would, we incline to believe, give us a secure peace-a peace which would justify and recompense the war. That it would be a lasting peace we can scarcely anticipate; for it would leave the deepest internal questions

the north; the second, to get Persia into her power, or under her influence, and through Persia to act upon and stir up the nations that lie between her and our Indian Empire. For years, almost for generations, the court of Teheran has been one of the silent battle-as unsettled as ever, and the great battle of fields between Russia and Great Britain; and according as the one or the other power prevailed, has our north-western frontier in Hindostan been tranquil or disturbed. To Russian intrigue, and the necessity, imminent or supposed, to counteracting it, we owe the Affghanistan war. As long as our inveterate rival remains in a position whence she can harass and command Persia, our Asiatic possessions can expect little repose. The interests of Great Britain and of Turkey alike require that Russia should be driven back across the Caucasian range.

These two modifications of the status quo

European freedom would be still unfought. But at least it might be expected to end for an indefinite period wars of territorial aggrandisement; and by weakening and baffling and compelling to the work of development at home the encroaching and overbearing despotism of Russia, it would assuredly give strength to the cause, and encouragement to the champions of progress. Viewed in that light, the present war-though waged with one despot, against another, in behalf of a third-may prove the first campaign of the great contest of civilisation and humanity which ere long must be brought to issue.

THE

NORTH BRITISH REVIEW.

NO. XLVIII.

FOR FEBRUARY, 1 8 5 6.

ART. I.-Papiers d'Etat, Pièces, et Docu- a close alliance with Achaius, the sixty-fifth ments, inédits ou peu connus, relatifs à Histoire de l'Ecosse au xvie siècle, tirés des Bibliothèques et des Archives de France, et publiés pour le Bannatyne Club d'Edimbourg. Par A. TEULET, Membre, &c., &c.

king of Scotland. It is needless to say that the undermining operations of our antiquaries have tossed Achaius and his sixty-four predecessors from their imaginary thrones, leaving us instead, some dreary lists of hypothetical chiefs, holding an ill-defined influence WERE the friendships of nations admitted to over not more distinctly bounded territories. be as fair an object of the historian's labour While our laborious sappers and miners of as their hatreds and contentions, the long history, such as Pinkerton, Chalmers, Ritson, eventful intercourse between France and and Jamieson, have thus effectually destroyed Scotland would have filled one of the most that compact, simple, ancient nationality of exciting and pleasing chapters in the history a Scotland which owned the sway of "Father of modern Europe. Allowing all due pre- Fergus of a hundred kings," no one has come ponderance to the main objects of history,- forward to perform the synthetic function, the separate development of states and their and shew how the realm of the Bruces and the contests with each other this remarkable Stewarts arose a separate nationality out of instance of steady co-operation and continued chaos-how, in short, Scotland became Scotfriendship between two peoples, geographic- land. We should have this distinctly set ally far separated, and in national character down as a starting point ere we can offer satdissimilar to each other, is possessed of sig- isfactory explanations of the nature of the nal interest for its historical peculiarities, and Franco-Scottish alliance; and since no histohas exercised an influence on the develop-rian of Scotland has distinctly done it so as ment of the European states, which entitles to enable us to refer to it in an abridged form it to more attention than it has hitherto re- as a settled chapter of history, we shall inceived. We shall find, if we examine this vert the more legitimate process, and endeanational alliance as a separate and independ-vour in a few sentences to foreshadow the form ent thread of causes and effects, that as well which it will assume when the critical histoin its origin, its progress, and its final extinc- rian shall give us the history of Scotland tion, it is connected with memorable events" from the earliest period." and great historical changes, to which it has given, or from which it has received, important impulses.

We enter not on the vexed question whether the Picts spoke Irish or German, but are content to consider it as undoubted that, in the days of Alfred and Charlemagne, the northern and eastern districts of Scotland— the Lowlands-were inhabited by men of Teutonic blood and tongue, who were not separated by any distinct national boundaryline from their Saxon brethren. We all know, that after the war of independence the boundary-line between the kingdom of Eng

shire have spoken Gaelic,-the division passing actually through the town of Nairn, of which it used to be said in the seventeenth century, and might almost have been said in the nineteenth, that one-half of its citizens did not understand the speech of the other half. No part of the British empire is more thoroughly Teutonic-none appears to have been more so throughout the whole historic period-than Angus and Aberdeen. whether these districts took their national tone as the home of the ancient Picts, or were peopled by swarms of Saxons passing on from England, or Northmen crossing directly from the shores of Norway, they must have belonged to the general cluster of the Saxon nations.

And

land and the kingdom of Scotland was so between the Celt talking Gaelic and the Lowdistinctly laid down, that when the town of land Scot talking Teutonic, seems to have Berwick became a possession of the English then stood nearly as it did down to the '45, Crown, it was still so nominally separate not precisely co-extensive with the mountains from that England, of which it was geogra- and the flat land, since the men of the Braes phically a frontier fortress, that in the Acts of Angus have ever been Lowland in their of Parliament, down to the present genera-speech, while those of the sandy flats of tion, it was not deemed to be included un- Nairn and the eastern districts of Invernessless it were specially referred to as "the town of Berwick-upon-Tweed." A boundary of so distinct a character, existing during several centuries of history, and indurated by settled hatred and repeated contests, so stamps itself on the mind as an original condition of the very existence of our island, that we have difficulty in placing ourselves in the position of those of our ancestors, whether English or Scottish, who knew not of its existence, and had no reason to believe that it was ever to be. Yet, if we can discard later history and the works of later historians, and throw ourselves back entirely into the past, we shall find it extremely difficult to discover an actual Scotland before the Norman conquest. During the heptarchy or octarchy, the boundaries of the Saxon When the heptarchy ceased, and the southkingdoms, and the authority of their several ern states were united under one crown, a monarchs, are so shifting and uncertain, that more distinct line of demarcation began to be the distinctness of the separate Scottish king-visible. While there was a powerful mo.dom, as our ordinary historians speak of it, makes it seem an unnatural neighbour to them, and suggests that its compact history is fictitious. In the splittings and alliances which make the early history of Saxon England so perplexing, it is easy to see that the monarch or chief ruler of Fife and the Lothians was sometimes independent and powerful, with a fragment of England under his sceptre, and at other times was reduced, like his southern neighbours, to bow before the prevailing influence of some fortunate and politic Bretwalda. Hence we have the school-book stories of Edgar rowed across the Dee by eight tributary kings, one of them Keneth of Scotland; and the more solemn but less accurate assertions about a feudal superiority exercised by a Saxon monarch over the realm or fief of Scotland. Feudal superiority, in fact, had no more place in that assemblage of states than monarchy in a republic or arch-episcopacy in a Presbyterian synod; and the supremacy of the English monarch was characterised with sufficient accuracy, even by that despised author Rapin, "to have been like that of the Stadtholder of the United Provinces of the Low Countries."

narch in the south, reigning over an empire purely Saxon, those far northern states which had not been absorbed in his new kingdom, separated themselves under the sway of a monarch holding an imperfect rule over a portion of their Celtic neighbours. Still there was so much uncertainty in the demarcation, and throughout a considerable period it is so variable, that the perplexed historian having found it necessary to include the Lothians in England, speedily finds that he must speak of Northumberland as a province of Scotland.

Let us now look at those successive steps by which the Island became divided into two nations, each looking on the other with jealous hatred. The Norman Conquest is the earliest. It created for the first time a thorough consolidation of regal power in England, adjusting every man's position as a subject, and feudatory of the King, and covering the soil with strong fortresses to carry out his supremacy. The Norman power was essentially aggressive, and Scotland, Wales, and Ireland, felt that they were in the presence of a new and dangerous neighbour. Scotland was filled with Saxon fugitives, who fled before the When we ask for the northern boundaries foreign invader, and found shelter with a of the cluster of Saxon states, we find that kindred people. It has often been mainthe antiquaries have groped their way through tained, that the source of the Teutonic charDeira and Bernicia, as far as Fifeshire. But acter of the Lowland Scots should be sought having brought us thither they cannot hinder in this immigration, we do not think so, for us from going further. The boundary-line | reasons which will be pretty obvious to those

The death of the Maid of Norway,

who have read the commencement of this ar- | land. ticle; but we avoid entering on a detailed and a competition for the throne among discussion of this point, because it will not much affect our ultimate view, founded on the belief that Lowland Scotland was inhabited by a Saxon population during the war of independence.

distant heirs, brought the matter to a crisis. So thoroughly had the Scottish Court thrown itself into the hands of the strangers, that they engrossed the nearest alliances with the blood royal, and it was among the flower of Among the Saxon fugitives was one man the Norman adventurers that the competiof significant position, Edward the Ætheling, tors for the crown,-twelve in number, arose. the heir on Saxon principles of the English These barons offered without hesitation to do Crown. His sister Margaret, was married homage to Edward King of England, if he to Malcolm the King of Scots. Thus both would help them to the glittering prize. Why at court and throughout the country, Scot- should they not? They had no Scottish naland was the representative and main support tionality to contend for; it would be almost of the Saxon party, who were still in some as unreasonable to expect an outburst of remote districts of England waging an un- Maori or Zoolu nationality in a Governor of equal warfare with the Norman. The great New Zealand or Natal. They were Norman Scottish invasion of Cumberland, which his- barons, subjects of the King of England, torians speak of as a wild raid, without any and, indeed, if there had not been a deeper specific cause, was founded on the interests current of political motives drifting him tothus created, and Hardyng, who knew more wards the enlargement of his empire, it is than he was always willing to confess about not natural that he should have been expectthe relative position of England and Scotland, ed to permit any of his own subjects to heads his account of the invasion in these establish an independent kingdom at his words, "How Kyng Malcolyn of Scotland door. The punctilious precision with which warred in England for his wife's right, pre- the candidates pleaded their respective claims tending that she was right heir of England." before the Lord Paramount, the technical The names of the children of Malcolm and pedantry with which they appealed to the Margaret at once marked them as the de- principles of feudal law acknowledged in the scendants and representatives of the Saxon succession to ordinary fiefs, and applied line. Edgar, who succeeded him, inherited them with appropriate distinctions to a the name of that very monarch whose barge sovereignty, have all been called up by Sir the tributary Kings were reported to have rowed; Edward was named after the Confessor, and Edmund and Ethelred were alike household names in Saxon royalty. The next step is, the partial extension of the conquest over Scotland.

Down to the war of independence, we find the Norman barons of England gradually swarming over Scotland and engrossing the territorial honours of the country. It was the function of this wonderful race wherever they went to be the leaders of men; and they established a superiority alike over the Celt and the Saxon, as the European of later days has predominated over rival races in India. Not only were the southern shires filled with Norman names, but the bold adventurers cast their lot among the wild tribes of the north and west, who, far more susceptible than their Lowland neighbours to the influence of military leadership, compensated them by the many attractions of a sort of barbarous sovereignty, for the luxury and regulated pomp of a higher social condition.

Francis Palgrave and other authors, as testimony to the established feudal supremacy of England over Scotland. But it is more just to view them as evidence of the conventional feudal notions of the Norman barons, and their thorough alienation from the people over whom they desired to rule.

Let us now see how the feudal superiority of the Norman King was something so much more offensive than the supremacy of a Saxon Bretwalda, as to excite a war of independence, ending in the permanent alienation from each other of two kindred nations. The Lowland Scots would probably not have deeply concerned themselves about the tenor and extent of any act of feudal homage performed by their King; and as to the Highlanders of the West, their Norwegian leader, the Lord of the Isles, was a rival rather than a subordinate of the King of the Lowlands, and would have acknowledged a master at Westminister far rather than at Holyrood. But there was something more than a mere ceremony in the supremacy of the Anglo-Norman Kings. Edward's auThus the two nations continued to partici- thority was a practical rule, hard and searchpate in that change which set the Norman as ing. For upwards of two hundred years in the ruler over the other inhabitants of the the hands of his ancestors, it had been by country. The conquest, by its social influ- slow degrees assimilating to itself the reence, was subduing Scotland as well as Eng-luctant English, and now it was sought to