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trated land than Scotland the morning after this fatal fight. The first outpourings of that frantic grief, whose echo still remains in plaintive melodies and traditions, were distressing cries all over the country for fathers, or brothers, or lovers, who lay dead on Brankstone Moor. 'The Flowers of the Forest were a' weed awa.' Solemn requiems were sung in the churches, and the harvest was stopped, as if in the idleness of despair. Yet there was no time to lose in facing what might prove still worse calamities; and on the day after the battle, in anticipation of the advance of the English, the presidents of Edinburgh who, when the provost and his bailies had gone to fight, ordered the city, issued a proclamation to lull the panic-stricken people. They alluded with sagacious caution to the national disaster, warned the citizens to place themselves in a state of defence, forbade the wailing of women in the streets, and commanded them rather to 'pass into the churches to pray for the King and his army."1 At this time a wall was built round the city, and this compressing it into narrow limits, accounts for the many floors piled one on another of its ancient houses. The defensive preparations were unnecessary, for the Tudors, profiting by the experience of the Plantagenets, were aware that a thousand victories would never conquer the Scots, and Surrey with his troops returned southwards.

James IV. left one son, James V., whose coronation took place at the age of eighteen months, twenty days after his father's death. Twelve Earls and thirteen Lords of Parliament were among the dead, and from the black dresses, and sobs, and tears of those present it was called the mourning coronation. War with England was for the present suspended; but as a first experiment of female government in Scotland was to be tried by the Queen-mother, an inexperienced young woman of twenty-four, who, with a large

1 Arnot's Hist. of Edinburgh, p. 14.

amount of perverse cleverness, took for the model of her life and conversation her brother, Henry VIII., many disasters might be looked for before the long regency was over. In April, she had a posthumous son, and in August she wedded the young Earl of Angus, the head of the humbled but still important house of Douglas. This marriage terminated her regency, and the Duke of Albany, a cousin of the King, was called over from France, where he was Lord High Admiral, to fill her place. He brought with him a gay little retinue, who were to receive the usual surly courtesy of the national nobility, and to be the natural enemies of the Englishmen who hung about the Court. One of the first acts of the new regency was to require the Queen to surrender her little sons. Four Lords were commissioned to proceed to Edinburgh Castle to receive them from their mother. A crowd of citizens followed them to the castle gates, where the buxom young Queen awaited them with a grandiose Tudor demeanour. She held by the hand the heir to the throne, and his baby brother was behind in his nurse's arms. The roar of the people having ceased, Margaret announced that she was ready to hear the commissioners: 'Stand, declare the cause of your coming.' They answered that they were sent by Parliament to demand their King and his brother. 'Drop the portcullis,' cried the Queen, and the iron gates came thundering down between the royal family and the bewildered lords. The castle,' said Margaret, 'is part of my enfeoffment, and of it, by my late husband the King, was I made sole governess: nor to any mortal shall I yield the important command. But I respect the Parliament and nation, and request six days to consider their mandate; for of infinite consequence is my charge, and my counsellors now, alas! are few.' With these words she returned within, and the baffled lords went down the castle way. But from the troubled regency we must turn for a while to the his

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tory of the Church. On the 9th day of January 1492, the see of Glasgow was erected into an archiepiscopal and metropolitan see, by a bull from Pope Innocent VIII., and the dioceses of Dunkeld, Dunblane, Galloway, and Argyll were subjected to the venerable church of St. Kentigern, 'the spiritual mother of many nations.' Robert Blackader, who had been translated from Aberdeen to Glasgow in the year 1483, was the first archbishop.1 Archbishop Sheves was succeeded in 1503 by James, Duke of Ross, brother of James IV., who died soon after his elevation.2

The see, after having been kept vacant for years, was filled in 1509 by Alexander Stewart, an illegitimate son of James IV. During his archiepiscopate, St. Leonard's College was founded in the University of St. Andrews. The records of saintly lives are now scattered thinly through our histories, and it is a rare relief to come on those who, in the midst of a 'wicked and adulterous generation,' 'walked with God.' George Brown, Bishop of Dunkeld, adorned his episcopate by a blameless life, and by the restoration of ecclesiastical discipline throughout his diocese. Among his many good and useful works, the last was the erection of a bridge over the Tay, near his palace at Dunkeld. The defeat at Flodden was a shock from which he never recovered. He spent the summer of 1514, his last on earth, at Dunkeld; his work being his prayers; and his recreation, sitting at his chamber window to watch the masons at the bridge. His last Christmas was spent at Cluny Castle, and here, on the 14th of January, after he had made his confession, and received the viaticum and last

1 The other archbishops of Glasgow before the Reformation were James Beaton, Gavin Dunbar, and another James Beaton. 2 No record of his consecration remains, and though he is called Archbishop, the same style was used by his successor, who certainly was never consecrated. See Grub, vol. i. p. 395.

anointing, he peacefully breathed his last, saying, as he closed his own eyes, and made the sign of the cross on his heart, 'Father, into Thy hands I commend my spirit.'1 Another good life was that of William Elphinstone, who in 1483 was consecrated to Aberdeen. He received all the learning that the home universities and those of Paris and Orleans could give him, and from his earliest youth a life of prayer and 'calm study' had been instrumental in sheltering him from the evil of the world. The fruits of what he had acquired himself was given to others in the foundation of the University of Aberdeen, for the study of theology, the civil and canon law, medicine, and the arts, and in the production in print of the Breviary of Aberdeen, which, with the legends of the Scottish saints, was printed at Edinburgh in 1509 and 1510. To him, indeed, the scheme for the establishment of a printing press in 1507, has been attributed. The two first printers were Walter Chepman and Andrew Myllar, two merchants in the city of Edinburgh, who, 'at his Majesty's request, for his pleasure, the honour and profit of his realm and lieges, had taken on them to furnish and bring hame ane prent, with all stuff belonging thareto, and expert men to use the same for imprinting within the realm of the books of the laws, Acts of Parliament, chronicles, mass-books, manuals, matin-books, and fortuus, after the use of the realm, with additions and legends of Scottish saints, now gathered to be eked thareto, and all other books that shall be seen necessary, and to sell the same for competent prices. .

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This invention of printing, which was destined to be so marvellous an agent in the dissemination of every branch of

1 Mylne, Vita Episcop. Dunkelden., pp. 27, 54; Grub, Eccles. Hist. of Scot., vol. i. pp. 400, 401.

2 Bremner's Industries of Scotland, p. 492.

useful knowledge, and which, perverted to the service of the devil, has done his work so terribly, was not attended at the beginning with results of unmixed benefit. Many hitherto steadily-worked brains now lay fallow, and this had not a little to do with the ignorance and idleness, and the sins that they prepare the way for, of the Religious Houses. The Monastic Scriptorium was to the middle ages what the printing press now is to the country at large.” Here the intellect of the consecrated to God had been employed in His service; but in the sixteenth century the work began to flag, and although the old-fashioned scribes still took care to have little spaces left that they might paint the initial letters on the printed volumes, they had all but ceased to toil at the illuminated spiritual treatises, those glorious fabrications of the soul and the hand, whose lasting work of mercy is still going on, so often as, turning from a thousand volumes in the nineteenth century, the soul is rested by gazing on a single page 'perfect in colour, and holy in thought.' A better spirit however in regard to a liberal education would appear to be gaining ground among the nobility. All barons and freeholders whose fortunes permitted it were now obliged to send their sons to the schools, and to keep them there until they had attained a competent knowledge of the Latin tongue. Gradually, too, a measure of comfort and of refinement may have been tolerated in the barons' rough household. When the necessities of war induced Robert I. to level one hundred and thirty-seven castles, the old stately way of life fell too. To the baronial castle, the gaunt square keep succeeded, and within its unlovely walls the influence of the Courts of the Stuarts-courts where music, literature, and art were cultivated-was slowly penetrating, and softening the bleak social life of the Scottish gentry.

1 Glastonbury Abbey, J. Williams, p. 28.

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