Meanwhile, as the centuries followed each other, changes came over the condition of the European nations and their position towards each other, as over all human things. Scotland was gradually recovering from prostration, and England was shaken by the wars of the Roses, to the dire calamities of which it was some offset that they enfeebled the crown of England for mischief, whether against its neighbours or its own people. In the balance of Europe in the reign of Henry VIII. England was counted with Spain and Scotland with France. Both the British countries were in some measure subsidiary and protected states, Scotland being nearly as powerful as her neighbour. Her hold on France, indeed, was something like an incorporation, while the relation of Spain to England was suspicious and fidgety. The sagacious and grasping Ferdinand looked with respect and sympathy to a prince so like himself as Henry VII.; but he would have fain had a more securely-seated father-in-law for his daughter. He had an ambassador in Scotland who had two alternative jobs on hand—either to get the influence of Scotland over France to operate in his favour, or to detach these sworn friends and make a powerful European alliance, including Spain, England, and Scotland. Ferdinand, indeed, was not very sure whether, if he could not unite with both, Scotland might not be the more valuable friend. The intrigues, as historians term it, at the Court of James IV., are highly amusing, and have a special liveliness imparted to them by both monarchs playing the card they called "Him of York," being the Perkin Warbeck, who professed to be, and made many people believe him to be, the younger of the princes reputed to have been murdered in the Tower. Ferdinand regretted that he had not a daughter to give to James, and instructed his ambassador to try whether it would be practicable to pass off one of his natural children as a legitimate daughter of the house of Castile; but he was told that such a trick would be a very dangerous one, for the Scots were a proud people and fierce in their resentment of slights and injuries.

To watch in history the action and counteraction of opposing forces which have developed some grand result, yet by a slight and not improbable impulse the other way might have borne towards an opposite conclusion equally momentous, is an interesting task, with something in it of the excitement of the chase. In pursuing the traces which brought Scotland back to her English kindred, and saved her from a permanent annexation to France, the arrival of John Duke of Albany in Scotland, in 1515, is a critical turning-point. Already had the seed of the union with England been planted when James IV. got for a wife the daughter of Henry VII. It would serve pleasantly to lighten up and relieve a hard and selfish reputation, if one could figure this King, in the depths of his own heart, assuring himself of having entered in the books of fate a stroke of policy that at some date, however distant, was destined to appease the long bloody contest of two rival nations, and unite them into a compact and mighty empire. The prospects of such a consummation were at first anything but encouraging. The old love broke in, counteracting prudential policy; and, indeed, never did besotted lover abandon himself to wilder folly than James IV., when, at the bidding of Anne of France as the lady of his chivalrous worship, he resolved to be her true knight, and take three steps into English ground. When a chivalrous freak, backed by a few political irritations scarce less important, strewed the moor of Flodden with the flower of the land, it was time for Scotland to think over the rationality of this distant alliance, which deepened and perpetuated her feud with her close neighbour of kindred blood. Well for him, the good, easy, frank, chivalrous monarch, that he was buried in the ruin he had made, and saw not the misery of a desolated nation. Of the totally alien object for which all the mischief had been done, there was immediate evidence in various shapes. One curious little item of it is brought out by certain researches of M. Michel, which have also a significant bearing on the conflict between the secular and the papal power in the disposal of benefices.

The Pope, Julius II., was anxious to gain over to his interest Mathew Lang, bishop of Gorz and secretary to the Emperor Maximilian. The bishop was consequently called to Rome and blessed by the vision of a cardinal’s hat, and the papal influence towards the first high promotion that might open. The archbishopric of Bourges became vacant. The chapter elected one of our old friends of the Scots emigrant families, Guillaume de Monypeny, brother of the Lord of Concressault; but the King, Louis XII, at first stood out for Brillac, bishop of Orleans, resisted by the chapter. The bishop of Gorz then came forward with a force sufficient to sweep away both candidates. He was favoured of the Pope: his own master, Maximilian, desired for his secretary this foreign benefice, which would cost himself nothing; and Louis found somehow that the bishop was as much his own humble servant as the Emperor’s.

No effect of causes sufficient seemed in this world more assured than that Mathew Lang, bishop of Gorz, should also be archbishop of Bourges; but the fortune of war rendered it before his collation less important to have the bishop of Gorz in the archiepiscopate than another person. The King laid his hand again on the chapter, and required them to postulate one whose name and condition must have seemed somewhat strange to them— Andrew Forman, bishop of Moray, in the north of Scotland. There are reasons for all things. Forman was ambassador from Scotland to France, and thus had opportunities of private communication with James IV. and Louis XII. This latter, in a letter to the chapter of Bourges, explains his signal obligations to Forman for having seconded the allurements of the Queen, and instigated the King of Scots to make war against England, explaining how iceluy Roy d'Escosse s'est ouvertemont declaré vouloir tenir nostre party et faire la guerre actuellement contre le Roy d’Angleterre. Lest the chapter should doubt the accuracy of this statement of the services performed to France by Forman, the King sent them le double des lectres gue it dict Roy d’Escosse nous a escriptes, et aussy de la defiance qu’il a faite au dict Roy d’Angleterre.

The King pleaded hard with the chapter to postulate Forman, representing that they could not find a better means of securing his own countenance and protection. The Scotsman backed this royal appeal by a persuasive letter, which he signed André, Arcevesgue de Bourges et Evesque de Morray. Influence was brought to bear on the Pope himself, and he declared his leaning in favour of Forman. The members of the chapter, who had been knocked about past endurance in the affair of the archbishopric from first to last, threatened resistance and martyrdom; but the pressure of the powers combined against them brought them to reason, and Forman entered Bourges in archiepiscopal triumph.

But the ups and downs of the affair were as yet by no means at an end. That great pontiff, who never forgot that the head of the Church was a temporal prince, Leo X., had just ascended the throne, and found that it would be convenient to have this archbishopric of Bourges for his nephew, Cardinal Abe. By good luck the see of St Andrews, the primacy of Scotland, was then vacant, and was given as an equivalent for the French dignity. Such a promotion was a symbolically appropriate reward for the services of Forman; his predecessor fell at Flodden, and thus, in his services to the King of France, he had made a vacancy for himself. He kept for some time in his pocket, afraid to show it, the Pope’s bull appointing him Archbishop of St Andrews and Primate of Scotland.

This was a direct act of interference contrary to law and custom, since the function of the Pope was only to collate or confirm, as ecclesiastical superior, the choice made by the local authorities. These had their favourite for the appointment, Prior Hepburn, who showed his earnestness in his own cause by taking and holding the Castle of St Andrews. A contest of mingled ecclesiastical and civil elements, too complex to be disentangled, followed; but in the end Forman triumphed, having on his side the efforts of the King of France and his servant Albany, with the Pope’s sense of justice. The rewards of this highly endowed divine were the measure alike of his services to France and of his injuries to Scotland. He held, by the way, in commendam, a benefice in England; and as he had a good deal of diplomatic business with Henry VIII., it may not uncharitably be supposed that he sought to feather his hat with English as well as French plumage. It was in the midst of these affairs, which were bringing out the dangerous and disastrous elements in the French alliance, that Albany arrived.

We have seen how Albany’s father, the younger brother of James IlI., lived in France, getting lord-ships there, and how the son became a thorough naturalised Frenchman. There are men who, when they shift their place and function, can assimilate themselves to the changed elements around them— who can find themselves surrounded by unwonted customs and ways, and yet accept the condition that the men who follow these are pursuing the normal character of their being, and must be left to do so in peace, otherwise harm will come of it; and in this faculty consists the instinct which enables men to govern populations trained in a different school from their own. Albany did not possess this faculty. He appears to have been ignorant of the language of Scotland, and to have thought or rather felt that, wherever he was, all should be the same as in the midst of Italian and French courtiers; and if it were not so, something was wrong, and should be put right. It was then the commencement of a very luxurious age in France—an age of rich and showy costumes, of curls, perfumes, cosmetics, and pet spaniels—and Albany was the leader of fashion in all such things. It is needless to say how powerfully all this contrasted with rough Scotland—what a shocking set of barbarians he found himself thrown among—how contemptible to the rugged Scots nobles was the effeminate Oriental luxury of the little court he imported from Paris, shifted northwards as some wealthy luxurious sportsman takes a detachment from his stable, kennel, and servants’ hall, to a bothy in the Highlands.

He arrived, however, in a sort of sunshine. At that calamitous moment the nearest relation of the infant king, a practised statesman, was heartily welcome. He brought a small rather brilliant fleet with him, which was dignified by his high office as Admiral of France; he brought also some money and valuable trifles, which were not unacceptable. Wood, in his ‘Peerage,’ tells us that "The peers and chiefs crowded to his presence: his exotic elegance of manners, his condescension, affability, and courtesy of demeanour, won all hearts." If so, these were not long retained. He came, indeed, just before some tangible object was wanted against which to direct the first sulky feelings of the country towards France; and he served the purpose exactly, for his own handiwork was the cause of that feeling. In a new treaty between France and England, in which he bore a great if not the chief part, Scotland was for the first time treated as a needy and troublesome hanger-on of France. Instead of the old courtesy, which made Scotland, nominally at least, an independent party to the treaty, it was made directly by France, but Scotland was comprehended in it, with a warning that if there were any of the old raids across the Border, giving trouble as they had so often done, the Scots should forfeit their part in the treaty. This patronage during good behaviour roused the old pride, and was one of many symptoms that Albany had come to them less as the representative of their own in-dependent line of kings, than as the administrator of a distant province of the French empire. The humiliation was all the more bitter from the deep resentments that burned in the people’s hearts after the defeat of Flodden; and it was with difficulty that the Estates brought themselves to say that, though Scotland believed herself able single-handed to avenge her losses, yet, out of respect for the old friendship of France, the country would consent to peace with England.

Setting to work after the manner of one possessed of the same supreme authority as the King of France, Albany began his government with an air of rigour, insomuch that the common historians speak of him as having resolved to suppress the turbulent spirit of the age, and assert the supremacy of law and order. He thus incurred the reputation of a grasping tyrant. The infant brother of the king died suddenly; his mother said Albany had poisoned the child, and people shuddered for his brother, now standing alone between the Regent and the throne, and talked ominously of the manner in which Richard Ill, of England was popularly believed to have achieved the crown by murdering his nephews. It is from this period that we may date the rise of a really English party in Scotland—a party who feared the designs of the French, and who thought that, after having for two hundred years maintained her independence, Scotland might with fair honour be combined with the country nearest to her and likest in blood, should the succession to both fall to one prince, and that it would be judicious to adjust the royal alliances in such a manner as to bring that to pass.

Such thoughts were in the mean time somewhat counteracted by the light-headed doings of her who was the nation’s present tie to England—the Queen-Dowager. Her grotesque and flagrant love-affairs, are an amusing episode, especially to those who love the flavour of ancient scandal. But more serious agencies came in force, and any gracious thoughts that had turned themselves towards England were met in the teeth by the insults and injuries which her savage brother, Henry VIII., continued to pile upon the country.

Up to this point I have not observed any instances of offices of emolument in Scotland given to Frenchmen, and the fuss made about one instance of the kind leads to the supposition that they must have been rare. Dunbar the poet, who was in priest’s orders, was exceedingly clamorous, in prose and in verse—in the serious and in the comic vein— for preferment. Perhaps he was the kind of person whom it is as difficult to prefer in the Church as it was to make either Swift or Sydney Smith a bishop. His indignation was greatly roused by the appointment of a foreigner whom he deemed beset by his own special failings, but in far greater intensity, to the abbacy of Tongueland; and he committed his griefs to a satirical poem, called ‘The fenyet Freir of Tungland.’ The object of this poem has been set down by historians as an Italian, but M. Michel indicates him as a countryman of his own, by the name of Jean Damien. He is called a charlatan, quack, and mountebank, and might, perhaps, with equal accuracy, be called a devotee of natural science, who speculated ingeniously and experimented boldly. He was in search of the philosopher’s stone, and believed himself to be so close on its discovery that he ventured to embark the money of King James IV., and such other persons as participated in his own faith, in the adventure to realise the discovery, and saturate all the partners with riches indefinite.

It might be a fair question whether the stranger’s science is so obsolete as the social tone of the literature in which he is attacked, since Dunbar’s satirical poem, among other hints that the precedents of the adventurer unfitted him for the higher offices in the Christian ministry, insinuates that he had committed several murders; and although the charge is made in a sort of rough jocularity, the force of it does not by any means rest on its absurdity and incredibility. He was accused of a mad project for extracting gold from the Wanlockhead Hills, in Dumfriesshire, which cannot be utterly scorned in the present day, since gold has actually been extracted from them, though the process has not returned twenty shillings to the pound. This curious creature completed his absurdities by the construction of a pair of wings, with which he was to take a delightful aerial excursion to his native country. He proved his sincerity by starting in full feather from Stirling Castle. In such affairs it is, as Madame du Deffand said about that walk taken by St Denis round Paris with his own head for a burden, is premier pas qui coute. The poor adventurer tumbled at once, and was picked up with a broken thigh-bone. Such is the only Frenchman who became conspicuous before Albany’s time as holding rank and office in Scotland.

Albany had not long rubbed on with the Scots Estates when he found that he really must go to Paris; and as there seems to have been no business concerning Scotland that he could transact there, an uncontrollable yearning to be once more in his own gay world is the only motive one can find for his trip. The Estates of Scotland were in a surly humour, and not much inclined to allow him his holidays. They appointed a council of regency to act for him. He, however, as if he knew nothing about the constitutional arrangements in Scotland, appointed a sort of representative, who cannot have known more about the condition and constitution of Scotland than his constituent, though he had been one of the illustrious guests present at the marriage of James lV.

He is named, in the chronicle called Pitscottie’s, "Monsieur Tilliebattie," but his full name was Antoine d’Arces de la Bastie, and he had been nicknamed or distinguished, as the case might be, as the Chevalier Blanc, or White Knight, like the celebrated Joannes Corvinus, the knight of Wallachia, whose son became king of Hungary. M. Michel calls him the " chevalresque et briliant La Bustle, chez qui le guerrier et l’homme d’état etaient encore supérieurs au champion des tournois." He was a sort of fanatic for the old principle of chivalry, then beginning to disappear before the breath of free inquiry, and the active useful pursuits it was inspiring. M. Michel quotes from a contemporary writer, who describes him as perambulating Spain, Portugal, England, and France, and proclaiming himself ready to meet all comers of sufficient rank, not merely to break a lance in chivalrous courtesy, but a combattre à l’outrance—an affair which even at that time was too important to be entered on as a frolic, or to pass an idle hour, but really required some serious justification. No one, it is said, accepted the challenge but the cousin of James IV. of Scotland, who is said to have been conquered, but not killed, as from the nature of the challenge he should have been; but this story seems to be a mistake by the contemporary, and M. Michel merely quotes it without committing himself.

Such was the person left by the Regent as his representative, though apparently with no specific office or powers acknowledged by the constitution of Scotland. Research may perhaps afford new light to clear up the affair; but at present the only acknowledgment of his existence bearing anything like an official character, are entries in the Scots treasurer’s accounts referred to by M. Michel, one of them authorising a payment of fifteen shillings to a messenger to the warden of the middle march, "with my lord governor’s letters delivered by Monsr. Labawte;" another payment to his servant for summoning certain barons and gentlemen to repair to Edinburgh; and a payment of twenty shillings for a service of more import, thus entered —"Item, deliverit be Monsieur Lawbatez to Johne Langlandis, letters of our sovereign lords to summon and warn all the thieves and broken men out of Tweeddale and Eskdale in their own country—quhilk letters were proclaimed at market-cross of Roxburgh, Selkirk, and Jedwood."

This proclamation seems to have been the deadly insult which sealed his fate. The borders had hardly yet lost their character of an independent district, which might have merged into something like a German margravate. There had been always some family holding a preponderating and almost regal power there. At this time it was the Homes or Humes, a rough set, with their hands deeply dipped in blood, who little dreamed that their name would be known all over Europe by the fame of a fat philosopher sitting writing in a peaceful library with a goosequill, and totally innocent of the death of a fellow-being. It was one of Albany’s rigorous measures to get the leaders of this clan brought to justice, or, in other words, executed. This was a thing to be avenged; and since La Bastie was taking on himself the responsibilities of Albany, it was thought as well that he should not evade this portion of them.

To lure him within their reach, a sort of mock fight was got up by the borderers in the shape of the siege of one of their peel towers. Away went La Bastie in all his bravery, dreaming, simple soul, as if he were in Picardy or Touraine, that the mere name of royalty would at once secure peace and submission. His eye, practised in scenes of danger, at once saw murder in the gaze of those he had ventured among, and he set spurs to his good horse, hoping to reach his headquarters in the strong castle of Dunbar. The poor fellow, however, ignorant of the country, and entirely unaided, was overtaken in a bog. It is said that he tried cajoling, threats, and appeals to honour and chivalrous feeling. As well speak to a herd of hungry wolves as to those grim ministers of vengeance! The Laird of Wedderburn, a Home, enjoyed the distinction of riding with the Frenchman’s head, tied by its perfumed tresses on his saddle-bow, into the town of Dunse, where the trophy was nailed to the market-cross. As old Pitscottie has it, "his enemies came upon him, and slew and murdered him very unhonestly, and cutted off his head, and carried it with them; and it was said that he had long hair platt over his neck, whilk David Home of Wedderbnrn twust to his saddle-bow, and keeped it."

This affair brought Scotland into difficulties both with England and France. Henry VIII. professed himself displeased that a French adventurer should have been set up as ruler in his nephew’s kingdom; and Francis I., who had just mounted the throne of France, demanded vengeance on the murderers of his distinguished subject, with whose chivalrous spirit he had a congenial sympathy. There is an exceedingly curious and suggestive correspondence between France and Scotland at the commencement of M. Teulet’s volumes. It closely resembles the papers that might be returned to Parliament by our Indian Government on the negotiations with some wily Affghan or Scinde chief, in which reparation is demanded for outrages on a British subject. There is much fussy desire to comply with the demands of the great power, but ever a difficulty, real or pretended, in getting anything done.

Proclamations and other denunciatory documents were issued in the loudest and angriest terms against the traitors and foul murderers of the representative of the illustrious ally of Scotland. Francis was told that a great army was organised to march to the borders, and utterly annihilate the criminals and their faction; and to give the expedition all the more thorough an aspect of serious business, it was accompanied by actual artillery—a new device in the art of war but little known up to that time in Scotland. But when this powerful host arrived at the country of the Homes, the lords had fled to England. What more could be done? The correspondence concludes with a suggestion close on sarcasm, if not intended for it, that Francis had better demand the criminals from Henry VIII. it is not necessary, however, to suppose that there was absolute perfidy in all this. It may have been then in Scotland as probably it often is in the East, that the difficulty in punishing a set of powerful culprits has a better foundation in their capacity for self-defence than the government is inclined to acknowledge.

But Francis was not in a condition to press the matter so far as to risk a quarrel with an old friend. Evil days, indeed, were coming to both kingdoms and they were knit together again by the ties of a common adversity. Albany gave great provocation to Henry VIII. by joining in, if he did not organise, a project by which France, the northern powers, and Scotland were to unite for the restoration of the house of York in England through its representative, Reginald de la Pole. The wrath of Henry fell heavily on the land, and appeal after appeal was made to Francis for assistance. But his hands were full. He had to keep up three great armies—one in Italy, another in Picardy, and a third in Guienne--and was in great alarm for the safety of his own frontiers. He sent first M. Le Charron, and then M. De Langeac, as his ambassadors, with supremely kind and sympathising messages, recommending Scotland to keep up heart until better days should come, but he could give no material assistance. Driven to extremes, the Scots represented that they had been offered peace with England on the condition of abandoning the French alliance. They had sternly refused this humiliating condition; but they now put it to France, whether, being quite unable to give them assistance, she would resign, for a time at least, her claims to the exclusive friendship of the Scots, and let them make peace with England. But Francis was in the climax of his adversity. The great battle of Pavia had just been fought. The Scots were asked if it was a time to desert steady old friends when their king was defeated and a captive in the enemy’s hands? The chivalry which ruled the diplomacy of that day prevailed, and the request was withdrawn. The two nations, in externals, became faster friends than ever.