xxvii
Morton.[1] 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,[2] 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,[3] 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[4] and a great practicer against
- ↑ 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.
- ↑ 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).
- ↑ Historie of King James Sext, Bann. Club, p. 189.
- ↑ Cal. S. P. For., January 15, 1580.
