282 Mr. Hardy o?i the Wolf in Scotland. 



deservedly die without law, because they refused to live 

 according to law."* It is remarkable to find the "gentle 

 Jamie's " line of argument towards an unruly section of his 

 subjects adopted to justify the attempted assassination of an 

 unpopular official of his grandson, Archbishop Sharpe. " It 

 is acknowledged by all rational royalists, that it is lawful for 

 any private person to kill an usurper, or a tyrant, sine titulo^ 

 and to kill Irish rebels, and tories, or the like, and to kill 

 bears and wolves, and catch devouring beasts, because the 

 good of his action doth not only redound to the person him- 

 self, but to the whole commonwealth, and the person acting 

 incvirs the danger himself alone." f 



Harrison, who wrote in the time of Elizabeth, says that 

 though the English " may safelie boast of their securitie," in 

 respect to wild animals, " yet cannot the Scots do the like in 

 everie point within their kingdome, sith they have greeuous 

 woolfes and cruell foxes, beside some other of like disposition 

 continuallie conversant among them, to the general hinder- 

 ance of their husbandmen and no small damage vnto the in- 

 habiters of those quarters." J John Taylor, water-poet, made 

 his "Pennylesse Pilgrimage " into the north in 1618, and was 

 present at a great hunting in Braemar, in which he testifies 

 to have seen the wolf. " My good Lord of Mar having put 

 me into shape, I rode with him from his house, where I saw 

 the ruins of an old castle, called the Castle of Kindroghit. It 

 was built by King Malcolm Canmore (for a hunting house) 

 who reigned in Scotland when Edward the Confessor, Harold, 

 and Norman William reigned in England : I speak of it be- 

 cause it was the last house that I saw in those parts : for I 

 was the space of twelve days after, before I saw either house, 

 corn-field, or habitation of any creature, but deer, wild horses, 

 wolves, and such like creatures, which made me doubt that I 

 should never have seen a house again. "§ 



Camden, whose Britannia was published in 1586, while 

 alleging that wolves were found in many parts of Scotland, 

 particularly specifies Strath Navern or Sutherlandshire. *^ It 



* Bracton, lib. 3, tract 2, cap. 11. Fuller's Worthies of England, p. 162.— 

 By the law of Edward the Confessor. The bear and wolf were outlaws by the old 

 Norwegian statutes. " Biorn og ulf seal hverneta utlsegr vera." (Crichton 

 and Wheaton's Scandinavia, i. p. 193.) In Iceland vagr is a wolf, and also an 

 exile — an outlawed man being regarded as a wolf. (Mallet's Northern Antiqui- 

 ties, p. 30.) 



t Testimony of James Mitchell, 1678. M'Gavin's Scots Worthies, ii. p. 178. 



X Holinshed's Chronicles, i. p. 378. London, 1807. 



§ Penny Magazine, 1841, p. 490. Scott's Marmion, note v. 



