128 TWO CHAPTERS ILLUSTRATIVE OF 



somest man of Scotland, set on the Marquis of Huntly, who was his 

 mortal enemy, to murder him ; and by a writing, all in his own 

 hand, he promised to save him harmless for it. He set the house 

 in which he was on fire, and the earl flying away, was followed and 

 murdered, and Huntley sent Gordon of Buckey with the news to 

 the king. Soon after, all who were concerned in that vile fact were 

 pardoned, which laid the king open to much censure."* Upon 

 these observations, Higgons exclaims, — " Not content to have laid 

 King James in his grave, he will not let him be quiet there ; but, 

 before he begins the succeeding reign, rallies all his malice to give 

 one parting blow. Hitherto he has not dared positively to accuse 

 him but of common wickedness ; but now, to take his leave, he 

 boldly and without mincing the matter peremptorily charges that 

 prince with the greatest crime against God and man, a wilful and 

 premeditated murder." " I cannot, therefore, in the least doubt," 

 he observes in another place, " but that the reader is by this time 

 sufficiently satisfied of the disingenuity and injustice of our author, 

 in this barbarous aspersion on the memory of King James VI. If 

 he had been more candid and sincere in the rest of his book, this one 

 story is enough to blast his credit by destroying all opinion of his 

 faith and probity — this one instance is sufficient to show the man 

 and his principles."t 



In the historian we do not of course expect to find an inventor, but 

 certainly the reader will require the most authentic evidence for the 

 novelty and boldness of Burnett's assertion ; since the crimes of a 

 sovereign prince, when once established, become a kind of public guilt 

 and national ignomony ; and therefore should never be broadly af- 

 firmed, without the fullest deliberation and conviction, and without 

 the largest allowance conceded to human infirmity and to human 

 error. 



If we are to rely upon the judgment pronounced in Archbishop 

 Spotteswood's History respecting this horrid transaction, James is to 

 be considered as perfectly and entirely exculpated from all blame in 

 it ;% but we must not forget that the fulsomely corrupt sycophancy 

 of this prelate towards the monarch, was reckoned somewhat extra- . 

 vagant in that " king-praising age;" so that his authority, wherever 

 his majesty was concerned, is to be regarded with extreme distrust. 



* History of his own Times, vol. i, p. 32. 

 + Remarks, p. 38. 



X He designates it merely " as a commission to apprehend and bring 

 Murray to trial." 



