WALLACE, DISGUISED, VISITS THE ENGLISH CAMP. Edward and his army being encamped at Biggar, Wallace, meditating a midnight raid, visits it disguised, in order to observe their arrangements. On his way to the camp he meets a countryman. Driving a mare, and pitchers had he to sell. "Good friend," said he, "in truth wilt thou me tell, With this chaffer where passes thou truly. Till ony, sir, who likes for to buy ; But thou beware, thou tines 2 of thy chaffre Among Southerns full busily he past The King's pavillion whereon the libbards bade Spyand full fast, where his avail should be, And could well look and wink with the tae ee. It is my craft, and I would (sell) them Some scorned him, some, gleèd carl, called fain." "I will them buy, so God me save from Agrieved they were for their herald's miss pain. What price let's hear? I will take them ilk ane." "But half a mark, for sic price have I ta'en." him there. fare. Some speired at him how he sold off his beast. "For forty pence," he said, "while they may lest." "Twenty shillings," Wallace said, "thou Some brake a pot, some pirlèd3 at his ee, shall have. I will have mare, pitchers, and all the lave. Thy gown and hose in haste thou put off syne, Wallace fled out and privily let them be: On till his host again he past full right. LAMENT FOR WALLACE. And make a change, for I shall give thee Alas, Scotland, to whom shall thou com mine; plain! Alas, frae pain wha shall thee now restrain! Alas, thy help is falsely brought to ground, Thy (best) chieftain in braith 4 bands is bound! Alas, thou has now lost thy guide of light! Alas, wha shall defend thee in thy right? Alas, thy pain approaches wonder5 near, With sorrow soon thou mon be set in feyr!" Thy gracious guide, thy greatest gover nour, Alas, o'er near is coming his fatal hour! Alas, wha shall thee 'bate now of thy baill?7 Alas, when shall of harmis thou be haill?8 Spring. In Aperil the one and twenty day gone. The whilk had been both beast and birdis bon; Zepherus eik, with his sweet vapour, Autumn. In September, the humyll moneth sweet, When passed by the height was, of the heat, Victual and fruit are ripèd in abundance, As God ordains to man's governance. Sagittarius with his aspre bow, By the ilk sign, verity ye may know The changing course whilk makes great difference; And leaves had lost their colouris of plea sance. All worldly thing has nought but a season; Both herb and fruit mon frae heaven come down. I Disposed. JAMES THE FIRST. JAMES THE FIRST was the fourth in descent from Robert the Bruce, being the great-grandson of his daughter Marjory, and the third of the Steward | line of kings. He was the second son of Robert III., an estimable and good man, but wanting that vigour of body and commanding firmness of mind necessary for the government of the turbulent nobility of Scotland in that age. His mother, Annabella Drummond, a daughter of Sir John Drummond of Stobhall, is called by Chalmers "the admirable queen of Robert III." James was born in Dunfermline in 1394, in the thirty-seventh year of the married life of his parents, twenty-one years the junior of his brother David, Duke of Rothesay. His education till his eleventh year was entrusted to Henry Wardlaw, the celebrated bishop of St Andrews. his uncle specious grounds for putting him under restraint. He was accordingly arrested, and imprisoned in a dungeon of Albany's castle of Falkland, in Fife, from which, after about a fortnight, his dead body was carried to the neighbouring Abbey of Lindores, and buried. It was given out that he died of dysentery, yet public opinion pointed so directly to Albany as his murderer, that he demanded to be brought to trial. But such was his influence, that not only was he acquitted, but he obtained a formal remission, absolving himself and his associate the Earl of Douglas of all guilt in the matter. Although too feeble to cope with his crafty brother, the king appears to have shared the public belief in his guilt; and with his heart all but broken for the loss of his beloved eldest son, his whole thoughts became concentrated upon the safety of the youngest, now his only hope. James was but eight years old when the death of his brother made him heir to the crown, and the only obstacle that stood in the way of his uncle's ambitious designs upon it. When he attained his eleventh year, his father, with the consent and advice of his ex David, James' brother, as heir to the crown, had for some time shared the government of the kingdom along with his uncle, the Duke of Albany, who, since the accession of his brother Robert III., had been entrusted by him with the administration of affairs. Albany was a man of an unprincipled and ambitious disposition, and, before the birth of James, the Duke of Rothe-cellent tutor Bishop Wardlaw, resolved say was the only obstacle that stood betwixt him and the crown. The duke's behaviour, if not his character, appears to have been reckless and licentiou to such a degree as to give to send him to France, on the plea of prosecuting his education, and had a vessel equipped for conveying him thither in the spring of 1405. He embarked at the Bass, accompanied by his tutor Henry St Clair, Earl of Orkney, and a small retinue of attendants; but they had not proceeded beyond Flamborough Head, on the coast of Northumberland, when they were intercepted by an English squadron, and made prisoners, in violation of a treaty of truce then subsisting between England and Scotland. This breach of good faith, which obtained the subsequent approval of Henry IV. and his council, was perpetrated on the 12th April 1405, and it is strongly suspected to have been instigated by Albany. On receipt of the news of this second calamity, the aged king retired to the seclusion of his castle of Rothesay, in Bute, where he died on the 4th April 1406. He was buried in Paisley Abbey. The captive James was now proclaimed king by a parliament which met at Perth, and his Uncle Albany was confirmed in his office of Regent; but no remonstrance was made against the illegality of his capture, and no steps were taken to obtain his release. When James and his retinue were brought before Henry, the Earl of Orkney protested against his being made a prisoner, pleading the peaceful object of his voyage to France on account of his education. The English monarch jestingly replied, that, in that case, it made little difference, that he himself understood French well, and James would be as well educated at his court as at that of France. And Henry seems to have meant what he said, for in the selection of Sir John Pelham to superintend the studies of his captive, "he generously," says Tytler, "selected for him a military governor, whose character was a guarantee for his being brought up in a manner suitable to his royal rank." Nor did the youthful prisoner discredit the teaching of his excellent master. He greatly excelled in all those military and athletic exercises which formed the physical education of the young knights of the time. Beside those active feats which strengthened the constitution, he did not neglect the cultivation of those more elegant and intellectual studies which give grace to the manners and strength to the mind. His natural genius for music and poetry were of no common order; and the circumstance of his captivity gave him leisure and opportunity for the study of those fascinating arts, which, had he remained at home, might be incompatible with the discharge of more serious duties. He is also said to have been a good Greek and Latin scholar, and to have been well acquainted with the philosophy of the age. The two first years of his imprisonment were spent in the Tower of London, from whence he was removed to Nottingham Castle, and shortly after to Windsor, where he appears to have spent the greater part of his captivity. Henry IV. died in March 1413, and was succeeded by Henry V., by whom James was again, for a short time, committed to the custody of the Tower, after several unsuccessful attempts for his liberation on his own part, and on that of the Scottish nobles opposed to Albany. At length, in September 1319, Albany's long lease of power came to an end, through his death, at Stirling, in his eightieth year; but such was his influence, and the tenacity of his issue nor them to obey such orders; but," unprincipled ambition, that he contrived he added, "in order to win the prize of to transfer the reins of power, which chivalry, and become instructed in the death alone snatched out of his own art of war under so illustrious a master, firm grasp, into the feeble hands of his was an opportunity he willingly emson Murdoch. James, now in his braced." Accordingly, with a select twenty-fifth year, saw, with indignation, | company of Scottish knights, he accoma renewal of that unjust usurpation | panied Henry for the love of honour. which kept him out of his rights, without a protest being made on his behalf. In these circumstances it must have been a mitigation of his misfortunes to have accompanied Henry V. to France, where he commanded a chosen band of Scottish knights who fought with great bravery under the standard of England | for two years. He was also present at the magnificent coronation festival of Catherine of France, as Henry's queen, and returned to England in their train. In this second visit to France, James obtained some information about the misgovernment of his cousin, Duke Murdoch, and the anxiety of the people for his own return; and Henry, seeing how little he could influence Scottish policy through James, and having now satisfactory evidence of the firm and energetic character of his captive, began to think it might best serve his own interests to bind him by the ties of gratitude and relationship, by restoring him to his dominions, and bestowing upon him the hand of his relative, the Lady Jane Beaufort. Henry had not been long in England, when the arrival of a body of 7000 Scots, under the Earl of Buchan, the second son of Albany, enabled the James' introduction to this beautiful dauphin to renew hostilities, and the and accomplished lady is equally infirst check sustained by the arms of teresting from a poetical and a political England in France was that of Baugé, point of view; and taking his own where the Scots under Buchan defeated delicate but romantic account of it, them, killing the Duke of Clarence, which there is no reason to believe to Henry's brother, and making many be a piece of fanciful feigning, it is as important prisoners. Henry resolved simple, and natural, and artless as the to return, to retrieve the misfortunes of accidental meeting of the most primihis army, and to bring James along with tive pastoral swains. The lady who him, in the hope that the Scots auxili- thus became the object of James' ardent aries might be induced, by the presence affection, and inspired his muse, was of their king, to desist. On Henry's the daughter of the Earl of Somerset, proposing to James that he should then dead, and whose mother, a daughter charge them on their allegiance to do so, of the Earl of Kent, was married to he replied, with equal good reason and Henry's brother, the Duke of Clarence, high spirit-"That, so long as he con- killed by the Earl of Buchan at the tinued a prisoner, and acted under the battle of Baugé. Her brother, the will of another, it neither became him to | Duke of Somerset, one of Henry's re |