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'Quhen Alysandyr oure Kyng wes dede,

That Scotland led in luẅe and lé,

Away wes sons of ale and brede,

Off wyne and wax, off gamyn and glé:

'Oure gold wes changyd in to lede.

Cryst, borne in to Vyrgynyté,

Succoure Scotland and remede,

That stad [is in] perplexyté.'

Wyntoun, VII. fin.

A most fateful date in the history of Scotland was the 19th of March 1285–86. In the dusk of that memorable day, King Alexander III., riding along the coast of Fife, near Kinghorn, was thrown over a precipice and killed. He was only in the forty-fifth year of his age, though in the thirty-seventh year of his reign. If we take our stand at Kinghorn on the next melancholy morning, and gaze backwards and forwards on the history of the country, we shall witness the most impressive contrast of peace and war that is presented in the annals of Scotland, or perhaps of any civilised nation in the world. This awful contrast forms a most essential element in determining the judgment of history on the policy of the Scots and of the English kings. At the death of Alexander, Scotland was a most prosperous country, steadily advancing in the arts of peaceful life—'more civilised and more prosperous,' says Innes, with the common assent of historians, 'than at any period of her existence, down to the time when she ceased to be a separate kingdom in 1707.' The policy of Edward I., however motived, was the prime cause of this lamentable subversion of the tranquillity of a hundred years.