much for the honour of "the Good Regent," "the bonny Earl of Murray." The unhappy captive, that is, the Earl of Northumberland, was, however, basely delivered up for gold, to Elizabeth, who executed him at York; in this case the traitor was the unprincipled Regent Morton, who owed his own life to the Earl of Northumberland during his exile after the murder of Rizzio, by affording Morton an asylum: so much for his sentiment of gratitude and of honour. We find that "Elizabeth agreed to deliver Mary into the hands of the Regent Mar, upon condition that she should be put to death within four hours after she had set foot on Scottish ground."* The accomplishment of this nefarious treaty was only prevented by the death of the Regent, who expired suddenly at Stirling, on the 28th of October, 1572. Did Elizabeth not forfeit her honour by delivering up the gallant Kirkcaldy of Grange, his brother, and Maitland of Lethington, to Morton, after promising protection? Were not the two first executed in the market place of Edinburgh, in 1572? Did not Maitland, anticipating the same doom, poison himself in prison? Did not the Scottish army basely deliver up Charles I. to the English Parliament, after a promise of protection, on receiving £400,000, and was he not executed? His own perfidy does not justify the act. Such instances of treachery, out of many more that could be given to disgrace the page of history, can only be equalled by the treachery of Caracalla, the Roman emperor; who, like Philip of Macedon, did not blush to say, "that children were amused with playthings, and men with oaths." I am tempted to exclaim with the poet : 66 I rage, I burn, no kind assistance nigh; Give, give me ease, ye gods, or let me die !" How different is this from the honour of Regulus, the Roman general, who, when taken prisoner in Africa, in the year 256 before Christ, was sent back on his parole to negociate a change of prisoners. He accomplished his mission, and returned to certain death. All the past vexatious events, which I have endeavoured to scan, could not have occurred without sowing the seeds of future misery in Fife, where its inhabitants took an active part, and which neither threats, danger, nor friendship could prevail in preventing; consequently, they reaped their own share of the calamities which ensued. To these must be added a concatenation of circumstances that conspired to sap the Tytler. Vo1. vii. prosperity of the county to its foundation, and lay its population prostrate, from the peasant to the capitalist. These were the removal of the court to London on the accession of James VI. to the crown of England; the rebellion against Charles I., giving rise to a protracted struggle; the disastrous battle of Kilsyth in August, 1645; in which Adamson says:— "Three regiments from Fife perished almost to a man. Most of the principal traders and shipmasters, with their seamen, besides a multitude of the people of all classes, were engaged in that most disastrous enterprise;"*—the tyranny of Charles II. and James VII.; a severe and long-continued famine following the Revolution in 1688; the utter failure of the Darien expedition in America, in 1699, where the Scots had settled a colony, and to the success of which all parties had looked for the means of restoring their ruined fortunes-every family of respectability in Fife was involved in this disastrous adventure, the total failure of which spread misery and dismay throughout the county; the mad expedition of James VI., who, in 1602, established a colony in the isle of Lewis, drawn principally from the inhabitants of Fifeshire, at the head of which was Sir James Anstruther, and other leading gentlemen of the county. James fixed upon the men of Fife as being the most industrious in husbandry, and skilful fishermen in Scotland. It proved still more unfortunate than the Darien expedition. They were either slain in battle, starved to death, or hanged by Murdoch Macleod, a powerful and ferocious chief. The laird of Balcomie, a gentleman of Fife, was thrown into a dungeon. Macleod was betrayed by his own brother, for a reward, to the Government, who hanged him at St Andrews. The cowardly vacillating policy of James is here very conspicuous: instead of revenging the insult offered to his crown, he ransomed the few survivors. that weak monarch any better at the long imprisonment and execution of his own mother? or yet at the insufferable privations of his daughter, princess Elizabeth of Dunfermline? Besides all these causes, there was the imposition of duties on salt, malt, and many other articles. Lastly, and not the least, was the jealousy of the English merchants, who, under the favour of William III., nearly crushed all future exertion. Each of these had given a new blow to the prosperity of Fife, and threatened the annihilation of trade, commerce, and agriculture. Notwithstanding these disastrous events, there were distant intervals of *Notes to Sibbald's History. Was prosperity; thus, industry began to revive in 1341; and in the brilliant reign of James IV., arts and sciences, manufactures, commerce, and navigation, received a new impulse. So true is it, that while a healthy stamina exists, a county, like a nation, will rise up and flourish, though it has been cut down to the root. And the present state of Fife proves the truth of our statement, by its exhaustless internal resources. In taking leave of the early history of Scotland, I feel tempted to bring our favourite James VI. on the stage to play his second part – he, "who never said a foolish thing, and never did a wise one.” The reception of James VI. in London was expressed with such extravagant joy, that Barclay tells us of a Scotchman who said, bluntly,"This people will spoil a good king." And Sir Ritchie Moniplies, the son of Mungo Moniplies, the flesher of the West Port, Edinburgh, who, being purveyor to his Majesty and to his hapless mother, and being an eye-witness of the turbulent state of Holyrood Palace, is therefore undoubted authority, thus describes one scene. He alludes to seeing the King at Whitehall:-" But my certie, lad, times are changed since ye came fleeing down the back stairs of auld Holyrood House, in grit fear, having your breeks in your hand, without time to put them on, and Frank Stuart, the wild Earl of Bothwell, hard at yer haunches; and if auld Lord Glenvarloch hadna cast his mantle about his arm, and taken bluidy wounds mair than ane in your behalf, ye wald not have crawed sae crouse this day." But mark the retrospective view taken by King James on another occasion, by the same high authority:-" Cocksnails," said the King to Heriot, "when I think of these wild passages (in Holyrood), in my conscience, I am not sure but we lived happier in auld Holyrood, in those shifting days, than now when we are dwelling at heck and manger. Cantabit vacuus—we had but little to care for."* King James did much good to his new kingdom by favouring the English trade, and instituting the East India Company. Though he greatly increased the spirit of commerce during his reign, he seemed regardless of the depressed state of his native land. * Chambers's Repository, No. 23. RETROSPECT. In drawing the character of the inhabitants of Fife, from past and present history, we find that no people can conform their tempers better than they do to their stations. They are taught from their infancy to bridle their passions, to behave submissively to their superiors, and live within the bounds of the most rigid economy. Their habits are industrious;-in social order, we have seen that they reflect honour on their county;-in sobriety, they will bear a comparison with any in Scotland. That they are intelligent to a high degree, is shown by their progress in arts and sciences; though, excepting in the towns and manufacturing districts, their intellect is seldom cultivated, and certainly not to be compared with the same class in the south of Scotland. Their crowning principle, however, is courage, which has always been undeniable. Nevertheless, they are like the celebrated Roman statue, which had two sides, one of gold, the other of silver. Amongst other questionable qualities, that of ingratitude to the medical profession is too conspicuous to pass unnoticed, and hence the truth of the following lines: "God and the doctor we alike adore- In casting a retrospective glance at all that has passed under review, as regards the early history of the church down to the Reformation; we are struck with the imperious, domineering ferocity of the high clergy; who were then the representatives of hell, rather than the meek, the merciful ambassadors of Christ. In surveying the political horizon of past ages, we are astonished at the folly or the tyranny of most of the sovereigns, the misrule of the different Regents who succeeded each other, the intrigues, treachery, and turbulence of the nobility, and the civil wars that frequently raged with unexampled ferocity, in which no quarter was given, and numbers of prisoners put to death in cold blood. These causes conspired to keep up a state of anarchy and confusion. No leader rose up capable of bringing the distracted elements of society into order by the vigour of his government; even the firm, bold, and energetic mind of Morton was unequal to the task. As regards the county of Fife, we find that almost every parish has produced its proportion of eventful occurrences; though St Andrews, Falkland, Cupar, and Dunfermline, stand pre-eminent as being the theatres of the most astounding associations. The folly, the misery, the captivity, and crime, that mark the early page of their history, are amusing, instructive, and revolting. When the gorgeous festivities of former ages are contrasted with the barbarous deeds of Falkland and St Andrews, we are left to question whether man was a rational and responsible being—the image of God— or was the savage and deceitful tiger of the forest in human shape, made to play his part of divine retribution for wise, though mysterious ends ! Having frequently adverted to education, literature, arts, and sciences, the following observations may not be unacceptable. While I admit the barbarous state of our Celtic ancestors, and blush at the ignorance, the apathy, and the bigotry of the past, on the one hand; and freely own the magnificent and rapid advances of modern science, stretching from the invisible world of animalcula that surround our globe, to the equally invisible planetary system; the one seen by the microscope, in the hands of Ehrenberg; the other by Lord Rosse's telescope, under the eye of Sir William Herschel; with all the intermediate inventions and discoveries in the arts, all of which turn the brain and bewilder the imagination; and have no disposition to withhold the need due to the mighty genius of modern origin-to men who dared to break from the trammels of scholastic bigotry—who looked to nature alone for their guide: I am still inclined to think that society is more indebted to them for rescuing what was consigned to unmerited oblivion, and for the application of them to inductive theory and practice, than for the originality of their ideas. I am disposed to put the question, -have we not been deceiving ourselves? Were the Egyptians, the Arabians, and the Greeks ignorant of what we now boast ?—Yes, even the gas-light, the steam-engine, gunpowder, paper, printing, silk manufacture, porcelain, the art of dyeing, staining glass, besides a hundred others, equally marvellous. Do we bear in mind the destruction of the great Alexandrian library-the convulsions of nature and of man? |