Of Edynburgh the kirk brynt they,
And would have done so that abbay,
But the duke for his courtesy
(Since he had wylom there herbry
When he was out of his country :)
Gart it at that time saved be."

The respite, however, was a brief one, for the Scots having retaliated, according to their wont, by a foray across the border so soon as the invaders had withdrawn, they returned the following year and destroyed whatever the gratitude of the duke had at first induced them to spare. Edinburgh was still an unwalled town; and such repeated invasions, which exposed its citizens to the full brunt of all the horrors of war, must have effectually checked its advance, however much favoured by the Scottish court. The town, nevertheless, was already rising to an importance which rendered its defenceless state a matter of serious moment, and the evil was now partially remedied by granting the citizens of good fame the novel privilege of building their houses within the fortress.

A curious contemporary account of Edinburgh at this period is furnished by Froissart, in giving a narrative of the reception of De Kenne, the admiral of France, who had been despatched to the assistance of the Scottish king. Edinburgh," says he, "though the king kept there his chief residence, (and that is Paris in Scotland) yet it is not like Tournay or Valenciennes; for in all the town is not four

*Harboured.

thousand houses; therefore it behoved these lords and knights to be lodged about in the villages." The reception which these allies met with was even worse than their accommodation. We are told that the Scots "did murmur and grudge, and said, Who hath sent for them? Cannot we maintain our war with England well enough without their help? They understand not us, nor we them; therefore we cannot speak together. They will anon rifle and eat up all that ever we have in this country; and do us more despites and damages than though the Englishmen should fight with us; for though the English burn our houses we care little therefor; we shall make them again cheap enough."

The picture thus furnished of the Scots of the fourteenth century is a sufficiently graphic one, and represents a state of manners which prevailed on the more exposed border districts to a much later period. The constant liability to have their houses plundered and burned, rendered the citizens indifferent about their furnishing or fitting, so that the straw roof of the dwelling was frequently carried off by its owner on his retreat, leaving the enemy to wreak their futile vengeance on its rude furniture and bare walls. At the same time they were proportionably anxious to make up for the absence of all household display by personal ornaments; and hence the costly brooches, bracelets, and collars, and the general extravagance in dress, which was frequently attempted

to be restrained within due bounds by the enactment of stringent sumptuary laws.

Some of the early Scottish sumptuary enactments afford a curious insight into the manners of the age. The dress of lords, knights, yeomen, burgesses, and labourers, are each specially restricted within due limits, while that of the ladies is placed under such restraints as prove that female love of display is no taste of modern growth. One act, for example, passed in the reign of James II., imposes on the citizens the somewhat onerous duty of making their wives and daughters dress in a way corresponding to their estate, and especially enacts that " no women wear tails of unfit length;" an evil which the satires of sir David Lindsay show to have remained equally in need of curtailing in the following century; and which, indeed, some of the more zealous reformers of female dress appear to regard as still open to improvement even in our own day. By the same enactment, "Baron's and other puir gentlemen's wives" are forbid the use of silks or furs, as well as various other costly adornments, except on holidays; while husbandmen are restricted to gray and white, and their wives to "courchies of their awin making, not exceeding the price of 12 pennyes the elne.”

Other acts of the same period, which relate to the prevention of fires, and to the accommodation of travellers, serve to show that the burghers' dwellings continued to be rude wooden tenements, of one or two stories,

thatched with straw. For the encouragement of innkeepers, all travellers are forbidden to lodge with their friends, or anywhere but in the public hostles, unless when they travel with a numerous body of followers, in which case, if their horses and baggage are harboured in the hostle, they are at liberty to find lodging elsewhere. Such were the habits of society in Scotland, and such was the condition of Edinburgh, in the middle of the fifteenth century; that mediæval era which has been supposed by some modern enthusiastic revivalists to have been a period remarkable for contented happiness, and the diffusion of moral and social blessings in wise gradation through all the various ranks of society.

CHAPTER V.

JAMES II. AND MARY DE GUELDRES.

THE forced residence of the royal poet, James I., at the English court during bis earlier years, was the means of introducing some of the refinement of the more polished southerns among the Scottish nobles. During this reign, however, the favourite residence of the king was at Perth; nor is it till his assassination in the convent of the Dominicans there, in 1438, that Edinburgh again, and permanently, takes its place as the Scottish capital. Thither his queen Jane, celebrated long before in "The King's Quair," fled, and took refuge with the young king, in its secure fortress; and within less than forty days after the murder of the king, the assassins had been apprehended and brought to Edinburgh for trial. Little form of law was deemed requisite to sanction the cruel vengeance with which the parricidal deed of the conspirators was visited. The meaner agents were left to the hangman, while, with respect to the others, all the ingenuity of a barbarous age was employed to devise such novel and