“Aurea prima sata est ætas, quæ vindice nulloSponte sua sine lege fidem rectumque colebat.”
“Aurea prima sata est ætas, quæ vindice nulloSponte sua sine lege fidem rectumque colebat.”
“Aurea prima sata est ætas, quæ vindice nulloSponte sua sine lege fidem rectumque colebat.”
“Aurea prima sata est ætas, quæ vindice nullo
Sponte sua sine lege fidem rectumque colebat.”
It might be a fair question whether the stranger’s science is so obsolete as the style of literature in which he is attacked, since Dunbar’s satirical poem, among other minor indications of a character unsuited to the higher offices in the Christian ministry, insinuates that the adventurer committed several murders; and although, the charge is made in a sort of rough jocularity, the force of it does not by any means rest on its absurdity and incredibility. He was accused of a mad project for extracting gold from the Wanlockhead Hills, in Dumfriesshire, which cannot be utterly scorned in the present day, since gold has actually been extracted from them, though, the process has not returned twenty shillings to the pound. This curious creature completed his absurdities by the construction of a pair of wings, with which he was to take a delightful aerial excursion to his native country. He proved his sincerity by starting in full feather from Stirling Castle. In such affairs it is, as Madame du Deffaud said about that walk taken by St Denis round Paris with his own head for a burden,le premier pas qui coute. The poor adventurer tumbled at once, and was picked up with a broken thigh-bone. Such is the only Frenchman who became conspicuous before Albany’s time as holding rank and office in Scotland.
Albany had not long rubbed on with the Scots Estates when he found that he really must go to Paris, and as there seems to have been no business concerning Scotland that he could transact there, an uncontrollable yearning to be once more in his own gay world is the only motive we can find for his trip. The Estates of Scotland were in a surly humour, and not much inclined to allow him his holidays. They appointed a council of regency to act for him. He, however, as if he knew nothing about the constitutional arrangements in Scotland, appointed a sort of representative, who cannot have known more about the condition and constitution of Scotland than his constituent, though he had been one of the illustrious guests present at the marriage of James IV. He was called by Pitscottie ‘Monsieur Tilliebattie,’ but his full name was Antoine d’Arces de la Bastie, and he had been nicknamed or distinguished, as the case might be, as the Chevalier Blanc, or White Knight, like the celebrated Joannes Corvinus, the Knight of Wallachia, whose son became king of Hungary. M. Michel calls him the “chivalresque et brillant La Bastie, chez qui le guerrier et l’homme d’état etaient encore supérieurs au champion des tournois.” He was a sort of fanatic for the old principle of chivalry, then beginning to disappear before the breath of free inquiry, and the active useful pursuits it was inspiring. M. Michel quotes from a contemporary writer, who describes him as perambulating Spain, Portugal, England, and France, and proclaiming himself ready to meet all comers of sufficient rank, not merely to break a lance in chivalrous courtesy, butà combattre à l’outrance—an affair which even at that time was too important to be entered on as a frolic, or to pass an idle hour, but really required some serious justification. No one, it is said, accepted the challenge but the cousin of James IV. of Scotland, who is said to have been conquered, but not killed, as from the nature of the challenge he should have been; but this story seems to be a mistake by the contemporary, and M. Michel merely quotes it without committing himself.
Such was the person left by the regent as his representative, though apparently with no specific office or powers acknowledged by the constitution of Scotland. Research might perhaps afford new light to clear up the affair, but at present the only acknowledgment of his existence, bearing anything like an official character, are entries in the Scots treasurer’s accounts referred to by M. Michel, one of them authorising a payment of fifteen shillings to a messenger to the warden of the middle march, “with my lord governor’s letters delivered by Monsr. Labawte;” another payment to his servant for summoning certain barons and gentlemen to repair to Edinburgh; and a payment of twenty shillings, for a service of more import, is thus entered:—“Item, deliverit be Monsieur Lawbawtez to Johne Langlandis, letters of our sovereign lords to summon and warn all the thieves and broken men out of Tweeddale and Eskdale in their own country—quhilk letters were proclaimed at market-cross of Roxburgh, Selkirk, and Jedwood.”
This proclamation seems to have been the deadly insult which sealed his fate. The borders had hardly yet lost their character of an independent district, which might have merged into something like a German margravate. There had been always some family holding a preponderating and almost regal power there. At this time it was the Homes or Humes, a rough set, with their hands deeply dipped in blood, who little dreamed that their name would be known all over Europe by the fame of a fat philosopher sitting writing in a peaceful library with a goosequill, and totally innocent of the death of a fellow-being. It was one of Albany’s rigorous measures to get the leaders of this clan “untopped,” to use one of Queen Elizabeth’s amiable pleasantries. This was a thing to be avenged; and since La Bastie was taking on himself the responsibilities of Albany, it was thought as well that he should not evade this portion of them. To lure him within their reach, a sort of mock fight was got up by the borderers in the shape of the siege of one of their peel towers. Away went La Bastie in all his bravery, dreaming, simple soul, as if he were in Picardy or Tourain, that the mere name of royalty would at once secure peace and submission. His eye, practised in scenes of danger, at once saw murder in the gaze of those he had ventured among, and he set spurs to his good horse, hoping to reach his headquarters in the strong castle of Dunbar. The poor fellow, however, ignorant of the country, and entirely unaided, was overtaken in a bog. It is said that he tried cajoling, threats, and appeals to honour and chivalrous feeling. As well speak to a herd of hungry wolves as to those grim ministers of vengeance! The Laird of Wedderburn, a Home, enjoyed the distinction of riding with the Frenchman’s head, tied by its perfumed tresses at his saddle-bow, into the town of Dunse, where the trophy was nailed to the market-cross. As old Pitscottie has it, “his enemies came upon him, and slew and murdered him very unhonestly, and cutted off his head, and carried it with them; and it was said that he had long hair platt over his neck, whilk David Home of Wedderburn twust to his saddle-bow, and keeped it.”
This affair brought Scotland into difficulties both with England and France. Henry VIII. professed himself displeased that a French adventurer should have been set up as ruler in his nephew’s kingdom, and Francis I., who had just mounted the throne of France, demanded vengeance on the murderers of his distinguished subject, with whose chivalrous spirit he had a congenial sympathy. There is an exceedingly curious and suggestive correspondence between France and Scotland at the commencement of M. Teulet’s papers, which has been aptly compared to the papers that have been returned to Parliament by our Indian Government on the negotiations with some wily Affghan or Scinde chief, in which reparation is demanded for outrages on a British subject. There is much fussy desire to comply with the demands of the great power, but ever a difficulty, real or pretended, in getting anything done; and probably it often is in the East, as it then was in Scotland, that the difficulty in punishing a set of powerful culprits has a better foundation in their power of self-defence than the government is inclined to acknowledge. Evil days, however, for a time clouded the rising sun of France. The battle of Pavia seemed to set her prostrate for the time; and when Scotland, having then many inducements the other way, was reminded of the old alliance, she answered the appeal with her old zeal.
This article does not aspire to the dignity of history. It has dealt chiefly with the under current, as it were, of the events connected with the doings of the French in Scotland—the secondary incidents, which show how the two nations got on together in their familiar intercourse. Their intercourse, however, now developes itself in large historical features, to which it is thought fitting to offer, in conclusion, a general reference, merely hinting at their connection with the preceding details. Ostensibly, and as matter of state policy, the old alliance was so strong that it seemed as if Scotland were drifting under the lee of France to be a mere colony or dependency of that grand empire—though there were influences at work which, in reality, utterly defeated this expected consummation. There was a brilliant wedding when James V. went to bring home Madeleine of France; and was so honoured that, according to the documents given by M. Teulet, the officers charged with the traditions of state precedents grumbled about this prince of a northern island, who knew no civilised language, receiving honours which had heretofore been deemed sacred to the royal blood of France. The national policy that held by this marriage would have had but a frail tenure, for poor Madeleine soon drooped and died. She had said, as a girl, that she wanted to be a queen, be the realm she ruled what it might; and so she had a brief experience—this word seems preferable to enjoyment—of the throne of cold uncomfortable Scotland. There was speedily another wedding, bearing in the direction of the French alliance, for that was still uppermost with the governing powers, whatever it might be with the English and Protestant party daily acquiring strength among the district leaders, nobles or lairds. It may have seemed to these, that when the queen was no longer a daughter of France, but a young lady, the child of one feudatory and the widow of another, with no better claim to share the throne than her beautiful face, there was no further danger from France. But the young queen was a Guise—one of that wonderful race who seemed advancing onwards, not only to the supreme command of France, but to something still greater, for they have been known in their boasting to speak of their house being directly descended from Charlemagne. When the daughter was Queen of France, and the mother ruled Scotland, the time for the final annexation seemed close at hand; but, in reality, the climax had been reached, and the French interest was near to its downfall. While the queen-mother was taking possession of the feudal strongholds, and placing all the high offices of state in the hands of Frenchmen—D’Oysells, de Rubays, Villemores, and the like—in France the proper method of governing Scotland was considered in council as a matter of French policy; and the question was discussed whether Scotland should have the honour of belonging to the crown of France, or should be a provision for a younger son of the house of Valois.
Those busy politicians, called the Lords of the Congregation, knew these things, and were stimulated to exertion accordingly. Hence came it to pass that the Reformation was so sudden an event in Scotland. On the morning of the 1st of August 1560 the people of Scotland awakened under the spiritual dominion of the Pope—ere evening his hierarchy was abolished, and to own it was criminal. The work of that day was not a deliberative act of legislation, but the announcement of the triumph of a party. After a long deadly contest the English party had gained a complete and final victory. It almost enhanced the triumph over French principles that the Acts of this Parliament never received the royal assent. Legislation without the intervention of the crown, was flat rebellion in the eyes of France, and not very reconcilable even with English decorum. It was owing to this specialty that, when Queen Mary engaged to support the religion established by law in Scotland, she was suspected, and not without reason, of stowing away, among the secrets of her heart, the consideration likely to be some day available, that Protestantism, not having the sanction of the crown, was not the religion established by law. If we were to enter with any fulness on this great passage in history, and to view it through the rich new light poured upon it by the documents collected by M. Teulet, we would require more room than the quite sufficient space which this article occupies. We have opportunity only for this brief reference to them, as the winding-up and conclusion of that interesting episode in history—the old alliance between France and Scotland.
Before parting, let us say a word on the personal character and other merits of the volumes which have led us on this occasion to look into the connection of our ancestors with the French, and have furnished us with the greater portion of the material for our two articles. To see two men of learning, research, and various special abilities, devoting what must be no inconsiderable portion of a life’s labour to the connection of our country with the great French empire, is interesting and pleasant, to say the least of it. We are a nation disposed to court the light; we are never afraid of the effect that revelations of our antecedents may have; we are sure of coming well out in all inquiries into our history and connections; and the present elucidation has not stripped a leaf from the national laurels—indeed, we take it to have only removed some of the dust that covered them, and revealed their real freshness and brightness. To the labourers in such a task we should feel that we owe a debt of kindly gratitude, and this should not the less impress us that the work has been done by citizens of that great old European central power which befriended the poor children of our soil in the days of their poverty and danger. New interests and attachments, more suitable to the position of Scotland on the map of Europe, and to the origin of her people, afterwards arose. When centuries of cruel wrong and alienation and wrath had passed away, she became reconciled to that great relation which, let us suppose, in the usual misunderstanding which creates the quarrels in the romances, had treated her as an alien enemy. But while the reconciliation has been long consolidated, and has proved as natural a national adjustment as the restoration of an exiled child is a natural family adjustment, there is still a pleasing sentiment in recalling the friends found in the wide world when kindred were unkind; and the hospitable doors opened to our wandering countrymen, among those who stood at the head of European civilisation in the middle ages, must ever remain a memorable record of the generosity of the patrons, and of the merits of those who so well requited their generosity by faithful and powerful services. To the volumes which contain the record of this attachment something more is due than the mere recognition of their literary merits—they deserve at the hands of our countrymen an affectionate recognition as national memorials. The quantity of curious and interesting matter contained in them, but for the special zeal of the two men who have thus come forward, might have remained still buried under archæological rubbish—might have remained so for ever, even until oblivion overtook them. It is surely right to hope that the zeal and labour embarked by the adventurers will not be thrown away; and that our countrymen will take to the volumes, both of M. Michel and of M. Teulet, as works which it is becoming for them to possess and read as patriotic Scotsmen. If readers have found any interest in the casual glimpses of their contents supplied by the present sketch, they may be assured of finding much more matter of the same kind should they undertake an investigation of the volumes themselves.
Setting before one on the library table the two volumes of M. Michel, and the five of M. Teulet, is a good deal like receiving one guest in full court costume, prepared to meet distinguished company, while another comes to you in his lounging home vestment of serge, with slippers and smoking-cap, as if he had just stepped across the way from the scene of his laborious researches. In the collections in this country of some men who have given themselves to works illustrated by fine engravings, the Book of the Ceremonial of the Coronation of Louis XV. is conspicuous, not only by its finely engraved plates, but by the instruction they afford as representations of the costume and ways of the great hierarchy of state officers which clustered round the throne of the Bourbons before the great smash came. Among the most conspicuous of these are the Scots Guards, then no longer our countrymen, though the title was retained. The outfit must have appeared signally beautiful and chivalrous amid the ponderous state habiliments which the eighteenth century saw accumulate and fall to pieces. It is evidently a traditional type of the court or company dress of the man-at-arms of the fifteenth century—a sufficient amount of steel to betoken the warrior, richly damasked or inlaid with precious metals—a superfluity of lace and embroidered cloth of silk or velvet. Altogether, a more superbly and chivalrously accoutred person than your Scottish Guard it is difficult to idealise; and in the original engraving there is about him, both in countenance and attitude, the air of one devoted in enthusiasm and solemn sense of responsibility, to the duty wherewith he is intrusted. With a good eye to the appropriate, M. Michel—it is his own suggestion, we take it, not the binder’s—has transferred this striking figure to the outside of this book, where it glitters in gold on the true-blue background, which also relieves the lion, the thistle, and thefleur-de-lys. A glimpse we have just had at a quarto and illustrated copy of the book in the hands of a fortunate collector, wherein is a full engraved copy of the plate of the Scots Guard, along with many other appropriate artistical decorations; but in this shape the book is not put, so far as we are aware, at the disposal of the public; and any account of it is, in a manner, a digression into something like private affairs. Reverting to the common published impression of M. Michel’s book, let it suffice to say that it is well filled with blazons of the armorial achievements of our countrymen, assuredly valuable to workers in heraldry and genealogy, and interesting to those descendants of the stay-at-home portions of the several families which established themselves so comfortably and handsomely in the territory of our ancient ally.
Looking apart from matters of national interest to the literary nature of M. Michel’s volumes, we find in them specialties which we know will be deemed signally meritorious; but of the merits to be found in them we have some difficulty in speaking, since they are literary virtues of a kind rather out of the way of our appreciation—beyond it, if the reader prefers that way of expressing what is meant. There is throughout these two volumes the testimony to an extent of dreary reading and searching which would stimulate compassion, were it not that he who would be the victim, were that the proper feeling in which he should be approached, evidently exults and glories, and is really happy, in the conditions which those who know no better would set down as his hardships. There are some who, when they run the eye over arrêts and other formal documents, over pedigrees, local chronicles telling trifles, title-deeds, and such-like documents, carry with them a general impression of the political or social lesson taught by them, and discard from recollection all the details from which any such impression has been derived. M. Michel is of another kind; he has that sort of fondness for his work which induces him to show you it in all stages, from the rude block to the finished piece of art, so far as it is finished. You are entered in all the secrets of his workshop—you participate in all his disappointments and difficulties as well as his successes. The research which has had no available result is still reported, in order that you may see how useless it has been. We repeat that we have not much sympathy with this kind of literature, yet would not desire to speak profanely of it, since we know that some consider it the only perfect method of writing books on subjects connected with history or archæology. The “citation of authorities,” in fact, is deemed, in this department of intellectual labour, something equivalent to records of experiments in natural science, and to demonstrations in geometrical science. Our own sympathy being with the exhibition rather of results than of the means of reaching them, we have not, unfortunately, that high respect for footnotes filled with accurate transcripts of book-titles, which is due to the high authorities by whom the practice has been long sanctioned. We can afford it, however, the sort of distant unsympathising admiration which people bestow on accomplishments for which they have no turn or sympathy—as for those of the juggler, the acrobat, and the accountant. M. Michel’s way of citing the books he refers to is indeed, to all appearance, a miracle of perfection in this kind of work. Sometimes he is at the trouble of denoting where the passage stands in more than one, or even in every, edition of the work. He gives chapter or section as well as page and volume. In old books counted not by the page but the leaf, he will tell you which side he desires you to look at, right or left; and where, as is the way in some densely printed old folios, in addition to the arrangement of the pages by numeration, divisions on each page are separated by the letters A B C, he tells you which of these letters stands sentry on the paragraph he refers to. There is, at all events, a very meritorious kind of literary honesty in all this, and however disinclined to follow it, no one has a right to object to it.
And, after all, a man who has gone through so much hard forbidding reading as M. Michel has, is surely entitled to let us know something about the dreary wastes and rugged wildernesses through which he has sojourned—all for the purpose of laying before his readers these two gay attractive-looking volumes. Towards his foreign reading, we in the general instance lift the hat of respect, acknowledging its high merits, on the principle of theomne ignotum pro magnifico. Upon the diligent manner in which he has, in our own less luxuriant field of inquiry among Scots authorities, turned over every stone to see what is under it, we can speak with more distinct assurance. Take one instance. The young Earl of Haddington, the son of that crafty old statesman called Tam o’ the Cowgate, who scraped together a fortune in public office under James VI., was studying in France, when he met and fell in love with the beautiful Mademoiselle De Chatillon, grand-daughter of the Admiral Coligny. When only nineteen years old he went back to France, married her, and brought her home. He died within a year, however, and the countess, a rich beautiful widow, returned to her friends. She was, of course, beset by admirers, and in reference to these, M. Michel has turned up a curious passage in ‘Les Histoirettes de Fallemant des Réaux,’ which, if true, shows the persevering zeal with which our queen, Henrietta Maria, seized every opportunity to promote the cause of her religion. The countess, being Huguenot, and of a very Huguenot family, the queen was eager that she should be married to a Roman Catholic, and selected the son of her friend Lady Arundel. The dominion over her affections was, however, held by “un jeune Ecossois nommé Esbron, neveu du Colonel Esbron.” The name is French for the chevalier Hepburn, one of the most renowned soldiers in the French service in the early part of the seventeenth century. The mamma Chatillon was dead against either connection. She got a fright by hearing that her daughter had been carried off to the Fenêbres, or the services of Easter-week which inaugurate Good-Friday; she consequently gave her a maternal box on the ear, carried her off, and, to keep her out of harm’s way, forthwith married her to the Count de la Suze,tout borgne, tout ivrogne et tout indetté qu’il étoit. M. Michel’s purpose is not with this desirable husband, nor with his wife after she ceases to be connected with Scotland, but with the young Hepburn who comes casually across the scene. Following in his track entirely, the next quarter where, after appearing in the ‘Histoirettes,’ he turns up, is Durie’s ‘Decisions of the Court of Session.’ This is by no means one of the books which every well-informed man is presumed to know. So toughly is it stuffed with the technicalities and involutions of old Scots law, and so confused and involved is every sentence of it by the natural haziness of its author, that probably no living English writer would dare to meddle with it. No Scotsman would, unless he be lawyer—nor, indeed, would any lawyer, unless of a very old school—welcome the appearance of the grim folio. In citing from it the decision of HepburncontraHepburn, 14th March 1639, even the courageous M. Michel subjoins: “Si j’ai bien compris le text de cet arrêt conçu dans un langue particulière.” This peculiar arrêt begins as follows:—“The brethren and sisters of umquhile Colonel Sir John Hepburn having submitted all questions and rights which they might pretend to the goods, gear, and means of the said umquhile Sir John, to the laird Wauchton and some other friends, wherein the submitters were bound and did refer to the said friends to determine what proportion of the said goods should be given to George Hepburn, the son of the eldest brother to the said Sir John, which George was then in France at the time of the making of the said submission and bond, and did not subscribe the same, nor none taking the burden for him; upon the which submission, the said friends had given their decreet arbitral. The living brethren and sisters of the said Sir John being confirmed executors to him, pursues one Beaton, factor in Paris, for payment of 20,000 pounds addebted by him to the said umquhile Sir John, who, suspending upon double poinding,” &c.
Perhaps we have said enough to exemplify the dauntless nature of M. Michel’s researches. It is impossible to withhold admiration from such achievements, and we know that, in some quarters, such are deemed the highest to which the human intellect can aspire. But we confess that, to our taste, the results of M. Teulet’s labours are more acceptable. True, he does not profess to give the world an original book. He comes forward as the transcriber and editor of certain documents; but in the gathering of these documents from different quarters, through all the difficulties of various languages and alphabets, in their arrangement so as to bring out momentous historical truths in their due series, and in the helps he has afforded to those who consult his volumes, he has shown a skill and scholarship which deserve to be ranked with the higher attainments of science. We had formerly an opportunity of paying our small tribute to M. Teulet’s merits when we referred to his supplemental volume to Labanoff’s Correspondence of Queen Mary.[9]Among not the least valued of the contents of our book-shelves, are six octavo volumes containing the correspondence of La Mothe Fénélon, and the other French ambassadors to England and Scotland during the latter years of Queen Elizabeth’s reign, for which the world is indebted to M. Teulet’s researches. The immediate merit of the book, the title of which is referred to at the beginning of this article, is, that it is now at the command of the public. It is indeed a reprint, with some additions, of the papers—at least all that are worth having—which were previously an exclusive luxury of the Bannatyne Club, having been printed in three quarto volumes, as a gift to their brethren, by certain liberal members of the Club. These papers go into the special affairs of this country as connected with France and Spain from the beginning of our disputes with our old ally down to the accession of James VI. In the hands of the first historian who has the fortune to make ample use of them, these documents will disperse the secluded and parochial atmosphere that hangs about the history of Scotland, and show how the fate of Europe in general turned upon the pivot of the destinies of our country. It is here that, along with many minor secrets, we have revealed to us the narrow escape made by the cause of Protestantism, when the project on the cards was the union of the widowed Queen Mary to the heir of Spain, and the political combinations still centring round the interests and the fate of the Queen of Scots, which led to the more signal and renowned escape realised in the defeat of the Armada.