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among such a people, tinder a feeble government, could not possibly be main-
tained (n).
But a sad scene of sorrow soon ensued, which gave a colour to the earl's
future life. In 1399, the Duke of Rothesay, the son and heir of Robert III.,
a known profligate, spoused Elizabeth the earl's daughter. The father is said
to have paid to the Duke a large part of her matrimonial portion, who gave a
bond under his seal to perform his espousals (o). Yet did the heir apparent
of the throne marry, within Bothwell church, in February 1400, Marjory
the daughter of Archibald, the third earl of Douglas, who died in February
1400-1 (p). The injured lady was very nobly descended. She had the blood
of William the Lion, in her veins ; Robert Bruce, the competitor, was her pro-
genitor by his daughter Christian ; she was the grandchild of Black Agnes, the
magnanimous defender of Dunbar castle, who was the daughter of Randolph
Earl of Moray, one of the illustrious restorers of the Scottish monarchy; and
she was the second cousin of Henry IV., the reigning sovereign of England.
This injured lady very soon had her revenge. The Duke of Rothesay neglected
her rival, and he was assassinated by Albany, his uncle, and Douglas, his
brother-in-law, on the 27th of March 1402 (q). The Earl of Dunbar, as he
had forgot his usual circumspection in entering into such a contract with the
heir-apparent to the crown when under age, felt that he had been injured,
without hope of reparation ; and carried his resentment beyond all hounds. He
(n) Rym., vii., 683-737-54-5-788 ; Rym., viii., 54-68.
(0) The earl, in writing on this interesting subject to Henry IV., his relation, says, "the Duke of
" Rothsay spousit my douchter, and now agayn [against] his oblishying [obligation] to me, made he
" his lettre and his seal, and agaynes the law of haly kirk, spousis another wife, as it is said." Pink.
Hist., App., i., 449. Spousals, according to the learned Swinburn, doth only signify promises of mar-
riage, though lawyers have sometimes confounded spousals with marriage. Treatise on Spousals,
1-3. Though she were only affianced, the Earl of Dunbar's daughter called herself, and was called by
Henry IV., Duchess of Rothesay. Rym., viii., 694. Bower, 428. It appears not that there was any
dispensation from the pope for this second marriage, in opposition to a previous contract. The pre-
tence held out was that the Estates had not given their assent to that previous spousal which formed a
bar to the second spousals. But there was a much stronger objection to the first marriage. As the
Duke of Rothesay was born in 1379, he could have been only twenty years of age in 1399, when he
spousit the daughter of George, Earl of Dunbar. Bp. Elphinston's Chron. in Innes's MS. Notes, ch. ii.
He was scarcely twenty-one when he married the daughter of the Earl of Douglas, in 1400, and he
was assassinated on the 27th of March, 1402. Such was the short but wretched life of the first Duke
of Rothesay. His fate may be attributed to the folly of Dunbar, the ambition of Douglas, the mis-
creancy of Albany, and to the profligacy of Rothesay himself.
(p) Crawford's Peer.,  97.
(q) Bower, 431-2 ; Wyntoun, ii., 397 ; Lord Hailes' Remarks Hist. Scot., ch. xix.
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