they may have well considered a minor evil. The fate of the coadjutors and completers of this great crime was singular and remarkable. The tradition regarding the question and the answer in the church of Dumfries at the moment of the slaughter of the Red Comyn is most probably imaginative. The question might have been put by a partisan of the murdered man, concealed within the buildingsome monk connected with its affairs, for example, one of the waking Franciscans-and the response might have come from a similar source ;— yet how the latter should have been in the form, as events occurred, of a precise prophecy, is not clear by any means.

compelled to resist the unjust aggressions of Edward—was forced into war, and defeated at Dunbar. The signature of the Ragman's Roll followed, on which the names of all the Lindsays were inscribed. In fact, all the names of the Scottish barons, with few exceptions, were placed there. Only two noted exceptions occur, those of Sir William Wallace and Sir Andrew Moray. The great barons had English lands which were dear to them, and their example influenced their minor followers. The common people had no temptation to swerve from their country's cause, and they loved it more than life. They were not left without a leader. The bravest and the purest knight on the rolls of Scottish chivalry became the instrument of working out his country's freedom. The annals of no nation contain greater or more disinterested achievements than those of William Wallace. In all his struggles he was well supported by the commonalty of Scotland-the men who have embalmed his me-patrick, as you may recollect, were partners in the deed. The mory in their traditions, and in the affections of successive generations, for well nigh a thousand years. It is right to add that the Lindsays did not all stand long on the side of power and tyranny; for some of them became the fastest friends of the champion to their land, and were, like him, excepted even from the mercy of their ruthless foe.

The deepest crime of Robert Bruce became the cause of his rising. The Red Comyn was a nearer heir to the crown than Bruce. His connexions were

more powerful. His experience was greater. His means of opposing the English power more likely to be successful than those of the Bruce. This powerful chieftain was induced to meet young Robert Bruce in Dumfries. The sad story has been often told, and thus Lord Lindsay repeats it:"The circumstances which led to the decisive act which flung Bruce upon his fortunes, and led to the independence of Scotland, are unknown. All that can be ascertained is, that Comyn of Badenoch, popularly named the Red Comyn, his personal rival, and the leader of the Balio interest, was at Dumfries at the same time with Bruce; that they held a secret conference in the church of the Minorites, or Franciscans; that a quarrel arose between them; and that Bruce, in a paroxysm of rage, stabbed him on the steps of the high altar. Rushing to the door, he met Sir James Lindsay and Roger Kirkpatrick, of Closeburn, who demanded what had disturbed him? 'I doubt,' replied Bruce, 'I have slain Comyn!' Have you left it doubtful?' replied Lindsay. 'I mak sicker,' or 'sure,' rejoined Kirkpatrick wherewith they rushed into the church; and Kirkpatrick, asking the wounded baron whether he deemed he might recover, and hearing from him that he thought he might if he had proper leech-craft, stabbed him to the heart-a deed for which Bruce and

his adherents were excommunicated as soon as the news reached the Holy See."

This murder has been excused and palliated by the partisans of Bruce on various grounds. But it was a foul and treacherous crime-the only evil deed laid to his charge; and its consequences wasted Scotland for many long years of unprofitable warfare, until the doom of blood was for a time removed, and the battle of Bannockburn cast the longcontested claim of English superiority in the negative. The partisans of the Red Comyn were disheartened by his violent death, yet they resisted, for many years, more successfully than Edward himself, the claims of Bruce; until, wearied at last with a contest that wrought woe to their common country, they appear to have acquiesced in what

"Sir James, the accomplice in the murder of the Red Comyn in the church of the Minorites at Dumfries, was succeeded by another Sir James, his eldest son and heir, in whose person the sacrilege of the father was visited by a fearful retribution, as recorded by the ancient chroniclers. Sir James and Roger Kirk by the Franciscans, with the usual rites of the Church; but at body of the slaughtered Comyn was watched during the night midnight the whole assistants fell into a deep sleep, with the exception of one aged father, who heard with terror and surprise a voice like that of a wailing infant, exclaim, 'How long. O Lord, shall vengeance be deferred? It was answered in an awful tone, Endure with patience until the anniversary of this day shall return for the fifty-second time.' In the year 1357,' says Sir Walter Scott, fifty-two years after Comyn's death, 'James of Lindsay was hospitably feasted in the castle of Caerlaverock, in Dumfries-shire, belonging to Roger Kirkpatrick. They were the sons of the murderers of Comyn. In the dead of the night, for unsuspecting host. He then mounted his horse to fly; but guilt some unknown cause, Lindsay arose, and poniarded in his bed his and fear had so bewildered his senses, that, after riding all night, he was taken at break of day not three miles from the castle, and was afterwards executed by order of King David II.' Sir James, thus untimely cut off, was succeeded by his son, Sir John Landsay of Craigie and Thurston, whose daughter and heiress, Margaret, carried the property into the family of Riccardon, ever since designed of Craigie," the representatives in the collateral

male line of Sir William Wallace."

A rightful heir to the throne was cut off by treachery-and the slaughter of the Red Comyn was one of the darkest deeds, and done on one of the darkest days for Scotland in its history-because, except for the feud which it originated, a Bannockburn would probably have been fought much earlier; and Scotland might have been spared from all the calamities attendant on the Stuart race. Lord Lindsay asserts, indeed, that Comyn was not the nearest heir to the crown, and in proof mentions that Edward Baliol was still alive, and an English prisoner. Being an English prisoner, he was unable to assert his right-and being a Baliol, it may have been deemed a forfeit; and next Christiana de Lindsay, Lady of Lamberton, whose mother was an elder daughter of King John than Marjory, Comyn's mother. This tracing merely gives one part of Comyn's claim, and, at least, it was a superior claim to Bruce's. This transaction has not been frequently treated with the reprobation it deserved, on account of the glories of King Robert's reign; but he made a narrow escape from the fate of poor Macbetha worthy monarch, too, who asserted the independence of Scotland against the shadow of supremacy claimed by the English monarchs, and accorded, as is believed, by the "gracious Duncan"-a smaller

Baliol in his time. The following eulogy of Bruce [] Civil wars were common between rival chiefis, nevertheless, elegant and true :

In reference to the claim of Christiana de Lindsay to the crown of Scotland, which has been mentioned by Lord Lindsay as better than that of the Red Comyn, we may mention that she was an English subject, and therefore would have been very properly excluded from the Scottish crown, at a time when the assumed and asserted supremacy of England over Scotland was the question at issue. Except for that claim, the Baliols were the nearest heirs. Their conduct forfeited the crown. They sold their country for the enforcement of their own claims; and the country expelled them. On the same grounds, which were good grounds, if the struggle was justifiable, Christiana de Lindsay, the Lady of Lamberton, had forfeited her claim also, and was incompetent for the crown; leaving, of course, the Red Comyn as the nearest heir in that line, to whom no exception could be raised that was not more obviously applicable to Bruce himself.

The battle of Bannockburn decided the struggle for Scottish independence, which left rankling between the nations a feeling of hatred and jealousy that four centuries scarcely served to quench, fed, as it ever was, by new wars and new embarrassments. Robert Bruce left to his successors a new struggle. The great barons, in aiding to achieve the independence of Scotland, almost succeeded in accomplishing their own. They became small kings, each within his own district and possessions." confirmed the grants of his predecessors, and more par

ticularly of Sir Gerard de Lindsay to Newbattle, granting || David, Lord of Crawford-took, as we shall see, an active

to the monks, for himself and his heirs, a charter of free barony over all the lands thus bestowed upon them, with all its privileges, and without any retinementum,' or claim in requital, save the suffrages of their prayers."

All the saints were deeply indebted to this Sir David Lindsay. St. Thomas the Martyr, St. Lawrence of the Byres, and another at Lindores, had money left them for wax candles, that were to burn perpetually. The fortunes of the family were remarkable:

part in the affairs of their time. The two elder, Sir James and Sir Alexander, were especially active during the period immediately subsequent to 1350-Sir James, after his father's death, in negotiating his Sovereign's release, and Sir Alexander in seeking honour in the foreign wars; he obtained a safe-conduct to pass through England to the Continent in 1868, with a train of sixty horse and foot, probably to take part in the struggle between France and England for Aquitaine; and for some years we lose sight of him. He reappears shortly before the death of King David; and his seal, with that of his nephew Sir James, the son of his elder brother, long before deceased, is still attached to the "Sir David left three surviving sons whose alliances and famous instrument or declaration of the magnates of Scotpossessions I must here briefly enumerate, as it will render land, immediately after the coronation of King Robert II., my narrative more distinct and clear hereafter. They had in 1371, by which they bound themselves to recognise bis an elder brother, David, a very gallant youth, who had been eldest son, the Earl of Carrick, as King of Scotland, killed several years before his father, unmarried, and aged after his death-a recognition by which the succession only 21, at the disastrous battle of Neville's Cross, near to the throne was virtually secured for ever to the House Durham, where David II. was taken prisoner. He fought of Stuart. Sir William, the youngest of three sons, was under the king's banner, and fell with the flower of the also distinguished both in policy and war. We shall hear chivalry of Scotland in a vain struggle for his preservation more of him hereafter. Sir David left a daughter, also, the The eldest surviving brother, Sir James, married that same wife of the chief of the House of Dalhousie, and mother of year his cousin, Egidia Stuart, sister of Robert II., and Sir Alexander Ramsay, a most distinguished warrior. And daughter of the High Steward, by the Princess Marjory, I ought to have mentioned previously, that he had had a daughter of King Robert Bruce-a marriage for which, on sister, Beatrice de Lindsay, wife of Sir Archibald Douglas, account of their near relationship, a dispensation was obtained brother of the "Good Lord James," and mother of Wilfrom Rome, at the request of King Philip of France. She bore liam, the first Earl of Douglas-an alliance which became him an only son, Sir Jas. Lindsay, afterwards Lord of Crawthe ground, I presume, of the close fraternity that long exford, and a daughter, Isabella, wife of Sir John Maxwell, of | | isted between the Houses of Crawford and Douglas." Pollock. The third of Sir David's sons, Sir Alexander, mar ried Catherine, daughter of Sir John de Striviling, or Stirling and heiress of Glenesk and Edzell, in Angus, and of other lands in Inverness-shire--by whom he had issue, Sir David, of Glenesk, the first Earl of Crawford, and Sir Alexander. He married, secondly, Marjory Stuart, niece of Robert II., who bore him two sons, Sir William of Rossie, ancestor of the Lindsays of Dowhill, still numerous in Scotland, and

The particulars are interesting, as the starting points in the history of families that long combined to exercise great political influence; but, looking back at this period of the world, they afford different materials of reflection. The branch of the family that settled in Fifeshire was to be represented in course of a century and a half by the minstrel knight, whose sarcasms in verse did not less, perhaps, to commend the overthrow of Saints' shrines and wax tapers to the common people of Scotland, than the The Lindsay of the Byres tiana, daughter of Sir William Mure, of Abercorn; and in-preaching of John Knox.

Sir Walter, besides a daughter, Euphemia. And, lastly,
Sir David's youngest son, Sir William, whose appanage ||
was the Byres in Haddingtonshire, acquired the barony of
Abercorn, and other extensive estates, with his wife Chris-

herited, moreover, by disposition from his elder brother was to be followed in two centuries by a descendant,
Sir Alexander, the offices of hereditary baillie and seneschal Lord Lindsay, of the Byres, the rough and stern
of the regality of the Archbishopric of St. Andrew's, offices noble who, in his zeal for the Reformation, com-
retained for many centuries by his posterity, even subse-pelled Mary to resign her crown. Before other
quently to the Reformation, down, in fact, to the middle of
the last century; and which gave them great power in Fife-
shire, and wherever the Archbishops possessed property and

influence."

The estate of Pollock has remained since that date in the hands of the Maxwells, while nearly all the other baronics mentioned have changed repeatedly|| the families of their possessors:

two centuries passed, the possessions of the Lindsays were forfeited, or had passed away to other houses, partly from the maintenance, by their descendants, of the Stewarts' cause. These changes offer the tory, and Lord Lindsay's work reads very like a means of making a romance out of a family hisbook of that alluring character; and yet the fate of the Lindsays was that of many Scottish families–nearly of all whose ancestors ranked amongst the Barons of

"Each of these three surviving brothers-the sons of Sir the Ragman Roll.

DIARY OF SAMUEL PEPY S.

This portion of the Diary is a curious mixture of private and public facts, so that by following it for a few pages, it will not be difficult to afford an idea of the discursive character of the whole. Pepys seems to have recorded his ideas, each as it floated to the surface of his imagination; never troubling himself to classify facts, to divide his domestic affairs from the chronicle of his public duties, but rolling the whole into a heap, without order or arrangement.

WE left Samuel Pepys rejoicing in the accumulation it either black or white, that he was unable to apof worldly wealth, in the beginning of the year 1667.proach. However, the sight of Nell Gwynne, standWe now again meet him, on the first day of April, ing at the door of her lodgings in Drury Lane, made walking with Sir William Coventry in a garden at up, in some measure, for the disappointment. Whitehall, and discussing the position of the country. Great men then managed public affairs with a view to private aggrandisement; and, throughout all the records which our diarist has bequeathed to us of transactions in which himself and his colleagues, and the members of other departments of the Government were engaged, this fact is visible. To secure themselves, to fill their own purses, and exalt their own honours, they were many of them willing, on occasion, to overthrow all others, to impoverish the Exchequer, to take bribes, and bring disgrace on the national name. Pepys still continues his quaint manner of mixing up affairs of public importance with insignificant trifles, then of consequence only to himself, but interesting to posterity as illustrating the social economy of those times.

Loudon still lay in ruins-the skeleton of a city, depopulated by pestilence, and half-destroyed by fire. When we, in a former number, took leave of the clerk of the acts, it was remarked that, even then, smoke sometimes issued from vaults in the city. We now find the process of rebuilding slowly commenced, and carried on with sluggishness and apathy; while the war with the Dutch was chiefly occupying men's minds, and drawing their attention away from their ancient and desolated city.

He now expresses his admiration of a handsome chimney-piece in the Duke of York's chamber; then mentions that he was ashamed to be seen in company with Mr. Pechell, because his nose was so red; describes the projects for raising London from its ashes; notes down information connected with the Dutch invasion; tells us how he chased Lady Newcastle's carriage, but failed to overtake it; and how, finding that his wife, being dressed with fair hair, so enraged him, that he would not all day speak one word to her. Riding home in the evening, however, he explains his anger, "swearing several times-which God forgive me

do, making an inward reserve, however, as a hole for conscience to creep out at. A truce was by this means established, and peace restored.

and bending my fists, that I would not endure it. She, poor wretch! was surprised with it, and made me no answer all the way home." The next morning, while he was at his accounts, his wife came down to him in Pepys, however, busied himself during this period her nightgown, and promised that, if he would supply with much pleasure, play-going, and feasting. We find her with money for mourning apparel, she would wear him, one day, kicking Luce, his cookmaid, for leaving white locks no more. He, like a severe fool, as he conthe door open; the next, taking his wife and his two fesses, would not hear of these terms; whereupon Mrs. servants to a bowling-green, where the young girls ran Pepys-who, like a skilful general, had kept her main a race; and constantly attending the theatre, until a force in reserve-fell back upon reproaches, tears, and rumour reaches his ears that his conduct is noticed, upbraiding, telling her husband of his intimacy with when he makes a resolution to go no more to the play Mrs. Knipp, and declaring that, if he would agree never until Whitsunday. He seemed, as his years increased, to see this woman again, she would satisfy him in all to become more gay, fonder of lively company, neglect-respects with regard to her hair. This he consented to ful of his wife, and attentive to actresses, on whom he lavishes money, which, expended at home, would have appeared to him lavish and wanton extravagance. The idea of keeping a carriage now entered his mind, and is anxiously considered, since he says "I am almost ashamed to be seen in a hackney." Revolving this thought, he went to church, chiefly, as he confesses, to enjoy the sight of the pretty girls of the schools, and to hear the organ play. Always fond of show, and taking pleasure in the spectacle of anything eccentric, he was particularly delighted at seeing "Lady Newcastle going with her coach, all in velvet, whom I never saw before, as I have heard her often described; for all the town talk is, now-a-days, of her extravagancies—with her velvet cap, her hair about her ears, many black patches, because of pimples about her mouth, and a black fustian cape. She seemed to me a very comely woman; but I hope to see more of her on May-Day."

He was in this, however, disappointed; for on May. Day the park was so thronged with carriages pressing after that of Lady Newcastle, adorned with silver instead of gold, with white curtains, and everything about

VOL. XVI.NO. CXC.

Very little repose of mind, however, was really enjoyed by our diarist, whose affairs of office continually pressed upon his imagination; whilst the invention of new schemes for keeping himself afloat when so many were sinking around him, constantly kept his thoughts on the strain. Still his love of the theatre intruded itself very frequently upon his attention to business; and his fondness for pleasure of all kinds, his vanity, his desire to save, and at the same time to display, maintained a curious contest between his ideas. The wish to accumulate money, and the craving to enjoy the advantages which wealth can give, possessed him at once; and he sought to attain both objects by pinching his expenditure, and that of his wife, in mere matters of comfort; whilst he was lavish when his own peculiar tastes could be gratified, even though at the cost of money. One of his greatest gratifications was, as we have remarked, the sight of pretty women; and he frankly tells, in his journal, that it was for this object he went to church :

3 B*

great bulwark against invasion, was wanting. Decision, too, the next most powerful moral force, there was none. All was disputing, vacillation, and timidity. Fireships were prepared, vessels of war equipped, means of defence devised; but there was no great master hand to review the resources of the country, to ar

The next day, we find him in a house at Bear Garden Stairs, enjoying the civilizing spectacle of a prize-range and consolidate them, and to bring them to fight between a butcher and a waterman. The upper part was so full that he could not enter, and so was constrained to go through an alehouse into the pit, where, perched upon a stool, he witnessed the combat. The butcher had every advantage and promise of success, until the waterman, by accident, dropped his sword, when, pretending not to notice this circumstance, the former cut his opponent across the wrist, and disabled him from continuing the contest.

"But Lord!" says Pepys, "to see how in a minute the whole stage was full of watermen, to revenge the foul play, and the butchers to defend their fellow!" They all fell to, in good carnest, dealing blows right and left, knocking over some, and cutting down others, to the great terror of the diarist, who, though infinitely enjoying the sight, feared lest, in the tumult, he might receive some hurt. At last, exhausted, the combatants ceased, and the battle ended.

bear at the point where danger threatened most. Justice must be done to the eccentric and selfish, but able author of these diaries. His talent was most serviceable to his country, his energy was great, his inventive resources were numerous, and his exertions in the performance of those duties to which he was bound were important and incessant. He was the soul of the department in which he was placed, and the country owed him much both for his talent and his official industry.

Much reliance was placed on the opposition which would be thrown in the way of the Dutch fleet, in its advance up the river, by a huge chain stretched from shore to shore, and defended by batteries on the London side. Pepys relates, in his journal for the 12th of June, how much joy was diffused by the intelligence that this defence was sure, "that all is safe as to the great ships against any assault, the bomb and chain being so fortified." But on the same day information of a different hue spread fear through the town, and blanchied many a citizen check. Plague had scattered death and desolation through London; a great fire hal laid half the mourning city in ruins; and there was now the prospect of slaughter and destruction from an in

"All our hearts do now ache, for the news is true that the Dutch have broke the chain, and burned our great ships."

This is a curious illustration of the manners of the period. English civilization in the seventeenth century, and that in the nineteenth, differed somewhat widely. This we might learn, if from no other source, from the present record of Pepys' private life; the leaves in which he has embalmed himself, his secret thoughts, his vices, his pettiness, and also his ownvading army. Excitement rose to its highest pitchability, for posterity. A constant source of annoyance to him appears to have been his wife's manner of attiring herself. Having procured the mourning to which reference has been made, she came down to him Alarmed for the safety of the city, and fearing one day, when a party of pleasure was in antici-grievously for his own stores of gold, Pepys revolved pation, dressed in a black moyre waistcoat and short in his mind many schemes to save it. He sent argy petticoat, laced with silver lace "so basely that I his wife with a large portion of it, he fowarded his could not endure to see her," and with laced lining,plate to different places to be secreted, and carried which made him "horrid angry," so that he resolved three hundred pounds on his own person. Nothing, to stay from the agreeable meeting he had proposed however, that he can devise fills his mind with the joining. This, as he says, vexed him to the blood; sense of security. Trepidation takes possession of his but though his wife sent to him two or three times re-heart; and we see him-whilst working with all the viquesting to be directed how to dress, promising to gour of his energetic mind to fulfil the duties of his office wear anything but her cloth gown, he would not be appeased, and, mad with anger, retired to his room to

settle his accounts.

He now, after calculating his expenditure in hackney coaches, and the profit and honour to be derived from keeping a carriage, resolved to do it. This idea sticks like a thorn in his mind, since the prudence of the step often appears questionable, especially as his position was insecure. The Dutch and French fleets were at sea; the prospect of invasion was imminent; and none knew what might occur. The Admiralty, instead of being a united friendly body of able, vigorous, and public. spirited men, was a nest of intrigue, split into petty factions, and composed of some talented, many timid, and not a few individuals of equivocal honesty. Therefore thinks Pepys that the plan of keeping a carriage was prematurely resolved on.

Day after day, fresh news arrived from the coasts with new intelligence of the Dutch movements. Their fleet was now off the Nore; London trembled; and preparation for resistance was rife. Still, unity, the

whilst describing all the interior machinery employed to raise money and men, and gather ships to check the invasion whilst dwelling on the terror spread in London, as courier after courier brought fresh and more alarming news-trembling for his money-bags, for his silver flagons and golden pieces, with more of solicitude in his mind for them, than for the welfare or ruin of the empire. The spreading sails of the vast Dutch armament slowly advanced up the river.

Still Pepys does not relinquish pleasure, but takes advantage of Sunday to enjoy it. Straying away from church, he, on the 14th of July makes up a pic-nic party. Rising at four in the morning, he was vexed with his wife, whose dressing occupied the time till five. "She ready, and taking some bottles of wine and beer, and some cold fowls with us into the coach, we took coach and four horses, which I had provided last night, and so away. A very fine day; and so towards Epsom, talking all the way pleasantly, and particularly of the pride and ignorance of Mrs. Lowther in having her train carried up."