post of sempstress to the king till the end of his reign. The union took place about the year 1522.
In 1524 affairs in Scotland took a turn which for a time deprived Lyndsay of his office. On 20th May in that year the Regent Albany finally retired to France, and the reins of government were assumed by Queen Margaret, who, to strengthen her position against her divorced husband, the powerful Earl of Angus, withdrew the young prince from his tutors, and placed the sceptre nominally in his hand. Angus, however, prevailed, and getting possession of the person of James, ruled Scotland in the Douglas interest for four years. Lyndsay’s opinion of the effect of this proceeding may be gathered from the lines of his “Complaynt”—
The Kyng was bot twelf yeris of aige
Quhen new rewlaris come, in thair raige,
For Commonweill makand no cair,
Bot for thair proffeit singulair.
Imprudentlie, lyk wytles fuilis,
Thay tuke that young Prince frome the scuilis,
Quhare he, under obedience,
Was lernand vertew and science,
And haistelie platt in his hand
The governance of all Scotland;
As quho wald, in ane stormye blast,
Quhen marinaris bene all agast
Throw dainger of the seis raige,
Wald tak ane chylde of tender aige
Quhilk never had bene on the sey,
And to his biddyng all obey,
Gevyng hym haill the governall
Off schip, marchand, and marinall,
For dreid of rockis and foreland,
To put the ruther in his hand.
Without Goddis grace is no refuge:
Geve thare be dainger ye may juge.
I gyf thame to the Devyll of Hell
Quhilk first devysit that counsell!
I wyll nocht say that it was treassoun,
Bot I dar sweir it was no reassoun.
I pray God, lat me never se ryng,
In-to this realme, so young ane Kyng!
Discharged from his duties, though, at the instance of James, his salary continued to be paid, Lyndsay retired to his estates, and occupied his leisure by casting into verse some of his reflections upon the events and character of his time. These, in the form of a scarcely veiled satire, with a finely poetic setting, he published under the title of “The Dreme,” probably in 1528. In the autumn of the same year, it is believed, he wrote his “Complaynt to the Kingis Grace,” a performance in which, as has been seen, he recounts his early services, and asks some token of royal recognition, declaiming fearlessly the abuses which have been practised by the recent governors of the realm, and ending with congratulations and sound counsel on James’s own sudden assumption of power.
This reminder would hardly appear to have been needed by the young king. On a night in May of that year James had escaped from Falkland, and dashing through the defiles of the Ochils with only a couple of grooms in his train, had established himself in Stirling, successfully defied the Douglas power, and, though no more than sixteen years of age, had in a few hours made himself absolute master of Scotland. Among the first to benefit by his assumption of power were his old attendants. His chaplain, Sir James Inglis, he made Abbot of Culross; his tutor, Gavin Dunbar, he made Archbishop of Glasgow, and afterwards Lord High Chancellor; while upon Lyndsay he conferred the honour of knighthood and appointed him Lyon King at Arms.
This was in 1529, and the appointment marks Lyndsay’s entry into the larger public life of his time. The office of the Chief Herald was then an active one, its holder being employed on frequent state envoys to foreign courts. Thus in 1531 Lyndsay was sent to the Netherlands to renew a commercial treaty of James I. which had just lapsed. Upon that occasion he had an interview at Brussels with the Queen of Hungary, then Regent of the Netherlands, and her brother the Emperor Charles V.; and in a letter still extant[8] he describes the tournaments, of which he was spectator, at the royal court.
Again, in 1536, he was one of the embassy sent to France to conclude a marriage between James and Marie de Bourbon, daughter of the Duc de Vendôme. Negotiations in this case were all but completed when by the personal interference of James the treaty was broken off and espousals arranged instead with Magdalene, the daughter of the French king, Francis I.
The sad sequel of this romantic union is well known. The fate of the fragile young princess formed the subject of Lyndsay’s elegy, “The Deploratioun of the Deith of Quene Magdalene.”
Strangely enough, the Lyon Herald’s next employment was, in the following year, the superintendence of ceremonies at reception of James’s new bride, Mary, the daughter of the Duc de Guise. These, like the other events of the time, are fully described by Lindsay of Pitscottie, the contemporary historian. Among other “fersis and playis” they included one curious device. “And first sche was receivit at the New Abbay yet (gate); upon the eist syd thairof thair wes maid to hir ane triumphant arch be Sir David Lindsay of the Mount, knicht, alias Lyon Kyng at Armis, quha caussit ane greyt cloud to cum out of the hevins down abone the yeit; out the quhilk cloude come downe ane fair Lady most lyk ane angell, having the keyis of Scotland in hir hand, and delyverit thayme to the Queinis grace in signe and taikin that all the harts of Scotland wer opin for the receveing of hir Grace; withe certane Oratiouns maid be the said Sir David to the Quein’s Grace, desyring hir to feir hir God, and to serve him, and to reverence and obey hir husband, and keip her awin body clein, according to God’s will and commandment.”[9]
A more momentous piece of work, and one more worthy of the poet’s genius, was Lyndsay’s next performance. In 1530, in his “Testament and Complaynt of our Soverane Lordis Papyngo,” he had already ventured with great boldness to expose the disorders of the time in church affairs. He now went further, and in the guise of a stage-play attacked with fearless and biting satire the corruptions of clergy and nobles. This play, “Ane Pleasant Satyre of the thrie Estaitis,” appears to have been first performed at Linlithgow at the feast of Epiphany on 6th January, 1539–40, when, occupying no less than nine hours in representation,[10] it was witnessed by the king, the queen, and ladies of the court, the bishops, nobles, and a great gathering of people.
As Lyon Herald, Lyndsay superintended the preparation of the Register of Arms of the Scottish nobility and gentry. This work, now in the Advocates’ Library, Mr. Laing commends for its careful execution and proper emblazonment of the arms, as most creditable to the state of heraldic art in Scotland. It was completed in 1542.
On the 14th of December in the same year Lyndsay was one of those who stood by the bedside of the dying king at Falkland, when, overwhelmed by sorrow and disappointment, he “turned his back to his lordis and his face to the wall,” and presently passed away. The friendship between the king and the poet, which had begun in the prince’s cradle-days, appears to have had not a single break, one of James’ last acts being to assign to Lyndsay, “during all the days of his life, two chalders of oats, for horse-corn, out of the King’s lands of Dynmure in Fife.”
The
