James v. married, in 1537, the princess Magdalen, eldest daughter of Francis 1. of France; and her reception at Holyrood, and her entry in state into Edinburgh, were marked by the utmost magnificence and loyalty of an age specially fond of such displays. But the rejoicing was of brief duration. Ere six weeks had elapsed, king James followed the remains of his fair young bride, and saw them laid in the royal vault of Holyrood Abbey, amidst the greatest public mourning that had ever been known in Scotland. Buchanan, who was an eye-witness, mentions that it was the first occasion on which mourning dresses were worn by the Scots.

Mary de Guise, the second queen of James v., plays a part in the history of Scotland, and of its capital, inferior only to that of her hapless daughter, queen Mary. All the parliaments during this reign assembled at Edinburgh; and it more and more assumed the exclusive character of the capital of the kingdom. The palace which had been begun by James Iv., beside the Abbey of Holyrood, was continued by his successor; and tradition still assigns to him the erection of the north-west towers of the palace, the only portion of the original building which has survived the successive conflagrations and demolitions to which it has been subjected.

CHAPTER IX.

THE DAWN OF THE REFORMATION.

It was impossible that the collision between the grossly corrupt church of Scotland and the people could be long averted, in the reign of James v., when the neighbouring country of England was passing through the singular ordeal by which it was prepared under Henry VIII. for the Reformation. But the marriage of James v. to Mary of Lorraine, daughter of the duke of Guise, undoubtedly tended to increase the violence of the strife between the reformers and the adherents of Rome. Throughout the whole reign, the influence of sir David Lindsay's writings was widely felt, and it cannot be doubted that his private interest with the king, whom he had tended from his childhood, was directed to the same end. But in the new

queen, the churchmen had a much more powerful agency for their immediate purpose, though the reforming poet finally triumphed. The queen was undoubtedly a woman ability, and characterized by such virtues as might have shone with great lustre, and been

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productive of the happiest effects on her adopted country under more favourable circumstances; but her lot was cast in the midst of that momentous strife of great principles, in which unhappily she was led by her hereditary associations and early education to take the side of error and persecution. Hence her name is associated with the struggle for liberty of conscience in Scotland, as the great upholder and instigator of the persecution and bloodshed which prevailed during the long minority of her ill-fated daughter, queen Mary, and which paved the way for all that has given her name so sad a pre-eminence in the national annals.

Whether under the direct countenance of the queen, or merely encouraged by her known partiality to the Romish cause, there is no doubt that soon after her arrival in Edinburgh the persecution against all who favoured the reformed doctrines became more violent, while the proceedings of Henry VIII. of England added to the virulence of the incensed churchmen. Many fled to England and the continent to escape the danger which threatened them; while others were induced, through fear, to bear a faggot, or as the old Scottish writers term it, "to burn their bill,” in token of recantation. "The form of burning one's bill," says Keith,

or recanting, was this: the person accused was to bring a faggot of dry sticks and burn it publicly, by which ceremony he signified that he destroyed that which should have been the instrument of his death."

In 1534, sir William Kirk, Mr. Henry Hendryson, master of the Grammar School of Edinburgh, and sundry other inhabitants of the town and of the neighbouring port of Leith, were summoned to appear before an assembly of the bishops in Holyrood Abbey, some of whom abjured and publicly burned their bills, and others fled to foreign lands; but two of them, of whom Knox has preserved a particular account in his History of the Reformation in Scotland, were brought to trial in the presence of the king at Holyrood Abbey. These were David Straiton, a gentleman of property, and Mr. Norman Gourlay, whom the historian describes as a man of reasonable erudition.

In David Straiton, as in so many others of that age, the first movements of rebellion against the intolerant sway of the corrupt church of Rome, flowed from the lively indignation at the pride and avarice of the priesthood, and a resolute opposition to their unjust claims. He had provided for himself a fishingboat, with which it was his frequent custom to go to sea to fish. Thereupon the prior of St. Andrew's and his factors came upon him for the tithe of the product of his labours. His answer was sufficiently explicit. If, said he, they must have the tiend of what my servants won from the sea, it is only reasonable that they should come and receive it where the whole stock was got; and so, as was afterwards witnessed against him, he caused his servants to throw every tenth fish into the sea. The prior

forthwith brought an action against him for non-payment of tithes; and on his failing to make good his charge, he summoned him to answer for the more heinous crime of heresy. The account which the great reformer, John Knox, gives of his conversion is nearly as follows:-He was greatly troubled at this charge of heresy, and forthwith began to frequent the company of such as were godly; though before he had been of a stubborn and worldly character, and one who specially despised all religious discourse or reading. But now a marvellous change appeared. He delighted in nothing but such reading, and was a vehement exhorter of all men to concord, peaceableness, and contempt of the world. It chanced on one occasion that the laird of Lowriston, a kinsman of his own, was reading to him from the New Testament, in a quiet place in the fields, and as God had appointed, he chanced to read these words of our Divine Master: "Whosoever shall deny me before men, him will I also deny before my Father which is in heaven." At these words he suddenly, as one ravished, cast himself on his knees, and looking up to heaven, with hands extended for some time, he at length burst forth in these words: "O Lord, I have been wicked, and justly mayest thou withdraw thy grace from me. But, Lord, for thy mercy's sake, let me never deny thee nor thy truth, for fear of death or corporal pain." The issue, as Knox observes, proved that his prayer had not been made in vain.