PARLIAMENT AND THE CROWN.

     
     With the coming of a dynasty which endured for three centuries, we must sketch the relations, in Scotland, of Crown and Parliament till the days of the Covenant and the Revolution of 1688.  Scotland had but little of the constitutional evolution so conspicuous in the history of England.  The reason is that while the English kings, with their fiefs and wars in France, had constantly to be asking their parliaments for money, and while Parliament first exacted the redress of grievances, in Scotland the king was expected “to live of his own” on the revenue of crown-lands, rents, feudal aids, fines exacted in Courts of Law, and duties on merchandise.  No “tenths” or “fifteenths” were exacted from clergy and people.  There could be no “constitutional resistance” when the Crown made no unconstitutional demands.
     In Scotland the germ of Parliament is the King's court of vassals of the Crown.  To the assemblies, held now in one place, now in another, would usually come the vassals of the district, with such officers of state as the Chancellor, the Chamberlain, the Steward, the Constable or Commander-in-Chief, the Justiciar, and the Marischal, and such Bishops, Abbots, Priors, Earls, Barons, and tenants-in-chief as chose to attend.  At these meetings public business was done, charters were granted, and statutes were passed; assent was made to such feudal aids as money for the king's ransom in the case of William the Lion.  In 1295 the seals of six Royal burghs are appended to the record of a negotiation; in 1326 burgesses, as we saw, were consulted by Bruce on questions of finance.
     The misfortunes and extravagance of David II. had to be paid for, and Parliament interfered with the Royal prerogative in coinage and currency, directed the administration of justice, dictated terms of peace with England, called to account even hereditary officers of the Crown (such as the Steward, Constable, and Marischal), controlled the King's expenditure (or tried to do so), and denounced the execution of Royal warrants against the Statutes and common form of law.  They summarily rejected David's attempt to alter the succession of the Crown.
     At the same time, as attendance of multitudes during protracted Parliaments was irksome and expensive, arose the habit of intrusting business to a mere “Committee of Articles,” later “The Lords of the Articles,” selected in varying ways from the Three Estates—Spiritual, Noble, and Commons.  These Committees saved the members of Parliament from the trouble and expense of attendance, but obviously tended to become an abuse, being selected and packed to carry out the designs of the Crown or of the party of nobles in power.  All members, of whatever Estate, sat together in the same chamber.  There were no elected Knights of the Shires, no representative system.
     The reign of David II. saw two Scottish authors or three, whose works are extant.  Barbour wrote the chivalrous rhymed epic-chronicle 'The Brus'; Wyntoun, an unpoetic rhymed “cronykil”; and “Hucheoun of the Awle Ryal” produced works of more genius, if all that he is credited with be his own.

CHAPTER X.  EARLY STEWART KINGS: ROBERT II.  (1371-1390).

 

     Robert II. was crowned at Scone on March 26, 1371.  He was elderly, jovial, pacific, and had little to fear from England when the deaths of Edward III. and the Black Prince left the crown to the infant Richard II.  There was fighting against isolated English castles within the Scottish border, to amuse the warlike Douglases and Percies, and there were truces, irregular and ill kept.  In 1384 great English and Scottish raids were made, and gentlemen of France, who came over for sport, were scurvily entertained, and (1385) saw more plundering than honest fighting under James, Earl of Douglas, who merely showed them an army that, under Richard II., burned Melrose Abbey and fired Edinburgh, Perth, and Dundee.  Edinburgh was a town of 400 houses.  Richard insisted that not more than a third of his huge force should be English Borderers, who had no idea of hitting their Scottish neighbours, fathers-in-law and brothers-in-law, too hard.  The one famous fight, that of Otterburn (August 15, 1388), was a great and joyous passage of arms by moonlight.  The Douglas fell, the Percy was led captive away; the survivors gained advancement in renown and the hearty applause of the chivalrous chronicler, Froissart.  The oldest ballads extant on this affair were current in 1550, and show traces of the reading of Froissart and the English chroniclers.

 

     In 1390 died Robert II.  Only his youth was glorious.  The reign of his son, Robert III. (crowned August 14, 1390), was that of a weakling who let power fall into the hands of his brother, the Duke of Albany, or his son David, Duke of Rothesay, who held the reins after the Parliament (a Parliament that bitterly blamed the Government) of January 1399.  (With these two princes the title of Duke first appears in Scotland.)  The follies of young David alienated all: he broke his betrothal to the daughter of the Earl of March; March retired to England, becoming the man of Henry IV.; and though Rothesay wedded the daughter of the Earl of Douglas, he was arrested by Albany and Douglas and was starved to death (or died of dysentery) in Falkland Castle (1402).  The Highlanders had been in anarchy throughout the reign; their blood was let in the great clan duel of thirty against thirty, on the Inch of Perth, in 1396.  Probably clans Cameron and Chattan were the combatants.

 

     On Rothesay's death Albany was Governor, while Douglas was taken prisoner in the great Border defeat of Homildon Hill, not far from Flodden.  But then (1403) came the alliance of Douglas with Percy; Percy's quarrel with Henry IV. and their defeat; and Hotspur's death, Douglas's capture at Shrewsbury.  Between Shakespeare, in “Henry IV.,” and Scott, in 'The Fair Maid of Perth,' the most notable events in the reign of Robert III. are immortalised.  The King's last misfortune was the capture by the English at sea, on the way to France, of his son James in February-March 1406. {52}  On April 4, 1406, Robert went to his rest, one of the most unhappy of the fated princes of his line.