Page images
PDF
EPUB

of the Queen's infatuation for Bothwell was a possible or an impossible undertaking, it was certainly one never attempted by Murray. Throughout, he preserved an attitude of aloofness, and witnessed the spectacle of his sister descending the slopes of Avernus with indifference, if not complacency.

That his

After a period of absence exceeding six months, Murray journeyed homewards with a French pension in his pocket-which, to do him justice, he did nothing to earn. interests had been in no way neglected during the course of his peregrinations was at once shown by the conferring upon him of the crowning dignity of Regent of Scotland. Mary by this time had been immured by the Confederate Lords in the island prison of Lochleven Castle, and her position was one which lent itself admirably to the development of her brother's designs. Adroitly availing himself of it, he succeeded in obtaining not merely the confirmation of his office, but also the custody of the royal jewels, which he then promptly sold to Elizabeth at a miserably inadequate figure.

The rout of the royal forces at Langside was in no small degree attributable to the military skill of the Regent, whilst the clemency which he displayed in dealing with enemies whose rancour towards him in many instances surpassed all bounds, exhibited a magnanimity most unusual in a period when vindictiveness ranked almost among the virtues.

In the subsequent conferences, however, which took place at York and Westminster, with the object of determining the position of Mary when a captive in England, Murray appeared in the character of the plaintiff, and exhibited an unscrupulousness which no casuistry can extenuate. Accompanied by Morton and Lethington, he had the effrontery to accuse Mary of the Darnley murder-a crime with which he himself was indirectly, and his two associates directly, connected. Whatever view may be taken as to the genuineness or spuriousness of the Casket Letters, it is at least certain that they were only produced at Westminster by Murray and his confederates as a dernier ressort, and, after secret communications with the English ministers, most hostile to Mary.

After the conclusion of the inquiry, which ended in a refusal to condemn either accuser or accused, Murray took his departure northwards with the sum of £5,000 in his pocket bestowed upon him from the English treasury as a reward for blackening, though failing to destroy, the character of his sister.

Resuming his duties as Regent, Murray enforced law and order throughout Scotland with an unsparing hand, but in his treatment of his adversaries he exhibited in an ever-growing degree the duplicity which had always been one of his most marked characteristics. Inveigling Châtelherault to Edinburgh by counterfeited inducements, he then consigned him to prison, and about the same time betrayed the matrimonial overtures, sanctioned by himself, which Norfolk had made to his sister, and thus brought down upon the head of that nobleman the unrelenting wrath of Elizabeth.

It is highly probable that Murray's dramatic death at the hands of Hamilton, of Bothwellhaugh, preserved his memory from a depth of obloquy which would otherwise have awaited it. At the time of his assassination he was actively engaged through the medium of Elphinstone, one of his emissaries, in negotiations for the transference of his sister to Scotland, and had Elizabeth consented to such a surrender, there can exist little doubt that it would have been equivalent to the signing of her deathwarrant. The English Queen would thus have been spared a weight of odium which, shifted to the shoulders of Murray, could not have failed to greatly modify the verdicts of history. The good Regent might then have been stripped of the sanctity in which he has been clothed by his ultra-Protestant adulators and rendered a target for the sneers of the ungodly.

To judge Murray solely in the light of his relations with Mary, would, however, be an act of manifest injustice. They represent indubitably his character under its most unfavourable aspect, but none the less it is difficult for those among whom the spirit of theological partizanship is entirely lacking, to find much material for admiration in a personality so reticent and elusive. Lord Guthrie has deplored the absence of any adequate biography of Murray, and undoubtedly an unfilled niche in Marian history is created by this void. All that at present exists is a subsidiary memoir by Chalmers attached to his Life of Mary, which merely takes the shape of a virulent indictment.

Tytler, in his History of Scotland, appears more than inclined to question the genuineness of the humanity with which the Regent stands generally accredited, and dryly remarks that he found fines and forfeiture a more effectual way of destroying his opponents and enriching his friends.' M. Philippson takes a similar view; but, on the other hand, Murray has been canonised

by Froude, who discovers him to be a man of stainless honour and free from any taint of self.'

un

Apart, however, from any conclusions favourable or favourable arrived at by different historical writers who have been largely guided by bias in their varying estimates, it is at least abundantly evident that Murray possessed fundamental principles in a period when the bulk of his contemporaries were content to be led by their own ever-changing impulses and interests. Fidelity to Elizabeth and the union of the two kingdoms of England and Scotland were the two aims which animated his career, and in nothing did he ever deviate from them. In his Memoirs, Sir James Melville maintains that Elizabeth despised Murray for his subserviency, but however this may have been his standpoint remained unaltered.

Morally it seems hardly possible to leave the Regent uncondemned. A scribe and a pharisee, the standards of the day can hardly be taken as applying to him. His house, it was said, 'was more like a church than a court,' and this being so, it is hard to see by what process of apologetics the owner can be weighed up in the same scales as a Bothwell or a Huntly. Over his grave like that of the great 'daughter of debate,' his sister, controversialists are still content to wrangle, but whatever issue their ingenuity may raise it can scarcely be that of the life-long perfidy practised by Murray towards one whom it was his duty to succour and protect from calamity. The pensioning of Bothwellhaugh by the hands of Mary may have seemed to many a matter for regret, but to none can it appear in the light of a subject for astonishment.

THOMAS DALRYMPLE DUNCAN.

TH

The Romance of Sir Tristrem

HE famous Romance of Sir Tristrem has been fortunate in its editors; it has successively attracted the attention of Sir Walter Scott, Professor Kölbing and Mr. George M'Neill. The last of these edited it for the Scottish Text Society in 1885-6, and this may be taken as the standard edition.

But it is now nearly twenty years old; and so much has been done during this swiftly advancing period that it may not be out of place to suggest some explanations of passages that once seemed hopeless.

A few preliminary remarks may also fittingly find a place here. The MS. has been exactly reproduced; but I do not observe that two of its peculiarities have received special mention, though they are likely to mystify a reader.

The first is, that the indefinite article is frequently united with its substantive; it will therefore be found, for example, that ares is only a way of writing a res, i.e. a 'race, rush, swift attack'; and the word is only given in the glossary under res. Examples are rather numerous.

The second is that, on the contrary, compound words are often written as two words. Hence y wis really means ywis, adv. 'certainly'; and is duly entered as ywis. So also for lorn, for thi, and several more.

There is but one MS. copy; so we must be thankful for what we have. But it is a very careless and inaccurate copy; and many of its errors are duly corrected in the notes. I take occasion to point out others that have not been observed.

The word auntours, i.e. adventures,' as in The Anters (or Auntours) of Arthur, is dissyllabic; but is ill spelt auentours. I need not supply the references except where the Glossary fails us. Maked should be mad, i.e. ‘made,' not only in l. 2965 (Glossary), but in l. 144. In the note to 1. 189, for the following line' read '1. 194.' In 1. 56, for went read wend. In 1. 323, for endred read entred; in 327, for has read as; in 707, for Wit read With; in 711, for Whasche read Wasche; so in l. 1580; in l. 1917, read loge; in 1. 1980, for kinsseman read kinnesman; in l. 2012, read seyth; in 1. 2150, for his read is; in 1. 2247, for schip read schippes; in 1. 2399, for welp read whelp; etc. In several places the scribe miswrites a word so as to ruin the rhyme; I may instance redde (miswritten radde), 155; yspred (written ysprad), 442; led (written lad), 444; hy (written heye), 786, 2150; thinke (written thenke), 1112; arive (written a ride, corrected in the note), 1173; dint (written dent), 1450; brent (written brend, but see 1478), 1472; read bald for glad, 2014; fille, 2172; me think, 2262;

thriste, 2391; diste, 2393; say (miswritten sain), 2621. These are, I fear, uninteresting details; but they may serve to put us on our guard. There is a misprint in l. 521, where p means th.

It will be of more interest to discuss some passages that do not seem to be explained in this edition. I usually quote two lines in one, to save space. 28. His men he slough among, And reped him mani a res.

Reped is given up; for, indeed, the right form is raped. Raped him means 'he hastened him,' or 'hastened on for himself'; and the phrase means 'quickly performed or sped many a swift attack.' See the New English Dictionary, s.v. Rape, reflexive verb, where there are two good illustrative quotations. Compare:-Rape the to ride,' P. Plowman, B. iv. 7; Rape the to shrifte,' id. v. 399; 'Rape yow to worche,' id. vi. 120; He wolle rape hym on a resse... to the holy londe,' Le Morte Arthur, 2665, which is a parallel passage.

In 1. 44, we have mention of rouland rise'; so also rouland riis,' 49, 94, 122, 189, 200; but also simply rouland,' 179, 194. The note is :'it may be connected with the German riese, a giant, or with the German reis, a sprout or scion. Neither explanation is wholly satisfactory.' But it is obviously the Welsh name Rhys, which has been Englished both as Reece and Rice, and whose sons are with us still as Preeces and Prices. It is an excellent example for convincing such as are open to conviction (they are far too few) that the modern English long i was once pronounced like the ee in deep.

229. King Markes may rewe, the ring, than he it se,

And moun.

Here the word moun rhymes with sone, 'son,' so that the ou really represents the short u, which comes out in modern English as the u in sun. It is explained by 'moan, sorrow.' This is impossible, because oa comes from an A.S. a. Just as son is from A.S. sunu, so moun is from the A.S. munan, to remember; a vast improvement of the sense. 'King Mark may feel pity, when he happens to see the ring, and remember me.' See the whole context, in which the dying lady leaves her ring to her son.

289. He taught him ich a lede Of ich maner of glewe.

Lede is explained by 'song'; and is compared with the German lied.

This is not very satisfactory, because the A.S. form for 'song' was leoth, Mid. Eng. leth; a word not much used. It hardly gives the right sense. I greatly prefer the explanation given under Leed in the N.E.D., which makes it a docked form of leden, language,' and explains it by 'phraseology.' This is the very point: he taught him every phrase relating to every kind of sport.' In olden times, only the ploughboy spoke about the feathers' of a hawk; every one who had pretensions to gentility called them 'plumes.' In the same way I would explain the apparently otiose term in lede,' in 1. 64 and elsewhere, by 'in correct. terms,' or 'in gentle language'; it is expressly said, in the same sentence, that the knights were hende, i.e. ' courteous.'

293. On hunting oft he yede, To swich a lawe he drewe,

Al thus ;

More he couthe of veneri Than couthe Manerious.

« PreviousContinue »