assembled the Kings Majesties Subjects to the great charges and vain attendance of many Noblemen and Barons to see their passions put forward They have busied the Prince to condemn others by power a Minister of their attempts and not purge himself to posterity for such a Paper should have been answered by a Pen not by an Ax. There is no Prince living no nor dead but Subjects have and do both write and speak of after their fantasies Augustus in a Letter to Tiberius Noli in hac re indagere et nimium indignari quemquam esse qui de me loquatur male satis est enim si hoc habemus ne quis malefacere possit And Tiberius in the beginning of his raign though after he killed Cremutius Codrus for words was wont to say in Civitate libera linguam quoque liberam esse debere Wise Princes have never troubled themselves much about talkers weak spirits cannot suffer the liberty of judgements nor the indiscretion of tongues To strive to restrain them is the work of busie Bodies who would fain have somewhat to do but know not what nor how to help Domitian to kill gnats with his Dagger having won points and conclusions heretofore in the State beyond their hopes they begin to foster great and shameful hopes beyond the reach of all obtaining A Prince should be such towards his Subjects as he would have God eternal towards him who full of mercy spareth peopled Cities and darteth his Thunders amongst the vast and wilde Mountains To ARABELLA Countess of Lothian Madam AS those antients who when they had given over with credit any facultie wherein they excelled were wont to offer the Tools and Instruments of their Art to the Shrine of some Deity My Musical recreations giving place to more laborious serious my Lute these many daies like my mind lying out of tune keeping no harmony in perfect discord I offer these airs and tabulature to your Ladiships harmonious Virtues and to whom could they more deservedly appertain than unto her whose goodness of nature and eminent known virtues of mind may justly intitle the onely Grace and Muse of our Northern Climate Though the Gift be not much worth I hope your Ladiship will daign to accept it as if it were a greater and more precious from a Giver brought already in admiration of your Ladiships worth and who desireth nothing more than to remain Your Ladiships to command W. DRUMMOND To Isabella Countess of Perth Madam YOur Courtesiâ— hath prevented me it being mine to offer you thanks both for esteeming me worthy so honourable a Task and for measuring those lines according to affection and not their worth for if they had any it was all as the Moon hath her light borrowed from the Rayes of your Ladiships own invention But this quality becometh well your sweet disposition and the generosity of that Noble Stem of which you have your birth as doth the erecting of that notable Monument to your all-worthy Lord by the which ye have not onely obliged all his kinred now living but in ages to come the unborn posterity to render you immortal Thanks Your Desert and good opinion of me have by a gracious violence if I can be so happy as to do you service won me to remain your Ladiships Ever to Command W. DRUMMOND To the Right Honourable JOHN Earl of PEARTH My Noble LORD THough as Glaucus saies to Diomed in Homer Like the Race of Leaves the Race of Man is that deserves no question nor receives his being any other breath the Wind in Autumn strowes the Earth with old leaves then the Spring the Woods with new indews yet I have ever thought the knowledge of kinred and the Genealogies of the antient families of a Countrey a matter so far from contempt that it deserveth highest praise Herein consisteth a part of the knowledge of a mans own self It is a great spur to virtue to look back on the worth of our line In this is the memory of the dead preserved with the living being more firm and honourable than any Epitaph The living know that band which tyeth them to others By this man is distinquished from the reasonless and the noble of Men from the baser sort For it often falleth out though we cannot tell how for the most part that generosity followeth good Birth and Parentage This moved me to essay this Table of your Lordships house which is not inferiour to the best in this Isle and greatest It is but roughly I confess hewen nakedly limmed and after better informations to be amended In Pieces of this kind who doth according to such light as he receiveth is beyond reprehension Your Lordships humble Servant and Kinsman W. Drummond To the Right Honourable J. Earl of T. My Lord THe Ocean though great Rivers with many currents pay him Tribute disdains not to receive also the lesser loyal though ignoble Brooks which by one only Urn powre themselves into his bosom no more will your Lordship after the many congratulations of your Countrey of the State of your great Friends reject the applause of the Muses fair though contemned Mistress who by me offer this Posy of Flowres to your Lordship who is the flowre of Nobleness in acknowledgment of your Lordships constant zeal towards them and their many obligations towards you congratulating your prosperous Fortunes which they wish to encrease and praying the heavens at last may turn so propitious to virtue and true worth that though they do not reward them upon Earth yet the world may see that they do not suffer them ever to lie oppressed They have fair hopes that the advancement of your Lordship is the advancement of them for the body preceding the shadow must follow Your Lordship being near the helm of the State they exspect a new Saturnian world knowledge must florish ignorance decay as Mists before the Sun Innocency live guarded oppression trampled and they shall no longer hereafter have occasion to wish ask or complain Your Lordships Servant W. Drummond To the truely Noble S. R. Carre Gentleman of the Kings Majesties Bed-Chamber SIR HOw joyful were all here who either love worth in others or are conscious of any part of it in themselves to hear the happy event of your late danger but yet the apprehension of what might have fallen forth if Providence had not otherwise disposed doth still with a pensive fear possesse their minds It was too much hazarded in a point of Honour why should true Valour have answered fierce Barbarity Nobleness Arrogancy Religion Impiety Innocency Malice The disparagement being so vast Was it for knowing this when ye left us that ye graved with your Diamond in a Window Frail Glass thou bearest this name as well as I And none doth know in which it first shall dye And had ye then to venter to the hazard of a Combate the exemplary of virtue and the Muses Sanctuary the lives of twenty such as his who hath fallen in Honours
Allegiance bound to him and though he were bound to them and they to follow his commandment he would foresee whether it were to him honourable and to his Realm honest to leave their Old Friend of France in his extrem necessity without aid or comfoâ—t With this answer though the King was not content when Iames went out of his presence he is recorded to have said Happy shall they be which shall be subjects to a King endued with such wisdome of so tender years of age His severity in Justice was traduced by some under terms of cruelty but considering the Disorders of his Countrey by the fierce nature of the People over whom he ruled who by often Rebellions did not only exasperate him to some severity but even constrain him to keep them in aw his rigour was rather an effect of necessity than of his natural disposition No Prince did more reverently entertain Peace at Home amongst his Subjects nor more wiâ—lingly conclude the same amongst Strangers There is no Prince more cruel than he who by a facility and evil measured pitty suffers Robberies Rapes Murthers and all sort of opprâ—ssion and abuses to overturn his Countrey by which a whole State is interessed when the strictest Justice toucheth but some particular persons By him abuses were reformed defects repaired sedition and discord was put from the Nobles equity and industry restored to the Countrey every man had a certainty of enjoying his own and security Into all Men was either infused a will to do well or a necessity of so doing imposed upon them virtuous actions being honoured crimes punished The mean man did respect the great not fear him the great man did precede the mean not contemn him favour was mastered by equity Ambition by Virtue for the excellent Prince by doing well himself had taught his subjects so to do He was one of the worthiest of all the Kings of Scotland till his time of the former Kings it might have been said The Nation made them Kings but this King made that People a Nation He left behinde him one Son and six Daughters King Iames the second Margarite wife to Lewis the eleventh King of France Elizabeth Dutchess of Bretaigne Iane first of Anguss and then Countess of Huntley Elenora married to Sigismond Arch-duke of Austria Mary wife to the Lord of Camphire and Annabella he was buried in the Charter-house of Perth which he had founded where the Doublet in which he was slain was kept almost to our Time as a Relict and with execrations seen of the People every man thinking himself interested in his wrong The rumour of his Murther blazed abroad it is incredible what weeping and sorrow was through all the Countrey for even by them to whom his Government was not pleasant he was deplored and the act thought execrable The Nobles of their own accord and motion from all parts of the Kingdome assembled and came to Edenbrough and ere they consulted together as if they had all one mind directed troups of armed men through all the quarters of the Kingdome to apprehend the Murtherers and produce them to Justice Such diligence was used grief and anger working in their minds that within the space of fourty daies all the Conspiratours were taken and put to shameful deaths The common sort as Christopher Clawn or Cahown and others that were of the Council in the Conspiracy having had art or part in the plot were hanged on Gibbets The chief Actors that the Common wealth might publickly receive satisfaction were made spectacles of Justice by exquisite torments the punishment of Athole was continued three daies on the first he was stript naked to his shirt and by a Crane fixed in a Cart often hoised aloft disjointed and hanging shown to the People and thus dragged along the great Street of the Town on the second day he was mounted on a Pillar in the Market place he was crowned with a Diadem of burning Iron with a Plaâ—hart bearing The King of all Traytors thus was his Oracle accomplished on the third he was laid naked along upon a Scaffold his Belly was ript up his heart and Bowels taken out and thrown in a fire flickering before his eyes Lastly his head was cut off and fixed in the most eminent place of the Town his body sent in quarters to the most populous Cities of the Kingdom to remain a Trophie of Justice His Nephew Robert Stuart was not altogether so rigorously handled for that he did but consent to others wickedness being only hang'd and quarter'd But for that it was notorious Robert Graham had embrued his hands in the Kings bloud a Gallows being raised in a Cart he had his right hand nailed to it and as he was dragged along the Street Executioners with burning Pincers tearing the most fleshy parts off his Carcass being nip'd torn and flâ—y'd his heart and entrails were thrown in a fire his head exalted and his Quarters sent amongst the Towns to satisfy the wrath and sorrow of the injured people being asked during his torture how he dared put hand in his Prince he made answer that having Heaven and Hell at his choice he dared leap out of Heaven and all the contentments thereof in the flaming bottomes of Hell an answer worthy such a Traytor Aâ—neas Sylvius then Legate in Scotland for Pope Eugenius the fourth after Pope himself having seen this sudden and terrible Revenge being a witness of the Execution said he could not tell whether he should give them greater commendations that revenged the Kings death or brand them with sharper condemnation that distain'd themselves with so hainous a Parricide Iames King of Scotes AnoÌ„ 1436 THE HISTORY OF THE Reign of Iames the second KING of SCOTLAND SCarce were the tears dryed for the loss of the Father when the three Estates of the Kingdom meet 1654. and at Holy-rood-House set the Crown upon the head of the Son then a child in the sixth year of his age The Government of the Realm is trusted to Sir Alexander Levingstoun of Calendar the custody of the Kings person with the Castle of Edenbrough are given to the Chancelor Sir William Creightoun Men for that they had been ever faithful to the Father without apparent vices of no capacity to succeed nor entertaining aspiring thoughts for a Diadem held worthy of these charges and dignities Good men may secure themselves from Crimes but not from envy and calumnies for men great in trust in publick affairs are ever assaulted by the ambition of those who apprehend they are less in imployment than they conceive they are in merit Archembald Earl of Dowglass grudging mightily that the State had bestowed those honours upon men far inferiour to him as though by this the many merits of his Ancestours had been forgotten and his own service neglected They being ever accustomed in times of Peace to be nearest the Helm of the State and when any danger of war blazed sent abroad to encounter it In a confusion of
cause it may be thoright these men found out their new Poesie differing from the Matters Manners Rules of former ages either they did not see the way of Poesie or were affraid to enter it The verses of Camillus Quernus as they are imitated by Strada seem very plausible and to admiration to some but how far they are off right Poesie children may guess These mens new conceptions approach neerer his than to the Majesty and Statelinefs of the great Poets The contempt and undervaluing of verses hath made men spare their travel in adorning them but Poesie as it hath overcom ignorance at last will overcom envy and comtempt This I have been bold to write unto you not to give you any instruction but to manifest mine obedience to your request W. D. To the Right Honourable the Earl of Sterlin WHen the pittiful news came of so dear Funerals though I had an intention to have written to your Lordship I restrained my self both because your wound was flagrant and that I had not an argument of comfort which was not your own Nothing is now left me but to manifest that the sense of this loss could not but perplex him grievously who never made any difference between your fortunes and his own I hold my self Copartner of all your Griefs as I have been of your prosperities I know your Fatherly affiction I know too your constancy which being seasoned with piety will not suffer you to repine at that which is the determinate will of God Your erudition and experience instruct you that such accidents should be taken in a good part and chearfully which are not incident to us alone and which by our sighs tears plaints we may not evite and put far from us ye must not attend till time mitigate your languor for this do the vulgar sort of men with sola dies poterit tantum lenire dolorem A wise man should prevent and anticipate time over-run newborn Grief which is an ungrateful Guest thrusting out and ran sacking the Masters of their Inn. I who am conscious to your patience and wisdom am assured ye have performed all this already upon which confidence I will leave off to trouble you further or lay a heavier burthen and needless task upon my self W. Drummond To SHould ye think to escape this Enemy of Virtue Fortune when she never spareth the most Worthy who hath ever yet in many excellencies been eminent whom she hath not either after one fashion or other if not trampled yet tossed and make not a long search in the old ages of the world and through the Mists of Antiquity but look upon our own Times and our Fathers Ye have Sidney cropped in the vigour of his Youth by a murthering Bullet Rawleigh brought to a fatal Scaffold la Nove with the Marquess D' Urfee complaining in miserable Prisons Tasso famishing in the like Thraldom the two Counts of Mirandula Spectacles of Pitty and Cruelty the one by too soon a Death if death can be too soon the other by being assassinated by his neerhst kinsemen As if Excellencies were the only Object of Disasters and some secret influence laboured to make the bravest of men and the basest equal Or that the superiour powers thought Glory to belong only to them and no praise-worthy Actions should befal poor Mortals Yet should they not envy silly men a dusty honour which in some small moments of time vanisheth and reacheth no further than the narrow bounds of some few Climates of this small Globe of the Earth We may doubt whether Excellencies and Heroical Virtues were to be desired with so many dangers and miseries lackying them or a homebred untaught rude Plobeian life W. DRUMMOND To S. W. A. SIR MY silence this time past proceeded no waies of any forgetfulness of you but from my many new cares and sorrows The loss of so many friends this season hath estranged me from my self and turned my mirth into mourning what civil arms and discord have performed in other kingdomes of Europe a still mortality hath done in this So many Funerals these many years have not been seen as in this one There are few bands of kinred societies acquaintances friendship which by death are not broken here without respect of Age vigour ranck quality and justly this mortality might claim the name of Pestilence if the Dead were deprived of customary burial Well have some Astrological Divines guessed that this year should be the great Judgement What is recorded of the years 100. and 120. that Church yards were not ample enough to contain the dead bodies but that new ground was digged up is true in this and what of the year 1348. that the third of mankind was sweeped from the Earth we may say that though this Countrey hath not lost the third yet that the Almighty providence hath taken away the tenth part of the People This is perhaps a part of that Judgement which the late blazing lights of Heaven did signifie unto us the defects of the Sun besides the malignant influences of other Caelestial Bodies This one year is enought to make men hereafter if not altogether believe yet fear Astrological Predictions which though they fail in particulars yet strangely hold true in some generals Heavens I hope shall preserve you ad molliora et meliora tempora to be a witness and Recorder of their Just Proceedings on this Globe of the Earth for the Good of your self your Friends and all that love you 1623. W. Drummond The Oath of a KNIGHT I shall fortisie and defend the true holy Catholtque and Christian Religion presently possessed at all my power I shall be loyal and true to my Soveraign Lord the King his Majestie and do honour and reverence to all Orders of Chivalrie and to the noble office of Arms. I shall fortifie and defend justice to the uttermost of my power but feed or favour I shall never flie from the Kings Majesty my Lord and Master or his Lieutenant in time of battel or medly with dishonour I shall defend my native Countrey from all aliens and strangers at all my power I shall maintain and defend the honest Adoes and Quarrels of all Ladies of Honour Widows Orphans and Maids of good Fame I shall do diligence wherever I hear tell there is any Traytours Murtherers Rovers and Masterfull Theeves and Outlaws that suppress the Poor to bring them to the Law at all my Power I shall maintain and defend the Noble and gallant State of Chevalrie with Horses Harnesses and other Knightly Apparel to my Power I shall be diligent to enquire and seek to have the knowledge of all Articles and points touching or concerning my duty contained in the Book of Chevalrie All and sundry the Premisses I oblige me to keep and fulfil so help me God by my one hand and by God himself To his loving Cousin IF wishes could have place or prevail I wish ye could be moved to separate your self from the frequent conversation and
actions to all men which they cannot go beyond Most then answered I Death is not such an evil and pain as it is of the Vulgar esteemed Death said he nor painful is nor evil except in contemplation of the cause being of it self as indifferent as birth yet can it not be denyed and amidst those dreams of earthly pleasures the uncouthnesse of it with the wrong apprehension of what is unknown in it are noysom But the Soul sustained by its Maker resolved and calmly retired in it self doth find that death sith it is in a moment of Time is but a short nay sweet sigh and is not worthy the remembrance compared with the smallest dramm of the infinite Felicity of this Place Here is the Palace Royal of the Almighty King in which the uncomprehensible comprehensibly manifesteth Himself in place highest in substance not subject to any corruption or change for it is above all motion and solid turneth not in quantity greatest for if one Starre one Sphere be so vast how large how huge in exceeding demensions must those bounds be which do them all contain In quality most pure and orient Heaven here is all but a Sunne or the Sunne all but a Heaven If to Earthlings the Foot-stool of God and that Stage which he raised for a small course of Time seemeth so glorious and magnificent What estimation would they make if they could see of his eternal Habitation and Throne and if these be so wonderful what is the fight of him for whom and by whom all was created of whose Glory to behold the thousand thousand part the most pure Intelligencies are fully satiate and with wonder and delight rest amazed for the beauty of his light and the light of His beauty are uncomprehensible Here doth that earnest appetite of the understanding content it self not seeking to know any more For it seeth before it in the vision of the Divine essence a Miroir in the which not Images or shadows but the true and perfect essence of every thing created is more clear and conspicuous than in it self all that may be known or understood Here doth the Will pause it self as in the center of its Eternal rest glowing with a fiery affection of that infinite and al-sufficient good which being fully known cannot for the infinite motives and causes of love which are in him but be fully and perfectly loved As he is onely the true and essential Bounty so is he the onely essential and true beauty deserving alone all Love and Admiration by which the Creatures are onely in so much fair and excellent as they parâ—icipate of his Beauty and excelling Excellencies Here is a blessed Company every one joying as much in anothers Felicity as in that which is proper because each seeeth another equaly loved of God thus their distinct joyes are no fewer than the copartners of the Joy And as the Assembly is in number answerable to the large capacity of the place so are the joyes answerable to the numberlesse number of the Assembly No poor and piâ—tiful mortal confined on the Globe of Earth who hath never seen buâ— soâ—row or interchangeably some painted superficial pleasures can righly think on or be sufficient to conceive the termless delights of this place So many Feathers move not on Birds so many Birds dint not the Air so many leaves tremble not on Trees so many Trees grow not in the solitary Forests so many waves turn not in the Ocean and so many grains of Sand limit not those Waves as this triumphant Court hath variety of delights and Joies exempâ—ed from all comparison Happiness at once here is â—ully known and fully enjoyed and as infinite in conâ—inuance as extent Here is flourishing and never-fading youth without Age Strength without Weaknesse Beauty never blasting Knowledge without Learning Abundance without Loathing Peace without Disturbance Participâ—tion without Envy Rest without Labour Light without rifing or setting Sunne Perpetuity without moments for Time which is the measure of Endurance did never enter in this shining Eternity Ambition Disdain Malice Difference of Opinions cannot approach this place and resembling those foggy Mists which cover those Lists of Sublunary things All pleasure paragon'd with what is here is pain all Mirth mourning all Beauty deformity Here one daies abiding is above the continuing in the most fortunate estate on the Earth many years and sufficient to countervail the extreamest torments of Life But although this bliss of Souls be great and their joies many yet shal they admit addition and bee more ful and perfect at that long wished and general meeting with their bodies Amongst all the wonders of the great Creator not one appeareth to be more wounderful replied I than that our Bodies should arise having suffered so many changes and nature denying a return from privation to a Habit. Such power said he being above all that the Understanding of Man can conceave may well work such wonders For if Mans Vnderstanding could comprehend all the secrets and counsels of that Eternal Majesty it must of necessity be equal unto it The Author of Nature is not thralled to the Lawes of Nature but worketh with them or contrary to them as it pleaseth him What he hath a will to do he hath a power to perform To that power which brought all this All from nought to bring again in one instant any substance which ever was into it unto what it was once should not be thought impossible for who can do more can do less and his power is no less after that which was by him brought forth is decaâ—ed and vanished than it was before it was produced being neither restrained to certain limits or instruments or to any determinate and definite manner of working where the power is without restraint the work admitteth no other limits than the Workers will This world is as a Cabinet to God in which the small things however to us hid and secret are nothing less kept than the great For as he was wife and powerful to creat so doth his knowledge comprehend his own Creation yea every change and varity in it of which it is the very Source Not any Atom of the scatter'd Dust of mankind though daily flowing under new forms is to him unknown and his knowledge doth distinguish and discern what once his power shall waken and raise up Why may not the Arts-Master of the world like a Molder what he hath framed in divers shapes confound in one mass and then severally fashion them out of the same Can the Spargirick by his Art restore for a space to the dry and withered Rose the natural purple and bluth and cannot the Almighty râ—ise and refine the body of man after never so many alterations on the Earth Reason her self finds it more possible for infinit power to cast out from it self a finit world and restore any thing in it though decaied and dissolved to what it was first than for man a finit piece of reasonable misery to change the form of matter made to his hand the power of God never brought forth all that it can for then were it bounded and no more infinit That time doth approach O hast ye times away in which the dead shall live and the living be changed and of all actions the Guerdon is at hand then shall there â—e an end without an end time shall finish and place shall be altered motion yielding unto rest and another world of an age eternal and unchangeable shall arise which when he had said me thought he vanished and I all astonished did awake To the Memory of the most Excellent Lady JANE Countess of PERTH THis Beauty which Pale death in dust did turn And clos'd so soon within a Coffin sad Did passe like Lightning like to T hunder burn So little Life so much of Worth it Had. Heavens bâ—t to shew their Might here made it shine And when admir'd then in the Worlds disdain O Tears O Grief did call it back again Lest Earth should vaâ—ut she kept what was Divine What can we hope for more What more enjoy Sith â—â—irest Things thus soonest have their End And as on Bodies shadowes do attend Sith all our blisse is follow'd with Annoy Yet she 's not dead she lives where she did love Her Memory on Earth Her soul above To S. W. A. THough I have twice been at the Doors of Death And twice found shut those Gates which ever mourn This but a lightning is Truce tane to Breath For late-born Sorrows augurre fteet return Amidst thy sacred Cares and Courtly toils Alexis when thou shalt hear wandring Famâ— Tell Death bath triumph'd o're my mortal spoils And that on Earth I am but a sad Name If thou e're held me clear by all our Love By all that Blisse those Ioyes Heaven here us gave I conjure thee and by the Maids of Jove To grave this short Remembrance on my Grave Here Damon lies whose Songs did somtime grace The murmuring Esk may roses shade the Place On the Report of the Death of the Author Iâ— that were true which whispered is by Fame That Damons light no more on Earth doth burn His Part on Phoebus physick would disclaim And cloth'd in clouds as erst for Phâ—eton mourn Yea Fame by this had got so deep a wound That scarce She could have power to tell his death Her Wings cut short who could her Trumpet sound Whose blaze of late was nurs'd but by his Breath That Spirit of his which most with mine was free By mutual traffick enterchanging store If chac'd from him it would have come to me Where it so ost familiar was before Some secret Grief distempring first my Mind Had though not knowing made me feel this losse A Sympathy had so our Souls combind That such a parting both at once would tosse Though such Reports to others terrour give Thy Heavenly Virtnes who did never spy I know thou that canst make the dead to live Immortal art and needs not fear to dye Sir WILL. ALEXANDER FINIS