the Revolution, they were steady friends to the Crown-or to those who claimed to wear it-Queensmen, Cavaliers, and Jacobites to the last. In the course of their history it fell to their lot to defend their strong and princely castle of Carlaverock on two occasions at the command of their kings: on the first, successfully, against the English on behalf of Bruce in 1312; on the second, in behalf of Charles I. against the Covenanters in 1640-unsuccessfully indeed, but surrendering only after a prolonged resistance of thirteen weeks. A parallel fact can hardly be cited, involving such an interval of time, and in respect to one and the same fortress, from the annals of any other Scottish family. Three, or rather four personages stand out with especial prominence in these volumes,-viz., John Lord Herries, the faithful champion of Mary Queen of Scots; his nephew John, eighth Lord Maxwell, and the son and heir of the latter, John the ninth Lord (both of them Earls of Morton during the eclipse of the Douglases of Dalkeith, but whom we shall style for convenience by their more familiar title), and under whom the well-known feud between the Maxwells and Johnstones rose to its climax and expired; and Winifred Herbert, Countess of Nithsdale, the heroic but thoroughly womanly wife of William the fifth Earl, who planned and accomplished her husband's escape from the Tower after his condemnation to death for his share in the insurrection of 1715. The history of Lord Herries is sufficiently known, and Lady Nithsdale's character is familiar to us through her letter to her sister, narrating her husband's escape; but our space will not allow us to do more than touch on the great Maxwell and Johnstone feud, which Mr Fraser has now placed before us for the first time in its completeness by the collation of private

and public documents; although we must of course hope for still further light from the Johnstone or Annandale archives, should such in course of time become accessible.

It can hardly be necessary to remind the Scottish reader that while the Maxwells ruled in Nithsdale the Johnstones held nearly equal power in Annandale, and that a constant personal rivalry and a rooted opposition of character and political sentiment marked the two families. The Maxwells adhered (as we have stated) to what are now termed Conservative ideas, the Johnstones to Liberal, for the two parties were as clearly defined then as now. The proximate question of dispute turned invariably on the possession of the Wardenship of the Western Marches, an office of immense influence, and which the Maxwells claimed as a sort of hereditary right, and usually held when partisans (more or less avowed) of the elder religion and the old French alliance were in power, but were as certainly deprived of, as a matter of course, when the doctrines of the newer world got the ascendancy— as they did, in fact, more and more towards the close of the sixteenth century. The great feud-if it were not more correct to term it a war— began in earnest in 1584, and may be said to have terminated in 1613; and the drama falls naturally into three distinct acts, each contributing its catastrophe. It began, not through the love but the pride, apparently, of a woman.

In 1584, Captain James Stuart, the upstart Earl of Arran, the unworthy favourite of James VI., was in the zenith of his power. He had acquired the barony of Kinneil by the forfeiture of the Hamiltons, and wished to exchange it with Lord Maxwell for that of Mearns and other property, part of the Maxwell patrimony. Lord Maxwell declined; and in order to coerce him, Stuart

prevailed on Lady Johnstone, wife of Sir John of that Ilk, Lord Maxwell's rival, and who was then at Court, to induce her husband to accept the provostship of Dumfries, which was vacant. He did so; but Lord Maxwell, who viewed it as an affront to himself and his family, occupied the town with his forces, prevented the entrance of Johnstone, and obtained his own election. Sir John complained to Stuart and the Privy Council. Maxwell was denounced as a rebel-ordered to surrender himself prisoner at the Castle of Blackness under pain of treason -the Wardenship of the Western Marches was conferred on Johnstone-all Lord Maxwell's fortified castles were to be surrendered within twenty-four hours, and all his friends to appear before the new warden and give security for loyal obedience under pain of rebellion. Along with these orders Stuart sent two companies of horse to support Johnstone, but Maxwell intercepted and defeated them. Mutual raids followed between the two clans, in the most important of which, the Maxwells, under a brother of the chief, burnt the castle of Lochwood, the chief stronghold of the Johnstones, boasting that he would give Lady Johnstone light enough "to set her hood by;" while at the same time Lord Maxwell besieged the Tower of Bonshaw, the old seat of the Irvines, and which was held out by Sir John Johnstone in person, with cannon, and had brought it to extremity, when Lord Scrope, the English warden, intervened as mediator, and effected a composition between them. The Tower was surrendered, and Johnstone appears to have gone free; but his proud spirit chafed so under the discomfiture, that he died of grief shortly afterwards, in 1586. Beyond empty proclamations, the Government attempted nothing more for the time against the Maxwells; and thus ter

minated the first act in the drama, the Johnstones remaining in legal and confirmed possession of the wardenship, but deprived of their chief. Lochwood, the fortress of the Johnstones, could hardly have been captured except by practised Borderers it stood in the centre of an almost inaccessible morass, which induced King James to exclaim when he saw it a few years afterwards, that the man who built it there must have been a thief in his heart.

Some years now elapsed, during which Sir James Johnstone, the son and heir of the elder laird, and a brave and able man, occupied himself in strengthening his position, renewing the alliance with his hereditary friends the Jardines, and otherwise. The fall of Arran, in which Lord Maxwell was a chief actor, and his re-establishment in the wardenship, threatened to reawaken the struggle; but it was postponed for a time by the efforts of King James, who at length brought the enemies to a formal agreement and reconciliation in 1592. It was not destined to be of long duration. In the succeeding year a party of Johnstones, headed by the Laird of Wamphray, invaded the territories of the Crichtons, who appealed to Lord Maxwell, as Warden of the March, and to the King and Privy Council, for redress. Fifteen poor widows, carrying as many bloody shirts which had been worn by their slaughtered relatives, accompanied the deputation, and paraded the streets of Edinburgh. The people were roused to compassion, and demanded vengeance; and the King and Council ordered Lord Maxwell to do justice on the offenders. The neighbouring barons and others who had suffered wrong from similar oppression on the part of the Johnstones and their allies, engaged themselves to Lord Maxwell on this occasion by a bond of friendship and man

rent to support his authority. The existence of this bond came to the knowledge of Sir James Johnstone, who immediately took measures to repel the threatened attack. The Scotts of Buccleuch, the Elliots of Liddesdale, and the Armstrongs of the Debatable Land, all took part with him-Buccleuch in particular contributing five hundred men. The two armies met on the sands near the point where the river Dryfe falls into the Annan; but the tactics of Sir James Johnstone proved superior to those of his enemy. He took up a position on the slope of a rising ground, with the river in front, where Maxwell, if he crossed and attacked him, could only do so under the disadvantage of being unable to employ more than half his men. The latter crossed, notwithstanding, confident in his superiority, but found himself in face of an enemy having the advantage of position, with his own troops in disorder, and, in short, obliged either to fight or fly. While he paused for a moment, Johnstone sent forward a detachment of prickers to provoke him to combat, shouting his slogan, "Ready, aye ready!" to which Maxwell replied by throwing forward a similar party, whose cry of "Wardlaw! I bid ye bide, Wardlaw!" bespoke defiance. But these last were instantly sur rounded by numbers; some were taken and others slain; and the remainder fell back on the main body and threw the whole into confirmed confusion and flight. Lord Maxwell was slain in the pursuit-some say by Sir James Johnstone himself, some by Johnstone of Kirkhill, who cut off his hand; some by the wife of the latter, who had come to the field to succour the wounded, and found him bleeding to death, and dashed out his brains with the heavy keys she wore at her girdle. these traditions rest on no sufficient authority, and all that is affirmed

But

by contemporary evidence is that he was slain, and his head and right hand cut off and carried as a trophy to Lochwood. Before the battle, Maxwell, it is said, had offered a "ten-pound land" as reward to any one who would bring him his rival's head or hand, and the challenge. thus fearfully recoiled against himself. The place where he fell was long known by two trees named in tradition "Lord Maxwell's thorns," but which were swept away by an inundation of the Dryfe about fifty years ago. Many of the fugitives were pursued by the Johnstones as far as Lockerby, where the severity of their wounds originated the proverbial expression of "a Lockerby lick." Lord Maxwell was still in the prime of life, only forty years old. Archbishop Spotswood describes him as "a man of great spirit, humane, courteous, and more learned than noblemen usually are. His fall was pitied of many, for that he was not known" (rather a negative merit) "to have done much wrong in his time, and was rather hurtful to himself than others." The Battle of Dryfe Sands, as it is called, was fought on the 6th of December 1593.

The third and last act in this tragical history, in which the mature Sir James Johnstone and the young Lord Maxwell, the son and heir of Lord John, are the principal performers, begins with the year 1608, but was prefaced, as in an interlude, by a series of minor struggles between the two clans. Lord Herries, Sir James Johnstone, Lord Ochiltree (as an impartial statesman, attached to neither party), and finally, Sir James Johnstone once more, were successively appointed Wardens of the Western Marches during the interval; and it would seem that the Johnstones' rule was arbitrary and oppressive, and such as the Maxwells and their friends could ill brook. But James VI. and the Privy Council were con

stantly labouring in the beneficent task of bringing the various feuds which distracted the country to peaceable accommodation; and a reconciliation was once more effected between the families in 1605, when Lord Maxwell executed what were called "Letters of Slains," by which he formally forgave the Laird of Johnstone the slaughter of his father. Nothing is more striking, we may observe, than the intermixture of bloodshed and legal composition or atonement "assy thement is the ancient word for it in the feudal jurisprudence of Scotland-which reminds us at every page of our criminal trials of the feuds in Iceland, and subsequent arbitrations at the Thing, as recorded, for example, in the Nials-Saga,' so admirably translated by Mr Dasent. The quasilegality then attaching to the bloodfeud, is incidentally illustrated during this very interval, when, on the 7th March 1600, Lord Herries, in subscribing a renunciation of his personal share in the feud, reserves his duty of blood and friendship to his chief, which reservation was duly admitted by the king. It is difficult to believe that the young Lord Maxwell could have thus foregone his claim to vengeance, except under pressure; but he may have shared in the better feelings rapidly growing up among the younger generation; and what took place afterwards is susceptible, we think, of an interpretation less harsh than the law and the Privy Council affixed to it.

This reconciliation of 1605 was shortly afterwards followed by a mandate commanding him to enter himself as prisoner in the castle of Leith, as suspected of Popery; and a challenge to the Earl of Morton to decide certain differences between them as to jurisdiction by single combat, was punished by his arrest and imprisonment in the castle of Edinburgh. He made his escape, and took refuge in the fortresses of

his own country, where a cavern which he tenanted is still called "Lord Maxwell's Cave."

Under the adverse circumstances just related, overtures were made to him by Sir James Johnstone for a permanent reconciliation. The intermediary was Sir Robert Maxwell of Spotts, who had married Johnstone's sister, and was well affected to both parties, although Lord Maxwell treated him with coldness in consequence of his alliance with the hostile clan. It was arranged that Lord Maxwell and Sir James should meet and confer, each with a single attendant, near the house of Beal, on Wednesday the 6th of April 1608, Sir Robert to act as mediator. Sir Robert, who undertook the commission with reluctance, exacted an oath from both barons that neither should commit any act of violence, whether the conference ended in a reconciliation or not. The details of the meeting are given from contemporary authority with the minuteness of an eye and ear witness. Lord Maxwell was attended by Charles Maxwell, brother of the Laird of Kirkhouse, and Sir James by William Johnstone of Lockerby. Charles was a man of hasty temper, and Sir Robert augured ill from his appearance on the field. The two chiefs met, and saluting each other courteously, rode forward together, Sir Robert riding between them. Charles Maxwell and Lockerby had been ordered to remain apart, under apprehension of that violence on the part of subordinates which so frequently under parallel circumstances defeated the intention of principals. But, disobeying his orders, Charles Maxwell left his post, and approaching Lockerby, said, "If I had known of this tryste, Lord Maxwell neither could nor should have brought me here." "I hope in God, Charles," replied Lockerby, "ye shall not rue of your coming here; for these two noblemen have

been long at variance, and I hope now they shall agree." "The Laird of Johnstone is not able," rejoined Charles, "to make amends for the great skaith and injury he hath done to us." To which Lockerby replied, soothingly, "The Laird will do to his power to satisfy Lord Maxwell and his friends." But Charles continued to provoke him by bitter words, and at last drew a pistol and fired at him. The bullet passed through Lockerby's cloak. He cried "Treason!" and aimed at Charles, but the pistol missed fire. Lord Maxwell, hearing the shots, was about to turn back, when Sir Robert seized him by the cloak, exclaiming, "Fie, my lord! make not yourself a traitor and me baith!" To which Maxwell replied, "I am wyteless" (i. e., blameless); and then seeing Sir James Johnstone "stealing away" (as it is expressed) to support his follower, and shaking off Sir Robert's grasp, he rode quickly after him, fired at him with his pistol, and mortally wounded him. Sir James fell to the ground, exclaiming, "Lord, have mercy on me! Christ, have mercy on me! I am deceived," and almost immediately afterwards expired. Lord Maxwell, who had turned his horse back after firing the fatal shot, paused, looking on-it is not difficult to imagine with what mingled emotion-while the faithful Locker

by was supporting his dying chief. He was preparing to go when Charles cried, "My lord, will ye ride away and leave this bloody thief behind you?"—meaning Lockerby. "What reck of him!" said Maxwell-" as if," observes Mr Fraser, "his thirst for blood had been slaked by the death of the slayer of his father". "for the other has enough." they rode away together.

Then

ous services. It has a suspicious appearance, but does not necessarily imply foul play. The event was wholly against Lord Maxwell's interest, and we have little doubt that the crime was unpremeditated. The presence of various gentlemen as witnesses to the charter suggests that it was signed in the morning. The interview and its disastrous termination took place between three and four in the afternoon.

Lord Maxwell escaped to France, where he remained for some years. Meanwhile he was tried, condemned, and forfeited in absence, in 1609, for treason, murder under assurance (and, it is charged, by poisoned bullets, for which there is not a shadow of support), and on other counts; and his lands were bestowed on others. His flight and the occasion of it are commemorated in the well-known, beautiful, and contemporary ballad, familiar to us as "Lord Maxwell's Good-Night."

Wearied of exile he returned to Scotland without the king's licence, and at the certain risk of his life, in March 1612. He was hunted like a wild beast, and, broken in health and hopeless of escape, determined to make his way, if possible, to Sweden. His kinsman, George, Earl of Caithness, with unexampled infamy-if a story so black and without any adequate motive can be credited-offered him shelter and

assistance towards that object; and, after getting him into his power, imprisoned and betrayed him to the Government. He was brought by ship from Thurso to Edinburgh, and warded in the common jail in September of the same year.

The last scene of the last act was now at hand. On the news of Lord Maxwell's arrest and arrival in Edinburgh, Sir James, the young heir of Johnstone, with his mother and