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of the Original Letters of Logan of Restalrig, in the Register-Office, Edinburgh. To ROBERT PITCAIRN, Esq., the able Editor of the Criminal Trials, I am under very great obligations, for having put into my hands a mass of interesting documents connected with this Conspiracy, hitherto unpublished, and of which I have made as much use as my limits would permit. Indeed the latter part of the narrative is almost wholly prepared from these documents, and from the subsequent proceedings of the government contained in that splendid work, “The Acts of the Parliament of Scotland" recently printed by the command of his present Majesty.

The second volume must speak for itself. It is not too much to say, that its contents will be found perhaps more interesting than the first; and it is hoped, that, altogether, these portions of history-in which human character and adventure are brought so conspicuously before the reader, as illustrative of what men have hazarded for the accomplishment of ambitious projects, or to gratify revenge-will not be unacceptable to the Public.

EDINBURGH, July 1829.

J. P. L.

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THE

ASSASSINATION

OF

JAMES I. OF SCOTLAND.

CHAPTER I.

Heaven from all creatures hides the book of fate,
All but the page prescribed, their present state:
From brutes what men, from men what spirits know,
Or who would suffer being here below?
The lamb thy riot dooms to bleed to-day,
Had he thy reason, would he skip and play?
Pleas'd to the last, he crops the flowery food,
And licks the hand just rais'd to shed his blood.

POPE.

FROM the death of Robert III. in 1405, till 1586, -a period of one hundred and eighty-one years— it was the misfortune of Scotland to be governed by a succession of minors. The consequences in a rude and turbulent age, and among a people completely under the control of their feudal superiors, may be easily conceived. The progress of im

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