THE HOUSE OF DOUGLAS.* "THOSE who write the histories of

nations," says Mr. Lindsay, the editor of the series of histories of which Sir Herbert Max- well's substantial volumes constitute the first, "can only deal with the acts of Kings or peoples as landmarks of time, or as the outward and visible products of changes in thought or belief. Those who limit their horizon can see illustrated in some great noble houses the eddies of the broad stream of human history, and these minor historians are apt to be more accurate in details and less influenced by preconceived theories than the historians of kingdoms." This fact is apt to be forgotten in times like our own, when, on the one hand, the pageantry of Monarchy is more in evidence than ever it was, and on the other, the history of a nation is considered too exclusively the history of its "people" in the democratic sense, or at least in the sense used by the late John Richard Green. Mr. Lindsay's remark is, of course, very much truer of Eng- land than of Scotland ; the great families south of the Tweed are much more numerous that those north of the dividing line, have balanced each other better, and have had the reputation of being less savagely selfish than that poverty-stricken and rapacious noblesse which every Scottish historian from the days of Knox to the present time has denounced as the worst in the world. Yet it is true of some of the Scottish families as well, and of these none is more notable in every

way than the house of Douglas. The historian of that house pertinently enough asks;—

"What's in a name ? Much, it seems ; for it has come to pass that we are inclined to expect more of one bearing that of Douglas than of people with less historic surnames. They suffered and they made to suffer they served and they made others to serve. Now they rose to the highest levels of patriotism and loyalty, and anon sank to the dark and crooked ways of treason and dishonour. A masterly, purposeful, ambitious breed, their influence cannot have been for ill upon the destiny of their country, seeing what a large share of power lay ever in their hands; and no family has furnished more material towards the ideal of a Scottish gentleman."

From the War of Independence, in which "the good Lord James " played a part second only to that of Robert Bruce himself, to the Legislative Union between England and Scot- land, which was largely the work of the " Union Duke " of Queensberry, a Douglas either of the " Black " or of the "Red " branch was sure to be found playing a prominent part as patriot, traitor, exile, as kidnapping or killing a Stuart King, or being kidnapped or killed by him. Poor in the

extreme would be the romance of Scottish history without such names as those of "the good Lord James," the Knight of Liddesdale, the " Tineman," Bell-the-Cat, the Douglas who figures in Shakespeare as the captive and the ally of Hotspur, or that strange ally of Knox and bulwark of Protestantism, the grim, forceful, and sensual Morton. And then, as Sir Herbert Maxwell reminds us—

"One remarkable feature distinguishes the Douglas from most other Scottish families of equal antiquity. Despite repeated for- feitures and the personal vicissitudes befalling the adherents of one or other of the parties which so constantly and so fiercely divided the northern realm, the lands which gave this family their name still remain in the possession of their descendants. Twenty-two generations of Douglases have borne the lordship of that dale for seven centuries between William of Douglas, the first recorded of the name, down to the present Earl of Home, Lord Douglas of Douglas, who represents the house in the female line."

The origin of the Douglas family is steeped in myth. As Hume of Godscroft, the unreliable family historian, puts it, " we know the Douglas race not in the fountain but in the stream ; not in the root but in the stem ; for we know not the first mean man that did raise himself above the vulgar." Sir Herbert Maxwell, who has devoted much labour to this portion of his task, suggests that the first recorded Douglas may have received the lands of the name as a reward for notable service done for William the Lion in putting down the rebellion of the Moray men under Donald Bain, or Bane,

• A History of the House of Doug/as: from the Earliest Times down to the Legislative Union of England and Scotland. By the Eight Hon. Sir Herbert Harwell. With an Introduction by W. A. Lindsay, Windsor Herald. 2 vols. London : rresasztle and Co. (425. I

great-grandson of Malcolm Canmore. Other links of connec- tion with the North, such as the resemblance of armorial bearings and family names, seem to point to the probability of a common origin of the Douglases and the De Moravias or Murrays. As soon, however. as the Douglases assert them- selves in authentic history, their characteristics are revealed, —masterfulness, selfishness, chivalry, and to a certain extent patriotism, which must not, all the same, be confounded with loyalty to the Stuarts. As for treachery, well- " Scottish traitors and self-seekers parade on every page of Scottish history and seem to fill the whole field ; one is apt to overlook the shrewd heads and staunch hearts which do not figure so obtrusively as the others, but again and again it was by these that the kingdom was defended and its destiny wrought to the appointed end."

It cannot be said that Sir Herbert has been able to throw fresh light on the greatest of the truly historical Douglases.

He thus quite accurately sums up his historical whitewashing:— "I have endeavoured to view their relations with the Stuart dynasty as dispassionately as possible. In doing so, I have arrived at a judgment upon such men as the 1st, 4th, 8th and 9th Earls of Douglas, the 5th, 6th and 8th Earls of Angus, and the 4th Earl of Morton less unfavourable than that pronounced by more than one historian, more lenient than many of my readers may feel able to endorse."

Of perhaps the most masterful of them all, Archibald Bell- the-Cat, who crushed James the Third, Hume of Godscroft writes :—" Upright and square in his actions, sober and moderate in his desires One fault he had, that he was too much given to women, otherwise there was little or nothing that was amiss." Yet Sir Herbert is constrained to say :—" One need not become devil's advocate to pronounce the career of Bell-the-Cat to have been in most of its features deplorable and in none of them glorious." The Earl of Morton, the coadjutor of Knox and Moray in the work of the Reformation, who was Regent in the minority of James VI., and triumphed over Maitland and Kirkcaldy, only to suc- cumb to the intrigues of James's favourite, Lennox, and to be put to death as a participant in the murder of Bothwell, was certainly one of the most interesting of the later Douglases.

He has never been popular in Scotland on account of his unquestionable sensuality, and the greed that is commonly believed to have marked his dealings with the Presbyterian clergy. Sir Herbert Maxwell's treatment of Morton is worth giving as an example of his method :— " Morton has never been a favourite with historians. It has been his fate always to appear in contrast with the interesting and pathetic figure of Mary Queen of Scots; and although, like her, he ended his days on the scaffold, none of the glamour of a lost cause falls upon him. Wherefore his faults loom more darkly, his merits shine less brightly, than is altogether just to his memory. His political principles were clearly defined and con- sistent, and there is no reason to suspect him of private ambition or self-seeking in ardently pursuing a Protestant league with England and a union of the Crowns as the surest means of securing the much-desired peace for both countries."

With this estimate may be compared that of Dr. Hume Brown as given in the second volume of his History of Scotland: " He is one of the grimmest figures even of the grim race from which he sprang—profligate, merciless, unscrupulous—yet he was not a mere lawless desperado. His conduct of the regency proved that he had the capacity and aims of a statesman ; and his life- long fidelity to Protestantism and the English alliance gives him a place next to Moray and Knox among the moving forces of his time."

Such a book as this hardly lends itself to much in the way of that writing of history which means either the reproduction of social life in detail, or the legitimate resort to " purple patches." As Sir Herbert Maxwell has in his previous works shown pleasure and proficiency in both kinds of writing, he has here had to exercise a good deal of self-restraint. W hen, however, he "lets himself go," he has much to say that is not only interesting but has the merit of literary "efficiency." We have never seen the dark side of feudalism better represented than by this writer, who is filled with its romance :—

" Tho fray of Otterburn was bloody and fierce enough, God wot ! but not more bloody and fierce than a hundred others waged between men of common speech and kin, whereof the memories have clean passed away. What was there to raise Otterburn to immortality ? What but the fate of the two leaders —the death of Douglas and capture of Percy? Of which fact, unless one grasp the significance, he shall never discern through the glamour of romance—splendour of heraldry, dauntless feats of arms, chivalrous daring, and all the rest of it—the real cruelty of the business. Before gunpowder had affected the whole system of tactics the farmers and peasants who followed their lords to the field counted as no more than material of war. The object was to kill as many of them as possible, prisoners being both costly and troublesome to keep. Far different the barons, knights, and esquires ; they rode into action with charmed lives; it was only in exceptional disasters, like Bannockburn on the one aide, and Flodden on the other, that any large number were slain. Every precaution was observed to take these gentlemen of coat-armour alive for the sake of their ransom. A baron's farms might be burned, and the live stock driven off ; his ruined tenants might offer him no rent ; let him but have the luck to capture some well-to-do opponent and the balance would be handsomely in his favour. So the warfare of feudal lords was the finest of gambling, with all the excitement of high play plus military glory."

The return of the " Union Duke" of Queensberry from Edinburgh to London after the completion of his work is told in a fashion worthy of an event which meant the close of a long period of strenuous and bitter struggle :—

"On 2nd April, 1707, just a month before the Act of Union should come in force, the King's Commissioner to Parliament left Edinburgh for the last time. Never before, even in the height of feudal magnificence, had any chief of the haughtiest house in Scotland assumed or been invested with such a measure of authority as this scion of the house of Douglas. Others of his race had ridden forth at the head of imposing armies, whether to waste English lands or to flaunt their own sovereign's authority ; the semblance of their power was more imposing than Queens- berry's, but the reality was far less. With a modest escort of Queen Anne's Horse Guards he rode across the Border, by the track where so many of his ancestors had passed before ; but neither flaming. stack-yards nor blackened ruins marked the route as of old. He left behind him, indeed, a sullen, angry nation ; but he was sustained by the conviction that he had redeemed his country from the intolerable, incurable ferment of petty faction, and united its destiny for ever with that of a powerful neighbour. As he advanced through England he might draw good augury from the aspect of the people. His journey assumed the character of a Royal progress; peers, gentry, farmers, and peasants mustered along the route to bid him welcome ; mayors and corporations emulated each other in ceremonial and laborious hospitality until, when he reached Barnet Common, Queen Anne's Ministers and many of both Houses of Parliament met the Duke and rode with him in procession to London."