Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 15.djvu/370

 thai ar the names that war with the king that strak him, for he had xxvi woundis. In the first Schir Alexander Boyd, the Lord Dundee, Schir William of Crichton, Schir Symond of Glendonwyn, and Lord Gray, etc.’ A month after, on St. Patrick's day in Lent, his brother, James Douglas, Lord Ormonde, Lord Hamilton, and a small band of followers, came to Stirling and denounced the king for the foul slaughter of the earl, dragging the letter of safeguard through the streets. The king had by this time passed to Perth in pursuit of the Earl of Crawford.

A subsequent act of the three estates, who, it is specially noted, met in separate houses without the presence of the king, solemnly declared that no safe-conduct had been given. But the concurrence of the chronicles of the time to the contrary, combined with the improbability that without it Douglas would have put himself in the king's hands, outweighs this declaration, and place it to the long list of state documents which are lying instruments vainly devised to falsify history. Even with a safe-conduct it is difficult to understand how Douglas, conscious of the murders and other lawless acts for which he might be summoned to give account, and the treasonable practices to which he was a party, ventured to meet the king at Stirling. We are tempted to conjecture that his coming was not altogether a voluntary act, but it is represented as such by the only authorities we have. Apart from the treachery and violence of his death and the degradation of a king acting as his own executioner, modern writers concur in thinking that the destruction of the Douglas power was necessary to the safety of the Stuart dynasty and the good order of the realm, and that it could scarcely have been accomplished without the sacrifice of its representative. Hume of Godscroft, the family historian, attributes the death of the earl to Sir William Crichton— By Crichton and my king too soon I die, He gave the blow Crichton the plot did lay. The earl was only twenty-seven at the date of his death and the king five years younger. The friendship of their boyhood adds to the horror of the tragedy. The character of Douglas, according to Hume of Godscroft, ‘resembled more his grandfather and cousins put to death in Edinburgh Castle than his father's, for he endeavoured by all means to augment the grandeur of his house by bonds, friendships, and dependencies, retaining, renewing, and increasing them.’ This fatal ambition caused his untimely end, and again pursued by his brother and successor brought about the ruin of the house of Douglas.

[Besides the family historians, Hume of Godscroft and Sir W. Fraser, the Short Chronicle of the Reign of James II, called the Asloam or Auchinleck MS., and the Law MS. in the library of the university of Edinburgh are the best contemporary sources. Boece or his continuators, Major and Pitscottie, are the chief authorities of a little later date, and always hostile to the Douglases. Of modern writers Pinkerton and Tytler are the fullest. Burnett's prefaces to the Exchequer Rolls are also valuable.] 

DOUGLAS, WILLIAM, ninth (1533–1591), eldest son of Archibald Douglas of Glenbervie and Lady Agnes Keith, daughter of William, second earl Marischal, was born in 1533. His paternal grandfather was William Douglas of Braidwood and Glenbervie, second son of Archibald, fifth earl of Angus (‘Bell-the-Cat’), and on the failure of the heirs male of the eldest son of that earl in the death of Archibald, eighth earl of Angus, William Douglas of Glenbervie succeeded, in right of entails made by Archibald, sixth earl of Angus, in 1547, as ninth earl. James VI, who as grandson of Lady Margaret Douglas, the daughter of the sixth earl, was heir of line, instituted legal proceedings for the reduction of these entails as being expressly violations of the law of God, the law of man, and the law of nature. The court of session repelled the king's claim, but James had other weapons, and the laird of Glenbervie judged it most prudent to accept a proffered renunciation of the royal claim at the king's own price, thirty-five thousand merks, and the loss of his lands of Braidwood.

While laird of Glenbervie, Douglas attained to some repute as a soldier at the battle of Corrichie in 1562, where he sided with Queen Mary against the Earl of Huntly. On later occasions he also fought against Huntly. He was chancellor of the assize which convicted Francis, earl of Bothwell, for whose incarceration he lent his castle of Tantallon, at the king's request. As a privy councillor he was required to reside in Edinburgh for the government of the country every alternate fifteen days during the absence of James VI when he went to bring over his Danish bride, and on their arrival he took part in the coronation ceremonial. He died at Glenbervie on 1 July 1591, in the fifty-ninth year of his age, and was buried in the Douglas aisle at the parish church of Glenbervie. His countess, Egidia, daughter of Robert Grahame of Morphie, whom he married in 1552, erected a monument to him and herself there. They had a family of nine sons and four daughters, and three of the younger sons originated the families of