It is wisdom, but it is the wisdom of Achitophel, crafty at once and cruel." "My heart tells me so," said the King, laying his hand on his breast--"my heart tells me that it will be asked of me at the awful day, 'Robert Stuart, where are the subjects I have given thee ?' It tells me that I must account for them all, Saxon and Gael, Lowland, Highland, and Border man; that I will not be required to answer for those alone who have wealth and knowledge, but for those also who were robbers because they were poor, and rebels because they were ignorant." "Your Highness speaks like a Christian king," said the prior; "but you bear the sword as well as the sceptre, and this present evil is of a kind which the sword must cure." "Hark ye, my lords," said the Prince, looking up as if a gay thought had suddenly struck him.

"Suppose we teach these savage mountaineers a strain of chivalry?
It were no hard matter to bring these two great commanders, the captain of the Clan Chattan and the chief of the no less doughty race of the Clan Quhele, to defy each other to mortal combat.
They might fight here in Perth--we would lend them horse and armour; thus their feud would be stanched by the death of one, or probably both, of the villains, for I think both would break their necks in the first charge; my father's godly desire of saving blood would be attained; and we should have the pleasure of seeing such a combat between two savage knights, for the first time in their lives wearing breeches and mounted on horses, as has not been heard of since the days of King Arthur." "Shame upon you, David!" said the King.

"Do you make the distress of your native country, and the perplexity of our councils, a subject for buffoonery ?" "If you will pardon me, royal brother," said Albany, "I think that, though my princely nephew hath started this thought in a jocular manner, there may be something wrought out of it, which might greatly remedy this pressing evil." "Good brother," replied the King, "it is unkind to expose Rothsay's folly by pressing further his ill timed jest.

We know the Highland clans have not our customs of chivalry, nor the habit or mode of doing battle which these require." "True, your Grace," answered Albany; "yet I speak not in scorn, but in serious earnest.

True, the mountaineers have not our forms and mode of doing battle in the lists, but they have those which are as effectual to the destruction of human life, and so that the mortal game is played, and the stake won and lost, what signifies it whether these Gael fight with sword and lance, as becomes belted knights, or with sandbags, like the crestless churls of England, or butcher each other with knives and skenes, in their own barbarous fashion?
Their habits, like our own, refer all disputed rights and claims to the decision of battle.