formidable and dangerous father in law, and showing little respect
to the authority of the King himself, and none whatever to the
remonstrances of Albany, his uncle, whom he looked upon as his confirmed
enemy.

Amid these internal dissensions of his family, which extended themselves
through his councils and administration, introducing everywhere the
baneful effects of uncertainty and disunion, the feeble monarch had
for some time been supported by the counsels of his queen, Annabella, a
daughter of the noble house of Drummond, gifted with a depth of sagacity
and firmness of mind which exercised some restraint over the levities
of a son who respected her, and sustained on many occasions the wavering
resolution of her royal husband. But after her death the imbecile
sovereign resembled nothing so much as a vessel drifted from her
anchors, and tossed about amidst contending currents. Abstractedly
considered, Robert might be said to doat upon his son, to entertain
respect and awe for the character of his brother Albany, so much more
decisive than his own, to fear the Douglas with a terror which was
almost instinctive; and to suspect the constancy of the bold but fickle
Earl of March. But his feelings towards these various characters were
so mixed and complicated, that from time to time they showed entirely
different from what they really were; and according to the interest
which had been last exerted over his flexible mind, the King would
change from an indulgent to a strict and even cruel father, from a
confiding to a jealous brother, or from a benignant and bountiful to a
grasping and encroaching sovereign. Like the chameleon, his feeble mind
reflected the colour of that firmer character upon which at the time he
reposed for counsel and assistance. And when he disused the advice
of one of his family, and employed the counsel of another, it was no
unwonted thing to see a total change of measures, equally disrespectable
to the character of the King and dangerous to the safety of the state.

It followed as a matter of course that the clergy of the Catholic Church
acquired influence over a man whose intentions were so excellent, but
whose resolutions were so infirm. Robert was haunted, not only with a
due sense of the errors he had really committed, but with the tormenting
apprehensions of those peccadilloes which beset a superstitious
and timid mind. It is scarce necessary, therefore, to add, that the
churchmen of various