Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 5.djvu/148

208 plausibility which was attached to them, and by the strongly corroborative circumstances by which they were attended. He is also as entirely relieved from the imputation of conniving in the imposture an accusation which has been insinuated against him by the circumstance of his having given a near relation of his own, Catharine Gordon, a daughter of lord Huntly's, in marriage to the impostor, which it cannot for a moment be believed he would have done had he known the real character of Warbeck.

The species of roving life which the young monarch led, was now about to be circumscribed, if not wholly terminated, by his entering into the married state. This he avoided as long as he possibly could, and contrived to escape from it till he had attained the thirtieth year of his age. Henry of England, however, who had always been more desirous of James's friendship than his hostility, and had long entertained views of securing the former by a matrimonial connexion with his family, at length succeeded in procuring" James's consent to marry his daughter Margaret, an event which took place in 1503.

Whatever reluctance the monarch might have had to resign his liberty, he wag not wanting in gallantry to his fair partner when she came to claim it. He first waited upon her at Newbattle, where he entertained her with his own performance on the clarichords and lute, listened to specimens of her own skill in the same art on bended knee, and altogether conducted" himself like a true and faithful knight He also exhibited a care and elegance in his dress on this occasion, sufficiently indicative of his desire to please. He was arrayed in a black velvet jacket, bordered with crimson velvet, and furred with white; and when he afterwards conducted his bride from Dalkeith to Edinburgh, which he did, strange to tell, seated on horseback behind him, he appeared in a jacket of cloth of gold, bordered with purple velvet, furred with black, a doublet of violet satin, scarlet hose, the collar of his shirt studded with precious stones and pearls, with long gilt spurs projecting from the heels of his boots.

By the terms of the marriage contract, the young queen, who was only in her fourteenth year when she was wedded to James, was to be conducted to Scotland at the expense of her father, and to be delivered to her husband or to persons appointed by him, at Lamberton kirk. The latter was to receive with her a dowry of thirty thousand pieces of gold; ten thousand to be paid at Edinburgh eight days after the marriage, other ten thousand at Coldingham a year afterwards, and the last ten thousand at the expiry of the year following. The marriage was celebrated with the utmost splendour and pomp. Feastings, tourneyings, and exhibitions of shows and plays, succeeded each other in one continued and uninterrupted round for many days, James himself appearing in the lists at the tournaments in the character of the "Savage Knight." But there is no part of the details of the various entertainments got up on this occasion that intimates so forcibly the barbarity of the times, as the information that real encounters between a party of Highlanders and Borderers, in which the combatants killed and mangled each other with their weapons, were exhibited for the amusement of the spectators.

A more grateful and more lasting memorial of the happy event of James's marriage than any of these, is lo be found in Dunbar's beautiful allegorical poem, the "Thistle and the Rose," composed on that occasion, and thus aptly and emblematically entitled from the union being one between a Scottish king and English princess. In this poem, Dunbar, who then resided at the court, hints at the monarch's character of being a somewhat too general admirer of the fair sex, by recommending him to reserve all his affections for his queen.