“There is a forest where the din
Of iron branches sounds!
A mighty river roars between,
And whosoever looks therein
Sees the heavens all black with sin, —
Seas not its depths nor bounds.
Longfellow
Whilst Patrick Hepburn, Prior of St. Andrews, was disputing about his “teindis” with David Stratton, the corrupt hierarchy, of which he was a most worthy member, was fast filling up the measure of its iniquity. What that iniquity was — how deep, how dark, how terrible — may still be read in the pages of contemporary history. But the heart turns sickening from the record, feeling it “a vexation only to understand the report,” a pain and a grief even to know what these men dared to do “in the face of the sun and the eye of light.”
Some, indeed, there were who amidst all that unutterable pollution yet “walked with Christ in white garments stainless.” For their names and their memories we thank God; and none-the-less because such names have oftenest come down to us surrounded by a mournful halo of martyr glory. Strange to say, it is usually those stories that end with stake and gibbet to which the student turns with relief and pleasure, and over which he lingers gladly. Bright to the thoughtful eye is the dungeon’s midnight gloom; dark with a horror of great darkness are the abodes of pomp and luxury, where cardinal, priest, and bishop held ungodly revelry.
For they held revelry as those who neither feared God nor regarded man. Like the nobles at Belshazzar’s feast, they drank wine, and praised their gods of silver and gods of gold; they profaned to every vile, degrading use the vessels of the sanctuary,” those hallowed names and symbols which Rome has borrowed, or rather stolen, from the true temple of the Lord. But they saw not the writing of the man’s hand upon the wall, they knew not that even then they were weighed in the balances and found wanting, and that God had numbered their kingdom, and finished it.
Already, at the period of which we write, the light of the glorious gospel of Christ was beginning to shine upon Scotland. Five years before young Patrick Hamilton, the protomartyr of the Scottish Reformation, sealed his testimony at St. Andrews, and “the reek of his burning infected all that it did blow upon.” Many copies of Tyndale’s New Testament had found their way into the country, chiefly through the instrumentality of the merchants of the sea-port towns; and these were eagerly read by all classes of the people. Some of the principal teachers at the University of St. Andrews were strongly inclined to the reformed doctrines, and numbers of the young men who were educated there had imbibed their opinions.
But to return to the true history of David Stratton. For a short time after his bold message to the Prior of St. Andrews all went on prosperously with him. His land brought forth abundantly, his nets gathered rich spoils from the sea. What was better still, Alison Lindsay was disposed to look favorably on his suit; nor did her relatives, at this time, seem to regard him with an unfriendly eye. But while he “blessed his soul,” and promised himself years of peace and plenty, a dark and threatening cloud had gathered unnoticed, and was about to burst over his head.
The proud and covetous Prior of St. Andrews answered his rude taunt with the thunders of a Romish excommunication. It might have been thought, even by zealous Romanists, that the punishment exceeded the offence; and that those thunders might better have been reserved for more important occasions, and more desperate and willful offenders. “For, indeed, the man had no religion,” as we are gravely told of another person, by way of a sufficient reason for his full and triumphant acquittal from the charge of heresy. It is light that darkness hates, and light alone: Rome’s quarrel is not with ignorance and irreligion; though these may sometimes provoke her bitter anger, when they lay their hands upon some of her cherished interests. This was just what David Stratton had done: striking blindly and recklessly, under the influence of momentary irritation, he had chanced to strike a very tender part “One that shoulde have said that no tithes shoulde be payed” was a dangerous member of society in the eyes of those who, by means of these very “teindis and rentis,” extracted from the fears or the superstitions of the laity,” were clothed in purple and fine linen, and fared sumptuously every day.
It is not easy for us to understand what David Stratton felt when he found himself cursed with bell, book, and candle, and “delivered into the deville’s handes.” The lion’s roar has lost its terrors for us, who have only seen him caged and powerless; it was very different with the men who knew that the roar was but the prelude to the crouch and spring of the deadly destroyer.
But apart from the temporal consequences of excommunication, which were likely to be dreadful enough, other troubles, born of superstition, could not fail to arise in the soul of the excommunicated. Every man who is not religious, in the highest sense of the word, must be in some way or other superstitious; for though many men can dispense with a creed, every man must of necessity have a faith: a belief in something of which his senses cannot take cognizance, in some power greater than his own, yet not without its influence upon his being. David Stratton had thrust this belief away into the darkest corner of his soul — had smothered it with the pursuits, the interests, the pleasures of life — had almost become insensible to its existence. But the thunder of excommunication awakened it within him, and every superstitious fear or fancy he had felt or known since childhood nourished and gave it strength. Strange things began to haunt and torture him: memories of warnings from the lips of a dead mother; frightful stories of hell and purgatory from the friars’ sermons he had occasionally listened to; legends of the terrible punishments inflicted on those who despised holy Kirk, how their bodies could not rest in their graves, nor their souls find relief from anguish; — all these mingled with recollections of his own sins since last he had confessed, and indeed during his whole life — a very miscellaneous catalogue, comprising such items as neglecting to hear mass, and running someone through with his whinger in a drunken brawl. But on all these points he was profoundly silent, covering a heart that ached and trembled in secret by a dauntless, or rather a defiant, bearing. He paid the prior his Latin curses back with interest in good plain Saxon; and he boasted everywhere that he “wadna gie a brass bodle for a’ his cursing.”
He would, however, have given half his worldly possessions with a cheerful heart to be well clear of the whole business, when he learned in what light it was regarded by Alison Lindsay and by her relatives. A cold message from her father, declining a proffered visit, stung him to the quick, especially as it was hinted that her own wishes on the subject entirely coincided with those of her family. About the same time, an intimation reached him from another quarter, that his open contempt of the sentence of excommunication was considered to savor of heresy, and might probably involve him in temporal pains and penalties.
Upon hearing this, he went to Lauriston to seek his brother’s counsel and countenance. The consolations the Laird administered to his wounded feelings were of a very common, but very unsatisfactory kind. “This came of rejecting good counsel — he had told him beforehand exactly what would happen.” Such was the substance of Lauriston’s exhortations; nor was it to be wondered at that under the circumstances he should look coldly on his imprudent brother. Naturally both shrewd and timid, he was keenly alive to the peril David incurred in provoking a prosecution for heresy, and no less sensible that the danger would not be confined to his own person, since the orthodoxy of other members of the family was by no means above suspicion. But reasonable as his displeasure may have been, David was not prepared to brook its expression. His anger was easily kindled, and an open quarrel between the brothers, the first since their childhood, followed. David at last strode out from the halls of Lauriston with flushed cheek and burning brow, protesting that nothing would induce him to remain, even for one single night, beneath the roof of a brother who used him so unworthily. He had come on horseback, and with a mounted servant, but he departed alone and on foot, leaving orders at the porter’s lodge for his attendant to follow him next day to his own dwelling with the horses.
It was late; but the month was August, and the long twilight lingered still. Mechanically David went on, his mind too busy with its own bitter thoughts to take note of anything around him. The kirkmen, the Lind-says, his brother, all were alike his enemies; and had either united together for his ruin or were determined to abandon him to those who had. Every man’s hand was against him; but if he must die, he would die hard. He would give them all trouble enough before he had done with them, from Patrick Hepburn himself, villain that he was (and David clenched his hand), to Alison Lindsay’s scapegrace brother, who had delivered that bitter message with such a mocking smile. He wondered what had kept him from giving the lad a taste of his whinger in return, save indeed that he was but a “hatpins callant,” and slight and pale-faced like “ Maister Geordie, who’ll be owre blythe to ken a plain man like me can make a muckle fool o’ himsel as weel as a body wha has been driven daft wi’ logic, and Latin, and sic’.” He was just about to retract the acknowledgment of his folly, when feeling a hand laid on his shoulder, he turned quickly round, and at the same moment placed his own on his sword, — a very natural impulse in those rough, uncertain times.
He was a good deal surprised to see the person who had just occupied his thoughts his nephew George. “I a’maist took ye for a robber, lad,” he said, adding an expression that need not be chronicled. “Gang hame to yer bed, and dinna stop folk at midnight on the king’s highway.” He spoke, however, all things considered, with tolerable good humour; for he remembered that he had no personal quarrel with George, who had not even been present during his stormy altercation with the Laird.
“The Laird of Lauriston’s brother,” answered the young scholar, “suld not be found on the king’s highway at midnight within three miles of Lauriston Castle.”
“That’s the Laird o’ Lauriston’s ain doing.”
“Not with his will.” And then the youth exerted himself to the utmost to act the ‘part of peacemaker.
As might be guessed, his mission was not exactly of his own choosing. His gentle mother, the Lady Isabel, had been much distressed by the quarrel between the Laird and his brother. This was not only because she liked David, and did justice to the genuine qualities that lay beneath his rough exterior, but because she was warmly interested in her young cousin Alison, and had set her heart on the prosperous termination of a suit which, from the beginning, she had furthered in every way in her power. No sooner, therefore, had she heard the heavy tramp of David’s retreating footsteps than she hastened to her son, who was reading in his own chamber, and entreated him to follow his uncle, and prevent, if possible, the open and perhaps deadly rupture that must ensue if he quitted Lauriston at such an hour and in such a way. George hesitated, pleading the dislike and contempt with which his uncle evidently regarded him. But his mother’s earnestness overcame his reluctance, and he eventually consented to undertake the difficult and distasteful task.
Though for some time his explanations and remonstrances seemed unavailing, yet he was not discouraged, as he drew a favorable augury from the fact that his uncle was willing to hear him patiently to the end, which was much more than he expected at first.
At length he took the last arrow out of his quiver, and discharged it with due care and deliberation. “His mother,” he said, “greatly regretted his uncle’s departure, having a few days agone received a letter from a gentlewoman, her friend or cousin, concerning which she desired to hold purpose with Maister David.” Then, wisely changing the subject, he added, “Gif ye depart thus, uncle, it will be a tale for all the country side, that the Laird and his brother have quarreled. But come home with me, and bide till the morning breaks, and servants and horses will haud themselves ready to do yer pleasure. So shall ye go, gif ye maun go, as Stratton of Stratton suld frae the halls of Stratton of Lauriston.”
“Atweel — aiblins — for the honour o’ the family,” said David, slowly turning; “but I’ll keep my word, and no see Andrew’s face again”