Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 7.djvu/283

Rh ing at the worthless and ignoble lives of the clergy, only conceived that learning, to which the latter urged an exclusive claim, was the nurse of idlness and sloth, and fit to be exercised only in the gloom of a monastic cell. In these generous and truly princely endeavours, however, James was grievously thwarted by the exhausted condition of the public revenues, which, what with foreign wars, and domestic seditions, had almost entirely disappeared. To remedy this evil he called a parliament at Edinburgh, mainly with a view to relieve the hostages that remained in England for the king's ransom, of which one half, or two hundred thousand merks, stood unpaid. To raise this money a general tax of twelve pennies on the pound of all land, spiritual and temporal, and four pennies on every cow, ox, and horse for the space of two years was imposed. This tax, however, was so grievously resented by the people, and so many extortions were committed in its exaction, that the generous monarch, after the first collection, compassionately remitted what uas unpaid, and, so far from being enabled to be more generous in rewarding men of learning and talents, the greater number of the hostages for his ransom were allowed to die in bondage, from his inability to redeem them. What good was in his power, however, he did not fail to perform. He invited from the universities on the continent no fewer than eighteen doctors of theology, and eight doctors of the canon law. He attended in person the debates in the infant university of St Andrews, and visited the other seminaries of learning. He advanced none to any dignity in the church but persons of learning and merit; and he passed a law, that no man should enjoy the place of a canon in any cathedral church till he had taken the degree of a bachelor in divinity, or of the canon law. He placed choristers and organs in every cathedral in the kingdom; and, that the nobility might be compelled to apply themselves to learning, he ordained, that no nobleman should be allowed to accede to his father's estates till he was in some degree acquainted with the civil law, or the common law of his own country. James was also careful to encourage artists from abroad to settle among his rude people, who were miserably destitute of all the conveniences and comforts of civilized life.

A degree of prosperity, for a long period unknown in Scotland, followed; and, in its train, if we may believe Buchanan, ease, luxury, and licentiousness, and, to such an extent, as not only to disturb the public tranquillity, but to destroy all sobriety of individual conduct. Hence, he says, arose sumptuous entertainments by day, and revellings by night, masquerades, a passion for clothes of the most costly foreign materials, houses built, not for use but for show, a perversion of manners under the name of elegance, native customs came to be contemned, and, from a fastidious fickleness, nothing was esteemed handsome or becoming that was not new. All this was charged by the common people, though they themselves were following it up as fast as possible, upon the courtiers who had come with the Jung from England, in the train of his queen, Jane, daughter to the duke of Somerset Nor did the king himself escape blame, though, by his own example, he did all that he could to repress the evil; for not only were his dress and his household expenses restrained within the most moderate bounds, but extravagance of every kind he reproved, wherever he beheld it. The matter, however, was considered of so great importance by some of the Scottish nobility, who were accustomed themselves to wear the plainest habiliments, to live on the plainest and simplest description of food, and to accustom themselves to all manner of privations, in order to fit them for the fatigues of war, that they pressed the bishop to move the king to call a parliament, for abolishing these English customs, as they were called. A parliament was accordingly assembled at Perth, in the year 1430, when it was