In Byways of Scottish History

JAMES VI AS STATESMAN AND POET

Those who accept the traditional estimate of James VI's character may deem it little short of preposterous to connect his name with the idea of statesmanship. To them he appears as a garrulous pedant and a coarse buffoon, whose rickety walk was the outward sign of a feeble, vacillating temper; as a would-be autocrat who, whilst constantly obtruding his despotic theories on his subjects, lacked the strength of mind and the energy to put them into practice; and, to express it briefly and bluntly in the words of Macaulay, as "a drivelling idiot" and "a finished specimen of all that a king ought not to be".245 But there is another portrait that may be drawn of him. Materials for it will be found not in the rhetorical descriptions of writers whose aim was literary effect or political denunciation, but in those absolutely trustworthy, if most prosaic and unimaginative documents, the Acts of the Privy Council. And it was Professor Masson, the editor of those records, who asserted that it is impossible for anyone duly acquainted with them "to think of James as other than a man of a very remarkable measure of political ability and inventiveness, with a tenacity and pertinacity of purpose that could show itself in a savage glitter of the eye whenever he was offended or thwarted, and in a merciless rigour in hunting down and crushing his ascertained opponents".246 It is worth going to the same sources of information for the purpose of determining to what extent this view is justified.

In any attempt at a survey of the administration of James VI it is important to remember that, although he became nominal sovereign at an early age, it was not until he had reached his thirtieth year that he got the reins of government fully into his own hands. That occurred towards the close of 1595, at the death of Lord Maitland of Thirlstane, after a Chancellorship and Premiership of over eight years. It was then that on being asked how he intended to fill up the vacant office, James replied that he was resolved no more to use great men as Chancellors in his affairs, but only such as he could correct and were hangable.247

The peculiar idea of kingship or sovereign authority which the enfranchised monarch thus expressed, and which he took every opportunity of repeating in both his speeches and his writings, is the more noteworthy that it was opposed to the principles which must have been inculcated upon him in his early years. For it must be remembered that his tutor, Buchanan, was a politician as well as a scholar, and that it was he who wrote the famous treatise, De Jure Regni apud Scotos, that vigorous exposition of liberal and constitutional monarchy which justifies the description of its author as "the first Whig". It is certainly not to him that James's training in autocracy is to be attributed, but rather to Thirlstane. That statesman, it is true, ruled the Court and the country for years with a fixity of purpose and a firmness of hand that bore down opposition, and did not allow the King himself any opportunity of asserting his independence. At the same time, however, he did not fail to urge upon him the necessity for dealing energetically with the abuses which had arisen owing to the turbulent insolence and the intolerable oppression of the arrogant nobility. James had not been deaf to advice so conformable with his character and disposition. He had taken it so thoroughly to heart that, although he could not shake himself free from his Minister's despotism, it had become irksome and galling to him. When Maitland lay on his deathbed his Sovereign refused repeated requests to visit him, and it was even said that he had whispered in a courtier's ear that "it would be a small matter if the Chancellor were hanged".248 The years that intervened between Maitland's death and James's departure from Scotland at length gave the King his opportunity, and not only did he at once show his determination of becoming master within his own kingdom, but he also succeeded in actually carrying it out to a very noteworthy degree. And of the qualifications that enabled him to do so none was more conspicuously displayed than his ability to extract power to shape things according to his mind from the very incidents that the opposition to his royal will and pleasure evoked. An instance of this was afforded by his energetic conduct when the Edinburgh riot of December, 1596, originating in a demonstration in favour of the rights of Presbytery, as championed by Mr. David Black, of St. Andrews, gave him a chance of striking at the antagonists to his notion of supremacy. And the same inflexibility of purpose and dexterous management of circumstances appeared, four years later, in the use which he made of the Gowrie tragedy as an instrument for the subjection of the Scottish clergy. The monarch who could turn such occurrences as those to political profit had some right to boast of his "kingcraft". We may not approve of the system which he followed of marking out individual opponents and of striking them down with a strong and merciless hand, but we must admit that it proved effectual, and acknowledge that the man whose conduct of the bitter struggle it characterized cannot be contemptuously dismissed as "a nervous, drivelling idiot".

One of the special points with regard to which James has a claim to recognition is the zeal with which he undertook and consistently performed the task of checking the lawlessness and rebellion that had been rampant in Scotland during his minority. The Royal Declaration in which he announced his intention of bestowing his "haill travellis, moyane, and diligens" on the work of reform was not allowed to remain a dead letter. Page after page of the records testify to the resoluteness with which he enforced the laws which had for their object the restoration of order throughout the kingdom, and which were directed more particularly against two classes of offenders – the "horners" and the members of families at hereditary feud. Horners, as they were called in Scotland, were all persons who stood out in denounced disobedience to the decrees of any law court, for any kind of offence from simple debt to murder and treason. At one time the country was full of such. Mere proclamations against them having proved of little avail, James at length had recourse to a measure which proved more effectual. He established a flying police, consisting of a body of forty well-equipped horsemen, "to be in reddiness at all occasiounis to hunt, follow and perseu all and quhatsumevir rebellis within this countrie, without respect of persones, quhither thair rebellioun be for civill or criminall caussis, and to tak thair houssis and uplift thair eschaitis as thai salbe directit and commandit".249 The beneficial result of these stringent disciplinary measures was soonest and most distinctly apparent in the Borders, or, as James desired them to be called after his accession to the English throne, "the Midland Shires of Britain", which, within the space of four or five years, were so thoroughly subdued that they ceased to be a sanctuary for rough-riding reivers, and entered upon that more peaceful era of their existence which has now lasted for three hundred years.

In an Act "anent deidly feidis", evidently emanating from James himself, the Council reminded the lieges that "The Kingis most gratious Majestie, ever since his first cuming to yeiris of perfectioun", had displayed "ain maist ernest and ardent zaill and desyer to have removit frome amange his subjectis of the cuntrey of Scotland all sic custumis, faschiounnis, and behaviouris as did in ony weyis smell of barbarity and sevegnes", and had been unremitting in his endeavours to suppress the "barbarous and detestable consuetud of deidly feids".250 Nothing could be better founded than the claim thus put forward on the King's behalf, for one of the most commendable features in his administration is to be found in the perseverance with which he strove to put an end to this characteristically Scottish form of disorder by means both of preventive and punitive legislation. He did not succeed in wholly rooting out the "weid of deidly feid", but there is abundant evidence to prove that, thanks to vigilant care and vigorous action, he was able to check its baneful growth.

In taking the measure of James VI as a statesman, it is important not to overlook the method which he adopted to carry on the government of Scotland as an absentee king. It is assuredly no sign of weakness or incapacity that the nearest approach to that absolutism that he had set up as his ideal was made by him after his departure to take possession of the crown left him by Elizabeth. What he achieved in this respect was once set forth by him in a speech to his refractory English Parliament. "This I must say for Scotland, and may truly vaunt it: here I sit and govern it with my pen; I write and it is done; and by a Clerk of the Council I govern Scotland now – which others could not do by the sword."251 That such was literally the case, that he kept himself fully acquainted with everything that went on in his northern kingdom, and that the measures adopted by his Ministers for its control and management were nothing but the embodiment of his Royal will, is established beyond dispute by the letters which he periodically sent to Edinburgh from his palace in the capital or one of his hunting seats in the shires.

Even the most hostile of James VI's critics give him credit for having endeavoured to promote one excellent measure – the union of England and Scotland. To what negotiations the scheme gave rise, how it was discussed in both Parliaments, what eloquent testimony Sir Francis Bacon bore to the statesmanlike character of the King's views and intentions, and in what circumstances the projected treaty broke down under the weight of English prejudice and jealousy – those are the details of a story which cannot be told now. It must suffice to recall that, if James had had his way, history would have been anticipated by a whole century.

The "bagage littéraire" of James VI is but slight, and if the profound indifference of all and the absolute ignorance of most as to its very existence be taken as representing a fair estimate of its merit it must in truth be worthless. But if, on the other hand, we consult his contemporaries we must, unless we are prepared to dismiss them all as more shamelessly fulsome in their adulation than the average of courtly flatterers, at least recognize the possibility of his having been a little better than posterity has been taught to believe. Long before James VI became James I his reputation as a poet had reached England, and helped to swell the chorus of welcome that greeted him on his arrival. In 1598 Barnfield made the King's love of poetry the point of one of his sonnets: —

Before this, Harvey in his Pierce's Supererogation, had already proclaimed the poetical merit of "Lepanto", declaring it, in his high-flown style, to be "a short, but heroicall worke, in meeter, but royall meeter, fitt for a David's harpe".253 Two years later the judgment of Vaughan was that "James is a notable Poet, and daily setteth out most learned poems, to the admiration of all his subjects".254 In 1600 Allott gave ten quotations from James in his England's Parnassus, and Bodenham claims that in "The Garden of the Muses", from "what workes of Poetrie have been put to the world's eye by that learned and right royall King and Poet, James King of Scotland, no one sentence of worth has escaped".255 After the accession to the English throne, Jonson addressed "To King James" an epigram of ten lines, in which he expanded the idea of the monarch's excellence as both prince and poet: —

And Sir John Beaumont, in a carefully polished poem written before, but published after James's death, and entitled "To His late Maiesty, concerning the True Forme of English Poetry", bestowed upon him the more subtle flattery of calling him the Master whose "judicious rules" have been his guide.257 Here the reference is to James, not only as a poet but as a critic also. For one of his early prose treatises was entitled Reulis and Cautelis to be Observit and Eschewit in Scottis Poesie. This was the manifesto of a group of poets, amongst whom were, in addition to the King himself, Alexander Montgomerie, the author of The Cherry and the Slae; Fowler, and the Hudsons, and whose aim was to found a school of Scottish poetry. This document contained a passage which is interesting enough to be quoted. Setting forth the "twa caussis" that have induced him to compose his treatise, the Royal lawgiver of Parnassus says: "The ane is; as for thame that wrait of auld, lyke as the tyme is changeit sinsyne, so is the ordour of poesie changeit. The other cause is; that as for thame that has written in it of late, there has never ane of thame written in our (Scottis) languag. For albeit sindrie hes written of it in English, quhilk is lykest to our language, zit we differ from thame in sindrie reulis of poesie, as ze will find be experience."258 And we believe there are Scotsmen who will account it to James for righteousness that he at least made an attempt, abortive though it proved, to maintain Scotland's autonomy in language and in poetry.

In forming an estimate of the King's poetical productions, it is but fair to bear in mind that "all of his poems, save three or four sonnets and the revisions of his early paraphrases of the Psalms, belong to the period of his reign in Scotland", and that "the greater portion of them were composed either before the publication of the first volume of his poems in his nineteenth year or in the time of romantic enthusiasm excited by his marriage".259 We have "The First Verses that ever the King Made". They are written in a sententious vein which might be looked upon as characteristic of the author, were it not that this special feature "is one of the commonest in Scottish poetry of the Chaucerian tradition". And if, on the one hand, it cannot be claimed for them that they bear evidence of exceptional talent, on the other it must be admitted that, as the production of a lad of fifteen, they were quite creditable: —

James was still, as he puts it himself, in his "verie young and tender yeares: wherein nature (except shee were a monster) can admit no perfection", when he wrote his "Lepanto", which his contemporaries seem to have looked upon as the best of his poems, and to which Du Bartas paid the compliment of translating it into French. It is no masterpiece, but Mr. Westcott, the editor of the New Poems by James I of England, does not exaggerate the author's merit when he says that "his style in the description of the battle between the Christian and the Turkish navies is concrete and lively, and at times achieves an almost ballad-like simplicity". This seems to us to be justified by such lines as those which describe the gathering of the Christian forces: —

James did not make frequent use of this metre, but he adopted it for another poem of a very different kind, "A Dreame on his Mistris my Ladie Glammes", in which he displays some ingenuity and inventive skill. Interpreting one of the tokens that have been left him – an amethyst – he says:

There are 268 lines altogether, and the discovery of them ought to contribute in some degree to the poetical rehabilitation of the author.

As a knowledge of James's character would suggest, his interest in the art of poetry was mainly directed to the details of verse making and diction, and it seems natural in such a stickler for metrical propriety that in his shorter poems his favourite form should have been the sonnet. His highest achievement in this department has always been considered to be the sonnet to his son Henry, at the beginning of the Basilicon Doron: —

Of this poem Bishop Percy said that it would not dishonour any writer of that time, and a later critic has pronounced that it is by far James's best performance, "which just misses being really fine". By the side of it there may now be placed, by reason of their "sustained music, conformity to the technique of the sonnet, and prettiness of fancy, if not elevation", at least three others which figure amongst the twenty-six hitherto unpublished poems included in the manuscript which Mr. Westcott has discovered. One of them refers to a lady, probably the daughter of Sir John Wemyss, whose name was Cicely: —

On the strength of this, or of anything we have quoted from James's poems, it would be supremely unreasonable to claim for him a place on the same level as that of the authors either of "The King's Quhair" or of "The Gaberlunzie Man". But it may be less unjustifiable to suggest that he is not absolutely undeserving of a corner in anthologies of the Scottish poems of the sixteenth and of the early seventeenth century. That he is altogether contemptible is an opinion that might be maintained if we had nothing better of his than the string of punning rhymes quoted in the notes to Walpole's Royal and Noble Authors, for the purpose of making him appear ridiculous.264

THE INVASION OF AILSA CRAIG

Although in the possession of the historic family of Kennedy, to the head of which it gives his title, Ailsa Craig, the imposing "ocean pyramid" that rises in solitary grandeur to a height of over 1100 feet above the waters of the Firth of Clyde, does not figure prominently in the annals of the country, nor in the special records of the district to which it belongs. Its whole story consists of a single episode, which, though hardly noticed by modern historians, created some excitement, both in Scotland and in England, at the time of its occurrence, and may be read with interest at the present day. That incident, the invasion of Ailsa Craig, which it is here intended to relate on the authority of contemporary documents, takes us back to the year 1597. The chief actors in it were Hugh Barclay, Laird of Ladylands, an Ayrshire gentleman of good family, whose estate was situated in the neighbourhood of Irvine, and Andrew Knox, "minister of God's worde at Paselye".

Though originally a member of the Presbyterian Church, Ladylands had made "defectioun and apostacie fra the said trewe religioun". In the correspondence of the time he is usually to be found figuring in the lists of those whom it was customary to describe as "practising Papists", a designation not undeserved in his case, for amongst the religious enthusiasts who devoted themselves to the restoration of the old religion none displayed a greater fixity of purpose, a more unscrupulous contempt for the law, or a more reckless disregard of personal danger. Andrew Knox, on the other hand, in spite of his peaceful calling, gave proof of equal determination and equal audacity in the fulfilment of the self-imposed mission of hunting down "Jesuitis, seminarie preistis, and suspect trafficquaris with the King of Spain, and utheris foreynaris". The plotting of the laird and the counter-plotting of the minister had more than once brought the two men into personal conflict. Indeed, so far as extant documents go, the career of the one is practically identified with the career of the other.

In 1592, which seems to be the year in which he abandoned Presbyterianism, Ladylands was "excommunicated for Papistrye", but granted "a licence to departe out of the realme". Before his departure, however, it was discovered that he and "twoe Inglishmen of the worst sorte haunted togither" at Irvine and other places in the west.265 In consequence of this, it was at once resolved to take him and his accomplices "quietlie", and to bring them back to Edinburgh. The difficult task of apprehending him was undertaken by Andrew Knox, and successfully carried out, though at "no little paines and perill". He pursued the conspirators through Glasgow and towards Irvine, and pressed them so closely that Ladylands was driven to the necessity of giving himself up to James Hamilton, the eldest son of Lord Claude, though not till, by some means which are unfortunately not recorded, he had provided for the safety of his confederates. Under the charge of Andrew Knox and Captain Hamilton he was led back to Edinburgh, and handed over to the Provost's keeping. On being examined he "confessed himselfe excommunicated and to be of the Catholique Romaine Church and not of the Church established in Scotlande, and he agreed to answer to any interrogatorye charginge him in cryme of treason wherein he pleaded his inocencye, but he derectlie refused to answere to anye question touchinge matter of religion, or as micht accuse or charge anye person other than himselfe onlye".