Royal Edinburgh: Her Saints, Kings, Prophets and Poets

A more serious matter than this encounter at sea, which was really more a trial of strength than anything else, was the purely chivalric enterprise of James in taking up the cause of Perkin Warbeck, the supposed Duke of York, who imposed upon all Europe for a time, and on nobody so much as the King of Scotland. This adventurer, who was given out as the younger son of Edward IV escaped by the relenting of the murderers when his elder brother was killed in the Tower, was by unanimous consent of all history a youth of person and manners quite equal to his pretensions, playing his part of royal prince with a grace and sincerity which nobody could resist. The grave Pinkerton, so sarcastically superior to all fables, writing at the end of the eighteenth century, had evidently not even then made up his mind how to accept this remarkable personage, but speaks of him as "this unfortunate prince or pretender," and of James as "sensible of the truth of his report or misled by appearance," with an evident leaning to the side of the hero who played so bold a game. The young adventurer came to James with the most illustrious of guarantees. He brought letters from Charles VIII of France, and from the Emperor Maximilian, and was followed by a train of gallant Frenchmen and by everything that was princelike, gracious, and splendid. So completely was he received and believed at the Scottish Court that when there arose a mutual love, as the story goes, between him and the Lady Catherine Gordon, daughter of the Earl of Huntly, one of the most powerful peers in Scotland, and at the same time of royal blood, a cousin of the King, the marriage seems to have been accepted as a most fit and even splendid alliance. No greater pledge of belief could have been given than this. The King of Scots threw himself into the effort of establishing the supposed prince's claims as if they had been his own. Curious negotiations were entered into as to what the pretender should do if, by the help of Scotland, he was placed upon the English throne. He was to cede Berwick, that always-coveted morsel which had to change its allegiance from generation to generation as the balance between the nations rose and fell—and pay a certain sum towards defraying the expenses of the expedition, a bargain to which Perkin, playing his part much better than any king of the theatre ever did before, demurred, insisting upon easier terms—as he afterwards remonstrated when James harried the Borders, declaring that he would rather resign all hopes of the crown than secure it at the expense of the blood and goods of his people. A pretended prince who thus spoke might well be credited as far as faith could go. The story of this strange enterprise is chiefly told in the letters to Henry VII of England of Sir John Ramsay, the same who had been saved by James III when the rest of his favourites were killed, and who had more or less thriven since, though in evil ways, occupying a position at the Court of James IV whom he hated, and acting as spy on his actions, which were all reported to the English Court. Ramsay gives the English Government full information of all that his sovereign is about to do on behalf of the fengit (feigned) boy, and especially of the invasion of England which he is about to undertake "against the minds of near the whole number of his barons and people. Notwithstanding," Ramsay says, "this simple wilfulness cannot be removed out of the King's mind for nae persuasion or mean. I trust verrilie," adds the traitor, "that, God will, he be punished by your mean for the cruel consent of the murder of his father."

Curiously enough Pitscottie, the most graphic and circumstantial of historians, says nothing whatever of this most romantic episode. Why he should have left it out, for it is impossible that it could have been unknown to him, we are unable to imagine; but so it is. Buchanan however enters fully into the tale. The wisest of James's counsellors, he tells us, were disposed to have nothing to do with this spurious young prince coming out of the unknown with his claim to be the rightful King of England; but many more were in his favour, specially with the reflection that the moment of England's difficulties was always one of advantage for the Scots. An army was accordingly raised, with which James marched into England, carrying Perkin with him with a train of about fourteen hundred followers, and hopes that the country would rise to greet and acknowledge their lost prince. But it is evident that the Northumbrians looked on without any response, and saw in the expedition but one of the many raids which they were always so ready to return on their side when occasion offered. The pretender, on whose behalf all this was done, shrank, it would appear, from the devastation, and with something like the generous compunction of a prince protested that he would rather lose the crown than gain it so—a protest which James must have thought a piece of affectation, for he replied with a jeer that his companion was too solicitous for the welfare of a country which would neither acknowledge him as prince nor receive him as citizen. Perkin must have begun to tire the patience of the finest gentleman in Christendom before James would have made such a contemptuous retort. He returned with the King, however, when this unsuccessful expedition—the only use of which was that it proved to James the fruitlessness of fighting on behalf of a pretender who had no hold upon the people over whom he claimed to reign—came to an end. It was followed by some slight reprisals on the part of the English, and after an interval by an embassy to make peace. Henry VII would seem to have been at all times most unwilling to have Scotland for an enemy, notwithstanding the strange motive suggested to him by the traitor Ramsay. "Sir," writes this false Scot, "King Edward had never fully the perfect love of his people till he had war with Scotland; and he made sic good diligence and provision therein that to this hour he is lovit; and your Grace may as well have as gude a tyme as he had." But the cunning old potentate at Westminster was not moved even by this argument. Instead of following the instructions of the virulent spy whose hatred of his native king and country reaches the height of passion, he sent a wise emissary, moderate like himself, the Bishop of Durham, to inquire into the reasons of the attack.

And Edinburgh must have had another great sensational spectacle in the arrival not only of the English commissioners, but of such a great foreign personage as the Spanish envoy, one of the greatest grandees of the most splendid of continental kingdoms, who had come to England to negotiate the marriage of Catherine of Arragon with the Prince of Wales, and who continued his journey to Scotland with letters of amity from his sovereigns for James, and with the object of assisting in the peacemaking between the two Kings. Henry required James to give up the pretender into his hands—a thing which of course it was not consistent with honour to do—but it was evident that the King of Scots had already in his own mind given up the adventurer's cause. And after the negotiations had been concluded and peace made between England and Scotland, Perkin and his beautiful young wife and his train of followers set sail from Scotland in a little flotilla of three ships, intending it is said to go to Ireland, where he had been well received before coming to the Court of James. The imagination follows with irrestrainable pity the forlorn voyage of this youthful band of adventurers: the young husband trained to all the manners and ways of thinking of a prince, however little reality there might be in his claims; the young wife, mild and fair, the White Rose as she was called, with the best blood of Scotland in her veins; the few noble followers, knights, and a lady or two who shared their fortunes, setting out vaguely to sea, not knowing were to go, with the world before them where to choose. When they got to Ireland Prince Perkin heard of an insurrection in Cornwall, and hastened to put himself at the head of it, placing his wife for security in the quaint fortress, among the waters, of St. Michael's Mount. But the insurrection came to nothing, and "the unfortunate prince or adventurer" was taken prisoner. He was pardoned it is said, but making a wild attempt at insurrection again, was this time tried and executed. His White Rose, most forlorn of ladies, was taken by King Henry from her refuge at the end of the world, placed in charge of the Queen, and never left the English Court again. There is no record that she and her husband were ever allowed to meet. So ends one of the saddest and most romantic of historical episodes.

This story takes up a large part of the early reign of James, who no doubt saw his error at the last, but in the beginning threw himself into Perkin's fortunes with characteristic impetuosity, and thought nothing too good, not even his own fair kinswoman, for the rescued prince. It was an error, however, that James shared with many high and mighty potentates who gave their imprimatur at first to the adventurer's cause. But even for the most genuine prince, when only a pretender, the greatest sovereigns are but poor supporters in the long run. James had a hundred things to do to make him forget that unfortunate adventure of Perkin. It was in the year 1497 that this incident ended so far as the Scottish Court was concerned, and James returned to the natural course of his affairs, not without occasional tumults on the Border, but with no serious fighting anywhere for a course of pleasant years. The old traditional strife between the King and the nobles no longer tore the kingdom asunder. Perhaps the first great event of his life, the waking up of his boyish conscience to find himself in the camp of a faction pitted against his own father, influenced him throughout everything, and made the duty of conciliation and union seem the first and most necessary; perhaps it was but the natural revulsion from those methods which his father had adopted to his hurt and downfall; or perhaps James's chivalrous temper, his love of magnificence and gaiety, made him feel doubly the advantage of courtiers who should be great nobles and his peers, not dependants made splendid by his bounty. At all events the King lived as no Stewart had yet lived, surrounded by all without exception who were most noble in the land, encouraging them to vie with him in splendour, in noble exercises and pastimes, and almost, it may be imagined—with a change of method, working by good example and genial comradeship what his predecessors had vainly tried to do by fire and sword—tempting them to emulate him also in preserving internal peace and a certain reign of justice throughout the country. There was no lack of barons in the Court of James. Angus and Home and Huntly, who had pursued his father to the death and placed himself upon the throne, were not turned into subservient courtiers by his gallantry and charm: but neither was there any one of these proud lords in the ascendant, or any withdrawn and sullen in his castle, taking no share in what was going on. The machinery of the State worked as it had never done before. There were few Parliaments, and not very much law-making. Enough laws had been made under his predecessors, "if they had but been kept," to form an ideal nation; the thing to do now was to charm, to persuade, to lead both populace and nobility into respecting them. It would be vain to imagine that this high purpose was always in James's mind, or that his splendour and gaieties were part of a plan for the better regulation of the kingdom. But that he was not without a wise policy in following his own character and impulses, and that the spontaneous good-fellowship and sympathy which his frank, genial, and easy nature called forth everywhere were not of admirable effect in the welding together of the nation, it would be unjust to say. If he had not the sterner nobility of purpose which made the first of his name conceive and partially carry into effect the ideal reign of justice which was the first want of his kingdom, he had yet a noble ambition for Scotland to make her honoured and feared and famous, and the success with which he seems to have carried out this object of his life for many years was great. He made the little northern kingdom known for a centre of chivalry, courtesy, courage, and, what was more wonderful, magnificence, as it had never been before. He penetrated that country with traditions and associations of himself in the character always attractive to the imagination, of that prince of good fellows, the wandering stranger, who came in unknown and sought the hospitality of farmer or ploughman, and made the humble board ring with wit and jest, and who thereafter was discovered by sudden gift, or grace, or unexpected justice, to be the King:—

 
"He took a bugle from his side, and blew both loud and shrill,
And four and twenty belted knights came trooping owre the hill;"
 
 
"Then he took out his little knife, let a' his duddies fa',
And he was the brawest gentleman that was among them a'."
 

The goodman of Ballangeich,³ the jovial and delightful Gaberlunzie, the hero of many a homely ballad and adventure, some perhaps a trifle over free, yet none involving any tragic treachery or betrayal, James was the playfellow of his people, the Haroun al Raschid of Scotch history. "By this doing the King heard the common brute (bruit) of himself." Thus he won not only the confidence of the nobles but the genial sympathy and kindness of the poor. A minstrel, a poet too in his way a man curious about all handicrafts, famous in all exercises, "ane singular good chirurgian, so that there was none of that profession if they had any dangerous case in hand but would have craved his advice "—he had every gift that was most likely to commend him to the people, who were proud of a king so unlike other kings, the friend of all. And nothing could exceed the activity of the young monarch, always occupied for the glory of Scotland whatever he was doing. It was he who built the great ship, the Michael, which was the greatest wonder ever seen in the northern seas; a ship which took all the timber in Fife to build her (the windswept Kingdom of Fife has never recovered that deprivation) besides a great deal from Norway, with three hundred mariners to work her, and carrying "ane thousand men of warre" within those solid sides, which, all wooden as they were, could resist cannon shot. "This ship lay in the road, and the King took great pleasure every day to come down and see her," and would dine and sup in her, and show his lords all her order and provisions; No doubt there were many curious parties from Edinburgh who followed the King to see that new wonder, and that groups would gather on the ramparts of the castle to point out on the shining Firth the great and lofty vessel, rising like another castle out of the depths. James had also the other splendid taste, which his unfortunate father had shared, of building, and set in order the castle at Falkland in the heart of the green and wealthy Fife—where there was great hunting and coursing, and perhaps as yet not much high farming in those days—and continued the adornments of Stirling, already so richly if rudely decorated in the previous reign.

But Edinburgh was the centre of all the feasting and splendour which distinguished his time. The lists were set before the castle gates, on that lofty and breezy plateau where all the winds blow. Sometimes there were bands of foreign chivalry breaking lances with the high Scottish nobles according to all the stately laws of that mimic war; sometimes warriors of other conditions, fighting Borderers or Highlanders, would meet for an encounter of arms, ending in deadly earnest, which was not discouraged, as we are told with grim humour, since it was again to the realm to be disembarrassed of these champions at any cost, and the best way was that they should kill each other amicably and have no rancour against Justiciar or King. Among the foreign guests who visited James was Bernard Stuart of Aubigny, Monsieur Derbine, as Pitscottie calls him, the representative of a branch of the royal race which had settled in France, whom James received, his kinsman being an old man, with even more than his usual grace, making him the judge in all feats of chivalry "at justing and tourney, and calling him father of warres, because he was well practised in the same." Another of the visitors, Don Pedro d'Ayala, the Spanish grandee who helped to conduct the quarrel over Perkin Warbeck to a great issue, wrote to his royal master a description of King James, which is highly interesting, and full of unconscious prophecy. The Spaniard describes the young monarch at twenty-five as one of the most accomplished and gallant of cavaliers, speaking Latin (very well), French, German, Flemish, Italian, and Spanish; a good Christian and Catholic, hearing two masses every morning; fond of priests—a somewhat singular quality unless such jovial priests and boon-companions as Dunbar, the poet-friar, were the subject of this preference; though perhaps the seriousness which mingled with his jollity, the band of iron under his silken vest, led him to seek by times the charm of graver company, the mild and learned Gavin Douglas and other scholars in the monasteries, where thought and learning had found refuge. The following details, which are highly characteristic, bring him before us with singular felicity, and, as afterwards turned out, with a curious foreseeing of those points in him which brought about his tragical end.

"Rarely even in joking a word escapes him which is not the truth. He prides himself much upon it, and says it does not seem to him well for kings to swear their treaties as they do now. The oath of a king should be his royal word as was the case in bygone ages. He is courageous even more than a king should be. I have seen him even undertake most dangerous things in the late wars. I sometimes clung to his skirts and succeeded in keeping him back. On such occasions he does not take the least care of himself. He is not a good captain, because he begins to fight before he has given his orders. He said to me that his subjects serve him with their persons and goods, in just or unjust quarrels, exactly as he likes; and that therefore he does not think it right to begin any warlike undertaking without being himself the first in danger. His deeds are as good as his words. For this reason, and because he is a very humane prince, he is much loved."

BAKEHOUSE CLOSE

The perfect reason yet profound unreasonableness of this quality in James, so fatally proved in his after history, is very finely discriminated by the writer, who evidently had come under the spell of a most attractive personality in this young sovereign, so natural and manful, so generous and true. That James should acknowledge the penalty of the fatal power he had to draw a whole nation into his quarrel, just or unjust, by risking himself the first, is so entirely just according to every rule of personal honour, yet so wildly foolish according to all higher policy; exposing that very nation to evils so much greater than the worst battle. Flodden was still far off in the darkness of the unknown, but had this description been written after that catastrophe, it could not more clearly have disclosed the motives and magnanimity but tragic unwisdom of this prince of romance.

The Spaniard adds much praise of James's temperance, a virtue indifferently practised by his subjects, and of his morality, which is still more remarkable. The amours and intrigues of his youth, Don Pedro informs his king, this young hero had entirely renounced, "or so at least it is believed," partly "from fear of God, and partly from fear of scandal," which latter "is thought very much of here"—a curious touch, which would seem to indicate a magnificent indifference to public opinion, not shared by the little northern Court, in the haughtier circles of Madrid. The picture is perhaps a little flattered; and it is hard to imagine how James could have picked up so many languages in the course of what some writers call a neglected education, confined to Scotland alone; but perhaps his father's fondness for clever artificers and musicians may have made him familiar in his childhood with foreign dependants, more amusing to a quick-witted boy than the familiar varlets who had no tongue but "braid Scots." "The King speaks besides," says Ayala, "the language of the savages who live in some parts of Scotland and in the islands"; clearly in every sense of the word a man of endless accomplishments and personal note, quite beyond the ordinary of kings.

At no time, according to unanimous testimony, had Scotland attained so high a position of national wealth, comfort, and prosperity. The wild Highlands had been more or less subdued by the forfeiture of the traditionary Lord of the Isles, and the final subjection of that lawless region, nominally at least, to the King's authority, and with every precaution for the extension of justice and order to its farthest limits. A navy had suddenly sprung into being, signalising itself in its very birth by brilliant achievements and consisting of vessels few indeed, but of exceptional size and splendour, as great for their time as the great Italian ironclads are for this, and like them springing from something of the bravado as well as for the real uses of a rapidly growing power. And there had been peace, save for that little passage of arms on account of Perkin Warbeck, throughout all the reign of James—peace to which the warlike Scots seem to have accustomed themselves very pleasantly, notwithstanding that on the one side of the Border as on the other there was nothing so popular as war between the neighbour nations; but the exploits of Sir Andrew Wood with his Yellow Carvel, and the Great Michael lying there proudly on the Firth, ready to sweep the seas, afforded compensation for the postponement of other struggles.

It was in these circumstances that the negotiations for James's marriage with the little Margaret, Princess Royal of England, and in every way, as it turned out, a true Tudor, though then but an undeveloped child, took place. The gallant young King, then seven or eight and twenty, in the plenitude of his manhood, was not anxious for the bride of ten persistently offered to him by her royal father; and the negotiations lagged, and seemed to have gone on à plusieurs reprises for several years. But at length by the persistent efforts of Henry VII, who saw all the advantages of the union, and no doubt also of councillors on the Scots side, who felt that the continued prosperity of the country was best secured by peace, it was brought about in 1504, when James must have been just over thirty and Margaret was twelve—a very childish bride, but probably precocious, and not too simple or ignorant, as belonged to her violent Tudor blood. He "was married with her solemnedlie by the advice of the nobilitie of England and Scotland, and gatt great summes of money with her: and promise of peace and unity made and ordained to stand between the two realms," says Pitscottie. The great sums, however, seem problematical, as the dower of Margaret was not a very large one, and the sacrifices made for her were considerable—the town of Berwick being given up to England as one preliminary step. The event, however, was one of incalculable importance to both nations, securing as it did the eventual consolidation in one of the realm of Great Britain, though nobody as yet foresaw that great consequence that might follow. Along with the marriage treaty was made one of perpetual peace between England and Scotland—a treaty indeed not worth the paper it was written upon, yet probably giving comfort to some sanguine spirits. Had the prudent old monarch remained on the throne of England as long as James ruled in Scotland it might indeed never have been broken; but Henry was already old, and his son as hot-headed as the cousin and traditionary adversary now turned into a brother. Margaret was conveyed into Scotland with the utmost pomp, and Edinburgh roused itself and put on decorations like a bride to receive the little maiden, so strangely young to be the centre of all these rejoicings: her lofty houses covered with flutterings of tapestries and banners and every kind of gay decoration, and her windows filled with bright faces, coifs, and veils, and embroideries of gold that shone in the sun. The dress worn by James, as he carried his young bride into Edinburgh seated on horseback behind him, is fully described for the benefit of after ages. He wore a jacket of cloth of gold bordered with purple velvet, over a doublet of purple satin, showing at the neck the collar of a shirt embroidered with pearls and gold, with scarlet hose to complete the resplendent costume. At his marriage he wore a jacket of crimson satin over a doublet of cloth of gold, with the same scarlet hose, and a gown of white damask brocaded with gold over all. No doubt the ladies were not behind in this contest of brave apparel. Grey Edinburgh, accustomed this long time to the dull tones of modern habiliments, sparkled and shone in those days of finery and splendour. The streets were meant for such fine shows; its stairheads and strong deep doorways to relieve the glories of sweet colour, plumes, and jewels. When the lists were set on the summit of the hill, the gates thrown up, the garrison in their steel caps and breastplates lining the bars, and perhaps the King himself tilting in the mêlée, while all the ladies were throned in their galleries like banks of flowers, what a magnificent spectacle! The half-empty streets below still humming with groups of gazers not able to squeeze among the throngs about the bars, but waiting the return of the splendid procession: and more and more banners and tapestries and guards of honour shining through the wide open gates of the port all the way down to Holyrood. There was nothing but holiday-making and pleasure while the feasting lasted and the bridal board was yet spread.

While this heydey of life lasted and all was bright around and about the chivalrous James, there was a certain suitor of his Court, a merry and reckless priest, more daring in words and admixtures of the sacred and the profane than any mere layman would venture to be, whose familiar and often repeated addresses to the King afford us many glimpses into the royal surroundings and ways of living, as also many pictures of the noisy and cheerful mediæval town which was the centre of pleasures, of wit and gay conversation, and all that was delightful in Scotland. Dunbar's title of fame is not so light as this. He was one of the greatest of the followers of Chaucer, a master of melody, in some points scarcely inferior to the master himself whose praise he celebrates as

 
"Of oure Inglisch all the light
Surmounting every tong terrestrial
Alls far as Mayis morrow dois mydnyght."
 

But it is unnecessary here to discuss the "Thrissil and the Rois," the fine music of the epithalamium with which he celebrated the coming of Margaret Tudor into Scotland, or the more visionary splendour of the "Golden Targe." The poet himself was not so dignified or harmonious as his verse. He possessed the large open-air relish of life, the broad humour, sometimes verging on coarseness, which from the time of James I. to that of Burns has been so singularly characteristic of Scots poetry: and found no scene of contemporary life too humble or too ludicrous for his genius—thus his more familiar poems are better for our purpose than his loftier productions, and show us the life and fashion of his town and time better than anything else can do. This is one, for example, in which he upbraids "the merchantis of renown" for allowing "Edinburgh their nobil town" to remain in the state in which he describes it:—

 
"May nane pass through your principall gates
For stink of haddocks and of skates,
For cryin' of carlines and debates,
For fensome flytings of defame.
Think ye not shame
Before strangers of all estates
That sic dishonour hurt your name?
 
 
"Your stinkand schule that standis dirk
Halds the light from your Parroche Kirk,
Your forestairs makis your houses mirk
Like na country but here at hame
Think ye not shame,
Sa little policie to work
In hurt and sklander of your name?
 
 
"At your hie Croce, where gold and silk
Should be, there is but curds and milk,
And at your Tron but cokill and wilk,
Pansches, puddings, of Jok and Jame.
Think ye not shame
Kin as the world sayis that ilk
In hurt and sklander of your name?"
 

Thus old Edinburgh rises before us, beautiful and brave as she is no longer, yet thronged about the Netherbow Port, and up towards the Tron, the weighing-place and centre of city life, with fishwives and their stalls, with rough booths for the sale of rougher food, and with country lasses singing curds and whey, as they still did when Allan Ramsay nearly four hundred years after succeeded Dunbar as laureate of Edinburgh. Notwithstanding, however, these defects the Scottish capital continued to be the home of all delights to the poet-priest. When his King was absent at Stirling, Dunbar in the pity of his heart sang an (exceedingly profane) litany for the exile that he might be brought back, prefacing it by the following compassionate strain:—

 
"We that are here in Hevinis glory
To you that are in Purgatory
Commendis us on our hairtly wyiss,
I mean we folk in Paradyis,
In Edinburgh with all merriness
To you in Strivilling in distress,
Where neither pleasance nor delyt is,
For pity thus ane Apostle wrytis.
 
 
"O ye Heremeitis and Hankersaidillis
That takis your penance at your tabillis,
And eitis nocht meit restorative
Nor drinkis no wyne comfortative
Bot aill, and that is thyn and small,
With few courses into your hall;
But (without) company of lordis or knights
Or any other goodly wightis,
Solitar walkand your allone
Seeing no thing but stok and stone,
Out of your powerfull Purgatory
To bring you to the bliss of glory
Of Edinburgh the merry toun,
We sall begin ane cairfull soun,
And Dirige devout and meik
The Lord of bliss doing besiek
You to delyvre out of your noy
And bring you soon to Edinburgh joy,
For to be merry among us,
And so the Dirige begynis thus."
 

Many are the poet's addresses to the King in happier circumstances when James is at home and in full enjoyment of these joys of Edinburgh. His prayers for a benefice are sometimes grave and sometimes comic, but never-failing. He describes solicitors (or suitors) at Court, all pushing their fortune. "Some singis, some dancis, some tells storyis." Some try to make friends by their devotion, some have their private advocates in the King's chamber, some flatter, some play the fool—