New Poems by James I/The Study of Poetry under Montgomerie

by James I

II

THE STUDY OF POETRY UNDER MONTGOMERIE

"Beloved Sanders maistre of our art."

Admonition, l. 2.

The arrival in Scotland of Esme Stuart d'Aubigny in September, I579,^[1] and the King's "first and magnificent" entry into Edinburgh in the next month, mark the beginning of a complete change from the latter's quiet life at Stirling. D'Aubigny was a cousin of James's father, a man of "cumlie proportion and civil behaviour," according to Melville, "upright, just, and gentle, but wanting experience in the state of the country."^[2] "False"^[3] has been added; yet it is likely that his influence over the young King was gained at first by nothing more objectionable than his personal charm and the boy's natural feeling for his kindred. Together, amid the grief and railings of the Kirk, they set about the overthrow of the Regent Morton and the collection at court of more congenial followers. "Papists with great ruffes and syde bellies were suffered in the presence of the Kynge."^[4] "His Majesties chaste ears were frequently abused with unknown Italian and French forms of oaths, days were turned into nights, and Arran's mistress infected the air of the court." In milder language, James was easily distracted by less elevated phases of humanism than the study of the classics and Calvinistic theology.

Among those who found the change not unpleasant was Alexander Montgomerie, author of The Cherrie and the Slae, and the only Scottish poet of importance who was writing in this period. In the next ten years his life connects itself closely with the King's, and affords the best approach to the latter's relations with Scottish literature. There is reason to suppose that he numbered among his companions the English poet Constable; he was the leader of the quasi-literary group of envoys and intelligencers who were about the court and hailed in sonnets the issues of the King's poems; and, as will appear later, he was the King's guide in his first ventures into verse and criticism.

The date of his birth is still uncertain, but the recently published researches of Mr. George Stevenson^[5] make it clear that, while he was born not later than 1545, he belonged to a younger generation of the Hessilheid Montgomeries than the one with which he has hitherto been connected, and that his mother, who died after a long widowhood in 1583, was a great granddaughter of Sir John Stewart of Dernely, first Earl of Lennox, from whom James and d'Aubigny were also directly descended. The poet was thus a member of the Stewart clan, and his kinship with the King helps to explain the favor in which he stood at court. Of his early life little is known, but there is reason to believe that he was in the Low Countries at some time during the seventies,^[6] and afterward about the court as a follower of Morton.^[7] The only poems of his which belong clearly in this period are The Navigatioun and The Cartell of the Thre Ventrous Knichts, written for the King's first entry into Edinburgh.

That the poet joined the Lennox faction at court, and during the next ten years was first a "familiar servitour" and afterward a pensioner of the King, is established by evidence drawn both from his writings and from documents of the period. On March 5, 1579-1580, d'Aubigny was made Earl of Lennox, and soon after acquired the large revenues of the Bishopric of Glasgow. Robert Montgomerie, a kinsman of the poet,^[8] was appointed "tulchan" archbishop, as the means by which the money might reach Lennox. He was thus a follower of Lennox as early as 1581, and this bears out the evidence in a sonnet of Montgomerie (XVII, in the numbering of Cranstoun's edition for the Scottish Text Society) that the poet was in the same service and in this way a member of the royal household. For later reference the sonnet is given in full; the "suete Duke" was Lennox's son Ludovic, who at the time when the poem was written was about nineteen years old,^[9] and the "umquhyle Maister" was not Morton, as has generally been supposed, but Lennox himself. This is shown by the fact that Henry Keir, one of the companions mentioned, was Lennox's private secretary^[10] and a great practicer against the Kirk.^[11] Constable was either Archibald Douglas, the Scottish representative in London, who occupied the curious position of an envoy paid by the government to which he was sent, and who was sometimes referred to by this title;^[12] or Henry Constable, the English sonneteer and Catholic emissary, whose activities make his intimacy with Keir and Montgomerie at least equally probable.^[13]

[To his Majestie, for his pension.]

Adeu, my King, court, cuntrey, and my kin ;
Adeu, suete Duke, vhose father held me deir;
Adeu, companiones, Constable and Keir:
Thrie treuar hairts, I trou, shall neuer tuin.
If byganes to revolve I suld begin,
My tragedie wald cost you mony a teir
To heir hou hardly I am handlit heir,
Considring once the honour I wes in.
Shirs, ye haif sene me griter with his Grace,
And with your umquhyle Maister, to, and myne;
Quha thogt the Poet somtyme worth his place,
Suppose ye sie they shot him out sensyne.
Sen wryt, nor wax, nor word is not a word ;
I must perforce ga seik my fathers suord.

By the Raid of Ruthven, August 22, 1582, the opponents of Lennox secured possession of the King's person and drove the Duke back to France, where he died in May of the next year. Montgomerie, however, remained in the household, for, on April 24, 1583, he appeared as the King's messenger before the General Assembly of the Kirk, forbidding them to remove the principal or members of the University of Glasgow.^[14] Again in Calderwood, in August of the same year, we learn that "the King's old household servants were changid for the most part, and the rest were likewise to be removed, as James Murray of Powmaes, Captain Montgomerie, etc."^[15] This change it is difficult to explain, unless it was a concession to the demands of the Kirk following James's escape in June from the control of the Ruthven nobles. But it is quite unlikely that it represents any withdrawal of favor; Montgomerie was now placed on a pension of five hundred merks a year, granted by James, July 7, 1583, and paid regularly until 1586, when the poet left Scotland on an errand abroad for the King.^[16]

In November of 1583 the interesting packet of political tracts and French verse was brought from Stirling to Holyrood, 3 and in the ensuing winter James seems to have settled down to the examination of Scottish histories, the censorship of treasonable documents, and the study and composition of poetry. The Phœnix, lamenting the death of Lennox and referring to the arrival of his son, 4 was written at this time, and is the longest and best of the poems which appeared the next year in The Essayes of a Prentise. 5 The translation from Du Bartas in the Essayes may belong to the same period, but the boyish crudity of the Reulis and cautelis and the twelve "sonnets and suites to the gods" suggests that they were composed still earlier. The "Song, the first verses that ever the King made" (LIII), was written, according to the heading in Calderwood, when he was "fyfteene yeere old," and there is other evidence that his

3 Cf. p. xxiii. Buchanan's De Jure Regni, which was in the packet, and his History were condemned by act of Parliament the next year (Acts of the Parliaments of Scotland, Vol. Ill, p. 296).

4 Ludovic landed at Leith, November 13, 1583.

5 There seem to have been two issues of this volume; some copies bear the date 1584 and others 1585. poetical experiments began as early as 1581.^[17] Whatever the exact date, it is clear that they were carried on under the guidance of Montgomerie and not of Buchanan, who died September 29, 1582, and some time before had ceased to perform his duties as tutor. The King's reliance on the master poet is everywhere traceable in both his precepts and his practice.

To this period may also be assigned Montgomerie's Flyting with Polwart, the King's enjoyment of which is spoken of in one of Montgomerie's sonnets (XXVII):

"Vhose Highnes laughed som tym for to look
Hou I chaist Polwart from the chimney nook."

The Flyting is true to its uncomely type, and to modern taste more grotesquely coarse than either lascivious or amusing; but it is not necessary to make it the chief index of James's early taste in poetry he was also the translator of Du Bartas's Uranie, ou Muse Celeste.

Montgomerie's poem, like the King's Admonition (LI), illustrates the good-natured fellowship which existed between the young monarch and his poetical familiars. Celebrations inspired by Bacchus as well as the Muses were not infrequent. Indeed, from such evidence as we can gather the joke on Archbishop Adamson,^[18] the boisterous tone of the Flyting and similar pieces, his final surrender to the god of wine^[19] one pictures "beloved Sanders" as a jovial, not altogether reputable character such as Scott would have enjoyed painting, gifted with intelligence and some genius, yet quite capable of the role of court jester or abbot of unreason when occasion permitted.

The order of March 21, 1588-1589, restoring Montgomerie's pension,^[20] informs us that he left Scotland on the King's business in the autumn of 1586, with license to "pass of this realme to the pairtis of France, Flanders, Spaine, and otheris beyond sey . . . quheras he remanit continewallie sensyne, detaynit and halden in prison." His destination and the nature of his errand have remained unknown, though the time, just preceding the execution of Mary his intimacy with Constable and Keir, and references in his sonnets to Archbishop Beaton, Mary's representative in Paris, show that he was associated with members of the Catholic party. A hitherto unnoted letter from T. Fowler to Archibald Douglas in London, November 25, 1588,^[21] makes it likely that his imprisonment was in England. The given name is again omitted, but the date and the circumstances of the detention at once connect the reference with the poet. Fowler's statement that Montgomerie was "unacquainted with trouble" may be taken with many allowances.

During his absence, his pension was stopped, and a number of his sonnets (XIV-XXX)^[22] deal with his efforts by legal proceedings and direct appeal to the King to have it restored. Since they were all written during a short period and for a special purpose, one can hardly draw a general conclusion regarding the author's petulant melancholy of temperament or undignified servility. His "real and sincere" passion for Lady Margaret Montgomerie, to whom he addressed sonnets at the time of her marriage in 1582, is also wholly mythical, since she was many years his junior and of a higher social station. In spite of the restoration, his pension was still withheld, and it is doubtful if Montgomerie ever regained favor at court. James was in Denmark from October, 1589, until May of the next year, and after his return there was another reordering and reduction of his household.

The King's Epitaphe (XXXIV) and a second sonnet referring to Montgomerie (XLV) may conveniently be considered at this point, since they make it highly probable that the poet's death occurred before the King's departure for England. After 1603, James wrote little verse, and could hardly have spoken of the Scottish writer as "our maistre poëte" and "the Prince of Poets of our land." In the Bodleian MS., XLV occurs on one side of a folio which contains an early paraphrase of one of the psalms.^[23] The thirteenth line of the Epitaphe,

"Though to his buriall was refused the bell,"

shows that at the time of his death Montgomerie was not in the good graces of the clergy. The latest of other trustworthy references to the poet is a denunciation, July 14, 1597, of "Alexander Montgomerie, brother to the laird of Heslott," for "arte, parte" in Hugh Barclay of Ladyland's treasonable attempt to seize Ailsa Craig as a station for Spanish troops and refuge for Catholics.^[24] It is perhaps significant as a clue to the date of his death that the two earliest editions of The Cherrie and the Slae appeared in this year, from different MSS., but neither with any announcement, preface, or complimentary verses such as one would expect with the work of a living writer. The second, it is true, was "Prented according to a Copie corrected by the Author himselfe"; but this may refer to the MS., and, according to Mr. Stevenson,^[25] the edition contains errors which make it hard to believe that it was corrected by the author. In 1615, a third edition (now lost) appeared, in which the poem was increased from 930 to 1596 lines. Since it is generally admitted that this edition came out after the poet's death, there is no difficulty in assuming the enlargement to have been made prior to 1603, or even, for that matter, prior to 1597.

1. D'Aubigny arrived at Stirling September 15. James entered Edinburgh on the 29th of the same month, but the formal celebration did not take place until the i5th of October. (Moysie's Memoirs, Bann. Club, p. 25.)
2. Memoirs, Bann. Club, p. 240.
3. Andrew Lang, History of Scotland, Vol. II, p. 264. D'Aubigny is thought to have served the Catholic interest (which, be it said in his favor, was by no means his own) throughout his stay in Scotland.
4. Bowes' Correspondence, Surtees Soc., p. 136.
5. Poems of Alexander Montgomerie, Supplementary Volume, Scottish Text Society, 1910.
6. Cf. l. 591 of Polwart and Montgomeries Flyting:

   "Syne forward to Flanders fast fled or he ceast."

   A Captain Robert Montgomerie — whose friendship with the Hessilheid branch of the family is shown by the fact that his name appears, with the title added, as prolocutor for Hugh of Hessilheid in a lawsuit (Pitcairn's Crim. Trials, Vol. I, p. 62) was sent to Flanders in the spring of 1573 with a force of about three thousand horse and foot (Cal. S. P. For., 1572-1574, Nos. 460, 1114, 1163). The poet may have accompanied this expedition. Young, in his list of the King's books (Warner, pp. 1, lix), written before 1578, records two gifts, one "Gottin fra Capten Montgomery," and the other "Donnée par le Capitaine Robert Montgommery." The difference in the form of the entries may serve to distinguish between the two captains, and the gifts of books would indicate their return from abroad. Robert Hackett came back from Flanders the next year with at least a dozen (ibid., p. xxxix).

7. This may be gathered from a reference in Melville's Diary (p. 45, c. 1576) to a "Capten Mongummerie, a guid honest man, the Regent's domestic." The given name is omitted, but the term "domestic" and the joke in the context suggest the poet. Cf. XXII, note.
8. It has been supposed that he was the poet's brother, but for this Stevenson finds no documentary evidence. He was appointed minister in Stirling in 1572, at the request of Morton (Acts of Gen. Ass. of the Kirk, p. 135). On his acceptance of the bishopric, he was excommunicated by the Kirk, and on one occasion attacked by an Edinburgh mob with stones and rotten eggs, an episode the account of which so amused the King that he lay down by the Inch of Perth unable to contain himself for laughter. According to James, he was a "seditious loon"; the Kirk accused him of opposing the "doctrine of Christ, who pronounceth that the most part are rebellious, and perish," and related that he had been found drunk and in pursuit of his servant with a drawn whinger (Calderwood, Hist. of the Kirk, Vol. VI, pp. 580, 635).
9. Historie of King James Sext, Bann. Club, p. 189.
10. Cal. S. P. For., January 15, 1580.
11. Melville's Memoirs, p. 240. In August, 1585, Sir Edward Stafford wrote from Paris that "John [Henry?] Keyer, a Scot, sometime secretary of the Duke of Lennox, had been with the Queen of Scots in disguise" (Cal. S. P. Sco., p. 440).
12. Calderwood, Vol. VI, p. 486.
13. Cf. p. xxxvii.
14. Calderwood, History of the Kirk, Vol. III, p. 708.
15. Ibid., Vol. VIII, App., p. 250. Since Montgomerie appears as a "sirvitour of the Kingis Majestie" in a document dated December 30, 1584 (Stevenson, p. 304), it is reasonable to conclude that these earlier references are to him.
16. Cf . the grant authorizing the restoration of his pension, Reg. of the Privy Seal of Scotland, March 21, 1588-1589
17. Stevenson places the Flyting in 1582, and suggests that the King's Admonition was written not long after.
18. Cf . XXII, note.
19. Cf . XXXIV, XLV, and notes.
20. Cf . p. xxix, note.
21. Cal. Hatfield MSS., Pt. III, p. 374. Fowler complains of the seizure of his papers by the English authorities: "Always if they would deliver my house and stuff, I shall be glad, and more of Montgomery's release, which I beseech you to procure as much as you may, for he is honest and not acquainted with trouble, and what they have to say to him God knows. I wot not, but I would gladly know whereupon they examined him, and what he hath done with my books." Fowler was an Englishman resident in Edinburgh and connected with the Lennox family. He was executor of the Countess of Lennox's will, and was intrusted by Queen Mary with jewels intended for Lady Arabella Stuart. These got into the hands of James; hence, perhaps, the seizure of Fowler's papers.
22. The mention in one of these sonnets (XXV) of the poets Alexander Scott and Robert Semple shows that they were still alive in 1588. But Scott, the references to whom as a burgess of Edinburgh are pointed out by T. F. Henderson (Scottish Vernacular Lit., p. 241), was perhaps also the burgess of that name mentioned in Cal. S. P. Sco., July 20, 1591, who had sent letters of complaint to England regarding the debts of an English agent in Edinburgh
23. Lusus Regius, p. 54.
24. Register of the Privy Council of Scotland (cf. Stevenson, p. 334).
25. Poems of Alexander Montgomerie, p. xvii.