| <Taits Edinburgh Magazine>
| <Tytler's History of Scotland> 
| <pb n="85">
| Mr. Tytler's readers will, we are persuaded, participate in 
| those feelings of mingled regret and gratitude with which he 
| tells them he now closes <q> </q> years passed in the 
| tranquil pleasures of historical investigation and <q>  </q> 
| This gratitude springs from the purest and the highest source; 
| and rises to the Giver of all Good, that life and health have 
| been spared him to complete his arduous undertaking. Nor can 
| it be without grateful feelings of another kind, that the author 
| looks back upon his finished work; on the novel monument 
| which he has, through so long a term of years, patiently and 
| diligently piled, and which must henceforth entwine his name 
| with the literature and the history of his country. 
| The world has undergone important changes since this 
| work was projected, some of which are, we think, reflected in 
| its pages. One of the most marked of these changes is the rapid 
| ascendancy of the Democratic principle; of the 
| <hi rend="italic"> <persona> "rascal poke-bearing 
| Commons." </persona> </hi> 
| The <q> </q> have everywhere, and even under the most 
| despotic governments, become of more account. One 
| consequence of this is, that the Historian dives deeper into the 
| heart of the social system in looking for the springs of events. 
| He is no longer contented, as of old, with merely skimming the 
| surface of society, or resting on its prouder eminences. He 
| perceives mighty causes silently at work, which have hitherto 
| passed with but slight attention, until, like the French 
| revolution, revealed in their tremendous results. ~~  The style, 
| or rather spirit, of modern History, at least as it is exemplified 
| in the pages of Mr. Tytler, and especially in his later volumes, 
| has also become more racy and picturesque. Of the novelists 
| have, of late, invaded the province of the Historians, the latter 
| have, on the other hand, learned something of dramatic effect 
| from the pages of Historical Romance. Instead of the brief 
| details and masterly generalizations of Hume, or the stately, 
| resonant periods of Robertson's narrative, we have, in Mr, 
| Tytler's History, without any sacrifice of recondite thought or 
| purity of style, more graphic force, a closer appeal to fact, and 
| a firmer reliance on the naked truth of character and 
| circumstance. We see events passing, not in the dressed-up 
| narrative of a distant third party, but as nearly as possible as 
| they actually appeared to the spectators, or to the actors in the 
| scenes described. We are admitted behind the scenes, to see 
| how passion and interest animate and influence men of all 
| degrees; and by want strange motives, or with how 
| <persona> "little wisdom" </persona> and forethought, 
| the world is governed. A troubled 
| and unruly world was that same brave, old world of Scotland 
| down to the period at which Mr. Tytler takes leave of it; when 
| the death of Elizabeth, by opening the succession to the crown 
| of England to James VI., blended the future history 
| of the rival and hostile kingdoms. Mr. Tytler's work, 
| closing with this period, possesses a secondary, and yet 
| important value to the reflecting student of history, from 
| furnishing one of the most complete pictures of society in a 
| particular stage of progression that can be obtained. Change but 
| the names, and shift the scent from Scotland and the Scottish 
| Court in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth centuries, to 
| Affghanistan and Cabul at this moment, and the annals of both 
| countries become, in their great features, almost identical. A 
| feudal monarch, however able and intrepid he might personally 
| be, contending, often hopelessly, against his unruly and 
| powerful chiefs and barons, whom he could only manage by 
| playing off against each other those passions of ambition, 
| revenge, and rapacity, which kept the nobles at perpetual feud 
| amongst themselves; and a country distracted and 
| impoverished by their oppression and their quarrels, and the 
| feebleness of the supreme power; of the <hi rend="italic"> 
| Law, </hi> as represented by the sovereign. The Feudal 
| principle, in its early stages, is not more forcibly illustrated in 
| the history of any nation than in the annals of Scotland during 
| the reigns of the Stuarts; nor yet the policy by which a stronger 
| and better-ordered commonwealth, in irksome relation with a 
| poor, unruly, and troublesome neighbour, contrives to keep her 
| in a state of perpetual alarm and disquietude. Throughout the 
| entire reign of Elizabeth, it was the base maxim of her 
| government, that internal peace in Scotland was imminent peril 
| to England. Ireland is very much at eh present day what 
| Scotland was to England during the reign of Elizabeth, and in 
| the feeble nonage of the Reformation principle. It was by 
| <hi rend="italic"> Union </hi> that the peace and welfare of both 
| kingdoms were finally secured, ~~ by the union of the crowns, 
| followed by a union of the kingdoms. 
| Though we think that Mr. Tytler has both <hi rend="italic">
| pictorialized </hi> and moralized History in a 
| spirit that belongs to our own period, and in so doing raised its 
| character as a general instructor, besides rendering it more 
| attractive; it is probable that his main distinctive attribute as an 
| Historian, will be considered his systematic rejection of all 
| second-hand testimony, however high its authority; and his 
| simple reliance on the truth as he found it at first-hand, 
| revealed to his patient and unwearied research in those 
| voluminous original documents which had either remained 
| unexamined for centuries, or had been examined very 
| imperfectly. This is a solid and indefensible claim; and one 
| which, in Mr. Tytler's case, admits of no dispute; as very page 
| bears testimony to its validity. 
| We may be influenced, unconsciously however, by the 
| spirit of our own age, when we consider the new style of 
| writing the annals of nations, which has been adopted and 
| indeed in part invented by Mr. Tytler, as more congenial to 
| <q> </q> than the elaborate 
| compositions of what may be called the Classical School of 
| History; and in imagining the familiar
| <pb n="86">
| and life-like "Tales of a Grandfather," quite as full of 
| instruction as more grave and ornate productions. This is, after 
| all, a matter of taste; but not so the new facts, and new 
| documents, originating new views of character, and pointing to 
| probable motives of action not before suspected, which have 
| been dragged into light by Mr. Tytler. We may illustrate our 
| idea of the classical and the modern mode of writing History, 
| and at the same time vindicate our preference of the latter, ~~ 
| of the familiar, graphic, and picturesque, ~~ by pointing to the 
| original letters of Elizabeth, now first printed in the Appendix 
| of this volume, and which are replete with individuality; and 
| those letters which have long been before the world, written 
| officially on the same business by her ministers, and only 
| bearing her signature. 
| Mr. Tytler's eighth volume closed with the tragical 
| execution of Queen Mary. At the opening of this volume the 
| character of Elizabeth becomes, if possible, more odious to the 
| reader, from the deep dissimulation (with which some remorse 
| might have mingled) which she practiced on receiving accounts 
| of the rival queen's death; and from her severity and perfidy to 
| her tools and instruments in that catastrophe. Hoe nobly ~~ the 
| most bigoted Tory must allow ~~ stands out the conduct of the 
| Regicides throughout the troubles and the trial and execution of 
| Charles the First, when contrasted with the baseness of Queen 
| Elizabeth and her ministers to the long-marked and 
| long-pursued victim of her suspicion and jealousy! Truth was as 
| incompatible with the functions of sovereignty in those times, 
| as it is to be feared frankness and sincerity must be in courts at 
| all times. Mr. Tytler's History, like every other history, 
| whatever opinion it may leave of the value of the Institution of 
| Monarchy, does not in any case recommend the individuals 
| doomed to enact the part of monarch either to the reader's 
| affections or esteem. 
| The duplicity of Elizabeth failed for once. Scotland and 
| Europe held her guilty of the murder at which she affected so 
| much indignation and horror. In Scotland the intelligence was 
| received with universal indignation and open threats of 
| revenge; but the feeling seems to have evaporated in words 
| where other interests were not involved in the quarrel. The 
| party most deeply interested by affection and by honour, the 
| young king, selfishly delighted with the assurance of undivided 
| sovereignty, even suffered, according to Mr. Tytler, some 
| expressions of satisfaction to escape him; which his wily chief 
| minister, Secretary Maitland, thought it right should only reach 
| the most confidential ears. The proud and fierce Border chiefs, 
| and the Catholic lords of the north, were more in earnest, as 
| was proved in some desperate forays and many threats of 
| vengeance. 
| Secretary Maitland, afterwards Chancellor, was the most 
| distinguished and influential Scottish statesman of this period; 
| and Mr. Tytler has bestowed remarkable pains in elaborating 
| that mixed character in which bad moral elements greatly 
| preponderated; although Maitland certainly possessed many 
| solid and useful qualities. Elizabeth could not 
| at this time afford to quarrel with Scotland, had an open course 
| of policy ever been her object in the country which she always 
| aimed to divide, in order to govern. The Armada was gathering 
| in Spain; the ports of Flanders rang with the din of preparation; 
| and Ireland was, as ever, when danger menaces England, on 
| the eve of a rebellion. But this, the Rebellion of Tyrone, 
| afterwards proved one of the most formidable of those endless 
| movements. The genius or good genius of Elizabeth, or of 
| England and of Protestantism, once more triumphed. The 
| Armada was dispersed, the Guises assassinated, and Elizabeth 
| found herself at liberty to retract or forget the lavish promises 
| by which in the moment of danger she had purchased the amity 
| and assistance of the King of Scots, and inspired him with fresh 
| zeal against his rebellious subjects, the Catholic lords. They 
| had been encouraging Spain to attack England through 
| Scotland; promising Philip and the Duke of Parma that the 
| moment a descent was made, they would join them with a body 
| of troops which should overwhelm Elizabeth. This may serve 
| as an introduction to an illustrative extract. 
| <q>  </q>
| But the danger passed over; and Elizabeth was ever as 
| dexterous at forgetting promises as opportune in making them. 
| <q>
| <pb n="87">
| </q>
| James at this period had not long attained his majority. In 
| cunning he had been an early proficient; and though always 
| dishonest, his understanding expanded with his years and 
| experience of affairs. He was indeed one of the most singular 
| mixtures of sagacity and imbecility, spirit and pusillanimity, 
| that ever wore a crown. Unlike what is alleged of his grandson 
| Charles II., his actions were often marked by more wisdom 
| than his words. But in this tumultuary period of his reign, he 
| owed much to the sagacious counsels and firmness of his 
| chancellor, Maitland; and he was also sometimes made a hero 
| in spite of himself. ~~ A lull following the crushing of the 
| Catholic Lords, (the Earls of Huntly and Errol, aided by the 
| turbulent Bothwell,) enable the young king to perform the 
| gallant and chivalrous exploit of going to Denmark to claim, 
| despite the smallness of her <hi rend="italic"> tocher, </hi> 
| the royal bride whom the envious winds and waves have 
| conspired to keep from his embraces. All Mr. Tytler's 
| veneration or royalty cannot save him from perpetrating here 
| and there a gentle joke at the expense of 
| <persona> "Gentle King Jamie;" </persona>
| followed by others at the Kirk, which the historian admires 
| even less than the king. The young Queen of Scotland's 
| coronation took place not long after the royal pair reached 
| Edinburgh, and was performed on a scale of unusual 
| magnificence; ~~ <q> </q> 
| Anne of Denmark's triumphal entry into her capital far 
| out-did that of Queen Victoria the other year; the worthy 
| merchants and burgesses having had full time and scope for 
| due preparation, and the display of their splendour. Kings and 
| queens now-a-days are acting wisely in trying to diminish the 
| senseless prostration of their worshippers; and it is full time. 
| Acting under the counsels of Maitland, James, after his 
| marriage, resolved on energetic measures to restrain his 
| turbulent barons and extend and consolidate the influence of 
| the Crown. His first decided measure was the attempt to seize 
| the Laird of Niddry, a lesser baron, protected by Bothwell; 
| which, though the man escaped, showed that the king was in 
| earnest. This spirited act, and the new regulations in giving 
| audience at the palace, now first adopted by James gave deep 
| offence to a haughty nobility; every one of whom fancied 
| himself quite as good a man as his prince. New conspiracies 
| were formed, which had, however, the good effect of drawing 
| the councils of Elizabeth and James more into unity. Elizabeth 
| was besides, at this time, as much teased and exasperated by 
| the encroachments of the Puritans as James was afflicted by 
| those of the Kirk ministers. In the intervals of more serious 
| affairs, the king found leisure to amuse himself by hunting up 
| witches; an amusement which, if sport to him, was too often 
| death to them. Our enlightened age, ~~ in which learned and 
| respectable men openly profess belief in the wildest alleged 
| phenomena of mesmerism, and settle a man's moral and 
| intellectual character, if not from the witch-marks  seen in his 
| eyes or found on other parts of his body, as did the witch-
| finders of the sixteenth century, then from certain bumps or 
| hollows on his skull, ~~ has no right whatever to be severe in 
| judgment on King James and his darker age. A certain witch, 
| named Barbara Napier, being <q> 
| </q> was on her trial acquitted, where a poor unfriended crone 
| whom the king wished to find guilty, would too probably have 
| been summarily condemned. He was enraged, and strained law 
| and justice on another witch-trial, in which, after the fashion of 
| Alfred, or <q> </q> he sate, sole 
| and supreme, administering justice as judge and jury. The poor 
| wretches arraigned, pleaded guilty, and came in the king's 
| mercy; and the monarch made a most characteristic speech; 
| one, indeed, much better than any dramatist, or novelist, could 
| have invented for him, and to introduce which we have 
| mentioned the trial: ~~ <q>
| <pb n="88">
| </q>
| James, perhaps, felt somewhat doubtful upon the subject 
| of his personal courage, and was aware that his subjects hared 
| in his apprehensions; but he was little aware how soon his 
| courage and determination were to be put to the test, by the 
| frightful state of the country and the frequent attacks upon the 
| royal person. So, however, it happened. Between private feuds, 
| the continuance of Catholic intrigues, the active and indignant 
| counter-movements of the Kirk, and the open rebellion of 
| Bothwell, whose power and reckless bravery made him 
| formidable to all parties, the whole land was thrown into a 
| deplorable state of tumult and insecurity. In the Highlands. The 
| Earl of Huntly and the Earl of Murray, two of the greatest 
| houses in the North, engaged in a deadly quarrel, which drew 
| in the Lairds of Grant, Calder, Mackintosh, and others, and 
| made the fairest districts a prey to indiscriminate havoc and 
| murder. At court all was commotion and apprehension from the 
| rivalry of the Master of Glammis, who began to be a favourite 
| of the king, and Chancellor Thirlstane, who would brook no 
| rival in power. On the Borders, Bothwell welcomed every 
| broken man and cruel murderer who chose to ride under his 
| banner. Some time previous to the trials of the witches, this 
| daring chief had invaded the Supreme Court, and carried off a 
| witness from the bar, who was about to give evidence against 
| one of his retainers, whilst the king, although in the next room, 
| did not dare to interfere. 
| Neither the storming of Cromarty jail by the Non-
| intrusionists the other day; and their rescue of a prisoner, nor 
| even the affair of Porteous, can be compared to this. The affair 
| ended in an attempt by Bothwell to make the king prisoner; 
| which, like the subsequent Gowrie conspiracy, had very nearly 
| been successful. This attempt ushers in the tragedy, still 
| familiarly remembered, talked of, and sung at the cottage 
| firesides of Scotland, as the murder of the "Bonny Earl of 
| Murray." It is thus strikingly related by Mr. Tytler: ~~ <q>
| <pb n="89">
| </q> The Kirk triumphed; and 1592 witnessed the full 
| recognition of Presbytery, as the established religion of 
| Scotland. But the Kirk was not yet content; and Mr. Tytler thus 
| moralizes on the spirit of every dominant ecclesiastical party, 
| whatever be the severe ordeal through which it may itself have 
| passed ~~ <q> </q>
| Though James had for the moment by these concessions, 
| secured the favour of the Kirk and the Protestant lords, he 
| remained embroiled with the Catholic lords, who still intrigued 
| with Spain; and with the restless and reckless Bothwell, whom 
| it was the policy of the Kirk, as of Elizabeth, secretly to favour, 
| as a means either of annoying the king, or of balancing 
| interests, and keeping him in check. When the plot, known in 
| history by the name of the <hi rend="italic"> Spanish Blanks, 
| </hi> was detected ~~ by the zeal and courage of Mr. Andrew 
| Know, minister of Paisley, who seized a Catholic gentleman, 
| the messenger of the conspirators, in the mouth of the Clyde, 
| after he had got on board the ship which was to convey him to 
| Spain, ~~ Elizabeth fully shared in the apprehensions of James; 
| which fact we mention, to introduce her original epigrammatic 
| letter of counsel, written to her young <persona> 
| "Brother," </persona> in their 
| common perplexity ~~ <q> </q>
| The King of Scots certainly needed at this time both 
| counsel and consolation. His great stay, the chancellor, had 
| succumbed beneath the powerful faction favoured by the 
| queen, which had long plotted his ruin, and dreaded his 
| restoration to power. 
| Mr. Tytler presents a vivid picture of the internal condition 
| of Scotland at this epoch, and one which, in the great outlines 
| might, with the exception of the religious factions, stand for the 
| delineation of many of the previous reigns. <q>
| <pb n="90">
| </q>
| We shall go no farther. For once, surely, the king was right 
| in his resistance to the enactment of such 
| <persona> "sweeping and severe penalties." </persona>
| In recording, at this time, an open insult to the law, and to 
| all lawful authority, shown by some of the nobility, Burghley, 
| the minister of Elizabeth wrote upon the margin of a letter from 
| Edinburgh in which Bowes, the English ambassador, gave an 
| account of the outrage ~~ <q> </q> Seldom did a 
| month go by, but some old quarrel was avenged by a fresh 
| murder, some plot was concocted among the nobility, or some 
| family feud broke out; while Elizabeth and her ministers 
| played their usual game of craft, sustained by the most 
| barefaced disregard to truth. Added to all this, was the 
| suspicion of the leaders of the Kirk, that the king and court 
| were, in earnest, becoming favourable to Popery. Indeed, the 
| English emissaries in Scotland appear themselves to have 
| shared in these apprehensions; and dreaded, above all things 
| the union of the Scottish nobility, which James had after a 
| triumphant campaign against his barons, set himself to 
| accomplish. He resolved, at all events, not to drive the Catholic 
| nobility desperate, by directing against them the thunder of the 
| Kirk. Mr. Tytler states the case strongly but does not, we think, 
| place the threatened dangers to the Protestant cause, and even 
| to the national independence, in the strongest light possible, in 
| his description of the solemn convention assembled at St. 
| Andrews in this emergency. <q> </q>
| The reasons for this solemn Fast are set forth in
| <pb n="91">
| detail; and some of them, to modern ears, sound not a little 
| curious. Although there were pregnant grounds for suspecting 
| the Catholic lords of treason to their country, and although 
| firmness and zeal were never more required in the guardians 
| and representatives of the national or Protestant party, these 
| leaders, the ministers, attempted to carry matters with the high 
| hand, which even the imminency of the crisis will hardly 
| justify. ~~ The three excommunicated earls concerned in the 
| conspiracy of the <hi rend="italic"> Spanish Blanks </hi> 
| having now prepared their forces, suddenly demanded to be 
| brought to trial; and a final and open collision was expected to 
| take place at Perth. We have said this much to render the 
| subjoined animated account of the affair intelligible to those 
| readers who may not remember the exact position of the 
| parties. <q> </q>
| With that middle course of policy which James deemed it 
| expedient to steer, and which Mr. Tytler characterizes as 
| unwise and unmerciful to the Catholic lords, and which filled 
| the Catholic party with discontent, the Kirk was not better 
| pleased. <q> </q>
| The leniency, if it might be so termed, shown by the king 
| to the Catholic lords, and the activity of the Jesuits in Scotland, 
| were exceedingly displeasing to Elizabeth, who was at this 
| time much chagrined by Henry the Fourth becoming a 
| professed convert to the Roman Catholic faith.  Besides 
| dispatching Lord Zouch as an extraordinary ambassador, to 
| remonstrate strongly and openly, Elizabeth privately wrote a 
| letter to her <persona> "Misguided brother," </persona>
| with her own hand, which is 
| full of the mingled strength, severity, and <hi rend="italic"> 
| finesse, </hi> which constituted the elements of her 
| <hi rend="italic"> double </hi> nature. <q> </q>
| The letter is of considerable length, and, under the guise of 
| friendship, becomes more and more biting and sarcastic. Like 
| every ambassador sent to Scotland by Elizabeth, Lord Zouch 
| had a double mission; the object of spying, and secretly 
| intriguing among the factious nobility being always as 
| important to the English queen, as the ostensible
| <pb n="92">
| purposes of the embassy. This, though not one of the most 
| serious plots, in which the instigator was Elizabeth, was 
| marked by the same character of treachery which pervades 
| them all. <q> </q>
| James was all the time protesting, and with truth, that he 
| had no Spanish predilections; and was as true to Protestantism 
| as he was to Elizabeth. What was as probable a motive, he 
| knew that the invasion of England by Spain would be a 
| madness. In the meanwhile, the nation was filled with joy by 
| the birth of a Prince; and Bothwell and his complotters were 
| signally defeated by the king in person in the open field. King 
| James, who was perfectly well informed of the intrigues of 
| Lord Zouch, was now at liberty to reply to the three-months 
| old, ironical epistle of his <persona> "Beloved sister," 
| </persona> which he did by the 
| retort courteous and in her own vein. The royal correspondence 
| is, indeed, to those informed of the by play and real feelings of 
| the parties, as irresistibly comic as <reg orig="any thing"> 
| anything </reg> in a true comedy. 
| James set out ~~ <q> </q>
| The King of Scots, in this spirited remonstrance, had 
| Elizabeth at advantage; and she felt it. She was now all 
| graciousness; and not only agreed to stand as godmother to the 
| infant heir to the crown, but to make a largesse to the ever 
| needy king. All was again harmony and amity between James, 
| Elizabeth, and the Kirk; and he proceeded with fresh zeal 
| against the Catholic lords, who had proved themselves 
| incorrigible revels, and against the whole Catholic body of 
| Scotland. At the meeting of the Estates ~~ <q> </q>
| The pageants attending the baptism of the infant prince, 
| need not, after all, greatly astonish an age which has witnessed 
| the fooleries of the Eglinton Tournament. The christening took 
| place in the castle of Stirling: ~~ <q>
| <pb n="93">
| </q>
| We are strongly tempted to copy out Mr. Tytler's spirited 
| and clear narrative of the <hi rend="italic"> Battle of 
| Glenlevat, </hi> which, for the time, overthrew the hopes of 
| the Catholic party; but must be content ed with the remarks 
| which follow the account of an action, on which all the 
| chivalry of Scotland were engaged on the one side or the other, 
| and in which that able member of the Church militant, Andrew 
| Melvil, bore pike in hand, as representative of the Kirk: ~~ 
| <q> </q>
| The condition of the Catholic party was now rendered 
| desperate by the arrest of Father Morton, who was said to be an 
| emissary of the Pope and the King of Spain, and who, when 
| pounced upon, tore his secret instructions with teeth. But 
| enough was made out of them to criminate the Popish lords; 
| and Errol and Huntly resolved to retire into temporary exile: ~~ 
| <q> </q> 
| Instead of pursuing the thread of general history, or of the 
| history of the endless feuds and complicated factions of 
| Scotland, we are induced to extract, for its unity and 
| completeness, this Clarendon-like portrait of the Chancellor 
| Maitland. The Earl of Mar, to whom the care and education of 
| the infant prince had been confided, was the especial object of 
| Maitland's dislike and jealousy, and Mar was also in disgrace 
| with the queen, who wished herself to be her child's guardian, 
| and who took sick upon the refusal of the king to comply with 
| her wishes. The murder of a retainer of Mar, by individuals ~~ 
| the Laird of Dunipace assisted by the Bruces and Livingstones 
| ~~ who belonged to the Chancellor's faction, exasperated the 
| feud: but ~~ <q>
| <pb n="94">
| </q>