satisfactory alibi. And we daresay, if we were to put a fine point upon our criticism, it would be easy to show that Sholto's claims to rank as a historical character are not less weighty than those of Solvathius himself. "WE do not yet know them fully," cries Master David Hume of Godscroft, speaking of the Douglases in his History; "we do not know them in the fountain but in the stream; not in the root but in the stock and stemme, for we know not who was the first mean In post-Solvathian days, when, man who did, by his vertue, raise by the aid of actual history, we himself above the vulgar." Tra- first distinctly discern the Dougdition points out to us Sholto lases, they occupy a position Dhuglas, the dark-grey man, among the nobles of Scotland whose valour turned the tide which could scarcely have been of battle in favour of the royal enhanced by the efforts of the army of King Solvathius, and herald or the genealogist. Minagainst the rebels under Donald erva-like, the first authentic DougBane. This was in the year las steps into Scottish history 767; and heaven forbid that we armed at all points with feudal should venture to gainsay it. power, landed possessions, and an We willingly accept Sholto as the assured rank among the nota"first mean man of the house of bles of the country. However the Douglas until a more remote far back he might trace his lineage, progenitor has been produced, as we are justified in believing that we accept the hero of Luncarty as the place held by William of the founder of the fortunes of the Douglasdale in the end of the Hays; John the Scot who killed twelfth and beginning of the thirthe buck in the "cleuch" as the teenth century, must have been ancestor of the "Rough Clan"; or secured for him by generations of the warrior who dared to rescue ancestors of distinction and imthe body of King Kenneth's cousin portance. The "stream" of which from the Pictish gibbet, as the fa- Godscroft speaks was already touchther of all who call themselves Dal- ing high-water in the time of Wilzell, and bear the motto "I dare." liam "the Hardy," during the seOur modern historians brush these cond half of the thirteenth cenheroes too lightly aside. But we tury; a few generations more saw are of Godscroft's way of thinking. it flowing "from bank to brae"; Doubtless there was some first a little later still and it has be"mean man" even in the lofty come an impetuous torrentline of the Douglases, and Sholto will serve well enough for the eponym until direct historical evidence is forthcoming that he did not live in the reign of Solvathius, or until his presence at the battle in question is refuted by a "Frothing white with many a plume, Dark-blue with many a spear," sweeping everything before it, until checked by the confines which a growing Reign of Law was compelled to impose upon its course. The Douglas Book. By William Fraser, C.B., LL.D. In Four Volumes. Edinburgh: Privately printed. 1885. Apart from the consequence which the house of Douglas derived from its old descent, extensive possessions, royal and noble alliances, and the multitude of its vassals, no other Scottish family can boast of the same number of members who individually, by force of character, have made themselves famous in their generation and in the annals of the chroniclers, or who have contributed so many names to the household words of their countrymen. Few of the Lords of Doug las or of Angus who flourished before the Union of the Crowns are without some familiar and graphic epithet attached to their names, indicative of the frequency with which these were repeated by the tongues of the vulgar, and of the deep impression which the person alities of these barons must have made upon the popular imagination. A first glance at the Douglas tree rests upon Sir William "le Hardi," the companion inarms of Wallace and Bruce, the "Good Sir James," "Archibald the Grim," the "Dead Douglas of Otterburn," "Tineman," "James the Gross," the proud "Fair Maid of Galloway," the "Great Earl of Angus," and on the "homely name of Archibald Bell-the-Cat." All these have furnished prized themes for the arts of both poet and minstrel. There is no injustice in Godscroft's remark that— during an age of feudalism and chivalry. Those qualities which had raised the house of Douglas to the highest place of honour in its own country, and had made its name famous throughout Christendom, lost their value as feudalism gave place to legalism; and though its lords had frequently combined statecraft with military prowess, yet their natural sphere was the field and not the Cabinet. They "loved better to hear the lark sing than the mouse squeak." When we perceive that in the person of the Regent Morton the diplomatist is preponderating over the warrior, we are conscious the changed times have set their mark upon the Douglas character, and that it has entered upon an age to which it will with difficulty adapt itself. All the distinct characteristics of the Douglases were, if not a direct product of the feudal system, at least fostered by it; and with the extinction of feudalism all the sources of their pre-eminence are closed up. They henceforth take the place assigned to them in the ranks of their order, now in the van, now in the rear, as the case may be; but they cease to specially influence the national life and to interest the national sentiment as the earlier barons of their house had done. The annals of the Douglases must combine within themselves all the elements of the highest literary interest. The name of the 66 Black Douglas" found its way into the lullaby of English mothers. The most picturesque pages of our earlier chronicles are those which describe the Douglas exploits. Poets and novelists have alike delighted in twining the threads of their history with the strands of imagination, and have presented us with such picturesque and strik the bibliophile has generally to look at the balance at his banker's before venturing on an attempt at purchasing. As a family historian, Mr Fraser handles his subjects with an evident consciousness that the select audience whom he is addressing desiderate kindly and courteous treatment of their ancestors; but we cannot accuse him of neglect of the wider object to which his work is subservient the establishment of historic truth. We can justly say of these family histories, especially of The Douglas Book,' that they are not merely additions of the highest value to the general history of Scotland, but that they render it necessary that much of our history as generally received should be reconsidered if not rewritten. ing portraitures of Douglases, that falls into the hand of a bookseller, history vainly seeks to supplant their ideals. But even when shorn of all legendary accretions the Douglas records still preserve the higher charms of romance. The bold and powerful lords, more than a match for the Crown itself; the fair and haughty dames of the race; the battles, forays, treasons, conspiracies, bitter feuds, and splendid friendships,-need no effects of art to fix them upon the mind. Nor are the darker dramatic qualities wanting. Though proverbially "tender and true," the Lords of Douglas were ruthless and implacable foes, fettered by few scruples when either their interest or their ambition was to be gratified. A history of the Douglases would therefore be an eloquent volume, even though it came from the pen of a less accomplished writer and less authoritative historian than Mr William Fraser. Mr Fraser's magnificent series of family histories, of which 'The Douglas Book' is the most important both by subject and treatment, may be said to be unique in literature. Embodying the results of the closest and most painstaking research, such sumptuous volumes as the Scotts of Buccleuch,' the 'Red Book of Menteith,' the Stirlings of Keir,' the Book of Carlaverock,' the Lairds of Grant,' or the much-criticised Lennox,' want only a larger circulation to entitle them to rank as national as well as family muniments. But Mr Fraser does not write for that general public, which will, however, in the end, reap the benefit of his researches. His histories are privately printed for the families to which they relate; the editions are limited-rarely, we believe, exceeding a hundred and fifty or a couple of hundred copies; and when one of these by chance Of the four large volumes which Mr Fraser has devoted to the Douglas family, the first two are concerned with the histories of the houses of Douglas and Angus, the "Black" and "Red Douglases"; the third contains character; and the fourth, correspondence extending over a period of about five hundred years; and all these volumes are beautifully illustrated with facsimiles of characters and signatures, engravings of seals, and plates of the principal sepulchral memorials of the Douglases. While claiming for Mr Fraser the credit due for the execution of the work, it would be unjust to omit commendation of the Earl of Home, the representative of the Lords of Douglas-pace his Grace of Hamilton-to whose spirited munificence the printing of The Douglas Book' is due. It may be easily imagined that, under Mr Fraser's searching scrutiny, many of the traditions with which the Douglases are usually associated pass away into the regions of myth. Sholto Dhuglas is not the only familiar member of the family whose existence is called in question. The authorities for Sholto are "truth delivered from hand to hand" and a "certain manuscript" seen by the tenth Earl of Angus, as mentioned by Godscroft, in the north of Scotland in 1595, perhaps a transcript of Boece's History. The rebellion of Donald Bane, against which Sholto distinguished himself, took place some four hundred years after the assumed era of Solvathius; and it is contemporaneously with this occurrence that William of Douglas, "the earliest recorded ancestor," is met with. Might not this William have been the legendary "Sholto" "? Might he not have been distinguished by a popular cognomen as well as "Bell-theCat" or "Tineman"? Mr Fraser observes in a note that the name of Sholto does not appear in the families of Douglas or Angus until quite recent times-" which," he remarks, "is not what usually occurs. Respect for the name of the founder of a great family generally ensures that his Christian name at least occasionally appears when he has a long line of descendants." This is true so far; but we need go no further than 'The Douglas Book' for an instance which proves that Christian names are not always a safe basis for genealogical evidence. The Gledstanes were the hereditary bailies of the Douglas on his barony of Cavers, and there is strong presumption made out that the family of which Mr Gladstone is the most distinguished member are the present representatives of that ancient house. The first of the old stock of whom we have any record was Herbert of Gledstanes, and we find the same name perpetuated still in the ex-Premier's family. Genealogists some two hundred years after this, for the satisfaction of future Gladstones, may point to this fact, and from it advance with more assurance than Mr Fraser ventures on the assumption that the great statesman of the Victorian age traced a direct descent from Herbert of Gledstanes in the end of the thirteenth century. But the truth is, that Mr Herbert Gladstone derives his Christian name from having been born at the time when Mr Sidney Herbert was his father's colleague; and thus the recurrence of the Christian name is nothing more than a coincidence. Identity of names has led Mr Fraser to discuss another suggested origin of the Douglases, which, if not wholly new, is now examined in full detail for the first time. The peculiar name of Freskin appears once, and only once, in the Douglas pedigree, and on it is based a hypothesis that the Douglases had a common origin with the great house of De Moravia in Freskin the Flemming, who obtained a grant of lands from King David I. in the recently subjugated province of Moray. When most is made of the evidence, the conclusions are not very convincing. Freskin the Flemming died before 1171; and in a charter between 1203 and 1222, we find Brice of Douglas, Bishop of Moray, speaking of his uncle Freskin of Kerdal, a barony presumably lying within Strathnairn. But who was Freskin of Kerdal? The furthest that even Cosmo Innes can go, is to conjecture, from the peculiarity of his name, that, if not a member, he was at least a relative of the family of Moravia. Even the marriage of William of Douglas to the sister of Freskin de Kerdal has no other foundation than the allusion in Bishop Brice's charter, and the fact that William of Douglas had a son called Freskin. The utmost that this proves is, that the Douglases in the end of the twelfth century occupied a position which entitled them to intermarry with so high a family as the De Moravias were. But an argument for consanguinity is found in the assertion of identity of arms. The old coat of the Douglases, we are told, bore three stars, like those of Moray, Sutherland, and Bothwell, but on a line in chief, and not arranged two and one. But even upon this we cannot lay much stress. Our earlier Scottish armorials show, if not limited imagination, a constant tendency on the part of Scottish heraldry to repeat itself; and only on such suppositions can we account for the existence of almost identical coats borne by families, between which no connection is traceable. Scottish heraldry in the days before the War of Independence was not the perfect and discriminative science that it had become in the days of so accomplished a Lord Lyon as Sir David of the Mount. Thus, while the attempts to establish a genealogical and heraldic connection between the Douglases and the De Moravias are interesting as showing the early importance of the former, we must agree with Mr Fraser that the chain of evidence is not complete, and no definite conclusion can be drawn." Other three theories of the Douglas origin remain to be disposed of, but these Mr Fraser does not deem deserving of such elaborate investigation. Chalmers, with characteristic dogmatism, remarks that Godscroft might have seen the "first mean man" of the family, had he opened his eyes to the existence of "Theobald Flammaticus," who obtained a grant of lands on the Douglas Water between 1147 and 1160. This grant, how ever, is now ascertained to have been in Lesmahagow, and not in Douglas; and no link exists to connect William of Douglas, who appears in Douglasdale certainly within thirty years of the last of these dates, and Theobald the Flemming, who with more probability has been assigned as an ancestor to the De Berkelays a powerful baronial family in the Mearns and Angus under the earlier Stewart kings. The second theory is, that the Douglas family were natives of the soil from which they took their name, and Lords of Douglasdale, before we find any written record of their existence. This is, to our mind, the most probable hypothesis; and we think that Mr Fraser, evidently carried away by a partiality for the De Moravia theory, hardly gives it the consideration to which it is entitled. Weight is given to it by the fact that the Douglas family, when we first hear of it, was possessed of evident local influence and consequence; for it could procure the Piory of Lesmahagow for Brice of Douglas "in juvenilibus annis," it could contract distinguished alliances, and enjoyed popularity among the people-a further presumption of its being a native or Celtic family, for the Scots were by no means partial to the foreigners whom David I. and his successors settled in the country in such numbers. And lastly, Mr Riddell, the peerage authority, has suggested a Northumbrian origin, which is, however, found to have no better foundation than that the family of Douglas possessed some manors in that county, as at various times they possessed lands in the sister kingdom. We have discussed this matter at such length, that we must allow Mr Fraser himself to conclude the controversy : |