forth like the others, wandering unfortunates, with no hold upon the world but that which their heads and hands, and perhaps the lustre of their descent, gave them, and in the end they rooted themselves as landed Lords and Princes. John Stewart, Earl of Buchan, the High Constable, whose deeds and fate have been already recorded, was a son of the Regent Albany, and grandson of King Robert II. Alexander Stewart, Duke of Albany, a brother of James III., cuts a rather ugly figure in the history of his own country. He set up as king, calling himself Alexander IV., and agreed to do homage and acknowledge the old supremacy of England if Edward IV. would assist him, and make his nominal title a reality. After a rather adventurous life he went over to France. His antecedents did not in the least prejudice the tolerant heart of Louis XI. against him; on the contrary, he was a man very much after that monarch's own heart. He acquired great lordships in France, and thoroughly assimilated himself to the Continental system. He married Anne de la Tour, daughter of the Count of Auvergne and Boulogne, of a half-princely family, which became afterwards conspicuous by producing Marshal Turenne, and at a later period the eccentric grenadier, Latour d'Auvergne, who, in homage to republican principles, would not leave the subaltern ranks in Napoleon's army, and became more conspicuous by remaining there than many who escaped from that level to acquire wealth and power. The sister of Anne de la Tour married Lorenzo de Medici, Duke of Urbino. From this connection Albany was the uncle of Catherine de Medici, the renowned Queen of France, and, in fact, was that nearest relation, who, as folks used to say in this country, "gave her away" to Henry II. On this occasion he got a cardinal's hat for Philip de la Chambre, his mother's son by a second marriage. He lived thoroughly in the midst of the Continental royalties of the day, and had the sort of repute among them that may be acquired by a man of great influence and connection, whose capacity has never been tried by any piece of critical business— a repute that comes to persons in a certain position by a sort of process of gravitation. Brave he seems to have been, like all his race, and he sometimes held even important commands. He accompanied his friend, Francis I., in his unfortunate raid into Italy in 1525, and was fortunately and honourably clear of that bad business, the battle of Pavia, by being then in command of a detachment sent against Naples. His son, a thorough Frenchman, became afterwards Regent of Scotland; but though he acted in the way of legitimate business, he was not, as we shall find, a much better friend to his country than his father had been. Well scolded as they have been through all legitimate history, it has been the fortune of M. Michel to show that to the Albanies Scotland owes a boon which would have gone far to retrieve their character a century ago—the use of and taste for French wines. This specialty as a national taste is not even yet dead; for every Englishman who gets at good tables in Scotland, remarks on the preference for the French wines over those of Spain and Portugal, although, until the other day, the duties, which in old Scotland had been greatly in their favour, were rather against the French. The following details about the commerce of the Scots in France seem interesting. 66 During his residence in France, the Duke of Albany occupied himself actively, as it would appear, in favour of the Scotch merchants trading in our country, all the more that they were undoubtedly commissioned by the nobility. His efforts were crowned with success; and Francis I. gave at Amboise, in the month of May 1518, an order to free these foreigners from the dues to which foreign merchandise was subjected at Dieppe, the usual place of their disembarkation; which, however, did not prevent fresh demands on the part of Scotland some years after. "What commodities could the Scotch bring to our country? "Probably the same which they sent to Flanders, and of which we have a list in the great book of Andrew Halyburton, one of the first merchants of his time, who filled the high office of Conservator of the Privileges of the Scottish Nation in the Low Countries-or, as we should now say, Scottish Con sul-at Middleburg. There was, in the first place, salmon, which came even to the inland towns, such as Reims, where a municipal order of 1380 regulated the sale of it; then herrings, cod, and other fish, for the common people; lastly, wool, leather, and skins. "Afterwards this catalogue increased so much that a rhymer of the seventeenth century could say to a courtier 'Tury, vous quittez donc la cour, Mais celui d'Espagne ou d'Escosse.' Spain and Scotland, it seems, were the countries in which commerce was most lucrative, as there also seems reason to believe that the Spaniards and the Scotch were the foreigners best known in France, when we find another poet make an actor say— 'Je passe quand je veux, bien que je sois Français, Tantôt pour Espagnol, tantôt pour Escossois.' "In exchange for the goods which they brought us, the Scotch received from us the products of a more advanced civilisation, not only by regular commerce, but by diplomacy, the agents of which, as it seems, had the privilege of bringing in goods free of tax. On the 8th May 1586, Henry III. wrote to M. de Chateauneuf, his ambassador at the Court of Elizabeth I beg of you also to mention to her the depredation which some of her subjects have committed near Dieppe on a Scotch vessel, which was returning to Scotland, in which there were, to the value of sixteen hundred crowns, wines, silken cloths, sugar, spices, and other things which the said Sire Esneval had caused to be purchased, and was having carried for his use into Scotland, by one of his people named Captain James. They had the cruelty to remove the sails of the said vessel, and to leave it and also another Scotch vessel at the mercy of the wind and sea; but God helped them so much that they were thrown up on the coast by the reflux of the tide there, where they were known and succoured.' "The place occupied by wines in this enumeration of goods destined for Scotland shows the importance of the consumption of them by our allies in the sixteenth century. Even in the thirteenth, Henri d'Andeli describes the Scotch and some other Northern nations as drinking abundantly of the wines of La Rochelle; and in the following century Froissart shows us their ships coming into the port of Bordeaux to load with wine, at the risk of being captured in going out of the river, as happened under rather singular circumstances related by Cleirac, who supposes the master of a Scotch vessel, laden with wine for Calais, in connivance with Turkish pirates. A letter of James IV. to the first president of the parliament of Bordeaux-recommending to him the affair of his subject George Wallace, master of the ship Volant, seized for theft imputed to Robert Gardiner and Duncan Campbell-tells us that in |