Kolyrood.] THE COFFIN OF JAMES V. 65
Appended to this scroll was a minute of thei
possessions, with a hint of the pecuniary advantager
to result from forfeiture. This dangerous policy
James repelled by exclaiming, ?? Pack you, javels !
(knaves). Get you to your religious charges ; reform
your lives, and be not instruments of discord
between me and my nobles, or else I shall reform
you, not as the King of Denmark does, by im
prisonment, nor yet as the King of England does
by hanging and heading, but by sharp swords,
if I hear of such hotion of you again ! ?
From this speech it has been suppqsed that
Jxnes contemplated some reform in the then
dissolute Church. But the rout at Solway
followed; his heart was broken, and on learning
the birth of his daughter Mary, he died in despair
at Falkland, yet, says Pitscottie, holding up his
hands to God, as he yielded his spirit. He was
interred in the royal vault, in December, 1542,
at Holyrood, where, according to a MS. in the
Advocates? Library, his body was seen by the Earl
of Forfar, the Lord Strathnaver, and others, who
examined that vault in 1683. ?We viewed the
body of James V. It lyeth within ane wodden
coffin, and is coverit with ane lead coffin. There
seemed to be hair upon the head still. The
body was two lengths of my staff with twa inches
more, which is twae inches and more above twae
Scots elms, for I measured the staff with an ellwand
afterward. The body was coloured black with ye
balsam that preserved it, and which was lyke
melted pitch. The Earl of Forfar took the measure
with his staf lykewayes? On the coffin was the
inscription, flhstris Scoturum, Rex Jacobus, gus
Nominis E, with the dates of his age and death.
The first regent after that event was James,
second Earl of Arran (afterwards Duke of Chatelherault,
who had been godfather to James, the
little Duke of Rothesay, next heir to the crown,
failing the issue of the infant Queen Mary), and in
1545 this high official was solemnly invested at
Holyrood, together with the Earls of Angus, Huntly,
and Argyle, with the collar and robes of St.
Michael, sent by the King of France, and at the
hands of the Lyon King of Arms.
We have related how the Church suffered at
the hands of English pillagers after Pinkie, in
1547. The Palace did not escape. Seacombe, in
his ?? History of the House of Stanley,? mentions
that Norns, of Speke Hall, Lancashire, an
English commander at that battle, plundered
from Holyrood all or most of the princely
library of the deceased King of Scots, James V.,
?particularly four large folios, said to contain
the Records and Laws of Scotland at that time.?
He also describes a grand piece of wainscot,
now in Speke Hall, as having been brought from
the palace, but this is considered, from its style,
doubtful.
During the turmoils and troubles that ensued
after Mary of Guise assumed the regency, her
proposal, on the suggestion of the French Court,
to form a Scottish standing army like that of
France, so exasperated the nobles and barons,
that three hundred of them assembled at
Holyrood in 1555, and after denouncing the
measure in strong terms, deputed the Laird of
Wemyss and Sir James Sandilands of Calder to
remonstrate with her on the unconstitutional step
she was meditating, urging that Scotland had
never wanted brave defenders to fight her battles
in time of peril, and that they would never submit
to this innovation on their ancient customsc
This spirited remonstrance from Holyrood had the
desired effect, as the regent abandoned her pro--
ject. She came, after an absence, to the palace in
the November of the following year, when the
magistrates presented her with a quantity of new
wine, and dismissed McCalzean, an assessor of the
city, who spoke to her insultingly in the palace on
the affairs of Edinburgh; and in the following
February she received and entertained the ambassador
of the Duke of Muscovy, who had been
shipwrecked on his way to England, whither she
sent him, escorted by 500 lances, under the Lord
Home.
After the death of Mary of Guise and the arrival
of her daughter to assume the crown of her ancestors,
the most stirring scenes in the history of the
palace pass in review.
