A difficulty meets you in making Kings the subject of anecdote; the “fierce light” that beats about a throne distorts the vision, your anecdote is perhaps grave history. Again, a monarch is sure to be a centre of many untrustworthy myths. What credit is to be placed, for instance, on engaging narratives like that of Howieson of Braehead and James V.? Let us do the best we can. Here I pass over the legends of Queen Margaret and her son David, but one story of the latter I may properly give. Fergus, Prince of Galloway, was a timid if not repentant rebel. He made friends with Abbot Alwyn of Holyrood, who dressed him as a monk and presented him with the brethren on the next visit of the King. The kiss of peace, words of general pardon for all past transgressions, were matters of form, not to be omitted, but quite efficacious. Fergus presently revealed himself, and everybody accepted the dodge as quite legitimate. You recall the trick by which William of Normandy got Harold to swear on the bones of the saints: the principle evidently was, get your oath or your pardon by what dodge you choose, but at all costs get it. Alexander, Lord of the Isles, played a more seemly part in 1458 when he appeared before James I. at the High Altar at Holyrood, and held out in token of submission his naked sword with the hilt towards the King. A quaint story is chronicled of James II. As a child he was held in Edinburgh Castle by Crichton, the Lord Chancellor. The Queen Mother was minded to abduct him; she announced a pilgrimage to Whitekirk, a famous shrine or shrines, for there was more than one of the name. Now a Queen, even on pilgrimage and even in old-time Scotland, must have a reasonable quantity of luggage, change of dresses, and what not. Thus no particular attention was given to a certain small box, though the Queen’s servants, you believe, looked after it with considerable care. In fact it contained His Majesty _in propria persona_. By means of a number of air-holes practised in the lid he managed to survive the journey. It is said his consent was obtained to his confinement, but those old Scots were used to carry their own lives and the lives of others in their hands, and he had little choice. This is the James who ended at Roxburgh by the bursting of a cannon. His son had peculiar relations with Edinburgh. In 1482 he gave the city its Golden Charter, exalting its civic rulers, and his Queen and her ladies knit with their own hands for the craftsmen the banner of the Holy Ghost, locally known for centuries as the “Blue Blanket,” that famous ensign which it was ridiculously fabled the citizens carried with them to the Holy Land. At this, or rather against the proud spirit of its owners, James VI. girded in the _Basilicon Doron_. It made a last public appearance when it waved, a strange anachronism, in 1745 from the steeple of St. Giles to animate the spirits of the burghers against Prince Charles and his Highlanders, then pressing on the city. There it