After dinner, Sir Patrick presented the King’s letter to the Earl, who received it with great affectation of reverence; “and took him by the hand, and led him forth to the green, where the gentleman was lying dead, and showed him the manner, and said, ’Sir Patrick, you are come a little too late; yonder is your sister’s son lying, but he wants the head; take his body, and do with it what you will.’—­ Sir Patrick answered again with a sore heart, and said, ’My lord, if ye have taken from him his head, dispone upon the body as ye please;’ and with that called for his horse, and leaped thereon; and when he was on horseback, he said to the Earl on this manner:  ’My Lord, if I live, you shall be rewarded for your labours, that you have used at this time, according to your demerits.’

’"At this saying the Earl was highly offended, and cried for horse.  Sir Patrick, seeing the Earl’s fury, spurred his horse, but he was chased near Edinburgh ere they left him; and had it not been his led horse was so tried and good, he had been taken."’—­PITSCOTTIE’S History, p. 39.’—­Scott.

Stanza xv. line 456.  Cp. above, iii. 429, and see As You Like It, i. 2. 222:  ‘Hercules be thy speed!’ The short epistle of St. Jude is uncompromising in its condemnation of those who have fallen from their faith—­who have forgotten, so to speak, their vows of true knighthood.  It closes with the beautiful ascription—­’To Him that is able to keep you from falling, and to present you faultless before the presence of His glory with exceeding joy.’  There is deep significance, therefore, in this appeal of the venerable and outraged knight for the protection of St. Jude.

line 457.  ’Lest the reader should partake of the Earl’s astonishment, and consider the crime as inconsistent with the manners of the period, I have to remind him of the numerous forgeries (partly executed by a female assistant) devised by Robert of Artois, to forward his suit against the Countess Matilda; which, being detected, occasioned his flight into England, and proved the remote cause of Edward the Third’s memorable wars in France.  John Harding, also, was expressly hired by Edward iv to forge such documents as might appear to establish the claim of fealty asserted over Scotland by the English monarchs.’—­Scott.

line 458.  It likes was long used impersonally, in the sense of it pleases.  Cp.  King John, ii. 2. 234:  ‘It likes us well.’

line 460.  St. Bothan, Bythen, or Bethan is said to have been a cousin of St. Columba and his successor at Iona.  His name is preserved in the Berwickshire parish, Abbey-Saint-Bathan’s; where, towards the close of the twelfth century, a Cistertian nunnery, with the title of a priory, was dedicated to him by Ada, daughter of William the Lion.  There is no remaining trace of this structure.

line 461.  The other sons could at least sign their names.  Their signatures are reproduced in facsimile in ‘The Douglas Book’ by Sir William Eraser, 4 vols. 4to, Edin. 1886 (privately printed).