BISHOPS OF ST ANDREWS.

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a man of versatile talent and much learning, a lover of books and experiments in astrology. His books form the nucleus of the library of the university.

James Stewart, Duke of Ross, son of James III., succeeded. His graceful bearing, celebrated by Ariosto, disguised the fatal error of filling the see with a prince of the royal blood.

The error was followed and exceeded when James IV. made it a provision for his son Alexander. It was a strange form of union of Church and State when the highest office of the Church was held by a royal bastard. When kings made and popes sanctioned appointments of this kind, what could be expected from those below them except imitation by bad and condemnation by good men? The foundation of St Leonard's by the youthful archbishop was a natural and graceful act of a favourite pupil of Erasmus. Yet there are signs in the correspondence and conduct of Alexander Stewart, with whom history has dealt gently, that it was perhaps well for his fame he fell at Flodden.

Andrew Foreman, Bishop of Bourges, was another ambitious Churchman who obtained the primacy against powerful competitors by adroit policy, and administered its revenues with liberality; but his French interests made him an unfortunate adviser for James V.

The two Beatons of the family of Balfour, uncle and nephew James the Archbishop, and David the Cardinal-raised the see to a perilous and giddy height, the prelude of a fall.

The reigns of the five Jameses, which covered nearly a century and a half, do not, so far as Fife was concerned, apart from what might be called the almost domestic annals of the bishops at St Andrews and the kings at Falkland, afford matter illustrative of the greater events in Scotch history. But a few incidents may be glanced

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1424, CORONATION OF JAMES I.

at to indicate the current which brought Fife, like the rest of Scotland, through the transition from the middle ages to the eve of the Reformation.

James I. was placed on the Sacred Stone at Scone to receive the crown by his cousin Murdoch, Duke of Albany, as Earl of Fife. It was the last time this office was discharged. Within a year Albany was tried and beheaded for treason. The earldom was forfeited to the Crown, and Fife ceased to be represented by a great feudal lord. The king seized the Tower of Falkland, but, perhaps on account of the memory of his brother's death, did not make it his home.

It was as James I. was about to cross the Firth to Fife on his road to Perth that he was warned by the weird prophecy of an old Highland spaewife-that if he passed that way he would never return. Within a few weeks he met his tragic fate at Perth. Perth and Scone, and not any royal palace in Fife or Lothian, had been his favourite residences. The horror caused by his death is said to have combined with other circumstances in depriving Perth of its preference as a royal residence. Linlithgow, Stirling, Dunfermline, Falkland, and Holyrood were the favourite palaces of the succeeding kings, and Edinburgh grew rapidly into the position of a capital. The vicinity to Edinburgh gave Fife a character it has since held as one of the most convenient retreats from business to the healthy pleasures of the country and the seaside. The royal family went to Falkland and St Andrews, and courtiers and subjects followed the example, as in our day they have followed the Queen to Deeside.

The reigns of the second and the third James were chiefly occupied with the struggle between the Crown and the Border house of Douglas. Fife lay outside of the scene of this contest, and was reputed to be the most peaceful part of the kingdom. One of the Douglases—

THE FORTH THE CRADLE OF SCOTS NAVY. 33

James, the ninth earl-died at the Abbey of Lindores in 1488, the same year his successful adversary James III. fell at Sauchie. When sent there as a prisoner, he is said to have muttered-"He who can no better be, must be a monk." Times had altered since Constantine, the Celtic king, had deemed the tonsure more honourable than the crown, and become a monk at St Andrews.

The little towns which girdle the shores of Fife from Queensferry to St Andrews, and from St Andrews to Newburgh, were during this period busy havens of foreign trade-chiefly with France and the Low Countries, but also with the ports of the North Sea and the Baltic. At these towns, or on the opposite coast of the Firth, most of the Scottish ships were built. Bruce had made the first experiment of a Scottish navy with the foresight which marked his character, anticipating the later day when the seas were to bring Scotland a more plentiful harvest than its soil. But he had few imitators, till Bishop Kennedy built his famous barge-the St Salvator -which cost as much as his college of the same name and his too ostentatious tomb. largely used for shipbuilding. the hardiest sailors. Sir Michael of Wemyss was the first Scottish admiral.

The woods of Fife were

The men of Fife were

Two sea-battles-the first on record illustrating the infancy both of the Scottish and the English navies—were closely connected with Fife. In 1498-99, Sir Andrew Wood of Largo, the best of the councillors of James III. and the trusted adviser of his son, with his two shipsthe Yellow Carvel and the Mayflower-captured Stephen Bull, the English admiral, and three ships at the back of the May

"The battle fiercely it was fought

Near to the Craig of Bass ;

When we next fight the English loons,
May nae waur come to pass."

C

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EXPLOITS OF ANDREW BARTON.

Bull was sent home without ransom, but with the boastful message to the English king that James had as manful men by sea and land in Scotland as there were in England; and that if the English king disturbed Scottish. waters, his ships and sailors would not be so well treated in future. Wood sided with James III., and a false rumour spread that the king took refuge in his ship after the battle of Sauchie. If we could credit Pitscottie, the young king mistook the admiral for his father; but Wood declared he was only a trusty servant, who would avenge the death of his master.

Andrew, the eldest of three brothers-sons of John Barton, the commander of the Yellow Carvel-continuing Wood's exploits, cleared the Forth of pirates, made reprisals on the Flemish, the Portuguese, and the English for injuries to Scotch merchantmen, and was sent by James IV. to aid his uncle, Hans of Denmark, against the Swedes and Lubeck. Hans charged him, in a letter to Henry VIII., with making off with the vessel James intended as a present to Hans. It brought him no luck, for it appears to have been the ship in which the bold sailor-the terror of the seas from the Baltic and the Sound to the coasts of Brittany and the English Channel, who had sent James three barrels filled with the heads of Flemish pirates-at last met his own doom. At the instance of some traders of Newcastle who had suffered from his piracy, Henry VIII. commissioned Edward Howard, son of the Earl of Surrey, who volunteered to put down Barton. He succeeded in taking his famous ship the Lion in an engagement off Northumberland, during which her commander was shot through the heart. The Lion became the second man-of-war of the navy of England. The body of Barton was cast into the sea, though the head, according to the English ballad, was carried in triumph to London :

ORIGIN OF LINEN MANUFACTURE.

"Then in came the queen and ladies fair
To see Sir Andrew Barton, knight;
They weened that he was brought on shore,
And thought to have seen a gallant sight.

6

But when they see his deadly face,

And eyes so hollow in his head,

I would give,' quoth the king, 'a thousand marks,
This man were alive as he is dead.'"

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But Scottish historians record a contemptuous answer of Henry that kings should not concern themselves with the fate of pirates, which does not accord with the more generous sentiment attributed to him by the ballad. Robert, another of the brothers, became Controller of the Exchequer of Scotland in the reign of James V. Vengeance for the death of Andrew Barton was one of the causes which led to the campaign of Flodden. It had been intended to fight by sea as well as by land; and the great St Michael—the largest ship ever yet seen, says the Scottish chronicler - had been built for the

purpose. She took so much timber as to waste all the woods of Fife except Falkland, besides pines imported from the forests of Norway. Her cost, apart from her artillery, was £30,000. She was two hundred and forty feet long, fifty-six broad, and carried thirty-five cannons, besides smaller guns; her crew was three hundred seamen besides officers, one thousand men-at-arms, and one hundred and twenty gunners. Wood was her master, and John Barton his skipper; but this vessel, like the Great Eastern of our day, was found too unwieldy, and after Flodden was sold to the King of France.

While the seaports were resounding with hammer and anvil, in the inland towns-Dunfermline, Cupar, Auchtermuchty, and Newburgh-and in the scattered cottages which then as now varied the grey landscape with red-tiled or thatched roofs overgrown with green moss,