Anonymous

THE REIGN OF ELIZABETH.

Accession of Elizabeth—Sir William Cecil—The Coronation—Opening of Parliament—Ecclesiastical Legislation—Consecration of Parker—Elizabeth and Philip—Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis—Affairs in Scotland—The First Covenant—Attitude of Mary of Guise—Riot at Perth—Outbreak of Hostilities—The Lords of the Congregation apply to England—Elizabeth hesitates—Siege of Leith—Treaty of Edinburgh—Return of Mary to Scotland—Murray's Influence over her—Beginning of the Religious Wars in France—Elizabeth sends Help to the Huguenots—Peace of Amboise—English Disaster at Havre—Peace with France—The Earl of Leicester—Project of his Marriage with Mary—Lord Darnley—Murder of Rizzio—Birth of Mary's Son—Murder of Darnley—Mary and Bothwell—Carberry Hill—Mary in Lochleven—Abdicates in favour of Her Infant Son—Mary's Escape from Lochleven—Defeated at Langside—Her Escape into England.

Parliament had met on the morning of the 17th of November, 1558, unaware of the decease of the queen; but before noon, Dr. Heath, the Archbishop of York and Lord Chancellor of England, sent a message to the House of Commons, requesting the Speaker, with the knights and burgesses of the Lower House, to attend in the Lords to give their assent in a matter of the utmost importance. On being there assembled, the Lord Chancellor announced to the united Parliament the demise of Mary, and, though by that event the Commons were dissolved by the law as it remained till the reign of William III., he called upon them to combine with the Lords, before taking their departure, for the safety of the country, by proclaiming the Lady Elizabeth queen of the realm. Whatever might have been the fears of any portion of the community as to the recognition of the title of Elizabeth on the plea of illegitimacy, or from suspicion of her religion, that question had long been settled by the flocking of the courtiers of all creeds and characters to Hatfield, where she resided; and now on this announcement there was a loud acclamation from the members of both Houses of "God save Queen Elizabeth! Long may she reign over us!"

For two days Elizabeth, as if from due respect to her deceased sister and sovereign, remained quiescent at Hatfield; but thousands of people of all ranks were flocking thither; and on the 19th her Privy Council proceeded thither also, and, after announcing to her her joyful and undisputed accession, they proclaimed her with all state before the gates of Hatfield House. They then sat in council with her, and she appointed her own ministers, having, no doubt, made all these arrangements with the man whom she had long marked out for her prime minister, Sir William Cecil. He had for years been her confidential counsellor. By his shrewd and worldly guidance, she had shaped her future course; and in appointing her ministers now, she showed by her address to Cecil that it was for him that she designed the chief post.

Besides Cecil, she named Sir Thomas Parry, her cofferer, Cave, and Rogers of her Privy Council. Cecil immediately entered on his duties as her Secretary of State, and submitted to her a programme of what was immediately necessary to be done, which she accepted; and thus began that union between Elizabeth and her great minister, which only terminated with his life.

On the 23rd the new queen commenced her progress towards the metropolis, attended by a magnificent throng of nobles, ladies, and gentlemen, and a vast concourse of people from London and from the country round. At Highgate she was met by the bishops, who kneeled by the wayside, and offered their allegiance. She received them graciously, and gave them all her hand to kiss, except to Bonner, whom she treated with a marked coldness, on account of his atrocious cruelties: an intimation of her own intentions on the score of religion which must have given satisfaction to the people. At the foot of Highgate Hill, the Lord Mayor and his aldermanic brethren, in their scarlet gowns, were waiting to receive her, and conducted her to the Charter House, then the residence of Lord North, where Heath, the Lord Chancellor, and the Earls of Derby and Shrewsbury received her. There she remained five days to give time for the necessary preparations, when she proceeded to take up her residence in the Tower, prior to her coronation, which took place on the 15th of January, 1559.

QUEEN ELIZABETH.

(From the painting by Zucchero at Hatfield House.)

On the 25th of January Elizabeth proceeded to open her first Parliament. She had prepared to carry the decisive measures of religious reform which she contemplated, by adding five new peers of the Protestant faith to the Upper House, and by sending to the sheriffs a list of Court candidates out of which they were to choose the members. Like all other public proceedings, this was a strange medley of Romanism and Protestantism. High mass was performed at the altar in Westminster Abbey before the queen and the assembled Houses, and this was followed by a sermon preached by Dr. Cox, the Calvinistic schoolmaster of Edward VI., who had just returned from Geneva. The Lord Keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon, then opened the session by a speech, the queen being present, in which he held very high prerogative language, assuring both Lords and Commons that they might take measures for a uniform order of religion, and for the safety of the State against both foreign and domestic enemies; not that it was absolutely necessary, for she could do everything of her own authority, but she preferred having the advice and counsel of her loving subjects.

The first thing which the Commons proposed was the very last thing which she would have wished them to meddle with—that is, an address recommending her to marry, so as to secure a legitimate heir to the throne. Elizabeth, as we have seen, had had many suitors, none of whom, if we except the unfortunate Lord Admiral Seymour, or the handsome but imbecile Courtenay, Earl of Devon, had she shown any willingness to marry. There have been many theories regarding the refusal of Elizabeth to enter into wedlock. The only one which will bear a moment's examination is, that her love of power was so strong as to absorb every other feeling and consideration. She made a long speech in reply to the address, glancing towards the close of it at her coronation ring, and then saying that when she received that ring, she became solemnly bound in marriage to the realm, and that she took their address in good part, but more for their good will than for their message.

Without referring to the questionable marriage of her mother, Anne Boleyn, an Act was passed restoring Elizabeth in blood, and rendering her heritable to her mother and all her mother's line. She was declared to be lawful and rightful queen, lineally and lawfully descended of the blood royal, and fully capable of holding, and transmitting to her posterity, the possession of the crown and throne.

Next came the regulations for the government of the Church, which Elizabeth had so prudently avoided making upon her own responsibility, but left to the authority of Parliament. By it the tenths and first-fruits resigned by Mary were again restored to her. The statutes passed in Mary's reign for the maintenance of strict Romanism were repealed, and those of Henry VIII. for the rejection of the Papal authority, and of Edward VI. for the reformation of the Church ritual were revived. The Book of Common Prayer, considerably modified, was to be in uniform and exclusive use. The old penalties against seeking any ecclesiastical authority or ordination from abroad were re-enacted, and the queen was declared absolute head of the Church by a new Act of Supremacy.

Notwithstanding the softening of the parts and expressions in the liturgy most offensive to the Papists, such as the prayer "to deliver us from the Bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities," and the modification of the terms in administration of the sacrament, to avoid offence to other Protestant churches, the bishops opposed these measures most resolutely. Convocation presented to the House of Lords a declaration of its belief in the Real Presence, transubstantiation, the sacrifice of the Mass, and the supremacy of the Pope. On the other hand, the Protestants were grievously disappointed in other particulars, especially as to restoration of the married clergy, and of the restoration to their sees of Bishops Barlow, Scorey, and Coverdale. Both these petitions failed on the question of marriage, for Elizabeth never could tolerate married priests or bishops, and these expelled bishops were all married men. The Protestants were equally disappointed in the failure of a Bill to nominate a commission to draw a code of canon law for the Anglican Church. Elizabeth, like her father, rather preferred deciding all such matters herself than allowing any other body to be authority.

But to give an air of liberality to what was not meant to involve any concession, permission was given for the Papist and Protestant divines to argue certain great points in public. Five bishops and three doctors on the part of the former, and as many Protestant divines, were appointed to dispute before the Lord Keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon, and the debates of the two Houses were suspended, that the members might attend the controversy. The Roman Catholics were to have the privilege of opening the conference, and the Protestants were to reply; but it was speedily discovered that this gave immense advantage to the Protestants. The Roman Catholics called for a change of this mode; the Lord Keeper refused to grant it; the bishops, therefore, protested that the conditions were not equal, and refused to attend. For this disobedience the Bishops of Winchester and Lincoln were committed to the Tower, and the other six disputants were bound to make their appearance at the bar of the Lords till judgment was pronounced, and they were compelled to do so till the end of the session, when they were fined in sums from £500 to forty marks. Parliament was dissolved on the 8th of May, and within a week Elizabeth summoned the bishops and other dignitaries before herself and the Privy Council, and admonished them to make themselves conformable to the laws just passed regarding religion. Heath, the archbishop, replied by boldly advising her Majesty to remember her own coronation oath, not to alter the religion which she found by law established; adding that his conscience could not permit him to conform to the new regulations, and all the other prelates and dignitaries declared the same. The Council then charged Heath and Bonner, on the evidence of certain papers, with having, during the reign of Edward VI., carried on secret conspiracies with Rome, with the intent to overthrow the Government. To this they replied by pleading two general pardons, and the Council then proceeded to administer to them the oath of supremacy. This they all refused except Kitchen, the Bishop of Llandaff, who had clung to his see through all changes for the last fourteen years, and clung to it still. They were then deprived of their sees, and a considerable number of other Church dignitaries were also deprived by the same test. The bulk of the clergy, however, conformed, and to those who were ejected pensions for life were allowed—a policy far more considerate than had ever prevailed in such circumstances before. The refugees on account of the Marian persecution, who had now flocked home from Switzerland and Germany, were installed in the vacant livings, and before the end of this year the Church of Rome had lost the State patronage in Great Britain for ever. Two statutes—the Act enforcing the oath of Supremacy, and the other the Act of Uniformity—became law, during this session. The latter Act prohibited under heavy penalties the use by a minister of any but the established liturgy, and confirmed the revised Book of Common Prayer of Edward VI.

To replace the expelled bishops was no very easy matter, not from the paucity of candidates, but from the revolutions which had taken place in the ordinal of the Church. Dr. Matthew Parker, who had been the chaplain of Anne Boleyn, and who had stood so faithfully by her, was appointed by Elizabeth Archbishop of Canterbury, but how was he to be consecrated? His election was to be confirmed by four bishops, and his consecration to be performed by them. Where were they to be found? There was not a bishop left, except Llandaff. Still more, Mary had abolished the ordinal of Edward VI., and Elizabeth had abolished that of Mary. The difficulty was, at first sight, insurmountable, and no way out of it presented itself for four months. It was then recollected that Barlow, Hodgkins, Scorey, and Coverdale, the deprived Bishops of Bath, Bedford, Chichester, and Exeter, had been consecrated by the Reformed ordinal, and that restoration which had been denied them at the petition of their friends, because they were married men, was now accorded as an escape from this dilemma. They were reinstated, and confirmed the election of Parker, consecrated him according to the form of Edward VI., and helped to confirm and consecrate all the newly elected prelates.

While Elizabeth and her ministers had been thus engaged in settling the constitution of the Church, they had also been occupied with effecting a Continental peace. Philip had refused to conclude a treaty with France previous to the death of Mary, without including in it the restoration of Calais to England, and to Philibert the Duke of Savoy his hereditary estates. The death of Mary at once cut the actual connection of Philip with England, but he remained firm in his demand, for he had formed the design of obtaining the hand of Elizabeth. He lost no time in making the offer, observing that though they were within the proscribed degrees of affinity the Pope would readily grant a dispensation, and the union of England and Spain would give them the command of Europe. But, independent of the partnership in power which this marriage would create, Elizabeth entertained schemes of Church arrangement very different to any which would accord with Philip's ideas. She, therefore, courteously excused herself on the plea of scruples of conscience, and this refusal was followed by the non-appearance of Feria, Philip's ambassador, at her coronation. Philip, however, did not give up the suit without employing all the eloquence and the arguments that he could muster; he kept up a brisk correspondence for some time with the new queen, and even when the attempt appeared hopeless, he still offered to assist her in the treaty with France. He settled his own disputes with France by marrying the daughter of the King of France, as soon as he saw the hand of Elizabeth unattainable, and procured the sister of Henry II. for his friend Philibert.

ELIZABETH'S PUBLIC ENTRY INTO LONDON. (See p. 246.)

The great demand of Elizabeth was the restoration of Calais, and at Cateau-Cambresis a treaty was concluded on the 2nd of April, 1559, by which the King of France actually engaged to surrender that town to England at the end of eight years, or pay to Elizabeth 500,000 crowns; and he agreed to deliver, as guarantee for this sum, four French noblemen and the bonds of eight foreign merchants. But to this article was appended another which, to any one in the least familiar with diplomacy, betrayed the fact that the whole was illusory, and that the French would have no difficulty, at the end of the prescribed term, in showing that England had in some way broken the contract. The article stipulated that if, within that period, Henry of France, or Mary of Scotland, should make any attempt against the realm or subjects of Elizabeth, they should forfeit all claim to the retention of that town; and if Elizabeth should infringe the peace with either of those monarchs, she should forfeit all claim to its surrender or to the penalty of 500,000 crowns. The public at once saw that the French would never relinquish their hold on Calais from the force of any such condition, and the indignation was proportionate. The Government, to divert the attention of the people from this flimsy pretence of eventual restoration, ordered the impeachment of Lord Wentworth, the late governor of the castle and of the Rysbank, on a charge of cowardice and treason. Wentworth, as he deserved, was acquitted by the jury; the captains were condemned, but the object of the trial being attained, their sentence was never carried into effect.

Elizabeth, at her accession, had assumed the title of Queen of France. Henry II. immediately, by way of retaliation, caused his daughter-in-law Mary (she had married the Dauphin in 1558) to be styled Queen of Scotland and England, and had the arms of England quartered with those of Scotland. Elizabeth, with her extreme sensitiveness to any claims upon her crown, and regarding this act as a declaration of her own illegitimacy and of Henry's assertion of Mary's superior right to the English throne, resented the proceeding deeply, and from that moment never ceased to plot against the peace and power of Mary till she drove her from her throne, made her captive, and finally deprived her of her life.

We have already shown that Henry VII. commenced, and Henry VIII. and Edward VI. continued, the system of bribing the Scottish nobility against their sovereign. Elizabeth, in pursuance of her plans against the Queen of Scots, now adopted the same practice, and kept in pay both the nobles and the Protestant leaders of Scotland. To understand fully her proceedings, we must, however, first take a hasty glance at the progress of the Reformation in Scotland. That kingdom received the Reformation in its simplest, most rigid, and severe form. The doctrines which had sprung up in republican Switzerland, under Calvin and Zwingli, were imbibed there by Knox and others in their most unbending hardness. There was little of the gentle and the pliant in their tenets, but a stern asceticism, which suited well with the grave and earnest character of the Scots. When summoned by Mary of Guise to appear in Edinburgh and answer for their conduct, the preachers, attended by thousands of the respective congregations, presented themselves in such a formidable shape, that the Regent declared that she meant no injury to them. A period of such tranquillity succeeded, that the leaders of the Reform party—the Earl of Glencairn, Lord Lorne, son of the Earl of Argyll, Erskine of Dun, Lord James Stuart, afterwards the Regent Murray—on the 3rd of December, 1557, drew up that League and Covenant which was destined to work such wonders in Scotland, to rouse the suffering Reformers into a church militant, to put arms into the hands of the excited peasants, brace the sword to the side of the preacher, and, through civil war and scenes of strange suffering, bloodshed, and resistance on moor and mountain, to work out the freedom of the faith for ever in Scotland. The Covenant engaged all who subscribed it, in a solemn vow, "in the presence of the Majesty of God and His congregation," to spread the Word by every means in their power, to maintain the Gospel and defend its ministers against all tyranny; and it pronounced the most bitter anathemas against the superstition, the idolatry, and the abominations of Rome. This bond received the signatures of the Earls of Glencairn, Argyll, and Morton, Lord Lorne, Erskine of Dun, and many other nobles and gentlemen, who assumed the name of the Lords of the Congregation: and from this hour it became a scandalous apostacy for any one to flinch or fall away from this "Solemn League and Covenant."

Mary at first temporised, but eventually determined to stand firm. In a convention of the clergy held in Edinburgh, in March, 1559, the Lords of the Congregation demanded that the bishops should be elected by the gentlemen of the diocese, and the clergy by the people of each parish. This was peremptorily refused, and it was decreed that the practice of using English prayers should cease, no language should be permitted in public worship but Latin, and this was followed by a proclamation of the Queen-Regent, ordering all people to conform strictly to the established religion and to attend Mass daily; and, in an interview with the leaders of the Protestants, she showed them the commands which she had received on these heads from France, and summoned the chief ministers of the Reformed body to appear before a Parliament to be held at Stirling to answer for their conduct in introducing heretical practices and doctrines.

At this moment Knox arrived from France. It was determined by the Lords of the Congregation to attend their ministers to Stirling in such numbers as to overawe the Government, and Knox volunteered to take his part with the other preachers. The nobles and the people mustered at Perth. There Knox preached a stirring sermon; a riot was the result, and some religious houses were sacked.

The Queen-Regent, at the news of this destruction, became furious. She vowed she would raze the town of Perth to the ground, and sow it with salt as a sign of eternal desolation. She summoned to her aid Arran, now Duke of Chatelherault, the Earl of Athole, and D'Oyselles, the French commander, and being joined by two of the Lords of the Congregation, Argyll and Lord James Stuart, who were averse from the outrages committed, on the 18th of May she marched to Perth. The Congregation hastened to address letters both to the Queen-Regent and the two Lords of the Congregation, who, to their indignation, had joined her. They told Mary of Guise that hitherto they had served her willingly; but if she persisted in her persecutions, they should abandon her and defend themselves. They would obey the queen and her husband if permitted to worship in their own way, otherwise they would be subject to no mortal man. To the two Lords of the Congregation they wrote first in mild expostulation, but they soon advanced their tone to threats of excommunication, and the doom of traitors, if they did not come from amongst the persecutors. They addressed another letter "To the generation of Anti-Christ, the pestilent prelates and their shavelings in Scotland;" and they warned them that, if they did not desist from their persecutions, they would exterminate them, as the Israelites did the wicked Canaanites.

Matters were proceeding to extremity when Glencairn arrived in the Protestant camp with 2,500 men. This made the Queen-Regent pause, and an agreement was effected by means of Argyll and the Lord James, by which toleration was again granted, and the Queen-Regent engaged that no Frenchman should approach within three miles of Perth, a condition which she characteristically evaded by garrisoning it with Scottish troops in French pay. Knox and Willock had an interview with Argyll and the Lord James, and sharply upbraided them with appearing in arms against their brethren, to which these nobles replied that they had done it only as a means of arbitrating for peace; but the Congregation took means to bind them in future by framing a new covenant, to which every member swore obedience, engaging to defend the Congregation or any of its members when menaced by the enemies of their religion.

They were soon called upon to prove their sincerity. The Queen-Regent—totally regardless of the treaty just entered into—the very same day that the Lords of the Congregation quitted Perth, entered it with Chatelherault, D'Oyselles, and a body of French soldiers. She deprived the chief magistrates of their authority because they favoured the Reformation; made Charteris of Kinfauns, a man of infamous character, provost of the city, and left a garrison of troops in French pay to support him.

The Lords of the Congregation assembled at St. Andrews, and with them Knox, who had come, as he said, to the conclusion that to be rid of the rooks it was necessary to pull down their nests. Their action was prompt; Perth surrendered at the first assault. Argyll and the Lord James had succeeded in checking the march of the Queen-Regent; and on their advance to Linlithgow, she and the French forces evacuated Edinburgh, falling back to Dunbar; whilst the Covenanting army, entering Linlithgow, pulled down the altars and images, destroyed the relics, and then advanced on Edinburgh, which they entered in triumph on the 29th of June, 1559.

It was at this crisis that the progress of the Reformers in Scotland arrested the attention of the Government in England, and a letter was received from Sir Henry Percy by Kirkaldy of Grange, inquiring into the real objects of the Lords of the Congregation. Kirkaldy replied that they meant nothing but the reformation of religion; that they had purged the churches of imagery and other Popish stuff wherever they had come, and that they pulled down such friaries and abbeys as would not receive the Reformed faith; but that they had not meddled with a pennyworth of the Church's property, reserving the appropriation of that to the maintenance of godly ministers hereafter; that if the Queen-Regent would grant them spiritual liberty and send away the Frenchmen, they would obey her; if not, they would hear of no agreement. Knox also wrote to Percy in the name of the whole Congregation, and entreated that England should aid them in their struggle, telling them, in his sturdy way, that if it did it would be better for it; if not, though Scotland might suffer, England could not escape her share of the trouble.

From the Portrait by Isaac Oliver

ELIZABETH. (From the Portrait by Isaac Oliver.)

The parsimony of Elizabeth, however, and the caution of her minister Cecil, withheld all efficient aid from the Scottish Reformers at the time that it was most essential. Whilst the Queen-Regent delayed any active proceedings in the hope of the arrival of fresh troops from France, and the knowledge that the irregular army brought into the field by the Scottish barons could not long be kept together, Elizabeth deferred the promised subsidies. In this predicament, the Lords of the Congregation made still more impassioned appeals to Cecil, and Knox wrote to him entreating him to abate the prejudice of Elizabeth towards him. But that prejudice was of the most bitter and unconquerable kind in the heart of Elizabeth. Knox had perpetrated the unpardonable offence to Elizabeth in writing his "First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women." While Elizabeth hesitated, the Regent was fortifying Leith.

At last the English queen determined to help her fellow-religionists, and by the treaty of Berwick agreed to aid them in an attack on the Regent. The Covenanters prepared for an assault on Leith, by constructing scaling-ladders in the High Church of St. Giles, Edinburgh, to the great scandal of the preachers, who prognosticated that proceedings begun in sacrilege would end in defeat. This soon appeared likely to be the result, for the money sent from England being exhausted, the soldiers clamoured for pay, and the army of 12,000 was on the verge of melting away very rapidly. In great alarm, the leaders vehemently entreated Elizabeth for more money, and making a struggle with her natural parsimony, she sent £4,000 to Cockburn of Ormiston, who undertook the perilous office of conveying it to headquarters. But a man who afterwards became notorious for the audacity of his crimes, the Earl of Bothwell, who now professed to be a zealous supporter of the Congregation, and had by this means obtained the knowledge of the transmission of the treasure, waylaid Cockburn, and carried off the money. This was a severe blow to the Congregation, and was speedily followed by another. Haliburton, provost of Dundee, had led a party of Reformers to attack Leith. He had planted his heavy artillery on an eminence near Holyrood; but whilst the majority of the leaders were attending a sermon, the French garrison attacked the battery, and drove the Reformers back into the city with great slaughter.

AUTOGRAPH OF ELIZABETH.

Even the arrival of an English army did not mend matters. The siege was carried on against Leith in a manner little creditable to the ancient fame of the English; as for the Scots, Sadler said, "they could climb no walls:" that is, they were not famous for conducting sieges and taking towns by assault. The English, who had acquired great fame in that kind of warfare, now seemed to have forgotten their skill, though they had lost none of their courage. Their lines of circumvallation were ill-drawn, their guns were ill-directed, their trenches were opened in ground unfit for the purpose, and they were repeatedly thrown into disorder by sorties of the enemy. To make matters worse, the supplies of the Scots became exhausted, and they began to make their usual cries to the English for more money. But from the English court came, instead of the all-needful money, signs of discouragement. Elizabeth still maintained her equivocal conduct, and the Lords of the Congregation were greatly alarmed to find her actually negotiating with the sick Queen-Regent for an accommodation. At the very time that the Scots and the English were engaged in a smart action at Hawkhill, near Lochend, during the siege, Sir James Croft and Sir George Howard were with the dying Mary of Guise in the castle of Edinburgh. Elizabeth still declared that she was not fighting against Francis and Mary, the king and queen of France and Scotland, but against their Ministers in the latter country, and simply for the defence of her own realm against their attempts. She desired Sir Ralph Sadler to express her willingness to treat, and to make it clear that she was no party to any design to injure or depose the rightful queen. What she aimed at was the expulsion of the French from Scotland as dangerous to her own dominions, and he was instructed, if the old plea was raised—namely, that the French only remained there to maintain the throne of their mistress against disaffected subjects—to state that his sovereign would not admit this plea, as it was a mere pretence, and would not lay down her arms till the Queen of Scots was also secured in her just power and claims.

On the 10th of June, 1560, the Queen-Regent died in the castle of Edinburgh. On her death-bed she entreated Lord James Stuart, and some others of the Lords of the Congregation, as well as her own courtiers, to support the rightful power of her daughter: but, as the events showed, and the treacherous, ambitious character of the bastard brother of Queen Mary rendered probable, to very little purpose. The Queen-Regent's decease, however, opened a way to negotiation. The insurrectionary feeling in France made the French court readily support such a proposition, and it was agreed that the French and English commissioners should meet at Berwick on the 14th of June. The English commissioners were Cecil and Dr. Wotton, Dean of Canterbury; the French, Monluc, Bishop of Valence, and Count de Randon. Perhaps four more acute diplomatists never met. On the 16th of June, they proceeded to Edinburgh, passing through the English camp on the way, where they were saluted by a general discharge of firearms. By the 6th of July all the conditions of peace were settled, and it was announced both to the besiegers and besieged that hostilities were at an end.

The French commissioners stood stoutly for the rights and prerogatives of the Crown, but they were compelled to yield many points to the imperturbable firmness of Cecil. Dunbar and Inchkeith were surrendered as well as Leith. The French troops, excepting a small garrison in Dunbar and another in Inchkeith, were to be sent home and no more to be brought over. An indemnity for all that had passed since March, 1558, in Scotland, was granted; every man was to regain the post or position which he held before the struggle, and no Frenchman was to hold any office in that kingdom. A Convention of the three Estates was to be summoned by the king and queen, and four-and-twenty persons were to be named by this Convention, out of whom should be chosen a Council of twelve for the government of the country, of whom the Queen should name seven, and the Estates five. The king and queen were not to declare war, or conclude peace, without the concurrence of the Estates; neither the Lords nor the members of the Congregation should be molested for what they had done, and Churchmen were to be protected in their persons, rights, and properties, and to receive compensation for their losses according to the award of the Estates in Parliament.

On one point, and that the chief point of the quarrel, the leaders of the Congregation did not obtain their demand, which naturally was for the establishment of their religion. We may suppose that Cecil and his colleague were not very desirous of carrying this; for the Queen of England regarded the Scottish Reformers as fanatical and she especially abominated the character and doctrines of Knox. It was conceded, however, that Parliament should be summoned without delay, and that a deputation should lay this request before the king and queen.

By a second treaty between England and France, it was determined that the right to the crowns of England and Ireland lay in Elizabeth, and that Mary should no longer bear the arms or use the style of these two kingdoms. Another proposition, however, was refused in this treaty, and that was the surrender of Calais to England.

It remained now to obtain the consent of Francis and Mary to these decisions; and Sir James Sandilands, a knight of Malta, was despatched to Paris for this purpose. His reception was such as might be expected. Mary refused to sanction the proceedings of a Parliament which had been summoned without her authority, and which had acted in the very face of the treaty, by seeking to destroy the religion in which she had been educated. Thereupon the Estates established Protestantism on their own authority.

All speculations as to what the Guises would do were cut short by the death of Francis II., the husband of Mary, on the 5th of December, 1560. He had always been a sickly personage, and his reign had lasted only eighteen months. His successor, Charles IX., was only nine years of age, and had a mind and constitution not exhibiting more promise of health and vigour than those of his late brother. His mother, Catherine de Medici, became regent, and his uncles of Lorraine lost the direction of affairs. Catherine and Mary were no friends; the young Queen-Dowager of France, only nineteen, was now treated harshly and contemptuously by the Lady-Regent, and she retired to Rheims, where she spent the winter amongst her relatives of Lorraine.

Mary now prepared to make her way home by sea. Her false half-brother, the Lord James, instead of being to her, at this trying moment, a friend and staunch counsellor, was, and had long been, leagued with her most troublesome and rebellious subjects, and was expecting, by the aid of Elizabeth of England, to engross the chief power in the State, if not eventually to push his unsuspecting sister from the throne. The Roman Catholics of Scotland were quite alive to the dangers which attended their sovereign in such company, and deputed Leslie the Bishop of Ross, a man of high integrity—which, through a long series of troubles, he manifested towards his queen—to go over to France and return with her. Leslie was so much alarmed by the dangers which menaced her amongst her turbulent and zeal-excited subjects, that he advised her in private to extend her voyage to the Highlands, and put herself under the protection of the Earl of Huntly, who, at the head of a large army, would conduct her to her capital and place her in safety on her throne, at the same time that he enabled her to protect the ancient religion. But Mary would not listen to anything like a return by force. She determined to throw herself on the affections of her subjects, and to go amongst them peaceably.

Mary embarked at Calais on the 15th of August, 1561. She eluded the ships sent to prevent her, and on the 19th she landed on her native shore at Leith. She had come a fortnight earlier than she had fixed, to checkmate the schemes of her enemies; but the people flew to welcome her and crowded the beach with hearty acclamations: the lords, however, says a contemporary, had taken small pains to honour her reception and "cover the nakedness of the land." Instead of the gay palfreys of France to which she had been accustomed, in their rich accoutrements, she saw a wretched set of Highland shelties prepared to convey her and her retinue to Holyrood; and when she surveyed their tattered furniture and mounted into the bare wooden saddle, the past and the present came so mournfully over her, that her eyes filled with tears. The honest joy of her people, however, was an ample compensation, had she not known what ill-will lurked in the background against her amongst the nobles and clergy.

Mary was the finest woman of her time. Tall, beautiful, accomplished, in the freshness of her youth, not yet nineteen, distinguished by the most graceful manners and the most fascinating disposition, she was formed to captivate a people sensible to such charms. But she came into her country, in every past age turbulent and independent, at a crisis when the public spirit was divided and embittered by religious controversy, and she was exposed to the deepest suspicion of the Reforming party, by belonging to a family notorious for its bigoted attachment to the old religion. Yet the candour of her disposition and her easy condescension seemed to make a deep impression on the masses. They not only cheered her enthusiastically on the way to her ancestral palace of Holyrood, but about 200 of the citizens of Edinburgh, playing on three-stringed fiddles, kept up a deafening serenade under her windows all night; and such was her good-natured appreciation of the motive, that she thanked them in the morning for having really kept her awake after her fatiguing voyage. Not quite so agreeable, though, was the conduct of her liege subjects on the Sunday in her chapel, where, having ordered her chaplain to perform Mass, such a riot was raised, that had not her natural brother, the Lord James Stuart, interfered, the priest would have been killed at the altar.

This was a plain indication that, although the Reformers demanded liberty of conscience for themselves, they meant to allow none to others; and a month afterwards the same riot was renewed so violently in the royal chapel at Stirling, that Randolph, writing to Cecil, said that the Earl of Argyll and the Lord James himself this time "so disturbed the quire, that some, both priests and clerks, left their places with broken heads and bloody ears."

Mary bore this rude and disloyal conduct with an admirable patience. She had the advantage of the counsels of D'Oyselles, who had spent some years in the country, and had learned the character of the people. She placed the leaders of the Congregation in honour and power around her, making the Lord James her chief minister, and Maitland of Lethington her Secretary of State, both of whom, however, were in the pay and interests of the English queen. It was not in the nature of Knox to delay long appearing in her presence, and opening upon her the battery of his fierce zeal.

It is, perhaps, impossible to imagine a situation more appalling than that of this young and accomplished girl suddenly thrown into the midst of this effervescence of spiritual pride and boorish dogmatism, which was so insensible to the finer influences of social life, so unconscious of the rights of conscience in those of a different opinion. Mary showed a far more Christian spirit. She reminded Knox of his offensive and contemptuous book against women, gently admonished him to be more liberal to those who could not think as he did, and to use more meekness of speech in his sermons.

But the Scottish clergy at that moment received a severe recompense for their contempt of the social amenities, in their aristocratic coadjutors treating them as men who had no need of temporal advantages. The nobles used them to overturn by their preaching the ancient Church; and that done, they quietly but firmly appropriated the substance of it to themselves. The example of the English hierarchy had not been lost upon them. When the clergy put in their claim for a fair share of the booty, the nobles affected great surprise at such a worldly appetite in such holy men. The clergy proposed that the property of the Church should be divided into three portions: one-third for the pastors of the new Church, one-third for the poor, and one-third for the endowment of schools and colleges. Maitland of Lethington asked Knox, "Where, then, was the portion of the nobles? Were they to become hod-bearers in this building of the Kirk?" Knox replied that they might be worse employed. But he and his fellow-ministers had different material to operate upon in the hard-fisted nobles. They might browbeat and insult a young queen, but they could not force the plunder from the grip of their aristocratic patrons. The whole sum which they could obtain for the maintenance of 1,000 parish churches was only about £4,000, or about £6 sterling as the annual income of a parish priest.

As for the unhappy queen, she was equally vexed by clergy and aristocracy. She was soon called upon for extensive favours by her ambitious brother, the Lord James, prior of St. Andrews. She created him Earl of Mar, and she further contemplated conferring on him the ancient earldom of Murray, which had been forfeited to the Crown in the reign of James II. A great part of the property, however, of this earldom had been taken possession of by the Earl of Huntly, the head of the most powerful family in the north. Huntly had offered, if Mary would land in the Highlands, to conduct her to Edinburgh at the head of 20,000 men, and enable her to put down the whole body of Reformers. Mary had declined this offer, as the certain cause of a civil war, if accepted. Huntly, therefore, stood aloof from the present Government, and was especially hostile to the Earl of Mar, who was the leading person in it. Mar determined to break the power of this haughty chief, and thus wrest from him the lands he claimed for his new earldom. Mary was anxious to advance her brother, and did not need much persuasion to sanction this design of Mar; and the son of Huntly, Sir John Gordon, having committed some feudal outrage, was seized and imprisoned for a short term. This punishment was regarded as an indignity by the house of Gordon, and the symptoms of disaffection towards the Government were increased. Mary, therefore, took the field with her brother, the Lord James, and marched into the Highlands at the head of her troops. The Earl of Huntly, dismayed at this spirit in the young queen, who appeared to enjoy the excitement and the inconveniences of a campaign, hastened to make overtures of accommodation; and the matter would probably have been soon amicably arranged, but, unfortunately, a party of Huntly's vassals refused Mary and her staff entrance into the castle of Inverness, and made a show of holding it against her. They were, however, soon compelled to surrender, and the governor was executed as a traitor. At this time, Sir John Gordon, escaping from his prison, flew to arms, roused the vassals of the clan Gordon far and wide; and his father, seeing no longer any chance of agreement, led his forces into the field. He advanced towards Aberdeen, and met Mar, who had now exchanged that title for the title of Earl of Murray, encamped on the hill of Fare near Corrichie. There Murray, as an excellent soldier, defeated Huntly, who was killed on the field, or died soon after. His son, Sir John Gordon, was seized, and executed at Aberdeen, three days after the battle. Murray was thus placed in full possession of his title and new estate, and Mary, with so able and powerful a relative as her chief minister, appeared in a position to command obedience from her refractory subjects. But now a new danger menaced her from the rival queen of England, who was still bent on seeing Mary so married as to give her no additional power.

In the spring of 1562 Elizabeth became engaged in the support of the Huguenots, or Protestants of France, against their Government, as she had supported the Covenanters of Scotland. After the failure of a conspiracy to surprise the court at Amboise, and the accession of Catherine de Medici to the Regency, the heads of the party again flew to arms; but Catherine making concessions, in order to engage the Huguenot chiefs CondÉ and Coligny to assist her in counteracting the influence of the house of Guise, a treaty was entered into by which the Protestants were to be allowed free exercise of their religion. But the Duke of Guise becoming possessed of the person of the king, soon persuaded Catherine—his mother and Regent—to break the treaty. The Huguenots again rose in defence of their lives and principles, and no less than fourteen armies were soon on foot in one part or another of France. The Duke of Guise headed the Catholics; the Prince of CondÉ, Admiral Coligny, Andelot, and others, commanded the Huguenots. The Parliament of Paris issued an edict, authorising the Papists to massacre the Protestants wherever they found them; the Protestants retaliated with augmented fury, and carnage and violence prevailed throughout the devoted country. The Duke of Guise found himself so hard driven by the Protestants, in whose ranks the very women and children fought fiercely, that he entreated Philip of Spain to come to his aid. Philip gladly engaged in a work so congenial, his own Protestant subjects having had bloody experience of his bigotry, and sent into France 6,000 men, besides money. On this the Prince of CondÉ appealed to Elizabeth for support against the common enemies of their religion. To induce her to act promptly in their favour, he offered to put Havre-de-GrÂce immediately into her hands. Nowadays, in such a case, the English Government would take the public means of endeavouring by negotiation to lead its ally to concede their rights to its subjects. But Elizabeth took her favourite mode of privately aiding the discontented subjects of a power with whom she was at peace, against their sovereign. She made no overtures to Catherine de Medici, as Queen-Regent. She made no declaration of war, but despatched Sir Henry Sidney, the father of the afterwards celebrated Sir Philip Sidney, ostensibly to mediate between the Roman Catholics and Protestants, but really to enter into a compact with CondÉ. She was to furnish him with 100,000 crowns, and to send over 6,000 men, under Sir Edward Poynings, to take possession of the forts of Havre and Dieppe.

From the Painting by SIR DAVID WILKIE, R.A., in the National Gallery of British Art

THE PREACHING OF JOHN KNOX BEFORE THE LORDS OF THE CONGREGATION, 10th JUNE, 1559.

From the Painting by SIR DAVID WILKIE, R.A., in the National Gallery of British Art.

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MARS' WORK, STIRLING.

On the 3rd of October a fleet carried over the stipulated force, took possession of the ports, and Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick, the brother of the favourite Lord Robert Dudley, was made commander-in-chief of the English army in France. The French ambassador, with the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis in his hand, demanded the cause of the infringement of the thirteenth article of this treaty, and reminded the queen that, by proceeding to hostilities, she would at once forfeit all claim to Calais at the expiration of the prescribed period. Elizabeth replied that she was in arms, in fact, on behalf of the King of France, who was a prisoner in the hands of Guise, and when the ambassador required her, in the name of his sovereign, to withdraw her troops, she refused to believe that the demand came from the king, because he was not a free agent, and that it was the duty of Charles IX. to protect his oppressed subjects, and to thank a friendly power for endeavouring to assist him in that object.

But these sophisms deceived nobody. The nobility of France regarded Guise, who had driven the English out of France by the capture of Calais, as the real defender of the country; and CondÉ, who had brought them in again by the surrender of Havre and Dieppe, was considered a traitor. Numbers flocked to the standard of Guise and the Queen-Regent, who were joined by the King of Navarre. The Royal army, with Charles in person, besieged Rouen, to which Poynings, the English commander at Havre, sent a reinforcement. The governor of the city defended it obstinately against this formidable combination, and the Englishmen, mounting a breach which was made, fought till their last man fell. Two hundred of them thus perished, and the French, rushing in over their dead bodies, pillaged the place for eight days with every circumstance of atrocity.

The fall of Rouen and the massacre of a detachment of her troops was news that no one dared to communicate to Elizabeth. The ministers induced her favourite, Lord Robert Dudley, to undertake the unwelcome task; but even he dared only at first to hint to her that a rumour of defeat was afloat. When at length he disclosed the truth, Elizabeth blamed nobody but herself, confessing that it was her own reluctance to send sufficient force which had caused it all. She determined to send fresh reinforcements; commissioned Count Oldenburg to raise 12,000 men in Germany, and ordered public prayers for three days in succession for a blessing on her arms in favour of the Gospel.

CondÉ, who had been engaged near Orleans, on the arrival of 6,000 mercenaries from Germany, advanced towards Paris; and at Dreux, on the banks of the Eure, where the Duke of Guise achieved a victory over the Huguenots, CondÉ and Montmorency, a leader of each party, were taken prisoners; and Coligny, who now became the chief Huguenot general, fell back on Orleans, and sent pressing entreaties to Elizabeth for the supplies which she was bound by the treaty to furnish. The English queen, never fond of parting with her money, had at this crisis none in her exchequer. But money must be forthcoming, or the cause of Protestantism must fail through her bad faith. The German mercenaries were clamorous for their pay, none of which they had received, and the representations of Coligny were so urgent that Elizabeth was compelled to summon a Parliament and ask for supplies.

Meanwhile affairs in France had been anything but satisfactory. The Huguenot chiefs had promised Elizabeth, as the price of her assistance, the restoration of Calais. Elizabeth, on her part, ordered the Earl of Warwick not to advance with his troops beyond the walls of Hammes; and when Coligny reduced the chief towns of Normandy, he gave up their plunder to his German auxiliaries, and, instead of awarding any share to the English, complained loudly of the neutrality of Warwick's troops, and the more so when he saw the Duke of Guise preparing to lay siege to Orleans. But Guise was assassinated (February 24, 1563) by Poltrot, a deserter from the Huguenot army, and this circumstance produced a great change amongst the belligerents on both sides. The Catholics were afraid of the English uniting with Coligny, and gaining still greater advantages in Normandy; and, on the other hand, CondÉ was anxious to make peace, and secure the position in the French Government which Guise had held. A peace was accordingly concluded at Amboise on the 6th of March, in which freedom for the exercise of their religion was conceded to the Huguenots in every town of France, Paris excepted; and the Huguenots, in return, promised to support the Government.

Elizabeth, in her anger at this treaty, made without any reference to her, appeared to abandon her own shrewd sense. Though the French Government offered to renew the treaty of Cateau, to restore Calais at the stipulated time, Havre being of course surrendered, and to repay her all the sums advanced to the Huguenots, she refused, and declared that she would maintain Havre against the whole realm of France. But when she saw that the two parties were united to drive the English troops out of France, she thought better of it. She despatched Throgmorton to act for her in conjunction with Sir Thomas Smith, her ambassador. But Throgmorton arrived too late. The united parties were now pretty secure of the surrender of Havre, and, as Throgmorton's intrigues in France were notorious, to prevent a repetition of them they seized him on pretence of having no proper credentials, and delayed audience to Sir Thomas Smith from day to day, while they pushed on the siege.

To prevent insurrection, or co-operation with the French outside, Warwick had expelled most of the native inhabitants from Havre. He had about 5,000 men with him, and during the siege Sir Hugh Paulet threw in a reinforcement of about 800 more. Elizabeth had now the mortification of seeing her old allies take the command against her. Montmorency, the constable, had the chief command; and CondÉ, who had been the principal means of leading her into the war, served under him. It was clear that the place could not hold out long, yet the English manned the walls, defended the breaches and, till the whole garrison was reduced to less than 1,500 men, gave no sign of surrender. The Constable made the first proposals for a capitulation, which Warwick agreed to accept; but such was the fury of the French soldiers, or rather, the rabble collected from all quarters to the siege, that, in spite of the truce, they fired on the besieged repeatedly, and shot the Earl of Warwick through the thigh, as he stood in the breach. The next day the capitulation was signed, the garrison and people of the town being allowed to retire within six days, with all their effects. The chief marshal, Edward Randall, caused the sick to be carried on board, that they might not be left to the mercy of the French, and himself lent a helping hand. But the infected troops and people carried out the plague with them; it spread in various parts of England, and raged excessively in London. The inns of court were closed; those who could fled into the country. To the plague was added scarcity of money and of provisions. There were earthquakes in Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, and other places; terrific thunders and lightnings—and all these terrors were attributed by the Papists to the heresies which were in the ascendant.

Thus terminated Elizabeth's demonstration in favour of the Huguenots. She contemplated the humiliating result with indignation, which she was unable to conceal even in the presence of Castelnau, the French ambassador. At one moment she declared that she would not consent to peace, at another she vowed that she would make her Commissioners pay with their heads for offering to accept conditions which were gall to her haughty spirit. But there was no alternative. She first attempted to compel the French court to liberate Throgmorton, by seizing the French envoy De Foix, and offering him in exchange; but the French would not admit that Throgmorton was a duly appointed ambassador, and in retaliation for the seizure of De Foix, they arrested Sir Thomas Smith, and consigned him to the castle of MÉlun. Elizabeth still held the bonds for 500,000 crowns, or the restoration of Calais, and the hostages; and in the end she submitted to surrender the hostages for the return of Throgmorton, and reduced her claim of 500,000 crowns to one-fourth of that sum. Thus, not only Havre but Calais was virtually resigned, though Elizabeth still claimed to negotiate on that point. The proud English queen was, in fact, most mortifyingly defeated, both in the cabinet and the field. The treaty was signed on April 11th, 1564.

This French campaign terminated, Elizabeth turned her attention again to Scotland, and the subject on which she was most anxious was the marriage of the Scottish queen. To Elizabeth, who abhorred the idea of any one ever succeeding her on the throne, it was of much consequence how Mary, her presumptive heir, should wed. If to a foreign prince, it might render the claim on the English throne doubly hazardous. By this time it was pretty clear that Elizabeth herself was resolved to take no partner of her power, as the hands of numerous other princely suitors had been refused besides that of Philip. Of all the long array of the lovers of this famous queen, foreign or English, none ever acquired such a place in her regard and favour as the Lord Robert Dudley, one of the sons of the Duke of Northumberland, who had been attainted, with his father and family, for his participation in the attempt to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne, to the exclusion of Queen Mary and of this very Elizabeth. The queen restored him in blood, made him Master of the Horse, installed him Knight of the Garter, and, soon after this period, Earl of Leicester. This maiden queen, who had rejected so many kings and princes, soon grew so enamoured of this young nobleman, that their conduct became the scandal of the Court and country, but probably it was nothing more than indiscreet. The reports were believed of their living as man and wife, even whilst Leicester was still the husband of Amy Robsart, whom he is said, though falsely, to have murdered. The Queen of Scots, in one of her letters, tells her that she hears this asserted, and that she had promised to marry him before one of the ladies of the bed-chamber. Throgmorton, her ambassador, sent his secretary, Jones, to inform Elizabeth privately, and at the suggestion of Cecil and the other ministers, of the common remarks on this subject by the Spanish and Venetian ambassadors at Paris. Elizabeth, listening to Jones's recital, including the account of the murder of Amy Robsart, sometimes laughed, sometimes hid her face in her hands, but replied that she had heard it all before, and did not believe in the murder. From the evidence on this subject, it appears that Elizabeth had promised Dudley to marry him, and was this time very near being involved in the trammels of matrimony; but she escaped to have another long string of princely suitors.

Careful to avoid the bonds of matrimony herself, Elizabeth was, however, bent on securing in them the Queen of Scots. Since Mary of Scotland had become a widow, the suitors of Elizabeth had transferred their attentions to her. She was younger and much handsomer; her kingdom was much less important, but then she was by no means so haughty and immovable. She was of a warm, a generous, a poetic nature, and would soon have found a congenial husband, but either her own subjects or her rival Elizabeth had something in each case to object. Her French relatives successively proposed Don Carlos, the son of Philip, and heir of Spain; the Duke of Anjou, one of the brothers of her late husband; the Cardinal de Bourbon, who had not yet taken priest's orders; the Duke of Ferrara, and some others. But none of these would suit her Scottish subjects, for they were all Papists; and they suited Elizabeth as little, for they would create too strong a foreign coalition. Mary, with an extraordinary amiability, listened to all the objections of Elizabeth, and expressed herself quite disposed to accept such a husband as should be agreeable to her. Be it understood, however, that Mary was not without policy in this condescension. She hoped to induce Elizabeth, by thus being willing to oblige her in this particular, to acknowledge her right to succeed her, but in this she was grievously disappointed.

GREAT SEAL OF ELIZABETH.

Mary at last sent Sir James Melville to London to consult with Elizabeth, in personal interview, fully and candidly as to the person that she would really recommend as her consort. Elizabeth received him at her palace at Westminster, at eight o'clock, in her garden. She asked Melville if his queen had made up her mind regarding the man who should be her husband. He replied that she was just now thinking more of some disputes upon the Borders, and that she was desirous that her Majesty should send my Lord of Bedford and my Lord Dudley to meet her and her Commissioners there. Elizabeth affected to be hurt at Melville naming the Earl of Bedford first. She said that "it appeared to her as if I made but small account of Lord Robert, seeing that I named Bedford before him; but ere it were long she would make him a greater earl, and I should see it done before me, for she esteemed him as one whom she should have married herself, if she had ever been minded to take a husband. But being determined to end her life in virginity, she wished that the queen her sister should marry him, for with him she might find it in her heart to declare Queen Mary second person, rather than any other; for, being matched with him, it would best remove out of her mind all fear and suspicion of usurpation before her death."

Elizabeth immediately carried into effect her word that she would make Dudley an earl, by creating him, whilst Melville was present, Earl of Leicester and Baron Denbigh. "This was done," he says, "with great state at Westminster, herself helping to put on his robes, he sitting on his knees before her, and keeping a great gravity and discreet behaviour; as for the queen, she could not refrain from putting her hand in his neck to tickle him, smilingly, the French ambassador and I standing beside her. Then she asked me 'how I liked him.' I said, 'as he was a worthy subject, so he was happy in a great prince, who could discern and reward good service.' 'Yet,' she replied, 'ye like better of yon long lad,' pointing towards my Lord Darnley, who, as nearest prince of the blood, that day bare the sword before her. My answer was, 'that no woman of spirit would make choice of sic a man, that was liker a woman than a man, for he was lusty, beardless, and lady-faced.' I had no will that she should think I liked him, though I had a secret charge to deal with his mother, Lady Lennox, to purchase leave for him to pass to Scotland."

Lord Darnley, "the long lad," as Elizabeth called him, was the son of that Earl of Lennox who in the time of Henry VIII. joined with Glencairn, Cassillis, and others in attempting to betray Scotland to Henry. For these services, and especially for attempting to betray Dumbarton Castle to the English, he was banished and suffered forfeiture of his estates, but received from Henry VIII., as the promised reward for his treason, the hand of the Lady Margaret Douglas, daughter of Margaret, Queen of Scotland, and sister of Henry VIII., one of the lewdest and most turbulent women of the age. Thus Darnley was the son of Mary's aunt, the Lady Margaret Douglas, and grandson of Elizabeth's aunt, Margaret Tudor. He was thus near enough to have laid claim to the crown of England, and of Scotland too, in case of the failure of issue by the present queens. His nearness to the thrones of both kingdoms seems to have suggested the idea of marrying him to the Queen of Scots, whereby her claim on the English throne would receive added force. Mary was induced to favour the family, her near relatives. She corresponded with the Countess of Lennox, and invited Lennox to return to Scotland, and reversed his attainder. He did not recover the patrimony of Angus, his father, for that was in possession of the powerful Earl of Morton, Chancellor of the kingdom, but Mary promised to make that up to him by other means. Once restored to favour and rank in Scotland, Lennox pushed on the scheme of marrying his son Darnley to the queen. Melville was commissioned to intercede for his return to Scotland, but Elizabeth, who could not be blind to the danger of Darnley's wedding the Queen of Scots, for a time would not listen to it. We may believe too that Cecil did his best to prevent this, for of all his desires, the most earnest was that of the removal of Leicester from the Court, and therefore he used all his eloquence to get Leicester chosen for that honour.

On returning from Hampton Court, Leicester conducted Melville to London by water, and on the way he asked him what the Queen of Scots thought of him as a husband. The answer of Melville, who did not care so nicely to flatter the favourite, was not very complimentary, and thereupon Leicester made haste to assure the Scottish envoy that he had never presumed so much as to think of marrying so great a queen; that he knew he was not worthy to wipe her shoes, but that it was the plot of Cecil to ruin him with both the queens.

Melville, on his return to Edinburgh, assured the Queen of Scots that she could never expect any real friendship from the Queen of England, for that she was overflowing with jealousy, and was made up of falsehood and deceit. These royal courtships and rivalries went on still for some time: Queen Mary finally determined to refuse the Archduke Charles of Austria, probably to avoid giving umbrage to Elizabeth, and Elizabeth received one more suitor in no less a personage than the young King of France. This was a scheme of the busy and intriguing Catherine de Medici, who thought it would be a fine thing to link England and France together by marriage, but Elizabeth was not likely to perpetrate anything so shallow. The king was only fourteen, and Elizabeth replied that "her good brother was too great and too small; too great as a king, and too small, being but young, and she already thirty." Catherine, however, again pressed it, by De Foix the ambassador; but Elizabeth, laughing, said, she thought her neighbour Mary Stuart would suit him better; this, however, was only thrown out because Elizabeth had heard of some such project, which, if real, she would oppose resolutely. But a circumstance now took place which it seems difficult to account for. Having refused to permit Lord Darnley to go to Scotland, lest he should marry the Queen of Scots, and add to her claims on the English throne, all at once her objection seemed to vanish, and in February, 1565, she permitted him to travel to Edinburgh. Darnley was at this time in his twenty-fourth year, tall and handsome, possessing the courtly accomplishments of the age, and free in the distribution of his money. He waited on the young queen at Wemyss Castle, in Fife, and was well received by Mary, who was now about the same age. There appears no doubt but that the marriage had been planned and promoted by the Lennox party, and it is said that Murray encouraged it, thinking that with a young man of Darnley's weak and pleasure-loving character, he could easily retain the power of the State in his hands. Be that as it may, Darnley soon proposed, and was rejected; but Elizabeth, contrary to her own intentions, contributed to alter Mary's resolution. Elizabeth, probably apprehensive that Darnley being present might obtain the queen's goodwill, again sent Randolph to press the marriage with Leicester; on which Mary, bursting into tears, declared that the Queen of England treated her as a child, and immediately favoured the pretensions of Darnley. The marriage took place on the 29th of July, 1565.

As Darnley was a Catholic, the Protestant party was much alarmed. The lords, headed by Murray, assembled at Stirling, and entered into a bond to stand by each other. They sent off a messenger to urge speedy aid from Elizabeth, and actively diffused reports that Lennox had plotted to take away the life of Murray. This, both Lennox and Darnley stoutly denied, and the queen, to leave no obscurity in the case, gave Murray a safe conduct for himself and eighty others, and ordered him to attend in her presence and produce his proofs. She declared that such a thing as enforcement of the religion or consciences of her subjects had never entered her mind, and she called on her loyal subjects to hasten to her defence. This call was promptly and widely responded to, and Mary, finding herself now in security, declared the choice of Darnley as her husband, created him Duke of Albany, and married him openly, in the chapel of Holyrood. He was by proclamation declared king during the time of their marriage, and all writs were ordered to run in the joint names of Henry and Mary, King and Queen of Scotland.

Elizabeth, meanwhile, had complied with the demands of the Scottish lords; sent off money, appointed Bedford and Shrewsbury her lieutenants in the north, and reinforced the garrison of Berwick with 2,000 men. Finding, however, that the call of Mary on her subjects had brought out such a force around her as would require still more money and men to cope with it, she despatched Tamworth, a creature of Leicester's, to Scotland, to deter Mary by menaces and reproaches. It was too late; and Mary, assuming the attitude of a justly incensed monarch, compelled the ambassador to deliver his charge in writing, and answered it in the same manner, requesting Elizabeth to content herself with the government of her own kingdom, and not to interfere in the concerns of monarchs as independent as herself. When Tamworth took leave, he refused the passport given him bearing the joint names of the king and queen, out of fear of his imperious mistress, for which Mary ordered him to be apprehended on the road by Lord Home as a vagrant, and detained a couple of days; and on Randolph remonstrating, she informed him that unless he ceased to intrigue with her subjects, she would treat him the same. This bold rebuff to the meddling Queen of England, and the demonstration of affection on the part of the people, confounded the disaffected lords, and their resistance collapsed.

The Queen of Scots, victorious by arms over her enemies, determined to call together a Parliament, and there to procure the forfeiture of Murray and his adherents. This threw the rebel lords into the utmost consternation; for, in the then temper of the nation at large, the measure would have been passed, and they would have been stripped of their estates and entirely crushed. To prevent this catastrophe no time was lost. It was actively spread amongst the people that Mary, having signed the league, it was the intention, through the Kings of France and Spain, to put down the Reformation in Scotland. It was represented that David Rizzio, a Milanese, who had become Mary's secretary for the French language, was the agent of the league and a pensioner of Rome, and that it was necessary to have him removed. Unfortunately for Rizzio, he had incurred the hatred not only of these Protestant lords, but of Darnley, the queen's husband. That young man had soon displayed a character which could bring nothing but misery to the queen. He was a man of shallow intellect, but of violent passions, and, as is usually the case with such persons, of a will as strong as his judgment was weak. He was ambitious of the chief power, and sullenly resentful because it was denied. Mary, who was of a warm and impulsive temperament, in the ardour of her first affection, had promised Darnley the crown matrimonial, which would have invested him with an equal share of the royal authority; but soon unhappily perceiving that she had lavished her regard on a weak, headstrong, and dissipated person, she refused to comply, fully assured of the mischiefs which such power in his hands would produce. Darnley resented this denial violently. He reproached the queen with her insincerity in most intemperate language; treated her in public with scandalous disrespect; abandoned her society for the lowest and worst company, and threw himself into the hands of his enemies, who soon made him their tool. They persuaded him that Rizzio, who, in his quarrels with the queen, always took her part, and who, as the keeper of the privy purse, was obliged to resist his extravagant demands upon it, was not only the enemy of the nation, the spy and paid agent of foreign princes, but was the queen's paramour, and the author of the resolve to keep him out of all real power. The scheme took the effect that was desired. Darnley became jealous and furious for revenge. His father, the Earl of Lennox, joined him in his suspicions, and it was resolved to put Rizzio out of the way.

Darnley, in his blind fury, sent for Lord Ruthven, imploring him to come to him on a matter of life and death. Ruthven was confined to his bed by a severe illness, yet he consented to engage in the conspiracy for the murder of Rizzio, on condition that Darnley should engage to prevent the meeting of Parliament, and to procure the return of Murray and the rebel chiefs. Darnley was in a mood ready to grant anything for the gratification of his resentment against Rizzio; he agreed to everything; a league was entered into, a new covenant sworn, the objects of which were the murder of Rizzio, the prevention of the assembling of Parliament, and the return of Murray and his adherents. Randolph, the English ambassador, now banished from Scotland for his traitorous collusion with the insurgents, yet had gone no farther than Berwick, where he was made fully acquainted with the plot, and communicated it immediately to Leicester in a letter, dated February 13th, 1566, which yet remains. He assured him that the murder of Rizzio would be accomplished within ten days; that the crown would be torn from Mary's dishonoured head, and that matters of a still darker nature were meditated against her person which he dared not yet allude to.

Mary was not without some warnings of what was being prepared, but she could not be made sensible of her danger, neither could Rizzio; though Damiot, an astrologer, whom he was in the habit of consulting, bade him beware of the bastard. The obscurity attending all such oracles led Rizzio to believe that Damiot alluded to Murray, and Rizzio laughed at any danger from him, a banished man; but we shall see that he received his first wound from another bastard, George Douglas, the natural son of the Earl of Angus.

On the 3rd of March Parliament was opened, and a statute of treason and of forfeiture against Murray and his accomplices was immediately introduced on the Thursday, which was to be passed on the following Tuesday. But on the Saturday evening, the queen, sitting at supper in a small closet adjoining her chamber, attended by her natural sister the Countess of Argyll, the Commendator of Holyrood, Beaton Master of the Household, Arthur Erskine captain of the guard, and her secretary Rizzio, was surprised by the apparition of Darnley suddenly putting aside the arras which concealed the door, and standing for a moment gloomily surveying the group. Behind him came a still more startling figure; it was that of Ruthven, in complete armour, just come from his sick bed, and with a face pale and ghastly as that of a ghost. Mary, who was seven months gone with child, started up at this terrible sight, and commanded Ruthven to be gone; but at this moment Darnley put his arm round her waist as if to detain her, and other conspirators entered, one after another, with naked weapons, into the room. Ruthven drew his dagger, and crying that their business was with Rizzio, endeavoured to seize him. But Rizzio, rushing to his mistress, caught the skirt of her robe, and shouted, "Giustizia! giustizia! sauve ma vie—Madame, sauve ma vie!"

Darnley forced himself between the queen and Rizzio, to separate them from one another, and probably the intention was to drag him out of her presence, and dispatch him. But George Douglas, the bastard, in his impetuosity, drove his dagger into the back of Rizzio over the queen's shoulder, and the rest of the conspirators—Morton, Car of Faudonside, and others—dragged him out to the entrance of the presence-chamber, where, in their murderous fury, they stabbed him with fifty-six wounds, with such blind rage that they wounded one another, and left Darnley's dagger sticking in the body as an evidence of his participation in the deed. This done, the hideous Ruthven, exhausted with the excitement, staggered into the presence of the shrieking queen, and, sinking upon a seat, demanded a cup of wine. Mary upbraided him with his brutality; but he coolly assured her that it was all done at the command of her husband and king. At that moment one of her ladies rushed in crying that they had killed Rizzio. "And is it so?" said Mary; "then farewell tears, we must now study revenge."

It was about seven in the evening when this savage murder was perpetrated. The palace was beset by troops under the command of Morton. There was no means of rousing the city, the queen was kept close prisoner in her chamber, whilst the king, assuming the sole authority, issued letters commanding the three Estates to quit the capital within three hours, on pain of treason, whilst Morton with his guards was ordered to allow no one to leave the palace. Notwithstanding this, Huntly, Bothwell, Sir James Balfour, and James Melville, made their escape in the darkness and confusion; and as Melville passed under the queen's window, she suddenly threw up the sash, and entreated him to give the alarm to the city. Her ruffianly guards immediately seized her, and dragged her back, swearing they would cut her to pieces; and Darnley was pushed forward to harangue the people, and assure them that both the queen and himself were safe, and commanding them to retire in peace, which they did.

But Mary was not long left alone with Darnley, before she convinced him of the dupe he had made of himself. She asked him whether he was so mad as to expect that after they had secured her, after they had imperilled the life of his child, they would spare him? And she bade him look at their conduct now, where they usurped all authority and did not even allow him to send his own servants to her. Darnley became thoroughly alarmed; he vowed he had had no hand in the conspiracy, and offered to call the conspirators into her presence, and declare that the queen was ready to pardon them, on condition that they withdrew their guards, replaced her own servants, and treated her as their true queen. The noble traitors were this time over-reached in their turn; probably trembling for the consequences of their daring conduct, on seeing Darnley and the queen reconciled, they consented, and in the night the queen and Darnley mounted fleet horses and fled to Dunbar. The consternation of the murderers in the morning may be imagined. The outraged and insulted queen had escaped their hands, and the news came flying that already the nobles and the people were hurrying from all sides to her standard. Huntly, Athole, Bothwell, and whole crowds of barons and gentlemen flew to her, and at Dunbar a numerous army stood as if by magic ready to march on the traitors and execute the vengeance due. They fled. Morton, Ruthven—the grisly, pale-faced assassin—Brunston, and Car of Faudonside, escaped to England. Maitland of Lethington betook himself to the hills of Athole, and Craig, the colleague of Knox, dived into the darksome recesses of the city wynds.

The spirit of Mary was not of a character long to brood over revenge; that belonged rather to such men as Ruthven, Murray, and Morton. They vowed deadly vengeance on Darnley, and from that hour his destruction was settled, and never lost sight of. As for Elizabeth of England, she was loud in denunciation of the outrage on the queen, and wrote expressing deep sympathy; and the virtuous Murray was indignant at the villainy in which he had been engaged, but now only seemed to perceive the full extent of. The assurances of the friendship of England and France seemed, however, to tranquillise the queen's mind, and the hour of her confinement drawing nigh, she called her councillors around her, became reconciled to the king, and prepared everything for her own life or death. On the 19th of June she was, however, safely delivered, in the castle of Edinburgh, of a son, who was named James, and Sir James Melville was dispatched to carry the tidings to Elizabeth. The messenger arrived as the English queen was dancing after supper at Greenwich. Cecil, who had seen Sir James, took the opportunity to whisper the news to her in preparation. No sooner did she hear the news than she seemed struck motionless. She ceased, sat down, leaning her cheek on her hand, and when her ladies hastened to ascertain what ailed her, burst out, "The Queen of Scots is mother of a fair son, and I am a barren stock!" Her agitation was so visible that the music stopped, and there was general wonder and confusion. There were not wanting spies to carry this to Melville, and, aware of the truth, he was curious to mark the official look which the great dissembler wore the next morning. She was then all smiling and serene, and even received the message, he says, with a "merry volt," that is, we suppose, a caper of affected joy. She declared that she was so delighted with the news, that it had quite cured her of a heavy sickness which she had had for fifteen days. Melville was too much of a courtier to congratulate her on being able to dance merrily in sickness; but he wanted her to become godmother, which office she accepted cheerfully, by proxy. She expressed quite an ardent desire to go and see her fair sister, but as she could not she sent the Earl of Bedford, with a font of gold for its christening and £1,000. With Bedford and Mr. Carey, son of her kinsman, Lord Hunsdon, she sent a splendid train of knights and gentlemen to attend the christening. The ceremony was performed at Stirling by the Archbishop of St. Andrews, according to the rites of the Romish Church, the Kings of France and the Duke of Savoy being godfathers by their ambassadors. The English embassy remained outside the chapel during the service, for they dared not take part in the idolatries of the mass. They reported that Mary looked very melancholy, and Darnley was not present, it was supposed for fear the officers of Elizabeth should not give him the homage of royalty; for Elizabeth had still refused to acknowledge his title as King of Scotland.

The attention of Elizabeth and her ministers was soon attracted to Scotland by the startling events in progress there. The birth of the young prince had only for the moment had the effect of softening the wayward temper of Darnley. It became absolutely necessary for Mary to construct a strong Government if she was to enjoy the slightest power or tranquillity. Had she known the villainous materials out of which, at best, she must erect such a Government, she would have despaired. All the men of talent and influence were more or less tainted by treason, and in the enjoyment of bribery to work her evil. She leaned on Murray as on a brother, and he was at heart a very Judas. He advised her to recall Morton and reinstate Maitland. By his efforts Bothwell and Maitland were reconciled; the Lairds of Brunston, Ormiston, Hatton, and Calder, the heads of the Church party, were admitted to favour. But the prospect of so many of the traitors, cognisant of his own treason, assembling about the throne, rendered Darnley desperate. He resolved on throwing himself into the arms of the Roman Catholic party, and actually wrote to the Pope, blaming the queen for not taking measures for the restoration of the Mass. His letters were intercepted and, in his indignation, he gave out that he would quit the kingdom.

Nothing availed to show Darnley the folly of his proceedings, everything tended rather to aggravate his waywardness. He persisted in his declarations that he would leave the kingdom, yet he never went. He denounced Maitland, Bellenden the justice-clerk, and Macgill the clerk register, as principal conspirators against Rizzio, and insisted that they should be deprived of office. He opposed the return of Morton, and thus embittered his associates, Murray, Bothwell, Argyll, and Maitland. There was no party, except the Roman Catholics, which did not regard him with suspicion or aversion. The Reformers hated him for his intriguing with their enemies; Cecil suspected him of plotting with the Papists of England; the Hamiltons had detested him from the first for coming in between them and the succession. The queen now became grievously impatient of his intractable stupidity, and deeply deplored her union with the man who had already endangered the life of herself and her child, and now kept the Government in a constant state of struggle and uncertainty.

Matters were in this state when, in the commencement of October, 1566, disturbances on the Borders rendered it necessary for the queen to go thither in person. Her lieutenant, the Earl of Bothwell, in attempting to reduce the Borderers to subordination, was severely wounded, and left for dead on the field. He was not dead, however, and was conveyed to Hermitage Castle. Mary arrived at Jedburgh on the 7th of October, and the next day opened her Court. The trials of the marauders lasted till the 15th, when she rode over to Hermitage, a distance of twenty miles, to visit her wounded lieutenant. This visit excited much observation and remark amongst her subjects, and the events which succeeded have given deep significance to it. Bothwell was a bold and impetuous man, who had from the first maintained a sturdy attachment to the service of the queen, even when all others had deserted and betrayed her. This had won him a high place in Mary's estimation, and she was not of a character to conceal such preference. He was a man of loose principles, which he had indulged freely on the Continent. Ambition and gallantry, united to unabashed audacity, made up a forcible but dangerous character. The manifest favour of his young, beautiful, and unhappy sovereign seems very soon to have inspired him with the most daring designs, which still lay locked in his own heart. There is little doubt that he had entered into the conspiracy to kill Darnley, for he was mixed up with that clique; and the miserable and irritating conduct of Darnley towards the queen was now rousing the indignation of far better men than Bothwell. The favour in which Bothwell was with the queen was early observed and encouraged by Murray, Maitland, and their associates, because it tended to punish and might eventually lead to the dismissal of Darnley. Sir James Melville, indeed, attributes Bothwell's scheme for murdering Darnley and gaining possession of the queen to this time.

There is, however, no reason to believe that Mary consciously encouraged the unhallowed passion of Bothwell at this period. As an officer high in her Court, and in her esteem for his fidelity, it was not out of the generous course of Mary's usual proceedings to pay him a visit, which, moreover, was only of two hours, for she rode back to Jedburgh the same day, ordering a mass of official papers to be immediately sent after her. Immediately on reaching Jedburgh she was seized with a fever so severe and rapid, that for ten days her physicians despaired of her life. This was ascribed to the fatigue of her long ride to Hermitage and back; but it probably arose from that fatigue operating on a mind and body already shaken by deep anxiety. She recovered, but her peace of mind and cheerfulness were gone. Darnley never went to see her during the extremity of her illness; and though he made her two visits during her convalescence, they were not visits of peace or regard. They left her in a state of great melancholy, and she often wished that she was dead. The recollection of what Darnley had shown himself capable of in the plot against Rizzio, and his duplicity on that occasion, seemed now to inspire her with a dread that he would conspire against her life, and she never saw him speaking to any of the lords but she was in alarm.

Bothwell, Murray, and Maitland, now invited Huntley and Argyll to meet them at Craigmillar Castle, and there proposed that a divorce should be recommended to the queen, on condition that she pardoned Morton and his accomplices in the death of Rizzio. Mary listened to the scheme with apparent willingness, on the understanding that the measure was not to prejudice the rights of her son; but when it was proposed that Darnley should live in some remote part of the country, or retire to France, the idea appeared to realise their separation too vividly. She evidently cherished a lingering affection for him, and expressed a hope that he might return to better mind. She even offered to pass over to France herself, and remain there till he became sensible of his faults. On this Maitland exclaimed that, sooner than that she should banish herself, they would substitute death for divorce. This effectually startled Mary, and she commanded them to let the matter be, for that she should wait and see what God in His goodness would do to remedy the matter.

The conspirators expressed their obedience to the queen's demands, but they still proceeded with the plot. At Craigmillar they met again, and drew up a bond or covenant for the murder of Darnley, which was signed by Huntly, Maitland, Argyll, and Sir James Balfour, of which Bothwell, kept possession. It declared Darnley a young fool and tyrant, and bound them to cut him off as an enemy to the nobility, and for his unbearable conduct to the queen.

Soon after the Earl of Bedford arrived to attend the baptism of the child. As we have stated, Darnley, though in the palace, did not attend the ceremony, and the queen was observed to be oppressed with melancholy and to shed tears. The ministers now prevailed on the queen to pardon all the murderers of Rizzio, except Car of Faudonside, who had held a pistol to her breast, and George Douglas, who was the first to stab Rizzio. This gave such offence to Darnley that he quitted Edinburgh, and went to his father's, at Glasgow. There he was seized with a severe attack of illness, and an eruption which came out all over his body. It was believed to be poison, but proved to be the small-pox.

Whilst he was lying ill, Morton returned to Edinburgh. Bothwell and Maitland met him at Whittingham, the seat of Archibald Douglas, where they pressed him to join the conspiracy for the murder of Darnley, professing that it was all done at the queen's desire. Morton insisted that they should bring him the queen's warrant, under her own hand, but this they failed to do. At the time that these plottings were going on, in the month of January, 1567, the queen set out to visit Darnley, who had received some hints of the plots against him, and was greatly alarmed by the tidings that the queen, whose severe censure of him he was well acquainted with, was on the way to see him. He sent a messenger to meet her, apologising for not waiting on her in person. The queen replied there was no medicine against fear, and rode on. She went direct to his father's, entered his room, and greeted him kindly. Darnley professed deep repentance of his faults, pleading his youth and the few friends and advisers that he had. He complained of a plot got up at Craigmillar, and that it was said that the queen knew of it but would not sign it. He entreated that all should be made up, and that she should not withdraw herself from him, as he complained she had done. Mary conducted him by short journeys to Edinburgh, herself travelling on horseback, and Darnley being carried in a litter. They rested two days at Linlithgow, and reached Edinburgh on the last day of January. It was intended to take Darnley to Craigmillar, on account of Holyrood being thought to lie too low for a convalescent; but probably Darnley, after what he had heard, objected to go thither, and he was therefore taken to a suburb called Kirk-of-Field, an airy situation, where the Duke of Chatelherault had a palace. The attendants proceeded to the duke's house, but the queen told them the lodging prepared for the king was not there, but in a house just by, and also by the city wall, near the ruinous monastery of the Black Friars.

The place appeared a singular one for a king, for it was confined in size and not over well furnished. What was more suspicious was, that it was the property of Robert Balfour, the brother of that Sir James Balfour who was of the league sworn to destroy Darnley, and the same who drew up the document. He was a dependent of Bothwell's, who held the bond, and who met the king and queen a little way before they reached the capital, and accompanied them to this place. These circumstances taken along with those which followed, show that the whole had reference to the catastrophe, and the great question which has divided historians to this hour is, how far the queen was a party to the proceedings. For the present, so far as Mary was concerned, all appeared fair and sincere. She seemed to have resumed all her interest in her husband. She was constantly with him, and attended to everything necessary for his comfort and restoration. She passed the greater part of the day in his chamber, and slept in the room under his. Though Darnley was apprehensive of danger from the circumstance that his mortal enemies were now in power and about the Court, the constant presence and affection of the queen were a guarantee for his safety, and appeared to give him confidence.

But the conspirators were watching assiduously for an opportunity to destroy him. Morton, Maitland, and Balfour, had now gathered into the plot the Earls of Huntly, Argyll, and Caithness, Archibald Douglas, the Archbishop of St. Andrews, and many other lords and leading men of the bench and bar. Murray alone seemed to stand aloof; though, from the evidence existing, there can be no question that he was privy to the whole affair.

Darnley during this time received a warning of his danger from the Earl of Orkney, who, finding opportunity, told him that if he did not get quickly out of that place it would cost him his life. Darnley told this to the queen, who questioned the earl, and he then denied having said so. This was precisely what Morton stated would take place, when on his death-bed, confessing a knowledge of the plot, he was asked why he had not revealed it. He replied, that there was nobody to tell it to; that it was no use telling it to the queen, for he was assured that she was in the plot; and that if he had told Darnley, he was such a fool that he would immediately tell it to the queen. The circumstance, however, startled the conspirators, and determined them to expedite the terrible business. The desired opportunity arrived. The queen agreed to be present on the evening of the 9th of February at the marriage of Sebastiani and Margaret Carwood, two of her servants, which was to be celebrated with a masque. The queen remained with the king the greater part of the day, which was passed in the most apparent cordiality, and Mary declared her intention of remaining all night at Kirk-of-Field. However, she suddenly recollected her promise to attend the marriage, and taking leave of Darnley, kissed him, and taking a ring from her finger placed it on his own. It was now that the hired assassins executed their appointed task. How Darnley and his page were murdered is yet a disputed point. The house was blown up with gunpowder, but the bodies of the king and his page were found in the orchard adjoining the garden wall, the king only in his night-dress, his pelisse lying by his side, and no marks of fire upon the body.

However doubtful may be other matters, there is no question of the presence of Bothwell at the tragedy. He attended the queen from Kirk-of-Field to Holyrood, but about midnight quitted the palace, changed his rich dress, and in disguise joined the murderers, who were waiting for him. About two o'clock two of them entered the house and lit a slow-burning match, the other end of which was placed amongst the powder. They remained some time expecting the catastrophe, till Bothwell grew so impatient that he was with difficulty withheld from entering the house to ascertain whether the match still burnt. This was done by one of the fellows, who looked through a window and perceived the match alight. The explosion soon after took place, and with a concussion which seemed to shake the whole city. Bothwell hurried away and got to bed before a servant rushed in with the news. He then started up with well-acted astonishment, and rushed forth shouting, "Treason! treason!" Huntly, and some others of the conspirators then proceeded to the queen's chamber, and informed her of what had taken place. She seemed petrified with horror, gave herself up to the most violent expression of grief, and, shutting herself up in her chamber, continued as if paralysed by so diabolical a tragedy.

The demands of the outraged people for inquiry were loud. The city was placarded with the names of Bothwell, James Balfour, David Chambers, black John Spens, Signors Francisco, Joseph Rizzio—the brother of David—Bartiani, and John de Bourdeaux, as the leading murderers. The Earl of Lennox, the father of Darnley, called on the queen to bring them to trial; but he demanded in vain. Bothwell, the man whom the whole public denounced, continued the first in favour with the queen. Everything demonstrated the necessity of the queen exerting herself to discover the murderers of her husband. Sir Harry Killigrew arrived from Elizabeth, bearing a message of condolence, but at the same time urging the absolute necessity of the trial of Bothwell. Killigrew found the capital in a most excited state, clamorous for inquiry, and loud in its censures of the queen. At the same time a letter arrived from Bishop Beaton, her ambassador in France, stating in plainest terms that she was publicly accused there of being herself the chief mover in the whole dark business, and telling her that if she did not exert herself to take a rigorous vengeance she had better have lost life and all. Mary promised Killigrew that Bothwell should be brought to strict trial; but as soon as he was gone means were taken to secure Bothwell more completely from any effectual inquiry. The Earl of Mar was induced to give up the possession of the castle of Edinburgh to Bothwell, Morton had his lands and his castle of Tantallon restored to him, and in return supported Bothwell with all his influence. The castle of Blackness, the Inch, and the superiority of Leith, were conferred on Bothwell; and Murray—who neither liked to play the second to the aspiring favourite, nor to run any risk of exposure in those inquiries which must sooner or later ensue—requested permission to visit France.

Mary could not possibly be happy in such circumstances. Whatever might be the state of her conscience, her character was fearfully implicated, and on all sides came calls for inquiry, which she did not seem to have the power or the will to make. The climax to her trouble was put by the queen-mother of France and her uncle, the cardinal, sending her the most cutting message of reproach; calling on her without delay to avenge the death of the king, and to clear her own reputation, or regard them as no longer her friends, but the proclaimers of her utter disgrace. There was no possibility of delaying inquiry any longer, but every means was adopted to make it a mockery. Lennox was forbidden to appear with more than six followers, and his efforts to obtain a postponement were fruitless. In his absence Bothwell was unanimously acquitted.

Rumours now arose that Bothwell was about to divorce his wife, the sister of Huntly—to whom he had been married only six months—and to marry the queen; and in the face of these reports Mary conferred on him the castle and lordship of Dunbar, with extension of his powers as Lord High Admiral. As tidings of the queen's intended marriage grew, Murray, her brother, stole away out of contact with danger or responsibility and retired to France. But, nevertheless, she did not lack warning. Her ambassador at the French Court entreated her, in the most serious manner, to punish her husband's murderers, and not allow the world to use such freedom with her character as it did. She had equally strong letters from her friends in England, which Melville showed to her, and was advised by Maitland of Lethington to get away from Court for fear of Bothwell. Bothwell, however, soon put the matter beyond doubt. He invited the principal nobility to a tavern, kept by one Ainslie, and there he drew out of his pocket a bond expressing his innocence of the murder of Darnley, as established by the bench and the legislature, and his intention to marry the queen, and containing, it is said, her written warrant empowering him to propose the matter to the nobility. The company was composed partly of his friends and accomplices. The rest were taken with confusion, but they had all been deeply drinking, and they found the house surrounded by 200 of Bothwell's hackbutters. Under constraint, eight bishops, nine earls, and seven lords, subscribed the paper.

But the daring ambition of the man now roused even his old accomplices to conspire against him, for the safety of the young prince and Government. Morton, Argyll, Athole, and Kirkaldy of Grange, were at the head of this plot; and they wrote to Bedford the day after the supper at Ainslie's, saying it was high time that his dangerous career was checked, and engaging by Elizabeth's aid to avenge the murder of the king. Kirkaldy, who was the scribe, added that the queen had been heard to say that "she cared not to lose France, England, and her own country for him, and would go with him to the world's end in a white petticoat, before she would leave him."

An anonymous letter, but undoubtedly from some of this party, soon followed, declaring that the queen had concerted with Bothwell the seizure of her person. The correctness of this information was immediately proved. On Monday, the 21st of April, the very day foretold, Mary rode to Stirling to visit her son, where the Earl of Mar, entertaining strong suspicions of her intentions, refused to allow her access to him with more than two attendants, to her great indignation. On her return, as had been foreseen in the letter quoted, Bothwell met her at the head of 1,000 horse, at Almond Bridge, six miles from Edinburgh; and, according to Melville, who was in the queen's train, taking the queen's bridle, he boasted that "he would marry the queen, who could or who would not; yea, whether she would herself or not." He says that Captain Blackadder, one of Bothwell's men, told him that it was with the queen's own consent. Whether this were so or not, has been argued eagerly on both sides, but it is probable from what we have seen, that Mary really was a consenting party. The royal retinue was suffered to continue its journey, with the exception of Melville, Maitland, and Huntly, who were conducted along with the queen to the castle of Dunbar, the recent gift of Mary to Bothwell. The queen seems to have made no loud outcries against her apparently forcible abduction, and the country was so convinced of the sham nature of the affair, that there was no attempt to rescue her.

The divorce of Bothwell from his wife was now hastened, and after detaining the queen five days at the castle of Dunbar, he conducted her to Edinburgh, and led her to the castle, where she was received with a salute of artillery, Bothwell holding her train as she dismounted. The ministers of the Church were ordered to proclaim the banns of marriage between the queen and Bothwell, but they declined; and Craig, the colleague of Knox, who was absent, declared that he had no command from her Majesty, who was held in disgraceful constraint by Bothwell. This brought to him the Justice Clerk with a letter under the queen's own hand, stating that the assertions he had made were false and commanding him to obey. Craig still refused till he had seen the queen herself; and, before the Privy Council, charged Bothwell with murder, rape, and adultery. No punishment followed so daring a charge, and the preacher having done his duty, obeyed the Royal mandate and published the banns, at the same time exclaiming, "I take heaven and earth to witness that I abhor and detest this marriage, as odious and slanderous to the world; and I would exhort the faithful to pray earnestly that a union against all reason and good conscience may yet be overruled by God to the conform of this unhappy realm."

Nothing moved by these public expressions of censure and disgust, the queen appeared, on the 12th of May, at the high court of Edinburgh, and informed the Chancellor, the judges, and the nobility that, though she was at first incensed against the Earl of Bothwell for the forcible detention of her person, she had now quite forgiven him for his subsequent good conduct. That day she created Bothwell Duke of Orkney and Shetland, and with her own hand placed the coronet on his head. On the 15th they were married, at four o'clock in the morning, in the Presence Chamber of Holyrood. The ceremony was performed by the Bishop of Orkney, according to the Protestant form, Craig being present; and afterwards privately, according to the Romish rite.

Very soon circumstances hastened the inevitable insurrection in Scotland. Mary had summoned her nobles to accompany her on an expedition to Liddesdale, but many disobeyed the order. Murray had now arrived in England, and was using all his influence with Elizabeth to make a movement for the expulsion of Bothwell from his usurpation; and even Maitland, who to the last had remained at Court, wearing the air of a staunch supporter of the queen, slipped away and joined the opposition. These were ominous circumstances, and suddenly, while the queen and Bothwell were at Borthwick Castle, about ten miles from Edinburgh, the conspirators made a rapid night march, and morning saw the castle surrounded by nearly 1,000 Borderers, under the command of Hume and other Border chiefs, with whom were Morton, Mar, Lindsay, Kirkaldy, and others of the nobles.

The confederates deemed the queen and Bothwell now safe in their hands, but they were deceived. Bothwell escaped through a postern to Haddington, whence he reached Dunbar; and the queen also eluding them disguised as a man, rode booted and spurred after him. The confederates, disappointed of their grand prize, marched on the capital, forced the gates, and entered, proclaiming that they came to revenge the death of the king, and to rescue the queen from the murderer. There the Earl of Athole and Maitland joined them, and a banner was displayed on which was painted the body of the murdered king lying under a tree, and the young prince kneeling beside it, exclaiming, "Judge and avenge my cause, O Lord!" The people flocked to this exciting standard, and the leaders speedily commanded a strong force.

Mary and Bothwell, meanwhile, summoned the nobles and people around Dunbar, and the Lords Seton, Yester, and Borthwick, appeared in arms, with a body of 2,000 men. Impatient to quell the confederates at once, they marched to Seton, where Mary issued a proclamation, declaring that all the pretences of the confederates were false; that her husband, the duke, was no murderer but had, as they knew, been fully acquitted; she was under no restraint but freely married to Bothwell, by consent and approbation of these very nobles; nor was her son in any danger, unless it were from them, for he was in their hands. Mary advanced and entrenched herself on Carberry Hill, in the old works which the English had thrown up before the battle of Pinkie.

The confederates marched out of Edinburgh and confronted the Royal army, eager for the battle. De Croc, the French ambassador, now attempted to mediate between the two parties, and carried a message to Morton and Glencairn, offering the queen's pardon, on condition that they all returned to their allegiance; but Glencairn replied that they were not come there to seek pardon, but rather to give it those who had sinned; and Morton added, "We are not in arms against our queen, but the Duke of Orkney, the murderer of her husband, and are prepared to yield her our obedience, on condition that she dismisses him from her presence and delivers him up to us."

It was clear that these terms must be complied with or they must fight; and it was soon perceived that the soldiers of the queen's army began to show symptoms of disaffection. Bothwell, therefore, rode forward, and defied any one who dared to accuse him of the king's murder. His challenge was accepted by James Murray of Tullibardine, the baron who was said to have charged Bothwell with the murder, in a placard affixed to the Tolbooth gate. Bothwell declined to enter the lists with Murray, on the plea that he was not his peer, whereupon Lord Lindsay of the Byres offered himself and was accepted, but at the moment of action the queen forbade the fight. By this time the defection in the queen's army became so conspicuous that Mary rode among her men to encourage them, assuring them of victory; but her voice had lost its charm, and the soldiers refused to fight in defence of the alleged murderer of the king. Whilst this was passing, it was observed that Kirkaldy of Grange was wheeling his forces round the hill to turn their flank, and the panic becoming general, the queen and Bothwell found themselves abandoned by all but about sixty gentlemen and the band of hackbutters.

To prevent Kirkaldy from advancing his troops so as to cut off their retreat towards Dunbar, the queen demanded a parley, which was granted. Kirkaldy went forward and assured the queen that they were all prepared to obey her authority, provided she put away the man who stood by her side stained with the blood of the king. The queen promised to acquiesce, and she held a moment's conversation with Bothwell, gave him her hand, and followed Kirkaldy; Bothwell turning his horse's head and riding off to Dunbar. This brutal and unheroic man afterwards became a rover in the North Sea, and died in prison in Denmark in 1578. Mary did not follow Kirkaldy of Grange far till she saw Bothwell out of danger, when she reminded him that she relied on the assurances of the lords, on which Grange, kissing her Majesty's hand, took her horse by the rein, and led her towards the camp. On reaching the lines, the confederate lords received the queen on their knees, and vowed to obey and defend her as loyally as ever the nobility of the realm did her ancestors; but they very soon showed the hollowness of these professions, and the common soldiers assailed her ears with the most opprobrious language.

MARY SIGNING THE DEED OF ABDICATION IN LOCHLEVEN CASTLE. (See p. 273.)

The unfortunate but guilty queen at every step learned more plainly her real situation, and the faith which she was to put in these nobles. She was conducted like a captive into Edinburgh, the soldiers constantly waving before her eyes the banner on which was painted the murdered king. The mob was crowding round in thousands, shouting and yelling in execration, and the women heaped on her all the coarsest epithets of adulteress and murderess. On arriving in the city, instead of conducting her to her own palace, the patriot nobles shut her up as a solitary prisoner in the house of the Provost, not even allowing her to have her women to attend her; and in the morning she was greeted by a repetition of the scenes of the previous day—the same hideous banner was hung out opposite her window, and the yells of the mob were furious. Driven to actual delirium by this treatment, she rent the clothes from her person, and almost naked attempted to speak to the raving populace. This shocking spectacle roused the sympathy of the better class of citizens, and they determined on a rescue of the insulted queen, when the watchful nobles removed her to Holyrood. There they held a Council, and concluded to send her prisoner to Lochleven Castle, at Kinross, under the stern guardianship of Lindsay and the savage Ruthven. While there she was persuaded (July 23, 1567), to resign in favour of her baby, and Murray, who was summoned home, became Regent.

The queen, seeing herself destined by Murray to perpetual captivity, resolved to exert every faculty to effect her escape. After several unsuccessful efforts, she succeeded in May, 1568, through the ingenuity of a page called Little Douglas. The news of Mary's escape flew like lightning in every direction; the people, forgetting her crimes in her beauty and her sufferings, gathered to her standard; and she who a few days before was a deserted captive, now beheld herself at the head of 6,000 men. Many of the nobility, and some of those who had sinned deeply against her, now flocked around her. Murray, on the first news of their movement, marched out of Glasgow, and took possession of a small hamlet called Langside, surrounded by gardens and orchards, which occupied each side of a steep narrow lane directly in the way of the queen's army. Instead of avoiding this position, and making their way to Dumbarton by another course, Lord Claud Hamilton charged the troops there posted with his cavalry, 2,000 strong, in perfect confidence of driving them thence; but the hackbutters, who had screened themselves behind walls and trees, poured in on the cavalry a deadly fire which threw them into confusion. Lord Claud cheered them on to renew the charge, and with great valour they pushed forward and drove the enemy before them. But, pursuing them up the steep hill, they suddenly found themselves face to face with Murray's advance, composed of the finest body of Border pikemen, and commanded by Morton, Home, Ker of Cessford, and the barons of the Merse, all fighting on foot at the heads of their divisions.

The battle was unequal, for the troops of Murray were fresh, while those of the queen were out of breath with their up-hill fight. Notwithstanding, the main body of the queen's forces coming up, there was a severe struggle, and the right of the Regent's army began to give way. Grange, who was watching the field from above, quickly brought up reinforcements from the main body, and made so furious a charge on the queen's left as to scatter it into fragments; and Murray, who had waited with the reserve for the decisive moment, rushed forward with so much impetuosity, that the main battle of the queen was broken, and the flight became general (May 13, 1568). Mary, who had surveyed the conflict from the castle of Crookston, on a neighbouring height, about four miles from Paisley, beholding the rout of her army, turned her horse and fled, and never drew bit till she reached the abbey of Dundrennan, in Galloway. She then set sail in a boat, and landed at Workington, in Cumberland. Here she wrote to Elizabeth, expressing her strong confidence that Elizabeth would receive her and protect her against her rebellious subjects. She concluded her letter with these words:—"It is my earnest request that your majesty will send for me as soon as possible, for my condition is pitiable, not to say for a queen, but even for a simple gentlewoman. I have no other dress than that in which I escaped from the field. My first day's ride was sixty miles across the country, and I have not since dared to travel except by night."