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A mysterious knight and an equally mysterious outlaw agree to preserve one another’s incognito.
The Black Knight has liberated the wounded Ivanhoe and his friends from Torquilstone, the castle of wicked Norman baron Reginald Front-de-Boeuf. Assistance came from an outlaw and his band of merry men, and though the two heroes each suspect they have penetrated the other’s disguise, they agree to drop the potentially embarrassing subject.
As Lord Marmion lies dying on Flodden Field, there is no one near to tend him but the woman he has wronged.
It is 1513, and Lord Marmion has been mortally wounded on the battlefield of Flodden. As he lies there, his lifeblood ebbing away, a woman kneels beside him. Clare feels no love for him, and the ungoverned passion he feels for her has spread death and dishonour all around. Yet her heart is not as hard as his.
Cracking down on benefit claimants and migrant workers didn’t make Godfrey Bertram as popular as he expected.
In Guy Mannering, King George III has been pleased to appoint Godfrey Bertram, Laird of Ellangowan, to the magistrates’ bench. (“Pleased! I’m sure he cannot be better pleased than I am.”) The Laird at once gave up good-humoured tolerance and began sweeping the idle into work, the sick from their beds, and the ragged from the streets.
Sir Walter Scott tells of the tale of how a little spider inspired Robert the Bruce to win his country’s sovereignty.
Robert I of Scotland forced England to recognise Scottish independence in 1328. But back in 1307, King Edward I had responded to news of Robert’s coronation by seizing his estates, kidnapping his Queen and murdering his brother. Robert fled to the remote isles, and according to a popular folktale his fate hung almost literally by a spider’s thread.
Sir Walter Scott tells the story of how a distinguished Scottish professor nearly became Little John to Scotland’s Robin Hood.
Early in the Jacobite Rising of 1715, Rob Roy MacGregor and his band of rebels marched into Aberdeen, and Rob called to see Professor Gregory, a kinsman and a distinguished Professor of Medicine. He hoped to enlist his support for a cause which, whatever its merits, was open treason — and to enlist his little son, James, too.
Sir Walter Scott described how the long-forgotten crown jewels of the Scottish Kings came to light again.
After the Union of Scotland and England in 1707, Scotland’s crown jewels were locked away in Edinburgh Castle. Almost at once, the Jacobites who so bitterly opposed the Union began spreading rumours that the ‘Honours of Scotland’ had been stolen, and in 1794 King George III sent a party up to Edinburgh to prove them wrong.
Legend tells how Richard the Lionheart’s favourite singer found where Leopold of Austria had stowed him.
In December 1192, Richard I was arrested in Vienna and imprisoned at Dürnstein in lower Austria near the Danube, on the orders of his former ally in the Third Crusade, Leopold of Austria. According to legend, his place of captivity was a closely guarded secret but one man was determined to uncover it.