Honours Even

by Nigel Tranter

Genres: Historical Fiction

Synopsis

In 1649 Charles II left his exile in the Netherlands and sailed to Scotland. Arriving at the small fishing village of Garmouth, he faced a mixed reception from the minister of the Kirk. The exiled king was to remain in Scotland for a year, learning more about his northern subjects, while the English tried to adjust to life under the puritanical heel of the Lord Protector, Oliver Cromwell. But Cromwell was soon to turn his attentions to matters north of the border. He coveted the Honours of Scotland - the crown, sceptres and sword-of-state - symbols of hope and the nations's honour. And so the young men of Scotland were forced into battle to save the Honours... The gripping story of Charles II's year in Scotland and Scotland's brave stand against Oliver Cromwell, told by Nigel Tranter, master of Scottish historical fiction.

Release date: September 13, 2012

Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton

Print pages: 358

Sample

Jamie Ramsay glanced sidelong at his father to see how he was taking the talk around them. Sir Gilbert was frowning, as well he might, his son considered. The divines seemed to him to be vying with each other in their harsh and strident assertions and claims, Argyll and the other lords not seeking to tone them down, as they ought to be doing in Jamie’s opinion. This was no way to welcome the new monarch, surely. This should be a great day for all, for Scotland – perhaps even for Commonwealth England also.

He transferred his gaze seawards. Out there, still fully a mile off in Spey Bay, the single ship was tacking a way in against quite a strong westerly wind; they had been watching it doing so for the last half-hour at least, and it would undoubtedly be as much again before it made the river-mouth and jetty. It was a strange place to receive a king, and one who had never before so much as set foot on the soil of his ancient realm. It occurred to Jamie that Mary Queen of Scots, Charles’s great-grandmother, had at least done better than this when she arrived back in Scotland at the age of eighteen, from France. She had been suitably and officially welcomed at Leith, port of Edinburgh, her capital, and conveyed in style up to her palace of Holyroodhouse – to a grim reign admittedly, and eventual dire death. Jamie often all but wept over Mary, being somewhat romantically minded, although of course her religion was against her, as a good, or goodish Protestant, he had to concede. Charles was no Catholic, at least. He was twenty years old, Jamie Ramsay two years younger.

His older brother, Thomas, standing at the other side of their father, was speaking, having almost to shout to be heard against the upraised voices of the proclaiming divines used to thunderous preaching. “Is it not strange that he comes with only the one ship? You would think that there would have been an escort, a squadron even, to protect him from Cromwell’s wretched navy. But there is no sign of other than just this one.”

“One vessel can be safer than any squadron,” Sir Gilbert said. “It can sail unnoticed, as a group could not. It will have come from The Hague, by an easterly route, to avoid the English patrols. And if any of them saw her, flying the Dutch flag, they would assume her to be but a merchanter.”

“It is all wrong that the King of Scots should have to come to his own land so,” Jamie asserted – and not for the first time. “In secret. Hiding, almost. And from his own subjects, if not his own people. For he is King of England, too.”

“He will not wish to go the way of his father!” Sir Gilbert said dryly. Charles the First had been executed, by order of the English parliament, some sixteen months before.

Even stronger upraised voices to their right turned the Ramsays’ heads, like those of others waiting there. An altercation had broken out between a group of black-robed clerics – they all but outnumbered the lords and lairds present, if not the common folk, who stood well back – and the Earl Marischal, no less, and they were actually shouting him down. It was changed days for Scotland when ministers of religion could shout down an earl, especially the hereditary Marshal of the realm; but these days, with the great Montrose dead, executed, the Covenant divines all but ruled the land, aided and abetted by Archibald Campbell, Marquis of Argyll, for his own purposes.

It was the Reverend Andrew Cant, of St Andrews, who was dominating the discussion, if that it could be called, a very senior Covenant churchman, even though once he had been an Episcopalian.

“I say that this is Christ’s kingdom before it is Charles Stewart’s! As such he must have reception. You, my lord, represent the second, we the first!”

The other clerics uttered vehement agreement.

William Keith, seventh Earl Marischal – who was in fact kin to the Ramsays by marriage – a handsome man who had been a Covenant forces commander, shook his head. “As Marischal, it is my simple duty to receive His Grace first, Master Cant. Lacking the presence of his lieutenant-general and viceroy!” That, with a brief side glance at Argyll, an oblique reference to the late Marquis of Montrose, whom Argyll had had executed. There was no love lost between these two noblemen. “Then you may have your say.”

“No! The Kirk takes precedence!” That was the Reverend Robert Blair, of Aberdeen, another stalwart of the Church Militant, who actually claimed prophetic powers and direct communication with heaven. “You are but an earthly vassal of an earthly monarch. We speak in the name of the Most High!”

“Who made you so?”

Argyll intervened, softly. It was strange that Archibald Campbell, chief of that name and clan, MacCailean Mor himself, should have such a soft and sibilant Highland voice in view of his reputation: sibilant but sufficiently penetrating, and positive enough to be heeded, even by divines. Whether he was looking at Cant, Blair or the earl was hard to tell, for he had a notable cast in one eye which could confuse his hearers, and which nowise enhanced foxy, narrow-chinned features. This was the real ruler of Scotland.

“I suggest that my Lord Marischal goes on to the ship first,” he said. “And that when His Grace sets foot on land, the Kirk greets him first. Only then, we others.” That was typical Argyll.

It had its effect, none challenging.

Jamie Ramsay was turning to his father, to whisper in the sudden hush, when another voice spoke up, and loudly, and another Campbell at that, John, first Earl of Loudoun.

“His Grace is not well versed in conditions here,” he pointed out. “He will require much . . . instruction. But, I suggest, not all at this first meeting!” Loudoun, one of Argyll’s protégées naturally, had proved quite an effective general for the Covenant – Argyll was no warrior and preferred others to do the fighting for him – and was now in fact Chancellor of the realm, that is, in effect, chief minister of state. He was in a position to know the new king’s condition, for he had gone, not long before, to The Hague, with two other earls, Lanark and Lauderdale, to persuade the young monarch to come to his ancient kingdom of Scotland from exile in the Netherlands. Loudoun had come home thereafter, leaving the other two to bring Charles in person. No doubt they were in that ship out there.

“He will be instructed!” the Reverend David Dickson declared briefly but with authority. He was almost as senior in the Kirk as were Cant and Blair.

The approaching vessel was now much nearer, protected from the offshore wind by the loom of the land, sufficiently so for all to see the Dutch flag of William of Orange flying from its masthead. Jamie felt that there ought to be cannon fired in salutation for this auspicious occasion; but there were none such at or near Garmouth, where great Spey reached salt water, in north-eastern Moray, which had been chosen, presumably by Argyll, as a suitably remote spot to receive the new monarch. Sir Gilbert Ramsay had opined that this was not only to avoid English naval attack, informed by spies as Cromwell surely would be, but to ensure that the populace of such as Edinburgh, Glasgow, Dundee or Aberdeen did not welcome Charles too heartily and kindly, and give that young man erroneous notions as to his position and power – or the lack of it – in his Scotland.

It occurred to Jamie, for one, that it was strange that Garmouth, a mere fishing village, had been selected, only a mile or two from St Ninian’s church at Bellie, a little further up Spey, where not so long before James Graham of Montrose had buried his fourteen-year-old son, the Lord Graham, a lad worn out by the campaigning in which he had been so determined to take part, and when Montrose had proclaimed that he hoped to rejoin the boy before so very long – a strange prophecy from the man who had, for a brief spell, conquered Scotland for Charles. Could he have guessed, somehow, that despite all his brilliant victories, Argyll and the Covenant would win in the end? If it was indeed the end?

As the ship neared, the welcoming party moved down to the jetty. They could discern a group standing in the bows. Jamie thought that he could distinguish two slighter and younger figures amongst the others. Was one their liege-lord?

He felt like cheering, but nobody else seemed to be so inclined. Grapnels were thrown to the jetty-timbers, and slowly the vessel was warped in. All could see which was Charles Stewart now, the youngest man there, long, dark hair curling down to his shoulders, not handsome as his father had been but large-eyed and heavy-lidded with a long nose and somewhat sallow complexion, as had been his grandfather, James the Sixth and First.

A gangway was run out from the ship.

Promptly the Earl Marischal strode over, to board, and behind him the other notables surged, the divines well to the fore.

As Charles came forward, flanked by Lanark and Lauderdale, with the other younger man close behind, the Marischal sank down on one knee to take the monarch’s hand between his two palms in the gesture of fealty.

Jamie did raise a cheer now, and after a moment Thomas hesitantly joined him. Nobody else did.

After a word or two, Charles turned to introduce the overdressed and dandified fair-haired man behind, and all heard him say George, Duke of Buckingham. Then he beckoned forward another solid and bearded man of so very different type, no doubt the captain of the ship. Then the group moved forward to the gangway.

And now they were faced with what amounted to a challenge. For the Kirk ministers had pushed on to the gangway itself, fronted by Cant, Blair and Dickson and, since it was only wide enough for three abreast, they completely blocked it. There was no getting down on knees, now, only stern, unsmiling faces.

Charles stared, blinking those large, liquid-seeming eyes. His had been a strange life and upbringing hitherto for a prince and a monarch; but this was probably the strangest experience yet.

“Sire, we greet you, in the name of Almighty God, the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit. Amen!” Andrew Cant announced, at his most sonorous and authoritative. “By God’s grace and permission you come to this ancient land where your forefathers have reigned for a thousand years. It is our duty, as representing the Covenanted Kirk, to require of you, before you set foot on its sacred soil, that you take the Covenant.”

An absolute silence fell on all there, not even a gasping, only suddenly held breaths as everywhere men all but gaped.

“Take the Covenant! Take the Covenant!” the divines reiterated in chorus.

Charles’s great eyes widened as he looked from them to his companions and back again. “Take . . .?”

“Aye, Your Grace. Although you are not Your Grace yet! Take the Covenant. The National and the Solemn League Covenant, between Almighty God and His Kirk,” Cant said forcefully. “Accept and swear to it. As we all have done.”

The young monarch stood silent. He would certainly have heard of the Covenant, but as certainly would know little of what it meant.

Strangely the silence was broken by laughter of a sort, a tittering. It came from the ridiculously dressed Buckingham, with his painted face and ribboned ringlets. George Villiers, second Duke, was aged twenty, two years older than Charles.

“Ha, Charles, by God, here is a play-acting, no? Better than anything we have viewed at The Hague, I vow. Better even than any I have penned! Bow before them! I –”

The Earl of Lauderdale coughed and raised a hand to urge the younger man to stop. He was looking as appalled as his somewhat heavy features allowed, whether at the divines’ demand or at Buckingham’s remarks it was hard to say, possibly both.

The duke was not finished, however. Son of the previous two kings’ favourite, he was an accomplished poet, playwright, and known as the most wicked and depraved man in all Europe, with a great influence over the younger Charles. He was not used to being waved down.

“These are . . . clerks?” he enquired silkily.

Cant pointed at him. “Silence!” he cried. “We are God’s appointed representatives in this land. How dare you to speak! We address and inform the king-to-be. For he is not yet crowned.” That was only a little-disguised warning. He turned back to Charles. “Your Grace, it is necessary that you take the Covenant before you set foot on the soil of this Scotland.”

Charles looked from Lauderdale to Lanark for guidance. Neither earl looked happy, the former frowning, the latter’s cadaverous features unhelpful. Lanark shook his head, but not decisively. Lauderdale nodded, but looked away, which was of scant assistance to their twenty-year-old liege-lord.

It was the Earl Marischal who spoke, from behind the royal group. “This is absurd! Intolerable!” he exclaimed. “To speak to His Grace so. Make way, I say, for His Grace to land.”

“No!” That was the Reverend Blair. “This is the moment of truth! Do we worship the King of Heaven? Or the would-be King of Scots!”

“We are not worshipping here, sirs. We are welcoming King Charles back to his own land and kingdom.”

“Only if he takes the Covenant,” the Reverend Dickson insisted.

“Swears to accept and abide by the Covenant’s provisions,” Blair amplified.

The other ministers at their backs shouted agreement.

Again it was that unlikely peacemaker, Argyll, who intervened. “Sire, it would be best, wise, to agree,” he said carefully. “It must aid your royal cause. You need the Kirk. I am Argyll.”

Charles, who up till now had spoken only that one word “take . . .?” found his voice. “You . . . you are Argyll! Who had Montrose beheaded!”

“The Estates of the Realm did, Sire. And the General Assembly of the Kirk. In their wisdom. He betrayed the faith he once supported. The first hand to sign the Covenant. But that is by with. Agree the Covenant, Your Grace, and be welcomed to your realm.”

“What is it? To what should I agree?”

Cant it was who answered him. “Three main provisions. You swear to renounce Popery. To maintain the Reformed Religion in its Presbyterian form. And to adhere to it all your days, banning all episcopacy and bishops.”

“But . . .” Charles wagged those long curls in bewildered objection. “How can I do that? It is against all that, that . . .”

“It is necessary.”

“Necessary for what?” There was a spark of spirit there.

“Necessary for your coronation, Charles Stewart! Until you are crowned at Scone you are not the king. And only the Church of this land can give you coronation – the Kirk!”

So there it was, the secret of the divines’ power and Argyll’s support for them.

The lapping wavelets against the jetty timbers made all the sound.

Buckingham tinkled another laugh. “The masque unfolds! Even the man Shakespeare did not rise to such heights of pretence, Charles. It was worth our journey to hear this!”

No one else was taking the situation thus lightly. The Campbell Earl of Loudoun spoke up.

“Sire, the form of it is none so grievous. Your Grace’s one word will suffice, I think. Then all can be done suitably and in order. We all here seek to welcome you to your ancient kingdom. All.”

Despite the emphasis, the divines stood still, completely blocking the gangway. Clearly they were not going to move, and nobody there, as clearly, was going to try to move them by force, although Jamie Ramsay for one, seething with anger and shame, would have wished it.

Lauderdale and Lanark eyed each other, and nodded. The former spoke.

“I advise that you take the Covenant, Sire,” he said. “Montrose, after all, was its first signatory, those years back.”

“But reneged.” That was Argyll.

Helplessly the young monarch shrugged. He had come many hundreds of miles for this day, at major risk. The Marischal would have cleared the gangway had he had the means, as no doubt he would conceive it his duty; but here were no forces to marshal. And any physical struggle, pushing and striking, would be unseemly to a degree. The Kirk stood firm.

“Do you, Charles Stewart, take the Covenant?” Cant demanded then. “Swear to uphold and maintain it?”

The young man drew a deep breath. “Yes,” he said flatly.

“Good! That is well. Your Grace has taken the Covenant. Your coronation may now be proceeded with. At Scone.” He had, with his companions, won the day. He turned, and gestured for them to clear the gangway.

There were probably more sighs of relief than mutterings of offence.

Urged on now by Lauderdale and Lanark, Charles moved forward at last, if less than assuredly, Buckingham sauntering elegantly behind. The royal foot came down, for the first time, on the earth of the longest line of monarchs in all Christendom, but this one made no sort of token of it. He no doubt had had enough of tokens. Argyll was the first to come to take the royal hand between his own – but not on bended knee.

It was no very large party which had awaited the King’s arrival, deliberately limited as to numbers so that there should be no unsuitably enthusiastic welcome from non-Covenant supporters; and the small port of Garmouth, little more than a fishing village, was no place to raise a crowd. There were perhaps thirty there other than the villagers. Sir Gilbert Ramsay and his sons were present only because of their Ogilvy connection. James Ogilvy, second Earl of Airlie, had campaigned with Montrose, and suffered direly for it, being captured, imprisoned and excommunicated. One brother, Sir Thomas, had been slain in battle; but the other brother, Sir David, had been fortunate to escape and was here present, representing the earl. And Sir Gilbert Ramsay was his cousin and friend, and had been the earl’s aide. So they had come on this especial occasion more or less as representing the great and loyal family of Ogilvy rather than merely as Ramsays. Theirs was no very great house, although they had been settled at Bamff, on the Perth-Angus borders, for over four hundred years.

Not all the company was lining up to kiss the royal hand; certainly no divines were. And Jamie, a mere eighteen-year-old second son, was uncertain as to whether he was entitled to do so, eager as he was. But his father joined the line and did not sign to his sons not to follow, so he and Thomas dared.

Somebody else was looking doubtful, a youngish man of good looks and hot eyes – and those eyes made the doubts seem the stranger. But he had reason to doubt, with a glance at Argyll and the ministers. For he was a Catholic, and all there knew it, the Lord Lewis Gordon. Indeed he should have been Marquis of Huntly, his father and elder brother both having paid the supreme penalty for their religion and support of Montrose, and the title was forfeited meantime. But this was very much Gordon country, and the Gordons could still field a couple of thousand fighting men at short notice; so he had risked being present to greet his liege-lord. He had been a successful, if not always disciplined, captain of cavalry. Jamie, who had been introduced to him by his father, noting the hesitation, and sympathising, gestured for Lord Lewis to join the line in front of himself, and the other, nodding, did so.

Waiting his turn to kneel, Jamie inspected the young man he was there to greet and pay allegiance to. Seen close at hand, Charles Stewart had an interesting face, not strong nor handsome but prominent as to features, refined save for that overlong nose, with a twist to the mouth which might bespeak humour but equally disdain, and a gleam in the eyes. It was those eyes which really made the impression, however, not hot like the Gordons’, but deep-seeming as they were large, scarcely soulful but holding a quality of, as it were, slumbering intensity. Jamie had never seen eyes quite like these; it was said that James the Sixth had similar, derived possibly, it was whispered, from David Rizzio, Mary Queen of Scots’ talented Italian secretary, who might have been her son’s father.

When it was Jamie’s turn to kneel and take the royal hand between his, Charles was scarcely using those eyes to best effect, not to the kneeler at any rate. He was, indeed, looking all but bored with the proceedings, glancing away from the line of fealty-givers. Jamie would dearly have liked to express his sympathy with the ordeal with which the new monarch had been confronted, and his shame over it all, but recognised that this was not the time nor himself a suitable mouthpiece. He merely murmured his own name and added “God save Your Grace”, even so wondering whether there had not already been a sufficiency of God’s name brought into the occasion. But at least he held the king’s hand in his own, the great-grandson of Mary Queen of Scots whose memory he doted on, and swore to be his man so long as he had breath.

When all this was over, the clergy, impatient with it all, led the way to the waiting horses, the local village folk falling back respectfully to give them passage. It was only then that most there learned that they were bound for Bog of Gight Castle, a Gordon stronghold nearby, for the night. This would be why the Lord Lewis’s presence there had been tolerated. It was the nearest, indeed only, major house to Garmouth, such as was required; and he would be allowed to provide comfort and hospitality for all.

It was rather comic, Jamie thought, to reach those horses and find them watched over by a troop of Gordon men-at-arms, with extra mounts thoughtfully provided by the Lord Lewis for the voyagers. Presumably the Covenant enthusiasts perceived themselves as quite safe in these hands, owing to the royal presence. All mounted, Lord Lewis assisting Charles to mount the best horse and then leading the way due southwards up-river.

The Spey was broad here and slow-flowing through bogland and sandy shallows, with many sub-channels and islanded banks, so very different in character from its wild Highland genesis, indeed from most of its one-hundred-and-seven-mile course. But the ground did begin to rise a little as they moved up the river’s east side into wooded slopes. The Ramsays rode well to the rear of the column with Sir David Ogilvy, a fine-looking man of middle years. His kinswoman Isabel had been Sir Gilbert Ramsay’s mother, and the Ramsays had other Ogilvy blood and connections. Well out of earshot of Argyll and the clergy, they went over the day’s doings, thus far, and deplored most of it. But they all recognised how carefully all had to tread, at this juncture, for it had been touch and go whether the ruling Covenant faction would in fact allow Charles to come to assume his late father’s throne; and equally uncertain that these young men would agree to come. It had taken the embassage of the three earls, Loudoun, Lauderdale and Lanark, much persuading to achieve it. The backgrounds of those three were significant: Loudoun, representing his Campbell chief, Argyll, who it seemed wanted the royal presence purely to enable him to rule Scotland as he would without too much interference by the divines; Lauderdale, a confirmed and hard Covenanter; and Lanark, a Hamilton, royalist but not a militant one, who had not actively supported Montrose. Scotland was a divided nation indeed that summer of 1650.

After three miles, they passd the small church of St Ninian’s on a rise above the river, where Montrose had buried his son. Only some there eyed it with anything like Jamie’s intensity. If Mary Queen of Scots had been his heroine, James Graham of Montrose had been his hero, from childhood. That both had died under the executioner’s axe greatly affected that young man’s thinking.

Soon they were riding through the village of Fochabers, a small burgh-of-barony, really the castleton of the large Bog of Gight Castle, their destination. No doubt the Gordon men-at-arms who escorted them lived here. Montrose’s son had in fact died in this castle before being buried in that kirkyard. The Lord Gordon, Lord Lewis’s elder brother, now dead like their father, had acted host then, a lieutenant of Montrose. It was a strange place for the Covenant ministers and Argyll to be going for hospitality, these who had taken and all but destroyed the main Gordon seat of Strathbogie, at Huntly in Aberdeenshire.

It was a great and imposing stronghold, when they came in sight of it, despite its odd name, and giving still odder style to the Gordon chiefs, who were prouder to be known, in North Country fashion, as Gudeman o’ the Bog and Cock o’ the North than as Marquis of Huntly and Earl of Aboyne. The bog referred to the surrounding marshland, deliberately undrained, so that it provided a vast and impassable moat, crossable only by hidden and twisting causeways, keeping the castle out of range of any possible cannon-fire, and difficult for cavalry to approach save by the said causeways, in single file, as good a defensive site as any rock-top fortress in the land. What Charles Stewart thought of it, raised in London, France and Holland, was not to be known.

The present Gudeman o’ the Bog had certainly not let his anti-Covenant sympathies restrict his provision for the occasion. There was ample and excellent accommodation for all, servants in plenty to attend them, and what amounted to a banquet laid on in the great hall, even with pipers, singers, harpists and entertainers. This last was almost certainly deliberately prolonged, for of course the Calvinist divines frowned on music, dancing and the like as devices of Satan. As a result practically all of them walked out – but after they had partaken of the fare – whether to go and chant psalms or merely to rain down curses on their host, who could tell? At any rate, Charles seemed to appreciate it all, drinking deeply, even though Buckingham looked scornful at such primitive and barbaric entertainment, however colourful.

Later, in one of the angle-towers across the courtyard, which had been allotted to the Earl Marischal, the Hay Earl of Kinnoull and Sir David Ogilvy, this group, with the Ramsays, discussed the future – or such of it as they could learn or guess at. The Marischal had managed to discover something of the proposed programme from Loudoun the Chancellor. On the morrow they would ride by Elgin, where they all had spent the previous night, and where Charles would be shown the mighty ruined cathedral, magnificent even yet in its remains, destroyed by the Reformers as proof of their devotion to correct doctrine, and their power. Then they would head on for Aberdeen, nearly eighty miles, to halt at what was left of Huntly on the way. Dunnottar Castle, the Marischal’s main seat, a score of miles south of Aberdeen, would house the company before the next leg of their long journey to Perth, where they would stop preparatory to the coronation ceremony at Scone, three miles distant up Tay. After that, who knew? Charles, once actually crowned king, might begin to show and exercise his new authority.

All in that tower greatly felt for their young liege-lord and were eager to aid and support him, where they could, in the taking over of his kingdom. But the Kirk? And Argyll? And that Buckingham! None of them liked the look or sound of him. And apparently, as Charles’s personal friend and adviser, his influence could be great, and the reverse of beneficial.

Jamie Ramsay went to bed that night in no very somnolent frame of mind. What lay ahead of them all?

The city of Aberdeen, situated between the mouths of the two great rivers of Dee and Don, gleamed silvery before the royal cavalcade, its defensive walls, built of the local almost white granite, reflecting the June sun. It could look grey indeed of a wet or misty day such as the North Sea so frequently threw at it; but today it was at its most brilliant, suitably to welcome its king. It was a long time since it had had a monarchial visit.

Whether Charles looked forward to entering his first Scottish city was hard to say. He was not being very forthcoming, set-faced, those eyes hooded, apt to confine his remarks to George Villiers on this journey, despite Argyll’s rather surprising efforts to engage him in conversation, and still more surprising cultivation of Buckingham, whom he obviously saw as a useful ally. Who could blame Charles, lectured and hectored all but incessantly as he was by the representatives of the Kirk, who seemed to be more or less practising their sermons on the young man, enough to offput even the most seriously minded. The divines were clearly not content that he had taken their Covenant, and were intent on driving the lesson home. After all, there were rumours that he inclined towards Catholicism. His mother, daughter of a King of France, had been a Papist; and his brother, James, Duke of York, was a notorious Catholic. So they had reason to be heedful. Perhaps Aberdeen could be made to convey to him something of the realities of his situation, even though it had in the past had a wretchedly Episcopalian and bishop-conscious bias, the fault of its university and the so-called Aberdeen Doctors, undoubtedly.

The Reverend Cant, who was senior minister of the city, and the Earl Marischal who, with his Keiths, had a powerful influence in Aberdeen, had ridden on in advance to inform – and perhaps warn – the city fathers; Cant at least to ensure that the correct messages were conveyed to the royal visitor.

Coming down Donside, the company would have approached the North Gate. But the divines insisted that they work round to the main South Gate. There, presently, they saw a party coming out to greet them, no very large party.