failed to make an impression, "you surely argue
over rigidly in this matter. It was during my last indisposition, while
the Earl of Douglas held, as lieutenant general, the regal authority in
Scotland, that the obstruction to the reception of the Primate unhappily
arose. Do not, therefore, tax me with what happened when I was unable to
conduct the affairs of the kingdom, and compelled to delegate my power
to another."

"To your subject, sire, you have said enough," replied the prior. "But,
if the impediment arose during the lieutenancy of the Earl of Douglas,
the legate of his Holiness will demand wherefore it has not been
instantly removed, when the King resumed in his royal hands the reins
of authority? The Black Douglas can do much--more perhaps than a subject
should have power to do in the kingdom of his sovereign; but he cannot
stand betwixt your Grace and your own conscience, or release you from
the duties to the Holy Church which your situation as a king imposes
upon you."

"Father," said Robert, somewhat impatiently, "you are over peremptory
in this matter, and ought at least to wait a reasonable season, until
we have time to consider of some remedy. Such disputes have happened
repeatedly in the reigns of our predecessors; and our royal and blessed
ancestor, St. David, did not resign his privileges as a monarch
without making a stand in their defence, even though he was involved in
arguments with the Holy Father himself."

"And therein was that great and good king neither holy nor saintly,"
said the prior "and therefore was he given to be a rout and a spoil to
his enemies, when he raised his sword against the banners of St. Peter,
and St. Paul, and St. John of Beverley, in the war, as it is still
called, of the Standard. Well was it for him that, like his namesake,
the son of Jesse, his sin was punished upon earth, and not entered
against him at the long and dire day of accounting."

"Well, good prior--well--enough of this for the present. The Holy See
shall, God willing, have no reason to complain of me. I take Our Lady
to witness, I would not for the crown I wear take the burden of wronging
our Mother Church. We have ever feared that the Earl of Douglas kept his
eyes too much fixed on the fame and the temporalities of this frail and
passing life to feel altogether as he ought the claims that refer to a
future world."

"It is but lately," said the prior, "that he hath taken up forcible
quarters in the mo