THE

CHAPTER II.

DRUMMOND IN HIS FATHER'S LIFE-TIME.

1585-1610.

This

HE first Drummond of Hawthornden was John Drummond, second son of Sir Robert Drummond of Carnock, in Stirlingshire, the representative of a family of Drummonds that had branched off from those more ancient Drummonds of Stobhall in Perthshire whose chiefs had ranked in the Scottish peerage since 1471 as Lords Drummond of Stobhall. John Drummond was much about the Scottish court of King James VI.; he had acquired the Hawthornden property (comprising Hawthornden, Slipperfield, Whitfields, and Kingsfield) from its previous possessors; and he had married Susannah Fowler, sister of a Mr. William Fowler, who is styled Parson or Rector of Hawick in some documents, but elsewhere merely Burgess of Edinburgh, and is known in his actual life as a man of means and court-connexions, with nothing of the parson discernible about him. The eldest son of this first Laird of Hawthornden and his wife Susannah Fowler was William Drummond, the Poet. He was born at Hawthornden, December 13. 1585, in the nineteenth year of King James's reign in Scotland, and seventeen years before his accession to the English throne. That king, in fact, after his long and perpieved minority, was but assuming his real government of Scotland, in the twentieth year of his age, when this subject was born to him; and it was not till four years afterwards that he brought from Denmark the Princess Ann to be his Queen.

was.

In 1590 the Poet's father, then thirty-seven years of age, was appointed gentleman-usher to the young king; and about the same time the Poet's uncle, William Fowler, became Private Secretary to Queen Ann. From his infancy, therefore, the Poet was within the radiance of Scottish Royalty, such as it He had three brothers, younger than himself, James, Alexander, and John, and three sisters, Ann, Jane, and Rebecca. He was educated at the High School of Edinburgh, and then at the recently-founded University of the same city. The teaching-staff of the University then consisted of the Principal and Professor of Divinity, Mr. Henry Charteris, the Professor of Humanity, Mr. John Ray, and four Regents, or Professors of Philosophy. Each of these regents had the special superintendence of his own class through the four years of varied study which, with attendance on the Humanity Lectures and the Divinity Lectures, constituted the complete college curriculum. The Regent to whose class Drummond belonged was a Mr. James Knox; and in July 1605 Drummond was one of twenty-four students who, after their due course of four years with this gentleman, and their supplementary tuition. at the same time by Mr. John Ray and Principal Charteris, took the usual degree of M.A. They were the eighteenth batch of graduates sent forth by the University since its foundation in 1582. Here are their names, as they are still to be read, in their own handwriting, in the preserved GraduationBook :

Two years before Drummond's graduation, King James had been called from Edinburgh to London, to assume his longexpected succession to Queen Elizabeth. It had been a sore shock, not to Scottish national sentiment only, but also to more substantial interests. James had done his best, indeed, to console the Scots at his departure, or immediately afterwards, by all sorts of promises of perpetual recollection of them in his. new sphere of duty, and by a lavish award of farewell honours and privileges among corporations and individuals. There was a new Charter to the City of Edinburgh, with special guarantees in favour of the infant University; there were peerages for some select Scotsmen of high note; and there was a shower of knighthoods among other Scots of distinction, including the gentleman-usher Drummond, the Poet's father.

An insufficient compensation all this for what had been lost; and more and more it was felt to be so. None of the commercial bustle any longer, none of the picturesque jollity or quaint ceremonial, that had gathered round resident Scottish Royalty, slovenly as had been its tastes, and meagre as had been its exchequer. No sight of Majesty now in the streets of Edinburgh, or worshipping in any of the city-churches, or riding out with retinue on any of the country highways; no future outlook of gentleman-usherships or other court-appointments, except for such adventurous Scots as chose to follow their emigrant Solomon into his richer southern kingdom, and hang on by him there, like Richie Moniplies and his master in The Fortunes of Nigel, announcing their names and antecedents, and presenting their little "sifflications!" Of these, indeed, there was already a goodly number; and the number was to increase, till the shoaling of hungry Scots Londonwards became a bye-word in England, the sound of a Scottish voice in London was detested, and the English wished that the successor of their Elizabeth had come from Estremadura, or some yet remoter part of the earth. But, save for the providential outlet for Scottish energy thus afforded by the new connexion with

England, Scotland had to acquiesce sullenly in what had befallen her, and adjust her methods within herself to her new conditions. The trial was perhaps hardest for Edinburgh and its vicinity, and for such families as the Drummonds of Hawthornden.

After all, the new conditions were not ruinous. Scotland, from the Tweed to the Orkneys, did not find the presence of a king within her bounds absolutely indispensable for the main. purposes of her small million of inhabitants; Edinburgh still remained the centre of purely Scottish affairs, with law-courts, a Privy Council, and an occasional Parliament; and, for a young man of such Edinburgh training and such familyconnexions as Drummond's, there was the prospect, if he qualified himself as a Scottish lawyer, of a considerable career in the public business of his native country. This, and not a migration to England, was the career for which his father had destined him. Accordingly, after his graduation in Edinburgh University, where the sole teaching then was in Arts and Theology, it was decided that he should go abroad to study Law. An incident of some consequence to the family at this time (for the Scots of those days counted kin among themselves with a peculiar relish, and the Drummonds thought their kin among the best) was the elevation of their titular chief, James, fourth Lord Drummond of Stobhall, to the Earldom of Perth. After the accession of King James to the English throne, this nobleman had gone on an embassy to Spain, in attendance on the English High Admiral, the Earl of Nottingham; and his promotion to the Perth Earldom (March 4, 1605) was a reward on his return. The honour was still a subject of congratulation among all the Earl's kinsfolk, near or distant-i.e., among all in Scotland who called themselves by the name of Drummondwhen the young Edinburgh graduate, whose interest in it was that of very far-off cousinship indeed, traceable only in the mists of an old Scottish genealogy, went abroad for instruction in Law.

He was there, or in the

He took London on his way. vicinity, it appears, for some considerable time in 1606, staying probably with his uncle Fowler, who had retained his secretaryship to Queen Ann, and gone south in that capacity, and employing himself, as a young stranger might be expected to do, in going about and seeing the sights. Perhaps the earliest letters of his now extant are six written in June, July, and August, 1606, and addressed "to the Right Honourable the Earl of ——————." The nobleman is not named further in the preserved copies, but was evidently some Scottish Earl, with whom young Drummond had the honour of an acquaintance, and to whom news from London, and especially from the Court, would be gratifying in his northern abode.

"Knowing the delight your Lordship was wont to take in "the sports of Court, whether as beholder or actor," the young correspondent begins, in his first letter, dated June 1, “I "thought I should not importune your honour in sending you "the challenge of the Errant Knights, proclaimed with sound of "trumpet before the palace-gate of Greenwich." In other words, a great court-pageant was in preparation at Greenwich, part of which was to be a tournament in the Park, with other ceremonial in revival of the ancient chivalry, and Drummond, who had access, from his court connexions, to the whole display, and might even be behind the scenes a little, thinks his northern Lordship might like to have an exact copy of the challenge issued by the four Champion Knights who were to lead off the tournament part of the grand affair: viz., the Earls of Lennox, Arundel, Pembroke, and Montgomery. These four Earls, it seems, had challenged, at the palace-gate of Greenwich, "all "honourable men of arms and knights-adventurers of hereditary "note and exemplary nobleness" as follows-"Right Brave and "Chivalrous, wheresoever through the world we four Knights"Errant, denominated of the Fortunate Island, servants of the "Destinies, awaken your sleeping courages with Mavortial "greetings: know ye that our Sovereign Lady and Mistress,