such a courtly Norman nomenclature as De Quincey, De Vere, De Vipont, D'Umfraville, Mortimer, and De Coucy. When order is restored, and the lands are again recorded as having lords, there are Johnstons, Bells, Armstrongs, Scots, Kerrs, Browns, and suchlike, telling at once of their native Saxon origin. The loss of their estates, indeed, was a substantial grievance to the Norman holders, who would not relinquish them without a struggle; and in their effort to get them back again, under Edward Baliol, whom they had set up as King of Scotland for that purpose, they were very nearly successful in crushing the newly-bought independence of the land.

Thus the extinction of the English rule had at first the effect of removing French elements out of Scotland. In England, the language of France, being the language of the Court, became that of the law, in which it has left to our own day some motley relics, remaining imbedded in it like grotesque organic remains. If, along with the influx of Normans, their language may have at one time been creeping into legal practice in Scotland, the efforts of the Edwards to enforce the English forms of law throughout the country made their technicalities especially odious. All the way from the border to the Highland line, the people, high and low, came to speak in very pure Teutonic; for it is curious that the language of the Lowland Scots has not received the slightest tinge from close contact with

the

the Celtic. Whatever it may have been among common people, the literary language of England became afflicted with Gallicisms; and so it came to pass that Barbour sang the liberation of his country from the English kings in purer English, according to the canon of the present day, than his contemporary Chaucer, whose more finished verses are not so easily read by Englishmen as those of the Aberdonian. England in the end outgrew these French elements, but Scotland cast them forth at once. And we shall find that, however close became the intimacy of the two nations, and however powerful the influence of the greater on the destinies of the less, the symptoms of that influence were ever external and superficial-it never penetrated to the national heart. After the expulsion of the Englishor, more properly, of the Normans-from the north, it becomes a key-note in French history that England is to be fought from Scotland; while, on the English side of European history, the response is that everything must be right on the Border before it will be prudent to send an expedition to the Continent.

When we have a clear hold on those great national conditions of which the League was an inevitable result, it is of less moment to know the minute particulars about the dates and tenor of the treaties, and the statesmen who negotiated them. But these too have their interest. The first name practically connected with them is Wallace's; and there is some reason, besides his renown as a war

rior, and an organiser and governor of his fellowmen, to award to him the reputation of a successful diplomatist. The legendary chroniclers, such as Blind Harry the minstrel, tell us that he frequented France; that he became a respected friend and a favoured counsellor of the French monarch; that he performed valorous feats on French soil, and that he chased pirates on French waters. These stories have been discredited by the grave, to whom it did not commend them that one of his feats was the hunting and slaying of a lion in Guienne. But there is an odd tenacity of life in the fundamentals of even the most flagrant legends about the Scottish hero. Few names have been so saturated with nonsense in prose and verse; and the saturation seems to be ceaseless, having developed a formidable access in our own very times. Yet when we come to documents and other close quarters, we generally realise in some shape or other almost all the leading events of his wonderful legendary career. The statements of the graver of the old Scots historians are sufficient to convince the man who has worked hardest of all in clearing up the history of the League, that he was received at the French Court.* For those of narrower faith there is one little scrap of what lawyers call real evidence, worth more than all the narratives of the chroniclers. When Wallace was

* "Il se réfugia en France, où il fut honorablement accueilli et traité par le Roi.”—Michel, Les Ecossais en France, i. 46.

apprehended and taken to London for trial, after the fashion of dealing with other criminals he was searched, and the articles in his possession duly removed and inventoried. Among these were letters of safe-conduct from King Philip his French passport, in short; a valuable piece of evidence, had any been needed, of practices hostile to the King of England.* That he should, at the Court of Philip, have forgotten the great cause to which he was devoted is an inadmissible supposition; and he is at least as likely as any one to have suggested that the common interest of France and Scotland lay in enmity towards England.

But we find more distinct traces of Wallace having dealt with France through a diplomatic agent. When he held the office of Governor of Scotland, like every other man in power he required conformity in those who worked with him; and when they would not conform, displaced them. If he needed an excuse for strong measures, he had it in the urgency of the question at issue-the preservation of the national independence. Accordingly, he drove out the primate who leaned to the Norman side, and got William Lamberton, a partisan of the national independence, elected Archbishop of St Andrews. Certain articles presented against this

*

Palgrave, Documents and Records illustrating the History of Scotland, and the Transactions between the Crowns of Scotland and England,' cxcv.

B

archbishop to his ecclesiastical superior, the Pope, by King Edward, bear that

"Being thus made bishop, Lamberton continued at the Court of France with other the great men of Scotland, the King's enemies, labouring continually to do all the harm and injury in his power against his liege lord, until the peace was finally concluded between France and England. And after the conclusion of such treaty, he, Lamberton, by letterspatent under his seal, urged and excited the prelates, earls, barons, and all the commonality of Scotland (these being the King's enemies), to carry on the war vigorously until the bishop and the other lords in France could return to Scotland. Moreover, the bishop addressed his special letters, sealed with his seal, to the traitor Wallace, and prayed that, for the love of him the bishop, he, Wallace, would do all possible hurt and damage to the King of England. And Lamberton also wrote to his officers in Scotland to employ a portion of his own provision for the sustenance of Wallace."*

Soon afterwards Scotland was too effectually subdued to hold independent diplomatic relations abroad. In a curious way, however, the thread of the negotiations so begun may be traced through the intervening confusions, until the whole was resumed when France and Scotland could speak to each other both as separate independent kingdoms,

* Palgrave, clxv.