A DARK and murderous scene now awaits your eyes. It is about seven o’clock on a Saturday evening in March 1566. A beautiful queen is supping with her friends in the inner boudoir of the ancient Palace of Holyrood. Some eightscore armed men stealthily enter the courtyard and close the gates behind them. Within the supper-chamber only one person is cognizant of the foul deed which is even now preparing—and he is the queen’s husband! The queen herself is blithe and gay, according to her wont. She strives to rally her husband, who sits by her side; but he is full of drink and jealousy. But a swarthy Italian present responds to every sally with nimble wit and easy grace. Mary smiles upon him, for he alone in that gloomy palace reminds her of the light-hearted merriment and the brilliant frivolity of her dearly-loved France. And as she smiles the queen’s husband scowls darkly, and ever and anon glances furtively towards a door behind the arras.

Suddenly the arras is pushed aside, and a man in armour, his face corpse-like in its pallor, steps into the room, and behind him you see three others. The queen, cool and fearless, rises and demands the meaning of this intrusion. The Italian knows its meaning full well; he has long been bitterly hated by the nobles, and now he fears that his hour has come. He cowers for protection behind the queen, who confronts the armed men without a tremor. “What do ye here, my Lord Ruthven?” she cries, and the intruder roughly replies that he comes to drag the Italian from the queen’s chamber, where he has been overlong.

In a flash the queen perceives a plot, and turning to her wretched husband demands if he knows anything of this enterprise. The ready lie comes to his lips, and he says that he knows nothing of it. “Go,” cries the queen to Ruthven, and points to the door. But he moves not, and bids the accomplice who has disowned him, “Take the queen, your wife and sovereign, to you.” But the royal dastard stands dazed, and wists not what to do; while the Italian, with his drawn dagger in his trembling hand, clings to the queen’s gown, crying, “Save me! save me!” Now one of the guests strives to seize Ruthven, who draws his sword and cries fiercely, “Lay no hands on me, for I will not be handled!”

Then the chamber is filled with armed men, the table and chairs are overthrown, the lights are extinguished save one, and a wild rush is made for the victim. Ruthven flings the queen into the arms of her husband, and the shrieking Italian is dragged from the room with curses and threats and blows. You hear his screams grow fainter and fainter, as his foes plunge their daggers into him. Now all is silent, and the queen’s favourite lies dead with fifty-six wounds in his body. Her husband’s dagger is sticking in the breast of the corpse in testimony of his consent to the deed!

The ghastly scene which you have just witnessed serves to introduce the moving tragedy of Mary Queen of Scots. She was born in the hour of calamity, and conflict, contention, sorrow, and disaster dogged her footsteps from the cradle to the grave. Her heart-broken father, James the Fifth, had turned his face to the wall when her birth was announced. Ere she was christened he was dead, and Scotland was torn with the strife of contending factions. Scotland’s weakness was England’s opportunity, and Henry the Eighth lost no time in proposing his delicate little son, afterwards Edward the Fifth, for the hand of the five-year-old queen. The Scots refused the match, and an English army marched north and sacked Leith and Edinburgh. The invasion was “too much for a wooing and too little for a conquest.”

Four years later an English army again made an attempt to compel the Scots to marry their queen to young Edward. At Pinkie there was a great slaughter, but it was all in vain. The little queen was hurried to France, where she grew up with her four Maries at the gay court of King Henry the Second, and became far more French than Scottish. As she advanced in years, her grace and beauty, her esprit and her accomplishments, were the talk of France, and at sixteen she wedded the Dauphin, a sickly weakling, who only survived his marriage a little more than a year. At the age of nineteen Mary was a widow, about to set sail for her northern kingdom.

She was now the most charming princess of her time, fond of music, dancing, laughter, and gaiety, yet eager for risk and adventure, and always rejoicing in the clash of arms. Often she wished she were a man “to know what life it was to lie all night in the fields, or to walk on the causeway with a jack and knapsack, a Glasgow buckler, and a broadsword.” In statecraft she was the equal of Queen Elizabeth, and in person and charm she far exceeded her royal kinswoman. Her beauty, grace, and easy cordiality won the hearts of all with whom she came in contact.

She left France most reluctantly, and as long as the shores of that gay, joyous land remained in sight she riveted her gaze on them. As they gradually faded from her sight she sighed, and said again and again, “Adieu, France! I shall never see thee more!” She arrived at Leith unexpectedly on a dismal day of thick fog and incessant rain. Never was a more unpropitious home-coming. She had returned to a stern, poor, unruly kingdom, which had adopted Reformation doctrines with remarkable zeal and austerity. The guiding spirit of the time was John Knox, the most implacable and fearless Reformer who ever lived. Well indeed did he deserve the eulogy spoken at his graveside, “Here lyeth a man who in his life never feared the face of man.” The Covenant had been signed, the authority of the Pope had been thrown off, and Protestantism had taken deep root in the land. Mary was a strong Romanist, and she meant to restore her kingdom to the old faith. In this she failed utterly, for almost the whole of her people were bitterly opposed to Romanism in any shape or form.

While in France, Mary and her husband had assumed the style and title of King and Queen of England, and Elizabeth was naturally aggrieved. Now Mary offered to give up her claim if Elizabeth would recognize her as heir to the English throne. The Scottish queen said that she asked for nothing more than her due. Should Elizabeth—the Virgin Queen—die without children, Mary would be heir to her throne by right of birth, though her claim had been barred by Henry the Eighth. Elizabeth, however, flatly refused to make any such agreement.

For a time Mary was popular with her subjects, but soon the heather was on fire. All sorts of suitors aspired to her hand, and the rival factions were eager to marry her to a Catholic or a Protestant, according to the character of their respective beliefs. At length, however, she decided to marry Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, “a long lad ... beardless and lady-faced,” and only nineteen years of age. He was a Roman Catholic like herself.

The inevitable rising took place, but it was ineffective, and for a while the Protestant cause was undone and Mary triumphed. Meanwhile the queen had discovered that her youthful husband was vain, spiteful, foolish, untrustworthy, and drunken. He was eager for the “crown matrimonial,” and yearned to rule in her name; but Mary consistently refused his request, and Darnley believed that her Italian secretary, David Riccio, was at the back of her refusal. Some of the nobles were bitterly jealous of the foreigner, who was supposed to sway the queen’s counsels, and with these malcontents Darnley came to an understanding. The result you have witnessed in the savage scene with which this chapter opened.

Riccio was dead, and Mary, maddened with rage at the night’s work, determined to have her revenge. Within a year Darnley was murdered in the lonely house of “Kirk of Field,” which stood on the site of the present University of Edinburgh. No one knew exactly how Darnley had perished, though thousands heard the roar of the explosion which blew up the house in which he was lying. His murderer was unknown, though anonymous placards on the walls of the Tolbooth accused the Earl of Bothwell of the foul deed. This earl was a masterful, bold, and vicious man, with whom Mary had fallen over head and ears in love. He was the very antithesis of Darnley with his “heart of wax,” and Mary needed a strong arm to lean upon. So flinging every prudential consideration to the winds, she gave her whole heart to the dangerous and showy man who was accused of murdering her husband. Bothwell was tried for the crime, but the trial was a mere mockery, and the accused rode to the court of justice on Darnley’s favourite steed. No witnesses were called, and the jury, composed of Bothwell’s partisans, triumphantly acquitted him.

Bothwell had already been divorced, and now he was free to marry the queen. The ceremony took place in the presence-chamber at Holyrood, and when the news leaked out men’s hearts were hot with shame and indignation. For a brief time Mary and her new husband seemed happy, but Bothwell’s fierce and brutal nature soon revealed itself. There were angry quarrels between the pair, and on one occasion Mary called for a knife with which to kill herself.

Ere long a rebellion broke out, and the insurgents marched to battle beneath a banner painted with the figure of a murdered king with an infant prince kneeling beside the body, crying, “Judge and avenge my cause, O God.” At Carberry Hill, on the longest day of the year 1567, Bothwell offered to decide the contest by single combat, but this the queen would not allow. Her forces melted away. Bothwell fled, and she was a captive in the hands of an exasperated people. A month later she was rowed across Loch Leven to the castle which still stands upon its little island. Here she was imprisoned, and here she was forced to abdicate the throne in favour of her infant son James. The Earl of Moray, her half-brother, was named regent, and the Protestant party was once more supreme.

Within a year Mary was free again. She found a knight-errant in the person of “pretty George Douglas,” younger brother of the Laird of Loch Leven. He fell deeply in love with the deposed queen, and ere long he had planned her escape. The story goes that when all was ready Douglas sent Mary a signal in the shape of a pearl fashioned like a pear. The key of the castle was obtained by the ruse of Willie Douglas, a page boy. It was the custom of the governor of the castle to have the key of the great gate placed on the table beside him when at supper. The page, who served at table, placed a plate before the governor, and at the same time dropped a napkin on the key, and then lifted key and handkerchief together. He slipped out to the queen, who was waiting for him. They gained the gate unperceived, locked it behind them, and threw the key into the water. The lad put Mary and her companion, a little maid of ten, into a boat, cast off, and plied his oars manfully. The queen waved a white veil to and fro, and at the signal George Douglas rose up from the reeds by the side of the lake and hurried to the village, from which he soon afterwards returned with a troop of armed men and some led horses. By the time the boat touched the shore the horsemen were waiting for the queen, and in a few minutes she was galloping southwards towards the ferry across the Forth. On the way she was joined by another troop of horse. That night she slept in Niddrie Castle, and next day reached Hamilton in safety.

The news of her escape spread like wildfire through the land, and speedily many of the barons and nobility flocked to her with offers of support and service. Before long she had five or six thousand men about her, while the regent, who was at Glasgow, mustered some four thousand. With this force, inferior as it was, he decided on an immediate battle. As the queen advanced from Hamilton towards Dumbarton, where she proposed to take ship for France, she had to pass through a narrow lane leading up to the hill on which the village of Langside stands. Moray posted his main battle on Langside Hill, and stationed his hagbutters or matchlock men along the hedges on both sides of the lane and amongst the cottages of the village. The queen took her station on an eminence half a mile distant and watched the battle which now began. She saw her troops charge up the hill and endeavour to force the passage of the lane. She saw them roll back under the heavy fire of the hagbutters, and then make a second attempt to storm the village. This, too, was unsuccessful, and soon she saw Moray’s pikemen and his Highlanders sweeping down on her friends with the utmost fury. With a cry of anguish she saw them break before the flashing claymores of the yelling Macfarlanes, and betake themselves to headlong flight. All was over, and the miserable queen put spurs to her horse and galloped away. She tried to reach Dumbarton, but she was too late. So hot was the pursuit that she was obliged to gallop for the wilds of the south-west. On and on she rode, and never halted until she reached Sanquhar, where she drank a bowl of milk at a cottage door. Then her wearied horse was urged on again until she reached the remote and lonely Abbey of Dundrennan, on the Solway, sixty miles from the field of battle.

On Sunday afternoon, May 16, 1568, she made the fatal mistake of her life. She determined to throw herself upon the generosity of Elizabeth, and no argument of her attendants could make her change her purpose. That reckless decision practically signed her death-warrant. She crossed the Solway and arrived at Workington. The next day she was brought by Richard Lowther to Cockermouth, and thence to Carlisle Castle, where she arrived in great distress and mean attire, and by the instructions of Elizabeth’s council was detained as a prisoner.

Elizabeth was by no means pleased at the turn which events had taken. Mary was a most embarrassing guest. Many of Elizabeth’s Catholic subjects regarded the Queen of Scots as the rightful sovereign of England, and now this dangerous rival was within her kingdom. Obviously, Mary could not be permitted to go to and fro unrestrained, gathering her adherents about her, the centre of a movement which might hurl Elizabeth from the throne. Equally obviously, Elizabeth could not send the refugee back to Scotland, where the scaffold or a life-long imprisonment awaited her. It would similarly be the height of folly to permit her to return to France and there raise an army to subdue the Protestants of the kingdom which had rejected her. Elizabeth was in a dilemma, and for the moment she saw no way out of it. Meanwhile, she wrote to Mary that she would be careful of “her life and honour,” and regretted that she could not receive her as a royal guest until she had been acquitted of the hideous crime charged against her. She would be the gladdest in the world to see her Grace well purged of this crime, that thereby she might aid her fully and amply to regain her throne.

At length, after much discussion and negotiation, a trial was agreed upon, and three sets of commissioners—one set for Elizabeth, one for Mary, and one for the confederate Scottish lords—were appointed to inquire into the complaints which the Scottish queen brought against those who had risen in arms against her, seized her, and imprisoned her, forced her to abdicate, and crowned her infant son. The conference began at York and ended at London. The Regent Moray appeared before the commissioners, and, as a last resort, produced a silver casket containing letters which were alleged to be written by Mary to Bothwell. These letters, if their genuineness could be proved, clearly showed her to be the accomplice of Bothwell in the murder of her husband. Mary constantly declared that the casket letters were forgeries, and to this day no man can positively say that she did not speak the truth. Mary demanded that the letters should be shown to her, but most unfairly her demand was refused. Then she indignantly broke off the conference, and the commissioners reported that nothing dishonourable had been proved against Moray and his friends, and nothing against Mary that could lead Elizabeth to take any evil opinion of her good sister. Nevertheless, Mary remained a prisoner in England, while Moray returned to Scotland and resumed his regency.

And now began Mary’s long captivity of nineteen years. She was moved about from castle to castle, and at first was permitted as much liberty as was consistent with the safe custody of her person. We read that she had a stud of sixteen horses, and frequently went hunting. She amused herself with needlework, in which she was very skilful, and kept dogs, turtle doves, and Barbary fowls. She practised her religion with great devotion, and she did not fail to charm all who came in contact with her by her gracious condescension.

But all the while she was ceaselessly plotting and intriguing, not only with Elizabeth’s disaffected subjects, but with her French friends, the King of Spain, and the Pope. Elizabeth’s life was in hourly danger, and her councillors constantly warned her that Mary was a terrible menace to her safety. In 1569 news arrived that the Pope was about to depose Elizabeth, and declare Mary Queen of England. Almost immediately there was a great rising of the Catholics of the north. The Earls of Northumberland and Westmorland marched into Durham, and mass was once more said in the cathedral. The insurgents, however, received but little support, and some of the leaders perished on the scaffold. Next year the long expected Bull of Deposition arrived. While most of the Catholics remained loyal, some of the more violent schemed to depose and even murder Elizabeth.

One of the plots, known as the “Ridolfi Plot” from the name of an Italian banker who played an important part in it, was headed by the Duke of Norfolk, an ambitious noble of thirty-two, who undertook to seize Elizabeth and marry Mary, who had now obtained a divorce from Bothwell. Norfolk was the leader of the English Catholics, and had the support of many noblemen in the northern counties. Some of his papers, however, fell into the hands of Burleigh, and the whole plot was exposed. Norfolk, who said truly that nothing done for Mary ever prospered, paid the penalty with his head on Tower Hill. Both Houses of Parliament now petitioned that the Queen of Scots should share his fate, but Elizabeth replied that “she could not put to death the bird that had fled to her for succour from the hawk.” Henceforth Mary was more strictly confined.

At length in 1583 another great plot was unmasked. France and Spain were to unite in an invasion of England, the English Catholics were to rise, Elizabeth was to be murdered, and Mary was to ascend the throne. Six desperate fanatics undertook to dispatch the English queen by steel or poison as a service pleasing to Heaven. Mary was in the plot up to the eyes. She had corresponded with Anthony Babington, a vain fool who was the chief agent in the plot, and had accepted his offer to assassinate Elizabeth. In extenuation it must be said that she was now desperate. She felt no compunction in lending her support to the murderous project, for she had the wrongs of a lifetime to revenge, and she knew that she would ultimately come to the scaffold if Elizabeth were permitted to live. Walsingham knew every move of the plot, and encouraged it to develop until he had sufficient evidence to bring Mary to trial on the capital charge.

She was arrested at a neighbouring seat, whither she had been allowed to go on the pretext of a stag-hunt, and was there detained until her papers had been secured. Then she was removed to Fotheringhay Castle and brought to trial. Mary faced the court with great tact and dignity, and defended herself with the utmost skill. She totally denied all knowledge of the Babington plot; but her case was hopeless, both because the court had what it considered sufficient evidence of her complicity, and because it was considered necessary for political purposes that she should be found guilty.

On October 25, 1586, the commissioners reported that she had contrived “divers matters tending to the hurt, death, and destruction of the Queen of England.” Therefore both Houses of Parliament again petitioned for Mary’s speedy execution. Elizabeth replied that she was unwilling to shed the blood of that wicked woman, the Queen of Scots, though she had so often sought her life. She wished that she and Mary were two milkmaids with pails upon their arms, and then she would forgive her all her wrongs. As for her own life, she had no desire on her own account to preserve it. She had nothing left worth living for; but for her people she could endure much. She was most reluctant to sign the death-warrant, and endeavoured to evade the painful task by all sorts of shifts and devices, even going so far as to make the cowardly suggestion that Mary’s guardians should act upon their own responsibility. At length she put her name to the document, and her councillors hurried on the execution lest their mistress should change her mind.

The Earl of Shrewsbury, who had been Mary’s guardian for nineteen years, broke the news to her. She heard her fate with the utmost calmness, saying that she was content and even happy that she was so soon to be freed from so many miseries and afflictions, and rejoicing that God had given her grace to die for the honour of His name and for His Church. Finally she asked when she was to suffer. “To-morrow morning at eight o’clock,” was the reply.

Let us not linger over the painful scene of her execution. She laid her head upon the block with calm fortitude, the axe descended, and the long tragedy of her life was over. She sinned grievously, but she suffered greatly, and she will never lack champions who will stoutly maintain even to the crack of doom that she was more sinned against than sinning.

The Murder of Rizzio.
(From the picture by John Opie, R.A., in the Art Gallery of the Corporation of London.)