HISTORY OF SCOTLAND 
 
THE 
 
 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND 
 
 FROM AGRICOLA^S INVASION TO THE 
 EXTINCTION OF THE LAST 
 JACOBITE INSURRECTION 
 
 JOHN HILL BURTON 
 
 HISTORIOGRAPHER-ROYAL FOR SCOTLAND 
 
 A NEW EDITION, REVISED 
 
 IN EIGHT VOLUMES 
 
 t 
 
 VOL. IV. 
 
 V 
 
 WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS 
 EDINBURGH AND LONDON 
 MDCCCLXXVI 
 
 All Rights Resefyied 
 
CONTENTS OF FOURTH VOLUME. 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 Narrative of events resumed — Death of the King of France — The 
 widow, and her position and conduct — The projects for her 
 disposal in marriage — Visitors to her — Her brother, afterwards 
 Earl of^Murray — Embassy from Huntly and the Romish party 
 — Pertinacious dealing of Queen Elizabeth's ambassadors in 
 France — Unsuccessful in their object of the ratification of the 
 treaty — Queen Mary's return — Her companions — Her recep- 
 tion — Her past and future position compared — A pageant — 
 The religious difficulty — The question of tolerating idolatry — 
 Calvin consulted — Methods of reviling the old creed and cere- 
 monies — Interviews with John Knox — The First Book of Dis- 
 cipline — Failure of the clergy to get it confirmed by Parlia- 
 
 Vjnent— Reasons for the lay members of the Congregation dis- 
 liking it — Contains provisions for appropriating the temporali- 
 ties of the Church — Would thus take them from the lay lords 
 who had secured them — Instances of the method of getting at 
 them — Roasting a commendator — Knox's wrath — The compro- 
 mise — Murray's marriage and elevation — A clearing among the 
 Border thieves, . . . . . .1-46 
 
VI 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAPTER XLII. 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 ( Continued. ) 
 
 Dangers in the north — Position of Huntly as leader of the 
 Ron\anist party — Murray's designs — A royal progress — 
 Pluntly's fears from it — He arms — Battle of Corrichie — Ruin 
 of the house of Huntly — Queen Mary's policy in assisting in 
 the ruin of her friends — Position of Mary's Government — As- 
 pect of firmness and moderation — Her home-life and amuse- 
 ments — Her popularity — Further dialogues with Knox — Ques- 
 tion as to what language they were held in — Prosecutions of 
 Romanist priests — Archbishop Hamilton — The queen's de- 
 votedness to her Church — Her foreign correspondence — Com- 
 munication to the Council of Trent — Papal emissaries — Assas- 
 sination of her uncle — Parliament — Tendency to a reaction 
 against the Protestant party — Further altercations between the 
 queen and Knox — Riotous attack on officiating priests — The 
 rioters brought to task — Feeling among the Protestant clergy, 47-81 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 ( Continued. ) 
 
 The queen and her admirers — Mysterious story of the project of 
 Arran and Bothwell — Bothwell indicted for it — History of 
 Chatelar — His adventures— His fate— Political importance of 
 the queen's marriage — The projects of the house of Guise — 
 Queen Mary's own views — Project for union with the heir of 
 the Spanish monarchy — Political prospects of such a union — 
 Mary's foreign correspondence about it — Her schemes tra- 
 versed by Catherine of Medici — Other projects — Queen Eliza- 
 beth — Her escapades about Leicester — Proposed meeting of 
 Mary and Elizabeth— Mary meets Henry Stewart, Lord Darn- 
 ley — Mary's secret emissaries — David Rizzio — Reaction in 
 favour of the Romanist party— Gloom and difficulties of the 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 vii 
 
 Reformers — Protestant riot suppressed — Question of consult- 
 ing the Estates about the marriage — Marriage of Mary and 
 Darnley, ...... 82-121 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 ( Contimied. ) 
 
 A strong Government — Darnley gets the title of king — Parlia- 
 mentary displeasure with the assumption — Arming of Murray 
 and his supporters — Their dispersal — Present themselves to 
 Elizabeth — How treated by her — Danger of Elizabeth and the 
 Protestant cause — Projects of the Romanist powers — Confer- 
 ence at Bayonne — Philip, Catherine of Medici, and Alva — 
 Darnley's character develops itself — Odious among the cour- 
 tiers — His wife's appreciation of him — Progress of Rizzio's in- 
 fluence — Project for putting him out of the way — The band 
 for his slaughter — Arrangements for effecting it — The supper- 
 party— Rizzio dragged out and slain — Inquiry as to when the 
 queen knew of his death — Her conduct before and after that 
 knowledge — Lures back her husband — Return of Murray and 
 his followers from England — Murray makes peace — Secret 
 arrangement of the queen and her husband — Their escape to 
 Dunbar, ...... 122-155 
 
 CHAPTER XLV. 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 ( Continued. ) 
 
 The confederate lords and their danger — Projects of retaliation 
 — The slayers of Rizzio seek refuge in England — A Parliament 
 —The fit of conjugal attachment passes — Symptoms of Mary's 
 feeling towards her husband — He is avoided, and becomes 
 aiarmed — Rise and character of Bothwell — His power on the 
 Borders — Condition of the Borders that time — His power , 
 on the sea — History of his house as renowned for royal love- 
 affairs — Wounded in a Border scuffle — The queen's ride from 
 Jedburgh to Hermitage to visit him — Birth of the prince — 
 Peculiar circumstances of his baptism — Projects against Dam- 
 ley mooted — Darnley's illness— The queen's new profession 
 
viii 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 of reconciliation, and visit to him in Glasgow — His father 
 and he afraid of murder — His own expressions on the matter 
 — Darnley brought to the Kirk-of-Field — A band for putting 
 him out of the way — The preparations — The completion of the 
 murder, . . . . . .156-192 
 
 CHAPTER XLVI. 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 {Continued.) 
 
 The morning after the murder — Doings at Holyrood — Feeling of 
 the public — Disposal of the murdered man's body — Suspicions 
 and accusations pointing to Bothwell — Whispers about the 
 queen — Correspondence with Damley's father, who demands 
 a trial — How it was evaded — Bothwell advanced and favoured 
 — The queen gets warnings — Sojourn at Seton — The supper at 
 Annesly's — The band for Bothwell's marriage with the queen 
 — The interception and carrying off of the queen to Dunbar — 
 Her formal entry into Edinburgh— Bothwell's difficulties as a 
 married man — Arrangements for their removal, and question 
 if they were legally removed— How the Protestant party and 
 their clergy take matters — The marriage of Mary and Bothwell 
 — The married couple — Her apology for her conduct, 193-232 
 
 CHAPTER XLVII. 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 {Continued.) 
 
 Symptoms of a rising — The queen and Bothwell take alarm and 
 leave Holyrood — The queen in Borthwick — Escapies thence and 
 joins her husband — They take refuge in Dunbar — Provisions 
 for the safety of the infant prince — The confederate lords get 
 possession of Edinburgh — The armed conference at Carberry 
 — The queen's surrender, and removal to Edinburgh — Difficul- 
 ties in deahng with her there — She is taken to Lochleven — Dis- 
 covery of a casket — Its contents said to be poems and love- 
 letters addressed by Mary to Bothwell — How the confederates 
 resolved to deal with this discovery — Examination of the let- 
 ters — Their narrative of the queen's visit to Darnley at Glasgow 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 ix 
 
 compared with the other narrative of the same by Craufurd — 
 Queen Mary abdicates— Conclusion of a historical epoch, 233-279 
 
 CHAPTER XLVIII. 
 
 INTERREGNUM. 
 
 Political conditions following on the abdication of Queen Mary 
 — The claims of the Hamiltons — The coronation of the 
 infant prince — The organisation of the regency — Murray re- 
 called from France — His visit to his sister — Inaugurated as 
 regent — Takes Edinburgh Castle out of Balfour's hands — A 
 Parliament — Position of Scotland towards France and England 
 — Queen Elizabeth's high demands — Throckmorton sent to 
 assert them — How he fared in his mission — Conferences with 
 Murray and Lethington — Accusations against the Hamiltons — 
 Popular feeling about Queen Mary — Effect of Queen Eliza- 
 beth's interference, ..... 280-318 
 
 CHAPTER XLIX. 
 
 ORGANISATION OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 Confirmation of the Reformation statutes — General Assembly 
 — Powers of discipline — Attempts to recover the temporalities 
 — How they succeeded — Formation of judicatories — Modelled 
 on the Huguenot arrangements — The clergy— 'Use of the 
 English Liturgy — History of the **Book of Cbmmon Order," 
 or Scots Pray^ir-'Book — Adapted from the Geneva Liturgy used 
 by Knox in Frankfurt — Scenes occurring there in connection 
 with its use — Examination of the Book of Common Order in 
 its relation to other Liturgies — Its use confirmed — Translated 
 into Gaelic— Forms of burial and administration of the sacra- 
 ment — The vocal praise — The spiritual and godly songs — The 
 Psalter — Condition of the ecclesiastical edifices, . 319-355 
 
 ^ CHAPTER L. 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 Tlie regent's Government — Its strength — Its difficulties — The 
 dealing with the murderers of the king — The Church and the 
 
X 
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 holders of ecclesiastical estates — News of the escape of the 
 queen — What is known of her captivity — Lochleven Castle 
 and its inmates — Projects for escape — Final success — Flight 
 to Hamilton — Gathering there — The regent at Glasgow — The 
 battle of Langside — Flight to Dumfriesshire — To England — 
 The perplexities of the situation — English and Continental 
 politics — Residence of Mary at Carlisle — Her blandishments — 
 Seeks a meeting with Elizabeth — Removal to Bolton, . 356-394 
 
 CHAPTER LI. 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 {Continued.) 
 
 The effect on the Court of England — Fleming, Herries, and the 
 French ambassador there — The question of Mary going to 
 France — The question of a personal interview between the 
 queens — The mission of Middlemore — How received by Queen 
 Mary — How in Scotland — The Casket Letters — Feeling the 
 way to the result if the charges proved — Queen Elizabeth's 
 divine right of sovereigns, and repudiation of the power of sub- 
 jects to question their acts — Conflict with Queen Mary's pre- 
 tensions to the throne of England — The latent question of the 
 superiority of the crown of England — Queen Mary's diplo- 
 matics — Her profession of an inclination to the Church of 
 England — Her absolute devotion to the old Church — The dis- 
 cussions to be conducted at York — The three commissions — 
 The external political conditions of the inquiry, . 395-422 
 
 CHAPTER LIL 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 {Continued.) 
 
 Opening of the inquiry — The charge of rebellion against Mur- 
 ray and his party — Their defence involving a counter-charge, 
 but reserving the charge of murder — The removal of the inquiry 
 to London — The endeavours to discover what the result would 
 be were the charge made and proved — Private discussions of 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 xi 
 
 the Casket Letters— Queen Mary's conferences with the Bishop 
 of Ross on the safest course — Directs any charges against her 
 to be denied — Lethington's machinations — The Duke of Nor- 
 folk — His acquaintance with the charges, and his proffers to 
 Queen Mary — The policy of such a marriage considered — The 
 reservation of the public charge of murder — Made at last — The 
 effect on the discussions — The Book of Articles — The produc- 
 tion of the Casket Letters — Tendering of the testimony of 
 Thomas Craufurd as to the meeting in Glasgow — Perplexities 
 of the Bishop of Ross — The inquiry gradually closes — Incom- 
 pleteness of the apparent results — Real results behind them — 
 The career of Both well — His flight— Imprisonment in Norway 
 and Denmark — His Danish wife — His offers to restore Orkney 
 and Shetland — His death, , . . . 423-473 
 
THE 
 
 HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. 
 
 CHAPTER XLI. 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 NARRATIVE OF EVENTS RESUMED — DEATH OF THE KING OF FRANCE— 
 THE WIDOW, AND HER POSITION AND CONDUCT — THE PROJECTS FOR 
 HER DISPOSAL IN MARRIAGE — VISITORS TO HER — HER BROTHER, 
 AFTERWARDS EARL OF MURRAY— EMBASSY FROM HUNTLY AND 
 THE ROMISH PARTY—PERTINACIOUS DEALING OF QUEEN ELIZABETH'S 
 AMBASSADORS IN FRANCE — UNSUCCESSFUL IN THEIR OBJECT OF THE 
 RATIFICATION OF THE TREATY— QUEEN MARY'S RETURN— HER COM- 
 panions — her reception— her past and future position 
 compared— a pageant— the religious difficulty — the ques- 
 tion of tolerating idolatry — calvin consulted— methods 
 of reviling the old creed and ceremonies — interviews with 
 john knox — the first book of discipline — failure of the 
 clergy to get it confirmed by parliament — reasons for the 
 lay members of the congregation disliking it— contains 
 provisions for appropriating the temporalities of the 
 church — would thus take them from the lay lords who had 
 securee^them— instances of the method of getting at them 
 — roasting a commendator — knox's wrath — the compromise 
 —Murray's marriage and elevation — a clearing among the 
 border thieves. 
 
 How far the ecclesiastical Revolution, carried by a vote 
 of the Estates on the 17th of August in the year 1560, 
 was to be conclusive and permanent, seemed to be a ques- 
 tion depending on the fate of a youth, fragile from his 
 
 VOL. IV. A 
 
2 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 birth and now seriously diseased. Suspense ended when 
 it became known that Francis II., King of France, the 
 husband of the Queen of Scots, had died on the sth of De- 
 cember. He was in his seventeenth year, and had reigned 
 a few days more than a year and a half Had human aid 
 availed for anything, he had such as the greatest monarchs 
 cannot always command. He was attended on his death- 
 bed by Ambrose Pare, not only the most skilful surgeon 
 of his day, but one of the illustrious few who have left a 
 legacy to the world in permanent devices for assuaging 
 pain and saving life. All that his skill could do, however, 
 in treating the dying king, was to announce with confi- 
 dence that death was advancing with absolute certainty 
 in the shape of a gangrenous ulcer making its way to the 
 brain. It might be supposed that the protective presence of 
 one so skilful would have saved the dark repute of the king's 
 mother, Catherine of Medici, from an additional shade, 
 and the deepest of all, in the charge that she had murdered 
 her son as one who stood in the way of her ambition. While 
 the Queen of France was the niece of the Guises — and a 
 niece with so much in her own character to increase their 
 resources — the *^fille de marchand,'' as Mary scornfully 
 called her husband's mother, was almost nobody at Court. 
 She had been, like a caged tigress, disabled from pursuing 
 the instincts of her ferocious nature. Her son's death 
 was the first and the most effective of the successive 
 blows that finally levelled the power of her enemies, the 
 Guises, to the dust. It made her virtually Queen of France ; 
 and those who saw all this and knew her nature, spoke in 
 the belief that no crime would be permitted to stand be- 
 tween her and such a fortune. 
 
 Outside the palace-gates the contest between the Hugue- 
 not and the Guise party raged so fiercely, that even the 
 death of the king, whom both professed to reverence and 
 obey, passed over as a secondary incident, and he was 
 buried out of sight with little of the pomp incident to the 
 obsequies of a king of France.^ 
 
 ^ Conde, who was saved by the event that broke the power of the 
 Guises, was on his way from his prison to resume his military autho- 
 
DEATH OF KING FRANCIS, 1560. 
 
 3 
 
 There was one man who, though his place was in the 
 centre of all the storm, stood apart in calm seclusion, 
 watching its course, and calculating how the probable re- 
 sults would work with the other combinations of European 
 politics. This was the English ambassador, Throckmor- 
 ton. In the mean time his chief occupation was gone — 
 that of achieving the ratification of the treaty of Edin- 
 burgh. It might be that the event opened up new pros- 
 pects of success, but he could not in decency press his 
 demands on the new-made widow. 
 
 He had to content himself in the mean time with the 
 study of her conduct and character in her hour of calamity 
 and trial, and he sent his commentaries on what he no- 
 ticed home for study by his mistress and his political col- 
 leagues. In these revelations the spirit of the kindly 
 English gentleman in some measure seems to overcome 
 that of the diplomatist and spy. He spoke well of her ; 
 and the very weight of the charges that afterwards loaded 
 her fame renders it but fair that we should not pass over 
 the words of commendation rendered to her by one who 
 was present at so critical a time. On the day of the king's 
 death, and in the intimation of the end to his mistress, 
 he says, — He departed to God, leaving as heavy and dol- 
 orous a wife as of right she had good cause to be, who, 
 by long watching with him during his sickness, and pain- 
 ful diligence about him, and especially by the issue there- 
 of, is not in best tune of her body, but without danger." ^ 
 
 Twenty-five days later, having meanwhile been watching 
 and ruminating, he is able to speak more specifically 
 about her character, and its possible political influence. 
 
 rity at Orleans, when II faillit croiser en chemin le corps du feu 
 roi, que deux chambellans et un eveque aveugle (Guillard, eveque de 
 Senlis) menaient a Saint-Denis * petitement ' accompagne : les Guises, 
 resolus a ne pas quitter la place un seul jour, et a disputer opiniatre- 
 ment tout ce qu'ils pourraient conserver d'autorite, abandonnerent 
 les restes de celui qui ne pouvait plus rien pour leur fortune, malgre 
 les devoirs que la charge de grand-maitre imposait au Due Francois, 
 et le rbi fut enterre sans pompe a Saint-Denis, tandis que les Etats 
 Generaux s'ouvraient bruyamment a Orleans en presence de son 
 jeune successeur." — Martin, Hist, de France, ix. 62. 
 ^ Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 421. 
 
4 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 Her marriage is one of the special things'* that the Lords 
 of the Council to whom he writes " have to consider and 
 have an eye to ; " and then, " During her husband's Hfe there 
 was no great? account made of her, for that being under 
 bond of marriage and subjection of her husband (who 
 carried the burden and care of all her matters) there was 
 offered no great occasion to know what was in her. But 
 since her husband's death she hath showed, and so con- 
 tinueth, that she is both of great wisdom for her years, 
 modesty, and also of great judgment in the wise handling 
 of herself, and her matters, which, increasing with her 
 years, cannot but turn greatly to her commendation, re- 
 putation, honour, and great benefit of her and her coun- 
 try. Already it appears that some such as made no great 
 account of her, do now, seeing her wisdom, both honour 
 and pity her. Immediately upon her husband's death 
 she changed her lodging, withdrew herself from all com- 
 pany, and became so sorrowful and exempt of all worldli- 
 ness, that she doth not to this day see daylight, and so 
 will continue out forty days. For the space of fifteen 
 days after the death of her said husband, she permitted no 
 man to come into her chamber, but the king, his brethren, 
 the King of Navarre, the constable, and her uncles; and 
 about four or five days after that, was content to admit 
 some bishops, and the ancient knights of the order, and 
 none of the younger, save Martignes, who, having done 
 her good service, and married the chief gentlewoman of 
 the chamber, had so much favour showed him. The am- 
 bassadors were also lastly admitted as they came, who 
 have all been with her to condole, saving I, which I have 
 forborne to do, knowing not the queen's pleasure in that 
 behalf.^' ^ After touching other matters he returns to his 
 sketch of character in a tone suggestive of susceptibility 
 to the powers of fascination that afterwards gained so many 
 victories. "For my part I see her behaviour to be such, and 
 her wisdom and kingly modesty so great, in that she think- 
 eth herself not too wise, but is content to be ruled by good 
 counsel and wise men — which is a great virtue in a prince 
 
 Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 472. 
 
THE WIDOW IN FRANCE, 1560. 
 
 5 
 
 or princess, and which argueth a great judgment and wis- 
 dom in her — that by their means she cannot do amiss." ^ 
 While the widow is thus found dwelHng apart in decent 
 gloom, the diplomatic correspondence of the day becomes 
 lively with suggestions and queries as to her disposal in 
 marriage. Would she be wedded to her dead husband's 
 brother and successor in the throne, Charles the Ninth, 
 under a papal dispensation demanded by the eminent 
 importance of such a union to the Church ? And here it 
 may be noted as a practical consideration by the states- 
 men of the period, however fanciful and fruitless any re- 
 flections on the matter may appear at the present day, 
 that it had been among possibilities that Queen Elizabeth 
 might, under the like sanction, be married to her brother- 
 in-law King Philip, and thus secure to Spain and England 
 in union the preponderance over France in the champion- 
 ship of the old religion. On the other hand, would King 
 Philip claim the widow for his son, Don Carlos ? — an idea to 
 be weighed along with the influence of King Philip's own 
 recent marriage to Elizabeth of France. It was rumoured 
 that the Guises might claim their niece for some member 
 of their own family, as an item in the daring game they 
 were playing, for supremacy in France. The disposal, in- 
 deed, of this young widow's hand, was a great European 
 question, widened and disturbed by the consideration that 
 in canonical doctrine she was entitled to supersede Eliza- 
 beth on the throne of England. Frederick of Denmark 
 and Eric of Sweden, each freshly enthroned, were named. 
 There was also the son of the Emperor Frederick, called the 
 Archduke Charles and occasionally the Duke of Austria. 
 Nearer home the name of Arran, the heir to the honours 
 of the house of Hamilton, came up ; but at the instigation 
 rather of his own family and himself than of the diplo- 
 matists. The folly of his nature, tinged with somewhat of in- 
 sanity, seems to have been apparent to them, and we find 
 them significantly leaving it to himself to promote his cause. ^ 
 
 ^ Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 473. 
 
 ^ See a letter full of subtle doubts and difficulties, Randolph to 
 Cecil, Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 4th March 1 561. The matter 
 drops with — ** Well ! my lord of Arran may conceive with himself that 
 
6 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 The house of Hamilton, it will be remembered, was the 
 nearest, as descending from James IL, in the hereditary 
 right of succession to the house of Stewart. Of the success- 
 ful suitor, Lennox's son, Lord Darnley, no account seems 
 to have been taken by the busy diplomatists, though it is 
 casually mentioned as a common report in Scotland, that 
 he had gone to France to try his fortunes with the widow.^ 
 While Queen Mary was still in France, Queen Elizabeth 
 made preparation for taking a decided part in the question, 
 by instructing Randolph, her representative in Edin- 
 burgh, on the tone he was to take when the question came 
 to be discussed there. He was to represent the danger to 
 the Scots of a foreign king. Of those who had been most 
 earnest in defence of the liberties of the Scots he would 
 be the ruin, unless he adopted their cause ; and if he pro- 
 fessed to do so he might turn and be an enemy. Any- 
 thing restoring the ancient league with France would be 
 fatal. They should look near home for a husband, and 
 find one well addicted to the cause of religion, and of 
 good amity with England.^ 
 
 Throckmorton, as he ruminated on such questions, 
 hoped that the second marriage would not be so prejudi- 
 cial to the interests of his country as the first had been, 
 and uttered as a general opinion, that the widow " more 
 esteemeth the continuation of her honour, and to marry one 
 that may uphold her to be great, than she passeth to please 
 her fancy by taking one that is accompanied with such 
 small benefit or alliance as thereby her estimation and 
 fame is not increased."^ Perhaps this was a fair estimate 
 of her aspirations before they were dispersed by other in- 
 fluences. When, as we shall see, the Earl of Bedford joined 
 Throckmorton, instructions were given to both to ''ex- 
 plore the likelihood of the marriage of the Scottish queen ; 
 wherein they shall employ their devices to procure it, to 
 be either in her own country, or in such place as may least 
 augment her strength."^ 
 
 there is possibility or likelihood that he may have her ; but it is 
 against the opinion of ail the doctors." 
 
 ^ Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 15th March 1561, T. Stew- 
 art to Lady Lennox. 
 
 2 Ibid., 20th March 1561. ^ n^jj^^ 423. * jbi^., 508. 
 
THE WIDOW IN FRANCE, 1560. 
 
 7 
 
 In the public correspondence nearer home — that of the 
 Scots Protestants with each other, and with their friends 
 in England — there is a decorous tone of comfort and 
 rehef in the dispersal of gloomy anticipations, and the 
 brightening of hopes. The more the death of King 
 Francis was weighed as a political event, the more it was 
 felt to be a great deliverance. It was seen that when 
 he was gone there remained little strength in the hold 
 by which Scotland seemed bound over to the ambitious 
 schemes of the Guises. If to a large portion of the Scots 
 people their queen was also to be their enemy, she had 
 lost her power to injure. Her early return was now de- 
 sired, and preparations were made accordingly. 
 
 The first public event in Scotland affecting the connec- 
 tion of the leading men with their sovereign after the 
 death of the king was the reception, early in the month 
 of May, of an embassy or deputation from the new King 
 of France. It was professedly sent for the purpose of 
 condoling with them on the loss they had sustained by the 
 death of King Francis, and on the effect this might have 
 in breaking the close alliance of Scotland with France. 
 Perhaps of the many events treated in diplomatic courtesy 
 as occasions of sorrow, few have been less legitimately 
 entitled to sympathy than this. But there was more and 
 less innocent matter in the " Harangue,^' as it is called, 
 of the leader of the embassy. He appears to have met 
 in the hotel of the Hamilton family, close to the Kirk- 
 of-Field, with a body of the chief political leaders as- 
 sembled to arrange about the calling of a Parliament. 
 He assured this assemblage of the continued friendship 
 of the King of France. He announced to them that 
 their queen desired to bury the memory of all past 
 offences, and to show a sincere love for her subjects, 
 for which she desires them to render in return their 
 perfect obedience to her, so that she may not have to 
 regret her magnanimity. He had it in commission to 
 express on the part of the king that, in assurance of 
 his amity, he was prepared to offer to their queen a 
 continuation of the ancient league between France and 
 Scotland. He brought assurances, too, from the Queen- 
 mother, Catherine of Medici, that she would assist in 
 
8 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 Strengthening and maintaining the old friendship between 
 the kingdoms. 
 
 There was matter in all this to inflame the temper of a 
 class of men who, on 'more propitious occasions, were apt 
 to spurn admonitions by strangers to do their loyal duty.^ 
 The opportunity for a gentle answer in the matter of con- 
 dolence was courteously employed. On the other mat- 
 ter, the purport of their answer was : As for his offer of 
 reconciling them with the queen, they are not otherwise 
 affectioned towards her than became good and obedient 
 subjects, and are willing to recognise the queen's good- 
 ness with all submission and humble service. It is not 
 very necessary to admonish them to do thus, which they 
 acknowledge to be their duty. They beg that the king 
 will be pleased to consider that there are no subjects in 
 Europe more ready to serve their sovereign than they are 
 their queen.'^ Even in the condolence there was a sting ; 
 if the king had lived, he would have looked into the 
 recent troubles, not with the result of bringing the pro- 
 moters of the revolution to chastisement. On the contrary, 
 with the conclusion of punishing " such of his ministers as 
 were the occasion of the same." 
 
 There are but scanty traces of the conduct and trans- 
 actions of the ambassador after his "harangue.'^ Knox 
 briefly says that his demands were : i. That the league 
 betwixt us and England should be broken; 2. That the 
 ancient league between France and Scotland should be 
 renewed ; and, 3d, That the bishops and kirkmen should 
 
 ^ This part of the national character was skilfully touched in the 
 instructions to the Earl of Bedford, whom we shall find associated with 
 Throckmorton in his mission. In his intercourse with the Scots 
 queen's uncles — '* If the said cardinal or duke shall enter into argu- 
 ment of the disobedience of Scotland, the said ambassadors shall 
 seem to answer of their own knowledge, how evil informed they be, 
 seeing in what quietness the realm is since the departure of the men 
 of war from thence ; and that the nature and manners of the people 
 of England and Scotland are in that part somewhat like, for by 
 gentleness they may be used or sometimes abused, but with force, 
 and especially with a foreign governor, neither of them can agree ; 
 whereof the time of King Philip in England, and the late time in 
 Scotland, make good proof." — Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 508. 
 
THE WIDOW IN FRANCE, 1560. 
 
 9 
 
 be reponed in their former places, and be suffered to 
 intromit with their Hvings." These weighty matters 
 were deferred until the arrival of the Lord James from 
 France, when a distinct negative was returned to each 
 demand.^ 
 
 In the mean time, and before Randolph could decorously 
 resume the object of his mission, Queen Mary had to re- 
 ceive other visitors. Among these were two countrymen 
 of her own, who, representing the two opposite parties in 
 the great contest, reached her simultaneously at Vitry in 
 Champagne. The one was her brother, the Lord James ; ^ 
 the other represented the adherents of the old Church. 
 Whatever counsel she received from her brother the leader 
 of the Lords of the Congregation, cannot have harmonised 
 
 ^ History, ii. 156, 166 ; Diurnal of Occurrents, 64, 282. The 
 Oration " scene is founded on two documents : Harangue of M. De 
 risle to the Scottish Council," and " Answer of the Council of Scot- 
 land to M. De risle," Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 16. There 
 seems to be a mistake in the name. The date attributed to these is 
 the middle of March, when De Noailles certainly was in Scotland on 
 a mission from the King of France. His name, though disguised as 
 Monsieur Newill in the Diurnal of Occurrents, is familiar in the 
 history and correspondence of the period, while, even if it were 
 likely that two emissaries came at the same time, I cannot identify 
 any De Tile as likely to have been available for such a mission. 
 
 2 The Lor d Jam es is better known by the title of his earldom of "2- 
 Moray, or Murray as custom has settled that it shall be called. He 
 seems on this occasion to have gained from Throckmorton that high 
 opinion ever conceded to him by the statesmen of Queen Elizabeth's 
 Court. Throckmorton writes to Cecil : ** It is a great matter in this ; 
 time to find a man of His credit in his country to be so faithful and 
 sincere as he is. I find in him wit enough for his years, much 
 honour, and great fidelity. It is a good turn that so direct a man as he 
 is hath the credit and love at home that he hath. " To Queen Elizabeth : 
 *' I do well perceive the Lord James to be a very honourable, sincere, 
 and godly gentleman, and very much affected to your majesty, upon 
 whom you never bestowed good turn better than on him, in my 
 opinion." To the Lords of the Council of England, after general 
 remarks on his sincerity and magnanimity : What a great benefit 
 it is for her majesty and your lordships to deal with such an upright 
 man, and in so weighty affairs as betwixt prince and prince, realm 
 and realm, and more especially when the press of men be much 
 subject to dissimulation, cautels, and finesse, I leave to your lord- 
 ships to consider." — Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 1861-62, 
 76, 85, 97. 
 
ro 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 with her temper and aspirations. But what passed between 
 these two, holding to each other, both domestically and 
 politically, a position so unusual and remarkable, was 
 matter of much conjecture, but of little assurance, for 
 neither of them was given to babble or to useless confi- 
 dences. Better, perhaps, than from the current rumours, 
 we may judge of Murray's conclusions from a letter writ- 
 ten by him to Queen Elizabeth. She became impatient 
 and alarmed at the treaty of Edinburgh, with its acknow- 
 ledgment of her right to the throne of England, remaining 
 unratified by the one person whose acknowledgment of 
 her right was essential. She wrote to Randolph, desiring 
 him to press this matter on the Scots Estates ; if they took 
 it up, either they would in some way carry the ratifica- 
 tion, or by showing their earnestness to promote it might 
 frighten their queen from returning among them.^ Mur- 
 ray wrote to Queen Elizabeth on the general question, in 
 his usual grave deliberate fashion. It was a blessed thing 
 to see the people of the two countries uniting in common 
 objects — they whose ancestors had been for centuries 
 enemies so bitter to each other. The Reformed religion 
 had abolished the enmity, and secured this harmony. 
 What pity, then, that while there is unity of purpose be- 
 tween the bulk of the people in each of the two kingdoms, 
 there should be diversity of purpose in the two heads. 
 Here they are, two queens, each in the flower of her age, 
 each adorned by all virtuous capacities and accomplish- 
 ments, with this unfortunate gulf of religious variance be- 
 tween them. Passing from such generals to particulars, 
 he becomes earnest, and invokes the name of God to the 
 strongsincerity of his grief that Queen Mary had ever done 
 aught inferring a claim of right to Elizabeth's throne. At 
 the same time, Queen Mary was the heir to the throne of 
 England, and should be so dealt with until nearer heirs 
 should arise in children born to the Queen of England. 
 He suggested, as a reasonable and a graceful termination 
 of the whole dispute, that on the one side the iright of 
 Queen Elizabeth and her issue should be acknowledged ; 
 
 ^ Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 167. 
 
VISITORS BEFORE THE RETURN, 1560-61. II 
 
 while, on the other side, the Queen of Scots should be 
 treated as the heiress of the crown of England until such 
 issue should appear.^ 
 
 The other emissary, who came after him, was John 
 Leslie, afterwards the Bishop of Ross, and Mary's stanch 
 friend and supporter in her adversities. We have the 
 object of his mission from himself He represented 
 the party of the old Church, especially the Lords Huntly, 1 
 Athole, Crawford, Marischal, Sutherland, and Caithness. 
 He says he offered the devoted duty of his party, and 
 that it was thankfully received. He further tells the 
 significant fact that he recommended her to land at 
 Aberdeen, where twenty thousand troops would be at 
 her disposal ; and that he was accompanied by one high 
 in command in Huntly's armed force, who was to arrange 
 her convoy to Aberdeen, if she consented to land there. 
 This was no less than the offer of the power of the north 
 to strike at once a great blow against the Congregation 
 and for the old religion. However it came to pass, the 
 landing at Aberdeen was not effected ; but the proposal 
 will be seen to have an intimate connection with events 
 immediately following the queen's return to Scotland.^ 
 
 Sir James Melville, with whom we shall make acquaint- 
 ance hereafter, at that time a young politician, active and 
 ambitious, was haunting the Court of Queen Mary, as well 
 as all other places where advancement might ifall in his 
 way. He was a keen observer, and tells us that she took 
 counsel as to the future with some eminent Frenchmen, 
 who had been in Scotland in the last war. He names 
 De Martignes, D'Oisel, De la Brosse, the Bishop of May- 
 ence, and Roubay, who having been vice-chancellor of 
 
 ^ Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 239. 
 
 2 liistory, vernacular version, 294. It is in the Latin version that 
 the affair is more distinctly marked as a project of the Romish party, 
 and that the army to be collected at Aberdeen is mentioned. The 
 leader of the convoy was to be Jacobus Cullenus, ipsius Huntlaei 
 cognatus, vir mihtiae terrestris ac navalis scientia plurimum valens, 
 qui illam tutam ac incolumem Aberdoniam duceret." — P. 532. 
 These particulars are repeated in Gordon's History of the Family of 
 Gordon (i. 198), whether on Leslie's or other authority. See also 
 Gordon's Genealogical History of the Earldom of Sutherland, 139. 
 
12 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 Scotland, must have seen something of the character of 
 the people among whom he had to act. According to 
 Melville, the tenor of their advice was *'to serve the time, 
 and to accommode herself discreetly and gently with her 
 own subjects, and to be maist familiar with my Lord James, 
 Prior of St Andrews, her natural brother, and with the 
 Earl of Argyle, who had married Lady Jean Stewart, 
 her natural sister, and to use the Secretair Lethington 
 and the Laird of Grange maist tenderly in all her affairs ; 
 and in effect, to repose maist upon them of the Reformed 
 religion." ^ Whether her subsequent conduct was directed 
 by such advice is a point on which every one who follows 
 her career will probably decide for himself 
 
 She had other advisers to recommend to her the same 
 course, but not with the same ultimate object. If she 
 in the end deliberately undertook the policy of cherishing 
 the triumphant Protestants, until she found the oppor- 
 tunity for striking them a fatal blow, she had not made up 
 her mind to this project, when, in the month of June, she 
 had an open conversation on general topics with Throck- 
 morton, as if they both sought relief from the sharp con- 
 test about the ratification of the treaty. Describing the 
 interview to his own queen, he renders what Queen Mary 
 must have told him in French into very appropriate Eng- 
 lish. " Well," said she, " I will be plain with you, and tell 
 you what I would all the world should think of me. The 
 religion that I profess I take to be most acceptable to God, 
 and indeed neither do I know nor desire to know any 
 other. Constancy doth become all folks well, but none 
 better than princes, and such as have rule over realms, and 
 especially in the matter of religion. I have been brought 
 up in this religion, and who might credit me in anything 
 if I should show myself light in this case? And though 
 I am young, and not greatly learned, yet I have heard this 
 matter disputed of by my uncle my Lord Cardinal, with 
 some that thought they could say somewhat in the matter, 
 and I found therein no great reason to change mine 
 opinion." Here the ambassador put in that the Cardinal 
 
 ^ Memoirs, 88. 
 
VISITORS BEFORE THE RETURN, 1560-61. 1 3 
 
 had confessed to the gross abuses and disorderliness 
 among the clergy. Yes, she admitted that to be true; she 
 had ofttuTies heard her uncle say the hke. The admission 
 did not touch her fidelity ; in fact at that period it was a 
 sign of sincerity or of bigotry when a professor of the old 
 religion lamented the corruptions of the hierarchy and the 
 viciousness of the men who held conspicuous rank in it. 
 She was plausible, it might be said genial, when the am- 
 bassador pressed her on the hard issues of irreconcilable 
 beliefs. A firm adherent of the old Church, she would 
 not constrain her subjects, — but in this her sense was that 
 she would be lenient and gracious towards them in their 
 transgression ; not that they had a right to think for them- 
 selves. Her assurances of toleration were overshadowed 
 by the assertion of supreme authority. The ambassador 
 pleading against constraint on consciences because the 
 duty due to God could not be given to another, she put 
 it emphatically that God commanded subjects to be 
 obedient to their princes.^ 
 
 The Earl of Bedford, with instructions dated the 12th of 
 January 1561, was sent to strengthen the English mission 
 by co-operation with Throckmorton. The two were directed 
 to recommend Queen Mary to allow her subjects to be 
 ruled by their own laws, in the hands of such natural-born 
 subjects as were found most capable to administer them. 
 They were to remind her how well Scotland had been 
 governed for her ever since the French troops had been 
 driven out. They were to point out how, when her royal 
 sister sent an army to Scotland, it was for no advantage 
 to her own crown or kingdom. Nothing had been at- 
 tempted for the aggrandisement of England ; on the con- 
 trary, she had given all aid to the wardens of the marches 
 to put down the outlaws, murderers, and thieves on both 
 sides of the border, and to keep good order. They were 
 to enlarge on such topics without coming to the particular 
 matter of the ratification of the treaty of Edinburgh, unless 
 Queen Mary herself were to open that question. If she do 
 not, then in the end they must. They are to complain of the 
 
 ^ Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 151. 
 
14 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 vain delays during the king's life, and press the matter home. 
 If it were ground of dubiety or hesitation that the King 
 of France, who had been a party to the treaty, was dead, 
 then let it be amended so as to accept complete fulfilment 
 by Queen Mary's own confirmation. Let them do anything 
 to accomplish the vital object. Queen Mary's abandonment 
 of her claims on England.^ They did their duty accord- 
 ingly ; and it might be said that their pertinacity in this 
 matter extended to rudeness and even to cruelty, were it 
 not that they could plead the vital interests at stake as 
 an excuse for earnest endeavour. 
 
 If these experienced statesmen expected to mould the 
 beautiful young widow in her solitude and sorrows to 
 L their purpose they were mistaken. What they chiefly 
 gained after repeated audiences was the assurance that 
 their mistress was to have a dangerous neighbour, so far 
 as plausibility and seductive influence might go. On the 
 very weakness of her condition as a new-made widow 
 among strangers, she founded an insuperable barrier 
 against all their eflbrts. She was young, she was igno- 
 rant, she had never acted for herself — her husband took 
 all the cares and responsibilities of their high position 
 on himself while he lived. How could they ask her to 
 transact business — important business — without her proper 
 advisers about her? They pointed out that she had 
 advisers, able, experienced, and friendly, at hand in her 
 two illustrious uncles — the Duke and the Cardinal. It 
 cannot have been that she should divine how offensive 
 such an mfluence would be felt to be in Scotland, yet by 
 something like an instinct she saw that there was reason 
 against this advice — no, they were not her proper advisers 
 in the treatment of her realm in Scotland. They were 
 themselves too wise and considerate to give her such 
 advice — they never interfered in the aflairs of Scotland. 
 Eevelations in the correspondence of the day tell another 
 story; but had she selected a poHtical position which 
 Queen Elizabeth could not turn and her own people would 
 thoroughly support, she could not have selected a better. 
 
 ^ Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 507. 
 
VISITORS BEFORE THE RETURN, 1560-61. 1 5 
 
 In fact, Queen Elizabeth had, in a manner that chafed 
 her as savouring of presumption, enjoined her, as we have 
 seen, to walk by the counsel of those native subjects of 
 her realm whose station commended them as her legiti- 
 mate advisers. This little offence served her in good pur- 
 pose. Had not the Queen of England, her most gracious 
 sister, most kindly advised her in this matter, and would 
 they, her servants, advise her to disregard the counsel so 
 vouchsafed to her by their own royal mistress ? And, as 
 appropriate to their queen's name coming up in the dis- 
 course, concerning her there was a promise unfulfilled. 
 She and her gracious sister were to exchange portraits. 
 She had sent her own, but she had not received the much- 
 desired equivalent. She begged that there might be no 
 delay about this — she could not rest until she was blessed 
 with the likeness of that dear one. Afterwards when she 
 received it, she was curious in her inquiries about the 
 accuracy of its resemblance to " her lovely face." 
 
 Bedford returned in the early spring of 1561, leaving 
 his companion to do his best alone, and him we find 
 cynically remarking in a letter to Cecil, how the injunc- 
 tion to remain at his post until he obtain the ratification 
 is equivalent to a doom of perpetual banishment. He 
 persevered, however, dutifully to the end. His opportuni- 
 ties were many; for the Queen, as if conscious of the 
 power of bafiiing him at the beginning, and feeling an en- 
 joyment in the facile use of her weapons, readily admitted 
 him to interviews. His last was at a juncture that afforded 
 his adversary a brilliant opportunity of putting him to 
 shame. It was three days before she sailed for Scotland. 
 She was at Abbeville, on her way from St Germains to 
 Calais, where the galleys awaited her arrival. She was to 
 resume her journey that evening, and had " somewhat 
 to do." That treaty — she had no copy of it at hand. 
 Throckmorton could supply the deficiency — he had it all 
 sealed and ready for signature ; but he saw, somewhat to 
 his surprise, that she needed it not to refresh her memory. 
 In a few casual remarks, lightly casting aside the possibility 
 of transacting this weighty business on a stage in a jour- 
 ney, she showed an intimate and distinct acquaintance 
 
i6 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 with all the leading and emphatic provisions of the treaty. 
 In these later interviews the ambassador got experience 
 of another of her dialectic accomplishments, finding and 
 feeling with what royal grace she could pass a sarcastic 
 rebuke on an unworthy act. She had requested from 
 Queen Elizabeth, for her protection on her way to her 
 kingdom, a safe-conduct or passport, that might be effec- 
 tual either on the sea or in England. The request was 
 refused, and Throckm.orton had to announce the refusal. 
 She took for granted that Queen Elizabeth would en- 
 deavour to intercept her. She spoke of all this with a 
 kind of easy scorn. Queen Elizabeth's father had tried 
 to kidnap her when she came to France as an infant. He 
 failed ; and perhaps Providence would be equally kind to 
 her again, and bring her safe through the traps set by his 
 daughter. And if Queen EUzabeth were successful ? Well, 
 then, she would be at the mercy, no doubt, of the person 
 who had so acted — and what would be the end? For 
 herself, simple enough ; she had but to submit to her fate, 
 whatever it might be — captivity or death : but how for the 
 other, with such a weight of infamy on her fame? ^ 
 
 1 It seems to be a question whether the passport requested by Queen 
 Mary was for permission to land in England, and travel by land to 
 Scotland, though Queen Elizabeth offered to her what she pleased 
 in the shape of a royal progi*ess, would she but ratify the treaty. 
 Throckmorton's account of the matter in his announcement of the 
 refusal is : ** Madam, — Whereas you sent lately Monsieur D'Oysel 
 to the queen my mistress, to demand her majesty's safe-conduct for 
 your free passage by sea into your realm, and to be accommodated 
 with such favours as upon events you might have need of on the 
 coast of England, and also did farther require the free passage of the 
 said Monsieur D'Oysel into Scotland through England : the queen 
 my mistress hath not thought good to suffer the said Monsieur D'Oysel 
 to pass into Scotland, nor to satisfy your desire for your passage 
 home ; neither for such other favours as you required to be accommo- 
 dated withal at her majesty's hands, inasmuch as you have not 
 accomplished the ratification of the treaty according to your deputies 
 in July now twelve months ago, at Edinburgh, which in honour you 
 were bound many ways to perfonn." — Keith, 8vo edition, ii. 43. 
 There seems no foundation for the belief that Queen Elizabeth had a 
 deliberate design to intercept her. Naval preparations for such an 
 act would have been known in France, and would have influenced the 
 arrangements. Too much has been founded on a casual observation 
 
HER RETURN, 156 1. 
 
 17 
 
 This refusal of a passport was deemed so serious a step 
 that the Spanish ambassador in France announced it to 
 his master as an event likely to bring war between France 
 and England. He observes that it was a gratuitous in- 
 
 in a letter of Cecil's : The queen's majesty hath three ships in the 
 North Seas to preserve the fishers from pirates — I think these will be 
 sorry to see her pass." The significance of such brief remarks de- 
 pends on the context, and this is supplied in Wright's Queen Eliza- 
 beth (i. 67-69), where the letter it belongs to is printed at length. It 
 would appear that these ships actually met the galleys and let them 
 pass, if Cecil was rightly informed when he wrote to Throckmorton, 
 saying: '*The queen's majesty's ships that were upon the seas to 
 cleanse them from pirates saw her and saluted her galleys ; and stay- 
 ing her ships, examined them of pirates, and dismissed them gently ; 
 one Scottish ship they detained, as vehemently suspected of piracy " 
 — (Hardwicke's State Papers, 176). In construing this intelligence 
 the difference of treatment towards galleys and ships must be noted. 
 Though it does not appear that as an act of national policy Queen 
 Elizabeth's Government intended to intercept Queen Mary in her 
 voyage, yet it seems to have been in the view of subordinates that 
 they might do acceptable service by seizing accidental opportunities. 
 For instance, the Earl of Rutland tells Cecil how he was adver- 
 tised by a man from Bridlington that about four o'clock of the pre- 
 vious day, eight galleys and sixteen great ships were visible — it is 
 not easy to reconcile this apparition with Brantome's : **Elle trou- 
 vera au port deux galeres, . . . et deux navires de charge seule- 
 ment pour tout armement" (p. 1 10). The earl states that he had 
 sent ' * Mr Strickland " to use all diligence and circumspection in the 
 matter, giving this significant account of his duty : ** It is thought they 
 will draw to the shore, which, if they do, and arrive, I have given 
 such order as I nothing doubt but ye shall hear good news of her 
 stay." — Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 254. It might account 
 for interruptions and alarms, that there was a serious difficulty at that 
 time between England and Spain, arising out of charges that English 
 pirates had plundered Spanish vessels. In the course of the diplo- 
 matic correspondence on this point it was maintained on the part of 
 England that some of the guilty vessels belonged to Scotsmen, and 
 that others had sought refuge by running into the narrow seas of Scot- 
 land, where English ships were endeavouring to trace them. And 
 then all this petty complexity about the designs of Queen Elizabeth 
 and the attempts to effect them is simplified, if we are to believe a 
 brief announcement of Randolph, who was in Edinburgh at the time 
 of the arrival and ravenous for news : " She never met or saw ships 
 upon the sea, for all the bruit that was of her stay that should have 
 been" (ibid.) From casual remarks in the letters of the period, it 
 seems possible that some diligent investigator may find that Queen 
 Elizabeth thought better of the matter and granted the safe-conduct. 
 VOL IV. • B 
 
i8 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 suit; for Queen Elizabeth must know that information 
 about the movements of the EngHsh fleet could be so 
 easily and fully obtained at Calais, that Queen Mary might 
 time her voyage with almost a certainty of safely com- 
 pleting it. The refusal had an ugly and discourteous aspect, 
 and yet something can be said for Queen Elizabeth in the 
 matter. She was asked to permit a pretender to her 
 throne to pass through England. She put the granting 
 of the passports and the ratifying of the treaty of Edin- 
 burgh as equivalents. Let Queen Mary abandon her 
 claims by signing the treaty — then she would be received 
 in England with all honour and hospitality.^ 
 
 Queen Mary embarked to return to Scotland on the 
 14th of August 1 56 1. She and her escort sailed from 
 Calais in two of the galleys then almost peculiar to France, 
 as vessels which went before the wind when they could, 
 and were rowed by galley-slaves on benches at other 
 times. Two ordinary sailing vessels attended, the whole 
 making a fleet of four. She was well escorted. There 
 were with her, besides many minor nobles of France, her 
 two_uncles, the Duke of Aumale and the Marquis of El- 
 boeuf ; her two adorers. Marshal d'Amville, and Chastellar, 
 whose adoration afterwards cost him so dear. There was 
 Strozzi — apparently the son of the general who besieged St 
 Andrews — and La None, afterwards known in the Hugue- 
 not wars as Bras de Fer.^ By far the most interesting, how- 
 ever, of her attendants to us at the present day was Bran- 
 tome, who sailed in the same galley with her.^ Her conduct 
 during the voyage has been treasured and told in various 
 
 ^ Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 1560-61, p. 574; 1561-62, 
 p. 46, 58, 166, 67, 179, 187, 196, 244. Letters from Throckmorton, 
 Keith (8vo ed.), ii. 26 et seq, 
 
 2 M. de Castelneau, 1. iii. ch. i. 
 
 ^ It might be inferred from what Leslie says, that she was then 
 accompanied by her evil genius, Bothwell : **Not long efter, the 
 Earls Bothwell and Eglintoun, the Bishop of Orkney, and sindry 
 other noblemen and clerks, arrivet in France, wha returnet in Scot- 
 land with the queen's majesty again." — P. 295. In the Latin ver- 
 sion, Bothwell's going to France is mentioned ; but in the train 
 coming to Scotland with the queen, only the French are mentioned, 
 as in Bran tome. The author of a contemporary diary says : Upon 
 the 21 day of Februar, my Lord Bothwell landed in Scotland out of 
 France." — Diurnal of Occurrents, 64. 
 
HER RETURN, 1561. 
 
 19 
 
 shapes ; but as the original source of all of them is a few 
 precious sentences by that vivid writer in his little book 
 ' DesJDames Illustres,' it may be well to adhere to what 
 is so~said. A light wind sprang up, the crew of galley- 
 slaves were released from their labours, and the sails set. 
 As the lumbering vessels moved slowly away, the queen 
 sat beside the helm, as the place where she would be 
 nearest the land she was leaving. She gazed on it with 
 her fine eyes, and wept bitterly throughout the remaining 
 five hours of daylight, repeating over and over the simple 
 words," Adieu, France ! " When the sight of land faded 
 into the darkness, she uttered passionate words about the 
 jealous night drawing its curtain before her, and with tears 
 falling faster and faster, exclaimed that the sight of France 
 was now lost to her — she would never see it more. She 
 then became conversible, and spoke of herself with her 
 eyes bent on the land, dropping a sentiment about her re- 
 versing the attitude of Dido, who, when .^neas departed, 
 ever gazed on the sea. She slept on the deck, desiring 
 the pilot to waken her immediately, should the land be- 
 come again visible at dawn. The wind fell, and the slaves 
 were set to their slow labours again, so that next morning 
 the coast was still to be seen; and sitting up, she looked on 
 it till it vanished, crying — "Adieu la France, cela est fait! 
 Adieu la France, je pense ne vous voir jamais plus ! " The 
 queen reached her dominion through the port of Leith on 
 the morning of the 19th of August. The voyage was made 
 with unusual rapidity — in four days, as it appears. The 
 event was not expected. ^ The arrival of their queen was 
 announced to the nearest inhabitants by the discharge of 
 the guns mounted on the galleys. Whatever arrangements 
 were in preparation for the event had not been completed, 
 and the contrast betweeen Scotland and France was 
 rather exaggerated than modified. She and her following 
 
 ^ Randolph, writing a week later, says : * * The noblemen were all 
 absent, saving the Lord Robert ; her arrival was so sudden, that no 
 man thought of her. Incontinent upon the news there arrived 
 the duke first, next the Lord James, then the Earl of Arran. Since 
 that time the repair has been great of all sorts. All men welcome — 
 all men well received ; good entertainment, good cheer, and fair 
 words." — Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 278. 
 
20 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 had to wait some time at Leith ere horses — there were 
 no carriages — could be procured for them. Brantome, 
 whose narrative still accompanies us, says the queen burst 
 into tears at the sorry contrast with the gorgeous proces- 
 sions of France. He says nothing more, however, against 
 the equipage, save that it consisted of the horses of the 
 country, with conformable harness ; but this he seems to 
 have thought enough. 
 
 Some zealous citizens sought to enliven her first night 
 at Holyrood by a serenade, in which it is said that fiddles 
 with three strings bore a conspicuous and discordant part. 
 Whatever effect the discord may have had on the queen 
 herself, it seems to have grated direfully on the nerves of 
 Brantome, who describes the attempt as some five or six 
 hundred ^' marauds " performing on mechans violons and 
 petits rebecs ; continuing, by way of aggravation apparently, 
 that the music, abominably performed by them, partook 
 of the nature of psalmody. The serenade is described by 
 an observer of a different order in Knox^s History, where 
 we are told that a company of most honest men, with 
 instruments of music and with musicians, gave their salu- 
 tations at her chamber window," and that the queen said 
 the melody " liked her well," and she wished the same to 
 be continued some nights after. 
 
 The spoilt beauty expected to find in the land of her 
 destiny a dreary contrast with that of her adoption, and 
 she found her expectations fully realised. France, though 
 now more closely and economically cultivated, scarcely 
 bears to outward appearance a richer raiment of civilised 
 fruitfulness than it * did then. Wherever royalty was 
 likely to resort, there were palaces and chateaus, walled 
 towns, fine churches, and great stretches of pleasure-ground. 
 Scotland was yet ignorant of the high cultivation which 
 has warmed her cold landscape and softened her dreary 
 winds. There was a greater contrast even in the people 
 than in the country. England was behind France in a 
 certain kind of civilisation ; the Court and the aristocracy 
 were more home-spun and yeoman-like. Scotland was a 
 much greater distance behind England, and lacked the 
 solid respectability which was then ripening into a civili- 
 
HER RETURN, 1561. 
 
 21 
 
 sation more firm and true than that of France. The com- 
 mon people of Scotland were perhaps as well oft as those 
 of France, but they were not subdued to the same sub- 
 missive order, being self-willed, boisterous, and, down to 
 the very humblest grade, even proud. 
 
 In France, the Court, through its power and wealth, 
 could effectually isolate itself from the people, clearing 
 away whatever was sordid and disagreeable, all around. 
 In Scotland, the common people, such as they were, 
 pressed close around the palace-door, and haunted royalty 
 wherever it went. The contrast between the two na- 
 tions, thus considerable in the lowest sphere of society, 
 increased rather than diminished with the ascending 
 grades, and was greatest among the courtiers immediately 
 surrounding the throne. There were many country 
 seigneurs in France, who practised rough hospitality and 
 tyranny in their own domains, and were seen but on rare 
 occasions at Court, where they were the objects of ridicule 
 and horror. But those Vv^ho frequented the Court had 
 mounted as high in the scale of external elegance and fas- 
 tidiousness as the world has ever reached. Though cor- 
 roding vices were eating all morality out of it, the Court 
 abounded in as much elegant luxury and external refine- 
 ment as it has ever known at any later age. There was a 
 high polish in the very vices of the period. If there were 
 gluttony and drunkenness, they exercised themselves in 
 the most skilfully prepared meats and costly wines. 
 French cookery had made wonderful strides as a skilful 
 art, and had produced one master-mind. Sensuality in- 
 dulged itself in exquisite works of art and inspired poetry. 
 The men even were profuse in silks and velvets, indulged 
 in perfumes, and kept diminutive monkeys and silky 
 spaniels as pets. Murder itself was refined, by a preference 
 of subtle poisons, skilfully prepared, over the bloody 
 brawls of earlier times. A portion of these vices and tri- 
 vialities, covered with a thin polish, had been transferred 
 by the French courtiers to their faithful aUies of Scotland ; 
 but these tended rather to expose and aggravate than 
 to subdue the natural character of the Scots aristocracy. 
 Their dress was that of the camp or the stable ; they were 
 
22 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 dirty in person, and abrupt and disrespectful in manner, 
 carrying on their disputes, and even fighting out their 
 fierce quarrels, in the presence of royalty, which had by 
 no means accomplished the serene imperial isolation which 
 the sovereigns of France had achieved since the days of 
 Francis I. 
 
 One man, called in the correspondence of the day Cap- 
 tain Hepburn/' gained notoriety by excelling his neigh- 
 bours in intrusive insolence to the young queen. While 
 she was in a group of courtiers talking to Sir Harry Sydney, 
 he slipped a packet into her hand. If Randolph's ac- 
 count of what was within it be accurate, he might well 
 say that he knew not in what honest terms to describe it. 
 There were obscene poetic descriptions made emphatic 
 by pictorial illustrations — altogether such a morsel as de- 
 corous people might imagine — but are not likely to have 
 ever seen — adjusted to gratify the lusts of those frequent- 
 ing the lowest resorts of brutal profligacy.^ 
 
 It was one redeeming feature of the close pressure of 
 the sordid elements of life on the presence of royalty, that 
 it gave opportunity to the sovereign to show kindness and 
 amiability — and of these qualities the queen had ever a 
 store at command. She had been trained in a land 
 heavily laden with human misery and degradation, but it 
 was all kept out of sight of royal eyes. Had it been vis- 
 ible and accessible it had been found all too mighty, as it 
 was for centuries after, to be mitigated by royal tender- 
 ness. But the humble poverty in the smaller country was 
 a lighter difficulty. She interested herself about the poor 
 in various ways, and we find the English resident in admi- 
 ration of her patient and judicious efforts to see them 
 righted in the courts of law, stimulating the organisation 
 for the assistance and protection of pauper litigants, and 
 sometimes attending the courts while their causes were in 
 process. It was in the nature of the Stewart kings to act 
 
 ^ Captain Hepburn's name has come down in this story only. 
 Randolph says he is requested by the queen to write to Lord Grey 
 for the apprehension of Captain Hepburn, who played of late a most 
 shameful part with her grace, and has fled into England." — Calen- 
 dar of State Papers (Foreign), loth August 1562. 
 
HER RETURN, 1561. 
 
 23 
 
 popularly and kindly to their humbler subjects, as we have 
 seen especially in her father's history; and it happens 
 that there are vestiges of a practical interest taken in the 
 cause of the friendless litigant by her mother, who, like 
 herself, had little opportunity for the exercise of such amia- 
 bilities before her abode in Scotland. 
 
 With the exception of a few castles which had been 
 built in the French style, the best families were crowded 
 into narrow square towers, in which all available means 
 had been exhausted in strength, leaving nothing for com- 
 fort or elegance. The royal residences were little better. 
 The more roomy portions of Linlithgow, Stirling, and Falk- 
 land, as we now see them, did not then exist. Holyrood, 
 though then very different from what it now is, was pro- 
 bably an exception to the general sordidness. It was 
 the new palace, and was consequently built up to the 
 taste and luxury of the age. It had been completed but 
 •a few years previously by James V. The park included 
 the fine mountain-range of Arthur Seat. The lands of 
 Duddingston, with their loch, had just been added to it ; 
 and thus, with rocks, trees, and water, the palace and its 
 .park bore some faint analogy to the glories of Fontaine- 
 bleau. 
 
 On one important point a difference between the two 
 Courts was disagreeably and alarmingly conspicuous — the 
 unprotected condition of the sovereign and her Court, 
 from the want of any armed force, whose duty it was to 
 guard the royal person. In France, besides many other 
 armed retainers of the household, there was the thor- 
 oughly disciplined body of the Scots Guard — mercenary 
 foreigners, in the usual phraseology of later times, but at 
 the same time a body of honourable tried men, entirely 
 devoted to their employer, and by their foreign birth dis- 
 connected with the native aristocracy, against whom they 
 were the crown's chief support. 
 
 Ayhile every head of a considerable family in Scotland, 
 down to the humblest landowner, had some regular armed 
 following, the crown alone had none. The feudal tenants 
 of the crown were bound, indeed, to furnish their quotas 
 to the national armament; bxit the troops so assembled 
 
24 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 were entirely under their feudal leaders, and were often 
 questionable supporters, if not dangerous neighbours, to 
 the sovereign. Memorable incidents, some of which 
 were yet to come, show how unprotected the royal per- 
 son might be in Scotland. The early Stewart kings were 
 men and soldiers who could always manage to keep a 
 force of some sort at their call : but Mary severely felt 
 the want of a permanent armed body, whose duty it was 
 without interference on her part, to be always protecting 
 her and her feminine Court — and her son was scarcely 
 better fitted to dispense with it. All Mary's efforts, how- 
 ever, to establish a royal guard, were, like the attempt of 
 her mother, sternly resisted, calling out a deep national 
 antipathy to anything approaching to the character of a 
 standing army. When an alarm arose in the palace that 
 the crazy Earl of Arran was going to seize the queen, 
 and sudden efforts were made for her protection against 
 dangers which soon turned out to be unreal, she was 
 suspected of having planned the cause of alarm to prove 
 the necessity of establishing a household guard.^ 
 
 On the 2d of September, a fortnight after her landing, 
 she had to undergo the ordeal of a popular demonstra- 
 tion by the citizens of Edinburgh. They were to make 
 a "propine" or goodwill - offering to her.^ It was a 
 present of a cupboard double overgilt," which had cost 
 2000 merks. The giving of it was to be the occasion of 
 a pageant, which was to salute her in a progress through 
 the city. It was witnessed by one who chronicled in their 
 order the events of the time, and the show delighted him, 
 so far as to inspire some spirit into a narrative, the general 
 merits of which are to be found in the brevity and pre- 
 cision with which he states in their proper order of 
 sequence the events of that stirring period.^ 
 
 ^ See Knox, ii. 293. 
 
 2 This term, **propine" or **propyne," rarely if at all used in 
 England, was a favourite in Scotland in the sixteenth century. It is 
 of classic and convivial origin, coming from the Greek and Latin for 
 handing the partially-drained cup to the guest, or in English lyrical 
 phraseology, * * passing the bowl. " 
 
 ^ The crisis of the pageant is as follows : — 
 And thereafter, when she was rydand down the Castellhill, thair 
 
HER RETURN, 1561. 
 
 25 
 
 The Protestant clergy, and those of their political par- 
 tisans who were also their followers in religion, had mixed 
 the sentiment of the English Puritan with the Calvinism of 
 the Huguenots, and disliked exhibitions and pastimes. 
 On this occasion, however, there was something to pro- 
 pitiate them. There was the significant presentation of a 
 Bible to the Popish queen ; and the children resembling 
 angels, who presented the propine, "made some speech 
 concerning the putting away of the mess, and thereafter 
 sang ane psalm.'' ^ 
 
 There were pageants or exhibitions of a less innocent 
 character, which yet had a tendency that made them not 
 entirely unwelcome to the Congregation. These were the 
 ritualistic revels, called by the French the fetes des foux. 
 They are not to be confounded with the legitimate mys- 
 
 met hir hienes ane convoy of the young men of the said burgh, to the 
 nomber of fyftie or thairby, thair bodeis and theis coverit with yellow 
 taffateis, thair amies and leggs, fra the kne doun, bair, cullorit with 
 blak, in maner of Moris, upon thair heiddes blak hattis, and on thair 
 faces blak visouris, in thair mouthis rings, garnesit with intellable 
 precious staneis, about thair nekkis, leggis, and armes insynit of 
 chenis of gold ; togidder with saxtene of the maist honest men of the 
 toun, cled in velvet gownis and velvet bonettis, berand and gangand 
 about the paill under the whilk hir hienes raid, whilk paill wes of 
 fyne purpour velvet lynit with reid taffateis, freingiet with gold and 
 silk ; and after thame wes ane cart with certane bairnes, togidder 
 with ane coffer whairin wes the copburd and propyne whilk suld be 
 propynit to hir hienes. And when hir grace come fordwart to the 
 butter-trone of the said burgh, the nobilitie and convoy foirsaid pre- 
 cedand, at the whilk butter-trone thair was ane port made of tymber 
 in maist honourable maner, cullorit with fyne cuUouris, hungin with 
 syndrie armes, upoun the whilk port wes singand certane barneis in 
 the meist hevinlie wyis ; under the whilk port thair wes ane cloud 
 opynnand with four levis, in the whilk was put ane bonny barne. And 
 when the quenes hienes was cumand throw the said port, the said 
 cloude opynnit, and the barne discendit doun as it had bene ane angell, 
 and deliverit to her hienes the keyis of the toun, togidder with ane 
 Bybill and ane Psalme-buik coverit with fyne purpourit velvet ; and 
 after the said barne had spoken some small speitches, he deliverit 
 alsua to hir hienes thre writtingis, the tennour thairof is uncertane. 
 That being done, the barne ascendit in the cloud, and the said clud 
 stekit." — Diurnal of Occurrents, 67. 
 
 ^ Ibid. See an account of the same pageant, Knox's History, ii. 
 287, 288. He says, **The verses of her own praise she heard, and 
 smiled ; but when the Bible was presented, and the praise thereof 
 declared, she began to frown." 
 
26 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 teries, which were attempts, however unseemly, to impress 
 religious notions on the people by the acting of the criti- 
 cal events in Scripture history in such a manner as to seize 
 the attention and attract the admiration of the uninstructed. 
 The others had nothing in them professing to aim at the 
 reverent or devout, but were acts of profane ribaldry, of 
 which the point was the travestying, by some lewd and 
 brutal antithesis, the most solemn ordinances of the 
 Church. They were generally pinned to something or 
 other in sacred history. Conspicuous among them was 
 the Feast of Asses. Its chief actor was the ass of Balaam, 
 or one supposed to stand beside the manger, or that on 
 which the Saviour rode. Whichever it might be, a donkey 
 clad in grotesque canonicals was brought into the most 
 sacred parts of the church, and there a brutal mob made 
 sport of the beast to the full satiety of their lust of the 
 profane. Another feast, more formidable if less disgust- 
 ing, was dedicated to the Innocents, and brought the 
 whole children of the neighbourhood to do their will 
 among the vestments, ornaments, and shrines of the 
 church. These things had been allowed to become an 
 established formula of the decorous Church of Rome. 
 How they arose, is a mystery which has defied solution. 
 It has a literature of its own, and is worthy of far more 
 zealous efforts to reach its causes and early history than 
 any yet made. 
 
 If such observances were troublesome when the Church 
 was powerful and revered, it is easy to believe what they 
 vv^ould become when it was tottering to its fall. If there 
 were rules by which the licensed ribaldry was restrained 
 and measured out, the populace broke through them. 
 They could thus, in following up old traditional usages of 
 the Church, inflict the most stinging insults on the priest- 
 hood; and if the Church had thus provided a means of 
 mortal injury in the house of its friends, its enemies were 
 not naturally called on to interfere for its relief. 
 
 But the populace was impartial, and would have the 
 revels condemned by the new Church as well as those 
 that might offend the old. Queen Mary had arrived 
 almost in time to find the city of Edinburgh tossed by a 
 
DIALOGUE WITH KNOX, 1561. 2/ 
 
 bloody tumult. The tradesmen of the city would have 
 the old pageant of Robin Hood and Little John. The 
 Congregation would not abide it, and they had an Act of 
 Parliament for its suppression, on their side. A riotous 
 shoemaker was committed to the Tolbooth — the well- 
 known Heart of Mid-Lothian. He was so far implicated 
 that death was to be his doom. We see the influence at 
 work in this rigid act, when we are told that his friends 
 besought John Knox to procure his release ; but Knox of 
 course was obdurate, and would " do nothing but have 
 him hangit." His comrades collected. They seized and 
 locked up the magistrates, and tore down the gibbet; 
 next they battered in the door of the prison and released 
 their comrade, while, with a good-fellowship common to 
 such occasions, they permitted all the inmates of the 
 prison to escape. There was no force sufficient to con- 
 tend with them, and the magistrates were glad to make 
 terms on the foundation of a general amnesty.^ 
 
 To return to the young queen, set down amid all these 
 contending elements, great and small. She had many 
 difficulties to deal with, formidable among which was that 
 she, a thorough devotee of the Church of Rome, had ^- 
 come among a people of whom the greater portion, in- 
 cluding all the ruling men, had become Protestants. 
 There was little toleration in that age, and it was a thing 
 undreamed of in France, whence both parties took their 
 principles. When at any time there was religious quiet- 
 ness there, and Protestants had rights as well as their op- 
 ponents, it was in reality but a truce between enemies 
 prepared soon to fly at each other's throats — each abstain- 
 ing only because the other was too nearly his equal in 
 strength to be easily prostrated. 
 
 The contest broke out on the first Sunday after her 
 arrival. It was known, of course, that she would hear 
 private mass in her chapel; and whether on the grounds 2 
 of Christian toleration, or of the promises made to her, it 
 was useless to argue with men who, in the words of Knox, 
 " began openly to speak, ' Shall that idol be suffered to 
 
 ^ Diurnal of Occurrents, 65. 
 
28 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 take place again within this realm ? It shall not;' or with 
 the Master of Lindsay and his followers from Fife, "The 
 idolater priest shall die the death according to God's 
 law/' Some violence was done to a priest carrying a 
 candle ; and the chapel would have been burst open had 
 not the Lord James defended the door — an act for which 
 he was rebuked by Knox, who says in conclusion, " And 
 so the godly departed with great grief of heart/' 
 
 A proclamation was issued, denouncing, on the one 
 hand, as penal, any attempt to interfere with the form of 
 religion which the queen found publicly and universally 
 standing at her arrival in the realm ; and, on the other 
 hand, requiring that her French followers should not be 
 molested in the private exercise of their religion. In- 
 spired by a bold thought, however, the queen resolved to 
 go to the root of the evil, and endeavour to talk over the 
 formidable head of the Church. In demanding an inter- 
 view with Knox, there is little doubt that she anticipated 
 a triumph from her never-failing blandishments ; and she 
 courted the ordeal of the discussion as one seeks an arena 
 where triumph seems secure. She had seen little in 
 France to prepare her for the rugged nature on which she 
 was to play her wit and allurements. No other person 
 was present in the same room but the Lord James. It 
 has been said that the Reformer treated the queen on the 
 occasion with gross insult. It is probable that he did 
 not observe very closely the complicated etiquettes of 
 the French Court ; but neither would the Scots nobles 
 of the day, Protestant or Romish. Her grave brother 
 would, doubtless, have protected her from absolute insult, 
 had any been offered. Though there are many accounts 
 of this renowned dialogue, the one given by Knox him- 
 self in his History is the source of all the others, and to 
 that we must go back as the sole authority for the scene.^ 
 It is extremely picturesque and lifelike, and has the ap- 
 pearance of doing honest justice to the ready wit of the 
 queen, as it certainly does to the relentless bigotry of the 
 
 ^ History, ii. 277 et seq. 
 
DIALOGUE WITH KNOX, 1561. 
 
 29 
 
 narrator. She first rallied him on his attacks upon 
 feminine rule in the tract which had been his stumbling- 
 block with Queen Elizabeth — the Blast of the Trumpet 
 against the monstrous Regiment of Women. He seems 
 to have felt that, with matters of difference behind it far 
 more serious, he need not have a contest on this with the 
 Popish queen; and it was easily, if not gracefully, got 
 over. He did not deny his objection to feminine rule, 
 but he did not intend specially to attack her title — " that 
 book was written most especially against that wicked 
 Jezebel of England," Mary Tudor. For his part in the 
 particular instance before him, if the realm finds no in- 
 convenience from the regiment of a woman,'' that which 
 his countrymen approve he shall not gainsay, but shall 
 be as well content to live under her grace as Paul was 
 to live under Nero.'' He afterwards, however, gave a 
 casual but significant inference to this strong comparison, 
 by arguments which referred to Paul living quietly at 
 Rome because he was powerless and could not resist, 
 while the Paul of Edinburgh was powerful, and had 
 another line of duty before him. The queen turned the 
 argument on resistance to princes. Her opponent asked, 
 what would have been the fate of mankind had all 
 adopted the religion of their princes — had Abraham 
 worshipped with Pharaoh, and the apostles submitted to 
 the religion of the Roman emperors ? " and so, madam, 
 ye may perceive that subjects are not bound to the 
 religion of their princes, albeit they are commanded to 
 give them obedience.'' With a ready dialectic power of 
 which the Reformer, hurried on by his zeal, seems to 
 have been unconscious, the queen marked off the differ- 
 ence between passive resistance, in which each subject 
 individually worships according to his own conscience 
 without regarding the religion of the ruler, and that de 
 sire to coerce the ruler to his own views, of which she 
 accused Knox. But the very words of this portion of the 
 dialogue are necessary to express its import. The queen 
 remarked that none of those he had referred to raised 
 their sword against their princes. 
 
30 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 " ' Yet, madam/ quoth he, ' ye cannot deny but that 
 they resisted ; for they that obey not the commandments 
 that are given, in some sort resist/ 
 
 * But yet,' said she, ' they resisted not by the sword/ 
 ' God,' said he, * madam, had not given unto them the 
 power and the means/ 
 
 " * Think ye,' quoth she, ^ that subjects having power 
 may resist their princes?' 
 
 "^If their princes exceed their bounds,' quoth he, 
 ^ and do against that wherefor they should be obeyed, it 
 is no doubt but what they may be resisted even by power. 
 For there is neither greater honour nor greater obedience 
 to be given to kings or princes than God has commanded 
 to be given unto father and mother. But so it is, madam, 
 that the father may be stricken by a frenzy in the which 
 he would slay his own children. Now, madam, if the 
 children arise, join themselves together, apprehend the 
 father, take the sword or other weapons from him, and 
 finally bind his hands and keep him in prison till that his 
 frenzy be overpast, think ye, madam, that the children do 
 any wrong? Or think ye, madam, that God will be 
 offended with them that have stayed their father to com- 
 mit wickedness ? It is even so,' said he, * madam, with 
 princes that would murder the children of God that are 
 subject unto them. Their blind zeal is nothing but a very 
 mad frenzy ; and therefore to take the sword from them, 
 to bind their hands, and to cast themselves in prison till 
 that he be brought to a more sober mind, is no disobedi- 
 ence against princes, but just obedience, because that it 
 agreeth with the will of God."' 
 
 The narrator here tells us that at these words the 
 queen stood, as it were, amazed more than a quarter of an 
 hour." Nor can this be wondered at, if she saw the full 
 import of the exposition, as showing that her profession 
 of Romanism was like the frenzy of the parent — a thing 
 which entitled the children to seize and bind, in self-pro- 
 tection against the bloody consequences. She spoke of 
 her conscience, but was told that conscience required 
 knowledge, and it was to be feared that of the right know- 
 ledge she had none. But she had heard and read — so 
 
THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY, 1561. 31 
 
 hild the Jews who crucified Christ ; they heard the law 
 and the prophets, she the Pope and the cardinals. "*Ye 
 interpret the Scriptures/ said she, * in one manner, and 
 they interpret in ane other — whom shall I believe, and 
 who shall judge?'" The answer is ready. "^Ye shall 
 believe,' said he, ' God that plainly speaketh in His 
 Word ; ' " or, as a duller mind than hers would plainly see, 
 she must obey Knox and the Congregation. Throughout 
 the whole dialogue he does not yield the faintest shred of 
 liberty of conscience, or leave it for one moment doubtful 
 that the queen has any other course before her save sub- 
 mission. 
 
 And yet the interview seems in some measure to have 
 warped the stern rigidity of his original purpose. He 
 joined with those who were for giving her a trial, a back- 
 sliding of which he seems afterwards to have bitterly re- 
 pented. It was plainly put, he says, that " she will be 
 content to hear the preaching ; and so, no doubt, but 
 she may be won — and thus of all it was concluded to 
 suffer her for a time." "So careful was I," he con- 
 tinues, " of that common tranquillity, and so loath was 
 I to have offended those of whom I had conceived a 
 good opinion, that in secret conference with earnest 
 and zealous men I have travailed rather to mitigate, 
 yea, to sloken that fervency that God had kindled in 
 others, than to animate or encourage them to put their 
 hands to the Lord's work — whereintil I unfeignedly ac- 
 knowledge myself to have done most wickedly." 
 
 This view of the state of the Reformer's mind at 
 that juncture is singularly confirmed by a remarkable 
 letter written by him to Calvin, which has been lately 
 found. It is dated from Edinburgh on the 24th of 
 October 1561. It is the more curious as a private 
 pouring out of its writer's griefs, that Knox had offered 
 his services to obtain the opinion of Calvin and the 
 fathers of the Geneva Church on the course which the 
 Protestants should pursue in Scotland, and was stayed 
 by Lethington, who offered to take that duty on himself 
 — he was trimming at the time between the Court and 
 the Congregation, and Knox charged him with making 
 
32 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 the offer as an expedient to gain time.^ Whatever 
 Lethington may have done, the researches of the French 
 antiquaries have shown, by producing the very docu- 
 ment, that Knox was not to be deterred from his pur- 
 pose of consulting Calvin.^ It is the letter of a man 
 sad at heart, and sincerely penitent for not having, in 
 the hour of trial, been strong enough to do the stern duty 
 which his faith demanded of him, and now willing to 
 atone. He tells the mournful news that the idolatrous 
 mass had again been set up in purified Scotland. There 
 were those of gravity and authority who had thought that 
 they could not in conscience stand by and permit this 
 thing to be done. It had been pleaded that the clergy of 
 Geneva, and himself, Calvin, had expressed an opinion 
 that they were not entitled to prohibit the queen from 
 openly professing her own religion. He desires to know 
 if this is true ; he courteously acknowledges how trouble- 
 some he has been for advice, but there is no other bosom 
 on which he can repose his cares. He had never before 
 seen how formidable and difficult it was to contend with 
 hypocrisy, disguised under the name of piety. Never, in 
 the midst of his hardest struggle with open enemies, had 
 he despaired of victory ; but so wounded was he by this 
 perfidious defection from Christ — which its perpetrators 
 chose to term indulgence — that strength was failing him 
 for the labour before him. 
 
 It is probable that this letter never reached its desti- 
 nation. The answer it would have received can be easily 
 anticipated. Even the faint remaining scruples enter- 
 tained by Knox himself would -have been at once dis- 
 persed by the conclusive logic of him who knew no doubts, 
 and permitted no paltering between truth and error. We 
 have here the beginning of a series of events in which it 
 will be seen that, when it came to actual deeds, the Scots 
 nation shrank from enforcing the rules of faith and 
 action which they received from the sanguinary Hugue- 
 nots.^ 
 
 ^ Knox, ii. 292. 
 
 ^ See the letter, which is in Latin, with a facsimile, Teulet, ii. 12. 
 3 Dr M'Crie, criticising the observation of an anonymous French 
 
THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY, 1561. 33 
 
 Knox, before he wrote this letter, had in reality seen 
 grounds for penitence in the alarming reaction towards 
 Romanism. The Congregation had gradually lost a good 
 deal of that absolute power which seemed to leave it as 
 a question of discretion with them whether they would 
 tolerate their sovereign's religion or not The magistrates 
 of Edinburgh had been in the practice, on their election, 
 of issuing a proclamation against certain classes of crimi- 
 nals and profligates, calling them by names which, how- 
 ever appropriate, it is not now deemed decorous need- 
 lessly to repeat. On this occasion they added to the list 
 the " massmongers '' and the obstinate Papists, that 
 corrupted the people;" which, blown in the queen's 
 ears,'' says Knox, " there began pride and maliciousness 
 to show the self." Proceedings were taken against the 
 magistrates, and the town council were constrained to ap- 
 point others in their stead, who issued a proclamation of a 
 different tenor, " and so got the devil freedom again where 
 that before he durst not have been seen in the daylight 
 upon the common streets. Lord, deliver us from that 
 bondage Such is the pious ejaculation with which the 
 Reformer relieves his mind ere he passes from this de- 
 plorable event. ^ 
 
 At a public banquet given by the city of Edinburgh to 
 the queen and her Court, including her French followers, 
 a mystery was performed, in which was enacted the de- 
 struction of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, for burning 
 strange fire on the altar. There was nothing palpable in 
 
 writer who compares Popery with Calvinism, says of the reception of 
 Queen Mary : **I maintain that, in the state of men's spirits at that 
 time, if a Huguenot queen had come to take possession of a Roman 
 Catholic kingdom with the slender retinue with which Mary went to 
 Scotland, the first thing they would have done would have been to 
 arrest her ; and if she had persevered in her religion, they would have 
 procured her degradation by the Pope, thrown her into the Inquisi- 
 tion, and burnt her as a heretic. There is not an honest man who can 
 deny this." — P. 177. Perhaps not, if the affair had taken place in 
 France or Spain. But there is no reason to suppose that any Roman 
 Catholic prince who fell under the power of the French Huguenots 
 would have experienced a better fate. 
 ^ Knox, ii. 289, 290, with Laing's notes. 
 
 VOL. IV. C 
 
34 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 this which might not tell against the one priesthood as 
 well as the other, although it might be easy to know 
 which was meant. But when the actors went on to parody 
 the mass, and burn in effigy a priest in his canonicals, the 
 Popish Earl of Huntly was permitted audaciously to sup- 
 press the performance. But there were other and more 
 serious indications of the tendency of events, insomuch 
 that " the devil, guiding his reins, ran forward in his course, 
 and the queen took upon her greater boldness than she 
 and BaaFs bleating priests durst have attempted before." ^ 
 A sort of crisis was brought on by the solemn celebration 
 of Hallow mass. A meeting of the Congregation, lords, 
 and clergy, was held in the house of Macgill, the lord 
 clerk register, where it was gravely discussed, " whether 
 that subjects might put to their hand to suppress the 
 idolatry of their prince." The laymen present, with the 
 Lord James and Lethington at their head, were for the 
 most part favourable to the proposition " that the queen 
 should have her religion free in her own chapel, to do, she 
 and her household, what they list." The ministers seem 
 to have unanimously voted against this proposition, main- 
 taining that ere long ^'her liberty should be their thral- 
 dom.'' But the lay votes carried the proposition, so far 
 as that meeting was concerned. 
 
 Another dispute among the Protestants, in which the 
 clergy, nearly alone, held one side, carried the war into 
 their own ground. They had adopted, besides the Con- 
 fession of Faith, a Book of Discipline, being an outline of 
 an organisation for the new Church. It is known as ' The 
 First Book of Discipline.' They desired that it should 
 have the sanction of the Crown and Parliament and be 
 made the law of the land. 
 
 The Protestant nobles and lairds were ready to accept 
 all denunciations of Antichrist and Popish idolatry, nor 
 did they hesitate at accepting the Calvinistic doctrines 
 of the new faith just as Knox and his assistant minis- 
 ters set them forth ^ they had, hence, at once adopted 
 the Confession of Faith in Parliament. But the Book of 
 
 ^ Knox, 291. 
 
THE BOOK OF DISCIPLINE, 1561. 
 
 35 
 
 Discipline affected practice as well as faith, and enforced 
 certain stringent restraints to which it would have been 
 inconvenient for some, who were the readiest to subscribe 
 propositions of theological metaphysics, to submit Seve- 
 ral, it is true, had found it expedient to sign the document; 
 but Lethington, with a sneer, asked how many even of 
 these would be subject to the conditions of that book ; 
 and he emphasised the taunt by saying, ^' Many sub- 
 scribed these in fide parentum^ as the bairns are baptised," 
 meaning that the subscription was but the mere temporary 
 conformity for obtaining an object, which men submit to 
 when they ask for a ceremonial such as a baptism. Knox, 
 whose ire was roused, reminded him that the book " was 
 read in public audience ; and by the space of divers days 
 the heads thereof was reasoned, as all that here sit know 
 well enough, and ye yourself cannot deny/' Another of 
 the laymen expressed the general impatience among them, 
 by telling him at once to stand content — that book will 
 not be obtained.'' " Let God," said Knox, finding farther 
 discussion useless, " require the lack which this poor com- 
 monwealth shall have of the things therein contained, from 
 the hands of such as stop the same." ^ 
 
 Elsewhere, in a general view of the dispute, he leaves 
 this emphatic testimony to the conduct and motives of his 
 lay comrades in the work of reformation, when dealing 
 with the Book of Discipline : " Some approved it, and will 
 the same had been set forth by a law. Others, perceiving 
 their carnal liberty and worldly commodity somewhat to 
 be impaired, thereby grudged, insomuch that the name of 
 the Book of Discipline became odious unto them. Every- 
 thing that impugned to their corrupt affections was called 
 in their mockage * devout imaginations.' The cause we 
 have declared : some were licentious ; some had greedily 
 gripped to the possessions of the Kirk ; and others thought 
 that they would not lack their part of Christ's coat, yea, and 
 that before that ever He was hanged, as by the preachers 
 they were oft rebuked. The chief great man that had 
 professed Christ Jesus, and refused to subscribe the Book 
 
 ^ Knox, iL 298. 
 
36 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 of Discipline, was the Lord Erskine ; and no wonder, for 
 besides that he has a very Jezebel to his wife, if the poor, 
 the schools, and the ministry of the Kirk had their own, 
 his keching would lose two parts and more of that which 
 he unjustly now possesses. Assuredly some of us have 
 wondered how men that professes godhness, should of so 
 long continuance hear the threatenings of God against 
 thieves and against their houses, and knowing themselves 
 guilty in such things as were openly rebuked, and that 
 they never had remorse of conscience, neither yet in- 
 tended to restore anything of that which long they had 
 stolen and reft. There was none within the realm more 
 unmerciful to the poor ministers than were they which had 
 greatest rents of the churches." ^ 
 
 The inspiring cause of this wath was a matter, partly in- 
 volved in the question of the Book of Discipline, which 
 also came in a separate shape. It was an affair of the 
 keenest temporal interest to both sections of the congrega- 
 tion — the lay and the spiritual ; an interest not common, 
 but antagonistic. It was the weighty question of the funds 
 on which the Reformed Church was to be supported. The 
 Protestant clergy had no fixed source of income, though 
 the Book of Discipline dealt wath them as persons entitled 
 to and obtaining a comfortable provision. There is, in- 
 deed, a savour of practical sense and worldly wisdom in 
 this portion of the original standards of the Presbyterian 
 Church, which says much for the discernment and ability 
 of its founders in matters of secular importance. After 
 setting forth the appointments and supplies proper to a 
 minister's house, in which are included forty bolls meal 
 and twenty-six bolls malt, to find his home-bread and drink," 
 there is provision for the education and up-setting of his 
 sons, and for his daughters being virtuously brought up 
 and honestly doted when they came to maturity of years." 
 These requirements, the framers of the document protest, 
 are not so much for their own sakes as for the increase of 
 virtue and learning, and the profit of the posterity to come ; 
 for " it is not to be supposed that any man will dedicate 
 
 1 Knox, ii. 128, 129. 
 
DISPOSAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL REVENUES, 1561. 37 
 
 himself and children so to God, and to serve His Kirk, that 
 they look for no warldly commodity. But this cankered 
 nature whilk we bear is provoked to follow virtue when it 
 seeth honour and profit annexed to the same; as con- 
 trarily, then, is virtue of many despised when virtuous and 
 godly men live without honour. And sorry would we be 
 that poverty should discourage men from study, and from 
 following the way of virtue, by whilk they might edify the 
 Kirk and flock of Christ Jesus." ^ 
 
 The Assembly passed some acts or orders professing to 
 exercise authority over the tithes or " spiritualities " of 
 benefices, and charitably resolved " that all such as have 
 been in the ministry of the Pope's Kirk, good and well- 
 conditioned persons, that they shall live upon the alms of 
 the Kirk with the number of the poor." As yet, however, 
 they had not touched the temporalities. These yet re- 
 mained with those Popish beneficiaries whose ecclesiastical 
 functions were abolished by law ; but, in a great measure, 
 the property was theirs only nominally. Many of the ec- 
 clesiastical corporations, hopeless, apparently, of ultimate 
 victory in the struggle, disposed of the property committed 
 to them in long leases, mortgages, or absolute conveyances, 
 under conditions which would not easily bear inspection 
 in reference to the fairness of the transactions and the dis- 
 interestedness of those who became parties to them. The 
 lords and lairds who obtained legal claims over ecclesiasti- 
 cal property by such arrangements were likely to hold their 
 own with a much firmer gripe than the tottering ecclesiasti- 
 cal foundations, and that was th^ reason why it was deemed 
 politic to make arrangements with them. For a few years 
 both before and after the eventful epoch of 1560, there 
 was a continued process of absorbing ecclesiastical within 
 temporal domains — or a continuous " birsing yont,'' as it 
 has been expressively called — by the lay landholders. 
 
 The transference was not effected without some pres- 
 sure on the hopes and fears of the ecclesiastics who had 
 
 ^ Buke of Discipline, — the Fifth Head, concerning the provision 
 for the ministers, and for the distribution of the rents and possessions 
 justly appertaining to the Kirk. 
 
QUEEX MARY. 
 
 the power to make the desired arrangements, and even 
 some Wolence to their persons. Of how this might come 
 to pass, the method pursued by Gilben, Earl of Cassilis, 
 called in his o^ti neighbourhood the King of Carrick,'* 
 may be taken as an expressive example. We are told by 
 the family historian that this Gilbert was ane panicular 
 man, and ane ver}- greedy man, and cared not how he gat 
 land, so that he could come by the same." He had his 
 eye on a few of the estates of the Abbey of Glenluce, and 
 had dealings \^'ith the abbot about them. That abbot, 
 however, died before the writs were signed, and then he 
 dealt with ane monk of the same abbacy, wha could coim- 
 terfeit the abbot's hand-writ and all the haill convent's, and 
 gart him counterfeit their subscriptions." When this was 
 done, fearing that the monk might make unpleasant revela- 
 tions, he got a certain carl to stick or stab him, and then 
 he got one to accuse the carl of theft, and hang him in 
 Crosragall, and so the lands of Glenluce were conquest'* ^ 
 The next step was the conqueshing " of the estates of 
 the Abbey of Crossraguel, of which the extensive ruins 
 may yet be seem The domestic buildings of the fraternity 
 have not here been so completely destroyed as in other 
 places, probably because the King of Carrick" preserved 
 them for his own use. It was his desire that certain writs 
 should be executed in his favour — to wit, a five-year tack 
 and a nineteen-year tack, and a charter of feu of all the 
 lands of CrossragueL" The commendator of the abbey 
 was unwilling to sign the writs, and shy of approach. He 
 was waylaid however, ancf brought face to face with the 
 " king," who introduced him to a chamber where there was 
 a roaring fire, prepared, as the host said savagely facetious, 
 for roasting meat The commendator saw his fate at a 
 glance, but held out till he was stripped or skinned," as 
 the narrator says, basted with grease, and scorched unril 
 his hand barely retained power to sign the deeds. The 
 
 ^ History of the Kennedies, Banna tyne's Journal, 55. In Scot- 
 land, the landed property which any one has acquired by purchase is 
 distinguished firom inheritance by the term " conq uest," in its modem 
 
 acceptarion sometimes considered 
 acquisition. 
 
 method of 
 
DISPOSAL OF ECCLESIASTICAL REVENUES, 1561. 39 
 
 Privy Council so far took notice of this affair as to require 
 Cassilis to find security to the extent of ;^2ooo, not to 
 molest the person or the property of the commendator.^ 
 Men who had done such things to acquire lands were not 
 likely to part with them without knowing why. 
 
 The Protestant clergy, sagacious as they were about 
 many things, seem to have made the mistake of supposing 
 that the active energy \dth which their lay brethren helped 
 them to pull doyvn Popery was actually the fruit of reli- 
 gious zeal, and to have expected that they took from the 
 one Church merely to give to the other. The landhold- 
 ers, on their part, thought such an expectation so utterly 
 preposterous, that they did not condescend to reason with 
 it ; but, without any hypocritical attempt to varnish their 
 selfishness, called the expectations of the ministers "a 
 fond imagination." 
 
 There were, thus, three_ classes of claimants on the 
 property of the Church — the old clerg}^, the la}Tnen who 
 had obtained rights from them, and the ministers of the 
 Reformation. The Privy Council resolved to deal with 
 this matter by a process which had the merit of simpli- 
 city. They were to appropriate to the Crown the fourth, 
 and if necessary, the third, of the ecclesiastical benefices 
 for new uses ; it was found necessary to take the third, 
 and the transaction is known in law and history as the 
 assumption of thirds of benefices.'^ It was carried out 
 by a series of Acts of Council, very secular in their tenor, 
 and seeming as if they avoided the nomenclature of the 
 Romish hierarchy on the one hand, and of Presbyterian 
 perfection and supremacy on the other.^ The purposes 
 to which these thirds were to be applied are thus set 
 forth : Sae muckle thereof to be employed to the 
 queen's majesty, for entertaining and setting forward of 
 the common affairs of the countr}^ ; and sae muckle 
 thereof unto the ministers, and sustentation of the min- 
 istry, as may reasonably sustain the same, at the sight 
 
 ^ Douglas's Peerage, 
 
 ' The most accurately printed copies of these Acts of the Council 
 are in Mr Laing^s edition of Knox 
 
40 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 and discretion of the queen's majesty foresaid; and the 
 excrescence and surplus to be assigned unto the old pos- 
 sessors." One department of ecclesiastical property was 
 to be specially dealt with. The revenues drawn within 
 towns by monastic establishments, whether in the shape 
 of rents of property or in the more invidious form of 
 local taxes or privileges, were specially designed for the 
 entertaining of "schools and colleges,'* and other like 
 uses ; and it was at the same time recommended that, as 
 " nothing is more commodious '' for such uses than the 
 friaries and other edifices which had belonged to the mo- 
 nastic bodies, such of them as had not been demolished 
 should be kept up for these uses. 
 
 When there was delay in giving in the valuations of 
 the estates, stewards were sent down by the Council to 
 estimate the "rentals.'' As these officers would be apt 
 to affix a higher value to the estates than those in 
 possession, the alternative had the effect of stimulating 
 the preparation of the returns in the proper quarter. As 
 a sort of sanction against the imder - estimating of the 
 rentals, the tenants on the ecclesiastical estates were 
 authorised to hold the rents returned as the maximum 
 which they were bound to pay ; for instance, if a farm 
 were returned by the holder or owner as of so much 
 " rental " or annual value, the tenant farming it was ac- 
 quitted if he paid that amount of rent. 
 
 For all the precautions taken, however, it seems clear 
 that the returns were imperfect and to a great extent 
 false. Of the three parties interested, the ecclesiastics, 
 unless Archbishop Hamilton be an exception, do not 
 seem to have complained. Such a remnant of their 
 possessions was a boon which the tenor of recent events 
 had placed beyond their expectation ; and if something 
 was taken from them, what remained was secured, so far 
 as anything could be in that age, by an adjustment which 
 professed to be final. The two-thirds of the fund unap- 
 propriated were supposed to remain in the hands of the 
 ecclesiastics of the old Church, on the principle of each 
 retaining a vested life-interest in the greater part of his 
 old income. As these died out, the benefices seem to 
 
PROVISION FOR THE CLERGY, 1561. 4 1 
 
 have fallen to the Crown for miscellaneous disposal. But 
 there is no doubt that a very large portion of these rev- 
 enues had already, in the manner referred to, got into 
 lay hands. It might have been expected that these lay 
 holders, who had come recently into possession, and held 
 in many instances by questionable tenures, should have 
 readily acquiesced in an arrangement which secured to 
 many of them a lion's share in the two-thirds. But in the 
 general case they seem to have thought the chance of 
 keeping what they could with the strong hand a prefer- 
 able alternative, and there was throughout the whole body 
 much growling at the disgorgement they were called on to 
 make. 
 
 It was to the ministers, however, who were to be sus- 
 tained out of the thirds, that the arrangement was least 
 pleasing, since they had settled in their own minds that 
 the sudden overturn of the Romish Church was virtually 
 a transference of its wealth to their own body. They 
 protested vehemently from their pulpits, Knox giving 
 them the key-note, and saying, " Well, if the end of this 
 ordour, pretended to be taken for the sustentation of the 
 ministers, be happy, my judgment faileth me ; for I am 
 assured the Spirit of God is not the author of it ; for first ^ 
 I see twa parts freely given to the devil, and the third - 
 maun be divided betwixt God and the devil. Weel, bear 
 witness to me that this day I say it. Ere it be long the 
 devil shall have three parts of the third, and judge ye 
 then what God's portion shall be.'' A commission col- 
 lected the money, and adjusted the claims on it. To pay 
 the ministers' stipends was the special function of the 
 Laird of Pitarrow, "an earnest professor of Christ,'' 
 whose conduct in the business was, however, such as to 
 call forth the suggestive analogy, " Who would have 
 thought that when Joseph ruled Egypt, that his brethren 
 should have travailed for victuals and have returned with 
 empty sacks unto their families ? " ^ 
 
 The allowance made to the ministers varied from one 
 hundred to three hundred merks a-year. The amount 
 
 Knox, ii. 310. 
 
42 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 gave rise to a curious comparison, which shows how ex- 
 tremely poor many of the Scots aristocracy then were, 
 and how considerable were the merely worldly aspira- 
 tions of the Protestant clergy. It was said that there 
 were many lords who had not so much to spend. Where- 
 on it is remarked in Knox's History, where the justness 
 of the comparison ' seems to be admitted, "Men did 
 reason that the vocation of ministers craved of them 
 books, quietness, study, and travail, to edify the Kirk of 
 Jesus Christ ; and therefore that the stipends of ministers, 
 who had none other industry but to live upon that which 
 was appointed, ought not to be modified according to 
 the livings of common men, who might and did daily 
 augment their rents by some common industry."^ So 
 enormously rich had the Romish hierarchy become, that 
 a mere fragment of their wealth — much less than a third 
 — was sufficient to endow a ministry on terms bearing 
 comparison with the incomes of the aristocracy. 
 
 There were several political causes urging the queen's 
 Government to moderation ; and in the person of her 
 brother, the Lord James, who took the helm as if it natu- 
 rally belonged to him, she had a pilot willing to take this 
 course, and able to keep it with a strong hand.^ Eliza- 
 beth sent her ambassador Throckmorton ostensibly to see 
 to the fulfilment of the treaty of Edinburgh, but at the 
 same time to keep his eye on many other things. The 
 question of Mary's right to succeed Elizabeth in the En- 
 glish throne was opened, and though it was not conceded, 
 neither was it denied. The settlement of this question 
 was rather evaded than furthered, by a proposal that the 
 
 ^ Kjiox, ii. 312. 
 
 2 On the 1st of May Throckmorton wrote to Elizabeth from 
 France, saying that it had been the intention of Queen Mary to 
 give the Lord James a commission under her seal to administer the 
 government until her arrival, but that it was not given. ** The spe- 
 cial cause why she has changed her opinion of Lord James, is be- 
 cause she could not dissuade him from his devotion to the Queen 
 of England, and the observation of the league between her and the 
 realm of Scotland ; and also for that she and the Cardinal of Lorraine 
 could not win him from his religion, wherein they used very great 
 means and persuasions." — Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 91. 
 
PROJECT FOR A ROYAL CONFERENCE, 1562. 43 
 
 two queens should meet each other in Queen Elizabeth's 
 realm. In its undefined shape the suggestion was accepted 
 by both. So far as the discussion about the meeting 
 took a practical shape, it was held that Queen Mary must 
 not travel to Windsor like a vassal to do homage ; for " her 
 honour/' as it was termed, her sister must come north- 
 ward to the border to meet her. Then, that there might be 
 no taint of a suspicion that treachery was intended, Queen 
 Mary, if she found her sister affable, would pass southward 
 with her, and enjoy the hospitality of the English Court. 
 Mighty results were anticipated from the meeting, but 
 vaguely, as the astrologers used to draw their inferences 
 from planetary conjunctions. The accomplished French- 
 bred queen might throw the spells of her fascination on 
 her home-reared sister, but to what end ? On the other 
 hand, unless it were that Queen Elizabeth could persuade 
 Queen Mary to become a Protestant — and this, among the 
 least possible of human achievements, was gravely antici- 
 pated — no beneficial result could be reached through the 
 process of cause and effect by those who discussed the 
 scheme. Much eagerness was expressed by the two 
 queens to see and caress each other, and the longings 
 of Queen Mary for such a consummation were very elo- 
 quent ; but in all this, too, there was a hollowness. The 
 project was of the visionary kind that is easily dispelled 
 by a practical difficulty, and such a difficulty appeared in 
 the most sordid of shapes. Where was the money for a 
 royal progress to be found? In fact the project would 
 impoverish Scotland, already poor enough. At that time 
 the coinage of Scotland was in a state of transition. 
 Its direction, in comparison with English money, was 
 towards deterioration, and there was no fixed scale of 
 equivalents for the immediate convertibility of the one 
 currency into the other. A phenomenon often noticed by 
 travellers in small separate Continental states at the present 
 day was exemplified in Scotland, a desire to get rid of the 
 native coin, and to get possession of the English. It was 
 said of the Scots dealers in native produce, that instead of 
 sending their goods to England, and getting remittances in 
 the usual mercantile shape — which even then endeavoured 
 
44 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 to settle accounts without the removal of bullion from place 
 to place — they travelled to Berwick, sold their goods there, 
 and carried the price home in English money. So great 
 was the outcry against this that the practice was stopped 
 by force ; and it was said on the side of Scotland that the 
 rough-handed borderers who carried the regulation into 
 effect, not only confiscated the English money found in 
 the purses of the Scots, but even condescended to 
 seize such poor items of beggarly Scots coinage as they 
 possessed.^ The bearing of all this on a royal progress 
 
 ^ For such a charge there seems to have been better founda- 
 tion than one might expect to find. In March 1562, the Council 
 of Berwick address their queen to allay suspicions about the drain- 
 age of English gold into Scotland. She having signified that 
 merchants, haberdashers, creel-men, pedlars, and foot-packers, con- 
 tinually resort here and the adjoining marches, and for their wont 
 cany away the fine moneys ; they assure her that they never knew so 
 few of that faculty repair hither at this instant ; and such as do, are 
 victuallers and sellers of linen cloth and other things, which could not 
 be spared by the people of this town. Also, that they stand bound 
 with Englishmen not to carry away coin. To prevent them from 
 purloining money from hence, the writers have appointed searchers 
 to ransack them; and sometimes they find English moneys, which 
 they take from them, and as much of the Scots coin as is found 
 with the same for the greater terror." — Calendar of State Papers 
 (Foreign), 557. Any one studying the currency equivalents of the 
 period would probably find assistance in a paper that had belonged 
 to Cecil, and is endorsed by him as * ' William Humphrie's opinion 
 concerning Scottish money.'* The opinion " is a set of calculations 
 of equivalents, in which the calculator found that " the money of 
 Scotland cannot be reduced into English money without the use of 
 fractions of the penny, which is to be divided by 32." The estimate 
 speaks of *'the bawbee," or the "babie," current for 6d. Scots, 
 showing the term to have been older than the babyhood of James the 
 Sixth, given to it by tradition." The babie current for 6d. Scottish, 3 
 oz. silver in the lb. troy, which contains 192 babies, each worth seven- 
 teen-eighths of a penny. — Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 500. 
 
 The laws for keeping English gold at home were marked by the 
 ferocity of the English protective laws of that period. There is a 
 pathetic case of Thomas Sampson, an Englishman, who had been a 
 linen-draper in Cheapside, but had fallen into poverty, and having 
 carried a pike at the siege of Leith, remained there after the paci- 
 fication. Between Leith and Berwick he trafficked in kind of 
 merchandise in selling leather;" being watched, he **was taken by 
 two soldiers, with 23 lib. of new money, and one angel of gold, as he 
 was passing without Berwick towards Leith." This is told by Sir 
 
THE EARL OF MURRAY, 1562. 
 
 45 
 
 into England was, that as the Scots money would not pass 
 in England, the cost must be paid for in English cur- 
 rency, and would probably draw out the whole of that 
 precious commodity in the possession of Scotland. The 
 weight of this impediment is enhanced by a suggestion of 
 Randolph's to remove it, by clearing accounts between 
 the two coinages at Berwick.^ In the midst of a discus- 
 sion on this difficulty, the project of a meeting and solemn 
 conference between the Queen of England and the Queen 
 of Scotland seems to have dropped.^ 
 
 The Guises, with a considerable French following, still 
 remained in Scotland; and they thought it wise, while 
 the great question of the English succession stood in 
 doubt, to help rather than interrupt the moderate coun- 
 sels of the Lord James. This able man was gradually 
 strengthening his hands. In 1562 he married the daugh- 
 ter of the powerful Earl Marischal. The wedding was fol- 
 lowed by a grand banquet, destined by its magnificence to 
 provoke the cynical reproaches of Knox, who was ever 
 doomed to find the world regaining possession of those 
 whom he fondly believed that he had rescued from its 
 influences. On this occasion Mary performed one of 
 those graceful and effective courtesies for which she pos- 
 sessed a gift. She drank to the health of Queen EHzabeth 
 in a heavy golden cup, which she presented to Randolph 
 
 Francis Leeke, the governor of the fortifications of Berwick, who 
 informs the Privy Council that the money taken from Sampson had 
 not been left with the soldiers who caught him, in terms of the pro- 
 clamation. His suggestion is, that, " if it seems good to the queen 
 to extend her mercy to the poor man in favour of his life, yet he 
 would wish for example's sake that the soldiers had the money.'' — 
 Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), i6th October 1560. 
 
 1 **The greatest kind of difficulty is, that all kinds of gold that is 
 current in England, is very scant here. The matter being considered, 
 the Queen of England should send to Berwick so much treasure as 
 they may have Scottish money there — only gold or testons of good 
 silver — and have English money for the same. The Scottish money 
 may serve to pay soldiers, workmen, or others. It is said to him 
 that this will be the only stay of the journey.'' — Calendar of State 
 Papers (Foreign), 1862, p. 631. 
 
 2 Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 1861-62, p. 488, 492, 511, 
 538, 565, S7h 575, 606, 608 ; 1862, p. 144, 148. 
 
46 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 the ambassador.^ The Lord James was at the same time 
 created Earl of Mar. He was known but for a short period 
 by this title. It was claimed for the family of Erskine, 
 and the Lord James became Earl of Moray, or, as it is 
 generally termed, Murray, the title by which he is best 
 known in history. 
 
 He was immediately afterwards engaged in one of the 
 many expeditions against the thieving borderers. Of this 
 expedition, which must have been full of interest, we have 
 nothing but the results — fifty-three of the most noted out- 
 laws apprehended, of w^hom eighteen were drowned for 
 " lack of trees and halters,'^ and six were hanged in Edin- 
 burgh.2 There is no trace of these punishments to be 
 found in the criminal records. By a sort of tacit under- 
 standing, border thieves, like Highlanders, were not deemed 
 within the pale of the law; and the slaughter of them was 
 a matter of interest solely as to its amount, as marking, 
 like the head of game brought down in a day's sport, a 
 successful or an unsuccessful raid. There are, however, 
 several prosecutions for abiding from the raid of Jed- 
 burgh," as it was called — that is to say, for not complying 
 with the royal proclamation to join the expedition — a de- 
 falcation which, in the instance of any border chief, was 
 naturally deemed suspicious. From these trials it ap- 
 pears that the raid lasted for twenty days, beginning on 
 the 13th of November 1562.^ 
 
 1 P. F. Tytler, vi. 258. 
 
 2 Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 149. 
 
 2 The excuse pleaded for absence was generally extreme ill-health. 
 Ramsay of Dalhousie, for instance, protested that he was vexed 
 with sic distress in his person that he might not ony ways travel, 
 nother on horse nor foot, to na space, by reason his hail left side was 
 so occupied and troubled with evil and malign humours, sic as he 
 can nought declare nor specify — that his haill arms, fingers, and leg 
 on that side, wherethrough that he might not move the same." — Pit- 
 cairn, i. 421. 
 
47 
 
 CHAPTER XLIL 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 {jCo7itinued.) 
 
 DANGERS IN THE NORTH— POSITION OF HUNTLY AS LEADER OF THE 
 ROMANIST PARTY — MURRAY'S DESIGNS — A ROYAL PROGRESS — 
 HUNTLY'S FEARS FROM IT — HE ARMS — BATTLE OF CORRICHIE — 
 — RUIN OF THE HOUSE OF HUNTLY— QUEEN MARY'S POLICY IN 
 ASSISTING IN THE RUIN OF HER FRIENDS — POSITION OF MARY'S. 
 GOVERNMENT — ASPECT OF FIRMNESS AND MODERATION — HER 
 HOME-LIFE AND AMUSEMENTS— HER POPULARITY— FURTHER DIA- 
 LOGUES WITH KNOX — QUESTION AS TO WHAT LANGUAGE THEY 
 WERE HELD IN? — PROSECUTIONS OF ROMANIST PRIESTS — ARCH- 
 BISHOP HAMILTON — THE QUEEN'S DEVOTEDNESS TO HER CHURCH 
 — HER FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE — COMMUNICATION TO THE 
 COUNCIL OF TRENT— PAPAL EMISSARIES — ASSASSINATION OF HER 
 UNCLE— PARLIAMENT — TENDENCY TO A REACTION AGAINST THE 
 PROTESTANT PARTY — FURTHER ALTERCATIONS BETWEEN THE 
 QUEEN AND KNOX — RIOTOUS ATTACK ON OFFICIATING PRIESTS — 
 THE RIOTERS BROUGHT TO TASK— FEELING AMONG THE PROTES- 
 TANT CLERGY. 
 
 We next follow the queen and Murray to a contest in the 
 opposite end of the country, the cause and character of 
 which can only be seen by going back a little way into » 
 the past. We have found that the policy of the Crown in 
 dealing with the old half-independent districts, inhabited 
 chiefly by people of Celtic race, was to root out the 
 power of their original local chiefs, and to encourage the 
 predominance over them of some neighbouring family of 
 rank and power. Thus, in the west, the house of Argyle 
 
48 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 governed ; in the north, that of Huntly. Even in such 
 hands, however, the spirit of the old troublesome Maar- 
 morate had a tendency to develop an independent prin- 
 cipaHty. The family of Huntly possessed estates on the 
 east coast, estates cultivated by the most industrious 
 among the Lowland tenantry. From these they drew a 
 goodly revenue. This enabled them to keep high court, 
 and strengthen their rule over the vast Highland territory 
 to the north and west ; for over all the district now beyond 
 the Caledonian Canal and the lakes it unites, the Cock 
 of the Xorth'^ was supreme in one shape or other. He 
 kept princely state in his Castle of Strathbogie ; and events 
 afterwards revealed that its sumptuous furnishings shamed 
 those of the royal palace. He had the flourishing town 
 of Aberdeen, with its university and cathedral, by way of 
 capital. Here he seems to have had a small fleet, with 
 which he kept up foreign communications, as little under 
 restriction from the Court of HolyTOod as those of the 
 King of Norway or Denmark might be. The Earl of 
 Huntly of that day was an accomplished man and a poli- 
 tician. He frequented the Court of France, where he 
 received the decoration of St ^Michael, and would pro- 
 bably rank with the sovereign of any secondary Ger- 
 man or French state. What he might be doing in 
 strengthening himself by alliances, or surrounding him- 
 self by troops, was not easily to be discovered by those 
 outside of his own dominions. The Government in 
 Edinburgh could but guess at them, as our rulers in 
 India might at the doings of some native prince who 
 professes to hold by British protection in a distant in- 
 accessible territory. He had been playing some deep 
 game with the Lords of the Congregation. It seemed 
 to them at one time that they had him, having bought 
 him with a price — a large share in the ecclesiastical 
 estates so profusely distributed. But there is little 
 doubt that he determined to stand forth as leader in a 
 great contest for the old faith, and had made arrange- 
 ments accordingly, treating with the Guises, and organ- 
 ising the people under his owm banner. Murray, when 
 his followers jostled those of Huntl/s ambassador in 
 
CONTEST WITH HUNTLV, 1562. 49 
 
 the village of Vim-, must have come to the knowledge 
 that Huntly had deep projects. Whether or not he 
 knew exactly that an army of twenty thousand men 
 had been offered to the queen, he knew enough to tell 
 him that he must crush Huntly ere the power he yet 
 held as head of the Congregation slipped from his 
 grasp. Murray had further and personal motives for 
 trying his strength with Huntly. The estates belonging 
 to his own new earldom were m Huntly s hands, whether 
 under any regular title or by mere occupancy, and 
 would not be got for him who owned them under a 
 crown charter, except by force. 
 
 It was determined that the queen and Murray should 
 make a royal progress northwards, and \isit Huntly. Os- 
 tensibly the Court was to do him honour ; but he had his 
 own reasons for suspecting that something of another kind 
 was in ^iew. Matters at Strathbogie Castle were not in a 
 condition to be inspected by eyes like Murray's. Inci- 
 dentally we know^ that the vestments and treasures of the 
 Cathedral of Aberdeen — the monuments of idolatr}*, as 
 they would be called — were deposited in Huntly's strong- 
 hold, that they might be restored to the Church in its day 
 of triumph.^ These things might be hidden out of sight, 
 to be sure ; but it would be impossible to obliterate all 
 testimony that here were the headquarters of the enemy. 
 
 An incident that seemed in itself of little moment con- 
 nects itself with this affair. A quarrel which Huntly's 
 son. Sir John Gordon, had with Ogilvy of Findlater, broke 
 into a bloody conflict on the streets of Edinburgh. Gor- 
 don was seized, and put in prison ; but the Scots prisons 
 were ever notorious for their unretentiveness of prisoners 
 of his rank. This Sir John, who was not the heir of 
 Huntly, but only his fourth son, was among the countless 
 lovers with whom Queen Mar}^'s name is mixed up. The 
 historian of the earldom of Sutherland says he was " a 
 comely young gentleman, y^ry personable, and of good 
 expectation, whom she loved entirely.'"' - 
 
 ^ See Inventories of Queen Mary's Jewels, pref. xxv. p. 53. 
 2 Gordon's History of the Earl of Sutherland, 140. 
 VOL. IV. D 
 
50 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 Soon after this affair, the queen with her brother took 
 their royal progress northwards. They started in August 
 1562. To have gone without a sufficient force, would 
 have been a folly of which Murray was not likely to be 
 guilty; and Huntly felt by no means satisfied with the 
 form in which his sovereign approached him. Wisely 
 keeping at a distance himself, he sent his wife, as a sort 
 of ambassador and spy, to meet the queen at Aber- 
 deen, and try to discover whether she came in peace 
 or war. She was courteously invited to the earFs fort- 
 ress-palace at Strathbogie. She decHned, however, to 
 countenance the house of Huntly w^hile one of its mem- 
 bers was a fugitive from justice, and demanded that 
 Sir John Gordon should enter himself in ward " again 
 — that is, go back to prison. It appears that he went so 
 far southward with the intention of doing so, but changed 
 his mind. The royal party ran some risk. Murray, had 
 he fallen into the hands of the Gordons, would not have 
 been spared ; and they would have had little hesitation 
 in keeping the queen herself in pledge for their lives 
 and fortunes. It appears that when sojourning in the 
 stronghold of the Leslies of Balquhain, of which a bat- 
 tered tower still remains, about twenty miles from Aber- 
 deen, the queen and Murray both made a narrow escape 
 from seizure. They passed on to Inverness, where, de- 
 siring admission to the castle, it was closed against them. 
 This was all the more audacious an act, that the castle 
 was not a strength attached to Huntly's ovm dominions ; 
 it was nominally a royal castle, Huntly holding it as 
 hereditary sheriff of the district. A siege was begun. In 
 this conflict with royalty, some of the clans which had 
 submitted hitherto to the iron rule of Huntly found that 
 they had an opportunity of deserting with the merit of 
 loyalty. The Clan Chattan remembered how their chief 
 had, a few years before, been beheaded before the gate 
 of Strathbogie Castle ; and with the Erasers and Monros, 
 they abandoned the banner of Huntly. The castle was 
 taken, and the governor hanged. 
 
 On returning, the queen's party were taught to expect 
 an attack at the crossing of the Spey. They passed it 
 unassailed, but on the occasion the queen was in the full 
 
CONTEST WITH HUNTLY, 1562. 5 1 
 
 sense of the term exposed to the casualties of war, for it 
 was not in the overwhelming strength of the royal force, 
 but the large body that had passed over from Huntly to 
 the queen, that her exemption from a battle lay; and 
 Randolph had an opportunity in reporting the affair to 
 Cecil, of moralising on the desperate blows that would 
 have been given when all fought in the sight of so noble 
 a queen and so many fair ladies.^ 
 
 When the queen and Murray approached Aberdeen, 
 Huntly, who seemed to think that his best chance of 
 avoiding ruin was in war rather than submission, followed 
 them, designing some bold stroke. There was a fight — 
 sometimes called a battle — on the decHvity of Corrichie, 
 a long flat hill from fifteen to eighteen miles west of Aber- 
 deen. Huntly's force, which had dwindled down, was 
 easily defeated. The earl was found dead on the field — 
 smothered, as it was said, in his armour. His body was 
 brought to Edinburgh, that doom of forfeiture might be 
 pronounced on it ; and there is extant the record of cer- 
 tain payments to an adept for treating it with vinegar, 
 aqua vitae, powders, odours, and other necessaries, to pre- 
 vent it from putrifying.2 Sir John Gordon was convicted 
 of treason, and beheaded at Aberdeen, where the queen 
 attended his public execution. 
 
 When Huntly was in the flush of power he found 
 a convenient capital for his principality in Aberdeen, 
 though it is not certain that he exercised his powers 
 there with the full concurrence of the citizens. At all 
 events, they gave their queen a loyal and hospitable 
 reception. She was honourably received with spec- 
 tacles, plays, interludes, and other things as they could 
 best devise. They presented her with a cup of silver 
 double gilt, with 500 crowns in it ; and wine, coals, and 
 wax, as much as will serve her during her being here." ^ 
 
 The power of the house of Huntly was thus broken, 
 and the event, though in the ordinary phraseology of 
 history it was but the suppression of a rebellion and 
 the punishment of its leaders, was an important national 
 
 ^ Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 319. 
 ^ Laing's Knox, ii. 359, note. 
 
 ^ Randolph to Cecil, Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 319. 
 
52 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 revolution. The breaking and dispersal of so great a 
 fabric of power by a single day's events afforded to the 
 Reformed clergy a great occasion for addressing their 
 hearers on the vanity and uncertainty of human great- 
 ness, and the punishment which in due time visits 
 those who lift themselves up against eternal power. 
 One of them — no doubt it was Knox himself — in point- 
 ing, for the benefit of Mary's courtiers, the moral of 
 the event, affords a curious personal sketch of the pub- 
 lic deportment of the great earl: "Unto you do I say, 
 that that same God who from the beginning has pun- 
 ished the contempt of His word, and has poured forth 
 His vengeance upon such proud mockers, shall not spare 
 you, yea. He shall not spare you before the eyes of the 
 same wicked generation, for the pleasure whereof ye de- 
 spise all wholesome admonitions. Have ye not seen' 
 ane greater than any of you sit picking his nails, and pull 
 down his bonnet over his eyes, when idolatry, witchcraft, 
 murder, oppression, and such vices were rebuked ? Was 
 not his common talk, ' When the knaves have railed their 
 fill, then they will hold their peace ' ? Have ye not heard 
 it affirmed in his own face, that God should revenge that 
 his blasphemy even in the eyes of such as were witness to 
 his iniquity ? There was the Earl Huntly accused by you 
 as the maintainer of idolatry, and only hinderer of all 
 good order. Him has God punished even according to 
 the threatenings that his and your ears heard, and by your 
 hands hath God executed His judgments. But what 
 amendment in any case can be espied in you ? Idolatry 
 was never in greater zest — virtue and virtuous men were 
 never in more contempt — vice was never more bold, and 
 less feared punishment. And yet who guides the queen 
 and Court ? Who but the Protestants ? O horrible 
 slanderers of God and of His holy evangel ! better it were 
 unto you plainly to renounce Jesus Christ, than thus to 
 expose His blessed evangel to mockage."^ 
 
 That the queen should have dealt so hardly with the 
 champion of that faith to which she was ever devoted, and 
 of which we shall find that she was working for the res- 
 
 Knox, ii. 362. 
 
HER POLICY, 1562-63. 
 
 53 
 
 toration, has been felt as one of the mysteries of history. 
 She not only did what had to be done, but seemed to do 
 it with heart and will. The solemn Randolph tells how, 
 while the contest was yet undecided, and Huntly might 
 intercept her at the Spey, "In all these garboils I assure 
 you I never saw her merrier, never dismayed, nor never 
 thought that so much to be in her that I find. She 
 repented nothing; but — when the Lords and others at 
 Inverness came in the morning from the watch — that she 
 was not 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 
 knapschalle, a Glasgow buckler, and a broadsword." ^ 
 
 For solving the mystery of her conduct on this occasion, 
 familiarity with the tenor of Scots, or even of English 
 history, does not prepare us. In these we find many 
 deeds of passion, and cruelty, and rapine — some pieces 
 of perfidy too, such as the kidnapping projects of Henry 
 VIIL, or his daughter's barefaced mendacity. But all 
 was something utterly different from the profound dis- 
 simulation of that political school of which Catherine of 
 Medici wa? the chief instructor, and her daughter-in-law 
 an apt scholar. Covered over as the underworkings of 
 wickedness were by a fair outside of art, literature, 
 courtesy, gentleness, and loving-kindness, it was likened 
 by the oft-used parallel of a fair country, with its mea- 
 dows, gardens, and peaceful homes, covering volcanic 
 fires that might any day break through it. To feel the 
 spirit in which this young queen could assist in the 
 ruin of her friend, we must realise the halls of the 
 Louvre, with their splendid tapestries and statues, their 
 perfumes and pet poodles, filled with an assemblage of 
 gallant courtiers and gay ladies, full of wit and pleasan- 
 try and courtly kindness, while Henry of Navarre, the 
 gayest of all, his pleasant face beaming with jollity and 
 careless good-humour, has yet all his faculties at their 
 utmost tension to detect the first premonitions of murder ; 
 or we must enter the chamber of the wounded Coligny, 
 and find that vain headstrong youth who had tried to 
 murder him, and was preparing to try again, pouring 
 
 ^ Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 1562, p. 304. 
 
54 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 meek condolence into the ear of the wounded man, and 
 seducing him to the belief that his king held him in 
 love and honour. 
 
 Queen Mary was at this time in the hands of the Pro- 
 7 testant party. She was utterly destitute of any power to 
 control or resist them, and none knew that obdurate fact 
 better than herself. If we suppose that she was an apt 
 pupil of the political school she had been reared in, we 
 see her throwing her lot into the Protestant party, and 
 seeming to abide by it with a willing heart as if it were 
 her duty, — and so it was, by the doctrine of the same 
 school — the duty of waiting patiently for the day of retri- 
 bution. All this is in harmony with the counsel said by 
 a wise observer to have been given to her before she left 
 France — to serve the time, to commode herself discreetly 
 and gently with her subjects, and to cherish her brother. ^ 
 In the political correspondence of the day there may be 
 traced an impression that she had become an apostate 
 from her faith and policy. She was a woman alone in 
 the midst of a Huguenot community, who with their old 
 faith had deserted their old French alliance, and come 
 under the influence of England, the stronghold of the new 
 Church, and she had surrendered to conditions so over- 
 whelming. How false such suppositions were we shall 
 presently see ; but the form in which they are revealed 
 will show that her policy would have been worthless had 
 the gossips of the day known all she was doing. 
 
 The year 1562 was a period of political sunshine to 
 Randolph, the English resident. We find him telling how 
 he is treated with condescending kindness. On Twelfth 
 day he was absent from Court, through infirmity, and the 
 queen sent her physician to him. He tries to understand 
 her nature, and finds it to be candid. She may be be- 
 lieved in what she speaks and writes. In all her actions 
 he sees the desire to propitiate his mistress, and follow 
 her wise counsel. There is no danger from the inter- 
 ference of Lennox ; she will not follow his advice, unless 
 
 ^ See the passage from Melville's Memoirs cited in the preceding 
 chapter. 
 
HER POLICY, 1562-63. 
 
 55 
 
 it concur with that of her sister queen. Of his son Darn- 
 ley there have been whispers, as if he might become the 
 husband of the queen; but her objections to him are in- 
 superable. It is rumoured that by the advice of her uncle 
 the cardinal, she is likely to embrace " the religion of 
 England ; " but Randolph has doubts of this. It is thought 
 that there should be some Scotsman to represent her at 
 the Court of England " for the better continuance of in- 
 telligence " — some one to serve Queen Mary as he serves 
 Queen Elizabeth. The person he suggests to Cecil for 
 this duty comes with surprise on those who learn it with 
 the light of later events. " There is with the queen one 
 called Mr George Buchanan, a Scottish man, very well 
 learned, who was schoolmaster to M. De Busac's son, very 
 godly and honest, whom I have always judged fitter than 
 any other I know.^' ^ Buchanan might then have been in 
 the ascendant at the Scots Court ; and it must have taken 
 all the mixed stoicism and cynicism of his nature to avoid 
 the destiny of the courtier. It is one of the accidental de- 
 tails of Randolph's budget of news about the queen, that 
 "she readeth daily after her dinner, instructed by a 
 learned man, Mr George Buchanan, somewhat of Livy." ^ 
 It would be difficult to find in history a closer resem- 
 blance than the early government of Mary bore to a strong 
 and deep-rooted moderate policy, holding in check the 
 factious extremes of either side. The country had become 
 Protestant, and the members of the Government were \i 
 Protestants ; yet they desired to protect the queen herself - 
 in the exercise of her religion, and broke with the extreme 
 clerical party, which owned Knox as its head. Challoner, 
 the English resident at Madrid, noted that King Philip and 
 the Spanish Court were suspicious a»d angry about the 
 supineness of Queen Mary, and her toleration of the here- 
 tics who infested her realm. ^ Perhaps Philip himself 
 knew better, since his minister, Granvelle, was deep 
 in Queen Mary's secrets. He had, however, a placid 
 gift of fatalism that preserved him from serious alarm 
 
 ^ Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 30th Jan. 1562, p. 513, 576. 
 2 Ibid., 584. 3 Ibid., 1561-62, 562. 
 
56 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 when the Church and the divine right of sovereigns 
 seemed in danger. There is a serene grandeur about his 
 designs, even when we remember the wreck of the great- 
 est of them. In Scotland the course before him was 
 simple. When he had settled his difficulties with the 
 Turk, he was to suppress heresy in Queen Mary's king- 
 dom ; and this duty mixed itself up with his matrimonial 
 projects for himself and his son. He had not long to wait 
 for symptoms that Queen Mary was no apostate. The 
 elements of the political condition of the country, even 
 without reference to subsequent events, are sufficient to 
 show that the short peace was but an armed truce, in 
 which each party was prepared to fly at its opponent's 
 throat. " There is," says the English resident, thrice in 
 the week an ordinary sermon in the Earl of Murray's lodg- 
 ing in the queen's house, so near to the mass, that two 
 so mortal enemies cannot be nearer joined without some 
 deadly blow being either on the one side or the other." ^ 
 It was the reproach of both, though pleaded by each in 
 extenuation of its deeds, that the one could not permit 
 the other to live without danger to its own existence. 
 
 Protestantism, nominally supreme, asserted its dignity 
 in judicial proceedings against some adherents of the old 
 religion. On the 17th of March 1562, Sir James Arthur, 
 a priest, was prosecuted for solemnising baptisms and mar- 
 riages " in the old abominable Papist manner." He came 
 to the queen's will — that is to say, submitted to her 
 mercy, and probably went unpunished.^ 
 
 In spite of the lowering of the political atmosphere, 
 and some actual storms, the first two years of Mary's 
 reign were passed by her in a gaiety and geniality sadly 
 in contrast with the gloomy remainder of her days. She 
 possessed a strong elasticity of spirit, and, after the first 
 shock was over, set herself to draw as much enjoyment as 
 could be extracted from the humble resources now at 
 her disposal. It was no longer as in France, v/here a Court 
 
 ^ Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 505. 
 
 ® Pitcaim, i. 420*. It is curious that the record of his trial bears, 
 that an extract of it was sent to the regent in 1569, as if he might 
 then make some use of it. 
 
THE COURT, 1562. 
 
 57 
 
 party, roving on some sudden impulse to the distant bank 
 of a stream, or the centre of a wood, found there all the 
 luxuries of the palace laid at their feet by an expert and 
 costly comissariat. Yet she was not to be imprisoned in a 
 palace, and forfeit all the enjoyments of a free foot. The 
 English ambassador Randolph, in his minute reports, details 
 some little scenes of innocent gaiety, which it would be 
 refreshing to meet with among the partly arid and partly 
 appalling events he has to record, if the reader could feel 
 any assurance that they were the outward symbol of an 
 innocent and guileless heart. She went, for instance, 
 with a few attendants to the house of a burgess in St 
 Andrews. There Randolph followed her, and waited for 
 three days in devouring impatience for an audience. When 
 he could hold out no longer, and pressed through the • 
 light fence which royal raillery had set between them, she 
 said, I see now well that you are weary of this company 
 and treatment. I wish for you to be merry, and to see 
 how like a burgess's wife I live with my little troop ; and 
 you will interrupt the pastimes with your great and grave 
 m.atters. I pray you, sir, if you be weary here, return 
 home to Edinburgh, and keep your gravity and great am- 
 bassade until the queen come thither ; for, I assure you, 
 you shall not see her here — nor I know not myself where 
 she is become." ^ 
 
 Knox admitted that in presence of her Council she 
 kept herself very grave," but maintained that the scene 
 was changed when business and ceremony were over ; and 
 *^how soon soever the French fillocks, fiddlers, and others 
 of that band gat the house alone, then might be seen 
 skipping not very comely for honest women.'' In weigh- 
 ing the full merit of these old denunciations of the innocent 
 amusement of dancing, it must be remembered that in 
 that age the dance had often a meaning beyond the mere 
 graceful cadenced exercise. The forms of the dance were 
 often symbolical of interesting situations ; and of how 
 far these were delicate or decorous, we may judge by the 
 books, such as those of Brantome and Margaret of Na- 
 
 ^ Raumer, Contributions, 26. 
 
58 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 varre, which were the favourite literature of the dancers. 
 Knox lifts his testimony against the dance " called the 
 purpose," which the queen trod with Chatelar ; and it is 
 easy to believe it to have been sufficiently indecorous. 
 In fact, the Puritans from that day having taken a loath- 
 ing towards dancing such as they saw it, shut their eyes 
 to it for the coming ages ; and thus, to the amaze- 
 ment and ridicule of later times, blindly continued 
 their old railing against it long after it had been puri- 
 fied of its indecorums. The wrath of Knox on this 
 particular was raised to its climax by a suspicion that the 
 queen made her dancing an active expression of her 
 heterodoxy and malignancy ; and among others, he was 
 assured that the queen had danced excessively till after 
 midnight, because that she had received letters that per- 
 secution was begun in France, and that her uncles were 
 beginning to stir their tail, and to trouble the whole realm 
 of France. On this text he preached a stirring sermon, 
 which brought about one of his renowned interviews with 
 the queen. After having given her his mind with his 
 usual freedom and emphasis about her uncles, he con- 
 cluded by explaining to her that he was a public function- 
 ary doing his public duty, from which he was not to be 
 drawn to waste his valuable time in dialogues with indi- 
 vidual persons, unless in cases of urgency. **If your 
 grace," he said, please to frequent the public sermons, 
 then doubt I not but ye shall fully understand both what 
 1 like and mislike, as well in your majesty as all others.^^ 
 He had no objection to her solemnly setting apart an oc- 
 casion for his publicly expounding in her presence " the 
 form and substance of doctrine which is proposed in 
 public to the subjects of this realm" — a suggestion to- 
 wards which the queen kept silence, probably not without 
 a shudder. "But to wait," he continued, **upon your 
 chalmer door or elsewhere, and then to have no farther 
 liberty but to whisper my mind in your grace's ear, or to 
 tell to you what others think and speak of you— neither 
 will my conscience nor the vocation to which God hath 
 called me suffer it." He was pleased to depart from this 
 interview with **a reasonable merry countenance ;" and 
 
CONVERSATIONS WITH KNOX, 1562-63. 59 
 
 when he heard it remarked of bystanders that he was not 
 afraid, he made the genial remark often quoted, " Why 
 should the pleasing face of a gentlewoman affray me ? I 
 have looked on the faces of many angry men, and yet 
 have not been affrayed above measure.'' 
 
 A question will naturally arise, Were these dialogues 
 held in the language in which Knox reports them? 
 Singularly enough, among the many personal details about 
 Queen Mary, none informs us distinctly of the extent to 
 which she could understand or use the language of her 
 people. It is not likely that she could speak it fluently on 
 her arrival in Scotland, but we hear nothing of progress 
 made in acquiring it ; and in the various dialogues in 
 which her sayings are reported — even in these sharp trials 
 of wit and language with Knox — no instance occurs to us 
 in which she appears, or is said to have been, at a loss for 
 a proper expression. W^hen Knox reports the sayings of 
 her mother, they are generally in an imperfect or broken 
 Scots vernacular, as the instances cited in previous chap- 
 ters have shown. It is clear that her daughter was, while 
 in Scotland, extremely chary of writing in any other lan- 
 guage but the French. Running the eye over LabanofFs 
 collection, it will be noticed that a letter taken from an 
 autograph is invariably French. It must be inferred from 
 this that the letters in the vernacular are not only in the 
 handwriting, but in a great measure the composition, of 
 a secretary. Sometimes to such a letter there is a post- ^ 
 script autograph and in French. The earliest specimen ; 
 preserved in her autograph in the vernacular seems to be 
 a postscript of a letter to the Earl of Argyle, of 31st March 
 1566, in these terms : " Wat ever bis sayed, bi sur off my \ 
 gud mynd, and that ye sal persayve, command my to our 
 bruder."^ We shall afterwards find her taking lessons in 
 English from her keeper Sir Francis Knollys, and writing 
 to him what she called her first letter in that language. It 
 must be inferred that her habitual language was French ; 
 and if we are to take from her the merit of disputing with 
 Knox in the language which he learned when a boy in East 
 
 1 Labanoff, i. 340. 
 
6o 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 Lothian, we must concede to him the accomplishment ot 
 speaking French so well that he did not fear an encounter 
 in that language with a very clever woman, mistress of 
 every art for enhancing her native qualities which the high- 
 est courtly training in the world could bestow. But, in- 
 deed, Knox had his own training to the task, for he had 
 lived and preached in France. 
 
 The prosecution of a considerable body of recusants in 
 1563 was preceded by some discussions of a highly sug- 
 gestive kind. Of course, in a country so little under con- 
 trol, the old religion was privately observed wherever the 
 predominant feudal power of the district gave it any coun- 
 tenance. In the north, though the power of Huntly was 
 broken, there cannot be a doubt that the bulk of the 
 people, in as far as they were Christians, were Romanists ; 
 but they were too remote from the eye of justice to be 
 prosecuted, or even watched. In the western districts 
 south of the Clyde the territorial influence was so far di- 
 vided that in some places the Romanists were enabled to 
 resume their worship and observances, but not without 
 risk from the vengeance of their Protestant neighbours. 
 These were sternly urged by the clergy to put in force 
 those laws against Popery which the Government were 
 neglecting. The brethren "determined to put to their 
 own hands," and " that they should neither complain to 
 queen nor Council, but should execute the punishment 
 that God has appointed to idolaters in His law, by such 
 means as they might, wherever they should be appre- 
 hended. The work was begun, and some seizures had 
 been made, when the queen, who was at Lochleven, de- 
 sired to have a conference with Knox. He went, and 
 the dialogue is given with the usual emphasis in his His- 
 tory. The question why the royal prerogative was usurped 
 by subjects was at once met by conclusive reasons and 
 apt cases in point. *^The sword of justice, madam, is 
 God's, and is given to princes and rulers for one end, 
 which if they transgress, sparing the wicked and oppress- 
 ing innocents, they that, in the fear of God, execute 
 
 ^ Knox, ii. 371. 
 
THE TWO CHURCHES, 1562-63. 61 
 
 judgments when God has commanded, offend not God. 
 Although kings do it not, neither yet sin they that bridle 
 kings to strike innocent men in their rage. The examples 
 are evident ; for Samuel feared not to slay Agag, the fat 
 and delicate King of Amalek, whom King Saul had saved; 
 neither spared Elijah JezebeFs false prophets and Baal's 
 priests, albeit that King Ahab was present ; Phinehas was 
 na magistrate, and yet feared he not to strike Cozbi and 
 Zimri," — supplying, in the plainest words, the statement 
 of their guilty conduct, which the terms of Scripture leave 
 to be inferred.^ The queen, of course, was not prepared 
 to admit the soundness of the principles so explained and 
 exemplified ; and " she, being somewhat offended, passed 
 to her supper." Knox, sullen and resentful, determined to 
 return next morning to Edinburgh ; but before the early 
 May sunrise, messengers from the queen desired him to stay. 
 
 They had an interview, in which, judging from the only 
 account of it — that of her antagonist — the queen showed 
 consummate tact. She was '^at the hawking," so she 
 chose her own battle-field suited to her light weapons and 
 restless strategy. The traces of last night's anger were 
 totally obliterated — all was sunshine, gaiety, and good- 
 humour. The talk skipped lightly from topic to topic at 
 the queen's guidance until she could get it settled down 
 on some topic on which her formidable companion could be 
 kept interested. There was the offering df a ring to her by 
 Lord Ruthven — he was one of her Council ; but she could 
 not love him, for she knew him to use enchantment. This 
 failed to excite much interest. She next referred to Knox's 
 own movements. He was going to Dumfries to act in the 
 appointment of a superintendent of the Church there? 
 "Yes, those quarters have great need, and some of the 
 gentlemen so require." She then brings up the claims of 
 the favoured candidate, Alexander Gordon, titular Arch- 
 bishop of Athens, a son of the Master of Huntly, who 
 held high preferment in the hierarchy, and having turned 
 Protestant, desired to serve the new Church, and keep the 
 emoluments he had from the old. She warned Knox 
 
 ^ See Numbers, chap. xxv. 
 
62 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 against him, saying, " Do you as you will, but that man 
 is a dangerous man;'* and, oddly enough, Knox shows 
 in his narrative that he afterwards found this to have been a 
 sound warning. Still the queen, passing lightly from topic 
 to topic, had found nothing to interest and enchain her 
 formidable gossip ; but she hit on it at last, by soliciting 
 his services in restoring the heads of a great family to the 
 observance of domestic duties and moralities. The Earl 
 of Argyle had been married in 1554 to the Lady Jane 
 Stewart. The queen, telling Knox that she must have 
 his help in one of the gravest matters that had touched 
 her since she came to the kingdom, threw herself with 
 amiable simplicity on his friendly and confidential assist- 
 ance, explaining that this sister of hers had not been so 
 circumspect in all things as should be desired ; and yet," 
 said she, my lord, her husband, whom I love, entreats her 
 not in many things so honestly and so godly as yourself 
 would require." 
 
 The function of mediator, or rather of dispenser of dis- 
 cipline in such a matter, was one thoroughly to Knox's own 
 heart. His colloquy with the queen became cordial and 
 earnest ; and he fell immediately to his congenial task, by 
 writing to the earl a letter, setting forth the domestic 
 duties which he had hitherto neglected, and was now 
 called on to perform, with as much peremptory distinct- 
 ness as it is possible to suppose any like injunction to 
 have been given privily from the confessional. The letter 
 is printed in his History. In the mean time, Knox having 
 become interested in the task before him, the queen seized 
 the favourable moment to get through, briefly and without 
 cross-questioning, with the disagreeable business of their 
 original meeting — the prosecution of the officiating Ro- 
 manist ecclesiastics. "^And now,' said she, ^as touching 
 our reasoning yesternight, I promise to do as ye required. 
 I shall cause summon all offenders, and ye shall know 
 that I shall minister justice.' * I am assured then,' said 
 he, ' that ye shall please God, and enjoy rest and tran- 
 quillity within your realm, which to your majesty is more 
 profitable than all the Pope's power can be,' and thus they 
 departed." So is the conclusion of the interview set forth 
 
THE TWO CHURCHES, 1562-63. 
 
 63 
 
 in Knox's History. His account of it reads like a true 
 account of the part of the dialogue which it contains, and 
 at the same time does not look as if it suppressed any 
 important part. What afterwards passed through his mind 
 about the whole affair, when he put it in writing, seems to 
 be noted in the following words, with which, referring to 
 the sayings of the day before, he begins the narrative of 
 the second day's conference : Whether it was the nighf s 
 sleep, or a deep dissimulation locked in her breast, that 
 made her to forget her former anger, wise men may doubt 
 — but thereof she never moved word.'' ^ 
 
 It must be held as the consequence of her promise, that, _ 
 on the TQth of May 1563, no fewer than forty-eight per- 
 sons, some of them eminent Romish ecclesiastics, were 
 indicted for celebrating mass and endeavouring to restore 
 Popery in Paisley and Ayrshire. They were charged with 
 collecting tumultuous assemblies — in one instance, of two 
 hundred people. The law which they were accused of - 
 transgressing was that dubious proclamation by the queen, 
 requiring that no one should innovate on the state of re- 
 ligion as she found it publicly and universally standing on 
 her arrival in Scotland ; and the accused were said to have 
 transgressed this injunction by " ministering and abusing, 
 irreverently and indecently, the sacraments of haly Kirk — 
 namely, the sacraments of the body and blood of our 
 Lord Jesus — otherwise and after ane other order than the 
 public and general order of this realm was, the time of the 
 queen's majesty's arrival foresaid." Auricular confession 
 was another form of transgression taken at Paisley in the 
 " kirk, toun, kirkyard, chambers, barns, middens, and kil- 
 logies thereof ^ The charge of officiating in " middens " 
 or dunghills, and in killogies or kilns, which gives a ludi- 
 crous tinge to the proceedings, shows in harmony with the 
 tenor of the correspondence of the period, that these re- 
 cusants courted secrecy. Several of the accused were 
 sentenced to be " put in ward " within the royal fortresses 
 during the queen's pleasure. There was one man, by his 
 station and history, prominent among these offenders — 
 
 1 Knox, ii. 373. 
 
 2 Pit cairn, i. 429. 
 
64 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 SO prominent, indeed, that the prosecution may in some 
 measure be considered a trial of his strength. This was 
 John Hamilton, Archbishop of St Andrews, the illegiti- 
 mate brother of the head of the house of Hamilton. He 
 had become hateful to the Protestants by the martyrdom 
 of Walter Mill. At the same time there were reasons 
 why neither the Romish party nor the queen's personal 
 friends should then be strongly inclined to back him. 
 Restless, fierce, and ambitious, if he had shown devotion 
 to his Church, he had shown still more devotion to his 
 own interest, and was believed to be working for a com- 
 promise between the two extreme parties, in which there 
 would be enough of Protestantism to satisfy the lay Re- 
 formers, and enough of Popery to preserve for him his 
 high dignities and emoluments ; so that his deficiency in 
 zeal may even have contributed to his sufferings. At the 
 same time he was the leading spirit of the dubiousj)olicy 
 of the Hamiltons, and had fought the battle of Arran the 
 regent against the queen's mother. In Knox's History it 
 is told with great glee how the bishop, hesitating to appear 
 as a criminal in the Earl of Argyle's court, was at last 
 
 compelled to enter within the bar ; " and how a merry 
 man, who now sleeps in the sod, Robert Norwell, instead 
 of the bishop's cross, bare before him a steel hammer." ^ 
 
 But the most instructive consideration in connection 
 with these prosecutions is that, w^hile they were carried on 
 in the queen's name, she was resolutely bent on the res- 
 toration of the old religion. It is unnecessary, in confir- 
 mation of this, to found solely on that steady unshrink- 
 ing adherence to her own faith, which must ever stand 
 forth as the noblest, if not the sole redeeming feature of 
 her character. That while she was yet Queen of France 
 she should reciprocate with the Court of Rome the cour- 
 tesies appropriate to her sovereign rank in a country 
 devoted to the Popedom, was but natural, and it was not 
 to be expected that Scotland should be specifically ex- 
 cepted from them. So an embassy from the King and 
 Queen of France and Scotland, sent on their accession on 
 
 ^ Knox, ii. 380. 
 
SECRET COMMUNICATIONS WITH ROME, 1563. 6S 
 
 a mission of duty and spiritual obedience to Pius IV., re- 
 ceived in return his blessing, and the promise of his pa- 
 ternal good offices for both their realms.^ 
 - About half-way between the day of her husband's death 
 and that of her return to Scotland, she had received the 
 traditionary symbolical blessing of the Pope in the shape 
 of the golden rose, accompanied by a benedictory epistle, 
 with allusion to herself as a fair rose among thorns — a 
 possible allusion to the rumours that may have reached 
 the Court of Rome about affairs in Scotland.^ 
 
 On her return to Scotland this intercourse seemed to 
 come to an abrupt close, but the industry of recent in- 
 vestigators has revealed it as continued with subtle dex- 
 terity, and in condition for open diplomatic service when 
 the reaction eagerly expected on the one side and 
 dreaded on the other should restore the papal ascendancy. 
 Fragments of correspondence show that, while nominally 
 prosecuting Papists at home, she held close communica- 
 tion with the great leaders of the Romish party abroad, 
 and even with the Pope himself. In January 1563, she 
 wrote to Pope Pius IV., expressing her devotion to the 
 Church, and her readiness to sacrifice for it her life. She 
 mourns over the new opinions and damnable errors 
 which she found prevalent on her return to her kingdom, 
 and regrets that this will defeat a design she would other- 
 wise fain have carried out — to send certain prelates to 
 represent Scotland in the Council of Trent. She writes at 
 the same time to her uncle the cardinal, going over the 
 same topics more fully and earnestly, announcing her de- 
 sire to restore the Catholic faith in her dominions, though 
 at the peril of her life, and declaring that she will rather 
 die than change her faith and give encouragement to 
 heresy. The bearer of these dangerous communications 
 was that Cardinal Granvelle who was conspicuous even 
 
 1 Statuta Ecclesise Scot. Pref., 165. 
 
 ■ ^ Quae tanquam rosa pulcherrima inter spinas suavissimum fidei et 
 bonorum operum tuorum, odorem longe lateque diffundis ibid. The 
 Papal Rose is inventoried among the jewels brought by its owner from 
 France, but nothing further is known about it. — Inventaires de la Royne 
 Descosse, p. 17. 
 
 VOL. IV. E 
 
66 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 among the relentless Spaniards for his zeal in the forcible 
 suppression of heresy.^ 
 
 In the midsummer of 1562, there were rumours and sus- 
 picions about the arrival in Scotland of a shadowy figure, 
 whose presence was all the more mysterious that he was 
 seen by no one, unless he was identified by Randolph, who, 
 standing beside Lethington saw so strange a visage that 
 he supposed it must be the mysterious stranger's. The 
 rumours said he was a Jesuit and a legate of the Pope — that 
 he had landed at Dundee — that he passed on, secretly re- 
 maining in hiding in one place of refuge after another owned 
 by friends of his cause. He was conveyed at last to the 
 queen, and held a secret conference with her, almost in- 
 terrupted by the Earl of Mar. The most distinct thing 
 that Randolph can retail to his mistress about this visionary 
 affair is the opinion of Lethington, that the stranger came 
 to urge the queen to send a representative to the Council 
 of Trent, but that his mission would be in vain.^ 
 
 We have traces far more distinct of Queen Mary's con- 
 tinued devotion to her Church, and of her capacity of 
 communicating, undetected at home, with its hierarchy 
 abroad. The Council of Trent, when it reassembled in 
 1563, received from her a letter announcing her deep 
 regret at her inability to send prelates of her realm to 
 represent it in the Council. Not only did the troubles 
 of the time render such a mission impossible, but any 
 attempt in that direction would be dangerous; and this was 
 all the greater a grief to her that she remained among the 
 most devoted of the daughters of the Catholic Church. 
 She referred the Council to her illustrious uncle the Car- 
 
 ^ LabanofF, i. 175 etseq. The letters are translated copies, but there 
 is no reason to doubt their genuineness. In the pages immediately 
 following, repeated references will be found to the Concilia Scotiae 
 or Statuta Ecclesise Scoticanae, edited by Dr Joseph Robertson. 
 Whoever desires to enter critically into the question how far the 
 tenor of the correspondence here attributed to Queen Mary is sup- 
 ported by evidence, will find there all the inform-^tion he can 
 desire. But in truth Queen Mary's entire devotion to her Church 
 is so steadily distinct through her whole history as to leave neither 
 excuse nor temptation for resting it on narrow testimony. 
 
 * Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 131, 147, 199. 
 
SECRET COMMUNICATIONS WITH ROME, 1563. 67 
 
 dinal of Lorraine, who knew all about her affairs, and 
 would be virtually her representative. The Council held 
 a special congregation on this letter, and the minute of 
 its purport attributes the troubles in Scotland to the 
 Huguenots. The Cardinal of Lorraine addressed the assem- 
 blage, enlarging on his niece's zeal for the cause, and the 
 difficulties and danger of her position, and expressinga hope 
 that some one of the Scots prelates then refugees in 
 France might attend the Council. It must be inferred that 
 this part of the transactions of the great Council had been 
 kept a dead secret from the governing party in Scotland.^ 
 Ere the Council had broken up, Chisholm, the Bishop 
 of Dunblane, was received at the Vatican, on a mission 
 from the queen to explain the condition of Scotland. He 
 named as still among the faithful the Earls of Lennox, 
 Athole, Huntly, Montrose, Eglinton, Cassilis, Errol, and 
 Caithness, with some others. To each of those on the 
 bishop's list the Pope wrote a special letter of exhortation.^ 
 He sent to Queen Mary the acts of the Council, and she 
 in return addressed to him a letter full of devotion and 
 zeal, not in the formal Latin in which she addressed the 
 Council, but in her own familiar French.^ Two other in- 
 cidents may be here anticipated in the order of time, that 
 their significance may be interpreted along with all that 
 the queen had to say and to do for Protestantism at the 
 dictation of the ruling party. With great secrecy a papal 
 dispensation was obtained for her marriage with Darnley, 
 granted, as the Pope announced, on their assurance that 
 they would both help to the utmost of their power the old 
 religion. The Bishop of Dunblane again is found on a 
 mission to Rome — called his third — imploring the Pope 
 for aid to the queen in bringing her realm to order — a 
 
 1 Epistola Mariae Scotorum Reginse, Francise Dotariae, ad Sacro- 
 sanctam Synodum Tridentinam. Congregatio Generalis, Sacrosancti 
 Concilii Tridentini, habita pro litteris Marise Scotorum Reginae, 
 Franciae Dotariae, ad idem Sacrosanctum concilium legendis X Maii 
 MDLXIII. — Robertson, Statuta Ecclesiae Scoticanae, 249. 
 
 2 Ibid., Preface, 168, 169. 
 
 ^ LabanofF, vii. 6, where it is marked Autographe, Bibliotheque 
 Barberini, 20th October 1564. 
 
68 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 thing still not beyond hope. Pius V. wrote to her a bene- 
 dictory letter, apologising, with more politeness than sin- 
 cerity we must suppose, for his inability, through the infir- 
 mities of age, to cross the Alps and the sea for her relief. 
 He sent the Bishop of Mondovi to represent him with an 
 offering of twenty thousand crowns. The bishop reached 
 Paris, whence he wrote to the queen for instructions as 
 to the fulfilment of his mission. But this was in 1567, 
 when, as we shall see, evil days had fallen on Mary. The 
 nuncio did not reach Scotland, and appears to have taken 
 the money intrusted to him back to Rome.^ 
 
 In going back to the course of the narrative, with such 
 testimony to her thoughts and intentions, we must hence- 
 forth view Knox and the queen as engaged in a contest, 
 each for the extermination of the other. He also had 
 his correspondents on the Continent, and he seems to 
 have found some traces of her secret communications 
 with France, Spain, and the Court of Rome. For all the 
 skill with which she had represented herself as a simple 
 unprejudiced person seeking knowledge and open to 
 conviction, his sagacity early revealed to him that she 
 was an assured unwavering champion of the old faith. 
 So early as October 1561, he said, writing to Cecil, ^'The 
 queen neither is, neither shall be, of our opinion; and 
 in very deed her whole proceedings do declare that 
 the cardinal's lessons are so deeply printed in her heart, 
 *that the substance and the quality are alike to perish 
 together. I would be glad to be deceived, but I fear I 
 shall not.'' 2 
 
 But the state of the Continent at that time required 
 that the queen should keep her policy profoundly hidden 
 in her bosom. She had just witnessed, before she left 
 Paris, the reaction against the Guises, and the formidable 
 combination of the Huguenot princes. Catherine of 
 Medici, not having that assured faith which belonged to 
 her daughter-in-law, held herself in grim reserve, watching 
 the contest, and determined not to commit herself until 
 she saw which side should develop the elements of decided 
 
 1 Statuta, &c., Preface, 168-171. 2 Quoted, M^Crie, 183. 
 
ROMISH REACTION, 1563. 
 
 69 
 
 superiority. She made herself courteous to the Huguenot \ 
 preachers, and held colloquies with them like those of 
 Queen Mary and Knox. Then followed the celebrated 
 edict of January 1562, and the establishment of the Hu- 
 guenots in many of the strongest towns in France, where 
 idolatry was forthwith suppressed as in Scotland, the reli- 
 gious recluses driven out of their monasteries, and the 
 churches defaced of their sculpture and decorations. It 
 was, no doubt, with secret joy and pride that Mary watched 
 how, step by step, her illustrious uncle consolidated the 
 fragments of the Catholic party, and, after gaining the 
 victory of Dreux, was wrenching from the Huguenots 
 their chief stronghold — Orleans ; but all hopes thus ex- 
 cited were doomed to sudden and bitter disappointment, 
 by the news that he had been assassinated by a Huguenot 
 fanatic. He fell on the i8th of August 1563. That was 
 undoubtedly no time for his niece to try the strength of 
 the Catholic cause in Scotland. But in fact it continued 
 from that epoch rapidly to advance in France, with the 
 Guises still at its head. And as it achieved predominance, 
 so we shall find, at humble distance, its champion in Scot- 
 land warily stirring herself from the prostrate condition 
 she had found it necessary to accept on her first coming, 
 and arming herself for a conflict which, to all human ap- 
 pearance, was likely seriously to endanger, if not to over- 
 whelm, the cause of the Reformation in Scotland, if not 
 in England too. The concurrence was noticed by Knox 
 in his own peculiar fashion, in the passage already cited, 
 in which he represented the queen as inaugurating the 
 rise of persecution in France by excessive indulgence in 
 the offensive exercise of dancing. 
 
 Among the elements of power which she brought into 
 this contest, what she possessed in her own person and 
 personal qualities must not be overlooked. Scarce ever a 
 sovereign entered upon rule with so many attributes of 
 popularity. The blood of an ancient and beloved line of 
 monarchs ran in her veins. She was the descendant of 
 the heroic Bruce, the liberator of the land. With this 
 illustrious blood she united^ that of the chivalrous house 
 of Lorraine, with whose deeds Europe was ringing. She 
 
70 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 herself, by her marvellous beauty, her accomplishments, 
 and her wit, had even widened the renown of her country, 
 known as it was so well over Christendom. She dazzled 
 the commonalty with new court glories to which sombre 
 Scotland was unaccustomed ; and her regal pageants were 
 no mere chaotic displays of profuse barbaric splendour, 
 but were brought under the rule of a thoroughly refined 
 taste. The splendours of her Court were not invidious to 
 the people, since they came not from the national ex- 
 chequer, but were decorated by the jewellery and suppHed 
 from the dowry of a queen-dowager of France. The old 
 warlike and chivalrous feeling of the people found more 
 to stir it in this delicate woman than in many a hero. She 
 had often shown her beautiful face under the helmet, 
 mounted on her charger at the head of her troops. In 
 more peaceful days, the peasantry of the borders and the 
 Highlands were familiar with the airy form sweeping past 
 on a milk-white steed, at the stag-hunt or the hawking, 
 followed by all the chivalry of her Court. Such scenes 
 were not confined to the exclusive precincts of parks or 
 royal forests ; they were not secluded from a suspected 
 population by a jealous retinue of guards. They were 
 seen by her people at large ; and there were few corners 
 of the land so remote but some were there who could tell 
 of having seen them. Hence the queen naturally, from 
 year to year, acquired a strength in her own popularity, 
 which must have weighed formidably against her oppo- 
 nents, and might have served her in good stead had it not 
 been her fate to do things against which no popularity 
 could stand. 
 
 There was in the mean time such reaction as chafed the 
 impetuous spirit of Knox, and drew forth the following 
 expressive notice in his History : " While that the Papists 
 were so confounded that none within the realm durst more 
 avow the hearing or saying of mass than the thieves of 
 Liddesdale durst avow their stealth in presence of an up - 
 right judge, there were Protestants found there ashamed 
 not, at tables and other places, to ask, ' Why may not the 
 queen have her own mass and the form of her religion ? 
 What can that hurt us or our religion ? ' And from these 
 
THE PROTESTANT LORDS AND THE CLERGY. 7 1 
 
 two — ^why ? and what ? — at length sprang out this affirma- 
 tive, * The queen's mass and her priests will we maintain ; 
 this hand and this rapier shall fight in their defence,' &c.'' ^ 
 
 If Knox and his friends had found reason for genu- 
 ine satisfaction in the prosecution of Hamilton and the 
 western Papists, it did not last many days. A Parliament 
 was called, from which they expected much and got 
 nothing. It met on the 4th of June 1563. Now was the 
 occasion for ratifying with the royal presence the Refor- 
 mation, which had been passed in a mere Convention, and 
 for devoting to its proper spiritual purposes the Church 
 property which had been seized by the Church's lay 
 friends; but both these objects were effectively evaded. 
 The Acts passed by the Convention of 1560 remained 
 unconfirmed, and care seemed to be taken to avoid any 
 reference to the proceedings on that great occasion, as if 
 they involved questions tacitly set aside by both parties 
 for subsequent adjustment. The Estates commenced 
 business by passing an Act of Oblivion," to protect from 
 prosecution all concerned in the troubles immediately 
 preceding the queen's arrival. The period of time covered 
 by its protecting clauses was from 6th March 1558 to ist 
 September 1561. The chief object of this Act was to 
 secure from dispute the transactions about Church lands 
 during that period — transactions which the Protestant 
 clergy looked on as a robbery of their Church, but which 
 many of their lay supporters had reasons for keeping quiet, 
 even when adherents of the old Church were the chief 
 gainers by them. 
 
 For any other purpose than this, the Parliament need 
 not have assembled, since all its other business consisted of 
 petty regulations about cruives and yairs, the exportation 
 of bullion, the manufacture of salt — unless it may be con- 
 sidered an exception to the general triviality of the pro- 
 ceedings that a statute was passed discharging all per- 
 sons, of whatsomever estate, degree, or condition, to use 
 any manner of witchcraft, sorcery, or necromancy, under 
 the pain of death, " as well to be execute against the 
 
 Knox, ii. 266. 
 
72 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 user, abuser, as the seeker of the response or consulta- 
 tion." This is the first announcement on the statute-book, 
 of a persecution for which Scotland became rather noto- 
 rious. It was much desired by Knox, to whom the pro- 
 gress of witchcraft and the kindred arts had been giving 
 alarm ; but it was not sufficient to propitiate him in the 
 absence of the more solid results which a Parliament 
 should have brought forth. The proceedings of this Par- 
 liament filled up the cup of Knox's gathering wrath against 
 the Protestant lords, on their lukewarmness in the great 
 cause, and over-anxiety about their worldly interests. He 
 signified his displeasure on the occasion by solemnly 
 breaking with Murray. It is very significantly suggested 
 in Knox's History that Murray desired to see the estates 
 and honours which he had obtained through the ruin of 
 the Gordons effectively secured ; and that these things 
 and other convenient arrangements for supporters being 
 accomplished, he left the rest to the course of events, not 
 choosing to take the strong hand with the queen farther 
 than the assembled Estates might call for it. The feud is 
 thus told in Knox's History : The matter fell so hot be- 
 twixt the Earl of Murray and some others of the Court 
 and John Knox, that familiarly after that time they spake 
 not together more than a year and a half; for the said 
 John, by his letter, gave a discharge to the said earl of a/1 
 further intromission or care with his affairs."^ 
 
 A few days afterwards, Knox preached a renowned 
 discourse. It was addressed to the Protestant lords, most 
 of whom were present, and was sharpened with all his 
 sternest eloquence, as a last appeal of duty to their obdu- 
 rate hearts. He described, with picturesque pathos, how 
 he and they had worked together in the evil days of 
 temptation and danger. " In your most extreme dangers 
 I have been with you. St Johnston, Cupar Moor, and 
 the Craigs of Edinburgh are yet in my heart ; yea, that 
 dark and dolorous night, wherein all ye, my lords, with 
 shame and fear left, this time is yet in my mind, and God 
 forbid that ever I should forget. ^'^ And where had they 
 
 ^ Knox, ii. 382. 
 
 a Ibid., 384. 
 
THE PROTESTANT LORDS AND THE CLERGY. 73 
 
 cast the great truth for which all this temptation and 
 danger and scandal had been braved, now that the perfect- 
 ing of it was in their own hands ? Shall this be the 
 thankfulness that ye shall render unto your God, to betray 
 His cause, when ye have it in your own hands to estab- 
 lish it as ye please ? The queen, say ye, will not agree 
 with us. Ask ye of her that which by God's Word ye may 
 justly require, and if she will not agree with you in God, 
 ye are not bound to agree with her in the devil." Before 
 concluding, he sounded an admonitory blast of the trum- 
 pet on a matter then under busy discussion, although it 
 had not yet pointed to an individual conclusion — the 
 queen's marriage. **And now, my lords, to put end to 
 all I hear of the queen's marriage. Dukes, brethren to 
 emperors and kings, strive all for the best game ; but this, 
 my lords, will I say. Note the day, and bear witness after, 
 whensoever the nobility of Scotland, professing the Lord 
 Jesus, consents that an infidel— and all Papists are infi- 
 dels — shall be head to your sovereign, ye do so far as in 
 ye lieth to banish Christ Jesus from this realm; ye bring 
 God's vengeance upon the country, a plague upon your- 
 self, and perchance ye shall do small comfort to your 
 sovereign.'' ^ 
 
 When Mary heard of this she resolved to have another 
 controversy with her assailant, trusting, as on previous 
 occasions, to her own unaided wit. She had no one 
 present but the pacific Erskine of Dun. The attempt 
 brought her little satisfaction. When asked why he went 
 out of his way as a clergyman to meddle with the affairs 
 of her marriage, Knox explained that it was his duty to 
 admonish, and, where practicable, premonish his congre- 
 gation of their sins ; and if he saw them prepared to 
 stand by inactive, and permit her to take to herself an 
 idolatrous husband, he was constrained to admonish 
 them on their sinfulness and responsibility. According 
 to his own account, he was on this occasion encountered 
 by passionate bursts of weeping. His History states 
 that " the said John stood still, without any alteration of 
 
 1 Knox, ii. 385, 386. 
 
74 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 countenance for a long season/' until it occurred to him 
 to put in a word of comfort, founded on his domestic ex- 
 perience. Weeping was far from pleasant to him, and 
 he could scarce stand that of his own boys when under 
 paternal flagellation. But on the present occasion, that 
 he should be assailed by tears, was more unreasonable, 
 the queen having no just cause for offence, since he had 
 but spoken the truth, as his vocation craved of him. He 
 was thrust for a time into an anteroom among the queen's 
 ladies, a body for whom he had often expressed intense 
 disgust, railing at their stinkin' pride,^' and the " target- 
 ting of their tails and the rest of their vanity,'' all calcu- 
 lated to " provoke God's vengeance not only against 
 those foolish women, but against the whole realm." The 
 grim preacher was probably no more welcome to them 
 than they to him ; but he resolved to improve the occa- 
 sion, and to this accident we owe a sentence of quaint 
 and solemn moralising, which may fairly match with 
 Hamlet's over Yorick's skull : O fair ladies, how plea- 
 sant were this life of yours, if it should ever abide, and 
 then in the end that we might pass to heaven with all 
 this gay gear ! But fie upon that knave Death, that will 
 come whether we will or not ! And when he has laid on 
 us his arrest, the foul worms will be busy with this flesh 
 were it never so fair and so tender ; and the silly soul, 
 I fear, shall be so feeble that it can neither carry with it 
 gold, garnishing, targetting, pearl, nor precious stones."^ 
 This, according to his History, was spoken by him 
 " merrily," though it is not said to have been received 
 in the like spirit. After a short abiding, he was desired 
 to depart, and the Court ladies and he were reUeved of 
 each other's presence. 
 
 The conflict between the contending powers was soon 
 afterwards brought to closer issue by an occurrence 
 which did not leave the penal law entirely in the hands 
 of the Protestants, but emboldened the Romanists also 
 to seek its protection. In the summer of 1 563, the queen 
 made a progress in the western shires, hunting and hawk- 
 
 ^ Knox, ii. 389. 
 
THE PROTESTANT LORDS AND THE CLERGY. 75 
 
 ing as far northward as Argyle. She not only took her 
 idolatry with her, and set it up in sundry places, according 
 to Knox's sure information, but the followers left behind 
 attended mass in the Chapel of Holyrood. One Sunday 
 evening they appear to have been joined by an unusual 
 number of the citizens, which understanding, divers of 
 the brethren, being sore offended, consulted how to re- 
 dress that enormity ; and so were appointed certain of 
 the most zealous and most fipright in rehgion to wait 
 upon the abbey, that they might note such persons as 
 resorted to the mass/' ^ Had the performance merely 
 been deemed a public scandal, this deputation would have 
 been liable to the reproach of increasing the publicity 
 and the scandal. But the act was looked upon as a crime 
 which it is the citizen's duty to detect and denounce. 
 
 Several persons were thus indicted, according to the es- 
 tablished form, for making innovations and alterations on 
 religion contrary to the queen's proclamation, but it does 
 not appear that they were punished.^ They appear all 7 
 to have been citizensj)f ^Edinburgh, and not the French ^ 
 followers, whom Knox terms dontibours^ a term of equivo- 
 cal origin. The noting and identification of the mass- 
 mongers, however, being exciting work for the zealous 
 and upright men who undertook it, there appears to have 
 been violence. In Knox's History it is said, " Perceiving 
 a great number to enter into the chapel, some of the 
 brethren also burst in ; whereat the priest and the French 
 dames being affrayed, made the shout to be sent to the 
 town."^ Whatever may have been the extent of the 
 violence committed, two of the party — Andrew Armstrong 
 and George Boyd, burgesses — were indicted for carry- 
 ing pistols within the burgh, convention of the lieges at 
 the palace, and invasion of the queen's servants." ^ This 
 gave high offence to the Protestant clergy; and Knox, 
 who said he had been intrusted with authority to convene 
 the champions of the cause in case of danger or emer- 
 gency, considered that the hour had come for which this 
 
 1 Knox, ii. 393. 
 3 Knox, ii. 393. 
 
 2 Pitcairn, i. 435*. 
 ^ Pitcairn, i. 434*. 
 
76 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 precaution was taken, and issued a circular warning to the 
 faithful, calHng on them to assemble in Edinburgh on the 
 24th of October, the day fixed for the trial of Armstrong 
 and Boyd. 
 
 Such pains seem to have been taken to preserve secrecy 
 in this summons, although very widely circulated, that 
 Knox is loud in his denunciations of the treachery by 
 which it was rriade known to the queen's advisers. These 
 considered that at last they had Knox at their mercy, 
 with a charge of treason hanging over him for convoca- 
 tion of the lieges. Some efforts of Murray and the Mas- 
 ter of Maxwell to get him to accept of leniency, founded 
 on a partial admission of error, were received with 
 haughty scorn, and he was cited to appear before the 
 queen in Council. The assemblage does not appear to 
 have been limited to the Secret Council, nor was it a 
 meeting in full of the Estates, but something like a com- 
 mittee of the Government officers and chief members 
 of Parliament. The queen attended, and took a leading 
 part in the business. Her approach is described in her 
 opponent's History as that of a haughty and prematurely- 
 exulting foe. " Her pomp lacked one principal point — 
 to wit, womanly gravity ; for when she saw John Knox 
 standing at the other end of the table bareheaded, she 
 first smiled, and after gave ane gawf lauchter; whereat, 
 when her placeboes gave their plaudite, affirming with like 
 countenance, ^ This is ane good beginning,' she said ; * but 
 wit ye whereat I laugh ? Yon man gart me greet, and 
 grat never tear himself I will see if I can gar him 
 greet' There was a long discussion, Knox stern and 
 unbending as usual. The sum of his defence — or rather 
 justification, for he scorned to demean himself as one 
 pleading to a charge — was that convocation of the lieges 
 for evil purposes was doubtless a crime ; but his was for 
 a good purpose, a holy purpose — he was doing the duty 
 of God's messenger " in writing this letter. The assem- 
 blage declined to inculpate him. Their motives on the 
 occasion are not very clear, for there seems to have been 
 
 ^ Knox, ii. 404. 
 
THE PROTESTANT LORDS AND THE CLERGY. 77 
 
 a strong feeling, even among the zealous lay Reformers, 
 that it would be dangerous to let such an act pass. It is 
 open to the reader to believe with the exulting accused 
 that " there was not ane that plainly durst condemn the 
 poor man that was accused, this same God ruling their 
 tongue that formerly ruled the tongue of Balaam when 
 gladly he would have cursed God's people."^ It may 
 also have had its influence on the assemblage that, " the 
 bruit rising in the town that John Knox was sent for by 
 the queen, the brethren of the Kirk followed in such 
 number that the inner close was full, and all the stairs, 
 even to the chamber door where the queen and Council 
 sat." 2 On being told that he might depart homewards, 
 he turned to the queen and prayed that God would purge 
 her heart from Popery, and preserve her from the counsel 
 of flatterers. 2 
 
 A General Assembly was held immediately afterwards, ^ 
 and there Knox sought, and of course immediately re- 
 ceived, a full justification of his conduct. So the affair 
 ended. There are no traces of ultimate proceedings 
 against the rioters. The lay friends of the Reformation 
 got no thanks for any leniency shown on this occasion ; 
 on the contrary, from that time the wrath of the preachers 
 became ever louder against them as participators in the 
 idolatry of her they served. They anticipated the Divine 
 vengeance on the land for these sins, and soon found it 
 executed. God from heaven, and upon the face of the 
 earth, gave declaration that He was ofl'ended at the 
 iniquity that was committed even within this realm ; for 
 upon the 20th day of January there fell wet in great 
 abundance, which in the falling freezed so vehemently 
 that the earth was but ane sheet of ice. The fowls both 
 great and small freezed, and might not flee ; many died, 
 and some were taken and laid beside the fire that their 
 feathers might resolve. And in that same month the sea 
 stood still, as was clearly observed, and neither ebbed nor 
 flowed the space of twenty-four hours. In the month of 
 February, the 15 th and i8th days thereof, was seen in the 
 
 ^ Knox, ii. 411. 2 j^id., 403. ^ Ibid., 411. 
 
78 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 firmament battles arrayed, spears, and other weapons, and 
 as it had been the joining of two armies/' ^ 
 
 The gloom that had been gathering over the prospects 
 of the zealous Reformers now deepened apace. The 
 clergy besought the mitigation of God's wrath for the sins 
 of the land in their prayers, which, as they freely exposed 
 the great cause of all the evils, became thus a powerful 
 weapon of assault. Knox adopted a form of prayer for 
 the occasion, which he freely repeated when questioned for 
 the last time about his conduct. It was in these terms : — 
 Lord, if Thy pleasure be, purge the heart of the 
 queen^s majesty from the venom of idolatry, and deliver 
 her from the bondage and thraldom of Satan, in the whilk 
 she has been brought up and yet remains, for the lack of 
 true doctrine ; and let her see, by the illumination of the 
 Holy Spirit, that there is no mean to please Thee but by 
 Jesus Christ Thy only Son, and that Jesus Christ cannot 
 be found but in Thy Holy Word, nor yet received but as 
 it prescribes, which is to renounce our own wits and pre- 
 conceived opinion, and worship Thee as Thou demandest ; 
 that in so doing she may avoid that eternal damnation 
 which abides all obstinate and impenitent unto the end ; 
 and that this poor realm may also escape that plague and 
 vengeance which inevitably follows idolatry maintained 
 against Thy manifest Word and the open light thereof." ^ 
 
 This prayer came under question in the follo^ving shape. 
 A General Assembly was held in the summer of 1564, at 
 which the lay lords expected their clerical friends to take 
 violent measures. At the first sitting, these lay lords, 
 called The Courtiers, were not present, and it was pro- 
 posed that measures should be taken with them to compel 
 them to do their duty as humble members of the national 
 Church. The courtiers were accordingly summoned to 
 attend, and they appeared next day ; but instead of mix- 
 ing with the assembled clergy and their brother elders at 
 once, it appears that they passed into an inner council- 
 room to hold a preliminary conference. Thence they 
 sent a message requesting the superintendents "and some 
 
 Knox, ii. 417. 
 
 2 Ibid., 428. 
 
THE PROTESTANT LORDS AND THE CLERGY. 79 
 
 of the learned ministers " to confer with them. The Assem- 
 bly answered that they could not spare their principal 
 members, and that it better became the courtiers to take 
 their part in the general deliberations than to draw away 
 those whose services were the most valuable to the Assem- 
 bly. After an angry discussion, it was at last agreed that 
 a preliminary conference might be held between the lay 
 and clerical leaders, on the understanding that they should 
 conclude nothing, but that all should be redebated in open 
 assembly. Among the courtiers there were Hamilton, 
 Argyle, Murray, Morton, Glencairn, Marischal, Rothes, 
 the Laird of Pittarrow, and chief of all, as him on whom 
 the labour of the controversy fell, Secretary Lethington. 
 On the clerical side were Erskine of Dun, Spottiswood, 
 Winram, and Willock, who, according to an arrangement 
 for providing a governing body in the new Church, were 
 Superintendents of districts. They were assisted by Row, 
 Craig, and Hay. 
 
 Knox, who for some unexplained reason seems to have 
 been reluctant to appear, was forced into the discussion on 
 the infallible plea that his own conduct was to be ques- 
 tioned, and his absence would be cowardice. Once there, 
 the whole conduct of the conflict naturally fell into his 
 hands. He was opposed by the ready-debating talent 
 and subtle wit of the secretary. But in the ranks of the 
 laymen there was an assailable point, which rendered 
 victory to the others secure from the beginning. A 
 rumour had been ominously whispered about among the 
 clergy, and had gained such palpable force that some of 
 them had in fear and grief sought to relieve their hearts 
 concerning it in their public prayers. It was to the 
 effect that some of their lay friends had been heard to 
 doubt if the queen's mass really were the idolatry which 
 must be punished with death. It was the great aim of 
 Knox's rhetoric and his taunts to drive his opponents 
 to the avowal of this doubt ; but whatever they inward- 
 ly thought, none of them had courage for the avowal. 
 Thus the clergy had all the advantage possessed by men 
 with one simple clear conclusion which they delighted in 
 avowing, over those who wished to avoid avowals, and to 
 
8o 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 carry the controversy into subsidiary channels. The clergy 
 were charged with dwelling too strongly on the queen's 
 impenitence. Why should they propagate the impression 
 that she was obdurate in her sins ? why not make allow- 
 ance for penitence coming in due time ? But this argu- 
 ment tottered under its own inherent weakness. The 
 supposition of her repentance was a farce — nothing was 
 farther from her thoughts ; and all of them knew by that 
 time, if they did not before, that she was as thorough a 
 bigot to her own creed as the most zealous of themselves 
 was to his. 
 
 Then supposing her to be sinful and impenitent, yet 
 she was a queen, and could not be punished or controlled 
 in her personal actions ; and for subjects to rail at them, 
 whether in pulpits or elsewhere, was disrespect to the 
 Lord's anointed, if not worse. Lethington had the im- 
 prudence to throw out a challenge that Scripture prece- 
 dents could not be found for such arraignments of the 
 conduct of princes. This was a call to Knox to draw 
 on the resources of his great arsenal of Bible-learning. 
 He had so abundant a choice, that with characteristic 
 pride he cared not to cite precedents except from the 
 doings of the greater prophets. There were Elisha 
 and King Jehoram ; Jeremiah, who cried aloud to the 
 kings Zedekiah and Jehoiakim ; and happiest instance of 
 all, Ahab was ane king, and Jezebel was ane queen, and 
 yet what the prophet Ehjah said to the one and to the 
 other, I suppose ye be not ignorant."^ "The idolater 
 shall die the death." God's laws pronounce death to 
 idolaters without exception of any person." Such was the 
 terrible burden of the preacher's argument to the con- 
 clusion ; and the courtiers had nothing to answer it ^^ith. 
 Craig, who had led a strange wandering life, appealed to a 
 precedent of later times, when Protestantism had for a 
 short time dominion in Bologna, and it was resolved by 
 the eminent doctors there that idolatrous rulers must be 
 deposed by subjects sound in the faith. 
 
 The discussion was taking a dangerously practical direc- 
 
 Knox, ii. 432. 
 
THE PROTESTANT LORDS AND THE CLERGY. 8 1 
 
 tion, when Macgill, the clerk-register, diverted it by re- 
 minding the meeting of the previous proposal to consult 
 Calvin and the Continental heads of the Protestant faith 
 how far obedience was due to infidel princes. Lethington 
 admitted that he had undertaken that duty, but that when 
 it came to be done he shrank from deliberately inquiring of 
 foreigners whether it was his duty to depose his sovereign. 
 Knox was pressed to write such a letter to Calvin, but de- 
 clined. It is odd enough that he never alludes to his 
 having already written one.^ The conference ended with- 
 out any practical conclusion. No vote was taken in the 
 General Assembly ; and the reason why there was none 
 appears to be because the committee of leaders, which, as 
 we have seen, the Assembly were averse to sanction, once 
 finding themselves set apart, and divided into two parties 
 eager for controversy, debated so long that the Assembly 
 got tired, and dispersed. The lay Protestants — the Lords 
 of the Congregation — with Murray at their head, had by 
 this time their own deep anxieties to deal with. They 
 could not, on the one hand, bring the clergy to what they 
 thought reason ; on the other, they saw more clearly, day 
 by day, that there was no room for a temperate party; 
 that Knox and Craig were right in holding the queen to 
 be obdurate and impenitent in her idolatry, and that in 
 the great conflict hers was the party the more likely of the 
 two to be successful. The point on which the question 
 of Protestant or Roman Catholic appears at that time to 
 turn was the queen's marriage ; and before narrating that 
 event, with its wondrous consequents, it may be proper 
 to glance at some of its precedents. 
 
 Knox, ii. 460. 
 
 VOL. IV. 
 
82 
 
 CHAPTER XLIII. 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 {Continued.) 
 
 THE QUEEN AND HER ADMIRERS— MYSTERIOUS STORY OF THE PROJECT 
 OF ARRAN AND BOTHWELL— BOTHWELL INDICTED FOR IT—HISTORY 
 OF CHATELAR— HIS ADVENTURES— HIS FATE— POLITICAL IMPORT- 
 ANCE OF THE queen's MARRIAGE — THE PROJECTS OF THE HOUSE OF 
 GUISE— QUEEN MARY'S OWN VIEWS— PROJECT FOR UNION WITH THE 
 HEIR OF THE SPANISH MONARCHY — POLITICAL PROSPECTS OF SUCH 
 A UNION — MARY'S FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE ABOUT IT — HER 
 SCHEMES TRAVERSED BY CATHERINE OF MEDICI — OTHER PROJECTS — 
 QUEEN ELIZABETH— HER ESCAPADES ABOUT LEICESTER— PROPOSED 
 MEETING OF MARY AND ELIZABETH—MARY MEETS HENRY STEWART, 
 LORD DARNLEY — MARY'S SECRET EMISSARIES — DAVID RIZZIO — RE- 
 ACTION IN FAVOUR OF THE ROMANIST PARTY— GLOOM AND DIFFI- 
 CULTIES OF THE REFORMERS— PROTESTANT RIOT SUPPRESSED — 
 QUESTION OF CONSULTING THE ESTATES ABOUT THE MARRIAGE- 
 MARRIAGE OF MARY AND DARNLEY. 
 
 Ever since the death of her husband, the admirers of 
 the young queen had been very troublesome. Besides 
 the members of reigning houses who were offered or 
 spoken of after the usual fashion of projected royal alli- 
 ances, her steps were infested by audacious and demon- 
 strative adorers, who had no claims to such a destiny. 
 Whether the passive influence of her wonderful wit and 
 beauty rendered this phenomenon inevitable, or it might 
 be in any measure promoted by some little touches of se- 
 ductive fascination in her manner, is a question which 
 students of her history will in general decide for them- 
 selves. The most eminent among these miscellaneous 
 admirers, and the one who came nearest to the rank 
 which might have justified the expectation of her hand, 
 
THE queen's admirers, 1561-62. 83 
 
 was D'Amville, the second son of the Constable Mont- 
 morency, who afterwards succeeded to the offices and 
 honours of his family — the most illustrious among the un- 
 regal nobility of France. He was one of those who ac- 
 companied the queen to Scotland. He had a wife ; but 
 to such homage as he was entitled to tender, that was no 
 hindrance. 
 
 Arran, the heir of the house of Hamilton, was numbered 
 among the queen's suitors. The position of that family 
 at the juncture of Mary's return was very peculiar, and so 
 was their conduct. The head of the house was next heir 
 to the crown, and held this position not merely by genea- 
 logical tenure, but by the repeated acknowledgments of 
 Parliament, which had made provision for his claims be- 
 coming effectual if the succession opened. It was not in 
 human nature that the man so placed should enter, with 
 the indifference of an ordinary subject, into questions 
 about the most suitable alliance for his sovereign, and the 
 desirableness of a direct heir appearing to the house of 
 Stewart. Whether from temper or policy, he evaded the 
 usual demands of homage paid by the nobility. His ab- 
 sence from Court was of course noticed, and was in fact 
 rather the assumption of a diplomatic position than an 
 ordinary discourtesy. Something of menace, too, appeared 
 in his movements, and especially in his jealously fortifying 
 and keeping well garrisoned the fortress of Dumbarton. 
 The annalists of the day mention a sudden alarm arising 
 in Holyrood House one summer night in the year 1561, 
 when the Lord James was absent suppressing the border- 
 ers, and the palace was peculiarly unprotected. This in- 
 cident is isolated — unconnected with any train of events 
 preceding or following it. It is briefly recorded in the 
 quaint manner of Knox's History, in a spirit of latent 
 sarcasm : " The queen upon a night took a fray in her 
 bed, as if horsemen had been in the close, and the palace 
 had been enclosed about. Whether it proceeded of her 
 own womanly fantasy, or if men put her in fear for dis- 
 pleasure of the Earl of Arran, and for other purposes, as 
 for the erecting of the guard, we know not. But the fear 
 was so great that the town was called to the watch. 
 
84 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 The shape into which the cause of this panic was put, 
 was a design by young Arran to seize the queen and 
 carry her into the district where the house of Hamilton 
 was supreme. If the queen had, as Knox and others 
 thought, no ground for her apprehensions, yet such an 
 enterprise was not inconsistent with the spirit of the times, 
 and it is impossible to disconnect it with certain subse- 
 quent transactions in which the name of so very practical 
 a person as the Earl of Bothwell is mixed up. The alarm 
 in Hoiyrood must have occurred in November 1561, the 
 date of Murray's absence on the border ; the further in- 
 cidents now to be noticed belong to the spring of the fol- 
 lowing year. Knox was intimately concerned in them, 
 and they are narrated with much distinctness in his His- 
 tory. The affair begins by Bothwell desiring a private 
 interview with Knox, which was gladly conceded; and 
 they met in the house of James Barron, a worshipful bur- 
 gess of Edinburgh. The scene resolved itself into a sort 
 of Protestant confessional. The earl bewailed his sinful 
 life, and entered into particulars of his offences, whereof 
 he heartily repented. But there remained behind a prac- 
 tical object in which he desired the Reformer's interven- 
 tion — it pressed hard on him that he was at enmity with 
 the Earl of Arran, and he solicited Knox's good offices 
 for their reconciliation. Knox undertook the task with 
 thorough goodwill ; in some way or other it is evident 
 that the heart of the austere preacher had been gained. 
 He said his grandfather, father, and father-in-law had 
 served under the banner of the Hepburns — this by the 
 way, as connecting them together by the obligation of 
 their Scottish kindness ; " but he had another and a 
 more solemn function as the public messenger of glad 
 tidings, and so he bestowed on the penitent a suitable ad- 
 monition to prove the sincerity of his penitence by his 
 reformation. 
 
 Bothwell stuck to the practical point — of a reconcilia- 
 tion with Arran. Knox busied himself in the matter, and 
 after overcoming some practical difficulties, he had the 
 satisfaction to see them meet and embrace, the Earl of 
 Arran saymg to his new friend, " If the hearts be upright. 
 
STORY OF ARRAN AND BOTHWELL, 1561-62. 85 
 
 few ceremonies may serve and content me." Knox, who 
 seems to have been mightily pleased with his handiwork, 
 left them with the benediction following : Now, my 
 lords, God hath brought you together by the labours of 
 simple men, in respect of those who would have travailed 
 therein. I know my labours are already taken in an evil 
 part, but because I have the testimony of a good consci- 
 ence before my God, that whatsoever I have done, I have 
 done it in His fear, for the profit of you both, for the 
 hurt of none, and for the tranquillity of this realm. 
 The good work seemed to be perfected, when next day 
 Bothwell and ''some of his honest friends came to the 
 sermon with the earl foresaid, whereat many rejoiced." 
 
 But in a few days the scene was changed. Arran came 
 repeatedly to Knox, and poured into his ears a tale how 
 Bothwell had offered to help him to carry off the queen, 
 and put her in his hands in Dumbarton Castle, proposing 
 at the same time the slaughter of Murray, Lethington, and 
 the others that " misguide her." These revelations seem 
 to have gone on for some time, when Knox at last found 
 that his informant was raving. " He devised of wondrous 
 signs that he saw in the heaven ; he alleged that he was 
 bewitched ; he would have been in the queen's bed, and 
 affirmed that he was her husband ; and finally, he behaved 
 in all things so foolishly that his frenzy could not be 
 hid."i 
 
 He was subjected to the process by which in Scotland 
 insane persons are deprived of the management of their 
 property.^ His madness cannot be doubted, whether or 
 not it was rightly attributed to his despairing love for the 
 queen. However it arose, his accusations against Both- 
 well, to which he resolutely adhered, were not only gravely 
 considered and examined at the time, but were three 
 years afterwards, when Bothwell returned from France, 
 solemnly resuscitated in the form of a criminal indictment 
 or summons of treason. In this document it is specifi- 
 cally set forth that Bothwell proposed a plan for seizing 
 the queen when she was hunting in the fields, or in one of 
 
 ^ Knox, ii. 322-329. 2 -^qj.^ Di^t. Dec, 627$. 
 
86 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 her rural merrymakings, and conveying her with a suffici- 
 ent force to Dumbarton Castle. There she was to be at 
 the disposal of Arran ; and it was part of the charge that 
 by this Bothwell seduced him to join in the enterprise. 
 As Bothwell did not appear to answer to the charge, he 
 was outlawed, and the affair was forgotten amid the more 
 stirring historical incidents in which he was to figure.^ 
 As the conclusion of this episode, it is proper to note that 
 in the end of April 1562, a month after the date attributed 
 to Bothwell's conversation with Arran, the Castle of 
 Dumbarton was yielded up to Captain Anstruther, to be 
 held for the queen. ^ In Knox's History the extraction of 
 this fortress from the hands of the Hamiltons is spoken 
 of as a breach of faith, on the ground that the custody of 
 it had been granted to them ^^till that lawful succession 
 should be seen of the queen's body.''^ Thus the fortress 
 was understood to stand as a material guarantee for the 
 protection of the house of Hamilton's right of succession 
 to the throne. 
 
 It has been already recorded how the unfortunate Sir 
 John Gordon, the son of the rebel Earl of Huntly, con- 
 ducted himxself as a lover of the queen. But the most 
 troublesome and preposterous of all her train of admirers 
 was a Frenchman named Chatelar or Chastelard, who also 
 fell a victim to his follies. Little is known of him, except 
 from the pages of Brantome ; but his mere appearance 
 there, accompanied by expressions of eulogy and warm 
 attachment, is sufficient to mark him as a man of distinc- 
 tion. The biographer says h^ was a native of Dauphine, 
 and a grand-nephew by hisi mother of the illustrious 
 Bayard, whom he resembled, in person. According to 
 the same authority, he owned in a high degree not only 
 all the warlike and polite accomplishments of a high-bred 
 gallant of the day, but possessed original literary genius, 
 and could accompany his lute by his own poetry — usant 
 d'une poesie fort douce et gentile en cavalier." He was a 
 follower of the Constable Montmorency, with whom he 
 joined the body of gentlemen who escorted the queen 
 
 Pitcairn, i. 462*. 
 
 2 Diurnal of Occurrents. 
 
 3 Knox, ii. 330. 
 
CHATELAR, 1561-63. 
 
 8; 
 
 from France. A ge7itil mot of his on that occasion has 
 been recorded — that when a fog sprang up, and the neces- 
 sity of hghts was spoken of, he said the bright eyes of 
 their mistress were sufficient to light the fleet past all 
 dangers. 
 
 He had certainly been admitted on terms of some 
 familiarity with the queen. Brantome says her love of 
 letters led her to admire the young man's poems, of which 
 she was often naturally the theme, and that she answered 
 him in verses which raised within him the wildest aspira- 
 tions. It is difficult to mark the limits within which at 
 that period a royal personage at any of the French or 
 Italian Courts might I'&gitimately flatter and encourage a 
 person of good birth, endowed with the literary accom- 
 plishments of the troubadour. The homage paid to Ron- 
 sard, by beauties of princely rank, was more like adoration 
 than patronage. But Knox certainly shows ignorance of 
 the fitting usages of a court at that time, when he says, 
 ''The queen would he on Chatelar's shoulder, and some- 
 times privily she would steal a kiss of his neck ; and all 
 this was honest enough, for it was the gentle entreatment 
 of a stranger. But the familiarity was so great, that on a 
 night he privily did convey himself under the queen's bed."^ 
 That he committed this folly, whatever his encouragement 
 may have been, is beyond doubt, though Randolph states 
 that by his own account his hiding-place was a part of the 
 establishment still less adapted for romance or love- 
 making. ^ The occurrence was in Holy rood. For this 
 first offence, though flagrant enough, he was spared and 
 warned. Next day, however, as Mary spent the night at 
 Burntisland, on her way to St Andrews, he burst into her 
 private apartment, either to plead a palliation for his con- 
 duct or to plead his suit. It is said in Knox's History 
 that Mary desired him to be forthwith put to death, but 
 that Murray, who was present, maintained it to be due 
 to the fair course of justice, and more conducive to her 
 own good repute, that he should be brought to trial, and 
 the same is told at the time by Randolph writing to Ce- 
 
 ^ Knox, ii. 368. 
 
 « 
 
 Raumer, 22. 
 
88 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 cil.i He was tried at St Andrews, condemned, and execut- 
 ed. The records of the Court of Justiciary for that period 
 * having been lost, we are deprived of any light which they 
 might have cast on this strange story. Whoever desires 
 to read how he died, like a true knight-errant, turning 
 to the direction of his bright particular star, though it 
 was obscured from his view, and unheard addressing 
 her as the most lovely and cruel of her sex, may turn 
 to the lively pages of Brantome. Chatelar's adventures 
 fed many preposterous rumours, and the King of Spain 
 was told that he had been hired in France to do as he 
 did, for the purpose of ruining the queen's matrimonial 
 prospects.^ 
 
 Chatelar had been sent to France with the other 
 attendants of the queen soon after her arrival, and had 
 found his way back to the centre of attraction. One of 
 the few wise things done by Mary and her advisers was 
 the speedy restoration to their own country of this foreign 
 train, whose presence in Scotland, however discreetly they 
 might have conducted themselves, would have fostered 
 a special growth of jealousies and animosities, in addition 
 to the already luxuriant crop. What the rest would have 
 incurred we learn in the brief history of one of them who 
 remained behind the others — D'Elbceuf, the queen's uncle. 
 He was charged with having joined some dissipated Scots- 
 men in a nocturnal riot, in which they forced an entrance 
 to the house of a citizen, seeking access to a damsel 
 
 ^ Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 15th Feb. 1563. — Randolph, 
 exaggerating as was his wont, makes the offence of the besotted youth 
 amount to violence almost successful ; and he moralises on the inci- 
 dent in this fashion : * * Thus your honour heareth the beginning of 
 a lamentable story, whereof much infamy will arise ; as I fear, how 
 well soever the wound be healed, the scar will for ever remain. Thus 
 your honour seeth what mischief cometh of over-great familiarity that 
 any such personage showeth unto so unworthy a creature and abject 
 a varlet as ever her grace used with him." Randolph admits, with 
 somewhat of a grumble, that the queen never spoke to him about 
 this affair, and concludes his news by telling that the one who takes 
 it most to heart is Murray, because of the evil rumours it may occa- 
 sion. — Ibici, 167. 
 
 2 Teulet, iii. i. 
 
PURITAN REACTION, 1561-63. 89 
 
 living there. It is not stated that they committed vio- 
 lence on her, or even got access to her; and her own 
 conduct was so far from being irreproachable, that the 
 affair arose out of a dispute as to the person to whom she 
 had for the time being sold her blandishments, and the 
 object of the riot was to put one of the claimants in pos- 
 session. The criminal records of the day convey a very 
 false impression of the social condition of the country, 
 if far heavier offences of the same character were not 
 of daily occurrence. Yet the participation of D'Elboeuf 
 raised this paltry riot to a place in history. In Knox's 
 Book it is said that the horror of this fact, and the rarity 
 of it, highly commoved all godly hearts.'' ^ A sort of 
 General Assembly was convened on the occasion, who 
 addressed the queen in a long remonstrance about the 
 impiety, so heinous and so horrible that, as it was a fact 
 most vile and rare to be heard of within this realm, prin- 
 cipally within the bounds of this city, so should we think 
 ourselves guilty of the same if negligently, or yet for 
 worldly fear, we pass it over in silence.'^ They predicted 
 that its going unpunished might cause God's sore dis- 
 pleasure to fall on her and her whole realm.^ The queen 
 resisted the prosecution of the offenders, but promised 
 measures for better order in time coming. 
 
 It must be admitted, however, that so far as the clergy 
 were concerned, they do not seem to have applied to the 
 Frenchman a more rigid rule of virtue than that which 
 they followed themselves and endeavoured to enforce on the 
 community generally. They were under the impulse of 
 that great reaction against the profligacy of the age — the 
 reaction which, driven out of France, where it had its 
 origin, sv/ept England under the name of Puritanism, and 
 established a permanent influence over opinion in Scot- 
 land. Calvin had to take his notions of the absolute rule 
 of saintship away from France, where the Huguenots were 
 in a minority, to the small state of Geneva ; and Knox 
 sought to establish in Scotland the same iron rule which 
 
 ^ Knox, ii. 315. 
 
 ^ Knox, ii. 316. Book of the Universal Kirk, 29tli May 1561. 
 
go 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 his master was able with difficulty to hold over that small 
 and peculiar state. The rigidness of the rule by which he 
 and his brethren of the clergy had resolved to walk is 
 better exemplified by one exceptional case of backsliding 
 than by their professions of godliness. One of the new 
 clergymen — Paul Methven, minister of Jedburgh — was ac- 
 cused of connubial infidelity. Instead of any effort to con- 
 ceal this reproach to their body, they proclaimed it aloud 
 as an awful and inscrutable judgment, and hunted the 
 accused man until, whether guilty or not, he fled from 
 his pursuers. He had a claim that would have served 
 him well in any Church disposed to hide the frailties of its 
 zealous champions, for he had the glory of martyrdom. 
 We find him outlawed in 1559 for "usurping the authority 
 and ministry of the Church,'^ and addressing large assem- 
 blies in Dundee and Montrose.^ The excitement aroused 
 in a considerable body of men by the revelation among 
 them of this one black sheep, points to the conclusion 
 that such sins were rare in the community to which Meth- 
 ven belonged. Had there been other instances of flagrant 
 offence, these too would have been made known ; for it 
 was a peculiarity of the Presbyterian bodies to blazon the 
 infirmities of their own members as judgments and warn- 
 ings, while those of the opposite religion were dealt with 
 by ecclesiastical superiors, and shrouded in what they 
 deemed decorous privacy. 
 
 While thus perplexed by immoralities without and 
 within, the new Church had to look to the more serious 
 question of its own safety, and the preservation of the 
 Reformed faith. The question, which party should be su- 
 preme in Scotland, seemed to depend so much upon the 
 queen's marriage, that both preserved a sort of armed 
 neutrality until that event should take place, and declare 
 for the one or the other. The anxiety on the point tra- 
 
 ^ Pitcairn's Criminal Trials, I. 407. Randolph relating the scandal to 
 Cecil, as a morsel of important news, calls him a preacher brought 
 up under Mr Coverdale " — the translator of the Bible, we must sup- 
 pose ; and that " he has escaped into England, or was drowned in 
 crossing the water thitherwards." — Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 
 22d January 1562. 
 
MARRIAGE NEGOTIATIONS, 1563-65, 91 
 
 veiled indeed far beyond the bounds of Scotland : for if 
 Mary, with her claims on the crown of England, were 
 married to some great Catholic potentate, no one could 
 calculate what strength such an event might bring to the 
 cause of Rome ; while, on the other hand, a Protestant 
 king in Edinburgh would secure Scotland, at all events, 
 to the cause of the Reformation. Her ambitious relations 
 the Guises were fully alive to the important influence 
 which the result must have on their own designs and 
 prospects. It is only in the events of later times that we 
 can appreciate the scope and tendency of the projects of 
 that illustrious race, and see how near they were to the 
 accomplishment of a great revolution. They appeared 
 in all their lustre at a time when the French had few great 
 men, and were becoming discontented with the position 
 they found themselves holding among European powers. 
 What the family of Bonaparte since achieved, this ambi- 
 tious house were on the point of achieving in the sixteenth 
 century. If we look into the history of each of the several 
 great men of the house, we shall find them all strengthen- 
 ing their position by a marvellously dexterous use of every 
 available instrument, and uniting to propagate an im- 
 pression throughout the world that some wonderful des- 
 tiny was in store for them. They gave themselves out 
 as the true descendants of Charlemagne, through that 
 Lothaire, the founder of Lotharingia or Lorraine, whose 
 race was superseded on the throne of France by the 
 dynasty of Hugh Capet; and though they would have 
 found it hard to prove this descent to fastidious genealo- 
 gists, the history of their family gave plausibility to their 
 claim. When their niece ascended the throne of France, 
 they received a solid accession of power ; and whatever 
 may have been the form of their ambitious dreams for the 
 future, they had the certainty, while she and her husband 
 lived, of ruling supreme in France. 
 
 The death of the young king was a severe blow to them. 
 They had just perfected their measures for crushing the 
 house of Bourbon, where, from the physical condition of 
 the remnant of the Valois family, they saw the future pro- 
 bable successors to the throne of France. With the change 
 
92 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 of fortune, they were compelled to give up their hold on 
 Conde, Coligny, and the other illustrious victims through 
 whom the cause of the Huguenots and the Bourbon family 
 were to be crushed ; and they found in Catherine of Medici, 
 the mother of the boy who succeeded to the throne, one 
 who had the will, and might very soon have the power, to 
 trample them under her feet 
 
 Far from abandoning their great projects, however, the 
 history of their country has declared how they came back 
 to the contest with redoubled efforts and new resources. 
 The marriage of their niece was again in their hands, as a 
 means of giving strength to their position. They bethought 
 them that, with her claims on the crown of England, were 
 she married to the heir of the King of Spain, the most 
 powerful monarch of the day, there would arise a more 
 glorious prospect for her and themselves than even that 
 which the death of King Francis had extinguished. Ac- 
 cordingly they laboured hard to bring about her marriage 
 with Don Carlos, the heir of the Spanish crown, then in 
 his sixteenth year. The project was unsuccessful, and of 
 the manner in which it was defeated we at least know this 
 much, that Catherine of Medici was indefatigable in her 
 efforts to baffle it. Among other evidence of her indus- 
 try, some letters written in cipher to the Bishop of Limoges, 
 the French ambassador in Spain, have lately been deci- 
 phered.^ They are interesting in themselves, as specimens 
 of the subtle and tortuous method by which this incom- 
 prehensible woman worked for her ends. One reading 
 these letters cannot of course fathom their ultimate ob- 
 jects, which are laboriously concealed from the bishop 
 himself; but the overpowering intensity of her eagerness 
 to stop the match between her daughter-in-law and Don 
 Carlos breaks through all the avowed objects of the cor- 
 respondence. 
 
 Philip's own intentions lie hidden among the other 
 mysteries of his policy ; but it seems clear that he enter- 
 tained, if he did not push, the match. Catherine's sus- 
 picions were directed against him at so early a period that, 
 
 Cheruel, Marie Stuart et Catherine de Medicis, &c., 22. 
 
MARRIAGE NEGOTIATIONS, 1563-65. 93 
 
 when Don Juan de Manriquez was sent from Spain to 
 France on a message of condolence for the death of 
 Francis II., Catherine said this was a pretence ; for his 
 actual mission, in which he exerted himself, was to nego- 
 tiate with the Guises for the marriage of their niece with 
 Don Carlos. The preponderance which such an event 
 would give to Spain, influenced the policy of France in 
 relation to the resumption of the Council of Trent, as 
 seriously affecting the influence which Spain, aggrandised 
 by such an alliance, would exercise among the Catholic 
 powers.^ 
 
 The immediate object most keenly urged by Catherine 
 is a personal meeting with Philip. She seems to have 
 thought that, if she once had an opportunity of talking 
 with him, all her objects were gained — a curious instance 
 of her thorough reliance on her diplomatic powers, since 
 it would be difficult to point in history to a potentate 
 more obdurately and hopelessly self-willed than the man 
 she expected to bring over. Intensely as she desired the 
 interview, it must be so arranged as to seem unpremedi- 
 tated ; and she laid down a little chain of events through 
 which it might be brought to pass as if it were fortuitous. 
 In September, as she ascertained, the King of Spain would 
 attend a public spectacle in Aragon. Towards the end of 
 July her son would make his public entry into Paris, after 
 his consecration at Rheims. She might herself go as far 
 as Touraine under the natural pretext of visiting Che- 
 nenceau, the beautiful chateau out of which she had 
 driven her hated rival, Diana of Poitiers. Her son the 
 king would be with her, and they might probably go on 
 to Gascony, where the King of Navarre had a project for 
 letting the people see their young king ; so she would be 
 near Spain, and the meeting, which must appear to the 
 world an affair of chance, might be accomplished. 
 
 If the meeting were held, she was to take the opportu- 
 nity of proving to Philip that the proposed marriage would 
 in reality be disastrous to the interests of the Church, the 
 promotion of which was the avowed object for urging it. 
 
 Castelnau, Laboureur Additions aux Memoires, i. 480, 554. 
 
94 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 She knew that Philip held the interest of the Church 
 beyond all things at heart ; and could she but obtain this 
 interview, there were innumerable shapes in which they 
 could combine to promote that object, the dearest to her 
 heart as it was to his. The Guises, though the self-con- 
 stituted champions of the Church, were not truly devoted 
 to it — they were too ambitious and worldly. Even now 
 they were in league with the King of Navarre, whose in- 
 terests would predominate in France along with theirs. 
 Let the King of Spain sap this worldly coalition, and take 
 to his bosom her own young son the King of France, inspire 
 him with true zeal, and so raise up a hero worthy to serve 
 with him in his great enterprise for the restoration of the 
 rights of the Church. This pleading is a signal instance 
 of the plausibility and subtle duplicity of the woman. 
 She was then contemplating and preparing for an alliance 
 of her own interests with those of the Guises, as likely to 
 be the best security for her supremacy ; but she did not 
 desire that her prospective ally should acquire an influence 
 which would give him the mastery. She relied thoroughly 
 on the absorbing character of Philip's religious bigotry, 
 though she had none herself ; and yet at the same time 
 she laid before him a small temporal bait, in case he 
 should possess some latent element of worldliness, in her 
 allusions to the King of Navarre, who was then disput- 
 ing with the King of Spain the possession of certain 
 territories. 
 
 She did not obtain her interview, but she. gained her 
 ultimate end in breaking the match. She bore, in her 
 objections to it, on the King of Spain's ear through all 
 available channels, not forgetting his confessor. Her 
 most available ally, however, seems to have been her own 
 young daughter, who had been married to Philip after the 
 death of Mary, Queen of England. Catherine had known 
 and keenly felt the humiliation of giving precedence to 
 the haughty beauty as reigning queen, on the death of her 
 husband, and could tell her own daughter what she had 
 to anticipate in a similar position. The mother, indeed, 
 suggested that her daughter, the Queen of Spain, 
 should endeavour to keep this preferment for her own 
 
MARRIAGE NEGOTIATIONS, 1563-65. 95 
 
 young sister, Marguerite of Valois, the same who became 
 afterwards the wife of Henry IV. It appears that at 
 last Catherine of Medici even influenced the Guises to 
 abandon their project.^ But it was not abandoned by 
 Mary herself. When she was not under the influence of 
 the violent attachments to which she afterwards yielded, 
 and while she viewed her marriage as a politic arrange- 
 ment, she scorned anything but a thoroughly great al- 
 liance. So when it was proposed to marry her to the 
 Archduke Charles, the second son of the emperor, she con- 
 temptuously rejected him for substantial reasons. As a 
 stranger, he would have no following or political influence 
 in Scotland. Estimating him among the powers of Europe, 
 he was nothing but a younger son, without fortune or title,, 
 and with no power to assert her birthright — the entire 
 sovereignty of Britain.^ It was the more mortifying to 
 her also to find that, when this marriage was proposed, 
 Philip II. drew back in courtesy to his uncle the emperor. 
 When he learned Queen Mary's repulse of the German 
 alliance, he reopened the negotiation, observing that he 
 would have been well pleased to have seen his relation the 
 archduke husband to the Queen of Scotland, if that alHance 
 would have furthered the views he had at heart ; but he 
 really believed a marriage with his own son would be more 
 effective in settling religious difliculties in England. In 
 the year 1563, when Don Alvaro de la Quadra was Spanish 
 ambassador in England, there was at the same time a 
 Spanish gentleman connected with his embassy named 
 De Paz, who went to Scotland as representative of Spain 
 with special instructions about the proposed marriage of 
 Mary with Don Carlos, and, to shroud his journey in 
 secrecy passed round by Ireland.^ 
 
 The negotiations of De Paz, and their immediate result, 
 are as yet buried in mystery. We know, however, that 
 Mary herself renewed the negotiations for the marriage, if 
 they can be ever said to have died. She wrote earnest 
 
 ^ See Authorities in Mignet, chapter iii. 
 2 See Documents, Labanoff, i. 248, 295. 
 
 ^ Cheruel, 35. Papiers d'Etat du Cardinal de Granvelle, vii. 208. 
 
96 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 letters about it to Granvelle, her uncle the cardinal and 
 her aunt the Duchess of Arschot. Castelnau, when he 
 went to Holyrood after having delivered to Queen Eliza- 
 beth the mocking proposal for her marriage with the young 
 King of France, said, probably with truth, that Queen 
 Mary held easy and confidential communications with him 
 about the several princes named to her, as the Archduke 
 Charles, the Prince of Ferrara, several princes of Germany, 
 and the Prince of Conde, an alliance with whom would 
 accomplish the desirable end of bringing the house of 
 Bourbon on closer terms with the house of Guise. The 
 ambassador hinted that a marriage with the Duke of Anjou 
 would enable her to return to France. To this she said, 
 with a touch of graceful sentiment quite her own, that in- 
 deed no other kingdom in the world had such a hold upon 
 her as France, where she passed her happy youth, and had 
 the honour to wear the crown; but appropriate to this 
 honour, it would hardly be becoming for her to return 
 thither to fill a lower place, leaving her own country a 
 prey to the factions by which it was rent ; and then as to 
 the matter of dignity, she had high expectations from cer- 
 tain suggestions about an alliance with Don Carlos, who 
 would succeed to the great empire of Philip II. It was 
 on this alliance that her mind was bent, for she spoke of 
 it twice emphatically, in the midst of the slighting remarks 
 in which she passed the others in review.^ 
 
 She intrusted her secret foreign messenger Raulet, and 
 one less known, called Chesein, to make for her those 
 more full and confidential communications which she 
 could not always trust on paper. ^ What remains of this 
 correspondence shows that much more existed, and that 
 there were many communications to her friends abroad, 
 which she rather trusted to the spoken explanations of 
 faithful agents than to letters. 
 
 The fragmentary traces of her exertions in this cause 
 give some insight into the extent of the system of secret 
 communication with her friends on the Continent which 
 
 Memoires, liv. v. c. 1 1. 
 
 See Labanoff generally, down to 1564. Cheruel, 37. 
 
MARRIAGE NEGOTIATIONS, 1563-65. 97 
 
 she had established. Alava, the Spanish ambassador in 
 France, is found writing repeatedly to Philip II. himself, 
 in the year 1564 and in the early part of 1565, with state- 
 ments how Beaton, the exiled Archbishop of Glasgow, 
 whom he calls Queen Mary's secretary, presses for a 
 definitive determination from Madrid on the question 
 whether the marriage is to be or not. On the 15th of 
 March 1565, he communicates the assurance of Beaton 
 that unless the King of Spain come to the rescue, she will 
 be compelled to throw herself away on a cousin of her 
 own — namely, Henry, Lord Damley j and it is represented 
 that she is deserted by her brother Murray, and driven by 
 Queen Elizabeth to this undesirable union. A despatch 
 of the 4th of June states that there is still time, for she is 
 not yet married, and ardently desires the protection of the 
 King of Spain. This last appeal was written seven weeks 
 before her marriage.^ 
 
 It is doubtful whether Queen Elizabeth, if she knew 
 even that this project had been entertained, was aware 
 how pertinaciously it was pressed. Knox, whose com- 
 munications gave him means of accurate intelligence from 
 the Continent, seems to have known something of what 
 was going on, when he made those allusions to the 
 queen's marriage which aroused her high displeasure. 
 There is evidence that the ever vigilant Catherine of 
 Medici had considerable knowledge of the affair, and con- 
 tinued to be busily counterplotting. In letters written in 
 cipher she earnestly pressed it on Bochetel, Bishop of 
 Rennes, the French ambassador at the Emperor of Ger- 
 many's Court, to defeat the Spanish match by pressing the 
 proposal for Mary's marriage with the Archduke Charles.^ 
 She sent Castelnau to Britain professedly to arrange the 
 project already referred to of a marriage between Mary 
 and her son the Duke of Anjou, the brother of the King 
 of France and of Mary's dead husband. It was on the 
 
 ^ Extraits des Correspondances de Don Frances de Alava, du 
 Secretaire Aguilon, &c., Ambassadeurs ou Charges d' Affaires de 
 Philippe II. en France de 1563 a 1587. — Teulet, vol. iii. I et seq. 
 Additions aux Memoires de Castelnau, liv. iii. 552. 
 VOL. IV. G 
 
98 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 same mission that Castelnau was intrusted with the equally 
 sincere proposal of a marriage between the young King of 
 France and Elizabeth. 
 
 This king himself was among the reputed expectants of 
 the hand of Mary ; he is even said to have been deeply 
 in love with her. Any project for their union, if it was 
 ever really entertained at anytime, had not vitality enough 
 to call out the king's mother's active opposition, though 
 her opinion against it is pretty clear She says the ru- 
 mours about it were carried so far as to contain an assertion 
 that the Pope's dispensation for a marriage so far within 
 the forbidden degrees had been applied for, and was ex- 
 pected to arrive ; but at the same time she says that this 
 rumour was circulated for the purpose of concealing a 
 project for marrying the young king to a granddaughter of 
 the emperor, and that the author of the rumour was the 
 King of Spain, who sought in this manner to stop a mar- 
 riage which would too closely unite France and the house 
 of Hapsburg.^ It is on the correspondence of the period, 
 too, that, conscious how strongly the poor youth was at- 
 tached to her, Mary threatened to accept him, in the hope 
 that the threat would bring Philip II. to terms.^ 
 
 Among the other Continental dignitaries not already 
 named, who, by their own desire or the schemes of diplo- 
 matists, were counted among the suitors for Queen Mary's 
 hand, there were — the young Count of Orleans, of the 
 house of Dunois, the nephew of her mother's first husband; 
 the Duke of Nemours, of the house of Savoy; and the 
 Duke of Ferrara. Greater than any of these was the 
 young King of Denmark. The unhappy Eric, King of 
 Sweden, was another competitor for her hand ; and his 
 suit was pressed with considerable earnestness for nearly 
 three years after her arrival in Scotland. His subsequent 
 misfortunes were caused by personal defects, which were 
 not likely to be considered in the estimate of his claim. 
 Politically, such a union would have been the best that 
 could be found for the Protestant party ; and Queen 
 
 1 Additions aux Memoires de Castelnau, hv. iii. 552. 
 
 2 Spanish Correspondence quoted, Mignet, i. 134. 
 
MARRIAGE NEGOTIATIONS, 1563-65. 99 
 
 Elizabeth, if the affair had not been one about which 
 female caprices and jealousies had got possession of her, 
 would certainly have felt that a union between Scotland 
 and a Protestant state fast rising into the position of a 
 great European power was sound policy for the Protestant 
 interest, and would have furthered the claims of the King 
 of Sweden with her usual energy. Mary herself had, as 
 we have seen, her own designs, to which it was not con- 
 venient to attract attention by the peremptory rejection of 
 other proposals, and the negotiation with Sweden was 
 allowed barely to live until it exhausted itself. 
 
 All this while there passed between the two queens ex- 
 pressions of cordial sympathy and intimacy, Mary through- 
 out leaning with seductive confidingness on the counsel 
 of her royal sister in the serious affair of her marriage. It 
 is observable, however, that among her many letters to 
 Queen Elizabeth which have been preserved, none are in 
 the genial easy spirit of her French letters written with 
 her own hand to her friends abroad. Whether she could 
 write in English or Scots at that time, is, as we have 
 seen, questionable. The few letters to Elizabeth in 
 French, and the much larger number in Scots, are 
 drawn by secretaries, and only pass out of the etiquette 
 of state papers to express the feeling of cordial attachment 
 and sympathy which the draughtsman was instructed to 
 throw into his communication. Throughout, in the midst 
 of the most profuse professions of regard and confidence, 
 Mary is firm on the one essential point between them — 
 she will give no distinct assent or ratification to the treaty 
 of Edinburgh ; and in the arrangements for their meeting, 
 it was stipulated that " the said Queen of Scots shall not 
 be pressed with anything she shall show herself to mislike, 
 before that she be freely returned into her own realm. 
 This meeting, which was never to be, went so far on the 
 face of the negotiations that the French ambassador De 
 Foix reported to Catherine of Medici how it was to be 
 held at Nottingham on the 8th of September 1562. He 
 wrote in great alarm, anticipating a cordial alliance be- 
 
 ^ LabanofF, i. 152. 
 
lOO 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 tween the two queens, which would extinguish all remains 
 of the ancient league between France and Scotland, and 
 give England such an increase of power as would probably 
 soon be proved in the recapture of Calais.^ 
 
 At the time we have reached, the great civil war had be- 
 gun in which the Guises led the contest against the Hugue- 
 nots, as representing not only the interests of Catholicism 
 but the throne itself, since the king was in their possession. 
 Queen Elizabeth senc over troops to aid the Huguenots. 
 Randolph officially communicated this act to Queen 
 Mary, who received the information in sadness, but in 
 candour and courtesy, saying she believed her uncles were 
 true subjects of their prince, and did but execute their 
 orders ; adding, that " she was not so unreasonable as to 
 condemn those who differed from her in opinion, still less 
 was she inclined on their account to abate anything of the 
 friendship she felt for his mistress the Queen of England.*' 
 The astute reporter of this scene assured Cecil, his master, 
 in the end of December 1563, that Mary heard almost as 
 seldom from France as the King of Muscovy.^ 
 
 In fact, the gifted pupil of the Itahanised French Court, 
 under her winning smile and the bland courtesy which 
 seemed also so full of candour, kept impenetrably hidden 
 a subtle dissimulation, which was high art beside the 
 clumsy cunning of EHzabeth and her English advisers, 
 who could not rid themselves of the consciousness that 
 they were doing what was uncongenial to British natures, 
 and were ever apt to overact or otherwise bungle their 
 part. At Holyrood the practised statesman felt secure in 
 his communications with a woman, young, gentle, and in- 
 experienced, whose weaknesses were a careless frivolity 
 and too easy reliance on others. At Westminster the 
 same practised statesman would have an uneasy consci- 
 ousness that there was duplicity in the communication 
 with him, though he might not be able to trace it home. 
 
 In the course of the friendly messages between the 
 two queens, which chiefly now bore on the question of the 
 marriage. Sir James Melville was sent to Elizabeth. He 
 
 1 Teulet, ii. 24. 2 Document quoted, P. F. Tytler, vi. 269. 
 
ELIZABETH AND LEICESTER, 1564-65. lOI 
 
 was a shrewd observer with a strong sense of the ludicrous, 
 as well as an accomplished courtier ; and his account of 
 the attentions paid to him, the professions lavished on him, 
 and the tricks, as they might be termed, to secure his 
 confidence, is highly amusing. He was not for a moment 
 deceived, and set down the whole as dissimulation and 
 jealousy.^ His mission occurred at a curious juncture in 
 the affair of the marriage, which gives a zest to his personal 
 sketches of Darnley, Leicester, and other bystanders, as 
 well as of Elizabeth herself We are told how she stealth- 
 ily shows him Leicester's picture, comparing the hand- 
 some courtierly man it represents with "yonder long lad" 
 the Lord Darnley, and drives the faithful courtier nearly 
 frantic by determining to have his candid opinion on her 
 own personal beauty as compared with that of his mistress. 
 At his wits' end how to give her some honest praise, he 
 had his opportunity at last, when it was managed that by 
 chance he should hear her performing on the virginals, 
 and pleaded that while wandering about his ear was 
 ravished with her melody, which drew him into the 
 chamber he could scarcely tell how.''^ 
 
 Just before this visit Elizabeth had declared herself on 
 the question of the marriage. She had objected to every 
 claimant brought forward by others. Her position seemed 
 unreasonable ; but when she changed it for a positive re- 
 commendation, she only added amazement to the other 
 misgivings and difficulties, by proposing her own favourite, 
 Leicester. What did she mean by this ? — was it to ex- 
 tinguish temptation by fixing a gulf between her, and one 
 whom she loved not wisely, but too well ? Was it to shut 
 the mouth of scandal, by a sort of protest that she was 
 totally indifferent to him ? Was it a mere dash into the 
 diplomatic proceedings about her royal sister's marriage, 
 for the purpose of throwing them into confusion ? These 
 are questions which those only who know what kind of 
 sentiments may vibrate through such sinewy hearts as hers 
 can profess to solve. 
 
 The proposal scattered dismay among Elizabeth's sage 
 
 1 Memoirs, 129. 
 
 2 Ibid., 125. 
 
I02 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 advisers, who wist not what to do. Leicester had been 
 giving himself airs among them ; and though they might 
 consider him a rash young man, whose intellect was in- 
 flated by intoxicating draughts of regal caresses, yet some 
 of the wisest of them covertly sought his goodwill, as that 
 of the man who might some day soon be their master. 
 Randolph, in his confidential communings with Cecil, 
 muttered his uneasiness in conjectures about how un- 
 willing the queen's majesty herself would be to depart from 
 him, and how hardly his mind could be diverted or drawu 
 from that worthy room where it is placed, let any man 
 see, where it cannot be thought but it is so fixed for ever 
 that the world would judge worse of him than of any living 
 man, if he should not rather yield his life than alter his 
 thoughts/' 1 Murray seemed desirous of the match — at 
 least he spoke well of it. Leicester himself seems to have 
 been silent, awaiting his destiny at the hands of Elizabeth. 
 Mary not having fallen in love with Leicester — whom, by 
 the way, she never saw — did not abandon her ambitious 
 projects of a great regal alliance; and after having slighted 
 suitors who, if below her mark, were still royal, received 
 the proposal to marry the upstart favourite of her rival 
 with an angry disdain, which she could not or did not 
 wish to conceal. Indeed she repeatedly brought it up 
 and discussed it in voluble irritation with the perplexed 
 Randolph. Was she, the widow of the greatest sovereign 
 in Christendom, to mate with a mere subject of the English 
 queen? It was useless to say that a subject of Scotland 
 had been gravely commended as a fitting match for 
 Queen Elizabeth. That subject was of royal blood, and 
 might become a sovereign — his father was then heir of the 
 crown of Scotland, and it might be that the descendant of 
 such a marriage should inherit both kingdoms — but what 
 was Dudley ? Little better than a Court lackey, and re- 
 markable in his descent only for the criminality of an an- 
 cestor who belonged to the offensive and rapacious class 
 called in Scripture publicans. There was an odd and some- 
 thing like a diseased desire to hover about this proposal, 
 
 1 Quoted, Tytler, vi. 288. 
 
ELIZABETH AND THE MARRIAGE, 1564-65. I03 
 
 offensive as it was, along with the question of the marriage 
 generally. Wayward and capricious as her talk was, how- 
 ever, it never touched her projects about foreign princes. 
 Sometimes it would take a gloomy turn. She was sick of 
 all projects for her disposal. Her heart was in the grave 
 of her dead husband, and she took opportunity after op- 
 portunity to show how dear he. was to her memory. ^ 
 
 People of strong passionate natures are often subject to 
 reactionaryinfluence, productive of depression, debility, and 
 futile restlessness. In after-years. Queen Mary's nerves 
 were more than once thus shattered, but the cause was 
 then only too conspicuous to the world. For three months 
 before her second marriage, the English resident's news- 
 letters are disturbed by like symptoms from causes of irrita- 
 tion and anxiety unknown. The death of her illustrious 
 uncle, and the perilous position of the house of Guise ; 
 the negotiations with Rome — hidden under a Protestant 
 policy that might crush her if they were discovered ; her 
 remorseless sacrifice of Huntly, the best friend to her 
 Church and herself, — were items all-sufficient to frighten 
 and unnerve the strongest nature Yet perhaps it was 
 only that her vehement heart was not then occupied by 
 any object of exclusive devotion. Repeatedly Randolph 
 had to allude to her evident sufferings from some 
 secret sorrow, and seemed to think that her days were 
 numbered. At times she was so ill that he could not 
 see her, however urgent his business. At others, she 
 received him at long, bewildering, sorrowful confer- 
 ences at her bedside. Then suddenly she had taken 
 horse and gone off to Perth or St Andrews — on one 
 
 ^ On Saturday last she solemnly celebrated the obsequies of her hus- 
 band." — Randolph; State Papers (Foreign), 1563, p. 435. ** She said 
 that she had two jewels that must die with her, and wittingly shall never 
 lie out of her sight, and showed him a ring which she said was her 
 husband's" (617). In March 1564 **hehad long purpose with this 
 queen, as well of her own estate as his sovereign's, touching their 
 marriage. As for this queen, the remembrance of her late husband 
 is so fresh that she cannot think of any other. Her years are not so 
 many but she may abide ; and that which is most of all, she is neither 
 sought nor desired of any" (71). 
 
104 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 occasion to Dunbar, where there was stili a Frencli garri- 
 son, and the resident suspected that she was on a perfidi- 
 ous and dangerous mission.^ The resident's correspon- 
 dence at this period is rife wdth ominous rumours and 
 unverified predictions. It has firom this cause a sort of 
 negative instructiveness, since it teaches us that afterwards, 
 when a whole chapter of tragic events followed thickly on 
 each other, we must not take for granted that every mys- 
 terious hint or rumour finding its way into the ambassador's 
 budget of news indicated an accurate foreknowledge of 
 what was to come.^ 
 
 1 Touching this queen's going to Dunbar on Monday last to pass 
 her time, immediately arose a bruit that two ships were arrived there 
 that night, either that there was some nobleman come out of France, 
 or that the queen, taking a despite against this country, would again 
 into France ; and for that caus Martigues came to Calais to receive 
 her and the ships to convey her. To augment this suspicion it was 
 said that in the night there were conveyed out of the abbey four 
 great chests ; and that she being on horseback said to Lord Morton, 
 * God be with you, my Lord Morton ; I will bring you other novels 
 when I come again. ' The next day cometh the news that one of the 
 two ships that are laden with artillery to come into Scotland was 
 arrived at Dunbar, and the other was taken by the Englishmen. 
 That night, Wednesday, sudden warning was given to all Murray's 
 friends and servants in this town, to ride out and to lodge themselves 
 about Dunbar, for that Bothwell was come secretly to speak with the 
 queen with many horses, and that Murray, being without any com- 
 pany, might perchance have fallen into some danger." — Calendar 
 of State Papers (Foreign), 1564, p. 62. 
 
 2 The following about a mysterious banquet, of which I am not 
 aware that there is any other record, is a good specimen of this style of 
 correspondence: **The banquet ensued hereupon. What devilish 
 devices are imagined upon it, passes almost the wit of man to think. 
 Little good some say is intended to some or other. The banquets 
 made by her mother a little before she went about to suppress God's 
 Word made at that season of the year, are called to mind — this was 
 the Shrovetide before the troubles. News herewith comes that many 
 sail of ships were coming out of France to land in Scotland ; this 
 bruit had almost spilt the whole potage. This confirmed all the rest 
 that no good was intended to the poor Protestants, nor amity to be 
 kept with England. To what end are all these banquets ? For the 
 space of twelve or fourteen days together, every nobleman had his 
 day about, and the Lord of Lethington excelled all save the queen. 
 But while they pipe and dance, their enemies shall land and they have 
 their throats cut. I was content to let this rumour run, so far as no 
 
ELIZABETH AND THE MARRIAGE, 1564-65. 105 
 
 Dudley had just received the title, by which he is best 
 known, of Earl of Leicester ; and Cecil commending him to 
 Murray and Lethington shows how, First, he is of noble 
 birth and void of all evil conditions that sometimes are 
 heritable to princes, and in goodness of nature and rich- 
 ness of good gifts, comparable to any prince, and much bet- 
 ter than a great sort now living. He is an EngHshman, 
 and so meet to carry with him the consent of this nation 
 to accord with theirs. He is also signally esteemed of the 
 queen, so that she thinks no good turn or fortune greater 
 than may be well bestowed upon him. And for his 
 degree at this time, he is already an earl of this realm, and 
 she will give him the highest degree." Behind this and 
 other commendations on the part of English statesmen, 
 there lies the ^ question whether they spoke in the hearty 
 desire to give effect to the wishes of their mistress, or were 
 anxious to remove from her an object of temptation and a 
 cause of scandal. It was no doubt by the order of their 
 mistress that they became anxiously diplomatic as to what 
 she would do in support of Mary's claim to succeed her on 
 the throne of England. Through a hazy mist of words, 
 however, there never comes the direct promise to ac- 
 knowledge Mary as the nearest heir of EHzabeth. " She 
 will cause inquisition to be made " in the matter, and so 
 far as shall stand with justice and her own security. Queen 
 EHzabeth shall remove all things prejudicial to her sister's 
 interest," &c.i 
 
 An event of a simple character breaks in upon the vari- 
 ous negotiations and intrigues for providing Mary with a 
 husband, when the tall stature and fresh boyish face of a 
 fooHsh youth settled the matter by love at first sight. It 
 was at Wemyss Castle, a weather-beaten fortress on a rock 
 rising from the northern coast of the Firth of Forth, that 
 
 suspicion could be gathered of the queen that I was a mover of it. 
 What men expected to have found among so many secret banqueting 
 dishes, or what we remember of like banqueting, and what parts had 
 been used at such times, it skills not how little is spoken. " — Randolph 
 to Cecil, 2ist February 1564; Scots MS. i. Rolls house. It is 
 rendered very nearly word for word in the Calendar. 
 ^ Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 264. 
 
io6 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 Mary first saw her cousin, Henry Stewart, Lord Damley, 
 about the middle of February 1565. He had just come 
 from England to join his father, and finding the queen 
 absent from Edinburgh on one of her many progresses, he 
 took the privilege of a relation to push on and visit her. 
 They had no sooner m.et than the many keen eyes that 
 watched the young widow,,and the handsome youth saw 
 what was to be.^ 
 
 The meeting was no mere accident, though Mary does 
 not appear to have furthered or expected it. The young 
 man's birth placed him naturally within the view of those 
 who busied themselves about the disposal of her hand. 
 He was of a family which had branched off from the old 
 Stewart stock before it became royal, and several early 
 intermarriages connected his ancestry with the reigning 
 line of the family. His connection with the throne of 
 Scotland followed that of the house of Hamilton. He was 
 more closely aUied to the EngUsh throne, since his mother, 
 Margaret Douglas, was a daughter of Henry VIII.'s sister 
 Margaret, the widow of James IV., by her marriage with 
 Angus. According to the rules of strict lineal descent, 
 Mary was at that time heir to the crown of England, as 
 the child of Margaret's son, and he was next after her 
 in succession as the descendant of Margaret's daughter. 
 He was the nearest prince of the blood in Queen Eliza- 
 beth's Court, and Sir James Melville saw him take that 
 
 1 It is unexpected to find Randolph announcing to Leicester of all 
 men the arrival and propitious reception of Darnley. He writes on 
 the 19th of February, His courteous dealing with all deserves great 
 praise and is well spoken of " Going to meet the queen, as his own 
 horses had not come, Randolph supplied him, and upon Friday he 
 passed over the water, and on Saturday he met with the queen, where 
 he heard that he was welcomed and honourably used. He lodged in 
 the same house that she did for that time, and this day repairs towards 
 his father." — Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 301. Then on the 
 27th there is some curiously-mixed gossip sent to Cecil. Darnley * * has 
 been with him, and came again to the queen, at her coming over the 
 Queen's ferry upon Saturday last." Yesterday he and Darnley dined 
 with Murray. His behaviour is liked, and there is great praise of 
 him." Accompanying Murray **he heard Mr Knox preach and on 
 the evening of the same day, as it would seem, **he being required 
 by Murray, danced a galiarde with the queen." — Ibid., 305. 
 
THE LENNOX FAMILY, 1564-65. lOJ 
 
 place in one of the ceremonials of Leicester's promotion. 
 There was much parade, and some difficulty, about his 
 father, Lennox, obtaining leave to visit Scotland about his 
 personal affairs, as if both Elizabeth and the other parties 
 concerned felt that there was something more in view than 
 the mere object avowed.^ It was with the becoming and 
 very natural profession of joining his father that the young 
 Darnley visited the queen, and at once found himself on the 
 summit of fortune's wheel. Elizabeth professed herself ex- 
 tremely indignant that two of her subjects should have 
 taken the opportunity of their leave of absence to transact 
 business so important. 
 
 Queen Elizabeth on this occasion showed herself abso- 
 
 ^ In September and October the English resident sees distinctly 
 the sunshine of Court favour turning in the direction of the house of 
 Lennox. On the 23d of September, **by the queen's command, 
 Lennox (who had newly arrived) was welcomed. On Sunday the 
 earl kept his house quiet, and at night banqueted the four Marys. 
 On the 25th, the queen being present, it was agreed that Lennox 
 should be restored." On the 24th of October he tells how *^ on Sun 
 day there was married a daughter of the Justice Clerk [Sir John Bel- 
 lenden] three miles from Edinburgh, where the most of the ladies were. 
 After dinner thither went the queen and the four Marys, to do honour to 
 the bride. She returned that night, and supped with Lennox and the 
 writer also. In the midst of her supper she drank to Queen Elizabeth, 
 adding these words * de bon coeur.' That night she danced long and in 
 a mask ; and playing at dice lost Lennox a jewel of crystal set in gold. 
 . . . The queen is determined to accord the Earl of Lennox and the 
 duke. Much talk there is to what end all this favour showed to Len- 
 nox tends. He is well friended of Lethington, who, it is now thought, 
 will bear much with the Stewarts for the love he bears to Mary Flem- 
 ynge " — one of the * * four Marys " whom Lethington married. Lennox 
 was a rich man from his English estates, and he let his wealth be felt 
 in splendid and munificent living. * * His cheer is great and his house- 
 hold many, though he has despatched divers of his train away. He 
 finds occasions to disburse money very fast, and of his £'Joo that he 
 brought with him is sure that much is not left. He gave the queen 
 a marvellous fair and rich jewel, whereof there is made no small ac- 
 count, a clock, and a dial curiously wrought and set with stones, a,nd 
 a looking-glass very richly set with stones in the four metals ; to Leth- 
 ington a very fair diamond in a ring, to the Earl of Athol another, 
 as also to his wife he knows not what ; to divers others somewhat, 
 but to Murray nothing. He presented also each of the Marys pretty 
 things. The bruit is here that Lady Lennox and Lord Darnley are 
 coming." — Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 213, 228-230. 
 
io8 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 lute both in word and deed in treating the Lennox family 
 • — father, mother, and son — as her subjects bound to obe- 
 dience. We have seen the foundation of this claim in 
 the father's assurance to Henry VIII.^ He was endowed 
 with new domains in England, and the Estates of Scotland 
 passed on him an act of forfeiture, which they took the 
 opportunity of his return, under conditions so altered, 
 to revoke. It is useless to ask how far Queen Ehzabeth 
 was entitled by the letter of the law to the authority she 
 so ineffectually claimed — the question might involve any 
 amount of discussion, both on the preliminary point of the 
 naturalisation to England of the Lennox family, and on 
 the amount of regal control over their motions involved 
 by their being English subjects. But it may be noted 
 that, had the marriage been taken up by the Government 
 of England as a state question, in which it was strong 
 enough to interpose, there would have been a ready justi- 
 fication at hand, in the great secret that was never, unless 
 in cases of necessity, to be heard on the north side of the 
 border — the claim of feudal superiority over Scotland, be- 
 lieved, on the authority of documents unquestioned, to be 
 vested in the crown of England. We have seen how Cecil 
 deliberated over a beneficent use of this power. After- 
 wards we shall find how it was thought necessary on the 
 part of England to assert it — but parenthetically, as it were 
 — in a critical conference between English and Scots states 
 men. With this right in the English crown, if the English 
 crown should become strong enough to exercise the right, 
 the marriage of Mary with Darnley would have been an 
 affair between two vassals who must take their orders from 
 the sovereign of England. 
 
 Practically this question did not come up — there were 
 others more immediately urgent and critical. There was 
 more than one discussion by the Council of England, and 
 at last they found in the objections to the marriage a 
 plea for an object they had at heart, and a plea all the 
 stronger that Queen Elizabeth had herself started the ob- 
 jections. They approached their object gradually. They 
 
 ^ See chap. xxxv. 
 
MURRAY, DARNLEY, AND BOTHWELL, 1565. IO9 
 
 drew attention to the menacing combinations among the 
 Popish powers. They connected with these symptoms how 
 Mary and her husband the King of France had claimed 
 the crown of England, and had persistently refused or 
 evaded the ratification of the treaty abjuring that claim. 
 They looked nearer home, and found too closely in coin- 
 cidence with these, other special causes of alarm ; as, for 
 instance, " in perusing of the substance of the justices of 
 the peace in all the counties of the realm, scantly a third 
 part was found fully assured to be trusted in the matter of 
 religion, upon which only thing hangs the title of the Queen 
 of Scots. The friends of Lennox and Darnley had more 
 knowledge hereof than was requisite, and they made a 
 vaunt now in Scotland that their party was so great in 
 England as the queen dare not attempt to contrary this 
 marriage.'* Then came the remedy for the danger in an 
 urgent argument on the text, ^^that it was necessary to 
 obtain that the queen should marry with no long delay." ^ 
 
 To Murray and the Protestant lords the crisis was now 
 approaching, and they felt it. Darnley belonged to the 
 Church of Rome, and thus the question, which religious 
 party should have the influence of the queen's husband on 
 its side, was coming to a determination. Matters might 
 have been much worse ; and few people either in England 
 or Scotland then knew the imminent risk, that the most 
 powerful monarch of the day, who was at the same time 
 the most ardent champion of the Popedom, might have a 
 legitimate right to dictate to Scotland. The Protestant 
 lords felt, however, that in the prospect of the marriage 
 the queen was showing the flag of her true party. 
 
 Murray resolved at this juncture to try his strength in a 
 form which suggests strange associations with subsequent 
 events — he tried it not against Darnley himself, but against 
 Bothwell, who had just returned from France, where he 
 had sought refuge from the criminal charge already spoken 
 of. That charge Murray now urged against him — it was 
 the same strange plot against the queen in which he had 
 the mad Arran as his confidant and denouncer. 
 
 ^ Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 385. 
 
no 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 The indictment against Bothwell for high treason came 
 up for trial on the 2d of May 1565, before the Earl Argyle 
 as Lord Justice-General, one of Murray's supporters. It 
 is one of the most remarkable instances on record of a 
 judicial proceeding being turned into a trial of party 
 strength, yielding only in this characteristic to another and 
 more memorable trial to which Bothwell was called. 
 Finding his enemy too strong for him, he disappeared and 
 was outlawed. Randolph reported the triumphant sup- 
 port given to Murray in these terms: *^The company 
 that came to this town in favour of my Lord of Murray 
 are esteemed five or six thousand, and for my part I assure 
 your honour I never saw a greater assembly.^' It was put 
 on the record of the trial at Bothwell's instance that he 
 
 dare not compear for fear of his life at this time and 
 place, by reason of the great convention of his enemies 
 and unfriends."^ Thus, though his power was tottering, 
 Murray found and showed that he still ruled in Scotland. 
 The terms in which Randolph continues his letter are 
 curious and significant, as the first traces noted by a con- 
 temporary on the spot of the queen's partiality for Both- 
 well — yet what the agent meant to convey was probably 
 rather the evidence of her antipathy to Murray. " The 
 queen," he says, has shown herself now of late to mis- 
 like of Murray that he so earnestly pursued him " — 
 namely, Bothwell ; and further, the queen w^ould not 
 that the justice-clerk should proceed, which hath bred 
 here so mighty mislike, and given occasion to such kind 
 of talk against her grace for bearing with such men in her 
 own cause, that that which is already spoken passeth all 
 measure. So many discontented, so large talk, so plain 
 and open speech, I never heard in any nation ; and, in my 
 simple judgment, see not but it must burst out to some 
 great mischief^ These sentences, which, estimated by 
 the light of subsequent events, seem inspired by the 
 spirit of prophecy, are but Randolph hinting, with the 
 proper technical mysteriousness, that Murray is going 
 down, and a new ruling influence arising in Scotland. 
 
 Pitcairn, i. 464*. ^ Raumer, 46. 
 
RISE OF RIZZIO, 1564-65. 
 
 Ill 
 
 It is at this juncture that another remarkable actor in 
 the tragic events to come appears on the stage — David 
 Rizzio, the Italian. As he is never spoken of among his 
 contemporaries except either in contempt or hatred, it is 
 difficult to know his social position and his personal quali- 
 ties. He certainly had not that distinction of birth which 
 would enable him to refer to his family as one publicly 
 known for its eminence. But people seldom asked about 
 the family of any of the Italians, so numerously scattered 
 among the European Courts : they were gentlemen at least 
 by training and education, and able by their subtle talents 
 to hold their own place among the local feudal aristocracy. 
 Buchanan, to whom we owe nearly all that is known of 
 his early history, says he was a native of Turin, and came 
 to Scotland in the train of Morette, or Moretti, the Pied- 
 mont ese ambassador, who arrived in the year 1561, and 
 that he entered the queen's service as a musician, being a 
 skilful singer and performer. ^ Some writers on the his- 
 tory of Scots music have suggested, but on no better 
 foundation than his reputed skill, that he may have been 
 the author of the old melodies so much loved by natives 
 and admired by strangers. That he was old, deformed, 
 and strikingly ugly, has been generally accepted by his- 
 torians, but is not said of him by either Knox or 
 Buchanan, both of whom had opportunities of seeing him, 
 and were not inclined to forget anything likely to render 
 him odious. The common notion of his personal appear- 
 ance seems to have been derived from the account of 
 Adam Blackwood, who is very unlikely to have ever seen 
 him ; but it is a matter of no real moment in the events 
 with which the poor man was connected. 
 
 It is more important to correct another common sup- 
 position, that Mary advanced him to high offices of state. 
 Such an act might seem naturally a continuation of the 
 practice established under Mary of Lorraine as regent ; 
 but the two things are, when examined, very different. 
 Rizzio was at best a man who had to find his own liveli- 
 hood, employed at what his services were worth to his 
 
 ^ Buchanan, xvii. 44, See Teulet, ii. 50, 76. 
 
112 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 employer; the foreigners promoted by the regent were 
 Frenchmen of high rank sent to Scotland to carry out the 
 French projects of domination. There can be no doubt, 
 however, that the Italian was very valuable to the queen, 
 and very powerful. Knox seems accurately to describe 
 his official position in saying, *^The queen usit him for 
 secretary in things that appertainit to her secret affairs in 
 France or elsewhere."^ 
 
 A skilful person, versed in foreign languages, on whom 
 she could rely, was extremely valuable to her at this time. 
 Some other persons flit casually across her own corre- 
 spondence, and the other letters of the period, in the same 
 capacity. One, named Chesein, carries despatches to her 
 Guise relations and other correspondents, and is also in- 
 trusted with verbal communications. ^ A man called 
 Yaxley-^an Enghshman apparently, who had been secre- 
 tary to the Council in the reign of Edward VI. — was sent 
 on a special mission to the Netherlands, where, through 
 the Duchess of Arschot, he communicated with the 
 Duchess of Parma, the regent, who thought his communi- 
 cations so important that she passed him on to deliver 
 them at the Court of Spain. This man seems to have been 
 a babbler, who boasted of his diplomatic services and his 
 influence, and there is no trace of his having been again 
 employed. His revelations were reported to Elizabeth, 
 who founded on them in her complaints of the risk she 
 incurred from the machinations of Mary.^ Another of her 
 emissaries was David Chambers, a follower of Bothwell, a 
 scholar and an author, who had studied and served abroad, 
 knew the politics and the customs of most European 
 states, and had no scruples. 
 
 The French ambassador mentions an Italian, Francisque, 
 her maitre d^hdtel^ as one of her confidential advisers ; but 
 the one who, next to Rizzio, seems to have been deepest 
 in her counsels, was named Raulet. He was in the Low 
 Countries transacting business with the Spanish authorities 
 at this juncture, while Beaton represented her in France. 
 Rizzio then was virtually her secretary for the foreign 
 
 ^ Knox, ii. 422. ^ Labanoff, i. 200, 209. ^ Teulet, ii. 53, 84. 
 
THE DAR-NLEY MARRIAGE, 1565. 113 
 
 affairs, in relation to which these were her emissaries or 
 ambassadors.^ There was serious business in hand for 
 them all, since the crisis was approaching which found 
 Mary a member of the Catholic League. It is part of the 
 mystery, however, of the poor Italian's history, that, 
 though he was thus deeply occupied in politics, scarcely 
 any traces of his movements have survived. He is 
 not referred to so frequently as Raulet and Chesein in 
 the correspondence before his death. There is scarcely 
 a known document under his hand, and it has been diffi- 
 cult to identify his signature. 
 
 It was rumoured at the time that the Italian did his 
 best to forward the marriage with Darnley. Such a course 
 was natural ; it would unite duty with self - interest. 
 Darnley belonged to " The Church,'^ and so the claims 
 of religion were satisfied. He was not a man likely to 
 govern without help, and supersede the queen's adviser ; 
 while under any great foreign potentate Rizzio might have 
 been nobody. It was well, too, if other objects did not 
 preponderate, to keep favour by giving the advice most 
 agreeable to his patroness. 
 
 On the 15th of May 1565, a special council or assembly 
 of great feudal lords and officers of state was held at Stir- 
 ling. It was not a Parliament, nor was it a meeting of 
 the Secret Council. There is no authentic list of those 
 present, nor are there the means of ascertaining the crite- 
 rion on which they were selected. It is stated, however, 
 that among those present were Hamilton, Duke of Chatel- 
 herault, always called "The Duke,'' with the Lords of 
 Athole, Ruthven, Morton, Glencairn, Lindsay, Rothes, 
 Glammis, Semple, Boyd, and several others high in feudal 
 influence. Murray was present ; but singularly enough, 
 considering the business to be transacted, the name of 
 Lennox does not occur on the lists. ^ To this assemblage 
 Mary announced her intended marriage with Darnley. A 
 curious incident happened outside the castle, where the 
 meeting was held. Throckmorton, coming post from 
 
 1 Ibid. , 76 ; Labanoff, i. 200, 202, 
 
 2 Keith (8vo edition), ii. 280. 
 
 VOL. IV. H 
 
114 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 England to argue and protest against the proceedings 
 which were to take place that day, arrived at the gate of 
 Stirling Castle while the lords were assembled. Though 
 he had sent his cousin Middlemore before him to demand 
 an audience, he found the gate shut, and a deaf ear given 
 to all his demands^ and prayers for admission. He was 
 obliged to seek his own lodging in the town, whence he 
 was afterwards called by the queen to an audience.^ 
 After his audience was over, Darnley was created Lord of 
 Ardmanach and Earl of Ross, as steps to the rank he was 
 presently to be lifted to. This earldom, bringing down 
 the traditions of the old Maarmorate, was, as we have seen, 
 reserved as a title to the royal family, after the manner in 
 which the French monarchy reserved for the princes of 
 the blood the titles of the royal fiefs which were from time 
 to time annexed to the crown. 
 
 Difficulties were now thickening round Murray and the 
 Protestant party. The Lennox family recovered their 
 great feudal power in the west. In the north the Gordons, 
 being left for some time unmolested, were gathering up 
 the fragments of their old authority. Other men of influ- 
 ence, who were secret Eomanists or but doubtful Protest- 
 ants — a body larger among the aristocracy than the Refor- 
 mation party — now found that they could act according 
 to their inclinations or interests without danger. There 
 was but one reliance for the Reformation party — that 
 England would come to the rescue. The opportunity for 
 carrying out the policy begun by Henry VIIL, and estab- 
 lishing an English supremacy supported by Protestantism 
 in Scotland, had never been so good as now, when two 
 parties, hating each other, and each in fear of extirpation 
 by the other, were trembling in the balance. The oppor- 
 tunity was so good that the Protestant party in Scotland 
 seemed not to doubt that it would be seized. Elizabeth's 
 advisers thought so too, and felt provoked as the time for 
 action slipped past. Randolph, in his impatience, pressed 
 it on Cecil that if troops were not to be sent, money alone, 
 and but little of that, might accomplish great things. 
 
 1 Keith (8vo edition), ii. 280, 
 
THE DARNLEY MARRIAGE, 1565. II5 
 
 "A little now spent in the beginning affordeth double 
 fruit. What were it for the queen's majesty, if she list not 
 to do it by force, with the expense of three or four thou- 
 sand pounds, to do with this country what she would ? ^' ^ 
 Elizabeth, however, was sullenly immovable. She had 
 protested in various forms against the marriage, and even 
 by some stretch of the law had got the only member 
 of Darnley's family left in England — his mother, Lady 
 Lennox — committed to the Tower. She had even ob- 
 tained resolutions by the English Council condemnatory 
 of the marriage, as a matter affecting an English subject 
 of the blood-royal and the succession of the crown of 
 England. But there were reasons why the Queen of 
 England's opposition should be limited to mere words. 
 The marriage was, on the whole, not unsatisfactory. It 
 was to the two queens what an act of folly or imprudence 
 is in ordinary life — rivals and competitors must for 
 decency's sake protest against it, but are not sincerely 
 vexed at heart to hear of a fall which will substitute pity for 
 rivalry. If, when the Armada was at last in the Channel, 
 Elizabeth knew and remembered how near, to all human 
 appearance, her rival had been to the throne of Spain, she 
 must have more fully estimated the peril escaped by Eng- 
 land and Protestantism in the advancement of her worth- 
 less cousin. 
 
 The profession of amity, however, between the two 
 queens was kept up, and, on Mary's side at least, with 
 great skill to the last. She commissioned Lethington, 
 who was in England, to press for Elizabeth's approval of 
 the marriage. That rather self-willed and tortuous states- 
 man, however, had his own views, and resolved to pursue 
 them. He was on his way back to Scotland, probably 
 alarmed at the course of matters there, when he met 
 Beaton, Mary's messenger, at Newark, and finding his 
 worst fears confirmed by the instructions sent to him, in- 
 stead of returning to London, joined Throckmorton, the 
 ambassador sent from England to remonstrate with Mary; 
 and, like the other chiefs of the Protestant party, consulted 
 
 ^ Quoted, Tytler, vi. 344. 
 
ii6 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 with him how to thwart the marriage.^ She sent after- 
 wards John Hay, commendator of Balmerinoch, called 
 also her " principal master of requests,'^ with instructions 
 dated 14th June 1565, in which she professed an anxiety 
 to conciliate Elizabeth, and obtain her approval of the 
 now arranged marriage. ^ 
 
 It was necessary, however, that professions of amity 
 between the sovereigns should cease ; and Randolph, who 
 had the disagreeable part of the discussion on his hands, 
 was the first to feel the change. Writing to Leicester on 
 the 5th of February 1564, he says in his simplicity, " It 
 may please your lordship to understand that this queen is 
 now content to give good ear unto the queen^s majesty's 
 suit in your behalf/' Blandly satisfied about his reception 
 in Scotland, he continues : " Greater entertainment or 
 greater honour could not be done to the greatest ambas- 
 sador that the queen's majesty could have sent unto this 
 queen than was done to me at St Andrews. For four 
 days together I dined and supped daily at her grace's 
 table. I sat next unto herself (saving worthy Beton, our 
 mistress). I had longer talk and conference with her than 
 any other during the time ; enough, I assure your lord- 
 ship, if I were able to report all, can make all the ill- 
 
 ^ By Throckmorton's own account, * * Lethington had also commis- 
 sion after his charge done in England to repair into France, and there 
 make the French king and that state to allow of her choice ; and the 
 rather to move Lethington to take legations, she sent him a bill of credit 
 to the receivers of her dowry in France, to disburse unto him what 
 money he would ask, and to spare for no cost. And to incite him to this 
 voyage she wrote him the most favourable and gentle letter with her 
 own hand that ever queen did write to her servant, not leaving behind 
 large promises for his benefit and greatness in time to come. Not- 
 withstanding this charge and enchantment he would neither return to 
 London nor yet into France, but pursued Throckmorton, and over- 
 took him at Alnwick, whence both journeyed to Edinburgh." — Calen- 
 dar of State Papers (Foreign), 361. This "favourable and gentle letter" 
 unfortunately is not in any of the Marian collections, nor have we 
 another paper telling her reasons for following her own inclination 
 and will, instead of the dictation of others, though we may believe the 
 concise description by Throckmorton who had a glimpse of it, that 
 in it ** there wanted neither eloquence, despite, anger, love, nor 
 passion."— (Ibid.) 
 
 - Keith, ii. 293 ; Labanoff, i. 271 ; Teulet, ii. 56. 
 
THE DARNLEY MARRIAGE, 1565. 1 17 
 
 willers to both these queens' felicities to burst asunder 
 for envy/'^ Afterwards, on the 2d of July, when he had 
 been, partly with persuasion and partly with threat, 
 urging Darnley to go back like an obedient subject to 
 England, and thereupon craved audience of the queen, 
 " I was received,^' he says, in stranger sort than ever I 
 was before, as a man new and first come into her presence, 
 whom she had never seen/'^ So far as the Court was 
 concerned, the English connection might now be con- 
 sidered at an end. The Court of France was not in a 
 position to exercise its old influence in Scotland; but 
 when the civil conflicts were over and the Guises supreme, 
 the French alliance might be expected to revive with 
 renewed vigour. 
 
 It is stated in Knox's History and elsewhere that the 
 queen strove hard to persuade Murray to assent to the 
 marriage. His determined refusal was the key-note to the 
 views of those who still adhered to the Protestant party. It 
 had been intended to hold a Parliament at Perth, and there 
 solemnly desire the assent of the Estates of Scotland to 
 the union ; but the position taken up by Murray and his 
 friends suggested that it would be the safer policy to evade 
 a Parliament, as its concurrence could not be calculated 
 on, and discussions of which no one could foresee the 
 result might arise from bringing together parties fiercely 
 opposed. 
 
 A General Assembly meeting in Edinburgh at the time 
 when it was intended that the Pariiament should have met 
 at Perth, aflbrded in the mean time a sort of rallying-point 
 for the more zealous of the Protestant party. This meet- 
 ing had been preceded by a local event of an exciting 
 nature. It had become the practice to expect a scuflle 
 with the followers of the old religion during their Easter 
 celebrations. It is related in Knox's History how some 
 of the brethren, " diligent to search such things," having 
 with them one of the bailies of Edinburgh, " took one Sir 
 John Carvet, riding hard, as he had now ended the say- 
 
 1 Wright's Queen Elizabeth, i. 188. 
 
 2 Letter to Cecil, Keith, ii. 298. 
 
ii8 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 ing of the mass, and conveyed him, together with the 
 master of the house and one or two more of the assistants, 
 to the Tolbooth, and immediately revested him, with all 
 his garments upon him, and so carried him to the market- 
 cross, where they set him on high, binding the chaHce to 
 his hand, and hiihself fast tied to the said cross, where he 
 tarried the space of one hour, during which time the boys 
 served him with his Easter eggs. The next day following, 
 the said Carvet, with his assistants, were accused and con- 
 vinced by an assize, according to the Act of Parliament ; 
 and albeit for the same offence he deserved death, yet for 
 all punishment he was set upon the market-cross for the 
 space of three or four hours, the hangman standing by 
 and keeping him, the boys and others busy with egg- 
 casting/'^ 
 
 Then arose a tumult in which the poor priest might 
 have fared still worse, but the provost coming with the 
 town guard carried him back to the Tolbooth. The 
 magistrates received a royal letter, calling on them to pro- 
 secute the rioters, and altogether in a more peremptory 
 tone than any of the previous communications from the 
 queen in matters where her own religion was concerned. 
 The priest was released, and the matter went no further. 
 
 This was felt, however, as a heavy grievance by the 
 Protestant clergy, and helped with many other things to 
 strengthen the zeal with which they met in General 
 Assembly, in the Nether Tolbooth, on the 25th of June 
 1565. They resolved, in the first place, '^that the papist- 
 ical and blasphemous mass, with all papistry and idolatry 
 of Paip's jurisdiction, be universally suppressed and 
 abolished throughout the haill realm, not only in the sub- 
 jects, but in the queen's majesty's own person, with 
 punishment against all persons that shall be deprehended 
 to transgress and ofiend the same ; and that the sincere 
 Word of God and His true religion now presently received 
 might be established, approven, and ratified throughout 
 the whole realm, as well in the queen's majesty's own 
 person as in the subjects, without any impediment." ^ 
 
 ^ Knox, ii. 476. 
 
 ^ Book of the Universal Kirk. 
 
THE DARNLEY MARRIAGE, 1565. II9 
 
 It was further proposed that there should be a certain 
 amount of compulsory attendance at worship by Act of 
 Parliament. The Assembly took the opportunity to urge 
 that the large ecclesiastical revenues otherwise disposed of, 
 under the arrangement made in 1563, should be transferred 
 to the Protestant Church. Five members of the Assembly 
 were appointed to present these " articles to the queen ; 
 a.nd it is observable that they were all, though worshipful 
 gentlemen, persons of little note in the history of the 
 period, as if the presentation were a mere form, and not 
 an agreeable one. The five commissioners were — Walter 
 Lundie of Lundie, in Fifeshire ; William Cunningham of 
 Cunninghamhead, in Ayrshire ; William Durham of 
 Grange, in Forfarshire ; George Hume of Spot, in Ber- 
 wickshire ; and James Barron, burgess of Edinburgh.^ 
 
 These commissioners went to the queen at Perth, and 
 waited on her, desiring and requiring her highness most 
 humbly to advise therewith, and to give them an answer.'' 
 Having retired to their quarters, expecting next morning 
 to be summoned to receive the answer, they found that 
 the queen had slipped out of their hands and gone to 
 Dunkeld. Thither they followed her. They obtained 
 audience, and were told by the queen that she required 
 the advice of her Council in the matter, but that she pro- 
 posed in a week to be in Edinburgh, and then they would 
 get answer. 
 
 The answer, in as far as it has been preserved, exem- 
 plifies a peculiar distinction in practice between the two 
 great creeds — that Roman Catholics, when not predomi- 
 nant, profess principles of toleration ; while among Cal- 
 vinistic Protestants, the time when they have least power 
 is that in which they profess their most intolerant doctrines. 
 She assured her loving subjects that as she had not in 
 times past, so would she not hereafter, " press the consci- 
 ence of any, but that they may worship God in such sort 
 as they are persuaded in their conscience to be best.'' 
 She meekly desired the same toleration for her own con- 
 science. But even in this placid document there were 
 
 ^ Knox, ii. 486, Laing's note. 
 
120 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 suggestive allusions to the quarter to which the queen was 
 then looking for strength and support, and it was not one 
 from which the principles of toleration were likely to 
 radiate. Among the reasons why she must adhere to her 
 religion was, that by apostasy "she should lose the friend- 
 ship of the King of France — the married ally of this realm 
 — and of other great princes her friends and confederates, 
 who could take the same in evil part, and of whom she 
 may look for their great support in all her difficulties." 
 The abandonment of the ecclesiastical revenues, so far 
 as they were in the possession of the crown, was civilly 
 declined.! 
 
 It appears to have crossed the thoughts of the more 
 zealous members of the Assembly in the mean time to 
 organise an armed resistance ; for we are told that they 
 assembled on St Leonard's Craig, a small rocky eminence 
 between Edinburgh and Arthur's Seat, 'Svhere they con- 
 cluded they would defend themselves ; and for the same 
 purpose elected eight persons of the most able, two of 
 every quartier, to see that the brethren should be ready 
 armed." 2 Four burgesses were cited to answer for this 
 affair ; but the prosecution, of which this was the prelimi- 
 nary step, seems to have been abandoned.^ This inci- 
 dent was supposed to be connected with the designs of 
 Murray, who was then in his mother's Castle of Lochleven, 
 ill, or pretending to be so. The queen was living at Perth, 
 where the Parliament was to be held. She had promised 
 to attend the christening of the Lord Livingstone's heir at 
 Callander House, near Falkirk, and was prepared to ride 
 thither in company with Darnley. They started together, 
 with a strong escort, at an early hour, and reached Callan- 
 der by ten o'clock j and the reason assigned for the feat 
 was, that thus they avoided an ambush, to be laid by 
 Murray and his confederates, to attack and seize them at 
 a point where the road passed through a rugged defile of 
 the Ochils. The elements of the conspiracy have been 
 very distinctly set forth. Murray himself held Lochleven 
 
 A Knox, ii. 488, 489. 2 n^y., 487. 
 
 ^ Ibid. , 490, Laing's note. 
 
MARRIAGE WITH DARNLEY, 1565. 
 
 121 
 
 Castle, on the line of their journey ; the Earl of Argyle 
 was to descend with a force from his fortress of Castle 
 Campbell, on the brow of the Ochils ; and the Duke of 
 Chatelherault had made his preparations at Kinneil, near 
 to the ferry where the betrothed lovers would cross the 
 Forth. It would not be difficult to believe in such a con- 
 spiracy, if tolerably well vouched ; but there is scarcely a 
 vestige of evidence in its support.^ Murray, on his part, 
 maintained that his life was in danger, and kept himself 
 among his own immediate supporters. He was summoned 
 to Court, and offered a safe-conduct for himself and eighty 
 attendants ; but he declined to appear — he was making 
 arrangements for armed resistance. To prepare for a 
 crisis, a royal summons was issued on the 2 2d of July, for 
 a " raid or general gathering of the crown vassals and 
 their attendants. 
 
 The marriage of the queen and Darnley, who had just 
 been created Duke of Albany, was celebrated on the 29th ^ 
 of July 1565. It was preceded by a Papal dispensation, 
 on account of affinity in blood, and the ceremony was 
 performed according to the office of the Romish Church. ? 
 The queen, following the etiquette of a widow of France, 
 wore her solemn state mourning dress, or dule robe, until 
 the festival after the ceremony, when, as a wedded wife, 
 she cast it off, and put on gayer attire. At the festival 
 the ceremonials were imitated from the French Court, 
 which was foremost in the practice of exacting menial ser- 
 vices to the person of royalty from subjects of the highest 
 rank. Lord Athole served as sewer, Morton as carver, 
 and Crawford as cupbearer.^ 
 
 ^ See all that can be said for it in Chalmers, i. 140 ; Tytler, vi. 
 349 ; Miss Strickland, iv. 148. 
 
 2 Randolph's Letter, in Wright, i. 202, and elsewhere. 
 
122 
 
 CHAPTER XLIV. 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 {Continued.) 
 
 A STRONG GOVERNMENT — DARNLEY GETS THE TITLE OF KING — 
 PARLIAMENTARY DISPLEASURE WITH THE ASSUMPTION — ARMING 
 OF MURRAY AND HIS SUPPORTERS— THEIR DISPERSAL— PRESENT 
 THEMSELVES TO ELIZABETH— HOW TREATED BY HER— DANGER OF 
 ELIZABETH AND THE PROTESTANT CAUSE — PROJECTS OF THE 
 ROMANIST POWERS — CONFERENCE AT BAYONNE — PHILIP, CATHE- 
 RINE OF MEDICI, AND ALVA— DARNLEY'S CHARACTER DEVELOPS 
 ITSELF— ODIOUS AMONG THE COURTIERS — HIS WIFE'S APPRECIA- 
 TION OF HIM — PROGRESS OF RIZZIO'S INFLUENCE — PROJECT FOR 
 PUTTING HIM OUT OF THE WAY— THE BAND FOR HIS SLAUGHTER 
 — ^ARRANGEMENTS FOR EFFECTING IT— THE SUPPER-PARTY— RIZZIO 
 DRAGGED OUT AND SLAIN — INQUIRY AS TO WHEN THE QUEEN 
 KNEW OF HIS DEATH— HER CONDUCT BEFORE AND AFTER THAT 
 KNOWLEDGE— LURES BACK HER HUSBAND— RETURN OF MURRAY 
 AND HIS FOLLOWERS FROM ENGLAND— MURRAY MAKES PEACE — 
 SECRET ARRANGEMENT OF THE QUEEN AND HER HUSBAND— THEIR 
 ESCAPE TO DUNBAR. 
 
 The world has been so accustomed to treat this marriage 
 as a rash love-match, that what political significance it 
 had is overlooked. This was far less momentous than 
 the questions which a union with Spain or France might 
 have raised, but it was not without importance. Darnley's 
 mother did not forget that she, like Elizabeth, was a 
 granddaughter of Henry VII., with this difference, ac- 
 cording to the notion of herself and her religious party, 
 that she was not, like the woman on the throne, tainted 
 with illegitimacy. 1 
 
 ^ For an animated account of the little opposition court presided 
 over by Lady Lennox, in Yorkshire, see Froude, vii. 387, 389. 
 
REACTION AGAINST REFORMATION PARTY. 1 23 
 
 The new sovereigns began their reign with measures of 
 successful vigour, which seemed to promise a strong and 
 orderly government under the old religion and the old 
 regal authority. A portion of the Protestant barons, in- 
 cluding Murray, Glencairn, Rothes, and Kirkcaldy of 
 Grange, resolved to combine against the new order of 
 things. They stated that the laws against idolatry were 
 not enforced, and that the mass and other abominations 
 were tolerated. They stated, further, that the true reli- 
 gion was oppressed ; and though this was not according to 
 strict fact, unless the countenance given to Popery were 
 to be set down as oppression, yet it is plain that Protest- 
 antism was in imminent danger ; for the queen and her 
 supporters were as fully determined to suppress Heresy 
 whenever they were able, as Knox and his party were to 
 suppress Idolatry. But there were other grounds for op- 
 position of a constitutional character. The queen had 
 not ventured to face a Parliament, and ask their sanction 
 to her late doings. She had not only taken to herself a 
 husband without consulting the great Council of the nation 
 — an indecorous and ungracious thing — but she had pro- 
 claimed her husband as King of the Scots. It was main- 
 tained that this was illegal, since the monarch reigned by 
 the assent of the Estates of the realm, and could not trans- 
 fer any portion of the sovereign power to another without 
 the intervention of these Estates. The power asserted by 
 the Estates in such constitutional matters was very wide, 
 and there was at least no precedent to support a denial of 
 the claim in question. The portion of the declaration 
 issued by the discontented barons at Dumfries which re- 
 fers to this matter is extremely valuable, as one of the few 
 lights, other than what the acts of the Estates themselves 
 give us, on the constitutional power claimed for the Par- 
 liament of Scotland. They say — 
 
 " Of the same sinister counsel doth proceed that her 
 majesty, without the advice of her Estates, yea, without 
 the advice of the nobility either demanded or given, hath 
 made and proclaimed a king over us, giving unto him, so 
 far as in her highness lieth, power over our lands, lives, 
 and heritages, and whatsoever is dearest unto us on the earth. 
 
124 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 In the which doing the ancient laws and liberties of this 
 realm are utterly broken, violated, and transgressed, and 
 the liberty of the crown and state royal of Scotland mani- 
 festly overthrown, that he was made king over us that 
 neither hath the title thereof by any lineal descent of 
 blood and nature, neither by consent of the Estates/' ^ 
 It was afterwards put by Cecil to the French ambassador 
 Le Croc, as a justification of the conduct of Elizabeth, 
 that the assumption of the title of king without the assent 
 of the Estates was contrary to law ; and the Frenchman 
 was reminded that even so illustrious a personage as the 
 queen's first husband, Francis, had not taken the title of 
 King of Scotland until it had been accorded by consent 
 of the Estates.^ 
 
 Meanwhile Randolph, with special instructions as to the 
 tone of the English Court on the affair of the marriage, 
 found it expedient to adopt the view of the declaration, 
 and to deny Darnley's right to act as King Henry. His 
 mistress had sent to him, as a coadjutor in his mission, a 
 gentleman of her Court known as Sir John Tamworth, 
 who suffered in the body for a rigid adherence to the prin- 
 ciple of non-acknowledgment. Refusing to accept of a 
 safe-conduct in the name of King Henry," he was de- 
 tained on his way back to England by the border free- 
 booters, who secured him in Hume Castle, an act which 
 he said had been suggested to them from Holyrood. 
 
 Those bound to give suit and military service were 
 repeatedly required to attend the "raid'' or array. The 
 absence of important persons from these levies pointed 
 them out as disafiected, and at the same time afforded 
 means of punishing them by feudal forfeitures for default 
 It was thought fit at the same time specially to cite Mur- 
 ray and a few of the great opposition leaders by public 
 proclamation, with the usual threat of prosecution for trea- 
 son in case of disobedience. On the ist of August, Mur- 
 ray was charged to appear under threat of denunciation 
 " to the horn," or by public blast of trumpet ; and on the 
 6th he was denounced accordingly, for, not being a man 
 
 Calderwood, Appendix, ii. 573. ^ Teulet, ii. 73. 
 
REACTION AGAINST REFORMATION PARTY. 1 25 
 
 who would voluntarily place himself in the power of his 
 enemies, he did not appear. 
 
 He, with the other discontented barons, assembled at 
 Paisley. Those who had joined the royal raid at the same 
 time marched to Glasgow, so that the two forces were close 
 together. The discontented lords, who with their followers 
 made altogether about a thousand horsemen, passed by 
 Glasgow within sight of the royal pair, and took up their 
 position at Hamilton. The duke was their avowed leader ; 
 but he had purposes of his own, differing from theirs, to 
 serve, and they did not work well into each other's hands. 
 They left him, and rode on to Edinburgh. There a provost 
 had been chosen from their own party ; but, in obedience 
 to a royal letter, the appointment was cancelled, and a 
 nominee of the Court appointed, who, when the cavalcade 
 approached, directed the alarm-bells to be rung, and en- 
 deavoured to prevent the strangers from getting within the 
 gates. They succeeded in entering the town, but were 
 fired at from the castle. They issued missive writings, 
 calling on the Protestants to rally round them ; but they 
 utterly failed in their endeavour, and gained no recruits. 
 The royal army, about five thousand strong, had in the 
 mean time marched to Hamilton, and was on its way to 
 Edinburgh. Unable to meet it, the malcontents retreated 
 to Dumfries, whence they issued the remonstrance already 
 referred to. 
 
 The king and queen now took prompt measures, for in- 
 deed the shortness of the service which could be exacted 
 from the feudal levy required that what was done should be 
 done quickly. They were joined at that juncture by Both- 
 well, an adherent invaluable when daring and promptitude 
 were needed. This was the beginning of the effective ser- 
 vices which placed him, although a subject, in the position 
 of one to whom his monarch owed heavy obligations. He 
 came then from France, bringing with him an agent of 
 many of his doings — David Chambers, a scholar and an 
 author, whose naturally dark and subtle spirit was thor- 
 oughly trained in the unscrupulous policy of the Court of 
 France. There arrived nearly at the same time from 
 France the Lord Seton, a zealous member of the old faith, 
 
126 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 and an able and daring man. He was the head of a house 
 which had been powerful, until the triumph of the Refor- 
 mation had overwhelmed it; but now, when the day of 
 reaction had come, he returned to re-establish its influence. 
 At the same tirrie George Lord Gordon, the representative 
 of the ruined house of Huntly, who was in law a denounced 
 fugitive, was first relieved from this penal condition, and 
 then step by step restored to the honours and, as far as 
 that was practicable, to the vast possessions which had 
 enabled his father to wage war with the crown. This oc- 
 CRirred in August. Some months afterwards, as we shall 
 see, Huntly's sister was married to Bothwell; it was a 
 political alliance for strengthening the cause of the queen 
 and her husband. 
 
 They seem in the mean time to have pressed pretty hard 
 on the country in exacting the feudal levy. It could not 
 be detained for a period sufficient for a campaign, and an 
 attempt seems to have been made to remedy this by re- 
 peated citation. On the 23d of July, before the marriage, 
 the whole feudal army had been cited to appear at Edin- 
 burgh, with fifteen days' provisions. On the 6th of August 
 there was another citation of a raid to attend the king and 
 queen on a progress through Fife. On the 2 2d of August 
 all were again called to Edinburgh, with fifteen days' pro- 
 vision ; and on the 17th of September the fencible men of 
 the southern counties were cited to appear at Stirling on 
 the I St of October. Absence from these raids incurred 
 feudal forfeitures. These had to be levied by the courts 
 of law; and it would depend oh the question whether the 
 sovereign or some party among his subjects had the upper 
 hand, how far the penalties would be levied. On the pres- 
 ent occasion the crown was triumphant, and the recusants 
 had to fear the worst. Their danger enabled the sovereign 
 to extract aids from them in the shape of compromises, in 
 which the legal proceedings were bought off. Making a 
 progress northward through Fifeshire, money was thus 
 raised from several of the gentry and royal burghs, includ- 
 ing a considerable sum extracted from the town of Dundee. 
 Edinburgh was peculiarly disaffected. Certain of the citi- 
 zens being required to appear at Holyrood, a composition 
 
REACTION AGAINST REFORMATION PARTY. 12/ 
 
 was demanded, which they refused to pay, trusting probably 
 that they would be able to evade or defy its enforcement 
 by the courts of law. A transaction curiously suggestive 
 of the feudal usages of the day followed. Money was much 
 needed by the Court, and if threats would not force enough 
 from the citizens of Edinburgh, any other available means 
 must be taken. In the end a bargain was concluded, and 
 they advanced a thousand pounds, receiving in pledge of 
 repayment the superiority or feudal lordship of the neigh- 
 bouring town of Leith. The Government repented of the 
 bargain, and tried to cancel it ; but the corporation of Edin- 
 burgh had already taken feudal sasine, and their hold was 
 absolute, through the unyielding forms of the feudal law. 
 It was the privilege of the burgesses of royal burghs to be 
 the direct vassals of the crown; but by this transaction 
 one corporation was made feudally subordinate to another 
 — an arrangement which naturally occasioned many irri- 
 tating disputes in later times. 
 
 Mary loudly demanded aid from France, and had it ; 
 been obtained, the peril to Elizabeth's crown and the Pro- ) 
 testant cause would have been greatly increased. But it 
 was not far Catherine of Medici, if she could decently . 
 help it, to let the fast ally of Philip of Spain and her own 
 old rival in France become Queen of England. Castelnau 
 de Mauyissiere was sent to Scotland to keep matters quiet, 
 and a better messenger for such a purpose could not be 
 found. Grave, conscientious, friendly, and peaceful, he ^ 
 was beyond his age, and. was peculiarly free of the impul- 
 sive, warlike, and ostentatious propensities which have 
 characterised his countrymen in all ages. His lengthy, 
 and to all appearance faithful, record of his endeavours, - 
 onlyj;ecently become known, throws a powerful light on the - — 
 inner workings of the political mechanism. He brought 
 with him certain letters from the young King of France 
 to the discontented lords, urging them to quietness and to 
 compromise. This, it will be observed, was in accordance 
 with that patronising practice of the French Court, which 
 was apt to overlook the diplomatic rule that sovereigns 
 are only to communicate with sovereigns. In a four hours' 
 interview which Castelnau had with Mary, she tried on him 
 
128 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 all the various resources of her passionate and subtle 
 nature. She became tempestuously angry, she cried, she 
 besought him with seductive remindings of his old kindly 
 attachment to the house of Guise — surely he would not do 
 to her, a crowned queen, the dishonour of holding com- 
 munication in name of another sovereign with her rebel 
 subjects. Rather let it go forth that his mission is to ar- 
 range for the powerful armament that is to be sent by her 
 brother of France to crush them. She spoke, seemingly, 
 with the vehement impetuosity of one who had cast her 
 fortunes on a die and was to abide the issue. The French- 
 man spoke earnestly of the miseries of civil war, of which 
 he had seen only too much at home ; it might be so, but 
 she was a sovereign, and was not to let her kingdom be- 
 come a republic — she would die sooner ; and so, whether 
 helped from France or not, she would go at the head of 
 her faithful subjects and put down the rebels. Castelnau, 
 following his instructions, and totally unsuspicious of what 
 was to occur in his own country, told her that the discon- 
 tented lords only sought what was conceded to the Hugue- 
 nots of France, permission to follow in peace their own 
 religious observance — what we in this day call toleration ; 
 but she indignantly answered that they were her rebellious 
 subjects, that they were conspiring against her own and 
 her husband's life. 
 
 Castelnau ventured respectfully to hint that this was an 
 exaggeration put into her head by their calumnious ene- 
 mies — for courts, he said, were haunted by backbiters, who 
 attacked the absent and defenceless ; and as to the faults 
 of her subjects, it were better that she should overlook 
 these than drive them to the extremity of civil war. Those 
 councillors, he reminded her, who were loudest for war, 
 were not always the most valiant when it came to action ; 
 and many were the princes who had begun a civil contest 
 in the haughty resolution of humbling ambitious subjects, 
 and had come to see the day when they would have been 
 glad to buy peace with the concessions at first arrogantly 
 denied. The sage and moderate statesman pleaded in 
 vain ; the haughty queen had now taken the course she 
 had long kept in the impenetrable recesses of her own 
 
A STRONG GOVERNMENT, 1565-66. 129 
 
 bosom. It is significant that, in the same Memoir in 
 which he describes the beginning of her headlong career, 
 he mentions Bothwell as her right-hand man, and likely to 
 be made lieutenant-general of the kingdom — so, ostensibly, 
 began this man's disastrous influence.^ 
 
 On the 8th of October, the royal army, with the queen 
 and her husband at its head, left Edinburgh and marched 
 by Stirling and Crawford towards Dumfries. On their ap- 
 proach the leaders of the opposition retreated into Eng- 
 land, abiding at Carlisle, and dismissing their small band 
 of followers. 
 
 To all appearance the Reformation had now been vir- 
 tually subdued, and the old Church was again predominant 
 in Scotland. At Queen Elizabeth's Court this was natur- 
 ally deemed a serious calamity. It has been seen that 
 she was recommended to strike a blow before the fatal 
 marriage was accomplished. If she ever entertained such 
 a design, she hesitated in execution till it became too late. 
 Circumstances had now greatly changed. To have con- 
 ferred on Murray and his party an overwhelming power, 
 while they were yet nominally at peace with their sovereign, 
 would have seemed nothing else than strengthening the 
 established Government. The queen would have found \ 
 it necessary, with all proper grace, to submit to the influ- 
 ence of the Lords of the Congregation, as she had done 
 in the campaign against Huntly and the punishment of 
 the western Romanists. But now these lords were in 
 arms against their sovereign, and to support them would 
 be countenancing a principle for which Elizabeth had a 
 despof s thorough detestation. When the lords, therefore, 
 applied to her for an army of three thousand men and a 
 fleet, they received no answer. At the same time, if it 
 could be done with propriety and safety, it was extremely 
 desirable that Murray and his party should be saved from 
 utter extinction. The English representatives, Randolph 
 and Thomworth, gave them encouragement, and raised 
 expectations not to be realised. There has long been 
 
 ^ Discours sur la Voyage de Sieur de Castelnau en Escosse ; Teulet, 
 ii. loi. 
 
 VOL. IV. I 
 
130 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 known a characteristic letter from Elizabeth to the Earl 
 of Bedford, Warden of the Marches, which develops with 
 clearness and precision the policy of the English Court on 
 this nice question. If Murray is in such want of money 
 that a thousand pounds will be of service to help 
 him to defend himself, it may be conveyed to him as 
 from Bedford himself. As to armed assistance, she had 
 " no intention, for many respects, to maintain any other 
 prince's subjects to take arms against their sovereign;" 
 but in this instance there were to be diplomatic represen- 
 tations made, not only by herself, but by the French am- 
 bassador, that Murray and his friends might have a fair 
 trial and a just and merciful consideration — that they were 
 not then in a position to levy actual war, but were in reality 
 olfering to submit themselves as good subjects, and were 
 only defending themselves from extermination. The 
 matter being viewed in this light, Bedford might secretly 
 gather a small force by way of strengthening the garrison 
 of Carlisle, as a Scots army was about to approach the 
 border. If he found he could make this force effectual 
 for the protection of the lords, he might then, at the critical 
 moment, move on Dumfries.^ 
 
 It would appear that English money in some shape and 
 to some amount was given to the disaffected lords in Scot- 
 land. Randolph, charged with giving 3000 crowns to the 
 rebels, and protesting that he never had the fourth of that, 
 sum at his disposal, was ordered to leave Edinburgh. He 
 fidgeted and demurred, demanding an audience, and took 
 exception to the passport sent to him as signed by Darnley. 
 He thought well to pass out of Scots ground and so- 
 journ in Berwick. There he saw indications of prepara- 
 tion for the rush that used instantly to announce war — the 
 breaking loose of the Scots borderers upon English ground, 
 now after long restraints likely to be a productive field for 
 plunder. He speaks of war as desirable, and the adviser 
 of the Queen of England thought it so imminent as to 
 prepare instructions for a feudal muster in the north, for 
 strengthening the garrison at Berwick, and ''that all the 
 
 ^ Robertson, Appendix, xiv. Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 458 
 
DANGERS OF PROTESTANTISM, 1565-66. 131 
 
 wardens put their frontiers in order with speed to serve at 
 an hour^s notice."^ 
 
 As a key to the significance of these events, and 
 especially of Elizabeth's share in them, it is necessary to 
 remember that the caus^f_the old religion had received 
 at that juncture a greaH^mpulse in Europe, which had not 
 yet been metJ)y_a reactionr There was good ground to 
 apprehend that France and Spain were to abandon their 
 rivalry, and, with the guidance and temporal aid of the 
 Supreme Pontiff, to enter on an alliance to crush heresy 
 wherever they could find it. Scotland, the Italian states, 
 and the Romanist states of Germany, were converging to 
 the same centre of action. The French Huguenots felt 
 the peril which afterwards drove them into civil war, but 
 were not yet prepared to act. In the north of England 
 a large body of Romanists were restless and expectant 
 The Scots queen, by declining to accept of the treaty of 
 Edinburgh, adhered to her claim on the English throne ; 
 and the Catholic powers, leagued as they were together, 
 would seize it for her if they could. A letter of private 
 information by the French ambassador De Foix to Ca- 
 therine of Medici, dated 29th September 1565, in its calm 
 and guarded estimate of Queen EHzabeth's position, gives 
 a lively notion of the dangers of the juncture. He is of 
 opinion that Queen Elizabeth cannot give any assistance 
 to the rebel lords ; she has enough to do to protect herself. 
 Though he has heard that Queen Mary made the idle 
 boast that she would march at the head of her army until 
 it reached London, he gives it as his own mature opinion 
 that she will not venture to cross the border. But then 
 the council which Elizabeth had summoned, separated, 
 not without a suspicion that some favoured the claim of 
 Queen Mary. The Lordsjof J^Jorthumberland, Westmore- 
 land, and Cumberland were summoned to Court, that they ^ 
 might be delivered from the temptation of joining Queen 
 Mary's army if it crossed the border. To these symptoms 
 — which to the Frenchman were matters not of alarm but 
 of study — ^was added the news that the great O'Neil — 
 
 ^ Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 1565, p. 386 ; 1566, p. 27, 28. 
 
132 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 whom he calls Le Grand Honvel " — had taken two of 
 the principal royal fortresses in Ireland in the service of 
 Queen Mary as Queen of Ireland ; and that to arrange 
 about this affair, she sent over to him two Highland am- 
 bassadors — gentlemen " du pais des sauvages d'Ecosses 
 — who could speak his language.^ 
 
 The juncture was one of imminent peril to the liberties 
 and the Protestantism of Englanct Elizabeth dared not 
 quarrel with any of the powers which looked on England 
 with silent menace, and she found it absolutely necessary 
 to propitiate them, each in its turn. She was not in a 
 position to attack the Queen of Scots. She was especially 
 anxious to retain the amity of France, and professed even 
 to encourage a proposal for becoming the wife of the 
 young king. Both the Spanish and French ambassadors 
 at her Court dropped ominous hints of suspicion that she 
 was secretly aiding the Protestant lords of Scotland in re- 
 belUon against their sovereign. So pressed, Elizabeth did 
 not hesitate to cast them off, and succeeded in doing so 
 with flagrant publicity. Murray and the Commendator of 
 Kilwinning went to London to plead the common cause. 
 They were received, no doubt by prearrangement, in the 
 presence of the French and Spanish ambassadors, where, 
 to their amazement, they encountered a hearty scolding 
 for their audacity, rebels and traitors as they were to their 
 legitimate sovereign, in appearing before her, a sovereign 
 too. She demanded of them a declaration that she had 
 never given them any countenance in their traitorous re- 
 sistance. Murray knew very well that if he attempted to 
 thwart her, he was ruined for ever. He deemed it the 
 wiser policy — and the result showed him to be right — to 
 play into Elizabeth's game, and clear her of suspicion. 
 The reward of the sacrifice had to be patiently waited for. 
 
 In tracing the direct effect on Scotland of the impulse 
 given to Romanism abroad at that time, it is convenient 
 to look at events occurring in the remote French town of 
 Bayonne, on the Spanish frontier. Catherine of Medici 
 had repeatedly expressed an eager desire to have a per- 
 
 1 Teulet, ii. 85. 
 
THE CATHOLIC LEAGUE, 1565. 133 
 
 sonal interview with her son-in-law, King Philip of Spain, 
 and planned a method of accomplishing such a meeting 
 without attracting suspicion to it as a solemn conference, 
 by suggesting that Philip should hold a progress through 
 the north-eastern provinces of his dominions, while she 
 and her son held a like progress in the south of France. 
 Each might then step a short way aside, and meet, as it 
 were, by a fortunate casualty. Such a progress Catherine 
 and her son made in the beginning of the year 1565, 
 passing deliberately from town to town with great pomp 
 and splendour, and slowly approaching the Spanish fron- 
 tier. Catherine's daughter, the Queen of Spain, went 
 dutifully to Bayonne to meet her mother. Philip himself 
 did not join them, but he sent one well fitted to re- 
 present him — his destroying general, Alva. From his 
 recently-discovered letters we have his own account of the 
 secret conclaves to which the two dark spirits retired 
 from the ostensible gaieties of the royal meeting. They 
 soon found that, though each was unscrupulous, their 
 aims were not in unison. Philip had one single object 
 before him — the Church, of which he had become the 
 sworn champion. For the Church, but for the Church 
 alone, and for nothing else in this world, he was prepared 
 to plunder and torture and forswear himself — to do any- 
 thing required. It was not external conformity that, like 
 politic and worldly princes, he looked to, but sincere faith 
 and true belief He therefore, instead of waiting till it 
 made itself visible, tried to find heresy wherever it lurked, 
 that he might extirpate it by fire, axe, and cord ; believing 
 that whatever cruelties brought the victim to orthodoxy, 
 and consequently to salvation, were, in a higher estimate 
 than that of the world, acts of beneficence ; and that if the 
 cruelty failed to convert, it accomplished the next best 
 thing, by destroying the earthly tabernacle of heresy. 
 
 In this spirit Alva addressed the Italian, demanding of 
 her why heresy was not extirpated in France. When he 
 was told of the strength of the Huguenot party, he con- 
 sidered its existence all the greater a scandal. Not only 
 could he see no reason why greatness and power should 
 save any one from the destruction that was his due, but 
 
134 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 he flung it as a reproach on the Government of France 
 that there were princes of the blood and heads of the first 
 houses favourable to the heretics, and the very chancellor 
 himself was a Huguenot. It was put as an immediate 
 practical measure of a modified kind, that France should 
 expel the Huguenot clerg}^ and exact conformit}^, or 
 should, as an alternative, try to strike terror by cutting off 
 some five or sLx of the principal heads. The Italian tried 
 her diplomatic art by suggesting some royal marriages 
 advantageous to both countries, and hinting that, if these 
 were brought to a satisfactory conclusion, France might 
 join Spain in the good work of extirpation ; but these sug- 
 gestions were haughtily checked as e\idence that France 
 had not her heart in the cause, since, instead of going 
 straight to the good work, she made it a matter of policy, 
 and indeed sought a bribe. The subtle jNIontluc, who 
 was present, agreed in opinion that it would have been 
 better had the right course been taken in time, and before 
 the political power acquired by the Huguenots had ren- 
 dered its adoption precarious; but he pledged himself 
 that the queen was thoroughly sincere, and would rather 
 be cut in two than become Huguenot. Alva, however, 
 was dissatisfied and disappointed, though the Frenchmen 
 whom he met, especially the Cardinal of Guise, gave him 
 thorough sympathy.^ 
 
 The object of Philip 11. in this famous conference was 
 kno^Ti at the time — probably through the active emis- 
 saries of the Huguenots. It was not known that his 
 profilers met a cold return, and naturally the subsequent 
 massacre of St Bartholomew was set dovm as the consum- 
 mation of a plot then, prepared. Famianus Strada, the 
 great Romanist historian, the only person who professed 
 to know something about the conference from an authen- 
 tic source — a letter about it from PhiUp II. to the Duchess 
 of Parma, his sister — rather confirmed this notion by say- 
 ing drily, that whether the massacre was planned on this 
 
 ^ Papiers d'Etat du Cardinal de Granvelle, ix. 312-324, See also 
 Wiesener, * Marie Stuart et le Comte de Bothwell,* p. 86, and his 
 reference to the letter of the Bishop of Mondovi in Labanotf, vii 107. 
 
THE CATHOLIC LEAGUE, 1565. 
 
 occasion he has no means of asserting or denying, but he 
 rather thinks it was.^ 
 
 The impression at the time was that a special religious 
 league had been contracted between the two powers. The 
 foolish young King of France was supposed to reveal the 
 secret by the looks and words which he cast at the Pro- 
 testant leaders. His savage nature seems to have been 
 roused by the persuasion of the Spaniards, which his wily 
 mother heard impassively. It went forth that he deeply 
 pondered on a metaphor of Alva's, that one salmon was 
 worth a multitude of frogs, as illustrating the view that the 
 more effective and economic method of suppressing heresy 
 was to cut off the heads of the party by some sudden 
 stroke, rather than to fight out the question in contro- 
 versies and battles. The Huguenot leaders, thoroughly 
 frightened for their heads, and knowing that the tempting 
 moment for a stroke or coup was when they were assembled 
 in council or near each other, separated as far apart as 
 they could, each occupying and fortifying one of his own 
 strongholds. 
 
 These Huguenots communicated their peril to the Pro- 
 testants of Scotland, who in their turn believed that Mary 
 had joined the league. So early as the summer of 1562, 
 Throckmorton in Paris had warned his mistress that there 
 was to be a confederacy of princes, including Spain, the 
 Papal States of Germany, Italy, and Portugal, and that 
 the Cardinal of Lorraine sends to the Queen of Scots to 
 enter the same — which is called The Catholic League — 
 but not to make any appearance thereof At the period 
 we have reached, a French envoy, who brought the insignia 
 of the order of the Saint Esprit to be conferred on Darn- 
 ley, was believed to have brought the league for Mary's 
 signature, and to have obtained it.^ Randolph wrote to 
 Cecil in February 1566: There was a band lately de- 
 vised, in which the late Pope, the Emperor, the King of 
 Spain, the Duke of Savoy, with other princes of Italy and 
 the queen-mother, were suspected to be of the same con- 
 
 ^ De Bello Belgico, lib. iv. 
 
 ^ Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 193. ^ Tytler, vii. 15. 
 
QUEEN MARY. 
 
 federacy to maintain Papistry throughout Christendom. 
 This band was sent out of France by Thornton, and is 
 subscribed by this queen." ^ If such a bond existed, the 
 French Government was no party to it. But whether in 
 the form of a bond or not, beyond doubt Mary was the 
 close ally of the King of Spain in all his formidable views 
 and projects for crushing the new religion. 
 
 Indeed the state paper which reveals the true history of 
 the conference at Bayonne is followed by a letter from 
 Alva, undated, but seemingly also written from Bayonne, 
 in which he explains to his master the manner of his 
 carrying out the policy he was authorised to use towards 
 Scotland. At the solicitation, he says, of the Cardinal of 
 Guise, he gave audience to an envoy from the Queen of 
 Scots. That envoy told him there would certainly be a 
 revolution in England, and he desired to know what 
 course his mistress ought to adopt. That, he was told, 
 would depend on the strength of parties. Mary must in 
 the mean time conduct herself not merely with reserve, 
 but dissimulation towards Elizabeth. If she conducted 
 herself to the satisfaction of the King of Spain, he would 
 bring to her such aid, at the time when it was least ex- 
 pected, that she would certainly accomplish her object. 
 Here was laid the scheme of the Armada which was de- 
 signed to place Mary on the English throne, and restore 
 with her the old religion. By the signal tardiness of its 
 projector it was cast forward into a later historical period, 
 when all the conditions on which it depended for success 
 had passed away. It is remarkable that Alva pressed on 
 the envoy the necessity of keeping this intimation a dead 
 secret even from the Guises ; for, once in their possession, 
 Catherine of Medici might get at it. The envoy, whose 
 name is not mentioned, enchanted with the brilliant 
 prospect, sent his brother to Scotland to tell the happy 
 news.^ 
 
 But at this time events fast following upon each other 
 cleared away alike the hopes and the fears that Scotland 
 
 ^ Wright's Queen Elizabeth, i. 219. 
 
 ^ Papiers d'Etat du Cardinal de Granvelle, ix. 329. 
 
THE KING AND THE QUEEN, 1565-66. 1 37 
 
 was to prove the means of subduing the British Isles to 
 the "dominion of the old Church. The period during 
 which the marriage of Mary and Darnley had the aspect 
 of a happy union was short. If there had not been worse 
 qualities in either of them, there was an utter incompati- 
 bility. The wife had great genius and sagacity ; the hus- 
 band was a fool, and a vicious and presumptuous fool. 
 There is scarcely to be found in his character the vestige 
 of a good quality. The resources of his power and rank 
 seem to have been considered by him only as elements of 
 animal enjoyment, and of a vainglorious assumption of 
 superiority. He indulged in every vicious appetite to the 
 extent of his physical capacity; he surrounded himself 
 with all manner of costly luxuries, over-ate himself, and 
 drank hard. He did his wife that wrong which to a 
 woman who retains the smallest remnant of attachment 
 is the sorest of all. His amours were notorious and dis- 
 gusting, and they had not the courtly polish which would 
 entitle them to the compromising designation of intrigues ; 
 for he broke the seventh commandment with the most 
 dissolute and degraded, because they were on that ac- 
 count the most accessible, of their sex. Such is a general 
 summary of the character and habits which appear in those 
 numerous accusations by his contemporaries, from which 
 no one seems to have thought of vindicating his memory.^ 
 Without any ambition to govern, he was haughty and 
 supercilious to a pitch that drove the proud Scots nobility 
 rabid ; and in his irritable or drunken fits he could not 
 restrain his hand from the blow, inflicting on fierce and 
 vindictive men the insult never to be forgiven. 
 
 Apart from her own injuries as a wife, the queen had 
 too much natural good taste, and was too thorough an 
 adept in the court polish of Italy and France, to tolerate 
 vice in such a form as this. Not many weeks of their 
 married life seem to have passed before coldness appeared, 
 and it soon deepened through estrangement into enmity. 
 
 ^ The philippic of Buchanan, which must be dealt with afterwards, 
 may be thought an exception ; but there the faint praise is put in for 
 artistic effect. 
 
138 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 Their domestic bickerings became offensively notorious. 
 Darnley ostensibly fixed his quarrel on her in the shape 
 of a complaint that she had promised him. the crown- 
 matrimonial, and had afterwards refused to take any steps 
 for accomplishing this promise. In his foolish passion he 
 offered violence to the high officer of the law who brought 
 him the disappointing intelligence that he was unsuccess- 
 ful. How this expression crown -matrimonial " came 
 into use, and what it meant, have already been referred 
 to as difficulties arising out of the schemes of the Guises. 
 A French politician is the best interpreter of the term ; 
 and we find Mauvissiere saying that, in the case of Mary's 
 death, it would have passed the crown to her husband 
 entirely, and then to his heirs. If this arrangement were 
 absolute, then a daughter by Mary might have been super- 
 seded by a son born to a subsequent wife ; but whether 
 it went thus far or not, it was one of the matters in which 
 the Hamilton family had the chief interest, and proba- 
 bly through their influence it was that the claim was 
 defeated. 
 
 On the 24th February 1566 there was a marriage-cere- 
 mony, which would not have belonged to history but for 
 after-events. Bothwell was then married to the Lady 
 Jane Gordon, a daughter of the Earl of Huntly. This 
 was made a Court affair, and there was a royal banquet- 
 ing for five days. The queen took an interest in the lady, 
 and specially bequeathed to her some jewels. She be- 
 longed to the old Church ; and it is said in Knox's His- 
 tory that " the queen desired that the marriage might be 
 made in the Royal Chapel at the mass, which the Earl 
 of Bothwell would in nowise grant." But he could not 
 obviate the possible interference of Popish influence on 
 the union in another and more serious shape. From 
 what we have seen of the condition of the law of marriage 
 before the Reformation, it would have been an exception 
 to the ordinary conditions could such a marriage be valid 
 without dispensation. A Papal dispensation therefore was 
 obtained as a precaution should the question of the valid- 
 ity of the marriage come to be tried by the canon law as 
 administered by the old Church. We shall see that this 
 
THE KING AND THE QUEEN, 1565-66. I39 
 
 dispensation has a curious and significant episodical his- 
 tory of its own. 
 
 The interest taken by Queen Mary in this marriage has 
 been pitted against the many presumptions that her heart 
 then belonged to Bothwell. But experience in poor 
 human nature teaches us that people terrified by the pres- 
 sure of temptation do sometimes set up barriers against 
 it which they afterwards make frantic efforts to get over. 
 In the natural course of things a crisis was now at hand ; 
 for the ParHament was to meet on 4th March 1566, and 
 the great question was, whether Murray and his exiled com- 
 panions would appear there and fight their own battle, or 
 would stay away and be to a certainty outlawed, and stripped 
 of every dignity and every acre of their possessions. 
 
 The spies of Queen Elizabeth were in sore perplexity, 
 watching the shadows of coming events ; and their cor- 
 respondence has the tone of men labouring under a 
 weighty consciousness that terrible explosions are coming, 
 yet without any certain indication when or in what form 
 they may be expected. This correspondence is very in- 
 teresting and suggestive, if we take its general tone ; but, 
 written without that distinct knowledge of the mighty 
 projects of the inscrutable King of Spain, which were at 
 the back of all that was doing in Scotland, the letters do 
 not throw a steady and distinct light on the causes of what 
 followed, and indeed contain so many rumours and pre- 
 dictions — some of which were fulfilled, while others were 
 not — that the advocate of almost any historical theory 
 about subsequent events is apt to find among them some- 
 thing temptingly calculated to support his views. ^ We 
 
 ^ Many of the rumours wafted out of Scotland at this critical 
 juncture are oracularly equivocal, and even when they predict violence 
 or death, they might be supposed to refer to a conflict and its casu- 
 alties. The following letter, written by Randolph on the l8th of 
 February, has, especially in the concluding sentence, the merit of dis- 
 tinctness. * ' I know now for certain that this queen repenteth her 
 marriage — that she hateth him and all his kin. I know that he 
 knoweth himself that he hath a partaker in play and game with him. 
 I know that there are practices in hand contrived between the father 
 and son to come by the crown against her will. I know that if that 
 take effect which is intended, David, with the consent of the king, 
 
140 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 hear that Darnley is in danger of his life : so is Rizzio ; so 
 is the queen herself; so is Murray, who is said to be, un- 
 fortunately for his own safety, in possession of a secret 
 involving his sister's fair fame. In one significant affair 
 we can depend on these newswriters, because it was not a 
 guess or prognostication, but a matter of fact passing be- 
 fore their eyes ; and also because, although subsequent 
 events confer a momentous import on it, yet it was looked 
 on as but an ordinary matter at the time. Bothwell, 
 whether for public or private reasons, was rising high in 
 the queen's favour, and beginning to wield an influence in 
 rivalry of the king's. " This also," says Randolph, " shall 
 not be unknown to you, what quarrels there are already 
 risen between her and her husband : she to have her will 
 oneway, and he another; he to have his father lieutenant- 
 general, and she the Earl of Bothwell ; he to have this 
 man preferred, and she another." ^ 
 
 But another actor in the great tragedy was to precede 
 him. The Italian was daily becoming more offensive ; 
 and, utterly unconscious of his position, he flaunted before 
 the eyes that looked murder on him, giving himself many 
 arrogant airs, decorating his person extravagantly, and 
 dealing offence in the very state and rank betokened by 
 his costume. He seems to have felt no fear, and even to 
 have disdained some friendly warnings. He was sure of 
 the favour of the queen, and he was not accustomed to 
 governments in which those who are well with the supreme 
 power need be afraid of what subjects can do. His 
 thorough and almost exclusive knowledge of the great 
 secrets between his mistress and the King of Spain very 
 probably added to his arrogance ; and a dim consciousness 
 that he was working at Popish intrigues made him all the 
 more dangerous and odious to the Protestant party. The 
 miscellaneous circle of enemies who aggregated round the 
 poor man secured the aid of Darnley by the most power- 
 ful of motives — he became, or he was made, jealous of the 
 
 shall have his throat cut within these lo days." — Letters in Mait- 
 land, Narrative. 
 
 ^ Raumer, 69. See this referred to by Mauvissiere, in Teulet, ii. 99. 
 
DARNLEY AND RIZZIO, 1565-66. 
 
 141 
 
 Italian, and coarsely expressed his suspicion that he and 
 the queen were too intimate. Mary, no doubt, held him 
 in her usual chains ; for she seems to have been incapable 
 of holding converse with any one of the male sex without 
 setting her apparatus of fascination at work. Farther than 
 this she is not likely to have gone ; but the ugly stories 
 that long prevailed are aptly attested by the saying attri- 
 buted to Henry IV., that King James's title to be called 
 the Modern Solomon was, doubtless, that he was the son 
 of David who performed upon the harp. The revolting 
 paternity tainted the controversies of her son's reign, and 
 indeed was a jest before he was born.^ But we can 
 feel that in its nature it has none of the fundamental 
 credibility that influences other charges laid against the 
 same character. It is in some measure with the written 
 gossip of history as with the tattle of society. Things are 
 said in the fury of an election or under the temptations 
 that assail the habitual jester, and the sedate onlooker who 
 weighs them knows that they are not true. Even so we may 
 say of this charge against Queen Mary, as well as of the 
 cruel stories that beset the early life of Queen EHzabeth. 
 
 It was settled that the man should be put to death, and 
 that before the great parliamentary contest about the ex- 
 iled lords came on. A band or bond was entered into, 
 according to the old practice in Scotland, in which those 
 concerned owned their responsibility for the deed, and 
 their resolution to stand by each other. It was absolutely 
 necessary to have a hold like this on so slippery a person 
 as Darnley, whom no one trusted. Or as Ruthven puts 
 it, " They, considering he was a young prince, and having 
 a lusty princess to lie in his arms afterwards, who might 
 persuade him to deny all that was done for his cause, and 
 to allege that others persuaded him to the same, thought 
 it necessary to have security thereupon." It is worthy of 
 remark that the bond contemplates more than one victim, 
 the whole being described as " certain privy persons, 
 
 ^ In a letter to Leicester of 29th June, Randolph, anticipating off- 
 spring, says, " Woe is me for you when David's sone shal be a Kyng 
 of England !" — Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 13. 
 
142 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 wicked and ungodly, not regarding her majesty's honour, 
 ours, nor the nobiHty thereof, nor the common weal of the 
 same, but seeking their own commodity and privy gains, 
 especially a stranger Italian called Davie, whom they 
 mutually engage to punish according to their demerits ; 
 
 and, in case of any difficulty, to cut them off immediately, 
 and to take and slay them wherever it happeneth." If 
 any of the banders should get in trouble for doing so, 
 Darnley stipulates to fortify and maintain them to the ut- 
 most of his power, and shall be friends to their friends, 
 and enemies to their enemies." The document, drawn 
 by a skilful lawyer, ends with a specific clause that, ^' be- 
 cause it may chance to be done in presence of the queen's 
 majesty, or within her palace of Holyrood House, we, by 
 the word of a prince, shall accept and take the same on 
 us now as then, and then as now ; and shall warrant and 
 keep harmless the foresaid earls, lords, barons, freeholders, 
 gentlemen, merchants, and craftsmen to our utter power. 
 In witness whereof, we have subscribed this with our own 
 hand at Edinburgh the ist of March 1565-66." ^ 
 
 Darnley's side of the bond has been preserved, but not 
 the other, so that we do not know with certainty who all 
 were concerned in the plot. On the 6th, Bedford and 
 Randolph thus intimated to Cecil that it was presently to 
 come off : " Somewhat, we are sure, you have heard of 
 divers disorders and jeers between this queen and her 
 husband, partly for that she hath refused him the crown- 
 matrimonial, partly for that he hath assured knowledge of 
 such usage of herself as altogether is intolerable to be 
 borne, which, if it were not over-well known, we would 
 both be very loath to think that it could be true. To 
 take away this occasion of slander, he is himself deter- 
 mined to be at the apprehension and execution of him 
 whom he is able manifestly to charge with the crime, and 
 to have done him the most dishonour that can be to any 
 man, much more being as he is. We need not more 
 plainly to describe the person — you have heard of the 
 man we mean of" ^ 
 
 ^ Ruthven's Relation. 
 
 * Tytler, vii. 25. 
 
DARNLEY AND RIZZIO, 1565-66. I43 
 
 There was at the same time another bond, involving 
 ostensibly much larger political adjustments, in which 
 Darnley was on one side. Those on the other side were 
 in the same interest with the banders against Rizzio, but 
 there is no evidence that they were exactly the same per- 
 sons ; and, indeed, it might be supposed that they were 
 persons of too much dignity and seriousness of character 
 to entertain a proposal for the murder of a minion. If 
 Ave may beUeve Ruthven^s account of the origin of this 
 band, when Darnley besought him to get Rizzio disposed 
 of, he protested that he would have nothing to do with 
 the matter unless Darnley would bind himself to ^' bring 
 home " Murray and the others, " who were banished only 
 for the Word of God,'' as Ruthven put it. Darnley, to 
 carry his point, agreed to the terms. " After long reason- 
 ing and divers days' travailling, the king was contented 
 that they should come home into the realm of Scotland, so 
 that the said Lord Ruthven would make him sure that 
 they would be his, and set forward all his affairs. The 
 said lord gave answer to the king, and bade him make 
 his own security, and that he should cause it to be sub- 
 scribed by the aforesaid earls, lords, and barons.'' The 
 title of the formal document they subscribed is instructive. 
 It is called, " Certain Articles to be fulfilled by James, 
 Earl of Murray ; Archibald, Earl of Argyle; Alexander, 
 Earl of Glencairn ; Andrew, Earl of Rothes ; Robert, 
 Lord Boyd ; Andrew, Lord Ochiltree ; and their com- 
 plices — to the Noble and Mighty Prince Henry, King of 
 Scotland.'* The subscribers bound themselves to take 
 a loyal and true part with the said noble prince in all his 
 actions, causes, and quarrels, against whomsoever, to the 
 utmost of their powers ; and shall be friends to his friends 
 and enemies to his enemies, and neither spare their Hves, 
 lands, goods, nor possessions." They specially undertake 
 to do their best in Parliament to secure for him the crown- 
 matrimonial, and promise their interest to obtain for him 
 the friendship of Queen EHzabeth and the relief of his 
 mother and brother from detention by her. Darnley, on 
 the other hand, engages to do his best to protect the ex- 
 iled lords from punishment, and to restore to them their 
 
144 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 estates and dignities. Nothing is trusted to generalities^ 
 but the course he is to adopt is set forth with specific 
 distinctness by some able conveyancer — probably Bal- 
 four, who afterwards drew another band in which Damley 
 was concerned, but to which he was no party. He was 
 not to suffer any forfeitures to pass against them, nor 
 to let them be accused in Parliament, and, if need be, 
 was even to prevent the holding of a Parliament; and 
 if he succeeded in obtaining the crown-matrimonial, he 
 was then to use his prerogative in their favour. The 
 safety of the Protestant religion — the really important 
 part of the arrangement — is provided for, with a curi- 
 ous circumlocuitous shyness, as the religion which 
 was established by the queen's majesty our sovereign 
 shortly after her arrival in this realm, whereupon acts 
 and proclamation were made, and now again granted 
 by the said noble prince to the said earls, lords, and 
 their complices."^ 
 
 Thus had the Protestant cause received a new and 
 unexpected ally. Mary says afterwards, in a letter to her 
 councillor. Archbishop Beaton, that the arrangement was 
 kept a dead secret from her, and that she was unconsciously 
 arranging for her Parliament, " the spiritual estate being 
 placed therein in the ancient manner, tending to have 
 done some good anent restoring the auld religion, and to 
 have proceeded against our rebels according to their de- 
 merits. All was now ready for the blow. The Parlia- 
 ment assembled, the exiled lords were on their way back, 
 and the time and method of disposing of the Italian were 
 adjusted.^ 
 
 1 Ruthven's Relation. ^ Labanoff, i. 342. 
 
 ^ The account of its execution I propose to take from three sources : 
 first, the queen's own statement, sent to her faithful adviser. Archbishop 
 Beaton. Second, a state paper drawn up by the Earl of Bedford and 
 Randolph for the information of the Privy Council of England. It is 
 the fruit of inquiries made of the actors themselves after they had 
 taken refuge in England, and from other sources, the whole being 
 sifted and examined with the practical acuteness with which the 
 authors of the paper were so amply endowed. The third is a narra- 
 tive professing to have been written by Lord Ruthven, the chief 
 actor in the affair. All the three correspond with a precision un- 
 
MURDER OF RIZZIO, 1566. 
 
 145 
 
 On the 9th of March, Morton, the chancellor, com- 
 manded the force who were to act — about a hundred and 
 fifty men. Having the king with him, he got possession, 
 silently and without contest, of the great gate and the 
 various outlets of the Palace of Holyrood, so as to make 
 prisoners all within it. A considerable part of his force 
 seems to have been stationed in the royal audience-cham- 
 ber down-stairs. From this Darnley brought some of them 
 into his own chamber, whence he ascended, by a secret 
 stair, to the queen's apartments, shov/ing Ruthven, who 
 was to follow, the way. It was seven o'clock. Darnley 
 had supped early, to prepare for work. The queen, who 
 had two chambers entering to each other, was in the in- 
 ner, called the cabinet, twelve feet square. She was seated 
 at a small table on a couch, or *'low reposing-bed,'' as 
 Bedford and Randolph call it, with the Lady Argyle and 
 Rizzio, who sat, as it was noted, with his cap on ; and this 
 sight was perhaps the more offensive that a few Scotsmen 
 of good rank — her brother the Commendator of Holyrood 
 House, Arthur Erskine, the Laird of Creech, and others 
 attached to the household — seem to have been in attend- 
 ance as domestics, while "Signor Davie'' sat with his cap 
 on. He was clothed in a nightgown of damask, furred, 
 with a satin doublet and hose of russet velvet." The little 
 party seem to have been unconscious of anything unusual, 
 until after Darnley, who put his arm round his wife's 
 waist and chatted with her kindly, was followed by the 
 grim Ruthven, who had risen haggard from a sick-bed, and 
 required to be helped up-stairs, though he was clad and 
 armed more suitably for a foray than a queen's cabinet. 
 
 common in the accounts of exciting events ; but the third is the most 
 minute in its detail, and the most practical and lifehke throughout. 
 See Letters, Queen Mary to Archbishop Beaton — Labanofif, i. 341 ; the 
 Earl of Bedford and Randolph to the Council of England — Wright's 
 Queen Elizabeth, i. 226 ; and * A Relation of the Death of David 
 Rizzio, chief favourite to Mary, Queen of Scotland, who vi^as killed 
 in the apartment of the said Queen on 9th of March 1565-66 ; writ- 
 ten by the Lord Ruthven, one of the principal persons concerned in 
 that action.' Printed in 1699, and reprinted in Scotia Rediviva, 1826. 
 It is also in the Appendix to Keith, book ii. No. xi., and in Trip- 
 hook's Miscellanea Antiqua, 1814. 
 
 VOL. IV. K 
 
146 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 He told his business forthwith. It would please your 
 majesty to let yonder man Davie come furth of your pre- 
 sence, for he hath been over long there/' Then there was 
 a sharp dialogue, in which, as in all the dialogues even 
 reported by an opposite party, the queen appears to have 
 held her own. She wanted to know why her servant 
 should be demanded. She was at last told, in terms suffi- 
 ciently suggestive, if not quite explicit. 
 
 ^^It will please your majesty, he hath offended your 
 majesty's honour, which I dare not be so bold as speak 
 of. As to the king your husband's honour, he hath hin- 
 dered him of the crown-matrimonial, which your grace 
 promised him, besides many other things which are not 
 necessary to be expressed. And as to the nobility, he 
 hath caused your majesty to banish a great part, and the 
 most chief thereof, and forefault them at this present Par- 
 liament, that he might be made a lord ; and so he passed 
 to particulars. He then tells how, when he had finished, 
 the queen rose up. She stood before the recess of a win- 
 dow. The Italian drew his hanger mechanically, as it 
 appears, with no spirit to defend himself ; for he seems to 
 have read his doom in the face of the intruder, and he 
 crouched behind his mistress, clutching at the folds of her 
 gown. Ruthven was alone all this time, and nothing had 
 occurred to tell the inmates of the cabinet that there were 
 others at hand. As Ruthven was palpably rude, the attend- 
 ants laid hands on him j but he shook them off fiercely, 
 drawing his hanger and saying, " Lay not hands on me, 
 for I will not be handled !" and as he spoke others rushed 
 in, filling the small apartment, and upsetting the supper- 
 table with the candles on it. The Lady Argyle snatched 
 up one of the candles, and preserved the group from dark- 
 ness. There was some rough scuffling ere the wretch 
 could be torn from his clutch of the queen's gown ; and 
 she declared that a hanger was thrust at David over her 
 shoulder, and a hackbut or pistol held as if aimed at her- 
 self. In the end, Ruthven took the queen and placed her 
 in her husband's arms, telling her not to be afraid — they 
 would sooner spend their own hearts' blood than she 
 should suffer harm, and they were doing but the bidding 
 
MURDER OF RIZZIO, 1566. 147 
 
 of her own husband. So they passed her, and dragged the 
 trembling wretch out of the recess of the window. It had 
 been their intention to take him to Darnley*s chamber, 
 there to hold a sort of court of judgment on him, and 
 afterwards hang him ; but in the press and confusion he 
 was hurled into the queen's utter chamber'' or anteroom, 
 and the crowd of enemies about him " were so vehemently 
 moved against the said Davie that they could not abide 
 any longer." All that could get near enough stabbed him, 
 until "they slew him at the queen's far door in the utter 
 chamber." The body was hurled down-stairs to the por- 
 ter's lodge, where the porter's assistant, stripping off the 
 fine clothes as it lay on a chest, said, — " This has been his 
 destiny; for upon this chest was his first bed when he 
 entered into the place, and now here he lieth again, a very 
 ingrate and misknown knave." 
 
 Those great officers who had apartments within the pre- 
 cincts of the palace, including Bothwell, Huntly, and 
 Athole, were naturally surprised and angry at the presence 
 of the large addition unexpectedly made to the armed in- 
 mates of the palace ; and there was likely to be a contest 
 between their followers and the followers of the conspira- 
 tors. Darnley intervened and kept peace, owning the 
 strangers as his own men ; and there was much rapid talk, 
 with explanations and some professions of reconciliation, 
 in the crowd of men — several of them at feud with each 
 other — who had been so singularly brought together. 
 Very few on either side seem to have yet known of the 
 slaughter. A body of the townspeople, armed, and headed 
 by the provost, hearing that there was turbulence and draw- 
 ing of swords in the palace, hurried thither ; but, assured 
 by Darnley that the queen and he were uninjured, and all 
 was right, they went their way, also ignorant of the tragedy 
 of the night. While these things were going on, Ruthven 
 and Darnley were back in the queen's cabinet, talking to 
 her; and she also was ignorant of her favourite's fate. 
 Ruthven, indeed, assured her that he was safe, and for 
 the time in her husband's apartment, where he supposed 
 the body to be safe in his own sense of the word. The 
 queen uneasily observed the absence of her husband's 
 
148 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 hanger. It was left sticking ostentatiously in the Italian's 
 body, as a testimony whose deed the slaughter was ; but 
 she professed to be satisfied that nothing more had taken 
 place but what she had seen, and then began a wordy war 
 between the husband and wife. 
 
 He charged her with the change in her ways towards 
 him ^' since yon fellow Davie fell in credit and famiharity" 
 with her. Especially she used of old to seek him in his 
 chamber ; and now, even if he came to hers, there was little 
 entertainment for him there, save so far as Davie might be 
 the third with them ; and then they set to cards, and played 
 on till one or two of the clock after midnight — late hours 
 certainly for that age.^ To this she made answer with her 
 usual felicity, that " it was not gentlewomen's duty to come 
 to their husband's chamber, but rather the husband to 
 come to the wife's chamber, if he had anything to do with 
 her.'' He rejoined, like a petulant boy, How came ye 
 to my chamber at the beginning, and ever till within these 
 few months that Davie fell in familiarity with you ? Or 
 am I failed in any part of my body ? Or what disdain 
 have you at me ? Or what offence have I made you, that 
 you should not use me at all times alike, seeing that I am 
 willing to do all things that becometh a good husband to 
 do to his wife?" These words recalled the outrage that 
 had just taken place, and were followed by a little out- 
 burst from her, very remarkable when contrasted with the 
 tone we shall find her taking when she knew that her 
 favourite had been actually put to death. " Her majesty 
 answered and said. That all the shame that was done to 
 her, that, my lord, ye have the weight [blame] thereof ; 
 for the which I shall never be your wife, nor lie with you, 
 nor shall never like well till I gar you have as sore a heart 
 as I have presently." 
 
 ^ That the card-playing was an item of Court gossip appears in a 
 letter from Randolph to Cecil of 25th December 1565 : The queen's 
 husband never gave greater token of his religion than that this last 
 night he was at matins and mass in the morning before day, and heard 
 high mass devoutly upon his knees ; though she herself the most part 
 of the night sat up at cards, and went to bed when it was almost day." 
 — Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 541. 
 
MURDER OF RIZZIO, 1566. 
 
 149 
 
 Here Ruthven interposed with good-humour, recom- 
 mending the queen to take a sensible view of things, be 
 reconciled with her husband, and with him follow the ad- 
 vice of good friends. Exhausted apparently by this effort, 
 a little scene follows, which must be told in his own words. 
 *'The said lord being so feebled with his sickness, and 
 wearied with his travel, that he desired her majesty's pleas- 
 ure to sit down upon a coffer, and called for a drink for 
 God's sake; so a Frenchman brought him a cup of wine.'' 
 His interruption of the matrimonial colloquy, and his inso- 
 lent familiarity, turned the storm upon himself ; and he 
 says that, after he had drunken, the queen's majesty 
 began to rail against the said lord." She alluded to her 
 position, having been six months pregnant, and said that 
 if she died, or her child, in consequence of what had been 
 done, she was not without friends capable of revenging 
 her. There was the King of Spain, the Emperor, the 
 King of France, and her uncles, not to speak of his holi- 
 ness the Pope. Ruthven answered, with grave sarcasm, 
 that these noble princes were over-great personages to 
 meddle with such a poor man as he was, being her ma- 
 jesty's own subject. Then there was a partly political 
 discussion, in which Ruthven maintained that the queen 
 had abandoned her constitutional advisers, and sought 
 counsel of the Italian and other strangers, who taught her 
 to set her own abitrary power above the Estates ; that she 
 had especially interfered to name the Lords of the Articles 
 in the ensuing Parliament, for the purpose of securely crush- 
 ing her brother Murray and the other exiled lords. It is 
 observable that, while this brisk dialogue went on, not a 
 word came from Darnley, though Ruthven appealed to 
 him. At last he observed that the queen was tired, and 
 advised her husband to bid her farewell. She was left 
 with certain attendants who could be trusted, and Ruthven 
 kept charge of Darnley, with whom he had business still 
 to transact. Ere they separated two proclamations were 
 adjusted, to be issued next day by Darnley as king. The 
 one called a muster of the well-affected inhabitants of Ed- 
 inburgh, who were to keep ward in the streets, "and to 
 suffer none others to be seen out of their houses, except 
 
150 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 Protestants, under all highest pain and charge that after 
 may follow.'' The other proclamation discharged or dis- 
 solved the Parliament, requiring all the members to leave 
 Edinburgh within three hours, save such as the king might 
 specially require to remain. Having adjusted these matters 
 to his satisfaction, we are told that, " the gates being locked, 
 the king being in his bed, the queen's majesty walking in 
 her chamber, the said Lord Ruthven took air upon the 
 lower gate and the privy passages." One other event, 
 however, happened in the night, not so propitious as those 
 which preceded it. Bothwell and Huntly managed to make 
 their escape ; and, from Mary's own account of the matter, 
 it would seem that they had contrived to establish a com- 
 munication with her, engaging to relieve her from without, 
 or to help her to escape.^ 
 
 The great affair of next day, which was Sunday, was the 
 arrival of the banished lords, who reached Edinburgh about 
 seven o'clock in the evening. ^ Thus were they on the 
 spot to profit by the recent tragedy without having defiled 
 themselves with it. There can be little doubt that they 
 were prepared for it. Among the many scraps of paper 
 which contain merely the rumours of the day, Murray is 
 set down in some as a contriver in the plot. There is no 
 sufficient evidence that he was so, and such a thing is not 
 consistent with his steady, careful, decorous walk in life. 
 That, knowing it was likely to take place without throwing 
 any responsibility on him, he should have gone out of his 
 way to hinder it, was beyond the human nature of his age. 
 The name of Knox, too, is to be found on these lists. It 
 is still less likely, however, that he should have compro- 
 mised his position as a minister of the Word by either exe- 
 cuting or plotting an assassination. Whether, knowing 
 that it was to be done, he would have interrupted it, or 
 
 ^ Labanoff, i. 348. 
 
 ^ An accurate announcement by the English ambassadors to friends 
 in England, dated 8th March, proved precisely accurate : The Earl of 
 Murray is written for and his whole company. They will be on Mon- 
 day night at Edinburgh, but that which is intended shall be executed 
 before his coming on him whom Cecil knows." — Bedford and Ran- 
 dolph to Leicester and Cecil. Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 29. 
 
MURDER OF RIZZIO, 1566. 
 
 would have bidden the perpetrators God-speed, is an idle 
 question, since, with his usual candour, he has left in his 
 History his thorough approval of the deed. Moralising 
 on the fallen condition of the conspirators afterwards, when 
 they became fugitives, he utters a warning against suppos- 
 ing that they are deserted of God, who may yet raise them 
 up again to His glory and their comfort. ^' And to let the 
 world understand in plain terms what we mean, that great 
 abuser of this commonwealth, that poltroon and vile knave 
 Davie, was justly punished on the 9th of March, in the 
 year of God one thousand five hundred threescore five 
 [six], for abusing of the commonwealth, and for his other 
 villany, which we list not to express, by the counsel and 
 hands of James Douglas, Earl of Morton, Patrick, Lord 
 Lindsay, and the Lord Ruthven, with others assisters of 
 their company, who all, for their just act, and most worthy 
 of all praise, are now unworthily left of their brethren, and 
 suffer the bitterness of banishment and exile. ^ Much of 
 the accusation and defence wasted on the characters of 
 that age arises from the supposition that, like a well-princi- 
 pled citizen of the present day, any one hearing of an in- 
 tended crime was expected to go and inform the police. 
 People in the public world had too much anxiety about 
 themselves to think of others, and only the strongest per- 
 sonal motive would prompt one to interfere with any act 
 of violence. An attempt to thwart a crime by which his 
 cause would profit, might have justly exposed a man to the 
 charge of insanity or gross duplicity. 
 
 Sunday the loth was a busy and anxious day at the 
 palace: At what time the queen heard of Rizzio^s death 
 is not certain ; it must have been pretty near the time when 
 she also heard that the banished lords were to arrive.^ It 
 
 1 Knox, i. 235. 
 
 2 The question when and how the queen knew of Rizzio's death 
 seems to be of great moment, in its bearing on the evidence against 
 her for the murder which followed. It is quite clear that Rizzio was 
 not, as is generally supposed, slain before her face. In Bedford and 
 Randolph's narrative it is said distinctly, *' He was not slain in the 
 queen's presence, as was said, but going down the stairs out of the 
 chamber of presence," In her own narrative sent to her faithful coun- 
 
152 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 is certain, however, that she at once altered her tone to 
 Darnley. She resolved on luring him back, along with 
 such of the other enemies surrounding her as she could 
 win over. With her fooHsh husband she accomplished her 
 purpose with the ease of a great artist ; the others seem to 
 have kept themselves beyond the magic circle. It was 
 part of her policy to make him think she believed in his 
 absurd protestations that he had no concern in her favour- 
 ite's death. The day was spent by Darnley in vibrating 
 between the two parties — coming from the queen to de- 
 
 cillor, Archbishop Beaton, she says, The said Lord Ruthven perforce 
 invaded him in our presence (he then for refuge took safeguard, having 
 retired him behind our back), and with his complices cast down our 
 table upon himself, put violent hands on him, struck him over our 
 shoulders with whinyards, one part of them standing before our face 
 with bended dags, most cruelly took him furth of our cabinet, and at 
 the entry of our chamber gave him fifty- six strokes with whinyards 
 and swords." This tends to confirm Ruthven's narrative, by showing 
 that Rizzio was taken alive out of the cabinet and killed in the ante- 
 room. It is not a necessary inference that he was wounded, though 
 she says they struck him over her shoulder with whinyards ; their 
 object, undoubtedly, was to get him out of the queen's presence in the 
 first place. In the queen's short account of her controversy with 
 Ruthven, when speaking of Rizzio, she says, **whom they had actu- 
 ally put to death." If this stood alone, it might be doubtful whether 
 she mentions that as a fact merely which she might afterwards have 
 known, or states that she was told it at the time by Ruthven. In the 
 narrative of Bedford and Randolph, who were undoubted masters of 
 all the facts, it is stated that, in her conversation with Ruthven and 
 her husband, the queen spoke for Rizzio's safety partly in entreaties, 
 partly in threats, saying, Well, it shall be dear blood to some of 
 you if his be spilt." In whichever sense it be taken, this explanation 
 is further proof that she did not see him slain (see the letter in Laba- 
 noff, i. 344, 345). Spottiswoode (p. 195) gives the following distinct 
 account of her acquaintance with the end : * ' The queen, bursting forth 
 in many tears after a great tiding she kept with the Lord Ruthven, 
 sent one of her maids to inquire what was become of Davie, who 
 quickly returning, told that he was killed : having asked her how she 
 knew it, the maid answered that she had seen him dead. Then the 
 queen, wiping her eyes with her handkerchief, said, * No more tears — 
 I will think upon a revenge.^ Neither was she seen after that any 
 more to lament." For this account, accepted in several quarters, I 
 am aware of no better authority than Spottiswoode's mere statement, 
 and the dubious memoirs attributed to Lord Herries. If better 
 vouched, it woujd be formidable evidence of her intention to work 
 for what afterwards came to pass. 
 
MURDER OF RIZZIO, 1566. 
 
 153 
 
 mand concessions for her, getting scolded for his weakness 
 and the peril he was bringing them all into by yielding to 
 her blandishments, and going back fortified against her, to 
 return again as her humble messenger. Early in the day 
 she recovered her women, through whom she communi- 
 cated with Bothwell, Huntly, and other friends. The 
 alarm was more than once raised that a miscarriage was 
 approaching, and the necessary attendants were sum- 
 moned ; but Ruthven thought he saw under all this a 
 project for her escaping among the miscellaneous throng 
 of women hurrying out and in, and it was regulated, much 
 to the queen's annoyance, that no gentlewoman should 
 pass forth undismuffled.^' 
 
 It was arranged, as a signal token of reconciHation, that 
 Darnley was to share the queen's couch that night. As 
 men will do, however, when they have got a heavy piece 
 of business satisfactorily through, he took a drowsy fit — 
 probably, too, he was saturated with wine ; so he fell dead 
 asleep in his own chamber, and when he awoke too late, 
 scolded those who had failed to break his slumber. Pro- 
 bably the queen did not much regret a new insult which 
 relieved her of a portion of her work of dissimulation. 
 She was next day all smiles and caresses. The meeting 
 with the banished lords cannot be better told than in Ruth- 
 ven's own words : — 
 
 ^*She took purpose, and came out of the utter chamber, 
 led by the king. The said earls and lords sitting down 
 upon their knees, made their general oration by the Earl 
 of Morton, chancellor, and after their particular orations 
 by themselves. And after that her majesty had heard all, 
 her answer was, that it was not unknown to the lords that 
 she v/as never bloodthirsty nor greedy upon their lands 
 and goods sithence her coming into Scotland, nor yet 
 would be upon theirs that were present, but would remit 
 the whole number that was banished, or at the last dead, 
 and bury and put all things in oblivion, as if they had 
 never been ; and so caused the said lords and barons to 
 arise on their feet. And afterwards her majesty desired 
 them to make their own security in that sort they pleased 
 best, and she should subscribe the same. Thereafter her 
 
154 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 majesty took the king by the one hand and the Earl of 
 Murray by the other, and walked in her said upper cham- 
 ber the space of one hour, and then her majesty passed 
 into her inner chamber." ^ 
 
 The desire that they should "make their own security" 
 had reference to a new band appropriate to the occasion, 
 which a skilful conveyancer was in fact at that moment 
 preparing, under the vigilant inspection of the returned 
 exiles, or of the king^s party, as they were then — but only 
 for a few hours — named. Soon after six o'clock in the 
 evening the king joined them, or at least their committee, 
 consisting of Murray, Morton, Ruthven, and Lindsay, who 
 handed to him their band of security, ready for his signa- 
 ture and the queen's, " which the king took in hand (as 
 soon as he had supped) to be done/' He made a re- 
 quest, however, which inflamed their still slumbering sus- 
 picions, by desiring them to remove their own people, and 
 leave the queen in the hands of her proper guard. The 
 lords had been telling Darnley all along, in pretty plain 
 terms, that there was duplicity at work and they were only 
 led on to be betrayed ; and at this proposal Ruthven, 
 bursting out in anger, told him that what should follow 
 and what blood be shed should come on his head and that 
 of his posterity, not on theirs. The guards seem not to 
 have been removed; but the lords themselves adjourned 
 to Morton's house to sup — a step attended with risk, yet 
 in which there was a certain policy, because it was expe- 
 dient that the queen, in whatever she signed, should have 
 as much appearance of free-will as it was safe to allow. 
 After supper they sent Archibald Douglas to see if the 
 queen had subscribed the band. No, she had not ; the 
 king said she had read the articles and found them very 
 good, but she was sick and going to bed, and delayed the 
 subscribing until the morning. 
 
 About an hour after midnight the queen and Darnley 
 managed, by connivance, to slip out through the wine-cellar. 
 Outside, Arthur Erskine, captain of her guard, met her by 
 
 1 Ruthven's Relation. 
 
MURDER OF RIZZIO, 1566. 
 
 155 
 
 arrangement with six or seven mounted followers. The 
 queen seated on a crupper behind Erskine, they all rode 
 straight to Seton House, where the Lord Seton gave them 
 an escort on to Dunbar. The governor of that strong for- 
 tress was amazed, early on Tuesday morning, by the ar- 
 rival of his king and , queen, hungry, and clamorous for 
 fresh eggs to breakfast 
 
156 
 
 CHAPTER XLV. 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 (Continued.) 
 
 THE CONFEDERATE LORDS AND THEIR DANGER — PROJECTS OF RE- 
 TALIATION — THE SLAYERS OF RIZZIO SEEK REFUGE IN ENGLAND 
 
 — A PARLIAMENT— THE FIT OF CONJUGAL ATTACHMENT PASSES 
 
 — SYMPTOMS OF MARY'S FEELING TOWARDS HER HUSBAND — HE 
 IS AVOIDED, AND BECOMES ALARMED — RISE AND CHARACTER OF 
 BOTHWELL — HIS POWER ON THE BORDERS — CONDITION OF THE 
 BORDERS AT THAT TIME — HIS POWER ON THE SEA — HISTORY OF 
 HIS HOUSE AS RENOWNED FOR ROYAL LOVE-AFFAIRS— WOUNDED 
 IN A BORDER SCUFFLE — THE QUEEN'S RIDE FROM JEDBURGH TO 
 HERMITAGE TO VISIT HIM — BIRTH OF THE PRINCE — PECULIAR 
 CIRCUMSTANCES OF HIS BAPTISM — PROJECTS AGAINST DARNLEY 
 MOOTED — DARNLEY'S ILLNESS — THE QUEEN'S NEW PROFESSION OF 
 RECONCILIATION, AND VISIT TO HIM IN GLASGOW — HIS FATHER 
 AND HE AFRAID OF MURDER — HIS OWN EXPRESSIONS ON THE MAT- 
 TER — DARNLEY BROUGHT TO THE KIRK-OF-FIELD — A BAND FOR 
 PUTTING HIM OUT OF THE WAY — THE PREPARATIONS— THE COM- 
 PLETION OF THE MURDER. 
 
 Thus the confederate lords rose in the morning to find 
 themselves outwitted and in great danger. They de- 
 spatched a messenger to Dunbar on the useless errand 
 of procuring that signature to their band which the royal 
 fugitives had neglected to leave. The messenger was 
 detained two days before his message could be delivered, 
 and it was not even honoured with the formahty of an 
 answer. 
 
RIZZIO'S MURDERERS, 1566. 
 
 The queen dictated letters pleading her cause and 
 vindicating herself. One letter to Queen Elizabeth has 
 been preserved. It is dated from Dunbar on the 15th of 
 March, and contains this passage : " We thought to have 
 written this letter with our own hand, that ye might have 
 better understood all our meaning, and taken mair famil- 
 iarly therewith ; but of a truth we are so tired and evil at 
 ease, what through riding of twenty miles in five hours of 
 the night, as with the frequent sicknesses and evil disposi- 
 tion by the occasion of our child, that we could not at this 
 time, as we was willing to have done/' ^ 
 
 Bothwell meanwhile was busy in collecting a force for 
 the queen's protection. He seems to have immediately 
 brought to Dunbar a sufiicient number of followers to 
 render an attack on that fortress desperate ; and on the 
 28th of March he accompanied the royal pair back to 
 Edinburgh at the head of two thousand horsemen. The 
 opposition had in the mean time, with few exceptions, 
 either fled to England or retired to a safe distance. The 
 exiled lords who had returned from England made their 
 appearance at the Tolbooth, where the Parliament was 
 held, on the day for which they were cited — the day after 
 the escape. There was of course no Parliament, for it 
 had been dissolved by the proclamation which they had 
 influenced Darnley to issue ; but there was some subtle 
 technical fencing, the lords protesting that they had ap- 
 peared when summoned, and since there was no one to 
 arraign them, all charges against them fell ; while on the 
 other hand, Robert Crichton, the queen's advocate, en- 
 tered a counter-protest on such grounds as he thought 
 most tenable. The lords thought it wise to retreat to 
 Linlithgow. There was, however, no intention of press- 
 ing further on them as a party — the cause of the restora- 
 tion of the old religion, which was the cause of antagonism 
 to them, had to be abandoned for more urgent contests. 
 The queen gave several of them letters of remission. 
 Melville, as interim secretary, was occupied in preparing 
 these documents at Haddington while the Court was on 
 
 ^ Labanofif, i. 337. 
 
158 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 its way from Dunbar to Edinburgh.^ They were not, 
 however, directly received into favour, but were desired 
 to retire to their own estates ; and they professed to obey 
 this instruction, remaining sharply on the watch for each 
 turn of events. 
 
 The tragedy that naturally drew all attention in Scot- 
 land, was the topic of the day in England and throughout 
 civiHsed Europe. It was not only that it was a murder — 
 that was a common event — but it was perpetrated in such 
 conditions of outrage and insult to royalty, as raised the 
 indignation of sovereigns and courtiers. Yet the import- 
 ance of the tragedy as a political blow could only be 
 known to a few. In the traces of the queen's intercourse 
 with the Court of Rome and the Papal powers we now 
 see its significance more clearly than even the leading 
 statesmen of the day in England and Scotland. It cut, in 
 short, the communication of the queen with her secret 
 correspondents across the Channel. If there was any one 
 that could fill his place, it was emphatically marked as a 
 post of danger. There seems, however, to have been no 
 one with resources for the duty. Suspicion fell here and 
 there on persons, as employed in secret messages ; but if they 
 were so, it was as subordinates to the Italian, who appears 
 to have had the whole of that weighty business on his 
 hands. So it came that to the queen his death was not 
 only a mighty outrage, and the loss of a counsellor and 
 friend, but it was a fatal blow to the political and ecclesi- 
 astical projects that so filled her aspirations. Meanwhile 
 his mistress did honour to his memory. His body was 
 removed from the Canongate graveyard, where it had 
 been buried, and was solemnly, and with the proper rites 
 of his Church, laid with the dust of the kings of Scotland 
 within the Chapel of Holyrood. In scornful bravado the 
 queen appointed the dead man's brother, Joseph Rizzio, 
 a youth who had just arrived to seek his fortune, to the 
 office of her foreign secretary. The one object of her life 
 seemed then the avenging of the murder, and the one 
 class of men who felt that there could be no compromise 
 
 1 Melville, 152. 
 
THE QUEEN AND HER HUSBAND, 1566. 1 59 
 
 for their lives were those who could be proved to have 
 actually committed the deed. Morton, Ruthven, Lindsay, 
 Douglas the Postulate, Ker of Faudonside, and several 
 others, were cited to answer for the murder, and having 
 fled to England, were outlawed and put to the horn.'' 
 A few minor persons forming part of the force which held 
 the palace were convicted and executed. 
 
 Darnley showed the reckless perfidy of his nature by 
 eagerly helping to denounce and capture his fellow-mur- 
 derers. In speaking of them to Melville, he used an ex- 
 pressive trope applicable to men left to their doom, "As 
 they have brewed so let them drink.'' ^ It was not part 
 of his wife's policy to attempt to bring him to justice with 
 the others j and so, to put a decorous appearance upon 
 his position, he acted the farce of solemnly declaring his 
 innocence of the crime before the Privy Council — at least 
 the queen assured Beaton, her o^vn ambassador, that he 
 had declared to herself and the Council " his innocence 
 of this last conspiracy; how he never counselled, com- 
 manded, consented, assisted, nor approved the same."^ 
 His reconciliation with the queen had, however, now 
 served its turn. She no longer required to separate him 
 from the party of the exiled lords, who had more to trust 
 to from herself than from him. The distaste she had felt 
 before, deepened by the intervening tragedy, broke out in 
 a palpable loathing visible to every one around them. 
 Melville noticed it even on the journey from Dunbar, and 
 he thought the subsequent rapid movements of the queen 
 were for the purpose of avoiding her hated husband. 
 Melville takes credit for having pleaded, until he received 
 a rebuff, for the unhappy young man. Randolph, whose 
 eye caught the sudden change of conduct, attributed it to 
 Mary having been shown the band for the murder of 
 Rizzio, with her husband's signature to it ; but a woman 
 of her penetration, and with her opportunities of knowing 
 the facts, did not require such evidence. 
 
 Her wretched husband had now effectually divested 
 himself of every hold he ever had on any party or con- 
 
 1 Melville, 153. 
 
 ^ Labanoff, i. 349. 
 
i6o 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 siderable person in the realm. Grave and calculating 
 statesmen distrusted and despised him from the first. 
 Desperate plotters convicted him of the unpardonable 
 crime of treachery to his banded confederates. The Pro- 
 testant party hated him, and the scorn of the queen cast 
 him off from the Romish party ; and so, as Melville says, 
 he passed up and down his alane, and few durst bear 
 him company." There was not even the external pre- 
 tence of consulting him on business ; and he had nothing 
 to do but to go about like a tabooed schoolboy, bemoaning 
 his condition to any, whether Scots or foreigners, who 
 would listen to him — a practice which, by exposing the 
 family brawl to the world, only made him the more odious 
 and despicable to his wife. 
 
 An event occurred, however, which for a short time sus- 
 pended the matrimonial discord. Mary had retired to tne 
 Castle of Edinburgh, as a safe retreat for the occasion ; 
 and on the 19th of June a son was born to her, afterwards 
 known as James VI. of Scotland and I. of England. It 
 was noticed at the time as a memorable fact that Darnley 
 acknowledged the infant as his own ; and that this should 
 have been deemed a fact of importance is curiously sug- 
 gestive of the unsatisfied and suspicious feelings which had 
 become prevalent. Sir James Melville was sent to an- 
 nounce the auspicious news at the Court of England, and 
 he has left an amusing picture of the rigid Elizabeth yield- 
 ing to an impulse of curious vexation when abruptly 
 startled by the news in the midst of a Court banquet at 
 Greenwich, and lamenting that the Queen of Scots was 
 the mother of a fair son while she herself was but a bar- 
 ren stock. Next day, however, at a public audience, she 
 was kind and courteous, and profuse in her congratula- 
 tions and the proffers of her sympathy. 
 
 The family quarrel was suspended only for a brief period 
 by this event. The position of Darnley was ever becom- 
 ing more conspicuously isolated and feeble, by the queen's 
 policy of reconciliation with those who had been her 
 political enemies. All but those who had actually laid 
 hands on Rizzio were welcomed back. Thus Murray, 
 Argyle, Glencairn, and even the man she most feared and 
 
THE QUEEN AND HER HUSBAND, 1566. 161 
 
 disliked on public grounds, Lethington, with other minor 
 persons who had been in disgrace, were received into 
 favour, and, nominally at least, co-operated with Bothwell 
 and Huntly. 
 
 Darnley in his desolation seems to have become alarmed 
 for his safety. He resolved to go to France ^'in sl sort of 
 desperation," as the French ambassador called it — in short, 
 to escape. His father, Lennox, who suffered with his de- 
 cHning fortunes, and seems to have shared in his alarm, 
 wrote to the queen about this design, and said there was 
 a ship ready to receive him. She, however, resolved that 
 he should not go. Something is muttered in the corre- 
 spondence of the time about his forming a party \vith the 
 Romanists against the queen, on account of her favour to 
 the Protestant party and her abandonment of the project 
 of restoring the old religion ; but Mary and her policy 
 were far too deeply rooted in the councils of Rome and 
 Spain to give the foolish young man the smallest chance 
 of doing mischief — there was no danger in that direction, 
 and there can have been no genuine fear. The reason 
 for detaining him seems to have been that which Le Croc 
 refers to — the scandal that must arise from the separation 
 and its manner, aggravated as it would be by the young 
 man's incontinent tongue. He knew too much, foolish as 
 he was, to be safely trusted at a distance. 
 
 His wife took this occasion to put herself in the right 
 and him in the \\Tong, and did so with her usual skill. 
 She said she had discussed the matter with him in private, 
 and could get no satisfactory answer ; so she resolved on 
 a matrimonial dialogue in solemn manner, before an as- 
 semblage of the nobility — both those who were her con- 
 fidential friends and the others who were for the time 
 being her political aUies. 
 
 Le Croc was brought within the charmed circle over 
 which Queen Mary exercised her influence — she had 
 taken great pains apparently to gain him. I be not 
 able," he says, sufficiently to express the honour and 
 bounty the queen here shows me ; for she often prays me 
 to ask money from her, or any other thing I stand in need 
 of And he paid her back by saying, " I never saw her 
 
 VOL. IV. L 
 
102 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 majesty so much beloved, esteemed, and honoured, nor 
 so great a harmony amongst all her subjects, as at present 
 is, by her wise conduct." Of the scene of matrimonial 
 diplomacy which he was called on to witness, the ambas- 
 sador gives the follo\nng distinct and animated account, 
 in a letter of Court news sent on the occasion to a corre- 
 spondent in France. 
 
 And thereafter the queen prayed the king to declare 
 in presence of the lords and before me the reason of his 
 projected departure, since he would not be pleased to 
 notify the same to her in private betwixt themselves. 
 She likewise took him by the hand, and besought him for 
 God's sake to declare if she had given him any occasion 
 for this resolution ; and entreated he might deal plainly, 
 and not spare her. ]\Ioreover, all the lords likewise said 
 to him, that if there was any fault on their part, upon his 
 declaring it, they were ready to reform it. And I like- 
 wise took the freedom to tell him that his departure must 
 certainly afiect either his o^vn or the queen's honour — 
 that if the queen had afforded any ground for it, his de- 
 claring the same would affect her majesty; as on the 
 other hand, if he should go away without giving any cause 
 for it, this thing could not at all redound to his praise : 
 therefore, that since I was in this honourable emplo}'ment, 
 I could not fail, according to my charge, to give my testi- 
 mony to the truth of what I had both formerly seen and 
 did presently see. After several things of this kind had 
 passed amongst us, the king at last declared that he had 
 no ground at all given him for such a deliberation ; and 
 thereupon he went out of the chamber of presence, saying 
 to the queen, ^ Adieu, madam ; you shall not see my face 
 for a long space : ' after which he like^^-ise bade me fare- 
 well; and next turning himself to the lords in general, 
 said, ^ Gentlemen, adieu.' ^ 
 
 The eyes of onlookers now came to be fixed on Bothwell 
 as one whose destinies seemed to be linked with those of 
 the queen, in a sinister rather than a propitious shape. 
 
 1 Letter addressed to Archbishop Beaton, who acted as the queen's 
 ambassador or political agent in France. — Keith (8vo ed.), ii. 451. 
 
THE CAREER OF BOTHWELL, 1560-66. 163 
 
 As such forebodings were well justified by events that 
 must have exceeded their wildest stretch, and we have to 
 follow the two through a career presenting the rarely- 
 united features of reckless audacity and pubhcity in action, 
 while the inner practices and private motives at work 
 have been objects of a close criticism and keen dispute, 
 it may be proper here to look back on such traces as we 
 may find of Bothwell's position among his countrymen 
 before the commencement of his crowning notoriety. 
 
 In the first place, he was largely endowed with gifts 
 from the crown both in office and territory, and it will be 
 proper to follow the steps of his aggrandisement, noting 
 time and circumstance as appropriate to each. 
 
 He became lieutenant or warden of the Scots 
 marches. On each side of the border there usually were 
 three wardens — one for the eastern, one for the middle, 
 and one for the western march. The policy of this will 
 be found in the propensity of border powers to aggrandise 
 themselves, and become independent. The rule was 
 punctiliously observed on the English side, but on the 
 side of Scotland Bothwell was sole warden or lieutenant.^ 
 
 We find him transacting business in this capacity so 
 early as the year 1560, yet the sole wardenship is spoken 
 of in the correspondence of December 1566 as if it were 
 a novelty.2 
 
 The fluctuations in the property of the Church afforded 
 the crown ample means of distributing substantial prizes- 
 Bothwell was endowed with the Abbacy of Melrose and 
 the Priory domains of Haddington. Each of these foun- 
 dations had wide and rich territorial possessions. It 
 is often difiicult to find how much is acquired in the 
 acquisition of such a domain by its ecclesiastical title, 
 since substantial portions of the territories may be given 
 to others. It is said that Bothwell obtained the greater 
 
 1 It is said by one with good opportunities for knowing the truth, 
 that the three wardenships were '* never before held by one person." 
 — Wood's edition of Douglas's Peerage, 230. 
 
 ^ Bothwell is lieutenant of all the marches of Scotland, and has 
 allowed him 200 horsemen in wages for reforming of Liddesdale." — 
 Forster to Cecil, Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 850. 
 
164 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 portion of the actual wealth attending on these gifts at 
 the time when his power at Court became conspicuous. 
 But we find him credited with the possession of Mel- 
 rose and Haddington in 1560.^ 
 
 He was Lord High Admiral or " Great Admiral of Scot- 
 land/' and we find him administering the duties of this 
 office in 1561.^ 
 
 The French garrison, left as we have seen in Dunbar 
 Castle, were removed in 1561.^ It was rumoured at the 
 time that Bothwell was to be commander of the castle."* 
 We find it, however, in the mean time governed by others, 
 and it does not seem to have come into BothwelPs hands 
 until the more critical period of 1566 or 1567.^ The pos- 
 session of this, the strongest of all the Scots sea 
 fortresses, was a substantial addition to the power of the 
 Admiral of the Scots seas. It was ever the taint at- 
 tending on Bothwell's possession of authority, that he em- 
 ployed it for his own evil ends; and thus it was imputed 
 to the chief magistrate of the seas that he made them 
 safe to pirates, and unsafe to the statesmen who were 
 under the shadow of his enmity.^ 
 
 ^ *^ Lord Bothwell has given hhn by the queen the abbeys of Mel- 
 rose and Haddington. " — Randolph to Cecil, Calendar of State Papers 
 (Foreign), 9. But the same collector of news says, in December 
 1563, that Lethington is at Haddington, taking possession of the 
 whole Abbacy which the queen had given him, so that he is now 
 equal with any, and has his whole land lying in Lothian." — Ibid., 
 (1563), 617. 
 
 2 Ibid., 145. 3 xbia., 278. 
 
 ^ **The Queen of Scots has given order that in case the French 
 be shifted from Dunbar, the Earl of Bothwell shall forthwith enter 
 and keep it to her use." — Throckmorton to Queen Elizabeth, 21st 
 May 1561, ibid., 121. 
 
 ^ **The Earl of Bothwell has the whole inheritance of Dunbar 
 given to him, the castle reserved." — Randolph to Cecil, 7th June 
 1566, ibid., 81. *' Bothwell has obtained the castle of Dunbar, 
 with all the lands belonging to it." — Drury to Cecil, 19th April 1567, 
 ibid., 211. 
 
 ^ For instance, Lethington being ready to go into Flanders, had 
 word that Bothwell laid wait to take him by sea, whereupon he is 
 gone into Argyle." — KiUigrew to Cecil, 24th June 1566, ibid., 94. 
 So, when, as we shall see, certain accusative placards were pubhshed in 
 Edinburgh, all masters and skippers of vessels were forbidden under 
 
THE CAREER OF BOTHWELL, 1560-66. 165 
 
 We shall all the better understand the estimate of 
 Bothwell's character by his contemporaries, and the reason 
 why evil repute was so bitterly assigned to it before the 
 great crime associated for ever with his name, by taking a 
 glance at the political and social condition of the border 
 at this period. If the traditions of the old earldom of 
 Northumberland lingered, to suggest to those who were 
 strongest on the border the establishment of something 
 like an independent Margravate, the question was settled 
 by the destruction of the Armstrongs. A change had 
 gradually come over public opinion about mosstrooping. 
 It was degenerating from national warfare into sordid in- 
 dividual rapine. The old debt of enmity to England for 
 the war of aggression was discharged by the treaty of 
 Edinburgh. The political influences that led to that 
 treaty had discouraged marauding in England, and on each 
 side of the border there were zealous efforts to punish 
 depredations on the other side as if they were crimes 
 within the depredator's own country. It required a gene- 
 ration or two, however, to pass, ere the borderers could 
 adjust their habits to these new principles. They were 
 still rievers by nature, at war with all restrictive laws. 
 What they longed for above all things that could befall to 
 make them happy was war between the two countries. 
 Then w^ould each side be let loose on the national enemy 
 to plunder the byres and the barns that had grown afflu- 
 ent through years of peaceful industry. Thus, ever on the 
 alert to welcome the happy outbreak of war, the demeanour 
 of the borderers was, like the palpitation of the funds at 
 the present day, the most delicate test of the chances of a 
 quarrel.^ 
 
 pain of death to give passage to one of the persons accused of uttering 
 them. — Anderson, i. 38. There is a story told by Buchanan of the 
 queen and Bothwell taking a yachting voyage in the Firth of Forth 
 to Alloa, accompanied by a crew of pirates, only to be accounted for 
 b/the suspicions current as to Bothwell's use of his maritime powers. 
 
 ^ Of this there is an instance in Bothwell's own career. Some fear 
 this taking of Bothwell will cause Teviotdale men to ride the faster. 
 Continual bruits are here sown among them of wars." — Randolph to 
 Cecil, 22d January 1563, Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 60. The 
 *' taking " was one of Bothwell's many adventures. He was in a vessel 
 
QUEEN MARY. 
 
 Such marauding as there was took gradually the shape 
 of individual robbery rather than warfare. It was observed 
 that, curbed as they were on the side of England, the moss- 
 troopers turned northwards and did occasional business in 
 the Lothians and in Fifeshire. It was not a horde burst- 
 ing on the district and sweeping away all its wealth of 
 cattle, but the occasional feat of some small party attracted 
 by a valuable piece of booty. 
 
 Thus it befell, that while the mosstrooper race retained 
 their old instincts, the pursuit of them was falling from its 
 old position as a policy down into that of a crime against 
 society. The descendants of those who had carried out a 
 war policy against a national enemy, or arrived at the 
 establishment of a separate power between two hostile 
 kingdoms, were becoming vulgar thieves and robbers.^ 
 How far this social change concerns the character and 
 
 driven on Holy Island, having been, as he said, on his way to France 
 to visit the queen's uncles, the duke, and the Cardinal of Lorraine. 
 A party was told ofif from the garrison of Berwick to search for him. 
 He was taken in an outhouse belonging to a Northumbrian yeoman. 
 They found the earl in bed and two of his men standing with their 
 weapons and apparel about them, and their horses saddled, and so 
 apprehended the earl and his men. — Ibid., 51. We find Sir Henry 
 Percy, who then had him in charge, writing to Cecil that **he is a man 
 of the frontier and of great power ; for Liddesdale is his, wherein are 
 many great offenders to this realm, also a good part of Teviotdale, 
 with the residents in which he is in great friendship, as the Cars, the 
 TurnbuUs, the Scotts, and the Rutherfords. " It is therefore put to 
 Cecil to answer, whether the earl's friendship might find the queen 
 any service." — Ibid., 129. 
 
 ^ Sir Richard Maitland (father of William Maitland, better known 
 as Lethington) has a political diatribe against *'The Thieves of 
 Liddesdale," written, according to Sibbald's Chronicle (iii. 104), 
 
 perhaps in summer 1561." 
 
 " Thay thiefs have neirhand herreit haill 
 Ettrick forest and Lauderdaill. 
 Now are they gane 
 In Lothiane, and spairs nane 
 That they will wail. . . . 
 
 The spuile puir men of their paks, 
 Thay leif them nocht on bed nor baks. 
 Bayth hen and cok 
 With reil and rok, the Laird's Jok 
 All with him taks. 
 Thay leif not spindle, spoon, nor spit, 
 Bed, bolster, blanket, sark, nor sheit ; 
 
THE CAREER OF BOTHWELL, 1560-66. 1 67 
 
 career of Bothwell is found in the consideration that he 
 was the most powerful man on the Scots side of the 
 border, and in the solution of the question, how he used 
 the power he so possessed ? 
 
 Bothwell had, both from his wide territories and his 
 triple wardenship, a preponderating influence on the 
 border. His castle of Hermitage was as much beyond 
 the strength of the border peel towers or bastles, as a 
 
 John of the Parke 
 Rypes kist and ark — for all in wark, 
 He is richt meet." 
 
 This John of the Park seems to have been the man who wounded 
 Bothwell. 
 
 Sir Davd Lindsay, writing perhaps some twenty years earher, gives 
 us the changing features of the mosstrooper with his peculiar touches 
 of sarcasm and individuality. In the satire of The Three Estates," 
 '* Common Theft " lets out his propensities. He is met by Oppres- 
 sion," who is described so indistinctly as to give the impression that 
 the satirist could only venture on distant hints. We may suppose 
 him to be a potentate in the Highlands, since he is to be found in 
 Balquhidder, and swears by St Fillan. He gets the better of poor 
 Common Theft, who finds him in durance seated in the stocks, 
 and on the promise of **ane couple of kye in Liddesdale," he gets 
 Common Theft to change places with him, and makes off to his 
 own fortresses. Before this calamity comes on him, Common 
 Theft monologues in this manner : — 
 
 ** Will na gude fellow to me tell 
 
 Quhair I may find 
 The Earl of Rothes* best hakney 
 That was my errand here away. 
 He is richt stark as I hear say, 
 
 And swift as wind. 
 Here is my bridle and my spurns, 
 To gar him lanss our feild and furris. 
 Might I him gett to Ewis durris 
 
 I tak na cuir.^ 
 Of that horss micht I get ane sicht, 
 I haif na dout yet or midnicht 
 That he and I sould take the flicht 
 
 Through Dysart Muir. 
 Of companary, tell me brother 
 Whilk is the richt way to The Struther ; 
 I wald me welcome to my modher, 
 
 Yif I micht speid. 
 I wald gif baith my coat and bonnet, 
 To get my Lord Lindsay's brown Jonet ; 
 War we beyond the water of Annet 
 
 We sould nocht dreid." 
 
 — Sibbald, ii. 314. **The Struther" was in Fifeshire, and so the 
 mosstrooper of Ewesdale, temptingly close to England, is obliged to 
 turn northward and transact business north of the Forth. 
 
i68 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 fortress that will stand a siege compared to the strong 
 private man's house that may hold out against a band of 
 robbers. In the most remote and inaccessible wilds of 
 the Scots border^ it looked upon England some eight 
 miles distant. Thus, either for good or evil, the Earl 
 Bothwell was supreme in this critical district. But he 
 was in bad repute, and the preponderance of opinion 
 was that the use he put his power to was evil. The 
 public opinion of his class — the great border proprietors 
 — had outgrown, as we have just seen, the spirit of the 
 riever. To countenance him or have dealings with him 
 resembled what it was in Queen Anne's reign for the mem- 
 bers of some worshipful county family to be tainted with 
 a suspicion of connivance with highwaymen.^ If such 
 dealings were discreditable among the higher order of 
 border potentates, the reproach fell with double force on 
 that one among them who was intrusted with the ruling 
 and ordering of the others. In a variety of shapes there 
 occur bitter remarks on Bothwell's character and designs.^ 
 
 ^ Doings of the kind are the object of Lord Howard's rebuke in 
 the ' Lay of the Last Minstrel : ' — 
 
 It irks, high dame, my noble lords, 
 'Gainst ladye fair to draw their swords ; 
 But yet they may not tamely see, 
 All through the western wardenry. 
 Your law-contemning kinsmen ride, 
 And burn and spoil the border-side ; 
 And ill beseems your rank and birth 
 To make your towers a flemens-firth."^ 
 
 — Canto iv. 24. 
 
 It happens that his rebuke is imagined as addressed to a lady who was 
 on peculiarly intimate terms with Bothwell. 
 
 2 On the 2 1st of March 1561, Sir John Forster writes to Cecil, — 
 " For that theLiddelsdalemen came into Hexamshire on the 19th instant 
 and there made open reif ; yet they were so hastily pursued that there 
 are sundry of their horses won, and they themselves went very streightly 
 away on their feet through the mosses on the high land, where no 
 horseman could pursue them." He finds that **they have taken en- 
 couragement by reason of Lord BothwelFs arrival," and he *' desires 
 to understand the Council's pleasure, whether he may have liberty to 
 do such displeasure to the Liddlesdale men as he is able, seeing he 
 cannot be answered forthem." — Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 34. 
 
 On the 28th of February 1563, Randolph says : ** Since the appre- 
 hension of Bothwell the thieves have no less spared Scotland than Eng- 
 land. They take it here to be done by his advice ; they know that he 
 
 * An asylum for outlaws. 
 
THE CAREER OF BOTHWELL, 1560-66. 169 
 
 It appears that in the eyes of the substantial English 
 statesmen, among the elements of disreputability in his 
 condition, one was that for all his power and his wide ter- 
 ritories, he was ever destitute of money. Among many 
 
 has continual conference with the veriest thieves in the country. But 
 that it stands with Queen Elizabeth's pleasure, it is judged that that 
 liberty which he has can tend but to small effect." — Calendar of State 
 Papers (Foreign), 168. 
 
 Randolph a^ain, on the 19th of September 1565, in the crisis of the 
 contest with Murray : Such order is in this country that no honest 
 man is sure either of his life or goods. To amend these matters it is 
 told that Earl Bothwell is arrived, whose power is to do more mischief 
 than ever he was minded to do good in his life ; a fit man to be a 
 minister to any shameful act, be it either against God or man." — 
 Ibid., 467. 
 
 On the days of" trew" or truce, as they were called, the wardens and 
 their followers on either side of the border met for an equitable adjust- 
 ment of counter-claims for injuries. The claims were rendered in ^' bills," 
 and the whole process reminds one of those questions of " proving on 
 cross bills " in bankruptcies, that have distracted lawyers. In these 
 complex and delicate adjustments, Forster, who was warden of the 
 EngUsh middle marches, writes to the Privy Council of England about 
 his arrangements for the performance of certain bills for the attempt- 
 ates of both realms : " ** Sent hisWarden-serjeant with a roll of twenty- 
 three attemptates, to be delivered by Lord Borthwick at the Hei-mi- 
 tage on 25th February ; when such as kept the house flatly denied 
 either to receive any letter or rolls, and said that they kept the house 
 for Lord Bothwell and no other, and took the officer prisoner and 
 spoiled him of his horse and all that he had, and caused him to find 
 surety to enter whenever they called upon him. It is supposed 
 that they have got some encouragement to do so by reason of Lord 
 Bothwell's arrival in Scotland." He called on the Scots warden for 
 redress, "who says that>he will desire the assistance of the Council of 
 Scotland now at Edinburgh, for otherwise he is unable to redress it, or 
 other attempts of Liddlesdale. " — Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 
 1561, p. 10. 
 
 Bedford, going to a day of " trew " w^ell armed, is rather apprehensive 
 about the peace between the two parties, " because Bothwell is with 
 such a rout of thieves and lawless people so near. I assure you he 
 is as naughty a man as liveth. . . . Whatsoever countenance of 
 justice that queen pretendeth outwardly, yet is she thought to favour 
 him much, and if she punish him not, then will I think she is not so 
 bent to do justice as I supposed." — 6th April 1565 ; ibid., 327. 
 
 These are casual estimates of his merit as a keeper of order and 
 administrator of justice on the border. A collection from the corre- 
 spondence of the day, of the passages announcing evil opinions of 
 his character and intentions, would be tiresome. A passage in a letter 
 from Bedford to Cecil at the time of the great trial of strength with 
 Murray has an odd casual aptness to the tenor of subsequent events : — 
 
I/O 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 allusions to this, one by Throckmorton may suffice, in 
 reference to the question whether he should be permitted, 
 in the early part of the year 1564, to return to Scotland, 
 or be left in England, "where, if he remain in beggary, my 
 sovereign shall be forced for pity to supply his necessity, 
 for all is sold here to the uttermost penny/' ^ 
 
 There is observable through all the comments of the day 
 on BothwelFs restless and criminal career, a strange curi- 
 osity and anxiety about Queen Mary's intention regarding 
 him : is she favourable and inclined to help him out of his 
 difficulties ? is she implacable and determined to hunt him 
 down? Even if there had never been the cause there 
 afterwards was for connecting their names together, these 
 traces of a behef that a sovereign had a strong personal 
 interest in an erring subject would be peculiar. The first 
 question that naturally occurs is, whether these symptoms 
 of interest point to the awakening of that which afterwards 
 
 * * The length of time and the easyness of his bond maketh me to 
 think that the queen there doth secretly favor him. If he get fair 
 weather on his back, he may chance to wax wanton and work them 
 some trouble before they catch him.'* 
 
 There is, in a postscript to this lettei*, the following personal inti- 
 mation to Cecil, who was well accustomed to such warnings, and 
 seems to have taken them with quiet courage : *'Bothwell had this 
 talk of you in France, that he meant not to kill any in England so 
 soon as you, and one Riveley. . . . You may think yourself happy 
 that such an unhappy man doth bear you evil will, which is for no 
 other cause but doing justice and loving your country." — 1565; Cal- 
 endar of State Papers (Foreign), 320. 
 
 ^ Randolph to Cecil, 2 1st February 1564; Calendar of State Papers 
 (Foreign), 57. There are other passages in this correspondence that 
 unfortunately do not fully interpret themselves : Such as have written 
 — and I among the rest — in favour of my Lord Bothwell — saving the 
 queen and Mary Fleming — repent their haste." A month later Sir 
 Henry Percy writes to Cecil that Bothwell is recommended by the 
 queen of Scots to Queen Elizabeth, and solicits Cecil's patronage for 
 him, being young, and not left so well to maintain his estate as the 
 same requires. " — Ibid., 83. So also an interpreter would be welcome 
 to the following passage in a letter another month later, attributed to 
 Kirkcaldy of Grange, and addressed at Perth to Randolph : In the 
 mean time I wad such as ye knaw I have always done, that the Earl 
 of Bothwell were keeped [in England] still, for our queen thinks to 
 have him at all times ready to shake out of her pushet [French, 
 pochette] against us Protestants." — Laing's edition of Knox, vi. 540. 
 
THE CAREER OF BOTHWELL, 1560-66. 171 
 
 became a guilty passion ? The answer to this is, that no- 
 thing in the tone of the passages referred to warrants the 
 conclusion that this was in the minds of the writers. The 
 tenor of their suspicions, when they are suspicious, seems 
 rather to be that she cherished Bothwell as that desperate 
 and remorseless enemy of her brother Murray who might 
 be counted on for working his ruin.^ 
 
 There is still an opening to a higher motive for any par- 
 tiality felt by Queen Mary towards this man before the 
 great scandal arose. She may have expected to find him 
 a trusty warrior in the impending contest — for that there 
 should be a great European war, with England on one side 
 
 ^ Randolph, for instance, explaining to Cecil that in the pursuit of 
 Murray and his followers she is waiting for money : * ' Thereafter she 
 will herself again to the fields and pursue them wheresoever she finds 
 them. There comes a great host out of the north with Lord Gordon, 
 who imputes the overthrow of his father to Murray — which is ap- 
 proved by the queen. Bothwell takes great things upon him and 
 promises much — a fit captain for so loose a company as now hangs 
 upon him. Whatsoever she is able to do by authority, suit, request, 
 favour, or by benefit, all is one so it may serve to the overthrow 
 of them that she is offended with." — 1565 ; Calendar of State Papers 
 (Foreign), 478. 
 
 On the question of the appointment of a lieutenant-general, " 
 Captain Cockburn writes to Cecil on 2d October 1565 : She and 
 the king have been at great strife for chosing a lieutenant. The 
 king would have his father to be lieutenant, and she would have 
 Bothwell, by reason he bears evil will against Murray, and has pro- 
 mised to have hiiji die an alien — and for that cause she makes him a 
 lieutenant.'^ — Ibid., 477. 
 
 The literary history of a passage expressive of the queen's enmity 
 to her brother reveals a new peril to mankind, in any lack of careful- 
 ness in the citation of words of disparagement attributed to Queen 
 Mary — there is no such peril on the other side. The words are: 
 
 There is no talk of peace with that queen, but that she will first 
 have a head of the duke or of the Earl of Murray." The scolding 
 administered to the English historian of the period for a careless use 
 of this passage, thundered as it has been across the Atlantic, is one 
 of the curiosities of literature. — See *Mary Queen of Scots and her 
 latest English Historian,' by James F. Meline (New York, 1872), p. 
 77-89. When we come to her exultation at the news of the murder 
 of her brother, we may judge how lightly she would herself have taken 
 the imputation of any amount of enmity to him, unless it had been 
 made at an inopportune moment — as when she walked between him 
 and her husband, holding a hand of each, after the murder of Rizzio. 
 
172 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 and France on the other, was, as we have seen, the ex- 
 pected solution of the difficulties of the time. Of course 
 she earnestly desired that Scotland should help France ; 
 and if the traditions of the old league were appealed to, it 
 might make them more welcome to the country that the 
 forces of Scotland were to be commanded by a Protestant. 
 There would be consistency in such championship, since 
 he had served her mother in the contest ending with the 
 treaty of Edinburgh. But, in the correspondence of the 
 day, there is a dubiousness about his motives and their 
 sincerity on that occasion. From the opposite side he is 
 not spoken of as in his natural place, and from his own 
 he is scarcely esteemed an assured friend. We have seen 
 that he intercepted the subsidy sent by Queen EHzabeth 
 to the Lords of the Congregation. It might do something to 
 the clearing away of doubts if we had an account rendered 
 by him of his disposal of the money. If he employed it in 
 bringing retainers into the field, or in providing Hermitage 
 Castle against a siege, then the affair was the interrupting 
 of the enemy's supplies and the appropriation of them to 
 the public service. But it is spoken of by the English 
 more in the tone of a highwayman's feat. For all his vast 
 possessions and high offices, he is generally treated by 
 these English newswriters as a needy man driven to shifts 
 and expedients ; and in the accounts of his success on this 
 occasion there are touches of sordidness that are more ap- 
 propriate to the border thief than to the great commander.^ 
 In the same spirit there were demands that he should ren- 
 der up his plunder — demands in a tone that never could 
 be used to a hostile commander intercepting the enemy's 
 supplies. The whole affair leaves a suspicion that it was 
 the disagreeable pressure from the sum he had thus ac- 
 quired rather than zeal for the ancient league and the 
 cause of Queen Mary's mother, that influenced him to 
 join that cause against the Lords of the Congregation. 
 
 To the man on whose career and character the corre- 
 spondence of the day affords us these casual lights, let us 
 now return at that critical point where all eyes were bent 
 
 ^ Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), November 1559, p. 8, 9. 
 
THE CAREER OF BOTHWELL, 1560-66. 173 
 
 on him, and on the queen along with him, as in some shape 
 to be sharers in a common destiny. It was becoming evi- 
 dent that there was something in her sentiments towards 
 him of a warmer nature than those who closely observed it 
 could rationally attribute either to a just sense of his pub- 
 lic merits or to simple gratitude for his services to herself. 
 That she should fix her love on him has always been 
 deemed something approaching the unnatural ; but when 
 the circumstances are considered, the conclusion ceases to 
 become so absolutely startling. Mary was evidently one of 
 those to whom at times — and to her the times were apt to 
 come in quick succession — a great affair of the heart is a 
 necessity of life ; the necessity now increased in intensity 
 by her utter disappointment in her last attachment, and the 
 loathing she entertained towards its object. Who, then, were • 
 near her, to be the first refuge for her fugitive affections ? 
 None but her own nobles, for she was not in a position to 
 treat with a foreign prince; and in looking round among the 
 most eminent of these, including Huntly, the brother of a 
 former suitor, Argyle, Athole, and Arran, there were none 
 who, on the ground of rank and position, had claims much 
 higher than Bothwell's, unless it might be Arran by reason 
 of his royal blood, and he was already a rejected suitor. In 
 personal qualifications Bothwell was infinitely above them 
 all. He had a genius for command, with a dash of the chiv- 
 alrous, which made Throckmorton describe him to Queen 
 Elizabeth in 1560, as ''sl glorious, rash, and hazardous 
 young man.'' ^ He had lived at the Court of France, and 
 thus had over his harder and more effective qualities the 
 polish and accomplishments which were all that Darnley 
 had besides his handsomeness to recommend him. Both- 
 well, as the incidents in his career show, was restrained 
 by no conscientious scruples. They were not, indeed, a 
 necessary of life,, or even an ordinary possession of the 
 social circle in which he figured. There, unless a man 
 were notoriously addicted to vices now unnamed — Both- 
 
 ^ Hardwicke's State Papers, i. 149. Perhaps we should temper 
 the word glorious with the prefix **vain," giving it the sense of the 
 Latin as displayed by Terence in his ** miles gloriosus." 
 
174 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 well was but faintly accused of them by bitter enemies — 
 he might keep his fame clear. For the matter of ordinary 
 profligacy, it lay between himself and his physical consti- 
 tution ; and a man like Bothwell had, whether from judi- 
 cious control or the strength of his northern constitution, 
 the satisfaction of keeping his head clear and his arm steady 
 long after many of his companions in like courses had sunk 
 into premature senility. He was at a period of life when 
 the manly attractions do not begin to decline, for he had 
 just passed — if he had passed — his thirtieth year. Tradi- 
 tion says that he was ill-favoured ; but I do not remember 
 any contemporary authority for the assertion, except the 
 cursory sketch of him by Brantome, who may have met 
 him, but does not speak as if he had.^ The question can- 
 not now be decided by the eye, for there does not exist a 
 picture which has even the reputation of being his portrait. 
 
 With regard to his rank, it aimed at something higher 
 than his means. His comparative poverty, his inability to 
 grace by a bountiful outlay the state he aimed at, comes in 
 various shapes across his career, and became memorable 
 by drawing men's eyes to the vigorous efforts made at 
 Court to mend his fortunes. But poor as he was, his recent 
 ancestors had been the rivals, and in some measure the suc- 
 cessors, of the Douglases, who themselves had been the for- 
 midable rivals of the crown. He was thus, to those who 
 turned friendly eyes on him, seen in the interesting position 
 of the head of a decayed house striving to restore its an- 
 cient lustre. In that age of revolutions and forfeitures, 
 when property and power rapidly changed hands, such a 
 man, to make himself the most powerful subject in the, 
 realm, required only royal favour ; and this, as we shall 
 presently see, was not denied him. 
 
 It is incidentally curious that BothweU's family had ac- 
 quired a reputation for affairs with royal ladies, and is in 
 some measure significant, as helping to mitigate that colour 
 of the marvellous in which his audacious projects and their 
 
 1 Ce Bothuel etoit le plus laid homme et d'aussi mauvaise grace 
 q'il se peut voir." — Des Dames Illustres, Disc. iii. Buchanan speaks 
 of him as like an ape ; but this was when writing at him, and is 
 no more to be taken as accurate than any other scolding objurgation. 
 
THE CAREER OF BOTHWELL, 1560-66. 175 
 
 success are generally painted. In the Castle of Dunbar, 
 held by his father's great-grandfather Hepburn of Hales, 
 the widow of James I., the renowned and beautiful Jane 
 Beaufort, spent her latter days and died. She had lived 
 in a questionable obscurity for some time ; and how or 
 why she was under the same roof with Hepburn, whether 
 by her own consent or by force, was matter of unsatisfied 
 conjecture at the time. A son of this Hepburn was re- 
 puted among the many lovers of Mary of Gueldres, the 
 widow of James II. Bothwell's father, according to the 
 chronicles, was the rival of Darnley's father, Lennox, as a 
 suitor of Mary of Guise. The expense which the disap- 
 pointed aspirant had incurred in sunning himself at Court 
 in his wooing, contributed, as it was said, greatly to the 
 ruin of his house. It has to be added to all this, that 
 Bothwell had proved himself the devoted champion of the 
 queen, protecting her alike from the calculating ambition 
 of her brother and the base insults of her wretched hus- 
 band. The turning-point seems to have been the murder 
 of Rizzio, when Darnley showed how much treachery and 
 cruelty could be the companions of his folly and feeble- 
 ness ; and her champion, by his dexterous escape and 
 rapid muster of followers, placed her at once in safety and 
 power. In fact, but for the crimes which paved the way 
 to the conclusion, the union of Bothwell and Mary would 
 have been the natural winding-up of a legitimate romance. 
 Remove the unpleasant conditions that both were married, 
 and that there was a husband and a wife to be got rid of ere 
 the two could be united — substitute honour and virtue for 
 treachery and crime — and here are the complete elements 
 out of which the providence which presides over romance 
 develops the usual happy conclusion. 
 
 Of the influence now held by him at Court, contem- 
 porary estimates, however casual or imperfect, are far more 
 valuable than those afterwards made, however sagely, with 
 a view to account for intervening events. Of such contem- 
 porary estimates, something may be traced in the notices 
 of Bothweirs career already cited. In these is an allusion 
 to a suspected project for putting in his hands the whole 
 power of the crown over the military force, by endowing him 
 
176 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 with the office of " Lieutenant-General of the kingdom. 
 It will be remembered by the students of English history 
 that suspicions of Queen Elizabeth's intention to confer 
 an office of the same character and title on Leicester made 
 her advisers very uneasy. On the 28th of September 1565, 
 Bedford, who was gathering news on the border, wrote to 
 Cecil about Bothwell : He is now one of that queen's 
 Council, and besides Athole and Ruthven the chiefest man, 
 and looks daily to be advanced higher; and on 2d Octo- 
 ber, speaking of deficiencies in the garrison of Berwick, 
 and the prospects of war : " The saying is in Scotland that 
 the queen there has made Bothwell Lieutenant-General of 
 her army, now to be set forward.'' ^ Again, after the lapse 
 of several months, on the 27th of July 1567 : Bothwell 
 carries all the merit and countenance in Court. He is the 
 most hated man among the noblemen, and therefore may 
 fall out somewhat to his cumber one day, if the queen 
 takes not up the matter the sooner and a few days 
 later, — " It is said that the earl's insolence is such as that 
 David was never more abhorred than he is now." Again, 
 on the 1 2th of August : " I have heard that there is a de- 
 vice working for the Earl of Bothwell, the particularities of 
 which I might have heard, but because such dealings like 
 me not, I desire to hear no farther thereof Bothwell has 
 grown of late so hated that he cannot long continue. He 
 beareth all the sway ; and though Murray be there, and has 
 good words, yet can he do nothing." ^ 
 
 A memorable occurrence is connected with the execu- 
 tion of his duties as warden of the marches. There came 
 one of those occasions of more than average harrying and 
 quarrelling which arose at intervals, and it was determined 
 to hold a solemn justice aire at Jedburgh, which the queen 
 herself was to countenance by her presence. Bothwell 
 went to his own Castle of Hermitage, in the centre of the 
 disturbed district, to collect offenders for trial at the great 
 court. His function was more like that of an invading 
 general than a head-constable. He had a good deal of 
 
 ^ Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 473, 477. 
 2 Raumer, 86-88. 
 
THE CAREER OF BOTHWELL, 1560-66. 177 
 
 hard fighting, in the course of which he was dangerously 
 wounded by ElHot of The Park.^ There are disputes about 
 the manner of the event, but this is of less consequence 
 than that it occurred on the 7 th October. Next day 
 the justice aire was opened. When the proceedings had 
 gone on for a week, Mary took horse one day and rode to 
 the Hermitage, where Bothwell lay awaiting recovery from 
 his wound ; and according to Lord Scrope, who sent the 
 news to Cecil, she remained two hours, " to BothwelFs 
 great pleasure and content,'' and then galloped back to 
 Jedburgh. She had with her there, as official documents 
 show, Murray, Huntly, Athole, Rothes, and Caithness, with 
 three bishops and the judges and officers of court ; but to 
 what extent she was attended on her ride is not very clear. 
 It is certain that she could not have had a force sufficient 
 to make the adventure safe in a country which was not 
 merely lawless in the usual sense of the term, but where 
 the sovereign of Scotland was looked on as the great pub- 
 lic enemy. The double journey extended to at least forty 
 miles over a country which would be felt as singularly 
 wild, difficult, and dangerous to a rider of the present day.^ 
 About the strength and courage necessary to such a feat 
 there can be no question. About the motives which in- 
 duced the queen to perform it there have been disputes. 
 The affair looked as if she had been under that irresistible 
 influence over which selfish reason has no control — to 
 know by the sight of the eyes and the hearing of the ears 
 the chances for life or death of some beloved object hover- 
 
 ^ The shape given to this affair by rumour when it reached Lord 
 Scrope, the Warden of the West Marches at CarHsle, was '*that the 
 Earl of Bothwell, being in Liddesdale, apprehended the Laird of 
 Mongerton and Whitehaugh, with other Armstrongs, and put them 
 in the Hermitage. And yesterday, going about to take like persons 
 of the Elliots, he encountered John Elliot of the Park, and shot him 
 with a dag, upon which he assailed the Earl and killed him. " — Cal- 
 endar of State Papers (Foreign), 137. 
 
 ^ The Author knows, from having walked over the ground, that 
 Hermitage Castle is a stiff twenty miles' journey from Jedburgh. It 
 is reported, on the authority of tradition, that her horse floundered in 
 a marsh, thence called the Queen's Myre ; but if she passed this spot, 
 she must have diverged from the direct track. 
 
 VOL. IV. M 
 
178 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 ing between the two. On the other hand, it has been 
 supposed that she thought it right to undertake this jour- 
 ney in the way of business, that she might confer with the 
 wounded warden of the marches on details connected with 
 his performance of his official duties. Whatever was her 
 motive, she paid the penalty of her exploit in a strong 
 fever, which ran its course, leaving the issues of life and 
 death uncertain until the tenth day, when she began to 
 revive physically, while those around her still noted symp- 
 toms of mental suffering, for which each accounted accord- 
 ing to his prepossessions and knowledge. 
 
 When able to move, she went by short journeys to 
 Craigmillar, close to Edinburgh. There Le Croc saw her 
 in the beginning of December, and said : " She is in the 
 hands of the physicians, and I do assure you is not at all 
 well ; and I do believe the principal part of her disease to 
 consist of a deep grief and sorrow — nor does it seem pos- 
 sible to make her forget the same. Still she repeats these 
 words, ^ I could wish to be dead.' We know very well 
 that the injury she received is exceeding great, and her 
 majesty will never forget it. The king her husband came 
 to visit her at Jedburgh the day after Captain Hay went 
 away. He remained there but one single night, and yet in 
 that short time I had a great deal of conversation with him. 
 He returned to see the queen about five or six days ago ; 
 and the day before yesterday he sent word to desire me to 
 speak with him half a league from this, which I complied 
 with, and found that things go still worse and worse. I 
 think he intends to go away to-morrow ; but in any event, 
 I am much assured, as I have always been, that he won't 
 be present at the baptism." ^ 
 
 A document of later date throws very instructive light 
 on the condition of the Court at this time. It is called 
 ^*The Protestation of the Earls of Huntly and Argyle 
 touching the Murder of the King of Scots." ^ It opens 
 with an enumeration of the group surrounding the queen 
 
 ^ Keith (8vo ed.), xcvi. 
 
 ^ This document has been frequently printed. It is in Keith, Book 
 II. App. xcvi. 
 
PREPARATIONS FOR AN EVENT, 1566. 1 79 
 
 at Craigmillar, including the protesters themselves, Both- 
 well, Murray, and Lethington. The two latter, it states, 
 came to Argyle's bedroom before he had risen. Lething- 
 ton spoke of the hardship of Ruthven, Morton, and the 
 others continuing in banishment for the affair of Rizzio, 
 seeing it was done to stop the Parliament and prevent the 
 forfeiture of Murray and his friends, and said they thought 
 him bound in all fairness to use his influence for their res- 
 toration. Lethington then proposed, as the best means of 
 gaining the queen's consent to the restoration, to find means 
 of divorcing her from Darnley. Huntly was then sent 
 for, and the matter propounded to him, with the special 
 inducement that the opportunity might be taken to do 
 something in his own favour by the restoration of forfeited 
 lands. He said he would not stand in the way of the pro- 
 ject, and the four then went to lay it before the queen. 
 Lethington, still acting as spokesman, opened up on the 
 " great number of grievous and intolerable offences which 
 her ungrateful husband had perpetrated against her, and 
 continuing every day from evil to worse." The divorce 
 was then proposed as her best mode of rehef. After they 
 had phed her with persuasions, the reception given by her 
 to the proposal is thus stated by the protesters : " Her 
 grace answerit, that under twa conditions she might under- 
 stand the same — the ane, that the divorcement were made 
 lawfully ; the other, that it war not prejudice to her son — 
 otherwise her hyness would rather endure all torments, 
 and abyde the perils that might chance her in her grace's 
 lifetime. The Earl of Bothwell answered, that he doubted 
 not but the divorcement might be made bot prejudice in 
 anywise of my lord prince, alleging the example of him- 
 self, that he ceased not to succeed to his father's heritage 
 without any difliculty, albeit there was divorce betwixt him 
 and his mother.'' 
 
 That she should fear the effect of a divorce on the legiti- 
 macy of her child is at first calculated to start strange sus- 
 picions as to the facts which such a process, if founded on 
 the respective conduct of the husband and wife, would dis- 
 close ; but Buchanan, in his celebrated Detection, lets us 
 see that the ground of divorce pointed at on the occasion 
 
i8o 
 
 QUEEN Mx\RY. 
 
 was consanguinity. There next follows a passage of a 
 strangely suggestive kind : Then Lethington, taking the 
 speech, said, ' Madam, fancy^ ye not we are here of the 
 principal of your grace's nobility and Council that sail find 
 the moyen that your majesty sail be quit of him without 
 prejudice of your son ; and albeit that my Lord of Murray 
 here present be little less scrupulous for ane Protestant nor 
 your grace is for ane Papist, I am assurit he will look throw 
 his fingers thereto, and sail behold our doings, saying no- 
 thing to the same/ The queen's majesty answered, * I 
 will that ye do nothing whereto any spot may be laid to 
 my honour or conscience, and therefore I pray you rather 
 let the matter be in the estate as it is, abiding till God of 
 His goodness put remeid thereto ; that ye, believing to do 
 me service, may possibly turn to my hurt and displeasure/ 
 ' Madam,' said Lethington, *let us guide the matter amongst 
 us, and your grace sail see nothing but good, and approved 
 by Parliament/ There is reason to believe that this con- 
 versation is pretty accurately reported. In the first place, 
 Huntly and Argyle were men of such repute for probity as the 
 times permitted ; and Murray, not criticising the accuracy 
 of the statement, merely denied that he had entered into 
 any band or engagement for the murder, and in fact justi- 
 fied the expressive gesture described by Lethington, of 
 holding his hand before his face, as if to hide what was in 
 progress from his eyes, yet seeing it all the while. Let us 
 look at the object of the protestation. Its object was to 
 vindicate the queen from the charge that she had been " of 
 the foreknowledge, counselled, devised, and commanded 
 the murder. The protesters count that Lethington, in 
 the words quoted, did announce the murder; and the 
 manner in which they make this bear on the queen's vin- 
 dication is that, being assured that the deed would be done 
 by others, there was no occasion why she should dip her own 
 hands in blood — no occasion for her to " counsel, devise, 
 persuade, and command " the deed. True, what was to- 
 
 ^ This word ** fancy" is supposed to be a mistake for **soucy" — 
 se soucier; but whatever may have been the intended word, it does not 
 much affect the tenor. 
 
PREPARATIONS FOR AN EVENT, 1566. 181 
 
 be done was to be " approved by Parliament," and Parlia- 
 ment did not approve of it in the way in which it came to 
 be done. But whether there was a sincere intention to 
 walk in such a manner as to secure the sanction of the 
 Estates, the one thing clear is that a promise was made to 
 rid the queen of her unendurable husband, and that with- 
 out a divorce. Huntly and Argyle, it may be noticed, did 
 not pen their protest for an age when it would be consid- 
 ered either very improbable or very horrible, that a woman 
 situated as Mary was would be glad of the assurance that 
 she would be relieved of her husband without requiring to 
 to do anything that would compromise her own safety. 
 
 As all seemed to expect, Darnley was absent from the 
 baptism of the young prince on the 17th of December; 
 and his conduct was the more emphatic, as he was then 
 living in Stirling Castle, where the ceremony was per- 
 formed. Bothwell did the honours of the occasion, as 
 one to whom such a function came naturally ; and it was 
 remarked as rather anomalous that a Protestant should 
 have been selected to adjust and direct a ceremonial con- 
 ducted under the forms of the Romish Church.^ The 
 despised husband went about pouring out his grievances to 
 all who would listen to them, and became so troublesome 
 that the French ambassador had to threaten that if 
 Darnley entered his house by one door he would himself 
 leave it by the other. Meanwhile, among the events now 
 hurrying upon each other, those who pressed for the par- 
 don of Rizzio's murderers were successful as to all but 
 George Douglas and Ker of Faudonside, who had com- 
 mitted, or at all events threatened, violence in the royal 
 presence. 
 
 Darnley was now seized with a sudden and acute ill- 
 ness, which broke out cutaneously. Poison was at first 
 naturally suspected. The disease was speedily pronounced 
 to be smallpox; but it has been conjectured that it may 
 
 ^ Bothwell is appointed to receive the ambassadors, and all things 
 for the christening is at his appointment, and the same scarcely liked 
 with the rest of the nobility. "—-Forster to Cecil, I ith Dec. ; Calendar 
 of State Papers (Foreign). 
 
l82 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 have been one of those forms of contamination which had 
 then begun to make their silent and mysterious visitation 
 in this country, while the immediate cause by which they 
 were communicated was yet unkno\\Ti. From what 
 occurred afterwards, it became a current belief that he 
 had been poisoned. He was removed to Glasgow, and 
 tended under the direction of his father, Lennox. 
 
 His enemies waited to see if nature would relieve them 
 of the work before them ; but as he began to recover, they 
 began to be active. Their hands were strengthened by 
 the assistance of Morton, Ruthven, and the other fugitives 
 who had been pardoned, and whose restoration was no 
 doubt facilitated by the work in prospect for them. That 
 all things might be done duly and in order, a bond for 
 the slaughter of the king was prepared. The drafting of 
 this important document was committed to James Balfour, 
 the greatest lawyer of his day. No copy of it has been 
 preserved, and what we chiefly know about it is from 
 dubious sources.^ In the confession afterwards uttered by 
 Morton on his downfall, he stated that Bothwell met him 
 at Whittinghame, and in a long communing tried to per- 
 suade him to join in a plot for the murder of the king, 
 telling him it was the queen's desire that he should be 
 removed, and she would have it to be done.'' Morton 
 says, having just got out of one troublesome affair, he was 
 averse to immediately engaging in another ; and put it off 
 at the time by desiring, before he committed himself, to be 
 assured of the queen's wish under the evidence of her own 
 hand. He says that afterwards, when he was in St An- 
 drews visiting the Earl of Angus, Archibald Douglas came 
 to him from Bothwell to press the matter; but he had now 
 
 ^ The Laird of Ormiston, in his confession, professed to cite a part 
 of it from memory, to this effect : That for saemickle it was thought 
 expedient and maist profitable for the commonwealth, by the haill 
 nobiUty and lords under subscry vit, that sic ane young fool and proud 
 tyrant suld not reign or bear rule over them ; and that for divers 
 causes, therefore, they all had concluded that he suld be put off by 
 ane way or another — and whosoever suld take the deed in hand, or 
 do it, they suld defend and fortify it as themselves." — Pitcaim, i. 
 512*. 
 
PREPARATIONS FOR AN EVENT, 1566. 1 83 
 
 the good excuse that he had been promised a writing under 
 the queen's hand, and had not received it. When asked 
 why he did not reveal the plot, he said significantly, " I 
 durst not reveal it for fear of my life; for at that time to 
 whom should I have revealed it ? To the queen ? She 
 was the doer thereof I was minded, indeed, to the king's 
 father [viz., Darnley himself], but that I durst not for my 
 life ; for I knew him to be such a bairn, that there was 
 nothing told him but he would reveal it to her again." ^ 
 
 Completely in harmony with the part acted by these 
 performers in the tragedy, a change came over the con- 
 duct of the queen. She employed her ductile arts on her 
 diseased, suspicious, terrified husband. She set herself to 
 the task of quieting his fears and luring him back to her 
 arms. She announced that she would visit him on his 
 sick-bed; and she set forth on her journey on the 226. of 
 January 1567. A confidential friend of her husband's 
 family was sent to meet her. He is usually called 
 " Thomas Craufurd, a gentleman of Lennox's household.'' 
 Although Lennox held something of a court, this title is apt 
 to carry an imperfect impression of Craufurd's social posi- 
 tion. He was a near kinsman of Lennox, and consequently 
 of the queen's husband. We shall afterwards hear of him in 
 the civil war of 1569 as Captain Craufurd of Jordanhill. He 
 was, in the mean time, intrusted by the father of the sick 
 man to attend this critical meeting between the husband 
 and wife, and to observe and tell to his lord all that passed. 
 It was a duty of some moment ; for Lennox evidently be- 
 lieved that the visit was connected with some deadly pur- 
 pose, and he was striving to fathom it. Craufurd was in- 
 structed to report everything he saw and all he heard 
 passing between the two. The question how they con- 
 ducted themselves and what they said to each other be- 
 
 ^ Confession, in Bannatyne's Memorials; Bannatyne edit., 317. 
 This meeting at Whittinghame was noted at the time by the political 
 gossips. **The Lord Morton lies at the Laird of Whittingham's, 
 where the Lord Bothwell and Lethington came of late. Here they 
 look for Lethington or Melville very shortly to repair (wherefore I refer 
 it to your honour's conjecture) [cancelled]." — Drury to Cecil, 23d 
 January 1567; Calendar of State Papers (Foreign). 
 
QUEEN MARY. 
 
 came afterwards momentous, and holds so important a 
 place in the history of a year or two later, that we may 
 pass it over for the present, merely noting that Mary pre- 
 vailed on her husband to agree that, after he had made 
 some advance towards recovery, he would live at Craig- 
 millar Castle for a time, and take the bath there. 
 
 After the queen departed, there came a word or two 
 between her husband and Craufurd, remarkable in their 
 way. The sick man asked Craufurd what he thought of 
 the project for removing him. Craufurd did not like it. 
 Taking her husband to Craigmillar instead of his own 
 place of residence was odd — it seemed as if she were 
 going to take him more like a prisoner than a hus- 
 band. Then came this from the sick man : He answered 
 that he thought little less himself, and feared himself 
 meikle — save the confidence he had in her promise only ; 
 notwithstanding, he would go with her, and put himself in 
 her hands, though she should cut his throat, and besought 
 God to be judge unto them baith." ^ 
 
 A few days afterwards she had her husband removed to 
 Edinburgh, so that he arrived there on the last day of 
 January. The purpose of conveying him to Craigmillar 
 was changed. Yet he was told that he would not be 
 taken to Holyrood, but to a place close to the city wall 
 called the Kirk-of-Field. He knew that there stood the 
 great hotel of the Hamilton family, and expected to be 
 taken to it ; but the house destined for him was a smaller 
 building, the residence of the provost of the collegiate 
 church of St Mary-in-the-Fields, which conveniently be- 
 longed to Robert Balfour, the brother of the drafter of the 
 bond. This was one of the ecclesiastical establishments 
 wrecked by the English invaders. From this or some 
 other cause the provost's house seems to have been 
 singularly destitute of defences for a building of that age ; 
 and Nelson, Darnley's page, tells that a small door, which 
 appears to have given access to the whole building from 
 the courtyard, was taken off by the queen's orders, to 
 cover the vat or tub in which the convalescent took his 
 
 ^ Record Office, Scots Correspondence, vol. xiii. No. 14. 
 
THE KIRK-OF-FIELD, 1567. 185 
 
 bath, as if nothing more appropriate could be found for 
 such a purpose. Several incidental details speak clearly 
 of the hasty occupation of a* building which, however 
 suitable for other purposes, was not adapted to tranquillity 
 and security. An effort seems to have been made to 
 give comfort and even a touch of regal magnificence to 
 the apartments by hangings and furniture, conveniently 
 afforded from the affluent supplies obtained by the plunder 
 of Strathbogie in the conflict with Huntly.^ For all that 
 could be thus superficially done for it, the establishment 
 seems to have been of the most sordid and slovenly char- 
 acter. The key of a door leading out through the city 
 wall could not be found, and the door had to be nailed 
 up from within. Of the other keys it was remarked that 
 they were left in the possession of Balfour's people ; and 
 the conspirators appear, for more security, to have forged 
 
 1 * * The hall was hung with five pieces of tapestry, part of the 
 plunder of Strathbogie. It had a high chair or chair of state covered 
 with leather, and a dais or cloth of state of black velvet fringed with 
 black silk. The walls of the king's chamber on the upper floor were 
 hung with six pieces of tapestry which, like the hangings of the hall, 
 had been spoiled from the Gordons after Corrichie. The floor had a 
 little Turkey carpet. There were two or three cushions of red velvet, 
 a high chair covered with purple velvet, and a little table with a 
 broad cloth or cover of green velvet, brought from Strathbogie. The 
 bed, which had belonged to the queen's mother, was given to the 
 king in August 1566. It was hung with violet-brown velvet, pas- 
 mented with cloth of gold and silver, and embroidered with ciphers 
 and flowers in needlework of gold and silk. It had three coverlets, 
 one being of blue taffeta quilted. . . . The wardrobe, which seems 
 to have been on the upper floor, was hung with six pieces of tapestry, 
 figuring a rabbit-hunt. Here there was a cabinet of yellow shot 
 tafleta, fringed with red and yellow silk. In a chamber on the ground 
 floor, directly under the king's chamber, there was a little bed of 
 yellow and green damask, with a furred coverlet, in which the queen 
 slept on the nights of Wednesday and Friday, and intended to sleep 
 on the very night in which the king was murdered." — Queen Mary's 
 Inventories, Pref. xcviii.-c. 
 
 From the same accurate pen we have the following estimate of 
 the accommodation of the house: **The provost's place contained 
 a hall, two chambers or bedrooms, a cabinet, a wardrobe, and a 
 cellar, besides a kitchen, apparently under another roof. Of these 
 rooms only three or four seem to have been furnished from Holy- 
 rood." — Ibid. 
 
QUEEN MARY. 
 
 duplicates of them, in case they should have been required 
 to give them up.^ 
 
 Sunday, the 9th of February, was at last j&xed for the 
 great project, probably because, being the marriage-day 
 
 ^ Buchanan, in his Detection, gives a hideously-eloquent description 
 of the sordidness of the place ; and as he appealed to a public 
 who knew it as well as he did, he cannot well have gone beyond 
 bounds : — 
 
 **Whidder then is he led? Into the maist desolate part of the 
 towne, sumt\Tne inhabitit while the Papische preistis kingdome lestit, 
 bot for certane yeiris past without ony dwaller, in sic a hous as of it- 
 self wald haif fallin downe, yi£ it had not bene botched up for the 
 tyme to serve the tume of this nichtis sacrifice. Why was this place 
 chiefly chosin ? Thay pretend the helsumnes of air. O gude God I 
 going about to murther hir husband, seikis scho for ane helsum air ? 
 To what use ? Not to preser%-e his hie, bot to resen^e his body to 
 torment. Heirto tend hir wyfeHe diligent attendance, and hir last 
 cair of hir husbandis lyfe. Schoe feiris leist he suld, be preventing 
 deith, be deh-^-erit from pane, schoe wald fane have him feill himself 
 die. Bot let us se what maner of helsumnes of air it is. Is it amang 
 deid mennis graves to seik the preser\-ing of lyfe ? For hard by thair 
 were the ni}Ties of twa kirkis : on the eist syde, ane monasterie* of 
 Dominike freiris ; on the west, ane kirk of our Lady, whilk, for the 
 desolatenes of the place, is callit the Kirk in the Feild ; on the south 
 syde, the to^vne wall, and in the same, for commodious passage 
 every way, is ane posteme dure ; on the north syde ar ane few 
 beggeris cotages, then reddy to fall, whilk sumtime serv-it for stewis 
 for certane preistis and monkis, the name of whilk place dois planely 
 disclois the forme and nature thairof, for it is commounly callit the 
 Theif Raw. Thair is never ane uther hous neir bot the Hammil- 
 tounis hous, whilk is about ane stanis cast distant, and that also 
 stude voyde. Thether remuisit the Archebischop of Sanctandrois, 
 wha alway befoir was wont to be ludgeit in the maist populous partis 
 of the towne. He also watchit all that nicht the king was slane. 
 
 Now I beseik yow, sen ye cannot with your eyis, yit at the leist 
 with your myndes behald, ane hous whilum of auld preistis, amang 
 graves, betwene the ru\'ne5 of twa tempillis, itself also ru}Tiou5, neir 
 to the theifis hant, and itself ane resetter of theifis, not far from the fort 
 and garrisoun of his enemeis, that stude richt over aganis the dure, 
 be whilk yif ony man suld fle out, he culd not eschaip thair traterous 
 ambuschment. The verray schape of this place, when ye considder 
 in your m>'nd, when ye heir of the ruynes of kirkis, graves of deid 
 men, lurking comeris of theifis, bordelhousis of harlotis, — dois not, I 
 say, not the hous only, bot also everie part neir about it, seme to 
 proclame mischeif and trecherie ? Semis heir ane king to have gane 
 into a hous for ludgeing, or to be thrust into ane den of theifis ? Was 
 
THE KIRK-OF-FIELD, 1567. 
 
 187 
 
 of the queen's favoured French domestic Bastiat to one 
 of her women, the ceremonials and festivities of the oc- 
 casion afforded opportunities for doing what w^as to be 
 done. From the testimony and confessions afterwards 
 taken, imperfect as they are, a clear enough history can be 
 gleaned of the greater part of the doings of the active 
 hands, even if we should exclude from consideration 
 those portions in which they exculpate themselves, along 
 with those which, as directly inculpating the queen, are 
 maintained by her champions to be incredible. 
 
 To follow accurately the course of events, it is necessary 
 to keep in view one or two specialties which will enable 
 one to single out from existing Edinburgh the geography 
 of the ground gone over. The town formed itself then on 
 the two great thoroughfares running east and west, the 
 High Street and the Cowgate. The city wall cut through 
 on the line where St Mary's Wynd and Leith Wynd now 
 meet at the foot of the High Street, and there stood the 
 Canongate Port, the space between it and Holyrood being 
 occupied by the suburb of Canongate. Where the wall 
 passed the Cowgate, at the foot of the present St Mary's 
 Wynd, was the Cowgate Port. The wall there kept the 
 same southerly direction to a bastion or turret near the 
 present Infirmary, where it turned at right angles, running 
 west. The next break was the Potterrov/ Port, before 
 reaching which it passed close on the grounds of the 
 Kirk-of-Field, the nearest existing landmark to which is 
 the present College. 
 
 The persons known beyond the arch-conspirator as 
 having had an actual hand in carrying out the plot were, 
 Nicholas^ Hubert, called French Paris, a creature of 
 Bothweli's, whom he had brought from France and placed 
 in the service of the queen ; George Dalgleish and Wil- 
 liam Powrie, in Bothweli's service and confidence ; Hep- 
 burn of Bolton, his relation ; Patrick Wilson, his tailor 
 or master of the robes ; Ormiston, the laird of that ilk, 
 
 not that desolate waistnes, that unhantit place, abill of itself to put 
 simpill men in feir, to mak wyser men suspicious, and to give nouchtie 
 men schrewit occasionis ? " — P. 66-69. 
 
i88 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 and his uncle, called Hob Ormiston ; and Hay, the heir of 
 Talk, a district in the wildest part of the border mountains. 
 
 The first event noticed on Sunday was that Murray, 
 after breakfast, bade a formal farewell to the queen as he 
 was departing to join his wife; and Hubert, who took 
 note of this, says he saw that that good man desired to be 
 away while mischief was going on. The queen attended 
 the marriage of her favourites, partook of the marriage- 
 dinner, and then supped with the Countess of Argyle, ap- 
 parently about four o'clock. Hubert, who stood behind 
 a chair, says she was solicitous about a coverture of marten- 
 skins which she had directed him, through Margaret Craw- 
 ford, to remove the day before from the Kirk-of-Field. 
 She asked him now if it had been removed, and he satis- 
 fied her that it had. Bothwell was among the guests ; and 
 when they rose, he went to his mother's apartments, 
 attended by Hubert. They then went and found Ormiston 
 and his uncle Hob, with whom they joined Hay and 
 Hepburn on the street of the Canongate. Bothwell then 
 took Hubert to the Kirk-of-Field, and gave him such 
 directions that, when the others came to transact business 
 there, he should be on duty in the king's chamber. 
 
 The rest returned to the abbey or palace, where it has 
 to be observed that Bothwell had permanent apartments. 
 In these a quantity of powder was stored in bags or 
 pocks." Two large receptacles were provided for the 
 removal of these, one of them apparently a common trunk, 
 the other a mail or travelling-trunk. These were carried 
 by two horses, and it took two journeys to remove the 
 whole. They were taken round by the outside of the 
 wall. Near the Kirk-of-Field there was an old gate in the 
 wall, called the Blackfriars Gate, not one of the regular 
 occupied ports. Ormiston managed to get on the other 
 side of the wall by the help of some ruins, and opened 
 the gate. They had brought a cask with them to stow 
 the powder in, but it was too large to get admission to 
 the room where the train was to be laid. This room was 
 the queen's bedroom, just under the king's, and her bed 
 had to be shifted to make room for the train. It was 
 brought in by the men in the original sackfuls, and this 
 
MURDER OF DARNLEY, 1567. 
 
 189 
 
 appears to have been a long, silent process. Bothwell at 
 one time feared that it might be heard in the room above, 
 and with a fierce whisper enjoined more quietness. They 
 were at a loss for light ; and, among other incidents, we 
 are told that they bought six halfpenny candles from 
 Geordie Burns's wife in the Cowgate. 
 
 PowTie and Wilson took back the empty boxes, and on 
 their way saw "the queen's grace, with torches before 
 her,'' going along the Blackfriars' Wynd to join the king. 
 This seems to have been about ten o'clock. It was un- 
 derstood that, according to recently-established practice, 
 she was to sleep that night in the chamber under the 
 king's. She went first, however, up to the king's chamber, 
 passing the door of her own, like an affectionate wife, 
 whose first care was her sick husband. There was gene- 
 ral conversation in the room, in the midst of which she 
 suddenly recollected that she had promised to attend the 
 masked ball to be held, in the palace in honour of Bastiaf s 
 marriage, and must be off immediately. She bade her 
 husband a very affectionate farewell for the night, and 
 departed. Had she gone into her own chamber, she 
 would have seen the bed removed and the sacks of pow- 
 der lying there. But she did not go to it ; and it is for 
 every one to conjecture whether it was or was not known 
 beforehand that she would keep out of that apartment. 
 To prevent stray intrusions, Hubert kept the key. 
 
 The queen and her attendants, including Bothwell, 
 having gone, Hepburn of Bolton and Hay of Talla only 
 of the conspirators remained. How they occupied them- 
 selves is now the chief mystery in the whole affair ; and 
 from subsequent circumstantial evidence it has been con- 
 jectured that the intended victim, with his page, disco- 
 vered them, attempted to escape, and got even over a 
 wall into a garden, when they were seized and strangled. 
 They were found without any marks from the explosion, 
 but with marks of other violence. 
 
 Bothwell went to his apartments in the palace and 
 changed his black velvet hose and doublet of satin, both 
 trussed with silver, for a coarser doublet and dark muffled 
 cloak, such as the Schwartz-ritters wore, and passed forth, 
 
I go 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 accompanied by his immediate followers, Dalgleish, Hu- 
 bert, Powrie, and Wilson. They were challenged by the 
 sentinels on duty at the palace, but they said they were 
 friends — friends of the Earl of Bothwell ; and this powerful 
 name silenced everything. They came to the Canongate 
 Port, and finding it closed — for it was now twelve o'clock 
 — called out to Galloway, the keeper, to open for friends 
 of my Lord Bothwell ; and here, again, there was imme- 
 diate obedience. They took this way apparently that 
 they might pick up Ormiston ; but he managed not to be 
 found, though he told in his confession that he was in bed 
 asleep, and the rest went down by the Blackfriars. There 
 Bothwell left his followers behind the wall, and joined 
 Hepburn and Hay, who had already lighted the train. 
 It seems to have been carefully laid, and burned so long 
 that Bothwell, overcome by impatience, was on the point 
 of going to look at it when the great crash came. 
 
 He was not a man to do things by halves; and he 
 seems to have provided so large a train that the effect ex- 
 ceeded his expectation. Little was known then of the 
 expansive force of gunpowder, and the extent of its de- 
 structiveness when confined within walls ; and the build- 
 ing was so completely shattered, as to lead to the supposi- 
 tion that it had been systematically mined. The explosion 
 shook the earth, and all Edinburgh was roused from sleep. 
 The murderers had to escape rapidly, and it is probable 
 that they may thus have been obliged to abandon a small 
 detail necessary for the completion of their work in a 
 satisfactory manner. Certainly they either intended to 
 kill their victim by the explosion, or make it appear that 
 he had been so killed. If he was killed in trying to escape, 
 then of course it would have been desirable that the body 
 should be taken back into the house, that it might, wher- 
 ever it should be found, bear marks of the explosion, from 
 which it was observed to be exempt. If he tried to 
 escape, and was murdered after the lighting of the lint, it 
 was too late to bring the body back ; and, with all the 
 world rushing to the spot, it was hopeless to remedy the 
 matter after the explosion. The party were within the 
 
MURDER OF DARNLEY, 1567. I9I 
 
 town walls, and seemed desirous to escape through the 
 streets by an outlet distant from the Kirk-of-Field. They 
 attempted what they thought a weak part of the wall at 
 Leith Wynd, but found it too high for them, and had to 
 apply again to the keeper of the Canongate Port, who 
 again yielded to the demand of the Lord BothwelFs friends, 
 and let them pass. Bothwell got as rapidly as possible 
 to his apartments in the palace, took a draught of wine, 
 and tumbled into bed, to be roused, as if from slumber, 
 half an hour afterwards, by a messenger informing him of 
 the tragedy. He called out " Treason ! " donned his gar- 
 ments, and went forthwith to the queen, along with 
 Huntly, who joined him. It was then, apparently, between 
 three and four o'clock. 
 
 Of the way in which the masked ball came off, we hear 
 but little. It was probably a very gay and joyous affair; 
 for Bastiat, in whose honour it was held, was a merry 
 fellow, and especially expert at devising mummeries. It 
 was he who, on the occasion of a Court pageant, had dis- 
 turbed the equanimity of the English embassy, by the 
 provocative manner in which his satyrs wagged their tails 
 in the face of these grave personages. The mask was 
 long over, and all had retired before the explosion 
 roused them. Bothwell and Huntly, when they sought 
 audience of the queen at an untimely hour, had of course 
 the excuse of a general alarm ; and ostensibly, it appears 
 that they informed her that there had occurred an accident 
 from gunpowder at the Kirk-of-Field, as to which imme- 
 diate inquiry was promised. Bothwell, it appears, returned 
 between eight and nine o'clock to inform her that she was 
 a widow, and held audience with her within the curtain of 
 her bed — a matter which the royal customs of the time 
 render of no further moment than as it imported that 
 the communing was close and secret, excluding all other 
 of the queen's advisers.^ 
 
 ^ Sir James Melville says that ' * Bothwell, when he came furth, 
 told him that her majesty was sorro^vful and quiet." He then told 
 Melville that one of the most extraordinary things had come to pass — 
 
192 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 Meanwhile a crowd gathered round the scene of the ex- 
 plosion, eager and anxious to find what the late dawn of 
 the winter sun would reveal. 
 
 that powder had come down from the '*luft" or sky, and burnt the 
 house of the king, whose body was found under a tree. He recom- 
 mended Melville to go and see the body, and observed how that 
 there was not a hurt nor a mark in all his body ; " but Sir James was 
 not successful in his attempts to get access to the place where the 
 body lay. — Memoirs, 174. 
 
CHAPTER XLVL 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 ( Continued. ) 
 
 THE MORNING AFTER THE MURDER — DOINGS AT HOLYROOD— FEELING 
 OF THE PUBLIC — DISPOSAL OF THE MURDERED MAN'S BODY— SUSPI- 
 CIONS AND ACCUSATIONS POINTING TO BOTH WELL — WHISPERS ABOUT 
 THE QUEEN — CORRESPONDENCE WITH DARNLEY's FATHER, WHO DE- 
 MANDS A TRIAL— HOW IT WAS EVADED— BOTHWELL ADVANCED AND 
 FAVOURED— THE QUEEN GETS WARNINGS— SOJOURN AT SETON— THE 
 SUPPER AT ANNESLY'S— THE BAND FOR BOTHWELL'S MARRIAGE WITH 
 THE QUEEN — THE INTERCEPTION AND CARRYING OFF OF THE QUEEN 
 TO DUNBAR— HER FORMAL ENTRY INTO EDINBURGH— BOTHWELL'S 
 DIFFICULTIES AS A MARRIED MAN — ARRANGEMENTS FOR THEIR 
 REMOVAL, AND QUESTION IF THEY WERE LEGALLY REMOVED — 
 HOW THE PROTESTANT PARTY AND THEIR CLERGY TAKE MATTERS 
 —THE MARRIAGE OF MARY AND BOTHWELL — THE MARRIED 
 COUPLE — HER APOLOGY FOR HER CONDUCT. 
 
 The smallest incidents at Holyrood immediately after 
 the murder — the very inertness itself, almost reaching a 
 sort of political paralysis — deserve close attention from 
 their significance. It is useless to join in the common 
 wonder, founded on the practice regarding crimes in the 
 present day, why immediate investigation was not made 
 as to the procuring and carrying of the powder, the mak- 
 ing of the false keys, the movements of the perpetrators, 
 and the like. The question was not so much who could 
 speak, as who would ; and the latter question would have 
 to be decided by the tenor of political events. In fact all 
 the world knew who were the doers of the deed. Among 
 persons conspicuous in the history of the time there was 
 one, and only one, person who seemed to be ignorant of 
 
 VOL. IV. N 
 
QUEEN MARY. 
 
 the party guiltiest of all. It was a knowledge along with 
 which some entertained an approval of the deed, while 
 others were prepared to employ it in punishment if they 
 should have the opportunity. The one exception to this 
 general admission was the queen, who could not or would 
 not believe that her beloved follower was the great 
 criminal. 
 
 Bothwell immediately did the part of the prompt and 
 considerate friend, who in the hour of calamity relieves 
 the bereaved of the irksome duties of the household. He 
 took on himself, in fact, the functions of Governor of Scot- 
 land, and with immediate success ; for there was nobody 
 who could cope with one so prompt and audacious, sup- 
 ported as he was by the devout reliance of his royal mis- 
 tress. As morning dawned, the citizens naturally con- 
 tinued to gather to the Kirk-of- Field. Bothwell sent a 
 strong guard to the spot, and directed the bodies to be 
 removed. During the day the ambassadors of France and 
 Savoy desired an inspection of the king's body, which was 
 refused. This was cited, along with other like instances, 
 to show that the murderer was keeping out of sight the 
 chief real evidence of his crime ; but such suspicions are 
 natural to such an event. They are caused by excitement 
 and disappointed curiosity. In this instance there was 
 little concealment or motive for it. No one pretended 
 that the death had been accidental, or breathed a doubt 
 that there had been murder. 
 
 Mary at first adopted the decorous gloom proper to her 
 situation, and shut herself out from the world. It was a 
 carriage not only blameless but laudable, yet it aptly 
 served the purpose of him who was becoming the ruler of 
 her actions. On the second day of her widowhood we 
 have the earliest indication of the policy she intended to 
 pursue. It is addressed to her worthy councillor, Beaton, 
 the titular Archbishop of Glasgow, in whose eyes she ever 
 wished to stand well. The letter is so significant that it is 
 given in full : — 
 
 Most reverend father in God, and trusty councillor, 
 we greet ye well. We have received this morning your 
 letters of the 27 th January by your servant, Robert Dury, 
 
AFTER THE MURDER, 1567. 
 
 containing in ane part such advertisement as we find by 
 effect over true, albeit the success has not altogether been 
 such as the authors of that mischievous fact had precon- 
 ceived in their mind, and had put it in execution, if God 
 in His mercy had not preserved us, and reserved us, as 
 we trust, to the end that we may take a rigorous ven- 
 geance of that mischievous deed, which or it should re- 
 main unpunished, we had rather lose life and all. The 
 matter is horrible and so strange, as we believe the like 
 was never heard of in any country. This night past, being 
 the 9th February, a little after two hours after midnight, 
 the house wherein the king was lodged was in an instant 
 blown in the air, he lying sleeping in his bed, with such a 
 vehemence that of the whole lodging, walls and other, 
 there is nothing remained, no, not a stone above another, 
 but all either carried far away, or dung in dross to the very 
 ground-stone. It mon be done by force of powder, and 
 appears to have been a mine. By whom it has been done, 
 or in what manner, it appears not as yet. We doubt not 
 but, according to the diligence our Council has begun 
 already to use, the certainty of all shall be usit shortly ; 
 and the same being discovered, which we wot God will 
 never suffer to lie hid, we hope to punish the same with 
 such rigour as shall serve for example of this cruelty to all 
 ages to come. Always, whoever have taken this wicked 
 enterprise in hand, we assure ourself it was dressit as well 
 for us as for the king ; for we lay the most part of all the 
 last week in that same lodging, and was there accompanied 
 with the most part of the lords that are in this town that 
 same night at midnight, and of very chance tarried not 
 all night, by reason of some mask in the abbey ; but we be- 
 lieve it was not chance, but God that put it in our head. 
 
 *'We despatched this bearer upon the sudden, and 
 therefore write to you the more shortly. The rest of your 
 letter we shall answer at more leisure, within four or five 
 days, by your own servant. And so for the present com- 
 mit you to Almighty God. At Edinburgh the nth day of 
 February 1566-67."^ 
 
 ^ Labanoff, ii. 3, 4. 
 
196 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 The original of this letter is now lost, and we have not 
 the means of knowing whether it was written in her own 
 hand. The probability is that it was not.^ But there is 
 no doubt that it is her own. Whether her own device or 
 that of her master, it was a bold stroke. It was to stamp 
 at once the impression that she was to have been one of 
 the victims, and that her own escape was a great marvel 
 of the tragedy. This attempt was a failure. Circumstances 
 at once showed that the safety of the queen was essential 
 to the designs of the conspirators, and they were too ex- 
 pert to be likely to make any serious blunder. There is 
 a secondary point in this letter, in which it agrees with 
 the first impression made by the immediate aspect of the 
 affair. She promptly assumes that the explosion came 
 from a mine. This idea prevailed elsewhere, and the 
 question of her good faith in starting it depends on whether 
 she knew or did not know that the powder was piled in 
 her own sleeping-room. 
 
 On Wednesday, two days after the discovery of the 
 bodies, proclamation was made that a reward of two 
 thousand pounds would be paid to any one who would 
 reveal the author of the murder. Among the community, 
 who knew perfectly the chief actor at least, none ventured 
 to earn this money by an open denunciation ; but a writ- 
 ing was affixed to the door of the Tolbooth or Parlia- 
 ment House, naming Bothwell, Balfour, and Chambers, 
 and black Mr John Spence," as the guilty persons. 
 Another placard followed, naming as inferior actors in 
 the tragedy, Signor Francis, Bastiat, John of Bordeaux, 
 and Joseph Rizzio. 
 
 The event seems to have caused much more excitement 
 among the citizens than its perpetrators expected. The 
 age and the country were familiar with violent deaths. In 
 France, Spain, and the Empire, the labours of the civilians 
 had surrounded sovereigns with a sort of sanctity which 
 claimed inviolability for their persons. Violence to 
 monarchs was thus by degrees removed into a separate 
 category from other outrages, and partook of sacrilege. 
 
 ^ See above, p. 59. 
 
AFTER THE MURDER, 1567. I97 
 
 This doctrine had, however, but faintly penetrated to 
 Scotland, where the people were practically familiar 
 with stories of the death of kings. A party was arising 
 who argued that rulers should be specially responsible 
 for their misconduct j but then these were people of sober 
 rigid walk, who abjured crime and violence, and de- 
 manded that the responsibiHty should be enforced with 
 order and decorum. The method, too, of the deed, de- 
 veloping in an astounding manner the unknown, and it 
 might be illimitable, powers of the mysterious chemical 
 agent just added to the forces at the command of man, 
 was far more adapted to rouse the populace than any 
 common stabbing or hanging. The feelings of the citi- 
 zens of Edinburgh rapidly heated up to strong excitement, 
 and Buchanan mentions that voices were heard in the 
 street at dead of night denouncing the murderers.^ It 
 was a natural result of the general excitement that those 
 who dared not speak openly should give utterance in the 
 dark, and also that midnight denunciations were heard 
 with mysterious awe.^ 
 
 1 As all the picturesque accounts of the state of the pubhc mind at 
 this time are taken from Buchanan, we will get at the clearest state- 
 ment by taking his own words : '* Leist the mater suld seme not to 
 be regardit, out gais ane proclamation with rewardis promysit to him 
 that culd gif information of it. But wha durst accuse the quene? Or 
 (whilk was in maner mair perillous) wha durst detect Bothwell of sic 
 ane horribill offence, specially when he himself was baith doer, judge, 
 inquyrer, and examiner? Yit this feir whilk stoppit the mouthis of 
 everie man in particulaire, culd not restrane the haill multitude in 
 general ; for baith be buikis set out and be pictures, and be cryis in 
 the darke nicht, it was sa handillit, that the doeris of the mischevous 
 fact micht esilie understand that thay secreitis of thdiris wer cum 
 abrode. And when everie man was now out of dout wha did the 
 murther, and wha gaif furtherance unto it, the mair that thay lau- 
 bourit to keep thair awin names undiscloisit, sa mekle the pepilis 
 grudge restranit, brak out mair oppinlie." — Detection, Anderson, ii. 
 25, 26. More tersely it is put in his history : ** Nam et libellis pro- 
 positis, et pictura, et nocturnis per tenebras clamoribus effectum est, 
 ut parricidae facile intelligerent arcana sua nocturna in vulgus pro- 
 diisse.'' — Lib. xviii. 20. 
 
 ^ The street cries were important enough to have a place in politi- 
 cal correspondence. On the loth of April, Sir William Drury tells 
 Cecil of a man — with four or five others to guard him— who nightly 
 
198 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 Two days after the proclamation, the body of the mur- 
 dered man was buried in the Chapel of Hol}Tood with a 
 secrecy that attracted as much attention as any feature of 
 the affair.^ It is noted that on the day of the funeral 
 Bothwell obtained an accession of fortune in a gift of the 
 reversal of the feudal superiority over the town of Leith, 
 and that Damley's servant Drummond, who stood under 
 hea\y suspicion of treachery, got a pension and an office 
 near the person of the infant prince.- Two days after- 
 wards, on the Sunday after the murder, the queen went to 
 Seton Palace, in Haddingtonshire, about twelve miles from 
 Edinburgh.^ There she had for her Court the ever-pre- 
 sent Bothwell, with his supporters Argyle, Huntly, Seton 
 their entertainer, Secretary Lethington, and John Hamil- 
 ton, the restless Archbishop of St Andrews.-^ 
 
 goes about certain streets cr}Tng, rather in an illogical shape, Ven- 
 geance on those who caused me to shed innocent blood. O Lord, 
 open the heavens and pour do%\Ti vengeance on me and those that 
 have destroyed the innocent." — Calendar of State Papers (Foreign). 
 
 ^ Those curious in such matters will find in the third volume of 
 the Scottish Archaeologia, p. 80, printed from the originals, the 
 *' Precepts issued on the death of Henr\' Damley, King of Scotland, 
 for perfuming his body, and for pro\'iding a moumuig dress to Mary 
 Queen of Scots on the occasion." A certain Martin Picauet acknow- 
 ledges receipt of quatre \-intz li\Tes Toum pour lambanment de 
 Roy." One would like to know whether Martin Picauet was so 
 skilled in anatomy as to be Ukely to detect the method of the death 
 of a corpse on which he practised the embalmer's art. These docu- 
 ments go for what they are worth in any questions both about the 
 sordidness of the funeral and the desire to keep the body from inspec- 
 tion. In the paper in the Hopetoun MS. that goes by the name of 
 *'The Book of Articles," there is the following : '-'In manifest hatrent" 
 **againis his daid body, she causit the same be brocht fra the Kirk of 
 field to the said Chapell of Hal}Tud hous be certane soldiers, pynouris, 
 and otheris vile personis, upoun ane aiild blok of forme of tre ; and 
 after that the corps had l)Tie certain daps in the chapell quhair 
 alswa she beheld it, the same corps without any decent order was 
 cast in the nyt without any ceremony or company of honest men." 
 
 2 Malcolm Laing (Edit. 1S04), i. 49. 
 
 ^ The best authority for the exact sequence of the events is the 
 Diurnal of Occurrents. 
 
 In the Diurnal of Occurrents, however, it is stated that she " left 
 the Erlis of Huntly and Bothwill in the Palice of Halyrudhous, to 
 keip the prince unto her returning." 
 
LENNOX AND BOTHWELL, 1567. 199 
 
 The caterers for information to be sent to England 
 picked up expressive stories of the way in which the group 
 conducted themselves. The queen and Bothwell, it was 
 said, amused themselves in shooting at the butts, and 
 having together won a match against Seton and Huntly, 
 the losers entertained the winners at dinner in Tranent.^ 
 What means that place possessed for entertaining royalty 
 in the sixteenth century it were hard to say : it is now a 
 smoky, cindery, colliers* village, rife with whisky-shops, 
 and lately achieved notoriety, in the course of the Govern- 
 ment sanitary inquiries, by its excessive filth and unhealthi- 
 ness. The queen's vindicators are justified in holding 
 that such a scene was much at variance with the usual 
 decorum of her deportment, and the less partial will admit 
 it to be inconsistent with her powers of dissimulation ; 
 but there remains the consideration that she was then the 
 victim of an infatuation which broke through all the de- 
 fences of her strong nature. However it be, she had 
 presently more important matters to occupy her. The 
 denunciatory placards were repeated, and Joseph Rizzio, 
 Bastiat, and the other humble foreigners whose names ap- 
 peared on these formidable documents, prudently managed 
 one by one to slip out of the country, knowing that what- 
 ever turn matters took they must be in imminent peril. 
 
 A new actor now steps upon the scene — one likely to 
 bring practical conclusions out of the general chaos of 
 doubts, mysteries, and suspicions. The father of the 
 murdered man demands justice, and calls on the widow, 
 as the person who has the power, and ought of all others 
 to be the most earnest towards that end, to take vigorous 
 steps for the discovery of the guilty persons. The cor- 
 respondence between the queen and old Lennox is among - 
 the most significant of all the tell-tale documents of that 
 crisis, and is well worthy of careful examination. Unfor- 
 tunately the beginning, a letter from Lennox and the 
 
 ^ Drury to Cecil, cited by Tytler. That there were light doings at 
 Seton is asserted also by Buchanan. In a diary of occurrences 
 marked by Cecil (Forbes, ii. 269), it is said that at Seton she and 
 Bothwell passed their tyme meryly." 
 
200 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 queen^s answer, is lost. The reply of Lennox on the 20th 
 of February is as reverential as, coming from the meanest 
 of the queen's subjects, it could have been. He has re- 
 ceived her most comfortable letter, for which he renders 
 her highness most humble thanks, and he trusts never to 
 deserve otherwise than as he has received of her high- 
 nesses hands. > Since she takes in good part his simple ad- 
 vice and counsel, he ventures to continue therein. As he 
 sees that all the travail and labour she has manifested have 
 hitherto come to naught, he makes bold to put his poor 
 and simple advice in a practical shape, that your high- 
 ness wald with convenient diligence assemble the hail 
 nobility and Estates of your majesty's realm; and they, 
 by your advice, to take such order for the perfect trial of 
 the matter," as he doubts not through God's grace shall so 
 work on the hearts of her majesty and her faithful subjects 
 as that the bloody and cruel actors of the deed shall be 
 manifestly known. A sprinkling of piety there is towards 
 the conclusion ; but the last words have a touching sim- 
 plicity, in desiring that she will bear with him should he 
 seem troublesome, " being the father to him that is gone.'* 
 This appeal received prompt attention. It was written 
 at Houston, in Renfrewshire,- on the 20th of February, 
 and the queen's answer left Seton next day. It was 
 written in excellent taste, with such courtesy as a young 
 sovereign might show to a venerable subject parentally 
 related to her. The kindness and goodwill for which 
 Lennox was so grateful were but her duty, and came of 
 that natural affection, of which he might feel as assured 
 himself at that time, and so long as God gave her life, as 
 ever he had been since the beginning of their acquaint- 
 ance. Then to business. For the assembly of the no- 
 bility and the other Estates of Parliament, which he re- 
 commended '^for a perfect trial of the king our husband's 
 cruel slaughter," she so entirely concurred in that plan, 
 that before receiving his letter she had ordered a Parlia- 
 ment to be proclaimed, where first of all this matter, 
 being maist dear to us, sail be handlit, and nathing left 
 undone whilk may further the clear trial of the same." 
 This state paper does credit to the diplomatic skill of its 
 
LENNOX AND BOTHWELL, 1567. 
 
 201 
 
 author. Lennox was at once taken up as desiring a 
 formal meeting of Parliament. As of course something 
 must be done, no step could be more desirable than that, 
 since it was a matter of parade and delay, which would 
 give a long breathing-time. The Estates, in fact, did not 
 assemble until the T4th of April. What Lennox wanted 
 was a general assembling of the chief subjects of the crown, 
 that counsel might be taken among them, the hands of 
 justice strengthened, and assurance given to those who 
 were afraid to reveal what they knew. 
 
 The next letter from the old man slips into the tone of 
 one who is angry at being made a mockery of. After 
 short words of courtesy, he explains the misapprehension 
 of his meaning. With a touch of sarcasm, he expresses 
 his assurance that, although her highness is pleased to 
 await the assembling of Parliament, she will feel the time 
 as long as he does, until the matter be tried and the doers 
 of the deed condignly punished. The matter is not for 
 Parliament, but the criminal administration of justice ; 
 and "of sic wecht and importance, whilk ought rather to be 
 with all expedition and diligence sought out and punished, 
 to the example of the hail world." He reminds her that 
 certain persons have been denounced on the Tolbooth 
 door as the murderers, and comes to this practical con- 
 clusion : " I shall therefore most humbly beseek your 
 majesty, for the love of God, the honours of your majesty 
 and your realm, and well and quietness of the same, that 
 it will please your majesty forthwith, not only to appre- 
 hend and put in sure keeping the persons named in the 
 said tickets, but also with diligence to assemble your 
 majesty's nobility, and then by open proclamation to 
 admonish and require the writers of the said tickets to 
 compear." If, assured of full protection, they failed to 
 come forth and back their secret denunciations, then 
 these would go for naught. 
 
 In the queen's next letter, dated the ist of March, 
 there is some fencing about the cross purposes concerning 
 the Parliament. She did not mean that the affair was for 
 the Parliament, or that it should lie over until the Estates 
 met; "but rather wad wish to God that it might be 
 
202 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 suddenly and without delay tried, for ay the sooner the 
 better/' Then coming to the point : And where ye 
 desire that we should cause the names containit in some 
 tickets affixt on the Tolbooth door of Edinburgh to be 
 apprehended and put in sure keeping — there is sa mony 
 of the said tickets, and therewithal sa different and con- 
 trarious to [each] other in compting of the names, that we 
 wit not upon what ticket to proceed/' Perhaps this was 
 the best subterfuge that could be found, but it was lamen- 
 tably inferior to the subtle device in the previous letter. 
 If Mary expected it to go for anything but an effort to 
 gain time, this would strengthen the other evidence that 
 the terrible strain on her nervous system was telling on 
 her intellect. She ended by saying that, if he would in- 
 timate to her the names of any of the persons denounced 
 whom he thought deserving of being brought to trial, she 
 would direct them to be brought to trial according to 
 law ; " and being found culpable, sail see the punishment 
 as rigorously execute as the weight of the crime deserves." 
 On this hint Lennox spoke, and that plainly : And for 
 the names of the persons foresaid, I marvel that the same 
 has been keeped frae your majesty's ears, considering the 
 effect [purport] of the said tickets, and the names of the 
 persons is so openly talkt of — that is to say, in the first 
 ticket the Erie Bothwell, Master James Balfour, Mr David 
 Chambers, and black John Spence; and in the second 
 ticket, Seigneur Francis, Bastian, John de Bordeaux, and 
 Joseph, Davie's brother, whilk persons, I assure your 
 majesty, I for my part greatly suspect. And now your 
 majesty knawing their names, and being the party — as 
 well and mair nor I, although I was the father — I doubt 
 not but your majesty will take order in the matter accord- 
 ing to the weight of the cause, which I maist entirely and 
 humbly beseek." 
 
 This bears date the 17th of March. On the 24th the 
 queen intimated to him an entire compliance with his 
 demands. Next week the nobles were to convene, and 
 the persons denounced by the earl to be put to trial, and 
 punished if guilty; and then comes an injunction such as 
 would make one in Lennox's position ponder : " We pray 
 
bothwell's ascendancy, 1567. 203 
 
 you, if your leisure and commodity may suit, address you 
 to be at us here in Edinburgh this week approachand, 
 where ye may see the said trial, and declare thay things 
 which ye knaw may further the same ; and there ye sail 
 have experience of our earnest will and effectuous mind 
 to have an end in this matter, and the auctors of so un- 
 worthy a deed really punished.'^ ^ 
 
 Here there is a formidable change of tone, which was 
 not without its sufficient cause. In the oscillations of 
 immediate events the tables had been turned. The man 
 sought as a criminal was himself the pursuer, and the 
 accusers had to look to themselves. 
 
 It was consistent neither with the nature nor the de- 
 signs of the man against whom so many accusations were 
 levelled to act the part of the hunted hare. On the con- 
 trary, he took his stand as the great statesman — the 
 actual governor of the realm, insulted by base and skulk- 
 ing calumniators, who dared not confront him. He swore 
 vengeance against the authors of *'the tickets;" and inquiry 
 was made, or professed to be so, for their exposure and 
 punishment. Picturesque descriptions were furnished to 
 the English Court how, in his rage and defiance, he rode 
 through the town of Edinburgh with fifty of his armed 
 ruffians, and there before the multitude told how he would 
 serve the authors of the tickets if he could find them.^ 
 As a small incident, showing the contempt with which 
 such accusations were received, a pension was bestowed 
 on the Signor Francis so often referred to, the grant being 
 dated at Seton on the 20th of February.^ For nearly a 
 month there was inaction in Court while the story of ac- 
 cusation raged outside ; and men passed from Bothwell, 
 as the principal criminal, to seize on the name of one 
 still higher. It is remarked that the Privy Council, the 
 natural immediate resort on a political emergency, did 
 
 ^ The text of these letters is completed by comparing Anderson's 
 Collection and Keith's History with Labanoff, who gives the most re- 
 liable rendering of the queen's part of the correspondence. 
 
 2 Letters cited in Tytler, vii. 74. 
 
 ^ Privy Seal Record, quoted, Laing, i. 50. 
 
204 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 not assemble between the 12th of February, when the re- 
 ward for the detection of the murderers was issued, and 
 the I St of March, when it met to transact mere routine 
 business.^ Another equally barren meeting was held on 
 the nth, where it is noticed that Murray was present.^ 
 He had the day before obtained leave to retire to France, 
 and departed a few days later, not much to the regret, it 
 may be believed, either of his sister or the man in w^hose 
 hands he left her. 
 
 As to him, the career of Court prosperity, in which he 
 had been advancing, now took a rapid run — it could not 
 but compromise the giver as well as the receiver of the 
 rewards ; and that he should have pursued his fortune so 
 eagerly at such a juncture, may be attributed either to the 
 recklessness of his ambition and greed, or to the necessity 
 of fortifying himself from the coming attack, as the gover- 
 nor of a threatened garrison seizes the latest opportunity 
 afforded to him to run up fresh defences. 
 
 Meanwhile those who were near enough to the Court 
 to see what went on there, found themselves driven to a 
 new and astounding conclusion. They saw such distinct 
 evidence of the queen's infatuated love for Bothwell that 
 they believed she would marry him, and that the merely 
 superficial impediment of his having a wife alive would be 
 got over. There is little satisfaction in the accounts which 
 those professing after the event to recall what they ex- 
 pected to happen say about their suppositions. We all 
 like to be considered sagacious and prophetic ; and the 
 most candid will give a touch of strength to their antici- 
 pations when recording them after the event. We have, 
 however, to the present point a narrative of incidents, 
 small in themselves, but sufficient to show that there was 
 a practical belief, even while they were enjoying holiday 
 life at Seton, that these two would be united in wedlock. 
 These incidents are given us in the Memoirs of Sir James 
 Melville, where they follow on a remark that the bruit " 
 began to arise that the queen would marry the Earl of 
 Bothwell, *'who had six months before married the Earl 
 
 ^ Privy Seal Record, quoted, Laing, i. 50. ^ Laing, i. 55. 
 
BOTHWELL'S ASCENDANCY, 1567. 20$ 
 
 of Huntly's sister, and would part with his own wife;" 
 
 whereat/' he continues, " every good subject that loved 
 the queen's honour and the prince's security had sad 
 hearts, and thought her majesty would be dishonoured, 
 and the prince in danger to be cut off by him who had 
 slain his father." He then tells how the Lord Herries, 
 coming to Court, attended by fifty followers, on a special 
 errand for the purpose, told her in the plainest terms the 
 tenor of the rumours, ^'requesting her majesty most 
 humbly upon his knees to remember her honour and 
 dignity, and upon the security of the prince, whilk would 
 all be in danger of tinsell in case she married the said 
 earl, with many other great persuasions to eschew such 
 utter wrack and inconvenients as that would bring on." 
 Her majesty, it seems, marvelled at such bruits without 
 purpose, "and said that there was na sic thing in her 
 mind." Herries, having done what he deemed his duty, 
 fled quickly with his followers to his own country, to evade 
 the wrath of Both well. ^ 
 
 A story like this is always liable to be inaccurate ; but 
 in what follows Melville was himself a party, and must be 
 correct, unless we charge him with wilful fabrication. He 
 says he had made up his mind to speak to her majesty in 
 the same terms as Herries. One Thomas Bishop, how- 
 ever, whom he describes as a Scotsman long resident in 
 England, and a warm advocate of Mary's title to the 
 English throne, anticipated his intention by writing a letter, 
 which he desired Melville to show the queen. It took 
 up the same tone as the warning by Herries, " but more 
 freely, because he was absent in another country." Tell- 
 ing how the rumour of the coming event had penetrated 
 to England, he assured her that if it came to pass she 
 would lose her own reputation, the favour of God, and 
 the kingdoms of England, Ireland, and Scotland — " with 
 many other dissuasions and examples of histories, whilks 
 wald be ower lang to rehearse." He says that he showed 
 the letter to the queen, as he was desired ; and when she 
 
 1 There seems to be no reference to this in the * Memoirs ' attributed 
 to Herries. 
 
206 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 had read it, she called out to Secretary Lethington that 
 she had been shown a strange writing, "willing him also 
 to see it." He asked what it was, and she said, ^' A de- 
 vice of his own, tending to the wreck of the Earl Both- 
 well." Melville continues, " He took me by the hand and 
 drew me apart ; and when he had read it, he asked what 
 was in my mind, and said, ' So soon as the Earl Bothwell 
 gets word, as I fear he shall, he will not fail to slay you.' " 
 Melville muttered something about its being a sore thing 
 to see that good princess running to utter wreck, and 
 nobody to warn her ; but Lethington, telling him he had 
 done more honestly than wisely," became more specific 
 in his warning, and recommended Melville to be off be- 
 fore Bothwell should come up from his dinner. He took 
 the advice, and says he was hotly pursued. He says the 
 queen interceded for him once and again. On Bothwell's 
 rejecting her first intercession, she was miscontent, and 
 told him that he would cause her to be left of all her ser- 
 vants." He then promised to spare Melville — so much 
 influence had the siren still on the savage humour of her 
 lord. Melville says that, when he afterwards saw the 
 queen, he reverted to the matter, backing Bishop's coun- 
 sel with his own. The last touch is curious, and carries 
 an unsatisfied impression : " She said, matters were not 
 that far agaitwart, but she had na will to enter in the 
 terms." ^ 
 
 From other quarters come warnings equally significant. 
 We have seen how the queen wrote to Beaton, her ambas- 
 sador in France, endeavouring to stamp on the first news 
 of the tragedy the impression that she had herself made 
 a providential escape. He expresses in his answer his 
 thankfulness that she has been preserved to take a rigorous 
 vengeance for the crime committed, and then says, " Rather 
 than it be not actually tane, it appears to me better in 
 this warld that ye had lost life and all." Unless this be 
 an implied rebuke on her pretence, he passes entirely the 
 ideal danger, but presses on her solemnly the dangers that 
 were real and imminent. All Europe rings with the ter- 
 
 ^ Memoirs, 175-177. 
 
BOTH well's ascendancy, 1567. 20/ 
 
 rible story and the wretchedness of poor Scotland ; nay, 
 people make free with her own name, and in short charge 
 her with the deed. These are calumnies, no doubt ; but 
 they bring deep sorrow on all her faithful servants, and she 
 must nerve herself to such action as shall for ever confute 
 them. " It is needful," he says, that ye show now rather 
 than ever before, the great magnanimity, constancy, and 
 virtue that God has granted you, by whose grace I hope 
 ye sail overcome this most heavy envy and displeasure of the 
 committing thereof, and preserve the reputation of all god- 
 liness ye have conqueshed of long, which can appear no 
 way so clearly than that ye do such justice as the haill 
 world may declare your innocence, and give testimony for 
 ever of that treason that has committed, but fear of God or 
 man, so cruel and ungodly a murther.''^ 
 
 It must ever be kept in view, as the key-note to all that 
 preceded and followed, that never was wretched victim 
 more distinctly and loudly w^arned of the gulf that was 
 opening at her feet. She had still not finally committed 
 herself at the date of a letter in which Kirkcaldy of Grange, 
 writing to Lord Bedford, expresses his belief that the mar- 
 riage will occur. He quotes a saying reported of the 
 queen. Whether he gives it accurately or not, it imparts 
 his belief in her infatuated devotion to the lord of her 
 heart. It bore that " she cared not to lose France, Eng- 
 land, and her own country for him; and shall go with him 
 
 to the world's end in a white petticoat before she leave 
 him.^'2 
 
 The tone of the history of Scotland now takes a pecu- 
 liar turn. Events on the surface contradict the tenor of 
 the influences below ; and the plot hurries on, like that of 
 a romance or a drama, to be reversed when the unseen 
 powers find their opportunity and reveal themselves. The 
 death of Darnley was not an event to be regretted or 
 very zealously avenged ; but a new light sprang up in men's 
 minds when they saw the mighty reward at which the chief 
 actor aimed. Then, indeed, it was time for them to act 
 too. In the mean time, however, their enemy was too 
 
 ^ Keith, 8vo ed., i. civ. 2 Quoted by P. F. Tytler, vii. 88. 
 
208 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 strong ; and the policy adopted was to let the evil destinies 
 that ruled the land have their swing. Lethington, Morton, 
 Lindsay, Murray, all the subtlest and boldest spirits of the 
 day, were alike silenced for a time. The political con- 
 ditions of the situation were unprecedented in Scotland. 
 On some occasions the crown had been strong enough to 
 bear hard on the great local potentates. In others, some 
 potent feudal house had been able to defy the crown for a 
 time. But here was a new combination, showing what 
 might come of a connivance of the crown with the able, 
 audacious, and unscrupulous head of such a feudal house. 
 The result for a time was the existence, at least in the 
 south of Scotland, of a despotism which it was hopeless to 
 resist until the time for reaction came. 
 
 The first performance on the stage thus cleared for the 
 movements of the great actors was the trial which was to 
 cleanse the hero of the piece from all taint, and especially 
 to put matters finally right at the foreign Courts, where 
 an inconvenient amount of interest was shown about the 
 recent transactions in Edinburgh. 
 
 The proceedings taken were exceptional and anomalous. 
 The established practice was, when a criminal prosecution 
 was determined on, for the crown to take the ofiice of 
 accuser, treating any persons who had been the first ac- 
 cusers or informers merely as witnesses. In the docu- 
 ments connected with BothwelFs trial Lord Lennox is 
 brought up as the accuser, and the tenor of the procedure 
 looks like an arbitration in a dispute in which he and Both- 
 well hold opposite sides. On the 28th of March the Privy 
 Council gave instructions for the trial. There were nine 
 councillors present : Bothwell himself ; the Lords Huntly, 
 Argyle, and Caithness ; Leslie^ Bishop of Ross ; Gordon, 
 Bishop of Galloway; Secretary Maitland; Stewart, the 
 Treasurer; and Justice-Clerk Bellenden. The Act of 
 Council appointed the 12th of April for the trial, and 
 directed that Matthew, Earl of Lennox, be warned person- 
 ally, or at his dwelling-place, as well as all others who 
 came forward as accusers. Royal letters were issued for 
 the citation of Lennox; and in these, instead of the crown, 
 according to usual form, setting forth the accusation, in 
 
THE TRIAL, 1567. 
 
 209 
 
 name of the crown counsel it was stated that these gentle- 
 men " are informed that our well-beloved cousin and coun- 
 sellor, Matthew Earl of Lennox, father of our most dear 
 spouse, has asserted that James Earl of Bothwell, Lord 
 Hailes and Crichton, &c., and some others, were the con- 
 trivers of the traitorous, cruel, and detestable murther,'' 
 &c. As another reason for the proceedings, which kept 
 up their tone as a settlement of a dispute rather than 
 a trial of a murderer, is " the humble request and petition 
 of the said Earl Bothwell made to us, and in our pres- 
 ence, offering to submit himself to a fair trial of what 
 he is charged with." The messengers intrusted with the 
 citation of Lennox made formal returns, importing that 
 they did not get access to him personally, but took the 
 usual means for making their citations public and noto- 
 rious.^ 
 
 Lennox did not appear. Sir James Melville says he 
 was ordered by the queen to bring none with him but his 
 own household. He had a body of men-at-arms — three 
 thousand, it was said — prepared to follow him. And there 
 is no doubt that the policy which allowed the accused to 
 be undisputed master of the capital, obviated what would 
 probably have been the most bloody of all the street-con- 
 flicts that had disturbed Edinburgh. 
 
 There exists a final letter from Lennox to the queen. 
 As it bears date on the previous day, it may be questioned 
 whether it was delivered before the trial. It pleads sick- 
 ness as his reason for not appearing, but shows that he did 
 not think himself safe in Edinburgh. He begs that the 
 trial may be postponed until he can prepare his evidence, 
 and convene his friends for his protection. He demands 
 that, like other persons accused of crimes, those charged 
 on this occasion shall be taken into custody ; and throws 
 out a taunt that, instead of being treated as suspected 
 criminals, they are not only at liberty, but great at Court, 
 where they enjoy her majesty's special countenance and 
 protection.2 
 
 On the day of the trial a messenger arrived with a let- 
 
 ^ Anderson's Collections, i. 50; ii. 97-108. 
 VOL. IV. 
 
 2 Ibid., i. 52, 
 O 
 
2IO 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 ter from Queen Elizabeth to Queen Mary, but in the con- 
 fusion and excitement of the event of the day it is not 
 known whether she received it. 
 
 From the same authority which mentions the arrival 
 of this letter it has been inferred that the queen openly 
 showed before the citizens her sympathy with the ac- 
 cused, as an affectionate wife might telegraph her good 
 wishes to a husband going forth to a contest or other 
 critical ordeal.^ But these specialties are of small 
 moment beside the larger facts, among which the most 
 significant is that Bothwell had four thousand armed men 
 on the streets — an overwhelming force in itself — in ad- 
 dition to his command of the Castle of Edinburgh. 
 
 The proceedings of the day were pedantically formal. 
 The Earl of Argyle presided as Justiciar. Fifteen jury- 
 men were impannelled, according to the practice of Scot- 
 land, and the Earl of Caithness was chosen their chan- 
 cellor or foreman. John Spence, the queen^s advocate, 
 and Robert Crichton, appeared for the prosecution. 
 Still, however, the distinction was kept up, that it was 
 not a case taken up by the crown, but a contest with Len- 
 nox, who was called upon to appear as a party. There came 
 forward a gentleman of his household, Robert Cunningham, 
 who explained that the earl could not appear in safety, 
 and protested against the proceedings, should they end 
 in the acquittal of those notoriously known to have been 
 the murderers of the king. To meet this, the earl's letters 
 demanding a speedy trial, were read and recorded, and 
 the court solemnly decided to proceed with business ; " and 
 therefore the said Earl of Bothwell being accused by the said 
 dittay of the crime aforesaid, and the same being denied 
 by him, and referred to the deliverance of the said assize, 
 they removed furth of the said court, and altogether con- 
 vened ; and after long reasoning had by them upon the 
 said dittay, and points thereof, they, and ilk ane of them 
 for themselves, voted, delivered, and acquitted the said 
 James Earl of Bothwell of art and part of the said slaugh- 
 ter of the king." 
 
 ^ Documents quoted by Tytler, vii., App. v. 
 
THE TRIAL, 1567. 
 
 211 
 
 Through the pedantic formality of the proceedings it is 
 visible that the jury did not like what they were set to do. 
 It was a practice of the time to put jurors on trial for 
 false verdicts, or, as it was termed, " wilful error." Lord 
 Caithness and the rest of the jurors had honesty and 
 courage enough to record a protest that they ought not to 
 be liable to such an ordeal for acquitting the person ac- 
 cused before them, because not a particle of evidence 
 was given in — there was nothing whatever put before 
 them but the indictment. They therefore had no alter- 
 native but to acquit. The chancellor of the jury was at 
 the same time so punctilious as to insist on having it 
 recorded that this their verdict was not founded on a 
 quibble which the indictment put at the service of the 
 jury, by stating the date of the crime as the 9th of Febru- 
 ary ; " for that in deed the murther was committed the 
 next day, being the x day, in the morning at two hours 
 after midnight, whilk in law was, and ought to be, truly 
 accompted the x day." 
 
 A careful study of the proceedings — so much of them 
 as we have — leaves the impression that judges and jury 
 were anxious to put on record what would tell that, if 
 there were a defeat of justice, it was not their fault. 
 They could not be blamed for their acquittal of the accused 
 — they had everything, resting on the maxim that rigidity of 
 form is the safety of the innocent, to justify them. All 
 they had was an accusation put into shape. No evi- 
 dence was called to justify the accusation, and so the 
 jury acquitted.' If the world knew no more than the 
 record of the trial, nothing would seem more fair and 
 appropriate. The affair ended in a bravado, the acquitted 
 man offering, by public cartel, to fight, after the old way 
 of the ordeal of battle, any one who should still charge 
 him with the murder.^ 
 
 The Estates met on the 14th of April ; and were one 
 to judge solely from the internal evidence of the formal 
 procedure, never did Parliament assemble under con- 
 ditions of more quietness and order. Yet it might be 
 
 ^ The record of the trial in State Trials, i. 902, 
 
212 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 fancied that, in the very cautiousness of all its transac- 
 tions, there were symptoms of apprehension that a storm 
 was coming. It was a ParHament of precautions and 
 confirmation of acquisitions. It began by exonerating 
 Erskine of the command of Edinburgh Castle, acknowledg- 
 ing that he had held his trust as a good and true soldier, 
 and would never be liable to question for what he had done 
 in the course of his duty. There comes next an Act in 
 favour of religious peace and toleration. It narrates how 
 thoroughly the queen had kept her word, in her promise 
 not to attempt anything contrary to the religion which she 
 found publicly and universally standing at her arrival 
 for which all her subjects who have so enjoyed the rights 
 of conscience in peace shall have occasion to praise God 
 for her good, happy, and gracious government, and crave 
 of Him, from the bottom of their hearts, that He would, 
 of His infinite goodness, prosper and bless her majesty 
 and her posterity with long life, and good and happy 
 government to rule and reign over them. We have not 
 here the equivocation of supporting the Church by law 
 established as in the Act of 1563. But through its mul- 
 tifarious clauses, promising and reiterating protection to 
 the persons referred to in the exercise of their rehgion, 
 there is an exceeding care to avoid any specific definition 
 of what that religion is, whether by the use of the nomen- 
 clature or the characteristics of Protestantism, or by the 
 points of its difference from the Church of Rome. Such 
 as it was, Bothwell had the credit of having gained this 
 boon to his own ecclesiastical party. It did not propitiate 
 them, however. If, as it would seem, he expected to 
 secure to himself the Reformation party, he was signally 
 defeated. They were becoming the champions of Puri- 
 tanism as well as Protestantism, and looked askance at 
 murder, though the victim was a Papist and the doer one 
 of themselves. 
 
 There were several ratifications of gifts of private 
 estates. Lethington looked after himself on this occa- 
 sion ; and David Chambers, one of the Lords of Session, 
 was rewarded with domains "for the good, true, and 
 obedient service done in all time past to her majesty's 
 
bothwell's acquisitions, 1567. 213 
 
 honour, well, and contentment," and that through immi- 
 nent peril and danger. He was an able man, a jurist and 
 historian, writing both in French and Latin ; but he was 
 a creature of Bothwell's, and so vehemently suspected of 
 participation in the murder, that his name appeared on the 
 midnight placards. Morton and Murray were confirmed 
 in their acquisitions at great length ; so was the queen's 
 other illegitimate brother, Robert, the Commendator of 
 Holyrood House. There were several other such ratifica- 
 tions, the most significant of which was the virtual restor- 
 ation to Huntly of a large portion of the old domains of 
 his house. He was expected to reciprocate in services of 
 a peculiar kind. Bothwell, of course, comes in for his 
 share of the royal bounty. In general terms his right is 
 confirmed to all and sundry "his lordships and barony of 
 Hailes, Crichton, and Liddesdale ; and all others his lands, 
 lordships, baronies, castles, towers, fortalices, mills, fish- 
 ings, woods, parts, pendicles, &c., together with the 
 offices of admiralty of Scotland, and the offices of the 
 sheriffships of Edinburgh principal, and within the con- 
 stabularies of Haddington and Lauderdale." But there 
 was a more special object in the ratification, narrat- 
 ing her highness's regard and consideration " of the great 
 and manifold good service done and performed, not only 
 to her highness's honour, well, and estimation, but also to 
 the commonwealth of this realm and lieges thereof, by 
 which he " superexpended himself" and burdened his 
 lands. Most of his great territories he had from his 
 ancestors ; but, as we have already seen, by his own 
 extravagant living, succeeding that of his father, he be- 
 came hard pressed for available means, and the estates 
 were heavily burdened. The object of the ratification 
 was to amend this defect ; and to enable him to support 
 his rank as Governor of the Castle of Dunbar, certain 
 lands in its neighbourhood, apparently of considerable 
 agricultural value, were vested in him. His wealth and 
 power were now enormous. He had the command of 
 Edinburgh Castle and of the county of Edinburgh, with 
 Haddington and Lauderdale. The two great feudal 
 towers, still remaining, twelve miles from Edinburgh, 
 
214 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 Crichton and Borthwick, were his. He had the original 
 possession of his family — Hailes — and the friary lands of 
 Haddington. This almost joined his lordship round 
 Dunbar, where he commanded a strong fortress. Another, 
 the Hermitage, guarded his estates in Liddesdale, which 
 were almost joined to the rich possessions of Melrose 
 Abbey in the vale of Tweed ; and he was Warden of all 
 the three marches, and Lord High Admiral.^ 
 
 One significant feature in the legislation of the session 
 was for the suppression of the anonymous denunciations 
 which had been so troublesome. Any person first seeing 
 or finding such a document was to destroy it, otherwise he 
 would be punished as an accessory to its promulgation. 
 This was no novel effort of ingenuity ; it was, in fact, the 
 old Roman law of famosi libelli, and the Act was little 
 more than a translation of the provisions which may be 
 found in the 47th book of the Pandects. 
 
 Parliament rose on the 19th. On the afternoon of that 
 day there was a great supper of the influential members in 
 a tavern owned by a man named Annesly. They had the 
 distinction to be surrounded by an armed guard of Both- 
 welFs followers. Suppers were at that time, like state 
 dinners of the present day, a suitable occasion for politi- 
 cal movements. This one began at four o'clock, and 
 went, amidst much carousal, pretty deep into the night. 
 Before the revellers separated a document was presented 
 for their acceptance, drawn up with that special skill for 
 such draftsmanship which Balfour had more than once 
 exhibited. It contained, in the first place, an assertion of 
 
 ^ The editor of Queen Mary's Inventories has added a very curious 
 item to valuables v^ith which. Bothwell v/as then endowed, in certain 
 articles which, however his other acquisitions came, must have been 
 the gifts of the queen's own hand. There is an entry — ten pieces of 
 caps, chasubles, and tunicles," taken from Huntly's castle, whither 
 they had been sent from the Cathedral of Aberdeen for their safety. 
 On these the recipient notes : **In March 1567, I delivered three of 
 the fairest, whilk the queen gave to the Lord Bothwell ; and mair, 
 took for herself ane cap, a chasuble, four tunicles, to make a bed for the 
 king — all broken and cut in her own presence. " — P. 53. Here the ob- 
 ject of the gift is not so remarkable, as that so zealous a devotee of the 
 Church should have turned ecclesiastical robes into secular clothing. 
 
THE SUPPER AT ANNESLY'S, 1567. 21 5 
 
 Bothweirs innocence, and a resolution to hold it against 
 all impugners. There is next an obligation, in the usual 
 tenor of bonds of manrent, to stand by Bothwell in all his 
 quarrels. Then comes last the great stroke. In case his 
 distinguished services to her majesty, "and his other good 
 qualities and behaviour,'' should move her to condescend 
 to receive him as her husband, all the undersigned deter- 
 mine to further and promote such a marriage to the 
 utmost of their capacity ; and they recommend it as a 
 proper step to be taken for the public good in the widowed 
 condition of the queen. That there was shown to the 
 assembled magnates a writing expressive of the queen's 
 desire for the match is a disputed question. What is, 
 however, a lamentable fact is, that the document was 
 adopted by a meeting of the first men in the country. 
 This is an affair which not only lacks sufficient explana- 
 tion, but scarcely affords material for a plausible theory. 
 Simple coercion will hardly account for it. Among the 
 men there assembled the vices were many and grave, but 
 poltroonery was not conspicuous among them. It was 
 noticed that next morning the bulk of them rapidly dis- 
 persed to their separate territories, leaving the political 
 epoch to its own development.^ 
 
 Events now followed each other rapidly, and thickened 
 to a conclusion. On the 21st of April the queen went to 
 Stirling to visit her child ; and so dangerous a repute did 
 she carry with her, that Mar the governor was frightened 
 into vague fears about his precious charge, and would 
 not permit the mother to bring into his presence any 
 other attendants than two of her women. 2 Bothwell pre- 
 
 ^ Anderson's Collection, i. 107-111, iv. (part ii.) 60. There are 
 lists of the parties to this manifesto ; but they are given from memory, 
 and not to be depended on. The name of Murray, for instance, 
 occurs in them, though, apart from all question of probability, he was 
 absent from Scotland at the time. 
 
 ^ Of the written gossip flying about among the statesmen of the 
 period, the following may be taken as a specimen rather above the 
 average in picturesque extravagance : ** At the queen being at Stir- 
 ling, the prince being brought unto her, she offered to kiss him, but 
 he would not, but put her away, and did to his strength scratch her. 
 She offered him an apple, but it would not be received of him, and 
 
2l6 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 pared to intercept her on her return, and whether this was 
 done by her own connivance is one of the secondary 
 questions in the great controversy. Whether or not she was 
 aware of the enterprise, it was so well known to others 
 that, between her departure and return, one of the Edin - 
 burgh correspondents of the English Court writes to say 
 that the Earl of Bothwell has gathered a body of men 
 professedly to ride to the border, but the writer believes 
 that presently after he writes they will be employed to 
 intercept the queen and take her to Dunbar; and he 
 sarcastically asks the receiver of the letter to judge 
 whether this be with her will or not.^ Sir James Mel- 
 ville in his Diary drily says he was told by Captain 
 Blackadder that the queen was seized by her own consent, 
 but he does not give us the benefit of his own comment 
 on this assertion. Hubert, the French page, says in his 
 testimony or confession that, on the evening before the 
 seizure, the queen sent him from Linlithgow with letters 
 to Bothwell, who bade him in answer assure her majesty 
 that he would meet her on the road at the bridge. Both- 
 well took with him eight hundred spearmen to the western 
 entrance of Edinburgh ; he had miHtary resources at his 
 disposal which, for any such enterprise as he had on 
 hand, might be called inexhaustible. The spot where he 
 met the queen is now called Fountainbridge, a sort of 
 miixed suburb to the west of the old town of Edinburgh, 
 having to the south the new suburbs of Greenhill and 
 
 to a greyhound bitch having whelps was thrown, who eat it, and she 
 and her whelps died presently. A sugar-loaf also for the prince was 
 brought at the same time — it is judged to be very ill compounded. 
 There is a witch in the north who affirms the queen shall have yet 
 two husbands. Arbroath shall be the second. The Duke [Bothwell] 
 shall not live a year at the most. In the fifth husband's time she 
 shall be burnt, which death divers speak of to happen to her, and it 
 is said she fears the same." — Drury to Cecil, 20th May 1567 ; Calen- 
 dar of State Papers (Foreign). 
 
 1 Cited by P. F. Tytler, vii. 88; Calendar of wState Papers 
 (Foreign), 24th April. The unknown writer leaves the unknown 
 receiver to make out his correspondent by mysteriously announcing the 
 letter to be written **by him that is yours who took you by the hand 
 at midnight.'* 
 
THE CARRYING OFF, 1567. 
 
 217 
 
 Merchiston, and to the north the western verge of the 
 new town. The affair passed quietly.^ 
 
 It is provoking when men who have partaken in critical 
 events tell of them, and yet tell so sparingly and drily 
 as to leave a world of untold matter which every reader 
 longs to know; but such are often the very points on 
 which practical men's words are fewest, because they do 
 not like to commit themselves. Sir James Melville, who 
 has left so many lively sketches of more trifling matters, 
 was one of the queen^s escort on the occasion, and he 
 tells us nothing more than that " the Earl Bothwell was 
 in her gait with a great company, and took her majesty 
 by the bridle. His men took the Earl of Huntly, the 
 Secretary Lethington, and me, and carried us captives to 
 Dunbar; all the rest were letten go free." Next day 
 Melville himself was released; so that, if he held his 
 tongue about what was afterwards done within the grim 
 fortress, he disappointed no just expectations. A young 
 and lovely princess taken captive and immured in the 
 fortress of a profligate and unscrupulous baron, is one of 
 the most approved elements of old romance, giving room 
 for the imagination to revel in all horrors and tyrannies. 
 On the question whether or not the queen was treated 
 with violence in Dunbar Castle there is no end of specu- 
 lation, but there is very little means of distinct knowledge. 
 To the shifting unsatisfactory character of all foundations 
 for a conclusion she herself added, by expressions which 
 were intended, and with subtle skill adapted, to raise a 
 doubt about her exemption from personal violence, and 
 to leave that doubt unsolved. 
 
 1 Buchanan finds a very subtle plot in the " Ravishment." It was 
 desirable, all things considered, that Bothwell should be furnished 
 with the technical protection of a royal pardon. It was the practice 
 in such documents to set forth the principal crime committed by the 
 malefactor, that the boundaries of the indemnity might be fully de- 
 fined, and to slump minor offences in a general definition. It was 
 not expedient to name the murder of her husband ; but a treasonable 
 attack on her own person was a very heavy crime, and by a little 
 sophistry might be made out to go further than the other, so as tc 
 leave it in the group of minor offences. 
 
2l8 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 The next step was to rid Bothwell of the burden of his 
 existing wife, and make him free to take another In the 
 letter in which the EngUsh statesmen are told of the in- 
 tended seizure, they are also told of the intention to 
 separate Bothwell from his wife — so well was it known 
 that this was to be, although the method might not be 
 exactly anticipated. Since it had to be forced through, 
 the method adopted is instructive about the state of the 
 public institutions of Scotland at that time, as well as of 
 the character of the persons concerned. The old power 
 of the Romish hierarchy to judge in matters of marriage 
 and divorce as part of the canon law was abolished by the 
 Acts of 1560, which abolished the Papal supremacy. As 
 there was at first no distinct substitute for the power so 
 exercised, some inconvenience was felt. By a suppliant 
 to the Court of Session in 1562, it was represented that, 
 because the consistorial jurisdiction is abolished, the said 
 complainer could get no cursing" — that is to say, no 
 civil process followed on the excommunication which the 
 ecclesiastical court could launch against the person who 
 had wronged him in a matter in which the canon law, as 
 administered by the old hierarchy, would have given him 
 redress.^ To fill up the gap thus caused in the adminis- 
 tration of civil justice, a court of four commissaries was 
 erected by royal authority in 1563, and was recast in 
 1566. In this court BothwelFs wife sued out a divorce 
 against him on the ground of adultery ; and it appears to 
 have been very easy to find, on an analysis of her hus- 
 band's actions, enough to justify a decision in her favour. 
 Sentence of divorce was accordingly pronounced against 
 him, at the instance of his wife, on the 3d of May.^ 
 
 1 Riddell's Peerage and Consistorial Law, 427. 
 
 ^ The marriage with Lady Jane Gordon was on the 22d of Feb- 
 ruary 1566, so that she was his wife for a year and two months. It 
 is curious to trace, in the pages of the genealogists, the after-life of 
 one who was in a manner drifted in among the stormiest incidents of 
 her day, and then after a short interval floated off into calm waters. 
 She lived to an old age, which left far behind all the political con- 
 ditions of her first-married life, and passed through successive scenes 
 performed by successive relays of actors. She had her vicissitudes, 
 but the way in which she took them showed a quiet spirit, fitted to 
 
THE DIVORCES, T567. 219 
 
 The exceptional condition, however, in which her 
 destined successor stood, made something more neces- 
 sary for the satisfactory conclusion of the aifair. The 
 superseding of the bishop's court by that of the commis- 
 saries was occasioned by those reforming Acts to which 1 
 the queen had never given the royal assent, which she 
 believed consequently to be invalid, and which every- 
 body beHeved she in her secret heart intended to re- 
 pudiate when the proper time came. Farther, by the 
 doctrine of her own Church, and the practice of the old 
 consistorial tribunal in Scotland, separation of man and 
 wife for adultery was not that nullifying of the marriage 
 which permitted the divorced person to marry again.^ ^ 
 It was therefore desirable to get the marriage annulled - 
 under the old law, and by the old hands, on such grounds 
 as would admit of Bothwell marrying again. There were 
 many difficulties in the way of this, and the steps taken 
 to overcome them make a rather complicated history. 
 
 According to the view of the queen, and doubtless of 
 all sincere followers of her Church, the Acts abolishing 
 the power of the Romish hierarchy were a nullity ; but it ^ 
 would not do to publish such a view by acting on it, and 
 that on a very critical and conspicuous occasion. By a 
 warrant of the queen, acting under her notions of prero- 
 gative, the consistorial authority was formally restored, 
 with the Archbishop of St Andrews as its head. This 
 court was constituted in the month of December 1566, 
 and therefore that act in itself cannot have been done, as 
 historians generally say it was, for the special purpose of 
 carrying out this divorce. It was, in fact, an attempt 
 following up the triumph of the Romish party — a trial 
 
 make the best of existing conditions. The account given of her in 
 Wood's Peerage, after her first marriage is disposed of in proper 
 form, is, — Secondly, 13 December 1573, to Alexander, eleventh 
 Earl of Sutherland, and had issue ; thirdly, to Alexander Ogilvy of 
 Boyne ; and died in 1629, cs^a^. eighty-four. She was a lady of great 
 prudence." 
 
 ^ The General Assembly in 1566 desired the resumption of this 
 principle — viz. , that the culpable party in such a divorce should not 
 be free to marry. — Book of the Universal Kirk, 54. 
 
220 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 how far a quiet step could be safely taken for the restora- 
 tion of old things. It did not pass in silence, for the 
 Reformed Church uttered a loud testimony against it. 
 The General Assembly memorialised the Privy Council, 
 saying that although the commission included some of 
 themselves, ^*yet can the Kirk noways be content that 
 the Bishop of St Andrews, ane common enemy to Christ, 
 use that jurisdiction, and also in respect of that coloured 
 commission he might again usurp his old usurped 
 authority.' ' They attribute it to their own negligence 
 that Satan had so far prevailed within the realm of late 
 days. We therefore," they say, ^^in the fear of our 
 God, and with grief and anguish of heart, complain unto 
 your honours ; yea, we must complain unto God, and to 
 all His obedient creatures, that that conjurit enemy of 
 Jesus Christ and cruel murtherer of our dear brethren, 
 most falsely styled Archbishop of St Andrews, is reponed 
 and restored by signature to his former tyranny." They 
 strongly suspect that the end of such things will be " to 
 cure the head of that venomous beast whilk once within 
 this realm, by the potent hand of God, was so banished 
 and broken down that by tyranny it could not hurt the 
 faithful." And then follow some protestations, instructive 
 in communicating to us the constitutional notions prev- 
 alent at the time. " The danger may be feared, say ye ; 
 but what remedy? It is easy, and at hand, Right 
 Honourable, if ye will not betray the cause of God and 
 leave your brethren, whilk never will be more subject to 
 that usurped tyranny than they will unto the devil him- 
 self Our queen belike is not well informed. She ought 
 not, nor justly may not, break the laws of this realm ; and 
 so, consequently, she may not raise up against us, with- 
 out our consent, that Roman Antichrist again, for in ane 
 lawful and free Parliament as ever was in the realm before 
 was that odious beast deprived of all jurisdiction, office, 
 and authority within this realm." ^ 
 
 The new tribunal thus protested against did not super- 
 sede the Protestant court, and does not seem to have 
 
 ^ Book of the Universal Kirk. 
 
THE DIVORCES, 1567. 
 
 221 
 
 transacted judicial business.^ Its history stands by itself 
 entirely clear of the great personal question of the day. In 
 fact, before the severance of Bothwell from his wife could 
 be accomplished, Mary had to come personally forward 
 and issue a special authority for that end. 
 
 On the 27th of April a special commission was issued 
 authorising the archbishop and certain other clergy to give 
 judgment in an action of divorce by the Earl Bothwell 
 against the Lady Jane Gordon, on the canonical ground 
 of relationship within the fourth degree of consanguinity, 
 and the celebration of marriage without the necessary dis- 
 pensation.^ So rapidly did this tribunal get through its 
 one piece of work, that the proceedings, begun on the sth 
 of May, were finished by judgment of divorce on the 7th. 
 The peerages and genealogies will be searched in vain for 
 the evidence of propinquity. But this is immaterial. Else- 
 where it has been found necessary at some length to ex- 
 plain the doctrine and practice by which the old Church 
 carried the rules of prohibition and the occasion for eccle- 
 siastical dispensation far beyond the scope of the legal and 
 decorous alliances on which pedigrees are raised. The 
 matter revealed in such inquiries is not so attractive as to 
 call for repetition.^ Let it suffice, therefore, that to ap- 
 
 ^ The ** signature" or commission under the sign-manual restoring 
 the consistorial jurisdiction of the archbishop is in the Register of the 
 Privy Seal (vol. xxxv. 99). It is in absolute terms, superseding the 
 authority of the Commissaries and the Court of Session, and provid- 
 ing compensation for the judges of that court, whose salaries partly 
 consisted of commissariat fees. It bears date 23d December 1566. 
 The remonstrance of the Assembly bears date 27th December. It is 
 addressed to the Privy Council, requesting them to **stay" the com- 
 mission. The record of the Great Seal, which, however, is imperfect, 
 does not contain the completed commission, nor is there any evidence 
 of its having been accepted by the Privy Council. From this, and 
 the circumstances mentioned in the text — viz., the proceedings before 
 the Commissaries and the separate commission to the archbishop to 
 adjudicate in the special case — it may be questioned whether the res- 
 toration of the archbishop's jurisdiction passed through all the proper 
 forms, or was, on the other hand, stayed." 
 
 ^ Riddell's Peerage and Consistorial Law, 433. 
 
 ^ See chapter xxxvii. The adaptation of the law to this important 
 occasion is very explicitly set forth by Riddell. — Inquiry into the Law 
 * and Practice in Scottish Peerages, 432 et seq. 
 
222 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 pearance in this, as in the other process, Bothwell was 
 favoured by his extensive participation in the prevalent 
 vices of the day. His wife could not only divorce him for 
 his conduct since their marriage, but there had been con- 
 duct before the marriage sufficient to render it null unless 
 it were specially protected. 
 
 There might be a latent difficulty, however. It was the 
 policy of the Church, in stretching her authority over the 
 social as well as the religious condition of the people, to 
 find a method of counteracting every power she exercised. 
 If she helped those who were eager to break the marriage- 
 tie, she could protect those who desired to make it indis- 
 soluble. Hence it was customary for the prudent rela- 
 tions of a bride to obtain a Dispensation from the nullifying 
 influence not merely of actual propinquity, if such there 
 were, but of anything that might be founded on the vicious 
 life led by the other party. We find Buchanan asserting 
 that such a Dispensation had been obtained on the mar- 
 riage of Bothwell with Lady Jane Gordon, and that it was 
 abstracted or concealed : as the charge stands in the ver- 
 nacular version, ^^All this while they kept close the Pope's 
 bull, by whilk the same oftence was dispensed with." ^ 
 
 ^ Buchanan's statement is: '*Apud judices Papisticos, ordinum 
 quidem decreto vetitos, tamen ab Archiepiscopo Sancti Andrse ad 
 hanc caussam cognoscendum datos, accusatur, quod ante matrimo- 
 nium cum propmqua uxo7'is shipri consuetudinefn habuisset : celato 
 interim Pontificis Romani diplomate, quo venia ejus culpse facta erat." 
 — Detectio, Jebb, i. 248. A portion of the proceedings in both suits 
 is given by Principal Robertson in his Appendix, No. 20. In the 
 process before the Commissaries, a certain Bessie Crawford has a 
 story to tell, which removes all difficulties. As appropriate to the 
 whole occurrence, the French ambassador commented on the peculiar 
 facilities for divorce in Scotland : Ilz ont une coustume estrange en 
 Angleterre, mais plus prattiquee en Escosse, de pouvcir se repudier 
 I'un I'aultre quant ilz ne se trouvent bien ensamble;" and then he 
 cites instances. — Teulet, ii. 157. But that the French too were famil- 
 iar with such things, is shown by an apt case in point. When, on 
 Queen Mary's first widowhood, the Duke of Aumale was making love 
 to her, the gossips of the Louvre had it that she would marry him if 
 he were free — '* qu'elle declara, qu'elle I'epouseroit, si par la mort de 
 sa femme, Antoinette de la Marck fille du Due de Bouillon, ou autre- 
 ment, il rentroit en liberte de se remarier." — Mem. de Castelnau, i. 
 52 S. The gossips were at fault, for, as we have seen, the young 
 
THE DIVORCES, 1567. 
 
 223 
 
 In the process for the dissolution of the marriage it is 
 expressly set forth that no dispensation had been obtained, 
 and the statement to the contrary was generally set down 
 as one of Buchanan^s calumnies. Later inquiries, how- 
 ever, show that such a dispensation existed, that it was 
 granted by Archbishop Hamilton in virtue of his legatine 
 powers, and that, although he did not bring it up to inter- 
 rupt the divorce, it was preserved, whether through his con- 
 nivance or not. This dispensation has recently been 
 discovered. By her for whom it was obtained as a pro- 
 tection from possible calamities, it had been retained at 
 the time when events so strange and unexpected rendered 
 it desirable to others that it never had existed. The re- 
 pudiated wife of Bothwell had quietly taken the documient 
 with her to the scene of her changed fortunes, and after 
 slumbering for three hundred years, the dispensation was 
 found among other genealogical documents preserved in 
 the muniments of the house of Sutherland.^ It is certain, 
 then, whatever we may infer from that certainty, that the 
 conditions necessary by the rules of her own religion to 
 render Queen Mary the lawful wife of Bothwell had not 
 been fulfilled. 
 
 The affair of the divorces was adjusted, though not con- 
 
 widow had other designs ; but it is clear that the duke's having a 
 wife was considered only a temporary impediment to such a marriage 
 if the two desired it. 
 
 ^ *' Letters of Dispensation by John, Archbishop of St Andrews, 
 Papal Legate in Scotland, in favour of James, Earl of Bothwell, and 
 Lady Jean Gordon, sister-german of George, Earl of Huntly, being 
 within the forbidden degrees of consanguinity, dated 13th March 
 1565." (Second report Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, 
 p. 177.) No one can anticipate, in anything relating to Queen Mary, 
 how wide may be the discussions to be opened by this discovery. 
 The discoverer, Dr John Stuart, says: **The document now dis- 
 covered proves that a dispensation was regularly procured before mar- 
 riage ; and as we find that Lady Jean Gordon did not found on it in 
 the consistorial proceedings before the archbishop (which ended in 
 the divorce), and it would seem to have been in her custody through- 
 out, and to have been carried by her to Dunrobin when she was mar- 
 ried to the Earl of Sutherland in 1573, the inference is, that her 
 consent had been gained to the divorce either at the instance of the 
 queen or of her own husband." — Ibid. 
 
224 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 eluded, while the queen was still in Dunbar Castle. On 
 the day when the Protestant divorce was issued, the t^vo 
 entered Edinburgh with a large body of followers, who on 
 the journey threw away their arms, to give the assemblage 
 the appearance of a peaceful pageant. On the 12th 
 occurred one of those curious pieces of pedantic formality 
 which accompany the several steps of this wild stor}\ It 
 was said that the supreme courts of law had doubts 
 whether their proceedings were valid while the queen, in 
 whose name they acted, was a captive. Whether or not 
 they really experienced such doubts, the opportunity was 
 taken for a solemn proclamation of their groundlessness. 
 It is on record in the proceedings of the Court of Session, 
 which mentions the presence of the prelates, the high 
 officers of state, and the Provost of Edinburgh. The 
 ^* declaration of the queen's liberty " followed that equi- 
 vocal tone in which she all along spoke of the affair : 
 ^•'Albeit her highness was commovit for the present time 
 of her taking at the said Earl Bothwell, yet since syne, 
 by his guid behaving towards her highness, and haifing 
 sure knowledge of his thankful service done by him in 
 t\Tne bygone, and for mair thankful service in tyme coming, 
 that her highness stands content with the said earl, and 
 has forgiven and forgives him and all others his complices." 
 Hence she intimated that she was minded to promote him 
 to further honour for his senices foresaid.^ The first 
 instalment of the further honour made its appearance on 
 the same day, when he was created Duke of Orkney and 
 Shetland. 
 
 And now the wedding was to come on. Some of the 
 preliminaries had already been adjusted. To those who 
 knew the character of the queen, the tendency of these 
 must have been the most astounding evidence yet furnished 
 of the absoluteness of the mastership that had been estab- 
 lished over both her heart and her intellect. No man's 
 life could more thoroughly deride the Puritanic religion 
 professed by him than Bothwell's ; yet he, an adventurer 
 eagerly grasping at the advancement in his reach, would 
 
 ^ Acts of Sederunt. 
 
THE WEDDING, 1567. 
 
 225 
 
 take it in no other than the Protestant form — while she, 
 the bigoted devotee of the old Church, who was sacrificing 
 everything else, sacrificed this too, and accepted the new 
 form. The ecclesiastical functions proper to the occasion 
 would have rested with Knox. He, however, was absent, 
 a thing to be regretted by all who would desire to add an 
 additional touch of picturesqueness to the scene. His 
 assistant John Craig, however, represented him pretty 
 faithfully. Craig proclaimed the banns from his pulpit, 
 and when afterwards called in question for doing so by 
 the General Assembly, he gave this account of the trans- 
 action. He had refused to make the proclamation, when 
 a messenger came from the queen to desire it. Being 
 afterwards shown a command under her hand, he con- 
 sulted his session or congregational court. Their discus- 
 sion seems to have been strong ; but the conclusion come 
 to was, that the intention of the sovereign might be 
 announced, leaving the final responsibility on those who 
 should carry out such intentions; and Craig, in giving 
 effect to this view, argued ingeniously enough that, if the 
 act to be carried out was so outrageous and abominable 
 as it was pronounced to be, it was doing good service to 
 give the world previous warning of the intention to perpe- 
 trate it ; and it was not his proclaiming, but the silence of 
 others, that permitted the event to come to pass. The 
 session came at the same time to a resolution that they 
 could neither assist in nor approve of such a marriage, as 
 it was contrary to a resolution of the General Assembly to 
 unite again in wedlock a person divorced for misconduct. 
 He made it, he says, a condition of the proclamation, that 
 he should declare his mind to Bothwell himself in the 
 presence of the Privy Council. It seems to have been 
 thought prudent to submit to this ; and Bothwell had to 
 listen to a castigation, for his conjugal misconduct and 
 other irregularities ; " the suspicion of collusion betwixt 
 him and his wife ; the sudden divorcement and proclaim- 
 ing within the space of four days ; and last, the suspicion 
 of the king's death, whilk his marriage wad confirm." 
 The object of this tirade naturally enough, as its author 
 says, **answerit nathing to my satisfaction.'* Craig 
 
 VOL. IV. p 
 
226 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 threatened to carry his views before a more congenial 
 audience ; and he kept his threat next Sunday, when 
 from the pulpit, as he says, " I took heaven and earth 
 to witness that I abhorred and detested that marriage, 
 because it was odious and scandalous to the world ; and 
 seeing the best part of the realm did approve it either by 
 flattery or by their silence, I desired the faithful to pray 
 earnestly that God would turn it to the comfort of this 
 realm that thing whilk they intended against reason and 
 good conscience." On this he was called before the 
 Council for having passed the bounds of his commission, 
 and there, still following his own narrative, I answered, 
 the bounds of my commission whilk were the Word of 
 God, good laws, and natural reason, were able to approve 
 whatsoever I spake ; yea, that their own conscience could 
 not but bear witness that sic a marriage wad be odious 
 and slanderous to all that should hear of it, if all the 
 circumstances thereof were rightly considered."^ 
 
 On the 14th, the day before the marriage, two docu- 
 ments were executed. One of them was a short assurance 
 by the queen, that the persons who had signed the bond 
 urging Bothwell on her as a husband should never be 
 called in question for doing so. It is doubted whether 
 the bond referred to is that signed at the celebrated supper, 
 or one of later date. The other paper is a contract of 
 marriage. It is cleverly and plausibly drawn, probably by 
 that accomplished draftsman Balfour, and manages with 
 much skill to neutralise the inequality of the match be- 
 tween the widow and " the right noble and potent prince, 
 James, Duke of Orkney, Earl Bothwell, Lord Hailes, 
 Crichton, and Liddesdale, Great Admiral of this realm of 
 Scotland.'' With equal skill it throws the responsibility 
 of this step on the distinguished persons who recommended 
 it, and represents her majesty as yielding, after full con- 
 sideration, to their urgent prayers, because she considered 
 their choice so thoroughly appropriate. There was no 
 discussion, as on the two previous occasions, about the 
 crown-matrimonial ; but she virtually did her best to raise 
 
 ^ See the proceedings in Anderson, ii. 278. 
 
THE WEDDING, 1567. 
 
 227 
 
 him to a joint occupancy of the throne, by stipulating that 
 the signature of both should be necessary to all state docu- 
 ments passing under the sign-manual.^ 
 
 A fit person for the performance of the ceremony was 
 found in Adam Bothwell, who had been Roman Catholic 
 Bishop of Orkney, and was a convert or an apostate, ac- 
 cordinglto the estimate people took of his sincerity. The 
 ceremony was performed on the 15th of May. Sir James 
 Melville says he went little about Court at that time ; but 
 it seems he could not resist the temptation to be present 
 at so remarkable a wedding, though he entertained con- 
 siderable fear of Bothwell, which would hardly be modi- 
 fied by his consciousness that he was then negotiating for 
 his enemy's destruction. BothwelFs savage nature, how- 
 ever, seems to have been soothed by prosperity. He had 
 some familiar talk and banter, trying to act the condescend- 
 ing prince to one whose sphere he had now left far below 
 him. There was but little said, and that not very brilliant; 
 but it is valuable, as the sole instance in which one finds 
 that mysterious demon of our history unbending into any- 
 thing like geniality : I found my Lord Due of Orkney 
 sitting at his supper. He said I had been a great stranger, 
 desiring me to sit down and sup with him. I said that I 
 had already supped. Then he called for a cup of wine and 
 drank to me, that I might pledge him like a Dutchman. 
 He bade me drink it out to grow fatter; ^for,' said he, 
 ^ the zeal of the commonweal has eaten you up and made 
 you sa lean.* I answered that every little member should 
 serve to some use ; but that the care of the commonweal 
 appertanet maist til him and the rest of the nobility, who 
 should be as fathers to the same. Then he said, I wist 
 well he would find a pin for every bore." This was in 
 reference to an old allegory about nature having made so 
 many circular holes and so many angular, with a set of 
 pins made to fit each, but mismanagement so confused 
 the whole that the angular pins were forced into the circu- 
 lar holes and the circular into the angular. Bothwell, in 
 
 1 The two documents here referred to have often been printed, and 
 are in Labanoff, ii. 22, 23. 
 
228 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 administering the high functions likely to devolve on him, 
 was not to make this mistake — a conceited announcement 
 arrogating capacities for statesmanship which his career 
 by no means warrants. The conclusion of the short scene 
 is characteristic : " Then he fell in purpose of gentlewomen, 
 speaking sic filthy language that I left him and passed up 
 to the queen, wha was very glad of my coming." ^ If in 
 this sort of eloquence he could shock one who had seen 
 in that age so much of the world, and that not always the 
 best of it, he must have been a master indeed in the inven- 
 tion and expression of lubricity. 
 
 Although one chronicler mentions that the ceremony 
 was performed in the Chapel Royal, the probabihty lies 
 with the other authorities who name the Council Chamber 
 as the place. Le Croc, the French ambassador, said he 
 was urged to attend, but declined. The attendance was 
 meagre, the ceremonial strictly in the Protestant form. It 
 was noted at the time, as one type of the reckless haste 
 with which the affair was driven through, that it was not 
 delayed to the expiry of the month of May, held by an old 
 traditionary prejudice to be unpropitious to the nuptials it 
 claims as celebrated within its own limits. The prejudice 
 still has a lingering existence. As placarding had become 
 the received method of expressing pubHc opinion, a line 
 from Ovid's Fasti, importing that they turned out to be 
 wicked women who accepted wedlock in that forbidden 
 month, was affixed to the palace door on the night after 
 the wedding. 2 
 
 The beginning of their wedded life resembled that of 
 any innocent young couple affluent in the sources of mag- 
 nificence and luxury. They were a good deal seen in 
 public, and frequently rode together in much bravery. 
 Stories were told how, when he, still preserving the eti- 
 quette of sovereign and subject, would attend her cap in 
 
 1 Melville, 178. 
 
 2 ** Nec vidiise tsedis eadem, nec virginis apta 
 Tempora ; quae nupsit non diuturna fuit. 
 Hac quoqiie de causa, si te proverbia tangunt 
 Mense malas Maio nubere vulgus ait." 
 
 —Fasti, lib. i 
 
 The last was the line selected. 
 
AFTER THE WEDDING, 1567. 229 
 
 hand, she would playfully snatch it and place it on his 
 head. It may, indeed, be counted one of the most remark- 
 able phenomena of the whole situation, that one of the 
 subtlest and acutest women ever born should, in her fool's 
 paradise, have been totally unconscious of the volcano she 
 was treading on. 
 
 Some business had to be done, however ; and, among 
 other things, came up the proper diplomatic communica- 
 tion of the event to foreign Courts. A long document of 
 extreme interest contains her instructions to William Chis- 
 holm, Bishop of Dunblane, sent as a special envoy to 
 France to convey the intelligence and make suitable 
 explanations. This document is curiously wavering and 
 inconsistent. It begins with a eulogistic biography of 
 her husband — what the French would call an eloge. His 
 great services and merits are set forth at length ; and 
 since it has to be admitted that he was sometimes under 
 the cloud of the royal displeasure, this is attributed to 
 the envyings that ever dog high merit, and are successful 
 for a time in obscuring it. In this portion of the docu- 
 ment it is made clear that Bothwell amply deserved his 
 preferment. 
 
 Having shown that what she had done was exactly what 
 in justice and duty she should have done, she next tells 
 how the surrounding conditions coerced her, so that, as a 
 political necessity, she could not do otherwise. She found 
 that his eminent services to the state and to her own per- 
 son had not been achieved without exciting ambitious 
 thoughts. She saw the somewhat audacious tenor of these, 
 and tried to administer a judicious check to them. She 
 failed. There was another element besides ambition which 
 made him rash and headstrong in his acts — a devouring 
 love for her These combined motives conduced to rash 
 acts, which brought her into his power. Then, when she 
 considered her position, it was not merely that she was at 
 the mercy of a man exulting in the consciousness of un- 
 paralleled heroism and statesmanship, and frantically in 
 love with herself,' but the whole nation was with him. She 
 referred to the bond signed at the notable supper as a 
 great demonstration of the chiefs of the state, such as a 
 
230 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 sovereign cannot without danger resist. The current in 
 Bothwell's favour was so strong that not one man in Scot- 
 land appeared to stand uj) for her. Then she bethought 
 her if she was right in her obstinate resistance. She began 
 to yield to the wishes of her people, and at the same time 
 her heart relented to the merits and the deep affection of 
 her lover. Further, wearied out by the turbulence of the 
 country she has to rule over, she feels how great a relief 
 it will be to herself, how great a gain to law and order, 
 that she shall have for her husband a man who has com- 
 mand in his nature, and can be trusted to rule her fierce 
 subjects. These, indeed, would never "digest a foreign 
 husband ; " and of her own subjects " there was none, 
 either for the reputation of his house or for the worthiness 
 of himself, as well in wisdom, valiantness, as in all other 
 good qualities, to be preferred or yet compared to him 
 whom we have taken." Again the document takes a twist. 
 There must be something said to palliate the extraordinary 
 haste in this royal marriage. Such alliances were generally 
 affairs on which a sort of congress of friendly royalties de- 
 liberated. It was but common decorum that she should 
 have consulted the King of France, the queen-mother, her 
 uncle the cardinal, and some others. Here, again, she 
 throws the blame on the importunity of her lover, and the 
 impatient pressure of the ruling powers of the country 
 Then, as if the writer felt alarm that what she said in her 
 own vindication must react against the other, she pleads 
 vehemently that all her friends must be the friends of him 
 who is inseparably joined to her. The past is past. If 
 he has been to blame, it was because his devotion over- 
 came his discretion. 
 
 In some measure there is a key to the enigmas of this 
 set of instructions, in another given to Sir Robert Melville 
 for his guidance in explaining the affair to Elizabeth. This 
 document is much shorter than the other. It bears solely 
 on the political necessities which brought about the mar- 
 riage — the necessity that she should have a husband 
 capable to rule her turbulent people, their detestation of 
 foreigners, the eminent services and merits of her husband, 
 and the pressure of the ruling families. Nothing is said 
 
AFTER THE WEDDING, 1567. 
 
 231 
 
 about the machinations of Bothwell, so fully set forth in 
 the other letter. If we abstract these portions from the 
 instructions for France, the remainder is in substance 
 identical with the English letter. A comparison of the 
 two leaves the impression that a note of the general policy 
 to be adopted in communicating the marriage to foreign 
 powers had been drawn up with care and deliberation, and 
 that the queen had added her own particular story to the 
 French instructions. This would account for the motley 
 and almost contradictory character of the document. It 
 is unsafe to adopt absolute theories on such internal evi- 
 dence ; but there is no escaping the vivid impression that, 
 however the document was put together, those portions 
 which narrate the personal conduct of Bothwell towards 
 her are directly from herself They endeavour to make 
 out that she yielded to what could not be resisted ; yet 
 there is a consciousness throughout that she was guilty in 
 not resisting. While she makes out to her old friends of 
 France that the man she has married is in every way 
 deserving of her love and of his eminent position — that 
 he was the man of all others best fitted to be her hus- 
 band — that political conditions made the act a necessity, — 
 how comes it that she gives other and meaner reasons 
 for her conduct, and gives them in an apologetic, a 
 pleading, almost a penitential tone? My own opinion 
 is, that her conscience then accused her of her one act 
 of disaffection to the Church of Rome. On all other 
 occasions — when she pursued Huntly to ruin and death 
 — when she interpreted her engagement to support the 
 Church by law established on a promise to support the 
 Reformation — when she tolerated, or even caressed her 
 brother and his heretic followers — she could plead that 
 she bent to circumstances, in order that, when the right 
 time came, she might stand up in fuller strength as the 
 champion of the Church. But here she was struggling, 
 and struggling in vain, to prove that the force of an 
 engrossing passion had swept her for a time away from 
 her allegiance ; nor could she well assuage her own con- 
 science or the wrath of her party by a brief declaration 
 that, though forced to unite herself to a heretic, she will 
 
232 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 hold fast by her religion, and does not intend to leave the 
 same for him or any man upon earth. ^ 
 
 The newly-wedded couple were left much to each 
 other's society. Le Croc, the French ambassador, notices 
 the melancholy emptiness of Holyrood, with a touch of 
 the ennui which people of his nation are apt to feel in 
 deserted banquet-halls.^ 
 
 ^ These letters are published by Keith from what he calls shat- 
 tered MS." They have been on all hands accepted as genuine, and 
 are reprinted by Labanoff, ii. 31 et seq. Obtaining them from a 
 printed source, that careful editor was not able to follow towards 
 them his laudable practice of explaining whether each document 
 printed by him was taken from a contemporary copy or from the 
 original, and in the latter case whether it was merely signed by Mary 
 or holograph. It cannot be believed that she was sufficiently 
 acquainted with the vernacular to have written the long letter for 
 France straight off in her own hand. But whether or not it be a 
 contemporary translation of a letter written by her in French, I 
 believe that virtually all that criticises her husband's conduct is 
 her own. 
 
 2 Teulet, ii. 155. 
 
233 
 
 CHAPTER XLVIL 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 {Continued.) 
 
 SYMPTOMS OF A RISING— THE QUEEN AND BOTHWELL TAKE ALARM 
 AND LEAVE HOLYROOD — THE QUEEN IN BORTHWICK — ESCAPES 
 THENCE AND JOINS HER HUSBAND — THEY TAKE REFUGE IN DUN- 
 BAR — PROVISIONS FOR THE SAFETY OF THE INFANT PRINCE — THE 
 CONFEDERATE LORDS GET POSSESSION OF EDINBURGH — THE ARMED 
 CONFERENCE AT CARBERRY — THE QUEEN'S SURRENDER, AND 
 REMOVAL TO EDINBURGH— DIFFICULTIES IN DEALING WITH HER 
 THERE— SHE IS TAKEN TO LOCHLEVEN— DISCOVERY OF A CASKET 
 — ITS CONTENTS SAID TO BE POEMS AND LOVE-LETTERS ADDRESSED 
 BY MARY TO BOTHWELL— HOW THE CONFEDERATES RESOLVED TO 
 DEAL WITH THIS DISCOVERY — EXAMINATION OF THE LETTERS— 
 THEIR NARRATIVE OF THE QUEEN'S VISIT TO DARNLEY AT GLAS- 
 GOW COMPARED WITH THE OTHER NARRATIVE OF THE SAME BY 
 CRAUFURD— QUEEN MARY ABDICATES — CONCLUSION OF A HISTORI- 
 CAL EPOCH. 
 
 Some time passed over before anything occurred to break 
 the surface of the tranquil happiness which the new- 
 married couple appeared to enjoy. The first alarm of 
 danger seems to have occurred in this manner. On the 
 28th of May the usual proclamation was issued for a 
 raid," or assemblage of the feudal force, for an attack 
 upon the border marauders. The array was called upon 
 to meet the queen and her dearest spouse " — the force 
 of the midland counties on the 15th of June, that of the 
 border on six hours' warning. ^ It was said at the time 
 
 See the proclamations in Keith, 395. 
 
234 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 that the intention was to use the army when assembled 
 for other purposes. However this may be, instead of the 
 usual clanging and bustling preliminaries of such a gather- 
 ing, there was an ominous silence; and whatever was 
 doing among the barons and their retainers, they were not 
 flocking to the border. Those who were absent from 
 Court stayed at home ; those who had remained in Edin- 
 burgh slipped gradually away. Among them was Lething- 
 ton, who said his life was in danger. It was as with 
 Macbeth when he said, " The thanes fly from me.'' 
 Frightened by this silence, and probably by other hints, 
 on the 6th or 7th of June the queen and her husband 
 suddenly left Holyrood, and shut themselves up in Borth- 
 wick Castle, twelve miles from Edinburgh. Edinburgh 
 Castle would have been the natural place of retreat ; but 
 that, for reasons to be presently mentioned, was not 
 available. They were scarcely safe in Borthwick when 
 the Lords Morton and Hume suddenly appeared with a 
 hostile following of some six or eight hundred men — these 
 were part of a larger force which had crept from various 
 districts towards Edinburgh, expecting to seize the queen 
 and her husband in Holyrood. 
 
 Borthwick, a thick-walled square tower like the old 
 Norman keeps in England, was strong for a private forta- 
 lice, but could not stand artillery, as Cromwell afterwards 
 showed by the results of a round or two. It could not 
 accommodate a sufficient garrison to cope with an army 
 such as was gathering round it, and the fugitives in their 
 haste had not brought even such a garrison as it could 
 hold. There was nothing for it but flight or surrender 
 for Bothwell; as to the queen, the muster professed rather 
 to deliver than to attack her. Bothwell managed to 
 escape. The queen might have joined the party arrayed 
 against the castle; for if she had hitherto acted under 
 either coercion or fear of her husband, both were at an 
 end. With him all was suddenly over — there was not the 
 faintest chance of his finding a party that would hold out 
 for himself alone. 
 
 She took a different course, however. At dead of night 
 she got herself let out alone, dressed as a page, and, 
 
THE RISING, 1567. 
 
 mounting a pony, rode out upon the wild moorland. 
 About two miles south-west of Borthwick is the tower of 
 Cakemuir or Black Castle. There she met Bothwell with 
 a small party of followers. There could be nothing more 
 natural and seemly, under ordinary conditions, than that 
 the captive wife should flee into the arms of her husband ; 
 but the specialties of the event made it significant and 
 unfortunate for the stability of some amiable theories. 
 They rode through the night to Dunbar ; and thus, on a 
 third memorable occasion, the queen entered that fortress. 
 
 So came the outbreak of a combination which had been 
 rapidly maturing. The royal pair, having made no pre- 
 paration to meet it, seem not to have been conscious of 
 their danger; but it was palpable to the French ambas- 
 sador, who, within three days after the marriage, wrote 
 home that Bothwell was a doomed man.^ 
 
 Before the marriage, tiie leading barons had been 
 arranging with each other to cope with Bothwell. Gradu- 
 ally their objects went farther, and they spoke of dealing 
 with the queen herself as one whom it was dangerous to 
 leave in possession of the power she held. They opened 
 communications with Elizabeth's ministers. That active 
 spirit, Kirkcaldy of Grange, was the soul of their consulta- 
 tions and projects. He was one of themselves, as a landed 
 man, who could bring some followers into the field ; yet 
 was he not restrained to the diplomatic reserve of the 
 heads of the great houses, but could go about making 
 himself busy everywhere as adviser, exhorter, or mes- 
 senger. When they had felt their way so far as to know 
 what reliance they could place in each other, they sought 
 Elizabeth. She was so far with them that she was pre- 
 pared to express any amount of reprobation against the 
 chief actors in the late events in Scotland. There is 
 reason to believe that these really vexed the rival, and 
 rather malignant rival as she was, of the great actress in 
 them. The utter ruin of one rival is not always pleasant 
 to the other. It annihilates those elements of comparison 
 which impart a zest to emulation and rivalry. There is 
 
 ^ Teulet, ii. 155. 
 
236 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 nothing either to boast or feel internal satisfaction at in 
 being something better than an utter wreck. Elizabeth 
 had thus sufficient inclination to pour any amount of 
 censure on the offenders ; but she was startled when the 
 Scots spoke to her about bringing their queen to justice, 
 and making a new provision for the head of the govern- 
 ment in the name of the infant heir. All her sensitive- 
 ness to the danger of letting subjects question the doings 
 of their sovereigns was roused at once. To meet the 
 exigency that the young prince was in danger, she offered 
 to take him into her own charge — a proposal likely to 
 excite derisive smiles among the Scots lords, who felt that 
 the essence of their whole strength lay in the existence 
 and the possession of the puling infant. 
 
 The question, indeed, of his safety proved an important 
 turning-point in the progress of events. Mar, who had 
 him in charge in Stirling Castle, was uneasy for his safety, 
 judging the castle not sufficiently strong. Sir James 
 Melville hints, but does not flatly say, that the queen her- 
 self had pressed Mar to give up the custody of her son, 
 and that he had resisted, refusing to do so without the 
 authority of the Estates of Parliament.^ The question 
 was, What was to be done in the difficulty of all the places 
 sufficiently strong to retain so precious a charge being in 
 the hands of the enemy? 
 
 Melville claims much credit for the diplomatic skill 
 with which he conquered this difficulty. Edinburgh Castle 
 was in charge of one of Bothwell's creatures. Sir James 
 Balfour. His master, however, had lately shown some 
 suspicions that his devotion was not sufficiently implicit. 
 Melville, giving a direction to the uneasiness thus created, 
 informed Balfour that he had it from Whitelaw, the cap- 
 
 ^ My Lord Mar, wha was a true nobleman, wald not deliver him 
 out of his custody, alleging that he could not without consent of the 
 three Estates. 'Yet he was sa oft pressed be them that had the auto- 
 rity in their hands, that he was put to ane strait after that he had 
 made divers refuses ; that he made his moan to me among others, 
 praying me to help to saif the prince out of their hands wha had slain 
 his father,, and had made his vaunt already among his familiars that, 
 if he could get him ains in his hands, he suld warrant him fra reveng- 
 ing of his father's death. "—Melville. 179. 
 
THE CONFEDERATES, 1567. 237 
 
 tain of the Castle of Dunbar, that Bothwell was deter- 
 mined to take Edinburgh Castle from its present captain, 
 and appoint the Laird of Beanston, a Hepburn, in his 
 place. Melville then enlarged on the great part Balfour 
 would play, if he should be the means of saving the queen 
 and the prince from the man who was also going to sacri- 
 fice himself.^ 
 
 The immediate consequence of this dealing seems 
 to have been that, contrary to the general expectation, 
 when the confederates returned to Edinburgh from Borth- 
 wick they were not fired on from the castle, but easily 
 forced the city gates and entered — welcome to the in- 
 habitants, who saw them pour in from the alleys leading 
 to the gates and form on the High Street. James Beaton, 
 the archbishop's brother, having gone to offer his duty to 
 the fugitives at Dunbar, was sent by them with a mes- 
 sage to Balfour to hold the castle for the queen and punish 
 the rebels. 2 He found that the confederates had estab- 
 lished a watch on the Castle-hill ; and having managed 
 to pass it, two of the leaders — the Lairds of Tullibardine 
 and Rossythe — followed him to within twenty paces of 
 the castle gate and brought him back. He managed 
 afterwards to evade their diligence and get access to Bal- 
 four ; but he found ^' the captain very cauld in his an- 
 swering to her majesty's commandments. Presently 
 afterwards Secretary Lethington appeared among the 
 confederates — a token that there was life in their cause, 
 and more to be thrown into it. He went to the castle, 
 and, according to Beaton, ^' spak with the captain the 
 space of three hours." This seems to have been con- 
 clusive, and the great fortress passed from Bothwell to 
 the confederates. These took rapid steps to bring the 
 machinery of government into their own hands, to be 
 worked, of course, in the queen's name, and for the pur- 
 pose of releasing her out of the restraint in which she 
 was held. They invaded the " cunyie-house ^' or mint, and 
 took possession of the fount and the " cunyie-irons,'* or 
 matrices for stamping coins. They offered a bounty for 
 
 1 Melville, 180. 
 
 2 Letter printed in Laing, ii. 106. 
 
238 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 recruits, and readily obtained them. Finding themselves 
 decidedly popular with the citizens, they made a curious 
 appeal to their susceptibility by hanging up a picture of 
 the finding of Darnley's body, the young prince bending 
 over it with the legend, Judge and avenge my cause, O 
 Lord ! 
 
 One of the earliest steps of the confederates was to 
 issue a manifesto ; and as they were strong and in com- 
 mand of the capital, it was pitched in a high tone of 
 authority. It is dated on the nth June. It is a power- 
 fully-reasoned and eloquent document — very different in 
 tone from the pedantic formality of the bonds and other 
 documents so plentiful on the side of the queen and her 
 new husband. It refers to the murder in due terms of ^ 
 horror and indignation ; and points out that, in a nation 
 where such crimes not only go unpunished but uninvesti- 
 gated, no one knows what deeds may be committed, and 
 no one, high or low, can feel security for life. They are 
 banded together for the investigation of this crime ; for 
 the release of the queen from the bondage in which she 
 is held ; " to cause justice be ministrate equally to all 
 the subjects of this commonweal, and to purge this realm 
 of the infamy and slander wherewith as yet it remains 
 bruited among all nations.^' In this document there is 
 not a breath of suspicion or of disloyalty to the queen ; 
 the object held most prominently forward of all is to 
 rescue her from her present thraldom and danger. ^ 
 
 Next day a proclamation was issued in the name of 
 " the Lords of Privy Council and nobility." It charged * 
 Bothwell with having murdered the king, and afterwards 
 used other unlawful means to seduce his sovereign into 
 " ane unhonest marriage.'^ It narrates, in its own way, 
 and with its own colours, the other events that had oc- 
 curred, and asserts that he had made preparations whilk 
 we look can be with na other effect but to commit the 
 like murther upon the son as was upon the father.'* Of- 
 ficers-at-arms are directed to pass to the market-crosses 
 of Edinburgh, Perth, Dundee, St Andrews, Stirling, and 
 
 ^ Anderson, i. 128. 
 
THE CONFEDERATES, 1567. 239 
 
 Other places, and charge all the lieges to be ready, at 
 three hours' warning, to join their banner, and aid them 
 in delivering the queen from captivity, punishing the mur- 
 derers, and rescuing the royal infant from his father's fate.^ 
 
 On the night of the 14th the confederates heard that 
 Both well was approaching Edinburgh with a force, and 
 they resolved to go forth and meet him. One of their 
 reasons for not abiding his attack in their stronghold 
 appears to have been that they could not have much re- 
 liance on the new-born virtue of the captain of the castle, 
 should he be tempted by the presence of his old master at 
 the head of a considerable force. They marched at two 
 o'clock next morning. They were in all eighteen hundred 
 horsemen and four hundred footmen — half of these were 
 craftsmen, accustomed to watch-and-ward duty in the 
 town. They came in sight of their enemy as they ap- 
 proached Musselburgh. 
 
 Let us look now to the other side. The fugitives 
 reached the fortress of Dunbar at three o'clock in the 
 morning. The author of the Diary, attributed to the cap- 
 tain of Ir.chkeith, hearing of their arrival, set off to join 
 them. He found them at Dunbar with hardly any one but a 
 few domestics. He noticed the peculiarity of the queen's 
 dress, especially the brevity of the red petticoat, and that 
 she had prepared a couple of casts of hawks and two 
 single birds for the field. She had other matters, how- 
 ever, to busy her, and was deep in despatches and mes- 
 sages to bring together a force. She set off next day to 
 Haddington, with a guard of two hundred harquebussiers 
 and sixty horsemen. By her own exertions and her hus- 
 band's, she had six hundred horsemen round her when 
 she reached Haddington. Their recruiting was in the very 
 centre of the estates and jurisdictions with which she had 
 invested Bothwell ; and the old retainers of his house on 
 the border, where he reigned almost supreme as warden, 
 were within reach. The queen went on to Seton, her old 
 haunt, and when there she could count sixteen hundred 
 followers. At what point in the progress her husband 
 
 1 Anderson, i. 131. 
 
240 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 joined her, those who narrate the affair, otherwise so 
 minute, give no information. On the 15 th, however, he 
 had a gathering that, in numbers at least, seemed fit to 
 cope with the confederates. These, however, had greatly 
 the advantage in condition for the field. With the excep- 
 tion of a few sturdy burgesses, as the eyewitnesses note, 
 they were mounted gentlemen, trained to fighting, and in 
 excellent condition and discipline. Eighteen hundred of 
 them were mounted ; and in the sixteenth century, though 
 artillery was breaking down the enormous superiority of 
 horsemen over footmen, that would have been a formida- 
 ble element in a considerable army. Le Croc, who no- 
 ticed the preponderance of horsemen and their fine con- 
 dition, also noticed, as a specialty he seems not to have 
 seen before, that the Scots horsemen when halting aban- 
 doned the saddle, and only mounted for actual fighting. 
 Bothwell's men were hastily collected ; there had been no 
 time to handle them, so as to know what they were fit 
 for. He had no good captains ; and, as an onlooker re- 
 marked, they were chiefly commons or peasants. He 
 had with him a few cannon brought from Dunbar, and 
 a portion of these he posted at a ford a little above Mus- 
 selburgh. 
 
 To those anywise acquainted with the ground, it will 
 be best understood how the two armies stood to each 
 other by noting that the Esk, which passes Dalkeith and 
 Musselburgh, was between them when they first saw each 
 other. Bothwell's troops were on the south-east side, 
 keeping the upper ridge of the hills or banks. The con- 
 federates crossed the river, and competed for the higher 
 ground. They seem to have fidgeted about, trying as 
 well to occupy high ground as to get rid of the annoyance 
 of the sun being in their face, for it was a clear hot day. 
 The country presents no decided sweep of predominant 
 rising ground, but undulates ; and so both forces occupied 
 an elevation, with a burn running in the declivity between, 
 now cut by a branch railway. The position taken up by 
 Bothwell on Carberry Hill, where there remained some of 
 the earthworks left by the English army after the battle of 
 Pinkie, is still called Queen Mary's Mount. 
 
CONFERENCE AT CARBERRY, 1567. 
 
 241 
 
 While they were watching each other, Le Croc, the 
 French ambassador, appeared on the scene, his diplomatic 
 mind sorely perplexed by the anomalous sight. Here 
 was royalty on the one side, and rebelhous subjects on 
 the other. But with these was the bulk of the rank, states- 
 manship, and military capacity of the country — the men 
 with whom he used to hold counsel as its government 
 heads ; here, too, was an army, small, but respectable both 
 for the social condition of the men and their effective 
 training. On the side of royalty he saw crime, folly, a 
 few border lairds for a court, and a force of undrilled 
 peasants. Le Croc, however, wished to be of service. 
 He was a man of kindly nature, and, as representing the 
 crown that had so long exercised a high influence in 
 Scotland, he sought to do what he could to stay a conflict 
 that must be the first of a civil war. In fact he must have 
 felt that whatever he did on the occasion might have a 
 material influence on the interests of his own country, and 
 on his own position and repute as a statesman. The tone 
 of the diplomacy of the day shows that the French Court 
 at once took the alarm about the ancient alliance. It was 
 predicted that the end of the doings at Holyrood would 
 be that Scotland, severed from France, would be attached 
 to England. The instructions to Le Croc and others 
 pressed him to do his utmost to avert this calamity ; and, 
 in the sincerity of urgent pleading, the importance of 
 keeping a hold on Scotland was set forth in terms that 
 would have made any true Scot on either side indignant.^ 
 His way led first to the force of the confederates. With 
 these he held talk, but not so long as to give the impression 
 that he favoured their cause. Finding there no opening 
 for accommodation, he left them, and returned in three 
 hours to find the aspect of things unchanged. He be- 
 sought them, for the love of God, and in the name of his 
 master, who wished well both to the queen and to them, 
 to try and find a way to accommodation. They said 
 
 ^ "Le desir et intention principale de sa majeste est de conserver 
 le royaume d'Escosse a sa devotion." — Memoir to, or communicated 
 to, Le Croc; Teulet (8vo ed.), ii. 324. 
 
 VOL. IV. Q 
 
242 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 there was no other but the queen's giving up her husband 
 to them. Speak of it, he said, as they would, their act 
 was war against their queen; and should God favour 
 them so that they gained a battle, they would be more 
 than ever at a loss how to act. They said there were 
 just two ways of averting bloodshed : the one was for the 
 queen to part with the traitor in whose hands she was, the 
 other was for him to step forth prepared for single combat. 
 He would find one ready to fight him, and another, and 
 another, up to ten or a dozen, if he desired it The 
 ambassador said both alternatives would be offensive to 
 the queen, and he would have to do with neither : had 
 they nothing else to offer? No, nothing; and in strong 
 language they swore that they would get the truth of the 
 king's death laid bare. He seems to have found himself 
 in controversy with them. He intended, apparently, if 
 he saw any hope of good results, to have passed at his 
 ease between the two forces, bringing matters by degrees 
 to a reconciliation. Having found as yet nothing but 
 defiance among the confederates, he proposed to cross 
 over and speak with the queen. This was objected to. 
 He complained loudly of the awkward position in which 
 he was thus placed. Communicating with them alone, 
 he would appear to throw his weight into their side. 
 They had no right to put him in that position ; he must 
 retire if he were not to see the queen. No restraint was 
 put on him; but to pass over to the queen's force he 
 required to have a proper convoy. He does not tell who 
 they were who were so discourteous as to refuse him this ; 
 but he describes with vividness how Secretary Lethington 
 came forward with graceful courtesy, expressed his respect 
 for the ambassador of so great a king, to whom he and 
 his friends offered their humble duty, desiring earnestly 
 that the old alliance between the two nations might exist 
 uninterrupted. He told the ambassador frankly that he was 
 free to come and go at his will between the two forces, 
 and would be provided, so far as concerned their side, 
 with the means of doing so. They gave him an escort of 
 fifty horse, who had to take him beyond their own proper 
 lines; for he found that there had already crossed the 
 
CONFERENCE AT CARBERRY, 1567. 243 
 
 brook, in advance on the queen's party, some two hundred 
 troopers, with nme hundred as a support. 
 
 He was brought first in presence of the queen alone ; 
 and having paid his duty, he told her what grief the 
 knowledge of her present position would bring to the King 
 of France, and also to the queen — as to whom, however, 
 the sincerity of his remark may be doubted. He told her 
 that he had spoken with the confederate lords, and what they 
 had said, begging her to weigh their words and intentions 
 well; for they were still her loving subjects, though the 
 position they had taken might look otherwise. She said 
 that they used her very ill, since she had only complied 
 with their own bond, and taken the husband they had 
 dictated to her. Nevertheless, if they would acknowledge 
 his position and ask his pardon, she was ready to open 
 her arms to them. 
 
 At this point the husband came up. He and the 
 ambassador saluted each other ; but the proud French- 
 man specially notes that he declined the embrace of 
 friendship. He tells how Bothwell demanded, with an 
 air of assurance, and in a loud voice that his followers 
 might hear, if it was he that was wanted. The ambassador 
 answered aloud that he had spoken to the other force, and 
 they had assured him they were the very humble subjects 
 and servants of the queen ; and then, in a whisper for his 
 own particular ear, that they were his mortal enemies. 
 Bothwell, again speaking so as to be heard around, asked 
 what he had done to them. He had never wished to 
 offend any one, but desired to please all ; they were in- 
 fluenced by mere envy of his greatness ; but every man was 
 free to enjoy his own good fortune ; and there was not one 
 of them but would gladly be in his place. Then he be- 
 came very earnest, and besought the ambassador, for the 
 love of God, to relieve the queen from a position which 
 gave him great pain, and also to prevent bloodshed. Le 
 Croc he said was free to tell the confederates that, though 
 he had the honour to be husband to the queen, he would 
 enter in gage of battle with any of them, provided he were 
 of proper quality ; and he would fight, holding his cause 
 to be so just that he felt assured God would be with him. 
 
244 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 But the queen forbade this, and Le Croc declined to take 
 the message. 
 
 Bothwell then remarked that more talk was useless ; 
 he saw his enemies coming, some of them having passed 
 the brook. He hinted to the ambassador that, if he de- 
 sired to imitate him who mediated between the armies 
 of Scipio and Hannibal, he should hold himself impartial, 
 and take part with neither side, but stand aloof during the 
 fighting and see the best fun that ever was ; and if he 
 would imitate this example, he would have the like, for he 
 would see good fighting. Le Croc said it was not where 
 the queen and these two armies were concerned that he 
 would enjoy such a sight ; on the contrary, it had never 
 been his lot to behold a scene that could so grieve him. 
 Some more talk of a general character they seem to have 
 had before parting. Bothwell boasting of his own strength, 
 the other admitted that he had a greater number of men — 
 four thousand, while they had some five hundred fewer, 
 and he had three pieces of artillery — but were all to be 
 trusted to hold by his cause ? Le Croc had just come 
 from a force gallantly and sagaciously led, where there 
 were several wise heads, and all were resolute ; but here 
 was no one to be depended on but the leader, and he 
 questioned if more than a half would stand by him. In 
 fact several slipped over to the other side, and the force 
 was much weakened by many others falling out to refresh 
 themselves in the hot day. Le Croc bade adieu to the 
 queen mth extreme regret, leaving her with the tear in her 
 eye. He went back to the confederate lords, and told 
 them the condition on which the queen would be recon- 
 ciled to them ; but they were resolute, and would have 
 no more discussion ; and each taking his morion in his 
 hand, bade him for God's sake depart, thanking him for 
 his well-meant eftbrts. He withdrew accordingly, and re- 
 turned to Edinburgh with a heavy heart. 
 
 After he went, the two forces, which had stood immov- 
 able from eleven in the forenoon till five in the afternoon, 
 crept near each other — but each still sought an elevation ; 
 and when they were very close, it required that the one 
 making the attack should go down into a little valley in 
 
CONFERENCE AT CARBERRY, 1567. 245 
 
 the first place. The ambassador noticed the banners. 
 The queen's was the royal Hon ; that of the confederate 
 lords, their favourite picture of the murdered man and the 
 infant prince.^ 
 
 Presently a small party of the queen's force descended 
 and proffered a park. They were joined by a like body 
 on the other side, and it was determined between them 
 that the gage of battle should be tried. Tullibafdine, 
 understood to have been active in the affair of the accu- 
 satory placards, came forward, but Bothwell declined to 
 acknowledge him as of sufficient rank. He wished to 
 measure swords with Morton, but this life the confederates 
 thought too valuable to be so risked. Lindsay was the 
 next. He imitated, so far as was consistent with Pro- 
 testant usage, the religious ceremony of the old gage of 
 battle, and prayed on his knees conspicuously between 
 the two forces. When the queen's consent was asked, 
 she wavered, appeared to yield to such a sacrifice for 
 the avoidance of bloodshed, but in the end forbade the 
 combat. 
 
 The confederates now were determined to advance ; 
 and it became clear to Bothwell that his own party, 
 thinned by deserters, and not all disposed to combat, 
 would not stand the charge of the well-disciplined force 
 descending into the hollow. Seeing this, it became part 
 of the policy of the confederates to prevent the escape of 
 Bothwell ; and Kirkcaldy of Grange was detached, with 
 two hundred mounted men, to flank the enemy, and in- 
 tercept his retreat to Dunbar. The queen observing 
 Kirkcaldy, sent a message desiring to have conference 
 
 1 Le Croc describes it : *' Une enseigne blanche, oil il y avoit ung 
 homme mort aupres d'un arbre, et ung enfant qui est a genoulx, re- 
 presentant le prince de ce royaume, qui tient ung escrit oil il y a 
 * Revenche, O mon Dieu, de ma juste cause ! ' " The captain of 
 Inchkeith, who seems to have had a heraldic mind, describes it with 
 a characteristic difference : '* Une ansigne blanche en quoy estoit tire 
 ung abre vert, ayant une branch rompue, ung homme mort au pied, 
 vestu d'une chemise blanche, dans un champ vert, et ung enfant assis 
 audessus de son chef, tenant ung escriteau en sa main, disant, * O 
 Seigneur, juge et revange ma querelle ! ' " — Teulet (8vo ed.), ii. 306, 
 318. 
 
246 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 with him ; and having got a safe- conduct, he consented. 
 He appears to have bluntly told the queen that all would 
 honour and serve her if she would abandon the murderer 
 of her husband. Melville tells us that, while he so spoke, 
 " the Earl Bodwell had appointed a soldier to shoot him, 
 until the queen gafe a cry, and said that he should not do 
 her that shame wha had promised that he should come 
 and return safely." This incident is not mentioned by 
 the other narrators. It is not quite clear whether it was 
 then, or when called on a second time to confer with 
 the queen, that the confederates grew uneasy about his 
 detention, and continued their advance. A hasty stip- 
 ulation then passed that Bothwell should, unmolest- 
 ed, depart for Dunbar, and the queen render herself 
 They parted, as we are told, like fond lovers, with many 
 kisses, and much sorrow on her part.^ He mounted 
 and galloped off with a slender train. His last words 
 to the queen were an exhortation to continue true to 
 her plighted faith. 
 
 At that moment the cup of the wretched woman's bit- 
 terness must have been filled to the brim. One by one 
 every refuge had been closed ; and over the wide world 
 at home, as well as abroad, there was no quarter to 
 which she could look for countenance. England from 
 the first was not to be thought of But at the Court of 
 France the door was even more hopelessly closed. There 
 was strong suspicion there of her guilt ; and the deed was 
 not one of those acts, perpetrated with Italian subtlety and 
 external decorum in the inner recesses of courts, of which 
 people circulate timid whispers, but was a flagrant act — 
 the common talk of her own people. At all events she 
 had become the husband of one guilty beyond all question 
 of the crime held in chief abhorrence at Court; and not 
 only so, but she had brought scandal on the royalty of 
 France — she, the queen-dowager, allying herself with one 
 too well known in Paris — noble, no doubt, as all Scots 
 were, but a needy adventurer, seeking fortune wherever 
 
 ^ '* Avecque grande angoise et douUeur de son couste ; et plus sou- 
 ventefois s'entrebesserent." — Captain of Inchkeith ; Teulet, ii. 307 
 
THE QUEEN'S POSITION, 1567. 247 
 
 and however he could find her, and notorious for indulg- 
 ence in vices of a low cast. Then the bulk of what was 
 honourable and respectable among her own subjects had 
 taken arms against her, and the rest would not strike in 
 her defence. But sorest, perhaps, of all the arrows at her 
 heart, was the unkindness of him for whom she had en- 
 countered all. This dread skeleton in the house can 
 generally be kept in its secret receptacle in the courts of 
 princes, and even the abodes of moderate respectabiUty ; 
 but everything in Holyrood went on too passionately and 
 flagrantly for concealment. Many noticed that she was 
 an oppressed, insulted wife. But little incidents referred 
 to by persons present are more expressive than general 
 accusations. Le Croc said that, immediately after the 
 marriage, she was curious to know whether he had noticed 
 somewhat of her husband's strange usage towards her, and 
 told him not to wonder if her manner were sad, for she 
 was in deep distress. Once, too, in an inner chamber, 
 where she was alone with her husband, she was heard to 
 weep, and to say she wished she had a knife, that she 
 might put an end to her existence. By a rare coincidence 
 this was heard both by Le Croc and Melville — it was re- 
 ported by the former to the King of France, and recorded 
 by the latter in his Diary. 
 
 Such incidents are serviceable to those who hold that 
 the unhappy woman was the mere helpless victim of fraud 
 and force — a sort of realisation of the old stories about 
 giants and enchanters, or of the romances with the tyrant 
 lord who, gifted with powers almost as preternatural, seizes 
 and imprisons the doomed princess. But there is another 
 cause for such phenomena, with which the daily world is 
 unfortunately more familiar — the woman with many gifts, 
 and the one fatal weakness that induces her to throw 
 them at the feet of an unworthy object ; the victim of a 
 blind imperious passion, giving herself over, body and 
 soul, to one so thoroughly selfish and brutal, that no at- 
 tachment or gratitude, no prudential restraint, will even 
 for a brief space suspend the impulses of his sensual and 
 tyrannical nature. 
 
 Whatever at that moment passed through her mind, 
 
248 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 the queen acted her part with her usual grace and princely 
 decorum. According to Melville's Diary, she said, 
 " ' Laird of Grange, I render me unto you, upon the con- 
 ditions ye rehearsed to me in the name of the lords ; ^ and 
 gave him her hand, whilk he kissed, and led her majesty 
 by the bridle down the brae unto the lords, who came 
 forward and met her." Her selection showed a sagacious 
 instinct, and her courtesy that day is beheved to have 
 won for her a champion. We are told that the lords used 
 all dutiful reverence ; " but some of the rascals cried out 
 despitefully," until they were put down by indignant re- 
 monstrances and chastisement. And so the queen returned 
 to Edinburgh.^ 
 
 The confederates were not destined to find in their 
 captive the meek resignation of a broken spirit. After 
 the first touch of depression was over, a reaction seems 
 to have come, which hurried her on into one of those out- 
 bursts of rage which, more than once in the course of her 
 life, got the better of her usual subtlety. She let loose her 
 formidable tongue, and hit right and left with maddening 
 effect. She seems to have been particularly successful in 
 finding a sore in the gruff and surly Lindsay, and to have 
 torn at it remorselessly with her sharp sarcasm, while he, 
 accustomed to weapons of a different kind, could retaliate 
 nothing. What was more serious, however, than all this, 
 she swore she would have all their lives ; and spoke, even 
 
 ^ The account of these transactions is, with some little assistance 
 from Melville's Diary, taken from the accounts of three eyewitnesses, 
 all happily uniting in the minuteness and the general conformity ot 
 their details. One is the * Letter of James Beaton, the Archbishop 
 of Glasgow's brother, to his brother Mr Andrew, to be given to the 
 archbishop, containing the Proceedings in Scotland from the nth to 
 the 17th of June 1767 printed in Laing, ii. 106. Another is a long 
 letter by Le Croc to the King of France ; printed by Teulet (8vo). 
 ii. 312. The third is called * Recit des Evenements du 7 au 15 Juin 
 1567, par le Capitain d'Inchkeith; ' printed by Teulet, ii. 300. The 
 Captain was a Frenchman. It was agreed, as we have seen at the 
 treaty of Edinburgh, that a small French garrison should continue to 
 occupy this island in the Forth. It had been, like Dunbar, evacuated 
 by its French occupants, so that his captainship must have become 
 a title of courtesy. 
 
SCENES IN EDINBURGH, 1567. 249 
 
 as she then was, like one luxuriating in the execution of 
 her vengeance.^ 
 
 When the captive reached Edinburgh, the procession 
 got an ugly reception from the common people. The 
 great High Street was filled with a mob deeply excited, 
 who uttered revilmgs and accusations in abundance. It 
 was observed that the loudest and fiercest denunciations 
 came from her own sex, and not the most virtuous portion 
 of it. The scene in the celebrated banner, drawn ap- 
 parently on a large scale, was spread before her, with 
 sedulous endeavours to catch her eye whatever way she 
 turned. A portion of the natural excitement of the tim.e 
 appears oddly enough to have expended itself on paint- 
 ing. Several representations seem to have been made of 
 the discovery of the body, with more or less of allegorical 
 machinery ; and several other pictures made their appear- 
 ance, which, either through allegory or an attempt to repre- 
 sent facts, gave shape to the feelings of their producers. 
 Caricatures they could not be called, for they had a deadly 
 earnestness about them — and still less were they entitled 
 to be called specimens of historical art ; but they were 
 deemed as signs of the times, so important that some of 
 them may now be found among the documents of the 
 period, which were preserved in the State Paper Office.^ 
 
 Another phenomenon of the time may be found in the 
 creation of the Edinburgh mob. The strange exciting 
 history passing before it gave it life; and, finding its 
 
 ^ Ne parla jamais que de les faire tons pendre et crucifier, et con- 
 tinue tousjours." — Le Croc to Catherine of Medici ; Teulet, ii. 310. 
 
 2 There is one in which an attempt is made to represent the whole 
 scene of the murder — the shattered house, the Hotel of the Hamiltons 
 beside it, the city gate and wall, the remnant of the old Kirk-of- Field, 
 the bodies, and the assembled crowd of citizens. A copy of this will 
 be found in Chalmers's Life of Queen Mary. It is curious to observe 
 how that industrious and earnest author, while deeply immersed in 
 the furtherance of one of his hobbies, the vindication of Queen Mary, 
 seizes the passing opportunity to assist another which bore on the 
 prevalence of the Celtic language and customs in Scotland. He takes 
 the slight liberty of dressing about one-half of the attendant mob in 
 the kilt and other elements of the modern Highland costume. A 
 more correct rendering of the picture will be found in David Laing's 
 * Registrum Domus de Soltre ' edited for the Bannatyne Club. 
 
250 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 Strength, it continued, down to within the memory of per- 
 sons still living, a permanent and formidable institution. 
 The well-trained force of the confederates was perhaps 
 sufficient to control any actual violence. The condition 
 of the town, however, was from the first embarrassing. It 
 appears to have been owing to this that it was thought 
 imprudent to convey the captive down the High Street 
 and Canongate to Holyrood. Hence she was lodged in 
 the house of the provost, which stood on the north side 
 of the cross, where the Council-house and the Exchange 
 buildings now stand. ^ Her conduct there is one of the 
 most astounding features in the whole narrative. Several 
 times during the afternoon she appeared at the window so 
 scantily and carelessly dressed that the sight was incon- 
 sistent with proper feminine decorum; and there she 
 moaned and cried and wailed to the mob that gathered 
 thick upon the street. Beaton, with a touch of good feel- 
 ing and that minute attention to detail which makes his 
 story so valuable, says, Na man could look upon her 
 but she movit him to pity and compassion. For my ain 
 part, I was satisfied to hear of it, and micht not suffer to 
 see it." That she, who never was known to depart from 
 the etiquette of her rank except to dignify that departure 
 by her grace and wit, should so revolt against her proper 
 nature, was an expressive addition to the astounding 
 events that had excited the Edinburgh populace. It 
 goes, with other incidents, to show that the terrible ex- 
 citement of her recent life must have in some measure 
 disordered her brain. 
 
 Lethington was an eyewitness of this scene. He went 
 into the provost's house, and tried to soothe the queen. 
 The street in front was cleared of the mob ; but the ex- 
 citement of the people had got an impulse, and Le Croc 
 found that by evening there was much alarm about the 
 preservation of peace in the city. Le Croc expressed 
 
 ^ Le Croc, when reporting this to his master, makes haste to re- 
 move the impression likely to be created at the French Court by this 
 bourgeoisement treatment of royalty : ** Je sais bien, sire, que ce nom 
 de prevost sera bien odieux en France, mais en ce pays c'est comme 
 la principale maison de la ville." — Teulet, ii. 319. 
 
SCENES IN EDINBURGH, 1567. 251 
 
 himself satisfied that the confederates were reasonable in 
 their ultimate views — that they only wanted to get her 
 separated from Bothwell, in the belief that they might 
 then safely return to their duty towards her as their 
 sovereign. His chief anxiety, indeed, was lest they 
 should not feel strong enough to cope with their enemy, 
 and might seek assistance from Elizabeth, a contingency 
 that might be fatal to the French alliance. He seemed 
 to hint to them that, rather than this should be, they 
 might expect aid from France ; but he implored them, if 
 possible, to get this affair brought to a conclusion. 
 
 But under Le Croc's eyes, and even while he was ex- 
 plaining these views to Lethington, the affair took a 
 sudden and disagreeable turn. Believing that the queen 
 led a miserable life with her husband, the confederates 
 thought she would be easily severed from him. Her 
 wild talk the night before, however, had led them to 
 suspect that she was frantic to return to his arms, and 
 she had acted so as to confirm this view. Le Croc was 
 told by Lethington that he had had a conversation with 
 her, in which she reproached him for severing her from 
 the husband with whom she hoped to live and die with 
 all the satisfaction in the world. He answered that he 
 and his comrades were far from feeling that they did her 
 injury by this separation ; on the contrary, they believed 
 it to be in every way the best thing for her future honour 
 and tranquillity. He tried what jealousy would do, and 
 said her husband was still in correspondence with his 
 former wife, and had told her that she was his real wife 
 and the queen his mistress. The queen gave an angry de- 
 nial to this, and he shortly replied that the letters would 
 show it. Lethington said the conference ended by her 
 asking if she and her husband would be permitted together 
 in a ship, to sail where fortune should direct. To this 
 draft on the precedents of the romances, the " Chame- 
 leon,^' as Buchanan calls him, made answer, evidently 
 in a vein of dry sarcasm, that, provided the pair did 
 not happen to land in France, he thought it about 
 the best thing they could do. It seems clear, too, that 
 she wrote a letter to her husband, which the messenger 
 
252 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 she had hired to convey it faithlessly delivered to the 
 confederates. Melville renders its purport as calling 
 him her dear heart, whom she should never forget nor 
 abandon for absence ; and that she sent him away only 
 for his safety, willing him to be comforted, and to be 
 upon his guard." 
 
 In this state of matters — the city in commotion, a 
 frantic queen within it, and an unscrupulous enemy at 
 hand, whom she would do everything to help — the lead- 
 ing men seem to have adopted a hurried resolution that 
 there was no alternative but to get the queen se- 
 questered" in some place, quiet, remote, and safe. Le 
 Croc, who carefully watched what was doing, and imme- 
 diately reported it home, was unable to give the same 
 satisfactory account of these hasty movements as of the 
 deliberate proceedings of the confederates. He knew 
 that at nine o^clock in the evening she had been con- 
 veyed to Holyrood as if to reside there in her usual state, 
 but that during the night she had been taken to the port 
 of Leith, where a vessel received her with her attendants 
 and a guard. Farther than this he was at fault. In his 
 letter to his king dated 17th June, he presumed that their 
 destination was Stirhng; but in his next he said the 
 queen had been taken to Loquelin, or Lochleven. 
 
 The 20th of June, three days after these stirring events, 
 is the date of an incident small in itself, and known at 
 the time to few, which proved, however, of mighty 
 moment in the politics of the day, and has since given 
 occasion for a whole library of critical and disputative 
 literature. Bothwell, in his hurry to leave Edinburgh, left 
 behind him, as people on such occasions are apt to do, an 
 article which he highly valued. It had been taken with 
 him into the Castle of Edinburgh, and there left. It is de- 
 scribed as a casket about a foot long, decorated with silver 
 over-gilt, and bearing the crown of France and the initials 
 of Francis II., from whom it had passed to his widow, 
 and then to her third husband. It contained papers of 
 value, and Bothwell was very anxious to recover them. 
 He sent his servant, George Dalgleish, to bring the casket 
 from Edinburgh to Dunbar. The man was intercepted, 
 
DISCOVERY OF THE CASKET, 1567. 253 
 
 however, and the casket found its way to Morton's hands. 
 It is possible that a hint may have been given of the 
 removal by Balfour the governor; but as Dalgleish was 
 then wanted as an accessory of the murder of Darnley, 
 the probability is that he was apprehended on this 
 ground, and the casket found with him. The papers 
 afterwards produced as the contents of this casket, 
 whether, indeed, they were its real contents or mere for- 
 geries, were the ground on which the subsequent actions 
 of Queen Mary's opponents rested ; and hence it is that 
 the little incident of the discovery of the casket expands 
 into a great political event. ^ Besides the contract of 
 marriage already referred to, and some other documents, 
 the momentous portion of these papers consisted of eight 
 letters and some poetry called sonnets, all declared to be 
 in the handwriting of Queen Mary, and in that Latin or 
 Italian form of writing which she was about the first to 
 practise in Scotland, and which at once distinguishes 
 her manuscripts from the ordinary Gothic writing of the 
 period. 
 
 The literary history of these letters and sonnets is 
 curious. The originals have long been lost. They were 
 among Morton's effects when he was executed ; and there 
 has been an impression that they passed into the hands 
 of King James, by whom they were destroyed. The 
 source from which we now know their nature is a I^atin 
 translation of them appended to Buchanan's Detection of 
 the Doings of Queen Mary, published in 1572. In the 
 translation of that work, which appeared in the same 
 year, and is attributed to Buchanan himself, there is a 
 rendering of the whole into the Scots vernacular, and of 
 
 ^ The chivalrous class to whom Mary's innocence is a creed rather 
 than an opinion, will not blame me for having constructed my nar- 
 rative without reference to the contents of the casket. In the sup- 
 position that they are genuine, they were a secret between two 
 criminals which did not yet begin to influence others ; and it seemed 
 to be the historian's proper duty to deal with what was known to, 
 and consequently influenced, the actors at large on the political stage. 
 From the 20th of June 1567, however, the ruling power in Scotland 
 took its stand upon the import of these letters ; and it is, therefore, 
 from that day that they properly become a part of public history. 
 
254 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 nearly the whole into French. Having them in this shape, 
 we have no means of critically judging of the style of the 
 original; and any evidence that might be found in the 
 minuter turns of expression, sometimes so effective when 
 the general tenor of the writing is ambiguous, is lost. 
 The tone of these papers is, however, so impetuous, and 
 their tenor so emphatic and distinct, as to leave, at least 
 in the essentials, no doubtful meanings which a reference 
 to the original might have cleared. The same qualities 
 render it practicable to give a description of the docu- 
 ments, and a brief rendering of their more emphatic pas- 
 sages, without the risk of injustice. To feel the signifi- 
 cance of these passages, it is only necessary to keep in 
 view the chain of events which begins with the queen's 
 visit to her sick husband in Glasgow.^ 
 
 The first letter is long. It goes over many minute 
 transactions, to some of which we have now no clue. It is 
 apparent, however, that to a forger they must have been 
 perilous material, as affording numerous points from which 
 his work might be assailed. She apologises, indeed, for 
 writing about everything, however trifling, in order that 
 the receiver of her letter may have the means of estimat- 
 ing the significance of all the occurrences. In this abridg- 
 ment it is considered unnecessary to glean from the 
 document anything that has not in itself a plain meaning. 
 
 ^ It is scarcely necessary to inform the reader where he will find 
 the documents at length. They have been repeatedly printed, and 
 are given in nearly every one of the voluminous pleadings on both 
 sides of the great controversy. The most carefully edited copy of 
 them is, however, undoubtedly that given by M. Teulet in the volume 
 of * Lettres de Marie Stuart,' which he published for the purpose of 
 supplying deficiencies in Prince Labanofif 's Collection. The French 
 contemporary translation of the * Detectio' and its documents has the 
 title * Histoire de Marie Royne D'Escosse, touchant la conjuration 
 faicte contre le Roy, et I'adultere commis avec la Comte de Bothvvel, 
 histoire vrayement tragique, traduicte de Latin en Francois. A Edim- 
 bourg, par Thomas Vvaltem, 1572.' It is from this that the usual 
 P>ench version of the letters and sonnets is taken. Though bearing 
 the imprint of Edinburgh, the translation was probably prepared in 
 France, perhaps even printed there, since two v's are used for w. 
 It was usual to have a Dutch, and occasionally a Scots imprint, on 
 works that could not be safely published in France. 
 
THE CASKET DOCUMENTS, 1567. 
 
 or a reference to some known and significant event. She 
 begins with a sentiment : having gone from the place 
 where she had left her heart, it will easily be believed how 
 unable [she was to enjoy society, insomuch that, until 
 dinner-time, she spoke to no one, nor did any one ven- 
 ture to address her. Four miles from Glasgow she was 
 met by a gentleman of Lennox's household — the same 
 Craufurd whose account of these transactions is elsewhere 
 referred to. There was some rather exciting talk. Crau- 
 furd had to explain how Lennox did not come in person 
 — he was scared by the harsh words the queen had used 
 to Cunningham — probably the same who afterwards re- 
 presented Lennox at BothwelFs trial. The queen remarked 
 that Lennox would not have been afraid to come had he 
 not been conscious of guilt. She then stood on her dig- 
 nity, and closed the discussion. Others she encountered, 
 with whom her conversation was still more obscure and 
 incidental ; but she remarked that none of the Glasgow 
 citizens came to see her, whence she inferred that they 
 were on her husband's side. Of him the first note we 
 have is an inquiry of one of the domestics of the queen, 
 why she lodged not beside him. If she did so, he would 
 rise the quicker from his sick-bed ; and he was anxious to 
 know whether her visit was intended as a step towards 
 reconciliation. He particularly desired to know if Both- 
 well himself were in his wife's train, and also if she had 
 made her State." He wanted to know if she had taken 
 Paris and Gilbert into her service, and was to send Joseph 
 Rizzio away. She expressed extreme annoyance at his 
 being thus accurately informed of her private motions — 
 he spoke even of the marriage of Bastiat ! When they 
 met, she taunted him with some complaints in his letters 
 about the hardships he had to suffer. He, instead of 
 answering to the point, gave words to his astonishment 
 and excessive joy at seeing her — he believed he might die 
 of gladness, but he rallied her on her pensiveness. In a 
 second visit which he begged of her, he said his sickness 
 was caused by her unkindness — he would make no testa- 
 ment, but only leave everything to her. Then comes an 
 outpouring, which she professes to report in full : " You 
 
256 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 ask me what I mean by the cruelty spoken to in my let- 
 ters. It comes of you alone, who will not accept of my 
 promises and repentance. I confess I have been in fault, 
 but not in the shape which I ever denied. So also I 
 have failed in my duty to some of your subjects, but this 
 you have forgiven. I am young. You will say you have 
 forgiven me over and over, and still I repeat my offences. 
 May not a man of my age, for lack of counsel, fall twice 
 or thrice, or fail in his promises, yet repent and be chas- 
 tened by experience ? If I be forgiven, I protest I shall 
 never sin again. I desire nothing whatever but that we 
 may live again at bed and board together as husband and 
 wife ; and if you will not consent to this, I shall never 
 rise out of this bed. I pray you tell me your resolution. 
 God knoAYS how I am punished for making my god of 
 you, and for having no other thought but on you. And 
 if I am remiss towards you, you are yourself the cause ; 
 for when I have cause of offence, if I might take my com- 
 plaint to yourself, I would go nowhere else ; but when I 
 hear rumours while you are estranged, I am of necessity 
 compelled to keep it to myself, and this irritates me until 
 it makes me beside myself with anger." 
 
 She says she answered him on each particular, but her 
 part of the discussion was too long to be set down. Then 
 follows the general purport of a talk about her husband's 
 suspicions as to plots for his assassination, and his plans 
 to escape abroad. The matters are briefly touched, as if 
 the writing were to be read by one minutely acquainted 
 with the particulars. Among these there is a certain 
 ^'purpose of Heigate" — referring to a person so named, 
 a servant of Bishop Beaton, whom Mary herself had 
 charged with propagating a tale that the king was to take 
 the young prince and have him crowned.^ The impres- 
 sion made by these explanations, as by several others of 
 a like kind dispersed through the correspondence, is that 
 she has exhausted all the particulars of his fears, suspicions, 
 and general grumblings, as completely as an able counsel 
 draws out of an unwilling witness everything he knows. 
 
 ^ Letter to BeatOR ; Labanoff, i. 396. 
 
THE CASKET DOCUMENTS, 1567. 
 
 257 
 
 She describes with a slight touch of scorn how she 
 brings him on from suspicion to unwelcome demonstra- 
 tions of tenderness. He wants her to sleep in his lodging, 
 to walk with him, and to take him away with her when 
 she goes. He refers at the same time to the terrors now 
 dispelled. He believes she, his own flesh and blood, 
 would do him no harm ; and he boasts that others would 
 find it difficult to assail him. Then comes one of the 
 significant passages. If she did not know that his heart 
 was of wax, while her own w^as of diamond, incapable of 
 being penetrated from any quarter but the adored one she 
 writes to, she might have almost had pity on the poor 
 creature. But no fear ; she will hold out : let him she ad- 
 dresses take heed that he be not seduced by that false 
 race his wife^s family. A little farther down she says they 
 are coupled with two false races. May the devil sever 
 us from them, and God unite us together for ever ! " Be- 
 tween the two allusions to the false races she asks if he is 
 not inclined to laugh to see her lie so well, or at least 
 dissemble with gleams of truth between. Next she is 
 getting tired, and thinks of postponing her task till the 
 morning; but she cannot sleep unless it were, as she 
 would desire, in the arms of her dear love. Here she de- 
 sires him to tell her what he intends to do in the matter 
 he knows about, that nothing be mismanaged. Then 
 come more tokens of weariness, and remarks on her hus- 
 band's disease, which perhaps would not sound so offen- 
 sive in the original French as in the translations. His 
 breath, she says, has nearly slain her ; and to realise its 
 offensiveness, she tells Bothwell that it is worse than his 
 own uncle's. She had almost forgotten to say that, in 
 presence of the Lady Reres at supper, Livingston had 
 rallied her on the sorrowful condition in which she had 
 left a certain person at a distance. 
 
 The continuation appears to be a resumption next day. 
 She had worked two hours at a bracelet for her beloved, 
 trying to make it lock ; he must be careful not to show it, 
 for it has been seen, and will be at once traced to her. 
 She is now going to recommence her detestable purpose. 
 The lord of her heart makes her dissemble, so that she 
 
 VOL. IV. R 
 
258 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 feels like a traitress ; if it were not in obedience to him, 
 she would rather die than do it — her heart bleeds at it. 
 She found she had the work to do over again, and her 
 husband was by no means so compHant as she had left 
 him the evening before. He will not come with her un- 
 less >she agree to live with him at bed and board as be- 
 fore ; and his suspicions crop out again, to be smoothed 
 down by her skilful tongue. He will do whatever she 
 desires, and will love herself and all that she loves. Then 
 follow a few penitential words, and the old excuse that 
 she is led by a hand she cannot resist. As a token of the 
 imphcitness of her obedience come in some words — very 
 few, but so significant that they must touch with awe who- 
 ever comes incidentally across them, whether he believe 
 them to be the woman's own, or forged by others for her 
 condemnation. She prays her lord to consider whether 
 the deed might not be done in some more secret way — 
 by medicine, for there must be medicine with the bath at 
 Craigmillar. Then another passionate wail about her hor- 
 ror of deceit — she would not do it for her own particular 
 revenge, she does the bidding of the spirit that has mas- 
 tered hers. A good deal there still is in the letter ; but it 
 is incoherent repetition about her husband's suspicions 
 and her own spells to lull them, the bracelet sent as a 
 love-token, her jealousy of his wife's influence, and her 
 assurance that she is ready to sacrifice honour, conscience, 
 rank, and life itself for her chosen lord's love. 
 
 There are eight letters in all, but this one alone is 
 longer than all the rest together. The second in order is 
 a short querulous letter, complaining of forgetfulness and 
 neglect; her husband is still in a trusting and caressing 
 humour; she playfully remarks that her true lord may 
 think he is making love to her and with success, but his 
 very presence renews her infirmity in her side. One articu- 
 late announcement there is — she brings the man with her 
 to Craigmillar on Monday, and there he will remain all 
 Wednesday, while she goes into Edinburgh to be bled. 
 
 The third letter, set down as written from Glasgow in 
 January, but not on a specific day, is rather purposeless. 
 It shows that Bothwell apprehended danger from her pro- 
 
THE CASKET DOCUMENTS, 1567. 259 
 
 fuse writing and her many messages, and she craves for- 
 giveness for disobeying his injunction neither to write nor 
 send ; and yet there seems to be no practical object to be 
 served in the letter — it looks like a mere irrepressible 
 outburst of suspicion and jealousy of her rival the existing 
 wife. She wonders whether that rival is to win over her 
 what the second love of Jason won. There is something 
 dramatic in the effect of this allusion to the Medea. The 
 mind worked up to the point on which it tells, conscious 
 that the letters recall some vision of love and jealousy 
 drawing on their victim to hatred and murder, might, 
 even unaided by the hint, have remembered the terrible 
 creation of Euripides.^ After much amorous and jealous 
 raving, the letter ends with a brief notification that she 
 was afraid to write in the presence of Joseph (Rizzio), 
 Bastiat, and Joachim, and had to wait till they departed. 
 
 The next is a short letter in the same tone as the rest, 
 but bearing on some incidental grumbling of her lord, as 
 to something that one of her women had done which 
 frightened or displeased him. 
 
 All these letters are attributed to the month of January ; 
 the next is, on the same ground — internal evidence — re- 
 ferred to April. It deals with the plot for carrying her off 
 to Dunbar. She is distracted by the uncertainty of the 
 arrangements and the insufficiency of his information for 
 her guidance. Then comes to her in her perplexities his 
 false brother Huntly, who, professing to act as his mes- 
 senger to fix the time and place where he was to intercept 
 her, breaks in with his croakings : It was a foolish enter- 
 prise, and with her honour she could not marry the man 
 who carried her off while yet he was the husband of 
 another; and then her majesty's guard in attendance 
 would never be got to submit to such a humiliation. But 
 she has now gone so far that she is resolved to complete 
 the work. No persuasion, not the prospect of death it- 
 self, can shake her resolution. Then come jealous and 
 
 ^ In the * Inventory of the Queen's Books in the Castle of Edin- 
 burgh, deHvered by the Earl of Morton to King James VI.,' is * The 
 Historie of Jasone.' — Inventories, cxlvi. 
 
26o 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 querulous railings. Why call on her to fix the place? 
 He should have adjusted all that, and told her. He has 
 risked all through that false brother whom she does not 
 trust with her letter ; but if failure be the end, she will 
 never raise her head again. The bearer will tell him her 
 miserable plight ; and what effect his vacillations and in- 
 distinct counsels must have on it let him judge. She had 
 expected other things, but she sees the influence of 
 absence and of that other one. He must not send an 
 answer by Huntly ; and so God give him good-night. 
 
 The next letter is a short piece of subtle casuistry. It 
 looks forward to the way out of the difficulty into which 
 they are plunging. She thinks his services, and the good 
 esteem long entertained for him by his brother lords, may 
 justify his pardon, should he take on himself beyond the duty 
 of a subject — not to restrain her, but to assure himself of 
 such a place near to her, that the persuasions or inter- 
 ference of others may not prevent her from consenting to 
 realise the hopes which he may have founded on his ser- 
 vices. To be short, let him make himself secure of the 
 lords and free to marry ; and let him represent that, to be 
 able to serve his sovereign faithfully, he was driven to 
 join an importunate act with a humble request. He 
 knows, if he likes, how to set the matter in right trim, and 
 will not neglect many fair words to Lethington. If he 
 like not the deed, let him say so, and not leave the whole 
 burden on her. 
 
 Circumstances gave those who had the handling of the 
 letters the means of precisely dating the next on the 2 2d 
 of April. It begins about his brother-in-law that was. 
 There are no jealousies or suspicions of treachery in that 
 quarter now ; but he has perplexed her with doubts about 
 the affair to come off the day after to-morrow, because 
 there are many, and among them the Earl of Sutherland, 
 who will rather die than see their sovereign lady carried 
 off when under their protection. She is assured that he 
 wishes to be honest, but she sees that he fears a charge of 
 high treason. All this must foster caution and care. 
 They had yesterday three hundred horse, including Leth- 
 ington's ; for the honour of God, let her lord be accom- 
 
THE CASKET DOCUMENTS, 1567. 261 
 
 panied with rather more than less ; and so she prays God 
 that they may have a happy meeting. 
 
 There remains yet one letter, perhaps the most remark- 
 able of all for the passionate vehemence with which it 
 expresses the unconditional surrender of the writer's heart, 
 its utter hopeless captivity, its owner^s abject resignation 
 to the will and humour of the victor, mixed with faint but 
 agonised wailings about the incompleteness of the return, 
 the stint of that full flow of entire reciprocity which is 
 now the breath of her life. There is now no jealousy of 
 another. There are no uncertainties or plans or difficul- 
 ties. It is fervid passion throughout, pressing forth with 
 a vehemence that seems almost to choke the utterer. It 
 is coloured throughout with extreme dejection and sad- 
 ness, like a consciousness of the shadow of coming 
 calamity. 
 
 Of the tell-tale contents of the casket there still remain 
 to be dealt with some verses called " The Sonnets.^' They 
 are divided into sets of fourteen lines each ; but there is 
 no separate unity of purpose in each of these sets, nor do 
 they contain any other specialty of the sonnet proper. 
 That she was acquainted with these specialties is shown 
 by a real sonnet written after long imprisonment and 
 affliction. It condenses into unity those solemn verses 
 scattered through the ninth and tenth chapters of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews which speak of the old material 
 sacrifices of slain animals as superseded by one atone- 
 ment, which requires of mankind only the purifying quali- 
 ties of faith and humility. It is clear that the casket 
 sonnets have been a continuous poem, cut up by the 
 translator or editor into pieces of the canonical length of 
 the sonnet, but without entire success, since the whole 
 was not divisible by fourteen, and the last of the sonnets 
 contains only six lines. 
 
 There is, in fact, a unity of purpose throughout the 
 whole. It is a wild wailing of love, jealousy, and despair. 
 She is withheld from the object of her frantic adoration 
 by the double marriage — nay, worse, by his attachment 
 to her rival. And what sacrifice does that rival make to 
 be set beside all that she is prepared to lay down? If the 
 
262 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 Other gives love, she has love in return. She is protected 
 by the respectable bond of matrimony. She has been a 
 worldly gainer, for she has been elevated by the favour 
 which the devotion of another has conferred on her hus- 
 band. And that other — what is she not ready to sacrifice ? 
 Rank and position ; but these are nothing. Her life, her 
 fair fame, her infant child, her immortal soul — all will be 
 thrown at his feet. 
 
 There is no Latin translation of the sonnets ; and in 
 their Scots and French guise they have little to adorn 
 them but the sheer fervency of their passionateness.^ 
 Brantome spoke of them as unworthy of her pen ; but 
 there is scarcely any chance that he could have seen the 
 contents of the casket, and a retranslation from Scots into 
 French would be poor material for testing the merits of 
 the original. Nor is it quite clear whether he is giving 
 us his own opinion, or merely the result of conversation 
 with others. French critics of the present day do not 
 confirm the popular notion that Queen Mary was gifted 
 with the genius of poetry. They even talk disrespectfully 
 of those lines on the death of her husband which Bran- 
 tome himself preserved and published as a testimony to 
 her genius.2 French critics have gone farther of late, 
 and deposed poor Mary from the poetical rank which she 
 held as the reputed author of some pretty lines bidding 
 adieu to her beloved France.^ 
 
 1 As printed in the Detection they are called ** Certane Frenche 
 sonnettis writtin be the Queen of Scottis to Bothwel befoir hir mar- 
 riage with him, and (as it is said) while hir husband levit, but cer- 
 tainly befoir his divorce from his wyfe, as the words themselfsshaw." 
 — Forbes, ii. 115. 
 
 2 M. Chasles, in his * Etudes sur W. Shakspeare, Marie Stuart, et 
 L'Aretin ' — a curious conjunction — calls these lines " rimes barbares," 
 and says, L' expression en est dure et la pensee vulgaire." — P. 23. 
 
 8 " Adieu, plaisant pays de France ! 
 O ma patrie, 
 La plus cherie, 
 Qui as nourri ma jeune enfance ! 
 Adieu, France ! adieu, nos beaux jours ! 
 La nef qui dejoint nos amours 
 N'a eu de moi que la moitie 
 Une parte te reste, elle est tienne, 
 e la fie a ton amitie 
 our que de Tautrc il te souvicnne." 
 
THE CASKET DOCUMENTS, 1567. 263 
 
 There is still another piece of poetry — the admitted 
 work of Queen Mary — with which the sonnets may be 
 compared. When her councillor and ambassador, Bishop 
 Leslie, was imprisoned in the Tower for his zeal in her 
 cause, he wrote a book of meditations, which he sent to 
 the queen. She was pleased with the gift, and comforted 
 by its perusal ; and under this influence sent in return, in 
 a poetical shape, her own meditations upon his.^ An 
 effort, supposed to be longer and more ambitious, on 
 'The Institution of a Prince,' has unfortunately been lost 
 sight of 2 
 
 There are two theories on which the guilty conclusion 
 to which the casket documents point has been resisted 
 with great perseverance and gallantry : the one is that, as 
 we now see them, they have been tampered with ; the 
 other, that they are forgeries from the beginning. 
 
 All questions raised on the prior theory are at once 
 settled by the fact that those to whom the letters were 
 first shown drew conclusions from them as damnatory 
 
 M. Philarete Chasles having started a doubt as to the reputed author- 
 ship of these lines, the question was taken up and hunted to its con- 
 clusion by Fournier, and the result will be found in that amusing 
 book, * L'Esprit dans I'Histoire.' He proves that the lines were 
 written in Queen Mary's name by Meusnier de Querlon, and first 
 published by him in 1765 in his * Anthologie.' It gives a zest to his 
 success to be able to quote from the pompous M. Dargaud, who, 
 speaking of Mary and her genius, says, *'Ces vers sont desormais 
 inseparables de son nom." Querlon was accustomed to such tricks ; 
 or, as Fournier says, * * prenait volontiers plaisir a ces sortes de mysti- 
 fications litteraires. " He published a little book called *Les Inno- 
 centes Impostures ; ' but all his were by no means innocent. He was 
 the editor of one of the editions of the infamous book, * Meursii 
 Elegantise Latinae Sermonis,' in which the foulest pruriences that the 
 language could express were published as the production of a virtu- 
 ous and distinguished scholar. 
 
 ^ * Meditation fait par la Reyne d'Escoce, Dovairiere de France, i ] 
 recueillie d'un Livre des Consolations Divines, composez par j j 
 I'Evesque de Ross ; ' Bannatyne Miscellany, i. 343. 
 
 ^ ** The queen, his majesty's mother, wrote a book of verses in 
 French, of the Institution of a Prince, all with her oune hand, 
 wrought the cover of it with her needle, and is now of his maj esty 
 esteemed a most precious jewel." — Montague's Preface to the Works 
 of King James. It is stated by the same author that Darnley trans- 
 lated Valerius Maximus. 
 
264 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 as any they can now suggest. Little more than a month 
 after the documents were in possession of the confederates 
 — on the 25th of July — Throckmorton, the EngUsh am- 
 bassador, got sufficient information to write home that 
 ^' they mean to charge her with the murder of her hus- 
 band, whereof, they say, they have as apparent proof 
 against her as may be, as well by the testimony of her 
 own handwriting, which they have recovered, as also by 
 sufficient witnesses/'^ Farther still. Sir Ralph Sadler 
 made what may be called a precis of the significant portions 
 of the documents. According to the natural practice on 
 such occasions, he briefly sweeps over the trivial or indis- 
 tinct passages, and dwells on those which convey signi- 
 ficant conclusions, translating them at full length; and 
 these translations echo 'the corresponding passages in 
 the letters, as we now possess them, with decisive pre- 
 cision.2 
 
 The theory of an entire forgery seems not to have 
 occurred to any of those friends or foes of the queen who 
 saw the documents. In the Parliament held in December 
 there were several of her partisans present, such as Huntly, 
 Athole, Errol, Herries, and others ; but we have no hint 
 anywhere that they stood up for her fame, or had anything 
 to say, when, in the very body of an Act of Parliament, 
 the nature of the documents and the guilty conclusion 
 drawn from them were set forth in the plainest and 
 severest terms.^ The theory of forgery, indeed, seems to 
 
 1 Keith, 426. 
 
 ^ Sadler State Papers, ii. 337. Sadler, with his usual methodical- 
 ness, divides his notes of the papers under three heads : i. **The 
 special words in the Queen of Scotts' lettres, written with her oune 
 hand to Bothwell, declaring the inordynate and filthie love betwixt 
 hir and him." 2. **The specyall words in the said lettres declaring 
 her hatred and detestacion of her husbande." 3. **The specyall 
 words of the saide lettres touching and declaring the conspiracie of 
 her husband's deth." 
 
 ^ ** Anent the Retention of our Sovreane Lord's Motheris Person" 
 (Act 1567, c. 19). Here the Parliament, among their reasons for 
 their conduct towards her, say it is to be attributed to *Mier own 
 default, in sa far as be divers her privie letters written halely with her 
 aun hand, and send be her to James, sometime Earl of Bothwell, 
 
THE CASKET DOCUMENTS, 1567. 
 
 265 
 
 have become prevalent only after any appeal to the ori- 
 ginal writings, and to the recollection of the persons re- 
 ferred to in them, had ceased to be practicable. And it 
 is impossible not to connect the absence of contemporary 
 impugnment with a notable peculiarity in the documents. 
 They are so affluent in petty details about matters person- 
 ally known to those who could have contradicted them 
 if false, that the forger of them could only have scattered 
 around him, in superfluous profusion, allusions that must 
 have been traps for his own detection. 
 
 Wherever any of these petty matters comes to the sur- 
 face elsewhere, it is in a shape to confirm the accuracy 
 of the mention made of them in these letters. For in- 
 stance, take the purpose of Heigate,'' referred to in the 
 first letter. In no history, letter, or state paper of the day, 
 is that matter referred to except one, and that is a con- 
 fidential letter by the queen herself to Archbishop Beaton, 
 in which she desires him to warn his servants not to prate 
 on such matters, and refers, just as in the casket letter, to 
 the story having been spoken of by Walker, a servant of 
 Beaton's, and told to Lennox by the Laird of Minto.^ 
 Again there is a reference in the same letter to a matter, 
 the explanation of which has cast up only the other day. 
 Among other inquiries which teased her, as showing that 
 the sick man knew more about her doings than she liked, 
 was an inquiry whether she " had made her State." This 
 State is now visible in the papers published by M. Teulet ; 
 and a very important document it is, being a recasting of 
 the pensions and salaries of officers chargeable on Mary's 
 income as Queen-dowager of France. The sum total, of 
 which it records the distribution, exceeds thirty thousand 
 livres — an enormous sum in that day. The unseen exist- 
 ence of this separate expenditure, and of the official per- 
 sons to whom it passed, has caused occasional tripping 
 among historians, who are at a loss to account for persons 
 who, like Rizzio and his brother, are spoken of as holding 
 
 chief executer of the said horrible murther, as well before the com- 
 mitting thereof as thereafter." — Act. Pari., iii. 27. 
 ^ Labanoff, i. 397. 
 
266 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 distinguished offices, while no trace of them in their official 
 position can be found in the constitutional records of the 
 country. The document is signed by the queen and her 
 private secretary, Joseph Rizzio ; and its date, 13th Feb- 
 ruary 1567, coincides with its being under consideration 
 about the time of the momentous visit to Glasgow.^ 
 
 It will not readily be admitted that any weight should 
 be given to coincidences between the casket letters and 
 the facts narrated in the dying confessions of the inferior 
 persons executed for the murder. There was a person 
 less open to suspicion, however, who was an eye and ear 
 witness at some of the scenes described in these letters, 
 and his testimony concerning them was recorded in a very 
 peculiar manner. This was Thomas Craufurd of Jordan- 
 hill, who was, as we have seen, present when Darnley 
 in his sick-bed received the memorable visit from his wife. 
 It is stated, in the Journal of the commissioners who sat at 
 York, that this man was brought to give evidence before 
 them. It was found that the evidence he had to give was 
 something much more clear and specific than any mere 
 recollection of past events. He stated that old Lord 
 Lennox, being afraid, as we have seen, to trust himself 
 away from his own fortress and his own people, while he 
 was in a state of great anxiety and suspicion about the 
 object of the unexpected visit, had instructed Craufurd, 
 who was nearly aUied to the house of Lennox, carefully to 
 note down all he saw or could learn of what went on. 
 Craufurd said he not only set down in writing what he 
 was witness to, but that the king was very communicative 
 
 ^ * Estat des gaiges des dames, damoiselles, gentilzhommes, et 
 outres officiers domesticques de la Royne d'Escosse, Douairiere de 
 France;' Teulet (8vo), ii. 268. This document would be sent to 
 France as a warrant for the respective payments announced by it. By 
 far the greater portion of the recipients are French ; and some who 
 perhaps are not so are not easily recognisable as Scots — for instance, 
 Ceton for Seton, and Letinthon for Lethington. The highest salary, 
 however, goes to a Scot — Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow, who gets 
 3060 livres. It may be noted, for what it is worth, that Bothwell's 
 name does not occur in this list of beneficiaries. The editor of Queen 
 Mary's Inventories notices the identification of this document with the 
 ** State" mentioned in the casket letter. 
 
THE CASKET DOCUMENTS, 1567. 267 
 
 to him about the private interviews with the queen, at 
 which no third person was present. According to the 
 record of his testimony, he stated " that he did, imme- 
 diately at the same time, write the same, word by word, 
 as near as he possibly could carry the same away ; and 
 sure he was that the words now reported in his writing 
 concerning the communication betwixt the Queen of Scots 
 and him upon the way near Glasgow, are the very same 
 words, on his conscience, that were spoken; and that 
 others being reported to him by the king are the same in 
 effect and substance as they were delivered by the king to 
 him, though not, percase, in all parts the very words 
 themselves/' This document being read to the commis- 
 sioners, Craufurd affirmed it, "upon his corporal oath 
 there taken to be true."^ 
 
 It has often surprised me that, although casually re- 
 ferred to as in existence, this paper should not have been 
 printed among the documents, many of them less expres- 
 sive, which have been heaped together in the collections 
 regarding Queen Mary. It could not fail to be extremely 
 instructive on the one side or on the other. Guided to its 
 existence in the Record Office at the Rolls by the Calen- 
 dars recently issued, an opportunity has been found of 
 comparing it with the casket letter. 
 
 Of the result I can only say that the two agree together 
 with an overwhelming exactness.^ Of course every one is 
 
 ^ The Journal of the Commissioners, apud Westminster, die Jovis, 
 nono die Decembris 1568 ; Anderson, iv. 169. 
 ^ The following may suffice as a specimen ; — 
 
 Craufurd's Testimony. The Casket Letter. 
 
 * 'She asked him of hyssicknesse; "'Ze ask me quhat I mene be 
 
 he aunswered, that she was the the crueltie contenit in my letter; 
 
 cause thereof. And moreover, he it is of zow alone, that will not ac- 
 
 saide, ' Ye asked me what I ment cept my oflferis and repentance. I 
 
 bye the crueltye specified in mye confes that I have failit, bot not into 
 
 lettres ; yat procedethe of yow that quhilk I ever denyit ; and sick- 
 
 onelye, that wille not accepte mye lyke hes failit to sindrie of zour 
 
 offres and repentance. I confesse subjectis, quhilk ze have forgevin.. 
 
 that I have failed in som thingis, I am zoung. Ze wil say, that ze 
 
 and yet greater faultes have bin have forgevin me oft tymes, and zit 
 
 made to yow sundrye times, which yat I returne to my faultis. May 
 
268 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 at liberty to maintain that Craufurd's statement is entirely 
 false, and that it was got up to support a forgery. In such 
 repudiations, as in the length to which St Denis could 
 carry his head, the first step is everything. It might also 
 be maintained that the memorandum of Craufurd being 
 true, afforded the conspirators the materials from which 
 they could work up the details of their little picture of a 
 domestic interior. Before adopting, however, any theory 
 
 ye have forgiven. I am but yonge, 
 and ye will saye ye have forgivne 
 me diverse tymes. Maye not a man 
 of mye age, for lacke of counselle, 
 of which I am verye destitute, falle 
 twise or thrise, and yet repent, and 
 be chastised bye experience ? Gif I 
 have made anye faile that ye but 
 thinke a faile, howe soever it be, I 
 crave your pardone, and proteste 
 that I shall never faile againe. I 
 desire no other thinge but that we 
 maye be together as husband and 
 wife. And if ye will not consent 
 hereto, I desire never to rise forthe 
 of this bed. Therefore, I praye 
 yow, give me an aunswer hereunto. 
 God knoweth howe I am punished 
 for making mye god of yow, and 
 for having no other thought but on 
 yow. And if at anie tyme I offend 
 yow, ye are the cause ; for that 
 when aine offendethe me, if for my 
 refuge I might open mye minde to 
 yow, I woulde speake to no other ; 
 but when anie thinge is spoken to 
 me, and ye and I not beinge as hus- 
 band and wife ought to be, necessite 
 cpmpellethe me to kepe it in my 
 brest, and bringethe me in such me- 
 lancolye as ye see me in. ' 
 
 "She aunswered, that it semed 
 hym she was sorye for his sicknesse, 
 and she woulde finde remedye ther- 
 fore so sone as she might. 
 
 ' ' She asked him whye he would 
 have passed awaye in the Englishe 
 shippe. 
 
 "He aunswered, that he had 
 spoken with the Englishe man, but 
 not of minde to goe awaie with him ; 
 and if he had, it had not bin without 
 
 not ane man of my age, for lacke of 
 counsell, fall twyse or thryse, or in 
 lacke of his promeis, and at last re- 
 pent himself, and be chastisit be ex- 
 perience ? Gif I may obtane par- 
 doun, I protest I sail never mak fault 
 agane. And I craif na uther thing, 
 bot yat we may be at bed and buird 
 togidder as husband and wyfe ; and 
 gif ze will not consent heirunto, I 
 sail never ryse out of yis bed. I pray 
 zow, tell me zour resolutioun. God 
 knawis how I am punischit for mak- 
 ing my god of zow, and for having 
 na uther thocht but on zow; and 
 gif at ony tyme I offend zow, ze ar 
 the cans, becaus quhen ony offendis 
 me, gif for my refuge I micht playne 
 unto zow, I wald speik it unto na 
 uther body ; bot quhen I heir ony 
 thing, not being familiar with zow, 
 necessitie constrains me to keip it in 
 my breist, and yat causes me to 
 tyne my wit for verray anger.' 
 
 " I answerit ay unto him, bot 
 that wald be ovir lang to wryte at 
 lenth. I askit quhy he wald pas 
 away in ye Inglis schip. He denyis 
 it, and sweiris thairunto ; bot he 
 grantis that he spak with the men. 
 Efter this I inquyrit him of the in- 
 quisitioun of Hiegait. He denyit 
 the same, quhill I schew him the 
 verray wordis was spokin ; at quhilk 
 tyme he said that Mynto had ad- 
 vertisit him that it was said that 
 sum of the Counsell had brocht ane 
 letter to me to be subscrivit to put 
 him in presoun, and to slay him gif 
 he maid resistence. And he askit 
 the same at Mynto himself ; quha 
 answerit, that he belevit ye same to 
 
THE CASKET DOCUMENTS, 1567. 269 
 
 against the genuineness of this document, it would be well 
 for the enthusiast to weigh the possible influence of that 
 darkly suggestive conversation between Darnley and his 
 kinsman, in which they exchange their suspicions about 
 the unexpected visit — suspicions in which murder is an 
 element.^ 
 
 Such theories, and the impossibility of confuting them 
 to the conviction of those who choose to maintain them, 
 is one of the incidents of the rather forensic tone in which 
 the great controversy about Queen Mary has been con- 
 ducted. A leaf has been taken from the Old Bailey, and 
 it has been maintained that she should be counted innocent 
 until she is proved guilty. But in the legal sense this is 
 impossible about long-past events. To comply with it, 
 
 be trew. The morne I wil speik to 
 him upon this point. As to the rest 
 of WiUie Hiegait's he confessit it ; 
 bot it was the morne efter my cum- 
 ming or he did it." 
 
 cause, consideringe howe he was 
 used. For he had neather to sus- 
 teine him sellfe nor hys servantes, 
 and neded not make farder reher- 
 salle thereof, seinge she knewe it as 
 well as he. 
 
 ' ' Then she asked him of the pur- 
 pose of Hegace. He aunswered, it 
 was tolde him. 
 
 "She required howe and by 
 whome it was tolde him. 
 
 "He aunswered, that the L. of 
 Minto tolde him that a lettre was 
 presented to her in Cragmillar, 
 made bye her owne divise and sub- 
 scribed bye certaine others, who 
 desired her to subscrive the same, 
 which she refused to doe ; and he said 
 that he would never thinke that she, 
 who was hys owne propper fleshe, 
 would do him anie hurte ; and if 
 anie other woulde do it, theye should 
 bye it dere, unlesse theye tooke him 
 slepinge, albeit he suspected none. 
 So he desired her effect aouslye to 
 beare him companye. For she ever 
 founde som adoe to draw her sellfe 
 from him to her owne lodginge, and 
 would never abyde with him paste 
 two houres at once." 
 
 ^ See above, p. 184. Since this was written, the policy of the 
 
 Vindicators " has declared itself. As if by a common understanding, 
 they have found that the testimony of Craufurd is the text on which 
 the letter was forged. 
 
2^o 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 we would require to place Craufurd in the witness-box, 
 cross-question him, and search the world for testimony 
 until we fill up all gaps and explain all inconsistencies. 
 These things are the strong securities with which the law 
 surrounds the rights of living men, especially their lives or 
 their liberties. We all know multitudes of things which 
 are not judicially proved, which we could not judicially 
 prove j yet the law requires that before we act on them, 
 to the injury of our neighbour, they shall be so proved. 
 If the life or liberty of a British subject could be made to 
 depend either on proving Queen Mary guilty or proving 
 her innocent, neither could be made out in such a manner 
 as to secure a verdict. At the present day we have no 
 evidence on which we could hang Felton, who stabbed the 
 Duke of Buckingham in Charles I.'s time, or even the man 
 who shot Spencer Perceval. It would be the same with the 
 death of Caesar and the execution of Charles I. Such a way 
 of going to work would blot out history, by making its parts 
 extinguish each other, like the equivalents in an equation. 
 If Queen Mary is entitled to the benefit of all doubts, the 
 confederate lords who brought the charges and evidence 
 against her are entitled to the benefit of all doubts to 
 protect their character from the stigma of conspiracy. It 
 has been often pressed in this controversy that an accuser 
 takes nothing by character. This too belongs to the 
 courts of criminal justice as a constitutional protection of 
 life and liberty. The accuser is a law officer of the crown, 
 a man of high social position and spotless integrity ; the 
 accused is the hero of a hundred robberies, and has passed 
 the greater part of his adult life in prison. Yet the ques- 
 tion at issue must be determined by the strictest rules of 
 evidence, and it is only in the weight of the punishment 
 that character tells. But in coming to a mere opinion, we 
 cannot help the solution of the question, whether, from 
 antecedents and accompanying conditions, it is more likely 
 that the accused had done something to justify the charge, 
 than that those who made it had conspired to bring it 
 home by mendacity and forgery. 
 
 The judge may be bound to release the accused, al- 
 though in his secret heart believing him to be guilty ; but 
 
THE CASKET DOCUMENTS, 1567. 
 
 271 
 
 in history belief is all, and belief cannot be resisted when 
 it comes, nor can a leaning to the stronger probabilities 
 where there is doubt, let the effect on the fame of some 
 long-dead actor in the history of the world be what it will. 
 
 But while thus tenacious of the privileges of an accused 
 person, these enthusiasts demand a conclusion from which 
 such a person is excluded by the act of seeking their 
 protection. The verdict of " not guilty " founded on im- 
 perfection in the evidence, is no proclamation of innocence. 
 Its tenor is generally more distinctly interpreted by an 
 expressive form in use in Scotland. When the jury do 
 not find reason to proclaim a case of calumniated inno- 
 cence, but give the accused the benefit of defective 
 evidence, they find a verdict of " not proven.'* It would 
 perhaps surprise some enthusiasts of the present day to 
 find contemporary vindicators going no further than the 
 demand of a verdict of *^not proven. Their reason was 
 the same material one that influences modern trials. They 
 maintained that there was no sufficient case made out for 
 depriving the queen of her sovereignty and liberty. The 
 evidence against her was not conclusive, and she should 
 have had the benefit of the doubt. Those who believe in 
 her as a saint martyred by wicked men, would find dis- 
 agreeable revelations in reading what is said by the early 
 class of vindicators.^ 
 
 ^ Take, for instance, the following by the man who knew her best 
 of all her supporters — Bishop Leslie, in his * Defence of the Honour 
 of the Right High and Noble Princess Marie, Queen of Scotland and 
 Dowager of France,' printed in the name of 'Morgan Philips, 
 Bachelor in Divinity : ' * * I would, then, farther demand of them 
 what authority they had to summon and assemble a Parliament? 
 And whether this fact of hers, supposing she were shown guilty, 
 deserveth in her, being a prince, and considering how heinously the 
 Lord Damley had offended her and the crown of Scotland, such 
 extreme punishment to be levied upon her for one simple murther, 
 especially by them that committed that shameful murther upon her 
 secretary, that have committed so many treasons, and daily do commit 
 so many horrible murthers upon the queen's true loving subjects ? How 
 many, and how cruel and terrible deaths do such traitors deserve ! 
 We have, moreover, to demand of them, whereas they pretend a 
 marvellous and a singular zeal to religion and holy Scripture, and to 
 measure all their doings precisely by Scripture and order thereof, 
 
272 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 Though this controversy has produced dazzHng achieve- 
 ments of ingenuity and sagacity, I would be incHned not 
 so much to press technical points of evidence as to look 
 to the general tone and character of the whole story. In 
 this view, nothing appears to me more natural than the 
 casket letters. They fit entirely into their place in the 
 dark history of events. They are thoroughly characteristic 
 of one who, inheriting the common blood of James IV., 
 the Tudors, and the Guises, was trained at a Court 
 where good faith, justice, and mercy were represented by 
 Catherine of Medici, and the social morals were those of 
 the ' Dames Galantes ' of Brantome and the novels of 
 Queen Marguerite. 
 
 Suppose it to have been settled in conclave that such a 
 set of letters were to be forged, who was there with the 
 genius to accomplish the feat? Nowhere else, perhaps, 
 has the conflict of the three passions, love,- jealousy, and 
 hatred, been so powerfully stamped in utterance. Some- 
 what impoverished though it may be in the echo of a 
 foreign medium, we have here the reality of that which the 
 masters of fiction have tried in all ages, with more or less 
 success, to imitate. They have striven to strip great 
 events of broad, vulgar, offensive qualities, and to excite 
 sensations which approach to sympathy with human im- 
 perfections. And, indeed, these letters stir from their 
 very foundation the sensations which tragic genius endea- 
 vours to arouse. We cannot, in reading them, help a 
 touch of sympathy, or it may be compassion, towards the 
 gifted being driven in upon the torrent of relentless 
 passions, even though the end to which she drifts is the 
 breaking of the highest laws, human and divine. A touch 
 of tenderness towards those illustrious persons who show 
 their participation in the frailty of our common nature by 
 imperfections as transcendent as their capacities, is one 
 
 what sufficient warrant they have therein, by their private authority, 
 to lay violent hands upon their anointed prince ? 1 find there that 
 King David was both an adulterer and also a murtherer. I find 
 that God was highly displeased with him therefor ; yet find I not 
 that he was therefor by his subjects deposed." — Anderson's Collec- 
 tion, i. 56. 
 
THE CASKET DOCUMENTS, 1567. 273 
 
 of the mysterious qualities of the human heart, and here it 
 has room for indulgence. In fact, it is the shade that gives 
 impressiveness to the picture. With all her beauty and wit, 
 her political ability and her countless fascinations, Mary, 
 Queen of Scots, would not have occupied nearly the half 
 of her present place in the interest of mankind had the 
 episode of Bothwell not belonged to her story. 
 
 The question. Who could have forged such documents ? 
 receives in no quarter a distinct answer. In other in- 
 stances of attempted identification, as of Eikon Basilik^, 
 or the Letters of Junius, attempts have been made to 
 bring the matter home by identifying specialties of style, 
 method of handling, and turns of thought. No one, how- 
 ever, has tried to prove that these documents resemble 
 any one's acknowledged writings. 
 
 Buchanan is the person naturally hinted at as the 
 author of the contents of the casket, having been the first 
 to draw public attention to them. But if we suppose him 
 morally capable of such an act, it is pretty clear that it 
 did not come within his intellectual capacity, extensive as 
 that was. The little domesticities in the letters would 
 not suit the majestic march of his pen. In the Detection, 
 to which he appended the documents, he shows that, had 
 he prepared these himself, he would certainly have over- 
 drawn them. In fact, in that philippic the great scholar 
 and poet shows that, although he may have known politics 
 on a large scale, he was not versed in the intricacies of 
 the human heart. Everything is with him utterly and 
 palpably vile and degrading, without any redeeming or 
 mitigating element. The love that, if wicked, yet takes 
 the tone of feminine attachment and pure devotedness, 
 becomes in his hand mere lust, breaking out in brutal and 
 degrading acts. The flagrant proceedings of this guilty 
 couple, and their pander the Lady Reres, a cast-off mis- 
 tress of Bothwell's, sometimes even admit of ludicrous 
 postures, which the author describes with sarcastic zest. 
 The quarrels of the king and queen are like those that 
 might pass between a passionate strolling actress and the 
 good-for-nothing husband she has to support by her talents. 
 She starves him and lets him go in rags, while the favourite 
 
 VOL. IV. s 
 
274 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 fares sumptuously and is endowed with stately dresses and 
 jewellery. She grudges him the charge of a physician in 
 his sickness. She carries off his service of plate, and re- 
 places it with pewter. A quantity of incredible charges 
 are heaped up ; and among others, that she tempted her 
 husband into acts of low profligacy, that she might get 
 him divorced, ^' to make empty bedroom for Bothwell.'' 
 She sleeps soundly with a satisfied mind, when she hears 
 that her husband is dead — she gloats over his dead body, 
 unwilling to take her eyes from so delightful a sight — she 
 insults it with the sordidness of the funeral appliances — 
 her glee is irrepressible, and will not be controlled by any 
 usages of Court etiquette or even common decorum. She 
 lays plots to open a deadly feud between her husband 
 and Murray, in the hope that one of them may fall — little 
 matter which, it will be a hatred the less to her. And 
 what was he for whom she sacrificed herself, body and 
 soul ? He was not only polluted by the vilest crimes, 
 but he had none of the external qualities with which bad 
 men varnish their wickedness. He was hideously ugly, 
 boorish in manner, a babbler in talk, and a coward in 
 action. Where, then, was the attraction? In the common 
 degradation of the two — their cruelty, falsehood, and lust. 
 It is, perhaps, not the least incongruous feature of this 
 picture, with its blacks and whites, that the victim stands, 
 in contrast with his slayer, as endowed with constancy, 
 truthfulness, and general goodness. 
 
 But while those who have gone into the intricacies of 
 the story cannot accept the conclusions of the Detection, 
 they cannot read it without acknowledging that it is a 
 great work of rhetorical art. It bears up throughout the 
 grand forms of ancient classical denunciation, rising, with 
 blow after blow, up to the thundering climax. It is for 
 this reason that it is so extravagant. It was among the 
 rhetoricians a four de force, as the French say, to make 
 the denunciation perfect — a total annihilation of a cause 
 or a character ; and any ray of light or hope, any redeem- 
 ing touch, was a defect, almost an infringement of the 
 great principles of rhetoric. 
 
 Such a work, put forth in the common language of the 
 
THE CASKET DOCUMENTS, 1567. 275 
 
 learned by its greatest master, had immense influence over 
 Europe. It was paralleled by a scarcely less remarkable 
 translation for the benefit of the people of Scotland. 
 This conveys a very distinct impression of the power of 
 the old Scots tongue, and its capacity to march alongside 
 of the language of Rome, preserving the same grand 
 historic step. It will be found to differ much from Knox's 
 style, though both wrote powerfully, and were adepts in 
 denunciation. To say that Knox has a touch of vulgarity 
 would not be correct ; but he is more homely. He 
 affected to write in the English of the day ; and though 
 his style is abundantly rich, it wants a certain sinewy 
 terseness which his friend and coadjutor finds in the old 
 Scots tongue.^ 
 
 With all its exaggerations and extravagancies, the 
 Detection is the work of a man thoroughly sincere. 
 Buchanan believed in the fundamental fact of the guilt, 
 and he brought out his belief in the fashion of his special 
 accomplishments as a classical scholar, with due devotion 
 
 ^ ** Albeit thir thingis were thus done as I have declairit, yit thair 
 ar sum that stick not to say that the quene was not onely hardly, but 
 alswa cruelly delt with ; that efter sa detestabill ane fact, sche was 
 removit from regiment ; and quhen they cannot deny the fact, they 
 complane of the punischment. I do not think thair wil be any man 
 sa schameles to think that sa horribill ane fact aucht to have na 
 punischment at all ; bot if thay complane of the grevousnes of the 
 penaltie, I feir leist to all gude men we may seme not to have done 
 sa gentilly and temperately as lously and negligently, that have laid 
 sa licht ane pane upon ane offence sa haynous, and sic as was never 
 hard of befoir. For quhat can be done cruelly aganis the author of 
 sa outragious ane deid, quhairin all lawis of God and man ar violatit, 
 despysit, and in maner haillely extinguischit ? Everie severall offence 
 hes his punischment baith be God and man appointit. And as thair 
 be certane degreis of evill deidis, sa ar thair also incressis in the 
 quantiteis of punischmentis. If ane have slane a man, it is ane deid 
 of itself verray haynous. Quhat if he have slane his familiar freind? 
 Quhat if his father ? Quhat if in ane foull fact he had joynit all thir 
 offencis togidder ? Surely of sic a ane nouther can his lyfe suffice 
 for imposing, nor his body for beiring, nor the judge's policie for 
 inventing, pane aneuch for him. Quhilk of thir faultis is now com- 
 prysit in this offence? I omit the meane commoun materis — the 
 murthering of ane young gentilman, ane innocent, hir countriman, 
 hir kinnisman, hir familiar, and hir cousing-germane. Let us also 
 
276 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 to the method of the rhetoricians. There are accusations 
 in the Detection not to be beUeved, and yet the statement 
 of them there is an important revelation. It gives us 
 the popular feeling about Queen Mary. This feeling, of 
 course, arose and had its chief seat among the populace 
 of Edinburgh, before whom the tragedies of her reign 
 had been acted. But it was a period of action and excite- 
 ment, and whatever moved the centre was taken to the 
 extremities of the country by the burgesses and lairds who 
 
 excuse ye fact, if it be possibill sche unadvisidly, ane young woman, 
 angrie, offendit, and ane of greit innocencie of lyfe till this tyme, has 
 slane ane lewd young man, ane adulterer, ane unkynde husband, and 
 ane cruelle king. If not ony ane, bot all thir respectis togidder, wer 
 in this mater, thay aucht not to availe to schift of all punischment, 
 bot to rais sum pietie of the cace. Bot quhat say ye, that nain of 
 thir thingis can sa mekle as be falsly pretendit ? The fact itself, of 
 itself is odious in ane woman ; it is monstrous in ane wyfe, not onely 
 excessively luifit, bot also maist zealously honourit — it is incredibill. 
 And being committit aganis him quhais age craifit pardone, quhais 
 hartly affectioun requyrit lufe, quhais neirnes of kyn askit reverence, 
 quhais innocencie micht have deservit favour — upon that young man, 
 I say, in quhome thair is not sa mekle as alledgeit ony just caus of 
 offence thus to execute and spend, yea, to exceid all tormentis dew to 
 all offencis, in quhat degre of crueltie sail we accompt it ? Bot let 
 thir thingis availl in uther personnis to rais haitrent, to bring punisch- 
 ment, and to mak exempillis to posteritie. Bot in this cace let us 
 beir mekle with hir youth, mekle with hir nobilitie, mekle with the 
 name of ane prince. As for myne awin part, I am not ane that think 
 it alway gude to use extreme straitnes of law — na, not in private, 
 meane, and commoun personnis. Bot in ane maist haynous misdeid, 
 to dissolve all force of law, and quhair is na measure of ill-doing, 
 thair to discend beneth all measure in punisching, wer the way to the 
 undoing of all lawis, and the overthraw of all humane societie. Bot 
 in this ane horribill act is sic ane hotch-potch of all abhominabil 
 doingis, sic ane egernes of all outragious crueltie, sic ane forgetful- 
 ness of all naturall affectioun, as nathing mair can be fengeit or 
 imaginit." — Anderson's Collection, ii. 85-88. 
 
 This is the work of a mind saturated with the spirit which comes 
 to its perfection in the oration against Verres : " Quod si hsec non 
 ad cives Romanos, non ad aliquos amicos nostrae civitatis, non ad eos 
 qui populi Romani nomen audissent ; denique si non ad homines 
 verum ad bestias ; aut etiam ut longius progrediar, si in aliqua 
 desertissima solitudine, ad saxa et ad scopulos haec conqueri et deplo- 
 rare vellem, tamen omnia muta atqua inanima, tanta et tarn indigna 
 rerum atrocitate commoverentur. " 
 
THE CASKET DOCUMENTS, 1567. 277 
 
 attended the Estates, and the clergy and lay members of 
 the Assembly. It is its foundation on popular feeling that 
 gives the Detection its tone of vehemence and confidence. 
 The declaimer will not be at the trouble of going into 
 the evidence ; the thing is notorious, the public voice is 
 filled with it. 
 
 The fallaciousness of such a test is proverbial. The 
 atmosphere of public rumour that surrounds any marvel 
 is sure to exaggerate and distort it. But the existence of 
 that atmosphere is in itself an important psychological 
 phenomenon; and of such a phenomenon we have a vivid 
 picture in the Detection. It is a truer echo of public 
 opinion than we can find in Knox, because it is the echo 
 of reaction. To Knox she was a Popish Jezebel from 
 the beginning. But Buchanan, though a zealous Protest- 
 ant, had a good deal of the catholic and sceptical spirit 
 of Erasmus, and an admiring eye for everything that was 
 great and beautiful. Like the rest of his countrymen, he 
 bowed himself in presence of the lustre that surrounded 
 the early career of his mistress. More than once he 
 expressed his pride and reverence in the inspiration of 
 a genius deemed by his learned contemporaries to be 
 worthy of the theme. There is not, perhaps, to be found 
 elsewhere in literature so solemn a memorial of ship- 
 wrecked hopes, of a sunny opening and a stormy end, as 
 one finds in turning the leaves of the volume which con- 
 tains the beautiful epigram ^ Nympha Caledonise ' in one 
 part, the 'Detectio Mariae Reginae' in another; and this 
 contrast is no doubt a faithful parallel of the reaction in 
 the popular mind. This reaction seems to have been 
 general, and not limited to the Protestant party ; for the 
 conditions under which it became almost a part of the 
 creed of the Church of Rome to believe in her innocence 
 had not arisen. 
 
 To come back to the contents of the casket, which were 
 first made public along with the Detection. The question 
 of their genuineness is surrounded by doubts and dis- 
 putes ; but about another matter there can be no doubt 
 — namely, that the party in power resolved to treat them 
 as genuine, and steer their policy accordingly. She was 
 
278 
 
 QUEEN MARY. 
 
 to be dealt with as a murderess. Whatever demands 
 might be made on her were to be backed by the prospect 
 of a pubhc trial and the block. It was a tacit foreshadow 
 of strong measures that both the English ambassador and 
 a special envoy from the Court of France were refused 
 access to the queen. If she was still queen, this was a 
 deadly affront to two great powers, and there could be 
 no way out of the difficulty but a dethronement. 
 
 The secret counsels of the confederates were not long 
 of coming out in action. On the 23d of July the Lord 
 Lindsay and Robert Melville set off on a memorable mis- 
 sion to Lochleven. They presented to the queen two 
 documents, which she must sign : the one a renunciation 
 of her crown in favour of her son ; the other, an appoint- 
 ment of Murray to the office of regent during the child's 
 minority. Several stories got afloat about what passed at 
 this interview. It was said that Melville, who had a pre- 
 liminary private interview with her, carried, concealed in 
 the sheath of his sword, a letter from a friend, recom- 
 mending her to consent to everything, as all she did while 
 under restraint might be revoked. Another account says 
 that Lindsay, provoked by her obstinacy, lost his temper 
 and used violence. But Mary's was not the spirit to be 
 broken by brute force. The influence that made her sign 
 the deeds must have been crushing indeed. There is no 
 doubt that the tenor of the casket letters was brought 
 before her ; indeed the first rumour of their existence was 
 in a letter written two days afterwards by Throckmorton, 
 stating that the confederates boasted of possessing sure 
 evidence of her guilt. At all events the deeds were 
 signed. Of course documents of so much moment were 
 drawn up in the perfection of formality. They do not 
 contain a hint of guilt or a reference to Bothwell. Any 
 one alighting on them as they are recorded in the statute- 
 book, without any explanation from the events of the 
 age, might take them for the voluntary utterance of one 
 weary of the cares of a throne, going like the Emperor 
 Charles V. to seek consolation in the calm of monastic 
 life. She declares the act to be done of her own free will; 
 and of her motive to it, that, " after long, great, and in- 
 
THE ABDICATION, 1567. 
 
 tolerable pains and labours taken by us since our arrival 
 within our realm for government thereof, and keeping of 
 the lieges of the same in quietness, we have not only been 
 vexed in our spirit, body, and senses thereby, but also at 
 length are altogether so wearied thereof that our ability 
 and strength of body is not able to endure the same/' 
 The deed of demission appointed, as a commission of 
 regency in Murray's absence, the head of the house of 
 Hamilton, Lennox, Argyle, Athole, Morton, Glencairn, 
 and Mar. The affixing of the privy seal was wanted for 
 these documents, but the keeper refused so to use it. 
 This little difficulty was got over by Lindsay, who took 
 it from him by force. The documents were ratified in 
 Parliament, with a declaration that the prince's title was 
 as effectual as if his mother, at the time of his coronation, 
 "had been departed out of this mortal life." 
 
 From the date of these documents Mary Stewart ceases 
 to appear as sovereign in the public proceedings of the 
 realm, and the reign of King James VI. begins. 
 
280 
 
 CHAPTER XLVIIL 
 
 INTERREGNUM. 
 
 POLITICAL CONDITIONS FOLLOWING ON THE ABDICATION OF QUEEN 
 MARY — THE CLAIMS OF THE HAMILTONS — THE CORONATION OF 
 THE INFANT PRINCE — THE ORGANISATION OF THE REGENCY- 
 MURRAY RECALLED FROM FRANCE — HIS VISIT TO HIS SISTER- 
 INAUGURATED AS REGENT — TAKES EDINBURGH CASTLE OUT OF 
 BALFOUR'S HANDS — A PARLIAMENT — POSITION OF SCOTLAND TO- 
 WARDS FRANCE AND ENGLAND — QUEEN ELIZABETH'S HIGH DE- 
 MANDS— THROCKMORTON SENT TO ASSERT THEM— HOW HE FARED 
 IN HIS MISSION — CONFERENCES WITH MURRAY AND LETHINGTON 
 — ACCUSATIONS AGAINST THE HAMILTONS — POPULAR FEELING 
 ABOUT QUEEN MARY— EFFECT OF QUEEN ELIZABETH'S INTERFER- 
 ENCE. 
 
 The confederates having disposed of their troublesome 
 and dangerous mistress somewhat to their satisfaction, 
 the more active spirits among them set to the task of 
 organising a working government. There had been a 
 great revolution in the state of Scotland. Those who 
 have noticed in history the influence on the popular mind 
 of such convulsive changes cannot look into the conditions 
 attending Queen Mary's abdication without feeling them 
 to be exceptional in the remarkable calmness of the 
 people, and the precision of action in those who took the 
 lead. All the arrangements were well adapted to baffle 
 any bold ambitious man who might attempt to break in 
 on the plans of the leaders and establish a separate in- 
 terest. The abdication of the queen was carefully worded, 
 so as to be nothing unless it transferred the crown to her 
 
THE CRISIS. 
 
 281 
 
 son. It was not called an abdication, but a transfer, 
 merely bearing that we have demitted and renounced 
 the office of government of this our realm and lieges 
 thereof, in favours of our only most dear son, native 
 prince of this our realm." The infant, fourteen months 
 old, could neither reject nor modify this adjustment, nor 
 could others do so in his name. The " letter of demis- 
 sion," as it was termed, makes provision for a regency 
 during the minority of the king. The regent is to be 
 ^' our dearest brother, James, Earl of Murray." As he is 
 furth of the kingdom, however, a provisional regency is 
 established to act in his absence. It is to consist of 
 Hamilton and his heir, Lennox, and several other mag- 
 nates. This nomination is followed by a provision of 
 more importance. In case Murray, on his return to Scot- 
 land, ^'refuse to accept the said office of regentrie upon 
 his singular person," then he is to be one of a collective 
 regency, consisting otherwise of the temporary regents. 
 This document, and the character of the transactions con- 
 nected with it, give the impression that Murray had done 
 nothing to entitle his friends to count on his acceptance 
 of the chief power. 
 
 When those concerned in the new arrangements esti- 
 mated the difficulties in their way, they thought the most 
 formidable of these likely to arise in the claims of the 
 house of Hamilton. That family could not forget that 
 now only an infant stood between them and the throne. 
 The selection of Murray as the chief ruler of the country 
 was ominous to them. The distance between legitimacy 
 and illegitimacy had widened since the days when the 
 legitimacy of Robert III. was questioned and left un- 
 settled ; but statesmanship had not, like the civil law, 
 established that a bastard was counted the child of no 
 father. 
 
 In most of the Courts of Europe the illegitimate family 
 took rank immediately after the legitimate, and at almost 
 every great Court there was a prince called the Bastard. 
 Not long time had elapsed since one of this class nearly 
 made himself King of Spain. More astounding things 
 than the seizure of royal power had been accomplished by 
 
282 
 
 INTERREGNUM. 
 
 clever, courageous, and unscrupulous men with Murray's 
 opportunities ; and Murray was both clever and courage- 
 ous, whatever may be said about his scrupulosity. His 
 very call to the regency was an admission of hereditary 
 claim : it would not have been given had he been a 
 private peer unallied to the royal house. Had either of 
 the Hamiltons, the father or the son, been a man of 
 Murray's capacity, he would have taken the regency, if 
 not something more ; but the only member of the house 
 capable of strong action was the archbishop, and late 
 events had made his influence far less than it was when 
 he sneered at his brother for letting an infant live between 
 him and the throne. 
 
 It was observed that there was an assemblage of rela- 
 tions and retainers of the house at Hamilton Palace. Sir 
 Robert Melville, who was sent to them as a sort of ambas- 
 sador, was courteously received, and returned with the 
 assurance that they had no intention to interfere with the 
 dominant party. They made themselves conspicuous by 
 their absence from the coming ceremony ; but they took 
 no ostensible action farther than to tender a protest that 
 nothing done towards the reconstruction of a government 
 should stand to the prejudice of their hereditary claims. 
 For some weeks there had been in existence a band or 
 bond for the release of the queen and the re-establish- 
 ment of her government. The Hamiltons were understood 
 to be the promoters of this project, and afterwards they 
 became conspicuous as the leaders of " the queen's party. ^' 
 As we shall afterwards find, however, the Hamilton branch 
 of this party lay under the accusation of secretly working 
 for her death. 
 
 Mary's abdication or demission was signed, as we have 
 seen, on the 24th of July. Next day a body of the party 
 in power bound themselves to common action and sup- 
 port by a band.'' On the 28th they assembled at Stir- 
 ling, where the infant prince was guarded. Next day he 
 was solemnly crowned as king. Whether as a ceremonial, 
 or because there was real danger of a forcible interruption 
 to the business of the day, the garrison of the castle was 
 on the alert, and the artillery ready for use. 
 
CORONATION OF KING JAMES, 1567. 283 
 
 The ceremony was enacted in the beautiful parish 
 church perched on the castle rock and close to the out- 
 works. Though the Reformation had utterly changed the 
 sovereign's obligations in matters ecclesiastical, yet the 
 infant was not to be invested with monarchical power 
 without the proper obHgation for its due performance. 
 An oath was framed for the occasion. It was taken by 
 the Earl of Morton, as sponsor for the infant, incHning 
 his body and laying his hand on the book of God.*' This 
 oath is a remarkable document, and deserves to be set 
 forth at length. It is as follows : — 
 
 I, James, Prince and Stewart of Scotland, promise 
 faithfully, in the presence of the Eternal, my God, that I, 
 enduring the whole course of my life, shall serve the same 
 Eternal, my God, to the uttermost of my power, according 
 as He required in His most Holy Word, revealed and 
 contained in the New and Old Testaments ; and, accord- 
 ing to the same Word, shall maintain the true religion of 
 Jesus Christ, the preaching of His Holy Word, and due 
 and right ministration of His sacraments, now received 
 and practised within this realm, and shall abolish and gain- 
 stand all false religion contrary to the same, and shall rule 
 the people committed to my charge according to the will 
 and command of God revealed in His aforesaid Word, and 
 according to the lovable laws and constitutions received 
 in this realm, no ways repugnant to the said Word of the 
 Eternal, my God, and shall procure to my uttermost, to 
 the Kirk of God and whole Christian people, true and 
 perfect peace in all times coming. The rights and rents, 
 with all just privileges, of the crown of Scotland, I shall 
 preserve and keep inviolate, neither shall I transfer nor 
 alienate the same. I shall forbid and repress, in all estates 
 and all degrees, reiff, oppression, and all kind of wrong. 
 In all judgments I shall command and procure that justice 
 and equity be kept to all creatures, without exception, as 
 He be merciful to me and you — that is, the Lord and 
 Father of all mercies ; and out of all my lands and empire 
 I shall be careful to root out all heretics and enemies to 
 the true worship of God that shall be convicted by the 
 true Kirk of God of the foresaid crimes. And these 
 
284 
 
 INTERREGNUM. 
 
 things above written I faithfully affirm by my solemn 
 oath/'i 
 
 Thereafter the infant's head was placed inside the crown 
 which Bruce had worn, and his right hand was made to 
 touch the sword and sceptre, in so far that it could be re- 
 corded how the representatives of the Estates " deliverit 
 in his hands the sword and sceptre, and put the crown, 
 royal upon his head, with all due reverence, ceremonies, 
 and circumstances requisite and accustomed, and gave 
 their ayths for due and lawful homage and obedience to 
 be made by them to him in all times coming, as becomes 
 subjects to their native king and prince." It is said that 
 there was some difficulty on the question of the anointing, 
 as a superstitious ceremony, Jewish in its origin and Popish 
 in its later practice. We have seen how this rite was con- 
 ceded to Scotland by the Papal Court as a privilege, 
 raising the rank of the kingdom among the Christian mon- 
 archies. ^ Such an origin did not commend the institution 
 to the predominant Protestants. It was not prudent, how- 
 ever, on such an occasion, to omit any solemnity that 
 might tend to give effectiveness to the coronation. The 
 ceremony of anointing was performed by Adam Bothwell, 
 Bishop of Orkney, the same who had married the queen 
 to her last husband. John Knox, who among contem- 
 porary chroniclers is spoken of as objecting to the anoint- 
 ing, was a prominent party to the coronation. The as- 
 semblage was not properly a Parliament or meeting of the 
 Estates. Yet there were present members of all the 
 secular elements of the Parliament — the nobles, the barons, 
 and the burgesses ; and the names of the persons who re- 
 presented these orders are recorded. The representation 
 of the ecclesiastical order is curiously equivocal. The 
 only purely spiritual title in the minute is that of the 
 Bishop of Orkney. There are several " Commendators 
 of great religious houses; but these were only the persons 
 who had got hold of their domains or revenues. At the con- 
 clusion of the record of the proceedings is announced, as 
 an important party to them, one who is not named as among 
 
 ^ Anderson's Collection, ii. 247, 248. 
 
 ^ Chap. XXV. 
 
CORONATION OF KING JAMES, 1567. 285 
 
 those present — John Knox. By an ancient practice of the 
 Imperial notariat, the persons interested in the proceed- 
 ings of collective bodies might require them to be officially 
 certified or recorded by responsible recorders ; and this 
 right came to be called the asking of ^'acts/' or of "in- 
 struments/' or of documents/' We shall find this practice 
 rife when we come to the days of the Covenant. So in the 
 record of the coronation of the infant we find that " the 
 said Sir John Bellenden, Justice-Clerk, in name of the said 
 Estates, and also John Knox, minister, and Robert Camp- 
 bell of Kinzean Cleuch, asked acts, instruments, and 
 documents.^* There seems to have been thus far on the 
 record an acknowledgment of the influence of the leader 
 as representing the new Church, though he was not a 
 member of the Estates, and had no legitimate place among 
 the constituted powers. He preached a sermon on the 
 occasion in the church of StirHng. 
 
 The ceremony having been completed, the honours of 
 the realm, as the crown, the sceptre, and the other symbols 
 of royalty were called, were each separately conveyed back 
 to the castle by one of the great nobles in attendance. It 
 fell to the lot of Mar to bear in his arms the infant king, as 
 entire a mute emblem of the power of those who handled 
 him as the inanimate symbols carried by the others. 
 
 Before dispersing, the assemblage uttered a proclama- 
 tion, requiring it to be read at the market-cross of every 
 burgh, in order that all men might know under whose 
 authority they now lived. It bore as preamble how " it 
 has pleased Almighty God to call the king's majesty, our 
 sovereign lord, unto the royal crown and government of 
 this realm by demission of the queen his mother;'^ and 
 then states how "his highness is crowned, inaugurate, and 
 established in this kingdom in the presence of the nobility 
 and Estates convened for execution and accomplishment 
 of the queen's will and commission foresaid." ^ 
 
 There still remained the momentous question, Would 
 Murray accept of that regency offered to him in form by 
 
 ^ The Privy Council record of the procee< lings will be found printed 
 in Anderson's Collection, ii. 242 seq. 
 
286 
 
 INTERREGNUM. 
 
 his sister, and in reality by the predominant party in the 
 Estates ? It was ever his poHcy to keep at a distance 
 when he saw the storm gathering. Some attribute this to 
 timidity or caution, and even maintain that he kept away 
 from the poHtical explosion after laying and lighting the 
 train. Others have it that, knowing how impossible it 
 was to influence his countrymen to good and orderly ends 
 when their blood was up, he kept away from scenes of 
 tumult and bloodshed, which vexed his righteous soul, and 
 taught him to despise his brethren of the Scots aristoc- 
 racy as a band of ferocious barbarians.^ However it was, 
 he had now been four months absent, and was abiding in 
 France until he was sent for. When informed of the offer 
 made to him, he made no sign, but gravely and in a 
 leisurely fashion turned his steps homewards. Whether 
 on good ground or not, he was afraid of detention in 
 France, if not of worse, and escaped secretly. He passed 
 through England, whether as the safest route, or that he 
 might gather on the way instruction for his guidance. He 
 was well received at Court and elsewhere. Whatever he 
 may have learned from others, however, it is clear that he 
 kept his own counsel. Had he in any way committed 
 himself, the fact must have come forth in the acrimonious 
 disputes of the time. He passed through Berwick, and as 
 he entered Scotland he was welcomed by a procession of 
 four hundred mounted gentlemen. He arrived at Edin- 
 burgh on the nth of August, and was there received with 
 high applause. Still he kept silence until he had an in-' 
 terview with his sister. 
 
 On the 15th he appeared at Lochleven accompanied by i 
 Morton and Athole. Their reception was like many others 
 in which Queen Mary figures — at one time storm and tears, 
 at another all sunshine. She had long conversations with 
 Murray alone. As to what passed at these meetings of 
 
 ^ On the 1 2th of August we find Throckmorton telling Cecil : To 
 speak more plainly to you than I will do otherwise, methinketh the 
 Earl of Murray will run the course that those men do, and be par- 
 taker of their fortune. I hear no man speak more bitterly against the 
 tragedy and the players therein than he, so little liking he hath to 
 horrible sins." — Wright's Queen Elizabeth, i. 264. 
 
MURRAY, 1567. 
 
 287 
 
 brother and sister, amid conditions so strange and tragic, 
 there has been much ardent curiosity but imperfectly satis- 
 fied, and a consequent world of conjecture. From her we 
 have no revelation ; but what Murray chose to say of the 
 meeting was carefully treasured up by the English resi- 
 dent Throckmorton, and repeated to his mistress Eliza- 
 beth. This precise observer tells that on the 19th of 
 August he desired to have a conversation with Murray 
 and Lethington " quietly/* Murray was unwell or indis- 
 posed for prompt conversation, but sent to say that he 
 would call on Throckmorton next day. He had made 
 up his mind for a revelation, and bluntly said, " My lord 
 ambassador, whether will you that I should make decla- 
 ration to you of my doings at Lochleven, or have you 
 anything to say to me?'' The other ^'required him to 
 " declare his proceedings with the queen his sister, and 
 how they had agreed. '* Murray's story can only be ren- 
 dered in his own words as his companion reported them : — 
 
 " At the Earls of Murray, Athole, and Morton s arrival 
 at Lochleven, they went immediately to the queen, who 
 had conference with them all together ; notwithstanding 
 the queen broke forth with great passion and weeping, re- 
 tiring the Earl of Murray apart, who had with her long 
 talk in the hearing of no person. That talk, as I do learn 
 (which continued two hours until supper-time), was nothing 
 pleasant to the queen, and chiefly for that the Earl of 
 Murray talked nothing so frankly with her as she desired, 
 but used covert speech, and such as she judged he would 
 not discover neither the good nor the ill he had con- 
 ceived of her, nor meant unto her. After supper she de- 
 sired to talk with the Earl of Murray again ; and every- 
 body being retired, they conferred together until one of 
 the clock after midnight : in which second communication 
 the said earl did plainly, without disguising, discover unto 
 the queen all his opinion of her misgovernment, and laid 
 before her all such disorders as either might touch her 
 conscience, her honour, or surety. 
 
 " I do hear that he behaved himself rather like a ghostly 
 father unto her than like a counsellor. Sometimes the 
 queen wept bitterly, sometimes she acknowleded her un- 
 
288 
 
 INTERREGNUM. 
 
 avisedness and misgovernraent ; some things she did con- 
 fess plainly, some things she did excuse, some things she 
 did extenuate. In conclusion, the Earl of Murray left 
 her that night in hope of nothing but of God's mercy, 
 willing her to seek that as her chiefest refuge. And so 
 they parted. 
 
 The next morning betime she desired to speak with 
 her brother; he repaired unto her. They began where 
 they left overnight, and after those his reprehensions, he 
 used some words of consolation unto her, tending to this 
 end, that he would assure her of her life, and, as much as 
 lay in him, the preservation of her honour. As for her 
 liberty, it lay not in his power ; neither was it good for 
 her to seek it, nor presently for her to have it, for many 
 respects. 
 
 '^Whereupon she took him in her arms and kissed him, 
 and showed herself very well satisfied, requiring him in 
 any ways not to refuse the regency of the realm, but to 
 accept it at her desire. ^ For by this means,' said she, 
 * my son shall be preserved, my realm well governed, and 
 I in safety, and in towardness to enjoy more safety and 
 liberty that way than I can any other.' Whereupon the 
 earl declared many reasons why he should refuse it. The 
 queen again replied with earnest intercession, and prayed 
 him to prefer her reasons and requests before his own, 
 which were particular. At length he accorded unto her 
 the acceptation of the regency. 
 
 Then the queen required him to leave no means un- 
 done to bring all the forts of the realm into his own dis- 
 posing, and likewise to take her jewels, and things of value 
 which were hers, into his custody, offering unto the said 
 earl her writings, the use of her name and authority, to 
 bring all these things to pass. He showed himself very 
 unwilling to have the custody of her jewels. Then the 
 Earl of Murray requiring the Lords Lindsay, Ruthven, and 
 Lochleven to treat the queen with gentleness, with liberty, 
 and all other good usage, he took his leave of her ; and 
 then began a new fit of weeping, which being appeased, 
 she embraced him very lovingly, kissed him, and sent her 
 blessing unto the prince her son by him.'' 
 
MURRAY, 1567. 
 
 289 
 
 On being questioned and pressed, Murray made some 
 further admissions. These are more significant by the 
 doubts they leave than the revelations they convey. The 
 Englishman was desirous to know if anything was said 
 about the personal safety or danger of the captive, and if 
 so, to know what tone Murray had taken. The result 
 was that ^'he treated with her of that matter with this 
 caution, that for his own part, according to his many obli- 
 gations, he had a desire to spend his own Hfe to save her 
 life, and would employ all that was in him for that pur- 
 pose; but it was not in his power only^ the lords and 
 others having interest in the matter.'^ He then warned 
 her of the classes of actions that might bring her into 
 peril, such as practices to disturb the quiet of the realm 
 and the reign of her son; projects to escape; exciting 
 the people to be troublesome ; courting foreign aid from 
 England or France ; and lastly, persisting in her "immod- 
 erate affection with the Earl of Bothwell." With a like 
 precise analysis he showed the prudent course wherein 
 her safety lay. 
 
 Many people, of course, will decline to take Murray's 
 word for his own conduct on the occasion ; but it is 
 noticeable that Throckmorton seems to have felt content 
 with the statement as sufficient. When the guests left 
 Lochleven their captive had brought herself to her usual 
 serene and genial deportment.^ 
 
 On the 2 2d of August Murray was solemnly inaugurated 
 
 ^ Keith, ii. 736-738. If it be asked whether there is any account of 
 this interview on Queen Mary's side which may be compared with 
 Murray's, it may be answered that, literally speaking, there is an ac- 
 count on her side, but it is so brief as to afford no data for a compari- 
 son. It is simply said on her part that he went to ask her permission 
 to accept of the regency, and when she pointed out that it was his 
 duty to decline the offer, he said he had already committed himself : 
 ** S'appercevant que sa majeste tendoit a luy persuader de ne rece- 
 voir la regence, et q'elle avoit encore quelque fiance en luy, estimant 
 qu'il se monstreroit envers elle tel q'il devoit pour avoir cest honneur 
 d'estre estinie luy appartenir comme frere bastard, il meit bas le 
 masque, replicquant que desja il avoit accepte la charge, et qu'il 
 n'estoit plus temps de s'en excuser." — Memoir addressed in the name 
 of Queen Mary to all Christian princes ; Teulet (4to edition), ii. 246. 
 VOL. IV. T 
 
290 
 
 INTERREGNUM. 
 
 as regent in the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, with a repetition 
 of the various documents already before us, cumbering 
 the march of events with heavy formahties. As recorded 
 by the Council, all occurred in the presence of the Lords 
 of the Secret Council, nobility, spirituality, commissioners 
 of burghs, and barons."^ 
 
 Among the regent's earliest acts one showed that he 
 would rule with a firm hand. This was the removal of 
 the command of Edinburgh Castle from Balfour. In his 
 eventful tenure of that post he had been faithless to his 
 master, Bothwell, and had done something to help the 
 new ascendancy ; but Murray did not deem him a man 
 to be safely trusted with power. There was a hold over 
 him in the part he had been known to take in the murder 
 of Darnley. He stipulated for certain conditions. Fore- 
 most among these was an amnesty from trouble about that 
 affair. He was still strong enough, too, to hold the Priory 
 of Pittenweem, and other goodly morsels of ecclesiastical 
 property which had fallen to his share in the general 
 scramble. One of his conditions not to be easily ac- 
 counted for was followed by disasters to him who ap- 
 peared to gain by it — he bargained that he was to be 
 succeeded in his command by Kirkcaldy of Grange. 
 
 On the 15th of December a Parliament assembled under 
 the regent's summons. Its chief work was to strengthen 
 things already done. It ratified the various steps of the 
 great revolution which had just passed over the land. It 
 will be remembered that the group of Acts passed in 1560, 
 for abolishing Popery and establishing a Protestant Church, 
 had been passed at a Convention of the Estates not as- 
 sembled by royal authority. It will be remembered, also, 
 how dexterously Queen Mary evaded all attempts to get 
 her to ratify or acknowledge these Acts, and how she left 
 it an open question, whether, on the one hand, they did 
 not require the royal assent, or were, on the other, mere 
 waste paper, as being without it. Though it was a preva- 
 lent doctrine held by Buchanan and many others, that 
 Acts of the Estates were valid without the royal assent, 
 
 Anderson, ii. 252. 
 
RELATION WITH FRANCE, 1567. 
 
 291 
 
 and that the ceremony of touching with the sceptre was a 
 mere act of courtesy, showing a harmony of action be- 
 tween the Crown and the Estates, yet an opportunity was 
 taken for ratifying the Acts in this Parliament. Some 
 other business was transacted in reference to the Church, 
 to be noticed farther on in connection with ecclesiastical 
 affairs. Before the Estates separated, Huntly, Argyle, 
 and Herries protested for an amnesty for all political acts 
 done by them since the loth of June. The amnesty was 
 granted, and made general to all who would agree to con- 
 form with the new organisation. 
 
 Let us now go back and note how the neighbouring 
 powers chiefly concerned with Scotland looked on this 
 revolution as it passed before them. We have seen that 
 an ambassador from France, M. Villeroy, commissioned 
 to the queen alone, was not permitted to see her. He re- 
 turned home a few days after the refusal. Next came 
 from France M. Lignerolles with a wider mission. He 
 was apparently an easy courteous man, disturbed in equa- 
 nimity by the violent self-willed men among whom he 
 found himself, but anxious to see peace kept and dignities 
 respected. His mission was one of sadness rather than 
 of wrath. Things were done before his eyes utterly be- 
 yond the scheme of his philosophy as the servant of a 
 despotic Court, but he could do nothing save persuade 
 and soothe. If his Court had sometimes assumed towards 
 Scotland a mixed tone of patronage and dictation, this 
 arose from a natural yielding to the tenor of events, which 
 seemed to be bringing the distant barbarous country under 
 the banner of France to become a useful dependency. 
 When the French found Scotland angry and suspicious, 
 they ceased to trouble themselves in pressing any projects 
 that were found disagreeable there The French sugges- 
 tions seem to have been met with a courteous equanimity, 
 an echo, perhaps, of the tone in which they were made. 
 This matter was reported by Throckmorton to his mistress 
 in a letter dated two days before Murray's inauguration as 
 regent. What he tells about the answer given to the am- 
 bassador is told briefly, yet so distinctly that nothing of 
 moment seems to be omitted. We thus find in it at once 
 
292 
 
 INTERREGNUM. 
 
 all that was asked by the French ambassador, and the 
 answer made to each request, thus : — 
 
 " That the said lords did again render their humble 
 thanks to the king, and queen his mother, for this demon- 
 stration of their favour, which the said king and queen 
 had showed by sending him hither, and to treat with them 
 so amicably. And where they had, by his long discourse 
 at his first audience, comprehended the sum of his whole 
 negotiation into four points, they were now to answer to 
 every of them as had been resolved among all the lords 
 and others of the king's Council. 
 
 "To the firsts which tended to the union of all the 
 nobility of this realm, they thanked the king humbly for 
 his care in that matter ; but there was no such dissension 
 amongst them, thanks be to God, that they needed any 
 reunion. 
 
 " To the second^ for the care the king had to their surety, 
 which he willed them to provide for, and therein offered 
 them his assistance, they did humbly thank' the king also 
 for his gracious disposition towards them; but, God be 
 thanked, they took themselves to be in as great surety as 
 any men were or could be within this realm. 
 
 " To the thirds concerning the queen^s liberty, and his 
 access to her, they had made an assertion amongst them- 
 selves, that no prince's ambassador nor stranger should 
 speak with her until the Earl of Bothwell were appre- 
 hended, which they hoped should not be long to, for they 
 had given order for his apprehension; and that which 
 served for answer to refuse him access unto the queen 
 must also serve for answer concerning her enlargement. 
 
 " To the fourth and last, concerning his access to the 
 Hamiltons, and conference with them, they could not 
 allow nor permit any prince's ambassador or minister to re- 
 pair unto them or to treat with them. Well contented they 
 were that Mons. de Lynerol should send unto them any 
 gentleman he had, or write unto them, or otherwise to 
 confer with them at his pleasure, if the said Hamiltons 
 would repair to this town; otherwise they could not 
 accord any other mean of negotiation for any prince's 
 
RELATION WITH P^RANCE, 1567. 293 
 
 ambassador with any subject of this realm, lest thereby 
 they should derogate from themselves the authority which 
 was given them by the queen their sovereign, in name of 
 the king her son, for the government of this realm, and so 
 give occasion thereby, as well to strangers as to the sub- 
 jects of the realm, to think that there were as well two 
 sundry States as two sundry authorities." ^ 
 
 The English ambassador, who is presently to appear on 
 the stage, had misgivings about French intervention being 
 more acceptable than English. There had been some 
 boastful outbreaks at the Court of France, the king him- 
 self, ^^on the word of a prince,'^ avowing that he would 
 fight his sister's battle, and punish Queen Elizabeth for 
 connivance with the rebels. But Queen Mary had in 
 Catherine of Medici a potent enemy at that Court — an 
 enemy who had no scruples about the divinity of royalty, 
 or any other divinity, when she saw the means of injuring 
 the woman she hated. ^ The political conditions in France, 
 too, made difficulties. It could only be a Popish army 
 that could aid the queen against her Protestant armies ; 
 yet had the Government of France required to trim so far 
 as to send a Huguenot as their ambassador to Scotland, 
 that he might be in some measure acceptable to the party 
 in power. In fact it was likely that if a Popish army 
 crossed over to Scotland, a Huguenot army would follow, 
 and fight in Scotland the great quarrel that was desolating 
 France.^ 
 
 From the general tenor of what he saw and heard, the 
 English ambassador seems to have satisfied himself that, 
 as matters stood, France would do nothing for Queen 
 Mary; and his explanation is of all the more historic 
 value that it was given to disabuse his mistress and her 
 immediate advisers, who looked with alarm to the pros- 
 pect of Mary being rescued and enthroned by a French 
 
 1 Keith, ii. 734, 735. 
 
 ^ See a letter by Sir Henry Norris to Queen Elizabeth ; Wright, 
 L 260. 
 » Ibid., 264. 
 
294 
 
 INTERREGNUM. 
 
 army, with the consequent restoration of Popery and 
 French influence in Scotland. He wrote to his queen, 
 that however she " had been persuaded of the French or 
 of their doings,^' he found that Murray and his friends 
 seemed much at their ease, counting Lignerolles's embassy 
 to be "rather for the manner's sake " than from any seri- 
 ous intention to strike a blow for the captive queen. Then 
 follows a very significant explanation, " which is the better 
 confirmed to me by Lignerolles's own words, which he 
 had of me the same day of his entry to this town, I taking 
 occasion to talk to him by the way, who said his commis- 
 sion at this time tended to this end, to lay before the 
 lords that the king his master was bound by three respects 
 to do for this queen : The one because she was a queen, 
 a princess, sovereign as he was ; betwixt whom there was 
 some similitude of affections more than could be betwixt 
 common persons. The second was for that she was his 
 brother's wife, and had honoured France, his realm, with 
 her education. The third was for the many alliances be- 
 twixt the house of France and the house of Scotland, and 
 for the ancient league and amity which had continued 
 betwixt those realms these many years. He said, also, 
 the king, in being mindful of the queen's release, did not 
 forget the state of the nobility and the whole realm." 
 Then follow regrets that there is division among them, 
 and the hope that the ambassador may unite them, as if 
 that were so easily accomplished, and that all will end 
 well for their sovereign and for them. But then they are 
 not the King of France's subjects, so that he cannot con- 
 strain them if they refuse to take counsel from him. He 
 has nothing in his power but "persuasions and entreaties, 
 and if that would not serve, the king could do no more 
 but be sorry for the queen his sister's misfortune, seeing 
 he had no means to command them nor restrain them." ^ 
 Throckmorton concludes with a note of a small peculiarity 
 in the French ambassador's announcements, which suggests 
 that he connected it with the influence of Mary's enemy, 
 Catherine of Medici : " Always when he spake of the 
 
 ^ Stevenson's Selections, 270. 
 
RELATION WITH FRANCE, 1567. 295 
 
 king his master's name, he joined therewith the queen his 
 mother's." ^ 
 
 Nearer home the revolutionists had to deal with a spirit 
 of a different order. Queen Elizabeth, when she saw 
 what the end was to be, was roused into one of those fits 
 of fury which made those about her say it was easily to 
 be seen whose daughter she was. All had gone utterly 
 against her calculations. The sacredness of the sovereign 
 was to her the most imperious of human creeds. She 
 had counted on it as absolute when she coquetted with 
 her sister's subjects; they might go so far, but there was 
 no risk of their going farther. The leaders in Scotland 
 had now committed the most awful crime that it lay within 
 the compass of human wickedness to commit. Blasphemy 
 against the Almighty was merely a rash use of words, 
 doing nothing which penitence might not recall ; but here 
 was blasphemy put in practical and irretrievable shape 
 against the representative of the Almighty upon earth. 
 
 The consummation was perhaps the more irritating 
 that she might in some measure reproach herself for help- 
 ing it on. She had not honestly done her best to keep 
 her wayward sister in the straight path, rather she had 
 felt some comforting or even exulting feelings in the errors 
 into which that sister lapsed, conscious that she had the 
 power of correcting all, and coming forth as the mag- 
 nanimous patroness and rectifier. It was not her inten- 
 tion to nourish presumptuous aspirations in subjects, she 
 was only making out a case for her own beneficent inter- 
 vention ; for in a question between a sovereign and her 
 subjects, only a sovereign could judge ; and she was 
 precisely in the position to be judge of all questions aris- 
 ing in Scotland. She had, in fact, arranged all to her own 
 satisfaction. Queen Mary had doubtless misbehaved; 
 but the subjects who found her at fault should have gone 
 to her — Queen Elizabeth — to seek redress, instead of 
 lifting their voices and hands against the Lord's anointed. 
 She was, perhaps, all the more provoked that the revolu- 
 tion was not the result of a fierce contest in which men 
 
 Stevenson's Selections, 270. 
 
296 
 
 INTERREGNUM. 
 
 might forget what they were about, and that it was not 
 completed in ignorance of her instructions to her am- 
 bassador not to permit anything to be done in Scotland 
 which subjects ought not to do to a prince. Throck- 
 morton had arrived in Edinburgh before the middle of 
 July. He carried instructions so clear, full, and complete, 
 that had he been able to make any use of them, he would 
 have established the government of Scotland precisely in 
 the shape desired by his mistress and her advisers, meting 
 out Queen Elizabeth's justice and mercy to all parties from 
 her sister queen downwards. One little item in the in- 
 terpretation of these instructions shows how absolutely 
 exempt sovereigns were in the eye of Elizabeth from the 
 obligations lying heaviest of all on subjects. Protestant- 
 ism was to be the rule for all except the queen and her 
 attendants : That the cause of religion be established, 
 excepting none but the queen's person and some com- 
 petent number for her attendance." ^ 
 
 An exhortation sent along with the instructions gives 
 us a clearer revelation of Queen Elizabeth's mind than 
 the formal documents themselves. The conduct of her 
 sister had vexed and angered her, and she had resolved 
 to abstain in the mean time from offering the consolation 
 and succour that would have been freely offered to a 
 blameless and unfortunate sister sovereign. But now all 
 is changed : — 
 
 " Behold suddenly the raising an intestine trouble, in 
 manner of war, betwixt her and her nobility and subjects, 
 wherein finding her to have a light into such hard terms, 
 that she is restrained by her nobihty and subjects, as we 
 hear, from her liberty ; our stomach so provoked, we have 
 changed our former intention of silence and forbearing to 
 deal in her causes, first^ to an inward commiseration of 
 her, our sister, for this last calamity; and next^ to a 
 determination to aid and relieve her by all possible means 
 for the recovering of her to her liberty, and not to suffer 
 her, being by God's ordinance the prince and sovereign, 
 to be in subjection to them that by nature and law are 
 
 1 Keith, ii. 675. 
 
ELIZABETH AND HER INTERFERENCE, 1567. 297 
 
 subjected to her. For which very purpose you shall say, 
 We have sent you at this time to understand truly her 
 estate, and the whole manner how the same has happened; 
 and to confer with her what may be thought meet for us, 
 as her sister and next neighbour, to do for her, be it by 
 council, force, or otherwise ; and therefore you shall 
 require her to impart to you that which indeed she can 
 require of us in honour to be done for her, to bring her 
 to liberty, and her realm to concord and inward peace ; 
 and so doing you shall assure her we will do as much for 
 her (the circumstances of her case considered) as she were 
 our very natural sister or only daughter. And at the 
 hearing of her declaration you shall require her to bear 
 with you, if according to our direction you do declare 
 also unto her wherewith her nobility and subjects charge 
 her; and so you shall orderly make full declaration thereof, 
 adding therewith that your meaning is not to increase her 
 calamities, but to the end, upon the truth known, her 
 subjects may be duly reprehended and corrected for 
 things unduly laid to her charge : and in other things 
 wherein her fault and oversight cannot be avoided, or 
 well covered, the dealing therein and order thereof may 
 be with wisdom and policy so used and tempered, as her 
 honour may be stayed from utter ruin, and her State 
 recovered with some better accord to follow betwixt her 
 and her subjects. And after she shall have fully declared 
 to you her answer, or request, or her other defences, if 
 she shall require our aid by force to recover her liberty 
 and be revenged, you shall say, That you have commission 
 directly to charge and reprove her subjects with this their 
 restraining of her their sovereign lady, and to procure her 
 liberty ; or otherwise to assure them plainly. That she 
 shall not lack our aid to compel them thereto ; whereunto 
 if they shall not yield, you may tell her you will speedily 
 advertise us, who, you doubt not, will perform our 
 promise.^' ^ 
 
 Throckmorton entered on his duties with a heavy heart. 
 As we have seen, he had fears about French interven- 
 
 1 Keith, ii. 668, 669, 
 
298 
 
 INTERREGNUM. 
 
 tion. He soon found, however, that there was little to be 
 apprehended from any foreign quarter. The danger lay in 
 the temper of the Scots themselves. The great lords and 
 councillors spoke reverently and mildly'* of their queen. 
 In fact the acts so offensive to Queen Elizabeth tended to 
 the salvation of their poor mistress, for the populace did 
 mind vehemently the destruction of her." Instead of ad- 
 mitting the doctrine of divine right to do wrong, they put 
 in the plainest possible shape the converse proposition ; 
 and Throckmorton had the disagreeable but necessary 
 task of informing his mistress that " it is a pubHc speech 
 amongst all the people, and amongst all the Estates, sav- 
 ing the councillors, that their queen hath no more liberty 
 or privilege to commit murder nor adultery than any other 
 private person, either by God's law or the laws of the 
 realm.*' ^ The ambassador had a clear eye for the difficul- 
 ties before him. In his way through the northern coun- 
 ties of England we find him anticipating that, as the 
 French ambassador was not allowed an interview with 
 Mary, so neither would the English. He was, as we have 
 seen, right in this anticipation ; and this, with many other 
 incidents of his correspondence, shows that he knew well 
 what he had to deal with, and might have been a useful 
 counsellor and friend to the Scots, had he not been fet- 
 tered by imperious instructions. His letters show that 
 he was nervously anxious for the solution of the question, 
 whether he was right in expecting that he would be allowed 
 no audience. When he found that he had anticipated 
 only too sagaciously, he found also the seriousness of the 
 calamity. He had come with credentials as ambassador 
 to a queen, but there was no queen to hand them to. He 
 had his instructions about exacting obedience from the 
 rebels, but he was in a very unhappy position for using 
 them. The intention was that he should go to them from 
 their own queen, with the promises of the sister queen to 
 back her in her demands against her truculent subjects; 
 the reality was that he had to go to these men and lay 
 before them a menace from a foreign power. He was not 
 
 1 Wright, i. 258. 
 
ELIZABETH AND HER INTERFERENCE, 1567. 299 
 
 absolutely to disobey his instructions, and remain in Scot- 
 land without letting any one know what he had come to 
 demand ; but as his demands were not indorsed by the 
 sovereign they were to serve, he could not give them the 
 desirable emphasis and power. He felt his dilemma 
 keenly, and the men he had to deal with saw it, and used 
 it to their purposes. 
 
 He succeeded in getting a pretty full explanation of 
 the views of some of the confederates ; but it was made 
 full just because it was not a State document announcing 
 the policy of a government or even committing a party. 
 It began by saying, We cannot conveniently at this time 
 give you a resolute answer to the first part of your message 
 declared to us in the queen's majesty your sovereign's be- 
 half, being here but a small part of that number for the 
 present assembled to whom you are directed, the others 
 being before your coming dispersed in several corners of 
 the realm upon good occasions tending to the mainte- 
 nance of the just quarrel, and for suppressing dangerous 
 enterprises in the overthrow thereof Though not en- 
 titled to speak for their coadjutors, yet seeing, as they 
 say, that the Queen of England " finds strange our con- 
 duct towards the queen's majesty our sovereign, and her 
 highness's imprisonment, whereupon you have made us a 
 great and large remonstrance, putting us in mind of the 
 duties of subjects towards their natural princes, — we will, 
 for your better satisfaction herein, declare some parts of 
 our intents and proceedings, which we will desire you to 
 impart to the queen your mistress, not doubting but when 
 her highness shall have understood the same she shall not 
 so far disallow of our doings in that behalf"^ This pre- 
 amble is followed up by a note of the principal events 
 from the death of the king downwards. The tenor of the 
 narrative is towards supplying information to one not fully 
 acquainted with all the events rendering it necessary for 
 those who told the story to act. There is in it nothing 
 apologetic, unless, perhaps, it may be in the rather re- 
 markable terms used in the avowal following : We pray 
 
 1 Keith, ii. 678. 
 
300 
 
 INTERREGNUM. 
 
 her highness to conceive of us that we take no pleasure 
 to deal with our sovereign after this sort as we are pre- 
 sently enforced to do, being the person in the world whom, 
 according to our bounden duty, we have in our hearts 
 most revered and honoured, whose grandeur we have 
 most earnestly wished, and with the hazard of our lives 
 would have endeavoured ourselves to have procured it. 
 We never went about in any ways to restrain her liberty, 
 nor never entered in deliberation at the beginning of this 
 cause of anything might touch her person. The grounds 
 of our intents are too well known to the world, and better 
 a great deal than we wish they were ; forasmuch as they 
 impart the ignominy of this whole nation, and touch in 
 honour the queen herself, as us all."^ 
 
 Having thus got an explanation, uttered with a sort of 
 haughty frankness as between friends — an explanation 
 which avowedly committed no party as rulers or political 
 actors — the ambassador could get nothing more. He 
 kept grumbling to one and another that he got no satis- 
 factory answer to the demands of his mistress. But that 
 mistress herself helped the Scots to a facility of evasion 
 which nothing could overcome. He was not accredited 
 to the actual power ruling in Scotland, as to a government. 
 He could only speak to individual members of the ruling 
 power. These treated him according to their humour. 
 When he pressed them disagreeably they would assume 
 the tone of men who had business to attend to and had 
 no time for idle gossip. Occasionally he caught a sharp 
 retort from Lethington's bitter tongue. Gradually and 
 gently he endeavoured to explain the hopelessness of his 
 mission to Elizabeth. It took about a fortnight, however, 
 at that time to receive, even through a State messenger, 
 an answer from London to a letter sent from Edinburgh. 
 Thus it was among the perplexities of the am.bassador, 
 that the more hopeless he found his mission, the more 
 imperious became the tone of his instructions from Lon- 
 don. On one occasion two remarkable letters must have 
 crossed each other. The one was his own, announcing 
 
 i Keith, ii. 679. 
 
ELIZABETH AND HER INTERFERENCE, 1567. 30I 
 
 the abdication ; the otJier was a paper of instructions, the 
 draft of which exists, with marks of revisal by Cecil. The 
 following passages are selected from it : ^ 
 
 " You shall plainly denounce unto them, that if they 
 shall determine anything to the deprivation of the queen 
 their sovereign lady of her royal estate, we are well assured 
 of our own determination, and we have some most prob- 
 able cause to think the like of other princes of Christen- 
 dom, that we will make ourself a plain party against them, 
 to the revenge of their sovereign, for example to all pos- 
 terity ; and therein we doubt not but God will assist us, 
 and confound them and their devices, considering they 
 have no warrant nor authority by the law of God or man 
 to be as superiors and judges or vindicators over their 
 prince and sovereign, howsoever they do charge or con- 
 ceive matter of disorder against her. And therein we re- 
 quire them to appeal to their own conscience what warrant 
 they have in Scripture, being subjects, to depose their 
 prince ; but co7ttrary^ and that with express words in that 
 epistle who to the Romans commanded them to obey potestati- 
 bus supere?ninentioribus gladium gestantibus, although it is 
 well known the rulers in Rome were infideL 
 
 "You may assure them we do detest and abhor the 
 murder committed upon our cousin their king, and mislike 
 as much as any of them the marriage of the queen our 
 sister with Bothwell. But herein we dissent from them, 
 that we think it not lawful nor allowable for them, being by 
 God's ordinance subjects, to call her, who also by God's 
 ordinance is their sovereign prince, to answer to their 
 accusations by way of force ; for we do not think it con- 
 formed in nature that the head should be subject to the 
 foot." 
 
 Again, when Throckmorton was afterwards angrily re- 
 called : — 
 
 ^ This letter may be found in Keith (ii. 702) and elsewhere. It 
 is so distinct an exposition of the Tudor doctrines, that it has been 
 thought proper to copy these passages from the original in the Record 
 Office at the Rolls. Scots Correspondence, vol. xiv. No. 39, July 
 27, 1567 ; scroll instruction, Queen Elizabeth to Throckmorton, cor- 
 rected by Cecil. The passages in italics are in Cecil's hand. 
 
302 
 
 INTERREGNUM. 
 
 In the old law we have the example of David, who 
 not to die would ever hurt his anointed sovereign when 
 he had him in his will and danger to do what he liked 
 with him. In the new we have plain commandment to 
 obey and love them, yea, though they be evil." ^ 
 
 It has been supposed that in all this Queen Elizabeth 
 was merely playing a game, and that she secretly wished 
 success to the confederates, and would readily give them 
 private aid. I count this as trifling with a momentous his- 
 torical truth. The things done in Scotland slurred the 
 dignity of royalty. She felt that a dangerous precedent 
 had been established, and no one could tell when it might 
 be followed. And indeed, taking the matter from her 
 owTi point of view, she showed her sagacity in desiring 
 for the sake of royalty in England, that such a line of 
 action in Scotland should be suppressed, if it could be 
 suppressed. There is no doubt that the precedent, and 
 the views by which it was justified, had great influence in 
 promoting the resistance to Charles I. and its tragic end. 
 Had she not been more prudent than her father she would 
 have sent a force across the border to carr}^ her point.^ 
 
 But although she thus avoided desperate conclusions 
 Queen Elizabeth chose to consider that she and other 
 monarchs were absolute rulers by divine ordinance, and 
 not liable to be questioned or thwarted by subjects. It 
 will clear the way through many difficulties to remember 
 that she never swer\'ed from this creed, or permitted it to 
 be questioned. Even in the extreme case of the marriage 
 of Mary with Both well, she would not permit it to be 
 spoken of in her presence that her sister's subjects could 
 
 1 Scots Correspondence, vol. xiv. No. 48. 
 
 2 Mr Hosack, in his * Mary Queen of Scots and her Accusers 
 (350 et seq.)^ says justly of Queen Elizabeth's temper and conduct on 
 this occasion : Right or -WTong, she would not stand tamely by and 
 see her cousin murdered. She would remonstrate with these rebel- 
 lious Scots, and if remonstrances proved ineffectual, she would send 
 an army to chastise and reduce them to obedience." This concur- 
 rence is the more significant, as, according to traditional practice, a 
 vindicator of Queen Mar}^ has to make the perfidious cruelty of Eliza- 
 beth an antithesis to the generous candour of his heroine. See also 
 the 14th chapter of Froude. 
 
ELIZABETH AND HER INTERFERENCE, 1567. 303 
 
 interfere to prevent the catastrophe. To this there is 
 curious and strong testimony in a letter from Randolph, 
 where he tells how Queen Elizabeth just dropped a hint 
 of the ominous marriage, and continues : — 
 
 "These news it pleased her majesty to tell me this day, 
 walking in her garden, with great misliking of that queen's 
 doing, which now she doth so much detest that she is 
 ashamed of her; notwithstanding her majesty doth not 
 like that her subjects should by any force withstand that 
 which they do see her bent unto. 
 
 " Her majesty also told me that she had seen a writing 
 sent by Grange to my Lord of Bedford, despitefully writ- 
 ten against that queen in such vile terms that she could 
 not abide the hearing of it, wherein he made her worse 
 than any common woman. She would not that any sub- 
 ject, what cause soever there be proceeding from the 
 prince, or whatsoever her life or behaviour is, that any 
 man should discover that unto the world ; and therefore 
 she utterly misliketh of Grange's manner of writing and 
 doing, that she condemneth him for one of the worst in 
 that realm, seeming somewhat to warn me of my familiarity 
 with him, and willing that I should admonish him of her 
 misliking.'' ^ 
 
 On the present occasion Throckmorton showed by his 
 conduct his entire belief in the sincerity of his mistress. 
 If it were necessary to seek anything beyond the general 
 aspect of the affair in proof of this sincerity, it might be 
 found in the ultimate reason which he reported to her for 
 abandoning the attempt to influence the Scots, and in the 
 success of that ultimate reason. He said he found that 
 the Queen of England's interference endangered the life 
 of the Queen of Scots. Having ventured to reveal to 
 Lethington some of the views in Elizabeth's letter of the 
 27th, and to sift him on the effect these might have upon 
 his colleagues, the answer, as reported by Throckmorton, 
 was : My lord ambassador, I have heard what you have 
 said unto me. I assure you, if you should use this speech 
 unto them which you do unto me, all the world could not 
 
 1 Randolph in Maitland's Narrative. 
 
304 
 
 INTERREGNUM. 
 
 save the queen's life three days to an end, and as the case 
 now standeth it will be much ado to save her life." 
 
 For some time the ambassador had been enlarging on 
 the risk she ran of being put to death ; but here, without 
 committing himself to so unwelcome an opinion, he let 
 his mistress see that she was working for that consumma- 
 tion, and that the confederates were desirous to avoid it. 
 He was seconded by Cecil, whose ingenuity gave point to 
 the advice, by a hint that Elizabeth, if she persisted, would 
 be suspected of doing so for the purpose of securing the 
 death of the Queen of Scots, and being able to plead, 
 ^^Thou canst not say I did it.''^ 
 
 The ambassador's correspondence reports, with pic- 
 turesque distinctness, a conversation which he held with 
 two of the confederates. While it showed to him that in- 
 tervention from England would increase Mary's danger, it 
 revealed ambitious interests as well as angry passions 
 looking in the direction of her death. Ostensibly the 
 Hamiltons were her chivalrous friends; but whether it 
 was a calumny or not, Throckmorton reported to his mis- 
 tress that they eagerly desired her death. His conversa- 
 tion was at first with Murray, the Laird of Tullibardine, 
 a brother of the Countess of Mar who had charge of the 
 infant king. The laird told him such things, that the ex- 
 perienced statesman, well versed in duplicity, said he 
 could not think how people could have *'such double 
 faces and treacherous minds as the Hamiltons." Apart 
 from the question of criminality, the ambassador sug- 
 gested that, as a matter of self-interest, their view was 
 a mistake : — 
 
 "I said also they might make a better profit of the 
 queen's life than they could of her death, she being 
 divorced from Bothwell, or the marriage dissolved by 
 Bothwell's death, which was like to ensue if justice pro- 
 ceeded. That then either some of the Duke's of Chatel- 
 herault's sons (as he had divers marriable), and likewise the 
 Duke of Argyll having a brother to be married also, might 
 make a better bargain by marrying of the queen, than to 
 
 ^ Letter, Cecil to Throckmorton, cited by Hosack, 358. 
 
ELIZABETH AND HER INTERFERENCE, 1567. 305 
 
 seek her destruction." On this suggestion Tullibardine 
 said: — 
 
 " My lord ambassador, these matters which you speak 
 of have been in question amongst them ; but now they see 
 not so good an outgate by any of those devices as by the 
 queen's death ; for she being taken away, they accompt 
 but the little king betwixt them and power, which may 
 die. They love not the queen, and they know she hath 
 no great fancy to any of them. And by thus much they 
 fear her the more because she is yet young, and may have 
 many children, which is the thing they would be rid oV 
 The ambassador indeed said that John Hamilton, the 
 archbishop, had proposed a distinct practical arrangement 
 for putting the queen to death. So far as the character 
 of these Hamiltons is at stake, it must be remembered 
 that these charges passed through two exaggerating 
 mediums. They were made to frighten the ambassador, 
 and he desired to communicate his fears to his mistress. 
 Continuing the account of his interview, he tells how he 
 ventured on certain deprecatory arguments — "some gath- 
 ered of the law of God, some of the law of man, some of 
 the honour of their whole country, some for particular 
 honour for himself and his friends;'' and lastly, on the 
 impolicy of opening the succession to the Hamiltons. He 
 thought he had made some impression on Tullibardine, 
 when one not so easily persuaded — Lethington himself — 
 joined them. It was then that the ambassador endeav- 
 oured to make the two understand, as he tells his mistress, 
 "what your majesty did think of their rash proceedings, 
 finding the matter in this hasty sort, to proceed with a 
 queen, their sovereign being a queen anointed, — not having 
 imparted their intents to your majesty." He then in his 
 perplexity says, " Also I did declare unto him some part 
 of the substance of your majesty's instructions given me 
 in your said letter of 27th of July." This glimpse at the 
 purport of the "said letter" called from Lethington an 
 emphatic declaration about Mary's danger. He uttered 
 it in offering what he called " the best advice to prevent 
 extremity ; " and the words of his counsel were : " Either 
 the queen your sovereign will not be advised, or you do 
 
 VOL. IV. u 
 
306 
 
 INTERREGNUM. 
 
 forbear to advise her. I say unto you, as I am a Christian 
 man, if we who have dealt in this action would consent to 
 take the life from her, all the lords which hold out and 
 lie aloof from us would come and conjoin with us within 
 these two days/'^ 
 
 Throckmorton, in his perplexity, sought help from the 
 potent Leicester. Slight revelations show that when he 
 thought fit to interpose in the affairs of Scotland, it was 
 with so high a hand as to put Cecil and others in the 
 position of mere subordinates ministering to a prince.^ 
 Throckmorton, in appealing to him, referred to a letter of 
 " discursive and favourable advice " which Leicester had 
 sent to him along with his official instructions as ambas- 
 sador. In his appeal he takes strong ground ; he regrets 
 bitterly the tone of the instructions sent to him, and takes 
 credit for achieving great things by his own prudence. 
 " Whether," he says, " it were fear, fury, or zeal, which 
 carried these men to the ends they be come to, I know 
 not ; but I dare boldly affirm to your lordship, albeit I 
 could neither procure access to this queen, nor procure 
 her liberty, with restitution of her to her estate, yet I have 
 at this time preserved her life — to what continuance I am 
 uncertain. Sure I am there is nothing shall so soon has- 
 ten her death as the doubt that these lords may conceive 
 of her redemption to liberty and authority by the queen's 
 majesty's aid, or by any other foreign succour." ^ 
 
 The ambassador was told that there is to be a muster 
 of the leaders of the confederates at Corstorphine, a vil- 
 lage three miles from Edinburgh, to discuss the weighty 
 matters on hand ; and on this he drops the remark, " I 
 make no other reckoning but that they will agree. I pray 
 God their accord be not such as was between Herod and 
 Pilate to put Christ to death." ^ A few days earlier he 
 
 1 Scots MSS., No. 50. 
 
 ^ When Throckmorton's recall was made out, it was intimated to 
 Cecil, that * ' because it was very late before her highness signed the 
 same, and that my Lord of Leicester said he was also to write by this 
 despatch, I was driven to forbear the sending away of the packet un* 
 til this morning. " — Stevenson's Selections, 266. 
 
 ^Stevenson's Selections, 261. Scots MSS., No. 50. 
 
ELIZABETH AND HER INTERFERENCE, 1567. 307 
 
 had cited examples more ominous, because nearer home : 
 It is to be feared that this tragedy will end in the queen's 
 person after this coronation, as it did in the person of 
 David the Itahan and the queen's husband." ^ 
 
 Like other ambassadors lying under suspicion of bear- 
 ing imperious messages from England, Throckmorton 
 became alarmed for his own safety. His fears were not 
 of any harsh dealing from the statesmen with whom he 
 was in controversy ; but when they retired to their estates, 
 and left him unprotected in Edinburgh, he was in much 
 perplexity. He saw danger in remaining there, and still 
 more danger in an attempt to find refuge in Berwick, a 
 project which crossed his thoughts.^ 
 
 Perhaps, had all that his mistress ordered him to work 
 out become known, his danger had been far more serious. 
 Queen Elizabeth desired to have the young prince or king 
 in her charge, and seemed to think this a natural request 
 which would be easily conceded. That Throckmorton 
 was authorised to make it we only know from his instruc- 
 tions. The affair does not appear on the face of the dip- 
 lomatic transactions in Scotland. Such a proposal would 
 recall to every one practically acquainted with Scots 
 poHtics the bitter history of those times in which Henry 
 VIII. strove for the possession of "the child." ^ 
 
 ^ Stevenson's Selections, 255. 
 
 ^ He writes to Cecil on the 26th of July ; "If I could go safely, 
 as I much doubt of it, I would retire myself to Berwick until I hear 
 from you, this town being left destitute of all noblemen and gentle- 
 men, save Sir James Balfour, captain of the castle, and the Laird of 
 Craigmillar, provost of the town. There is also left here 200 har- 
 quebusiers for the guard of this town.*' — Stevenson's Selections, 255. 
 
 ^ * * As ye shall deal with the lords having charge of the young prince 
 for the committing of him into our realm ; so shall ye also do well, 
 in treaty with the queen, to offer her, that where her realm appeareth 
 to be subject to sundry troubles from time to time, and thereby, as 
 it is manifest, her son cannot be free from peril, if she shall be con- 
 tented her son may enjoy surety and quietness within this our realm, 
 being so near, as she knoweth it is, we shall not fail, but yield her 
 as good safety therein for her child as can be devised for any that 
 might be our child born of our own body, and shall be glad to show 
 to her therein the true effect c^f natural friendship. And herein she 
 may be by you remembered how much good may come to her son to 
 
308 
 
 INTERREGNUM. 
 
 On the 9th of August the ambassador made a brief but 
 strong appeal to Cecil for his recall. He repeated in 
 these terms some final words of advice given him by 
 Lethington overnight : " ' It is to no purpose for you to 
 tarr}^ here. You may make matters worse than they be, 
 for we may not satisfy the queen your mistress's affections 
 unless we should cast our king, our countr}^ and ourselves 
 away ; and she will do nothing that can be plausible to us. 
 To us the least harm — nay/ said he, Sve will take it as a 
 piece of good — vnll be for her majesty to let us alone, and 
 neither do us good nor harm ; and, peradventure, this 
 will bring far the better mean than any other course ; for 
 men begin to hold all things suspected that come from you, 
 and if you be over-busy with us, you will drive us faster 
 to France than we desire to run.'^' Throckmorton's 
 comment on the conversation is : " I do perceive by the 
 Lord of Lethington, they could be as well contented that 
 I were hence, as I desire it. And surely they see 
 thoroughly into your doings, and do understand such 
 things and speeches as I could have wished had never 
 come to their knowledge." This is an allusion to a Par- 
 thian dart sent by Lethington as he went. How it wound- 
 ed we can but guess, but we can see it to have been 
 sharp from its very brevity. ' And, my lord ambassador,' 
 said he, ^we know all the good purposes which have 
 passed betwixt you, the Hamiltons, the Earls of Argyle 
 and Huntly, since your coming into this country.' " The 
 ambassador's conclusion on all this is : **To tell you my 
 own opinion, I see no great purpose of my tarrying here 
 any longer ; for whatsoever you intend to treat ^^ith these 
 men hereafter, it were good there were some pause used, 
 to suffer them to chew upon their own bridles."^ 
 
 Before his last appeal reached London it was deter- 
 mined that Throckmorton should be relieved of his mis 
 
 be nourished and acquainted with our country. And therefore, all 
 things considered, this occasion for her child were rather to be sought 
 by her, and the friends of him, than offered by us." — Letter, Queen 
 Elizabeth to Throckmorton, 14th July 1567 ; Stevenson's Selections, 
 202. 
 
 ^ Stevenson's Selections, 267. 
 
ELIZABETH AND HER INTERFERENCE, 1567. 309 
 
 sion. It was not necessary, however, that he should re- 
 turn immediately, and a prospect dawned upon him which 
 induced him to remain. Murray was coming, and this 
 event promised safety and moderate counsels. Throck- 
 morton went three miles out of Edinburgh to meet him, 
 deeming such an act "convenient" to her majesty's ser- 
 vice. He noted how the new-comer was greeted with 
 vehement popular applause. He says, " I had conference 
 with him in such sort as might best advance your majes- 
 ty's purpose at his hand. And as I found my said lord 
 very honourable, sincere, and direct, so I found him not 
 resolved what he will do, nor what he will consent unto ; 
 abhorring on the one side the murder of the king and the 
 circumstances conjoined therewith, which he can like in 
 nowise should pass with impunity ; so on the other side 
 do I find in him great commiseration towards the queen 
 his sister, and yet not fully determined whether he will 
 accept the regency or refuse it ; but rather in my opinion 
 he will take it upon him than leave it, being thereto 
 pressed by ail these lords and gentlemen which have dealt 
 in this action, all which, in very deed, be the men he doth 
 value and esteem most within this realm." ^ 
 
 There is now a change in the tone of the ambassador's 
 letters. It is not that he is any nearer to the direct ful- 
 filment of his instructions. He finds in the end that it 
 is " lost money, lost labour, and lost time that is spent 
 here." 2 But he is no longer standing on the crust of a 
 volcano. He has to deal with a Government pursuing a 
 firm and fixed policy. Yet though his letters no longer 
 bear a tone of fear or anxiety, their purport cannot have 
 been much to the liking of his mistress. Almost imme- 
 diately he had to announce a proposal for sending an am- 
 bassador to England to represent the new Government as 
 an independent sovereignty : " Upon long conference had 
 with the Earl of Murray, and likewise with the Laird of 
 Lethington, and then with them both jointly, I do per- 
 ceive they be disposed to send some wise man and a 
 credit to your majesty in legation, in case they thought 
 
 ^ Stevenson's Selections, 269. 
 
 2 Ibid., 283. 
 
310 
 
 INTERREGNUM. 
 
 your majesty would receive him graciously, and make no 
 difficulty to use him favourably as the king's ambassador : 
 otherwise, if your majesty cannot be pleased to accept an 
 ambassador in the king's name, they mean not to deal 
 any further with your majesty." 
 
 Whatever impression Murray may have left as he 
 passed through England, it did not extinguish the hope 
 that Mary's liberation might be accomplished, and the 
 ambassador was directed to press the point on the new 
 Government. He lost no time, for on the 2 2d of August, 
 when, as we have seen, the regent was inaugurated and 
 proclaimed, the ambassador reported a conference held 
 with Murray and Lethington on the previous day. They 
 professed in common that ^^they never meant harm — God 
 they took to witness — neither to the queen's person nor 
 to her honour ; but she was as a person afflicted with 
 " an extreme disease," calling for strong and skilful treat- 
 ment. It fell to Lethington, who had been at the helm, 
 to discourse more at length. He managed pretty suc- 
 cessfully to involve the main question in complex condi- 
 tions : " This matter doth carry with it many parts, some 
 concerning the queen's person, some the king her son, 
 some the realm, and some the lords' and gentlemen's 
 sureties ; and when they shall see a moderation of the 
 queen their sovereign's passion, they mean nothing but 
 well unto her, and she shall have nothing but good at 
 their hands. There is no way to do her so much harm 
 as to precipitate matters before they are ripe, or to put 
 these lords to a strait ; for so against their wills they shall 
 be constrained to do that they would not do." They had 
 all endured with patience much hard language from Queen 
 Elizabeth and others, who called them rebels, traitors, 
 seditious, ingrate, and cruel." And should this treatment 
 be carried farther, they may have to deal otherwise with 
 their queen than they intend or desire. 'For, my lord 
 ambassador,' said he, 'you maybe assured we will not 
 lose our lives, have our lands forfeited, and be reputed 
 rebels through the world, seeing we have the means to 
 justify ourselves.'" If England is to make war on them, 
 
ELIZABETH AND HER INTERFERENCE, 1567. 311 
 
 then war be it, rather than that the captive should be 
 liberated in this mind that she is in, being resolved to 
 retain Bothwell and to fortify him, to hazard the life of 
 her son, to put the realm in peril, and to forfeit all these 
 noblemen." As to war with England, they are accus- 
 tomed to it : You will burn our borders, and we will do 
 the like to yours ; and whenever you invade us, we are 
 sure France will aid us, for their league standeth, and they 
 are bound by the league to defend us." Then some far- 
 ther hints were discharged about his practices with the 
 Hamiltons and others, which seem to have gone home, 
 for he made no defence. They were thrown, however, 
 more in sarcasm than anger. He was told he was wast- 
 ing his money; for either those who take it — alluding 
 especially to the Hamiltons — **will laugh you to scorn 
 when you have done, and agree with us — for we have in 
 our hands to make the accord when we will, — or else you 
 will make them attempt some such act as they and their 
 house shall repent it for ever." 
 
 He continued with a touch of the same sarcastic scorn, 
 tossing the imperious conduct of Queen Elizabeth in her 
 ambassador's face, as an insult that, on the whole, his 
 party were too strong to trouble themselves about very 
 deeply, and passing a jest on the Queen of England for- 
 getting to change her tone when she addressed those who 
 were not her own subjects. And the while that she was 
 calling on them to do what she wished, she was doing 
 nothing whatever to further their serious objects : " Will 
 the queen your mistress arm two or three ships to appre- 
 hend Bothwell ? pay a thousand soldiers to reduce all the 
 forts of this realm to the king's obedience ? Then we will 
 say, doing this, that her majesty mindeth as well these 
 other matters spoken of as the queen's liberty." 
 
 Then comes a sudden change in the diplomatic drama, 
 which the ambassador announces in saying, just after he 
 has recorded this thrust from Lethington, '^I directed 
 then my speech to my Lord of Murray. Sir, you have 
 no such interest in this matter as these men have, for you 
 have committed no such excess; and therefore I trust 
 
312 
 
 INTERREGNUM. 
 
 this answer given me by the Laird of Lethington — though 
 it may be the mind of the other lords his associates — yet 
 I trust it be not agreeable to yours.' 
 
 The ambassador had determined to seize his oppor- 
 tunity, and to force a way to the intentions that had re- 
 mained inscrutable. The time had come when Murray 
 had to commit himself to a policy ; for virtually he was 
 chief ruler in Scotland, and the ceremonies of next day 
 would make his signature the sanction for the enforcement 
 of the royal prerogative. He spoke, and his words were, 
 as the grave announcement of distinct conclusions likely 
 to be effected, the weightiest that had for generations 
 been uttered in Scotland. As the ambassador reports to 
 his mistress, " The earl said, * Sir Nicholas, truly me- 
 thinketh you have heard reason at the Laird of Lething- 
 ton's hand ; and for mine own part, though I were not 
 here at the doings past, yet surely I must allow of them, 
 and do mean, God willing, to take such part as they do. 
 And seeing the queen and they have laid upon me the 
 charge of the regentry — a burden which I would gladly 
 have eschewed — I do mean to ware my life in defence of 
 their action, and will either reduce all men to obedience 
 in the king's name, or it shall cost me my life. And if 
 the queen your sovereign do look into the world, she will 
 find more profit for her and her realm to fortify and assist 
 us than to be against us ; for though we may have cover 
 by her means, yet if the matter be well considered, those 
 which her majesty doth fortify against us will bring little 
 commodity to her or England.^" 
 
 The ambassador then tells the result of those nego- 
 tiations with the Hamiltons which were the object of 
 Lethington's sarcastic and ominous allusions. This part 
 of his report is, in its shifty dubiety, a signal contrast to 
 the decided utterances which precede it. The names he 
 mentions are the Lord Fleming, who was of consequence 
 as retaining the command of Dumbarton Castle ; the Lord 
 Herries ; the head of the house of Hamilton, who was 
 still in France ; and two John Hamiltons, the one being 
 the Archbishop of St Andrews, the other, as it would seem, 
 a secular priest, who became dangerously notorious for 
 
ELIZABETH AND HER 1NTERFERE^'CE, 1567. 313 
 
 his fierce enthusiasm in the cause of the French CathoHc 
 league, and his share in the murder of Barnabe Brissot, 
 the great French la\vyer and magistrate. Though there 
 were thus active men in the party, Queen EHzabeth got 
 but a poor prospect of anything effectual being done by 
 them. The ambassador says : — 
 
 '^I do guess by the contents of their letter that both 
 they be not very hasty in this matter, but would gladly 
 make your majesty to serve their turn; and also that there 
 be not many to adhere unto them, seeing their letter is 
 subscribed with so few hands, and those of no great 
 moment. Many of those noblemen and gentlemen 
 whereof the Hamiltons made account to run their fortune 
 do write daily to the Earl of Murray, and do offer unto 
 him obedience and fidelity, so as I think the Hamiltons' 
 faction will be far too weak.'' Then comparing them with 
 the confederates, he concludes : Indeed their party is 
 nothing so well made as these lords' ; for besides their 
 forces which lie united, they have the to^^^l and castle of 
 Edinburgh, the town and castle of Stirling, the town of 
 Leith, and the passages from all parts of the realm, at 
 their devotion.''^ 
 
 To the despatch containing these passages and others, 
 received by her in the month of August, Queen Elizabeth 
 sent an acknowledgment, with instructions so cold and 
 hesitating as to show a thorough misgiving about the 
 wisdom of her angry demands. She hopes the ^'peremp- 
 tory proceedings " reported to her are in time to wax 
 colder and to receive some reformation." Her encourage- 
 ment to the Hamiltons is of the faintest kind, with a 
 tinge of suspicion in it : Our meaning is, you shall let 
 the Hamiltons plainly understand that we do well allow^ of 
 their proceedings so far forth as the same doth concern 
 the Queen of Scotland for her relief ; and in such things 
 as shall appear reasonable for us to do herein for the 
 queen our sister, we wdll be ready to perform the same." ^ 
 
 ^ Keith, ii. 741-745. The letter subscribed with so few hands " 
 is mentioned at the beginning of this chapter. 
 Keith, ii. 747, 748. 
 
3H 
 
 INTERREGNUM. 
 
 About the middle of August the ambassador received 
 — to his comfort," as he with evident sincerity says — a 
 definitive direction to return. Before he went, however, 
 he made a last effort to obtain an interview with Mary, 
 and to press for her release. On the former point he was 
 flatly told that there was more reason than ever to pre- 
 clude his access to the queen, since Lignerolles, who had 
 been sent expressly to commune with her, was refused that 
 privilege. For the queen's release " the lords could not 
 resolve thereupon, because her liberty and the time there- 
 of depended upon accidents/' The ambassador referred 
 to one of the most probable and most important of these 
 accidents. Supposing Bothwell caught and justified" — 
 that is, condemned and executed — what then ? But Mur- 
 ray would not commit himself to prospective action, and 
 answered, "They could not merchandise for the bear's 
 skin before they had him." The ambassador still per- 
 sisted — they must " foresee by imagination what should be 
 meet for them to do ; " and he so far succeeded as to get 
 an answer, reported by him to his friend Cecil in the 
 following shape : — 
 
 "The Earl of Murray answered, ^ As far as I can per- 
 ceive, the queen's liberty then will depend chiefly upon 
 her own behaviour and considerate doings ; for if the lords 
 may perceive that she doth digest well the justifying of 
 Bothwell, the punishment of his adherents, and doth not 
 discover a wrathful and revengeful mind towards these 
 proceedings, — and likewise if the queen your sovereign 
 will so deal as we may have cause to think that she 
 seeketh the quietness of this realm, and not the trouble of 
 it, as by countenancing and nourishing certain factions, — 
 then these lords will seek to do all grateful things to the 
 queen our sovereign, and to the queen's majesty of Eng- 
 land. Marry, to fish so far before the net, and to tell now 
 what shall be done then, neither do I nor they think con- 
 venient to give any determinate answer.'"^ 
 
 Having given the ambassador his final answer with a 
 distinctness that left no room for farther negotiation, the 
 
 ^ Keith, ii. 759 ; Stevenson's Selections, 297. 
 
ELIZABETH AND HER INTERFERENCE, 1567. 315 
 
 confederates were desirous to propitiate him so far as they 
 could in consistence with the position they had taken. 
 On the day fixed for his departure he was desired, " after 
 the sermon/' to walk with Murray to his house. There 
 he found assembled " all the lords," as he says. Lething- 
 ton, apparently with his usual fluent and graceful eloquence, 
 took occasion to recall the many services done to them 
 by the Queen of England, how especially she had served 
 them in their utmost struggles at the siege of Leith, when 
 their danger from foreign enemies was extreme. He spoke 
 of the accord of religion between the countries as a natural 
 bond of union, and declared that " no men would be more 
 sorry than they to have the queen's majesty conceive other- 
 wise than favourably of them.'' Murray followed in the same 
 strain, with a stronger reference to personal obligations and 
 ties, " concluding there was no prince next those which he 
 ought his chiefest duty unto, that the alienation of their 
 favour might trouble him so much as the queen's ma- 
 jesty's." Lastly, Morton was pathetic on the kindness 
 shown to him in the time of his " trouble," after the dis- 
 agreeable affair of Signer Davie. 
 
 Some of the assemblage took the ambassador to a recess, 
 where there was a present for him of " gilt plate." He speaks 
 respectfully of its value ; but there was more connected with 
 it than money's worth. They offered it to him as a present 
 " from the king their sovereign lord." He says, I de- 
 clared that I could not accept any present from any per- 
 son within that realm but from the queen their sovereign, 
 of whom I would not make any difficulty to receive a 
 present if she were in case to bestow any ; but as from the 
 king — whom I took to be prince — I could receive none, 
 seeing he had attained to that name by injuring the queen 
 his mother." They pressed him hard, but he remained 
 firm in his purpose, and so departed homewards.^ 
 
 Queen Elizabeth had an opportunity of explaining her 
 policy and conduct on this occasion. She had requested 
 the co-operation of the King of France, the Cardinal of 
 Lorraine, " and others, the uncles and friends of our sister 
 
 Keith, ii. 760, 761. 
 
3i6 
 
 INTERREGNUM. 
 
 the Queen of Scots, touching some honourable means to 
 be devised for her rehef and Hberty." On this invitation 
 M. Pasquier was sent as ambassador to England. Queen 
 Elizabeth had personal conferences with him. Of these 
 she gave an account to her own ambassador in France, 
 and as this account does not seem to vary much from the 
 truth, it is valuable and interesting. She says : — 
 
 We told him that as we had been always inclined to 
 favour equity and justice as much as in us hath lain, so 
 hearing of the pitiful and hard case that the Queen of 
 Scots our good sister was in, we could not, for the com- 
 miseration we had of her woeful estate, but procure to 
 ease her thereof to the uttermost we could, and thereupon 
 sent our ambassador into Scotland, who by our order dealt 
 first in all mild and gentle sort with the lords there for the 
 relief of the said queen ; and perceiving that that manner 
 of dealing, although it had been at sundry times and in 
 diverse degrees attempted, could nothing prevail, we letted 
 not to cause sharp and threatening words to be also used : 
 which profiting as little as the rest, we thought best, seeing 
 the small fruit that had followed upon our good meaning, 
 to revoke our ambassador, and thereupon sent our advice 
 and opinion unto our said good brother by you our am- 
 bassador, since which time the state of matters seem to be 
 very much altered in Scotland ; for whereas at that time 
 it was thought that the Hamiltons, and certain others of 
 their faction, would have made a good party in that realm, 
 if they might have been therein assisted by the French 
 king or us, towards the said queen's restoring to her 
 liberty, now it is certainly advised from thence that they 
 are all come in, and have joined themselves with the rest 
 of the lords ; so as there is now no means left within that 
 realm to make any party to join with any force that should 
 be sent to make any exploit there. Besides, we were (we 
 said) born in hand, that if the matter should be dealt 
 withal by way of force and hostility, the queen our sister's 
 life were like thereby to stand in great hazard ; and there- 
 fore, seeing gentleness had not hitherto prevailed, and 
 that extremity and force might bring danger to her person, 
 
ELIZABETH AND HER INTERFERENCE, 1567. 317 
 
 whom both the king and we mean to preserve to the best 
 of our power, we said, the matter hanging thus in balance, 
 would be well thought upon and ripely considered before 
 anything were taken in hand." ^ 
 
 Thus Queen Elizabeth stopped in time. It was not 
 the only critical occasion on which she did so, to the 
 great profit both of herself and others She thus, indeed, 
 preserved her self-satisfying principle of divine right by 
 never permitting it to encounter the rude test of practice. 
 It was chiefly in this faculty that she showed her superior- 
 ity to her father as the chief ruler of England. Holding 
 the same despotic notions, and stirred often by like pas- 
 sions, she yet possessed that high gift of policy, the faculty 
 of retreating from a false position while it is yet time — 
 while yet it can be done without the loss of honour and 
 dignity. The history of fifty years earlier shows us, that 
 had her father so threatened Scotland, he would have 
 pushed his threat "to the bitter end," be that where it 
 might. There would have been the same relentless casti- 
 gation and the same dogged endurance. Whether Mary's 
 life would have been sacrificed or not, the people of the 
 country would have presented their old steady front against 
 English aggression or dictation. It is anomalous enough, 
 no doubt, to suppose the Protestant Scots bringing in the 
 French Papists to aid them against their Protestant friends 
 of England ; but the strong current of nationality would 
 have drifted to such a conclusion, and France and Scot- 
 land would have actually resumed the ancient league 
 against England, still nominally existing. Queen Eliza- 
 beth must have felt conscious of all this, and the imminent 
 danger to herself that might follow, and so she acted as 
 we have seen.^ 
 
 1 Keith, ii. 771, 772. 
 
 2 The two leading features in Queen Elizabeth's dealing with this 
 affair — ist, her wrath at the Scots for their conduct to their queen ; 
 2d, the influence of her advisers in persuading her that interference 
 would only endanger the captive's life — are briefly and clearly set 
 down by Cecil, writing to Norris, the English ambassador to France, 
 and telling the passing news, when he had no object to serve in tell- 
 
3i8 
 
 INTERREGNUM. 
 
 ing it falsely : The Hamiltons hold out ; the Earl of Murray is now 
 regent ; the queen's majesty our sovereign remaineth still offended 
 with the lords for the queen — the example moveth her." And again : 
 ** Surely if either the French king or the queen should appear to make 
 any force against them of Scotland for the queen's cause, we find it 
 credibly that it were the next way to make an end of her ; and for 
 that cause her majesty is loath to take that way, for avoiding of slan- 
 ders that might grow thereby.' '—Cabala, 141. 
 
319 
 
 CHAPTER XLIX. 
 
 ORGANISATION OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 CONFIRMATION OF THE REFORMATION STATUTES— GENERAL ASSEM- 
 BLY—POWERS OF DISCIPLINE — ATTEMPTS TO RECOVER THE TEM- 
 PORALITIES — HOW THEY SUCCEEDED — FORMATION OF JUDICATORIES 
 — MODELLED ON THE HUGUENOT ARRANGEMENTS — THE CLERGY — 
 USE OF THE ENGLISH LITURGY— HISTORY OF THE "BOOK OF COM- 
 MON ORDER," OR SCOTS PRAYER-BOOK — ADAPTED FROM THE 
 GENEVA LITURGY USED BY KNOX IN FRANKFURT — SCENES OCCUR- 
 RING THERE IN CONNECTION WITH ITS USE — EXAMINATION OF THE 
 BOOK OF COMMON ORDER IN ITS RELATION TO OTHER LITURGIES 
 — ITS USE CONFIRMED — TRANSLATED INTO GAELIC — FORMS OF 
 BURIAL AND ADMINISTRATION OF THE SACRAMENT — THE VOCAL 
 PRAISE— THE SPIRITUAL AND GODLY SONGS— THE PSALTER— CON- 
 DITION OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL EDIFICES. 
 
 The events of the year 1567 make a turning-point in the 
 history of the Church as well as of the State. As we read 
 the statute-book, Popery was overthrown and the Refor- 
 mation established in 156a We have seen, however, 
 that it was deemed prudent to confirm the legislative 
 work of that year in the year 1567. During the interval, 
 the new Church held not so much by the legitimate position 
 of an established national institution as by the strength of 
 its supporters. Care was taken to leave it so unprotected 
 by theTiead of the State, that any day, through a counter- 
 balance of power, the Reformation might have been ab- 
 jured as rapidly as it had been adopted. It scarcely 
 needed an Act of the Estates to accomplish this. If the 
 Romish party had been powerful enough, they and the 
 queen would probably not have paid so much respect to 
 
320 ORGANISATION OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 these Acts, which had never obtamed the royal assent, as 
 to repeal them by a counter-Act of the Estates. Thus 
 it was in this crisis of 1567, when Mary's reign sud- 
 denly ceased, and Murray governed in the name of her 
 infant son, that the Reformation really was established in 
 Scotland. 
 
 Within the Church we may trace the effects of the 
 change. During the seven years of dubiety the political 
 attitude of the Protestant Church is strong and determined; 
 but there are few traces of the exercise of authority over 
 the citizens. The new ecclesiastical rules are rigidly en- 
 forced against ecclesiastical persons, for the purpose of 
 keeping the Church itself pure in morals, and correct in 
 doctrine and form. There are, at the same time, power- 
 ful protestations against crimes in high places, such as the 
 murder of Darnley, and the other flagrant acts of the 
 period. It is not until the Church found itself achieving 
 a firm position that we see it organising a machinery for 
 the correction of the morals of the people. Among the 
 earliest existing indications of the new Church looking 
 out of its own sphere for matter of reproach and correc- 
 tion is one in 1563, when four women are delated for 
 witchcraft by the Superintendent of Fife. The matter 
 finds its way to an Assembly, who modestly dispose of it 
 by a resolution that the Privy Council be requested to 
 take order concerning it.^ 
 
 On 28th June 1567 there is an entry significant of the 
 beginning of interference with the liberty of free action. 
 John Spottiswood had been excommunicated for his mis- 
 deeds. It is told that, in contempt of the Church's thus 
 excluding him from communion with the faithful, Sir 
 William Hamilton of Sanquhar harbours the excommuni- 
 cated man in his dwelling-house. The Assembly orders 
 that Sir William send him forth.^ 
 
 AVe find the corrective authority gradually increasing. 
 
 ^ Book of the Universal Kirk, i. 44, 
 
 2 Book of the Universal Kirk, i. 98. The Assemblies held from 
 time to time were the germ of the "General Assembly ; " but it is 
 perhaps scarcely correct to use at this stage a name applicable to a 
 permanent institution. 
 
DISCIPLINE, 1560-67. 
 
 321 
 
 After two years' growth, on the 6th of July 1569, a group 
 of offenders — there are no means of knowing how many — 
 appeared before the Assembly. They were all under ex- 
 communication for sins of the flesh, and they attended, 
 as the record tells us, to know what the Assembly would 
 enjoin them." 
 
 " The Assembly ordained every one of them to repair 
 to their superintendents, or to the ministers, elders, and 
 deacons of their own church respective, and to receive 
 injunctions from them how they shall behave themselves 
 till the next Assembly ; and that then they bring a tes- 
 timonial from their ministers of their behaviour to the 
 Assembly, and that they present themselves to the next 
 Assembly bareheaded and barefooted in linen clothes, 
 humbly requesting the Assembly for farther injunctions 
 for their offences, and restitution to the bosom of the 
 Kirk.^'i 
 
 There was a movement — certainly a natural one — to- 
 wards the establishment of an ecclesiastical censorship 
 over the press. Bassendyne the printer was charged with 
 the publication of a profane ballad in an edition of the 
 Psalms. But he had committed a far more serious offence, 
 in that a book published by him, called ' The Fall of the 
 Roman Kirk,* spoke of "our king and sovereign as 
 supreme head of. the primitive Church." It was ordered 
 by the Assembly that he " is not to print without licence 
 of the supreme magistrate, and revising of such things as 
 pertain to religion by some of the Kirk appointed to that 
 purpose." 2 
 
 In 1574 a committee was appointed "to oversee all 
 manner of books or works that shall be proposed to be ' 
 printed, and to give their judgment thereupon if the same 
 be allowed and approved by the law of God or not ; their 
 judgment or opinion thereof, by their superscription and 
 handwrit, to witness and testify for relief of such as shall 
 read the said works." To revise the sacred ppems in 
 Latin, just issued by Patrick Anderson, a committee was 
 appointed remarkable for the eminence of its members. 
 
 ^ Book of the Universal Kirk, i. 144. 
 VOL. IV. 
 
 2 Ibid., 126. 
 X 
 
322 ORGANISATION OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 The Right Honourable Mr George Buchanan, Keeper 
 of the Privy Seal ; Mr Peter Young, pedagogue to oui 
 sovereign lord ; Mr Andrew Melville ; Mr James Lawson, 
 minister of Edinburgh."^ Where censorship has existed, 
 literature has often taken vengeance on the censors by 
 sarcasms on their ignorance and their incapacity to under- 
 stand what they are castigating ; but here it was probably 
 the author's grief that he was put into the hands of 
 masters only too capable of detecting any deficiency in 
 his attainments. 
 
 The authority arrogated by the Churchmen was not 
 limited to the class who wrote books, but extended to the 
 most powerful among the territorial lords. 
 
 The Earl and Countess of Argyle came under censure 
 — he in separating in an unbecoming fashion from his 
 wife, she in having attended the Popish ceremony of the 
 christening of the prince. The earl professed his willing- 
 ness to submit to discipline if he were in fault, but pleaded 
 that he was not to blame. The Superintendent of Argyle 
 was directed to make inquiry in the matter, and cause such 
 satisfaction to be made as God's law appoints. " The 
 countess admitted her guiltiness, and she was ordained to 
 make public repentance in the Chapel Royal of Stirling 
 upon ane Sunday in time of preaching. ^ 
 
 But however the Church as a body might feel that its 
 influence was strengthening and widening, there was one 
 point on which the Churchmen personally w^ere doomed 
 to feel that all effort was hopeless — the redevotion to 
 spiritual purposes of the revenues of the old Church. 
 The appropriators of these funds were naturally the friends 
 of Protestantism, because that cause had put them in the 
 way of gaining what they had gained, and the triumph of 
 Popery might be the loss of all. They might be, there- 
 fore, counted on for any amount of aggregate zeal in the 
 cause ; but when there was a personal pressure to deliver 
 over to the true Church what they had taken from the 
 idolaters, they were firm as fate. 
 
 The policy pursued by the clergy in this contest is 
 
 ^ Book of the Universal Kirk, i. 310. 
 
 Ibid., i. 310. 
 
LAY ELDERSHIP AND ENDOWMENTS, 1560-67. 323 
 
 supposed to have exercised a decided influence on the 
 constitution of the Presbyterian Church in Scotland. It 
 inherited from the Huguenot consistories and synods the 
 practice of admitting lay elders as component members 
 of the ecclesiastical assemblies. But the decided hold 
 which the lay interest has ever held in Scotland may in 
 great measure be attributed to this, that in the infancy of 
 the Church it was deemed wise that those who showed 
 their zeal for the Reformation by despoiling the Popish 
 hierarchy should be dealt with as zealous members of the 
 new Church. 
 
 It is often said that the institution so arising — laymen 
 elected by laymen to sit in ecclesiastical courts — testifies 
 to the broad popular principle of a Church relying on the 
 voice of the people. On the other hand, it may be main- 
 tained that, whether in its original design or its subsequent 
 growth, the lay eldership was a politic device for strength- 'i., 
 ening the ecclesiastical authority by rooting it in lay soil. 
 No doubt ruling elders are laymen elected by laymen ; 
 but all who are elected in the higher courts must belong 
 to the guild of eldership, and that guild is created by 
 the clergy. Every one who sits at the table of the kirk- 
 session — the fundamental Presbyterian court — has been 
 ordained to the eldership by a clergyman ; and whatever 
 he may turn afterwards to be, he must have entertained 
 principles acceptable to his ordainer. Those so ordained, 
 too, have subscribed the articles of faith and discipline 
 peculiar to the Church. All this is something very different 
 from the election of laymen at large to sit in ecclesiastical 
 courts, as the constituencies elect members of Parliament 
 or of a corporation. As of other institutions connected 
 with the Church, the features of this may be traced in 
 the institutions of the French Huguenots, who guarded 
 it even more strictly than the Scots from any disturbing 
 element.^ 
 
 In the mean time, the more completely they were 
 admitted as a component element in the new organisation, 
 
 ^ See in Quick's Synodicon (xxvii.) the canons for elders and 
 deacons." 
 
324 ORGANISATION OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 the more flagrant became their sin if they withheld its 
 own from the new priesthood. At the Assembly held in 
 the crisis of 1567, "letters missive" were addressed to 
 certain important persons among the landed aristocracy, 
 inviting and persuading them to be present and co-operate 
 with their clerical comrades. Many of them sent letters 
 of ^^excusation," but a sufficient number attended to 
 create surprise at the resolutions adopted by the Assembly. 
 They were to do all in their power for the suffering clergy, 
 and that not only "to the relief of their present necessity, 
 and while ane perfect order may be taken and established 
 towards the full distribution of the patrimony of the Kirk, 
 according to God's Word ; " but they engage to press in 
 Parliament to their uttermost, " that the faithful Kirk of 
 Jesus Christ professed within this realm shall be put in 
 full liberty of the patrimony of the Kirk, according to the 
 book of God, and the order and practice of the primitive 
 Kirk."i 
 
 These protestations were not only permitted to pass, 
 but were subscribed by about eighty of the most noto- 
 rious impropriators of Church lands. Foremost in this list 
 appear the signatures of Morton, Glencairn, Mar, Hume, 
 Ruthven, Sanquhar, Lindsay, Ochiltree, Sir James Balfour, 
 Sir James Macgill, Tullibardine, and William Maitland of 
 Lethington. 
 
 On the face of the proceedings of Parliament the claims 
 of the Church stand as if they were cordially admitted by 
 the temporal power. A statute in their favour goes out 
 of the strict course of legislative indifference to sym- 
 pathise with the suffering clergy, and censure their op- 
 pressors. " Because," it says, " the ministers have been 
 lang defrauded of their stipends by ane great space, where- 
 through they are and sail be constrained to leave their 
 vocation unless remeid be provided ; " therefore the Act 
 professes to make sure that " the haill thirds of the haill 
 benefices of this realm sail now instantly, and in all time 
 to come, first be paid to the ministers of the evangel of 
 Jesus Christ and their successors." But this was not all 
 
 1 Book of the Universal Kirk, i. 107. 
 
LAY ELDERSHIP AND ENDOWMENTS, 1560-67. 325 
 
 that the Act seemed to promise. The thirds are but a 
 temporary arrangement to relieve the Church of its im- 
 mediate indigence ; and it is only to last until " the Kirk 
 come to the full possession of their proper patrimony, 
 quhilk is the teinds " — that is, the tenths or tithes. 
 Among the official notes of matters more or less adopted 
 by this Parliament, but not formally passed into statute, 
 some portion seems to have been devised for giving what 
 the clergy professed sorely to need — an effective process 
 for recovering the emoluments thus declared to belong to 
 them. By way of preamble to this unpassed measure it is 
 set forth that these remedies should be in force until " the 
 Kirk be put in full possession of the hailj patrimony," a 
 term which includes the temporalities as well as the tithes.^ 
 But all this bore no fruit, if we may except the historical 
 conclusion, that the statesmen of the day were anxious to 
 secure the co-operation of the clergy. 
 
 Many signs of the times, however, make it clear that 
 the poor clergy would readil)^ have compounded for a 2 
 punctual payment of their thirds. The law declared for 
 them, but, as if in furtherance of a fixed policy, omitted 
 to supply them with the practical machinery for enforcing 
 their rights, though an Act professing to do so was, we 
 have just seen, drafted and laid before the Estates. There 
 were difficulties in the way of each clergyman identifying 
 his own. His third" might have to come out of some 
 estate which had belonged to his Popish predecessor in a 
 distant county. The local collectors paid everything over 
 to the comptroller in exchequer, and of him the clergy 
 had to seek their respective shares without means for 
 recovering them, or even, perhaps, of identifying them. 
 The regent issued an order to the controller to permit the 
 clergy to collect and appropriate their own thirds. But 
 this had no more influence than the other warrants pro- 
 fessing to render justice to the clergy, and for several 
 years they bewailed the poverty of their lot, and the hard 
 measure dealt out to them. They at the same time pro- 
 claimed that the selfish men who appropriated the patri- 
 
 ^ Act. Pari., iii. 37. 
 
326 ORGANISATION OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 mony of the Church were hard masters to their tenants, 
 and rigid exacters of their tithes, and whether disinter- 
 estedly or not, they raised an occasional cry of commiser- 
 ation for those who were thus oppressed.^ 
 
 The poHtical storms close at hand brought no relief to 
 the clergy. In August 157 1 we find some of their lay 
 friends, in a memorial to the regent, complaining that 
 all temporal sustenance worth looking after was finding 
 its way into the hands of " dumb dogs." To these fell 
 everything laid apart "for the sustentation of preaching 
 pastors, and for other godly uses." The other side of the 
 picture was : " As touching the condition of our ministers 
 present, it is more miserable nor the condition of a beggar, 
 for beggars have freedom, without reproof, to beg over all ; 
 but our poor ministers, bound to their charge, are com- 
 pelled to keep their house, and with dolorous hearts see 
 their wives, children, and families starve with hunger." 
 The case is expressed with the vehemence of Knox's 
 school : — 
 
 " Your Government and greedy wasters violently reives 
 and unjustly consumes that which just law and good order 
 has appointed for their sustentation — to wit, the thirds of 
 benefices, which are now so abused that God cannot long 
 delay to pour forth His just vengeance for this proud con- 
 tempt of His servants." ^ 
 
 We find the new Church gradually resolving itself into 
 that shape and order which enabled it in 1578 to announce 
 in a ''Second Book of Discipline" its full organisation 
 into a Presbyterian hierarchy of Sessions aggregating into 
 Presbyteries, while these were grouped into Proyincial 
 Synods, and supplied the members to the supreme Gene- 
 ral Assembly. In 1567 we find, when the Assembly meets, 
 that ''for eschewing confusion in reasoning, the whole 
 Assembly present named Mr George Buchanan, Principal 
 of St Leonard's College, in St Andrews College, Modera- 
 
 ^ A collection of the documents relating to the thirds of benefices 
 and the claims of the Church will be found in Connel on Tithes, i. 
 156, and Appendix, 25-27. 
 
 2 Bannatyne's Memorials of Transactions in Scotland, 181, 
 
ECCLESIASTICAL TITLES, 1560-67. 327 
 
 tor during the convention." This title of moderator was 
 taken from the practice of the French Huguenots, along 
 with other terms, such as that of the " Overture," by which 
 any matter was opened for discussion. The first Protest- 
 ant Assembly was held in 1559; and though the Scots 
 had thus an example to teach them how to walk, it is 
 probable that afterwards, being masters of their own 
 actions in a free national Church, they afforded more 
 practical instruction to their brethren of France than they 
 received. 
 
 Such dignitaries in the old Church as conformed and 
 were received into the new were subjected to its author- 
 ity as simple ministers. Thus " Adam, called Bishop 
 Orkney," who married the queen to Bothwell, is found in 
 that act to have transgressed the laws of the Kirk, and is 
 deprived of all functions of the ministry. The least con- 
 formable feature in the new organisation appears to have 
 been the "Superintendents," for whom, after the first 
 difficulty in organising the several local divisions, the 
 Church seems to have been at a loss to find suitable em- 
 ployment. They appear to have acted after the manner 
 of an executive for giving effect to the instructions of the 
 Assembly and synods. Persons laid under censure are 
 remitted to them for discipline; and we find that the 
 superintendents in general are required to deal with all 
 abbots, bishops, and others within their respective pro- 
 vinces who profess to belong to the Church by drawing 
 its emoluments, and yet who neither perform pastoral 
 duties nor attend at the meetings of the Assembly. They 
 were to be brought to the Assembly, that their right to 
 remain as ministers of the Word might be tested ; and if 
 there were no superintendent in the district, the nearest 
 superintendent was to deal with them through " the min- 
 ister next adjacent." ^ 
 
 There is a supposition that it may have been the inten- 
 tion of those early Reformers to confer on the Superintend- 
 ent important powers and duties in the collation of min- 
 isters. One short rule on this ceremony sets forth a very 
 
 Book of the Universal Kirk, i. 91. 
 
328 ORGANISATION OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 wide principle of action, however it may have been car- 
 ried out in detail : " Touching persons to be nominat to 
 kirks, that nane be admitted without the nomination of 
 the people, and due examination and admission by the 
 superintendent." ^ 
 
 Among the humbler Protestant clergy a considerable 
 body appear to have been converts from the old Church, 
 and to have been welcomed into the new Establishment 
 without much suspicion or jealousy; but there seems to 
 have been no such readiness to welcome the higher clergy 
 into the new office of superintendent. In one instance, 
 where Alexander Gordon, Bishop of Galloway, a member 
 of the offensive Huntly family, professed to hold the office 
 of superintendent, it was jealously and rigorously denied 
 to him. 2 
 
 The form of worship adopted by the new Church 
 seems now to have found its way into ample use. It took 
 shape in a printed liturgy or prayer-book. The critical 
 examination of books of this period, and the comparison 
 of one with another, has naturally become an interesting 
 and affluent source of polemical discussion. It is, indeed, 
 so ample and varied, that it is apt to appal the lay in- 
 quirer. The " Uses " in the old Church were multitudin- 
 ous ; and even when they were reduced to uniformity by 
 the Council of Trent, the uniform system was so large and 
 complicated, that to be familiar with it demanded a science 
 in itself After the Reformation it is needless to say that 
 
 ^ Book of the Universal Kirk, i. i6. 
 
 ^ ' * It was answered by the Assembly, to the petition of Mr Alex- 
 ander Gordon anent the superintendentship of Galloway, first, that 
 they understood not how he hath any nomination or presentation, 
 either by the Lords of Secret Counsell or province of Galloway ; 
 secondly, albeit he had presentation of the lords, yet he has not ob- 
 served the order keeped in the election of superintendents, and there- 
 fore cannot acknowledge him for a superintendent lawfully called for 
 the present, but offered unto him their aid and assistance, if the kirks 
 of Galloway shall suit [sue for the appointment], and the lords pre- 
 sent ; and requireth that before he depart he subscribe the Book of 
 Discipline. Farther, it was concluded that letters should be sent to 
 the kirks of Galloway, to learn whether they required any superin- 
 tendent or not, and whom they required. " — Book of the Universal 
 Kirk, i. 15. 
 
GENEVA LITURGY, 1560. 
 
 329 
 
 the divergences among the Protestant communities still 
 supplied an ample variety of form and matter. Like 
 many other portions of theological literature, this has been 
 overloaded by laborious attempts to attach significance 
 to distinctions of a merely casual character, and to attri- 
 bute a deep mysterious meaning to terms which may have 
 slipped from the author's pen as the nearest he could find 
 to express some common thought. 
 
 In the old Romish Breviary, however, there may be 
 marked ofi' an original stock from which all have sprung. 
 The Reformation did not spurn the real spirit of the old 
 worship, even -when it destroyed the shrines and abolished 
 the hierarchy of the old Church. In amply supplying it- 
 self from the great fountain of the Bible, the framers of 
 the different uses which were amalgamated into the Bre- 
 viary had chosen the good way in which all must walk 
 together. 
 
 The prayer-book of the Church of England at once 
 attests this in the Latin titles of its services, which are the 
 initial words of the old Latin version of the same service, 
 as the " Venite, exultemus Domino,'' " Te Deum Laud- 
 amus," and the Magnificat." 
 
 The leading principles on which in Scotland the new 
 Church stood apart from the old were, — the Pontificate 
 as a divine hierarchy ; the real presence in the elements ; 
 the spiritual efiicacy of the sacraments ; the power of ab- 
 solution ; purgatory ; and the effective intercession of the 
 saints. These left still a common stock in the great doc- 
 trines of Christianity over which it was unnecessary to 
 quarrel. No doubt the Mass and the Mass-book or 
 Missal were abused with vociferous eloquence by the 
 Scots Reformers ; but this was because the mass proper 
 belonged to the celebration of the Eucharist, and thus 
 embodied the abjured doctrines of the real presence and 
 the spiritual efficacy of the sacrament. This hatred did 
 not extend to the Breviary as the great storehouse of 
 Christian devotion, and in its affluent resources the vari- 
 ous Protestant communities could all find material for 
 their more limited and simple worship. 
 
 When the Lords of the Congregation formed their 
 
330 ORGANISATION OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 great league in 1557, they '^agreed upon two heads, — first 
 that the common prayer be read in the parish churches 
 on the Sunday, with the lessons of the New and Old 
 Testament, conform, to the order of the Book of Common 
 Prayer ; and secondly, that doctrine, preaching, and in- 
 terpretation of Scripture, be had and used privately in 
 quiet houses until authority was obtained from the prince 
 to grant public preaching by faithful and true ministers." 
 The correspondence of the period leaves no doubt that 
 this " Book of Common Prayer was the English Liturgy 
 of Edward VI. ^ That it meant, as some have thought, 
 the book afterwards brought from Geneva^-is at once con- 
 tradicted by the mandate regarding "the lessons from 
 the New and Old Testaments,'' since there are no " les- 
 sons in the Geneva book. In the Book of Discipline 
 of 1560 the EngHsh Liturgy is superseded by the adop- 
 tion of "the Book of our Common Ordour, called the 
 Ordour of Geneva," and popularly known as Knox's 
 Liturgy. 
 
 The literary history of this Scots prayer-book is very 
 distinct, and at the same time curiously interesting. Among 
 the many Protestants who were driven abroad by the per- 
 secutions in the reign of Mary Tudor, a considerable body 
 congregated in Frankfurt-on-the-Main. It happened that 
 they there met with a body of Huguenot refugees more 
 numerous than themselves. The English refugees negoti- 
 ated for a joint use of the church occupied by the French, 
 and obtained what they desired under the following con- 
 ditions, laid down by the municipal authorities of Frankfurt: 
 " That they should have liberty 'to preach and administer 
 the sacrament in that church which the Frenchmen had, 
 the French one day and the English another day ; and on 
 Sunday to choose also their hours as they could agree 
 among themselves ; but it was with this commandment, 
 that the English should not dissent from the Frenchmen 
 in doctrine or ceremonies, lest they should thereby min- 
 ister occasion of offence ; and willed further, that before 
 they entered their church they should approve and subscribe 
 
 ^ Authorities referred to. Laing's Works of Knox, vi. 278. 
 
GENEVA LITURGY, 1560. 
 
 the same confession of faith that the Frenchmen had there 
 presented."^ 
 
 It fell to John Knox to be chief in giving effect to this 
 concordat. In the year 1554 he was called to the ministry 
 of the English congregation at Frankfurt A committee 
 was appointed to aid him in preparing a book of devotion 
 suitable to the occasion. They held that by the spirit, at 
 least, of the municipal direction, they were not bound to 
 conform precisely with the French Calvinistic service, 
 provided they abstained from aught that might prove 
 offensive to the French Huguenots themselves. Hence 
 was adjusted the little book afterwards used at Geneva, 
 and called ' The Forme of Prayers and Ministration of 
 the Sacraments, &c., used in the English Congregation at 
 Geneva, and approved by the famous and godly learned o 
 man John Calvin.^ This, slightly altered and somewhat | 
 
 enlarged, became the Book of Common Order in Scotland. 
 
 It had a brief and stormy career among those for whom 
 it was first adjusted. From the beginning there was a 
 minority who protested against any deviation from Church 
 of England practice. These were, before the book was 
 many months old, augmented by an auxiliary band who 
 emigrated to Germany under the guidance of Dr_Cox, who 
 had been chaplain to King j^dward. He got possession 
 of the pulpit, and denounced all schism from the order of 
 England. This of course called up Knox in retaliation : 
 he denounced the servicQ^of England as containing many 
 shreds ofl^opish idolatry, and showed it to be one of the 
 causes of God's wrath towards England exhibited in the 
 Marian persecution. Cox's party, however, had a weapon 
 of offence which Knox's lacked. They gave forth the 
 responses in a loud voice, a practice, as we shall see, 
 inconsistent with the whole scheme of Calvinistic worship. 
 Knox says of this, "They were admonished not to mur- 
 mur aloud when the minister prayed ; but they would not 
 give place, but quarrelled, and said they would do as they 
 had done in England, and their Church should have an 
 English face. The Lord grant it to have the face of 
 
 A Discourse of the Troubles at Frankfurt ; Phcenix, ii. 96. 
 
332 
 
 ORGANISATION OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 Christ's Church, which is the only matter that I sought — 
 God is my record ; and therefore I would have had it 
 agreeable in outward rites and ceremonies with Christian 
 Churches Reformed." ^ 
 
 Knox, who had been victorious in more eminent con- 
 tests, was beaten in this. He and his book were speedily 
 driven from the field. But, through the influence of those 
 who had used it at Frankfurt, it became known among 
 English Protestants as a simple form of worship rendered 
 in the English language ; and it long exercised an influence 
 even in England. The more moderate of the Puritans — 
 those who were not hostile to all forms of worship — gave 
 it their adherence. It was sometimes attached, as a be- 
 coming book of private devotions, to old English editions 
 of the Bible. It now and then comes on the surface in 
 the history of the early conflict between the Dissenters 
 and the Church. The same year (1567) which saw the 
 final establishment of the Protestants and their Book of 
 Order, was conspicuous in England by the earliest trial for 
 holding a Puritanical conventicle, one of the Acts of which 
 was a protestation in favour of this same Book of Common 
 Order. 
 
 This book might, in the language of the present day, be 
 I called a prayer-book less ritualistic in character than the 
 I English Common Prayer. It was a compromise between 
 j that and the prayer-book of the French Huguenots, with 
 ' a decided preponderance of this latter element. In some 
 instances where the divergence from the English form 
 seems of small moment, it is yet essential, and stands as 
 the representative of broad opinions. For instance, in the 
 Scots, as in the French form, the prayers are not followed 
 by any response from the congregation. The import of 
 this distinction is, that the words used are communicated 
 by the minister to the congregation, who listen to them, 
 but are not bound to announce an instant adoption of 
 them. Though there is a penitential confession of sins, 
 there is nothing answering to what follows in the Common 
 Prayer, " The absolution or remission of sins to be pro- 
 
 1 Knox's Works, iv. 42. 
 
GENEVA LITURGY, 1560. 
 
 333 
 
 nounced by the priest alone standing, the people still 
 kneehng.'' This is one of several English usages which 
 seem ingeniously devised to satisfy the views of persons 
 standing far apart from each other in fundamental prin- 
 ciple. The Ritualist sees in it an effective absolution; 
 the Evangelical may find in it merely a wholesome remin- 
 iscence of those promises of Scripture which are held out 
 to the sincerely penitent. The absolution was one of 
 those features which Calvin desired to re-establish in this 
 modified form, but without success. He had, indeed, in 
 Geneva, to deal with a very peculiar morsel of the work 
 of reformation. The process there was not the reforming 
 or remodelling of existing things. Farrel had swept away 
 every vestige of the Romish worship ; and the thunder of 
 heaven had completed his work by tossing down the cross 
 on the top of the great church, which the hand of man 
 could not without great cost and difficulty reach. It fell 
 to Calvin to erect on this vacant arena a system of worship 
 and discipline ; but he did so under the eyes of men in 
 jealous alarm of aught that reminded them of the depart- 
 ed abominations. So it was that the constitution and 
 worship of the Presbyterians of Scotland, and of the 
 Huguenots of France, took their prevaihng peculiarities 
 from the small republic on the Rhone. In the end the 
 form of absolution was tolerated among the Huguenot 
 churches, but was not made a point of order. ^ The peni- 
 tential confession itself is a literal translation from the 
 French form.^ 
 
 ^ ** That such churches as were accustomed on sacrament-days or 
 other Sabbaths, after the confession of sins, to pronounce a general 
 absolution, may, if they please, continue in it ; but where this custom 
 is not introduced, the synod adviseth of the churches not to admit it, 
 because of the dangerous consequences that may ensue." — Synodi- 
 con, can. iv. 
 
 2 " Seigneur Dieu, P^re etemel et " O Etemall God and most mer- 
 tout pouissant, nous confessons et cifuU Father, we confesse and ac- 
 recognoisons sans feintise devant ta knowledge here before Thy divine 
 saincte majesty, que nous sommes majestie that we are miserable sin- 
 pouvres p^cheurs, conceus et nais ners, conceaved and borne in sinne 
 en iniquity et corruption, enclins k and iniquitie, so that in us there is 
 mal faire, inutiles k tout bien, et no goodness. For the flesh ever- 
 
334 
 
 ORGANISATION OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 The Book of Common Order contains a Confession of 
 Faith fundamentally different from that larger Confession 
 separately adopted by the Parliament and the General As- 
 sembly. If we seek its origin, we shall find this in a mere 
 recasting of those passages in Calvin's Catechism which 
 contain a critical examination of the Apostles' Creed. 
 The Scots Confession embodies that Creed. The various 
 articles are printed on the margin as a rubric, thus forming 
 the texts on which the several divisions of the Confession 
 are a commentar}^ Having absolutely no other sanction 
 than the tradition of the Christian Church, the Apostles' 
 Creed has not received much acceptance in Scotland. I 
 am not aware, however, that any prohibition of its use is 
 recorded. When, in the manner we shall afterwards see, 
 a form of service ceased to be used, there was no rule for 
 the use of the Creed ; and it fell into disuse, and became 
 virtually unknowTi among the worshippers in the Presby 
 terian churches in Scotland. It is curious to watch a 
 tendency to this conclusion in the several editions of the 
 Book of Common Order. The Confession of Faith came 
 to be printed without the rubric — that is to say, the com 
 ment of the French and Scots divines was retained, but 
 the articles on which it was a comment, being among the 
 traditions of the Church of Rome, were dropped. 
 
 que de nostre vice nous transgres- more rebelleth against the spirite 
 
 sons sans fin et sans cesse tes saincrs whereby we continuaUie transgresse 
 
 commandements. En quoy faisant Thine holy precepts and command 
 
 nous acquerons par ton juste juge- ments, and so doe purchase to our- 
 
 ment mine et perdition sur nous." selves, through Thy just judgement 
 
 — La Forme des Prieres Ecclesias- death and damnation." — Book of 
 
 tiques, 1586. Common Order, 1591. 
 
 ^ It may be noted that the Creed, as printed in the rubric of the 
 Confession, is exactly as it is in the Book of Common Prayer, except 
 one word. Where the English book has * * He rose ag^in from tA^ 
 dead^''"' the Scots has " He rose again from death.'" Perhaps this is 
 a mere slip. The English is the more accurate translatiori from the 
 Breviary, which has ** resurrexit a mortuis, " answering to the original, 
 6/c v€Kpu)u. The French is '* resuscite des morts." 
 
 Another point of minor criticism suggests itself Since the Creed 
 is in the Book of Common Order broken up into paragraphs, do these 
 agree with the old divisions maintained in the traditions of the 
 Church ? As the reader probably knows, this tradition was, that at 
 
BOOK OF COMMON ORDER, 1560-67. 335 
 
 The directions for the ministration of the Lord's Sup- 
 per, as it is termed in the Book of Common Order, have 
 much in common with the French form. They both 
 materially differed from the English, in driving unworthy 
 persons from participation in the ceremonial. The doc- 
 trine of the old Church dealt with the Eucharist as pecu- 
 liarly appropriate to the sinful, being a means for their 
 redemption. A little of this spirit entered into the Church 
 of England in the warning to those w^ho have intimated an 
 intention to communicate : " If any of those be an open 
 and notorious evil liver, or have done any wrong to his 
 neighbours by word or deed, so that the congregation be 
 thereby offended, the curate, having knowledge thereof, 
 shall call him, and advertise him, that in any wise he pre- 
 sume not to come to the Lord's table until he hath openly 
 declared himself to have truly repented and amended his 
 former naughty life," &c. But both in the French and 
 the Scots form there is a solemn exclusion of all unwor- 
 thy persons from the table.^ This exclusion, or " excom- 
 
 Pentecost the Creed was revealed to the assembled disciples, not en- 
 tirely to all, but in twelve separate parts, each revealed to and an- 
 nounced by an individual apostle. The divisions do not agree ; and 
 the Calvinistic division is the more logical of the two, as will be seen 
 in the opening passages : — 
 
 The Tradition. 
 
 1. ' ' Petrus dixit, ' Credo in Deum 
 Patrem Omnipotentem.' 
 
 2. "Joannes dixit, 'Creatorem 
 coeli et terrae.' 
 
 3. "Jacobus dixit, 'Credo et in 
 lesum Christum, Filum ejus uni- 
 cum, Dominum nostrum.' " — Sixti 
 Senensi Bibliotheca Sancta, 49. 
 
 1 De la Ci:NE. 
 
 ' ' Au nom et en rauthoritd de nos- 
 tra Seigneur Jesus Christ, j'excom- 
 mune tous idolatres, blasphema- 
 teurs, contempteurs de Dieu, h^r- 
 etiques, et toutes genes qui font 
 sectes k part pour rompre 1' unite 
 de I'Eglise, tous perjures, tous ceux 
 qui sent rebelles k peres et k meres 
 et leurs sup^rieurs, tous seditieux, 
 
 The Book of Common Order. 
 
 1. " I believe in God the Father 
 Almighty, Maker of heaven and 
 earth ; 
 
 2. " And in Jesus Christ, His 
 only Son, our Lord." 
 
 The Ministration of the 
 Lord's Supper. 
 
 " In the name and authority of 
 the Eternal God, and of His Son 
 Jesus Christ, I excommunicate from 
 this table all blasphemers of God, 
 all idolaters, all murtherers, all 
 adulterers, all that be in malice 01 
 envie ; all disobedient persons to 
 father or mother, princes or magis- 
 
336 
 
 ORGANISATION OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 munication," as it was termed, is still conspicuous in the 
 commemoration as practised in Scotland. It is called 
 '^the fencing of the tables;" and although no form is 
 prescribed for this denunciatory process, it is said to be 
 sometimes all the more terrible that it is left to the indig- 
 nant eloquence of the presiding minister. 
 
 It is observable that the French form keeps clear of 
 perilous matter by offering no definition of the object or 
 the effect of participation in the elements. The direction 
 simply is, that the minister sits down at the table with the 
 others, and sees that they partake of the bread and wine 
 with reverence and in due order, passages of Scripture 
 being read and psalms sung during the partaking. The 
 Book of Common Order goes a step farther towards the 
 definition of an object. The direction is in these words : 
 
 The minister breaketh the bread and delivereth it to the 
 people, who distribute and divide the same among them- 
 selves, according to our Saviour Christ's commandment, 
 and likewise giveth the cup ; during the which time some 
 place of the Scripture is read which doth lively set forth 
 the death of Christ, to the intent that our eyes and senses 
 may not only be occupied in these outward signs of bread 
 and wine, which are called the visible word, but that our 
 hearts and minds also may be fully fixed in the contem- 
 plation of the Lord's death, which is by this holy sacra- 
 ment represented." In the Confession of Faith adopted 
 by the Estates and the x-lssembly there is a far more elabor- 
 ate definition of the influence attributed by the Kirk to 
 the act of communicating. It is a strange piece of rea- 
 soning, like the work of a strong intellect drawn in oppo- 
 site directions. To one who is practically acquainted 
 with modern Presbyterian doctrine and practice, and who 
 is not deadened to the meaning of the Confession by 
 hearing or reading it as a matter of routine, the explana- 
 tion is curiously expressive. It is like the writing of one 
 
 mutins, bateurs, noiseurs, adulteres, trates, pastors or preachers ; all 
 
 paillards, larrons, avaricieux, ravis- theeves and disceivers of their neigh- 
 
 seurs, y\Tognes, gourmans, et tous hours ; and, finallie, all such as live 
 
 ceux qui meinent vi scandaleuse." a life directly fighting against the 
 
 —Edition 1576, p. 23. willof God. " — Edition 1591, p. 133. 
 
BOOK OF COMMON ORDER, 1560-67. 337 
 
 who is under the spell of the old forms and beliefs, and 
 endeavours to throw them off and adopt the pure theory 
 of commemoration, without entire success.^ 
 
 ^ We utterly damn the vanity of they that affirm sacraments to be 
 nothing else but naked and bare signs. Na we assuredly believe that 
 by baptism we are ingrafted in Christ Jesus, to be made partakers of 
 His justice, by which our sins are covered and remitted ; and also 
 that in the Supper rightly used Christ Jesus is so joined with us that 
 He becomes very nourishment and food of our souls. Not that we 
 imagine any transubstantiation of bread in Christ's natural body, and 
 of wine in His natural blood, as the Papists have perniciously taught 
 and damnably believed ; but this union and conjunction which we 
 have with the body and blood of Christ Jesus in the right use of the 
 sacraments is wrought by operation of the Holy Ghost, who by true 
 faith carries us above all things that are visible, carnal, and worldly, 
 and makes us to feed upon the body and blood of Christ Jesus, which 
 was once broken and shed for us, which now is in the heaven, and 
 appears in the presence of His Father for us : and yet, notwithstand- 
 ing the far distance of place which is betwixt His body now glorified 
 in the heaven, and us now mortal in this world, yet we most assuredly 
 believe that the bread which we break is the communion of Christ's 
 body, and the cup which we bless is the communion of His blood ; so 
 that we confess and undoubtedly believe that the faithful, in the right 
 use of the Lord's table, do so eat the body and drink the blood of the 
 Lord Jesus, that He remains in them and they in Him. Yet that 
 are so made flesh of His flesh, and bane of His banes, that as the eter- 
 nal Godhead has given to the flesh of Christ Jesus (which of the awin 
 condition and nature was mortal and corruptible) life and immortality, 
 so does Christ Jesus, His flesh and blood eaten and drunken by us, 
 give unto us the same prerogatives ; which albeit we confess are 
 neither given unto us at that time only, neither yet be the proper 
 power and virtue of the sacraments only, yet we afiftrm that the faith- 
 ful, in the right use of the Lord's table, has conjunction with Christ 
 Jesus, as the natural man cannot apprehend. Yea and farther we 
 affirm, that albeit the faithful, oppressed by negligence and manly 
 infirmity, does not profit so much as they would in the very instant 
 action of the Supper, yet shall it after bring fruit forth, as lively seed 
 sown in good ground ; for the Holy Spirit, which can never be 
 divided from the right institution of the Lord Jesus, will not frustrate 
 the faithful of the fruit of that mystical action. But all this we say 
 comes of true faith, which apprehends Christ Jesus, who only makes 
 His sacraments effectual unto us ; and therefore, whosoever slanders 
 us, as that we affirmed or believed sacraments to be naked and bare 
 signs, do injury unto us, and speaks against the manifest truth. But 
 this liberally and frankly we confess, that we make ane distinction be- 
 twixt Christ Jesus in His eternal substance, and betwixt the elements 
 in the sacramental signs ; so that we will neither worship the signs in 
 VOL. IV. Y 
 
338 
 
 ORGANISATION OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 Among the Huguenots, the ordinances which bound the 
 members of the congregation to the visible Church — 
 baptism, marriage, and the Lord's Supper — were performed 
 in the presence of the congregation assembled at public 
 worship."^ 
 
 In the Scots form of marriage it is directed that *^the 
 parties assemble at the beginning of the sermon and it 
 seems to have become gradually the rule that marriages 
 as well as baptisms were to be celebrated only on Sundays 
 — at least there are instances where marriage on a " ferial 
 or ordinary week-day is dealt with as an irregularity. ^ 
 
 In the baptisms of the Scots Church, in the sixteenth 
 and the early part of the seventeenth century, there was 
 a party who in later times dropped out of the ceremony 
 —the Godfather. The instruction is, that the infant to 
 be baptised shall be brought to the church on the day 
 
 place of that which is signified by them, neither do we despise and 
 interpret them as unprofitable and vain, but do use them with all 
 reverence, examining ourselves diligently before that so we do, be- 
 cause we are assured by the mouth of the apostle, that such as eat of 
 that bread and drink of that cup unworthily, are guilty of the body 
 and of the blood of Christ Jesus." 
 
 ^ '*I1 est a noter qu'on doit apporter les enfans pour baptiser, ou 
 le Dimanche a I'heure du catechisme, ou les autres jours, au sermon ; 
 afin que comme le baptisme est une reception solenelle en I'eglise, 
 qu'il se face en la presence de I'assemblee." — Le Forme des Prieres, 
 edition 1576. 
 
 2 Thus, on 30th December 1567, the minister of Ratho was sus- 
 pended for celebrating a marriage to which, among more serious ob- 
 jections, there were, " without proclamation of banns or a testimonial 
 thereof, and upon a ferial day, contrary to all order established in the 
 Kirk." — Book of the Universal Kirk, i. 114. In 1572 Mr John Row 
 was charged with * * solemnising the bond of matrimony betwixt the 
 Master of Craufurd and the Lord Drummond's daughter without pro- 
 clamation of bands, and in like manner out of due time — viz. , on a 
 Thursday, at afternoon prayers." — Ibid., 256. On one occasion the 
 question of the proper time for baptising came up in an odd manner, 
 mixed with others of a more serious character. Among a set of per- 
 plexing queries to be solved by the Assembly, one is, ** What punish- 
 ment shall be for ane minister that baptises ane murtherer's bairn on 
 ane Monday, not being ane day of preaching, and without repentance 
 of the murtherer remaining at the king's horn?" — that is, a fugitive 
 from justice. The answer is, ** Deserved deposition." — Ibid., 345. 
 
BOOK OF COMMON ORDER, 1560-67. 339 
 
 appointed to common prayer and preaching, accompanied 
 by the father and godfather ; so that after the sermon, the 
 child being presented to the minister, he demandeth this 
 question, ' Do you here present this child to be baptised, 
 earnestly desiring that he may be ingrafted in the mystical 
 body of Christ?'^' Perhaps we may take the spirit in 
 which the Scots received the sponsorial institution, so well 
 known still in England, from the following authorised in- 
 junction to the Reformed Church in France : " Forasmuch 
 as we have no commandment from the Lord to take god- 
 fathers or godmothers, who may present our children unto 
 baptism, there cannot be any particular canon made which 
 shall bind persons to do it. But sith it is a very ancient 
 custom, and introduced for a good end, to wit, to testify 
 the sureties' faith and the baptism of the infant, and also 
 for that they charge themselves with the care of educating 
 the child in case it should be deprived of its parents by 
 death ; and for that it doth maintain a sweet communion 
 among the faithful by a conjunction of friendship, they 
 who will not observe it, but will by themselves present 
 their own children, shall be earnestly entreated not to be 
 contentious, but to conform unto the ancient and accus- 
 tomed order, it being very good and profitable."^ 
 
 In the many editions of the Book of Common Order 
 there are variations, and in some there are additions, 
 which appear not to have been m.ade under any ecclesias- 
 tical authority. Thus, as in the En^ish prayer-book, there ^ 
 were hymns translated from the Breviary, having by way " 
 of distinctive title the first words of the Latin version. 
 Among these was the " Song of Blessed Mary, called the 
 Magnificat," the " Veni Creator," and the " Nunc Dimit- 
 tis." There was a calendar, in which the several events 
 of the history of the Virgin which had been selected by 
 the old Church as the object of solemn ceremonies were 
 reverently amended. There were a few saints' days, and 
 some of the saints commemorated in them belonged to 
 tradition, not to Scripture, as St Martin and St Lawrence. 
 
 ^ Quick's Synodicon, i. xlv. 
 
340 
 
 ORGANISATION OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 We shall again meet with the Book of Common Order 
 when we come to the disputes which ushered in the great 
 civil war of the seventeenth century.^ 
 
 With an origin thus rooted in French soil, it could not 
 be but that the Church of Scotland should bear many 
 marks of its parentage. As we have seen, the organisation 
 of the new Establishment was on the exact model of the 
 Huguenot communities, with the one exception, that in 
 the Superintendents the Scots made what some at least 
 have deemed a nearer approach to a hierarchy, with per- 
 manent division of ranks and duties. Some mere inci- 
 dental points, already casually noticed, perhaps show re- 
 lationship still more distinctly than those large fundamental 
 features, which may be said to resemble each other because 
 they represent eternal truth. 
 
 Thus the very significant symbol afterwards adopted by 
 the Church of Scotland, the burning bush — the bush which 
 Moses beheld burning but unconsumed — was a favourite 
 among the early Huguenots.^ The term Moderator was 
 
 ^ I have not met in any copy of the French * Forme des Prieres 
 Ecclesiastiques ' with the commemoration of saints of the old calendar 
 not belonging to the Biblical period, and all I have seen tends to the 
 opinion that they were especially excluded. Their place, indeed, was 
 otherwise occupied. In the edition of 1576 there are events of Scrip- 
 ture history, and also of history contemporary to the publication of 
 the calendar. But the entries which appear especially to displace 
 those of the translation-day of the medieval saints are such as these : — 
 27 May, — Mourut Jean Calvin, homme de singulier savoir et 
 grande piete. 
 
 Juillet. — Jean Hus fut brusle au Concile de Constance I'an 
 1415, pour maintenir la verite de I'Eglise." 
 
 2 The editor of the S)modicon, after telling how the Piedmontese 
 had for their common seal a taper burning in a golden candlestick, 
 scattering its glorious beams in a sable field of thick darkness,'^ goes 
 on to another seal, as illustrious an hieroglyphic as the former, 
 appertaining unto the national synods of those renowned and once 
 flourishing, though now desolate, Reformed Churches of France, 
 which was Moses' miraculous vision when he fed the flock under the 
 mount of God — viz., a bramble-bush in a flaming fire, having that 
 essential incommunicable name of God, Jehovah, engraven in its 
 centre, and this motto, * Comburo non consumer,^ in its circumference 
 — * I burn, but am not consumed. With this those venerable councils 
 sealed all their letters and despatches." — Epistle Dedicatory. 
 
BOOK OF COMMON ORDER, 1560-67. 341 
 
 peculiar to the French Protestant Churches, as applied to 
 the chairman or president selected by each ecclesiastical 
 assembly or meeting, whether great or small. The term is 
 familiar to every one in Scotland, as of time-honoured use 
 for the same purpose. Any piece of business of the General 
 Assembly and the other Presbyterian courts in Scotland is 
 opened by an overture,'* the direct descendant of a solemn 
 form in the French Parliaments. 
 
 The title-page of the earlier editions carries the foreign 
 origin of this liturgy on its face. For instance, the Edin- 
 burgh edition of 1565 has 'The Form of Prayers and 
 Ministration of the Sacrament used in the Enghsh Church 
 of Geneva, approved and received by the Church of Scot- 
 land.' In the editions a few years older, printed abroad, 
 where this announcement of reception by the Church of 
 Scotland stands, there are the words, approved by the 
 famous and godly learned man John Calvin." Ten years 
 later the title varied to ' The Psalms of David in English 
 Metre, with the Form of Prayers and Ministration of the 
 Sacrament used in the Church of Scotland.' As the 
 Psalms occupied by far the greater portion of the volume, 
 it came to be popularly called the Psalm-book j and even 
 in this small matter there was an assimilation to French 
 practice which gave the title ' Les Pseaumes de David, 
 mes en Rime Frangois.' In the year 1564 we find an Act 
 of Assembly in which " it was ordained that every minister, 
 exhorter, and reader shall have one of the psalm-books 
 lately printed in Edinburgh, and use the order contained 
 therein in prayers, marriages, and ministration of the 
 sacraments.'' ^ 
 
 The early editions of the Psalms are, like the Book of 
 Common Order itself, not uniformly the same ; but the 
 bulk of them all was the well-known English translation 
 attributed to "Sternhold and Hopkins." They received 
 some aid from native Scotsmen, two of them men of mark 
 — John Craig and Robert Birt. It is of interest to know 
 that the Regent Murray gave to the cause of psalmody in 
 
 1 Book of the Universal Kirk (Bannatyne edition), i. 54. This 
 order is not contained in the octavo edition. 
 
342 ORGANISATION OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 Scotland his assistance as a man not only zealous for the 
 cause of the Reformation and all things especially belong- 
 ing to it, but as one who evidently had his own views on 
 music and its right adaptation to the purposes of collective 
 worship. We have the tunes harmonised " into four parts 
 by his desire ; and know that the task was undertaken by 
 a certain David Publes or Peebles, and because he was 
 not sufficiently earnest in the task, completed by Nicholas 
 Wood.i 
 
 The *'Book of Common Order" came forth in many 
 editions. The later of these vary from the earlier, chiefly 
 in the removal of services applicable to events contem- 
 
 1 Wood tells us how **my Lord James — who after was Earl of 
 Murray and regent — being at the Reformation Prior of St Andrews, 
 causes ane of his canons to name David Publes, being ane of the 
 chief musicians into this land, to set three parts to the tenor : and my 
 lord commanded the said David to learn the curiosity of music, and 
 so to make all dulce, and so he has done ; but the said David he was 
 not ernest ; but I being come to this town to remain, I was ever re- 
 questing and soliciting till they were all set.'' Wood was a disap- 
 pointed man, not meeting his reward, and believing that the world 
 was coming to the condition when only those who contributed to 
 substantial wants or sensual luxuries would be valued. "Notwith- 
 standing of this travel I have taken," he says, I cannot understand 
 but music shall perish in this land alutterly and "to ane great mani 
 that hes but ane reasonable grip of music these five books are worth 
 their weight in gold." The "parts," according to facsimiles recently 
 made, are richly adorned or illuminated according to the art of the 
 day. We have, in rather spirited art, allegorical figures, or rather 
 imaginary full-length portraits of the performers in the "parts," with 
 a poetic explanation. We have for the first " Tennour," introduced 
 with — 
 
 " I may be knawen by my heavenly line, 
 I am ane man of mickil modesty, 
 And therefore sings my part with notes most true, 
 As it affeirs unto my faculty." 
 
 Next comes " Tribbill," a more jovial figure, announced by — 
 " My glistering colour, glorious and green, 
 Betokens youth, with glad and merry heart, 
 Whilk ever does with courage from the splene, 
 But praise or paine, with pleasure sing my part. " 
 
 wSee "An Account of the Scottish Psalter, a.d. 1566, by David Laing, 
 Proc. Ant. Soc. Scot., vii. 445, and "History of the Scottish Metri- 
 cal Psalms, with an Account of the Paraphrases and Hymns and of 
 the Music of the Old Psalter ; illustrated with twelve plates of MS. 
 music of 1565, by the Rev. J. W. Macmeeken. 
 
BOOK OF COMMON ORDER, 1560-67. 
 
 343 
 
 porary with the early issues, such as a thanksgiving unto 
 God after our deUverance from the tyranny of the French- 
 men, with prayers made for the continuance of the peace 
 betwixt the realms of England and Scotland/' Its formal 
 name, as we have seen, was 'The Book of Common 
 Order,' and this name among the Protestants of Scotland 
 became the equivalent of ' The Book of Common Prayer ' 
 among those of England. After the lapse of nearly a 
 hundred years from the introduction of the Scots form, 
 we shall again come across it in troublesome times, and 
 find it dropping, almost unnoticed, out of existence, as 
 the companion of the English prayer-book, when that 
 was assailed and conquered by enemies. The Book of 
 Common Order, meanwhile, had so unobtrusive an exis- 
 tence as the service-book of the Scots Protestants, that 
 references to it in the civil and even in the ecclesiastical 
 history of the period are extremely rare.^ 
 
 ^ Hence the following slight morsel of comparative criticism by 
 two lay politicians has value from the scantiness of other notice. It 
 arose out of the events to be presently told. While Queen Mary 
 was detained at Bolton Castle in July 1568, some English statesmen 
 seem to have yielded to the delusion that she was about to become an 
 earnest member of the Church of England. At that time Sir Francis 
 KnoUys, Queen Elizabeth's vice-chamberlain, a stern servant of the 
 English Crown, but courteous and kindly, had the chief responsibility' 
 about Queen Mary's disposal. Naturally it was of interest to him to 
 know what truth was in the rumour that she was becoming attached 
 to the English Common Prayer-book. Hence we have from him this 
 account of a conversation with Lord Herries, Queen Mary's am- 
 bassador or advocate at the Court of Queen Elizabeth, and, it may 
 be noted, a Protestant : " And touching the condition of this queen 
 receiving of the form of common prayer after the manner of England, 
 I said unto my Lord Herrys, that if he meant thereby to condemn 
 the form and order of common prayer now used in Scotland, agree- 
 able with divers well-reformed churches in Germany, Switzerland, 
 France, and in Savoy, and that withal he would reject and annihilate 
 the Confession of Faith acknowledged in Scotland by Parliament, 
 because there is no such Confession of Faith acknowledged in Eng- 
 land, or that he meant to expel all the learned preachers of Scotland 
 if they would not return back to receive and wear cornered caps and 
 tippets with surplice and coopes, which they have left by order con- 
 tinually since their first receiving of the Gospel into that realm, — then, 
 howsoever he meant to further religion hereby, I said I thought and 
 feared that he might so rather contend so far for the form and order 
 
344 ORGANISATION OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 So it was that, by a strange yet distinct and traceable 
 succession of events, it was the destiny of Scotland to 
 be again influenced by France. And in some measure 
 the new influence was stronger than the old. That had 
 been political and superficial, but this was social and vital. 
 A despotic Court, swarming with courtiers affluent and 
 luxurious, had few points of sympathy for the Scots. The 
 broken and persecuted Huguenots had claims on them of 
 another kind ; and they are not to be blamed for failing 
 to see, as we in calmer times can from many incidents, 
 that had the Huguenots been victorious, they would have 
 been as bloody and tyrannical as their opponents. This 
 common feeling with their brethren of Scotland cheered 
 the hearts and strengthened the hands of the French Pro- 
 testants, and it was often remarked by their enemies how 
 evil an influence it had on the rebels in France to witness 
 the success of their brother rebels in Scotland, and peruse 
 their pestilent literature. 
 
 The possession of a form of service was, as it happened, 
 of essential use to the new Church in helping it to econo- 
 mise its limited ministering power. The First Book of 
 Discipline decreed that ^^none ought to presume either to 
 preach or yet to minister the sacraments but those who 
 were ordained ministers ; but the same code made provi- 
 sion, that ^'to the churches where no ministers can be had 
 presently, must be appointed the most apt men that dis- 
 tinctly can read the common prayers and the Scriptures, 
 to exercise both themselves and the church till they grow 
 to greater perfection." ^ A large and affluent congregation 
 would have a reader to assist the minister; in other 
 instances a group of parishes would each have a reader. 
 
 of common prayer that he might bring the substance of religion in 
 peril, and that he might so fight for the shadow and image of religion, 
 that he might bring the body and truth in danger : whereunto he 
 answered, that in cities and towns, where learned preachers remain, 
 he allowed very well of the form and order of common prayer and 
 preaching now used in Scotland ; but in the countries, where learned 
 men were lacking, he said the form of common prayer in England 
 was better to be allowed, in his judgment, — whereunto I agreed very 
 well with him." — Anderson, iv. no, in. 
 1 First Book of JOiscipline, iv. i, 19. 
 
BOOK OF COMMON ORDER, 1560-67. 
 
 while a minister presided over all, and visited each on 
 occasion to preach and administer ecclesiastical rites. It 
 appears that often some half-educated priest or friar of 
 the old Church was content to earn a scanty living in the 
 new as a " reader." ^ A well-informed writer says that " in 
 1567 there were about 289 ministers and 715 readers in 
 the Church." 2 
 
 As it was the object of the promoters of the Book of 
 Common Order to preserve a ritual for the congregation, 
 and yet to keep it absolutely clean from all those doctrines 
 and practices which their Church condemned, there were 
 two matters demanding much nicety and skill in their 
 handling. The one was the commemoration of the atone- 
 ment or of the Last Supper, which was to be cleansed of 
 the idolatry of the real presence ; the other was the burial 
 of the dead, where any admission of purgatory, or the 
 possibility that there was still an opportunity of doing 
 anything on earth that might be of service to the soul of 
 the departed, must be shunned.^ The commemoration of 
 the Last Supper has already been discussed, and it will 
 again come up when a proposal to supersede it became 
 
 1 Sprott, introduction to the Book of Common Order, xxiii. 
 This author says, Some of the early session records at St Andrews 
 mention the reception of many conforming priests. " It may be noted, 
 that of the many editions of the Book of Common Order, that here 
 referred to is the one to be consuked for historical purposes. Its 
 title is, ' The Book of Common Order of the Church of Scotland, 
 commonly known as John Knox's Liturgy, and the Directory for the 
 Public Worship of God, agreed upon by the Assembly of Divines at 
 Westminster; with Historical Introductions and Illustrative Notes 
 by the Rev. George W. Sprott, B.A., and the Rev. Thomas Leish- 
 man, M.A. 1868/ 
 
 ^ Sprott, introduction to the Book of Common Order, xxiii. 
 
 ^ A very instructive account of the feeling ever entertained by the 
 thorough Presbyterian party ort this point will be found in a pamphlet 
 called ' Free notes on the late Religious Celebration of the Funeral 
 of her Royal Highness the Princess Charlotte of Wales. By Scoto 
 Britannus. 1817.' This is attributed to Dr M*Crie; and to one 
 familiar with his works internal evidence immediately confirms the 
 imputation. It is thoroughly warmed with the primitive Presby- 
 terian zeal ever burning within him, and is composed with a purity 
 of style, and illustrated by an abundance of learning, not invariably 
 found in attendance on that kind of zeal. 
 
346 ORGANISATION OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 an element in a memorable contest. For the burial of 
 the dead it was thought the safer course to avoid all form. 
 In the book there is merely this instruction : '*The corpse 
 is reverently brought to the grave, accompanied with the 
 congregation, without any further ceremonies; which being 
 buried, the minister, if he be present and required, goeth 
 to the church, if it be not far off, and maketh some com- 
 fortable exhortation to the people touching death and 
 resurrection." 
 
 The First Book of Discipline tempers the abjuration of 
 the offensive doctrines with a certain misgiving about the 
 entire abandonment of ceremonial. It says, Burial in 
 all ages hath been holden in estimation to signify that 
 the same body that was committed to the earth should 
 not utterly perish but should rise again. And the same 
 we would have kept within this realm, provided that 
 superstition, idolatry, and whatsoever hath proceeded of 
 a false opinion, and for advantage' sake, may be avoided ; 
 as singing of mass, placebo, and dirige, and all other 
 prayers over or for the dead, are not only superstitious and 
 vain, but also are idolatry, and do repugne to the plain 
 Scriptures of God." The conclusion is : For avoiding 
 all inconvenients, we judge it best that neither singing 
 nor reading be at the iDurial;. for albeit things sung and 
 read may admonish some of the living to prepare them- 
 selves for death, yet shall some superstitious and ignorant 
 persons ever think that the singing and reading of the 
 living do and may profit the dead. And therefore we 
 think most expedient that the dead be conveyed to the 
 place of burial with some honest company of the Church, 
 without either singing or reading — yea, without all kinds 
 of ceremony heretofore used, other than that the dead be 
 committed to the grave with such gravity and solemnity 
 as those that be present may seem to fear the judgments 
 of God, and to hate sin, which is the cause of death. 
 We are not ignorant that some require ane sermon at 
 the burial, or else some places of Scripture to be read, 
 to put the living in mind that they are mortal, and that 
 likewise they must die." But great caution is recom- 
 mended, lest words be used that may "nourish super- 
 
BURIAL OF THE DEAD, 1560-67. 347 
 
 stition and a false opinion." And there is a special 
 danger here, that either shall the ministers for the 
 most part be occupied in preaching funeral sermons, or 
 else they shall have respect to persons— preaching at the 
 burial of the rich and honourable, but keeping silence 
 when the poor or despised departeth/* ^ 
 
 So far the Book of Discipline in the ordinary current 
 editions. In one version, however, supposed to have 
 been specially approved by Knox, there is added after 
 the words ^^they must die," this passage : And yet, not- 
 withstanding, we are not so precise but that we are con- 
 tent that particular kirks use them in that behalf, with the 
 consent of the ministry of the same, as they will answer to 
 God and Assembly of the Universal Kirk gathered within 
 the realm." ^ Here is a charitable opening left for that 
 innate desire to which the funeral ceremonies and monu- 
 mental edifices have testified over all the world — the desire 
 to scatter affluent honour over the memory of the dead 
 out of the overflowing hearts of the living who held them 
 dear. Whether under this sanction or not, incidents occur 
 which show that funerals were accompanied by pomps 
 and ceremonies, which were repressed when the sterner 
 Presbyterians had their ascendancy in 1643; and there 
 are traces of arrangements by some of the local judicatories 
 of the Church for methodising a form of funeral service.^ 
 
 ^ A Presbyterian divine, explaining the offices of his Church eighty 
 years later, says of funeral sermons that they '* do beget superstition 
 and tend to flatter}^ make the Gospel to be preached with respect of 
 persons, and are most pressed by such as do least regard sermons at 
 other times. " — Henderson's Government and Order of the Church of 
 Scotland, 28. 
 
 ^ Laing's edition of Knox's Works, ii. 250. 
 
 ^ See **The Forme and Manner of Buriall usit in the Kirk of Mon- 
 trois ; " Wodrow Miscellany, 295. This service contains a dirge, 
 sweet and solemn, from the Book of Godly and Spiritual Songs, be- 
 ginning — 
 
 Our brother let us put in grave, 
 And na doubt thereof let us have, 
 But he shall rise on doomesday. 
 And have immortal life for aye. 
 He is of earth, and of earth made, 
 And man return to earth through deid ; 
 Syne rise shall frae the earth and ground 
 Quhen that the last trumpet shall sound." 
 
348 ORGANISATION OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 Before leaving the Book of Common Order, it is proper 
 to take note of an attempt to extend its benefits to the 
 Highlanders. The merit of this attempt will perhaps be 
 best understood b^ looking to the contemporary dealing 
 of the English Government with Ireland, where the Celtic 
 element eminently preponderated in the population, in- 
 stead of being, as in Scotland, a poor fraction of it. It 
 was not until the seventeenth century that any book of 
 devotion suited for the use of the native Irish was pub- 
 lished, and then — if such a boon could ever have been 
 effective — it came too late. The "vulgar tongue" in 
 which, under the Reformation poHcy, the Irish were to 
 worship, was not more understood by them than the 
 Chinese, and was only known to be the, language of their 
 detested Saxon oppressors. The Irish Uniformity Act of 
 1560 extended the English Common Prayer-book to Ire- 
 land, and ordained that all persons not having any reason- 
 able excuse for absence should resort to the churches to 
 hear it read. A strange exception in this Act is a signal 
 instance of a law declaring its own futility. It is provided 
 " that in every church or place where the common minister 
 or priest hath not the use of the English tongue — and 
 that was everywhere beyond the English pale, and over 
 much territory within it — the service might be in Latin.^ 
 
 The "mere Irish" who knew no English may have 
 picked up a little Latin from explanations made by the 
 priest on passages in the Breviary. Even where they did 
 
 ^ **It shall be lawful for the same common minister or priest to 
 say and use the matins, even-song, celebration of the Lord's Supper, 
 and each of the sacraments, and all their common prayer, in the 
 Latin tongue." Yet there is a touch of misgiving that there should 
 be something better, if only the English Government could be at the 
 trouble and expense of effecting it : That if some good means were 
 provided that they might use the prayer, service, and administration 
 of the sacraments set out and established by this Act, in such language 
 as they might best understand, the due honours of God should be 
 thereby much advanced ; and for that also the same may not be in 
 their native language, as well for difficulty to get it printed as that 
 few in the whole realm can read the Irish letters." — Irish Stat., 2 
 Eliz. ch. ii. See a good account of the matter in King's Church 
 History of Ireland, i. 755. 
 
GAELIC PRAYER-BOOK, 1567. 349 
 
 not understand the meaning of the Latin, it would natu- 
 rally have a devotional sound in their ears, though it is 
 likely that whatever feeling of this kind arose would tend 
 more towards the old Church than the new. 
 
 In secular matters the Celt of Scotland was scarce less 
 harshly treated than the Celt of Ireland ; but it is pleas- 
 ant to find that he was not left in the same spiritual desti- 
 tution, and that the Saxon Protestant tried in some measure 
 to make him a sharer in the privileges of the new faith. 
 In 1567 a prayer-book in Highland GaeHc was printed in 
 Edinburgh. It was an adaptation of the Book of Com- 
 mon Order, by John Carsewell, Bishop of the Isles, being 
 a translation of the book " adapted in some cases to the 
 peculiar manners of the Highlanders.^' It has the dis- 
 tinction to be the earliest printed book in any of the 
 Celtic languages.^ 
 
 If we ask whether, in the new form of religious service, 
 there was anything to compensate for the influence on 
 the popular mind of the ceremonials and aesthetic appara- 
 tus of the old Church, we must be content to find it in 
 vocal music. The officiating clergyman might or might 
 not be gifted with fiery eloquence, but it was always in the 
 power of a musically-inclined congregation to enjoy the 
 luxury of song in vocal praise. As the forms both of 
 the constitution of the Church and its service were taken 
 
 1 Reid, Bibliotheca Scoto^Celtica, 43, 44. This author says, 
 **This work is of uncommon rarity, and is the first Gaelic book 
 PRINTED. Only two copies are known to exist.'* It was said that 
 the two had become reduced to one, and then there was a rumour, 
 fortunately proving unfounded, that this one had been lost out of the 
 Duke of Argyle's library at Inverary. There is a copy in the British 
 Museum. It is not complete, but it is believed that its imperfections 
 might be supplied from a fragment in the library of Edinburgh 
 College. The title-page is supplied in manuscript from the Biblio- 
 theca of Reid, and is ' Foirmna nvrrnvidheadh agas freasdal na Sacra- 
 muinteadh, agas foirceadul an chreidimh christuidhe andso sios,' &c." 
 The press-mark is C 36 a. It will be satisfactory to those who are 
 interested alike in the devotional arrangements of the period and in 
 Celtic literature to know that the Rev. Dr Maclauchlan, known for 
 his translation of and notes on the Dean of Lismore's Book, and for 
 many other valuable services, has been editing Carsewell's version of 
 the Book of Common Order. 
 
3SO ORGANISATION OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 from the French, so this, so far as it was borrowed, was 
 brought from Germany. The Germans and the Scots are 
 both a people eminently musical, each with their own 
 great and original works in that art. In its application to 
 vocal praise, the Scots participated with the Germans in 
 the grand hymnology of Luther and his followers, still so 
 much sung and beloved in their fatherland. We have 
 seen that Knox had a congregation in Frankfurt-on-the- 
 Main ; and there were many other Scots Protestants in 
 different parts of Germany at the period when Reforma- 
 tion principles had spread in Scotland, but were neither 
 established nor protected. Conspicuous among those 
 who planted this Scoto-German school in their native 
 land was a family of Wedderburns belonging to Dundee. 
 It is true, that both the German and the Scots hymn- 
 writers drew fundamentally on the great store of hymns, 
 chiefly in monkish Latin, composed by the old Church, 
 and that when translations are made from a dead lan- 
 guage into two living languages, rising from a common 
 Teutonic root, there will naturally be a similarity between 
 the two, especially if both be literally exact. But an en- 
 thusiastic and accurate critical inquirer has shown coin- 
 cidences of a kind only to be accounted for by the one 
 translator having received at least an influence from the 
 other. ^ 
 
 ^ * The Wedderburns and their Work ; or, The Sacred Poetry of 
 the Scottish Reformation in its Historical Relation to that of Ger- 
 many. By Alexander F. Mitchell, D.D., Professor of Hebrew, 
 St Andrews. 1867.' Here is a specimen : — 
 
 German. Scots. 
 
 ** Nun horend zu, ihr Christen lent, All Christen men take tent and lier, 
 
 wie leyb vnd seel gegnander streyt ; How sauU and body ar at wier, 
 
 Allhie auff erd in diser zeyt Upon this eird baith lait and eir, 
 
 heb'n sie ein stettigs kriegen. With cruell battell identlie, 
 
 keins mag vom andern fliehen." And ane may nocht ane uther flie." 
 
 The help from the German will be more distinct in some specimens 
 of macaronics where there were only patches of Latin, and these had 
 to be put together with vernacular words : — 
 
 German. Scots. 
 
 * In dulci jubilo, Nun singet und seyd " In duici jubilo, Now let us sing with 
 frc»h, mirth and jo. 
 
THE GODLY SONGS, 1560-67. 
 
 These godly songs and ballads, as they were called, 
 would not in all things be to the mind of orthodox Pres- 
 byterians in the present day.^ But there is a very con- 
 spicuous and far from reverential feature common to both 
 the German and the Scots versions. The old Church 
 had a policy for securing the attachment of the most 
 ignorant and brutal of the populace by countenancing and 
 taking share in popular saturnaha, supposed in great 
 measure to be of heathen origin. Such were the Mys- 
 teries, and the revolting festivals of the new^ year. Some- 
 what in imitation of this policy, besides the translations 
 of the old hymns, it was attempted to subsidise the popu- 
 lar ballads and songs of the people to the purposes of de- 
 votion. That the national music of Scotland can be 
 made as solemn as it is sweet, will become evident to any 
 one who hears Tullochgorum, or any other riotous strath- 
 spey, slowly performed on the organ. But these inventors 
 did not stop with the music. They used the words of the 
 ballads with an application the converse of w^hat is called 
 travesty. What was of the rude and ribald character was 
 parodied into the pious. We cannot speak with precision 
 from the experience of the present day on the influence 
 that certain agencies may have had three hundred years ago, 
 but surely we may believe that religion lost more than it 
 gained by this operation.^ The chief merit conceded to 
 
 Unsers hertzen's wonne, liegt in prse- Our heartis consolation lyes in prin- 
 
 sepio, ^ cipio, 
 
 Und leuchtet als die sonne, Matris in And schynes as the sunne matris in 
 
 grsemio, gremio. 
 
 Alpha es et Omega, Alpha es et Omega, Alpha es et Omegd, Alpha es et Omega. 
 
 O Jesu parvule, Nach dir ist mir so O Jesu parvule, I thirst sore efter Thee ; 
 
 weh. Comfort my hart and minde, O puer 
 Trost mir mein gemuthe, O puer op- op time.'* 
 
 time." 
 
 ^ For instance, following the name of the Redeemer : — 
 
 **Next Him to luf His mother fair 
 With steadfast heart for ever mair, 
 She bore the birth freed us from care." 
 
 ^ Of the parodies here referred to, the following instances may 
 suffice : — 
 
 ** ' Quho is at my windo ? quho, quho ? 
 Go from my windo, go, go ! 
 Quho callis thair, sa lyke a straine^air 
 Go from my window, go ! * 
 
352 ORGANISATION OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 it in the present day is, that it has preserved some vesti- 
 ges of old Scots music, showing that tunes now known and 
 practised are older than the Reformation, and that others 
 then popular have since been lost. 
 
 The few existing copies of the ' Godly Psalms and 
 Spiritual Songs ' have been treated with close and skilful 
 criticism.! How many editions they may have appeared 
 in is undecided. Old copies of the book are extremely 
 rare, and the cause of the rarity evidently is, not because 
 few copies were printed, but because the book was so 
 popular and so extensively used that the copies of it were 
 worn out. Its contents, however, achieved no permanent 
 popularity. While they fell into oblivion, sacred music 
 did not decrease. The Psalter or " Psalm-book'' became 
 the great treasury of vocal praise, and the musical genius 
 
 * Lord, I am heir, ane wretchit mortall, 
 That for Thy mercy dois cry and call 
 Unto The, my Lord celestiall.' " 
 
 Again — 
 
 ** With huntis up, with huntis up. 
 It is now perfeit day ; 
 Jesus our King is gane a-hunting, 
 Quha lykis to speid thay may. 
 
 Ane cursit fox lay hid in rox 
 
 This lang and mony ane day, 
 Devouring scheip, quhill he micht creip 
 
 Nane might him schaip away. " 
 
 The cursed fox is of course the Church of Rome. The following is 
 perhaps still a stronger specimen : — 
 
 Johne, cum kis me now ; 
 Johne, cum kis me now ; 
 Johne, cum kis me by-and-by, 
 And make no moir adow. 
 
 The Lord thy God I am 
 
 That Johne does the call. 
 Johne representit man 
 
 Be grace celestiall ; 
 For Johne God's grace it is 
 
 (Quha list till expone the same). 
 Oh Johne, thou did amis 
 
 Quhen that thou loist this name." 
 
 ^ Some fragments of the godly songs were printed by Lord Hailes. 
 They were reprinted more fully by Sir John Graham Dalzell. Who- 
 ever desires them in their most accurate form, with the fullest intro- 
 duction to their literary history, will consult * A Compendious Book 
 of Psalms and Spiritual Songs, commonly known as the Gude and 
 Godlie Ballads,* edited by David Laing, 1868. 
 
THE CHURCHES, 1560-67. 
 
 353 
 
 of the religious community found suiScient occupation in 
 adapting all the psalms to congregational use. They were 
 adapted to part-singing" or harmony.^ This art was 
 taught in the chief towns of Scotland in the " Sang 
 Schule/' an institution fitted to go home to the heart of 
 the German both in name and purpose. We have an 
 instance of the influence of this teaching in 1582, when 
 John Durie, a popular minister, returning from banish- 
 ment, went up Leith Walk in a procession of Edinburgh 
 citizens, who, as we are told, sang the 124th Psalm " till 
 heaven and earth resounded/' ^ 
 
 Before returning from this ecclesiastical digression, to 
 follow the course of political events, let us say a word or 
 two on the places where the people worshipped. Through- 
 out the latter half of the sixteenth century we find the 
 churches breaking up into that condition of ruin which 
 the early Reformers were reputed to have accomplished 
 at once. To their leaders the objects of offence were 
 those which partook in what they counted idolatry — 
 everything connected with the mass and its tran substan- 
 tiation ; the crucifixes, images, and pictures which were 
 used for breaking the second commandment. These 
 things could not be destroyed by a rough mob without 
 other parts of the edifice suffering. Buildings bearing the 
 marks of mutilation and fracture are ever subject to dis- 
 respectful usage. There was no fund for the protection of 
 the edifices, and the State left them to their fate. 
 
 Even in so early a voice of the new Church as the 
 First Book of Discipline, we find an exhortation in terms 
 that imply great urgency and need of remedy : Lest 
 that the Word of God and ministration of the sacraments, 
 by unseemliness of the place, come in contempt, of neces- 
 
 ^ The division into the four parts — tenor," "treble," counter," 
 and ** bassus" — does not appear to have been printed in the Book of 
 Common Order earlier than the year 1635 ; but it had then been 
 long in use, the variations being marked off with the pen to save the 
 cost of printing. See 'The Scottish Metrical Psalter,' by the Rev. 
 Neil Livingston, 1864 ; and Mr Macmeeken's book, cited above. 
 
 ^ Calderwood, iii. 346; Melville's Diary, 134. 
 
 VOL. IV. Z 
 
354 ORGANISATION OF THE CHURCH. 
 
 sity it is that the churches and places where the people 
 ought publicly to convene, be with expedition repaired, in 
 doors, windows, thack, and with such preparations within 
 as appertaineth as well to the majesty of the Word of God 
 as to the ease and commodity of the people. And because 
 we know the slothfulness of men in this behalf, and in all 
 others which may not redound to their private commodity, 
 strait charge and commandment must be given, that within 
 a certain day the reparations must be begun, and within 
 another day to be affixed by your honours that they be 
 finished; penalties and sums of money must be enjoined, 
 and, without pardon, taken from the contemners.'^ ^ 
 
 The lead on the roofs of ecclesiastical buildings was 
 coveted by the State for warlike purposes, and there was 
 an excuse for removing it, as it was disappearing through 
 private pillage, and had better be put to use than lost. 
 In 1568 the lead on the Cathedral of Elgin was so re- 
 moved for the sustentation of the men at war," and the 
 same fate befell St Machar's, in Aberdeen.^ The clergy, 
 instead of welcoming the adversity thus befalling the 
 temples of the old worship, were loud in lamentations 
 and reproaches, heard by the possessors of the ecclesias- 
 tical revenues with supreme indifference. The records of 
 the various General Assemblies provide many testimonies 
 of this sort ; but perhaps more expressive than any of 
 them is this record, from a sermon preached before the 
 regent and nobiHty in 1572 by David Ferguson, minister 
 of Dunfermline : " Now to speak of your temples, where 
 the Word of God ought to be preached and the sacra- 
 ments ministered. All men sees to what miserable ruin 
 and decay they are come ; yea, they are so profaned, that, 
 in my conscience, if I had been brought up in Germany, 
 or any other country where Christ is truly preached, and 
 all things done decently and in order, according to God's 
 Word, and had heard of that purity of religion that is 
 among you, and for the love thereof had taken travail to 
 
 ^ Laing's edition of Knox's Works, ii. 252. 
 
 ^ Shaw's Province of Moray, 217 ; Privy Council Records. 
 
THE CHURCHES, 1560-67. 
 
 355 
 
 visit this land, and there should have seen the foul defor- 
 mity and desolation of your kirks and temples, which are 
 mair like to sheep-cots than the houses of God, I could 
 not have judged that there had been any fear of God or 
 right religion in the maist part of this realm/^ ^ There is 
 abundant testimony that the clergy of the Reformation 
 did their best for the preservation and good order of the 
 fabrics of the churches. 
 
 1 Reprint, 73. 
 
356 
 
 CHAPTER L. 
 
 REGENCY, OF MURRAY. 
 
 THE regent's government— its STRENGTH— ITS DIFFICULTIES — 
 THE DEALING WITH THE MURDERERS OF THE KING — THE CHURCH 
 AND THE HOLDERS OF ECCLESIASTICAL ESTATES — NEWS OF THE 
 ESCAPE OF THE QUEEN— WHAT IS KNOWN OF HER CAPTIVITY — 
 LOCHLEVEN CASTLE AND ITS INMATES— PROJECTS FOR ESCAPE- 
 FINAL SUCCESS— FLIGHT TO HAMILTON— GATHERING THERE— THE 
 REGENT AT GLASGOW — THE BATTLE OF LANGSIDE— FLIGHT TO 
 DUMFRIESSHIRE— TO ENGLAND— THE PERPLEXITIES OF THE SITU- 
 ATION — ENGLISH AND CONTINENTAL POLITICS — RESIDENCE OF 
 MARY AT CARLISLE — HER BLANDISHMENTS— SEEKS A MEETING 
 WITH ELIZABETH — REMOVAL TO BOLTON. 
 
 Meanwhile the executive government was emphatically 
 of that kind which it is usual for history to call " vigorous/^ 
 The Border marauders had not felt so heavy a hand on 
 them since the days of James IV. ; but it was a hand 
 guided by a wiser head, which sought to effect real order 
 and obedience, instead of wasting strength in irritating 
 petulance and unproductive vengeance. As Throckmor- 
 ton said, " He seeks to imitate rather some which have 
 led the people of Israel, than any captain of our age. 
 As I can learn, he meaneth to use no dallying, but either 
 he will have obedience for this young king of all Estates 
 within this realm, or it shall cost him his life ; and yet I 
 see no disposition in him either to bereave the queen of 
 her life, or to keep her in perpetual prison. He is resolved 
 to defend those lords and gentlemen who have taken this 
 matter in hand, though all the princes in Christendom 
 would band against them.''^ 
 
 Stevenson's Selections, 282. 
 
MURRAY'S GOVERNMENT, 1567. 357 
 
 The efforts to punish the subordinate actors in the king's 
 murder were quickened and strengthened. On the 3d of 
 January 1568, Dalgleish and Powrie, young Hay of Talla 
 and John Hepburn, were hanged. They were desperate 
 men who had set their lives upon a die. They could 
 not possibly escape vengeance save through the ultimate 
 triumph and irresistible supremacy of their master; but 
 he was fleeing for his life, and the poor men felt the crush- 
 ing pressure on them to be so absolute that they offered 
 no defence or denial. One of them, John Hepburn, 
 dropped some remarks, which are touching in themselves, 
 and have an apt bearing on the tenor of events. He said, 
 ''Let na man do evil for counsel of great men or their 
 masters, thinking they sail save them ; for surely I thought 
 that night that the deed was done, that although know- 
 ledge should have been gotten, na man durst have said it 
 was evil done, seeing the handwrites [signatures to the 
 band], and acknowledging the queen's mind thereto." 
 And further, "In the Tolbooth he required John Brand, 
 minister of the congregation, to pass to my Lord Lindsay, 
 and say, ' My lord, heartfully I forgive your lordship, and 
 also my lord regent, and all others, but especially them 
 that betrayed me to you, as ye will answer before God in 
 the latter day, to do your diligence to bring the rest who 
 was the beginners of this wark to justice, as ye have done 
 to me, for ye knaw it was not begun in my heid.' ^ 
 
 This pointed at the one great blot in the regent's gov- 
 ernment. No doubt the victims were the practical men 
 who had done the deed. Of those who had hands black- 
 ened with powder, and clothes torn with clambering 
 over walls, justice had sought out all, from the great 
 leader himself downwards. If there were others who had 
 counselled and promoted the deed, the "band" which 
 would have condemned them was destroyed. Yet all the 
 world could point them out, and some of them were high 
 in place and power. All this is indubitable, yet must it 
 depend on the moral atmosphere of the time how heavy 
 it is to weigh. It was an occasion when the question of 
 
 Anderson's Collections, ii. 160, 161. 
 
358 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 power stood in the path before conscience and duty. To 
 close at once with such men as Morton, Lethington, and 
 Balfour, would not have been prompt administration of 
 justice, but civil war. The task might have been under- 
 taken by some fatalist who made no balance of means and 
 ends, but went straight to his work, conscious of rectitude 
 and confident of success. It might also have been under- 
 taken by one less scrupulous than Murray, for the reward 
 would have been brilliant. Any man with his pretensions, 
 had he broken all the factions in Scotland, and governed 
 without their support, must have taken the crown to him- 
 self as the trophy of his sword and of his bow, unless, 
 indeed, some man still more moderate and scrupulous 
 than it is easy to suppose Murray to have been. As mat- 
 ters stood, he was somewhat in the position of the diplo- 
 matist who has to bully a barbarous potentate for some 
 act of tyranny ; the diplomatist knows well what man of 
 power commanded the deed, but he must be content to 
 see it avenged on some poor underling who did as he was 
 bidden. 
 
 Murray went far enough for his own safety towards rais- 
 ing hostility. There was a menace in his strength that 
 made the unscrupulous uneasy. The Hamiltons saw in 
 it a barrier to their prospects. The encouragement he 
 gave the Protestant clergy to look to something from the 
 ecclesiastical revenues sent a lively alarm to the hearts of 
 many powerful men who had recently been enriched by 
 happy accidents. It might be said that the nation was 
 stagnating into a condition of quiet gloom, when all at 
 once it was electrified by the news that Queen Mary had 
 escaped from her prison, and was at Hamilton at the head 
 of an army. 
 
 We have seen that she was conveyed to Lochleven 
 Castle on the 17th of June 1567. She escaped on the 
 2d of May 1568, so that she had been a prisoner for a few 
 days more than ten months. The nature of the illustrious 
 captive's life on this island is hidden in mystery. We 
 know nothing about it save in the few revelations which 
 she herself was able to send past those who watched 
 vigilantly over her. There were eager watchers and in- 
 
MARY AT LOCHLEVEN, 1567-68. 
 
 359 
 
 quirers outside during her abode there. It may be said 
 that the same eager curiosity about her prison hfe there 
 has Hved down to the present day, and all unsatisfied. In 
 the character of what remains of Lochleven Castle there 
 is the same almost provoking reticence. It is only like a 
 hundred other old feudal houses in Scotland, in revealing 
 little or nothing of the way of life of those by whom it was 
 inhabited ; but then no one cares to question the others, 
 and their silence is of no moment. About this castle, 
 however, the world could not be more inquisitive than it 
 is, had it been a royal palace rich in historical associations, 
 instead of the sordid ruin of a country gentleman's house. 
 For the thousands who visit it as a sort of shrine, the half- 
 Highland lake and the green ruin on the island have their 
 charms as a piece of landscape ; but when we stand among 
 the ruins, there is nothing to enlighten us but the common 
 narrow square tower of Scotland, with a few fragments of 
 minor buildings round it. 
 
 The square tower belongs to a period in which the 
 baronial architecture of Scotland is signally inexpressive. 
 Gothic decoration had gone, and the French decorations 
 of the Renaissance had not yet replaced it in Scotland. 
 One well accustomed to the old fortified houses of Scot- 
 land would say that this might have been built during any 
 part of the hundred years of which one half was before 
 and the other after Queen Mary entered it. On first 
 sight it might be referred to the latter half ; but there is a 
 feature available to take it back. On three of the angles 
 there are machicolated circular projections, which might 
 have belonged to turrets with spiral tops of the French 
 kind, or might have been merely flanking projections or 
 small bastions never roofed. It becomes clear on close 
 inspection that they are of this kind, and that they nat- 
 urally belong to the period earlier than the introduction 
 of the turret. 
 
 The stranger at Lochleven is surprised to find that what 
 is termed a castle has so little of the fortress in it ; but in 
 the sixteenth century to be on an island in an inland lake 
 was to be strongly fortified. Lochleven Castle could have 
 offered no resistance to the artillery even of the early half 
 
36o 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 of the sixteenth century. Of the tower still extant, the 
 lower floor under ground is vaulted, and so is the second. 
 Other three floors have been of wood laid on wooden 
 rafters. Ambitious tourists who look at the narrow space 
 within the four thick walls, have an opportunity for reflect- 
 ing on the mutability of human things when they figure 
 the mistress of the most splendid of European Courts in a 
 splendid age doomed to abide in such a dwelling. But 
 even on this point the ruins are true to their uncommuni- 
 cative character. In fact we know no more from them of 
 the method in which the captive was housed and tended 
 than we would know if the island had been bare. It was 
 because it was on an island, not because it was strongly 
 built, that the abode of the Douglases w^as secure. The 
 island may have been covered by any amount and kind 
 of buildings of stone or even of wood. It is a vain task, 
 therefore, to argue on the history of the captive's treatment 
 from the aspect of the ruins of Lochleven Castle.^ The 
 
 1 The author may be charged with a commission of the offence 
 which he denounces, in saying so much about this old niin and the 
 revelations that may or may not be drawn from it. His defence is, 
 that attempts have been made at considerable length to draw history 
 out of these stones. It is necessary here either to accept the history 
 so told, or to reject it ; and a few words are required even to show 
 that for such a history the material is insufficient. We know that in 
 Scotland many islands in inland lakes were places of strength, yet 
 few of them contain the remains of baronial buildings. Although 
 meagre both in decorative and defensive architecture, Lochleven 
 Castle is perhaps the most important remnant of a purely Scots 
 island-fortress. Its nearest rival is Loch-an-Eilan, near Kingussie, 
 in Inverness-shire. Two other island-fortresses — Dune and Lochin- 
 dorb — are of the architecture called Edwardian, and belong to the 
 period of the English domination. On the island of Inchmahome, 
 where Queen Mary in her infancy was placed for safety during the 
 English invasion, the buildings were monastic, yet they were selected 
 for their secureness. M. Lamartine thus cites the authority of one 
 who, as he says, had visited Lochleven : The sojourn at Lochleven, 
 over which romance and poetry have shed their light, must be de- 
 picted by history only in its nakedness and horrors. The castle, or 
 rather fortress, is a massive block of granite flanked by heavy towers, 
 peopled by owls and bats, eternally bathed in mists, and defended by 
 the waters of the lake." — Mary Stuart, by Alphonse de Lamartine, 
 73. The material of which the castle was built is perhaps of little 
 moment ; but if it be worth while being particular about it, it is also 
 
MARY AT LOCHLEVEN, 1567-68. 
 
 361 
 
 building is now dreary and comfortless in its age ; and if 
 that be a feature associated with the treatment of the cap- 
 tive, it is but just to remember that if old now it was once 
 new. From what has just been said it must have been but 
 recently built when Queen Mary lived in it, or in a build- 
 ing beside it, at a time when Lochleven Castle was the 
 residence of a powerful baron and his wife. The con- 
 clusion of all is, that there is nothing in the conditions 
 to justify the inference that the captive was to be sent 
 thither as to a place of sordidness and severity, as well as 
 of seclusion and security. In any stronghold not upon 
 an island she must have been subject to more restraint ; 
 for it was not in Scotland, as afterwards in England, where 
 she could go forth attended by a retinue, and even join 
 the hunt. She was, however, in the most civilised district 
 of Scotland, with the comforts and luxuries of the age 
 close at hand. The three chief towns, Edinburgh, Glasgow, 
 and Perth, were not far off. The Fifeshire seaports, then 
 carrying on a brisk trade in wines and other French im- 
 ports, were still nearer : the chief among them, Inverkei- 
 thing, lay but a moderate walk from Lochleven. Close by 
 was a mountain district abounding in game. The lake 
 supplied water-fowl, and its trouts are yet renowned 
 among anglers as unmatched by any others in the British 
 waters. 
 
 Her keeper, the widow Lady Douglas, by profession a 
 Protestant, the mother of the illegitimate regent, might be 
 supposed unlikely to show favour to the Popish woman 
 who had inherited the crown of James V. The days were 
 when she herself looked to be Queen of Scotland ; and 
 she saw a son arise to her who would have been the 
 greatest king Scotland had seen since the days of Robert 
 Bruce. By a succession of strange and criminal calamities, 
 the actual office of King of Scots, though not its title, had 
 fallen to that son, the offspring of her guilt or weakness. 
 All these things might naturally accompany the story of a 
 
 worth while being accurate. The stone is not granite. The district 
 belongs to the sandstone formation, and the castle was naturally built 
 of the native material. 
 
362 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 lovely victim to a cruel jaileress. There is no evidence, 
 however, that the lady of Lochleven treated her prisoner 
 harshly. 
 
 Much vigilance was necessary, nevertheless, and that 
 could not be accomplished without giving annoyance and 
 even pain. The daughters of the house shared the prisoner's 
 bed. To one who had enjoyed full command over the 
 stately reserve of the Court of France, and the impregnable 
 barrier of isolation which it had put at her disposal, this 
 may have been a heavy grievance ; it can be paralleled only 
 by the sufferings of people accustomed to civilised refine- 
 ment when their lot is cast among barbarians. If there 
 be something in the arrangement that jars with the sense 
 of the decorous and appropriate, it is not removed by 
 remembering the connection between the family and the 
 queen's father. But in defence of this, as well as of 
 worse things, there was the hard logic of political necessity. 
 We have the record of the grievance in a letter which, 
 despite the vigilance of the sisters, she was able to write 
 to her mother-in-law, Catherine of Medici, and to send by 
 a trusty messenger who could tell more than the letter.^ 
 Except, indeed, in what she herself revealed in her acts or 
 her writings, the secret of her prison-house was well kept. 
 In matter of authentic history it is almost an entire blank, 
 although the rumours of the day, and the traditions in- 
 vented and believed in later times, have thickly peopled 
 it with incidents. 
 
 One of these stories imported that her last marriage was 
 not unfruitful; that during her imprisonment she gave 
 birth to a daughter, who was afterwards known as a mem- 
 ber of a religious sisterhood in France, the house of Notre 
 Dame of Soissons. Though this has been repeated in 
 several shapes, the evidence on which they all rest is 
 traced back to two rather inefficient sources. The one is 
 a casual assertion by a French man of letters who was not 
 born until more than half a century after the escape from 
 Lochleven, so that his story is only to be held as a 
 
 Labanoff, ii. 69. 
 
MARY AT LOCHLEVEN, 1567-68. 363 
 
 tradition of the seventeenth century.^ The other item 
 brought to strengthen this is an assertion by Throckmorton, 
 how it was explained to him on behalf of Queen Mary, as 
 her reason for refusing to divorce Bothwell, that she had 
 expectation of offspring of her marriage with him, and she 
 would not do that which might bring in question the 
 legitimacy of her child. He does not tell in what shape 
 this was communicated to him — whether it was by writing 
 or by message. It comes mixed up with the frequent 
 allusions to her frantic determination to adhere to the 
 object of her passion, and it would be easy to suppose that 
 friendly tongues would desire to attribute her determination 
 to such a motive. 2 That a child should have been born 
 
 ^ Following the narrative of the execution at Fotheringay is this 
 passage: *'Pour clorre I'histoire de Marie Stuart, apres avoir dit 
 qu'ell eut du Comte de Bothuel, son troisieme mary, une fille qui fut 
 Religieuse a N. Dame de Soissons ; je remarqueray que les beaux 
 esprits du temps de son premier veuvage firent deux Anagrammes sur 
 son nom, au sujet de la mort du Roy Frangois II., son mary, toutes 
 deux tres complettes ; car dans le nom retourne de Marie Stuart, on 
 trouve, Tu te marieras, ce qui arriva, et Tu as martyre; et cela ne 
 fut encore que trop veritable." — Memoires de Michel de Castelnau, 
 additions, i. 648. Had the assertion been made by Castelnau 
 himself, it vi^ould have stood on the authority of one who had the 
 confidence of Queen Mary, and was indeed one of her safest friends ; 
 but it stands only on the authority of La Laboureur, the editor and 
 continuer of Castelnau's Memoirs ; and all the repetition, more or 
 less positive, that has since been given to it, will not strengthen that 
 frail foundation. See the references to these repetitions in Michel, 
 Les Ecossais en France, ii. 66. 
 
 2 The following is the passage : it will be observed that Throck- 
 morton uses the verb persuade " in the meaning in which we would 
 now use advise : " ** I have also persuaded her to conform herself to 
 renoun^ce Bothwell for her husband, and to be contented to suffer a 
 divorce to pass betwixt them. She hath sent me word that she will 
 in no wise consent unto it, but rather die, grounding herself upon 
 this reason, that taking herself to be seven weeks gone with child, by 
 renouncing Bothwell she should acknowledge herself to be with child 
 of a bastard, and to have forfeited her honour, which she will not do 
 to die for it." — Throckmorton to Queen Elizabeth, 1 8th July 1567 ; 
 Stevenson's Selections, 221. This letter is also in Principal Robert- 
 son's Appendix, No. xxii. In a letter to Queen Elizabeth, 27th Jan. 
 1569, Mary says, **Considerez je suis mere et d'un seul enfant." 
 — Labanoff, ii. 288. She had here no motive to commit herself to 
 such an assertion, save to give a touch of pathos to her pleading. 
 
3^4 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 to her in Lochleven, should have been removed to France, 
 and should there have lived to maturity, — that these events 
 should have occurred in that vigilant suspicious age 
 without leaving a vestige of a whisper about them in the 
 correspondence or memoirs of the time, is a thing hard to 
 be believed. 
 
 We have seen that a queen's party had been gathering 
 themselves together, and there were many conjectures and 
 rumours as to the method in which they would strike a 
 blow for her release. Besides the island containing the 
 castle, there are others in Lochleven. On one stood the 
 Monastery of St Serf, probably at that time newly deserted 
 — an old house of the Culdees, in which, long subsequent 
 to their day, Wyntoun wrote his Chronicle. It was sup- 
 posed that if her keepers could be wiled to let her join a 
 hawking-party there, it would be easy for a force with 
 small boats, borne by them to the loch, to carry her off. 
 A bolder design was to bring overland upon waggons from 
 the Firth of Forth vessels sufficient to carry a party to 
 storm the castle. She owed more, however, to the active 
 employment of her own subtle apparatus of fascination 
 among her enemies than to the heroic devotion of her true 
 knights. The rumours of the time are full of uneasy sus- 
 picions concerning the fall of one after another of those 
 about her under the witchery of her blandishments. Those 
 that might be deemed farthest removed from doubt were 
 not exempt from it, as, for instance, the old Lady Douglas 
 herself. It is certain that of her family circle one at least 
 was enslaved — her son, George Douglas. What hopes she 
 may have allured him to entertain cannot be known, but 
 the gossip of the day raised them to a dizzy height.^ Then 
 
 1 Sir William Drury, writing to Cecil on 3d April, and telling 
 what he can gather about a second interview between Murray and the 
 captive, says : **At the first she burdened him with the rigour that 
 was used unto her in this last Parliament ; and he answered that he 
 and the rest of the nobility could do nothing less for their wn surety, 
 in respect they had enterprised to put her into captivity. From that 
 she entered into another purpose, being marriage, praying she might 
 have a husband, and named one to her liking — George Douglas, 
 brother to the Laird of Lochleven ; unto which the earl replied that 
 
MARY AT LOCHLEVEN, 1567-68. 365 
 
 imagination had been so heated by the strange events 
 passing before men's eyes, that a new romance of love 
 and crime was sketched. It had a long vitality. A cen- 
 tury afterwards, a certain bold Presbyterian divine, named 
 Robert Douglas, served as chaplain to the Scots troops in 
 the army of GustS-vus Adolphus. A mystery hung over 
 his birth and origin, but he was beHeved to be the grand- 
 son of George Douglas and Mary Queen of Scots.^ 
 
 All now really known of the relations of these two while 
 they were within the castle is, that the enslavement of 
 Douglas was so conspicuous as to make his removal neces- 
 sary. He thus brought his knowledge of affairs within 
 to the aid of those who were laying plans for a rescue from 
 without. It came to the ears of Sir William Drury, while 
 he commanded the garrison at Berwick, that with the aid 
 of Douglas an attempt to escape had been all but success- 
 ful on the 25th of March. Drury's story has in later times 
 been told in many shapes, all competing with each other 
 in giving a tone of picturesqueness to facts held as un- 
 doubted. The only fact we know, however, is that Drury, 
 greedy of every morsel of news from Lochleven that had 
 a chance of being true, thought this worthy of being re- 
 tailed to Cecil. Hence this only fact cannot be so well 
 told in any other way as in its own words, which make a 
 very clear story : — 
 
 **Upon the 25th of the last she enterprised an escape, 
 and was the rather nearer effect through her accustomed 
 long lying in bed all the morning. The manner of it was 
 thus : There cometh in to her laundress early, as at other 
 times, before she was wanted ; and the queen, according 
 to such a secret practice, putteth on her the weid of the 
 
 he was over-mean a marriage for her grace." — Keith, ii. 789. This, 
 like many other passages in the letters of the day, can only be counted 
 a piece of current rumour. 
 
 1 Wodrow Analecta, i. 166. Were it worth while, it could be 
 shown that between this tradition and that about Bothwell's offspring, 
 the establishment of the truth of one must of necessity establish the 
 falsity of the other. George Douglas must have been removed on 
 account of his infatuation about the time when the dates would show 
 that Bothwell's daughter was born. 
 
366 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 laundress, and so, with the fardel of clothes, and her 
 muffler upon her face, passeth out, and entereth the boat 
 to pass the loch ; which after some space, one of them 
 that rowed said, merrily, ^ Let us see what manner of dame 
 this is,' and therewith offered to pull down her muffler, 
 which to defend she put up her hands, which they spied 
 to be very fair and white ; wherewith they entered into 
 suspicion whom she was, beginning to wonder at her 
 enterprise. Whereat she was little dismayed, but charged 
 them, upon danger of their lives, to row her over to the 
 shore which they nothing regarded, but eftsoons rowed 
 her back again, promising her that it should be secreted, 
 and especially from the lord of the house under whose 
 guard she lieth. It seemeth she knew her refuge, and 
 where to have found it if she had once landed ; for there 
 did and yet do linger at a little village called Kinross, hard 
 at the loch-side, the same George Douglas, one Sempil 
 and one Beaton — the which two were some time her trusty 
 servants, and, as yet appeareth, they mind her no less 
 affection." ^ 
 
 George Douglas had left behind him in the castle a 
 trusty assistant. He has been sometimes called ^*the 
 little Douglas," sometimes Willy Douglas," or, as Mary 
 wrote it in her French manner, Volly Douglas. Whether 
 he was of kin to the Lochleven family is not known. He 
 was only eighteen years old. If his youth exempted him 
 from the usual precautions and suspicions, a great blunder 
 was committed; for he was precisely at the age when 
 feats such as his are achieved with greatest facility.^ He 
 
 1 Keith, ii. 790. 
 
 ^ There is evidence that she remembered Willy Douglas, and showed 
 a keen interest in his destiny at a critical juncture to her own. In one 
 of those letters of instruction to her commissioners in England, in 
 which she is wavering and incohertnt about the accusations brought 
 against her, she turns suddenly to a rumour that he had been **tint," 
 or lost, after getting a' passport from Queen Elizabeth. She vehe- 
 mently suspects that her rebel subjects have done him wrong, and im- 
 plores her sister queen to see to his safety, and " that she suffer him 
 not to be treated in that manner in her realm, so near her Court, being 
 under her protection, — wha set us to libertie and saiffit our life, doing 
 the act of ane venturous and faithful subject to his sovereign and nat- 
 
THE ESCAPE, 1568. 
 
 managed, unnoticed, to get possession of the chief keys, 
 after the castle had been closed for the night. He then 
 escorted the queen through the gates, locking them as he 
 passed each. He seized one of the boats always at hand, 
 and, as it would appear, had disabled the others. When 
 she touched the shore, she found her lover George Douglas, 
 her faithful follower the Lord Seton, and a few others. 
 All rapidly mounted and rode off. Their first point was 
 the Castle of Niddry, near Linlithgow, belonging to Seton. 
 The distance is, in a straight line, about twenty miles ; and 
 what it proved to the riders must have depended on the 
 point at which they were able to cross the Firth. From 
 Niddry she sent a messenger to the Court of England to 
 ask assistance. If he were unsuccessful, he was to go on 
 to Paris and ask it there. Next day the number of fol- 
 lowers increased, and all rode to Hamilton Palace, where 
 they might be considered safe from any immediate risk of 
 attack. 
 
 An event like this has ever been kno\Mi in history as 
 the most potent stimulant of a languid party. No sum- 
 mons of array could have carried to every partisan with 
 such instantaneous velocity the command to rise and arm. 
 So speedily did the adherents gather, that their concen- 
 tration seemed not merely the assembling of a party, but 
 the reaction of a people. Among the chiefs, besides Seton 
 and the Hamiltons, were Herries, Somerville, Arg}'le, 
 Cassilis, Fleming, Ross, Eglinton, and Rothes. They 
 had soon around them six thousand men in fighting array. 
 Hamilton Palace had the aspect of a Court well guarded 
 by troops. The group received lustre from the presence 
 
 ural princess." She expresses uneasiness about the threats of a certain 
 James Drysdale, a retainer of the family of Lochleven, who being 
 evil content of the good service whilk the said William did unto us, 
 said, in presence of some of our serv^ants, that if ever he met with 
 him he should put his hands in his heart-blood, whatever might fol- 
 low thereupon ; and as to us, he should give us to the heart w4th ane 
 whinger ; whereupon ye shall solicit our good sister that the said 
 1 Drysdale be made fast, in consideration of the premises — he knows 
 I what is become of the said William." — Labanoff, ii. 264. This will 
 I recall some incidents in the * Abbot,' and show what suggested them 
 to Scott. 
 
368 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 of De Baumont, the French ambassador. He had been 
 sent as a person of higher distinction than Lignerolles, 
 and therefore more likely to be well received. He made 
 no better speed with the regency. They refused to give 
 him access to the queen ; but now he was happy in attend- 
 ing her without their permission. 
 
 Of what passed at Hamilton during the short busy 
 period now begun, many things have unfortunately found 
 their way into history which have no contemporary sup- 
 port. 
 
 The opportunity was taken to revoke the queen's abdi- 
 cation, with all the business that had followed upon it. 
 As it happened, all that was thus done at Hamilton passed 
 away in empty words ; but had the end been otherwise, 
 the proceedings there would have resolved themselves into 
 formal documents, declaring the nullity of the abdication 
 on the part of the queen, and giving the sanction of her 
 assembled retainers as that of a Parliament, revoking the 
 Acts of the Parliament which had met in January, and 
 pronouncing it an illegal assemblage. 
 
 We know farther that two messengers or ambassadors 
 were sent southwards — one to represent Queen Mary at 
 the Court of England, the other to pass through England 
 to France, and there solicit succour to her cause. Mur- 
 ray was then at Glasgow ; and we find Cecil receiving in- 
 formation that, immediately on the arrival of the queen 
 and her party, a message was sent to him requiring him 
 to resign his authority to his lawful sovereign, but at th 
 same time informing him that the past would be forgotten 
 and all who had offended against her would be pardoned 
 Murray, it appears, sent a message to ascertain whether 
 this proposal really had been authorised by his sister 
 whether that he had actual doubts on the matter, o 
 merely desired to gain time.^ His action, however, was 
 prompt. On the day of the arrival at Hamilton, the 3d 
 of May, a proclamation was issued, calling on all the feu 
 datories of the Crown and others to meet him at Glasgow, 
 armed and accoutred according to their feudal duty, stat- 
 
 * Sir William Drury to Cecil, 7th May 1568 ; Keith, ii. 804. 
 
THE ESCAPE, 1568. 
 
 369 
 
 ing as a reason that their sovereign's mother had escaped 
 and gathered together certain of his liege subjects at 
 Hamilton ; for what purpose it is uncertain, but, as is 
 supposed, by the convoy and counsel of wicked persons, 
 enemies to his highness and his authority, and all quietness 
 within this realm." ^ He apprehended and imprisoned 
 a pursuivant who came to Glasgow to proclaim the queen, 
 and sent to Stirling for cannon. ^ 
 
 Murray's sojourn in Glasgow was for the purpose of 
 presiding at a session of justiciary for the trial of criminals. 
 He had adopted it as a policy of his rigid government to 
 attend the courts and give his high countenance to their 
 administration of justice. In the military sense he was 
 unprotected, and by a dash at Glasgow — only ten miles 
 distant from Hamilton — the regent, and probably a few 
 other persons of importance, might have been easily 
 seized. Had there been any spirit of reaction through- 
 out the country in favour of Mary, a blow that would 
 have at once roused it was the obvious alternative ; but 
 the policy adopted — and it seems to have been the only 
 tenable one — was to hold out until assistance came from 
 England or France. In the mean time the group of ad- 
 herents daily increased. Following up the peculiar national 
 practice, of which we have seen so many instances, they 
 bound themselves to co-operation and support by a bond 
 or band. This document was signed on the 8th of May 
 by nine titular bishops of the old Church, by eighteen 
 lords of Parliament, and by a large body of minor barons 
 and landowners. The bond was in this case peculiar for 
 the earnest terms in which it stipulates that the parties 
 to it shall abandon or compromise their separate objects 
 of contention, and unite in the common cause.^ In fact, 
 in that assemblage, which appeared to be a compact body 
 of loyal enthusiasts, there was a large element of disunity, 
 or at least of inertness. The Hamiltons, who seemed its 
 soul and centre, were really in that condition which is the 
 most fatal to the achievement of any bold stroke — they 
 
 ^ Keith, Appendix, No. xxvi. ^ ] 
 
 ^ See the bond in Keith, ii. 807. 
 VOL. IV. 
 
 Drury, ut sup. 
 
 2 A 
 
370 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 had no direct object to strike for. Whatever ended in 
 a firm and permanent government was inimical to their 
 interests. The young king, with Murray as regent, was 
 not a satisfactory prospect; but the re-estabUshment of 
 the queen was Uttle better. Thus there was a partial 
 paralysis at the head, and there was little of capacity 
 among the more eminent followers to redeem this loss.^ 
 
 There was one place where the escape and the gather- 
 ing at Hamilton were hailed with great joy — the Court of 
 Queen Elizabeth. The course to be taken, after Throck- 
 morton returned baffled and almost insulted, had reached 
 a climax of difficulties, and now all of them seemed to be 
 solved by the propitious event. It happened that on the 
 3d of May, the day after the escape, but before it could 
 have been known in London, Cecil had drawn up a sketch 
 of the proper course to be taken by the English Govern- 
 ment. It bears in its extreme brevity and distinctness the 
 
 ^ Throckmorton, in a letter to Cecil of 20th August 1567 — the 
 same in which he describes the aim, purposes, and resources of the 
 regent — gives us this animated sketch of some members of the other 
 party : — 
 
 As for the Hamiltons and their faction, their conditions be such, 
 their behaviour so inordinate, the most of them so unable, their hving 
 so vicious, their fidelity so fickle, their party so weak, as I count it 
 lost whatsoever is bestowed upon them. Shortly you are like to 
 have with you an handsome young man of that surname, named 
 John Hamilton, to procure to set you on fire to get some money 
 amongst them to countenance their doings, which serve little for our 
 purpose. The Lord Herries is the cunning horse-leech, and the 
 wisest of the whole faction ; but, as the Queen of Scotland saith of 
 him, there is nobody can be sure of him : he taketh pleasure to bear 
 all the world in hand. We have good occasion to be well ware of 
 him. Sir, you remember how he handled us when he delivered 
 Dumfries, Caerlaveroc, and the Harmitage unto our hands — he made 
 us believe all should be ours to the Forth ; and when we trusted him 
 best, how he helped to chase us away, I am sure you have not for- 
 gotten. Here, amongst his own countrymen, he is noted to be the 
 most cautious man of his nation. It may like you to remember he 
 suffered his own hostages, the hostages of the Lairds of Lochinvar 
 and Garlies, his next neighbours and friends, to be hanged for pro- 
 mise broken by him. This much I speak of him because he is the 
 likelyest and most dangerous man to enchant you." — Stevenson's 
 Selections, 282. John Hamilton, the ** handsome young man," is 
 perhaps the adventurous man already mentioned, p. 312. 
 
THE ESCAPE, 1568. 
 
 sense of difficulties that have reached a crisis, and must 
 be conquered by prompt action. It starts with the text 
 that — 
 
 If the French power restore the Queen of Scots, then 
 shall Scotland be more at commandment of the French, 
 and especially of the house of Guise, than ever it was." 
 Thus will England again have for its closest neighbour a 
 kingdom where Popery is the established religion, and 
 the government policy is dictated from France. And the 
 danger of such a consummation is not merely from with- 
 out. It vAW stir the adherents of the old religion in Eng- 
 land, " whereof it is to be feared that the number is 
 greater than were meet to be known." The remedy is 
 for Elizabeth frankly and effectively to take into her own 
 hand the restoration of Queen Mary, stipulating that no 
 French force is to be permitted to co-operate in the ser- 
 vice j and this is followed by practical suggestions for the 
 intercepting of any armament sent from France. One 
 passage is intentionally mysterious, and tempts to grave 
 speculations as to something understood but not expressed : 
 If neither the Queen of Scots will forbear to take the aid 
 of France, nor France forbear to give it, then it is manifest 
 what were the speedy way to remedy the whole matter, 
 both to relieve the Queen of Scots, and make quietness in 
 Scotland.^' 
 
 The last item in this State paper recalls the spirit of 
 events long past : " Note, it belongeth of very right to 
 the crown of England to give order as to dissensions 
 moved for the crown of Scotland." ^ This was for home 
 consideration, and not to find its way into the diplomatic 
 correspondence with Scotland. It recalled the old claim 
 of superiority. In fact every member of the English Go- 
 vernment believed that there lay among the records in 
 the Tower unquestionable evidence of the feudal vassal- 
 age of Scotland ; and this belief ever — as we have seen 
 and shall yet see — influenced the policy of England, 
 though it was not convenient to reveal it to the other 
 party. 
 
 ^ Stevenson's Selections, 309. 
 
372 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 There seems to have been no hesitation about the 
 course to be adopted after the escape. The heavy task 
 of bringing the Scots to a sense of their duty was greatly 
 lightened, and France must be anticipated in its fulfilment. 
 Thomas Leighton was sent as messenger or ambassador to 
 Queen Mary, with full and hearty instructions. If Queen 
 Mary would accept of her sister's intervention, and agree 
 to be guided by her, without seeking assistance from any 
 foreign power, " she shall then be assured that we will 
 have the principal regard to her state, so as her subjects 
 may be reduced to acknowledge their duties without 
 shedding of blood or trouble of her realm ; and if they 
 will not yield to reason by treaty or persuasion, we will 
 give to her such aid as shall be requisite to compel them.'' 
 There are some persuasive reasons given why the Queen 
 of Scots should concur in the conclusion, that of all the 
 potentates of Europe her neighbour the Queen of England 
 is the one to whom it must naturally and justly fall to 
 interpose, and bring the troubles of Scotland to a happy 
 end ; but no hint is dropped about the claim of homage.^ 
 
 The bearer of these instructions did not find the queen 
 to whom he was accredited. Her followers naturally 
 looked around for some stronger position than Hamilton. 
 Dunbar Castle had been acquired by the regent, and the 
 queen's party attempted to regain it, but failed. Dum- 
 barton, held by the Lord Fleming, was the next recourse. 
 It involved a march close by Glasgow; but as the queen's 
 force was the larger of the two, it was resolved to take this 
 risk. The Hamiltons have been blamed for recommend- 
 ing it with a treacherous purpose. It was a critical mo- 
 ment for the regent, but he decided that the best poUcy 
 was to fight. 
 
 The queen's force was estimated at 6000 men, the other 
 at 4500. But Murray had a great preponderance of mili- 
 tary capacity. He was himself a tried soldier in the home 
 wars, and had others such to assist him, as Morton, Semple, 
 
 ^ See the instructions in Keith, ii. 801. It may be noted that Eng- 
 lish statesmen were not unanimous in counting the escape a propitious 
 event. Throckmorton especially, who knew Scotland, augured **ill 
 of it." — See correspondence ; Teulet, ii. 20^ et seq. 
 
BATTLE OF LANGSIDE, 1568. 
 
 373 
 
 Home, and Lindsay; further, he had Kirkcaldy of Grange, 
 a leader of European renown, who had fought both at 
 home and abroad. To him the regent confided duties like 
 those of a modern aide-de-camp, with a wider discretion 
 to act on his own judgment. On the 13th of May the 
 queen^s army began to march along the south bank of the 
 Clyde towards Dumbarton. On a height about two miles 
 southward from Glasgow stood, and still stands, the village 
 of Langside. A sight of this village, on a stroll from Glas- 
 gow, shows that in the question of forcing a passage from 
 Hamilton to Dumbarton, the critical struggle must be 
 here. It seems to have been then, as now, a cluster of 
 houses on either side of the main road w^here it crosses a 
 hill. We may at once judge that the queen was ill sup- 
 ported by military capacity when the post was not seized 
 and held before she began her journey. 
 
 When it was seen from Glasgow that, without any pre- 
 paration, the queen's party were to pass through the village 
 by the highroad, the tactic of the day was instantly chosen. 
 Kirkcaldy, who commanded the horse, sent two hundred 
 troopers, each with a marksman behind him, through the 
 river. There was a race for this critical spot ; but the 
 marksmen gained, and were quickly posted among the 
 houses and behind the walls and fences. The queen's 
 troops, commanded by Argyle, formed on a small hill 
 towards the east of the village. They had with them six- 
 teen cannon ; but these seem to have played to no effect, 
 since they could do little harm to the marksmen under 
 cover, and could not reach the main force of the regent's 
 party, which had been drawn up westward of the village. 
 It was determined that the vanguard, led by Lord Arbroath, 
 should try to storm the village and force a passage. The 
 heavy-armed men in the front rank were met by a like 
 body from the regent's army, and a scene characteristic of 
 the warfare of the age followed. The tactic that the game 
 of war is gained by rendering the warrior impregnable in 
 an iron case had reached the height of its completeness 
 and absurdity, and was to give place to the reactionary 
 theory that the first object of all the apparatus of war is 
 the destruction of the enemy. Each line of spears finally 
 
374 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 Stuck in the angles and joints of the mail of the opposite 
 rank, and the battle was a mere trial of superior weight 
 and pressure. Thus across the path were two walls of 
 iron, with human beings enclosed in each, striving in vain 
 at motion and effective action. They not only could not 
 assail each other, but were a barrier preventing the residue 
 of each army from joining battle. An eyewitness records 
 the frantic efforts of those behind to assail their enemy 
 with broken weapons, stones, and other hand-missiles, and 
 describes how some of these fell and lay on the crossed 
 spears as on a platform.^ While those behind had no 
 better occupation than this, marks of unsteadiness were 
 observed by the regent's force among those on the queen's 
 side, and Grange charging them, they broke and fled. 
 " There were not many horsemen," says the same eye- 
 witness, " til pursue after them, and the regent cried to 
 save and not slay ; and Grange was never cruel, so that 
 there were but a few slain and tain."^ It was said that 
 three hundred were killed on the losing side, while the 
 other only lost one man. The affair lasted but for three- 
 fourths of an hour. In the number engaged, and the 
 nature of the contest, it was of the character of a mere 
 skirmish ; but the conditions in which it was fought ren- 
 dered it a decisive battle. It settled the fate of Scotland, 
 affected the future of England, and had its influence over 
 all Europe. 
 
 The queen, when she saw the fate of the day, galloped 
 off frantically. A second time the exciting events of which 
 she was the centre had broken in upon her self-command. 
 She fled from her friends as well as her enemies so heed- 
 lessly, leaving all behind, that it is impossible to identify 
 the course she took ; and there are doubts about the place 
 where she first found refuge. She is generally said to have 
 
 ^ The order on the regent's side — not easily interpreted with cer- 
 tainty — was to let the adversaries lay down first their spears, to bear 
 up theirs ; while spears were sa thick fixed in others' jacks, that some 
 of the flacons, pistolls, and great staves that were thrown by them that 
 were behind, might be seen lying upon the spears." — Sir James Mel- 
 ville's Memoirs. 
 
 2 Ibid., 202. 
 
THE FLIGHT TO ENGLAND, 1568. 375 
 
 ridden straight to Dundrennan Abbey; but that is up- 
 wards of a hundred miles from Langside.^ The author of 
 the Memoirs of Lord Herries says she was accompanied 
 by himself, his son, Lord Livingston, Lord Fleming, George 
 Douglas, and Willy, the hero of the escape, and that " she 
 rode all night, and did not rest until she came to the 
 Sanquhar. From thence she went to Terregles, the Lord 
 Herries's house, where she rested some few days." ^ She 
 said in her appeal to Queen Elizabeth that she rode sixty 
 miles on the first day of her flight ; and allowing for indi- 
 rect roads, it is easy to suppose the journey from Glasgow 
 to Sanquhar prolonged to that distance, according to 
 modern measurement. The journey onwards to Terregles 
 would add other thirty miles at least. It must have been 
 to this journey that she referred, though the context makes 
 her speak of England, in that letter, full of sorrows, to her 
 uncle the cardinal, in which she says she had suffered 
 hunger, cold, and fear ; had fled, she knew not whither, 
 fourscore and twelve miles across the country, without 
 once alighting; had slept " sur la dure;" had to drink 
 sour milk, and feed on oaten meal ; and had been three 
 nights like the owls.^ She resolved to pass over to Eng- 
 land. Whether this was under or against the advice she 
 received, or whether she received any, cannot be deter- 
 mined. Herries, we know, was with her ; for he wrote, 
 announcing her intention, to the deputy-captain of Carlisle, 
 desiring to know whether, if the Queen of Scots might 
 seek refuge in England, she could safely go to that 
 fortress. The astounded deputy, explaining that his prin- 
 cipal was at Court, answered that this was too high a 
 question for him to determine, but he would send first to 
 Court for instructions ; and if the queen came, he would 
 meet her, and protect her until he received further instruc- 
 tions from Court But before even the deputy's provisional 
 answer could be received she had gone. On the i6th she 
 
 ^ In Labanoff 's Collection there is a letter to Queen Elizabeth 
 dated De Dundrennan, 15 May 1568 " (ii. 71) ; but it is taken from 
 • a printed collection of the seventeenth century, and its authority may 
 be doubted. 
 
 2 P. 103. 3 Labanoff, ii. 118, 
 
376 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 embarked in an open fishing-boat, with Hemes and some 
 eighteen or twenty other persons'' — they are not called 
 attendants — and landed on the same day at Workington, 
 in Cumberland.^ 
 
 Much eloquence has been expended in denouncing this 
 flight into England as an act of consummate folly. But 
 it was one of those occasions in which reasoning plays no 
 part It was the occasion of a hunted creature seeking 
 immediate safety, and finding it at the nearest available 
 point ^nthout any weighing of future results. A common 
 impression has found its way into histor}', that there was 
 a popular reaction in her favour ; but this lacks evidence. 
 Herflight,both in its first stage from Lochleven to Hamilton, 
 and thence to the Solway, was in its character the flight of 
 one ever surrounded by enemies. There was no refuge save 
 where the feudal influence of her attendant Herries pro- 
 cured it. No doubt the news of her escape gave a power- 
 rul impulse to her friends ; but it does not follow that it 
 converted her enemies. It has been said, and repeated 
 in later histories, that many passed over from the regent's 
 to the queen's party while they were gathering round 
 Hamilton; but we have no contemporar}* authorit}" nam- 
 ing those who did so. We have the names of the ^'nine 
 earls, nine bishops, eighteen lords, and others,*' including 
 about a hundred lairds or lesser barons, who signed the 
 ''band'' for the queen at Hamilton; and if there were 
 signal deserters among them, they might be identified. 
 All the bishops are on the list except some who had gone 
 abroad, and the Bishop of Orkney, who had become Pro- 
 testant. They were in their natural place as the spiritual 
 champions of the holy Catholic Church. Among these 
 the only one requiring to be specially accounted for is 
 the Bishop of Galloway, who professed to join the new 
 Church, but did not receive so welcome a reception vdth- 
 in it as he desired.- Among the lords, the name that 
 one would least expect to find in such a group is that 
 of Argyle, familiar in association and co-operation "v^ith 
 Murray, Morton, and Lethington ; but he had parted 
 
 Cecil's Narrative ; Anderson, iv. i. ^ See above, ch. xlix. 
 
THE FLIGHT TO ENGLAND, 1568. 
 
 377 
 
 company with his allies on the question of the queen's 
 imprisonment. Others — such as Cassilis, Boyd, Eglinton, 
 Montrose, and Caithness — are to be found among those 
 who united to release the queen from Bothwell, and bring 
 the murderers of her husband to justice ; but the deposi- 
 tion aAd imprisonment of the queen, whether secretly 
 contemplated or not, were not then among the projects 
 openly avowed.^ 
 
 On the prevailing powers of Scotland she had no more 
 hold than at the time when it was hard work for the more 
 moderate among them to save her life. That was a 
 policy not to be repeated. They thought they had her 
 securely in bonds both moral and practical ; but she had 
 burst through all, and proved that there was no safety to 
 her enemies while she lived. She had taken that awful 
 position in which she must crush her enemies or they 
 must crush her. When her friends gathered round her at 
 Hamilton, her chance lay in holding out until succour 
 came from England — still better should it come from 
 France. But as the game had gone, there was nothing 
 for her in Scotland but an ignominious death. She had 
 reason to expect a good reception from Queen Elizabeth, 
 and had she entered English soil in a different fashion, 
 her expectations might have had a secure foundation. 
 It was among the instructions to the messenger whom 
 Mary never received, that he should convey to Murray 
 and his friends a request, approaching in its terms to a 
 command, that both parties should be "advised and 
 ruled" by her '4n all matters stirred up betwixt the 
 queen and them ; " and to tell both parties that in the 
 mean time she thought good " that all force do cease on 
 both parts, and no new collection of power." With these 
 
 1 The leading parties to the band for the queen, besides the Ham- 
 iltons, were the Lords of Argyle, Huntly, Eglinton, Seton, Crawford, 
 Cassilis, Rothes, Montrose, Sutherland, Errol, Fleming, Livingston, 
 Boyd, Somerville, Herries, Ross, Ogilvie, Oliphant, Borthwick, 
 Sanquhar, Yester, Drummond, Elphinston, and Sinclair, with the 
 Lairds of Lochinvar, Johnston, Wemyss, Dalhousie, Ferniehurst, 
 Closebum, Traquair, Balweary, Clackmannan, Banff, Haddo, and 
 Rowallan. 
 
3/8 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 conditions accepted, Queen Mary might have been wel- 
 come in England as a refugee seeking safety until her 
 sister had established an armed force in Scotland suffi- 
 cient to carry out the arrangement that seemed good to 
 her. 
 
 It was destined that this was not the shape she was 
 to take as a refugee ; but such as it was, there was no 
 choice. What might have been effected by a more delib- 
 erate retreat — if she had not lost head and fled outright — 
 it is hard to say ; but, unprotected on the Border, her one 
 chance of immediate safety to her life was to get within 
 English ground. 
 
 If we ask what other refuge was open, the first to 
 suggest itself is France. But there is reason to doubt 
 whether any one acquainted with affairs at the time would 
 have pronounced that a safer alternative, presuming- it to 
 be in the emergency attainable. No doubt it was still 
 one of the cherished policies of the French Court to seize 
 the first opportunity for re-establishing the old influence 
 in Scotland, and so bridling England from the north. 
 But if France would have then sent an army to help the 
 queen in a struggle with her rebeUious subjects, and 
 suppressed England's project of doing the hke, this was 
 something very different from the reception of a fugitive 
 who had been driven from her throne by a triumphant 
 party, from which she fled for bare life with the blot of 
 infamous crimes on her name. There was but little zeal 
 for her cause in the Court of France; while, on the other 
 hand, there was the fixed hatred of that miracle of craft 
 and cruelty, Catherine of Medici. She was again su- 
 preme in France, and the headlong ferocity of her son 
 was led to politic ends by her subtler intelligence. She 
 was in friendly communication with Elizabeth, and Tiad 
 not yet revealed the great secret whether she was to be 
 the friend or enemy of the Huguenots. With this woman, 
 Mary, at the climax of her career, when she was Quee 
 of France as well as Scotland, had a hard game to play. 
 What chance had she now ? ^ 
 
 ^ There are two letters of Catherine at this time, containing inqui- 
 
THE FLIGHT TO ENGLAND, 1568. 
 
 379 
 
 Could she have fled to Spain, a scene of another kmd 
 might have opened. There she would have found a mon- 
 arch who, if it be possible, was more earnest than herself 
 in reverence for the doctrine, that the one object, both 
 for the sake of this world and the next, to which a Chris- 
 tian sovereign should be devoted, was the restoration of 
 the old Church to its power and splendour. The possi- 
 bilities that such a conjuncture might have opened are 
 so interesting that they can hardly be passed in silence. 
 Might not an impulse have been given to his sluggish 
 nature, so that the great blow he was to strike in England 
 might have been earlier and more aptly timed? There 
 was no room, it is true, for the revival of the old matri- 
 monial project between Mary and Don Carlos, which 
 Catherine of Medici had wrought so hard to defeat. The 
 poor mad youth was at the crisis of his tragic fate. It 
 was about six weeks after her escape that, if we are to 
 accept what we are now told, his throat was cut in the 
 Escurial, not by assassins, but by the ministers of Spanish 
 justice. But presently there was to be another opening. 
 Within six months after this crisis in Mary's fate, her 
 sister-in-law, Isabella of France, the Queen of Spain, died. 
 She also became the tragic heroine of a romance of love 
 and crime ; but history gradually dropped the dark sus- 
 picions on her name, and left them to the world of fiction. 
 Though the daughter of the terrible Catherine, she left 
 the reputation of a faithful wife and a gentle queen. 
 Among those who cherished the memory of her virtues, 
 they were enhanced by the fervency with which on her 
 deathbed she expressed her thankfulness in being the 
 partner of one whom no deceptions frailties of mercy or 
 remorse had ever checked in the sacred task of extirpat- 
 ing heresy. To such views Mary was one who would 
 have given support quite as sincere and far more active. 
 Indeed, just before the Queen of Spain's death, the two 
 had been holding some genial correspondence, in which 
 
 ries about the escape and the other incidents ; but the writer shows 
 much more anxiety for the possession of some of her daughter-in- 
 law's pearls than the safety of their owner. — Teulet, ii. 217. 
 
3^0 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 the restoration of the Church was put foremost of human 
 duties. At that time Philip was not yet forty-two years 
 old, and though he had been three times married, the son 
 destined to succeed him had not yet been born. If it be 
 said that these speculations on the possible consequences 
 of events that never came to pass are away from the pur- 
 pose of history, it may be pleaded that they deserve a 
 passing notice, since they were contingencies which both 
 the thinking and the acting men of the times must have 
 studied. There was nothing in the possible future of 
 Mary's relations with France and Spain that did not then 
 affect the present in Scotland, and in England too. 
 
 The fugitive queen was received on English soil with 
 quiet decorum. The rumour of an unexpected arrival 
 from Scotland brought some Cumbrian gentlemen to the 
 landing place. When they found how illustrious a person 
 their visitor was, they formed themselves into an escort, 
 and attended her to Cockermouth. The news passing on 
 to the deputy-captain of Carlisle, who, as we have seen, 
 had some warning of her intention, he called together the 
 gentlemen of the district, and a large body assembled to 
 escort her to Carlisle. 
 
 Whether it was the assurance of safety from immediate 
 pursuit, or relief given by repose and quietness to an ex- 
 cited frame, it is certain that she was speedily herself 
 again. She sailed from Scotland on the i6th of May, and 
 the 17th is the date of a letter written by liei to Queen 
 Elizabeth — a letter of great length and full of matter. A 
 small portion of it contains the account already cited of 
 the hardships of her escape ; but this is briefly told at the 
 end, and after a narrative of events to which it comes as 
 a conclusion, because the events so narrated were the 
 causes leading to that step. It would be only again to go 
 over the history of Scotland since the death of Darnley, 
 were we to give the tenor of this letter, with a commen- 
 tary on the narrative it contains. It must suffice to say 
 that no one who has followed its author's career can well 
 read it through without high admiration of the concise 
 clearness of the narrative, and her persuasive skill in stat- 
 ing the points of her case. Her condition was pitiable, 
 
THE FLIGHT TO ENGLAND, 1568. 381 
 
 she said, not only for a queen, but an ordinary gentle- 
 woman. She had undergone the hardships already told ; 
 and there was no change of raiment, nothing but the 
 clothing in which she had escaped from the field of battle.^ 
 It was by no means in this alone that she showed the 
 elastic vitality of her nature — its restorative capacity for 
 suddenly rising in full life and force out of absolute pros- 
 tration. She found an opportunity for the exercise of her 
 allurements, and promptly seized it. While in Carlisle 
 she was allowed unrestricted intercourse with her own 
 people of Scotland ; and the throng of followers was so 
 considerable as to excite uneasiness in Scrope, the gover- 
 nor, who suggested that if this unrestricted visiting were 
 to continue, it would be well to remove the refugee farther 
 from the Border. In a town so close to the frontier, the 
 continued resort was "not without some danger, or at 
 least not without opinion of lack of consideration." ^ But 
 he and others felt more serious ground of alarm, in look- 
 ing back on the opportunities she had seized, immediately 
 on her arrival and before precautions had been taken, for 
 exchanging civilities with the Romanist gentlemen in the 
 north. The opportunity was slight, but Queen EHzabeth^s 
 emissaries saw that it had been used to effect.^^ She 
 afterwards boasted to her sister-in-law the Queen of Spain 
 how she had seen so much of the spirit animating the 
 adherents of the old Church in England, that had she but 
 a little assistance she would make it supreme, and teach 
 Elizabeth a lesson in the game of encouraging subjects to 
 rise against their sovereign.'* And in estimating the story 
 
 1 LabanofF, ii. 73. ^ Anderson, iv. 5. 
 
 3 ** It behoves your highness, in mine opinion, gravely to consider 
 what answer is to be made herein, especially because that many gentle- 
 men of divers shires here near adjoining within your realm have heard 
 her daily defences and excuses of her innocency, with her great accu- 
 sations of her enemies, veiy eloquently told before our coming hither." 
 — Scrope and Knollys's first report ; Anderson, iv. 56. 
 
 ^ " J'ay tant apris de Testat issi que, si j'avois tant soit peu d'esper- 
 ance de secours d'ailleurs, je metroys la religion subs, ou je mourois 
 en la poyne. Tout ce quartier issi est entierement dedie k la foy 
 catolique, et pour ce respect, et du droit que j'ay issi a moy, peu de 
 chose aprandroit cette Royne k s'entremetre d'ayder aux subjects con- 
 
382 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 of severity and restraint that is to come, it should be re- 
 membered that what control she was as yet subject to did 
 not prevent her from fostering such projects and boast- 
 fully announcing them to her friends. We can see in the 
 letters and reports of Sir Francis Knollys traces that his 
 allegiance as a servant of his kinswoman Queen Eliza- 
 beth, and his duty as a stern soldier, had been sorely tried 
 by the blandishments of the refugee. He saw much of 
 her when there were few others to occupy her attention. 
 He undertook the interesting duty of teaching her the 
 English language. She afterwards called him her *^good 
 schoolmaster,'' and rewarded him with the first letter writ- 
 ten by her in English. She states that as an excuse for 
 its imperfections; and it is the earliest specimen of a 
 complete letter from her pen in any British Saxon tongue. 
 It is thoroughly becoming in its tone, with kindly inquiries 
 after the Lady Knollys, and hints about a token to be sent 
 to her.i 
 
 Knollys arrived at Carlisle on the 28th of May, along 
 with Scrope, the governor, with whom he appears to have 
 been associated as an apt adviser. They record their 
 first interview with her held on that day. She had de- 
 manded that she should be brought as a visitor to the 
 
 tre les princes. Elle en est en si grande jalousie que cela, et non 
 aultre chose, me fera remetre en mon pays." — Labanoff, ii. 185. The 
 last sentence shows how Mary had sounded the depths of Queen 
 Elizabeth's notions of divine right. Her sister's horror of the doc- 
 trine that anything could justify subjects in rising against their sove- 
 reign was the one hold she had upon Elizabeth's sympathy. 
 
 ^ And ze send oni to zour wiff, ze mey asur her schu wald a bin 
 weilcom to a pur strenger hua nocht bien acquentet vth her, wil 
 nocht be ouuer bald to vreit bot for the aquentans betouix ous. Y 
 wil send zou letle tekne to rember zou off the gud hop y heuu in zou, 
 guef ze sendt a mit mesager. Y wald wysh ze bestouded it reder upon 
 her non ani vder." — Ellis's Letters, ii. 253, 254; Labanoff, ii. 173. 
 This was written on 1st September 1568. Afterwards, on the 26th 
 of February, with White, who reported to Cecil, on a visit to Queen 
 Mary, she held sorrowful discourse about the recent death of the 
 Lady Knollys, a calamity brought home to her by the remark of the 
 writer that ** the long absence of her husband, in his attendance on 
 Queen Mary, *'did greatly further her end." It was on this occa- 
 sion that she spoke of Knollys as her *'good schoolmaster.'*— 
 Haynes's State Papers, 510. 
 
THE RECEPTION IN ENGLAND, 1568. 383 
 
 Queen of England, and they had the unpleasant duty of 
 telling her that in the mean time this could not be, and 
 the still more unpleasant duty of telling her how it was so. 
 The Queen of England could not receive her so honour- 
 ably as her " desirous affection and goodwill towards her 
 did wish, until her highness might be well instructed and 
 satisfied by probable reasons that she was clear and inno- 
 cent of the said murder'^ of her husband. They had 
 further to declare their mistress's " sorrowfulness for her 
 lamentable misadventure and inconvenient arrival," and 
 at the same time to express ^^how glad and joyful^' her 
 highness felt " of her good escape from the peril of her 
 person, with many circumstances thereunto belonging." 
 
 Through the dry narrative of these cautious officers we 
 can see, in the reception of their disagreeable message, 
 the consummate powers on which the fugitive drew to 
 make the best of the conditions : " We found her in her 
 answers to have an eloquent tongue and a discreet head ; 
 and it seemeth by her doings that she hath stout courage 
 and liberal heart adjoined thereunto. And after our de- 
 livery of your highness' letters she fell into some passion, 
 with the water in her eyes; and therewith she drew us 
 with her into her bedchamber, where she complained to 
 us for that your highness did not answer her expectations 
 for the admitting her into your presence forthwith ; that 
 upon good declaration of her innocency, your highness 
 would either without delay give her aid yourself to the 
 subjecting of her enemies, or else, being now come of 
 goodwill and not of necessity into your highness' hands 
 — for a good and greatest part of her subjects, said she, 
 do remain fast unto her still — your highness would at the 
 least forthwith give her passage through your country into 
 France, to seek aid at other princes' hands, not doubting 
 but both the French king and the King of Spain would 
 give her redress on that behalf to her satisfaction." ^ That 
 she made a distinct impression on Knollys, we may read 
 in a recommendation in which Scrope did not participate. 
 Referring to the merits of .her case, and the popular feel- 
 
 1 Anderson, iv. 54. 
 
384 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 ing in her favour in the north of England, and therefore," 
 he says, " I, the vice-chamberlain, do refer to your high- 
 ness' better consideration, whether it were not honourable 
 for you, in the sight of your subjects, and of all foreign 
 princes, to put her grace to the choice, whether she will 
 depart freely back into her country without your highness' 
 impeachment [i.e., hindrance], or whether she will remain 
 at your highness* devotion within your realm here, with 
 her necessary servants only to attend upon her, to see how 
 honourably your highness can do for her ; for this means 
 your highness, I think, shall stop the mouths of back- 
 biters, that otherwise would blow out seditious rumour, 
 as well in your own realm as elsewhere, of detaining her 
 ungratefully." ^ 
 
 This suggestion is in keeping with the man's frank 
 character. It is perceptible that, like others, he had little 
 doubt that his fascinating captive was a murderess. In 
 the midst of his admiration he renders another morsel of 
 blunt, honest advice to the chief counsellor of his mistress : 
 If the spots in this queen's coat be manifest, the plainer 
 and sooner that her highness doth reveal her discontenta- 
 tion therewith the more honourable it will be, I suppose ; 
 and it is the readiest way to stop the mouths of factious, 
 murmuring subjects.''^ 
 
 This follows on a burst of admiration more like a tribute 
 bestowed by one brave, ambitious man on another, than a 
 homage to the qualities of a fascinating princess : " This 
 lady and princess is a notable woman. She seemeth to 
 regard no ceremonial honour beside the acknowledging 
 of her estate royal. She showeth a disposition to speak 
 much, to be bold, to be pleasant, and to be very familiar. 
 She showeth a great desire to be avenged of her enemies. 
 She showeth a readiness to expose herself to all perils in 
 hope of victory. She desireth much to hear of hardiness 
 and valiancy, commending by name all approved hardy 
 men of her country, although they be her enemies ; and 
 she concealeth no cowardice even in her friends. The 
 thing that most she striveth after is victory ; and it seemeth 
 
 1 Anderson, iv. 56. 
 
 2 Ibid., 72. 
 
THE RECEPTION IN ENGLAND, 1568. 385 
 
 indifferent to her to have her enemies diminished either 
 by the sword of her friends or by the liberal promises and 
 rewards of her purse — or by divisions and quarrels raised 
 among themselves — so that for victory's sake pain and 
 peril seemeth pleasant unto her ; and in respect of victory, 
 wealth and all things seemeth to her contemptible and 
 vile/' 
 
 Not less remarkable than this description of his captive's 
 temper is the moral he draws from it : Now what is to 
 be done with such a lady and prince, or whether such a 
 princess and lady be to be nourished in one's bosom, or 
 whether it be good to hold and dissemble with such a lady, 
 I refer to your judgment."^ Congenial with these simple 
 but expressive touches of character are the remarks of 
 another who saw and conversed with her a few months 
 later. He, too, writes his impressions to Cecil, and his 
 thorough admiration of the captive's powers is certainly 
 not neutralised by his somewhat clumsy disclamations of 
 any derogation from the superior merits of his own mis- 
 tress : If I, which in the sight of God bear the queen's 
 majesty a natural love beside my bounden duty, might 
 give advice, there should very few subjects in this land 
 have access to or conference with this lady. For beside 
 that she is a goodly personage (and yet, in truth, not com- 
 parable to our sovereign), she hath withal an alluring 
 grace, a pretty Scottish speech, and a searching wit clouded 
 with mildness. Fame might move ^ome to relieve her, 
 and glory joined to gain might stir others to adventure 
 much for her sake."^ 
 
 Such still remain among the casual notices imparted to 
 Cecil, on whom they can have had no reassuring influence. 
 Yet we can believe that doubts which crossed the mind of 
 the casual visitor would contribute but a drop to the vast 
 sea of difficulties that seemed to gather round the subtle 
 
 Anderson, iv. 72. 
 2 N. White to Cecil ; Haynes's State Papers, 511. The writer says, 
 -** In looking upon her cloth of estate, I noticed the sentence em- 
 broidered, * En ma fin est mon commencement,' which is a riddle I 
 undertake not." He noticed also that **her hair of itself is black, 
 and yet Mr Knollys told me that she wears hair of sundry colours." 
 VOL. IV. 2 B 
 
386 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 Statesman, whose eye looked so much farther into the 
 coming possibilities. In fact it is visible in the papers of 
 the time that the last event struck the Court of Elizabeth 
 with immediate consternation, followed by darkened and 
 confused counsels. Queen Mary's escape from Lochleven 
 seemed likely to inaugur the solution of a great difficulty, 
 but her defeat and flight threw all back into more insol- 
 uble perplexity. In whatever direction Cecil varied the 
 probable path of events, he ever ended in a precipice. 
 We have the spirit of his perplexed thoughts in a paper 
 called Things to be considered upon the Scottish queen's 
 coming into England." Looking to the several probable 
 conclusions, each in its turn, he sees in none of them suc- 
 cess — each has merely dangers to be encountered; and 
 the question is, Which has the fewest? We have first, 
 " danger if the Queen of Scots should pass into France 
 next, " danger if the Scottish queen do remain in England 
 and third, " danger if she should return into Scotland to 
 rule as she did.'^ ^ He expressed the full perplexity of the 
 situation in brief familiar terms when writing to Norris, 
 the English ambassador in France, how that all were 
 " much troubled with the difficulties, finding neither her 
 continuance here good, nor her departing hence quiet for 
 us." 2 
 
 Europe was filled with rumours that the crisis had now 
 come, and that it was determined to strike the great blow 
 — the blow that was to rid the Church of the pestilent 
 heresy that domineered in England and was struggling for 
 existence in the Spanish Netherlands. Norris told how a 
 Huguenot statesman with much mystery had wiled him to 
 a secluded corner furth of Paris, and there, beyond the 
 reach of spial or interruption, he recommended the am- 
 bassador to advertise Cecil ^^that the queen's majesty did 
 hold the wolf that would devour her ; and that it is con- 
 spired betwixt the King of Spain, the Pope, and the 
 French king, that the queen's majesty should be destroyed, 
 whereby the Queen of Scots might succeed her majesty.'' 
 The ambassador is put on the track of an Italian who 
 
 ^ Anderson, iv. 34 ^/ se^, ^ Cabala, 149. 
 
A CRISIS, 1568. 
 
 387 
 
 conducts communications between Spain and the Roman- 
 ist party in England, and is informed of other details too 
 obscure to be now realised. He puts it to Cecil's superior 
 wisdom what is most expedient " both to the preservation 
 of her majesty and well of the country;^' while he says 
 for himself, " Of God, I would wish that the Queen of 
 Scots were rather redelivered, than the queen's majesty to 
 stand in these perilous terms both at home and abroad.''^ 
 But it was natural that others should not concur in the 
 policy of immediately letting loose the wolf. It was, 
 indeed, for English statesmen, a reign of terror in the true 
 sense of the term — that terror of danger from without 
 which drives men to harsh and cruel remedies within. 
 Queen Mary's fate, if the strange course of events and her 
 own strange dealing with them are to be so termed, had 
 made her an incarnate peril. She was dangerous wherever 
 she dwelt or whithersoever she went. It was dangerous 
 alike to do anything with her or leave anything undone. 
 Her position was that awful one so well expressed in the 
 brief passage between the prison and the grave of kings. 
 
 Enough of her correspondence during this critical 
 period survives to prove that she vigorously pressed on 
 the Court of France for help. She commissioned the 
 Lord Fleming as her ambassador there; and she wrote 
 to her brother-in-law Charles IX., to her uncle the Car- 
 dinal of Lorraine, even to her personal enemy Catherine 
 of Medici. If they came forth as they should, and pro- 
 claimed that she, an anointed queen closely allied to them 
 by family ties, was not to be driven from her throne by 
 rebels, her enemies would be paralysed and her legitimate 
 rule restored. They must send men and money. It was 
 especially necessary to reinforce the loyal garrison of 
 Dumbarton, and to recover the other royal fortresses. 
 She appealed loudly to the compassion of her friends. 
 Her faithful people were slaughtered ; she was herself a 
 close prisoner, and treated with such sordid inhumanity 
 that she was in want of food and clothing. Otherwise her 
 letters are full of business and sagacity. On one point a 
 
 ^ Haynes's State Papers, 466. 
 
388 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 truth IS touched which may well have gone home to the 
 hearts of the French Court. She refers to the community 
 of interest between her own rebels and those of France — 
 between the Protestant party in Scotland and the French 
 Huguenots. She was quite right in her appreciation of 
 this formidable conjuncture — it was a source of danger in 
 France, it brought ruin on herself.^ 
 
 Besides these examples of her private correspondence, 
 we possess a solemn memorial of some length, prepared 
 for the purpose of bringing Queen Mary's case before the 
 principal Courts of Europe. ^ It might be hard to say how 
 far it is an inspiration of her own; but it is so entirely a per- 
 sonal pleading, and is so bold in its assertions, that we can- 
 not suppose it to have been circulated without consultation 
 with her. It is an able and powerful document. It needs 
 only that the mind runs over the successive strange events 
 of her short reign to see how easily the story could be told 
 so as to make her character in it solely that of the victim 
 to the vile machinations of others. From the very begin- 
 ning, while he was yet a youth, her bastard brother laid 
 his plans of usurpation. He steadily pursued his end 
 while his confiding sister was loading him with benefits. 
 Three times he had attempted to seize her, and each time 
 had been pardoned. At last he was successful through an 
 act of double villainy. He and his accomplices murdered 
 her husband under conditions which enabled them plau- 
 sibly to charge her with the crime. They then dealt with 
 Both well. He became one of their instruments, and under 
 the pretext that the country called him to be her husband, 
 he was allowed to abduct her and keep her in durance. 
 It was then that, under the pretence of delivering her, 
 they got her in their power. It may be noted that nothing 
 is said of the marriage — she is entirely a captive princess 
 in the hands of ruffians, and subject to their brutality. 
 
 ^ LabanofF, ii. 85 ^/ seq, 
 
 ' **Memoire addresse au nom de Marie Stuart a tous les princes 
 de la Chretiente;" Teulet, ii. 241. An Italian version found at 
 Florence was printed by Labanoff (vii. 313). M. Teulet says, **Ce 
 memoire fut redige par les ordres de Marie vStuart a Carlisle en Tuin 
 1568." 
 
A CRISIS, 1568. 
 
 389 
 
 Throughout this document charges of heresy and apos- 
 tasy accompany the charges of rebelHon and treachery. 
 From the beginnmg her base brother had found in the 
 heretical enemies of the Church the proper tool of his 
 machinations, and a close alliance between them grew 
 and strengthened. Hence the cause of the persecuted 
 queen was also the cause of the outraged Church, and all 
 the Church's friends were bound to strive for her restora- 
 tion and the condign punishment of her enemies. It was 
 natural that the cause of the Church, if it could with 
 prudence be introduced, should be a feature in such a 
 document, as it was from the Catholic sovereigns only 
 that aid could have been expected. But the vehement 
 eloquence with which the cause is pleaded, and the distinct 
 terms in which it is laid down that the cause of Mary 
 Queen of Scots is the cause of the true Church, show that 
 Herries and her other Protestant champions can have had 
 no voice in the preparation of this document. We may 
 even believe that it must have been carefully concealed 
 from them. Its language is inspired by the ardent 
 Catholic zeal of her in whose name it went forth. It may 
 be imagined that such a paper would have produced a 
 deep sensation throughout the Catholic world, if it had 
 not been that the minds of all men likely to hear of passing 
 events in a country so distant, were at the time impressed 
 with the belief that the Queen of Scots was the murderer 
 of her husband. 
 
 All the while she thus appealed to foreign powers she 
 was pouring letter after letter in upon Queen EHzabeth, 
 beseeching, wailing, and remonstrating. She appealed 
 to the courtesies and kindnesses that had passed be- 
 tween them, to their ties of kindred and their common 
 ancestry, to their divine destiny as sovereign princes 
 anointed and set apart to rule over their fellow-creatures, 
 and bound, not only by a sacred duty, but by a com- 
 munity of interest, to protect each other from the machi- 
 nations of traitorous subjects. Descending from these 
 lofty parallels, she brought her claim down to the level of 
 their common womanhood. She was in straits and peril; 
 she had endured memorable hardships ; she had borne 
 
390 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 hunger and thirst, and was destitute of the comforts, even 
 the decencies, of life ; she was yet dressed in the same 
 clothing in which she had fled for her life. Was it the 
 part of her sister, sitting serene in her own royal state, 
 not merely to restrain her hand from helping, but actually 
 to supply the remaining drop to her bitter cup by the 
 misery of strait captivity ? The reader of these letters, 
 if he recalls all that had occurred in Scotland in the 
 past three years, and remembers the position of these 
 two women towards each other, can hardly escape the 
 conviction that they form one of the most wonderful 
 specimens of eloquent and pathetic pleading to be found 
 in literature.^ Underneath all this pathos and eloquence, 
 too, there are subtle touches of flattery, and acute appeals 
 to policy and expediency. At one point there is a strange 
 and significant hint, as if the writer, could she but get 
 access to her sister, could reveal to her something im- 
 mediately touching her personal safety. Why should her 
 sister play the part of the deaf adder ? If Caesar had not 
 disdained a warning he might not have fallen. Why are 
 the ears of princes closed when they are commonly re- 
 presented as far-reaching, so that they may hear all and be 
 prepared for all occasions?^ This personal meeting was the 
 chief immediate object of all her entreaties. All would be 
 well if they could meet alone and unbosom their princely 
 hearts to each other, uninterrupted and uninfluenced by 
 
 ^ Labanoff, ii. 71 et seq. 
 
 2 '*Si Cesar n'eust dedaigne d'ecouter ou lire la plainte d'un 
 avertisseur il n'eust succombe. Pourquoy doivent les oreilles des 
 princes etre bouchees, puisque Ton les paint si longues? signifiant 
 qu'ils doivent tout ouyer et bien penser avant que respondre." — 
 Labanoff, ii. 134. 
 
 Are we to count it the same hint in another form when Heft-ies, 
 her representative at the Court of Elizabeth, intimated that ' * if she 
 might come personally to her majesty, then she would show that to 
 her majesty that she had to say;" adding, **that she would also 
 therein say that which she never yet had uttered to any creature " ? 
 — Anderson, iv. 18. Again, in the report of Elizabeth's messenger 
 Middlemore, who visited her at Carlisle, when she complains of 
 Elizabeth's refusal to see her : " I would and did mean to have 
 uttered such matters unto her as I would have done to no other, nor 
 never yet did to any." — Ibid., 87. 
 
A CRISIS, 1568. 
 
 the common order of politicians, whose place it is to 
 minister to their supreme will, but not to forecast its aims. 
 Among devout believers in the unfathomable wisdom of 
 Queen Elizabeth it may excite a smile to notice the dreams 
 which the fugitive indulged in as to the issue of such a 
 meeting. It is evident that she believed she could bend 
 her rival to her will. With her natural abilities, and her 
 training in the very centre of the social refinement and 
 diplomatic policy of the day, it seemed an easy matter to 
 prevail on one who, though a cultivated scholar, and a 
 clever, self-willed woman, was yet in the game of Court 
 intrigue to be counted but a mere provincial. Indeed, if we 
 can believe that Mary opened her heart to her sister-in-law 
 of Spain, the vistas of the future which the accomplishment 
 of a meeting with Elizabeth opened up to her can only be 
 called amazing. The Queen of England might naturalise 
 and adopt her son; but that would be no pleasing pro- 
 spect, since he would be trained in the prevailing heresy 
 and lost to the Church. But, on the other hand, if she 
 and Elizabeth could come to a proper understanding, he 
 might be trained in the true faith, succeed to the broad 
 heritage of his race, and strengthen the great cause by a 
 union of the King of Britain with a daughter of Spain. One 
 would think that the first step to such a sequence of events 
 must have been the conversion of Elizabeth to the true 
 faith.i Mary had, as we have seen, on one memorable 
 instance over-estimated the power of her apparatus of 
 fascinations. When she tried them upon the stern ecclesi- 
 astical champion, she found them utterly insufficient to 
 shake his obedience to the ordinances which he believed 
 to embody the direct commands of a higher power. 
 » Whether she would have been more successful with one 
 whose opinions were fortified more by policy and self- 
 importance than by religious fanaticism, the world has no 
 opportunity of knowing. The appeal was ever steadily 
 refused, on the ground that the Queen of Scots must 
 
 1 Labanoff, ii. 186. The terms are dubious, and it is open to every 
 reader to draw from them, if he so can, a different conclusion from 
 this. 
 
392 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 cleanse herself from the foul stains on her reputation be- 
 fore the two could meet as sister queens ; and so Mary 
 had to take what solace she could from the opinion that 
 Queen EHzabeth's minions combined to exclude her from 
 fear of the influence she would have over their mistress if 
 a meeting between them were permitted.^ 
 
 All things considered, it was found to be, justly or un- 
 justly, the prudent course to avoid an immediate decision 
 as to the ultimate disposal of the refugee, and to retain 
 her, as far as might be, in the position in which she had 
 placed herself One step was necessary, however, and 
 that could not be taken without some approach to an 
 active policy. If she were to be held in restraint, Carlisle 
 was so near her own country that any day might bring 
 some fresh astounding change in the eventful drama of 
 which she was the heroine. Knollys feared that one so 
 lithe and active might escape by such cords and drapery 
 as the furniture of her apartment could supply.^ Besides 
 
 ^ The conditions under which the expectations above referred to 
 are to be realised are * ' estant en mon pays et en amitie aveques ceste 
 royne, que les siennes ne veullent permettre me veoir de peur que je 
 la remete en meilleur chemin, car ils ont ceste opinion que je le gouver- 
 nerois, lui complesant.'' — Labanoff, ii. 1 86. 
 
 2 Anderson, iv. 57. Writing after she had been removed to a safer 
 place, Knollys says, about the anxieties and difficulties at Carlisle : 
 * ' The band was divided into five partes, so that the watche and wards 
 came about every fifth nyght and every fifth daye, of the which 
 watche and wards we had five governors. The first was Mr Reade, 
 and Wyllyam Knollys for his learning accompanied hym ; the second 
 was Mr Morton ; the third was Mr Wylford 5 the fourth was Barrett, 
 Mr Readers lieutenant ; and the fifth was Weste, his ansygne-bearer, 
 a very sufficient and carefull man also. This quene's chamber at Car- 
 lyll had a wyndow lokyng out towardes Skotland, the barrs whereof 
 being filed asonder, out of the same she myght have ben lett downe, and 
 then she had playne grounds before her to pass into Skotland. But 
 nere unto the same wyndow we founde an old postern doore, that was 
 dammed upp with a ramper of earth of the inner syde, of twenty 
 foot broade and thirty foot deepe, betweene two walls ; for the 
 comoditie of which postern for our sallie to that wyndow wyth readye 
 watche and warde, we dyd cutt into that rampier in forme of stayre, 
 with a turning aboute downe to the seyde postern, and so opened the 
 same, without the which devise we coulde not have watched and 
 warded this queue there so safely as we dyd. Although there was 
 another wyndow of her chamber for passing into an orchard within 
 
REMOVAL TO BOLTON, 1568. 
 
 393 
 
 the small body of servants and attendants who resided 
 with her in the castle, several Scotsmen living in Carlisle 
 attended her as she rode out, and formed a considerable 
 retinue. And " once," as KnoUys says, " she rode out 
 a-hunting the hare, she galloping so fast upon every occa- 
 sion, and her whole retinue being so well horsed, that we, 
 upon experience thereof, doubting that upon a set course 
 some of her friends out of Scotland might invade and 
 assault us upon the sudden for to rescue and take her 
 from us." To obviate this danger he came to the politic 
 conclusion that she must excuse her protectors if they 
 should refuse to countenance "such riding pastimes," 
 as they created anxiety lest they should end in " the 
 endangering of her person by some sudden invasion of 
 her enemies." ^ Toother causes of anxiety were added 
 some suspicions about the intentions of Northumberland 
 and several of his neighbours, all, like himself, " unsound 
 in religion." It was ostensibly a question of etiquette 
 whether he, as the feudal potentate of the district, was not 
 bound in loyalty and courtesy to take on himself the 
 especial protection of the royal fugitive ; but he was so 
 severely checked and heartily rated for his obtrusiveness 
 on the occasion, as to show that deeper motives than an 
 obedience to the rules of etiquette were supposed to 
 govern him. ^ 
 
 On the 14th of July she was removed to Bolton Castle, 
 in Yorkshire, a possession of the Lord Scrope. There was 
 here a distinct act, in which she was disposed of contrary 
 to her will. But action had become necessary, and this 
 was a choice among difficulties. To be permitted to re- 
 turn to Scotland was not her own desire — it would have 
 been certain destruction. Either she must be sent to 
 France, or to Scotland with an army to enforce her claims. 
 A little petulant outbreak described by Knollys thoroughly 
 harmonises with her position and natural expectations : 
 " ' I will require the queen my good sister that either she 
 
 the towne wall, and so to have slipped over the towne wall, that was 
 very dangerous. — Wright's Queen Elizabeth, i. 290, 291. 
 
 ^ Wright's Queen Elizabeth, i. 284. ^ ibid., i. 272 sey. 
 
394 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 will let me go into France, or that she will put me into 
 Dumbarton, unless she will hold me as a prisoner ; for I 
 am sure,' sayeth she, ' that her highness will not of her 
 honour put me into my Lord of Murray's hands.' Hereby 
 we might gather that although she would be put into Dum- 
 barton, that she dare not well go thither of herself if she 
 were at liberty ; and, saith she, * I will seek aid forthwith 
 at other princes' hands that will help me — namely, the 
 French king and the King of Spain — whatsoever come of 
 me, because I have promised my people to give them aid 
 by August.' " The little scene closes thus : " ^ And,' saith 
 she, ' I have made great wars in Scotland, and I pray God 
 I make no troubles in other realms also;' and parting 
 from us, she said that if we did detain her as a prisoner 
 we should have much ado with her." ^ 
 
 The removal was managed with decorum. Both parties 
 understood each other; and Queen Mary, having no 
 choice but compliance, ostensibly concurred in the pro- 
 priety of a change of residence, and was escorted to her 
 new home with all available ceremonial. The change was 
 a great relief to Knollys, whose last anxiety was about the 
 journey. He had the satisfaction of reporting that there 
 hath been no repair unto her by the way, as might have 
 been looked for ; " and the structure of the new prison 
 was eminently satisfactory : This house appeareth to be 
 very strong, very fair, and very stately, after the old man- 
 ner of building ; and is the highest-walled house that I 
 have seen, and hath but one entrance thereinto ; and half 
 the number of these soldiers may better watch and ward 
 the same than the whole number thereof could do at 
 Carlisle Castle." 2 
 
 ^ Wright's Queen Elizabeth, i. 286. 2 ibid., 290. 
 
395 
 
 CHAPTER LI. 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 (Co7itimied.) 
 
 THE EFFECT ON THE COURT OF ENGLAND— FLEMING, HERRIES, AND 
 THE FRENCH AMBASSADOR THERE— THE QUESTION OF MARY 
 GOING TO FRANCE — THE QUESTION OF A PERSONAL INTERVIEW 
 BETWEEN THE QUEENS — THE MISSION OF MIDDLEMORE— HOW 
 RECEIVED BY QUEEN MARY — HOW IN SCOTLAND — THE CASKET 
 LETTERS— FEELING THE WAY TO THE RESULT IF THE CHARGES 
 PROVED— QUEEN ELIZABETH'S DIVINE RIGHT OF SOVEREIGNS, AND 
 REPUDIATION OF THE POWER OF SUBJECTS TO QUESTION THEIR 
 ACTS— CONFLICT WITH QUEEN MARY'S PRETENSIONS TO THE THRONE 
 OF ENGLAND— THE LATENT QUESTION OF THE SUPERIORITY OF THE 
 CROWN OF ENGLAND — QUEEN MARY'S DIPLOMATICS— HER PROFES- 
 SION OF AN INCLINATION TO THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND— HER 
 ABSOLUTE DEVOTION TO THE OLD CHURCH— THE DISCUSSIONS TO 
 BE CONDUCTED AT YORK — THE THREE COMMISSIONS — THE EXTER- 
 NAL POLITICAL CONDITIONS OF THE INQUIRY. 
 
 Let us now turn aside from the fugitive and her personal 
 adventures, to look at a train of transactions of a different 
 character. They are to be found in materials more like a 
 lawsuit, than a romance with a wandering princess for its 
 heroine ; but they are full of matter bearing on the facts 
 and spirit of the history of the time, and on the character 
 and conduct of those who acted in it 
 
 Directly after her flight, Queen Mary had sent two of 
 her faithful followers to represent her interests at the Court 
 of EHzabeth — the Lord Fleming and the Lord Herries. 
 Fleming's object was stated to be, to pass from England 
 to France to inform the French king of Queen Mary's 
 
396 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 arrival in England, " and to thank him for his offers made 
 to her, and to move him to send no succours into Scotland 
 as beforetime she had solicited.'* He was told that there 
 was no necessity for such a mission. De Beaumont, the 
 ambassador from France, who had rendered court to Mary 
 at Hamilton, had just returned after having seen all. The 
 French Government were well aware that she had gone to 
 England ; and as to the plea that it was desirable to warn 
 France not to send any forces to Scotland, that was a 
 matter in which the Queen of England was as deeply in- 
 terested as her sister ; but the English Government felt no 
 anxiety. 
 
 There was thus no reason why Fleming should go to 
 France. It is clear that if Queen Mary could have sent a 
 messenger to France in any other manner, she would not 
 have appealed to her sister's aid. Fleming felt the object 
 of his mission to be so important that he still pressed for 
 a safe-conduct to France. He was met by some touches 
 of diplomatic sarcasm ; but enough was let out to show 
 him that there were formidable suspicions about the nature 
 of the real object of sending to the Court of France one 
 who had at his disposal a strong fortress commanding one 
 of the chief sea-gates of Scotland : The common opinion 
 was well known that his special errand, he being Captain 
 of Dumbarton, was to fetch Frenchmen by sea to Scotland, 
 whereof the world, by former certain experience, might 
 well judge what great troubles might ensue fit for England 
 to regard.^' True, the Queen of England was not afraid 
 of any actual mischief from his negotiations ; but " she 
 desired not to be thought in the judgment of the world 
 improvident, how improvident soever she might be indeed." 
 So Fleming was desired to abandon his mission if " he 
 meant to avoid the opinion of an evil meaning.'' 
 
 Thus Cecil and his friends having, as they believed, 
 baffled a deep design, thought they might conclude the 
 farce by a touch of light irony, which they might have 
 omitted had they known all. Queen Mary found other 
 emissaries. The letters to her friends in France already 
 referred to, describing her deplorable condition, and cry- 
 ing out for armed assistance, were written after the refusal 
 
MARY AND ELIZABETH, 1568. 397 
 
 to forward Fleming on his way, and refer to that refusal 
 as a grievance. 
 
 One of Queen Mary's emissaries being thus disposed 
 of, we have to look to the other, whose business was 
 destined to achieve more enduring importance. 
 
 John Maxwell, Lord Herries, a Protestant, was reputed 
 to hold by the party of the regent and the Lords of the 
 Congregation ; but when, after the marriage with Darnley, 
 the heads of the party were driven into England, he re- 
 mained on the north side of the Border, surrendered him- 
 self, and made his peace with the queen. He was now 
 the most zealous and active of her champions. He ap- 
 pears to have been ambitious of measuring wits with 
 Lethington as a scientific diplomatist, drawing his re- 
 sources from the Machiavellian school. Hence, like his 
 rival, he was always suspected of some deep and subtle 
 design in all he did. 
 
 The tenor of his negotiations comes to us in a paper 
 corrected by Cecil. He stated that although it was the 
 principal desire of his mistress to have a personal con- 
 ference with her sister, " if her majesty could not find it 
 meet presently to assent thereunto, yet, he said, that if 
 her majesty would take the understanding of her cause in 
 hand, she would wholly commit the same to be ordered 
 by her majesty." What immediately follows is not so 
 distinct ; but it appears to mean that in this offer Queen 
 Mary is not to be considered as submitting her case to be 
 judicially dealt with like a lawsuit, since she ^^took her- 
 self as a prince and monarch subject to none ; " and that 
 especially the example of a litigation should not be fol- 
 lowed in the admission of any of her subjects, "whom 
 she accounted traitors," to be heard as her accusers. 
 
 On this point Herries might be at his ease, for it was 
 Queen Elizabeth's intention to adopt the very opposite 
 course : " As to use any form or process herein by way 
 of judgment, whereby her subjects should be reputed 
 accusers of her, the queen's majesty was so far from that 
 intention, as she meant rather to have such of them as 
 the Queen of Scots should name called into this realm to 
 be charged with such crimes as the said queen should 
 
398 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 please to object against them ; and if any form of judgment 
 should be used, it should be against them." 
 
 The end to be held in view was no less gracious 
 towards her sister than the method in which it was to 
 be reached : The Queen of Scots her sister should 
 assure herself that she desired not for herself to deal 
 in this cause of the crimes imputed to the said queen, 
 but only wished, considering her cause, that some good 
 means might be devised how she might be honourably 
 acquitted thereof, which if it might be, her majesty would 
 be most glad, and so she should be surely restored with 
 all princely honour, and enabled to chastise her rebels. 
 And if it should not fall out so clearly to all purposes 
 as were to be wished, yet her majesty meant not in any 
 wise so to deal herein as thereby to animate or give com- 
 fort to any subjects to proceed against their sovereign for 
 any manner of cause whatsoever could be alleged, but 
 would do her best, after the matter heard, to compound 
 all difficulties without bloodshed, and procure her quiet- 
 ness in her realm and peace among her people." ^ 
 
 1 Statement revised and corrected by Cecil ; Anderson, iv. I seq. 
 So far as facts and conduct are described in this and the other papers 
 to be presently referred to, they have to be taken on the authority of 
 the writer of each, as it may be affected either in the direction of 
 confirmation or of dubiety by other documents or by public ascer- 
 tained facts. It may be objected that pure history ought to embody 
 the abstract truth to be found by the comparison of conflicting sources 
 of information, and ought always to be the statement of the historian, 
 who is presumed to be perfectly impartial, not that of the persons 
 interested in the transactions to be told. In answer to such a view, 
 the author has to say that he believes he keeps nearest to the truth by 
 adhering as closely as possible to the matter of the great State docu- 
 ments, which are the fundamental material of the history of the 
 period. It is a history that has been so overlaid with theories, con- 
 jectures, and angry controversy, that the best thing we can now do 
 seems to be to carry it back as close as may be to the fundamental 
 authorities, without allowing too much importance even to the morsels 
 of contemporary gossip and rumour disclosed in the secondary cor- 
 respondence of the period. In conducting the narrative towards the 
 accomplishment of the object thus in view, the chief element of pre- 
 paration lies in the grouping of the substance of the disconnected 
 documents in the order of the events to which their several parts 
 refer. This method affords an easy opportunity for quoting the words 
 
PRELIMINARIES OF THE ACCUSATION, 1568. 399 
 
 Murray had then an agent in London named John 
 Wood. The purpose for which his presence was ac- 
 knowledged by the EngUsh Court was ^'to understand 
 the queen's majesty's pleasure for the proceeding in this 
 cause of the Queen of Scots." The duty confided to 
 him was to intimate that Murray was prepared to vindi- 
 cate all that had been done by his party in the train of 
 events which had ended in his becoming regent. 
 
 At a point in the conferences held by Queen Eliza- 
 beth's advisers with Herries and Wood it was determined 
 to send an emissary to Scotland. 
 
 A certain Henry Middlemore, "one of good under- 
 standing and credit," was selected for the service. He 
 was not an ambassador, and as he is not otherwise known 
 in political life, it is probable that an obscure man was 
 selected for the purpose of rendering the aspect of his 
 mission as little ambassadorial as might be. His first 
 visit was to Queen Mary at Carhsle. By the terms of his 
 instructions he was to represent that " the queen [Eliza- 
 beth] meaneth to take her and her cause into her protec- 
 tion, and according to the justice of the cause will prose- 
 cute all her adversaries. '^ He was to tell her that his 
 queen would not deal with the Earl of Murray " in any 
 point tending to afiirm the coronation of the prince her 
 son as king." He was to repeat the explanation, that the 
 reason why his queen could not receive her sister sove- 
 reign was the yet unrefuted charges of heavy crimes lying 
 against her, but "that the queen's majesty doth neither 
 condemn her of the same, nor yet can acquit her until she 
 shall hear what may be said therein." ^ 
 
 If we are to accept Middlemore's own account of his 
 interview with Queen Mary, we must admit that he gave 
 sufficient emphasis to the reason why his queen could not 
 admit the fugitive to her presence. The charges with 
 which her fame was blackened — the charge of murdering 
 
 of the documents themselves, when it happens, as it often does, that 
 the sense cannot be trusted into other words without the risk of being 
 perverted. 
 
 ^ Anderson, iv. 66. 
 
400 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 her husband especially — were not more broadly and 
 offensively set forth by her accusers. Already in the eyes 
 of the world, including some ^S^ery great princes," the 
 character of his mistress was liable to be tainted, because 
 in her kindness to the person charged with crimes so foul 
 she had seemed tolerant of them. Her whole anxiety 
 was to rescue her sister ; but if she were to receive the 
 proffered visit, so that the two should meet together in 
 sisterly communing, any judgment which the Queen of 
 England might afterwards pass on her conduct would be 
 set down as the partial effort of a friend to screen the 
 guilty. 
 
 If Middlemore uttered but a portion of the expressions 
 that he took credit for, it is not surprising that the meeting 
 was a stormy one, and that Mary did not ^et through it 
 "without great passion and weeping, complaining of her 
 evil usage, and contrarious handling to her expectation." 
 Middlemore gave the oft-repeated assurance that her sub- 
 jects were not to be heard as her accusers ; on the contrary, 
 they were to be treated as subjects charged with rebel- 
 lion against their sovereign. At this point she was shown 
 the letter to Murray with which we have presently to deal, 
 and there she found that these rebels were to be invited 
 to say what they could in palliation of their conduct. 
 From this she drew a broad conclusion : " She said it 
 appeared that the queen's majesty would be more favour- 
 able to my Lord of Murray and his than she would be to 
 her; for it seems she was contented that they should 
 come to her presence to accuse her, but she will not per- 
 mit her to come to her to purge herself Here she in- 
 veighed greatly against my Lord of Murray and his party, 
 and said she was a prince and they were but subjects, and 
 yet traitors, so as there was no equality between her and 
 them to make themselves a party against her ; but, said 
 she, ' if they will needs come, desire my good sister the 
 queen to write that Lethington and Morton, who be two 
 of the wisest and most able of them to say most against 
 me, do come, and then to let me be there in her presence 
 face to face to hear their accusations ; but I think Leth- 
 ington would be very loath of that commission,' said she." 
 
PRELIMINARIES OF THE ACCUSATION, 1568. 40I 
 
 On one demand she was easily dealt with — the cessation 
 of hostilities. Whatever the farther end might be, to stay 
 Murray's hand was to save her party from immediate 
 destruction. But then came as a corollary " the trouble- 
 some point of Dumbarton.'' She was desired to take 
 order that no French auxiliaries should be received into 
 the garrison. " Her answer was plain, that in case her 
 majesty would not assure her of her full help and aid for 
 the suppressing of her evil and unruly subjects, she neither 
 could nor would leave and forsake the aid of other friends ; 
 but rather than not to be revenged of them, she would go 
 herself to the great Turk for help against them.'' 
 
 There remained still an article in Middlemore's in- 
 structions ; but it was in part so vague and oracular that 
 he seems to have prudently repeated it as he got it, with- 
 out any attempt to enlarge on it. It was that his mistress 
 did mean shortly to have her brought nearer unto her, 
 to some place where she might have more pleasure and 
 more liberty, and be utterly out of the danger of her 
 enemies ; and so as her grace should grow, so her majesty 
 would not fail to advance her to further degree of her full 
 contentation." The hapless messenger had this ^^kept in 
 store to make a pleasant parting, although it did not so 
 fall out." To a storm of questions as to the shape in 
 which she was to be removed^ — as a prisoner or as a 
 guest? — and other particulars, he did not give, and had 
 probably no means of giving, any satisfactory answer; 
 and he had no recourse but to make something like a 
 retreat from what he termed " a great conflict." ^ 
 
 The emissary passed on to Scotland, and delivered to 
 the regent a letter from Queen Elizabeth. Like all the 
 ostensible documents coming from the Court of England, 
 it was carefully worded, so as to avoid any terms import- 
 ing the validity of Queen Mary's abdication, of her son's 
 coronation, or of Murray's appointment as regent. The 
 reason for addressing the message to him is expressly 
 told : Considering the government of that realm is in 
 your power at this present." This letter begins with a 
 
 VOL. IV. 
 
 Anderson, iv. 80-94. 
 
402 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 rapid enumeration of the wrongs of which Queen Mary 
 complained. With a modification of the bitter eloquence, 
 they are detailed much as she herself stated them to 
 Elizabeth. This preamble is followed by articulate de- 
 mands, thus: "All which things cannot but sound very 
 strange in the ears of us, being a prince sovereign, having 
 dominions and subjects committed to our power as she 
 had. For remedy whereof she requireth our aid as her 
 next cousin and neighbour, and for justification of her 
 whole cause is content to commit the hearing and order- 
 ing thereof simply to us." She requires him in the mean 
 time to abandon all hostile acts, whether by open warfare 
 or legal process, against those who have taken part with 
 the queen. She notes that it had come to her ears that 
 he was willing to lay before her an explanation of his 
 "whole doings." The conclusion is a requisition "to 
 impart to us plainly and sufficiently all that which shall be 
 meet to inform us of the truth for your defences in such 
 weighty crimes and causes as the said queen hath already 
 or shall hereafter object against you contrary to the duty 
 of natural-born subjects ; so as we, being duly informed 
 on all parts, may by the assistance of God, direct our 
 actions and orders principally to His glory, and next to 
 the conservation of our own honour in the sight of all 
 other princes, and finally to the maintenance of peace 
 and concord betwixt both these two realms." ^ 
 
 This letter preserves consistency with the high prero- 
 gative views expressed by Elizabeth a year earlier, but 
 with modified vehemence. But a new and significant ele- 
 ment appears. The dominant party in Scotland are rebels 
 who can be only dealt with as criminals. They cannot 
 be heard as accusers of their sovereign, yet they are in- 
 vited to tell all that they can tell in vindication of their 
 conduct. 
 
 In answer to these propositions, a solemn document by 
 the regent in Council was delivered to Middlemore. The 
 purport of it simply was. Suppose we prove all that we 
 have charged against the queen, how shall we then stand? 
 
 ^ Anderson, iv. 69, 70. 
 
PRELIMINARIES OF THE ACCUSATION, 1568. 403 
 
 "We wad be maist laith to enter in accusation of the 
 queen, mother of the king our sovereign, and syne to 
 enter in qualification with her; for all men may judge 
 how dangerous and prejudicial that should be. Always, 
 in case the queen's majesty will have the accusation di- 
 rectly to proceed, it were most reasonable we understood 
 what we should look to follow thereupon, in case we prove 
 all that we allege, otherwise we shall be as uncertain after 
 the cause concluded as we are presently." Already had they 
 had sharp experience of what Elizabeth could do to save 
 herself from being dragged before the w^orld as a conniver 
 with subjects rising against their sovereign. If they 
 trusted themselves in her hands, they might expect at any 
 time to be silenced, and told that there was nothing for it 
 but submission to their lawful sovereign. The question 
 before them was, whether it were better to stand as they 
 were, and defend what they had done against all as- 
 sailants, than to enter on this dubious engagement with 
 the sovereign of England. 
 
 The nature of the difficulty must be weighed in esti-* 
 mating the peculiar method taken to clear it. The Scots 
 Estates had already declared to the world that they had 
 satisfied themxselves of their sovereign's guilt by documen- 
 tary evidence, " divers her privy letters," the same after- 
 wards familiarly known as the casket letters. Would these 
 be sufficient to convince the Government of Elizabeth that 
 they had done rightly ? To feel their way so far, their emis- 
 sary now took with him a copy of these documents, or 
 rather a vernacular translation of them, as to which they 
 say, " We wad earnestly desire that the said copies may 
 be considered by the judges that shall have the examina- 
 tion and commission of the matter, that they may resolve 
 to us thus far, in case the principal agree with the copy 
 that then we prove the cause indeed.'' ^ This is the first 
 point at which a reference to the casket letters is found in 
 the discussions with the Court of England. To whom 
 they were shown it is not easy to determine. One great 
 point is doubtful — whether Queen Elizabeth saw these 
 
 ^ Goodall, ii. 75, 76. 
 
404 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 copies, or was in any way made acquainted with the full 
 purport of the casket papers. We find Murray afterwards 
 complaining of it as one of his difficulties, that " the 
 queen^s majesty of England was not made privy to the 
 matter as she behoved to be." ^ 
 
 The answer to these proposals was, both in the form 
 and in the words, such as if Cecil who prepared it were 
 anxious that no part of it should be dubious or equivocal. 
 Both in litigation and diplomacy long experience has 
 taught that the most sure method of bringing parties to a 
 distinct utterance is to pick out each claim and require a 
 separate answer to it. In pursuance of this method, Mur- 
 ray's paper, or rather that of the Scots Council, is answered 
 paragraph by paragraph. Where they state their reluc- 
 tance to accuse their queen without some assurance about 
 the result, they are told that "the queen's majesty never 
 meant to have any to come to make any accusation of the 
 queen ; but meaning to have some good end to grow be- 
 tween the queen and her subjects, was content to hear 
 anything they had to say for themselves.'' On the other 
 question, What if they prove all their charges ? or, in other 
 words, produce the originals of the copies of the casket 
 letters ? the answer is, *'The queen's majesty never mean- 
 eth so to deal in the cause as to proceed to any condem- 
 nation of the Queen of Scots, but hath a desire to compound 
 all differences betwixt her and her subjects, and therein 
 not to allow any faults that shall appear in the queen, but 
 by reasonable and honourable conditions to make some 
 good end, with sufficient surety for all parties." 
 
 There is here thorough distinctness as to immediate in- 
 tentions ; but this distinctness seems only to render the 
 end all the more obscure. Anything that Queen Mary's 
 enemies were disposed to say would be heard; but of 
 what would follow nothing is revealed : we see only that 
 at this point Queen EHzabeth was not prepared to admit 
 that any act that could be proved against Queen Mary 
 would justify the forfeiture of her regal power and dignity. 
 
 Down to this point it is observable that there is a con- 
 
 ^ Letter produced at Norfolk's trial ; State Trials, i. 980. 
 
PRELIMINARIES OF THE ACCUSATION, 1568. 405 
 
 formity of purpose in the proposals of the two queens, but 
 a thorough contrast in tone. That which Queen EHza- 
 beth does not intend to do, her sister vehemently declares 
 must not and shall not be done. The 13th of June is 
 the date of one of Mary's passionate appeals. It is thus 
 connected with Middlemore's visit to Carlisle, and it was 
 doubtless in CeciFs hands when he prepared the answer to 
 the demands of the Scots Council. 
 
 In this appeal she repeats the demand for the personal 
 interview. She came to England to charge her rebellious 
 subjects with their offences against her, and to obtain 
 from her sister queen assistance for their due punishment. 
 That they should be heard in any statement against her 
 were an outrage on the relation of sovereign and subject. 
 She is ready to justify herself to her sister as friend to 
 friend, but not in a discussion with her subjects unless 
 their hands are tied. She will die sooner than submit to 
 such an outrage." ^ 
 
 It had not yet been determined that she should be sub- 
 ject to the humiliation of answering the accusations made 
 against her, but her natural acuteness seems to have 
 taught her that matters were drifting to that conclusion. 
 
 The position in which Middlemore's mission put the 
 question was that Murray and his friends were invited to 
 make their charges in the shape of a defence. After his 
 return a further step gave the whole affair more distinctly 
 the appearance of two parties conducting a litigation 
 before a judicial tribunal. It was proposed to Herries 
 that a deputation from Murray's party should come to 
 England to state what they had to say for themiselves, and 
 that another deputation should come from the queen's 
 
 1 " Je ne puis ny ne veulx respondre a leurs faulses accusations, mais 
 ouy bien par amitie et bon plaisir me veulx-je justifier vers vous de 
 bonne voglia, mais non en forme de proces cOntre mes subjectz, s'ilz 
 n'avoyent les mains liees ; madame, eux et moy ne sommes en rien 
 compaignons, et quand je devrois eStre tenue icy, encores aymeroy je 
 mieulx mourir que me faire telle.'' — LabanofF, ii. 99. This passage is 
 worthy of minute attention, since it has been translated not as if Mary 
 wished her accusers' hands tied, but as if her reason for her determina- 
 tion was that her own hands were tied. 
 
4o6 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 party to represent her interest. Herries naturally misliked 
 a project which seemed to him virtually to put his 
 sovereign on her defence against the accusations of her 
 subjects. We are then told that " after much conference 
 with him by her majesty, i*n the presence of her Council, 
 it was at length resolved best, for some speedy end of 
 the queen's causes, that the Earl of Murray shall either 
 speedily come himself with some company, or send some 
 of the best estate of the land. Likeas, the Queen of 
 Scots, he said, should have some of the principal of the 
 realm of her part to meet in some part of the north of 
 this realm, near to the said queen.'' It is the more 
 necessary to remember that these are the words of the 
 narrative authenticated by Cecil, on account of what 
 follows on it. Immediate steps were taken to bring up 
 the deputations, but within four or five days afterwards 
 Herries requested a special audience. What he had to 
 say was, " that the queen would neither make any answer 
 to any matter propounded by her own subjects, nor yet to 
 any other person of any estate in this realm to be deputed 
 by the queen's majesty, concerning the crimes wherewith 
 she was charged ; but if she might come personally to her 
 majesty, then she would show that to her majesty which 
 she had to say, adding that she would also therein say 
 that which she never yet had uttered to any creature."^ 
 It was afterwards supposed that Herries took this stand 
 
 upon letters that he had received out of Scotland, which 
 were taken by certain of the queen's men from a messenger 
 of the earl's," meaning the Earl of Murray. When Herries 
 was asked why he had revoked the consent given by him 
 in express terms to the proposed arrangement, he denied 
 that he had given such distinct consent, ^' or, to use 
 better speech, that he did not so conceive it." The pro- 
 posed conference, or by whatever name it might be called, 
 was stopped for the time. Herries left London on the 
 14th of July, after having, as the same narrative says, 
 returned to his old approval of the conference. 
 
 During the interval he suggested a new project. It 
 
 ^ See above, p. 390. 
 
PRELIMINARIES OF THE ACCUSATION, 1568. 407 
 
 opened large questions of policy, and deeply interested 
 Queen Elizabeth's advisers ; but as it came to nothing 
 it may be briefly told. England had much to fear both 
 from France and Spain. In the present condition of 
 affairs, Frenchmen might crowd into Scotland to fight un- 
 der the queen's banner without compromising the French 
 Government in a question either with Scotland or England. 
 Let Queen Elizabeth, then, frankly undertake the restora- 
 tion of Queen Mary, having first received absolute as- 
 surances from France and Spain not only to preserve 
 neutrality, but to restrain their subjects from joining in 
 the contest. The suggestion had " good appearance in 
 reason to be farther considered.'' It was the more 
 worthy of attention that Herries, though a supporter of 
 Queen Mary, was a Protestant. He was asked whether 
 he had ground of assurance on the part of France and 
 Spain for the part that each was to take, or if he acted 
 merely on the instruction of the queen his mistress. After 
 some pressing he admitted that the plan had no better 
 support than his own opinion. As that was not sufficient 
 warrant for so bold a policy the matter was dropped.^ 
 
 Though the much-sought royal conference was as hope- 
 less as ever, Herries could not well complain of being 
 unnoticed and unheard. He seems to have been in 
 continual intercourse with the leading statesmen in Eng- 
 land, and he had several royal audiences. His mission 
 came to a close before the month of August, and of its 
 latter stages we have accounts in two dissimilar shapes — 
 the one a solemn minute of the English Council relating 
 to the policy to be pursued about the Queen of Scots, the 
 other a full report of his mission rendered by Herries to 
 his mistress. - 
 
 As apart from the great personages interested, he had 
 to complain of the credit given to inferior persons, who 
 were placed in the several offices of the Government in 
 Scotland by rebels and traitors. In Scotland, of course, 
 that could not be helped; but there was Wood, a mere tricky 
 lawyer, who had been acting the part of ambassador ; and 
 
 Anderson, iv. 17-21. 
 
408 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 now had come up James Macgill, the clerk-register, one 
 of the same tribe, although Herries might have added 
 that the worst things done by him belonged to the sphere 
 of the politician rather than the lawyer. On these matters 
 some little sarcastic fencing between Herries and the 
 gentlemen of the Council was broken in upon by Queen 
 Elizabeth herself, briefly, but in thorough character. 
 These, Herries said, were not the class of persons who 
 were entitled to meddle in the high affairs of sovereigns. 
 " It is true/' said the queen ; ^' and I shall not suffer 
 Macgill to come into my presence, nor any one of those 
 who have set themselves against your mistress.'' ^ Herries, 
 of course, did not waste this last opportunity of pressing 
 that Elizabeth should admit her sister to a royal conference, 
 and take steps for her immediate restoration. If she 
 would not act thus, would she then let matters return to 
 their former shape by permitting his mistress to re-embark 
 in the open boat in which she had crossed to England ? 
 This was treated as a touch of petulance. The queen, so 
 long as she had it in her power, would be bound to stand 
 between her sister and an escapade so foolish and danger- 
 ous. Would she then be permitted to seek refuge in 
 France ? It happened that at the same time Cecil was 
 writing anxiously to the English ambassador in France 
 about rumours of an expedition to Scotland in concert 
 with the Hamiltons.^ This proposal, however, like the 
 other, was met with banter, but of a more bitter and 
 significant kind. When she sojourned there of old she 
 had taken the armorial achievements and the title of 
 Queen of England ; when she reached French ground she 
 would perhaps do so again. 
 
 In fact this affair was the subject of serious discussions 
 which Herries had no opportunity of reporting. Queen 
 Mary had never personally ratified that treaty of Edin- 
 burgh in which her pretensions to the throne of England 
 
 1 * II est vray/ diet la royne ; * et je ne soufFriray poinet que 
 Makgill vienne en ma presence, ni pas ung de ceulx qui sont contre 
 votre maistresse.' " — Teulet, ii. 240. 
 
 2 Cabala, 150. 
 
PRELIMINARIES OF THE ACCUSATION, 1568. 409 
 
 were abandoned, both by the predominant power in Scot- 
 land, and by the representatives of France. On this point, 
 as on that of the royal assent to the Acts abolishing the 
 old Church and establishing the new, she adopted the 
 same negative policy, and in both she exemplified the 
 potency of silence. She felt in both instances the strength 
 of her position. If the Estates urged her to ratify their 
 Acts, this was an admission that her assent was necessary 
 — an admission that would help to exclude them from the 
 statute-book if the assent were in the end refused. So it 
 was a questionable policy to press on her the ratification 
 of the treaty of Edinburgh, as such pressure would re- 
 veal anxiety and danger, and might not in the end be 
 effective. 
 
 It will have to be told that one of the duties of the 
 commission appointed about Queen Mary's afiairs was to 
 procure this ratification. The question did not come up 
 in the course of the discussions, and these included so 
 much other matter of personal interest that the omission 
 has rarely been noticed ; but this omission was afterwards 
 the foundation of a grave charge. Norfolk was the chief 
 commissioner ; and when he was put on trial for high 
 treason, one of the items whence his treason was inferred 
 was, that he took no steps under the instructions received 
 by him about the ratification of the treaty; and it was 
 charged against him that he "well and truly knew and 
 understood that Mary, late Queen of Scots, had laid claim 
 and pretended a title and interest to the present posses- 
 sion and dignity of the imperial crown of the kingdom of 
 England and that down to the date of his treason, the 
 22d of September 1569, he knew that "she had not 
 revoked or renounced her wicked and unjust claims and 
 usurpations aforesaid.''^ Through all the phases of her 
 correspondence at this period — be it vehement, sarcastic, 
 conciliatory, or persuasive — no words appear that can be 
 interpreted as a resignation of her right over England. 
 I can recall but one allusion to it, and that is a threat 
 that she will indorse it over to some prince better able 
 
 ^ State Trials, i. 960 et seq. 
 
410 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 than herself to give effect to it ; and so, as we shall find 
 in the end, she did. At the end of the month of Decem- 
 ber, when the long controversy we shall presently have 
 to enter upon was drawing to its close, Cecil, in one of 
 the many papers in which he suggested a line of policy 
 for his mistress, referring to her rival, says : " Considering 
 the said queen hath heretofore manifestly, in the sight of 
 the whole world, a thing also now registered in chronicles, 
 made title to this crown, and hitherto hath never made 
 satisfaction for the wrong, nor now cannot, she may not 
 without great folly permit the said queen to be at liberty 
 to become her enemy, and so to stir troubles by her alHes' 
 abroad/'^ 
 
 This affair of the treaty was kept by English statesmen 
 chiefly to themselves, and is but slightly alluded to in the 
 communings with Herries. There was another matter 
 of anxiety as to which it was necessary, so far as possible, 
 to observe profound silence in all dealings with Scotsmen. 
 This was the old question, never forgotten though often 
 hidden out of sight, of the superiority of the crown of 
 England over the realm of Scotland. The Privy Council 
 enjoined extreme caution, lest, in the difficult and delicate 
 negotiations in progress, anything should be done to en- 
 danger the ancient claim of the crown of England ; but 
 hitherto the noxious question had not intruded on the 
 negotiations. 
 
 Towards the end of July Herries returned to his mis- 
 tress, and reported the result to her. He desired that 
 Scrope and Knollys should be present on the occasion ; 
 and Knollys, whose narratives have ever the merit of 
 distinctness, retailed what was said to Cecil. The Queen 
 of England's offer was put by Herries thus : That if she 
 would commit her cause to be heard by her highnesses 
 order, but not to make her highness judge over her, but 
 rather as to her dear cousin and friend, to commit herself 
 to her advice and counsel ; and that if she would thus do, 
 her highness would surely set her again in her seat of 
 regiment and dignity regal in this form and order. First, 
 
 1 Goodal], ii. 275. 
 
MARY AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND, 1568. 4II 
 
 her highness would send for the noblemen of Scotland 
 that be her adversaries, to ask account of them before 
 such noblemen of England as this queen herself should 
 like of, to know their answer why they have deposed their 
 queen and sovereign from her regiment ; and that if in 
 their answers they could allege some reason for them in 
 their so doing (which her highness thinks they cannot 
 do), that her highness would set this queen in her seat 
 regal, conditionally that those her lords and subjects 
 should continue in their honours, states, and dignities to 
 them appertaining : but if they should not be able to 
 allege any reason of their doings, that then her highness 
 would absolutely set her in her seat regal, and that by 
 force of hostility if they should resist, upon condition that 
 this queen should renounce to claim, or have any present 
 title to, the crown of England during the continuance of 
 her highness and the issue of her body ; and also upon 
 condition that this queen, leaving the straight league with 
 France, should enter into league with England ; and also 
 upon condition that this queen should abandon the mass 
 in Scotland, and receive the common prayer after the form 
 of England : and this message the said Lord Herrys 
 repeated seven or eight times in our hearing unto this 
 queen ; and although at the first she seemed to make 
 some scruple in yielding hereunto, yet upon further con- 
 ference with my Lord Herrys, she said she would submit 
 her cause unto her highness in thankful manner accord- 
 ingly.'^! 
 
 More astounding than the proposal of these stipulations 
 about the mass and the Church of England was the spirit 
 in which it was received. This, too, must be told in the 
 words of Knollys, who had the best opportunity of notic- 
 ing what he speaks of, and can have had no temptation 
 to exaggerate it : " As touching this queen, she hath used 
 herself very discreetly in divers respects, and hath grown 
 to a very good liking of our common prayer; and she 
 hath received an English chaplain to her service that is a 
 good preacher ; and she hath heard him in his sermons 
 
 Anderson, iv. 109, 1 10. 
 
412 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 inveigh against Pharisaical justification of works and all 
 kind of Papistry, and that to the advancement of the 
 Gospel, with attentive and contented ears ; and she hath 
 seemed repentantly to acknowledge that her offences and 
 negligence of her duty towards God hath justly deserved 
 the injurious punishment, as she saith, and disgrace done 
 unto her by her adversaries in her own country. Now, 
 whether the increase of her sober, religious, and repentant 
 behaviour be done bona fide or not, I leave between God 
 and her conscience ; or whether the tyrannous subtilty of 
 the Cardinal Lorayne and the ambitious heads of the 
 house of Guise may call her back to perilous enterprises, 
 I will not take upon me to judge."^ When this good 
 news was sent to Murray he suggested that resorting to 
 the Church of England might serve her present turn to 
 move godly men to conceive a good opinion of her con- 
 formity and towardness." But he said, with a dryness 
 almost approaching to humour, that if she were again on 
 the throne, it would be one of the most difficult condi- 
 tions for any one to become good for that she should 
 abandon the mass.''^ 
 
 It is clear that she had begun to play a deep game, and 
 that so long as she thought it worth while she played it 
 with wonderful success. She evidently had not abandoned 
 it when at the end of the ensuing February a correspon- 
 dent of Cecil's reported having seen her, when " she heard 
 the English service, with a book of the Psalms in English 
 in her hand, which she showed me after." ^ Had Knollys 
 and others about her known all that has since been re- 
 vealed, they would have felt that there were few things in 
 human affairs nearer to impossibility than the conversion 
 of Queen Mary. Her entire devotion to the Church of 
 Rome, if it may not be called a good, is at least a grand, 
 feature in her character. Except while under the dominion 
 of that fatal passion to which she sacrificed everything 
 around her, and sacrificed herself, never had she failed to 
 hold absolute devotion to her own Church as uppermost 
 
 Anderson, iv. 113. ^ Ibid., 115, 116. 
 
 ^ Haynes^s State Papers, 509. 
 
MARY AND THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND, 1568. 413 
 
 among her duties. And both before and after the time 
 when these symptoms of a satisfactory awakening were 
 noticed, her marvellous capacity for baffling her keepers 
 is shown in repeated assurances to her friends in France 
 and Spain, that if appearances over which she, a captive, 
 can have no control, may turn against her, yet she is 
 stanch, and will rather suffer death than do any act that 
 may touch the supremacy of the true Church.^ 
 
 Noting that the form of Protestantism to which she pro- 
 fessed an inclination was that of the Church of England 
 as distinct from the Calvinism of Scotland, we may per- 
 haps find some light upon her motives from a passage in 
 the instruction afterwards issued by her to fier commis- 
 sioners at the conference of York : — 
 
 **When it was desired that the religion as it presently 
 is in England should be established and used in my realm, 
 it is to be answered by you, that albeit I have been in- 
 structed and nourished in that religion whilk hath stand 
 
 ^ *' L'ansienne religion, en laquelle j'espere mourir." — To Charles 
 IX. of France, 21st June 156&; Labanoff, ii. 113. Dieu m'esprouve 
 bien; pour le moins assurez-vous que je rnourray Catholique." — To 
 the Cardinal of Lorraine, 21st June ; ibid., 117. Je vous assure, 
 et, vous supplie, assures en le roi, que je mouray en la religion 
 Cattolique Romaine.'' — 24th September, to the Queen of Spain, to 
 whom she would fain send her son, and * ' soubmetre a tous dan- 
 gers pour establir tout ceste isle a I'antique et bonne foy." — Ibid., 
 183-187. This remarkable letter, repeatedly referred to in the text, is 
 worthy of careful study as a revelation. If Mary opened her heart to 
 any one, it was to this young sister-in-law. She enjoins secrecy, for 
 there are things in the letter for which she would be put to death. 
 It is in this letter that she speaks of the influence she had established 
 among the Eoman Catholics of the north, and other perilous matter. 
 To have written and despatched from her prison such a manifesto, 
 shows her wonderful capacity for securing faithful services, and her 
 equally wonderful courage in relying both on the fidelity and the skil- 
 fulness of those who served her. She wrote afterwards to Philip 
 himself, and to his minister of evil, the Duke of Alva, in the same 
 strain. 
 
 In the manifesto issued in her name to all Christian princes, her 
 dealing with those who made her tempting offers for the abandonment 
 of her faith is described as * * leur disant haut et clair que plustot elle 
 perdroict la vie avec sa couronne et liberte pour jamais, que de quieter 
 aucune chose de la religion en laquelle seule consiste le salut de 
 I'ame."— Teulet, ii. 249. 
 
414 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 lang time within my realm, and been observed by my 
 predecessors, called the auld religion, yet, nevertheless, I 
 will use the counsel of my dearest sister the queen's ma- 
 jesty of England thereanent, by the advice of my Estates 
 in Parliament, and labour that is in me to cause the same 
 have place through all my realm, as it is proposed to the 
 glory of God and uniformity of religion in time coming.''^ 
 If she undertook to get the Estates of Scotland to abjure 
 the creed and forms which had been modelled on the 
 practice of France, and to substitute for them those of 
 England, she did what she could do with entire safety, 
 since she had not the faintest chance of being permitted 
 to keep her promise. To have engaged this for the pro- 
 pitiation of Elizabeth would have proved a repetition of 
 the farce of the assured lords," who bought their liberty 
 from Henry VIII., by a promise to betray their country 
 which they were unable to keep. 
 
 The troubled state of Scotland, and other incidental 
 causes, delayed the first steps in the great business until 
 the approach of winter. The only notable incident dur- 
 ing the interval was an address to Queen Elizabeth by 
 the leaders of Queen Mary's party, calling for an armed 
 intervention for the suppression of the rebellion and 
 the restoration of the Queen of Scots. They rested on 
 arguments which had at that stage of the business been 
 many times repeated, and the most notable feature of 
 their appeal is that the Hamiltons were no party to it, 
 unless they were represented by the Archbishop of St 
 Andrews. 
 
 In September the commission of inquiry was issued 
 under the great seal of England to three persons — the 
 Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Essex, and Sir Ralph Sadler. 
 No doubt it had been drawn and adjusted with much 
 anxious criticism. There is perceptible a skilful touch in 
 conferring on the confederates a certain quality of royalty. 
 They are not the rebels and traitors they had so often 
 been called in documents both of England and Scotland, 
 but persons " who have submitted themselves under the 
 
 1 Goodall, ii. 346. 
 
OPENING OF THE CONFERENCE, 1568. 415 
 
 obedience'' of our cousin the prince, son of our sister 
 the queen : " it was on the face of the commission rather 
 a family dispute than a question about a national revolu- 
 tion. The duty of the commissioners was to settle all 
 manner of hostilities, differences, controversies, questions, 
 matters, debates, and contentions," arising out of the 
 family division. Besides these instructions, only rendered 
 more vague by multiplicity of words, there were others for 
 confirming or improving the treaty of Edinburgh — that 
 which professed to withdraw Queen Mary's claim on the 
 crown of England.^ 
 
 The commissioners named by Queen Mary were Leslie 
 Bishop of Ross, Lord Livingston, Lord Boyd, Lord Her- 
 ries, Gavin Hamilton the Commendator of Kilwinning, 
 Gordon of Lochinvar, and Sir James Cockburn of Skirling. 
 The version of their commission which has come down to 
 us is a short document, stating that Queen Elizabeth had 
 engaged to restore the Queen of Scots to her realm and 
 authority, from which she had been extruded by certain 
 of her disobedient and rebellious subjects:'' they are 
 empowered to co-operate with her sister's commissioners 
 for the furtherance of this end.^ The EngHsh took a 
 technical objection to this commission as not sufficiently 
 broad to meet their own ; and it was afterwards enlarged 
 by the addition of a clause giving authority and power 
 to treat, conclude, and decern upon all matters and causes 
 in controversy between the Queen of Scots and her sub- 
 
 ^ Anderson, iv. p. ii, 6, 7. 
 
 ^ Ibid., 34. There is some mystery about this version of the com- 
 mission. Of that which was shown to the EngHsh commissioners, it 
 is complained by them that it contains a condition restraining her 
 commissioners **by special words to treat and agree upon anything 
 that might touch the said queen in her estate and honour," and also 
 limited their power by certain private articles and instructions.'' 
 The Scots commissioners proposed to withdraw this commission and 
 obtain another in more satisfactory form. — Ibid., 26, 27. The docu- 
 ment referred to in the text does not contain such clauses as the Eng- 
 lish objected to ; yet it cannot well be the amended commission, since 
 it is dated on the 29th of September, and the meeting at which it was 
 criticised was held on the 4th of October, while it does not contain 
 the additional clause referred to in the text. 
 
41 6 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 jects, so always as the same do not touch the title of her 
 crown nor sovereignty thereof." ^ 
 
 Though Queen Mary's commission was a short docu- 
 ment, her instructions to those who held it were long and 
 full. Yet long and full as they were, so nervous was their 
 mistress as to anything they might commit her to, that she 
 charges them, " how soon anything bes answered by my 
 disobedient subjects to the complaints foresaids, ye shall 
 desire the same to be given in writ, to the effect ye may 
 advise thereon with myself ere ye answer thereto, I being 
 so concerned, specially if the same touches my honour, 
 whilk I esteem mair tender than my life, crown, authority, 
 or any other thing on earth.'' The bulk of these instruc-. 
 tions is the oft-repeated narrative of the conduct of heffl 
 subjects towards her. She offers to forget and forgive ali 
 if they will return to their allegiance. She will not sub- 
 mit herself to the judgment of EHzabeth, or of any prince 
 or judge on earth ; but she is content to take the counsel of 
 the Queen of England as to the measure she shall deal out 
 towards her rebellious subjects. If she is charged with the 
 murder of her husband, it is to be denied. As appropriate 
 to this, one item of the instructions stands separate and 
 significant, in its anticipation of the production of the 
 casket letters — a contingency which, as we shall see, did 
 not come until an advanced stage in the conference ; " In 
 case they allege they have any writings of mine, whilk 
 may infer presumptions against me, in that cause, ye shall 
 desire the principals to be produced, and that I myself 
 may have inspection thereof and make answer thereto ; 
 for ye shall affirm in my name I never writ anything 
 concerning that matter to any creature. And if any such 
 writings be, they are false and feinyet, forgit and inventit 
 by themselves only to my dishonour and slander; and 
 there are divers in Scotland, both men and women, that 
 can counterfeit my handwriting, and write the like manner 
 of writing whilk I use as well as myself, and principally 
 such as are in company with themselves." ^ 
 
 ^ Report by the English commissioners, Oct. 17 ; Goodall, ii. 174. 
 2 Goodall, ii. 337-343- 
 
OPENING OF THE CONFERENCE, 1568. 417 
 
 The queen's commission was accompanied by a paper 
 of resolutions and instructions signed by a body of her 
 chief supporters. This, no doubt, was designed to balance 
 the Parliamentary authority by which all the proceedings 
 in the name of the infant king were sanctioned. 
 
 A third commission was issued in the name of " James, 
 by the grace of God King of Scots." The commissioners 
 named in it were Murray, Morton, Adam Bothwell Bishop 
 of Orkney — the same who had performed the ceremony at 
 the queen's last marriage — Robert Pitcairn Commendator 
 of Dunfermline, and Lord Lyndsay of the Byres. Their 
 functions were briefly expressed. They were " to convene 
 with the commissioners and deputies of our dearest sister 
 the Queen of England," and explain the causes whereupon 
 "divers of our nobility and good subjects/' during the 
 time of his mother's reign, rose in arms against her, and 
 put her under restraint, with power to adjust all matters 
 arising out of that business. There were powers for deal- 
 ing with the treaty of Edinburgh, either by confirming or 
 revising it, all for " the maintenance of the true religion 
 publicly professed by the inhabitants of both the realms," 
 and resisting any foreign power or party at home that 
 might disturb " the unity of the said religion ; as also for 
 increase of amity, peace, and concord betwixt our said 
 sister and us, our realms, dominions, people, and subjects." 
 On reading the three commissions, a stranger to the ac- 
 companying facts might naturally think that of all the 
 three potentates whose names were used, King James was 
 the one most completely at his ease about his royal rank 
 and prerogatives. 
 
 There exist instructions for the guidance of the English 
 commissioners more important in their revelations than 
 all the three commissions. Of these a portion — to appear- 
 ance very carefully adjusted under Cecil's revisal — con- 
 templated the restoration of Queen Mary, and made 
 provision accordingly. As the policy so laid down was 
 never practically tried, or even seriously discussed, a brief 
 notice of it may suffice, as showing a future which was at 
 least so far within human possibility that the sage servants 
 of the English crown thought fit to provide for it as a con- 
 
 VOL. IV. 2 D 
 
4i8 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 tingency. It was proposed that the queen should govern 
 through a council not of her own selection. The mem- 
 bers were to be appointed at the conference, and there 
 was to be an arrangement for filling vacancies by a vote. 
 This was virtually a permanent council of regency; in 
 modern phraseology it was putting the crown in commis- 
 sion. There were arrangements for an appeal to Queen 
 Elizabeth as umpire when difficulties of a specified kind 
 might interrupt the working of this State engine. It 
 was an instruction to the commissioners that they were to 
 get this arrangement suggested by the said Queen of 
 Scots' own princely motion, upon good persuasion to be 
 made to her on that behalf 
 
 The treaty of Edinburgh was to be confirmed, that 
 treaty so often referred to as stipulating that Queen Mary 
 should abandon her claim to the crown of England. In 
 demanding this confirmation, the English commissioners 
 were instructed to ofier a concession of an interesting and 
 important kind. It was intended by the treaty to exclude 
 all claim by Queen Mary during the life of Queen Eliza- 
 beth or her descendants. But in case it might be inferred, 
 owing to the dubious terms of the treaty, that the exclusion 
 was absolute, it was to be stipulated that " no part of the 
 said treaty made at Edinburgh shall bind the said Queen 
 of Scots or her children after the determination of the life 
 of the queen's majesty — which God long preserve — and 
 the heirs of her body." This concession was not suggested 
 by empty generosity. The old league with France was to 
 be so far modified that Scotland was not to assist the 
 French in an invasion of the English dominions; and should 
 the Queen of Scots do anything to assist a hostile invasion 
 of these dominions, she was to forfeit all title to the suc- 
 cession. 
 
 Passing from these specimens of unproductive state- 
 craft, we find an item in these instructions of far more 
 vivid interest, so far as we have to deal with the personal 
 character of the two queens. It may be remembered how 
 Murray pressed for an announcement of the course to be 
 taken by the Queen of England if the contents of the cas- 
 ket were found to be identical with the copies sent to 
 
THE CONFERENCE AT YORK, 1568. 419 
 
 England for perusal. The instructions, by way of dealing 
 with this appeal, put the supposition that the king's party 
 may be deterred from proffering their charge upon the 
 doubt they have that the queen's majesty will, notwith- 
 standing any crime proved upon her, restore her to her 
 kingdom and rule," whereupon they should never be free 
 from her indignation. Then follows this distinct instruc- 
 tion : ^' It may be answered by the queen's majesty's com- 
 missioners, that indeed her majesty's desire hath been 
 always from the beginning that the said queen might be 
 found free, especially from the crime of her husband's 
 murder. Nevertheless, if her majesty shall find it to be 
 plainly and manfully proved — whereof she would be very 
 sorry — that the said Queen of Scots was the deviser and 
 procurer of that murder, or otherwise was guilty thereof, 
 surely her majesty would think her unworthy of a kingdom, 
 and would not stain her own conscience in maintenance 
 of such a detestable wickedness by restoring her to a king- 
 dom." On the other hand, the grave charges went no 
 farther than suspicions and conjectures ; " and if nothing 
 could be proved against her save some indiscretions, it 
 would be proper to consider how she might be restored 
 without power to do mischief ; and it was to this end that 
 the limitations above referred to were devised.^ 
 
 Here a distinct change has come over the tone and 
 policy of Queen Elizabeth. That high position of a 
 divine right never to be questioned by subjects is aban- 
 doned. She tells the rebels and traitors of her former 
 denunciations that there are possible conditions under 
 which the queen they have deposed ought not to be re- 
 stored. And here, no doubt, Queen Elizabeth's conduct 
 courts the reproach, that while she refused to hear subjects 
 on a charge against their sovereign, she invited them to 
 promulgate their charges in their own defence. Nay, 
 farther, she drove them to the point that the crimes with 
 which they charged their queen must be of the deepest 
 dye, and the evidence in their support absolute and over- 
 whelming ; for on these conditions alone could they keep 
 
 ^ Anderson, iv. (2) 8 seq. 
 
420 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 their deposed sovereign from the throne and provide for 
 th^ir own safety. Thus Queen EHzabeth, who refused to 
 hear the charges against her sister queen, made sure that 
 they should be made, and made in the most aggravated 
 form. Such a conclusion would be irresistible under the 
 usual method of treating this affair as a mere personal 
 contest between two rival queens who hated and tried to 
 ruin each other — a contest wrought up into a picturesque 
 tragedy, relieved by touches of comedy or farce where the 
 bitternesses or weaknesses of the two furies becomes irre- 
 sistibly ludicrous. No doubt there was personal jealousy 
 and contention ; but there were powers at work so strong 
 as to lead towards broader purposes all such secondary 
 influences. At that time any probable concurrence of 
 events — as, for instance, the paralysis of the Huguenot 
 party in France, or the subjugation of the Dutch — might 
 virtually arm all Europe against the English Government. 
 Nor was it expected to be a war for the subjugation of the 
 English people, all united to meet the enemy with their 
 old stubborn courage. The strangers would seek only to 
 drive the heretic queen from her throne ; they would find 
 sympathisers, if not actual allies, in a large body of her 
 people still attached to the old Church. The Romish 
 party in Scotland would vigorously aid a project to place 
 their own queen on the throne of England; and there 
 would be such things done in Ireland as, if they might 
 not materially affect the condition of Europe, would leave 
 tragic recollections behind them. In the king's party 
 Murray and the other leaders had serious political problems 
 to solve. These stood in the way of his acting either the 
 devoted or the treacherous brother, if either had been his 
 object. And even among the adherents of Queen Mary, 
 subject as they had been to the unsettling influences of 
 her wild and wayward career, there were those who had a 
 public policy in view outweighing personal considerations. 
 Some there may have been who believed in her innocence; 
 but to many this question was of secondary consideration. 
 They held, and honestly held, the doctrine that the crimes 
 and follies of princes are to be buried in silence and 
 blindness. They were not to be told to the world, and 
 
THE CONFERENCE AT YORK, 1568. 42 1 
 
 they were not even to be seen by the eyes that looked 
 upon them. 
 
 Besides the great questions arising out of foreign policy 
 holding influence over the attitude taken by England 
 there was a point of policy more domestic in its charac- 
 ter which materially affected the form and tenor of the 
 conduct of the English Government towards Scotland. 
 This is the old question of the feudal supremacy of the 
 crown of England over the crown of Scotland. The forged 
 documents so distinctly setting forth this supremacy had 
 now been more than a century among the English archives. 
 Now that they were themselves old, it was less easy than 
 ever to prove the falsity of the internal evidence that they 
 were three hundred years older. No English statesman 
 had more occasion to doubt the story they told than he 
 had to doubt the venerated records which proved the 
 prerogatives of the Crown, the jurisdiction of the courts 
 of law, and the privileges of the peerage. Without keep- 
 ing this fact ever in view, it is impossible rightly to under- 
 stand the conduct of English statesmen throughout the 
 history of Queen Mary. Perhaps none of them contem- 
 plated an offensive or oppressive use of the feudal supre- 
 macy. It was to be employed magnanimously in the 
 construction of one grand empire out of the two nations. 
 We have already found Cecil projecting beneficent pro- 
 jects to be wrought out by England's supremacy. If there 
 was something of the domineering and the intermeddling 
 in the conduct of England, it would all come forth as 
 moderation and duty when the removal of prejudices gave 
 freedom for explanation. 
 
 Meanwhile it was necessary so long as possible to con- 
 ceal this motive - influence from the unreasonable and 
 irritable Scots. Up to the point we have reached in the 
 negotiations about Queen Mary, it is repeatedly referred 
 to in the instructions and other documents intended solely 
 for English eyes — never in those which had to pass into 
 Scotland. A juncture, however, had now come when it 
 appears to have been considered that the danger must be 
 faced. Perhaps a protest by Queen Mary's commissioners, 
 that their mistress, in seeking the intervention of her good 
 
422 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 sister, did not as a sovereign princess recognise any judge 
 on earth, may have rendered an appeal to the supremacy 
 a technical necessity. At all events the Queen of Eng- 
 land's commissioners protested, as to the claim of the 
 Queen of Scots, that they neither did nor would admit 
 nor allow the same to be in any wise hurtful or prejudicial 
 to the right title and interest incident to the crown of 
 England, which the queen's majesty and all her noble 
 progenitors, kings of this realm, have claimed, had, and 
 enjoyed, as superiors over the realm of Scotland." ^ 
 
 The commissioners, reporting to their mistress, told 
 the result in these curious terms : " And so we passed 
 over the matter with them in merry and pleasant speeches, 
 not yielding to their opinion nor they to ours touching 
 the matter contained in our said protestation." ^ One 
 who had good means of information tells us that when 
 the matter of supremacy and homage was pressed upon 
 the commissioners of the young king, an angry flush 
 passed over Murray's face; but Lethington seized the 
 opportunity for the display of one of his favourite accom- 
 plishments, and flung back a scornful answer, fitted to 
 drive the proposal out of the range of serious business : 
 it would be time to adjust the question of homage when 
 the lands between the Humber and the Tweed, for which 
 it had been rendered, were restored to the crown of 
 Scotland ; " but as to the crown and kingdom of Scotland, 
 it was freer than England had been lately, when it paid 
 St Peter's penny to the Paip." ^ It is a feature in all the 
 codes of law rooted in feudal usages, that claims which 
 there is no intention and perhaps no ability to enforce, 
 must at all events be stated at intervals to save them from 
 extinction, the acquiescence of the opposite party not being 
 necessary for the preservation of the latent vitality. The 
 policy of the EngHsh commissioners seems to have been 
 modelled on such precedents. 
 
 ^ Anderson, iv. (2) 50. ^ ibid., 42. 
 
 3 Sir James Melville's Memoirs, 206. 
 
423 
 
 CHAPTER LII. 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 {Continued.) 
 
 OPENING OF THE INQUIRY — THE CHARGE OF REBELLION AGAINST 
 MURRAY AND HIS PARTY — THEIR DEFENCE INVOLVING A COUNTER- 
 CHARGE, BUT RESERVING THE CHARGE OF MURDER— THE REMOVAL 
 OF THE INQUIRY TO LONDON — THE ENDEAVOURS TO DISCOVER 
 WHAT THE RESULT WOULD BE WERE THE CHARGE MADE AND 
 PROVED— PRIVATE DISCUSSIONS OF THE CASKET LETTERS — QUEEN 
 MARY'S CONFERENCES WITH THE BISHOP OF ROSS ON THE SAFEST 
 COURSE— DIRECTS ANY CHARGES AGAINST HER TO BE DENIED— 
 LETHINGTON'S MACHINATIONS — THE DUKE OF NORFOLK — HIS 
 ACQUAINTANCE WITH THE CHARGES, AND HIS PROFFERS TO QUEEN 
 MARY— THE POLICY OF SUCH A MARRIAGE CONSIDERED —THE 
 RESERVATION OF THE PUBLIC CHARGE OF MURDER — MADE AT 
 LAST — THE EFFECT ON THE DISCUSSIONS— THE BOOK OF ARTICLES — 
 THE PRODUCTION OF THE CASKET LETTERS— TENDERING OF THE 
 TESTIMONY OF THOMAS CRAUFURD AS TO THE MEETING IN GLAS- 
 GOW — PERPLEXITIES OF THE BISHOP OF ROSS — THE INQUIRY 
 GRADUALLY CLOSES— INCOMPLETENESS OF THE APPARENT RESULTS 
 — REAL RESULTS BEHIND THEM— THE CAREER OF BOTHWELL— HIS 
 FLIGHT — IMPRISONMENT IN NORWAY AND DENMARK— HIS DANISH 
 WIFE — HIS OFFERS TO RESTORE ORKNEY AND SHETLAND — HIS 
 DEATH. 
 
 So began the great process which, standing, as it does, 
 alone in feudal history with no precedent, has naturally 
 enough excited much discussion on the question whether 
 it was lawful or unlawful. It must have made an animated 
 scene in York. As bitter enemies had to walk the streets 
 and meet each other, anxious arrangements were made by 
 the English Government for the preservation of the peace, 
 
424 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 and they appear to have been successful. Many were 
 there besides the commissioners and the necessary staff 
 of officers. Murray had with him Macgill, Buchanan, 
 and, as we have seen, Lethington. It was said that the 
 regent was afraid to leave this versatile man behind lest he 
 should work mischief ; but, as we shall see, he might have 
 had less opportunity for such work at home than he found 
 in England. 
 
 Besides the Scots commissioners, who were supposed 
 to represent public interests, another accuser was at work 
 whose motives were avowedly of a narrower kind. This 
 was Lennox, the father of the murdered Darnley. We 
 have seen how his efforts to bring Both well to justice 
 were baffled. It was but natural, after what had passed 
 then and since, that he should help the combination 
 against her who had first shielded and then married the 
 murderer of his son. He was in a position to know all. 
 He knew the story told by the casket letters, and had 
 peculiar faciHties for deciding whether they were genuine 
 or false, since, as we have seen, he had in his possession a 
 report, set down by another observer, of the conversations 
 detailed in them. If the letters were forged to shape 
 them to this report, or if this report had been adjusted to 
 confirm the story told in the letters, Lennox must have 
 known the real truth. Whatever he believed, there are 
 traces that he busied himself in collecting collateral evi- 
 dence, tending not merely to support the joint story of the 
 casket letters and of his own adherent, but otherwise to 
 bring home guilty conclusions against his son's widow.^ 
 
 When in point of form the controversy had begun, it 
 was in form only. The two parties pretended to attack 
 
 ^ Notes on the Hamilton Papers by George Chalmers, edited by 
 Joseph Robertson for the Maitland Club Miscellany, vol. iv. part i. 
 " He calls the queen the destroyer of his family, and of all his friends 
 and servants, of which he says there is sufficiency in her own hand- 
 writ, by the faith of her letters, to condemn her. Nevertheless he 
 would have them, by all possible methods, to search for more matters, 
 not only against her, but against all those who had come thither (to 
 England) in company with her, and by what means the articles which 
 he had sent them might be made out."— P. ii8. 
 
CONFERENCE AT YORK, 1568. 
 
 425 
 
 and defend under a tacit understanding that the real con- 
 test should be deferred. The chief reason for this was^ 
 that the assurance as to the ultimate steps to be taken in 
 the event of Queen Mary's guilt being proved was only 
 partially satisfactory. Elizabeth had changed her tone, 
 and had said what would have been sufficient to commit 
 a more scrupulous person to the desired course of action , 
 but Murray, knowing by bitter experience with whom he 
 had to deal, required stronger assurances before he took 
 that step which, in the understanding of all concerned, 
 was to close the door against all possibility of reconcilia- 
 tion between the two great parties in Scotland — the step 
 of publicly charging the Queen of Scots with murder at 
 that tribunal which the Queen of England had set up. 
 Whether Murray's party ought to have felt satisfied was 
 matter of much discussion among the commissioners. It 
 seems needless to enter on an arialysis of their subtle 
 altercations, and to be sufficient to give in its place the 
 demand ultimately made by Murray's party. 
 
 The etiquette by which Elizabeth professed to guard 
 the sovereign dignity of the queen who was yet to plead 
 before her was formally observed. She was to be the 
 accuser, and her subjects were to be heard only in their 
 defence. The queen accordingly made her charge of re- 
 bellion. The point of time at which her narrative be- 
 gins is that of the assemblage at Carberry Hill, so that 
 she has no occasion to refer to the murder of her husband 
 or the existence of such a person as Bothwell. In brief 
 formal terms it is told how she was forcibly conveyed to 
 prison, and how on her escape she was again assailed by 
 force. These undutiful acts in the end compelled her to 
 come to England, to require of the queen her nearest 
 relation " favour and support, that she may enjoy peace- 
 ably her realm according to God's calling, and that they 
 her subjects may be caused recognise their dutiful obe- 
 dience." There is no demand for punishment or out- 
 burst of revengeful wrath ; and those partial to such close 
 examinations would find an interest in comparing this 
 document with the passionate and fierce appeals made by 
 Queen Mary to her friends abroad and to Elizabeth herself 
 
426 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 Murray and his colleagues made answer, going farther 
 back. They mention the murder, saying it was committed 
 by Bothwell, and was followed by his " attaining to " a 
 marriage with the queen. These things are briefly and 
 gently told as the cause of what followed. Her unfortu- 
 nate position demanded their intervention, and compelled 
 them ''to sequestrate her person for a season. Then, 
 weary of spirit, she abdicated her crown in favour of her 
 son, and authorised her brother to act for him as regent. 
 All this was confirmed in Parliament ; and the new 
 Government was duly honoured and obeyed, until certain 
 evil-minded persons, " disdaining to see justice pioceed 
 as it was begun, and likely to have continued, to the 
 punishment of many offenders over the haill country," 
 practised to reinstate the power of the ex-queen, contrary 
 to the Act of Parliament and the established rule over 
 the land. Thereupon they require that the king and 
 regent in his behalf "may peaceably enjoy and govern 
 his realm according to God's calling, and that his majesty's 
 disobedient subjects may be caused recognise their debtful 
 obedience." There is a reservation that the commissioners 
 may " eke " or add to their statement ; and what they did 
 eke was, as we shall find, far more important than the 
 statement itself. 
 
 Before issuing their defence, these commissioners had 
 prepared a document of a different kind. The charge was 
 issued on the 8th of October, and next day Murray laid 
 on the table a set of " articles or '' demands." The first 
 was, " We desire to be resolved whether ye have com- 
 mission and sufficient authority from the queen's majesty 
 of England to pronounce in the cause of the murder guilty 
 or not guilty, according to the merits of the cause, and as 
 ye shall see matter deduced before you." The reasons 
 for such a demand have already been discussed. The 
 articles demand an anticipation of the result. If the de- 
 cision be ''guilty," will she be either delivered to the 
 Scots Government, or detained in England so as to be 
 kept from mischief? and will the Queen of England con- 
 cur in what has been done in Scotland since the meeting 
 
COXFERENXE AT YORK, 156S. 
 
 at CarbeiT)- Hill, and honestly support the young king's 
 rule, as established by Act of iParliament ? 
 
 On the nth Queen Elizabeth's commissioners wrote to 
 her a remarkable letter. They call attention to the Scots 
 commissioners' articles as matters on which it was but 
 reasonable that the Scots should desire to be satisfied 
 before they made their full charge. But there is matter of 
 deeper interest in the letter. The English commissioners 
 were privately shown the contents of the casket : and they 
 give a description of them, and of the effect produced on 
 those who saw them. After mentioning several of the 
 documents in their order, the Enghsh commissioners say : 
 " Afterwards they showed unto us one horrible and long 
 letter of her own hand, as they say, containing foul matter, 
 and abominable to be either thought of or to be ^^Titten 
 by a prince, with divers fond ballads of her own hand : 
 which letters, ballads, and other writings before specified, 
 were closed in a litde coffer of silver, and gilt, heretofore 
 given by her to BothwelL The said ballads and letters 
 do discover such inordinate love between her and iBoth- 
 well, her loathsomeness and abhorring of her husband that 
 was murdered, in such sort as every good and godly man 
 will not but detest and abhor the same. And these men 
 here do constandy affirm the said letters and other writings 
 produced of her own hand to be of her own hand indeed, 
 and do offer to swear and take their oaths thereupon, the 
 matter contained in them being such as could hardly be 
 invented or de^ised by any other than by herself ; for that 
 they discourse of some things which were unknown to any 
 other than to herself and iBothwell ; and as it is hard to 
 counterfeit so many, so the matter of them, and the man- 
 ner how these men came by them, is such as it seemeth 
 that God, in whose sight murder and bloodshed of the 
 innocent is abominable, would not permit the same to be 
 hid or concealed. ' It is clear that these men, who were 
 not fools, were at once convinced that a true story had 
 been revealed to them. 
 
 The qualification that they have but the word of the 
 Scots commissioners for the handwriting being Queen 
 
428 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 Mary's is frequently repeated, but it is pretty clear that 
 the commissioners had not much doubt on the point. The 
 tone of their letter creates one of the minor mysteries of 
 the drama. It is evidently the writing of men who have 
 become acquainted for the first time with the tenor of the 
 casket documents ; and yet, as we have seen, Murray sent 
 a copy of these for their instruction. They noted, for the 
 use of their mistress, ^' the chief and special points of the 
 said letters," a task that would have been unnecessary 
 had a full copy of them been for some time in their own 
 and their queen's hands. These notes contain extracts, 
 the effect of which, as we have already seen, has been to 
 preserve the most flagrant passages of the documents, and 
 so to show that any subsequent tampering with them 
 would have been a useless act.^ The notes are sent, as 
 they say, to the intent it may please your majesty to 
 consider of them, and so to judge whether the same be 
 sufficient to convince her of the detestable crime of the 
 murder of her husband, which in our opinion and con- 
 sciences, if the said letters be written with her own hand, 
 is very hard to be avoided ; most humbly beseeching your 
 majesty that it may please the same to advertise us of 
 your opinion and judgment thereon, and to direct us, with 
 such speed as to your highness shall be thought conve- 
 nient, how we shall proceed farther in this great matter." 
 
 It has to be remembered that this private revelation to 
 the English commissioners of the casket documents was 
 made that Murray's party might feel their way before they 
 did that which was to close the door of reconciliation — 
 before they brought up the charge of murder as one of the 
 points to be investigated by the commission. It was to 
 be a thoroughly confidential matter between the two groups 
 of commissioners, as if they were private persons giving 
 information to each other on a delicate affair. Murray's 
 party believed that they had buried this conference in dead 
 secrecy, but Queen Mary's commissioners discovered it. 
 They immediately told it to her, and she fashioned her 
 
 See chap, xlvii. 
 
THE INQUIRY AND CASKET LETTERS, 1568. 429 
 
 policy accordingly.^ Nothing that the English commis- 
 sioners could say sufficed to place Murray's party at ease 
 about the great question, What if all were proved ? The 
 reading of the involved and hesitating assurances given to 
 them is apt to excite a sympathy with their suspicion ; for 
 it is clear that the English commissioners were not them- 
 selves assured, and were afraid to use clear honest words, 
 if these were to commit their mistress to a course of action. 
 At length there arrived a document which looks as if it 
 ought to have satisfied the suspicious Scots. It contained 
 a specific answer to each of Murray's articles. On the 
 question whether the commissioners have authority to 
 decide guilty or not guilty, it is answered that they have. 
 On the question as to what would be done if the finding 
 were '^guilty,'' the assurance is, ^^If the Queen of Scots 
 shall be justly proved and found guilty of the murder of 
 her husband, which were much to be lamented, she shall 
 be either delivered into your hands upon good and suf- 
 ficient sureties and assurances for the safety of her life and 
 good usage of her, or else she shall continue keeped in 
 England upon the reasonable charges of the crown of 
 Scotland, in such sort that neither the prince her son, nor 
 you the Earl of Murray, nor any other, for holding part or 
 maintaining the said prince, shall be in any danger by her 
 liberty." On the question how far she would support the 
 existing Government, the answer was, that as to the past, 
 she would " allow the proceedings," as far as these could 
 be shown to have been lawful by the former laws of 
 Scotland " in force when they were done. For the future, 
 her majesty, " according to the said laws of Scotland, and 
 in respect of the demission of the crown made by her to 
 the said prince her son, if the same may be proven, will 
 maintain the authority of the same prince to be the king ; 
 and the regiment of the said realm now being in the pos- 
 session of you, the Earl of Murray, until it shall and may 
 be also duly proved by the laws of the said realm that any 
 other person of that realm ought by right to be regent or 
 
 Knollys to Norfolk ; Goodall, ii. 159. 
 
430 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 governor of the same, or that any other form of govern- 
 ment ought to be there used or allowed." 
 
 These were distinct answers ; yet a shade of dubiety 
 was thrown across them by a preamble, where their author, 
 while she freely announces her good intention, yet she 
 meaneth not nor will that any person do thereof interpret 
 that thereby the said Earl of Murray, or any with him, 
 should be boldened, moved, or anywise comforted to enter 
 into accusation of the said queen for any crime or sus- 
 picion of crime ; for that her majesty principally wishes 
 that, upon the hearing of this great cause, the honour and 
 estate of the said Queen of Scots were preserved and found 
 sincerely sound, whole, and firm.'* ^ 
 
 Before this paper was received the place of meeting of 
 the conference had been changed, and other events had 
 occurred to influence its character. For these we must 
 look outside of the conference itself Before, however, 
 bringing up this branch of the narrative, it may be right 
 to mention two passages of a secondary kind standing on 
 the record of the conference. One of these was the re- 
 joinder by Queen Mary's commissioners to the defence of 
 Murray and his party. Within the limits to which the 
 contest was restricted, it was full and persuasive. She was 
 a sovereign, and her subjects had rebelled against her; this 
 was the text, and the discourse distinctly brought it forth in 
 detail.^ The other document was a letter of special instruc- 
 tion by Queen Elizabeth to her commissioners. These 
 unhappy men, if they had not known all too well the voice 
 which spoke to them, might well have said, in the words 
 of Scripture, "Who is this that darkeneth counsel by 
 words without knowledge ? '' To abbreviate the meaning 
 of sentences so adjusted as not to have a meaning is im- 
 practicable, and it would not aid the narrative to intro- 
 duce such a document in full. Tt is more suitable as a 
 study in royal or feminine correspondence than an aid to 
 the reader, who could only be as much perplexed by its con- 
 tents as were those to whom it was addressed. She desires 
 certain members of all the three commissions to come to 
 
 ^ Anderson, iv. (2) 109, 113. 
 
 2 Ibid., 8a 
 
THE INQUIRY AND CASKET LETTERS, 1568. 43 1 
 
 her and discuss the matters referred to in the letter. That 
 in her verbal communings she dispelled the darkness of 
 her written sentences is not known, nor is it to be inferred 
 from the conduct of her advisers, which was that of men 
 in sore perplexity who wist not what to do. On one point 
 there is a distinct announcement ; but its distinctness is as 
 curious and perverse as the cloudiness of the others : " In 
 the dealing herein ye shall do well to have good regard 
 that none of the Queen of Scots' commissioners may gather 
 any doubt of any evil success of her cause, but that they 
 may imagine this conference of ours principally to be 
 meant how her restitution may be devised with surety of 
 the prince her son and the nobility that have adhered to 
 him." 1 It will be noticed that not only does Queen 
 Elizabeth here give no intimation that she will in any case 
 further the restoration of Queen Mary, but she does not 
 empower her commissioners to say that she will. They 
 are only to have good regard that Queen Mary's commis- 
 sioners shall " imagine ^' such a result. 
 
 In November the conference was removed from York 
 to London by Queen Elizabeth's order. The reasons for 
 this step are set forth with the usual cloudy elaborateness ; 
 but it were needless to repeat them here, as there is no 
 chance that the true reason may be found among them. 
 This, indeed, must rather be inferred from the separate 
 occurrences now to be looked into. The inquiry at this 
 point assumed a more august shape. It was to be held 
 before the Queen of England in Council. Those named 
 for the special duty were Sir Nicholas Bacon the Lord 
 Keeper, Norfolk, the Lords Arundel, Sussex, Leicester, 
 Lord Clinton and Saye, Cecil, and Sadler. The two sets 
 of Scots commissioners continued as they were, and con- 
 sequently the increase in number and rank of the English 
 commissioners detracted somewhat from the character of 
 a conference where all were on an equality, and assumed 
 the air of a high court of justice. Guarding as well as 
 they could against such appearances. Queen Mary's repre- 
 sentatives objected to the holding of the meetings in the 
 
 1 Goodall, ii. 172. 
 
432 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 Painted Chamber, or in any other place where courts of 
 law were in use to be held, or judicial business at any 
 time transacted. To humour them Hampton Court was 
 selected as the place. By an ingenious turn in their 
 phraseology, Leslie and his brethren did still more to pre- 
 serve their position. They spoke as ambassadors of a 
 sovereign prince who met in equal conference with the 
 representatives of another sovereign. 
 
 Down to the 26th of November the great charge had 
 not yet been publicly made. Queen Mary was conscious 
 that her enemies were approaching it, and in a manner 
 flickering round it. At this critical juncture her conduct 
 and deportment deserve all attention. 
 
 Her attached counsellor, Leslie, Bishop of Ross, was 
 reluctantly compelled at Norfolk's trial to give an account 
 of his intercourse with his mistress since her arrival in 
 England. He came to her at Bolton about the i8th of 
 September, and discussed the prospects of the conference 
 with her. He found her expectation to be, that Murray 
 and the others were to be arraigned for theii* undutiful 
 conduct ; and then there was to be a compromise, and 
 they were to be received into favour by the intervention 
 of Queen Elizabeth. The bishop took a different view. 
 He showed her that if her enemies were provoked they 
 would tell all, and regretted that she had allowed a con- 
 ference : " I was sorry that she had agreed to any confer- 
 ence wherein they should be accused, for I was assured in 
 that case they would utter all they could for their defence, 
 although it were to her dishonour and that of the whole 
 realm, for they would be loath to confess openly that they 
 were evil subjects and she a good princess; and therefore 
 I wished that the whole matter should first be treated by 
 way of concord and agreement.*' There is something 
 ominously suggestive in her best friend and supporter thus 
 instantly reaching the conclusion that her enemies knew 
 that which would put her in their power, and that it was 
 dangerous to provoke them. Scarcely less suggestive was 
 her reception of this warning. There was no haughty 
 defiance of threatened calumny : The queen replied that 
 there was no such danger in the matter as I supposed ; 
 
NORFOLK'S WOOING, 1568. 433 
 
 for she trusted I would find the judges favourable, princi- 
 pally the Duke of Norfolk, who was first in commission ; 
 and doubted not that the Earl of Sussex would be ruled 
 by him as his tender friend, and Sir Ralph Sadler would 
 not gainstand their advices/' 
 
 The bishop goes on to tell with more minuteness the in- 
 fluences at work to this end, and the manner of the capture 
 of Norfolk. In the midst of these secondary matters he 
 describes an interview between himself and Norfolk: "I' 
 talked with the duke alone in a gallery, where he uttered 
 to me he bore goodwill to the queen my mistress, and 
 that he had talked with the Earl of Murray and Lethington 
 at length, and had seen the letters which they had to pro- 
 duce against the queen my mistress, and other defences, 
 whereby there would such matter be proven against her 
 that would dishonour her for ever ; and if it were once 
 published, the queen's majesty of England would get 
 counsel by such as loved not my mistress to publish the 
 same to the world, and to send ambassadors to all other 
 Christian princes to make the same known to them, that 
 they could make no further suit for her delivery, and per- 
 haps greater rigour might ensue to her person/' It was 
 one of Lethington's subtle suggestions that she might grant 
 a confirmation of the abdication signed at Lochleven. As 
 she was in durance, the confirmation would be as worthless 
 as the original, and both might be abjured at the right 
 time. To this the duke answered, "What if that were 
 done to get quit of the present infamy and slander, and 
 let him work the rest ? " ^ 
 
 Among those who watched for the signs of coming 
 events at Court, some had supposed that it would please 
 Queen Elizabeth were her rival married to some suitable 
 English subject. They thought it likely that she would 
 take it well that he should be selected from her own 
 kindred on the mother's side ; it would be an advance- 
 ment in rank to them, and there were no other persons of 
 power and influence in the country over whom she had so 
 strong a personal control. But there was a powerful sub- 
 
 1 Murdin's State Papers, 52, $3 ; State Trials, i. 975, 976. 
 VOL. IV. 2 E 
 
434 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 ject who desired this honour for himself, even the Duke 
 of Norfolk, the head of the commission. He had man- 
 aged at a very early period to let her understand his views ; 
 for when she told Leslie the reasons for her sanguine 
 prospects, one of them was, that she understood of the 
 duke's goodwill towards her, and the bruit was else spread 
 abroad of a marriage betwixt the duke and her.'' At the 
 same time the bishop tells that, in a conference with 
 Lethington and Sir Robert Melville, on which they "talked 
 almost a whole night," Lethington told him how ^*he had 
 conferred with the duke, who seemed to have great good- 
 will to the queen my mistress, and had willed him to 
 counsel the Earl of Murray and others to abstain from 
 uttering any dishonest matter against the queen, but to 
 grow to some composition among themselves ; so that 
 Lethington said it appeared to him that the duke had 
 some intention of marriage with the queen, as the bruit 
 was, and their party did wholly suspect some such like 
 matter, and that he did verily believe that if it were 
 followed the marriage would take effect, which would 
 be most of all other things for the queen's honour and 
 welL^'i 
 
 Murdin, 53. Bishop Leslie appears to have been the man who 
 was deepest in the secrets about the project of the Norfolk marriage. 
 A reader of his Negotiations " might suppose him to say that it was 
 encouraged by Queen Elizabetli and her Government as a serious 
 object of English policy. The admission that it was otherwise is so 
 casual that a careless reader might fail to notice it. Lord Boyd 
 having come to him with Queen Mary's answers about the several 
 matters under discussion, he says, ** He and I conferred divers times 
 with the Queen of England upon the contents thereof, saving the 
 purpose of the marriage, whereupon the nobility and Council did treat 
 with us, whom we thought credible that they would never have done 
 unless they had made the queen their mistress privy thereto." Then, 
 taking the tone of a man who, though he cannot distinctly charge 
 any of them with falsehood or deceit, complains that the position of 
 the men he dealt with, and the tone assumed by them, led him to 
 expect results other than what occurred, he enumerates the magnates 
 according to their heraldic rank, from Norfolk down to " the Earl of 
 Leicester, great master of her horses, and most tender unto her," 
 concluding that they were altogether persons whose authority and 
 credit were sufficient for us to deal with them." — Anderson, iii. 54, 
 55. The important words in this statement are ** saving the purpose 
 
NORFOLK'S WOOING, 1568. 
 
 The new suitor had avowed his belief in her guilt. He 
 was a party to that report by the commissioners about the 
 casket letters, which leans so strongly to a belief in their 
 genuineness, and speaks with so much horror of the 
 wickedness they reveal. In putting his signature to this 
 document, he might have only certified the expressions 
 and opinions of his colleagues j but elsewhere he goes out 
 of his way to speak in the same tone. So in a letter to 
 Pembroke, Leicester, and Cecil collectively: "There is 
 but two ways to be taken — the one, if the fact shall be 
 thought as detestable and manifest to you, as for aught we 
 can perceive it seemeth here to us, that condign judgment, 
 with open demonstration to the whole world, with the 
 whole circumstances, and plain, true, and indifferent pro- 
 ceedings therein, may directly appear ; of which, for our 
 own discharge, we do not omit to keep good and sufficient 
 memorials, not forgetting with what manner of person we 
 have to deal, nor yet how the upright handling of this 
 cause shall import us both in honour and honesty to the 
 whole world. The other is, if her majesty shall not allow 
 of this, then to take such composition as in so broken a 
 cause may be." ^ 
 
 It is natural to connect with this affair a sudden change 
 in the captive^s designs about Bothwell. Heretofore she 
 has been found to spurn with angry disdain all suggestions 
 to repudiate him. But on the 21st of October she gives 
 authority that if the illegality of that marriage be mooted, 
 "ye shall answer that we are content that the laws be sued 
 for separation thereof, so far as the same will permit.'' 2 
 In fact she granted a commission to Lord Boyd to sue 
 out a divorce in her name, because her marriage with Both- 
 well "was for divers respects unlawful," and "the same 
 does touch us so highly in honour and conscience, that it 
 daily and hourly vexes our conscience."^ 
 
 of the marriage," showing that this was not an article in these nego- 
 tiations. 
 
 1 Anderson, iv. (2) 78. The "good and sufficient memorials" 
 were doubtless the notes of the casket documents preserved by the 
 commissioners, already mentioned. 
 
 2 Labanoff, ii. 221. ^ Boyd Papers, 24. 
 
436 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 The wooing of Norfolk and the fugitive queen is one 
 of the mysterious passages in history. There is an un- 
 pleasant indistinctness as to the policy or motive influenc- 
 ing either the principal actors in it or their abettors. We 
 know so much of its secret movements as that Murray 
 favoured it ; but we cannot now tell why he should have 
 done so, and contemporaries seem to have been equally 
 puzzled. The perplexed speculator is tempted to seek 
 refuge in the fact that the marriage was a pet scheme of 
 Lethington's. What cannot be explained from the political 
 conditions of the period is accounted for by the nature of 
 the moving spirit. For the other actors of the time we 
 find some motive in the broad face of politics : they were 
 influenced by selfishness, or ambition, or zeal ; they wanted 
 wealth, or promotion, or the aggrandisement of family or 
 party. The broadest and the purest motives among them 
 were patriotism and religious zeal. But Lethington took 
 his inspiration from the lamp. He tried such motive 
 influences in politics as he found in the works of classical 
 and Italian politicians. Among the common politicians 
 of the day he was like an alchymist acquainted with 
 formidable chemical combinations unknown to others, 
 and not so well at his own command but that the result 
 was often explosive and disastrous. On one point he 
 might be trusted — he was patriotic. The honour of Scot- 
 land was safe in his keeping, safe from any design against 
 it, though not from imprudent meddling. It has been 
 said, indeed, in a quarter worthy of all respect, that the 
 great passion of his life and the inspirer of his restless 
 energies was the desire to see the house of Stewart reign- 
 ing over England.^ 
 
 With this caution against any attempt to draw an 
 absolute conclusion, it may not be amiss to sketch the 
 considerations most likely to be uppermost in such a 
 scheming brain. There still dwelt among the English 
 aristocracy that proud republican tone which had incited 
 them to the barons' wars, and taught them to treat the 
 monarch as chief among themselves rather than as a star 
 
 Froude, x. 32, 90. 
 
THE ACCUSATION, 1568. 
 
 437 
 
 apait. The clergy had been promulgating the divine-right 
 doctrines of the civilians ; and even the common-lawyers 
 had imbibed them, and were becoming servile to the 
 Court. Since the beginning of the Tudor dynasty the 
 power and dignity of the aristocracy had been sapped in 
 many ways. Men of obscure origin, like Cromwell and 
 Cecil, had lorded it over them, and become supreme in 
 the State. Henry's marriage with the queen's mother had 
 brought a whole troop of obscure relations to the steps 
 of the throne. Norfolk was chief among the proud old 
 nobility who had to bear all this, and was the natural 
 man to head an effort for redress. To drive the present 
 occupant from the throne, and place another there who 
 would accept of the charge under conditions, was an 
 almost constitutional form of redress in England ; and 
 such an effort would be favoured by the adherents of the 
 old Church. Thus might Lethington see his vision of a 
 Scots sovereign ruling England realised. Had it come 
 up while Mary's character was still unstained, it might 
 have had a good chance of success ; but that it should 
 now be available was an idea fit only for the restless mind 
 of Lethington, if it really was the idea entertained by him. 
 But even if we can in any satisfactory fashion adapt the 
 project to the mind of Lethington, it is hard to see where 
 there could have been room for it in the harder head of 
 Murray. We must, it is feared, impute but a poor and 
 unheroic motive to any countenance he gave it, and hold 
 it to concur with the story that he was threatened with 
 assassination near Northallerton, and that he was content 
 to play such a part as would secure the protection of 
 Norfolk, the potentate of the north of England. This 
 affair was the chief new element in the great cause when it 
 found its way to London. 
 
 It will be remembered that the fatal charge had not yet 
 been uttered. Familiar with it as a statement bandied 
 about in the documents of the time, it takes consideration to 
 realise the fact that it should yet be to be made. We know 
 that it stood on the records of the Scots Privy Council, 
 that it was declared in an Act of the Scots Parliament, and 
 that it was freely talked over by all the commissioners; 
 
438 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 yet we are bound to believe that the actual tabling of the 
 charge in express words would be a crisis to all concerned. 
 It was one fondly hoped against to the last by Queen 
 Mary and her advisers, and to the accusers themselves it 
 was a step pondered over as a perilous necessity. It 
 would appear, that for all that had been done before, this 
 was the one remaining step necessary as a public arraign- 
 ment before the Courts of Europe. The minutes of the 
 Privy Council, and even the Act of Parliament, would 
 be at the command of the Government of the day. In 
 fact, if the queen had been restored with full authority, 
 both the Privy Council and the Estates of Parliament 
 would be treated as illegal bodies, and their proceedings 
 would be waste paper. And as to the mere scandal 
 privately circulated among the commissioners and the 
 members of the Scots Estates — how lightly that might 
 be treated we may infer from the conduct of Norfolk, who 
 desired that things should remain as they were, so as to 
 let his wooing proceed with decorum. 
 
 It must not be entirely overlooked, among the reasons 
 against the public accusation, that the claims of the house 
 of Stewart on the succession to the EngHsh throne were 
 admitted by others than the stern Romanists who desired 
 the removal of Elizabeth. Queen Mary was her legiti- 
 mate successor, and if the succession should open in the 
 course of nature, it would be an awkward contingency that 
 she had been charged with murder. The succession was 
 more likely to open to her son than to herself ; and people 
 who looked forward to the infant prince of Scotland as 
 the possible King of England, foresaw that to him the 
 accusation might carry matter of probable trouble and 
 scandal, in his dealings with those who had charged his 
 mother before the Privy Council of England with the 
 murder of his father. According to Sir James Melville, 
 Norfolk put it to Murray in these terms : Albeit she 
 had done or suffered harm to be done unto the king her 
 husband, there was respect to be had unto the prince her 
 son, whilk he for his part, and many in England, had, as 
 Mester Melville, who had been late ambassador there, 
 could testify ; and therefore wished that the queen should 
 
THE ACCUSATION, 1568. 
 
 439 
 
 not be accused nor dishonoured for the king her son's 
 cause, and for the respect of the right they both had to 
 succeed unto the crown of England/' ^ 
 
 The external tone of the English commissioners is that 
 of men impatient of time wasted, who ask why the threat- 
 ened charge is delayed. The Scots should be brought to 
 explain " why they do forbear in their answer to charge 
 the queen with the guiltiness of the murder, considering 
 their party have always given it out to the world that she 
 is guilty." 2 Still, through these and other general invita- 
 tions, the Scots hesitated to make the fatal accusation. 
 We are told by Melville, who had good opportunities of 
 knowing the secret movements, that Norfolk was the chief 
 cause of this hesitation. While the others called on 
 Murray not to doubt the fairly-avowed intentions of a 
 queen, he recommended that no reliance should be placed 
 on any promise of Elizabeth that was not signed by her- 
 self, and also sealed. Anything short of this she would 
 treat as words or paper wasted. For this advice, Norfolk, 
 if he gave it, is not to be charged with the sordid motive 
 of trying to save a shred of the reputation of the woman 
 whom he desired to marry. If he thoroughly believed 
 that the assurances he was authorised to give would be re- 
 pudiated, he knew that he dared not lay the blame of this 
 repudiation on his unscrupulous mistress. It was doing 
 something, then, to save the honour of himself and his 
 colleagues, as well as obviating mischief elsewhere, if he 
 could get the Scots to remain suspicious. 
 
 It was on the 26th of November that there came the 
 full assurance already referred to — the assurance that the 
 English commissioners were authorised to find guilty or 
 not guilty, and to act on the decision. On the same day 
 the proceedings of the conference bear the weight of the 
 great accusation. Even yet Norfolk seems to have dis- 
 suaded and Murray to have hesitated. The others of the 
 Scots commission, however, were desirous that it should 
 be tabled ; the bulk of the English were equally desirous 
 to have it. If we may believe a strange story told by 
 
 Memoirs of his own Life, 208. ^ Goodall, ii. 1 80. 
 
440 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 Melville, the impatient majority got hold of the document, 
 which Murray's secretary, Wood, held in his hand, and 
 passed it over to the English commissioners.^ 
 
 The great accusation lies, as a brief unobtrusive docu- 
 
 ^ We are to suppose that the other commissioners were prepared 
 to press on Murray to tender the accusation when Norfolk asked for 
 it : " Sa soon as he with his Council were within the council-house, 
 the Duke of Norfolk askit for the accusation. The regent desired 
 again the assurance of the conviction, by writ and seal, as said is. It 
 was answered again, that the quenis majesty's word, being a true 
 princess, wald be sufficient anough. Then all the Council cried out. 
 Would he mistrust the quen, wha had geven such proof of her friend- 
 schip to Scotland ? The regent's Council cried out also on that same 
 manner. Then the Secretary Cecil asked gen they had the accusa- 
 tion there ? 'Yes,' said Master John Wood (with that he plucked it 
 out of his bosom) ; ' bot I will not deliver it untill her majesty's hand- 
 write and seal be delivered to my lord.' Then the Bishop of Orkeney 
 cleaks the writ out of Master John Wood's hands. ' Let me have it ; 
 I shall present it, ' said he. Master John ran after him as gen he would 
 have had it again, or rive his claiths. Forward passed the bischop 
 to the council-table, and gave in the accusation. Then said to him 
 my Lord William Howard, chamberlan, ' Well done. Bishop Turpy ! 
 thou art the frackest fellow amang them ; none of them all will make 
 thy loup,' scorning him for his louping out of the Laird of Grange's 
 ship. Master Henry Balnaves only had made resistance, and called 
 for the Secretary Lethingtoun, who tarried without the council-house; 
 bot sa soon as Master Henry Balnaves had callit for him, he came in, 
 and roundit in the regent's ear that he had shamed himself, and put 
 his life in peril by the loss of so good a friend, and his reputation 
 for ever. 
 
 * ' The regent, who had been brought by his facility to break with 
 the Duke of Norfolk, repented him again so soon as Lethingtoun had 
 shown him the danger, and desired the accusation to be rendered to 
 him again, alleging that he had some more to add unto it. But they 
 said that they would hold that whilk they had, and were ready to 
 receive any other addition when he pleased to give it in. The Duke 
 of Norfolk had enough ado to keep his countenance. Master John 
 Wood winked upon the Secretary Cecil, wha smiled again upon him ; 
 the rest of the regent's company were laughing upon other ; the Sec- 
 retary Lethingtoun had a sair heart. The regent came furth of the 
 council-house with the tear in his eye, and passed to his lodging at 
 Kingstoun, a mile from Court, where his factious friends had enough 
 ado to comfort him." — Memoirs, 210-212. 
 
 The odd allusion to the agility of the Bishop of Orkney has to be 
 explained by this, that he was in Grange's vessel in pursuit of Both- 
 well when it struck, and surprised those present by an agile leap on a 
 rock, deemed a remarkable feat for a bishop. 
 
THE ACCUSATION, 1568. 
 
 441 
 
 ment, among the lengthy pleadings of the conference. In 
 the other papers it is generally referred to as " the eke,'' 
 being that eke or addition which the Scots commissioners 
 reserved power to make to their defence against the charge 
 of rebellion.^ After some preliminary mutterings about 
 their having been driven in self-defence to manifest the 
 naked truth," they say: **It is certain, and we bauldly 
 and constantly affirm, that as James sometime Earl of 
 Bothwell was the chief executor of the horrible and un- 
 worthy murther perpetrate on the person of umquhile 
 King Henry of good memory, father to our sovereign lord, 
 and the queen^s lawful husband, so was she at the fore- 
 knowledge, counsel, device, persuader and commander of 
 the said murder to be done, maintainer and fortifier of the 
 executors thereof, by impeding and stopping of the in- 
 quisition and punishment due for the same, according to 
 the laws of the realm, and consequently by marriage with 
 the said James sometime Earl of Bothwell, delated and 
 universally esteemed chief author of the above-named 
 murder ; wherethrough they begouth [began] to use and 
 exercise an uncouth and cruel tyranny in the hail state of 
 the commonwealth, and with the first, as will appear by 
 their proceedings, intended to cause the innocent prince 
 now our sovereign lord shortly follow his father, and sua to 
 transfer the crown fra the right line to a bloody murderer 
 and godless tyrant/' ^ 
 
 When the crisis of the long-expected enunciation was 
 over, it would seem as if Queen Elizabeth's advisers 
 thought it well to leave her at her own wayward disposal. 
 Up to this point there is a certain measured tread of de- 
 liberation in the conference, irresolute and unconclusive 
 as the conduct of the English commissioners often is. 
 But now arose all the vehement incoherence of a passion- 
 ate woman, whose wrath has been excited from various 
 opposite quarters, and who no sooner seeks to strike at 
 one of her tormentors than she is restrained by the reflec- 
 tion that this will gratify and encourage the others. That 
 a sister queen should have to defend herself against the 
 
 See above, p. 426. 
 
 2 Anderson, iv. (2) I.?o. 
 
442 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 accusations of her traitorous subjects seemed an outrage 
 on royalty not to be tolerated ; yet, unless her sister clear 
 herself of the vile charges laid against her, she will be 
 condemned to eternal infamy all over the world. Her 
 sister's rebellious subjects must not be permitted to pursue 
 such base accusations ; yet, if they do not thoroughly 
 prove the truth of what they have dared to assert, they 
 must expect to suffer — in her own phraseology, "they 
 shall smart for it." 
 
 On one point only is she distinct. The Queen of Scots 
 cannot be received at the English Court until she has 
 established her innocence of the vile charges raised against 
 her. It is on this point of the personal interview that the 
 two queens are quite distinct, as positive and negative. 
 Queen Mary's utterances as to the accusation are rather 
 neutral and indistinct, than incoherent like her sister's ; 
 but she appeals almost more urgently than ever for a 
 private personal interview, at which she is to confound 
 her calumniators and set her sister's mind at rest. Part 
 of the solemn farce played on the occasion was that 
 Murray and his party were to undergo a formal rebuke 
 administered by the chief-justice. He said to them that 
 " her highness thinketh very much and very strange that, 
 being native subjects of the Queen of Scots, you should 
 accuse her of so horrible a crime, odible both to God and 
 man — a crime against law and nature, whereby if you 
 should prove it true, she should be infamous to all princes 
 in the world ; and therefore hath willed us to say unto 
 you, that although you in this doing have forgot your 
 duties of allegiance towards your sovereign, yet her ma- 
 jesty meaneth not to forget the love of a good sister and 
 of a good neighbour and friend. What you are to answer 
 to this we are here ready to hear.'' Thus were they driven 
 closer than ever into the position that the atrocity of the 
 acts charged by them demanded that their proof of these 
 acts should be conclusive. 
 
 They explained that they made their charge with reluc- 
 tance, that they reserved it until it was forced from them 
 by the reiterated charges of treason and rebellion laid 
 • against themselves. They then produced a document 
 
THE ACCUSATION, 1568. 
 
 443 
 
 sometimes called the "Book of Articles."^ It classified 
 the circumstances from which her guilt was to be inferred 
 under five heads, and may in fact be called the indictment 
 under which they proposed that their charge should be 
 brought to a trial. ^ 
 
 ^ Anderson, iv. (2) 148 ; Goodall, ii. 234. 
 
 ^ The Book of Articles is not printed in any of the older collections 
 relating to Queen Mary, and it is not known to exist in any official or 
 authenticated shape. In the **Hopetoun Manuscript," which con- 
 tains several authentic papers ranging over the sixteenth century, 
 there is a long paper written in the official hand of the period, which 
 is supposed to be a copy of the Book of Articles. For the reasons 
 set down below I did not concur in this view, even though it had 
 been adopted by so skilful a critic as Mr Hosack. It was desirable, 
 however, that the document should be laid before the world, that all 
 who chose might form their opinion on the two questions, — the one, 
 whether it really was the accusation laid on the table — the other, how 
 far, whether as an official document or a private writing, it threw any 
 light on the great question. I therefore felt it to be satisfactory that 
 Mr Hosack considered it worthy of a place in his * Mary Queen of 
 Scots and her Accusers,' and helped to facilitate his access to the 
 manuscript from which it was taken. 
 
 On reading this paper, I had great difficulty in believing that it 
 was deliberately laid before the decorous body of men, high in rank 
 or office, who sat to hear what was said on either side. The tone 
 and character of the paper are utterly at variance with the caution and 
 reticence of Murray's party throughout. If this paper really was the 
 one tabled by Murray's party, it does little credit either to their 
 honesty or their skill. The prominent defect in Buchanan's Detec- 
 tion is, that it pushes secondary circumstances too closely home with 
 special pleading. Here the defect is exaggerated — it covers the whole 
 document ; while we have no rush of energetic eloquence to sweep 
 through such defects, as in the Detection. The great outlines of the 
 tragedy are in fact smothered in paltry details ; and the reading of 
 such a paper to neutral persons would be less likely to impress them 
 that a great crime had been committed, than that the authors of the 
 paper were very angiy and malignant. Compared with the Detection, 
 it might pass for the brief or memorial prepared by the pottering 
 attorney who has nothing but prejudice and spite to stimulate him ; 
 while the other is the harangue which the eloquent and artistic 
 counsel has created out of the arid material set before him. 
 
 To the opinion so expressed I have adhered after having considered 
 the able criticisms of Mr Hosack. I cannot but however rejoice 
 that this, with the whole case, has been subjected to his acuteness. 
 It was so overloaded with puerile pleading that it is eminently valu- 
 able to hear senior counsel on the merits. Of the other specimens of 
 this class of literature, the best was the Life written by Mr Henry 
 
444 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 Two Steps had been taken. A charge of murder had 
 been tabled. The particulars of the charge had followed 
 after the ordinary procession of the practice in criminal 
 trials. Next was to come the proof. After all their 
 reticence, the king's party had now no resource but to 
 bring home the murder to the queen or meet their own 
 ruin. So the accumulated mass of documentary evidence 
 passed in on the English Privy Councillors in a torrent. 
 The documents produced were of various kinds, — Acts of 
 the Scots Parliament and of the Privy Council — State 
 trials connected with the murder; in general, all the suc- 
 cessive documents which make up the history of the Court 
 of Scotland since the death of Rizzio. The contents of 
 the casket seem to have been produced in instalments. 
 A copy was made of them, and the originals were in- 
 spected at the pleasure of the English commissioners, in 
 order that when they had satisfied themselves the originals 
 might be returned to those who produced thetn. It was 
 thought fitting to enlarge the body of statesmen to whom 
 these secrets were to be revealed, and some of the most 
 
 Glassford Bell when he was twenty- two years old. The cause was 
 one suitable to the championship of chivalrous youth, and he did his 
 knight-errantry becomingly. Patrick Eraser Tytler, who was bound 
 by hereditary obligation to follow on the same side, when he came 
 into the depths of the case threw up his brief ; perhaps it might be 
 more just to say that he felt it incumbent on him to act the judge 
 rather than the partisan. It is infinitely satisfactory to see in Mr 
 Hosack's book, which has reached a second edition, the full compass 
 of what can be said for such a cause, and to see it unsoiled by spas- 
 modic eulogies and execrations. It is not the least valuable feature 
 of such a book that it completes the order of literature to which it 
 belongs ; and we may now be content to think that we have seen the 
 (juestion argued out. The following is a very characteristic French 
 compliment to Mr Hosack's merits — 'characteristic in this, that it 
 honours him not ks the impartial critic in search of the truth, but as 
 the intrepid advocate who is fighting for a reputation, as in living 
 practice the retained tdunsel struggles for the life of his client : — 
 
 La cause de Tinfortunee Marie wStuart a trouve dans M. Hosack un 
 nouveau defenseur aussi intrepide que prudent, et qui a mis au service 
 de la Reine d'Ecosse le talent de I'avocat le plus consomme." — Gustave 
 Masson, * Marie Stuart au Tribunal de la Posteritie' (Revue des 
 Questions Historiques, Jan. 1873, P- 252). 
 
RECEPTION OF THE CASKET LETTERS, 1569. 445 
 
 eminent English peers were commissioned to join them — 
 Northumberland, Westmoreland, Shrewsbury, Worcester, 
 Huntingdon, and Warwick. All were bound over to pro- 
 found secrecy. Of the manner in which the documents 
 were examined the records of the Council say : " It is to 
 be noted that at the time of the producing, showing, and 
 reading of these foresaid writings, there was no special 
 choice nor regard had to the order of the producing there- 
 of j but the whole writings lying together upon the coun- 
 cil-table, the same were, one after another, showed rather 
 by hap as the same did lie upon the table^ than with any 
 choice made, as by the natures thereof, if the time had so 
 served, might have been."^ 
 
 The extent to which they satisfied themselves as to the 
 genuineness of the casket documents is thus minuted. 
 Having first dealt with the copies of which letters the 
 originals, supposed to be written with the Queen of Scots' 
 own hand, were then also presently produced and perused, 
 and being read, were duly conferred and compared for 
 the manner of writing and fashion of orthography with 
 sundry other letters long since heretofore written, and sent 
 by the said Queen of Scots to the queen's majesty." ^ 
 
 Here they state that they had compared the letters ; 
 but they do not state specifically that the result was a 
 belief in their genuineness. On the other hand, through- 
 out the whole discussion — ^whether in the solemn pro- 
 ceedings of the conference, or in what is extant of the 
 communings and correspondence of the parties engaged 
 in it — no one will find, except in the instructions issued 
 by Queen Mary before they were produced, the plea that 
 the papers on which the charge was laid are forgeries. 
 It would be difficult even to find a hint at such a possible 
 solution of the great difficulty, a solution that would have 
 brought joy to many affectionate hearts. If it should 
 be said that Queen Mary herself, who knew best of all 
 whether they were her true writings or forgeries, was the 
 person who ought to have pronounced, but the documents 
 
 1 Goodall, ii. 259. 
 
 2 Ibid., 256. 
 
446 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 never came under her notice ; then the alternative would 
 be that her commissioners dared not tell her of them, 
 and hence that they believed in them. But without 
 doubt she knew from the beginning what sort of docu- 
 ments her enemies were prepared to produce if they 
 found it necessary. It is said that Lethington having 
 them for a time in his possession, his wife took a copy of 
 them in one night. But whether this be a true story or 
 not, we cannot doubt that Mar}^ herself knew what the 
 documents professed to be, and was silent on the question 
 whether they were her own \rating or forgeries. 
 
 In estimating the influence of contemporary abstinence 
 from the distinct charge of forger}^, we must remember 
 that in 1571 the casket documents were published to all 
 the world. They were full of little incidents and refer- 
 ences to names of persons who could have come forward 
 to maintain that the documents told false stories. If we 
 set aside Lennox and his kinsman Craufurd as suspected 
 persons, along with Joseph Rizzio, Paris, and Bastian, — we 
 have the Laird of ]^Iinto, William Heigate, Livingston, Lady 
 Reres, the Earl of Sutherland, Huntly, who is consulted 
 about "the ravishment," Beaton, who carries the letter, 
 being on his way to a " day of law," in which the Laird 
 of Balfour is concerned, and " all the Hamiltons," who 
 escort the queen. There must have been a crowd of 
 witnesses available to contradict the many particularities 
 in the casket documents had they been the work of a 
 forger. 
 
 We must remember, in looking at the discussion, the 
 difference between the substance of the letters and the 
 inference drawn from them. There are repeated protes- 
 tations in a general shape that the charges against the 
 queen are false and calumnious ; but it is never distinctly 
 asserted, as it has so often been in later times, that the 
 papers brought to support the charge were forged. There 
 is a marked reluctance to speak distinctly about them. 
 The nearest approach to a specific assertion about the 
 character of these papers is where it is asserted by Mary's 
 commissioners " that whatever thing was produced by her 
 rebels " after the 6th day of December " was but invented 
 
RECEPTION OF THE CASKET LETTERS, 1569. 447 
 
 slanders and private writings, which could not prejudice 
 her in any wise/' ^ 
 
 Side by side with the casket letters it was natural that 
 there should be tabled the report of Darnley's account of 
 
 1 Goodall, ii. 312. It seems clear that the term ^'invented" 
 applies to the slanders, not the writings. The first person to repu- 
 diate the documents as actual fabrications or forgeries appears to have 
 been Adam Blackwood writing in 1587. His book, called * Mar- 
 tyre de Marie Stuart, Roine d'Escosse,' is reprinted in his * Opera 
 Omnia,' Paris, 1644, p. 505, and in Jebb, ii. 242. On the question 
 whether during the holding of the conferences it was asserted that the 
 casket papers were forgeries, the following passage in a letter from 
 Sussex to Cecil claims notice: "This matter must at length take 
 end, either by finding the Scotch queen guilty of the crimes that are 
 objected against her, or by some manner of composition with a view 
 of saving her honour. The first, I think, will hardly be attempted, 
 for two causes— the one for that if her adverse party accuse her of the 
 murder by producing of her letters, she will deny them, and accuse 
 the most of them of manifest consent to the murder hardly to be 
 denied ; so as, upon the trial on both sides, her proofs will judicially 
 fall best out as it is thought." — The Earl of Sussex to Sir William 
 Cecil ; Lodge's Illustrations of British History, i. 458. This letter 
 is dated 22d October 1568, before the accusation had been made and 
 the letters produced, and is to be held as an echo of Queen Mary's 
 instruction to her commissioners. It is an anticipation of the position 
 which Mary's advisers were likely to take ; but it anticipates a far 
 bolder position than they did actually take. We shall find that there 
 was a feeble attempt to retaliate on her accusers with a charge of 
 participation in the murder. It would have been less feeble had the 
 other prediction been fulfilled which is imputed in the words *'she 
 will deny them." They were not denied, if we count this word to 
 mean that they were to be denounced as forgeries. 
 
 A French author, who has recently entered on this controversy, pro- 
 fesses to throw on it a blaze of light from Simancas. M. Jules Gauthier, 
 in his ' Histoire de Marie Stuart' (ii. 116), says: " Une lettre de 
 Guzman de Silva a Philippe II., citee pour le premiere fois, jette un 
 jour nouveau sur ces mysterieux documents. Le 21 Juillet, il ecrivait a 
 Philippe II. : 'J'ai dit a la reine que j'etais informe que les lords 
 avaient entre leurs mains certaines lettres, d'ou il resultait que la 
 Reine d'Ecosse avait su la mort de son mari. Elle m'a repondu que 
 ce n'etait pas vrai, bien plus que Lethington s'y etait mal employe, et 
 que si elle le voyait, elle hii dirait quelques paroles qui ne lui feraient 
 pas grand plaisir : * " in the original, ' ' Dixome que no era verdad, aun 
 que Ledington avia tratado mal esto " (Archives de Simancas, leg. 819, 
 fol. 108). The ambassador's story is likely to be true : if Queen 
 Elizabeth uttered anything to him on the affair, it would be in dis- 
 paragement of her royal sister's mutinous subjects. It is surely a 
 
448 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 the conversation with his wife at Glasgow — that conversa- 
 tion which, if the casket letters were genuine, she reported 
 to Bothwell. It lay with Lennox to bring up this morsel 
 of testimony. We have seen that to all appearance he 
 busied himself in collecting evidence against the woman 
 whom he charged with the murder of his son. Closely 
 as he was personally interested in the conference, he was 
 no party to it ; whatever share he took was like that of 
 any other private person who could give assistance to the 
 one party or the other. Hence whatever he may have 
 done to stimulate the accusing party is not visible on the 
 face of the proceedings. In sending his kinsman to 
 watch the visit paid by the queen to his son, her husband, 
 he had, however, unconsciously prepared fatal evidence 
 against her. We have seen already how exactly his report 
 of Darnley's narrative of the conversation tallies with that 
 attributed to the queen in the casket letters. He had to 
 report a preliminary conversation which he held with her 
 on her way to the sick man's chamber, and this also cor- 
 responds with the tenor of the casket letters. Craufurd, 
 the writer of this narrative, attended tKe conference as a 
 witness. The paper was read over ; and we are told in 
 the official record, that after he had declared it on his 
 
 testimony to single-hearted zeal of a high order, when one is content 
 with so meagre a prize as the reward of researches in distant Simancas. 
 But other searchers there have found more deleterious contributions to 
 history. Those who read the political correspondence of the ambas- 
 sadors and residents of the period know how full it is of wild and false 
 rumours ; and it is not when the story goes to a distant Court, where 
 it is not likely to be closely tested, that it will be sifted by the teller. 
 
 It would be invidious to leave M. Gauthier's three volumes behind 
 without a word on their peculiar merits. Unfortunately for the author, 
 these are of a kind that will not supply a want in this country, while 
 it is to be feared that they may not be duly appreciated in the author's 
 own. He shows a close familiarity with all the sources of informa- 
 tion in the Scots history of the period, and his history is a full, 
 distinct, and, so far as I have observed, accurate work. It is not so 
 closely biographical as that of his countryman Mignet, but for that 
 reason would be all the more valuable to any foreigner desirous of 
 knowing the history of the period without a full command of the 
 English language. In the works of Mignet and Gauthier, French 
 literature is endowed with two thoroughly good histories of the Scot- 
 land of Queen Mary's time, one on either side of the great controversy. 
 
CRAUFURD'S STATEMENT, 1568. 449 
 
 oath to be a true narrative, he explained " tnat as soon 
 as the Queen of Scots had spoken with the king his 
 master at Glasgow from time to time, he, the said Crau- 
 furd, was secretly informed by the king of all things which 
 had passed betwixt the said queen and the king, to the 
 intent he should report the same to the Earl of Lennox 
 his master, because the said earl durst not then, for dis- 
 pleasure of the queen, come abroad ; and that he did 
 immediately at the same time write the same word by 
 word as near as he possibly could carry the same away; 
 and sure he was that the words now reported in his writing 
 concerning the communication between the Queen of 
 Scots and him upon the way near Glasgow are the very 
 same words, in his conscience, that were spoken; and 
 that others being reported to him by the king are the 
 same in effect and substance as they were delivered by 
 the king to him, though not percase in all parts the very 
 words themselves.''^ 
 
 Thus Craufurd, w^ith this paper in his hands, stood in 
 the witness-box. He was not subjected to what is usu- 
 ally known as the cross-questioning of a witness, because 
 Queen Mary's commissioners repudiated the position of 
 a party pleading a cause. It was open, however, to the 
 English Council to get what light or information they 
 could by questions, and especially to harass him about 
 his document if they doubted its honesty. In estimating 
 the weight which his testimony is likely to have had at 
 the conference, and the weight it ought to have at the 
 present day, it is proper to look at his station and charac- 
 ter. He was allied to the house of Lennox, and held his 
 own place in the territorial hierarchy of the country as 
 Laird of Jordanhill and head of a worshipful house. He 
 was a great military commander, and we shall have to see 
 him performing one of the most brilliant exploits of the 
 day in the capture of Dumbarton Castle. ^ 
 
 ^ Anderson, iv. 169. 
 
 2 As some curiosity has been expressed about his statement, I sub- 
 join it in full from the copy in the Record Office : — 
 **The words betwixt the Q. and me, Thomas Crawforde, bye the 
 
 VOL. IV. 2 F 
 
450 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 After these critical stages, the record of the conference 
 is that of a meeting which the several parties are desirous 
 to wind up as decorously as may be. It is in what is 
 left undone, rather than in what is done, that we find the 
 
 waye as she came to Glasco to fetch the kinge, when mye L. 
 mye master sent me to shewe her the cause whye he came not 
 to meit her him sellfe. 
 
 *' First, I made mye L. mye masteris humble commendations unto 
 her matie., with the excuse that he came not to mete her ; praing her 
 grace not to thinke it was eather for proudnesse or yet for not know- 
 inge hys duetye towardes her highnesse, but onelye for want of helthe 
 at that present ; and also that he woulde not presume to com in her 
 presence untille he knewe farder her minde, because of the sharpe 
 wordes that she had spoken of him to Robert Cunningham, hys ser- 
 vant, in Sterling, wherebye he thought he was in her matie.'s disple- 
 soure. Notwithstanding, he hath sent hys servauntis and friendis to 
 waite upon her ma tie. 
 
 *^ She aunswered, that there was no receipt aganst feare. 
 
 " I aunswered, that mye L. had no feare for anie thinge he knewe 
 in him sellfe, but onelye of the colde and unkinde words she had 
 spoken to hys servant. 
 
 ** She aunswered and said, that he woulde not be afraid e in case 
 he were not culpable. 
 
 ** I aunswered, that I knew so farre of hys lordship that he desired 
 nothinge more than that the secretts of everye creature's harte were 
 written in their face. 
 
 She asked me gif I had anie farder commission. I aunswered no. 
 
 **Then she commanded me to holde my peace. 
 
 " The wordes that I remember were betwixt the king and the Q. in 
 Glasco, when she tooke him awaie to Edinbrowghe. 
 * * The kinge, for that mye L. his father was then absent and sicke, 
 bye reason whereof he could not speke with him him sellfe, called me 
 unto him, and theise wordes that had then passed betwixt him and 
 the quene he gave me in remembrance to reporte unto the said mye 
 lord hys father. 
 
 After theire metinge and schorte spekinge together, she asked 
 him of hys lettres, wherein he complained of the crueltye of som. 
 
 ** He aunswered, that he complained not without cause, and, as he 
 beleved, she woulde graunte her sellfe when she was well advised. 
 
 " She asked him of hys sicknesse ; he aunswered, that she was the 
 cause thereof And moreover, he saide, * Ye asked me what I ment 
 bye the crueltye specified in mye lettres ; yat procedethe of yow 
 onelye, that wille not accepte mye offres and repentance. I confesse 
 that I have failed in som thingis, and yet greater faultes have bin 
 made to yow sundrye times, which ye have forgiven. I am but 
 yonge, and ye will saye ye have forgivne me diverse tymes. Maye 
 
CRAUFURD'S STATEMENT, 1568. 45 1 
 
 chief significance. The chance of a personal interview 
 was now further off than ever. It was refused while there 
 were evil rumours ; and now there was a distinct charge, 
 with evidence to support it, wherein,'^ as the English 
 
 not a man of my age, for lacke of counselle, of which I am verye 
 destitute, falle twise or thrise, and yet repent, and be chastised bye 
 experience ? Gif I have made anye faile that ye but thinke a faile, 
 howe soever it be, I crave your pardone, and proteste that I shall 
 never faile againe. I desire no other thinge but that we may be to- 
 gether as husband and wife. And if ye will not consent hereto, I 
 desire never to rise forthe of this bed. Therefore, I praye yow, give 
 me an aunswer hereunto. God knoweth howe I am punished for 
 making my god of yow, and for having no other thought but on yow. 
 And if at anie tyme I offend yow, ye are the cause ; for that when 
 anie offendeth me, if for refuge I might open mye minde to yow, I 
 woulde speake to no other ; but when anie thinge is spoken to me, 
 and ye and I not beinge as husband and wife ought to be, necessite 
 compelleth me to kepe it in my brest, and bringeth me insuche 
 melancolye as ye see me in.' 
 
 **She aunswered, that it semed hym she was sorye for his sick- 
 nesse, and she woulde finde remedye therfore so sone as she might. 
 
 **She asked him whye he would have passed awaye in the 
 Englishe shippe. 
 
 He aunswered, that he had spoken with the Englishe man, but 
 not of minde to goe awaie with him ; and if he had, it had not bin 
 without cause, consideringe howe he was used. For he had neather 
 to susteine him sellfe nor hys servantes, and neded not make farder 
 rehersalle thereof, seinge she knewe it as well as he. 
 
 '* Then she asked him of the purpose of Hegate. He aunswered, 
 it was tolde him. 
 
 " She required how and bye whome it was tolde him. 
 He aunswered, that the L. of Minto tolde him that a lettre was 
 presented to her in Cragmillar, made bye her owne divise, and sub- 
 scribed bye certaine others, who desired her to subscrive the same, 
 which she refused to doe ; and he said that he woulde never thinke 
 that she, who was hys owne propper fleshe, woulde do him anie 
 hurte; and if anie other woulde do it, theye should bye it dere, 
 unlesse theye tooke him slepinge, albeit he suspected none. So he 
 desired her effectuouslye to beare him company e. For she ever 
 founde som adoe to drawe her sellfe from him to her owne lodginge, 
 and woulde never abyde with him paste two houres at once. 
 
 ** She was verye pensiffe, whairat he foftnd fault. He said to her 
 that he was advertised she had brought a litter with her. 
 
 " She aunswered, that because she understoode he was not hable 
 to ryde on horsebacke, she brought a litter that he might be carried 
 more softlye. 
 
 He aunswered, that it was not mete for a sick man to travelle 
 
452 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 Council say, ^^they had seen such foul matters as they 
 thought truly in their consciences that her majesty had 
 just cause herein given'' to answer as she did. The re- 
 fusal of a meeting, it has to be observed, was not absolute. 
 
 that coulde not sitt on horsebacke, and speciallye in so colde 
 weather. 
 
 She aunswered, that she would take him to Craigmillar, where 
 she might be with him, and not farre from her sonne. 
 
 *'He aunswered, that uppon condition he would goe with her, 
 which was that he and she might be togeather at bedde and borde as 
 husbande and wife, and that she should leave him no more. And if 
 she would promise him that uppon her worde, he woulde goe with 
 her where she pleased without respect of anye danger, eather of sick- 
 nesse wherein he was, or otherwise ; but if she would not condescend 
 thereto, he woulde not goe with her in anye wise. 
 
 She aunswered, that her comminge was onelye to that effecte, and 
 if she had not bin minded thereto, she had not com so farre to fetche 
 him ; and so she granted hys desire, and promised him that it should 
 be as he had spoken, and thereuppon gave him her hande and faithe 
 of her bodye that she woulde love him and use him as her husbande. 
 Notwithstanding, before they coulde com togeather, he must be purged 
 and clensed of hys sicknesse, which she trusted would be schortlye, 
 for she minded to give him the bath at Craigmillar. 
 
 **Then he said he would doe whatsoever she would have him doe, 
 and would love all that she loved. 
 
 ** She required of him especiallie whom he loved of the nobilitie, 
 and whom he hated. 
 
 * * He aunswered, that he hated no man, and loved all alike well. 
 
 * * She asked him howe he liked the Ladye Reresse, and if he were 
 angrye with her. 
 
 He aunswered, that he had litle minde of suche as she was, and 
 wished of God she might serve her to her honour. 
 
 *^Then she desired him to kepe to him sellfe the promise betwixt 
 him and her, and to open it to no bodye ; for peradventure the lordes 
 woulde not thinke welle of their suddene agrement, considering he 
 and thaye were at som wordes before. 
 
 ** He aunswered, that he knew no cause whye they shoulde mislike 
 of it, and desired her that she would not move anye of them againste 
 him, even as he woulde stirre none againste her, and that thaye 
 woulde worke both in one minde, otherwise it might turne to greater 
 inconvenience to them bothe. 
 
 She aunswered, that she never sought anye waie bye him, but he 
 was in fault him sellfe. 
 
 " He aunswered agane, that hys faultes were published, and that 
 there were that made greater faultes than ever he made that beleved 
 were unknowne, and yet they would speke of greate and small. 
 
 *' Farder, the kinge asked me at that present time what I thought 
 
CRAUFURD'S STATEMENT, 1568. 453 
 
 The granting it was made conditional on Queen Mary 
 offering some satisfactory explanation of the appearances 
 against her. Whether to induce her to be expUcit, or to 
 put her own conduct in a fair light, Queen Elizabeth 
 offered her three methods of explanation, as follows : — 
 
 *The first isj Whether she will answer by you, her 
 commissioners, or any others authorised by her thereto, 
 before my commissioners, of those things whilk are laid 
 to her charge. 
 
 " Secondly, If she will not do that, to answer by her 
 own writing to the same. 
 
 " Thirdly, If she thinks not that to be done, let her 
 answer to some noble whom I will send with commission 
 to that effect, who has heard and reasoned the matter 
 with the other party ; and if she will not answer by any 
 of these ways foresaid, it will be thought as much as she 
 were culpable in the cause, and in that case I cannot mth 
 my honour admit her to my presence." ^ Queen Eliza- 
 beth at the same time wrote an ample letter to her captive, 
 enjoining her, as she valued her good name, " not to foi 
 bear from answering the accusations against her. 
 
 Her instructions to her commissioners were to refuse 
 
 of his voyage. I auliswered, that I liked it not because she tooke 
 him to Craigmillar. For if she had desired him with her sellfe, or 
 to have had his companye, she would have taken him to hys own 
 house in Edinburgh, where she might more easelye visitt him than 
 to travelle two myles out of the towne to a gentleman's house. There- 
 fore, mye opinion was that she tooke him awaye more like a prisoner 
 than her husbande. 
 
 * * He aunswered, that he thought litle lesse him sellfe, and feared 
 him sellfe mikle, save the confidence he had in her promise onelye ; 
 notwithstandinge, he woulde goe with her, and put him sellfe in her 
 handes, though she shoulde cutte hys throatt, and besought God to be 
 judge unto them bothe." — State Papers — Scotch Correspondence, 
 vol. xiii. No. 14. In an English hand of the time. 
 
 Mr Hosack's commentaiy on this document will be found in his 
 *Mary Queen of Scots and her Accusers,' 192. 
 
 ^ Goodall, ii. 261. There are two versions of this answer printed 
 beside each other by Goodall. The one is the minute of the English 
 commissioners, supposed to have been revised by Cecil ; the other is 
 the note taken by the Bishop of Ross. The latter is the shorter of 
 the two, and it is the one given above, as leaving no doubt regarding 
 the shape in which the three offers were laid before Queen Mary. 
 
454 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 to answer, and to withdraw from the conference. Still 
 the poor Bishop of Ross offered a lingering protest against 
 so dangerous a resolution ; and again going over the well- 
 trodden ground of the treachery and ingratitude of his 
 mistress's rebels, pleads, — " Whilk being well weighed and 
 considered by indifferent ears, they who so oft have been 
 remitted by their sovereign for their heinous crimes shall 
 not be found able to be competent accusers of their said 
 sovereign; and doubts not, when your majesty has well 
 digested and considered the hail matter, your highness 
 will not admit such example prejudicial to all princes ; and 
 prays your majesty to remember the example of good 
 emperors, and especially Trajan's, who would never suffer 
 any man to speak evil of princes in his presence howbeit 
 they had been dead, lat be to speak of others that are 
 alive and absent.'' ^ 
 
 Before the conference died out, the Bishop of Ross and 
 his colleagues took a course having at least the aspect of 
 formidable menace. It was to recriminate, and charge 
 Murray and his colleagues with the crime of which they 
 had accused their sovereign. To Queen Mary's com- 
 missioners this was no course of their own choosing, and 
 their inability to pursue it only tended to bring on them 
 disaster and ridicule. They departed from the usual 
 etiquette of advocates and representatives by continually 
 avoiding personal responsibility in the matter, explaining 
 with thorough distinctness that they made the charge 
 merely in obedience to the order of her whom they were 
 bound to obey. At a solemn meeting in conference Cecil 
 brought up this new turn of the discussion by explaining 
 how the counter-charge had been "bruited and slandered," 
 and that Murray desired to be confronted with. Queen 
 Mary's commissioners, "to know whether they would 
 accuse them or not for the said crime in the queen their 
 mistress's name, or in their own names." Thus driven to 
 a point, they said " they were expressly commanded by 
 the queen their mistress to accuse the said Earl of Murray 
 and others his adherents to be principal authors, inventors, 
 
 Goodall, ii. 267. 
 
CONFERENCE AT HAMPTON COURT, 1569. 455 
 
 doers, and some of them proper executors, of the foresaid 
 murder." They were pressed closer than they desired 
 with the question if they or any of them would accuse 
 the said earl in special, or any of his adherents, or thought 
 them guilty thereof In answer '^they took God to 
 witness " that none of them personally knew anything 
 more of that black business than so far as it had transpired 
 to the rest of the world. They were not prepared ^*to de- 
 clare their thought and meaning whether the Earl of Mur- 
 ray and his company were clear or guilty thereof, for they 
 did presently accuse in the queen's majesty their mistress's 
 name." When she so instructed them, then they would 
 enter on particulars.^ They were somewhat alarmed by 
 an offer on Murray's part to *^pass to Bolton to the 
 queen's own presence, to see if she would accuse them, 
 whilk they believed she would not do ; " but the offer was 
 not accepted. 
 
 The bishop tells the story elsewhere, with some touches 
 of individuality naturally excluded from the formal record : 
 " The Earl of Murray was desirous to know if we would 
 accuse him as participant of the murder. And first he 
 inquired of me if I would accuse him, and take it upon 
 my conscience that he was guilty of the murder ; adding 
 thereto, that albeit I would so do, he would not accuse 
 me, nor take it upon his conscience that I was any way 
 guilty or participant thereof. To the which I answered 
 that I praised God, who had preserved me from such 
 ungodly and cruel acts, and would be sorry to accuse any 
 Scotsman of any such matter, both for honour of the 
 nation and for my own estate and calHng, for it was not 
 decent for me to be an accuser. And yet, nevertheless, 
 in respect that he had accused the queen our sovereign, 
 I had just cause to affirm that he was ungrateful unto her 
 for the many benefits which he had received of her liberal 
 goodness to recompense her so unthankfully ; and also at 
 her command we had accused him, and had offered to 
 prove the same ; and as to mine own knowledge, I was 
 not of that council, and therefore was not certain if he 
 
 ^ Goodall, ii. 308, 309, 
 
456 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 was guilty or not further than by such information as I 
 had received, wherein I would do the part of a faithful 
 minister for defence of the queen my mistress's honour, 
 and satisfying of her command/'^ 
 
 Some little personal squabbling attended this episode. 
 Lindsay sent a cartel intimating that in accusing him 
 Herries ^^lied in his throat." Herries had to answer that 
 he made no accusation ; but as the message came in 
 threat and swagger, he must meet it in like form : " That 
 ye were privy to it, Lord Lindsay, I know not; and if ye 
 will say that I have specially spoken of you, ye lied in 
 your throat.'' He admitted having said there is, of that 
 company present with the Earl of Murray guilty of that 
 abominable treason in the foreknowledge and consent 
 thereto." One can imagine this turn in the inquiry dis- 
 turbing in some measure the nerves of Morton and 
 Lethington. Perhaps it was in the chance of what might 
 come of their getting a fright that the idea was adopted, 
 and it is possible that it may have had its influence on 
 the pohcy of Lethington, who was becoming an avowed 
 queen's man. 
 
 Thus the conference lingered towards an ending by 
 mere inanition, with no real business transacted. The 
 prospect so opened seems on the whole to have been 
 satisfactory to Queen Elizabeth's sage counsellors. The 
 championship of the divinity of monarchy must bend to 
 circumstances ; and they helped to bend it by showing 
 that in supporting Murray's Government there was the 
 best security against many perils. There is extant a 
 large and very instructive paper by Sadler explaining these 
 perils. These come of the King of Spain, who may be 
 kept oif by work in the Netherlands and checks from the 
 Protestant States of Germany, and the King of France, 
 for whom work may turn up and be fostered through the 
 Huguenot party ; and thus may your majesty provide 
 for the two great enemies, to give them enough to do at 
 home, even at their own doors." But suppose these 
 nionarchs should be able to retaliate by giving work at 
 
 Leslie's Negotiations ; Anderson, iii. 34. 
 
CONFERENCE AT HAMPTON COURT, 1569. 457 
 
 home? *'And if they may then find a queen in Scotland 
 that pretendeth a title to the crown of England — who 
 seeth not that she will be a ready and apt instrument to 
 serve both theirs and also her own turn, when she may 
 have had aid thereunto both by the Pope, the King of 
 Spain, the French king, and also by the favour of your 
 evil subjects here at home, the Papists, which to set up 
 their Popish kingdom would not care to have a murderer 
 and adulteress reign over them — marry, I trust your 
 majesty will so provide that they shall find no such queen 
 in Scotland." He therefore urges that in this matter of 
 Scotland no time would be omitted. Surely it is most 
 expedient for your majesty to take that way, and to pre- 
 termit no occasion nor opportunity to entertain the amity 
 of Scotland ; for if the King of Spain or the French king 
 do break with you, if they have any intention to offend or 
 annoy your majesty, they have no way so fit or so proper for 
 them to do it as by the way of Scotland. Keep them out 
 of Scotland that they set not foot there, and your majesty 
 shall have the less need to care for any offence or annoy- 
 ance that they can do to your highness elsewhere.^' But if 
 they are to be kept out of Scotland there must be a decided 
 change in the policy of the Court of England : Marry, 
 if your majesty shall proceed coldly and indifferently, 
 showing yourself indifferent betwixt both parties as you 
 have done hitherto, whereby the one party may live in 
 hope and the other in fear that you will restore the Queen 
 of Scots — if your majesty shall proceed in that sort, then 
 it must needs be, as hitherto indeed it hath been, a great 
 hindrance to the cause, a great hindrance and prejudice 
 both to your majesty and especially to that party which 
 shall stand for your majesty and the young King of Scots." 
 The advice thus supported is put briefly and clearly : 
 must needs say, then, that it is expedient for your majesty 
 to accept and allow of the State as you find it — that is, of 
 the regiment established in the young King of Scots. Of 
 the validity or invalidity of his title your majesty hath not 
 to dispute, in my poor opinion, but to take him for a King 
 as you find him." ^ 
 
 ^ Sadler's State Papers, ii. 562-569. 
 
458 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 Other counsels, though less emphatic and distinct, 
 pointed in the same direction. It was the interest of 
 England to throw over Queen Mary and stand by Murray. 
 The great difficulty in the way of this policy was the 
 obstinacy of Queen Elizabeth on the divine right of sover- 
 eigns and the duty of subjects. The one fixed creed from 
 which she had never varied was, that no act of misrule or 
 wickedness on the part of her sister queen could justify 
 the conduct of her adversaries. The political conditions 
 — Mary a captive in England, her son nominally king, and 
 Murray the leader of the Protestants virtually supreme— 
 were all in themselves sound had they been brought 
 righteously to pass. If it could all be undone and recon 
 structed by herself, it would be as legitimate as it was 
 sound. Hence the concluding efforts of Queen Elizabeth 
 and her advisers were in this direction ; and nothing was 
 overlooked that could help to bring the whole affair under 
 the judicial revisal of the Queen of England. Even when 
 Queen Mary asked for " doubles,^' or copies of all the 
 papers produced against her, and an inspection of the ori- 
 ginals, the answer was, that these requests would be con- 
 ceded if Queen Mary would in proper form, consent to 
 meet the charges against her, and abide Queen Elizabeth's 
 decision.^ 
 
 In the perplexities of the conference this question is 
 lost, and we have at last an adjustment suggested from 
 Queen Elizabeth's side. It must be given in its own 
 words, for all of these were evidently weighed and adjusted 
 by skilful advisers : — 
 
 That the queen there might be induced by some good 
 persuasions, for avoiding of the great extremities where- 
 unto her cause may bring her, to yield so as it might also 
 appear of her own will, that by way of permission, that 
 her son may continue in the state wherein he is ; and the 
 regiment also in the Earl of Murray, as already it is ordered 
 by their Parliament ; and herself to continue here in our 
 realm during such time as we shall find convenient ; and 
 her son, nevertheless, for his safety, to be brought into 
 
 1 Goodall, ii. 288-310. 
 
POLICY OF ENGLAND, T569. 459 
 
 this our realm, to be preserved and educated under the 
 custody of persons of the birth of Scotland, for a certain 
 space. And this whole cause of hers, whereof she hath 
 been charged, to be committed to perpetual silence ; and 
 the cause of this her yielding and assent to be grounded 
 and notified to proceed of her own goodwill, by reason of 
 her weariness of governance, and of desire to see her son 
 estabhshed, in such terms, to save her honour, as is at 
 more length contained in the instrument devised for the 
 demission of her crown whilst she was in Lochleven."^ 
 
 It was a favourite practice with Queen Elizabeth, after 
 she had instructed an ambassador or other representative 
 concerning a very complex course of policy to be proposed 
 by him in the quarter to which he was accredited, to con- 
 clude the whole with a recommendation that he should 
 propose it as *'from himself' — as his own suggestion, 
 stimulated by a desire to avoid unpleasantness on either 
 side. The present instruction was sent to that sorely- 
 perplexed man Vice-Chamberlain Knollys. She tells him, 
 " First, we would have you, whom we have just cause to 
 trust, to attempt her herein ; and yet to do the same as of 
 yourself, by way of communication and devising with her 
 of her troubles, and also of her whole cause, and of the 
 likelihood of some end that must needs follow." This 
 was the first step. The second was, that as she might 
 consult Lord Scrope, he was to be spoken to with great 
 secrecy, that he may agree with you in opinion, if cause 
 be given him by her to talk thereof." The next step 
 seems to have been that the Bishop of Ross was to be in 
 some way influenced to give his mistress the same advice 
 as ^^from himself." And lastly. Queen Mary was to 
 make the proposal as from herself. It was to come before 
 the world as her spontaneous act. This apparatus of 
 statecraft seems to have been too delicate and complicated 
 for actual working, for there is no account of its reception ; 
 and presently a more distinct and emphatic proposal 
 comes from the English Court, as if it had passed at once 
 from subtlety to bluntness. After some preliminaries it 
 
 ^ Goodall, ii. 278, 279. 
 
460 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 came to the point by recommending that Queen Mary, 
 " as being weary of that realm and government thereof, 
 should yield up the crown and government thereof, and 
 demit the same in favour of her son the prince.^' ^ 
 
 This was met by a direct refusal, uttered in that spirit 
 of indignant scorn which the Queen of Scots could com- 
 mand when it became the occasion. She would die first. 
 The last words she would utter should be those of a Queen 
 of Scots.2 If it be asked why she refused to do on this 
 occasion what she had done on another, many will find a 
 satisfactory answer in her own often-repeated assurance, 
 that when she signed those parchments at Lochleven she 
 was in fear for her life ; now her potent jailer would pro- 
 tect her from assassination. But another solution is pos- 
 sible. At that time exposure was only threatened ; it had 
 now come. She knew the worst that could be said, and 
 she would stand at bay. As she herself explained, to yield 
 at this juncture would be to confess herself guilty before 
 all the world, and to deprive herself at the same time of 
 the power of defence which her rank and claims endowed 
 her with. So to the last, and for all that had been done, 
 she demeaned herself as Queen of Scots. It must al- 
 ways be remembered, too, in estimating the treatment she 
 endured, that she had never consented to revoke her 
 claim on the crown of England — a claim which, in the 
 hands of Elizabeth and her advisers, stood in this awk- 
 ward position, that the more a renunciation was pressed 
 the greater was the importance attributed to the claim. 
 
 Why Queen Elizabeth desired a second abdication is 
 obvious. The first was obtained by rebellious subjects, 
 the second would be her own doing. And if it were rea- 
 soned that the interference of one sovereign with the rights 
 of another might be a dangerous precedent, the superiority 
 of the crown of England over the crown of Scotland would 
 put the transaction right. A record of the transaction 
 
 ^ Goodall, ii. 300. 
 
 * * * Je suis resolu et deliber^ plutost mourir que de [la] fair, et la 
 demiere parole que je feray en ma vie sera d'une Royne d'Escosse." 
 — January 9, 1569; Labanoff, ii. 274. 
 
POLICY OF ENGLAND, 1569. 
 
 461 
 
 would have been prepared in all feudal form and solem- 
 nity, and stowed away beyond the reach of any Scotsman's 
 eyes so long as the kingdoms remained distinct. Had 
 events turned otherwise than they did, it were hard to 
 estimate how dangerous such a record might have been 
 to the independence of Scotland. Whether Queen Mary 
 had this in view or not, her refusal served her country. 
 We have no indication that Murray's party joined in the 
 request that she should repeat her abdication — appar- 
 ently they were quite content with what they had al- 
 ready obtained. 
 
 Elizabeth and her advisers were obliged also to be con- 
 tent. For the sake of form and dignity it was necessary 
 to give judgment ; but to the extent of the ludicrous it 
 was a form without substance. Murray and his adherents 
 had come to be arraigned for disloyalty to their sovereign ; 
 but '*for so much as there has been nothing deduced 
 against them as yet that may impair their honour and 
 allegiance; and on the other part, there had been nothing 
 produced or shown by them against the queen their sove- 
 reign, whereby the Queen of England should conceive or 
 take any evil opinion of the queen her good sister for any- 
 thing yet seen/'^ This was solemnly made known to 
 Murray on the loth of January 1569, and so he and all 
 others were now at liberty to return. Murray, in a letter 
 dated on the next day, says to the Laird of Craigmillar, 
 " Yesternight we had the queen's majesty's answer by the 
 Council, allowing our doings, with promise to maintain 
 the king's authority and our regiment." ^ 
 
 It has been maintained that this is a false rendering 
 of the judgment as it is here cited ; but in reality Murray 
 expressed the conclusion which the English Government 
 had reached, or to which it had been forced, whether it 
 was ever set forth in writing or not. Hitherto in all the 
 English royal documents Mary is ever " our dear sister 
 and cousin," and James " the prince her son.*' On one 
 or two occasions he is described as the person " called the 
 King of Scots." Henceforth the documents conform to 
 
 Goodall, ii. 305. 
 
 2 Ibid., 306. 
 
462 
 
 REGENCY OF MURRAY. 
 
 the new arrangement.^ Murray at the same time carried 
 with him an emphatic testimony of recognition in a loan 
 of ;^Sooo, which he acknowledged to have received from 
 Queen Elizabeth " for the maintenance of peace betwixt 
 
 ^ The policy which prevailed — the policy of endeavouring to estab- 
 lish the new rule in Scotland as coming from the authority of the 
 Queen of England, or, if that could not be done^ of giving it counte- 
 nance from England — was forecast, if not materially aided, by a re- 
 markable letter from Sussex to Cecil already referred to. He says : — 
 
 ** And now touching my opinion of the matter (not by way of 
 advice, but as imparting to you what I conceive), I think surely no 
 end can be made good for England except the person of the Scotch 
 queen be detained, by one means or other, in England. Of the two 
 ends before written, I think the first to be best in all respects for the 
 queen's majesty, if Murray will produce such matter as the queen's 
 majesty may, by virtue of her superiority over Scotland, find judici- 
 ally the Scotch queen guilty of the murder of her husband, and there- 
 with detain her in England at the charges of Scotland, and allow of 
 the crowning of the young king and regency of Murray. Where- 
 unto if Hamilton will submit himself, it were well done, for avoiding 
 of his dependency upon France, to receive him, with provision for 
 indemnity of his title ; and if he will not, then to assist Murray to 
 prosecute him and his adherents by confiscation, &c. If this will not 
 fall out sufficiently (as I doubt it will not) to determine judicially if she 
 deny her letters, then surely I think it best to proceed by composition, 
 without show of any meaning to proceed to trial ; and herein as it 
 shall be the surest way for the queen's majesty to procure the Scotch 
 queen to surrender, &c., if that may be brought to pass, so, if she will 
 by no means be induced to surrender, and will not end except she 
 may be in some degree restored, then I think it fit to consider therein 
 these matters following : — 
 
 First, To provide for her and her son to remain in England at 
 the charges of Scotland. 
 
 Secondly, To maintain in strength and authority Murray's faction 
 as much as may be, so as they oppress not unjustly Hamilton. 
 
 ** Thirdly, To compound the causes between Murray and Hamilton, 
 and their adherents ; and to provide for Hamilton's indemnity in the 
 matter of the title, to avoid his dependency of France. 
 
 y Fourthly, That the queen's majesty order all differences that shall 
 arise in Scotland, and to that end have security of both sides. 
 
 ** Fifthly, If Hamilton will wilfully dissent from order, it is better 
 to assist Murray in the prosecuting of Hamilton by confiscation, 
 although he fly therefor to France, than to put Murray anyways in 
 peril of weakening. 
 
 *' And lastly, To foresee that these Scots on both sides pack not 
 together, so as to unwrap (under colour of this composition) their 
 mistress out of all present slanders, purge her openly, show themselves 
 
BOTHWELL, 1567-78. 
 
 463 
 
 the realms of England and Scotland, and to appease and 
 withstand the attempts and enterprises of the common 
 enemies and disturbers of the common quiet of both the 
 said realms.^ 
 
 Before resuming the narrative of events in Scotland, 
 it may serve to clear the way for a distinct consecutive 
 account of them, if we go back to the point where Both- 
 well left the queen at Carberry, and pursue his career 
 onwards to its end. He fled to his strong castle of Dun- 
 bar ; but he saw it would be vain to stand a siege by the 
 confederates, so he took shipping for Morayland. There 
 he was sheltered and entertained by his granduncle the 
 bishop in his strong episcopal castle of Spynie. Yet there 
 he was not safe, and he sailed onwards to his dukedom 
 in the Orkney Isles. Kirkcaldy of Grange and the Laird 
 of Tullibardine were sent northward in pursuit.^ He w^as 
 
 satisfied with her abode here, and within short time after, either by 
 reconcilement or the death of the child, join together to demand of 
 the queen the delivery home of their queen to govern her own realm, 
 she also making the like request ; and then the queen, having no just 
 cause to detain her, be bound in honour to return her into her realm, 
 and, for matters that in this time shall pass, have her a mortal enemy 
 for ever after." — Lodge's Illustrations, i. 462. It will ])e noted, that 
 as this was a letter between friends, and not a State paper likely to 
 pass into Scotland, there is no occasion for avoiding reference to the 
 ** superiority over Scotland" as an accepted fact. 
 . ^ Foedera, xv. 677. 
 
 2 Grange, writing to the Earl of Bedford, says of his objects in the 
 expedition : And for my own part, though I be no good seaman, 
 I promise me to your lordship that gif I man anse enconter with him 
 either by sea or land, he shall either carry me with him, or else I shall 
 bring him dead or quick to Edinburgh; for I take God to witness the 
 only occasion that moved me either to procure or join myself to the 
 Lords of this the late enterprise was to restore my native country again 
 to liberty and honour. For your lordship knows well enough how we 
 were spoken of amongst all nations for that treasonable and horrible 
 deed whilk was committed by the traitor Bothwell." — An account of 
 the latter years of James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, his imprisonment 
 and death in Denmark, and the disinterment of his -presumed remains ; 
 in a letter to Sir Henry Ellis, K.H., F.S.A., from the Rev. R. S. 
 Ellis, M. A., chaplain to her Majesty's legation at Copenhagen. Read 
 to the Society of Antiquaries of England, 9th December 1859. Arch, 
 xxxviii. 308. 
 
 A contemporary tells how the ships sent in pursuit of "the Earl of 
 
464 
 
 CAREER OF BOTHWELL. 
 
 not accepted as the ruler of the islands ; and finding that 
 he could not be protected from his pursuers, he put to 
 sea, narrowly escaping capture. 
 
 At this point all that world that had been aroused by the 
 recent events in Edinburgh, heard that the active demon of 
 the great tragedy commanded a fleet of pirate vessels, and 
 had become the scourge and terror of the traders in the 
 North Sea. His evil repute in his high office of Admiral 
 of Scotland naturally fitted into such a conclusion, and it 
 was served by the accident that he sailed away in a vessel 
 that had been commanded by a notorious pirate named 
 David Vodt. A ship belonging to Bothwell — whether 
 his only one or not — was seized by his pursuers. The 
 suspicious vessel in which he sailed, with its companion, 
 had been obtained in the emergency of his escape, whether 
 honestly in purchase or hire, or by seizure. He is sup- 
 posed to have left behind him valuable jewels in his haste, 
 but, as we shall see, he brought his private papers with him. 
 
 In Bergen, the continental port nearest to the Orkneys, 
 there was much excitement on the appearance of a Danish 
 ship of war having in custody two armed pinks from 
 Scotland. It was reported that suspicions against them 
 were confirmed by the absence of all the certificates and 
 other papers appropriate to the vessels of honest traders. 
 Then the commander of the pinks was a man in ragged 
 and patched raiment, who gave his captors the amazing 
 intelligence that he was the monarch or supreme ruler of 
 
 Bothwell and his complices, slayers of the king's grace, arrived 
 and came to Leith and Dundee frustrate of their prey. " In giving 
 chase to vi^hat they supposed to be Bothwell's fleet, *'the ship called 
 the Unicom, being formost of the ships pursuand the said earl's ships, 
 most vehemently come upon ane rock and brack to pieces, and the 
 captains and men of war being therein with great difficulty escaped." 
 It was on this occasion that the Bishop of Orkney, who was in the 
 vessel, leaped on the rock with an agility that was alluded to in the 
 crisis of the discussion on the casket letters. The narrator goes on 
 to say, In this mean time the said earl's ships passed to ane place, 
 where the said earl and his complices being in the time foresaid upon 
 the Isle of Zetland at his dinner with Olav Sinclair, Foud of Zetland, 
 come therefore to them and shippet, and thereafter passed to the sea, 
 where he could not be apprehended." — Diurnal of Occurrents, 122, 
 
THE PURSUIT, 1567. 
 
 465 
 
 Scotland. In this capacity he claimed to be exempt from 
 the restraint of passports, licences, or any other certificates 
 required by ordinary traders on the seas. When ques- 
 tioned about his present object, he said he was on his 
 way to hold a conference with the King of Denmark, and 
 having concluded business at that Court, he was to pass 
 on the same purport onwards to the Court of France. 
 Being asked if he had any treasures, jewels, or other valu- 
 able things on board, he said. No — there was nothing that 
 he cared for ; and it would appear that though he had 
 taken with him such valuables, he had left them in the 
 exigencies of his flight. He showed an uneasy eagerness, 
 however, about a desk containing important private docu- 
 ments. His captors were not so confiding as to let him 
 have access to these without partaking in the secrets they 
 might reveal. And here was new matter of surprise — a 
 bundle of letters and printed proclamations, showing 
 that the owner of them was prosecuted as a traitor and a 
 murderer, and was fleeing before the avengers of blood. 
 Among the documents thus seized was one, that, as it 
 comes to us in the oflicial list, is apt to excite interest and 
 curiosity, since it is called a letter from the Queen of Scots, 
 with the tantahsing announcement that it tells her griefs, 
 but with nothing more. But there was another document 
 of infinite interest to the captors — a sealed parchment, 
 being a patent raising some one, and apparently the fugi- 
 tive in their possession, to the rank of Duke of the Orkney 
 and Shetland Isles, the old dominions of Norway. 
 
 He was removed to Copenhagen. There, though held 
 in restraint, he seems to have been indulged with some 
 shadow of the courtesies due to royalty in adversity. 
 Through the French ambassador, Dantzay, he addressed 
 two memorials to King Frederic, the first being dated in 
 January 1568, on the Day of Kings, called in England 
 Twelfth-day. 
 
 These papers make out a good case, of services to his 
 sovereign exciting the malice of his sovereign's enemies. 
 He fought for Queen Mary's Government, when there was 
 rebellion against her mother acting for her as regent, and the 
 rebels traitorously alUed themselves to an invading army of 
 
 VOL. IV. 2 a 
 
466 
 
 CAREER OF BOTHWELL. 
 
 Scotland's enemies * He set himself to defeat the ambitious 
 projects of the queen's illegitimate brother to supersede 
 her on the throne, and was persecuted by his powerful 
 enemy and driven from the country. He returned in time 
 to save the queen's husband from a project for his destruc- 
 tion, and was enabled to rescue both the king and the 
 queen from the conspirators who succeeded in slaying 
 their faithful servant Rizzio. Thus again he incurred the 
 hatred of the queen's enemies, and he was bethinking 
 himself of retiring from the world and passing his days 
 in peaceful obscurity, when there was a louder call than 
 ever for his devoted services to his sovereign, since the 
 traitorS; finding their opportunity, had murdered the king 
 by blowing up the house where he abode with gunpowder 
 and the queen would doubtless be the next victim. These 
 conspirators, to get rid of her champion, accused himself 
 of the deed, whereon he instantly demanded an open trial, 
 and, for all the machinations of his enemies, was honour- 
 ably acquitted. At this point, those influential nobles who 
 were the supporters of the Crown and the friends of roy- 
 alty, deeming such a reward due to his gallant fidelity, 
 recommended him as a worthy husband to the queen. 
 He was accepted. What followed on Carberry Hill re- 
 quired little art to make it flat rebellion and treason 
 against the sovereign and her husband. They took coun- 
 sel together to seek foreign aid — first of Denmark, next of 
 France. Hence was he, after having escaped from the 
 pursuit of his enemies, in the King of Denmark's domin- 
 ions, proposing, when he had completed a desirable ar- 
 rangement there, to pass on to Paris. 
 
 For the aid solicited from Denmark a distinct return 
 was offered. We have seen how James III. married a 
 daughter of Christian, King of Denmark, and how the 
 Orkney and Shetland Isles were kept in pledge by Scot- 
 land for her unpaid dowry. The emissary from Scotland, 
 who had arrived in so strange a fashion, was empowered 
 and prepared to render back this dominion to the Crown 
 of Denmark, if he was satisfied with the proflers of the 
 King of Denmark to assist the queen and the loyal party 
 in Scotland against the rebels. The restitution was to be 
 
HIS CAPTIVITY, 1567-78. 
 
 467 
 
 absolute, with a discharge of all pecuniary claim ; and he 
 was authorised in the diplomatics of the transaction to 
 give assurance that the queen, himself, and the Council 
 of Scotland, would grant whatever obligations Denmark 
 might demand.^ 
 
 ^ Je supplye sa majeste qu'il luy playse en dresser les lettres, avec 
 telles et si estroittes conditions, pour les diets isles d'Orquenay et 
 Schetland, que sa dicte majeste et les conseillers du royaume de 
 Dannemarck estimeront estre pour leur plus grands seurete ; et je 
 prometz en bonne foy que les dictes lettres seront scellees de la 
 royne, de moy, et du conseil du royaume d'Escosse, et signees de 
 chascun de nous, de noz propres mains." — Teulet, supplementary 
 to Labanoff, 189. To one not critical in the diplomacy of the 
 period, the condition seems to be put with distinctness, as well as 
 the whole case of which it is a part. We have not much of Both- 
 well's writing even in his native tongue, and it is therefore of some 
 moment that in the third collection of fac-similes of national manu- 
 scripts issued by authority of the Lord Clerk Register there is a letter 
 from him on business connected with the French auxiliary force in 
 the defence of Leith. Both in composition and penmanship it is 
 good, and its neat Italian lettering contrasts favourably with a speci- 
 men of the Regent Murray's writing in the same collection. No one 
 has doubted the genuineness of Bothwell's French narrative, and its 
 acceptance by M. Teulet is almost conclusive. One would have wel- 
 comed from so accomplished a diplomatic scholar as M. Teulet a fuller 
 criticism on these papers than the dry reference in a note to * ' ces 
 curieux Memoires, dans lesquelles le Comte de Bothwell expose sa 
 justification avec une certaine habilite.'^ Those accustomed to work 
 in the historical treasures M. Teulet has left, having got so much, 
 would expect no more, for he was an archaeologist of the severe 
 school, looking to the purity of the text, and offering all aid to the 
 proper understanding of it, but leaving the rest to the reader. It 
 may not confoiTn to our national ideas of the French intellect, but it 
 is true that France has been fertile in archaeologists of the pure 
 scientific order, and among these M. Teulet has done services likely 
 to be more appreciated the more they are examined. Nine years 
 ago I requested from him an opinion on a version of the fifth of 
 the * Casket Letters ' discovered at Hatfield, and particularly on the 
 questions, if it bore internal evidence of being originally composed in 
 French, and if it threw any light on the great controversy — but he 
 pronounced nothing. The same document has since been examined 
 by a more daring critic, who has published it in fac-si?iiile, with a 
 criticism bearing this conclusion : *'Appele a sieger apres trois siecles 
 dans un jury etranger a toutes les passions du temps d' Elisabeth, qui 
 ne releverait que de sa conscience et de son impartialite, nous 
 n'hesiterons pas a declarer que Marie Stuart est innocent et que cette 
 lettre est I'oeuvre d'un faussaire.'' — Marie Stuart d'apres les documents 
 
468 
 
 CAREER OF BOTHWELL. 
 
 He was removed across the narrow sound to Malmoe, 
 in Sweden, apparently before the end of the year 1573. 
 Thence, in 1573, he was taken to the Castle of Draxholm, 
 on the western coast of Zealand, where he spent the re- 
 mainder of his days. His detention was the object of an 
 active diplomatic correspondence. The successive re- 
 gents of Scotland demanded his extradition, that he 
 might be tried and punished. Queen Elizabeth backed 
 them, offering, if it were thought preferable, that he 
 should be sent through England, that she might have 
 a voice in his disposal. Had he in any Avay been at 
 the disposal of the Scots Government, everything con- 
 nected with the great crime — the casket letters and all — 
 would have been cast abroad for public discussion. Whe- 
 ther this would have been desirable to her accusers or 
 not, it could not have been escaped. It is open to argu- 
 ment, that apprehensions of such a discussion suggested 
 to them another alternative — namely, that treating the 
 fugitive on his Parliamentary condemnation in Scot- 
 land as a criminal under sentence for treason and murder, 
 sentence of death should be executed upon him in Den- 
 mark, and his head should be sent to Scotland to be im- 
 paled in the Kirk-of-Field. To see this project effected, 
 and take charge of the head, Captain John Clark was sent 
 to Copenhagen, and he was joined by an agent or am- 
 bassador of higher grade, Thomas Buchanan, a nephew of 
 the great George. Whatever the accusers had to appre- 
 hend from the presence of Both well, the French ambas- 
 sador in England saw in his removal to Scotland a dire 
 prospect for the imprisoned queen, and exerted himself 
 against it. ^ On the part of France, therefore. King Frede- 
 
 conserves au Chateau d'Hatfield, par M. Le Baron Kervyn de Letten- 
 hove ; Proc. Royal Academy of Belgium, No. 7, p. 107. 
 
 ^ *'Je suis de rechef fort instantemerit sollicite de suplier vos- 
 tre Majeste d'empescher en toutes sortes le retour du comte de 
 Boudouel, car I'on estime que nul plus grand escandalle a la repu- 
 tation de ceste pauvre princesse, ny nul plus grand destorbier a ses 
 affaires et k ceulx de votre service par de^a, ne S9auroit venir de 
 nuUe aultre chose qu'on peult pratiquer au monde." — La Mothe 
 Fenelon Correspondance, iv. 152. He had before put it that the extra- 
 
HIS CAPTIVITY, 1567-78. 
 
 469 
 
 ric was besought to keep Bothwell in close detention ; and 
 he did so, rather evading by troublesome conditions, than 
 directly repelling, the demands of the Queen of England 
 and the Regent of Scotland. 
 
 Among the other incidents of Bothwell's eventful 
 history it befell him at this juncture to find himself em- 
 barrassed with a Danish wife, whose claims went further 
 back than the two affairs in Scotland. Like the wives 
 whose misfortune it is to own erratic husbands of a hum- 
 bler order, she seems to have taken her opportunity to 
 lay claim to her share in such worldly goods as he hap- 
 pened to have in hand, for she got possession of one of the 
 pinks with its apparel.^ 
 
 This claim is supposed to have had its influence on 
 the determination to detain him. There was at the same 
 time the solicitation of the French Court; and perhaps 
 at the root of all, the unwillingness to abandon what 
 might in some shape or other be worked towards the 
 
 dition would go "pour achever de ruyner les affaires et la reputation 
 de ceste pauvre princesse." — Ibid., 148. 
 
 ^ " On the 17th of September, Mrs Anna, Christopher Trandson's 
 daughter, brought a suit against the Earl of Bothwell for having 
 taken her away from her native country, and refusing to treat her as 
 his married wife, although he by hand, word of mouth, and by 
 letters, had promised her so to do, which letters she caused to be read 
 before him. And inasmuch as he had three wives living — first her- 
 self ; then another in Scotland, of \vhom he had rid himself by pur- 
 chase ; last of all, the Queen Mary — Mrs Anna was of opinion that 
 he was not at all a person to be depended on ; he therefore promised 
 her the yearly allowance of a hundred dollars from Scotland, and 
 gave her a pink, with anchor, cable, and other appurtenances." — Liber 
 Bergensis, cited in *A Residence in Jutland, the Danish Isles, and Cop- 
 enhagen,' by Horace Marryat, i. 412. This marriage seems to have 
 been of sufficient moment to interest the English statesmen of the 
 day. It is said that the Earl of Bothwell is married in Denmark 
 to a wife with whom he has 40,000 *yoendallers.' The author of 
 this tale is Lady Buccleugh, his old friend and lover. "^Randolph to 
 Cecil, 25th September 1560 ; Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 311. 
 Something of the story was known to De Thou as cited by Schiern, 
 p. 277. The term **Pink" has, it may be rioted, dropped out of 
 naval nomenclature. It seems to have been an adaptation of the 
 French **Pinque," defined in the Dictiorinaire de Trevoux, **un 
 bdtiment de charge qui est rond a Tarriere." 
 
470 
 
 CAREER OF BOTHWELL. 
 
 restoration of the Northern Isles to the Scandinavian 
 sovereignty. His detention was so close and secret that 
 nothing was ever heard of it in Scotland, and he dropped 
 out of recollection. In 1573 came a rumour of his death, 
 and in 1575 a second and more positive assurance of it, 
 generally believed.^ On the ist of June 1576, Queen 
 Mary wrote to her faithful Beaton that she was assured her 
 husband had uttered a death-bed confession, taking on him- 
 self all the guilt of the crime, and pronouncing her inno- 
 cent. She afterwards complained that the confession had 
 been sent by King Frederic of Denmark to Queen Eliza- 
 beth, and that by her it had been suppressed.^ Beaton in 
 his turn had to give her a pleasant item of intelligence. 
 The tenor of the confession had been told to her son, and 
 the boy had shown becoming exultation at the rescue of 
 his mother^s fame from the calumnies heaped upon it.^ 
 
 A few years later, when the position of Queen Mary in 
 the esteem of her friends was rather that of the triumphant 
 martyr than of the sufferer under malignant rumours, and 
 the immaculateness of her character had spread as a creed 
 among those who were making her history available in the 
 cause of her Church, it was natural that the rumour of a 
 death-bed repentance, accompanied by the justification of 
 the innocent, should be reaUsed.^ Bothwell's confession is 
 
 ^ His death is thus entered in a chronology called Magazine til 
 den Danske Adels historic " In the year 1578, the 14th of April, 
 died the Scottish Earl at Diaxholm, and was buried in the same church. 
 His name was James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell." — Ellis, p. 311. 
 
 ^ Labanoff, iv. 330, 340. 
 
 ^ Keith, App., xviii., p. 301. 
 
 ^ " II deschargea la royne sa maistresse entierement du crime a elle 
 impose par ceux mesmes qui Tavoient commis et perpetre, appellant 
 Dieu a tesmoin de son dire * Blackwood Martyre.' — ^Jebb, ii. 227. The 
 confession was handled with ampler eloquence by another writer of the 
 same school, who appealed to King Frederic as having heard it from 
 the criminal, and so responsible for proclaiming to the world the inno- 
 cence of a sister queen. See * Maria Stuarta, Regina Scotise innocens, 
 &c., vindice Oberto Barnestapolio, ' Jebb, i. 415. The writer of this is 
 identified as an English Jesuit named Robert Turner, a native of 
 Barnstaple (Jocher Lexicon, voce Turner Turner was addicted to 
 paradoxical essays — a fashion of the day. He has one in favour of 
 debt, Melius est debere quam non debere." Another, **De Laude 
 
STORY OF THE CONFESSION. 
 
 now well known, and has been amply criticised.^ The peni- 
 tent attributes the influence he had gained over the queen 
 to the science of the sorcerer or magician, in which he had 
 been an ardent student and accomplished adept ; and this 
 was a solution of difficulties harmonising thoroughly with 
 the current opinions of the day.^ This confession has 
 never been pressed by Queen Mary's vindicators as any- 
 thing conclusive, even on the admission that it was the 
 genuine utterance of the dying ruffian.^ A death-bed 
 confession, indeed, it could not be, for, as we have seen, 
 he lived years after it became current ; and that the docu- 
 ment referred to by Queen Mary and Beaton is what we 
 now see, is shown by her naming — though not with precise 
 accuracy — the witnesses noted as present. But skilful 
 recent criticism has thrown the date when such a docu- 
 ment was possible still further back, by investigating the 
 period when these witnesses lived and died, and showing 
 that, to have been witnessed by all of them, the confession 
 must have been uttered between January 1568 and October 
 1569.^ People may utter dying confessions and yet live 
 
 Ebrietatis," beginning ^*Fugiant hinc Catones vultu severi, faces- 
 sant Philosophi oculis graves ; exterminentur Theolog conscientiae 
 lege arctissime constricti. " — Roberti Turneri, &c., Professoris in Aca- 
 demia Ingolstadiensi Orationes. 
 
 ^ It is among the other documents in the volume edited by Lord 
 Cockburn for the Bannatyne Club, * Les Affaires du Comte de Bod- 
 uel,' and in Teulet's supplementary volume to Labanoft's Collection. 
 
 ^ If the confessToiT vi^as framed in Denmark, the hint may have 
 been taken from a remark by the Scots ambassador, Thomas Bucha- 
 nan, who says that a queen so ilhistrious and so highly endowed w^ith 
 the best gifts of God v^ould never have been at the command of a 
 monster like Both well, if her natural powers *' fascinationibus, filtris, 
 incantationibus ac veneficiis ceterisque malis artibus, corruptae sub- 
 versaeque non essent." — Teulet's Supplement to Labanoff, 228. 
 
 ^ The strongest stand has been made on a short passage in a letter 
 by Sir John Forster giving the news of Morton's conviction. ** There 
 was xxii. articles put against him, but there was none that hurt him 
 except the murder of the king, which was laid unto him by iv. or v. 
 sound witnesses. The first is the Lord Bothwell's testament." — 
 Chalmers, 8vo edition, ii. 319. It is not elsewhere stated that refer- 
 ence was made to the confession at Morton's trial. 
 
 ^ James Hepburn, Jarl af Bothwell, bans Anholdesle i Norge og 
 Fcengselshri Denmark: en historisk-Undersoegelse" (James Hepburn, 
 
472 
 
 CAREER OF BOTHWELL. 
 
 on, but there were still larger elements of improbability. 
 King James, in his romantic matrimonial expedition, was 
 in the places connected with the affair, and among the 
 men who must have known whatever was to be known 
 about the great State prisoner, who had been dead only- 
 some twelve years. James brought home as his wife the 
 daughter of the King Frederic who had been called on be- 
 fore Europe to proclaim the confession as an acquittal. 
 Among those who accompanied her, it is told how, on 
 lyth of May 1590, in the festivities on the arrival of the 
 royal pair in Scotland, there were present at Holyrood these 
 men, Erik Kaas, Steen Brahe, Soergen Brahe, and Hannibal 
 Gyldensterne, all men, whose fathers, if the story of the 
 confession were true, must have been present when it was 
 uttered.^ King James, it was known, would do anything 
 for his mother's memory that did not demand a serious 
 sacrifice of his worldly fortunes, and had there been avail- 
 able in Denmark material for cleansing her reputation from 
 its foul stains, the world would have known of it. The 
 skilful critical examination of such conditions now avail- 
 able may satisfy us that Bothwell's confession is a fabri- 
 cation. ^ 
 
 Earl of Both well, his Seizure in Norway, and Imprisonment in Den- 
 mark: a Historical Inquiry), by Frederick Schiern, Professor of His- 
 tory in the University of Copenhagen, p. 289. 
 
 Though the names of the witnesses as mentioned by Queen Mary 
 do not quite coincide with those in the received copies of the testa- 
 ment, they are a mere variation of the same list, which is inaccurate 
 in all the copies, and gave Professor Schiern much trouble in identify- 
 ing the men intended to be named. In Teulefs, which must be held 
 as the most carefully printed edition of the testament, the witnesses 
 are ** Baron Gowes of Malmye Castle, Otto Braue of Elsinbronche 
 Cast ell. Monsieur Gullionestarne of Fowltostie Castle," p. 245. The 
 Professor identifies in these **Bjoem Kaas Lehnsmand, at Malmoe- 
 huus. Otto Brahe, the same at Helsingborg — this was the father of 
 the illustrious astronomer — and Mogens Gyldenstjeme in Fultofte," 
 p. 289. The Lehnsmand, generally a territorial magnate, had certain 
 judicial and executive functions. 
 
 1 P. 298. 
 
 ^ Professor Schiern is occupied in the preparation of a second and 
 enlarged edition of his very curious inquiry. Unfortunately, bad 
 health has delayed its publication. I hear from him, however, that 
 
STORY OF THE CONFESSION. 
 
 473 
 
 all recent inquiries have tended to confirm rather than to shake his 
 conclusions. When Denmark demands a second edition of a book 
 having so much more interest for this country, it v^ill surely be a re- 
 proach to us if it remains untranslated. I may mention that Professor 
 Schiern does not believe in the mummy reputed to be the dead body 
 of Bothwell, and pronounced by a lively traveller to be unmistakably 
 that of an ugly Scotchman ! " As a portrait from this mummy is 
 preserved in the museum of the Scottish Antiquaries, the Professor's 
 scepticism removes the last shred of any trace whence we could realise 
 what Bothwell was in his manner as he lived. 
 
 END OF THE FOURTH VOLUME. 
 
 PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS, EDINBURGH. 
 
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