too far, the lords meanly declined to afford him the support which they had
promised him. That Graham had done a rash thing, and had said more than
his colleagues meant he should have said, is scarcely an apology for their
deserting him as they did in the hour of trial. They ought at least to have afforded him some countenance, and to have acknowledged so much of his reproof as they were willing should have been administered; and there is little doubt
that a very large portion of its spirit was theirs also, although they seem to have lacked the courage to avow it. Graham was instantly ordered into confinement, and was soon after deprived of all his possessions and estates, and banished the
kingdom. Brooding over his misfortunes, and breathing vengeance against him
who was the cause of them, the daring exile retired to the remotest parts of the
Highlands, and there arranged and perfected his plans of revenge. He first
wrote letters to the king, renouncing his allegiance and defying his wrath, upbraiding him with being the ruin of himself, his wife, and his children, and
concluded with declaring that he would put him to death with his own hand, if
opportunity should offer. The answer to these threats and defiances was a proclamation which the king immediately issued, promising three thousand demies of gold, of the value of half an English noble each, to any one who should
bring in Graham dead or alive.
The king's proclamation, however, was attended with no effect. The object of it not only remained in safety in his retreat, but proceeded to mature the schemes of vengeance which he meditated against his sovereign. He opened a correspondence with several of the nobility, in which he unfolded the treason which he designed, and offered to assassinate the king with his own hand.
The general dislike which was entertained for James, and which was by no means confined to the aristocracy, for his exactions had rendered his government obnoxious also to the common people, soon procured for Graham a powerful co-operation; and the result was, that a regular and deep-laid conspiracy, and which included even some of the king's most familiar domestics, was speedily formed. In the mean time, the king, unconscious of the fate which was about to overtake him, had removed with his court to Perth to celebrate the festival of Christmas. While on his way thither, according to popular tradition, he was accosted by a soothsayer, who forewarned him of the disaster which was to happen him. "My lord king," she said, for it was a prophetess who spoke, "if ye pass this water," (the Forth) "ye shall never return again alive." The king is said to have been much struck by the oracular intimation, and not the less so that he had read in some prophecy a short while before, that in that year a king of Scotland should be slain. The monarch, however, did not himself deign on this occasion to interrogate the soothsayer as to what she meant, but deputed the task to one of the knights, whom he desired to turn aside and hold some conversation with her. This gentleman soon after rejoined the king, and representing the prophetess as a foolish inebriated woman, recommended to his majesty to pay no attention to what she had said. Accordingly no further notice seems to have been taken of the circumstance. The royal party crossed the water and arrived in safety at Perth; the king, with his family and domestics, taking up his residence at the Dominicans' or Blackfriars' monastery. The conspirators, in the mean time, fully informed of his motions, had so far completed their arrangements as to have fixed the night on which he should be assassinated. This was, according to some authorities, the night of the second Wednesday of lent, or the 27th day of February ; by others, the first Wednesday of lent, or between the twentieth or twenty-first of that month, in the year 1437; and the latter is deemed the more accurate date. James spent the earlier
