Page:Archaeological Journal, Volume 3.djvu/214

186 length succeeded on the decease of his elder brothers, the rich and powerful Dervorguil might not inaptly extend to him her protection and her home; and to his mental and spiritual nurture she, who then contributed to the direction of so many, would, we may be assured, never be careless or indifferent. The foundation of a chapel at Piercebridge; the confirmation of his parents' Collegiate Institution at Oxford, that was disregarded by his brothers; his selection of an especial number of dignified clergy to act among his assessors, on his competition for the crown—even these incidents may indicate to many, and demonstrate to some, that he was influenced by the dictation, if not of purely religious, yet of serious and moral emotions: a tendency to which, the place of his education, and the doctrinal system of his tutors, might not ineffectually minister. A mild and christian-like spirit is discernible in those extant diplomatic compositions, which, if not written by his hand, or under his immediate dictation, must have proceeded in spirit from his suggestion, and in substance must have met his approval. In his eloquent renunciation of his homage he emphatically objects first to the outrages committed against morality and religion. His appeal to the French king breathes the same admirable spirit; and it may also be remarked that, at a time when justice dictated, and circumstances commanded the renunciation of his solemn fealty, he sought and awaited the dispensation of him, who, he was taught to believe, could effectually blot out on earth what was registered in heaven. Between his temperament and his talent there might be, and probably was some disparity; but the greater part, if not the whole of the obloquy that has been cast upon him, seems to have been propagated by ascribing to his personal cowardice those humiliating submissions, which the estates of the realm had, by their indiscriminate and unconditional acknowledgment of Edward's paramount authority, attached to the tenure of his crown. A principle was thus represented in, and necessarily carried out by, his person, that has ever since been humiliating to the people of Scotland;—a section of whom, in his own day, clamoured against him from interested and treasonable partizanship; and others, since, because they found it more convenient to make their humiliation a personal rather than a national act; and to cast the blame on the one man, who, with a pardonable and natural deference of patriotism, received a splendid and undoubted, but otherwise unattainable inheritance, with diminished lustre, rather than on the regent representatives of the realm, who, unpatriotically, and with no defensible motive at all, consented to its surrender under no definite condition. It was not virtually from his election and consequent submission that the kingdom was involved in centuries of commotion and aggression. Every other competitor, even the "immortal" Bruce, made the same submission, swore the same fealty, and declared they would, if they might, receive the crown on the same condition as he. Edward's end was to be gained, and would have been gained, with each. He seemed to threaten like the furies of Æschylus,

"The means might have been more protracted; the end more certain and