mentary materials by which the history of England is illustrated in almost every period. But in this particular age the case is reversed; and in the scantiness of English sources of information, the light reflected from Scotch records-especially letters like these, is of peculiar value.

The first volume of Ruddiman's work contains correspondence of the time of James IV. and V., from 1505 to 1524, derived from two MSS. in the Advocates' Library, Edinburgh. These consist of duplicate copies of a collection of letters, of which Ruddiman has omitted about one in three, and sometimes those he has omitted are by no means the least interesting. Neither MS. is quite contemporary, but there is a third in the Royal Library in the British Museum, which evidently belongs to the period and is probably the original of the other two. Of this MS. it was, of course, not to be expected that Ruddiman should have known of the existence. He is less excusable for his neglect of a fourth copy which is still in the Advocates' Library, side by side with the two he used. This is a folio MS., written in a very rude but contemporary hand; and not only does it contain nearly all the letters in the other copies, but also a large number of additional ones, especially for the first three or four years of the period over which the collection ranges, corresponding to the last years of Henry VII. in England. Unfortunately, however, while in the other MSS. the order of the letters follows to some extent that of their dates, in this volume they are absolutely in no order whatsoever; and, what adds much to the difficulty of consulting it, there is hardly a single letter free from gross clerical errors.

This manuscript I have always quoted as the Advocates' MS., not having found it necessary to make use of the other two in the same library. In the foot-notes it is referred to by the letter A., and the Royal MS. by R. In both these MSS. modern numbers are attached to the letters in the margin, which I have used for reference. Having examined both from beginning to end, I have printed the more important of the letters prior to the death of Henry VII., including all that have any reference to England. To have included all that belong to the period would have been scarcely compatible with the object of this work; for they are so numerous, even during those four years, from 1505 to the beginning of 1509, that they might have filled a volume by themselves; while a large number relate only to Scotch benefices and other matters of little concern to England or the world at large. I may here review briefly the principal subjects of the correspondence.

But

of Scot

Scotland, under the reign of James IV., was recover- Condition ing rapidly from the disorders of a century, during land. which each reign had commenced with a long minority and been terminated by war or assassination. The warlike spirit of the people always sought a quarrel with their English neighbours; failing which they fought among themselves or with their sovereign. James, by his strict administration of justice, had done much to repress the factious spirit of the nobles, while his cultivated taste encouraged the arts of peace. It was no longer the barbarous country where Æneas Sylvius, half a century before, had found the towns unwalled, the houses built without mortar, and the savage highlanders sometimes eating bark. Foreigners had been induced to settle and introduce more civilized modes of life. The produce of the land was believed to have trebled in value. Letters had begun to be cultivated, and already Scotland had some distinguished scholars, besides one charming poet.2 The king himself was much devoted both to literature and

Character

IV.

to science. He was an excellent linguist. Besides his own native Scotch and the Gaelic of the highlanders, he spoke Latin, French, German, Flemish, Italian, and Spanish. Of his love of experiment many stories are told;1 and, according to Lindsay, he was so skilled in medicine and surgery, that his advice was asked in critical cases by the profession.2

He was, on the whole, an admirable representative of of James a people who, in a social and religious aspect, exhibited fundamentally the same character that they do at the present day. A strict observer of the ordinances of the Church, he never ate meat on fast days, nor mounted his horse on Sunday. Even in joke he seldom uttered an untruth. He leaned much to the counsels of priests, especially of the Friars Observants. His sobriety in that age and climate was accounted marvellous; Ayala had seen no man so

" (sought the dunghill) and not the "skyis." We are not told that he repeated the experiment with feathers of a loftier flight. Those of the solan goose, being easily procurable in Scotland, would have been every way appropriate.

temperate out of Spain. Bold, active, and adventurous, he would vault on horseback without using the stirrup, and outstrip the fastest in the gallop. On the battle field he would do the most dangerous things himself, beginning to fight without giving orders, and leaving his men to follow up the attack. He made himself familiar with all sorts of people, often wandering in disguise, and hearing what each man had to say of the king and his proceedings. The weaker side of his character was shown in his love intrigues, which at one time he seems to have made some effort to abandon, partly from his own sense of morality and partly from the fear of scandal, so powerful in Scotch society.1

Stewart.

Yet this dread did not deter him from providing for His son his natural children in a manner that was scandalous Alexander indeed. One of these, Alexander Stewart, he caused to be made archbishop of St. Andrew's before he had passed the age of boyhood. According to the canon law neither bastards nor minors were competent to enter holy orders; but in Scotland, so far from the centre of ecclesiastical authority, abuses had been permitted that were unknown elsewhere. Numerous instances of bishops of the same family succeeding each other in the same sees show the extraordinary prevalence of nepotism, while the names they bore show the influence to which it was due. Not, as in other countries had been the case, to the rapacity of the court of Rome; for a Scotch bishopric generally was too poor a thing for an Italian priest to covet. It was owing to the landed aristocracy. In one see there had been a succession of Stewarts, in another of Gordons, in another of Hepburns; and the Church, which in all other countries had broken the neck of feudalism, which,

Ayala to Ferdinand and Isa- say, i. 245. Leland, Coll. iv. bella, Bergenroth, 169, 170. Lind- 284.

even in its worst days, was the asylum of true greatness, and made genius independent of birth, was, like every thing else in Scotland, completely under the sway of the king and nobles. During the fifteenth century in England Cardinal Beaufort was the only bishop who came of the blood royal; but in Scotland during the same period were two sons and two grandsons of kings in the see of St. Andrew's alone.

The precise age at which James the Fourth's son was made archbishop I have not been able to discover; but he must have been about fourteen in 1507, when he was sent with the earl of Arran in embassy to France, from which country he proceeded to Italy to complete his education. He studied at first at Padua, as appears by his letters to his father and his old tutor, Paniter; and afterwards at Sienna, where he learned Greek from Erasmus, who in his Adagia speaks of the young scholar's proficiency, and indeed of his whole character, in terms of the highest eulogy. In the meantime he was well provided for at home.

2

It was not enough for James to appoint one son archbishop; his next care was for the young prelate's equally illegitimate brother. The important abbey of Dunfermline happening to fall vacant, he wrote to Rome that it might be given to James Stewart, afterwards Earl of Murray, who was then in his eighth