xxviii
the Kirk.[1] 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;[2] or Henry Constable, the English sonneteer and Catholic emissary, whose activities make his intimacy with Keir and Montgomerie at least equally probable.[3]
[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.[4] Again in Calderwood, in August
- ↑ 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).
- ↑ Calderwood, Vol. VI, p. 486.
- ↑ Cf. p. xxxvii.
- ↑ Calderwood, History of the Kirk, Vol. III, p. 708.
