enough, the former is nearly the same with the favourite Scotish air-" Saw ye Johnny coming."

No. LXV. " CRICHTON'S GUD NIGHT."

"Justice Shallow," says Falstaff, "came ever in the rearward of the fashion; and sung those tunes to the over-scutcht huswives that he heard the carmen whistle, and sware they were his Fancies or his Good-nights." These "Good-nights" were generally "a species of minor poem of the ballad kind;" such as "Armstrong's Good-night"" Essex's Good-night"-" Lord Maxwell's Good-night"—containing the "dying speech and confession" of some criminal of distinction upon the occasion of his final exit. But the passage in Shakspeare refers to tunes without poetry; and the air, "Chrichton's Good-night," in the Skene MS., is a specimen of this sort of composition, being evidently of the instrumental class, and the production of some English composer.

We have no difficulty in recognizing the individual to whom this "Good-night" related to have been Robert Chrichton, Lord Sanquhar, an accomplished Scotish nobleman, who was executed at London, in 1612, for the murder of Turner, a fencing-master, under circumstances which, though well known, are so curious in themselves, and so illustrative of the manners of the time, that we may perhaps be excused for briefly alluding to them.

Robert, sixth Lord Sanquhar, was a man of distinguished family, being the lineal descendant and representative of one of the most eminent characters who flourished in Scotland during the fifteenth century, Sir William Chrichton, Master of the Household to James I., and afterwards Chancellor of the Kingdom, and to whose efforts the House of Stuart were perhaps more indebted than to those of any other individual for withstanding the encroachments of the powerful family of Douglas during the most precarious period of their career. The Chrichtons were even allied

a See Dissertation, p. 53.

See Nare's Glossary.

© No. XVI.

d Border Minstrelsy, vol. i. p. 194.

to royalty, a son of the Chancellor having married a daughter of James II. And yet the life of this young man was forfeited to the law-and that, too, for an offence which, though in reality an odious and base act of assassination,-a nation only emerging from the barbarism of the Middle Ages might have regarded in a more venial light; and to which, but for particular circumstances, the royal mercy would have been extended.

The young Lord had met Turner, in 1605, at the house of an English nobleman, Lord Norreys', in Oxfordshire; and in the course of a bout d'armes, owing to some mismanagement, most probably the impetuosity of the youth, the foil of the fencing-master entered Lord Sanquhar's eye, and he was, for several days, in danger of his life." Notwithstanding the accidental nature of the occurrence, Chrichton seems, from that moment, to have cherished a settled purpose of revenge, although the fatal blow was suspended over the head of his victim for no less than seven years, when he hired two ruffians, who, on the 11th May 1612, called upon Turner at his lodgings in White-Friars, and while the latter was entirely off his guard, and making them a proffer of his hospitality, shot him through the heart. The two men were executed; and Lord Sanquhar, after having absconded, was also apprehended, and being arraigned as a commoner at the King's Bench, on 27th June 1612, made a full confession of his guilt. Some idea of the sentiments prevalent among the gallants of this day may be gathered from the terms in which a part of this confession was couched :-" Another aspersion," says Lord Sanquhar, "is laid upon me that this was God's judgment, for that I was an ill-natured fellow, ever revengeful, and delighted in blood. To the first I confess I was never willing to put up a wrong, when, upon terms of honour, I might right myself; nor never willing to pardon where I had a power of revenge." Upon this part of his character the great Lord Bacon, (who, as Attorney-General, conducted the prosecution,) in his grave, philosophical spirit, remarked-"All passions are assuaged with time; love, hatred, grief, and all fire burns out with time, if no fewel be put to it; for you to have been in the gall of bitterness so long, and to have been in a restless case for his blood, is a strange example. And, I must tell you plainly, that I conceive you have sucked these affections of dwelling in malice, rather out of Italy, and outlandish manners, where you have conversed, than out of any part of this island of England and Scotland."

A circumstance, however, is related, but for which the embers of the young nobleman's wrath might, very possibly, have smouldered away; and although it

a Cobbett's State Trials, vol. i. p. 746.

was not mentioned by him at his trial, there is no reason to suppose on that account that it was not perfectly true. Happening to be at the Court of France, in which country he was resident several years previous to the murder, Henry IV. one day casually asked him how he had lost his eye; to which he answered, "By the thrust of a sword," when the King, supposing that he had received the injury in some affair of honour, emphatically exclaimed, "Does the man yet live!" Nothing more passed, but these words are said to have inflamed Lord Sanquhar's desire of vengeance to such a pitch, that he immediately resolved to lose no time in carrying it into effect.

His ready confession, the address which he delivered, and his whole demeanour at the trial, indicated a pretty confident reliance on the King's leniency, to which family considerations, in his case, added a more than ordinary claim. But, although intercession was made for him by the Archbishop of Canterbury and others of great influence, James is said to have considered an example necessary in order "to curb the insolence of the Scots," and Lord Sanquhar died the death of a felon in Palace-Yard, Westminster, on 29th June 1612. To judge from the following epitaph by Drummond of Hawthornden, his fate was not a topic of much commiseration :

"Sancher, whom this earth scarce could containe,

Having seen Italie, France, and Spaine,

To finish his travelles, a spectacle rare,

Was bound towards Heaven, but dyed in the aire."

James obtained no small credit for the firmness with which he allowed the law to take its course in this instance; but it is somewhat doubtful whether this sovereign, whose general conduct so little entitled him to be considered as a rigid dispenser of justice, did not receive more praise for his inflexibility in this particular than he deserved. In the year 1760, during the excitement produced by the trial of Earl Ferrers for the murder of his steward, a good deal of discussion took place in the public journals as to the execution of noblemen for felony; and the case of Lord Sanquhar having been brought to recollection, a letter appeared in the “Edinburgh Chronicle," from a descendant of the Chrichton family, which goes very far

Lord Bacon called it "the most exemplary piece of justice that ever came forth in any king's reign."-State Trials, vol. vii. p. 86.

to explain what has hitherto been deemed an anomaly in James's history, and exhibits what may perhaps be considered to have been the real feeling by which his majesty was actuated. The writer, whose name is unknown, professes to have been "let into the secret by a person of quality," (the Honourable William Carmichael,) "who was himself related to that family," and "whose polite learning and curious knowledge of anecdotes of this nature were known to every body.”

"The story is this-When the Duke of Sully was sent over upon that famous embassy, of which he has given us an account in his letters, King James gave him the most solemn promises, that he would support Henry with all that vigour and gallant magnanimity with which the glorious Elizabeth had done; and that he would enter into all the heroic schemes projected between them two, for breaking the power of the House of Austria, then so justly formidable to all Europe: but instead of all this, Sully was hardly out of England, when James made peace with Spain, and continued their dupe ever after. This entirely ruined his reputation in France. Numberless were the jokes, the sarcasms, and epigrams, that were made upon him; of which that famous one which begins, Quand Elisabeth fut Roi, was one. In the meantime, at home, King James's flatterers called him the Solomon of the age. It happened that one day Lord Sanquhar was in a merry company at Paris, when one of them said, it was no wonder he was called Solomon, since he was the son of David, alluding to the story of David Rizzio. This Lord Creighton did not resent, but joined in the laugh. James was told of this by some malicious whisperer; and this was the true reason of his letting him suffer death," &c.a

The information contained in this letter is worthy of regard, since it appears to have come from a relation of the family; but the circumstance itself was not so much of the nature of a "secret" as the anonymous correspondent of the "Edinburgh Chronicle" seems to have thought. As an on dit, it was sufficiently well known, and is related by Osborne in his "Traditionall Memoyres on the Raigne of King James I." with this difference, that the individual who threw out the sarcasm is there described as having been Henry IV. himself, which, if true, would the more easily account for the fact of its afterwards having reached the ears of James; while the additional circumstance there alluded to, that Chrichton was personally attached to the French monarch, would have served to abate, in no slight degree, the interest which his own sovereign might otherwise have felt in his behalf. By the death of Lord Sanquhar, says Osborne," the King satisfied in part the people, and wholly himself; it being

"The Chronicle of Perth," presented to the Maitland Club by James Maidment, Esq., 1831.

thought he hated him for his love to the King of France, and not making any reply when he said in his presence to one that called our James a second Solomon, that he hoped he was not David the fidler's son: Thus doe princes abuse one another."-See "Secret History of the Court of James I." vol. i. p. 231, and vol. ii. p. 397; also "State Trials," vol. vii. p. 86; and Wood's Peerage, vol. i. p. 450.

No. LXVI." THE NIGHTINGALE."

The Nightingale has always been so favourite a theme with our lyrical poets, that we shall not attempt to say to what words this air had been originally adapted. "So sweetly sings the Nightingale" is one of the scraps introduced into the medley in the "Pleugh Song" contained in Forbes's Cantus, 1666. Leyden cites the air among a number of others in a MS. collection adapted to the Lyra-viol, and written soon after the Revolution, and it will be found in Durfey's Pills, vol. v. p. 87. Considering the nature of the melody, it can scarcely be worth while to pursue the enquiry farther; but should any one wish to do so, he will find a Welsh harper's version of the same air taken from a manuscript in Jones's Welsh Bards, p. 181.

No. LXVII." PRINCE HENREI'S MASKE."

No. LXVIII." COMEDIANS MASKE."

No. LXIX.-" LADIE ELIZABETH'S MASKE."

These three airs, together with No. LXXVIII., (Sommerset's Maske,) had, no doubt, formed part of the music which was performed at those magnificent perform

a Introduction to " Complaynt of Scotland,” p. 285.