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THE LONDON PRINTING AND PUBLISHING COMPANY, LIMITED,

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PREFACE.

Ir is the object of the volumes now offered to the public to supply the general reader with a History of Scotland, popular in its form, and complete in its details, while its important points are related with as great impartiality as possible. There are so many periods in Scottish history marked by keenly contested political feeling, that it is difficult for a writer to enter upon them without falling more or less under the influence of party prejudices, which detract from the value of most of the previous historians, who seem often to have written almost for the purpose of advocating a party or of sustaining a cause. It has been the aim of the writer of the present Work to give, as far as possible, a truthful narrative of facts, with as little colouring as the character of the materials will allow; and these, unfortunately, present too often the prejudiced impressions of those from whom we receive them, without furnishing us sufficiently with the means of correcting them.

It is hardly necessary to remark that the original material from which we derive our information for a History of Scotland, is as various in its kind as it is indifferent in its authenticity. Accordingly, modern criticism has justly rejected, as utterly worthless, much which our older historians adopted without hesitation. The general reader need scarcely be reminded that the annals of all nations boasting of antiquity commence in absolute fable, and that many ages of their existence passed before they were capable of transmitting to their descendants any written records of historical events, the want of which was still supplied by loose traditions, preserved orally, but so distorted and disfigured, when not absolutely displaced, that we cannot, without difficulty, make any historical use of them. We have, in the Greek and Latin, and in later foreign writers, a few scanty notices of Scotland which give us occasional glimpses of the condition of the country and people who inhabited it at a very remote period, but they form no connected story. I leave the poems attributed to Ossian out of the

question, for the critical discussion which these have undergone, has so long been accepted against their authenticity, that it would, at least, be very dangerous to make any use of them in a sober history. Indeed, all the native annalists of Scotland, until at least the eleventh century, inspire very little confidence, much of what they relate bearing the character of fable, while what remains can be considered as no better than vague popular traditions, the truth or falsehood of which we have no means of verifying. Of these materials I have adopted such as appear most trustworthy or probable, and as such only I wish them to be received by the reader. After the eleventh century, we find Scottish annalists who were contemporary, or nearly so, with the events they relate; and the relations between England and Scotland, whether hostile or friendly, became so intimate, that we have frequently the narrative of the chroniclers of the one country, to check or correct that of those of the other. On such still necessarily imperfect records as these last mentioned, we depend for the history of Scotland during the middle ages. With the wars of the Edwards, and the writings of Fordun, Barbour, Wyntoun, and their contemporaries and successors, Scottish history first becomes copious and satisfactory. From this time the materials we have to work upon are far more abundant, but the labour of sifting them is increased proportionally; for each writer is distinguished by his own one-sided views, and his motive for recording events is often a pique against some of those concerned in them, or some other personal motives, which give a false or exaggerated colouring to his narrative.

With the commencement of the sixteenth century, another class of materials make their appearance in the State Papers, which thenceforward throw a new light on public transactions. The volumes of these documents published by the English State-Paper Commission, and the printed correspondence of Sir Ralph Sadler, Henry VIII.'s ambassador to Scotland, have furnished the main portion of the history of the reign of James V., and the details in these letters are so truthful and picturesque, that I have often given them in the language of their writers. We now also begin to derive great advantage from the valuable, though not always strictly correct, contemporary history by George Buchanan. No one can justly accuse him. of intentional misrepresentation, but he appears sometimes prejudiced by political or personal partialities, and his memory evidently fails and misleads him in relation to some of the events which he had witnessed in earlier life.

We next arrive at an important epoch of Scottish history, that of the religious reformation, when the form of presbyterial church government was first established, and which has continued to the present day. It was not the

design of the writer of this Work to enter largely into the ecclesiastical history of Scotland; but the church occasionally acted so prominent a part in political events, that it is impossible to understand the civil history of the country without, at the same time, entering into the church history. At the time when the presbyterians were triumphing over the catholics, but while the catholic party continued still formidable, Mary Stuart arrived in Scotland to become the instrument of the latter, and to commence a reign of extraordinary turbulence and scandal. In the history of her reign, I have endcavoured, as much as possible, to let the original records tell their own tale, which appears to be a very simple and clear one; and I have consulted all the records that are accessible, not omitting even those so recently published that they have been used by no previous historian. Among these materials, the most important are the large collection of Mary's own letters, published by Prince Labanoff; and the interesting collection of documents relating to Scotland from the archives of France, published by M. Alexandre Teulet, for the Bannatyne Club. These latter documents have, for the first time, been made use of in the present history, and I have extracted from them copiously.

On the deposition of Mary, the Scottish church began to assume a more active position in the state; and during the earlier part of the reign of James VI., it was engaged in a constant struggle, first for its patrimony, and next for power. It was at this period that James appears to have imbibed a settled hatred to the presbyterian form of government. After his accession to the English throne, his whole life was a continued effort to suppress presbyterianism, and introduce an episcopacy which had more of the spirit and forms of the old Romish hierarchy than was preserved even in England. His policy, persevered in by his son and successor, Charles I., was especially obnoxious, not only to the people, but to the nobility, some of whom were sincerely attached to presbyterianism, and others were afraid of losing the church lands which they had obtained during the Reformation, while the attempt to raise the spirit of the old faith was combined with the resolution to establish a political despotism of the most degrading description. The consequence was a succession of unexampled struggles and sufferings, in which the church acted the most prominent part, and which cnded in the overthrow of royalty. We have excellent contemporary annalists of this period, among whom stand prominent the presbyterian Calderwood and the episcopalian Spottiswode, both of whose labours have largely contributed to the present Work.

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With the triumph of the parliament in its contest with King Charles, supreme power in Scotland fell into the hands of the church, which