In such a narrative it would not always be found that the aggrandising house was the aggressive or greedy party in all quarrels and contests. It enters the stage as the kindly paternal mediator-perhaps as the chivalrous redresser of wrong, or the generous assistant of the stricken or oppressed-but, as the nature of prosperous houses or states is, the end is ever to help on the waxing wealth and power of the house of Huntly.

For following up this special local history in its details there is no room here; but perhaps allowance may be made for a brief account of an incident in the progress of the house, which happens to be the latest of special moment at the time we have now reached.

The tragedy called "the Burning of Frendraught" has to the northern peasant as distinct a tragic place in history as the Sicilian Vespers or the night of St Bartholomew may have for those whose historical horizon is wider.

Of the house of Crichton, which we have seen rising to great splendour in the middle of the fifteenth century, one branch had made a settlement northward of the Grampians. They held the lordship of Frendraught, in the heart of the country of the Gordons, to whom they were becoming formidable rivals. Huntly was a great favourite with King James; but Charles thought his power too great to belong to a subject, and it was the policy of the Court, without any acts of direct hostility, to unnerve his strength. The best way to accomplish this was by cherishing and encouraging the Crichtons, so as by Court influence to bring them as near as might be to a balance with the local feudal power of the house of Huntly. threatening incidents of feud had occurred between the two houses just before the period we have now reached. In a small battle between the Crichtons and a party of Gordons, an important member of this family, Gordon of Rothiemay, was killed. The clan was stirred, and venitself a family history, and is rare, stands in high esteem among collectors, and is purchased by them at a large price. But for the purposes of a reader it is utterly worthless. It draws nothing from family papers or local information, and is a mere compilation from the received histories of Scotland at the time of its publication.

VOL. VI.

Some

66

geance demanded. On a calculation of chances, the Crichtons felt that it would go hard with them. The Marquis of Huntly-then a man about seventy years of age-took on himself something like the state and policy of a prince who was too great to be quarrelsome or vindictive. He desired that the feud might be compounded;" and in the end the Crichtons agreed to pay to the bereaved widow and children of Rothiemay an "assythement," as it was called, of fifty thousand merks. Such a settlement was not considered degrading or unbecoming. The Gordons would in the course of their vengeance have swept away the sheep and cattle of the Crichtons, and the fine bought off the harrying. This settlement was adjusted while all parties were enjoying the hospitalities of Huntly's Castle of Strathbogie. When the Crichtons set off to return home they felt a difficulty. In a recent squabble one of them had shot the son of Leslie of Pitcaple. The young man lay on his deathbed, and the father swore that he would have vengeance. Nor could Huntly's influence prevail to avert it. In fact it was known that he lay in wait with an armed band to attack Frendraught's small party on their way home. The old marquis would not have it said that his guest departed from his hearth to encounter danger, so that a party of the Gordons was sent as a convoy towards Frendraught. It was commanded by the heir of the house of Gordon, the young Lord Aboyne, and he was accompanied by the son of the slain Laird of Rothiemay.

The party were too strong to be attacked, and the Crichtons reached their own fortress in safety. Here it was pressed on the Gordon leaders that they should accept a reciprocity of hospitality, and remain all night beneath the roof of the Crichtons. The lady of the house, it was said, urged this with kind vehemence-it was so pleasant to see old enemies reconciled, and the exchange of hospitality would so becomingly crown the new friendship.

The party yielded to these entreaties, spent a jovial evening, and went to rest. It was observed afterwards that Crichton had that night under his roof the heir of his

great feudal enemy, and the son of the man for whose slaughter he had agreed to pay a heavy penalty.

All the Gordon party were lodged in the square tower of Frendraught, and no others slept in that tower. The lowest storey was vaulted with stone, and in the arch there was a round hole for passage by a ladder to the floor above. This and other two floors were constructed of timber. We are told exactly how the Gordon party were distributed over these three wooden floors, Aboyne occupying the lowest, along with Robert Gordon and his page, English Will."

66

At midnight the woodwork of the tower was seen to blaze up and light the country for miles round. Next morning nothing remained of the Gordon family but calcined morsels of flesh and bone, hardly to be distinguished from the ashes of the timber.

Then arose the immediate question, Was this calamity an accident? The Gordons at once said no-it was planned; gunpowder and combustibles had been piled in the vault below for the occasion. All the fastenings of the tower had been especially secured, and the Lord and Lady Frendraught looked on from without, casting gibes at the victims as they vainly struggled against the iron bars of the windows. If this was true, the deed went far beyond the licence of feudal vengeance. There was a story of a feudal chief who, finding himself unable with due hospitality to entertain a body of guests who were thrown upon him, burnt down his hall while his guests were in the hunting-field. Here, too, the ancestral hall had been sacrificed; but it was for the murder of those who had not only partaken of the sacred bread and salt, but had fallen into the trap in the performance of an act of chivalrous generosity.

Whatever might be the wish of the Court to foster the Crichtons, such an incident could not pass unnoticed. So far as the accumulation of a heap of technical documents, curious to the forensic antiquary, can attest the sincerity of the powers to fathom the mystery, that testimony stands still on record. The Frendraught cause of 1630 is one of the earliest in which we have, besides the

testimony of witnesses, the pleading of counsel aiming at a display of forensic eloquence.1 A commission sent to inspect the premises reported that the fire could not have been accidental, but was raised by design within the building. Justice seemed so earnestly at work that for a short period the Lord Frendraught was in prison, but he was not brought to trial. Certain retainers of his, however, were marked off as victims; and letters of fire and sword were issued, that they might be hunted through the land. The chief among these, named Meldrum, was found guilty of the act, hanged, and quartered. He seems to have been concerned in the deed; but a certain shadow of suspicion lies on a turn in the process which brings him into a quarrel with his old master Frendraught as his motive for the deed.

This great tragedy was handed down in the history of the north from generation to generation, even to the present day. It was sung in the hexameters of Arthur Johnston, and in the rhyming ballads of the common people. The public feeling against the Crichtons waxed strong. It inflicted on them a strange mysterious punishment, which seemed like a blight or judgment of a higher power, yet was in reality a simple and natural consequence of human conduct. They were deserted. It was a natural result of this doom that they should become the victims of "the broken clans" of Highland reivers. Against these the deadliest enemies to each other among the Lowlanders were wont for the time to combine, but no one would take part with the Crichtons. The marauders hovered round them like vultures round a wounded man. They came from all parts of the mountain districts, and met at Frendraught as at a common centre where the business of all lay. A field of prey so inviting tempted the MacGregors from the far-off banks of Loch Katrine, and they appeared under their leader Gilderoy, a robber

1 A considerable collection of these documents from the records of the Justiciary and the Court of Secret Council will be found in the appendix to the Spalding Club edition of Spalding's 'Memorials of the Troubles.'

1

chief of European celebrity. Under such wasting operations the fortunes of the Crichtons gradually crumbled. In a few years their name disappears from local history; and when the last of them took the losing side at the Revolution, he appears to have had little property to be forfeited.

Such is the history of the latest of those rivals whose power and wealth were absorbed into the house of Gordon. Meanwhile, however, the old marquis, tired of his useless contest with his enemy in Edinburgh, returned home and died, of a broken heart as it was said. Spalding, the annalist, gives an affectionate and pleasant sketch of his character. The style or the provincial lawyer is generally modelled on the terms of the testamentary settlements and dispositions which passed through his hands; but having before him a noble and chivalrous form, and describing it truly as he beheld it, he becomes insensibly an artist: "This mighty marquis was of ane great spirit; for in time of trouble he was of invincible courage, and boldly bore down all his enemies triumphantly. He was never inclined to war or trouble himself; but by the pride and insolence of his kin was divers times driven in trouble, whilk he bore through valiantly. He loved not to be in the laws contending with any man, but loved rest and quietness with all his heart; and in time of peace he lived moderately and temperately in his diet, and fully set to building and planting of all curious devices. A well-set neighbour in his marches, disposed rather to give than to

1 Gilderoy figures in the English biographies of highwaymen and robbers, by Captain Brown, Alexander Smith, and others. The outlaw chief, who, with his army of reivers, would devastate a province, is there reduced to the model of the Dick Turpins, Tom Kings, and other heroes of the English road, and graduates in crime according to the 'Newgate Calendar' formula. He is a disobedient son and a Sabbath-breaker. He falls in debt. He keeps company with naughty boys and naughtier girls. Through their blandishments and his own ungoverned passions he is led to the commission of a domestic outrage, and so takes to the highway. Gilderoy, after defying the power of the Crown and of his enemies, was hanged in 1636. His seizure was one of the feats of the great Argyle himself, and was deemed worthy of public thanks as a national service.