t to Leith to answer for their
misdoings. There they were reprimanded and bound over to better
behaviour, then dismissed without further penalty. How little effectual,
however, this treatment was, is exemplified by the fact that the
selfsame offence continues to be repeated until this very day.

There would seem to have been a little pause of calm and comfort in
James's life after this victorious expedition. Clouds already bigger
than a man's hand were forming on his horizon; the country had begun to
be agitated throughout its depths with the rising forces of the reform,
and the priests who had always surrounded James were hurrying on in the
truculence of terror to sterner and sterner enactments against heretics:
while he, probably even yet but moderately interested, thinking of other
things, and though adding to the new laws which he was persuaded to
originate in this sense, conditions to the effect that corresponding
reforms were to be wrought in the behaviour of the priesthood,--had not
entered at all into the fierce current of theological strife. He
followed the faith in which he had been bred, revolted rather than
attracted by the proceedings and pretensions of his uncle of England,
willing that the bishops, who probably knew best, and who were, as he
complained to the English ambassador, the only men of sense and ability
near him, should have their own way in their own concerns; but for
himself much more intent on the temporal welfare of his kingdom than on
its belief, or the waves of opinion which might blow over it. He had
just been very successful in what no doubt seemed to him an enterprise
much more kingly and important--the subjugation of the islands. He was
happy and prosperous in his private life, his Queen having performed the
high duty expected of her in providing the kingdom with an heir, indeed
with two sons, to make, as appeared, assurance doubly sure; and though
the burning of a heretic was not a pleasant circumstance, Beatoun and
the rest of the brotherhood were too clever and helpful as men of the
world to be easily dispensed with. James had, there can be no doubt,
much reason to be discontented and dissatisfied, as almost all his
predecessors had been, with the nobility of his kingdom. Apart from some
of those young companions-in-arms who were delightful in the camp and
field but useless in the council chamber, his state of mind would seem
to have resembled more the modern mood which is represented