Of this
feeling there is a curious proof in a transaction in the reign of Edward
I., when the sovereignty of Scotland was claimed by the English monarch.
The Scots sought the interposition and protection of the pope, alleging
that the Scottish realm belonged of right to the see of Rome. Boniface
VIII., a pontiff not backward in asserting the claims of the papacy,
did interpose to check the English conquest, and was answered by an
elaborate and respectful epistle from Edward, in which the English claim
is most carefully and confidently derived from the conquest of the whole
country by the Trojans in the times of Eli and Samuel--assuredly a
very respectable antiquity of some two thousand four hundred years.
No Philadelphia estate could be more methodically traced back to the
proprietary title of William Penn, than was this claim to Scotland up to
Brutus, the exile from Troy.... Now, all this is set forth with the most
imperturbable seriousness, and with an air of complete assurance of the
truth. It appears, too, to have fully answered the purpose intended;
and the Scots, finding that the papal antiquity was but a poor defence
against such claims, and as if determined not to be outdone by the
Southron, replied in a document asserting their independence by virtue
of descent from Scota, one of the daughters of Pharaoh.
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