a suitable sum of money; and from that time he laboured with great assiduity to effect a discord between James and his brother. Knowing the King's superstitious belief in witchcraft and prophecy, he privately stimulated an old woman to pass herself off as a witch before the King, who predicted to James that he would one day be slain by his own kindred. This prediction heightened the King's superstitious terrors, and his suspicions immediately alighted on his brothers. * The prophecy, aggravated by the artful insinuations of Cochrane and his associates, made a great impression on the King, who soon began to recollect various actions and expressions of Albany which seemed to him to establish the fact. As it was the interest of those minions to ruin the Earl of Mar also, that prince was not forgotten. It was brought to the King's recollection, that Mar had often ridiculed him, and spoken in language which sufficiently proved that he and his brother had a design against his life. But a much more serious charge was brought against Mar, and one which at once roused every superstitious feeling of James. He was accused of using magical arts against the King's life, that he associated with notorious witches and sorcerers,—and that he was concerned in the consuming of a waxen image of the King • Lindsay of Pitscottie, p. 116, 117. Buchanan (lib. xii.) gives a different account. He traces the enmity of James to his brothers, to the prediction of one Andrew, a Flemish astrologer, who was high in favour with the King, and who had declared that "a lion should be killed by his own whelps. This emblem, however, could not apply to Albany and Mar; but if it was a real prediction, it was certainly verified in a remarkable manner. before a fire, thus endeavouring to affect the King's health by magic. Mar, who was very young, was probably in complete ignorance of those absurd and superstitious practices in witchcraft; still less, perhaps, did he ever imagine that he was the subject of such accusations. The real cause, however, of the King's enmity towards his brothers, for it is hardly possible to conceive it to have resulted from the above traditions, is unknown, but it was attended with disastrous consequences. From a prince, observes Buchanan on this subject with great truth, of considerable genius and good hopes, and as yet not wholly depraved, the King degenerated into a cruel tyrant; for when his mind was filled with these suspicions, he reckoned his nearest kindred, and the best of his nobility, his greatest enemies. Be this as it may, Albany and Mar were apprehended at the King's instance, under the pretence of being concerned in a plot against the royal authority and life. This arbitrary conduct of James still farther incensed the nobles against him and his minions, and strengthened the confederacy against them, inasmuch as the two brothers had, in reality, no great connection with the intended conspiracy against the crown. It has indeed been asserted, that Albany was concerned in a treasonable correspondence with England, which was the cause of his imprisonment; and could the fact be ascertained, it would vindicate James. But the fact is doubtful; for though Albany had, on various occasions, applied the epithet of bastard to the King, and afterwards assumed the royal title, there is no evidence that he did so previous to 1479. The truth ap pears to be, that the minions of James had prepossessed him against his brothers, by alarming his superstitious fears, and by laying before him false representations. Whatever were the causes of this rash procedure, James was to be stained with a brother's blood. It is somewhat remarkable, that three contemporary sovereigns of England, France, and Scotland, were each of them in the same situation. Edward IV., on the most frivolous grounds, deprived his brother, the Duke of Clarence, of his life; the only favour granted to that prince, was his being permitted to choose the manner of his death, and he was accordingly drowned in a butt of Malmsey wine. Louis XI. procured, among his other acts of tyranny, the assassination or murder of the Duke of Guienne; and James III. of Scotland scrupled not, as we shall subsequently see, to condemn his brother, the Earl of Mar, under the pretence that he associated with witches to deprive him of life. In the present age, the accusation of witchcraft only excites the smile of ridicule; but we must not forget, that the reign of James was early in the history of improvement. In a more enlightened era, and under a better system, the belief in witchcraft or sorcery universally prevailed, and is not, perhaps, in some districts of Scotland wholly eradicated. James VI. wrote a book against it, and maintained that witchcraft was the greatest of crimes. The Presbyterians were most vigilant in their endeavours to procure the condemnation of witches; and they actually, among their other acts of fanatical intolerance, burnt a poor old woman in Edinburgh, who had cured Archbishop Adamson, of St Andrews, of a dangerous disease, by the application of some simple herbs. The statutes of the Kirk are furious in their anathemas against it; even Sir George Mackenzie sets forth, that witchcraft is a most horrible crime, and ought to be punished; and that no person can doubt for a moment that there is such a crime as witchcraft, since the laws condemn it. So late as 1722, a poor woman became a victim in Scotland to this absurd superstition. Finally, in this digression, the sect of Presbyterian dissenters in Scotland called Seceders, published an act of their Associate Presbytery in 1743, which was reprinted at Glasgow in 1766. In this there is what they call their annual confession of sins; and besides the sedition and extravagant language which it contains, the Seceders lamented, among other grievous calamities, national and personal, that "the penal statutes against witches have been repealed by Parliament, contrary to the express law of God!" In this, however, the Seceders of the last century were greatly mistaken. The "penal statutes against witchcraft," have not been repealed to this day, but common sense has repealed them. The zealots of the Associate Presbytery in 1743 and in 1766, ought to have lived in the days of James III. or James VI. Both of these monarchs would have given them the benefit of "the law of patronage. " CHAPTER II. More than a crown true worth should be esteemed. THE two brothers of the King, thus intended to become the victims of superstition by a worthless minion and his associates, were speedily apprehended. The Duke of Albany was committed a prisoner to Edinburgh Castle, and the Earl of Mar was seized in his bed by the King's orders, and confined in the Castle of Craigmillar, in the vicinity of the metropolis, at that time a fortress of great strength. The Castle of Dunbar, which belonged to Albany, yielded to the King after a short siege, at which the Lairds of Luss, Sauchie, and Craigie-Wallace, and a gentleman named Ramsay, of the King's army, were slain. The garrison, unable to hold out, and not choosing to trust to James' leniency, made their escape by night in fishing boats to the English coast. But the Earl of Mar was destined to be the only victim of the King's superstition. The youth of this prince, for he was almost a mere boy, demands the passing tribute of compassion for his |