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The reformation of St. Margaret and St. David was accompanied by a bloodless but a thorough political and social revolution, and during the happy hundred years which elapsed after the Treaty of Falaise was annulled to the death of Alexander III. the Church and State were at rest. Then men sought for a blessing on their prosperity by the erection of majestic churches and by the consecration of a part of their estates to God. On the abbey farm the capacities of the Scottis! soil were first discovered, and the clergy co-operated with the enlightened policy which opened up a wider commercial intercourse with foreign lands. It was the maternal love of 'Halie Kirk' that readily dedicated the son of the poor bondman to the service of her altars, and finally succeeded in the abolition of villanage, the lowest order in the social feudal scale; it was she who instituted the 'truce of God,' commanding her sons to abstain from hostilities at certain seasons, who held out to the penitent or to the taken at disadvantage the refuge of Gyrth within her walls, and who sanctified human suffering when she inscribed above the doors of the leper-houses (those homes of anguish of which there were many in this country) 'Vere languores nostros ipse tulit, et dolores nostros ipse portavit: et nos putavimus eum quasi leprosum et per cussum a Deo et humiliatum. In the 'Maison-Dieu' the sick of other diseases and the destitute were ministered to for the love of God; the public schools were in the hands of the monks and in the Benedictine library, literature, Gothic architecture, the pious art of illumination, medicine, and, in short, every science which could tend to the glory of God and the benefit of mankind, was sedulously cultivated. After the Wars of Independence the monks had lost somewhat of their fervour, and the sons and daughters of St. Francis and St. Dominic came to stir men up to repent, to renounce the flesh, to cut off superfluities, and to turn to

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the life of the cross. In the narrow streets of our quaint old burghs these mendicant brethren, in coarse habit and with sandalled feet, were often seen, as they are now to be seen in the towns of Italy. The immediately desolating consequences of the wars penetrated into the spiritual kingdom. The clergy devoted their energies to political contention, and, not unfrequently, figured on the battlefield. Then, to try to make up for upright lives, for neglected dioceses or parishes, and broken oaths, they did superstitious penances, or set off on pilgrimages to Continental shrines. At the same time the corruptions which infected the rest of Western Christendom gradually made way in Scotland. The abuse of indulgences was eagerly taken advantage of, and the 'Questionarius' was a welcome visitor to those who would rather impoverish themselves and their heirs than deny themselves the delights of sin for a season. During the reigns of the Five Jameses the deterioration continued; and yet at this period there was a great deal to be thankful for. These five kings were all more or less men in advance of their age. After a long struggle the pride of the aristocracy was humbled, and the highlands and islands and part of the stormy border land were brought under the real dominion of the King of Scots, and made in some measure accessible to law and magistrate. With the interest of every class at heart, the Jameses were emphatically kings of the people, and in their many parliaments not only are rigorous punishments provided for those who supplied their establishments by 'maisterful theft and reft,' but minute points of good order are attended to by statute after statute enacted and re-enacted with anxious solicitude for the welfare of all. There was the court of James I. and his Queen, Jane Beaufort, exhibiting a pure domestic life to a nation that seemed returning to the barbarism of the ninth or tenth centuries; there

was the foundation of the universities, the erection of the metropolitical sees; and, above all, there were the lives of Kennedy, Bishop of St. Andrews, of Brown, Bishop of Dunkeld, of Elphinstone, Bishop of Aberdeen, and of Margaret, the good Queen of James III., to show forth the 'beauty of holiness;' and among the less known but duly recorded we may think of those of the priors of St. Andrews, whose lives were very pure and lovely, whose bodies, laid to rest in their now nameless graves of the desecrated cemetery of the priory, await, with the chalice on their hearts, the resurrection; and whose spirits, with those of their many children whom they trained in the holiest paths, are, in the words of the old Scottish chronicler, 'intil Paradyse.' When the preachers of the new opinions appeared, the Church took the alarm, and tried to burn out unsound doctrine; she also held councils, and Parliament passed Acts, for 'the Reforming of Kirks and Kirkmen.' But these measures neither destroyed heresy nor improved the manners of the 'Kirkmen.' The Protestants became powerful and bold; the clergy, more than ever, a scandal and a byeword; and, while the sweeping assertions of the adversaries of the Catholic Church must be received with limitations, in one of the last Provincial Councils of the Scottish Church, we have evidence, by the confession of the clergy themselves, that their approaching fall was the meed of their ignorance and evil lives. In the Primatial city of Scotland, beside those gaunt ruins which are all that are left to us of the first pointed cathedral of St. Andrews, we can in some degree realize how deadly the sin must have been which called down on the Church of St. Ninian and St. Columba, of St. Margaret and St. David, of Bishop Kennedy and Bishop Elphinstone, so awful a retribution.

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Airth, Friar, 253.

Archbishop James Beaton, of St. Andrews, 250.

James Beaton, of Glasgow,

231.

Robert Blackader, 231.

Gavin Dunbar, 231.

Andrew Forman, 250.

Patrick Graham, 218.
John Hamilton, 273.
William Shevez, 219.
Alexander Stewart, 231.
James Stewart, 231.

Archery, 202, 214.

Ardchattan, Monastery of the Order of Vallis Caullium, 117.

Armarian, office of, 81.

Albany, Duke of, 184, 190, 197, Armstrong Borderers, 246.

223, 230, 242, 245.

Almoner, office of, 81.

Almonry, 84.

Ancient league with France, 130. Angus, Earl of, 212, 223, 230, 246.

Apostle of the Orkneys, 15.

Northern Picts, see

St.

Columba.

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Arran, Earl of, 221, 256, 261. Articles of Reformation, 280. Assured Lords, 257.

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Athole, Earl of, 207.

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Battle of Dunsinane, 57.

Dupplin, 174.

Falkirk, 136.
Flodden, 228.

the Grampians, 4.
Halidon Hill, 174.
Harlaw, 190.
Homildon, 185.
Largs, 119.

Lumphanan, 57.
Luncarty, 56.
Nectansmere, 45.
Neville's Cross, 175.

Nisbet Moor, 185.
Otterburn, 179.
Pinkie, 263.

Sauchie Burn, 225.

Solway Moss, 256.

the Standard, 92.

Stirling, 133.

Verneuil, 191.

Beaulieu, Monastery of the

Order of Vallis

Caullium,

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