ked between
offence and alarm, perhaps beginning to doubt the sombre excited
assembly, "My lords, is it jest or earnest?" It would seem that the grim
and terrible event of the execution "over the Bridge of Lauder" though
why this special locality was chosen we are not told, followed with an
awful rapidity. The chief offender had fallen into the hands of the
conspirators with such unhoped-for ease that they evidently felt no time
was to be lost.

"Notwithstanding the lords held him quiet while they caused certain
armed men pass to the King's pavilion, and two or three wyse men
with them, and gave the King fair and pleasant words, till they had
laid hands on all his servants, and took them and hanged them over
the Bridge of Lauder before the King's eyes, and brought in the King
himself to the council. Thereafter incontinent they brought out
Cochrane and his hands bound with ane tow, behind his back, who
desired them to take ane of his own pavilion tows [cords] which were
of silk and bind his hands, for he thought shame to be bound with
ane hemp tow lyk ane thiefe. The lords answered and said, 'He was
worse than a thiefe, he was ane traitour and deserved no better.'"

The last despairing bravado of the condemned man desiring that his hands
might be bound with a silken cord at least, the horror and wrath of the
pale King, helpless, looking on, forced into the assembly of the lords
to witness their pitiless vengeance, are painfully tragical and
terrible. All James's favourite attendants, the friends of his retired
leisure and sharers in the occupations he loved, were thus executed
before his eyes--all but a certain young Ramsay, who was at least a
gentleman, and who, to save his life, leapt up behind his master upon
the horse which the King was compelled to mount to see the dreadful deed
accomplished. Ramsay's life was spared, not to the advantage of Scotland
as became afterwards apparent.

The historical student will not fail to note how close in almost every
particular is this grim incident to the catastrophe of Piers Gaveston in
England in a previous age.

The state of affairs in Scotland after this extraordinary event was more
extraordinary still, if possible. James was conveyed to Edinburgh,

"with certain lords in companie with him that took hold on him and
keeped him in the said castle and served and honoured him as ane
prince ought to be in all things: for