Cassell's Illustrated History of England/Volume 2/Chapter 13

by John Cassell

CHAPTER XIII.

ELIZABETH.

Accession of Elizabeth—She abolishes the Papal Worship—Makes Peace with France and Scotland—War of the Scottish Reformation-Elizabeth takes part with the Reformers—Supports them through Cecil—The Siege of Leith—Peace—Mary Queen of Scots leaves France for Scotland—Suitors of Elizabeth—She aids the French Huguenots—Parliament enacts Penal Statutes against the Romanists—The Thirty-nine Articles—Peace with France—Proposals for the Marriage of the Queen of Scots—Elizabeth proposes the Earl of Leicester—Mary marries the Lord Darnley.

Parliament had assembled on the morning of the 17th of November, unaware of the decease of the queen; but, before noon, Dr. Heath, the Archbishop of York and Lord Chancellor of England, sent a message to the House of Commons, requesting the Speaker, with the knights and burgesses of the Lower House, to attend in the Lords to give their assent in a matter of the utmost importance. On being there assembled, the lord chancellor announced to the united Parliament the demise of Mary, and, though by that event the Commons were dissolved by the law, as it stood till the reign of William III., he called upon them to combine with the Lords, before taking their departure, for the safety of the country, by proclaiming the Lady Elizabeth the queen of the realm.

Whatever might have been the fears of any portion of the community as to the recognition of the title of Elizabeth on the plea of illegitimacy, or from suspicion of her religion, that question had long been settled by the flocking of the courtiers of all creeds and characters to Hatfield, where she resided; and now on this announcement there was a loud acclamation from the members of both Houses of "God save Queen Elizabeth! Long may she reign over us!"

Thus the Parliament, before dissolving, gave full and unequivocal recognition of the title of Elizabeth, and all the necessary Acts of the united Houses were completed before twelve o'clock; and the Lords, with the heralds, then entered the Palace of Westminster, and in due form, by blast of trumpet before the hall door, the attention of the public was called, and the new queen was proclaimed as "Elizabeth, by the grace of God, Queen of England, France, and Ireland, defender of the faith, &c." This continuance of the claim on France was a sheer absurdity, as by the ancient and invariable law of that kingdom no woman could succeed to the throne; but it took away all real right of complaint against Mary, Queen of Scots, for quartering the arms of England with her own, the aggression being thus made by Elizabeth on the claim of Mary as queen expectant of France.

Proclamation being thus made in Westminster, the young Duke of Norfolk, earl marshal, attended by a number of the peers and prelates, rode into the City, and there, being joined by the lord mayor and aldermen, Elizabeth was proclaimed at the cross in Cheapside, with the same instant and joyful recognition. The people shouted, "God save the Queen!" The bells from all the churches commenced ringing, bonfires were lit, tables were set out at the doors of the wealthy citizens for the multitude, and wine plentifully distributed. Not only was the death of the late queen forgotten in the universal joy, but all the melancholy circumstances of the time, for most melancholy they were. As we have stated, the season was wet and unhealthy. The fires of Smithfield, under the baleful activity of bloody Bonner, were still blazing; the prisons were crammed with fresh victims; and the power of an incensed Providence seemed to darken the country. The dismal seasons had produced famine, and a terrible fever, supposed to be what is now called typhus, of a most malignant kind, was raging through town and country. So much had it thinned the agricultural population that, combined with the disastrous state of the weather, the harvests had in many places rotted on the ground. Many thousands of the people had perished during four months of the autumn, and amongst them great numbers of the clergy, and no less than thirteen bishops. The joyful news which arrested the hand of the persecutor, seemed like light bursting through the clouds, and gave new hope and spirit to the nation.

For two days Elizabeth, as if from due respect to her deceased sister and sovereign, remained quiescent at Hatfield; but thousands of people of all ranks were flocking thither; and on the 19th her Privy Council proceeded thither also, and, after announcing to her her joyful and undisputed accession, they proclaimed her with all state before the gates of Hatfield House. They then sat in council with her, and she appointed her own ministers, having, no doubt, made all these arrangements with the man whom she had long marked out for her prime minister, Sir William Cecil. This statesman, of the true diplomatic breed, cool as winter's east wind, troubled with no disturbing imagination, no misleading heats of generosity, but far-seeing and subtle, though he could never win the confidence of the late queen, though he had bowed humbly, waited long and diligently, and even renounced his religion to win her favour, had soon caught the sagacious eye of Elizabeth, who had an instinctive perception of men able if not, in the truest sense, great. Cecil had for years been her confidential counsellor. By his shrewd and worldly guidance she had shaped her future course; and in appointing her ministers now, she showed by her address to Cecil that it was for him that she designed the chief post. "I give you," she said, "this charge: That you shall be of my Privy Council, and content yourself to take pains for me and my realm. This judgment I have of you: that you will not be corrupted by any manner of gift, and that you will be faithful to the State; and that, without respect to my private will, you will give me that counsel which you think best; and if you shall know anything necessary to be declared to me of secrecy, you shall show it to myself only, and assure yourself I will not fail to keep taciturnity therein; and, therefore, herewith I charge you."

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

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

Her procession to the Tower marked at once her popularity and her sense of royal dignity. Vast crowds had assembled to see and to cheer her; and she was surrounded by a prodigious throng of nobles, and gentlemen, and ladies. She rode in a chariot along the Barbican to Cripplegate, where the lord mayor and the civic dignitaries were waiting to receive her. There she mounted a horse, being already attired in a rich riding-dress of purple velvet, with a scarf tied over her shoulder, and attended by the sergeant-at-arms. The lord mayor went before her bearing her sceptre, at his side the garter king-at-arms, and followed by Lord Pembroke, who bore the sword of state before the queen. Next to her majesty rode Lord Robert Dudley, who had already so won her fancy that, though one of those who had endeavoured to thrust her sister and herself from the throne, she had appointed him master of the horse. The Tower guns announced her approach, and on entering that old fortress, she said to those about her, "Some have fallen from being princes of this land to be prisoners in this place; I am raised from being prisoner in this place to be prince of this land. That dejection was a work of God's justice, this advancement is a work of his mercy: as they were to yield patience for the one, so I must bear myself to God thankful, and to men merciful, for the other."

Elizabeth continued at the Tower till the 5th of December. It was necessary to ascertain how many of the existing Council would go along with her in the changes which she meditated. She soon found that she could not calculate on many of them, and a sort of lesser or confidential council was formed of Cecil, Sadler, Parr, the Marquis of Northampton, Russell, and the Dudleys. Of the old councillors she retained thirteen, who were all professed Papists, though some had only conformed for convenience under the late reign of bigot terror, and she added seven new ones, who all openly professed themselves Protestants. As yet, however, she had not announced those changes which were most likely to try the principles of her councillors; for she kept a show of Popery, and had not touched on the question of the supremacy. Elizabeth had learned caution in her own trials, and she had now at her elbow the very spirit of circumspection itself in Cecil. For the present she continued to attend mass, and witness all the ceremonies of the old religion. She had her sister, the late queen, interred with the solemnities of the Roman ritual; she had mass performed at the funeral of Cardinal Pole, and a solemn dirge and requiem mass for the soul of Charles V.

Yet these things did not deceive the people, and they were made the less doubtful by all prisoners on account of religion being discharged on their own recognisances, and the exiles for the same cause boldly flocking home, and appearing openly at Court. The Papal dignitaries, by their gross want of good policy, soon forced on a more open demonstration of Elizabeth's real feelings. The Pope himself acted the part of a most shallow diplomatist. Instead of waiting to see whether he could not induce the Queen of England to follow in the steps of her sister, he insulted her in a manner which was sure to drive a high-spirited woman to extremities. The conduct of Paul IV., who was now upwards of eighty, can only be regarded as proceeding from ecclesiastical pique, acting on a failing intellect. Elizabeth had sent announcement to all foreign courts of her accession "by hereditary right and the consent of her nation." She assured the Emperor Ferdinand and Philip of Spain that she was desirous to maintain the alliance betwixt the house of Austria and England; to the German princes, and the King of Denmark she owned her attachment to the Reformed faith, and her earnest wish to form a league of union with all Protestant powers. At Rome, her ambassador, Carne, informed the Pope that his new sovereign was resolved to allow liberty of conscience to all her subjects, of whatever creed. This, however, was by no means palatable to his Holiness, for this toleration was, in fact, an avowal of heresy; and he replied that he could not comprehend the hereditary right of one who was not born in lawful wedlock; that the Queen of Scots was the true legitimate descendant of Henry VII.; but that if Elizabeth would submit her claims to his judgment, he would do her all the justice he could.

At home, and to her very face, the same egregious folly and insult were shown. Dr. White, Bishop of Winchester, preached the funeral sermon of the late queen. Elizabeth was present, and it may be supposed that her astonishment and indignation were great to hear one of her subjects haranguing in this style. The sermon was in Latin, but that language was perfectly familiar to the queen. The bishop gave a highly-coloured history of the reign of Queen Mary, and amongst other subjects of eulogium, was especially loud in his praises of her renunciation of Church supremacy. This was a palpable blow at the new queen, who was about to put the oath of supremacy to the prelates, in order to test them; but this was only a beginning. He declared that Paul had forbidden women to speak in the church, and that, therefore, it was not fitting for the church to have a dumb head. He admitted that the present queen was a worthy person, whom they were bound to obey, on the principle that "a living dog was better than a dead lion;" yet qualifying even this left-handed praise by assorting that the dead lion was the more praiseworthy of the two, because "Mary had chosen the better part."

After this display of episcopal rancour and folly, the bishop found himself arrested at the foot of the pulpit stairs, where he continued his infatuated conduct by defying the authority of the sovereign, and threatening to excommunicate her. It is scarcely credible that one short reign of intolerance could so completely have carried back the bishops into the Middle Ages, and led them to act in a manner so utterly inconsistent with a firm but conscientious wisdom in support of their own faith.

Spurred on by these insults, Elizabeth, after having kept up the appearance of conformity with the Papal church for about a month, began to take a decided course. She had had mass regularly performed in her own chapel, but on Christmas Day, Oglethorpe, the Bishop of Carlisle, was preparing to perform high mass in the Royal chapel, when Elizabeth sent to him, commanding him not to elevate the host. Oglethorpe replied that he could not obey the command; that his life was the queen's, but his conscience was his own. Elizabeth sat quietly during the reading of the gospels, but that being concluded, when every one expected to see her make the usual offering, she rose and quitted the chapel with all her train. She followed this up by issuing an order forbidding any one to preach without Royal licence, and stopped all preaching whatever at that political pulpit, St. Paul's Cross. She probably gave Heath, the lord chancellor, a hint, through Cecil, to retire, for he resigned the seals, which were immediately transferred to Sir Nicholas Bacon.

The bishops, alarmed at the indications of a change in the public form of religion, met in London, and discussed the question, whether they could conscientiously assist at the coronation of a princess who appeared to be preparing for the subversion of the established hierarchy, and decided that they could not. Possibly, confiding in the apparent resolution of their body to maintain their present ecclesiastical status, they imagined that they should render the legal performance of the coronation impossible; but if so, they had little idea of the spirit they had to deal with. Elizabeth had all the ability, the self-will, and sense of her authority, which distinguished her father, and she soon made them feel it. They had now engaged in a contest with the Crown in which they were certain of defeat, for the people showed such attachment to their new queen, as would bear her through any opposition which the prelates could create. She found means to detach one single bishop from the general ranks, Oglethorpe of Carlisle, who had dared before to oppose her, and who must soon after have again joined his brethren in refusing the oath of supremacy, for we are told that all refused it except Kitchen, of Landaff.

This difficulty being removed, and the celebrated astrologer, Dr. Dee, having been consulted by the queen to point out a propitious day for the coronation, Sunday, the 15th of January, was fixed for that purpose.

On the 14th she made her procession, according to custom, from the Tower to Westminster; and the bishops might learn the uselessness of their opposition from the vast concourse of people of all ranks who filled the streets to witness the scene, and to make the air ring with their acclamations. Elizabeth appeared to do her utmost to make herself popular. She paid great attention to all the pageants which were prepared in the different streets through which she passed, and to all the speeches recited, and made many condescending little speeches of her own. The meanest person was suffered to address her, and she carried a branch of rosemary, given to her by a poor woman at Fleet Bridge, all the way to Westminster. She was greatly delighted to hear a man in the crowd say he remembered old King Harry VIII.

Not a bishop, except Oglethorpe, deigned to participate in the ceremony, though, with some trifling alterations, the queen had it performed in the ancient manner. She took the coronation oath, swearing to maintain the religion as established, meaning to break it as a matter of necessity, and after the oath, as the bishop was kneeling at the altar, she sent a little book by a lord for him to read out of, which he at first refused, and read on in his own books; but, after a while, seeming to think better of it, he read in the queen's book, and then read the gospel and epistle in English, at the queen's request. Following these concessions, he sang the mass from a missal which had been carried before the queen.

The whole affair of the coronation was a singular mixture of the old and the new; and whilst the bishops declined to be present because they believed the queen would turn out heretical, the Protestants were alarmed by the predominance of Popish rites in the ceremony, and the next day pressed her for a declaration of her intentions as to religion. But it was not her intention to disclose her whole meaning too soon; and she pursued her way, abandoning one thing and holding fast another, in a way which must have greatly tantalised all parties. Though she refused to sit out the mass in her chapel, she yet still kept her great silver crucifix and her holy water there, and forbade the destruction of images. At the very time, moreover, that she had a number of reformed divines sitting in the house of Sir Thomas Smith, preparing a new Book of Common Prayer, she received very coolly any recommendations for reform. "The day after her coronation," says Bacon, "it being the custom to release prisoners at the inauguration of a prince, Queen Elizabeth went to the chapel, and in the great chamber, one of her courtiers, who was well known to her, either out of his own motion, or by the instigation of a wiser man, presented her with a petition, and, before a great number of courtiers, besought her, with a loud voice, that now this good time, there might be four or five more principal prisoners released; there were the Four Evangelists, and the Apostle Paul, who had been long shut up in an unknown tongue, as it were in prison, so as they could not converse with the common people. The queen answered very gravely, that it was best first to inquire of themselves whether they would be released or not." Whilst thus appearing to favour very little this request, she did not neglect it, and the Convocation, at the request of Parliament, soon after recommended the translation of the Scriptures, and a translation was ere long published by Royal authority, which, after several revisions, was re-issued by King James I., and became the basis of our present authorised version.

On the 25th of January, Elizabeth proceeded to open her first Parliament. She had prepared to carry the decisive measures of reform which she contemplated, by adding five new peers of the Protestant faith to the upper House, and by sending to the sheriffs a list of Court candidates out of which they were to choose the members. Like all her other public proceedings, this was a strange medley of Romanism and Protestantism. High mass was performed at the altar in Westminster Abbey before the queen and the assembled Houses, and this was followed by a sermon preached by Dr. Cox, the Calvinistic schoolmaster of Edward VI., who had just returned from Geneva.

The lord-keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon, then opened the session by a speech, the queen being present, in which he held very high prerogative language, assuring both Lords and Commons that they might take measures for a uniform order of religion, and for the safety of the State against both foreign and domestic enemies; not that it was absolutely necessary, for she could do everything of her own authority, but she preferred having the advice and counsel of her loving subjects.

The first thing which the Commons proposed was the very last thing which she would have wished them to meddle with,—that is, an address recommending her to marry, so as to secure a legitimate heir to the throne. Elizabeth had, as we have seen, had many suitors, none of which, if we except the unfortunate Lord-Admiral Seymour, or the handsome but imbecile Courtenay, Earl of Devon, had she shown any willingness to marry. There have been many theories regarding the refusal of Elizabeth to enter into wedlock. The only one which we think will bear a moment's examination is, that her love of power was so strong in her as to absorb every other feeling and consideration. No woman of her time, or of any time, was so fond of flattery of her beauty, or showed so much pleasure in the attentions and courtship of handsome and distinguished men. From the days of her teens, when the lord-admiral used such familiarities with her, to her very old age, she had always one or more prince, peer, or gentleman who enjoyed her favour, and paid her all the adulation and assumed marks of fondness which lovers pay to their ladies. But, whatever amount of real passion she might feel on any of these occasions, there was a master passion far stronger—the love of power—enthroned in her soul, which made any marriage, any participation of that power with another, utterly impossible. So transcendant and invincible was this dominating principle in her, that, so far from allowing her to accept a husband, it would not even permit her to name or think of a successor to the latest day of her life. It was the fact that the Queen of Scots was her natural successor which made her hate her with a deadly, unappeasable hatred, and pursue her to destruction. Though her conduct for years with her favourite, the Earl of Leicester, was the subject of the grossest, and, as it would appear, too well-founded scandals; though she confessed to having promised him marriage; and though there has always been a tradition at Kenilworth that a certain grave is the grave of a daughter of Elizabeth and Leicester's, yet proudly she ever claimed the name of virgin queen; and capable as she undoubtedly was of the deepest dissimulation, yet never, we believe, did she utter truer words than on this occasion, when she declared that she had always vowed to remain single, and that nothing should move her from it. She made a long speech in reply to the address, glancing towards the close of it at her coronation ring, and then saying that when she received that ring, she became solemnly bound in marriage to the realm, and that she took their address in good part, but more for their good will than for their message. At this time Elizabeth was just turned twenty-five, and, according to the reports and portraits of the time, tall, fair of hair and complexion, and comely of person.

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

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

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

But to give an air of liberality to what there was no intention of any concession in, permission was given for the Papist and Protestant divines to argue certain great points in public. Five bishops and three doctors on the part of the former, and as many Protestant divines, were appointed to dispute before the lord-keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon, and the debates of the two Houses were suspended, that the members might attend the controversy. The Roman Catholics were to have the

 

Queen Elizabeth entering London.

 

privilege of opening the conference, and the Protestants were to reply; but it was speedily discovered that this gave immense advantage to the Protestants. The Roman Catholics called for a change of this mode; the lord-keeper refused to grant it; the bishops, therefore, protested that the conditions were not equal, and refused to attend. For this disobedience the Bishops of Winchester and Lincoln were committed to the Tower, and the other six disputants were bound to make their appearance at the bar of the Lords till judgment was pronounced, and they were compelled to do so till the end of the session, when they were fined in sums from £500 to forty marks.

The conduct of some of the bishops during the session was extremely violent, in consequence of the acts passed against their ascendancy. Bonner was particularly prominent, and others of the Romish party, with Dr. Storey at their head, seemed to lament that they had not cut off Elizabeth whilst they had the power in their hands. These were not measures, nor this the language, to do any good to their cause; and, in fact, the queen took the earliest opportunity to deprive these audacious enemies of their power to do mischief. Parliament was dissolved on the 8th of May, and within a week she summoned the bishops, deans, and other dignitaries before herself and Privy Council, and there admonished them to make themselves conformable to the laws just passed regarding religion. Heath, the archbishop, replied by boldly advising her majesty to remember her own coronation oath, not to alter the religion which she found by law established; adding that his conscience could not permit him to conform to the new regulations, and all the other prelates and dignitaries declared the same. The Council then charged Heath and Bonner, on the evidence of certain papers, with having, during the reign of Edward VI., carried on secret conspiracies with Rome, with the intent to overthrow the Government. To this they replied by pleading two general pardons, and the Council then proceeded to administer to them the oath of supremacy. This they all refused except Kitchen, the Bishop of Landaff, who had clung to his see through all changes for the last fourteen years, and clung to it still.

They were then deprived of their sees, and a considerable number of other Church dignitaries were also deprived by the same test. The bulk of the clergy, however, conformed, and to those who were ejected pensions for life were allowed—a policy far more considerate than had ever prevailed in such circumstances before. The refugees on account of the Marian persecution, who had now flocked home from Switzerland and Germany, were installed in the vacant livings, and before the end of this year the Church of Rome had lost the State patronage in this country for ever. Two statutes of this session, the one establishing the oath of supremacy, and the other of uniformity, became law, and pressed heavily and despotically on Papists and all classes of Dissenters till a very late period. So long as they were in force, no one except a member of the Church of England had the slightest chance of promotion or even of employment in the State. The statute of uniformity was the embodied spirit of intolerance. For absenting himself from the worship of the Established Church, a man was fined a shilling; for using any other than the State ritual, forfeiture of goods and chattels was incurred for the first offence, a year's imprisonment for the second, and imprisonment for life for the third. It was an attempt, of the kind which never succeeds, to put down a rival religion by force. It became the source of vast injustice and oppression, causing the most terrible heart-burnings and cruelties; throwing the firebrand of dissension into every neighbourhood, and producing eventually sanguinary civil wars. Till the accession of William and Mary, the Romanists were pursued by the most annoying surveillance, and often by the most intolerable tyranny; and the evil was not so much at first the work of the Government, as of the puritanic zealots who brought from their unfortunate exile in Switzerland the harsh, intolerant, persecuting spirit which sprang up there, and diffused its virus far and wide through Protestant Europe.

Under Elizabeth, the Roman Catholics could not worship according to their rites, except with the deepest secrecy, and were continually exposed to the vigilance of spies. In 1561 Sir Edward Waldegrave and his lady were imprisoned in the Tower for having a domestic chaplain and attending mass in their own house. This was only one case amongst great numbers, and the consequence was, that numbers of Roman Catholics went abroad, for the quiet enjoyment of their religion. Cecil, Walsingham, Bacon, and others of the queen's ministers, had, in fact, to keep the Protestants in check, who demanded more severe treatment of their enemies. The injunctions of Edward VI., which were re-issued, were much modified, and opprobrious phrases, such as "kissing and licking images," were softened down, the licking being omitted. The injunctions of Elizabeth, contrary to those of Edward, forbade the destruction of paintings and painted windows in churches. On the other hand, the remaining monastic institutions were broken up, and the monks and nuns were turned adrift. Three convents were removed to the Continent, and many of the ejected clergy followed Feria, the Spanish ambassador, to Spain.

Five of the deprived bishops—Heath, Bonner, Bourn, Turberville, and Poole—presented a petition to the queen, praying her, without loss of time, to return to the pious path of her late sister, to restore the ancient faith, and put down the prevailing heresies, before the wrath of God fell on the nation. Elizabeth, in great indignation, reminded them that they were, in her father's time, amongst the most obsequious flatterers and followers of his innovations, committed them all to prison, excommunicated them, and retained Bonner in the Marshalsea for the remaining nine years of his life. The rest, after imprisonment for terms more or less long, were then put under the care of different bishops and deans.

To replace the expelled bishops was no very easy matter, not from the paucity of candidates, but from the revolutions which had taken place in the ordinal of the Church. Dr. Matthew Parker, who had been the chaplain of Anne Boleyn, and who had stood so faithfully by her, was appointed by Elizabeth Archbishop of Canterbury—but how was he to be consecrated? His election was to be confirmed by four bishops, and his consecration to be performed by them. Where were they to be found? There was not a bishop left, except Landaff. Still more, Mary had abolished the ordinal of Edward VI., and Elizabeth had abolished that of Mary. The difficulty was, at first sight, insurmountable, and no way out of it presented itself for four months. It was then recollected that Barlowe, Hodgkins, Scorey, and Coverdale, the deprived Bishops of Bath, Bedford, Chichester, and Exeter, had been consecrated by the reformed ordinal, and that restoration which had been denied them at the petition of their friends, because they were married men, was now accorded as an escape from this dilemma. They were reinstated, and confirmed the election of Parker, consecrated him according to the form of Edward VI., and helped to confirm and consecrate all the newly elected prelates. Elizabeth, however, procured the passing of two acts, by which she stripped the new bishops of a large amount of the property of their sees. She restored to the Crown the property which Mary had returned to the Church, and she empowered herself to seize on what episcopal lands she chose when the sees were vacant, on condition of giving tithes and parsonages instead, which, however, seldom approached to the same value.

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

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

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

We have already shown that Henry VII. commenced, and Henry VIII. and Edward VI. continued, the system of bribing the Scottish nobility against their sovereign. Elizabeth, in pursuance of her plans against the Queen of Scots, now adopted the same practice, and kept in pay both the nobles and the Protestant leaders of Scotland. To understand fully her proceedings, we must, however, first take a hasty glance at the progress of the Reformation in Scotland. That kingdom received the Reformation in its simplest, most rigid, and severe form. The doctrines which had sprung up in republican Switzerland, under Calvin and Zwinglius, were imbibed there by Knox and others in their most unbending hardness. There was little of the gentle and the pliant in their tenets, but a stern asceticism, which suited well with the grave and earnest character of the Scotch. Foremost in the movement had stood the resolute John Knox, from the moment that he returned from his Algerine captivity, in 1580. During the reign of Edward VI. he was well received in England, and lent his aid in promoting those ecclesiastical changes which took place under that monarch. On the accession of Mary, he fled again to the Continent, and became minister of the English refugees at Frankfort. But there the Presbyterian system, which he pressed upon his congregation, was too unpalatable for them, and he was expelled from his pulpit, charged with treason against the Emperor, and fled to Geneva. Confirmed in the puritanism of his master, Calvin, he returned to Scotland in 1558. He found the Reformers there disposed to take a more moderate course than that which he had learned, at Geneva, to regard as the only righteous one. They were in the habit of attending mass; and as the queen-regent had, for her own purposes, shown some favour to the Reformers, they were anxious to go as far with her in conformity to the national Church as they could. Knox boldly opposed this spirit of compromise, and brought over Maitland of Lethington to his views. A more open and formal separation from the Romish Church was determined upon. He now numbered amongst his adherents men destined to figure in the religious history of their time: Erskine of Dun, a man of baronial rank and ancient family; Sir James Sandilands, commonly styled Lord St. John; Archibald, Lord Lorn, afterwards Earl of Argyll; the Master of Mar; James Stuart, prior of St. Andrews, a natural brother of Mary Queen of Scots, now called the Lord James; the Earl Glencairn; and the Earl-Marshal.

The opposing clergy, roused by the recommendations of Knox for separation, summoned him to appear before an ecclesiastical convention in Edinburgh. Thither he repaired, and, to his agreeable surprise, found the Reformers collected in such numbers as to overawe his enemies. He addressed a letter to the queen-regent, calling upon her to protect the Reformed preachers, and even to attend their sermons. This was a stretch of assurance which Mary of Guise treated with ridicule; and the opposite party, emboldened by her secret countenance, began to plot against his safety. A period of danger seemed approaching, and Knox, to the astonishment of his friends, at this moment accepted an invitation to become pastor of the reformed congregation at Geneva, where all was prosperous and secure.

The Roman Catholic leaders exulted in the flight of Knox; they summoned him to stand his trial, and as he, of course, could not appear, condemned him, and burnt him in effigy at the High Cross in Edinburgh. The conduct of the Reformers whom he left behind him was far bolder than his own. When summoned by Mary of Guise to appear in Edinburgh and answer for their conduct, the preachers, attended by thronging thousands of the respective congregations, presented themselves in such a formidable shape, that the regent declared that she meant no injury to them; and a period of such tranquility succeeded, that the leaders of the Reform party—the Earl of Glencairn, Lord Lorn, son of the Earl of Argyll, Erskine of Dun, Stuart, afterwards the Regent Murray—entreated Knox to return to his country, which they assured him he might do in safety. Knox resigned his charge, and had reached Dieppe in order to take ship for Scotland, when he received the intelligence that the zeal of the Reformers had cooled, that the scheme which occasioned them to write to him had been abandoned, and that the Protestants preferred worshipping God in private to daring the perils of a public contest. Knox wrote a most indignant answer, telling the nobles that if they thought they should escape tyranny and oppression by shunning danger, they grievously deceived themselves; that they would only encourage the enemy to greater insolence, and that the work of reformation was especially that of the nobles. This address, accompanied by stinging private letters to Erskine of Dun and Wishart of Pitarrow, produced the intended effect. A new impulse was given to the cause of reform; the leaders of the cause came together, their zeal acquired every day more fervency, and on the 3rd of December, 1557, they drew up that League and Covenant which was destined to work such wonders in Scotland, to rouse the suffering Reformers into an actual church militant; to put arms into the hands of the excited peasants, brace the sword to the side of the preacher, and, through civil war and scenes of strange suffering, bloodshed, and resistance on moor and mountain, to work out the freedom of the faith for ever in Scotland. The Covenant engaged all who subscribed it, in a solemn vow, "in the presence of the Majesty of God and his congregation," to spread the Word by every means in their power, to maintain the Gospel and defend its ministers against all tyranny; and it pronounced the most bitter anathemas against the superstition, the idolatry, and the abominations of Rome.

This bond received the signatures of the Earls of Glencairn, Argyll, and Morton, Lord Lorn, Erskine of Dun, and many other nobles and gentlemen, who assumed the name of the Lords of the Congregation: and from this hour it became a scandalous apostacy for any one to flinch or fall away from this "solemn League and Covenant." War to the death was thus proclaimed against the established religion, and the Congregation, as the Reformers now styled themselves, passed a resolution, that in all the parishes of the realm the Common Prayer Book—that is, the book of Edward VI.—should be regularly used, with corresponding lessons from the Old and New Testament, and that the curates should read the same; but, if they were not qualified, or refused, then the next qualified person should do it for them. Preaching, or interpretation of the Scriptures, was recommended to be used also in private houses, but not in such numbers as to draw the attention of the Government till such time as God should move the prince to grant public preaching by true and faithful ministers.

The Lords of the Congregation proceeded forthwith to put these resolutions in force in all their own districts. The Earl of Argyll ordered Douglas, his chaplain, to preach openly in his own house, and a second letter was written to hasten the arrival of Knox. The Papal clergy were greatly excited, and called on the queen-regent to interpose her authority; but Mary of Guise had a difficult part to play. The marriage of her daughter with the dauphin was about to take place, but as yet the Scottish Parliament had not given its final consent. She therefore had to avoid incensing the nobles of either persuasion, and whilst she supported the views of the establishment, she was obliged to protest against proceeding to extremities with the Reformers. The Archbishop of St. Andrews was averse to persecution also; but the clergy would not let him rest, and Walter Miln, the parish priest of Lunan, in Angus, who had been condemned as a heretic in the time of Cardinal Beaton, but had escaped from prison, was now seized, and brought to the stake. He was a venerable man of upwards of eighty, and his death excited such a horror and indignation, that he was the last victim in Scotland by fire.

This deed produced its natural fruits. The Lords of the Congregation remonstrated with the queen-regent boldly, and roused the indignation of the country against the clergy. Emissaries were dispatched in all directions to stir up the people against such cruelty, and Mary of Guise was compelled to protest, to a deputation headed by Sir James Sandilands, that such measures were contrary to her wishes, and that the Protestants should have her protection. In the Parliament of December, 1558, the Lords of the Congregation demanded that all proceedings on account of heresy should be suspended till the present differences of opinion in the Church should be settled by a general council, and that no churchman should judge those accused of heresy, but lay judges only. At this crisis Elizabeth of England ascended the throne. The power of the Papists was there for a moment paralysed; but in France, Mary's daughter was now married, and her husband, the dauphin, was proclaimed king-consort of Scotland by consent of Parliament. Mary of Guise's objects were accomplished, and she at once threw off the disguise of assumed moderation towards the Reformers. She at once joined the policy of her brothers, the Duke of Guise and the cardinal, whose object was to combine France and the Papists of France, England, and Scotland, for the dethronement of Elizabeth, and the establishment of the Queen of Scots in her place. The first step was evidently to put down the Reformation in Scotland, and to secure the French dominance in that country, by which they imagined that, in combination with the disaffected Roman Catholics of England, they would easily depose Elizabeth.

A firm stand against the demands of the Reformers indicated this change in the policy of the queen-regent. In a convention of the clergy held in Edinburgh, in March, 1550, the Lords of the Congregation demanded that the bishops should be elected by the gentlemen of the diocese, and the clergy by people of each parish. This was peremptorily refused, and it was decreed that the practice of using English prayers should cease, no language should be permitted in public worship but Latin, and this was followed by a proclamation of the queen-regent, ordering all people to conform strictly to the established religion, to attend mass daily; and, in an interview with the leaders of the Protestants, she showed them the commands which she had received on these heads from France, and summoned the chief ministers of the reformed body to appear before a Parliament to be held at Stirling to answer for their conduct in introducing heretical practices and doctrines.

The astonished Lords of the Congregation protested against so arbitrary and alarming a determination of government, and reminded the queen-regent of her solemn and repeated promises of toleration and protection. "Promises," replied the regent, to their still greater amazement, "ought not to be urged upon princes, unless they can conveniently fulfil them." This flagrant avowal of the basest Jesuitical doctrine so startled the lords, that they replied, on the spot: "Madam, if you are resolved to keep no faith with your subjects, we will renounce our allegiance; and it will be for your grace to consider the calamities which such a state of things must entail upon the country."

For a moment this remonstrance appeared to influence the infatuated woman, but soon hearing that the town of Perth had embraced the Protestant faith, she was so exasperated that she commanded Lord Ruthven, the provost, to suppress the heresy. "Madam," replied that nobleman, "I can cut down the people till you are satiated with their blood; but over their consciences I have no power." Blind to the folly of her course, she reprimanded Ruthven for what she termed his malapert speech, and issued orders for Perth, Dundee, Montrose, and other places which had renounced Romanism to return to the ancient faith, duly to attend mass, and again summoned the reformed preachers to appear at Stirling to answer for their delinquencies.

At this moment, as by the direct ordering of Providence, Knox arrived. He found the position of Protestantism very different from that in which he left it. Then, the Reformers were zealous, but their numbers few; now, they were numerous and powerful, though menaced. Willock, Douglas, and other ministers had, during his absence, been labouring at the peril of their lives; but now, not only were they protected by the nobles, by the indignant spirit of the people at large, but by England under her new Protestant queen. It was determined by the Lords of the Congregation to attend their ministers to Stirling in such numbers as to overawe the Government, and Knox volunteered to take his part with the other preachers. The nobles and the people mustered at Perth, and Erskine of Dun was sent on to request an interview with the queen-regent. Mary of Guise, aware of the formidable assembly of the Protestants, on this occasion exercised that duplicity for which she became famous. On Erskine assuring her that the people asked for nothing more than to worship God according to their consciences in peace, she declared that that was only reasonable, and if the leaders would request their followers to disperse, the summonses to the ministers should be discharged, and toleration fully conceded. But no sooner had the people returned home from Perth on the faith of this promise, than, acting on her maxim that promises were only to be regarded by princes as long as they were convenient, she continued the summonses, denounced all who did not appear as rebels, and made it high treason for any one to harbour them. Erskine of Dun, burning with indignation at this gross perfidy, hastened to Perth, where, on the announcement of this news, Knox ascended the pulpit, and preached a fiery sermon against the idolatry of the mass, and enumerated the stern commands of Scripture for the destruction of all the monuments of that crime. Scarcely had the people retired from the church, when a priest, as in defiance, unveiled a rich shrine which stood above one of the altars, and, displaying the images of the Virgin and the saints, prepared to celebrate mass. An enthusiastic young man called to those standing around him to prevent such a perpetration of the idolatry just denounced in so terrible a manner; the priest struck him in resentment at the interruption, and the young man retaliated by flinging a stone, and dashing to pieces one of the images. This was the signal for a general onslaught on the altar. Images, candles, and ornaments were torn down in an instant and destroyed; and the noise recalling those without, there was a general rush into the church, and crosses, shrines, confessionals, paintings, and painted windows were rent and battered into a thousand fragments, and stamped under foot. From the cathedral the excited multitude rushed away to the religious houses of the Grey and Black Friars, and thence to the Chapter House, or Carthusian monastery. In a very short time there was not a church or chapel in Perth that was not stripped and desolated; the rioters, Knox says, leaving the spoil to the poor, who showed no reluctance to help themselves. The fury thus aroused against the Popish idolatry, as it was called, soon spread from town to town, and the first to imitate Perth was Cupar in Fife.

 

John Knox.

 

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

Matters were proceeding to extremity when Glencairn arrived in the Protestant camp with 2,500 men; this made the queen-regent pause, and an agreement was effected by means of Argyll and the Lord James, by which toleration was again granted, and the queen-regent engaged that no Frenchman should approach within three miles of Perth, a condition which she characteristically evaded by garrisoning it with Scotch troops in French pay. Knox and Willock had an interview with Argyll and the Lord James, and sharply upbraided them with appearing in arms against their

 

Destruction of the Carthusian Monastry, Perth, by Rioters.(See page 402)

 

brethren, to which these nobles replied that they had done it only as a means of arbitrating for peace; but the Congregation took means to bind them in future by framing a new covenant, to which every member swore obedience, engaging to defend the Congregation or any of its members when menaced by the enemies of their religion.

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

The Lords of the Congregation assembled at St. Andrews, and with them Knox, having come, as he said, to the conclusion that to be rid of the rooks it was necessary to pull down their nests. At Crail, a small seaport in Fife, he had avowedly urged on the multitude to this work, and they had done it effectually, in the destruction of the altars and images in the church. The same scene was repeated at Anstruther, another seaport not far distant; and now he prepared to attack the great centre of Papal power and worship in St. Andrews.

The archbishop, hearing of the menaced attack, entered the town on the Saturday evening, at the head of a hundred spears, and sent to inform Knox that the moment he showed himself in the pulpit he would be saluted with a dozen culverins. Great alarm was occasioned in the congregation by this, but Knox treated the threat with contempt, appeared in the pulpit, and took for his text the account of Christ whipping the money-changers out of the temple. He declared that it was the intention of the queen-regent, who kept no oath or treaty, to bring in French troops and curb both their religion and their liberties, and to such a degree of fury did he work them, that the whole congregation rushed forth, with their magistrates at their head, and levelled with the ground the proud edifices of the Dominican and Franciscan friars.

The archbishop fled to the queen, who was lying at Falkland, and she immediately ordered her army to march upon St. Andrews and annihilate the iconoclasts. But on reaching Cupar Moor she found the camp of the Congregation defended at all points, and filled with a host of enthusiastic Covenanters, with skilful commanders at their head. Knox said people seemed to have been rained from the skies. Mary of Guise again betook herself to negotiation, and a truce of eight days was granted on the assurance that a number of noblemen should be appointed to meet the leaders of the Congregation, and settle all points of difference. But it was soon perceived that the queen-regent was only endeavouring to gain time for the muster of more troops; and no commissioners arriving, but, on the contrary, the inhabitants of Perth complaining loudly of the cruelties and oppressions of Charteris, it was determined to send a force to their relief. Sir William Kirkaldy of Grange, an officer of great ability and experience, joined them at this juncture. Such numbers flocked to the rescue of Perth, that it was surrendered at the first assault. In the immediate vicinity stood the episcopal palace and abbey of Scone, in which, from time immemorial, the kings of Scotland had been crowned; but, spite of the popular veneration for this place, they entertained a deep hatred of the bishop, who had been the chief instigator of the burning of Walter Miln. The people rushed away to execute vengeance upon him, and Knox and the Congregation hurried after them to prevent them. They succeeded in checking any further outrage than the destruction of the altar and images, and Argyll and the Lord James contrived to draw them away to fresh quarry. It was reported that the queen-regent was on the march to occupy Stirling and the fords of the Forth, so as to cut off all communication betwixt the northern and southern Covenanters. A great crowd followed Argyll and Murray to forestall her, but by this means they left Scone exposed. People from Perth began the next day to gather about the abbey, some in hope of plunder, others of vengeance, and the bishop, alarmed, barred his gates, armed his servants, and stood on the defensive. A man approaching the "gernel," or granary, was thrust through with a rapier, and the cry was that it had been done by the prelate's son. The news fled to Perth; the excited populace poured forth vowing vengeance, and presently, spite of the vehement dissuasions of Knox and his associates, the palace and abbey were in flames. "Now," exclaimed an old woman, who had been watching the efforts of the leaders to prevent the conflagration, "I see that God's judgments are just, and none can save where he will punish. Since ever I can remember aught, this place hath been nothing else than a den of profligates, where those filthy beasts, the friars, have acted in darkness every sort of sin, and specially that most wicked man the bishop. If all know what I know, they would see matter for gratitude, but none for offence."

Argyll and the Lord James had succeeded in checking the march of the queen-regent; and on their advance to Linlithgow, she and the French forces evacuated Edinburgh, falling back to Dunbar; whilst the covenanting army, entering Linlithgow, pulled down the altars and images, destroyed the relics, and then advanced on Edinburgh, which they entered in triumph on the 29th of June, 1559.

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

The consequence of this was that a secret interview took place betwixt Kirkaldy and Percy, at Norham, in which assistance was promised to the Scotch Reformers by Elizabeth. The manner in which Elizabeth proposed to afford this aid was most mean and dishonourable. As a friend to the Reformation, nothing could have been more noble than to have openly and courageously owned that sympathy, and sought in a legitimate manner to influence the young Queen of Scotland to arrest the persecution of her subjects, and to allow them toleration of their religion. But nothing was further from Elizabeth's intention than this. She regarded Mary already with deep jealousy and resentment, on account of her claims on the succession to the English throne, aggravated by her having been induced to quarter the arms of England with those of Scotland. Her desire, therefore, was to weaken Mary in the affections of her subjects, and to create such troubles in Scotland as should not only prevent any attempt of Mary in England, but also afford herself opportunity of acquiring an ascendancy in Scotland. Elizabeth was bound by treaty to be at peace with both France and Scotland, yet she did not hesitate thus secretly to foment rebellion in the kingdom of the young and absent queen, to hold her subjects in her secret pay, at the same time that she professed to act uprightly and faithfully towards their Government, as by her treaty bound.

The parsimony of Elizabeth, however, and the caution of her minister Cecil, withheld all efficient aid from the Scottish Reformers at the time that it was most essential. Whilst the queen-regent delayed any active proceedings in the hope of the arrival of fresh troops from France, and the knowledge that the irregular army brought into the field by the Scottish barons could not long be kept together, Elizabeth deferred the promised subsidies. Mary of Guise, meantime, spread all kinds of reports to the disadvantage of the Covenanters, declaring that, under the guise of seeking freedom of conscience, they were conspiring to overturn the Government of the country. She caused a proclamation to be issued in the name of the young king and queen, charging the Reformers with having stolen the irons of the Mint, and of maintaining a correspondence with England—a charge only too true. She asserted that she had already offered to call a Parliament, in which everything should be satisfactorily settled, and full religious liberty conceded.

These acts had their effect. Many of the reform party, in a letter to the queen, repudiated every idea of rebellion; others drew off from the army, and the Duke of Chatelherault abandoned the Congregation. In this predicament, the Lords of the Congregation made still more impassioned appeals to Cecil, and Knox wrote to him entreating him to abate the prejudice of Elizabeth towards him. But that prejudice was of the most bitter and unconquerable kind in the heart of Elizabeth. She regarded Knox with the fiercest aversion, and swore that he should never set foot in her kingdom. He had sought through Cecil to obtain from her permission to pass through England on his way from Geneva, but received the most angry denial. Knox had perpetrated the unpardonable offence to Elizabeth in writing his "First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women," wherein, aiming a blow at his own Queen Mary, he had hit more mortally the proud Queen of England. It was in vain that Knox now attempted to correct this error. He declared that, "though he still adhered to the propositions he had set forth in his book, he never meant to apply them in her case, whose whole life had been a miracle, God having by an extraordinary dispensation of his mercy made lawful to her that which both nature and God's law denied to other women, and that no one in England would be more willing to maintain her lawful authority than himself." He prayed that he might be permitted to come into England to plead the cause of the religion of his country. But such was the detestation with which the English queen regarded him, that he might have been thankful that she did not allow him to go there, or she would probably have served him worse than she did afterwards the Scottish queen.

Disappointed in his attempt, Knox did not fail, impolitic as it was, to give the proud queen a taste of his quality. He called her "an infirm vessel," and warned her that, if "she persisted in her pride and foolish presumption, she would not long escape punishment." He was equally outspoken to Cecil, from whom he hoped to obtain assistance for his cause; reminding him of his backsliding in the days of bloody Mary, when "he had followed the world in the way of perdition, to the suppressing of Christ's true evangel, to the erecting of idolatry, and to the shedding of the blood of God's most dear children, to which he had by silence consented and subscribed."

No aid coming soon from Elizabeth, the Reformers were compelled to come to terms with the queen-regent. They agreed to evacuate the town, restore the coining irons of the Mint, and refrain from any attacks on churches and religious houses, or molestation of churchmen. On the other hand, the queen agreed to give full freedom of faith and speech, and to admit neither a French nor Scotch garrison to the town. The conditions were signed by the Duke of Chatelherault, the Earl of Huntley, and D'Oyselles, to whom the negotiation was entrusted. The Reformers, before quitting the place, issued a proclamation, in which they made a false representation of the treaty, giving at length a statement of the privileges conceded, but concealing the conditions by which they had bound themselves to make no aggressions on the opposite party.

Neither party was honest in its professions. The queen-regent was looking daily for succour from France, the Reformers for support from England; and either party would, no doubt, have broken the contract with little ceremony had it found itself in a condition to dictate to the other. Sir James Melville had arrived from France during these late transactions on a private mission to ascertain the actual state of parties, and particularly whether the Lord James had any design of seizing the crown, as the queen-regent had represented. Melville interrogated Murray himself, and, professing himself satisfied with his denial, returned through England.

At this juncture died Henry II. of France. He had been in low spirits since the signing of the treaty of Cateau Cambresis; and receiving a wound in the eye whilst tilting at the celebration of the festivities on the marriages of his daughter Isabella with Philip of Spain, and his sister Margaret with the Duke of Savoy, inflammation took place, and he died on the 10th of July, 1559. He was succeeded by his son as Francis II., and thus Mary Queen of Scots became the Queen of France.

Melville, on his return, found this change had taken place. The Guises were in the ascendant, and the most determined menaces of destruction to the Protestant party in Scotland prevailed at the French court. The Congregation was greatly alarmed at the rumours of French troops which were to be sent over. The leaders had retired to Stirling, where they entered into a new bond to receive no message from the regent—who sought to sow dissension amongst them—without communicating it to the whole body. Knox was dispatched to the borders to communicate with Sir James Crofts, the governor. The assistance which the Reformers claimed was extensive. They asked for money to pay a garrison for Stirling, which they engaged to seize. They called for reinforcements by sea to secure the safety of Perth and Dundee, and proposed that Broughty Craig should be fortified, the nobles of the neighbourhood offering to do the work so that they got the money. Knox had it in his instructions to urge the seizure of Eyemouth, and money to influence the Kers, the Homes, and other borderers. Money was wanted and troops too, ready to support the movements of the Congregation: in fact, the Scottish nobles were thirsting for the pay which they had enjoyed under Henry VIII. and Edward VI.; and, in return for what they called "this comfortable aid," they promised to enter into a strict league of alliance with Elizabeth, binding themselves to make her enemies their enemies, her friends their friends, and never to come to any accommodation with France without the consent of Elizabeth.

Knox and his companion, Alexander Whitelaw, did not go and return on this clandestine mission without incurring danger from the French, who attacked their escort at Dunbar; and they returned much disgusted with the cautious parsimony and double-faced conduct of the English queen, who, instead of furnishing the funds which they craved, accused the Congregation of lukewarmness in not more vigorously exerting themselves against the queen-regent, whilst she herself was making the most open professions of amity to that princess. Her policy is displayed in the instructions which she gave to Sir Ralph Sadler, whom she now sent as her agent to Scotland. He was to nourish the faction betwixt the Scotch and the French, so that the French should have less leisure to turn their attention to England; and he was to ascertain whether the Lord James really entertained designs against the crown.

This policy of Elizabeth's extremely chagrined the Reformers. The Lord James and the Earl of Argyll addressed letters to Sir James Crofts and to Cecil, in which they complained of the treatment shown them, and aspersions of indifference cast upon them. They even threw out mysterious threats if they were not succoured. They observed that the English Government recommended them to supply themselves out of the wealth of the churches and altars, but they replied that they had not the court with them in this matter, as England had had; but in one thing they had followed the advice of England: they had established a council, had endeavoured to bring over Chatelherault to their views, and only waited a good opportunity to depose the queen-regent, and to place the viceregal power in the hands of some chief of their own party.

Who this should be was an important question. There were three leaders who principally attracted the attention of England: Chatelherault, his son the Earl of Arran, and the Lord James. Chatelherault was a timid and undecided character; Arran was daring enough, for he aspired to the hand of Elizabeth, and was thought to be liberal and chivalric, but further experience proved him to be only rash, vain, and fickle. The man on whom the expectations of Elizabeth and her wary minister, Cecil, were fixed, was the Lord James, the natural brother of the Queen of Scots, and afterwards the noted regent Murray. He was yet not twenty-six, and devoted to the Congregation. He was of powerful mind, of inordinate ambition, and, as the way opened so brilliantly before him, it became obvious that no moral principle was likely to present any obstacle in his path to power. He had been educated in France for the Church, in a school where the most subtle and unscrupulous doctrines were taught as the real philosophy of life. Outwardly he had an honest, frank, and friendly air, covering a mind quick, penetrating, capable of seizing on the thoughts, and appropriating the plans and powers, of those around him. He had a fine person and air, a kingly presence, and his knowledge of continental politics gave him a superiority over all his countrymen. At the same time he was selfish, perfidious, and capable of the worst deeds to his nearest kindred, in the prosecution of his own advancement.

Such an instrument was precisely of the kind that the English queen and her minister desired. Cecil requested Sadler to ascertain whether the Lord James had an eye to the crown, and, if he had, to let Chatelherault take what course he pleased without troubling himself much about him. Meantime Knox wrote very plainly to Cecil, telling him that if the queen did not soon do something for the Scottish nobles, and that liberally, they would be very likely to accept the bribes which France was offering. He desired Cecil to speak out plainly, and let them know what they had to expect at once, adding that he marvelled that the queen did not write to them, as her noble father used to do to men fewer in number and of less power; alluding to those hired by him for the murder of Cardinal Beaton, a business which seemed to be approved by Knox.

This remonstrance produced the desired effect. Sadler was instructed to treat with the Scotch Reformers. A messenger from Knox assured him that if the queen would furnish money to pay a body of 1,500 arquebuses and 300 horse, they would soon expel the French from Scotland, and establish the English ascendancy there. Balnaves, a zealous adherent of the Congregation, and intimate friend of Knox, had a long private interview with Sadler, and assured him that the Reformers were resolved to make no further league with the queen-regent, but to depose her on the first opportunity, place the power in the hands of Chatelherault or Arran, and then make open treaty with England. Sadler was so satisfied with this prospect that he paid over to Balnaves £2,000 for the Lords of the Congregation, and promised to give additional aid to Kirkaldy, Ormiston, Whitelaw, and others, who expended considerable sums in the cause of the Congregation, and had their pensions from France stopped since they became its partisans.

Three hours after the arrival of Balnaves at the castle of Berwick, and whilst he and Sadler were deep in their discussions, at midnight, Arran alighted at the gate. Arran had been serving in the French army as a colonel of the Scottish guards, and in reality as a hostage for the faith of his father in Scotland. He had been summoned by Henry II. to attend the marriages of his sister and daughter to the Duke of Savoy and Philip of Spain; but Arran, who was in the secret interest of Elizabeth, sent an apology, and, as it was supposed, by the aid of Throckmorton, the English ambassador, made his escape to England, where he had several secret interviews with Elizabeth and Cecil, and then made his way to Scotland under the assumed name of M. de Beaufort.

France, on the one side, and England on the other, were now in active rivalry for the ascendancy in Scotland. The Sieur de Bettancourt arrived from the French court in the beginning of August with assurances of the speedy transmission of an army under the Marquis d'Elbœuf, and with letters to the Lord James, calling on him, by the benefits which he had received from France, to prove himself a faithful subject to his sister and queen. Towards the end of August, 1,000 men, under an Italian officer named Octavian, landed at Leith, and with those the queen-regent put that port into a tolerable state of defence; but at the same time she sent urgent despatches to France for four ships of war to cruise in the Frith, for an additional 1,000 men, and 100 barbed horse. She did not obtain all she wanted, but La Brosse arrived on the 22nd of September, with three ships, 200 men, and eighty horse. With these came the Bishop of Amiens and two learned doctors of the Sorbonne, to endeavour to reconcile the people to the ancient faith.

This was the most hopeless of missions. The people of Scotland had long grown weary of the French, and suspicious of their designs on the independence of the country. The reformed preachers had perambulated the country, exposing the corruptions of the Papal Church, and exciting indignation against the queen-regent for her bigoted attempts to put down the Reformation, for her decided leaning to French interests, and her perfidious and repeated breaches of her contracts with the Lords of the Congregation. This arrival of fresh forces confirmed all their charges, and inspired the population with augmented jealousy of France.

No sooner was the arrival of Arran known, than it produced the highest enthusiasm in the Protestant party. He was regarded as the destined husband of the English queen; and the expectation of the influence which this circumstance would give his party with England, together with the encouragement of the £2,000 just received, raised the spirits of the Congregation to the highest pitch. They accused the queen-regent of two breaches of the capitulation of Edinburgh, by celebrating mass in Holyrood House, and receiving fresh troops from France, and they sent her a message requiring her to desist from the fortification of Leith. The queen-regent bluntly refused, declaring that she was as determined as she was able to maintain the power and interests of her daughter, their sovereign.

Hereupon the Congregation prepared for direct hostilities. The Duke of Chatelherault came over to them; and a commission was issued to Glencairn and Erskine of Dun, to proceed with the purgation of the religious houses. The abbeys of Paisley, Kilwinning, and Dunfermline were accordingly suppressed by them. Sir Thomas Randall, or Randolph, who had become acquainted with Arran at Geneva, was secretly dispatched by Cecil to Hamilton, to co-operate with the Scottish Reformers, affording them a direct means of counsel and communion through him with the English court. Thus was Elizabeth in full and active connection with the insurgent subjects of the queen whose kingdom she was bound by solemn treaty not to interfere with or prejudice in any way; but perhaps she was not destitute of excuse, in the fact that the French court was equally labouring, through the sides of Scotland, to penetrate her realm. The chain of intelligence betwixt the English court and all that was going on in the Scottish one, was rendered complete by Maitland of Lethington, the secretary to the queen-regent, becoming the secret ally of the Congregation, and betraying all the councils and the most private designs of the Scottish Government to the Reformers.

On the 15th of October the Congregation assembled its forces, 12,000 in number, and marched on Edinburgh, which they occupied without resistance, the queen-regent retiring before them to Leith. They established a council for civic affairs, consisting of Chatelherault, Arran, Argyll, Glencairn, the Lord James, Balnaves, Kirkaldy, and others, and another for religious affairs, under Knox, Goodman, and the Bishop of Galloway. They sent a message to the queen-regent, requiring her to order all foreigners and men-at-arms to quit the town, and leave it to the subjects of the realm. Mary of Guise replied that the French were naturalised subjects, and Scotland united to France by marriage; and she, in her turn, commanded the Duke of Chatelherault and his associates to quit the capital, on pain of treason.

The council returned answer that, as an oppressor and an idolatress, they suspended her authority as a council of born subjects for the queen, on the ground that she was acting contrary to the will and interest of the sovereign.

On the 28th the Covenanters prepared for an assault on Leith, by constructing scaling-ladders in the High Church of St. Giles, to the great scandal of the preachers, who prognosticated that proceedings begun in sacrilege would end in defeat. This very soon appeared likely to be the result, for the money sent from England being exhausted, the soldiers clamoured for pay, and the army of 12,000 was on the verge of melting away very rapidly. In great alarm, the leaders vehemently entreated Elizabeth for more money, and making a struggle with her natural parsimony, she sent £4,000 to Cockburn of Ormiston, who undertook the perilous office of conveying it to head-quarters. But a man who afterwards became notorious for the audacity of his crimes, the Earl of Bothwell, who now professed to be a zealous supporter of the Congregation, and had by this means obtained the knowledge of the transmission of the treasure, waylaid Cockburn, and carried off the money. This was a severe blow to the Congregation, and was speedily followed by another. Haliburton, provost of Dundee, had led a party of Reformers to attack Leith. He had planted his heavy artillery on an eminence near Holyrood; but whilst the majority of the leaders were attending a sermon, the French attacked the battery, and drove the Reformers back into the city with great slaughter. The queen-regent, sitting on the ramparts of Leith, hailed the victorious soldiers returning from the massacre of her subjects, and thus gave mortal offence.

 

Great Seal of Queen Elizabeth

 

On the 5th of November the French sailed from Leith to intercept a convoy of provisions for the relief of Edinburgh. They were attacked by the Lord James and Arran, who, getting into difficult ground, were defeated in the morasses of Restalrig with great slaughter. Haliburton of Dundee was killed; Arran and the Lord James escaped into the city, where Knox summoned them to hear the "promises of God;" but though the royalists had returned to Leith, the eloquence of Knox failed to inspire confidence, a sudden panic spread through the city, and the Reformers, abandoning Knox in his pulpit, fled. The road to Linlithgow was crowded before midnight with fugitives, and the darkness adding to their terror, in the belief that the French were pursuing them, they never stopped till they reached Stirling, thirty miles off.

When the Scottish fugitives arrived at Stirling, and the emptiness of their terrors became fully known, they were, both leaders and people, covered with confusion. Knox, however, undertook to restore them to their usual confidence by finishing there the sermon which they had broken off so suddenly at Edinburgh. He asked why had the army of God fled before the uncircumcised Philistines; and he answered his own question by asserting that they had been suffered to fall through the avarice of one leader, the lewdness of another, and the vain-glory and presumption of a third. He bade them repent and return sincerely to the Lord, and the tribes of Israel should yet triumph over the recreant sons of Benjamin. Thus he raised the spirits of the Protestants by his fiery eloquence, in the very act of soundly castigating them.

Meantime, the queen-regent entered Edinburgh in triumph; fortunately, however, the failure of the Reformers did not cool the zeal of their English friends. The struggle was considered not so much with the Scotch Government as with France; and Sadler urged on Cecil to supply the insurgents with more money, for so long, he observed, as they kept the French engaged there, they would have less leisure to turn their designs on England. The Lords of the Congregation, thus reanimated by the sermons of Knox and the promises of Cecil, mustered fresh forces at Stirling; but again they were defeated, and Stirling taken by a detachment from the queen-regent's army at Leith. The royalist forces then invaded Fifeshire, burning and laying waste the lands of the Covenanters. Kinghorn, Kirkaldy, and Dysart were sacked, and the troops of Arran and the Lord James were compelled to retire before the superior forces of the enemy. With the intensest anxiety did they expect the promised succours from England: the royalists were now in full march for St. Andrews, over which inevitable destruction seemed to hover, when, on rounding the promontory of Kingcraig, the little army of Arran following at a distance, watching their motions, a fleet was descried in the offing. Each army gazed in terror and expectation, the royalists hoping it might be the French fleet bringing the troops of D'Elbœuf, the Reformers that it might be the English succours. It proved to be the latter. Three small vessels of the queen-regent were soon captured, and the fleet directed its guns against her army. It was obliged to make instant retreat.

This was a direct and open infraction of the peace betwixt England, Scotland, and France. Noailles made a formal complaint at the English court of this violation of the treaty; but it was pretended that Winter, the English admiral, had only acted in self-defence; that he had been sent to convoy a fleet of victuallers to Berwick, but had been driven by stress of weather into the Frith of Forth; that there the batteries of Leith, Bruntisland, and Inchkeith had fired upon him, and obliged him to return the fire in self-defence. The story, though solemnly supported in the form of a despatch from the Duke of Norfolk, who was residing on the borders as the queen's lieutenant, was too flimsy and barefaced to bear a moment's scrutiny, and, to appease the clamour of the French ambassador, an inquiry into Winter's conduct was set on foot, which, like many such inquiries, was never meant to go very deep; and it answered its purpose by keeping up an appearance of investigation till the Duke of Norfolk had completed a treaty at Berwick with the Lords of the Congregation, by which Elizabeth bound herself to aid them with an army to expel the French from Scotland.

 

Mary Queen of Scots landing at Leith(See page 413)

 

Elizabeth's excuse for entering into a formal treaty with the subjects of another monarch with whom she was at peace, was, that she knew the French were directing their power in Scotland to an ulterior attack on her own kingdom; and on this plea Cecil is accused of not only inciting conspiracy in Scotland but also in France, by arming the princes of the blood and the Reformers against their sovereign, Francis II. For this purpose, Throckmorton was sent over to the King of Navarre, a favourer of the Protestant cause. Throckmorton bore secret offers of alliance and support against his enemies and the enemies of the true religion from the Queen of England. The fact was that Elizabeth was aware that Antoine, the King of Navarre, and Louis, Prince of Condé, were jealous of the preference given by Francis to the Duke of Guise and the cardinal of Lorraine, the uncles of his queen, brothers of the queen-regent of Scotland. They were placed at the head of affairs, and, as the determined champions of Popery, were doubly odious to Navarre and his adherents. Accordingly, having the secret countenance of the Queen of England and other Protestant princes, Navarre, Condé, Coligny, admiral of France, D'Andelot, colonel of the French infantry, and the cardinal of Châtillon, nephews of the constable Montmorency, united in a plot to seize the king and queen, the cardinal, and the Duke of Guise, and place the government in the hands of the princes of the blood.

At this moment the Duke of Norfolk received his orders to conclude the treaty with the Scottish lords at Berwick. The French ambassadors, rather than proceed to extremities, offered to withdraw the bulk of their troops from Scotland, and submit the points in dispute to the decision of Elizabeth herself. It is said that they even offered to restore Calais, and that Elizabeth replied that she could never place a fishing village in competition with the security of her dominions at large. This, however, is by no means probable, for we soon find Elizabeth herself demanding Calais as a condition of peace, and it is not to be supposed that she would not have at least deferred her plans against Scotland for the much-desired repossession of that town.

Whilst these negotiations were proceeding, the conspiracy of the French princes was defeated at Amboise through the sagacity of the Duke of Guise, and Elizabeth rather hesitated in completing her treaty with the Scots; but her Council urged her to advance, alleging that France was still on the eve of a civil war, and that she would, by backing out, lose a golden opportunity of driving the French from Scotland.

On the 27th of February, 1560, the treaty was concluded at Berwick, and in the month of March the English fleet appeared in the Forth in greater strength. D'Oyselles, the French general, managed to effect his retreat from Fife, and threw himself into Leith, where he resolved to defend himself. The queen-regent, who was lying there worn out by her continual struggles for the maintenance of her daughter's throne and religion, removed, by the permission of Lord Erskine, the governor, to the castle of Edinburgh, as unable to endure the hardships and anxieties of a besieged town. On the other hand, the Duke of Norfolk had collected an army of 6,000 men in the northern counties of England, and sent it, under the command of Lord Gray de Wilton, into Scotland by land. Lord Gray marched from Berwick to Preston, where he joined the forces of the Lords of the Congregation; and whilst Winter's fleet blockaded Leith by sea, the united army invested it on the land side. It was soon known that the fleet of the Marquis d'Elbœuf had been dispersed by a tempest, and partly wrecked on the coast of Holland, so that the English and their allies had little to fear from the arrival of fresh enemies.

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

These plausible arguments did not, however, abate the suspicions of the Lords of the Congregation, that Elizabeth was prepared to make a peace without them, nor that several of their own party, including the Duke of Chatelherault, who were lukewarm and dubious Protestants, were ready to join in it. Fortunately for the Congregation, Elizabeth and the queen-regent, undaunted and uncompromising in death, could not agree; the negotiations were broken off, and Elizabeth gave orders to renew the siege with fresh vigour, still commanding her officers to "contemn no reasonable offers of agreement" that might be made by the French.

No such offers, however, appeared likely to come from the brave defenders of Leith. They continued to fight with a spirit and gallantry which gave them a brilliant reputation all over Europe; and the English, on their part, worked doggedly, if not skilfully, to make a breach in the walls. At length they accomplished such a breach, and rushed headlong and in blind fury to force their way into the town; but one of the storming parties lost its way, and the rest, when they reached the ramparts and raised their scaling-ladders, found them too short; and, though they fought like bull-dogs, they were obliged to give way, leaving 1,000 of their comrades in the ditches, and mowed down by the enemy's artillery.

The queen, who had recommended treating in preference to fighting, was greatly chagrined by this failure, and the soldiers were much discouraged. The Government sent down more money, with orders to continue the siege with all vigour, and the Duke of Norfolk dispatched fresh reinforcements of 2,000 men, with promises of more, declaring that the besiegers should not lack men whilst there were any betwixt the Trent and Tweed. The investment was thus continued with the utmost rigour, and famine became terrible within the walls.

On the 10th of June the queen-regent died in the castle. On her death-bed she earnestly entreated the Lord James, in her presence, and some others of the Lords of the Congregation, as well as her own courtiers, to support the rightful power of her daughter; but, as the events showed, and the treacherous, ambitious character of the bastard brother of Queen Mary rendered probable, to very little purpose. The queen-regent's decease, however, opened a way to negotiation. The insurrectionary feeling in France made the French court readily tender such a proposition, and it was agreed that the French and English commissioners should meet at Berwick on the 14th of June. The English commissioners were Cecil and Dr. Wotton, Dean of Canterbury; the French, Monluc, Bishop of Valence, and Count de Randon. Perhaps four more acute diplomatists never met. On the 16th of June they proceeded to Edinburgh, passing through the English camp on the way, where they were saluted by a general discharge of firearms. By the 6th of July all the conditions of peace were settled, and it was announced both to the besiegers and besieged that hostilities were at an end. Leith was surrendered, and D'Oyselles, the French commander, entertained the English and Scotch officers, by whom he had been so nearly famished, at an entertainment, "where, says Stow, "was prepared for them a banquet of thirty or forty dishes, and yet not one either of flesh or fish, saving one of a powdered horse, as was avouched by one that vowed himself to have tasted thereof."

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

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

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

The war thus brought to an end reflected little credit on the diplomatic principles of Elizabeth and her ministers, however much it might display their ability and address. To excite the subjects of a neighbouring sovereign to rebellion, at the same time that she was bound by a treaty of peace, and was solemnly professing to maintain it, can never be vindicated on any system of morals, either public or private. If Mary of Scotland infringed, by her assumption of the arms or title of Elizabeth, the treaty betwixt them, that was a cause of fair but open appeal. If Elizabeth regarded her own national tranquillity as endangered, that was another just cause of protest; if she wished to protect the interests of the struggling Protestants in Scotland, nothing could have been more honourable, had the attempt been made by open and direct means, by earnest application to Francis and Mary; but so long as Elizabeth neglected these means and offices, by fomenting clandestine resistance amongst the subjects of the Scottish queen, she at once violated every honourable principle of international law, and perpetrated a felony on the rights of sovereigns.

Cecil, whilst busy with the negotiations now terminated, saw enough of the Reformers of Scotland to convince him that the French troops would be no sooner removed than they would trample under foot all the engagements into which they had entered whilst under that restraint. This was immediately verified. The Parliament assembled on the 1st of August, and the very first act which it passed was one of abolishing the Papal jurisdiction in Scotland, and decreeing severe punishment, in the very style of the church against which they had been battling, for those who presumed to worship according to the Romish creed. A crowd of lesser barons had attended at the call of the Lords of the Congregation, so that they carried everything their own way. They prohibited mass both publicly and privately. Whoever officiated at mass, or attended it in church chapel, or private house, was amenable to confiscation of his goods and imprisonment at the discretion of the magistrate, for the first offence; to banishment for the second; and death for the third.

A confession of faith, according to the austere model of Geneva, was framed by Knox and his confederates, and the moment that this bill was passed, was put into execution. Every member of the Parliament who refused to subscribe to this new creed was instantly expelled, and, with a strange injustice, they then called over twice the names of the ejected, and, of course, receiving no answer, refused them all compensation for their losses during the war, according to the provisions of the treaty which they thus violated.

One of the most singular proceedings of the Parliament was, that it deputed the Earls of Morton and Glencairn, and Maitland of Lethington, to wait on Queen Elizabeth and propose to her a marriage with Arran, the son of the presumptive heir to the Scottish crown; a scheme supposed to originate with Cecil, who thought thus to give the queen a strong plea for uniting the kingdoms; in this, however, the queen's own obstinacy regarding matrimony defeated him.

It remained now to obtain the consent of Francis and Mary to these decisions; and Sir James Sandilands, a knight of Malta, was dispatched to Paris for this purpose. His reception was such as might be expected, more especially as the two earls had been sent to Elizabeth with the proposal of marriage. Mary refused to sanction the proceedings of a Parliament which had been summoned without her authority, and which had acted in the very face of the treaty, and sought to destroy the religion in which she had been educated. When Throckmorton waited on her for the ratification of the treaty, she declined that also, alleging that her subjects had already violated every article of it; that they had acted in absolute independence of her sanction; and that Elizabeth had not only continued to support her subjects in their disloyalty, but had herself infringed the treaty by admitting to her presence deputies from the Parliament who had proceeded without the consent of their sovereign. The princes of Lorraine, Mary's uncles, expressed the utmost indignation at the whole proceeding, and are said to have taken measures for invading Scotland with much greater forces than before, and punishing the audacious Reformers.

All such speculations were cut short by the death of Francis II., the husband of Mary, on the 2nd of December, 1560. He had always been a sickly personage, and his reign had lasted only eighteen months. His successor, Charles IX., was only nine years of age, and with a mind and constitution not exhibiting more promise of health and vigour than those of his late brother. His mother, Catherine de Medici, became regent, and his uncles of Lorraine lost the direction of affairs. Catherine and Mary were no friends; the young queen-dowager of France, only nineteen, was now treated harshly and contemptuously by the lady-regent, and she retired to Rheims, where she spent the winter amongst her relatives of Lorraine. But, if she was coldly treated by the new court of France, she was not likely to receive any the more genial treatment from her cousin of England. It were hard to say whether her own subjects of Scotland or Elizabeth contemplated her return with more aversion. Her subjects saw in her a princess whose religious ideas were totally opposed to their own, and to their schemes for its predominance. Elizabeth, though she felt that the union of France and Scotland was severed by the death of Francis, knew that Mary's beauty, accomplishments, and crown would soon attract new lovers, and that some alliance might be formed which might become as formidable as the one just extinct. In conjunction, therefore, with Mary's refractory, and, in fact, traitorous subjects, Elizabeth proceeded to take the most arbitrary and unwarrantable measures for preventing the return of the Scottish queen to her kingdom, and for dictating to her such a marriage as should suit her own views.

The fleet of Winter, therefore, continued cruising in the Frith of Forth, and Randolph pressed the Lords of the Congregation to enter into a perpetual league with England, ere their own sovereign could return, as well as to unite in the great object of preventing their mistress marrying a foreign prince, by compelling her to give her hand to one of her own subjects. These lords of the new religion fell into Elizabeth's plans with the utmost alacrity, and promised to keep up the lucrative connection with the English court. Chatelherault, Morton, Glencairn, and Argyll promised their most devoted services; Maitland, as secretary, agreed to betray to Cecil all the plans of Mary and the party with whom she would naturally act; and the Lord James, her half-brother, proceeded to France, ostensibly to condole with his sister, but really to make himself master of her views and intentions, and, returning by England, revealed them to Elizabeth, and encouraged her to intercept the young queen by the way. Perhaps in all history there is no instance of a more dark and ungenerous conspiracy against a young and generous queen than this against Mary of Scotland.

The envoys of Elizabeth lost no time in pressing Mary to ratify the treaty. Again and again they returned to the charge, and on every occasion Mary gave the same answer—a most reasonable one—which she had given to Throckmorton—namely, that, as it was a subject which vitally affected her crown and people, as her husband was dead, and her uncles refused to give her advice upon it lest they should seem to interfere with Scotland, she could not decide till she had reached her kingdom, and had consulted with her council. She might have repeated what she had at first stated, that the treaty had been openly violated both by Elizabeth and her own subjects.

In one respect Mary was ill-advised, and that was to ask permission of Elizabeth to pass through England on her way to Scotland. The proud English queen, incensed at Mary's prudent resistance to her attempts to force her into the ratification of the abused treaty, now, on D'Oyselles' preferring this request in writing, answered him with great passion, and in the presence of a crowded court, that the Queen of Scots must ask no favour till she had signed the treaty of Edinburgh. When this ungenerous and unqueenly refusal was communicated to Mary, she sent for Throckmorton, and requesting all present to retire to a distance, in a manner to mark the sense of the rude conduct of his own queen, she thus addressed him:—"My lord ambassador, as I know not how far I may be transported by passion, I like not to have so many witnesses of my infirmity as the queen your mistress had, when she talked, not long since, with M. d'Oyselles. There is nothing that doth more grieve me than that I did so forget myself as to have asked of her a favour which I could well have done without. I came here in defiance of the attempts made by her brother Edward to prevent me, and, by the grace of God, I will return without her leave. It is well known that I have friends and allies who have power to assist me, but I chose rather to be indebted to her friendship. If she choose, she may have me for a loving kinswoman and useful neighbour, for I am not going to practise against her with her subjects as she has done with mine: yet I know there be in her realm those that like not the present state of things. The queen says I am young, and lack experience. I confess I am younger than she is, yet I know how to carry myself lovingly and justly with my friends, and not to cast any word against her which may be unworthy of a queen and a kinswoman; and, by her permission, I am as much a queen as herself, and can carry my carriage as high as she knows how to do. She hath hitherto assisted my subjects against me; and now I am a widow it may be thought strange that she would hinder me in returning to my own country." She added that she had never been wanting in all friendly offices towards Elizabeth, but that she disbelieved or overlooked these offices; and that she heartily wished that she was as nearly allied to her in affection as in blood, for that would be a most valuable alliance.

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

The return of this youthful queen to her own country and capital is one of the saddest things on record. She had left it as a child, to avoid being forcibly seized and married, from political motives, to the boy king of England. She had been educated in all the ease and gaiety of the French court. Far removed from the perpetual storms and struggles of her own country and race, she had given herself up to the enjoyments of a peaceful and pleasant life, to social pleasures, music and poetry, in which she excelled. All that she knew of her country from history showed her a race of proud, rude, half-savage nobles, who had made the lives of her ancestors miserable; who had murdered some, pursued others with perpetual rebellions, and sent them to their graves in broken-hearted despair. All that she had heard from her own mother were the eternal details of the same conflict of weapons, factions, and opinions. With a divided people, with an aristocracy to a great extent sold to do the work of her powerful and, as it proved, deadly enemy, the Queen of England, with all the disadvantages of attractive charms and inexperienced youth, she was going, as it were, from calm sunshine to perpetual tempest, and into a very whirlpool of dark passions and heated antipathies, which required a far more vigorous hand, a far cooler and more worldly temperament than her own to steer through. If she could have known her enemies from her friends, that would have been something; but the basest and most deeply bribed traitors, the cruelest and most unfeeling of her enemies, were immediately around her throne, which they had already undermined with treason, and overshadowed with death.

Mary embarked at Calais on the 15th of August. So long as the coast of France remained in sight she continued to gaze upon it; and when at length it faded from her straining vision, she stretched her arms towards it, and exclaimed, "Farewell, beloved France, farewell! I shall never see thee more!" There she passed her youth in honour and happiness. It was the only happy portion of her short existence; and no sooner did she turn to face the dark, rude sea, than her indefatigable enemy of England appeared. Elizabeth was there by her admiral to obstruct her progress, and, if possible, to seize her person. So soon as the intention of Mary to return to Scotland was known, Elizabeth collected a squadron of men-of-war in the Downs, on pretence of cruising for pirates in the narrow seas. In defiance of this, Mary put to sea, with only two galleys and four transports, and accompanied by the Lord James, Bishop Lesley, three of her relatives, the Duke of Aumerle, the Grand Prior of France, and the Marquis d'Elbœuf, the Marquis Damville, and other French noblemen. They were not long in falling in with the English fleet; but a thick fog enabled them to escape, except one transport, on board of which was the Earl of Eglinton. Yet so near was the British admiral to the queen, that he overtook and searched two other transports containing her trunks and effects. Failing, however, of the great prize, they let the ships go, and then pretended that they were only in quest of the pirates. But, on the 12th, only three days before Mary sailed, Cecil had written to the Earl of Sussex, that "there were three ships in the North Seas to preserve the fishers from pyrates," and he added that he thought they would be sorry to see the Queen of Scots pass. Elizabeth, having missed the mark, thought it necessary to apologise for the visit of her admiral, and wrote to Mary that she had sent a few barques to sea to cruise after certain Scottish pirates at the request of the King of Spain; and Cecil wrote to Throckmorton that "the queen's majesty's ships that were on the seas to cleanse them from pirates, saw her (the Queen of Scots), and saluted her galleys; and, staying her ships, examined them gently. One they detained as vehemently suspected of piracy."

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

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

 

Mary Queen of Scots. From the original Painting by Zucchero.

 

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

Mary bore this rude and disloyal conduct with an admirable patience. She had the advantage of the counsels of D'Oyselles, who had spent some years in the country, and had learned the character of the people. She placed the leaders of the Congregation in honour

 

State Progress of Queen Elizabeth.

 

and power around her, making the Lord James her chief minister, and Maitland of Lethington her Secretary of State, both of whom, however, we are already aware, were in the pay and interests of the English queen. It was not in the nature of Knox to delay long appearing in her presence, and opening upon her the battery of his fierce zeal.

"Mr. Knox," wrote Randolph to Cecil, "spoke on Tuesday unto the queen. He knocked so hastily upon her heart that he made her weep, as well you know there be of that sex that will do that, as well for anger as for grief." Mary's feelings, undoubtedly, were those of injury and indignation at the rude violence with which the religion of her youth, of her family, of her education, and of her inmost heart, was thus attacked. According to Knox, her parents had died in such error and idolatry that they went to the regions of weeping and gnashing of teeth. Randolph continued—"I commend better the success of Mr. Knox's doctrines and preachings than the manner of them, though I acknowledge his doctrine to be sound. His daily prayer for her is that God will turn her heart, now obstinate against God and his truth; and if his holy will be otherwise, that he will strengthen the hands and hearts of the chosen and the elect, stoutly to withstand the rage of tyrants."

But it was not merely the religion of Queen Mary which was exposed to this cynical and domineering spirit: the most innocent actions of her life, the most graceful and innocuous of her acquirements, were subjected to the iron shears of the Calvinistic philosophy. Mary had been accustomed to the enjoyment of music and the exhilaration of a social dance. All this was vile and scandalous in the eyes of Knox and his associates. She could not follow her hawks to the field, nor scarcely enjoy the pleasure of a ride amid her court, without being denounced as a vain and sinful Jezebel.

"It is difficult," says Knight's History, "to conceive a greater vulgarity of ideas or coarseness of language than that in which the Presbyterian clergy assailed these pastimes, which can be only sinful in excess—an excess not proved in the case of the queen. The preachers, one and all, were at least as bold in public as John Knox had been in his private conference. Every pulpit and hill-side was made to shake with awful denunciations of God's wrath and vengeance; and, following the example of their leader, they affirmed that, instead of dancing and singing, and hearing vile masses—the worst offence of all—the queen ought to go constantly to the kirk and hear them preach the only true doctrine. It was repeated daily that idolatry was worthy of death; that Papistry was rank idolatry; that the person who upheld or in any way defended the Roman Church was on the high-road to hell, however sincerely convinced of his religion being the true one. This sour spirit fermented wonderfully among the citizens of Edinburgh. The town-council, of their own authority, issued a proclamation, banishing from their town all the wicked rabble of antichrist, the Pope—such as priests, monks, and friars, together with all adulterers and fornicators. The Privy Council, indignant at this assumption of an authority which could only belong to the sovereign and the Parliament, suspended the magistrates; and then the magistrates, the preachers, and the people declared that the queen, by an unrighteous sympathy, made herself the protector of adulterers and fornicators. Before any circumstance had occurred calculated to throw suspicion on Mary's conduct, either as a queen or a woman, she was openly called Jezebel in the pulpit; and this became the appellation by which John Knox usually designated the sovereign. It was in vain that Mary tried to win the favour of the zealous reformer. She promised him ready access to her whenever he should desire it; and entreated him, if he found her conduct blameable, to reprehend her in private rather than vilify her in the kirk before the whole people. But Knox, whose notions of the rights of his clerical office were of the most towering kind, and who, upon other motives besides those connected with religion, had declared a female reign to be an abomination, was not willing to gratify the queen in any of her demands. He told her it was her duty to go to kirk to hear him, not his duty to wait upon her; and then came the usual addition, that if she gave up her mass-priest, and diligently attended upon the servants of the Lord, her soul might possibly be saved and her kingdom spared the judgments of an offended God. There was certainly a Calvinistic republicanism interwoven with this wonderful man's religious creed. Elizabeth blamed Mary that she had not sufficiently conformed to the advice of the Protestant teachers; but if Elizabeth herself had had to do with such a preacher as John Knox, she would, having the power, have sent him to the Marshalsea in one week, and to the pillory, or a worse place, in the next."

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

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

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

In the summer of this year, Elizabeth made one of those progresses in which she so much delighted, through Essex and Suffolk. In the course of this progress she complained much of the negligent performance of divine service by the clergy, and of their not wearing their surplices. What still more incensed her was the number of married clergy, and the number of children and wives in the cathedrals and colleges, which, she said, was contrary to the intention of the founders, and very disturbing to the studies of the students and clergy. Nothing excited her indignation so much as a married bishop; and, on her first visit to Parker, the Archbishop of Canterbury, though she had put the primate and his wife to enormous expense and trouble, she addressed Mrs. Parker, at parting, in these words:—"And you!—madam I may not call you, mistress I am ashamed to call you—but, howsoever, I thank you." Hearing that Pilkington, the Bishop of Durham, had given his daughter £10,000 as a marriage portion—as much as her father, King Henry, left her—she immediately deducted £1,000 a year from the revenue of his see, which she appropriated to the maintenance of the garrison at Berwick.

But marriage in any shape threw her into paroxysms of rage. On this progress, whilst at Ipswich, she learned that Lady Catherine Grey, a sister of the unfortunate Lady Jane Grey, who was one of her bedchamber ladies, was likely to become a mother. This news excited her extreme fury; but still greater was her wrath when, on inquiring of the young lady herself, she found that she was clandestinely married to the Earl of Hertford. Lady Catherine Grey was the eldest surviving daughter of Frances Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, whose posterity was named by the will of Henry VIII. as the next successors to the throne, and, by the party opposed to the Queen of Scots, held to be the heirs presumptive. With Elizabeth's terror of all successors, this discovery produced in her the most violent emotions. The Earl of Hertford, dreading her anger, had taken the precaution to retire to France. The remembrance of her own flirtations with the lord-admiral, the uncle of this young Lord Hertford, and the disgraceful disclosures brought before the Privy Council of Edward VI., about ten years before, had no effect in neutralising her resentment. She committed Lady Catherine to the Tower; and Cecil, writing to the Earl of Sussex—Cecil, who owed his first court favour to the Lord Protector, the father of this Lord Hertford—used the grossest terms regarding Lady Catherine, and then added, "She is committed to the Tower; he is sent for. She saith that she was married to him secretly before Christmas last."

Lady Catherine Grey, in her turn, appealed to Lord Robert Dudley, so soon to be Earl of Essex, the great favourite of Elizabeth, and brother to Lord Guildford Dudley, to intercede with Elizabeth on her behalf; but the heartless courtier refused, and Lady Catherine was conveyed to the Tower, where she was delivered of a son. When Lord Hertford returned on the Royal summons, he was also committed to the Tower, but to a separate apartment. By the connivance of Warner, the Lieutenant of the Tower, the unhappy husband and wife were permitted to visit each other—another child was born— and Elizabeth then giving way to her rage, she discharged Warner from his office, fined the Earl of Hertford £15,000, for seducing, as she called it, a lady of the blood royal, and for breaking his prison to renew his offence. The sister of Hertford, Lady Jane Seymour, being dead, who was the sole witness to the marriage, Elizabeth declared it null and void, and the children illegitimate. Lady Catherine was kept in confinement till death released her, in 1567; and Lord Hertford, who had recovered his liberty, was again incarcerated for endeavouring to prove the legitimacy of his children.

This lawless and tyrannic conduct of Elizabeth, true daughter of Henry VIII., caused much discontent; for the house of Suffolk had many adherents in opposition to the Scottish claim to the throne, but few dare speak out loudly. Those who did were severely punished. Hales, clerk of the Hanaper, was committed to the Tower for defending Lady Catherine's marriage, and her claim to the succession. Lord Keeper Bacon was visited with the resentment of his Royal mistress, on suspicion of inciting Hales to this task; and even Cecil was brought into jeopardy on the same ground, notwithstanding his apparent readiness to prosecute and malign the unfortunate victim of Elizabeth's jealousy. Nor did this arbitrary conduct of Elizabeth end here. In 1564, Lady Mary Grey, the remaining sister of Lady Catherine, perpetrated the like crime of marrying, and Elizabeth immediately committed her and her husband to separate prisons.

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

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

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

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

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

Parliament met on the 13th of February, 1563; but as Elizabeth had just had a dangerous attack of small-pox, in which her life had been despaired of, the Commons immediately presented to her an address, praying her to set the mind of the country at rest as to the succession, by choosing a husband, or by naming her heir. To get rid of this awkward dilemma, she saw herself required to name the Queen of Scots, or the Lady Catherine Grey, whom she had imprisoned, and whose children she had bastardised, as her successor. This she was resolved not to do; but, as she had now the Duke of Würtemberg as a fresh admirer, she preferred thinking of a husband. Parliament not being able to get from her anything more decisive, consented to vote her a subsidy upon land, and two-tenths and fifteenths upon movables. She called for it, on the plea of defending her throne against the Papists of France, as she had before defended it from those of Scotland, who, if they could succeed in putting down the Protestants, contemplated designs dangerous to Protestant England.

It was pretended that the same dangerous spirit existed in the Roman Catholics of this country, and Parliament was called upon to pass an act extending the oath of supremacy to all such subjects. Before, it had been confined to such only as being heirs, holding under the crown, sued out the livery of their lands, or who sought appointments or preferment in Church or State. It was now not only sought to impose it on all persons, but to make its first refusal punishable by premunire, its second by death. So severe a law, had it passed, and been carried with any considerable rigour into effect, would have revived the dreadful persecutions of the late reign. The bill was violently opposed, especially by Viscount Montague in the peers. He contended that the Papists had created no disturbance; that they neither preached, disputed, nor disobeyed the queen, and that such compulsion could only create hypocrites, or rouse the resentful into enemies. The bill passed eventually, though shorn of much of its mischief, yet still extending its liability to members of the House of Commons, schoolmasters, private tutors, attorneys, and to all persons who had held office in the Church or any ecclesiastical court during the three past years, who should hereafter seek such office, or who should disapprove of the established worship, or attend mass publicly or privately. Members of the House of Commons, schoolmasters, or attorneys, could only have the oath tendered once, so that they could only be fined and imprisoned; but all others, if not peers, were liable on refusal to death.

After so barbarous a law, the reformed Church had little cause to boast of its advance in toleration over its opponents; and Convocation equalled Parliament in the intolerant character of its proceedings. It new-modelled the articles of the Church, making them thirty-nine, as they still remain; but, instead of leaving them as matters of voluntary acceptance, they decreed that any one openly declaring his dissent from them, or attempting to bring them into discredit, should, for the first offence, pay a fine of 100 marks, 400 for the second, and for the third should forfeit the whole of his possessions, and be imprisoned for life. But the Privy Council disallowed of this decree, which, indeed, was wholly unnecessary to place the Catholics under the foot of the law, for the oath of supremacy did that effectually.

Convocation having voted the queen a subsidy of six shillings in the pound, payable in three years, Parliament was prorogued.

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

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

To prevent insurrection, or co-operation with the French outside, Warwick had expelled most of the native inhabitants from Havre. He had about 5,000 men with him, and during the siege Sir Hugh Paulet threw in a reinforcement of about 800 more. Elizabeth had now the mortification to see her old allies taking the command against her. Montmorency, the constable, had the chief command; and Condé, who had been the principal means of leading her into the war, served under him. Coligny, who had no faith in the perfidious Catherine de Medici, maintained a neutrality. Catherine herself pushed on the siege with all her energy. She entered the besieging camp, carrying with her the young king, her son, and summoning all liege Frenchmen to the contest. During the months of May and June the siege was conducted with great spirit, and the town was defended with equal bravery. In July a grand assault was made upon it with 3,000 men, but they were beaten back with a loss of 400 of their soldiers. On the 27th of the same month a fresh assault was made, which was as stoutly resisted. But the French had now gathered to the siege in immense numbers. It was of the highest importance to regain the town, which commanded the whole traffic to Rouen, Paris, and a vast extent of country; and the besiegers cut passages for the water in the marshes, and made the approaches to the town more passable. The batteries were now brought close under the wall, and breaches were at length made in it. To add to the extremity of the English, pestilence broke out, and, with the heat of summer, swept away the inhabitants by thousands. The streets were filled with the dead. The enemy cut off the supply of fresh water, and there was a failure of provisions.

It was clear that the place could not hold out long, yet the English manned the walls, defended the breaches, and, till the whole garrison was reduced to less than 1,500 men, gave no sign of surrender. The constable made the first proposals for a capitulation, which Warwick agreed to accept; but such was the fury of the French soldiers, or, rather, the rabble collected from all quarters to the siege, that, in spite of the truce, they fired on the besieged repeatedly, and shot the Earl of Warwick, as he stood in a breach in hose and doublet, through the thigh, with an arquebuse. The next day the capitulation was signed, the garrison and people of the town being allowed to retire within six days, with all their effects. The chief marshal, Edward Randall, caused the sick to be carried on board, that they might not be left to the mercy of the French, and himself lent a helping hand. But the infected troops and people carried out the plague with them; it spread in various parts of England, and raged excessively in London. The inns of court were closed; those who could fled into the country. To the plague was added scarcity of money and of provisions. There were earthquakes in Lincolnshire, Northamptonshire, and other places; terrific thunders and lightnings—and all these terrors were attributed by the Papists to the heresies which were in the ascendant.

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

This French campaign terminated, Elizabeth turned her attention again to Scotland, and the subject on which she was most anxious was the marriage of the Scottish queen. To Elizabeth, who abhorred the idea of any one ever succeeding her on the throne, it was of much consequence how Mary, her presumptive heir, should wed. If to a foreign prince, it might render the claim on the English throne doubly hazardous. By this time it was pretty clear that Elizabeth herself was resolved to take no partner of her power, and, before entering on her endeavours to provide Mary of Scotland with a husband, we may pass in brief review those offers which she herself had refused.

Philip of Spain, we have already stated, lost no time, on the death of Queen Mary, in offering his hand to Elizabeth. She was flattered by the proposal, the more that, united with Spain, she could have no fear of the power of France, or of its demands on the throne for Mary of Scotland. But she was compelled to admit the representations of her wisest counsellors, that Philip, by his bigotry, had rendered his connection with England odious in the minds of the people; that nothing could convert him to a tolerance of Protestantism; and that, as he stood to her precisely in the same degree of affinity as her father had been to Catherine of Arragon, she could not marry him without admitting that their marriage had been valid, and that of her mother consequently null, and herself illegitimate. She assured the Spanish ambassador that if she ever married she would prefer Philip to any other prince, but that she was totally debarred from such an alliance by Philip's former marriage with her sister. Philip replied, that the Pope's dispensation could at once remove that obstacle; but, as she did not listen to that, he made no long delay, but offered his hand to Isabella of France, who accepted him, by which he rendered the position of Elizabeth still more dangerous, for now France, Spain, and Scotland had a national alliance for the support of Roman Catholicism and the suppression of the Reformed faith.

Her next suitor appeared in the person of Charles, Archduke of Austria, the son of the Emperor Ferdinand, and cousin of Philip. This prince was young, of agreeable person, and of superior talents and accomplishments. Again Elizabeth was much flattered by his addresses, and, again, his power would present a sufficient barrier to that of France. But then, again, his religion stood in the way: he was a Papist, and of a most Popish family. So much encouragement, however, did Elizabeth give to this proposal, that she declared to Count Elphinstone, the emperor's ambassador, "that of all the illustrious marriages that had been offered to her, there was not one greater or that she affected more than that of the Archduke Charles." She expressed a desire to see him in England, and it was quite expected that he would make his appearance; but it was insisted that he should have a private chapel for the exercise of his own religion, and this was a stumbling-block that could not be got over. Some years hence, however, we shall find him reviving his suit.

 

Queen Elizabeth and her Suitors.

 

Whilst the archduke was still preferring his suit, there arrived another matrimonial ambassador, in the person of John, Duke of Finland. He arrived on the 27th of September, 1559, to solicit the hand of Elizabeth for his brother, Prince Eric, heir-apparent to the throne of Sweden. Eric was a Protestant prince; there could be no objection on that score. He was son of the celebrated Gustavus Vasa. He was of a romantic and excitable character, notorious for his amours at home, and not less so for being an aspirer to the hands of Elizabeth of England, Mary of Scotland, and of a princess of Hesse. John, his brother, was a man of a handsome and princely person, but ambitious and cruel. He came at this time, commissioned by the aged Gustavus, to seek this alliance with the Queen of England. John affected much magnificence, and wherever he went he threw handfuls of money amongst the people, saying, he gave silver, but his brother would give them gold. Elizabeth was evidently greatly charmed with the person and attentions of the handsome Swede, and it soon became rumoured that John was wooing for himself rather than for his brother. Gustavus dying, and Eric just now succeeding to the throne, he grew jealous of John, and recalled him. In the stead of John, who was very capable of trying to supplant his brother, and afterwards did supplant him in the throne, and murdered him, Eric sent Nicholas Guilderstern as his ambassador—who was reported to have brought two ships laden with treasure for the queen, but who really did bring eighteen pied horses, and several chests of bullion—announcing that he was following in person to lay his heart at the feet of the illustrious queen.

Eric was said to be the handsomest man in Europe; he was undoubtedly a man of great accomplishment, a proficient in music, and one of the earliest and best poets of his country, as his poetry still remaining testifies, one of his hymns being yet sung at the execution of criminals. But Elizabeth never had an opportunity of witnessing the attractions of the Swedish monarch; for though she might have liked the flattery of his presence, she dreaded the expense of entertaining him and his suite, though he had sent ample provision for his expenditure. She therefore requested him to wait awhile, and the indignant monarch casting his eyes on a very handsome countrywoman of his own, named Karin or Catherine Mansdotter, the daughter of a corporal, married her, and made her Queen of Sweden. Perhaps he could not have found a princess in Europe equal to her. She made him an admirable wife, comforting him in his imprisonment, and after his death lived with her daughter and son-in-law to a serene old age.

Whilst Eric was wooing Elizabeth, the King of Denmark, out of political jealousy, sent over his nephew Adolphus, Duke of Holstein. He arrived March 20th, 1560, and was received with much honour. Adolphus was young, handsome, had a great military reputation, and is said to have been really in love with the queen. Elizabeth appeared equally charmed with him, but she could not prevail on herself to accept him. She made him Knight of the Garter, gave him a splendid reception and splendid presents, and then politely dismissed him.

At the same time that Charles of Austria, Eric of Sweden, and Adolphus of Holstein were contending for the royal prize, the Earl of Arran was put forward by Cecil himself, and strongly recommended as giving a claim on the throne of Scotland. Arran, the son of the Duke of Chatelherault, had been very active in the Scottish war of the Reformation, stimulated by the smiles of the queen, and the support of her great minister; but when, in 1560, he made a formal application for his reward, Elizabeth shrouded herself in her old affected dislike of matrimony, and when Arran retired in confusion, complained that, though crowned heads had prosecuted their suits for years, the Scot did not deign to prefer his request a second time. Arran soon after lost his reason, and the loss was attributed to this disappointment.

To this list of regal or princely suitors we may add Hans Casimir, the eldest son of the Elector Palatine. He was a remarkably handsome youth of three-and-twenty, who, though betrothed to the beautiful Mademoiselle de Lorraine, abandoned that alliance from the persuasion that, once seen by Elizabeth, he was sure of success. Hans Casimir entreated Sir James Melville, who was in his father's service, to proceed to London and prefer his suit. Melville, who was a shrewd Scotchman, declined the commission; but Casimir found another agent, who, with his father's sanction, delivered his message. The queen replied that "the young prince must come to England, either openly or in disguise, for she would never marry a man that she had not seen." This reply of the Royal coquette gave Casimir the highest hopes, but again Melville withstood his suit, by declaring that he knew the queen never meant to marry, and therefore his journey would be a fool's errand, producing nothing but disappointment and enormous expense. He consented, however, to take his picture, which he did, and Elizabeth treated it with contempt. On Melville sending this intelligence to Hans Casimir, he was so far from resenting this treatment, or taking it to heart, that he thanked Melville for his services, and immediately married the eldest daughter of the Duke of Saxe.

Amongst suitors of lesser rank we may name the grand prior of France, brother of the Duke of Guise, and the youngest uncle of the Queen of Scots. On returning to France from accompanying Mary to Scotland, with the constables and 100 gentlemen of that embassy, he and his associates paid a visit to the English Court. Elizabeth received them with great distinction, and appeared particularly charmed with the grand prior. He was a handsome and bold fellow, and entered into this Royal flirtation with all his heart. Brantome, who was one of the company, says, "I have often heard the Queen of England address him thus: 'Ah, mon prieur, I love you much; but I hate that brother Guise of yours, who tore from me my town of Calais.'" With this gay cavalier the English queen danced, and showed him great attention; but let him go, and found consolation in admirers nearer home. One of these was Sir William Pickering, a handsome man, of good address, and a taste for literature, who for some weeks engrossed so much of her attention, that the courtiers set him down as the fortunate man. He was soon, however, forgotten, and the more mature Earl of Arundel, a man of high descent, appeared to have a still more favourable hold on the fancy of the maiden queen. This nobleman, who, though a Papist, to please the queen voted for the Reformation, and who nearly ruined himself in expensive presents and entertainments for her, fell in a while under her displeasure, and was made a prisoner in his own house, for participation in the scheme of marrying the Duke of Norfolk to Mary of Scotland. But of all the long array of the lovers of this famous queen, foreign or English, none ever acquired such a place in her regard and favour as the Lord Robert Dudley, one of the sons of the Duke of Northumberland, who had been attainted, with his father and family, for his participation in the attempt to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne, to the exclusion of Queen Mary and of this very Elizabeth. The queen restored him in blood, made him master of the horse, installed him Knight of the Garter, and, soon after this period, Earl of Leicester. This maiden queen, who had rejected so many kings and princes, soon became so enamoured of this young nobleman, that their conduct became the scandal of the Court and country. The reports were believed, both in this country and abroad, of their living as man and wife, even whilst Leicester was still the husband of Amy Robsart. The Queen of Scots, in one of her letters, tells her that she hears this asserted, and that she had promised to marry him before one of the ladies of the bedchamber. Confirming this belief, Miss Strickland admits that Elizabeth had Leicester's chamber adjoining her own. Throckmorton, her ambassador, sent his secretary, Jones, to inform Elizabeth privately, and at the suggestion of Cecil and the other ministers, of the common remarks on this subject by the Spanish and Venetian ambassadors at Paris. Elizabeth, listening to Jones's recital, including the account of the murder of Amy Robsart, sometimes laughed, sometimes hid her face in her hands, but replied that she had heard it all before, and did not believe in the murder. From the evidence on this subject, it appears that Elizabeth had promised Dudley to marry him, and was this time very near being involved in the trammels of matrimony; but she escaped to have another long string of princely suitors, whose advents we have yet to relate.

Careful to avoid the bonds of matrimony herself, Elizabeth was, however, bent on securing in them the Queen of Scots. Since Mary of Scotland had become a widow, the suitors of Elizabeth had transferred their attentions to her. She was younger and much handsomer; her kingdom was much less important, but then she was by no means so haughty and immovable. She was of a warm, a generous, a poetic nature, and would soon have found a congenial husband, but either her own subjects or her rival Elizabeth had something in each case to object. Her French relatives successively proposed Don Carlos, the son of Philip, and heir of Spain; the Duke of Anjou, one of the brothers of her late husband; the Cardinal de Bourbon, who had not yet taken priest's orders; the Duke of Ferrara, and some others. But none of these would suit her Scottish subjects, for they were all Papists; and they suited Elizabeth as little, for they would create too strong a foreign coalition. Mary, with an extraordinary amiability, listened to all the objections of Elizabeth, and expressed herself quite disposed to accept such a husband as should be agreeable to her. But Mary was not without policy in this condescension. She hoped to induce Elizabeth, by thus being willing to oblige her in this particular, to acknowledge her right to succeed her, but in this she was grievously disappointed. Elizabeth declared that "the right of succession to her throne should never be made a subject of discussion, for it would cause disputes as to the validity of this or that marriage;" that is, it would assuredly bring prominently forward what Elizabeth well knew was the weak place in her own claim—the illegal marriage of her mother. Mary declared herself ready to acknowledge the right of Elizabeth and of her posterity to the English throne, if she would acknowledge that her claim stood next; but Elizabeth replied that she could not do that without conceiving a dislike to Mary, for she asked "how it was possible for her to love any one whose interest it was to see her dead?"

Whilst Elizabeth was making a progress in the summer of 1563, in which her chief visit was to the university of Cambridge, where she made her Latin speech, she was greatly disturbed by the news that her old lover, the Archduke Charles of Austria, was paying his addresses to the Queen of Scots. Stung with both womanly and political jealousy—for Charles, besides his prospect of becoming emperor, was one of the most noble and chivalric princes in Europe—Elizabeth sent off the astute Randolph to Scotland to show Mary how very unfit a person was the archduke for her husband. He had been proposed by the Cardinal of Lorraine,—a sufficient proof, Randolph was to remind her, of his being an enemy to England; and that, if she married an enemy of England, there was an end of any chance of her succession. At the same time Elizabeth ordered Cecil to write to Mundt, one of the pensionaries in Germany, that the emperor should be advised to renew the offer of his son to the Queen of England; but the emperor replied that he had had a sufficient sample of the selfish and hollow policy of Elizabeth, and would not expose himself to a second insult.

Mary behaved with as much candour in the matter as Elizabeth had with duplicity. She told Randolph that she found it difficult to meet the views of her good sister in this matter; but that, if she would advise her in the choice of a husband, she would willingly listen to her. Randolph said that it would be most agreeable to his Royal mistress if she would choose an English nobleman. Mary replied that she should be glad to know whom her Royal cousin would recommend, and was astonished to learn that the husband destined for her was no other than Lord Robert Dudley, the favourite of Elizabeth herself, and regarded by all the world as her future husband. Mary was so much piqued at what could not but appear to her a studied mystification, that she replied that "she considered it beneath her dignity to marry a subject." This was a hard hit at Elizabeth, who was supposed to be intending that very thing, and the pungent remark was not lost on her; nor the equally sarcastic remark that "she looked on the offer of a person so dear to Elizabeth as a proof of good-will rather than of good meaning."

Elizabeth observed with much spleen that Mary had treated the offer which she had made her with mockery, but Mary protested that she never had, and wondered who could so have represented her words. The circumstance became the public talk and laughter both of the two Courts and of Europe; and Dudley affected to be much offended by the nomination of him as the husband of Mary. He regarded the whole scheme, however, as a plot of Cecil to remove him from the English Court. Elizabeth, on her part, for at this time she was absolutely ridiculous in her doting on Dudley, was wonderfully flattered by his reluctance to leave her for the beautiful Queen of Scots, and she determined to lavish fresh titles and favours on him. She had already granted him the castle and manor of Kenilworth and Astel Grove, the lordships and manors of Denbigh and Chirk, with other lands, and a licence for the exportation of cloth—a monopoly, in fact: she now resolved to give him new estates and dignity.

Mary, that she might do away with the ill effect of her sarcasms, sent Sir James Melville to London to consult with Elizabeth, in personal interview, fully and candidly as to the person that she would really recommend as her consort. Sir James was an able diplomatist, who had travelled, and seen much of men and courts. He had, as we have seen, been commissioned to forward the suit of Hans Casimir, son of the Elector Palatine, to Elizabeth, and had taken a very clear view of her character. Perhaps no man, who was only an occasional visitor of her court, so thoroughly understood her weak points. These are made most conspicuous in the narrative which he has left of those interviews which he had with her.

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

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

At this crisis it may be as well to see who these two noblemen were. We have seen that Dudley, now Earl of Leicester, was the son of the late attainted Duke of Northumberland and brother of the attainted Lord Guildford Dudley. Leicester had won the fancy of Elizabeth by his showy person, for that was his only attractive quality. He was neither brave, nor of superior ability, nor honourable. He had the worst possible character with the public at large for almost every vice, and was confidently believed to be the murderer of his wife, the beautiful Amy Robsart, whose story Sir Walter Scott has told in his "Kenilworth." As Leicester saw a prospect of marrying the queen, he is said, according to a contemporary account, to have sent his wife "to the house of his servant, Foster, of Cumnor, by Oxford, where shortly after she had the chance to fall from a pair of stairs, and so to break her neck, but yet without hurting of her hood that stood upon her head. But Sir Richard Varney, who, by commandment, remained with her that day alone with one man, and had sent away perforce all her servants from her to a market two miles off—he, I say, with his man, can tell you how she died."

The account continues:—"The man, being afterwards taken for a felony in the marches of Wales, and offering the matter of the said murder, was made privily away in the prison; and Sir Richard Varney himself, who died about the same time in London, cried piteously and blasphemed God, and said to a gentleman of worship not long before his death, that all the devils in hell did tear him to pieces. The wife, also, of Baldwin Butler, kinsman to my lord, gave out the whole fact a little before her death." Nor was this the firm belief of the multitude only, but of men of the highest estate and best information in the realm. Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, the queen's ambassador at Paris, one of her most sagacious statesmen, was so horrified at the idea of the queen's marrying this man, that, as we have seen, when he could not move Cecil to dare this representation, he sent his own secretary, Jones, to make a full statement of the murder of his wife by Leicester. Throckmorton declared that such a marriage would render Englishmen the opprobrium of men and the contempt of all people: "God and religion, which be the fundamentals, shall be out of estimation; the queen our sovereign discredited, contemned, and neglected; our country ruined, undone, and made a prey."

Yet so little effect had this honest representation, and the general abhorrence of Leicester, on Elizabeth, that for three years after it she continued her open and infatuated dalliance with this man, and then made him Earl of Leicester, and proposed him as the husband of the Scottish Queen, the real truth being, that as she never meant to marry at all, so she never meant the Queen of Scots to have him. The fact was that she liked to tease both Leicester and Queen Mary; she often quarrelled with Leicester, and then made it up by valuable presents. "His treasure was vast," says Lloyd, "his gains unaccountable, all passages to preferment being in his hand, at home and abroad. He was never reconciled to her Majesty under £5,000, nor to a subject under £500, and was ever and anon out with both."

Lord Darnley, "the long lad," as Elizabeth called him, was the son of that Earl of Lennox who in the time of Henry VIII. joined with Glencairn, Cassillis, and others in attempting to betray Scotland to Henry. For those services, and especially for attempting to betray Dumbarton Castle to the English, he was banished and suffered forfeiture of his estates, but received from Henry VIII., as the promised reward for his treason, the hand of the Lady Margaret Douglas, daughter of Margaret Queen of Scotland, and sister of Henry VIII., one of the lewdest and most turbulent women of the age. Thus Darnley was the son of Mary's aunt, the Lady Margaret Douglas, and grandson of Elizabeth's aunt, Margaret Tudor. He was thus near enough to have laid claim to the crowns of England, and Scotland too, in case of the failure of issue by the present queens. His nearness to the thrones of both kingdoms seems to have suggested the idea of marrying him to the Queen of Scots, whereby her claim on the English throne would receive augmentation. Mary was induced to favour the family, her near relatives. She corresponded with the Countess of Lennox, and invited Lennox to return to Scotland and reversed his attainder. He did not recover the patrimony of Angus, his father, for that was in possession of the powerful Earl of Morton, chancellor of the kingdom, but Mary promised to make that up to him by other means. Once restored to favour and rank in Scotland, Lennox pushed on the scheme of marrying his son Darnley to the queen. Melville was commissioned to intercede for his return to Scotland, but Elizabeth, who could not be blind to the danger of Darnley's wedding the Queen of Scots, for a time would not listen to it. We may believe too that Cecil did his best to prevent this, for of all his desires, the most earnest was that of the removal of Leicester from the Court, and therefore he used all his eloquence to get Leicester chosen for that honour. The great favourite was a perpetual thorn in his side, usurping all favour, all honour, all power and patronage. Whilst he was in the ascendant Cecil was never safe, for they hated one another. Cecil, therefore, watched every motion of both Leicester and the queen. He soon perceived that though Elizabeth pretended to urge the marriage of Leicester with Mary, so soon as matters appeared coming to a point, she always slackened her negotiations. He conceived hope again when he perceived any symptoms of the queen's returning to a foreign courtship. "This I see in the queen's Majesty," he wrote to his confidant, Sir Thomas Smith, "a sufficient contentation to be moved to marry abroad; and, if it may so please God Almighty to lead by the hand some meet person to come and lay hand on her to her contentation, I then could wish myself more health to endure my years somewhat longer, to enjoy such a world here as I trust will follow; otherwise, I assure you, as now things hang in desperation, I have no comfort to live."

Matters were in this position, when Melville spent his nine days at the English Court. She saw him, he says, every day, often three times a day, "aforenoon, afternoon, and after supper." The great topic was Mary's marriage, and she declared if Mary would take Leicester she would set the best lawyers in England to ascertain who had the best right to the succession, and that she had rather her dear sister had the crown than any other. "She herself, she said, 'never minded to marry except compelled by the queen her sister's hard behaviour to her.' I said, 'Madam, ye need not tell me that; I know your stately stomach. Ye think, gin ye were married, ye would be but Queen of England; and now ye are king and queen baith, ye may not suffer a commander.'"

Elizabeth, who was assuredly one of the most finished dissemblers that ever lived, affected great kindness for Queen Mary, kept her portrait by her, often gazed on it in Melville's presence, and would then kiss it. She showed Melville a fair ruby like a racket-ball and the portrait of Leicester, and told him that his mistress would get them both in time if she followed her counsel, and all that she had. She interrogated Melville regarding every particular of Mary's person, dress, and habits. She had female costume from various countries, and would appear in a fresh dress every day, and ask Melville which best became her. Melville replied the Italian, because it best displayed her golden coloured hair under a caul and bonnet. He adds, as it were aside, her hair was redder than yellow, and curled apparently by nature. She then wanted to know which had the handsomest hair, she or Mary, and there Melville was obliged to be evasive; then which had the handsomest person, and Melville was at his wits'-end, but replied they were both the handsomest women in their own Courts, but that Elizabeth was whitest. Then she wanted to know which was tallest; and Melville thought he might speak the truth there without offence, and said his queen. "Then she is over high," said Elizabeth, "for I am neither too high nor too low." She next wanted to know what were Mary's amusements and accomplishments; and learning that she played well on the lute and virginals, the same day he was taken, as it were without the queen's knowledge, to where he could hear her playing on the virginals. Then Elizabeth asked which played best, Mary or her, and, of course, Melville was obliged to say she did. She spoke to Melville in French, Italian, and Dutch, to display her knowledge of languages; and she detained him two days, that he might see her dance, after which came the regular question, which danced best, she or Mary? and Melville got out of that by saying that his queen danced not so high or disposedly as she did. A more exquisite exhibition of female vanity is nowhere to be found, and well would it have been if this womanly jealousy had produced no worse fruits.

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

Melville, on his return to Edinburgh, assured the Queen of Scots that she could never expect any real friendship from the Queen of England, for that she was overflowing with jealousy, and was made up of falsehood and deceit. These Royal courtships and rivalries went on still for some time: Queen Mary finally determined to refuse the Archduke Charles of Austria, probably to avoid giving umbrage to Elizabeth, and Elizabeth received one more suitor in no less a personage than the young King of France. This was a scheme of the busy and intriguing Catherine de Medici, who thought it would be a fine thing to link England and France together by marriage, but Elizabeth was not likely to perpetrate anything so shallow. The king was only sixteen, and Elizabeth replied that "her good brother was too great and too small; too great as a king, and too small, being but young, and she already thirty." Catherine, however, again pressed it, by De Foix, the ambassador; but Elizabeth, laughing, said, she thought her neighbour, Mary Stuart, would suit him better; this, however, was only thrown out because Elizabeth had heard of some such project, which, if real, she would oppose resolutely.

 

The Earl of Murray. From an original Portrait.

 

But a circumstance now took place which it seems difficult to account for. Having refused to permit Lord Darnley to go to Scotland, lest he should marry the Queen of Scots, and add to her claims on the English throne, all at once her objection seemed to vanish, and in February, 1565, she permitted him to travel to Edinburgh. Darnley was at this time in his twentieth year, very tall and handsome, possessing the courtly accomplishments of the age, and free in the distribution of his money. He waited on the young queen at Wemyss Castle, in Fife, and was well received by Mary, who was now about four-and-twenty. There appears no doubt but that the marriage had been planned and promoted by the Lennox party, and it is said that Murray encouraged it, thinking that with a young man of Darnley's weak and pleasure-loving character, he could easily retain the power of the State in his hands. Be that as it may, Darnley soon proposed, and was rejected; but Elizabeth, contrary to her own intentions, contributed to alter Mary's resolution. Elizabeth, probably apprehensive that Darnley being present might obtain the queen's goodwill, again sent Randolph to press the marriage with Leicester; on which Mary, bursting into tears, declared that the Queen of England treated her as a child, and immediately favoured the pretensions of Darnley.

The rumour of the queen's intention to marry Darnley soon reached the English Court. De Foix hastened to consult Elizabeth upon it, and found her playing at chess, and, whispering the news, added, as he surveyed

 

The Dismission of the Earl of Murray and the Abbot of Kilwinning by Elizabeth.(See page 429.)

 

the position of the game, "This game is an image of the words and deeds of men. If, for example, we lose a pawn, it seems but a small matter; nevertheless the loss often draws after it that of the whole game." "I understand you," observed Elizabeth; "Darnley is but a pawn, but may well checkmate me if he is promoted!" She rose and gave over the play. A council was immediately called, and Sir Nicholas Throckmorton was dispatched to dissuade or intimidate the Queen of Scots from the match. He found that ineffectual. Mary told him that she might have married into the houses of Austria, France, or Spain; but as none of those matches could please Elizabeth, she gave them up to oblige her, and had now resolved to marry one who was not only her subject, which she had so earnestly recommended to her, but her kinsman. "And why," she asked, "is she offended?" All she offered was to defer the marriage three months, to give time for Elizabeth's opposition to subside, and dismissed Throckmorton with the present of a gold chain. But that wily minister had contrived to breathe suspicion into the mind of Murray. Darnley, and Lennox, his father, were represented as Papists, and the fears of the Lords of the Congregation were thus aroused.

Murray withdrew from Court, declaring that he could not remain to witness idolatry. The gospel was declared to be in danger; the Protestants were summoned in defence of their religion, and the most scandalous stories of the intimacy of Darnley and the queen were propagated. Such was the excitement, that Randolph informed his own Court that the assassination of Darnley, now created Earl of Ross, was openly menaced. In England, Elizabeth showed her resentment by seizing the Countess of Lennox, Darnley's mother, and shutting her up in the Tower. She also sent word, through Randolph, to the Scottish leaders of the Congregation, bidding them maintain their religion, and the union betwixt the kingdoms, and on these conditions promising her support.

Encouraged by these assurances, the Kirk presented to Mary a memorial, bluntly informing her that they could no longer tolerate idolatry in the sovereign, any more than in the subject. Private information was given to Mary that the Protestant lords had laid their plan to seize both herself, Lennox, and Darnley, as they proceeded to the baptism of a child of Lord Livingstone's, at Callendar: that Chatelherault was at Kinneil, Murray at Lochleven, Argyll at Castle Campbell, and Rothes at Parretwall. To prevent this, Mary was on horseback at five in the morning, and dashed through their intended ambush before they were aware. Two hours later, Argyll, Boyd, and Murray met at the appointed spot, only to learn that the bird had escaped the snare. The traitors, to cover their defeated design, authorised Randolph to assure the queen that she had unnecessarily alarmed herself. But as, after this, there could be no safety for them, they implored Elizabeth to send them £3,000, and they would still endeavour to seize Lennox and Darnley. To defeat that object, Mary, on the 9th of July, privately married Darnley at Edinburgh. The intimacy which now subsisted betwixt the queen and her husband attracted the attention of the spies of the lords, and the utmost horror was expressed at the profligacy of their queen.

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

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

This bold rebuff given to the meddling Queen of England, and the demonstration of affection on the part of the people, confounded the disaffected lords; they retired with their forces, some towards Ayr, some towards Argyllshire. Henry and Mary pursued the latter division, which, by a rapid march, gained Edinburgh; but receiving no encouragement there, and the king and queen approaching, they fled towards Dumfries. Mary in this campaign appeared on horseback in light armour, with pistols at her belt, and at once greatly encouraged, by her courage and devotion, her followers, and astonished her enemies. As she drew near Dumfries the rebel army disbanded, and Murray and his associates fled to Carlisle, where Bedford received and protected them.

The traitors, being in the pay, and having acted under the encouragement of Elizabeth, hastened up to London to seek refuge and fresh supplies at her Court. But Elizabeth, who had brought herself into ill odour by clandestinely fomenting and assisting the rebellious subjects of both Scotland and France, now looked askance on them, and would not admit them to her presence unless they would free her from all blame, by confessing before the French and Spanish ambassadors that she had had nothing to do with their rising. As they knew that this was to mystify the continental Courts, they consented, but they little anticipated the result. Murray, the Duke of Hamilton, and the Lord Abbot of Kilwinning being admitted, on their knees declared that the queen had no part in the conspiracy, which was entirely of their own concocting and executing. "Now," exclaimed this truthless queen, "ye have spoken the truth; get from my presence, traitors as ye are!" The confounded men were driven from her presence; and, assuming a lofty and dignified air, according to her true servant Cecil, she declared roundly that "whatever the world said or reported of her, she would by her actions let it appear that she would not for the price of the world maintain any subject in any disobedience against any prince. For, besides the offence of her conscience, which should justly condemn her, she knew that Almighty God might justly recompense her with the like trouble in her own realm."

The crest-fallen Scottish lords retired to the north, where Elizabeth suffered them to hide their dishonoured heads, supplying them, however, with the necessary means of existence. Mary summoned them to surrender, but failing to do so, she proclaimed them rebels. Randolph, who ought long ago to have been ordered out of Scotland, still remained there, and to console the queen his mistress for her defeat, he regaled her ear with the most abominable scandals against Mary that he could rake together or invent. Amongst others he did not fail to insinuate that Murray was become her enemy, on account of an incestuous passion which she had entertained for him, and the knowledge of which she would now fain extinguish by his murder. This atrocious calumny, which her very worst enemies could not believe, is one of many such still to be seen in his letters to Leicester, and Raumer, the Prussian historian, has stated it as a fact.

Mary, on her part, displayed a spirit of forgiveness equally surprising. She had called a Parliament for the purpose of attainting the rebel lords and confiscating their estates, but no sooner did Chatelherault and her traitor brother, Murray, exhibit assumed symptoms of repentance, than she discovered a disposition to pardon them, and would probably have done it, but for the persuasions of her uncle, the Cardinal of Lorraine, and the fanatic fury of the mob, who insulted the priests, disturbed her at mass in her own chapel, and at the preceding Easter had dragged out a priest in his robes, with the chalice in his hand, and bound him to the market-cross of Edinburgh, where they pelted him with mud and rotten eggs. These, in an evil hour, led her to join the great Popish league of France and Spain, by which she hoped to gain the support of the monarchs of these countries against England and her own intolerant people. By this ill-advised step she only roused the religious zeal of her Protestant subjects to a formidable height, and increased the power of Elizabeth to wound her, whilst she gained no support whatever from the cruel bigots who, by their Bayonne alliance, covered their names with infamy and horror.