his queen, Annabella, a daughter of the noble house of Drummond,
gifted with a depth of sagacity and firmness of mind which exercised
some restraint over the levities of a son who respected her, and
sustained on many occasions the wavering resolution of her royal
husband. But after her death the imbecile sovereign resembled
nothing so much as a vessel drifted from her anchors, and tossed
about amidst contending currents. Abstractedly considered, Robert
might be said to doat upon his son, to entertain respect and awe
for the character of his brother Albany, so much more decisive
than his own, to fear the Douglas with a terror which was almost
instinctive; and to suspect the constancy of the bold but fickle
Earl of March. But his feelings towards these various characters
were so mixed and complicated, that from time to time they showed
entirely different from what they really were; and according to
the interest which had been last exerted over his flexible mind,
the King would change from an indulgent to a strict and even cruel
father, from a confiding to a jealous brother, or from a benignant
and bountiful to a grasping and encroaching sovereign. Like the
chameleon, his feeble mind reflected the colour of that firmer character
upon which at the time he reposed for counsel and assistance. And
when he disused the advice of one of his family, and employed the
counsel of another, it was no unwonted thing to see a total change
of measures, equally disrespectable to the character of the King
and dangerous to the safety of the state.

It followed as a matter of course that the clergy of the Catholic
Church acquired influence over a man whose intentions were so
excellent, but whose resolutions were so infirm. Robert was haunted,
not only with a due sense of the errors he had really committed,
but with the tormenting apprehensions of those peccadilloes which