It was her kingly father, the Eighth Henry, who ordered Hertford into
Scotland--"There to put all to fire and sword, to burn Edinburgh town,
and to raze and deface it, when you have sacked it and gotten what you
can of it, as there may remain forever a perpetual memory of the
vengeance of God lighted upon it for their falsehood and disloyalty.
Sack Holyrood House and as many towns and villages about Edinburgh as ye
conveniently can. Sack Leith and burn it and subvert it, and all the
rest, putting man, woman and child to fire and sword without exception,
when any resistance is made against you. And this done, pass over to the
Fife land, and extend like extremities and destructions in all towns and
villages whereunto ye may reach conveniently, not forgetting among the
rest, so to spoil and turn upside down the Cardinal's town of St.
Andrews, as the upper stone may be the nether, and not one stick stand
by another, sparing no creature alive within the same, especially such
as either in friendship or blood be allied to the Cardinal. The
accomplishment of all this shall be most acceptable to the Majesty and
Honour of the King."
Berwick has known gentler moments, even marrying and giving in marriage.
It was at this Border town that David, son of the Bruce, and Joanna,
sister of Edward III, were united in marriage. Even then did the
kingdoms seek an Act of Union. And Prince David was four, and Princess
Joanna was six. There was much feasting by day and much revelry by
night, among the nobles of the two realms, while, no doubt, the babies
nodded drowsily.
[Illustration: QUEEN MARY.]
At Berwick John Knox united himself in marriage with Margaret Stewart,
member of the royal house of Stewart, cousin, if at some remove, from
that Stewart queen who belonged to "the monstrous regiment of women,"
and to whose charms even the Calvinist John was sensitive. One remembers
that at Berwick John was fifty, and Margaret was sixteen.
There is not much in Berwick to hold the attention, unless one would
dine direct on salmon trout just drawn frae the Tweed. There are
memories, and modern content with what is modern.
Perhaps the saddest eyes that ever looked on the old town were those of
Queen Mary, as she left Jedburgh, after her almost fatal illness, and
after her hurried ride to the Hermitage to see Bothwell, and just before
the fatal affair in Kirk o' Field. Even then, and even with her spirit
still unbroken, she felt the coming of the end. "I am tired of my life,"
she said more than once to Le Croc, French ambassador, on this journey
as she circled about the coast and back to Edinburgh.
She rode toward Berwick with an escort of a thousand men, and looked
down on the town from Halidon Hill, on the west, where two hundred years
before (1333) the Scots under the regent Douglass had suffered defeat by
the English.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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