PROVINCIAL ANTIQUITIES OF SCOTLAND. CRICHTON CASTLE. THE Castle of Crichton is situated on the banks of the Tyne, there an inconsiderable stream, ten miles south from Edinburgh, and about two miles above the village of Pathhead, on the Lauder road. The river flows through a grassy valley, bounded by sloping banks, which, at least till of late, being chiefly covered with copse and underwood, formed a wild and beautiful fringe to the level pasture-land through which the brook winds. The stream itself is more deep, sluggish, and slow, than most of the Scottish rivers, and in that particular rather resembles those of South Britain. The very high prices which alders have lately borne, owing to their forming the most proper charcoal for making gunpowder, has occasioned the fall of many of those natural thickets. But it is to be hoped, that the demand for this formidable article of merchandise will not be again so imperative, and that the proprietors may have leisure to replace these coppices by more permanent plantations. The Castle was built at different periods, and forms, on the whole, one large square pile of irregular height, enclosing an inner court. It is situated upon a sharp angle of the almost precipitous bank which we have mentioned as the boundary of the dale. The lofty, massive, and solid architecture impress the spectator with an emotion rather of awe than of beauty. Yet the interior is so far from being of a rude character, than we shall hereafter have occasion to notice its architectural merits. At present, we propose to introduce the reader to the general history of the buildings, so far as it has been traced, as well as of its first possessors, to whom the Castle and Barony gave name. The family of Crichton was ancient and honourable, but remained long among the rank of lesser barons, and owed its great rise to the genius and talent of an individual statesman, distinguished for policy and intrigue beyond what is usual in a dark age. The name being territorial, and derived from the neighbouring village, seems to have been assumed about the period when surnames became common in Scotland. A William de Crichtoun occurs in the Lennox Chartulary about 1240,* and a Thomas de Crichton figures in the Ragman Roll in 1296; a wretched document, to which a name seems to have been accidentally affixed as contemptuous as it deserved, since by its tenor most of the ancient families of Scotland submitted to Edward 111.† More honourable records afterwards distinguish a Sir John de Crichton in the reign of David Bruce. A William de Crichton is frequently mentioned in the end of the fourteenth century; and finally, a John Crichton had a charter of that barony from Robert III. These ancient Lords of the Castle and Barony of Crichton, although men of note and estate, were still numbered among the lesser barons, who were not entitled to the rank of nobility. 1423. Sir William Crichton, son of the last-mentioned baron, with talents and a disposition not unlike to those which distinguished Ras Michael at the Court of Gondar was destined to rise to a greater eminence, and attain more celebrity, than his ancestors. He appears to have been one of the first laymen in Scotland who attained eminence, rather from political than military talents, and flourished in the reigns of James I. and his successor a period, fertile in strange turns of fortune, of which our imperfect records have presented but a dubious history. Sir William de Crichton early attended the court, being one of the persons despatched to congratulate James I. on his marriage, and, on the king's return to Scotland, he became master of the royal household. Three 1426 years afterwards he was one of the envoys sent to treat for the establishment of a perpetual peace with Erick, king of Denmark, and seems ever after to have been the personal favourite of his sovereign and to have acted the part of a courtier and minister with an address then very unusual in Scotland. In justice to this statesman we ought to add, that to be the adherent of the crown during this period, was, in fact, to be the friend of civil liberty and of the free administration of justice. The people as yet did not exist as an order of the state, and the immediate oppressors of law and freedom were the band of aristocratic nobility, who set the laws of the kingdom and authority of the sovereign at equal defiance. A. D. A. D The sudden and violent death of James I. threw loose all the rules and bands of government which his wisdom had 1437. begun to introduce; for it was ever the misfortune of Scotland, to lose her wisest and bravest rulers at the moment when she most needed them. The exorbitant power of the Douglasses outbalanced the feeble authority of an infant prince. But the wise * Wood's Peerage, vol. i., p. 603. Nisbet's Remarks on Ragman's Roll, Heraldry, vol. ii.,'p. 42. [See Bruce's Travels in Abyssinia.] policy of the parliament, while it named no noble of high rank to the office of regent, which the Earl of Douglas might have considered as an insult to himself, and avenged accordingly, assigned the management of the kingdom to Sir William Crichton, under the title of chancellor, and the custody of the king's person to Sir Alexander Livingston, a person of the same moderate station. It seems likely that the powerful feudal nobles were led thus to compromise their own claims in favour of two gentlemen of inferior rank, rather than run the risk of either placing Douglas in that high office, or electing in his despite one of his own rank. The talents of both statesmen were highly esteemed, and their wisdom was considered a counterbalance to the great power of Douglas. In the meanwhile, they could not refuse him the dignity of lieutenant-general of the kingdom. A. D. A dissension soon arose betwixt Livingstone and Crichton, the former alleging that the chancellor had deprived him of the custody of the king's person. The queen entered into the 1433. views of Livingston, and concealed her son in a chest, in which he was smuggled out of the Castle of Edinburgh, then in the power of the chancellor; and she herself accompanying him, under pretence of a pilgrimage to Whitekirk in Buchan, they landed safely at Stirling, the stronghold of his competitor. The power of Douglas, who contemned and menaced both the chancellor and Livingston as low-born upstarts, compelled the chancellor and the guardian once more to unite their interests. A. D. 1440, A second feud broke out between them, owing to the insolence of Livingston, who, as we learn from a curious and authentic chronicle of the time, laid the person of the queen under arrest, forgetful of the advantage she had so lately procured him; threw into a dungeon her second husband, the Black Knight of Lorn, as he was called, and his brother, and bollit, i, e. fettered them.* Crichton, therefore, found it no difficult matter to reconcile himself with the queen-dowager, through whose connivance he recovered the custody of the king's person, by a stratagem similar to that of Livingston. He surprised James while hunting in the Park at Stirling, and carried him off to Edinburgh, without any resistance offered by his attendants, or any reluctance shown on his own part. The estates of parliament interfered; the chancellor, with the Lord of the Isles, the Lord Gordon, and Sir Alexander Seton, became security for Sir James Stewart, and the governors were again reconciled; a truce which became fatal to the young heir of the house of Douglas. This unfortunate nobleman was a youth of eighteen, and could, therefore, have committed no great personal aggressions against his country; he was high-spirited, gallant, and intelligent, and might See Ane Schort Memoriale of the Scottis Croniklis, p, i. have lived to do her service. But his house had possessed too much power, and his minority and inexperience gave the governors 1440. an opportunity to restrain it. Under the guise of seeming A. D. reconciliation, he was enticed to the Castle of Crichton, and there hospitably entertained,-an evident proof how deeply Sir William Crichton was concerned in the nefarious scene which followed. On the next morning the young Earl of Douglas was inveigled to the Castle of Edinburgh, then in possession of the lord chancellor, the mask of friendship and hospitality was then thrown aside. The earl was arrested in the presence of the young king, who wept bitterly, and besought his life in vain from his unrelenting guardians. After the mockery of a hasty trial, Douglas was dragged to an inner-court, and there beheaded, along with his brother, still younger than himself, and Fleming of Cumbernauld, their most determined adherent, -an act of detestable policy, which soon brought on the vengeance it deserved, and was long remembered and execrated in the popular rhyme, "Edinborough castle, town and tower, God grant you sink for sin, And that even for the black dinoure The young king now appeared on the stage. He hated his Achancellor and Livingstone, particularly the former. He united with the Earl of Douglas, successor to him who was murdered; and, in the turns of state which followed, Crichton was deprived of his office of chancellor, and summoned to appear and stand his trial. His answer showed a confidence which could only proceed from the secret countenance of many of the nobility, who hated the exorbitant power of the Douglasses. He avowed himself a true servant to the king, and willing to render an account of his administration, so soon as "the captain of thieves" was removed from the royal councils, and he had a prospect of a fair and just trial. In the meantime, although denounced a rebel by blast of horn, he defended himself both against the power of the king and that of Douglas, in the then almost impregnable Castle of Edinburgh, while his kindred and followers maintained themselves in other strong places in Lothian, and refused to render them to the royal authority. This was particularly the case with Barntoun, or Brunston, defended by one Andrew Crichton, who, when summoned by the Earl of Douglas, in name and behalf of the king, returned for answer, "that he had the keeping intrusted to him on the king's behalf by the sheriff (Sir William Crichton), to whom he had found security for safely keeping the same, and without The event of this siege does whose order he would not deliver it. not appear. Edinburgh Castle was beleaguered for nine months, and defended with an obstinate valour and success, which showed that Crichton was supported by many and powerful allies. |