The bickerings,
which followed, distracted the whole kingdom. One celebrated exploit
may be selected, as an illustration of the border fashion of war.
The Earl of Lennox, who had succeeded Murray in the regency, held a
parliament at Stirling, in 1571. The young king was exhibited to
the great council of his nation. He had been tutored to repeat a set
speech, composed for the occasion; but, observing that the roof of
the building was a little decayed, he interrupted his recitation,
and exclaimed, with childish levity, "that there was a hole in the
parliament,"--words which, in these days, were held to presage the
deadly breach shortly to be made in that body, by the death of him in
whose name it was convoked.
Amid the most undisturbed security of confidence, the lords, who
composed this parliament, were roused at day-break, by the shouts of
their enemies in the heart of the town. _God and the Queen_! resounded
from every quarter, and, in a few minutes, the regent, with the
astonished nobles of his party, were prisoners to a band of two
hundred border cavalry, led by Scott of Buccleuch, and to the
Lord Claud Hamilton, at the head of three hundred infantry. These
enterprising chiefs, by a rapid and well concerted manoeuvre, had
reached Stirling in a night march from Edinburgh, and, without so much
as being bayed at by a watch-dog had seized the principal street of
the town.
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