Volume 1

Domestic annals of Scotland : from the reformation to the revolution / by Robert Chambers.

  • Robert Chambers
Date:
1858-1861
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Domestic annals of Scotland : from the reformation to the revolution / by Robert Chambers. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    93/574 page 77
    I of Buccleuch and Femiehirsfc, who, ere day brake, had possessed i57i. themselves of the town, crying “ God and the Queen! ” so that those that were for the King and his Eegent could not, for the multitude of enemies, come to a head. Wherever they could see any that belonged to the Regent, him they killed without mercy. The Regent being taken prisoner by the Laird of Buccleuch, and horsed behind him, ane wicked fellow lift up his jack, and shot him through the body with a pistol [On a counter-surprise, the queen’s party] departed the town immediately. The Earl of Mar was declared Regent, and concluded the parliament. This was the hole which the young king did see in the paidiament, although he meant nothing less.’—Bal. Robert Lord Boyd entered this day into a bond of manred with nov. lo. William Fairly, brother of David Fairly of that Ilk. Manred, properly, is a sendee of allegiance; but in Scotland it had come, in the course of time, to be an agreement, sometimes between a great man and a less, sometimes between tw'O or more equally great men, to stand by each other in all contingencies of war and law, excepting only (and perhaps it was but a hypocritical exception) where the king’s majesty and his commands were concerned. It was an an’angement dictated by the exigencies of a rude time, when law was but partial and uncertain in its actings, and natural feeling often called for something being done, whether the law would or no. As something not very consonant with good government, or even such attempts at the same as might be made in those days, manred had been denounced by a statute so long ago as 1457, when it ivas enacted ' that nae man dwelling within burgh be fund in manrent, nor ride in rout in feir of weir with nae man, but with the king or his officers, or with the lord of the burgh.’ But acts of parlia- ment were voices crying in the wilderness in Scotland, and manred stUl continued to have its place in the economy of life in this age. On this occasion, William Fairly binds and obliges himself to be rinan and subject servant’ to Lord Boyd and his heirs, ' aefaldly and truly to serve them upon their retinue and expenses in house- hold and out of household, as best sail please them in all their affairs, and as weel in defence as pursuit, with whom or against whom it sail happen them to have action and ado,’ the king excepted. He is likewise to help them with his good counsel, ‘ and sail never hear nor know their hurt, damage, nor skaith, in ony sort, but sail diligently sift out the same, and mak true declaration thereof.’
    digitised image 1
    digitised image 2
    digitised image 3