In 1174, the liberty of William was purchased at the expense of the independency of the Scottish nation, and he became the liegeman of Henry for Scotland and all his other territories,* while the Scottish church for a season acknowledged the supremacy of that of England. In 1178, Ada, the mother of the king, died; and in the same year William founded and endowed, with various privileges and revenues for its support, the picturesque and venerable abbey of Aberbrothick (Arbroath), in honour of the holy martyr Thomas à Becket, with whom he was personally acquainted. It was reported that at the same moment in which he was taken prisoner at Alnwick, Henry was doing penance by scourging himself before the shrine of the saint at Canterbury, and it was presumed that this monastic endowment of the Scottish king, was to propitiate the saint to observe a neutrality in future. After the death of Ada, William for some years laid aside the truncheon for the crosier, and was engaged in a warm dispute with the Pope respecting the election of a bishop to the see of St Andrews. John, surnamed the Scot, a native of Cheshire, a person eminently learned, and nephew of Matthew Kynymount, or Kininmund, bishop of Aberdeen, was supported by the papal authority, while William awarded the bishoprick to Hugh his chaplain. After a useless controversy between a spiritual and a temporal prince who held remote jurisdictions, the matter was conceded in favour of the king by the pope nominating Hugh to St Andrews and John to Dunkeld. In 1180, a difference having arisen between the men of the monks of Melrose and the herds of Richard de Morville, to settle this famous controversy, King William, accompanied by his earls, lords, and barons, perambulated the disputed ground, and appointed parties to be heard before him at Haddington. This event brought a vast assemblage of the chief men of the kingdom, clergy as well as laymen innumerable, when the king, like a good and pious prince, decided in favour of the monks of Melrose. • On the return of the king," says Leland, "the nobilles of Scotland came no nearer than Pembles (Peebles) yn Scotland to mete with theyr king. Wherefore he toke with hym many of the youngger sunnes of the nobyl men of England that bare hym good wylle, and gave them landes in Scotland of them that were rebelles to him." Amongst the names of these gentlemen we meet with Baliol and Bruce, and the following either then or to be connected with East Lothian: Sinclair, Hay, Gifford, Ramsay, Vaux, Fraser, &c.—Leland's Collectanea, who quotes Scala Chronica. The year 1186 was distinguished by the marriage of William to Ermengarde, at Woodstock, 5th September, who was destined to be the mother of our townsman king. She was daughter of Richard viscount Beaumont, whose mother was a natural daughter of Henry I. Hence she was styled cousin of Henry II., who proposed the alliance. The dower of the queen was the castle of Edinburgh, the feudal services of forty knights, and the yearly revenue of one hundred pounds. At Haddington, in 1191, William gave his daughter Isobel, (who had been the wife of Robert de Bruce,) to Robert de Ross in marriage. She was of course a natural daughter.* We are ignorant of her lineage; but it appears that William had issue by the daughter of Adam de Hituson. The 24th August, 1198, was remarkable for the birth of Alexander II., in the palace of Haddington, on St Bartholomew's day. In 1212, Alexander, prince of Scotland, received the order of knighthood from King John of England; and, on the 4th December, after a lingering illness, William died at Stirling, in the seventy-second year of his age, and forty-ninth of his reign. He is characterized as a worthy and judicious prince. Stern and inflexible in the administration of justice in a lawless age, and zealous in asserting the rights of the Scottican church. We have been thus particular in noticing the eventful life of William the Lion, as a prince decidedly our own, as one who perambulated the scenes we now behold, but which we enjoy under a more cultivated aspect ;--and as one who was the father of our townsman king. • William had a daughter Ada, married to Patrick earl of Dunbar, in 1184. CHAPTER II. "He was the third best knight persay, That men knew living in his day."-BARBOUR. ALEXANDER II.-MURDER OF THE EARL OF ATHOL. ALEXANDER III. - ALEXANDER II. succeeded his father at the age of seventeen, and was crowned at Scone, on the 5th December, 1212. To this prince the barons of Northumberland had recourse for protection against the fury of John, who, with his foreign mercenaries, ravaged their estates and debauched their families. They did homage to the young king at Felton, who afterwards invested the castle of Norham with all his forces; but after lying before the place forty days, he was forced to raise the siege. John, incensed at these proceedings, pursued his march northwards with the greatest expedition, in the depth of winter, and amidst the desolation of the country; for the barons of Yorkshire, like the Northumbrians, having sworn fealty to Alexander, destroyed their own houses and corn, that the English might be distressed for want of provisions. This served to whet the vengeance of the invader. After burning Roxburgh, he took the town and castle of Berwick, where the most barbarous cruelties were perpetrated in search of money and chattels; and the current report was that Jews were employed to assist in torturing the inhabitants to reveal where their treasure was hid. Advancing into Lothian, in 1216, he burned Dunbar and Haddington, with several places of smaller note: "We will smoke; we will smoke," said he," the little red fox out of his covert!" Meanwhile Alexander had concentrated his forces on the river Esk, near Pentland, and John, either not wishing to risk a general engagement, or because his army could not subsist in a desolated country, retreated eastward, plundered the abbey of Coldingham, burned Berwick; and, like another Nero, disgraced majesty by exulting over the flames of the houses which had sheltered him. These outrages were retaliated by Alexander's making an inroad into England. Penetrating into that country as far as Richmond, he received the submission of the inhabitants of the bishoprick of Durham, and returning through Westmoreland and Cumberland, ravaged and destroyed the country; the Highlanders, (to whom the Chronicle of Melrose gives the appellation of Scots,) acting with the same ferocity as the mercenaries of John. While Alexander was thus pursuing his successes, Haddington, which had been reduced to a smouldering pile of ruins, was hastily rebuilt with wood. On the 25th June, 1221, Alexander married Joan, princess of England, the sister of Henry III. Her jointure is stated at L.1000 landrent, out of the lands of Jedburgh, Lessuden, Kinghorn, and Crail. Queen Ermengarde, the mother of Alexander, died in a venerable old age, and with unblemished fame, and was interred in the monastery of St Edward of Balmerino, which she had founded. This event happened in 1233. A few years afterwards the king lost his beloved Joan, who had sought relief at the supposed medicinal shrine of Thomas à Becket; "And specially from every shire's end That them hath holpen when that they were sick.”—CHAUCER. But the virtues of the saint, and the shade of Pæon, proved unpropitious, and she expired on the 4th March, 1238. This loss, however, was in some measure repaired, by his marriage with Mary, daughter of Ingelram de Couci, a potent lord of Picardy. A family, which for wealth and antiquity almost rivalled the royal house of France. The laconic motto, embroidered on their banners, and shouted by their vassals as they rode to battle, marks the dignity of the house: “ Je ni suis Roy ni Prince aussi, Je suis le Seigneur Couci.“ "Neither king nor prince ye see, But the Baron of Couci."-TYTLER'S Scots Worthies, I. The treaty of marriage was concluded, at Roxburgh, on the 15th May, 1239. In 1242, Haddington was the scene of an atrocious murder, which created a great sensation in Scotland, and involved the C The kingdom in a party war. At a tournament on the English borders, Patrick, sixth Earl of Athol, a youth of distinguished accomplishments, overthrew Walter or William Bisset, it not being distinctly ascertained which of the two, the chief of a powerful family, who resided in the neighbourhood of his estate. An ancient animosity existed between them, which was now kindled into rage. Earl of Athol on his return passed the night at Haddington. The house in which he lodged was set on fire, and he, with several of his followers, were either burned to death or slain in their retreat. It was supposed that the house was fired, that the murder might be concealed. The supposition naturally fell upon the defeated Bisset. The nobility flew to arms, and demanded his life. It was in vain that the king offered to bring the matter to a regular trial. The Comyns and other powerful nobles, headed by Patrick earl of Dunbar and March, excited to vengeance by David de Hastings, who had married the aunt and heir of Athol, would listen to no accommodation. On the other hand Bisset, in order to justify himself, procured sentence of excommunication to be published against the murderers in all the churches of the kingdom. He urged that he was fifty miles distant from Haddington at the time of the murder, and offered to maintain his innocence by single combat; yea, the young queen offered to make oath, "That Bisset had never devised a crime so enormous!" which evidently shewed that he was a royal favourite. This only fanned the flame of the malice of his enemies, which at length prevailed. For three months did they secretly seek to slay him, while the king concealed him in retreats inaccessible to their vengeance. As a mark of Bisset's ingratitude, on effecting his escape to England, he sought to embroil the two nations in a general war. He laid his sufferings before Henry, ascribing them as much to the weakness of the king as to the fury of the nobility; and flattered the vanity of that prince, by impressing him with the belief, that he was the superior lord of Alexander, and that the latter had no right to condemn persons of the supplicant's rank without his majesty's consent. He likewise added, that Geoffry de Marais, the father of William de Morises, a famous pirate who had lately been hanged, and who had lately escaped from the jails of England, had received protection at the Scottish court; and further, that Walter Comyn, earl of Menteith, and other nobles, had erected a castle in Galloway |