Imagens da página
PDF
ePub

by the Archbishop of Rheims, and a brilliant train of French nobility, and the marriage was afterwards celebrated with great magnificence at Tours. The character of the French Prince, to whom she was united, and who became afterwards known as Lewis the Eleventh, is familiar to most readers, and her lot as his wife was singularly wretched.

The late infraction of the truce, and this unworthy attempt to intercept the Princess, effectually roused the King, and he determined to renew the war. It is not improbable that there were other motives: James may have deemed a renewal of hostilities the best method of giving employment to many discontented spirits, who in peace were likely to be more mischievously engaged. But the army which he assembled, although numerous, was weakened by disaffection; and after having for fifteen days laid siege to Roxburgh, the campaign concluded in an abrupt and mysterious manner. The Queen suddenly arrived in the camp, and although the place was not expected to hold out many days longer, the King, with a haste which inferred some secret cause of danger and alarm, disbanded his army and precipitately returned to his capital *. This was in August. Two months after a Parliament assembled at Edinburgh, in which nothing transpired or was enacted which throws light upon these suspicions. The probability is that discontentment, perhaps conspiracy, continued to exist; but we have no clue to unravel it, and events for a short space seemed to reassume their ordinary tenor.

* Fordun a Goodal, vol. ii., p. 502.

We are now arrived at that gloomy period when a reign, hitherto more than commonly prosperous, and in which the Monarch carried through his schemes with an energy and ability which seemed to promise a long career, was destined to close with an appalling suddenness. It is to be regretted that, at this interesting moment, the accounts of our contemporary historians, and the evidence of our national records, are both extremely indistinct and unsatisfactory, so that the causes of the conspiracy against James the First are involved in -much obscurity. In the feelings indeed of a great proportion of persons in the country, any daring individuals desirous of effecting a revolution, might have discovered ample ground for hope and encouragement. The rigour with which the King carried on the administration, whilst it gave a happy interval of comfort and security to the people, was displeasing to a large portion of the nobility; and the contrast between the feudal license and privileged disorder of the government of Albany, with the rigid justice and severity of James, was deplored by many fierce spirits to whom rapine had become a trade and a delight. To these, any prospect of a change could not fail to be acceptable; and it must be remembered, that, according to the miserable principles of the feudal system then in full force in Scotland, the disaffection of any baron was sure to draw along with it the enmity of the whole body of his followers.

But in accounting for the designs against this Monarch, it is also to be remembered, that there must have been many, and these of the highest rank, who were animated by a still deeper enmity.

The impression made upon the numerous connexions of the unfortunate Albany and Lennox, by the unmeasured severity of their punishment, was not to be easily eradicated. Revenge was a feudal duty, and such were the dark principles of this iron time, that the longer it was delayed the more fully and the more unsparingly was the debt of blood exacted. These circumstances, however, are to be considered not as the causes, but the encouragements, of a conspiracy, the actual history of which is involved in obscurity. The great actors in the plot were Sir Robert Graham, Walter, Earl of Athole, a son of Robert the Second, and his grandson, Sir Robert Stewart, Chamberlain to the King. In Graham, the motives which led to his mortal enmity against the King have been clearly ascertained. At the time of the execution of Albany this baron had been imprisoned, in common with other adherents of that powerful family, but, in addition to this cause of quarrel, the conduct of James in seizing, or resuming the Earldom of Strathern, had created a determined purpose of revenge. David, Earl of Strathern, was the eldest son of Robert the Second, by his second marriage with Euphemia Ross. This David left an only child, a daughter, who married Patrick Graham, son of Sir Patrick Graham of Kincardine, and, in right of his wife, by the acknowledged law of Scotland, which allowed the transmission of feudal dignities through females, Earl of Strathern. To her eldest son, by the same law, the estates and the dignity of this earldom unquestionably belonged; but the King contended that it was a male fief, and that,

upon the death of David, Earl of Strathern, it ought to have reverted to the crown. He accordingly dispossessed Malise Graham, and seized the estates of Strathern; but, to reconcile his nobility in some degree to the severity of such a proceeding, he conferred the life-rent of the earldom upon Athole, and erected the new earldom of Menteith in favour of Graham.

At the time that he was thus deprived of his paternal inheritance, Malise was in England, detained as one of the hostages for the payment of the money due by James; but Robert Graham, his uncle, indignantly remonstrated against the wrong done to his nephew; and finding his representations ineffectual, determined on revenge. The character of this baron was of that dark and powerful kind which made him a dangerous enemy. He was cruel, crafty, and eloquent; he could conceal his private ambition under the specious veil of zeal for the public good; he pursued his purposes with a courage superior to the sense of danger, and followed the instinct of his revenge with a delight unchecked either by mercy or remorse. Of all these qualities he gave ample proof in the events which followed.

It may be doubted whether he at first ventured to explain to the nobles, whom he had attached to his party, any more serious design than that of abridging the power of the King under which they had lately suffered so severely, and resuming into their own hands not only the lands of which they had been deprived, but the feudal prerogatives which had been, by the late acts of the legislature, so materially curtailed.

Animated by this desire it was determined that they should draw up a list of their grievances, for the purpose of presenting it to the monarch. The first was an easy task to discontented men; but all shrunk from laying it before the Parliament, till Graham, having first made them promise that they would support him against the royal displeasure, undertook the dangerous commission. His daring character, however, hurried him into an excess for which his associates were not prepared. He described, in glowing colours, the tyranny of the government; adverted to the ruin which had fallen on the noblest houses; to the destruction which might be meditated against them at that moment by a Prince who wrested the ancient laws and customs of the kingdom to suit the purposes of his own ambition; and, appealing to the barons who surrounded him, implored them to save themselves and the country, were it even at the expense of subjecting to restraint the person of the sovereign. This audacious speech was pronounced in the royal presence; and the barons, habituated to respect, or rather to fear their prince, gazed silently on each other. It was a moment of fearful suspense; and all hung upon the resolution of the Monarch. But this was a quality in which James was never deficient. A glance of his eye convinced him that his enemies were hesitating; he started from his throne, and in a stern voice commanding them to arrest the traitor who had dared to insult him to his face, was promptly obeyed. The result, for the time, appeared to strengthen the party of the King; and Graham, uttering imprecations against the weakness of his associates, was

« AnteriorContinuar »