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KIRKCALDY OF GRANGE




FAMOUS SCOTS SERIES


_The following Volumes are now ready_:--

  THOMAS CARLYLE. By HECTOR C. MACPHERSON.

  ALLAN RAMSAY. By OLIPHANT SMEATON.

  HUGH MILLER. By W. KEITH LEASK.

  JOHN KNOX. By A. TAYLOR INNES.

  ROBERT BURNS. By GABRIEL SETOUN.

  THE BALLADISTS. By JOHN GEDDIE.

  RICHARD CAMERON. By Professor HERKLESS.

  SIR JAMES Y. SIMPSON. By EVE BLANTYRE SIMPSON.

  THOMAS CHALMERS. By Professor W. GARDE BLAIKIE.

  JAMES BOSWELL. By W. KEITH LEASK.

  TOBIAS SMOLLETT. By OLIPHANT SMEATON.

  FLETCHER OF SALTOUN. By G. W. T. OMOND.

  THE BLACKWOOD GROUP. By Sir GEORGE DOUGLAS.

  NORMAN MACLEOD. By JOHN WELLWOOD.

  SIR WALTER SCOTT. By Professor SAINTSBURY.

  KIRKCALDY OF GRANGE. By LOUIS A. BARBÉ.




[Illustration:

    KIRKCALDY
    OF GRANGE

       BY

      LOUIS
    A. BARBÉ

      FAMOUS
      SCOTS
      SERIES

   PUBLISHED BY:
      CHARLES
  SCRIBNER’S SONS
     NEW YORK]




PREFACE


THE materials available for a biography of Sir William Kirkcaldy of
Grange are very unequally distributed over the two portions into which
his life naturally divides itself. For the first of them, I have been
obliged to content myself with the rather meagre and fragmentary
information to be gathered from the old chroniclers. As regards the
incidents that occur during those earlier years, I cannot, therefore,
claim much novelty for my sketch. By looking closely into dates,
however, I have been able to rectify some minor details, and to set
forth events in their proper sequence.

On the second part of Sir William’s public career, the documents
preserved in the Record Office throw considerable light. Some of them
have been utilised, to a certain extent, in connection with the general
history of the time; but, so far as I know, no attempt has yet been
made to base on them a connected narrative of this important period
of Grange’s life, or to draw from them an explanation of his policy.
By using his own correspondence--both the letters which he wrote, and
those which were addressed to him--I have endeavoured to represent the
man as he wished to be understood by his contemporaries.

It has not been my special object to justify Kirkcaldy’s conduct;
but I am not without the hope that the impartial account of it which
I have striven to give, may show how unfair it is to form an estimate
of him from a consideration of the bare fact that he was, in turn, the
champion of two conflicting parties.

  L. A. B.

  8 WILTON MANSIONS, GLASGOW,
  _October 1897_.




                               CONTENTS


 CHAPTER I

                                            PAGE

  THE KIRKCALDYS                               9


 CHAPTER II

  THE TRAGEDY AT ST ANDREWS                   18


 CHAPTER III

  THE CONSPIRATORS AT BAY                     26


 CHAPTER IV

  IN FRANCE                                   41


 CHAPTER V

  HOME AGAIN                                  53


 CHAPTER VI

  THE UPROAR OF RELIGION                      63


 CHAPTER VII

  HARASSING THE FRENCH                        73


 CHAPTER VIII

  AT CARBERRY                                 80


 CHAPTER IX

  LANGSIDE--AND AFTER                         97


 CHAPTER X

  DEFECTION?                                 108


 CHAPTER XI

  THE HOLDING OF THE CASTLE                  125


 CHAPTER XII

  THE MERCAT CROSS                           137




                    SIR WILLIAM KIRKCALDY OF GRANGE

_I._ THE KIRKCALDYS


IN the parish of Kinghorn, on the northern shore of the Firth of Forth,
a farm-house known as the Grange still marks the spot where, three
centuries ago, the ancestral seat of the Kirkcaldys stood. The greater
part of the present structure is comparatively modern; yet it