said that any but their lawful wives came to their bed, or that any of them had shocked modesty by wenching.” 9

But presently “afflictions heaviest shower” was to descend upon the happy family, and “sorrows keenest wind” was to scourge and blight them. A gloom, tenfold darker and more dreadful than that of , suddenly enshrouded them. In a few short weeks they lost father and mother, eldest brother, and home. Malcolm was treacherously slain by Percy at Alnwick; Edward, the pride and hope of both parents, fell in a vain attempt to avenge his father’s death; Margaret, three days later, expired at Edinburgh; Donald Bane, the paternal uncle, supported by the chiefs and churchmen, who did not like the Saxon ways or the Roman worship, usurped the throne; and Edgar, Ethelred, Alexander, and David were with the aid of faithful family friends, removed to England – not to join their sisters, who had been previously remove thither to have their education completed by their Aunt Christian, a at , but to be secreted in different parts by their Uncle Edgar, who distrusted the friendship of William Rufus, who had succeeded on the English throne. That he had cause for this suspicion was shown by the favour Rufus showed about this time to Duncan, the elder half-brother of Margaret’s sons. Duncan had joined the Court of Rufus, who, recognising that he had nothing to gain but possibly a good deal to fear from Donald Bane, treated the eldest son of Malcolm as the rightful heir to his father’s throne, dubbed him a , and encouraged a number of English and Norman adventurers to volunteer for service under the claimant. The motive of Rufus was evidently a desire to gain authority over Scotland, by using Duncan as his agent or tool, for he required the Scottish Prince to do him before he provided him with any assistance. Duncan’s expedition proved successful. Donald Bane was defeated and dethroned after a reign of six months, in 1094. The new King, however, did not long enjoy his sovereignty. After he had been monarch for eighteen months or so, he fell a victim of a revolt organized by Edmund, a son of Malcolm and Margaret, who had remained in Scotland after the flight of his brothers, and had made with Donald Bane. At the instigation of

RUINS OF KING MALCOLM’S TOWER 10

Edmund and Donald, Malpedi, the Mormaer of the Mearns, slew Duncan by treachery, and the uncle was enabled to resume the sovereignty. In later years David I referred to Duncan in his charters as “frater meus,” and King James II in his Confirmation Charter to the Abbey in 1450, describes the unfortunate Prince as “King Duncan.” Evidently he was regarded by the sons of Margaret as less of a usurper and less of an enemy than their Uncle Donald. Edmund is described as “the only degenerate son of Malcolm.” There is some indication that he gave his father some trouble, and was subjected to disciplinary correction by Malcolm. After his father’s death his fortunes became separate from those of the rest of Margaret’s children, if they were not during the lifetime of his parents. After the black week in 1093, which witnessed the death of King, Queen, and Heir-Apparent, he seems to have thought that the easiest and safest course for him to follow was to accept the sovereignty of his Uncle, Donald Bane. Contradictory stories are told about his latter end. The most pleasing is that he repented of his wrong-doing, became a holy man, and devout in God’s service, after his death, was buried in Montacute in England.” Presently, however, the historian gives another version, quoted from : - “Of the sons of the King (Malcolm) and Margaret, Edmund was the only one who fell away from goodness. Partaking of his Uncle Donald’s wickedness, he was privy to his brother Duncan’s death, having, forsooth, bargained with his uncle for half the kingdom. But being taken and kept in fetters for ever, he sincerely repented, and when at death’s door he bade them bury him in his chains, confessing that he was worthily punished for the crime of fratricide.”

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CHAPTER II

EDGAR, THE PEACABLE .

King Edgar was born in 1072, and he died in 1107. He was named after his Saxon uncle, Edgar Atheling, the brother of Queen Margaret, who, after his sister’s marriage to Malcolm Canmore, returned to England under the protection of William the Conqueror. He was 21 years of age when the series of crushing misfortunes already described befell his house, and when he and his two brothrs – Alexander 6 years and David 12 years his junior – sought refuge in England. After a five years; exile he was induced to undertake an expedition to Scotland for the assertion of his claims as the rightful heir to the Scottish throne. All the conditions were favorable. His elder half-brother, Duncan, was dead. Donald Bane, his usurping uncle, was in trouble – out of favour with a large section of his subjects, who had been disappointed by internecine wars, and seriously distracted by an incursion of Norsemen, who were harrying the northern and western coasts. Rufus, King of England, who had formerly befriended Duncan against Donald Bane, regarded with more favour a claimant to the Scottish throne who was half Saxon than a Celtic king, who represented the elements most antagonistic to England. Edgar Atheling was also

QUEEN MARGARET CAVE ORATORY.

From Baine’s view of 1790. 12

ready to assist his namesake. Hence the fugitive of a few years previously found himself supported by a considerable and fairly well equipped army. As a son of Queen Margaret, faithfully to the principles and devoted to the religion of his saintly mother, he had still further encouragement. A spiritual counselor, according to a legend similar to that narrated regarding he invincible Cid of and many other warriors, came to his aid. At Durham, which his father had founded and enriched, Saint Cuthbert appeared to him and, quietening all his apprehension gave him assurance of success, saying: - “When thou shalt have taken my standard with thee from the of Durham and set it up against thine adversaries, I shall up and help thee; and they foes shall be scattered and those that hate thee shall flee before thy face.” The legendary account of the expedition is an ample and detailed vindication of the promise of the vision. The story is told that the troops were greatly encouraged by it, just as the Song of Roland inspirited the forces of William the Conqueror before the battle of Hastings. When the armies met the standard of St Cuthbert was raised, and thereupon Robert, the son of the famous Godwin – as stout-hearted and confident as David when he confronted Goliath – and other two “charged the enemy and slew their mightiest, who stood out like champions in front of the battle. So before the armies had neared one another, Donald and is men were put to flight, and thus, by the favour of God and the merits of St Cuthbert, Edgar happily achieved a bloodless victory.” Setting aside the legend and following soberer, though somewhat vague and partial, history, we find that Edgar had little difficulty in overmastering his paternal uncle, who evidently had few powerful friend left him. Donald Bane was taken prisoner and blinded and so incapacitate from giving any further trouble. This stern punishment was possibly inflicted in retaliation for the daring cruelty of Donald, who, when his young nephew sent to him, and offer to give him great lands and possessions if he would peacefully give up the throne, put Edgar’s messengers in prison and then cut of their heads. Edgar was peacefully crowned at Scone; and in the days of his power and prosperity he made recognition of the Church and Saint by whom his expedition had been blessed and assisted. He bestowed on the monks of Durham in perpetuity the estate of Coldingham “with all the pertinents therof.” Other generous benefactions to the Church followed, until his hand was stayed by the ingratitude and infidelity of Ranulph, he of Durham. After King Edgar had bestowed on 13 this ecclesiastic the of Berwick, the Bishop instigated an attack on Robert, the son of Godwin, when this helpful ally was building a castle on an estate given to him in recognition of his bravery and devotion. The king not only compelled the Durham to surrender Robert, whom they had taken prisoner, but he cancelled his gift to Bishop Ranulph. Robert was brought back to his Scottish possessons and treated with great respect by the King, who followed the policy of his father and mother in encouraging the settlement of Saxons and in his realms. Edgar had a happy and peaceful reign of fully nine years. When the Norsemen, under Magnus, renewed their incursions, he made a treaty with him, recognising the Norwegian sovereignty over the Orkneys and the Hebrides and other western islands down to Cantyre – a supremacy which was maintained until the . To an Irish King, Murcertach, he showed princely courtesy by giving him a camel, a rare possession in those days. The marriage of his sister, Matilda, to Henry I and the friendly disposition of that monarch to the family of his accomplished and devoted wife, ensured peace with England. It was obviously with the view of assuring the continuance of this peace that, on his deathbed, he bequeathed to his young brother David. Cumbria, he recognize, as held by him, was in some sense under the English sovereign, and probably he feared that the more impetuous Alexander, who heired the Scottish throne, might raise objections regarding the paying of homage and so cause strife. During his reign Scotland enjoyed the great and much-needed blessing of peace. The first of the Kings who united Celtic and Saxon blood, he did not a little to solidify the nation and to strengthen its advances in the path of progress and civilization. He died unmarried at Dundee on 8th January, 1107, in the 33rd year of his age, and he was buried before the High Altar in Dunfermline Church.

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Wynton’s ryming record is in these terms:-

Of Edgar, our nobil King, The days with honoure tak endying, Be-north Tay in-til Dunde, Ty’l God, the Spryte, than yald he, And in the Kyrk of Dunfermlyne Solemnly he as entery’d syne.

Ailreid of Rievaux wrote of Edgar as “a sweet-tempered and amicable man, like his kinsman Edward, the Confessor, in all respects, who exercised no tyranny or avarice towards his people, but ruling them with the greatest charity and benevolence.”

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CHAPTER III

ALEXANDER THE FIERCE.

Perhaps Dunfermline owes quite as much to Alexander the First as to Malcolm and Margaret. It as he who completed the church which his parents had founded; who established the Monastry; who made Dunfermline the chief centre of religious worship in Scotland; and who proclaimed he town a Royal . The thus describes his character:-

“The King was a lettered and godly man; very humble and amicable to wards the clerics and regulars, but terrible beyond measure to the rest of his subjects; a man of large heart, exerting himself in all things beyond his strength. He was most zealous in building churches, in searching for relics of saints, in providing and arranging priestly vestments and sacred books; most open-handed, even beyond his means, to all newcomers; and so devoted to the poor that he seemed to delight in nothing so much as in supporting them, washing, nourishing, and clothing them.”

INCH COLME ABBEY & MONASTERY

From the East.

INCHCOME ABBEY

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In other words, he combined the refinement and piety of his mother with the vigour and patriotism of his father; and the happy association of these virtues in his character made him a good and a successful . Alexander was born in 1078. The maternal influence was earliest brought into play, and, founded on religious faith and a high sense of duty, it dominated his conduct throughout his varied life, with its alternations of fortune, with its hardships and perils, its successful achievements and happy experiences. The fourth son of Malcolm and Margaret, named after Alexander, he was too young to accompany his father in his border forays and his English wars. Hence, as in the case of so many men who have won for themselves enduring places in the Temple of Fame, he was in his boyhood, and when his mind and heart were most impressionable, the close associate of a wise and pious mother, from whom he learned the nobler ideals of life inspired and developed by the religious sense. Little or noting is recorded of him during his four or five years exile in England during the troubled reigns of his paternal uncle, Donald Bane, and his half-brother Duncan II or even during the nine years of the reign of his brother Edgar. It is believed that he accompanied Edgar on his return to Scotland in 1098, and that he was present at Durham Cathedral when the corpse of St Cuthbert, whose protection had been assured to his brother when he crossed the Borer to claim the , was shown by the monks as a rebuke to the incredulous. Presumably, therefore, the religious faith and feeling cultivated by his saintly mother continued to a mould his character during the nine years he stood in the relation of Heir-Apparent to his elder brother, and helped him to maintain an unswerving devotion to the reigning Sovereign at a time when, in all probability, not a little latent hostility was in operation, and intrigue was active. Fidelity to his mother’s teaching and fraternal and family loyalty were not the result of either effeminacy or incapacity. When, after his succession to the throne in 1107, he found that most of he Lothians and the Border lands, with Strathclyde and Cumbria, had been assigned by Edgar on his deathbed to his younger brother David as a practically independent Earl, he made a manly struggle for the maintenance of the unity of he kingdom. The Norman Barons, however, took the part of David, and made such a display of their power and resolution as commended to Alexander the discretion which is the better part of valour. Possibly, too, the King was easily persuaded he had little to fear from restless ambition or disloyalty on the part of his younger brothers. So the fatricidal and internal strife was abandoned; the brothers settled their differences in an amicable 17 way; and Alexander, early recognising that peace was the greatest interest of the country, alike for the northern and southern parts, entered into friendly relations with , who had married his sister Matilda. It is not at all unlikely that the influence of the good and faithful wife and sister helped the two Sovereigns to appreciate the value of peace; and the friendship, which was maintained during the closing years of the reign of Beauclerc, secured for the southern portion of the Scottish kingdom a better protection than even the buffer state which it is believe Edgar sought to create when he assigned the borderland and Cumbria to his younger brother David as a practically independent province. Another pledge of goodwill and peace between the Sovereigns and the two Kingdoms was given in the marriage of Alexander and of Sibylla, a naturl daughter of the English ruler. Thus as laid early in the twelfth century the foundation of the fusion which, after centuries of foolish and wasting conflict, led to the of th United Kingdom under one Sovereign, enjoying ever-increasing loyalty, on both sides of the Tweed or of the Humber. This happy assurance of peace in his southern frontier gave Alexander the means of promoting another fusion indispensable to the unity of Scotland. The antagonism between the Lowlanders and Highlanders was already active. Just as in a later age, the Highlanders favoured a Stuart King and displayed a passionate devotion to Jacobinism, so in the time of Alexander I, the preferred a ruler of purely Celtic blood. The sympathisers with the claims of Donald Bane and of Duncan had not yet died out; and their resentment was increased by King Alexander’s adherence to the policy of his parents and of his brother Edgar, in encouraging settlers from England, and more especially in setting aside the old Culdee form of worship to make way for a diocesan episcopacy after the Roman or Anglican . Aware of this unfriendly feeling, Alexander set himself to “mak siccar” of his northern . While maintaining Edinburgh and Dunfermline as his chief seats of government, he lived also a good deal at Invergowrie, Perth, scone, and . He wished to become better acquainted with the clans, so that he might strengthen his authority over them, and teach them to be orderly and peaceable subjects. For much lawlessness prevailed in these remote regions. Many of the chiefs were little better than robbers, who plundered as they had opportunity and made almost constant war with each other. No surprise can be felt that by such people his presence and assiduous efforts to enforce respect for law and justice were not welcomed, or that his personal investigation led to discoveries that quickened his 18 sense of the need for radical reform. A story is told of an appeal to the knightly chivalry of the King, which reflects the spirit of the reaching of ’s Faery Queen and Tennyson’s Idylls and of many of the beautiful stories of romance and exemplify and encourage the defence of purity and the championship of the oppressed and distressed. When returning from one of his punitive expeditions, Alexander was met by a whose appearance and attire gave evidence of rough usage. She told him that the lord of Mearns had slain her husband and her son and had robbed her of all she possessed. The irate, generous-hearted King took an oath that he would never rest until he saw justice done upon the miscreant. At one he led his followers in quest of the offender, whom, when he found, he hanged for his wrong-doing. The man evidently had friends who wished to avenge his death, and who, having probably committed depredations quite as wicked, feared that the scourging hand of the King might soon reach them. In their vindictive lawlessness they plotted the death of their Sovereign, just as in a later day did the resentful and audacious nobles during the reign of James I, of Scotland – also a Dunfermline-born Prince. With the connivance of one of the Royal servants they obtained entrance into the King’s bedchamber on a dark night. Alexander, having been aroused from his sleep, sprang from his bed and seizing his sword, killed the traitor and six of his assailants – achieving a victory even more notable than that of King Robert the Bruce when he was treacherously set upon by the one-eyed villain and his two doughty rascal sons. This attempt on his life and the proofs he obtained from the prisoners taken in the melee when his men came to his rescue, roused the martial instincts Alexander had inherited from his father. He quickly marshalled his army, and, putting himself at the head of his troops, made forced marches in pursuit of the rebels. At last he came in sight of their encampment on the opposite side of a river from that by which he had approached. The enemy evidently thought they were secure, or at least not in danger of immediate attack. With hot impetuosity, however, Alexander ordered that the stream should be at once forded; and the fearless gallantry shown by King and soldiers struck the Celtic force with dismay. After a brief struggle, the rebels were utterly defeated; and King Alexander had no further experience of civil war. He was recognized as a King indeed, and his writ ran unchallenged throughout the land. It was on account of the vigour and determination with which he master and stamped out the embers of this revolt, as well as by the promptitude and severity with which he punished all wrong-doing, and especially the oppressors of the poor, that he as given he name of Alexander the Fierce. The same 19 story is briefly but graphically told by David Chalmers: - “He was ane gritt punisher of malefactors and evil-doers. He dontonit Murray and Ross that had rebellit, and caused hang the lord of Mernis, brother and son, because they took away the guids of ane puir wyffe.” The King had, however, other troubles to confront much more perplexing than civil war. They were born of zeal for the church, or, rather, let us say, for the religious well-being of his people. In full sympathy with the religious views and aims of his mother, and anxious to substitute for the old and rude Culdee system, which had become degenerate in its character, a more cultured, more ornate, and more orderly form of worship, Alexander entered into friendly consultation with Anselm, the learned and devoted of Canterbury. When he asked from the pious churchman prayers for the soul of his brother Edgar, he was in turn requested to extend his civil protection to the monks, who had been sent to Scotland during the previous reign. Not only did Alexander provide them with protection, but he took and important step towards the establishment of a diocesan episcopacy, such as his mother had desired. On the death of Fothad, the last Celtic Bishop, he appointed to the See of Turgot, the of Durham, and formerly the Confessor of Queen Margaret. A dispute between the of Canterbury and of York as to their respective claims, delayed for some time the consecration ceremony; but at last a compromise was affected, by which the ceremony was performed by York with a salvo as a tribute to the authority of Canterbury. The settlement, however, did not prove quite happy. Misunderstandings and disputes rose between the King and the imported Archbishop, who on his part seemed disinclined to subordinate his to York. Disheartened by these controversies and conscious of failing health, Turgot abandoned his post and returned to Durham, where he died in 1115. Meantime, Alexander, as a Scottish King and an earnest promoter of the faith, continued the work of the church he had founded at Scone, to which he was attracted as the old set of the Scottish and Pictish kings, he brought of St Augustine from the church of Saint Oswald, near Pontefract. Simultaneously with the conversion of the Celtic Mormaers into Comites or of counties for the supervision of the secular affairs of the country, he introduced for the direction of church life and service. Thus, under his inspiration and guidance, the feudalizing of civil government and the promotion of diocesan episcopacy went on pari passu with a patriotic as well as a religious aim on the part of the reforming Sovereign, in whose reign Sheriffs or their equivalents and the use of coins first 20 made their appearance. On Gregory, the Bishop of and Cormac, , he conferred the right to hold Courts, and thus encouraged, wittingly or unwittingly, the growth of a sentiment making for independence in religious as in civil life – a sentiment which in time led Robert Bruce, though in his later days an ardently religious man, to deny the authority of the Pope of unless he recognized the national independence of Scotland, finally achieved at Bannockburn, and which at a later date gave birth and force to the most of the Protestant movements. After the foundation of the Scone church, to the dedication of which, says the Scotichronicon, “nearly the whole kingdom flocked,” Alexander applied not to the , but to Ralph, the successor of Anselm in the See of Canterbury, for a new Archbishop for St Andrews. One of his ambassadors to Canterbury on the occasion was Peter, Prior of Dunfermline. With the consent of Henry I Ralph appointed , the learned biographer of Anselm and deeply imbued with his liberal Christian spirit. Presently the old controversy between Canterbury and York was revived. The of Alexander as a Scottish King, who plainly thought the Church should be the servant not the mistress of the State, was marked by no little astuteness as well as patriotism. First of all, he claimed that the should be consecrated either by the Pope of Rome or by the ; and he maintained his ground although the claim of York was supported by Pope Calixtus II. As the controversy developed, Alexander let it be known that though he was willing to accept consecration for his Archbishop from Canterbury, he did not mean to let his Church be subordinated to any English See; and because this view was repudiated he on the day after the election continued the local monk who had administered the affairs during the vacancy, in possession of the lands dedicated to the maintenance of the See. A compromise was again resorted to for the purpose of protecting or asserting if not unifying the claims of State and Church. Eadmer agreed to accept the ring of investiture from the Scottish King as a temporal or secular head, but to take the staff, and symbol of the pastoral office, from the altar as from the hand of God. This patch-work of diplomacy did not, however, last long. Eadmer, feeling his position as a churchman impossible, surrendered the ring to the King, replaced the staff on the altar, and returned to Canterbury – because, according to Alexander, he would not conform to the customs of the country, but according to himself, because he would not yield to the claims of the temporal power. The perplexed and baffled Eadmer received a great deal of contradictory advice, but though he earnestly sought a way of escape from the impasse he failed 21 to find deliverance from the great dilemma of his life. The Pope told him to go to York for consecration. The archbishop of Canterbury advised that he should remain with him till Alexander yielded. One counselor recommended he should go direct to Rome for consecration, or for some advice backed by direct authority of the supreme Pontiff. Another advised him to go back to St Andrews and submit to the conditions of the Scottish King. This last counsel he was persuaded to accept, but when he communicated his purpose to Alexander, His Majesty, distrusting the English churchmen and becoming confirmed in his determination to uphold the nations independence and the royal authority in church government, declined the offer. On the death of Eadmer in 1124 Robert, Prior of Scone, was nominated Archbishop, but the difficulty regarding his consecration was left unsettled at the death of Alexander in the following year. Notwithstanding this keen controversy with the churchmen, King Alexander and his Consort, Queen Sibylla, proved constant liberal friends of the Church. Sibylla bequeathed to the Church of the Holy Trinity at Dunfermline, which her husband had completed, the lands of Beath and of Clunie. Dr Henderson, in his Annals of Dunfermline, suggests tht the day on which the complete Church and Monastery were opened for worship by solemn dedication also witnessed the reinterment of the body f King Malcolm, brought from Tynemouth by consent of the English King, in the presence, it was believed, of three sons of he deceased Sovereign, viz., Alexander, David, and Ethelrede, then Earl of as well as of Dunblane. On this as on other occasions Alexander enriched the Dunfermline Church with valuable gifts. St Andrews and Scone also received liberally at his hand. In Wyntoun’s rhyming description of the ceremony observed at the bestowal of the St Andrews benefaction occur these lines:

“Before the lordys all, the kyng Gert then to the awtare bring His cumly sted off Araby Sadelyd and brydelyd costlykly. With hys armourys of Turky That princys than oysid generally And chesyd maist for thare delyte With sheld and spear of silver quhyt Wyth the regale and all the lave That to the kirk tht time he gave.”

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Alexander’s possession of an Arab steed and Turkish armour suggests a crusade equipment, but there is no record of the Scottish King’s participation in the grand crusade successfully led by the kinsmen of his sister Mary, the gallant Godfrey de Bouillon, and in which his uncle, Edgar, and Robert of took part. Another illustration of his religious devotion calls for notice. He as the founder of a monastery on the island of Inchcolm in the of Forth, nearly opposite and Donibristle. According to the Scotichronicon, Alexander about the year 1123, having been overtaken by a storm when attempting to cross the Forth, made pious vows as he offered earnest prayers for deliverance. Presently he found his boat driven safely on to Inchcolm, where he met a Columba hermit, who entertained him and his retinue for three days until the storm subsided. As a thank-offering the King founded a monastry as a fitting home for pious churchmen. Dr Ross, in his careful and interesting work on Aberdour and Inchcolm, reproduces from the early chronicles the story of the foundation of the monastry as preserved by the monks, with the accompanying rhyming translation:

“M, C, ter I, bis et X, literis a tempore Christi Emon, tunc, a Alexandro fundata fuisti, Scotorum primo, structorem Canonicorum, Transferat ex ymo Deus, hunc ad astra polorum.”

“An M and C, three I’s and X’s two, These letters keep the year of Christ in view. When Alexander First gave Emon’s isle His kingly gift, a rich monastic pile. May God translate the noble founder’s soul To regions high above the starry pole.”

Alexander died at Stirling in the 48th year of his age on the 27th of April 1124, after a reign of seventeen years and three months, and having left no issue, he was succeeded in the Sovereignty by his brother David. He was interred before the High Altar of Dunfermline Church, where nine years before he had buried his father Malcolm.

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23

CHAPTER IV.

DAVID THE SAIR SANCT.

It was another Dunfermline-born king who first applied this designation to the good King David. When in 1426 James I visited Dunfermline he remarked, on being shown the tomb of his illustrious predecessor in the Abbey. “David wes ane soir sanct for the .” David was forty-four years old when he ascended the throne. He had been early marked out for sovereignty. When his brothers, King Edgar, was on his death-bed, he showed his special affection for, and confidence in, David, then 27 years of age, by assigning to him the administration of Cumbria, of which he recognized the King of England as in some measure overlord or suzerain. The wise and loving Edgar evidently desired that David should have some experience of affairs as heir-apparent of his elder brother Alexander. There were two other brothers older than David, but, as already seen, Edmund had forfeited his rights and Ethelrede had been dedicated to the service of the Church. This latter Prince, however, was more than an ecclesiastic. He was as well as Abbot of Dunkeld. In the “Admore Charter” he is described as “vir venerandæ memoriæ Abbas de Dunkelden et insuper comes de Fyfe.” Moreover, he had given proof of the vigorous and manly qualities that fit for the direction of secular or mundane affairs. Possibly he accompanied his father Malcolm and his brother Edward in their last and disastrous expedition to England. Certainly he was the bearer of the sad news to his dying mother at Edinburgh, and it was under his leadership tht the body of Margaret as safely removed from the Castle to Queensferry when Donald Bane was watching the stronghold with his followers. Seven years, however, before David’s accession, Ethelrede had passed to his final rest, and his mortal remains had been laid beside those of his mother and of his brother Edward before the Altar of the Holy Cross in Dunfermline. No rival claimant, therefore, opposed the succession of David on the death of Alexander in 1124. As Prince of Cumbria David proved a just and efficient ruler. Friendship between Alexander and him was easily maintained, because both were inspired by kindred political and religious motives. His conscientiousness and liberality were equally displayed in the inquisition he caused to be made “by the elders and wise men of Cumbria in 1121 regarding the lands belonging to the See of Glasgow with a view to their ; and while by this and other means he 24 befriended and enriched Glasgow to which he had secured the appointment of his tutor, John, in 1115, he founded a Benedictine Abbey at Selkirk and a Monastery of canons of Augustine at Jedburgh. He had other training for kingly service besides his supervision of the province of Cumbria. He was evidently a brother of his sister Matilda, who had married Henry I and having won the confidence and affection of Beauclerc, the fine scholar, he spent a considerable part of his early manhood at the English Court. There he married Matilda, the daughter and heiress of Waldeof, Earl of Huntingdon and Judith, who was the niece of the first King William, and through her became the Earl of Huntingdon. In England he made many friends among the Saxon and Norman noblemen, and in the cultured society of Henry’s Court his manners says an English writer, “were polished from the rust of Scottish barbarity.” He showed no excessive haste to return to Scotland after he had been declared King. He was content to leave the administration of the affairs of his kingdom to the Constable of Scotland, the holder of an office that had been created by Alexander. When with the good-will and lively hope of his subjects he began the personal discharge of his kingly duties, he was confronted with a revival of the old difficulty respecting the consecration of the Bishop of St Andrews. His attitude on this subject was similar to that which his brother Alexander maintained; but while watchful and resolute in upholding the independence of the Scottish Church, he sedulously sought a pacific arrangement. A Council held at Roxburgh in 1125 by Cardinal John of Crema, as legate of the Pope, proved abortive; but three years afterwards, , Archbishop of York, a friend of the King and at the same time a loyal churchman, consecrated Robert, Bishop of St Andrews, “for the love of God and of King David” under the reservation of the claims of York and of the rights of St Andrews, without receiving the usual promise of obedience from a suffragan to his metropolitan. Notwithstanding his eminently peaceful disposition, King David became embroiled in Border and English wars almost to as great an extent as his father Malcolm. The strife was not pleasant to him; but family partiality and his view of the sacredness of an oath compelled him to engage in war. When the friend of his youth and early manhood, Henry I of England, and his loved sister Matilda lost their son, the Prince William, who was drowned when crossing the , the able and powerful English Sovereign made his nobles pledge themselves to accept his daughter Matilda as Queen after his death. As the Earl of Huntingdon, and therefore an English nobleman 25 as well as King of Scotland, David took the oath. Some time after the death of their royal master, the English nobles set aside Matilda and made Stephen, her cousin and her father’s nephew, King. David, in devotion to his niece and in fidelity to his oath felt bound to interfere, and at the head of a large army he marched into England. If he had been able to maintain discipline among his forces, he would probably have met with a great deal of sympathy as the of the dethroned Queen Matilda. Many of his soldiers, unfortunately, were lawless, half-savage warriors from the far north, and they, with “the wild men of Galloway,” acted as reckless and merciless freebooters. Their ravages and cruelties roused the angry resentment of the barons and knights of the North of England and in self-defence more perhaps than from ardent devotion to the cause of Stephen, they assembled a comparatively small but well-equipped army. Thurstan, the archbishop, David’s old churchman friend, ws sent to remonstrate with the Scottish King, but he found himself unable to restrain the pillaging horde with him, and then Thurstan, joining the English troops at Northallerton in , unfurled the banners of Saint Cuthbert of Durham (whose protection Edgar had obtained when he went to claim his kingdom from Donald Bane), Saint Peter of York, Saint John of , and Saint Wilfred of . Two Norman knights, Robert de Bruce and Bernard de Balliol, friends and vassals of David as Prince of Cumbria, next came from the English camp for the purpose of inducing David to recall the depredators from Yorkshire. “Do not drive brave men to despair,” said Bruce, the grandfather of the hero of Scottish independence at a later date. “My dearest master, you have been my friend and companion I have been young with you and grown old in your service. It wrings my heart to think that you have been defeated and that in an unjust war.” David would have accepted this advice if he could, but one of the Galloway men passionately interposed, and denounced Bruce as a traitor who had broken his oath to his King. Reconciliation was found to be impossible, and battle was prepared for. The English swore to fight to the death for their holy standards. The invaders, defiant alike of religious authority and of military discipline, rushed headlong to the fray shouting “Scotland for ever.” I who wear no armour,” boastfully declared the chief of the Galwegians, “will go as far this day as any one with breastplate of mail.” “His men,” writes Green, “charged with wild shouts of ‘Albin, Albin,’ and were followed by the Norman knighthood of the Lowlands. The rout, however, was complete; the fierce hordes dashed in vain against the clos English ranks around he standard, and the whole army fled in confusion to .” According to another account, victory was almost achieved 26 for the scots, chiefly brought the prowess of David’s eldest son, Prince Henry, named after his uncle, Henry I of England, when a false rumour of the death fo their King caused a panic in the Scottish ranks. David took off his helmet and rode bareheaded among the flying rabble to le them see he was still with them. But the attempt to make a rally failed, and when Prince Henry, returning from the wining of his spurs, saw to his astonishment the rest of the army in hopeless flight, he said to his brave companions – “We have done what men may; now we must save ourselves if we can.” This they did with difficulty, for three days elapsed, and many adventures were passed through before Henry was able to rejoin his father, who had begun to sorrow or him as lost. So ended the historic . Thurstan and the Yorkshire barons made no attempt to follow up their victory. “The glory of victory fell to England, but the substantial gain to Scotland” is the verdict of Freeman. David continued as opportunity afforded to assist the cause of his niece, and when during a brief revival of her good fortune she entered London as Queen, he joined her there. When the tide again turned against her, he narrowly escaped capture during the flight to Winchester. A Scotsman, David Oliphant, who was in the service of Stephen, recognized his Scottish master, and showed his patriotic fidelity by giving him a disguise and assisting him back to Scotland. In times so troubled and in the midst of varying reverses and successes, Stephen was ready to concede good terms of peace to the Scottish King, who was uncle to his wife Mary as well as to Matilda. As the result of successive negotiations Cumbria was left with King David, and his son, Henry, was assigned the earldom of Northumberland, dong homage only for the earldom of Huntingdon. David was much more successful as an administrator than as a soldier. During his long reign, the country enjoyed in a marked degree the blessing of internal peace. Only twice was the authority of the Crown defiled. In 1130 an isolated rising by Angus, the Mormaer of Moray, was suppressed at Stracathro in Forfarshire; and another revolt, promoted by Wymund, the sham Bishop of Mar, and the Moray Mormaer, aided by Somerled, the , was ended by the capture of the impostor in 1137. The maintenance of the domestic peace was all the more remarkable in view of the radical character of the reforms the King introduced in the government of both State and Church. He developed and consolidated the feudal system. He established and directed a county judiciary with sheriffs holding their office from the Crown, and periodically he personally conducted the business of the Courts. He encouraged various industrial arts, including gardening, for which Scotsmen have through 27 the succeeding generation’s preserved a high reputation. He vigilantly upheld the independence of the Scottish Church on the basis of an organized diocesan episcopacy, with five or six Bishops. He sought to promote learning and piety by the introduction and endowment of the regular orders of the monastic clergy. Wyntoun’s historical rhyme thus chronicles the ecclesiastical reinforcement made at Dunfermline when the Church of the Holy Trinity was raised to the status of an Abbey:- Of Cawntybery, in Dunfermlyne Monkis he browcht, and put them syn, And dowyt thame rycht rychely, With gret possessyownys and mony.

It is believe the Canterbury monks brought with them Jerome’s Latin , which was used in the Abbey service of Dunfermline from its foundation in 1124 till its destruction in 1560. “This Bible,” says Dr Henderson in his Annals of Dunfermline, “is still in existence and in good preservation in the Advocates’ Library, where it is shown as one of its choicest literary treasures. It is written on vellum, is quite entire, legible and clear, except at some parts where it is a little soiled with grease spots, which appear to have been caused by the frequent anointing with the holy oil. The leaves are ornamented with a great variety of figures, such as scriptural and historical subjects, and there are several seemingly out of place, as they are singularly grotesque. It is not in the original binding; it was rebound 40 years

THE MONASTERY

COMPOSITION VIEW BY J. HEARSLEY, LONDON, 1780.

28 ago (now fully 70 years) in a very elegant and expensive way. In 1560 the Bible was taken by Abbot Dury, the last Abbot, to along with other sacred relics. Afterwards it came into the possession of the celebrated Mons. Foucault, as appears from his arms on it. At his sale it was bought by a Scotch and brought back to this country and deposited as a gift in the Advocates’ Library, Edinburgh.” King David enriched the ecclesiastical foundations which owed their origin to his brothers, Edgar and Alexander, and he established and liberally endowed many more, including Melrose, Dryburgh, Kelso, Jedburgh, Holyrood, and Cambuskenneth. He reformed the morals of the clergy and repressed their quarrels. He commended and enforced the sanctity of the marriage bond. His liberal benefactions to the poor and the distressed he enhanced by his personal service. He was unceasing in efforts to promote the well-being of his subjects, industrially, socially, intellectually, and religiously, and the influence of his counsel and labours was enormously strengthened by the consistency of his personal Christian behaviour. He had a high conception of religious duty as a prince and a ruler, and few Sovereigns in any land or in any age have been as faithful and successful as he in their efforts to conform their lives to the Christian law. No surprise need be felt that he won the devotion and affection of his subjects for whose best interests he so strenuously laboured. They sorrowed with him in his great sorrow when the brave and chivalrous Prince Henry was taken from him by death in his early manhood

A Styth Castell, and thare he hade Oft and mekyl hys dwellying All the tyme tht he ws Kyng. And fra Karlele thai browcht syne Hys Body dede till Durfermlyn: Thare in halowyed Sepulture It was enteryed wyth honowre.

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CHAPTER V.

QUEEN MATILDA.

One of the distinguishing titles of Dunfermline is the “Cradle of Scottish Dissent.” It is no disparagement of the work and influence of Ralph Erskine and Thomas Gillespie to say that the ancient city is equally entitled to the designation “The Birthplace of the United Kingdom,” or even “The Nursery fo the Entente Cordiale. When nearly eight and a half centuries ago Malcolm Canmore welcomed to his strong Tower Edgar Atheling and the Saxon refugees from England, and shortly afterwards made the Margaret his Queen, he planted and nourished the seed of British Union, During his reign and the reigns of his pious sons, went steadily on the process of unification that ultimately welded into one people Picts and Celts, Norsemen and Danes, Saxons and Normans, with one Sovereign and one throne, and that heralded the Anglo-Saxon fusion of modern times. The marriages of his daughters and the family relations they formed did more, however, than strengthen the tendencies to national the race unification. They may even be said – more especially the marriage of the second daughter, Mary, which led to association with th Bouillon family, of imperishable Crusader fame, that knit the chivalry of Christendom in a splendid effort for the vindication of the supremacy of the Cross – to have given life and direction to the Anglo-French intimacy at the end of the eleventh century, which in our day had fructified in the honourable and hopeful Entente . Loyal Americans appropriate with laudable pride the sentiment expressed by Wendell Holmes in his “Voyage of the Good ship Union” :-

One flag one land, one heart on hand, One nation evermore;

Or sing with General Morris –

The union of lakes – the union of lands – The union of States none can sever, The union of hearts, the union of hands And the Flag of our Union for ever.

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Britons, too, with a sense of grateful security, raise the flag that has braved a thousand years the battle and the breeze, and rejoice in the strength and fame which are given by a world-wide Empire faithful to the old Motherland. The intensity and purity of the patriotism of each section of the Anglo-Saxon family stimulate rather than weaken the sense of the brotherhood of man, and the emphasizing of the Anglo- Saxon fusion in our day is coincident with the growth of a universal benevolence, which works for the believes in the coming of the golden age of Millennial peace. When Malcolm and Margaret promoted the obliteration of race animosities in the island of Britain, and their daughters made alliances that knit the royal families of Scotland and England in association with the champions of Christianity on the Continent of Europe – even although the mission of the Prince of Peace was then but dimly comprehended – they were unconsciously making themselves agents of the "increasing purpose” running through al the ages. Their ends were shaped by the all- controlling Divinity recognized and proclaimed by Shakespeare long before Tennyson illumined the law of progress for his nineteenth century contemporaries, by the lines –

One God, one law, one element, And one far-off divine event To which the whole creation moves.

Matilda or Maud, the elder of the two daughters born to King Malcolm and Queen Margaret in Dunfermline Tower, was given a different name at her baptism. She was first named Eadgyth, or Edith. But at the time of her birth, probably 1080, Matilda, the wife of William the Conqueror was still alive, and her loved son Robert, then out of favour with his father, King Henry I was about the same time enjoying the hospitality of the Scottish Court. Possibly the good Queen Matilda and her virtues were in those days much talked about in the at Dunfermline; and it may be that as a tribute of personal regard for the Norman lady who had become Queen of England, if not also for reasons of State policy Matilda was substituted for Edith. The wife of William the Conqueror was not unworthy of her famous husband. The daughter of Baldwin V. Of Lisle, the of Flanders, she could claim through her mother, Adela, descent from the Kings of France, and she inherited a vast amount of wealth, When William had become of Normandy, he sought her hand in marriage. The union desired by the Duke was, however, forbidden by the Pope on the ground of nearness of kinship. Probably enough, at he beginning of the courtship, Matilda did not 31 regard the suit of the Bastard with particular favour, just as Ximena, the heroine of the popular Spanish war song, first showed aversion to Roderigo the Cid. When Ximena saw her error and perceived that her warrior-suitor was a man born to thrive, she changed her attitude. Similarly with Matilda. According to one of the stories, when she had had personal experience of William’s masterfulness and realized the strength of his character, she determined to wed no one else; and in due time, in defiance of the Pope and the wishes of many of her proud family friends, she became the wife of the Duke. A Papal interdict placed on Normandy was easily removed and church sanction for the marriage secured by hr liberal benefactions, including the building of the Abbey of the Holy Trinity for at , which she, as a devoted churchwoman, found it in her heart to bestow. With all her piety she was a right valourous and capable helpmeet for her husband. After she had failed in an attempt to persuade Harold of England to marry one of her daughters, she actively encouraged her husband in his designs on the English throne; and while her husband was engaged in his work of conquest and afterward of pacification on the north side of the Channel, she directed the administration of the affairs of the Duchy. A loving mother, as well as a devoted wife, she dared the resentment of her iron-willed lord by liberally supplying their son Robert, with money, when he had been exiled by his offended father. Generous to her friends, while liberal to the church, she was held in high esteem alike by ecclesiastics and men of war; and notwithstanding the many vicissitudes of her married life, caused by the competing claims of Normandy and England on her attention and the family disagreement already referred to, she enjoyed the reward of the virtuous woman o the Proverbs, of whom it is said her husband rusted and praised her while hr children arose and called her blessed. It was the name of this noble Queen of England that the elder of the Dunfermline-born Princesses was given after her baptism, and by which she is known in history. Happily she had better equipment than a fashionable or Courtly name. She had the inestimable advantage of a religious training. Mentally as well as morally she received the best culture the age could afford. After her education was finished at Dunfermline Place, under the supervision of her gifted mother, aided by the learned Court, she was transferred to the care of her Aunt Christina, the nun at Romsey. Here she found the discipline even stricter than she had been subjected to in the parental seminary. Her careful and conscientious guardian and preceptress at Romsey compelled her to ware a nun’s black veil, according to one account, as a protection “against the brutality of the Normans, which was then raging,” or, according to another, from fear of William Rufus, who 32 had ascended the throne in 1087. When in 1093 Malcolm visited his daughter he was incensed by the conduct of his sister-in-law, whether it ws inspired by worldly prudence or religious zeal. He angrily pulled the veil from off his daughter’s face, saying he intended her not to be a nun, but to be the wife of Count Alan II of Richmond; and he took her back with him to Scotland. Man or king may propose, but God disposes. Before the close of 1093, Alan, Malcolm, and Margaret were all dead; and Donald Bane, who usurped the throne, drove Margaret’s children out of the realm, which their father had made and where he had reigned, none daring to dispute his supremacy. By the help of Edgar Atheling the fugitive Scottish princes and princesses found shelter in England. While the family were enjoying the hospitality of English friends, William of Warrenne sought the hand of the accomplished Matilda. Presently, however, a suitor of greater authority, and evidently not unacceptable to the Princess, came her way. Henry I who ascended the throne of England in 1100, claimed her as his bride, and Matilda showed herself by no means loth to change her position from that of a dependent to that of the first lady in England. Her eligibility was disputed; but when certain ecclesiastics sought to interdict the marriage on the ground that she had been a nun, she showed a resolution worthy of her namesake, who became the wife of William the Conqueror. She denied she had ever been a nun, though she had been compelled to wear the veil, and she told the story of her father’s deliverance of her from the tyranny of her aunt and of the convent. Archbishop Anslem maintained her cause; and his verdict, supported by the Bishops, nobles, and clergy, who were too prudent to withstand the wishes of the King, she received “with a happy face.” She was married and crowned by Anselm in on the 11th November, 1000.

Matilda of Scotland, Queen of Henry I. 33

Henry was doubtless influenced by genuine love in his choice of a consort, but it is not denied tht reasons of State also affected him in making his selection. He calculated on strengthening the attachment of his English subjects by marrying a child of the good Queen Margaret, the cousin of , the memories of whose virtues made his people regard with special favour the old kingly stock of England. Her family life as Queen of England was peaceful and happy. She bore her husband three children. The first, a daughter, born at Winchester, died in infancy. Another daughter, who was named Matilda, after both mother and grandmother, was born in London in 1102, and a son, William, in 1103. She was not quite so active or resolute as the Queen of William the Conqueror in interference with political affairs. She is indeed credited with having persuaded Duke Robert of Normandy to give up the pension from England, secured to him by his treaty with Henry in 1101, but when in 1105 Henry exacted heavy sums from the English clergy, and she was asked to intercede for them, she burst into tears and said she dare not meddle. The outstanding feature of her character was her religious devotion. After the birth of her son William she ceased to follow the wanderings of her husband’s Court. She made Westminster her home and inspired by the example of her mother, she devoted her energies to family duties and religious exercises. She cultivated her friendship of good churchmen; she was liberal in her donations; she was unsparing in personal service. She corresponded affectionately with Anselm during his exile, and when he returned in 1106 neither worldly business nor worldly pleasure could keep her from hastening to every place through which he was to pass, hurrying to prepare him a lodging and be the first to meet him. In her convent days she had learned and practised the literary art. Six letters written by her to Anselm display a scholarship unusual among laymen and probably still more among women in her day. The learned Bishop Hildebert of Le Mons, who had probably made her acquaintance in England in 1099, wrote to her several friendly letters and two highly complimentary poetical addresses in praise of her beauty. Queen Matilda’s sense of religious duty required from her not a few personal mortifications and a great deal of personal service. Like her mother, she wore a hair-shirt. She went round the churches at Lent, devoting herself especially to the care of lepers, washing the feet and kissing their scars and building a hospital for them at St Giles-in-the-Fields. She founded the first Austin Priory in England, Holy Trinity Aldgate London, in 1108. She constructed two bridges, 34 with a causeway between them, over the two branches of the river Lee, near Stratford, to take the place of the dangerous passage of Old Ford. She gave the nuns of Barking a grant of land to provide for the maintenance of these bridges. In 1111 she was present at the translation of St Ethelworld’s relics at Winchester. In December, 1116, she was with Henry at the consecration of St Albans Abbey Church. Two years afterwards she died at Westminster on 1st May, 1118, and was buried in the Abbey. The testimony of William of Malmesbury is that Queen Matilda was a warm patroness of verse and song. She gave lavishly to musical clerks, scholars, poets, and strangers of all sorts, drawn to her Court by he fame of her bounty and who spread her praises far and wide. The tenants of her estate, however, were often fleeced by her bailiffs to provide funds for her ill-regulated generosity, yet in English tradition she is known as Mold the good Queen. Robert of Gloucester ascribes to her a direct personal and most beneficial influence on the condition of England under Henry First, declaring that “the goodness she did to England cannot all be here written nor by any man understood.”

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35

CHAPTER VI

PRINCE WILLIAM AND THE .

Every well-educated Dunfermline boy and girl is familiar with the tragic story of Prince William and the wreck of the in 1120. I am not sure, however, it is so well known that the hero of that tragedy was the grandson of Malcolm and Margaret, and that his mother was the elder of the two Princesses born in the strong Tower, whose ruins remain with us till this day in Pittencrieff Glen. Prince William, who perished with a company of young nobles and fifty strong rowers, when the White Ship foundered in the English Channel, may have been spoiled by the flatteries and seductions of Court life and by the designs of his worldly-minded father, who, for the purpose of strengthening himself and his family in the Sovereignty and in the possessions he had acquired in France as well as in England, planned for him a purely political marriage with Sybilla, the daughter of the Count of . He cannot however, have been destitute of attractive features of character. The English people regarded him with peculiar affection because of his Saxon descent, and as the son of Matilda, the niece of Edgar, they called him, too, “the Atheling.” His chivalrous attempt to save his half-sister when the White Ship was sinking outside of Harfleur harbour, was an act fitted to cover a multitude of follies in a youth still in his teens. He was the darling of his father, who, when he heard the fatal news, fell unconscious on the round, and, it was said, never smiled again. As an ambitious man and loving parent, Henry realize that the blessing which cheered the heart of King David of Israel – the promise of God that a son would succeed him on the throne, and that his house would last “a great while to come” – was slipping from his grasp. The subsequent policy of the fine scholar, who had himself gained the throne of England, though he was the youngest son of the Conqueror, was inspired by a desire to ensure the retention of sovereignty for his family in spite of the failure of a male heir. For the promotion of this purpose he made use of his daughter Matilda. For her, as for her brother, Prince William, he evidently had a strong natural action. Unhappily the intensity of his ambition led him to that he could best ensure her earthly felicity and good fortune by scheming for her exaltation in worldly rank and in projecting matrimonial design for her regardless of his own wishes or feelings. When she was only seven years of age, and while Prince William still remained as heir to the English throne, he arranged her marriage with Henry V 36 of , and on the following year she was sent to the home of her with a handsome dowry. At Easter she was betrothed at Utrecht, and on the 8th May she was crowned at Mainz by the Archbishop of Cologne, while the Archbishop of Trier held her “reverently” in his arms. Henry V has been described as the “last and worst of the Franconian line of .” He seems, however, to have acted in a kindly and considerate way to his child bride. It is true that after the crowning ceremony at Cologne he dismissed all her English attendants, but his purpose in doing so was that she might be the better fitted for her future position by careful training in the German language and manners. In 1114, when she was twelve years of age, he married her; and in order that no doubt might be allowed to exist as to her sovereign rank he had her crowned again at Mainz. Further, more than once he had the Imperial diadem placed on her head by the supreme Pontiff; and when he was on his deathbed at Utrecht in 1125 he placed his in her hands, evidently in token of his bequest to her of his Imperial dominions. The one child of the marriage who was named Christina, possibly after the grand aunt of her mother, the niece of Romsey, married a King of Poland, where – sad to relate – she “made herself odious by her pride and her passions.” Let it be noted then that the birthplace of royalty in Dunfermline has supplied in and through the elder daughter of Malcolm and Margaret, not ony a Queen in England, but an Empress to Germany. We shall now see it also provided the origin of the Plantagenet . After the death of the Emperor, Henry of England summoned his widowed daughter to his Court. She joined him in Normandy, and soon afterwards returned with him to England. Presently a deputation of German Princes arrived for the purpose of taking Matilda back with them as their Sovereign. The Empress was willing to place herself in their care. Her masterful parent, however, had other purposes for her, as his only legitimate child. His heart and mind were still bent on the foundation of an enduring dynasty. Deprived of a male heir, he conceived the idea of transmitting the Sovereignty through his daughter. Accordingly he entered into a covenant with his barons and bishops, who were favourably disposed to the Empress as the daughter of their “good Queen Matilda.” He got them to swear that if he would die without a lawful son, they would acknowledge her as Lady of England and Normandy. He on his part pledged himself not to give her in marriage to any one outside his realm. They wished to keep their country free from wasteful Continental strife and to avoid the danger of the introduction of any further foreign rule. The willful King broke his part of the bargain the following year. Daring the 37 resentment of his subjects, and still intent on ensuring the continuance of his French possessions, he planned another marriage with a view of mortifying the enmity of one of his Norman rivals. Treating his daughter’s feelings as no account, he sent her across the Channel under the care of Brian FitzCount and her half-brother, Robert Earl of Gloucester, with instructions to the Archbishop of to make arrangements for the marriage of the widowed Empress with Geoffrey Plantagenet, son of the Count of Anjou. A year later this second State marriage was solemnized in Rouen Cathedral. The marriage was not a happy one. The sadly tossed about Matilda, who, when still a child, was married to a man fully twenty years older than herself, was in the prime of life, being then twenty six years of age, married to a boy scarce fifteen years old. As a helpless tool in the hands of her scheming father, she was required to descend from her imperial status and herself in marriage with “the hero of an upstart race whose territory, insignificant in extent, was so placed as to make their hostility a perpetual thorn in the side of the ruler of Normandy.” The King’s political strategy succeeded; but the Mariae a pitiful misfortune for Matilda. The ill-assorted pair – the Empress and the boy-husband soon quarreled, and in 1129, the year after the marriage, Geoffrey, now Count of Anjou, drove his wife out of his . For two years she stayed at Rouen; but when she went back to England with her father, Geoffrey found it expedient to assert his claims as a husband. His message of reall was submitted to a Council at , which decided that she should return, while the barons renewed their homage to her as her father’s heir. Two years afterwards, in 1133, when Geoffrey was only 19 years of age, a son was born at Le Mans; and the English grandfather hastened to make his, Prince Henry. A detailed account of the further domestic troubles of Matilda, who was with her father when a second child was born at Rouen in 1134, and when in the following year she took the part of her husband against her father, does not fall within the scope of these papers. Nor is this the place for a particular description of the many trying vicissitudes through which she passed, when after the death of her father, England, in spite of the pledges of the barons to King Henry, chose Stephen as sovereign, or of the civil war, with is varying fortunes which ensued. With a spirit and courage worthy of her mother, who spoke so bravely for herself when her marriage with Henry I was challenged on the ground that she had been a nun, the ex- Empress and Countess of Anjou asserted her claims as heiress of her father. She had many friends, not at least devoted of them her uncle, King David of Scotland. Stephen, too, played into her hands. He 38 failed to fulfil promises and good-will of his subjects by introducing Flemish mercenaries and by the ill-advised bestowal of favours on great lords whom he wished to conciliate. Eventually the fortune of war declared in favour of Matilda, who at Winchester was proclaimed “Lady of England and Normandy,” and who, having been rapturously welcomed at London, took up her abode a Westminster. Unfortunately the full cup proved too much for the woman who had passed through so many perils and distresses. Without waiting to be formally crowned, she assumed the title of Queen; more recklessly than Stephen she confiscated lands and honours; the barons who came to offer her homage she offended by her haughty coldness; she showed herself at her worst when she turned the deaf ear to the appeals of her cousins, Stephen’s wife and brother; and she incensed the citizens of London by her scornful rejection of their petition for a renewal of “King Edward’s laws.” Thus she provoked a rebellion against herself by the people who had formerly rebelled against Stephen. During the strife Matilda passed through many perilous adventures. At last civil war was ended by an arrangement under which Stephen should retain possession of the crown during his life, but adopt Matilda’s son, Henry, as his heir. A year afterwards, on the death of Stephen, Henry ascended the throne without opposition, and the Plantagenet dynasty in England was founded. Thus the sprig of broom (planta genista) which the first Earl of Anjou assumed as a symbol of humility during a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, became a badge of royalty. Gladly withdrawing from the troubled arena, Matilda henceforth lived in Normandy. After her son’s accession as King of England, she took up her abode in a palace built by her father beside the Minster of Notre des Pres, near Rouen. Increasingly with her advancing years, peace and esteem became her happy portion. She is credited with having constantly influenced her son for good, though the English people, remembering her former haughtiness, always regarded her with suspicion. She was the one person with whom he took counsel before sailing for England in 1154. In the following year she induced him to give up a rash scheme for the invasion of Ireland. In 1162 she tried to dissuade him from making Thomas a Becket Arch-bishop of Canterbury; in the quarrels between he two whih shortly ensued she acted as a mediatrix, and displayed fairness and skill in dealing with he case. Two lettres of hr are extant, one written in 1166-67, a the Pop’s request, beseeching Thomas to be reconciled to the King; the other addressed to King Louis of France pleading for cessation of hostilities against her son. In 1167, overcome by fever and decay of strength, she died at Notre Dame. On her deathbed she 39 took the veil as a nun of Fontevrault. She was buried before the High Altar in the abbey Church of Beck, the resting-place she had chosen for herself thirty-three years before in spite of her father’s remonstrances. In 1263 the church, and with it her tomb, were destroyed by fire. In 1282, when the church had been restored, her remains, which had been wrapped in an oxhide, were interred in a new tomb, which in 1421 was stripped of its ornaments by the English soldiers who sacked Bec. In 1684 a brass plate with a long inscription was placed over the grave by the Brethren of the Maur, who had lately come into possession of the Abbey. This, too perished in 1793. The church itself was demolished in 1831, and the leaden coffin of the Empress, re-discovered in 1846, was translated to the Cathedral Church of Rouen, which her father, in 1131, had declared should be their only fitting abode. Her will directed that her wealth should be distributed to the poor, hospitals, church, and , of which Bec was the chief. She left a large sum for the completion of a stone bridge which she had begun to build over the Seine at Rouen. She founded several religious houses and aided many more in England as well as in Normandy. In her latter years the harsh and violent temper which had marred one period of her career seems, says the writer in the Dictionary of National Biography to have been completely mastered by the nobleness of her character, which had gained for her as a girl the esteem of her first husband and he admiration of his subjects, and which, even in her worst days, had won and kept for her the devotion of men like Robert of Gloucester, of , and Brian FitzCount. Arnulf of Lisieux, intending to praise her, called her, “a woman who had nothing of the women in her.” One German chronicler gave her the title of “the good Matilda,” which English writers applied to her mother. Germans, Normans, and English were agreed as to her beauty. Her portrait on her great seal, which had been made for her in Germany before her husband’s at Rome, shows a majestic figure seated, robed and crowned, and holding in her right hand a sceptre terminating in a lily flower. The Seal’s legend is – “Matilda, by God’s grace, the Queen of the Romans.” The style commonly used in her Characters is “Matilda, the Empress, King Henry’s daughter,” sometimes adding during her struggle with Stephen, “A Lady of the English,” or “Queen of the English.” The epitaph graven on her tomb sums up her character: - “Here lies Henry’s daughter – wife and mother, great by birth, greater by marriage, and greatest by motherhood.”

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CHAPTER VII.

MARY OF BOULONGE AND HER DAUGHTER,

QUEEN MATILDA.

Mary, the second of the Princesses born to Malcolm and Margaret in Dunfermline Tower, quickly passed out of the national and also English life and history. The Scotichronicon has practically nothing to say of her. May we therefore conclude that not only her life was comparatively uneventful but that she enjoyed the happiness proverbially associated with dull annals? Yet she really entered into a larger and more brilliant life than that of her sister. Shortly after her elder sister, Matilda, had become Queen of England, she married Eustace, Count of Boulogne, the brother of Godfrey of Bouillon, the famous Crusader, who after the capture of Jerusalem, refused to wear a crown of gold where his Saviour had worn one of thorns, and preferred the title of Defender and Guardian of the Holy Sepulchre – the typical representative of Christian chivalry, who is he hero of Tasso’s immortal poem, “Jerusalem Delivered,” and to whom the great poet thus pays his homage:-

Thus conquered Godfrey; and as yet the sun Dived not in silver waves his olden wain. But daylight served him to the fortress won With his victorious host to turn again. His bloody coat he put not off, but To the high temple with his noble rain; And there hung up his arms, and there he bows His knees, there prayed, and there performed his Vows .* (*From Fairfax’s translation in Hasell’s Tasso, published by M. Blackwood & Son.)

To Eustace and Mary was born a daughter, the fourth of our Matildas, who married Stephen, the favourite nephew of Henry I of England, and who was the first of Queen Margaret’s grand-daughters to ascend the English throne. Stephen was the son of Adela, the daughter of William the Conqueror, and the sister of Rufus and of Henry, who married the Count of . At an early age he joined his Uncle Henry’s court in England. As a pledge of affection the King gave him the Countship of in Normandy, and he strengthened 41 the family relationship and enlarged his personal fortune by marriage with Henry’s niece, the heiress of Boulogne, bearing the name of Henry’s Queen. At the English Court he won the favour of many besides that of the Sovereign, for, after the death of his cousin, Prince William, he was the next nearest male heir – admired for his dexterity as a swordsman and for his happy humour and generous nature. When his Uncle Henry held his Council in 1127 for the purpose of having his own daughter Matilda recognised as the Lady of England, Stephen swore fidelity – and possibly like Gawain in the Idylls, “louder than the rest.” Yet when Henry died Stephen hurried over to England, while his cousin Matilda was occupied with affairs in Normandy and heedless of his vow to his kingly relative and benefactor he laid claim to the throne. The people of England did not regard the prospect of a woman sovereign with favour, and they welcomed Stephen as a fit representative of the Norman family by descent and of the Saxon family by marriage with a daughter of Queen Margaret of pious memory. He was hailed with enthusiasm by the citizens of London and Winchester, and twenty-one days after the death of Henry he was proclaimed King of England. His reign was neither happy nor glorious. The Prince who proved false to his vow to his uncle soon found himself unable to fulfil the many generous promises he had made to the people, and his popularity rapidly declined. The fortune of war, too, quickly turned against him. For a time he lost his throne and even his personal liberty, and though he by and by regained the

Matilda of Boulogne. 42

Kingship, the protracted strife between the partisans of his cousin Matilda and his own, and his lack of skill and efficiency as a ruler, plunged the country into the deepest chaos and misery. Green quotes this description of the prevailing horror from the English Chronicle :-

They hanged up men by their feet and smoked them with foul smoke. Some were hanged up by their thumbs, others by the head, and burning things were hung on to their feet. They put knotted strings about their head and writhed them till they went into the brain. They put men into prisons where adders and snakes and toads were crawling and so they tormented them. Some they put into a chest, short and narrow and not deep, and that had sharp stones within, and forced men therein, so that they broke all their limbs. In many of the were hateful and grim things called rachenteges, which two or three men had enough to do to carry. It was thus made – It was fastened to a , and had a sharp iron to go about a man’s neck and throat, so that he might noways sit, or lie, or sleep, but he bore all the iron. Many thousands they afflicted with hunger.

Assuredly England during this horrible civil war was a habitation of horrid cruelty. No surprise need be felt tht while he warring barons plundered, burned, maimed and murdered as their passions prompted them, “men said openly tht Christ and His saints were asleep.” How did Queen Matilda bear herself in these terrible times? During the varying fortunes of her husband she proved not only the helpmeet but the better half. When Stephen’s follies and oppressions provoked a rebellion of the barons Matilda took energetic action. She besieged one of the leaders of the revolt, Wakelyn Meminot in Castle, while a squadron of ships from Boulogne blockaded him by sea, till he was driven to surrender. She used her influence with her Uncle David of Scotland (who had taken the field in behalf of his other niece, the widowed Empress Matilda) to secure peace between her and her husband, the terms of the treaty being settled by her and David’s son Henry at Durham on 9th April, 1129. Next she exerted herself to gain the alliance of France. Taking with her across the Channel her eldest son, Eustace, she obtained his investiture as Duke of the Normans and his betrothal with the French King’s sister, Constance, whom she brought back with her to England as a sign of French goodwill and a pledge of co-operation. All her efforts, however, were to no avail. The Barons and the people, who felt themselves deceived by King Stephen, were too deeply estranged from his rule to sustain her in her gallant efforts. Notwithstanding his 43 great skill in warfare and his own personal prowess, Stephen was defeated by his cousin’s forces at Lincoln in 1141, and he himself was taken prisoner. As indicated in the preceding chapter, the empress Matilda did not show to advantage in her hour of triumph. She ordered the defeated and dethroned King to be loaded with chains and to be kept as a close prisoner in the Castle of . Queen Matilda, however, neither lost heart nor slackened her efforts. When a Council was held for the purpose of acknowledging the Empress as Lady of England, the wife of Stephen sent a letter to the barons entreating them to effect his restoration. When this appeal failed, the lady who had been crowned Queen of England at Westminster in 1136, four years afterwards approached her cousin as a petitioner for the release of her husband. Her appeal on bended knees to her fair cousin established in her seat of sovereignty and surrounded by her courtiers, supplied famous artists with an attractive theme, and the pictures of two beautiful women – one as an eager suppliant and one as a relentless mistress- have invested this memorable incident with additional pathos. The suit of the devoted wife was refused. It would have been well for the Empress Matilda and for the country if she had shown a more peaceable disposition and sought the ways of peace. For the scorned Queen turning from appeals for mercy which had proved vain, renewed her appeal to fore. A rebel once more against her cousin, aided by Captain William of , a staunch friend of her husband, and aided still more by the resentment caused by the Empress’ misuse of her power, the wife of Stephen rallied the King’s adherents, and presently the tide of war turned in her favour. Robert, the Earl of Gloucester, the half-brother of the Empress, who had formerly effected the capture of the King, fell into the hands of Stephen’s party. The Queen behaved with greater magnanimity than her cousin. She took personal charge of the captive, but kept him free from physical restraint although under strict surveillance. She discreetly used him however, as a means of forcing the hand of the Empress; and the result of a negotiation which was opened was an exchange of prisoners – and possibly also a certain modification of the family hostilities. Meanwhile, however, Stephen’s cause continued to revive, while that of the Empress as steadily declined; and in a short time the royal lady who had scornfully rejected her cousin’s appeal for mercy was herself a fugitive, reduced on one occasion to the humiliating necessity of seeking escape by feigning herself a corpse. Stephen and Matilda re-entered London, and on Day 1141, they both wore their crowns in Canterbury Cathedral. As Queen Matilda showed a devotion to the church worthy of a descendant of Saint Margaret. Shortly after her first accession, in 44

1136 or 1137, she and her husband founded for the souls of hr father “and of our children” a preceptory of Knights’ Templars at Cowley in . In 1142, shortly after her restoration, she founded a Cistercian Abbey on her lands at Coggeshall in Essex. She also established the Hospital of St Katherine by the for the souls of two of hr children – Baldwin and Matilda – who were buried in Trinity Church. Of hr three other children, Eustace died in August 1153; William became by marriage Earl of Warrenne, but died childless in 1160; and Mary, who was devoted as an infant to the religious life, became in time Abbess of Romsey. On her brother William’s death, Henry II recognised the Abbess as heiress of Boulogne, and obtained a Papal dispensation for her marriage with Matthew, son of the . She died in 1182, leaving two daughters, through the younger of whom – Matilda – the County of Boulogne ultimately passed to the house of Brabant. As a true daughter of the church Queen Matilda showed herself a peace worker. Aided by the faithful family friend and counsellor, , she was instrumental in effecting in 1147 reconciliation between the King and Archbishop Theobald, whose appointment to the primacy of Canterbury ten years previously had been due chiefly to her influence. For two years afterwards she resided at Canterbury and superintended the building of Faversham Abbey, which she and King Stephen had founded. Her labours as mother, wife and Queen, and as a devoted supporter of the church were now drawing near a close. In April 1152 she fell sick at Hedingham Castle, Essex, sent or her confessor Ralph, Prior of Holy Trinity, Aldgate, and died three days later, on 3rd May. In death she was not long separated from her husband. Before his demise, which took place at Canterbury in 1154, Stephen deprived, like his Uncle Henry, of a son to heir his throne, and the Empress Matilda, chastened by long suffering and refined by a revival of her early piety, settled their differences. Stephen adopted as his heir the son of the lady he had formerly supplanted in the Sovereignty; and together as loving cousins they visited the chief centres of the land “to be received at each place with solemn procession and the most joyful acclamations.” The latter end of their exceptionally stormy and trouble career was peaceful. In the hope of Divine forgiveness they mutually forgave much and the people of England gratefully welcomed the reconciliation as a promise of national blessing.

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CHAPTER VIII.

JAMES I

Oure King Jamys in Scotland syme,

That yhere was born in Dunfermlyne –

So sings Wynton in his Orygynale Cronikil.

The prince, born in the Palace of Dunfermline in 1394, figures in history as one of the ablest, the most cultured, and, alas! The most unfortunate of Scottish Kings. The times in which he lived were unpropitious in the highest degree; and he endured far more than the fair share of the trials and miseries of sovereignty. He lost his mother when he was eight years of age; his liberty when he was twelve; his life when he was forty-three. In spite of his many misfortunes, however, he accomplished not a little for Scotland; and the story of his life appeals equally to lovers of country, of literature, and of chivalry. It is believed James spent the days of his childhood and early boyhood in Dunfermline and with his mother, Queen Annabella, the descendant of a Hungarian who accompanied Edgar Atheling in his flight from England, and who settled in Scotland as a friend of the good Queen Margaret. Too early he lost her tender care and watchful guardianship. She died in Inverkeithing in the year 1403, and was interred in . A memorial window in the south wall of the Abbey thus sets forth her record: -

The armys of queyne Annabell Drummond spous to King Robert ye third mother to king James The fyrst Annabell queyne of Scotland.

Robert ye third ye second of ye noble surnaym of ye Stewarts spousd Anabell dochter to ye lard of Stobhall qth bair to hym twa sones Dauid duk of rothsay qth bi his uncle duk Robert was presoint in Falkland to ye deth notwithstanding yat he was ye second James yat succeedit to ye croune.

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(Inscription on Brass Plate.) This Memorial, bearing the Escutcheon of Anabel Drummond, Queen of Scotland was erected by Clementina Sarah Drummond, Lady Willoughby de Eresby, in memory of her Royal Ancestors.

By this time, King Robert III a weak old man, bowed down beneath a load of cares, was conscious that authority was deserting him. His ambitious and unscrupulous brother, the Earl of Fife, known as the , was gradually usurping regal power, and when the feeble old King heard that Albany had compassed the death of his elder son, David , by starvation in Falkland Place, he in concern for the safety of his younger son, James, now the legitimate heir to the throne, arranged for his removal to France. The Prince never reached his intended destination. The vessel in which he sailed was seized by an English merchant cruiser near Flamborough Head in Yorkshire, and James, then a boy of twelve years, was sent to the Tower of London by Henry IV. The English King, and his successor, Henry V did well by their royal prisoner. They gave him a training designed to develop the ideal conditions – a sound mind in a sound body. James became an expert in all knightly accomplishments. As the result of his material exercises he was distinguished in wrestling, running, archery, and riding. And physical prowess represented only one side of his equipment. He was skilled in many 47 things on which great store is placed in modern education, and not least in Dunfermline, with the aid of the Carnegie Trust. He became an accomplished musician; in drawing and painting he found delight; and he was equally gifted in handicraft. To these accomplishments he added scholarship. He was an appreciative student of Chaucer and Gower, and he was a maker as well as a lover of literature. As a poet he takes a high rank among the early English writes. “The King’s Quhair,” or Book, not only tells the romance of his life, but it reveals the refinement of his mind and heart. Its heroine is the Lady Jane Beaufort, a daughter of the Earl of Somerset and a grand-daughter of the Earl of Somerset and a grand-daughter of John of Gaunt. The beautiful young lady he first saw from the window of his prison at Windsor walking in the “garden fair,” and, eager for sympathy in his loneliness, he loved her at first sight:-

Cast I down mine eyes again,

Where as I saw, walking under he Tower, Full secretly, new comen here to plain, The fairest or the freshest young floure That ever I saw, methought before that hour, For which, sudden abate, anon astart (went and came) The blood of all my body to my heart.

* * * * *

In her was youth, beauty, with humble aport, Bounty, richess, and womanly feature, God better wot than my pen can report, Wisdom largess, estate and cunning sure. In every point so guided her measure. In word, in deed, in shape, in countenance, That nature might no more her child avance.

And when she walked had a little thraw Under the sweete green boughis bent, Her fair, fresh face as white as snaw, She turned has and furth her wayis went; But tho began mine arches and torment, To see her part and follow I na might, Methought the day was turned into night.

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When, for reasons of state and on a pledge of the payment of £40,000 in name of board and education for eighteen years, James received his liberty from Henry VI he married the Lady Jane, who remained for him all his days “his soul’s far better part,” and proved to him in return a right loyal resolute helpmeet. The bill charged for board and education was by no means small; but James and the Scottish people, who pledged themselves to meet the demand, were given as already seen, some invaluable compensations, in the intellectual and knightly culture which had been provided during the long captivity. It was as a King, James returned to his native land. His father had died of a broken heart within a few months after his seizure at Flamborough Head. The fifty years’ guardianship of the adroit and merciless Albany had ended. His son, Murdoch, who had succeeded him in the Regency, had after five years been set aside by the turbulent nobles and chiefs. And it was as a King of Scotland he went. His scholarship in England had been built on a foundation laid by Bishop Wardlaw of St Andrews and on the eve of the quincentenary of St Andrews University it is interesting to reall that James I in his early boyhood, enjoyed the tuition of the Churchman, who, as a friend of learning, obtained the Pope’s authority for the institution of the first university in Scotland. Nor had he forgotten or surrendered his patriotism. It is said that when Henry V found himself opposed by Scottish warriors in France, he asked James to order their return to their native land. “Let me free,” answered the royal prisoner, “then they will obey me. How could they acknowledge as their King one who is in the power of another man.” Further, he entered upon the duties of sovereignty as one who keenly felt his responsibilities. He soon realized that the state of the realm which was nominally his was deplorable. The testimony of a monk chronicler is – “In those days there was no law in Scotland, and the great man oppressed the poor man, and the whole Kingdom was a den of thieves.” James resolved that the realm should be his in reality, and that in it justice should prevail and security be enjoyed. “If God,” he said, “grants, me life I will make the key keep the castle and the bracken bush the cow.” James was a very different man from his father. He soon made it evident he meant to govern as well as reign. Moe severely than in the time of Alexander the Fierce malefactors of all kinds – the turbulent nobles, the lawless predatory chiefs, the oppressors of the poor – were made feel the flagellations of the royal Talus. Shortly after his return to Scotland he was ceremonially crowned at Scone, and his Queen was similarly honoured. Yet, though thus cordially welcomed home 49 and placed on the throne, he was not long in discovering that the nobles or powerful barons had no thought of rendering him the obedience and homage of loyal subjects. Fearlessly and resolutely the King applied himself to the task of reducing them to subjection and asserting his regal supremacy. His own kinsfolk, his cousin Murdoch the son of the Duke of Albany, whom he regarded as responsible for his long exile, and Murdoch’s sons and relatives, were the first to feel the weight of his avenging hand. It is obvious he distrusted as well as disliked them; and when, after the eldest son of his cousin with his father-in-law, the Earl of Lenox, had been put in prison, another son of Murdoch raised the standard of revolt and slew the keeper of and thirty-one other persons, the King felt himself justified in executing against them summary vengeance. Murdoch, his two sons, and the were, after a form of trial at , led to the Heading Hill, where they suffered the last penalty for what James accounted their . He felt, too, that the lawless Highland chiefs needed a lesson. Forty of them who obeyed his summons to meet him at were at once arrested; and though most of them were given their freedom some time afterwards, several of them were put to death. Among the chiefs whose lives were spared was Alexander, the Lord of the Isles. Cherishing fierce resentment in his heart, the Lord of the Isles gathered around him his clansmen and friends and, the King was in pursuit; Alexander’s army began to melt away; and over the attenuated and disheartened forces of the Lord of the Isles James won an easy victory in Lochaber. The defeated chief informed that his only hope was to sue for mercy. Sometimes afterwards Alexander suddenly appeared in Holyrood Church as a humble suppliant, wearing only his shirt and drawers, and knelt before the King as he surrendered his sword. On the intervention of the Queen James spared the chief’s life, and after a short imprisonment restored to him his lands and his freedom. While the King thus terrorised the scheming and disloyal nobles and the turbulent Highlands chiefs, he insisted on orderly behaviour in his presence. On one occasion two nobles quarreled at Court; and when one struck his neighbour on the face, he was instantly required by the King to lay his hands on the table to be smitten off by the lord to whom, in his ungovernable temper, he had offered and unpardonable affront. On another occasion a poor Highland woman appeared before him with lacerated feet and told him that when she threatened to report to His Majesty the theft of her two cows by a robber, the caitiff brigand had nailed horse shoes on her feet. The King ordered the cruel scoundrel to be dressed in a linen shirt bearing a 50 representation of his misdeed and to be dragged at a hors’s tail to the gallows. Similarly he asserted his authority over the churchmen. He let them understand that avarice indolence, and oppression could not be tolerated; and oppression could no be tolerated; and through, as an orthodox Catholic, he treated Lollardism as heresy – allowing Paul Crawar, the Hussite preacher, to be put to death, and rewarding the inquisitor, Fogo, by promotion to the Abbacy of Melrose – he, like Robert he Bruce and Alexander the Fierce, jealously maintained the independence of the Scotish Church and resisted the Pope’s claims to supremacy. In his conflicts with the and clergy James was fortified by the goodwill and support of the people and of the smaller barons. Shortly after his Coronation at Scone he summoned the barons, the clergy, and the representatives of the to meet him in a Parliament at Perth, and these assemblies or councils were held yearly during his reign. He evidently had little difficulty in imposing his will upon the legislators, and he succeeded in having enacted a long series of reforming and melioratory measures for the enforcement of law and its identification with justice, for the promotion of agriculture and other industries for the establishment of the relations of Church and State. Every department of national business felt the stimulus and guidance of his intellect and his reforming zeal, and the masses of the people gratefully regarded him as their friend, their protector, and their benefactor. The twelve years of his reign were crowded with signal service for Scotland. He discovered for the country its sense of unity. He taught it to value law and order. He laid the foundation of constitutional government. He developed trade and commercial enterprise, and he encouraged shipbuilding and seamanship. He proved himself a great statesman and a vigorous administrator. He was not, however free from error. For one thing, he did not show himself scrupulous in his observance of the treaty with England under witch he obtained his freedom. He had no hesitation or difficulty in fulfilling one of the conditions, viz., marriage with an English lady, for he cherished for the beautiful and gifted daughter of the Earl of Somerset the true love, which binds heart to heart and mind to mind in body and in soul. He, however, showed little anxiety to pay the installments of the ransom money, which he had solemnly covenanted to do, and in further breach of the treaty he maintained friendly relations with France. When John Stewart, the Constable of France, came with a number of French noblemen to treat for the betrothal of his two-year-old daughter Margaret to the Dauphin, aged five, he accepted the 51 proffered alliance, and in the year before his death he sent the Princess to the French Court to a marriage which brought her high rank but also the intensest misery. He wisely, however kept free from entanglement in the military quarrels between France and England; and though he never forgot or forgave his captivity he kept the peace with his nearer neighbour. The most serious of his errors was the readiness with which he confiscated and added to the possessions of the Crown the estates of the barons whose loyalty he distrusted. Doubtless he felt the need of money, and believed he could make better use of it than the lawless nobles whom he despoiled. He was aware, too, that the Crown estates had been grievously dilapidated by grasping nobles during his long exile. Probably the sense of the injustice suffered by the Sovereign was not absent from his mind when, on a visit to the place of his birth and the tomb of his mother in Dunfermline Abbey, he lamented the impoverishment of the Crown caused by the lavish benefactions of King David to the church. This appropriation of the lands of the lawless nobility accentuated the enmity with which they regarded him as an upholder of law and order and a guardian of the poor. One of the earliest of the subjects of his reforming chastisement was Sir Robert Graham. This turbulent chief he found it necessary to put in prison during the first years of his reign. After his liberation Graham acted as a man who felt he had nothing to be grateful for. He cherished fierce resentment against the King; and when, after the confiscation of the estates of the great Earls of March and Mar, part of the possessions which should have fallen to Graham’s nephew, the Earl of Strathearn, was appropriated by the Crown, the hostility of Sir Robert grew ungovernably passionate. In Parliament he dared openly to curse the King and to denounce him as a tyrant. Knowing now that he had transgressed beyond the hope of forgiveness, Graham anticipated the royal vengeance by an active display of implacable hatred. He made himself a willing tool of the barons who fretted under the rigorous rule of James. Listening greedily to the treasonable suggestions which were whispered even in the Court itself and by men enjoying the confidence of the Monarch, he began to seek an opportunity for the assassination of the King. When in the winter of 1437 the King repaired to Perth to spend his Christmas at the Monastery of the Dominicans, he perceived his chance had come, and with the connivances of several of the courtiers he organized a band of assassins. James was not wholly without warning. Befor he left Edinburgh on his journey northward he was told by an old Highland woman that if he crossed the Forth on that occasion he would never come back, but like a brave and resolute man 52 he refused to take fright. A few hours before generally the King had come to be appreciated and greatly beloved.

For he had tamed the nobles’ lust, And curbed their power and pride, And reached out an arm to right the poor, Through Scotland far and wid; And many a lordly wrongdoer By the headsman’s axe had died.

Hence Graham and his fellow assassins found themselves outlawed and fugitives for their lives, with every man’s hand against them as the wicked of . Within forty days they were all caught, tried, and executed. Graham himself was treated with savage barbarity. He was nailed naked to a tree and dragged through the streets; his body was torn with pincers; his son was tortured and beheaded before his eyes; but his spirit remained untamed, and he declared with his dying lips that he had done a just deed slaying a tyrant. The widowed Queen in this terrible crisis showed little of the qualities of the “Milk white dove,” which in former days awake the admiration and devotion of her royal lover. She placed no restraint on the general cry for vengeance; and the unfriendly nobles soon realizes that they had lost rather than gained power by the murder of the King, and that the supremacy of the royal authority had been confirmed. James I was dead, but the cause for which he battled so valorously during his brief reign of twelve years – the cause of the Sovereign and the people against lawless and oppressive barons and chiefs – survived and held the field. James I was perhaps as conscious of his “divine right” and of his personal responsibility to God and to his subjects as the German Emperor of the present day. Physically as well as intellectually he was a man of exceptional force. Aeneas Sylvius, the Pope’s Ambassador, described him as “Quadratus,” or a “four-square man.” He was stout, broad shouldered, possibly a little under the medium height, but agile and well-proportioned. He loved equally manly exercises and metal culture. As a King who in the midst of his many duties and trails found time for personal culture and pleasant recreations, in the writing of verses, both in the vernacular and in Latin, he took a warm interest in the newly-founded as the chief seat of learning. A wise and far-seeing ruler, he 53 upheld justice, encouraged trade and commerce, and sought peace as the greatest of the national interests – though tempted on the one hand by alluring offers from France, and on the other by his dislike and distrust of England, caused by his imprisonment. He was a patriotic ruler, concerned for the unity and stability of his country and for the welfare of his subjects. And conspicuous among his other virtues shone his personal purity. He fulfilled the ideal of ’s knights, who rode about redressing human wrongs, sworn to love one maiden only, and to lead a pure life in spotless chastity. His love for his Queen never wavered. He, too, was a blameless King, of whom it is written he had no mistress and he left no bastards.

Annunciation Stone on the Palace Dunfermline. Luke c.i.v.28-38.

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CHAPTER IX.

ELIZABETH OF BOHEMIA – “QUEEN OF HEARTS.”

There are few historical characters about the facts of whose life and conduct more disagreement exists than Elizabeth, daughter of James VI and I, the Queen of Bohemia. First of all, there has been sharp conflict of testimony regarding the place of her birth. The of Dunfermline claims her as one of her daughters, but Mrs Everett-Green, in her carefully written Life, taking as her authority the Harley MSS. In the British Museum, states:-

“The Princess Elizabeth was born at on the 16th day of August 1596, nearly seven years before the accession of her father to the English throne.”

In his Annals of Dunfermline Dr Ebenezer Henderson sets forth the results of a careful comparison of the conflicting authorities. He first makes these extracts from works in favour of the Dunfermline claim: -

1. “Upon the xix day of September 1596, the Queen Majestie was deliveritt at Dunfermline of the Princess Elizabeth.” (Moyse’s Memoirs of the Affairs of Scotland; Bannatyne Club, 1830; Maitland Club, 1830.)

2. Elizabeth Princess of Scotland, borne in Dunfermline the 19th August 1596 yeirs.” (Chronicles of Perth, p. 6; Maitland Club.)

3. “The Queene was delivered of a childe at Dunfermling upon the 19th day of . . . 1596.” (Calderwood’s Hist. Kirk Scot. Fol. 1704. p.330; Woodrow Society, vol. v. p.438.)

4 “In the Palace t Dunfermline were born King Charles I with his sister Elizabeth, Queen of Bohemia.” (Macfarlane’s Geograph, Coll, MS., vol. Advo. Lib. Edin)

5. “The Princess Elizabeth, from whom his present Majesty is descended, was born in the Palace of Dunfermline.” (Stat. Acc. 55

Scot. vol. xili. P.448; Campbell’s Journey through Scotland; De Foe’s Journey through Scotland, 1728, p. 173.

Dr Henderson next subjoins extracts from the testimony in favour of the Falkland claim: -

1. “The 15th day of August (1596) the Queyne was deliverit of a ladie in Falkland, and baptesit be the nayme of Elizabeth.” (The Historie and Life of King James the Sext; Bannatyne Club 1825.) 2. “The 15th of August (1596) the Queyne was delyverit of a ladie in Falkland and baptesit be the nayme of Elizabeth.” (Vide Letters to King James the sixth, p. 26, Maitland Club 1835.) These two extracts are identical in every respect. 3. “The Princess Elizabeth was born at Falkland Palace on the 16th August 1596.” (Vide Miss Anne Everett’s Lives of the Princesses of England, p. 146.) (Miss Everett refers to a Harleian M.S. 1368.)

He quotes from Moyse’s preface to show that he was his Majesty’s “ain old man,” and had served him for upwards of thirty years, and he holds that the testimony of a man in so intimate a relation with the Royal family “is worth a score of hearsay notices.” By way of confirmatory circumstantial evidence Dr Henderson quotes from Calderwood, Spottiswoode, and Birrel regarding the Queen’s movements, and the conclusion he draws from these collateral sources is “That Queen Anne went from Edinburgh to Dunfermline on the 17th day of July, 1596; that she gave birth to the Princess in her dowry house here on the 19th August; and that she left Dunfermline for Holyrood House on November 2 of the same year to prepare for the baptism of her daughter.” He further gives quotations to show that the King resided much in Falkland between 16th August and 25th September, 1596, and his verdict is in these words: -

“It would therefore appear, after carefully comparing and weighing these matters, that Queen Anne resided in her dowry house at Dunfermline from 17th July until the 2nd November, 1596, and that she gave birth to her first and eldest daughter there on the 19th of August, 1596, while the King was enjoying the sport of hunting with his courtiers at Falkland, and that from this circumstance some careless writers, dealers in hearsay, had jumped to the conclusion that because the King was hunting at 56

Falkland about the time of the birth, the Princess was born in Falkland.”

Many recent authorities following Mrs Everett-Green have named Falkland Palace as he birthplace, but careful local historians who have examined the facts, like Dr Chalmers, Sheriff Mackay, and Mr A.H Millar, F.S.C., Scot., accept without challenge the view that as the birthplace of the Princess. In the next place there is disagreement as to the place of birth in Dunfermline Palace. Millar dismisses the suggestion that the famous Annunciation Stone was inserted in the roof of the oriel window of the Palace to mark the chamber where the Princess was born. He remarks that “the most probably reason for the stone being placed in the Palace was that Shaw (the architect) had found it amongst the ruins of the Church and had appropriately used it to decorate the birth-chamber of the Scottish Princess.” Dr Chalmers locates the birth-place of Charles I and Elizabeth in the room lighted by the most westerly widow in the front wall, which survives. From the beginning till the end of her days Elizabeth was the victim of statecraft and of strifes which dominated her fortune irrespective of her will or efforts. When she was born in 1596 Queen Elizabeth of England was an old woman, and James VI of Scotland, having an eye to her throne, sought to confirm himself in the favour of Her Majesty by naming his child after her. Yet the care of the Princes in her childhood was entrusted to Lord Livingstone, afterwards Earl of , whose wife was a Catholic, and with whom she stayed at . When shortly after the death of “good Queen Bess” she travelled with her mother to England, she was placed first under the charge of the Countess of Kildare, whose husband became a “suspect.” Next, she was handed over to Lord and Lady Harrington,” persons eminent for prudence and piety,” where Lady Anne Dudley became her intimate friend. In the days of her maidenhood she seems to have inspired universal homage by the exercise of the charms and which in after years won for her the honorific title of Queen of Hearts. The foes of her father were her friends – after their own unscrupulous fashion, for one of the designs of the authors of the Gunpowder Plot was to place Elizabeth on the throne. Before her twelfth years he was well acquainted with French and Italian as well as with the classics, and was able to send little notes in a foreign language to her scholarly father for his correction and also for his satisfaction as to the progress she was making in her studies. Among the English men of letters of this time it was the fashion to pay her tribute in adulatory poems or dedications; and when she became 57

Queen of Bohemia Sir Henry Wotton in courtly verses gave expression to the estimate formed of her by her English admirers:-

“You meaner beauties of the night That poorly satisfy our eyes More by your number than your light, You common people of the skies, What are you when the moon shall rise?

“Your curious chanters of the wood That warble forth Dame Nature's lays, Thinking your voices understood By you weak accents? What’s your praise When Philomel her voce doth raise?

“Your violets that first appear, By your pure purple mantles known, Like the proud virgins of the yer As if the spring were all your own! What are you when the rose is blown?

“So, when my mistress shall be seen In form and beauty of her mind, By virtue first, then choice, a queen Tell me if she were not designed Th’eclipse and glory of hr kind?”

Partly on account of her beauty and accomplishments and partly by reason of the play of antagonistic Continental diplomacies as Protestantism and Catholicism strove to win the support of the English Sovereign, Elizabeth had many suitors. The most notable of them all was Gustavus Adolphus, the son of Charles IX of Sweden who was anxious to effect a quadruple alliance, embracing England, Sweden, Holland, and France; but the Danish influence at the English Court represented by Queen Anne, the sister of Christian IV of , defeated this scheme. Another project was marriage with King Philip of Spain, which Elizabeth’s elder brother, Henry Prince of , strongly opposed. Eventually James formed an alliance with the Princes of the German Protestant Union, and he assigned his daughter in marriage to Frederick, Elector Palatine, in the expectation, which was realised, that his son-in-law would become King of Bohemia, and of ensuring the Elector of a Protestant Emperor – a design that was disappointed. For after a brilliant marriage ceremony in England and 58 a recklessly extravagant court life at Heidelberg, where the Princes had an establishment of 374 persons, and where the costliest festivities and masquerade were maintained, and after a brief reign at Prague, where the “Winter King,” as the Jesuits called Frederick, melted in the summer heat, Elizabeth and her husband were deprived both of principality and kingdom, and were obliged to seek refuge in Holland. There and elsewhere for many years they endured poverty in sharp contrast to the splendour in which they had indulged at Heidelberg and Prague. Elizabeth of England is credited with an inspiring display of patriotism and courage in the camp at Tilbury, where her troops were waiting for the Spanish invasion, when she told them that though she was a feeble woman she had the heart of a King, and of a King of England, too. By some historical authorities this heroic speech is regarded as apocryphal. Similarly, doubt is cast upon the genuineness of the utterance attributed to Elizabeth Stewart where her husband seemed inclined to shirk the responsibility of accepting the leadership of the Protestant Union in Germany as King of Bohemia. “Your were bold enough,” she is reported to have said, “to marry the daughter of a King, and do you hesitate to accept the crown which is voluntarily offered to you? I would rather live on bread at a kingly table, than feast at an electoral board.” According to another account the Electress was too much engaged with the Heidelberg festivities and gaieties to be keenly interested in the statecraft which entangled Frederick in the Bohemian enterprise, and was taken by surprise when her husband was offered the throne. It is difficult, however, not to believe that so intelligent a lady had some idea of the aims and hopes of her father when he gave her hand to the Elector, that so resolute a Protestant as she was did not share her husband’s belief in “the divine call” to the sovereignty, and that there is no foundation for the statement she was ready to pledge her jewels and everything else she prized in the world for the sake of the Protestant cause. For whatever estimate may be formed of her character there is nothing in the historical records of the time to cast doubts on her fidelity to the Reformed faith. She had her faults, and perhaps the greatest of them ws her extravagance and her love of luxury and display. One of her sons described her Court as vexed with rats and mice, but especially creditors. Her daughter Sophia wrote on one occasion that her mother’s banquets were more luxurious than Cleopatra’s, because diamonds as well as peals had been sacrificed in providing for them. The same Princess is also credited with having said of her mother that she preferred animal pests to the personal care of her children, of whom she had thirteen. Doubtless, too, she was tenacious in her 59 hatreds. But she was at least equally constant in her affections. In the poverty and distresses to the last devoted of her husband. In her youth she won in a marked degree the love of her elder brother, Prince Henry, whose last words, it is said, were – “Where is sister?” She was deeply affected by the death of her brother, Charles I and in token of the undying sisterly attachment she ever afterwards wore a mourning ring bearing the inscription, “Memento mori.” In the midst of her personal trials she was constantly concerned for the interests of her sons and daughters; and it as on their account as well as of her tendency to lavishness when she had means at her command she made demands on her son, Charles Lewis, when he became Elector, and on her nephew, Charles II of England, which they were unable, if also to a certain extent unwilling to meet. Two years before her death she returned to England, and Evelyn, in recording her funeral says – “This night was buried in Westminster Abbey the Queen of Bohemia, after all her sorrows and afflictions, being come to die in the arms of her nephew, the King.” Her personal fascination doubtless inspired the generous and fearless championship of Duke Christian of Brunswick, Administrator of the Bishopric of Halberstadt. But it was more than her charms of figure and manners; - it was her unflinching devotion to Britain and to Protestantism that made the chivalry of England ready to fight in her cause on the Continent if her worldly wise father had seen his way to sanction the enterprise, that ensured for her the self- sacrificing service of a nobleman of the type of Lord , her friend and companion in arms of her husband and her son Rupert, and that secured for her descendants the succession to the British throne. Of her large family four at lest became notable figures; Elizabeth by reason of her scholarship and her friendship with Descartes, and her patronage of letters as head of the Lutheran Abbey of Hervorden; Prince Maurice and Rupert by their knightly accomplishments and their devotion to the cause in England, and most of all Sophia, who married Ernest Augustus, Elector of Hanover, and was the mother of George I of Britain. Appended is the genealogical tale of the House of Stewart and the House of Hanover, as given in Professor Hume Brown’s : -

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James VI (1. of England) I I ______I______I I I Henry Charles I Elizabeth married (Died young) I Elector Palatien I I ______I______I______I I I I I I Charles II James VIII Mary married Rupert Maurice Sophia married (I. of England) Prince of Orange Elector of Hanover I I I I William II George I ______I I I I I I Mary II Anne James George II Married (The ) I I I ______I______Frederick I I () Charles Henry I (The Young Pretender (Cardinal of York) George III I I ______I___ I I I I George IV Frederick William III Edward () (IV of England) (Duke of Kent) I Victoria I I Edward I (VII of England) I I George IV

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61

CHAPTER X

CHARLES I.

Sir Robert Sibbald, the historian and Geographer-Royal; for Scotland by appointment of Charles II, in whose reign he received his knighthood, gives indisputable evidence of the staunchness of his loyalty to the Royalist case when he writes:-

“The greatest honour this shire ever had was that it gave birth to King Charles I, royal martyr, who was born in the Abbey of Dunfermline, and baptised by Mr David Lindsay, Bishop of Ross, on December 23, 1600 -

Whose heavenly virtues angels should rehearse; It is a theme too high for human verse; His sufferings and his death let no man name, It was his glory, but his kingdom’s shame.”

Nor is the Fife antiquarian the only panegyrist of the last of the kings born in Dunfermline. In Reliquiæ Antiquæ under the title of “Ane Epitaph on the Royale Martyr, King Charles I” as printed the following lines:- Here doth lye C. R. I.

Read these letters right, and ye shall find Who in this bloody sheet lyes here inshrined. The letter C his name doth signifie; R doth express his royall dignitie; And by the figure I is this great name From his sad son’s distinguished; the same Three letters, too, express his sufferings by Cromwell, Rebellion, Independency. Then join them in a word and it doth show What each true loyal subject ought to doe- CRY, cry, oh, cry aloud! Let our crys outcry his blood.

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Doubtless, throughout the succeeding generations this sentiment of devotion to King Charles has been cherished by a section of the citizens who favoured or Episcopacy. It cannot be said, however, that the political or civic partiality for the royal son of the Auld Grey Toon, who lost his head at , has been general. The traditions of the city most reverently and most generally cherished are associated with the cause of the Covenant, the Presbyterian testimony and its Evangelical succession, through Ralph Erskine and Thomas Gillespie, and the democratic political faith of which is the expression and embodiment of the religious or sacred sphere. Hence, Charles’ insincerity and his disloyalty to the Covenant, his association with unscrupulous sycophants who encouraged him in his reactionary ways, his assertion of th right divine of Kings to decide for their subjects their religious

Charles I. 63

Profession and the national policy, his attempt to suppress Parliamentary Government and Presbyterian worship, are remembered to his discredit, while his refinement of manners, his devotion to wife and family, the purity of his personal life are forgotten. If no sympathy with is shown, there is certainly to be found little disposition to pay homage to the memory of this unfortunate royal son of Dunfermline as a martyr in a good cause. It was not in the Abbey but in the that Charles was born. He was not the eldest child of the family. Prince Henry, born in Stirling Castle on 19th February 1593, was nearly seven years his senior. For some time before the advent of Charles, the Palace, which three successive Jameses had enlarged and beautified, had been “the Royal dwelling.” Here Elizabeth was born in September 1596, and Margaret, who died in girlhood in December 1598. A younger brother, Robert, who only survived fourteen weeks, was also born in the Palace in May 1602, and Dunfermline continued to be the head- quarters of the family until the removal to England in the following year, on the accession of James to the throne of the United Kingdom. The birth of Charles, who was given the title of Duke of Albany, was celebrated with befitting rejoicings. “At qlk tyme,” says Birrell in his Diary, “the canons schott for joy.” In his early infancy, however, he seems to have caused his father care and anxiety in the midst of his concern for “the affairs of the State” and of his learned studies, from which demonology does not seem to have been excluded. “Charles,” writes Dr Robert Chambers in his Picture of Scotland, “was a very peevish child, and used to annoy his parents dreadfully by his cries during the night. He was one night puling in his cradle, which lay in an apartment opening from the bedroom of the King and Queen, when the nurse employed to tend him suddenly alarmed the Royal pair by a loud scream, followed by the exclamation, ‘Eh! my bairn.’ The King started out of bed at hearing the noise, and ran into the room where the child lay, crying, 'Hoot, toot, what’s the matter wi’ ye, nursie?’ Oh.’ Exclaimed the woman, ‘there was ane like an auld man came into the room, and threw his cloak around the Prince’s cradle; and syne drew it till him again as if he had ta’en cradle, bairn, and a’ awa’ wi’ him. I’m feared it was the thing that’s no canny.’ ‘Fiend, nor he had ta’en the girnie brat clean awa’! said King James, whose demonological learning made him at on see he truth of the nurse’s observation: 'Gin he ever be King there’ll be nae gude in his ring; the deil had cussen his cloak over him already.’”

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Notwithstanding this inauspicious start in life, Charles surmounted his youthful ailments, and gradually developed a right regal bearing. When he was in his twelfth year the lamented death of Prince Henry made him the Heir-Apparent, and he was given a training befitting a British sovereign. Like most of his predecessors he became skilful in manly exercises. He was equally distinguished by his metal accomplishments. He acquired a refinement of manners, in marked contrast with that of King James; and though he was perhaps less accomplished than the Scottish Solomon as a student of the Humanities and Philosophies, he exhibited fine taste in art and letters. He was likewise much more reserved in his demeanour, which gave the impression of cold haughtiness, but in his family life he was more affectionate and gentle. Unfortunately, as already indicated, he yielded too readily to the foolish and selfish counsellors who led him sadly astray by their flatteries. Giving full play to the absolutist ideas taught by his father, and, making them his religion, he inflexibly maintained his claim to the Divine Right, and cherished the sense of personal responsibility to God only, which brought him into conflict with Puritanism in England, Presbyterianism in Scotland and Protestantism everywhere. The same absolutism also caused him to estrange the nobles and the people by seizure of lands which had one belonged to the Roman , and by his arbitrary imposition of taxes for enterprises and extravagances of which his subjects did not approve. Charles left Dunfermline with his parents when he was three years of age. Thirty years elapsed before he gave proof of the patriotic quality described by his father as “a salon-like affection” for the place of one’s birth, by visiting it. When in 1633 he came to Scotland for his Coronation, he did not forget the old Royal dwelling. On the 4th and 5th of July he held his Court there, when “with great solemnitie,” he created Sir Robert Kerr Earl of Ancrum and Lord Kerr of Nisbet. Proclamation of the election to the Peerage was made by the heralds at the open windows of “the great chamber” of the Palace. He also conferred the honour of knighthood on five of his friends, and it is supposed that Alexander Clark of Pittencrieff was one of the so honoured on this occasion. By this time, however, the glow of enthusiastic loyalty which had been exited by the Royal visit to Scotland had begun to cool. His Majesty showed himself tactlessly lacking in graciousness towards the citizens of Edinburgh, who had spared no pains to give him a right hearty Royal welcome. He had issued too, his “General Revocation.,” claiming for himself possessions which had been appropriated by others; and among the assumptions was the Lordship of Dunfermline 65

“to which His Majestie succeeded as only sone and heire to His Majestie’s umquhile, dearest mother, Queen Anna, who was heritably infeft in the said Lordship of Dunfermling and siclike gifts.” By this Act he revoked “all gifts, alienations, dispositions, and other rightes whatsoever, made by His Majestie, or his said dearest mother, unlawfully and against the lawes of the kingdome, of the said lordship, or any landes, teinds, offices, kirks, patronages, and others pertaining to the said lordship at any time preceding the date hereof.” Further, he had caused keep disappointment and no slight apprehension by his antipathy to Presbyterians or , whom in Edinburgh he regarded “with an unfavourable aspect.” At Stirling his attitude had been equally unfriendly. Two days before he arrived in Dunfermline, a Provost at Linlithgow or Stirling “who was known to be a ” was not admitted to kiss the regal hand, when he presented plate as a token of loyalty and devotion. Next year he gave offence on a larger scale. Lord Rothes, Sheriff of Fife; Lord Lindsay, bailie of the regality of St Andrews, having learned that it was the intention of the King to pass through Dunfermline, assembled the country there to the number of nearly 2000 on horseback, in order to give “a noble reception to his Majesty.” Rush-worth, in his History, adds – “Many of them being Dissenters, His Majesty was pleased to take another way and avoided them.” As the struggle between King and Parliament proceeded, the sympathy of the people of Dunfermline and West Fife with the cause of political and religious freedom must have steadily grown, notwithstanding their natural partiality for the Dunfermline-born sovereign. For the Protestant and Presbyterian sentiment was strong and keen, and the summons to battle for “Christ’s Crown and Covenant” was resolutely responded to. In 1638 the National Covenant, prepared by Alexander Henderson and Johnstone of Warriston, was extensively subscribed in Dunfermline. This document, a large sheep of parchment 37¼ by 34¾ inches, is treasured in the Session House of Queen Anne Street Church as a sacred relic transmitted to them through Ralph Erskine. Among upwards of 200 signatures are the names of the heads of most of the families in the town and district at the time including those of the Earl of Dunfermline; Sir Robert Halkett of Pitfirrane; James Durie of Craigluscar; Robert Ged (senior and junior) of Baldridge; of Pitreavie; Wm Wardlaw of Balmule; etc. As the trying dreary years slowly passed bringing with them alternating hopes and fears, there must have been many variations of attitude on the part of the citizens as they pondered the claims of their earthly King and of the King of Kings and strove to effect an adjustment in their minds 66 and consciences. With the great majority of their fellow-countrymen they were probably not unwilling to see concession or conciliation on the pat of Charles in times of stress and peril, when he turned to his Scottish subjects for support, even after he had failed and disappointed them again and again. The Solemn League and Covenant acceded to by the King in one of these times of strait in 1643 was eagerly accepted as a basis of settlement. The Kirk Session Records contain the following note under date of October 19:-

“That day the Solemne League and Covenant fr reformation and defence of religion, the honour and happiness of the King, and the peace and safety of the three kingdoms of Scotland, England, and Ireland, ws red intimat this sabbath be Mr Robert Kay to the haill congregation, that nane plead ignorance thairoff, but that they may be prepared to sweare to it and subscribe the same next Lord’s day.”

Unhappily that readjustment, which “cost Scotland blood, cost Scotland tears,” proved a rope of sand, and the accentuation of the strifes between and Independents, and Round- heads, culminated in the execution of Charles at Whitehall as a traitor to the Commonwealth. “There can be no doubt,” writes Dr Ebenezer Henderson, the painstaking City Annalist, who evidently to some extent shared the view of Sir Robert Sibbald, “that when the news of his violent death came to Dunfermline - his ain toun, as it was styled – the great body of the inhabitants would with the nation at large, ‘express their sympathy for his untimely end, mourn his loss, and esteem him a martyr’; while others who went in with Cromwell would refer to his ‘unrighteous war, his insincerity, and his bigotry.’”