# Cassell's Illustrated History of England/Volume 2/Chapter 14

Chapter XIV.
THE REIGN OF QUEEN ELIZABETH (Continued).
The Queen of Scots, victorious by arms over her enemies, determined to call together a Parliament, and there to procure the forfeiture of Murray and his adherents. This threw the rebel lords into the utmost consternation; for, in the then temper of the nation at large, the measure would have been passed, and they would have been stripped of their estates and entirely crushed. To prevent this catastrophe no time was lost. It was actively spread amongst the people that Mary, having signed the league, it was the intention, through the Kings of France and Spain, to put down the Reformation in Scotland. It was represented that David Rizzio, a Milanese, who was become Mary's secretary for the French language, was the agent of the league and a pensioner of Rome, and that it was necessary to have him removed. This Rizzio had come into the kingdom in the train of Moret, the Savoy ambassador; and, according to Melville, was at first content with being made a singer in the queen's band; but this fact Chalmers, by examining the treasurer's accounts, and tracing Rizzio's progress from the first, denies. Whatever was his original station, however, he soon rose to that of Mary's secretary, and to the possession of her confidence. Nor was this at all extraordinary, for Mary felt that she was surrounded by traitors and enemies. The violence and intolerance of the reform nobles had driven her into the league, and Rizzio, as a strict Papist, supported all her views. Besides himself, there were also his brother Joseph Rizzio, and one Francisco, Italians, and other foreigners, in the queen's service. Rizzio strongly urged the queen to call the Parliament, and thus to crush her turbulent and insolent enemies, and unless he could be got out of the way that would inevitably take place, and the ruin of Murray, Morton, and the rest be certainly ensured. Unfortunately for Rizzio, he had incurred the hatred, not only of these Protestant lords, but of Darnley, the queen's husband. That young man had soon displayed a character which could bring nothing but misery to the queen. He was a man of shallow intellect but of violent passions, and, as is usually the case with such persons, of a will as strong as his judgment was weak. He was ambitious of the chief power, and sullenly resentful because it was denied. Mary, who was of a warm and impulsive temperament, in the ardour of her first affection, had promised Darnley the crown matrimonial, which would have invested him with an equal share of the Royal authority; but soon unhappily perceiving that she had lavished her regard on a weak, headstrong, and dissipated person, she refused to comply, fully assured of the mischiefs which such power in his hands would produce. Darnley resented this denial violently. He reproached the queen with her insincerity in most intemperate language; treated her in public with scandalous disrespect; abandoned her society for the ​lowest and worst company, and threw himself into the hands of his enemies, who soon made him their tool. They persuaded him that Rizzio, who, in his quarrels with the queen, always took her part, and who, as the keeper of the privy purse, was obliged to resist his extravagant demands upon it, was not only the enemy of the nation, the spy and paid agent of foreign princes, but was the queen's paramour, and the author of the resolve to keep him out of all real power. The scheme took all the effect that was desired. Darnley became jealous and furious for revenge. His father, the Earl of Lennox, joined him in his suspicions, and it was resolved to put Rizzio out of the way.
Darnley, in his blind fury, sent for Lord Ruthven, imploring him to come to him on a matter of life and death. Ruthven was confined to his bed by a severe illness, yet he consented to engage in the conspiracy for the murder of Rizzio, on condition that Darnley should engage to prevent the meeting of Parliament, and to procure the return of Murray and the rebel chiefs. Darnley was in a mood ready to grant anything for the gratification of his resentment against Rizzio; he agreed to everything: a league was entered into, a new covenant sworn, the objects of which were the murder of Rizzio, the prevention of the assembling of Parliament, and the return of Murray and his adherents. Randolph, the English ambassador, now banished from Scotland for his traitorous collusion with the insurgents, yet had gone no further than Berwick, where he was made fully acquainted with the plot, and communicated it immediately to Leicester in a letter, dated February 13th, 1566, which yet remains. He assured him that the murder of Rizzio would be accomplished within ten days; that the crown would be torn from Mary's dishonoured head, and that matters of a still darker nature were meditated against her person which he dared not yet allude to.
Amongst the nobles who had fully participated in the rebellion against their queen, but who had had the cunning to keep their treason concealed, were Morton, Ruthven, Lindsay, and Maitland. These men now worked diligently to organise the conspiracy. They communicated the plot to Knox and Craig, as the head of the clergy, who came fully into the design, as did Bellenden, the justice-clerk, Makgill, the clerk-register, the Lairds of Brunston, Calder, and Ormiston. Morton assured them that the only means of establishing the Reformation was to prevent the meeting of Parliament, by the murder of Rizzio and the interposition of the king, the imprisonment of the queen, the investment of Darnley with the regal authority, and of Murray with the conduct of the Government; and the whole was readily accepted by both the ministers of State and the ministers of religion as a thing perfectly justifiable. To communicate with Murray and the other refugees in England, Lennox, the father of Darnley, set out thither; and the result was two bonds or covenants, into which the conspirators entered. The first—still preserved in the British Museum—ran in the name of the king. In it he solemnly swore to seize certain ungodly persons, who abused the queen's good nature, and especially an Italian stranger called David; and on any resistance "to cut them off immediately, and slay them, wherever it happened," and to defend and uphold his associates in this enterprise, even if carried into effect in the very presence of the queen. This was signed by Darnley, Morton, and Ruthven.
The second covenant, also still preserved, promised to support Darnley in this and all his just quarrels, to be friends of his friends, enemies of his enemies, to give him the crown matrimonial, to maintain the Protestant religion, on condition that the king pardoned Murray and his associates, and restored their lands and dignities. This was signed by Darnley, Murray, Argyll, Glenclairn, Rothes, Boyd, Ochiltree, and their "complices." All this was duly communicated to Elizabeth and her ministers, Cecil and Leicester, by letters still extant, from Randolph and the Earl of Bedford, the lieutenant of the north, to both Elizabeth and Cecil; and they add that they have engaged that the particulars shall be communicated to none but the queen, Cecil, and Leicester.
Thus we see that Elizabeth was made fully cognisant of all these diabolical designs, and the names of all the leading men engaged in them. In the letter of the 6th of March, 1566, from Berwick, signed by Hertford and Randolph, we learn that Randolph had taken copies of the secret bonds or covenants entered into by the conspirators, and forwarded them to the queen and her confidential ministers. She knew, therefore, that Rizzio was to be murdered before the meeting of Parliament, that the queen was to be seized, stripped of her crown, imprisoned, and that other designs too dark to mention were meditated against her person. Murray and the rebels, whom she had so indignantly reprimanded in public, were to be restored to power; and all this was menaced against a queen whom she was calling sister, for whom she was professing great regard, and with whom she was in profound peace and alliance.
What did she do at this startling crisis? We prefer using the words of a distinguished historian to our own. Mr. Tyler says, "She knew all that was about to occur: the life of Riccio, the liberty, perhaps, too, the life of Mary was in her power; Moray was at her court; the conspirators were at her devotion; they had given the fullest information to Randolph, that he might consult the queen. She might have imprisoned Moray, discomfited the plans of the conspirators, saved the life of the miserable victim who was marked for slaughter, and preserved Mary, to whom she professed a warm attachment, from captivity. All this might have been done, perhaps it is not too much to say, that even in those dark times, it would have been done by a monarch acutely alive to the common feelings of humanity. But Elizabeth adopted a very different course; she not only allowed Moray to leave her realm, she dismissed him with the marks of the highest confidence and distinction; and this man, when ready to sail for Scotland, to take his part in these dark transactions which soon followed, sent his secretary, Wood, to acquaint Cecil with the most secret intentions of the conspirators."
Mary was not without some warnings of what was being prepared, but she could not be made sensible of her danger, neither could Rizzio; for Damiot, an astrologer, whom he was in the habit of consulting, bade him beware of the bastard. The obscurity attending all such oracles led Rizzio to believe that Damiot alluded to Murray, and Rizzio laughed at any danger from him, a banished man; but we shall see that he received his first wound from ​another bastard, George Douglas, the natural son of the Earl of Angus.
On the 3rd of March Parliament was opened, and a statute of treason and of forfeiture against Murray and his accomplices was immediately introduced on the Thursday, which was to be passed on the following Tuesday. But on the Saturday evening, the queen, sitting at supper in a small closet adjoining her chamber, attended by her natural sister, the Countess of Argyll, the Commendator of Holyrood, Beaton, Master of the Household, Arthur Erskine, captain of the guard, and her secretary, Rizzio, was surprised by the apparition of Darnley suddenly putting aside the arras which concealed the door, and standing for a moment gloomily surveying the group. Behind him came a still more startling figure; it was that of Ruthven, in complete armour, just come from his sick bed, and with a face pale and ghastly as that of a ghost. Mary, who was seven months gone with child, started up at this terrible sight, and commanded Ruthven to be gone; but at this moment Darnley put his arm round her waist as to detain her, and other conspirators entered, one after another, with naked weapons, into the room. Ruthven drew his dagger, and crying that their business was with Rizzio, endeavoured to seize him. But Rizzio, rushing to his mistress, seized the skirt of her robe, and shouted, "Giustizia! giustizia! sauve ma vie—Madame, sauve ma vie!"
Darnley forced himself betwixt the queen and Rizzio, to separate them from one another, and probably the intention was to drag him out of her presence, and dispatch him. But George Douglas, the bastard, in his impetuosity, drove his dagger into the back of Rizzio over the queen's shoulder, and the rest of the conspirators—Morton, Car of Faudonside, and others—dragged him out to the entrance of the presence-chamber, where, in their murderous fury, they stabbed him with fifty-six wounds, with such blind rage that they wounded one another, and left Darnley's dagger sticking in the body as an evidence of his participation in the deed. This done, the hideous Ruthven, exhausted with the excitement, staggered into the presence of the shrieking queen, and, sinking upon a seat, demanded a cup of wine. Mary upbraided him with his brutality; but he coolly assured her that it was all done at the command of her husband and king. At that moment one of her ladies rushed in crying that they had killed Rizzio. "And is it so?" said Mary; "then farewell tears, we must now study revenge."
It was about seven in the evening when this savage murder was perpetrated. The palace was beset by troops under the command of Morton. There was no means of rousing the city, the queen was kept close prisoner in her chamber, whilst the king, assuming the sole authority, issued letters commanding the three estates to quit the capital within three hours, on pain of treason, whilst Morton with his guards was ordered to allow no one to leave the palace. Notwithstanding this, Huntley, Bothwell, Sir James Balfour, and James Melville made their escape in the darkness and confusion; and as Melville passed under the queen's window, she suddenly threw up the sash, and entreated him to give the alarm to the city. Her ruffianly guards immediately seized her, and dragged her back, swearing they would cut her to pieces; and Darnley was pushed forward to harangue the people, and assure them that both the queen and himself were safe, and commanding them to retire in peace, which they did.
The queen remained in the most frightful condition, and the only wonder is that in her situation the consequences were not fatal to both herself and child. She became delirious, and cried out ever and anon that Ruthven was coming to murder her. As miscarriage was imminent, even the foolish and contemptible Darnley was at last moved, and her women were admitted to attend on and soothe her. In the morning her base brother, Murray, with Rothes, Ochiltree, and others of the banished lords, rode into the capital, and thence directly to the palace. So little was the unfortunate queen aware of the extent of the villany surrounding her that, on seeing Murray, she threw herself into his arms, and, bursting into tears, exclaimed, "If my brother had been here he would never have suffered me to have been thus cruelly handled." The wretch either felt or feigned a momentary compassion; but, if real, it was but like a passing flash, for he went from her direct to the meeting of the conspirators, where it was determined to shut Mary up in Stirling Castle, to confer the crown on Darnley, and establish the Protestant religion, with death or imprisonment to all dissentients.
But Mary was not long left alone with Darnley, before she convinced him of the dupe he had made of himself. She asked him whether he was so mad as to expect that after they had secured her, after they had imperilled the life of his child, they would spare him? and she bade him look at their conduct now, where they usurped all authority and did not even allow him to send his own servants to her. Darnley became thoroughly alarmed; he vowed he had had no hand in the conspiracy, and offered to call the conspirators into her presence, and declare that the queen was ready to pardon them, on condition that they withdrew their guards, replaced her own servants, and treated her as their true queen. The noble traitors were this time over-reached in their turn; probably trembling for the consequences of their daring conduct, on seeing Darnley and the queen reconciled, they consented, and in the night the queen and Darnley mounted fleet horses and fled to Dunbar. The consternation of the murderers in the morning may be imagined. The outraged and insulted queen had escaped their hands, and the news came flying that already the nobles and the people were hurrying from all sides to her standard. Huntley, Atholl, Bothwell, and whole crowds of barons and gentlemen flew to her, and at Dunbar a numerous army stood as by magic ready to march on the traitors and execute the vengeance due. They fled. Morton, Ruthven—the grisly, pale-faced assassin—Brunston, and Car of Faudonside escaped to England. Maitland of Lethington betook himself to the hills of Atholl, and Craig, the colleague of Knox, dived into the darksome recesses of the city wynds.
Mary, once more free, resumed all the decision of her character. But she had a difficult part to play. Willing to think the best, and only too prone to forgive, she yet must have seen enough to shake her faith in all around her. Darnley, spite of his protestation, had appeared simultaneously with the assassins, and what had been the real conduct of Murray? Besides the doubts which ​hung around many of her courtiers, they were almost all at deadly feud with each other. There was nothing for it, however, but to make the beat of her materials. She reconciled Bothwell to Murray, and Argyll to Atholl, and she appeared ready to pardon Morton, Maitland, and others of the conspirators. In Mary's kindly and forgiving nature lay her danger. Had she punished with the relentless severity of Elizabeth her throne might have stood. But her pardons were wasted on wretches who, at the first opportunity, would turn and rend her. The nobles of her Court were but demi-savages, rude, insolent, treacherous, and implacable.
Murder of Rizzio(See page 431)
Darnley, conscious of having committed himself irrecoverably with these brutal men, was now loud in their denunciation. His safety lay only in their destruction, and there was not one that he did not betray except Murray, who was at hand and dangerous. The fugitive nobles, enraged at Darnley's betrayal of them, sent the "bonds," or covenants which had passed between them, or copies of them, to the queen. She was thunderstruck there to behold, in the list of sworn traitors and assassins, her own husband and her brother Murray. She seemed crushed to the soul by the terrible discovery. She saw herself actually seated in a nest of vipers, and the vilest of those reptiles were those nearest to her in affection and consangiunity. She could no longer put faith in her husband, she turned from him in sickness of heart; and so completely was she dispirited with the scene around her, that she contemplated ​retiring to France and committing the government of the country to a regency of five lords, Murray, Mar, Huntley, Atholl, and Bothwell. She contemplated a divorce from her unworthy husband, and, it is said, had sent an envoy for that purpose to Rome.
Holyrood House.
But the spirit of Mary was not of a character long to brood over revenge; that belonged rather to such men as Ruthven, Murray, and Morton. They vowed deadly vengeance on Darnley, and from that hour his destruction was settled, and never lost sight of. As for Elizabeth of England, she was loud in denunciation of the outrage on the queen, and wrote expressing deep sympathy; and the virtuous Murray was indignant at the villany in which he had been engaged, but now only seemed to perceive the full extent of. The assurances of the friendship of England and France seemed, however, to tranquillise the queen's mind, and the hour of her confinement drawing nigh, she called her councillors around her, became reconciled to the king, and prepared everything for her own life or death. On the 19th of June she was, however, safely delivered, in the castle of Edinburgh, of a son, who was named James, and Sir James Melville was dispatched to carry the tidings to Elizabeth. The messenger arrived as the English queen was dancing after supper at Greenwich. Cecil, who had seen Sir James, took the opportunity to whisper the news to her in preparation. No sooner did she hear the news than she seemed struck motionless. She ceased, sat down, leaning her cheek on her hand, and when her ladies hastened to ascertain what ailed her, burst out, "The Queen of Scots is mother of a fair son, and I am a barren stock!" Her agitation was so visible that the music stopped, and there was a general wonder and confusion. There were not wanting spies to carry this to Melville, and, aware of the truth, he was curious to mark the official look which the great dissembler wore the next morning. She was then all smiling and serene, and even received the message, he says, with a "merry volt," that is, we suppose, a caper of affected joy. She declared that she was so delighted with the news, that it had quite cured her of a heavy sickness which she had had for fifteen days. Melville was too much of a courtier to congratulate her on being able to dance merrily in sickness; but he wanted her to become godmother, which office she accepted cheerfully, by proxy. She expressed quite an ardent desire to go and see her fair sister, but as she could not she sent the Earl of Bedford, with a font of gold for its christening and £1,000. With Bedford and Mr. Carey, son of her kinsman. Lord Hunsdon, she sent a splendid train of knights and gentlemen to attend the christening. The ceremony was performed at Stirling by the Archbishop of St. Andrew's, according to the rites of the Romish Church, the Kings of France and the Duke of Savoy being ​godfathers by their ambassadors. The English embassy remained outside the chapel during the service, for they dared not take part in the idolatries of the mass. They reported that Mary looked very melancholy, and Darnley was not present, it was supposed for fear the officers of Elizabeth should not give him the homage of royalty; for Elizabeth had still refused to acknowledge his title as King of Scotland.
The birth of a son to the Queen of Scotland, though mortifying enough to Elizabeth in itself, was made tenfold more so by the increased impatience which it occasioned amongst her subjects of her own obstinate celibacy. Even Leicester now began to despair of winning her hand. He had demanded the fulfilment of her promise, and begged that she would decide finally at Christmas: she promised it at Candlemas. But Cecil, who dreaded this marriage with Leicester above all things, ventured to give Elizabeth six objections to it. They were, that Leicester could bring neither riches, power, nor estimation; that he was deeply in debt, spite of all she had lavished on him; that he was surrounded by greedy dependants who would swallow up all the patronage of the crown; that he was so violent and fickle in his temper, that the queen could expect no happiness with him; that he was infamed by the death of his wife; and that to marry him would confirm all the scandalous reports which had been disseminated both at home and abroad.
Whether or not these reasons had any more influence than Elizabeth's private resolve never to take a partner in her power, far less a master, she remained immovable. Leicester was so much chagrined that he openly declared to La Forets, the French ambassador, in August, that he believed the queen would never marry; that he had known her from her eighth year better than any man on earth, and that from that early age she had always had the same language; that if she did ever break her resolve, he believed it would be in his favour, but that he now despaired of that.
The restless state of Leicester's mind, and the knowledge that the Earl of Sussex was an advocate of the queen's marrying the Archduke Charles, occasioned such quarrels betwixt these noblemen this summer, that Elizabeth was repeatedly obliged to call on them to be friends: but it was a hollow friendship, soon broken again, especially as the Howard family, to which Sussex's mother belonged, and Lord Hunsdon, the queen's relative, supported the same views as Sussex.
In September Elizabeth made a visit to Oxford, after a progress into Northamptonshire and to Woodstock, where she was feasted, harangued, and lionised for seven days. Intending on one occasion to deliver a speech in Latin, a Dr. Westphaling made so tremendously long an oration, that she sent to him bidding him very curtly to cut it short; but the doctor having committed his speech to memory, found himself unable to do so, on which she severely lectured him; but laughed heartily when he confessed to her his predicament. The next day she pronounced her own Latin oration, and in the middle stopped short to order Cecil a chair, and then went on again to show the learned but prosy doctor how much better she could manage it.
On her return to town she was not quite so successful in cutting short the harangues of her Parliament. After six prorogations she was compelled to summon it, and no sooner did it meet than it came upon the distasteful subject of her marriage. The Queen of Scots having now a son, the Roman Catholics would have been glad to have the succession recognised in that line; but the Protestants were alarmed at that circumstance, and all the more anxious for an alliance with a Protestant prince. Both parties, therefore, united in addressing her on this head. On hearing the address she replied that she should keep her intentions locked in her own breast: that was her own concern, and she bade them go and perform their own duties and she would perform hers.
The Commons resented this language, and as soon as a motion for supply was made, it was opposed on the ground that the queen had not kept her pledge to marry or name a successor, given when the last money vote was passed. The motion was carried that the business of the supply and the succession should go together.
The Lords commissioned a deputation of twenty of their body to wait upon her, calling her attention to the inconvenience of her silence. She replied to them in a very angry style, saying she did not choose that her grave should be dug whilst she was alive; that the Commons had acted to her like rebels, and durst not have behaved so to her father; that the Lords could do as they pleased, but she would regard their votes as mere empty sounds. She would never confide such high and important interests to a set of hair-brained politicians, but would appoint six grave and discreet counsellors to confer upon it, and would acquaint the Lords with their decision.
This novel and intemperate language excited an immense ferment, both within and without the walls of Parliament, and language was heard in the senate such as had not been uttered for the last several reigns. Leicester, who was in the worst humour with Cecil, for his letter to the queen in his disparagement, took the opportunity of revenging himself by mingling in the debate, and boldly charging that minister with being the man who steadily dissuaded her Majesty from marrying. Elizabeth was so incensed at this presumption in the favourite, that she forbade Leicester and Pembroke, who supported him, her presence. Never had the spirit of Parliament and of the public risen so high for centuries; much ill will was heaped on Cecil, and many curses were bestowed on Herrick, the queen's physician, for having said something professionally which had tended to deter her from marrying.
On the 27th of October both Houses joined in a petition to her, which was read by the lord keeper. This time she restrained her temper, and determined on mystifying the legislators. The following specimen of her address is unique in its line, and even equals the oratorical effusions of Cromwell for its quality of employing speech to conceal your thoughts:—"If any one here doubt that I am by vow or determination bent never to trade in that kind of life (marriage), put out that kind of heresy, for your belief is therein awry. For though I can think it best for a private woman, yet do I strive with myself to think it not meet for a prince; and if I can bend my liking to your need, I will not resist such a mind. As to the succession, the greatness of the cause, and the need of your returns, doth make me say, that which I think the wise may easily guess, that as short a time for so long a ​continuance, ought not to pass by rote, as many tell their tales; even so, as cause by conference with the learned shall show me matter worth the utterance for your behoof, so shall I more gladly pursue your good after my days, than with all my prayers, whilst I live, be means to linger my living thread."
But the Commons, who wanted a distinct statement of her views, and not a puzzle, were not satisfied with this. They resolved to stand by their vote, that the supply and succession should not be separated. On presenting her with a copy, she hastily scribbled at the foot of the paper these lines, which she read aloud to Mr. Speaker and thirty members, who waited on her November, 14th, 1566:—"I know no reason why any my private answers to the realm should serve for prologue to a subsidy rate; neither yet do I understand why such audacity should be, and to make without my licence an act of my words. Are my words like lawyers' books, which now-a-days go to the wire-drawers to make subtle doings more plain? Is there no hold of my speech without an act to compel me to confirm? Shall my princely consent be turned to strengthen my words, that be not of themselves substantives? Say no more at this time, but if these fellows were well answered, and paid with lawful coin, there would be no more counterfeits among them!"
The Commons pronounced this speech a breach of their privileges, and, as the legitimate course, allowed the bill for supplies to lie on the table, with the observation that, "Since the queen would not marry, she ought to be compelled to name her successor; and that her refusing to do so proceeded from feelings which could only be entertained by weak princes and faint-hearted women."
To be pronounced weak-minded or faint-hearted and womanish was of all things most repugnant to the queen's nature. But she felt it was not the moment to show further resentment; she therefore bridled her wrath, and knowing that France, Scotland, Spain, and Rome were all on the watch to combine against her if they saw the slightest symptom of disaffection at home, she sent for thirty members from each House, and, receiving them graciously, assured them of her hearty desire to do all that they required, and added that "as the Commons were willing to grant her a subsidy if she would declare her successor, she could only say that half would content her until she had determined that point, as she considered the money in her subjects' purses as good as in her own exchequer." This stroke completely threw the Commons off their guard. They granted her one-tenth and one-fifteenth, to which Convocation added four shillings in the pound. No sooner was Elizabeth in possession of this vote, than she broke out upon them, when she summoned them for dismissal. She complained bitterly of the dissimulation that they had shown, whilst she was all plainness towards them. "As for your successor," she said, "you may, perhaps, have a wiser or more learned to reign over you, but one more careful for your weal you cannot have. But whether I ever live to meet you again, or whoever it may be, I bid you beware how you again try your prince's patience, as you have done mine. And now, to conclude, not meaning to make a Lent of Christmas, the most part of you may assure yourselves that you depart in your prince's grace."
Thus the resolute and politic queen once more triumphed over her Parliament, and, in proof of the truth of Cecil's remark, that sometimes she was more than a man, sometimes less than a woman, she went away to consult alchymists and astrologers how she was to triumph over time and age as she did over men. According to Cecil's journal of January, 1567, she committed Cornelius Launoy, a Dutchman, to the Tower, for abusing the queen's Majesty in promising to make an elixir. This man had promised to convert any metal into gold, and had been allowed to set up his laboratory in Somerset House.
The celebrated Dr. Dee was more fortunate with her. He was a truly learned man, who had studied on the Continent, and mixed with all the sound knowledge of the times all its superstitions. He was at once a good mathematician, a good linguist, an astrologer, astronomer, alchymist, and soothsayer. He wrote a book called "The Book of Spirits," and held conversations with them, using as a medium in which he saw them, a black speculum, or a crystal, still preserved in the British Museum. Dr. Dee promised Elizabeth the transmutation of metals and the revelation of future events; but, however often he might fail in them, there were other services in which he was calculated to be successful beyond any man of his age. From his familiar knowledge of the continental languages, and the learned men of all ranks there, he could be used as "a secret intelligencer" without the slightest suspicion. He spent a great deal of his youth, in the reign of Henry VIII., on the Continent, studying in Holland and Belgium, particularly at the University of Louvain. He afterwards lectured on Euclid at Rheims and other places with wonderful éclat, and was in communication with the most learned of all countries. He was consulted by Elizabeth's maids, if not by Elizabeth, in Queen Mary's reign; was presented to Edward VI. by the crafty Cecil, and was consulted by Lord Dudley, afterwards the Earl of Leicester, as to the most auspicious day for her coronation. He was constantly sent on pretended scientific missions to France, Germany, Belgium, and other countries; but, no doubt, really to learn everything that Cecil or Elizabeth wanted to know. Hence he was presented to the rectory of Upton-on-Severn by Edward VI., and by Elizabeth to another living and to the chancellorship of St. Paul's. He lived many years at Mortlake in Surrey, and there Elizabeth would ride over, with her whole Court and privy council, on pretence of examining his library; but even then she did not neglect to get a peep into his magic mirror. In his own diary he says:—"September 17th.—The queen's Majesty came from Richmond in her coach, the higher way of Mortlake field; and when she came right against the church, she turned down towards my house; and when she was against my garden, in the field, she stood there a good while, when, espying me at my door, making obeisances to her Majesty, she beckoned me to come to her coach-side. She very speedily pulled off her glove, and gave me her hand to kiss, and, to be short, asked me to resort to her Court, and to give her to wete when I came there."
Dee not only promised the queen perpetual youth and beauty—which she seemed to believe, for she imagined herself handsome at sixty—but he also promised to convert any base metal into silver and gold, and once sent to her Majesty a copper warming-pan with a piece cut out of it, and the piece converted into real silver. Had he ​discovered how to electrotype? or did he very exactly fit a piece of silver to the part cut out? Be that as it may, to the last his prestige with her was never shaken. She sent for him from the Continent, when he had stayed there some time; he came travelling like a prince. On landing, a guard of soldiers met him, and accompanied him on the road, to prevent him being plundered. Those who imagine that the queen's love of the occult sciences was the cause of this great honour to Dr. Dee, are, perhaps, not far wrong; for of all the occult sciences, that of diving into the secrets of all the princes who could have any influence on her realm or personal security, was the most profoundly cultivated by Elizabeth and her astute minister, Cecil. In Dr. Dee's coach we may rest assured that there were documents of much more value than silver or gold, and which, for the world, Elizabeth would not have come to the light.
The attention of Elizabeth and her ministers was no sooner released from the contest in Parliament than it was attracted to Scotland by the startling events in progress there. The birth of the young prince had only for the moment had the effect of softening the wayward temper of Darnley. It became absolutely necessary for Mary to construct a strong Government if she was to enjoy the slightest power or tranquillity. Had she known the villanous materials out of which, at best, she must erect such a Government, she would have despaired. All the men of talent and influence were more or less tainted by treason, and in the enjoyment of bribery to work her evil. She leaned on Murray as on a brother, and he was at heart a very Judas. He advised her to recall Morton and reinstate Maitland. By his efforts Bothwell and Maitland were reconciled; the Lairds of Brunston, Ormiston, Hatton, and Calder, the heads of the Church party, were admitted to favour. But the prospect of so many of the traitors, cognisant of his own treason, assembling about the throne, rendered Darnley desperate. He resolved on throwing himself into the arms of the Roman Catholic party, and actually wrote to the Pope, blaming the queen for not taking measures for the restoration of the mass. His letters were intercepted, and, in his indignation, he gave out that he would quit the kingdom.
When this came to the knowledge of the queen, she did everything which a prudent and affectionate woman could do to learn the real cause of his dissatisfaction, in order to find a remedy. She went to him, brought him into the palace, and entreated him in private to open his mind to her upon any grievance which he had. But the wrong-headed man would not confess that he had any cause of grievance, yet not the less continued his reserve and alienation. Then the queen sent for her council, who, in presence of De Croc, the French ambassador, implored him to open his mind, and assured him that if he could show cause of real dissatisfaction against any person in the kingdom, it should be redressed. They said it must be some very serious grievance which could induce a sane man to relinquish so beautiful a queen and so noble a realm, and declared that he should have all the justice that he could demand. This not availing, Mary took him by the hand and affectionately entreated him before those lords to avow openly in what she had offended him. She said that she had a clear conscience, and that in all her life she had done no action which could in any way prejudice either his or her own honour. If, however, she had unfortunately offended him unconsciously, she desired to make every reparation, and she implored him to speak plainly, and not to spare her in the least matter.
None but a fool or a maniac could have resisted such amicable and generous conduct; but Darnley was one of those impracticable men who cannot bear high fortune. He declared that the queen had never given him any occasion whatever of discontent or displeasure; yet his sullen stubbornness of humour was in no degree dissipated. De Croc reported the folly of Darnley to his own Court, and added, "It is vain to imagine that he shall be able to raise any disturbance, for there is not a person in all this kingdom, from the highest to the lowest, that regards him any farther than is agreeable to the queen; and I never saw her Majesty so much beloved, esteemed, and honoured, nor so great a harmony amongst all her subjects as at present is, by her wise conduct; for I cannot conceive the smallest division or difference."
Nothing availed to show Darnley the folly of his proceedings, everything tended rather to aggravate his waywardness. He persisted in his declarations that he would leave the kingdom, yet he never went. He denounced Maitland, Bellenden, the justice-clerk, and Makgill, the clerk register, as principal conspirators against Rizzio, and insisted that they should be deprived of office. He opposed the return of Morton, and thus embittered his associates, Murray, Bothwell, Argyll, and Maitland. There was no party, except the Roman Catholics, which did not regard him with suspicion or aversion. The Reformers hated him for his intriguing with their enemies; Cecil suspected him of plotting with the Papists of England; the Hamiltons had detested him from the first for coming in betwixt them and the succession. The queen now became grievously impatient of his intractable stupidity, and deeply deplored her union with the man who had already endangered the life of herself and her child, and now kept the Government in a constant state of struggle and uncertainty.
Matters were in this state when, in the commencement of October, 1566, disturbances on the Borders rendered it necessary for the queen to go thither in person. Her lieutenant, the Earl of Bothwell, in attempting to reduce the borderers to subordination, was severely wounded, and left for dead on the field. He was not dead, however, and was conveyed to Hermitage Castle. Mary arrived at Jedburgh on the 7th of October, and the next day opened her Court. The trials of the marauders lasted till the 13th, when she rode over to Hermitage, a distance of twenty miles, to visit her wounded lieutenant. This visit excited much observation and remark amongst her subjects, and the events which succeeded have given deep significance to it. Bothwell was a bold and impetuous man, who had from the first maintained a sturdy attachment to the service of the queen, even when all others had deserted and betrayed her. This had given him a high place in Mary's estimation, and she was not of a character to conceal such preference. He was a man of loose principles, which he had indulged freely, if not acquired, on the Continent. Ambition and gallantry, united to the most unabashed audacity, made up a forcible but most dangerous character. The manifest favour of his young, beautiful, and unhappy sovereign seems very soon to have ​inspired him with the most daring designs, which still lay locked in his own heart. There is little doubt that he had entered into the conspiracy to kill Darnley, for he was mixed up with that clique; and the miserable and irritating conduct of Darnley towards the queen was now rousing the indignation of far better men than Bothwell. The favour in which Bothwell was with the queen was early observed and encouraged by Murray, Maitland, and their associates, because it tended to punish and might eventually lead to the dismissal of Darnley. Sir James Melville, indeed, attributes Bothwell's scheme for murdering Darnley and gaining possession of the queen to this period.
There is no reason to believe that Mary, however, consciously encouraged the unhallowed passion of Bothwell at this period. As an officer high in her Court, and in her esteem for his fidelity, it was not out of the generous course of Mary's usual proceedings to pay him a visit, which, moreover, was only of two hours, for she rode back to Jedburgh the same day, ordering a mass of official papers to be immediately sent after her. Immediately on reaching Jedburgh she was seized with a fever, so severe and rapid that for ten days her physicians despaired of her life. This was ascribed to the fatigue of her long ride to Hermitage and back; but it probably arose from that fatigue operating on a mind and body already shaken by deep anxiety. Might not a perception of her growing regard for Bothwell, causing her to feel more acutely the misery of her union with Darnley, have had much to do with it? Nothing, however, of a criminal acquiescence in the growth of this passion could exist; for, believing herself dying, she displayed all the resignation of the most unquestionable innocence, exhorting her ministers and nobles to unity for the good of the kingdom, and for the safety of her son.
She recovered, but her peace of mind and cheerfulness were gone. Darnley never went to see her during the extremity of her illness; and though he made her two visits during her convalescence, they were not visits of peace or regard. They left her in a state of deep melancholy, and she often wished that she was dead. The recollection of what Darnley had shown himself capable of in the plot against Rizzio, and his deep duplicity on that occasion, seemed now to inspire her with a dread that he would conspire against her life, and she never saw him speaking to any of the lords but she was in alarm.
Bothwell, Murray, and Maitland now invited Huntley and Argyll to meet them at Craigmillar Castle, and there proposed that a divorce should be recommended to the queen, on condition that she pardoned Morton and his accomplices the death of Rizzio. Mary listened to the scheme with apparent willingness, on the understanding that the measure was not to prejudice the rights of her son; but when it was proposed that Darnley should live in some remote part of the country, or retire to France, the idea appeared to realise their separation too vividly. She evidently felt a remainder of affection for him, and expressed a hope that he might return to better mind. She even offered to pass over to France herself, and remain there till he became sensible of his faults. On this Maitland exclaimed, sooner than that she should banish herself, they would substitute death for divorce. This effectually startled Mary, and she commanded them to let the matter be, for that she would wait and see what God in his goodness would do to remedy the matter.
The conspirators expressed their obedience to the queen's demands, but they still proceeded with the plot. At Craigmillar they met again, and drew up a bond or covenant for the murder of Darnley, which was signed by Huntley, Maitland, Argyll, and Sir James Balfour, of which Bothwell kept possession. It declared Darnley a young fool and tyrant, and bound them to cut him off as an enemy to the nobility, and for his unbearable conduct to the queen.
Soon after the Earl of Bedford arrived to attend the baptism of the child. As we have stated, Darnley, though in the palace, did not attend the ceremony, and the queen was observed to be oppressed with melancholy and to shed tears. The ministers now prevailed on the queen to pardon all the murderers of Rizzio, except Car of Faudonside, who had held a pistol to her breast, and George Douglas, who was the first to stab Rizzio. This gave such offence to Darnley, that he quitted Edinburgh, and went to his father's, at Glasgow. There he was seized with a severe attack of illness, and an eruption which came out all over his body. It was believed to be poison, but proved to be the small-pox.
Whilst he was lying ill, Morton returned to Edinburgh. Bothwell and Maitland met him at Whittingham, the seat of Archibald Douglas, where they pressed him to join the conspiracy for the murder of Darnley, professing that it was all done at the queen's desire. Morton insisted that they should bring him the queen's warrant, under her own hand, but this they failed to do. At the time that these plottings were going on, in the month of January, 1567, the queen set out to visit Darnley, who had received some hints of the plots against him, and was greatly alarmed by the tidings that the queen, whose severe censure of him he was well acquainted with, was on the way to see him. He sent a messenger to meet her, apologising for not waiting on her in person. The queen replied there was no medicine against fear, and rode on. She went direct to his father's, entered his room, and greeted him kindly. Darnley professed deep repentance of his faults, pleading his youth, and the few friends and advisers that he had. He complained of a plot got up at Craigmillar, and that it was said that the queen knew of it but would not sign it. He entreated that all should be made up, and that she should not withdraw herself from him, as he complained she had done. Mary conducted him by short journeys to Edinburgh, herself travelling on horseback, and Darnley being carried in a litter. They rested two days at Linlithgow, and reached Edinburgh on the last day of January. It was intended to take Darnley to Craigmillar, on account of Holyrood being thought to lie too low for a convalescent: but probably Darnley, after what he had heard, objected to go thither, and he was, therefore, taken to a suburb called Kirk-of-Field, an airy situation, where the Duke of Chatelherault had a palace. The attendants proceeded to the duke's house, but the queen told them the lodging prepared for the king was not there, but in a house just by, and also by the city wall, near the ruinous monastery of the Black Friars.
The place appeared a singular one for a king, for it was confined in size and not over well furnished. What was more suspicious was, that it was the property of Robert ​Balfour, the brother of that Sir James Balfour, who was of the league sworn to destroy Darnley, and the same who drew up the document. He was a dependant of Bothwell's, who held the bond, and who met the king and queen a little way before they reached the capital, and accompanied them to this place. AH these circumstances compared with those which followed, show that the whole had reference to the catastrophe, and the great question which has divided historians to this hour, is, how far the queen was a party to the proceedings. That we shall be called upon anon to discuss. For the present, so far as the queen was concerned, all appeared fair and sincere. She seemed to have resumed all her interest in her husband. She was constantly with him, and attended to everything necessary for his comfort and restoration. She passed the greater part of the day in his chamber, and slept in the room under his. Though Darnley was apprehensive of danger from the circumstance that all his mortal enemies were now in power, and about the Court, the constant presence and affection of the queen was a guarantee for his safety, and appeared to give him confidence.
Lord Darnley. From the original Portrait in the Collection of the late Earl of Seaforth.
But the conspirators were watching assiduously for an opportunity to destroy him. Morton, Maitland, and Balfour bad now gathered into the plot the Earls of Huntley, Argyll, and Caithness, Archibald Douglas, the Archbishop of St. Andrew's, and many other lords and leading men of the bench and bar. Murray, alone, seemed to stand aloof; though, from the evidence existing, there can be no question that he was privy to the whole.
Queen Elizabeth and her Parliament. From an Engraving of the Period.
​it would cost him his life. Darnley told this to the queen, who questioned the earl, and he then denied having said so. This was precisely what Morton stated would take place, when on his death-bed, confessing a knowledge of the plot, he was asked why he had not revealed it. He replied, that there was nobody to tell it to; that it was no use telling it to the queen, for he was assured that she was in the plot; and that if he had told Darnley, he was such a fool that he would immediately tell it to the queen. The circumstance, however, startled the conspirators, and determined them to expedite the terrible business. The desired opportunity arrived. The queen agreed to be present on the evening of the 9th of February at the marriage of Sebastiani and Margaret Garwood, two of her servants, which was to be celebrated with a masque. The queen remained with the king the greater part of the day, which was passed in the most apparent cordiality, and Mary declared her intention of remaining all night at Kirk-of-Field.
It is said that whilst she was talking there with the king, Hay of Tallo, John Hepburn of Bolton, Pourie, Dalgleish, and others in the pay of Bothwell, entered the room below the king's and deposited bags of gunpowder. These men, who were afterwards examined under torture, and confessed to strangling the king, could not in this instance, as we shall see, have told the truth. However, Mary, still sitting with her husband, suddenly recollected her promise to attend the marriage, and taking leave of Darnley, kissed him, and taking a ring from her finger placed it on his own. Darnley, according to the evidence of these ruffians, retired to his bedchamber on the departure of the queen. He seemed much changed since his illness, had become thoughtful and repentant of his past conduct, and this state of mind will account for the change in the queen's manner towards him. But still he was melancholy; complained that he had no friends, and was impressed with the conviction that he should be murdered. From those feelings he sought refuge in religion, and before retiring to rest he repeated the fifty-fifth psalm, which he often sung. After he fell asleep Taylor, his page, continued still to sit by his side.
It was now that the hired assassins executed their appointed task. How Darnley and his page were murdered is yet a disputed point. The house was blown up with gunpowder, but the bodies of the king and his page were found in the orchard adjoining the garden wall, the king only in his night-dress, his pelisse lying by his side, and no marks of fire upon the body. There is a story of the murderers going to commence their operations, and the king hearing their false keys in the lock of his apartment, and rushing down in his shirt and pelisse, endeavouring to escape; of his being seized and strangled, and his cries being heard by some women in the nearest house. On the other hand, the ruffians who did it, swore that only gunpowder was employed, and that the king's bed-clothes must have defended him from the action of the fire, and the crushing effect of the fall. Why, indeed, should they have taken the trouble to strangle Darnley, when the gunpowder was sufficient to destroy him? It was also stated that two of his servants had perished in the ruins, and two others had escaped with very little hurt. How does the presence of so many attendants agree with the strangling story? However doubtful may be other matters, there is no question of the presence of Bothwell at the tragedy. He attended the queen from Kirk-of-Field to Holyrood, but about midnight quitted the palace, changed his rich dress, and in disguise joined the murderers, who were waiting for him. About two o'clock two of them entered the house and lit a slow burning match, the other end of which was placed amongst the powder. They remained some time expecting the catastrophe, till Bothwell grew so impatient, that he was with difficulty withheld from entering the house to ascertain whether the match still burnt. This was done by one of the fellows, who looked through a window and perceived the match a-light. The explosion soon after took place, and with a concussion which seemed to shake the whole city. Bothwell hurried away and got to bed before a servant rushed in with the news. He then started up with well-acted astonishment, and rushed forth shouting, "Treason! treason!" Huntley and some others of the conspirators then proceeded to the queen's chamber, and informed her of what had taken place. She seemed petrified with horror, gave herself up to the most violent expression of grief, and shutting herself up in her chamber, continued as if paralysed by so horrible and diabolical a tragedy.
But how far had Mary been cognisant of this conspiracy? Was she wholly or only partially innocent of participation in it? These are questions which have been, and continue to be, agitated by different historians with much zeal. We are disposed to believe the queen entirely innocent of any direct guilt in the matter. Her character was that of open, warm, and forgiving sincerity. Much as she had been tortured and humiliated by Darnley's conduct, she had refused to be divorced from him when it was proposed to banish him from the kingdom. She had hastened to forgive the past, and to renew her kindly intercourse with him, and to the last moment maintained a conduct towards him in keeping with her own warm-hearted character.
But we are not so clear that even now she was not strongly, though perhaps unconsciously, influenced by Bothwell. It was at his suggestion that she had taken him to Kirk-of-Field instead of to some more stately mansion, where the concerted explosion would not be so easily affected; and her conduct from this period bore more and more the marks of one of those paralysing and infatuated passions, which have converted into tragedy the story of so many lives.
Multitudes in the morning rushed to Kirk-of-Field to examine the ruins, but Bothwell hastening thither with a guard drove them back, and carried the king's body into a neighbouring house, where it was in the custody of one Alexander Drurem, who refused Melville a sight of him. Melville then went to the palace to inquire after the queen. Bothwell came out to him, and said that her Majesty was sorrowful but quiet, and he told him a clumsy story of the strangest accident that ever chanced—that the thunder came out of the sky and burnt the king's house, and killed the king, but so wonderfully that there was not the least mark upon him, desiring him to go and look at him.
The public were impatient to have the affair thoroughly investigated, and were amazed at the apparent apathy of the queen and Court. Two days, however, passed ​before any step was taken, when a reward of £2,000 was offered for the discovery of the assassins. In the night a paper was affixed to the door of the Tolbooth denouncing Bothwell, James Balfour, and David Chambers, as the perpetrators of the king's murder. Voices at the dead of night also were heard in the streets accusing the same persons, and calling for their punishment. But to the astonishment of the public, the queen, who had hitherto acted with so much spirit and energy, now remained perfectly quiescent. She was surrounded by the conspirators; Bothwell, whom all judged to be the leader of the assassins, was in the highest favour; and after remaining several days in her chamber, Mary removed to the house of Lord Seaton, at a little distance from the castle, accompanied by Bothwell, Huntley, Argyll, Maitland, and others of the well-known conspirators. Darnley was privately buried in the Royal Chapel of Holyrood, none of the nobility attending.
The demands of the indignant public for inquiry continued. The city was placarded with the names of Bothwell, James Balfour, David Chambers, black John Spens, Signors Francisco, Joseph Rizzio—the brother of David—Bartiani, and John de Bourdeaux, as the leading murderers. The Earl of Lennox, the father of Darnley, called on the queen to bring them to trial; but he demanded in vain. Bothwell, the man whom the whole public denounced, continued the first in favour with the queen. At this time Lutyni, an Italian, and companion of Joseph Rizzio, who had been on his way to the Continent, and had been recalled by the queen's warrant, on a charge of theft, and was believed to be concerned in the plot, was examined by Bothwell and dismissed, the queen presenting him with thirty crowns to assist him on his journey. Nine days after the explosion, Sir William Drury wrote to Cecil from Berwick, informing him that Dolu, the queen's treasurer, had arrived in the town with Bartiani, who was denounced in the placards and eight others. Francisco, another of the denounced, was expected to pass that way in a day or two; and other foreigners had left Scotland by sea.
Morton and Murray kept still away from Court, and Lennox, when demanded by Mary to repair thither, dismissed her messenger without reply. The people, astonished at this state of things, talked loudly, and hinted a variety of means of coming at the truth, if it were desired. The smith, said a placard affixed to the Iron, who furnished the false keys to the Kirk-of-Field house, was ready to name his employers; and the person who furnished James Balfour with the powder was well known. Other placards and drawings pointed broadly at the queen and Bothwell. The only effect of all this was, that whilst there was no attempt to inquire after the authors of the murder, there was a sharp search after the authors of the placards. Bothwell himself rode into the city in great fury, surrounded by fifty guards, declaring, with furious oaths and gestures, that if he knew who were the authors of the placards, he would wash his hands in their heart's blood. At the same time the queen was attended, as guard, by Captain Cullen, a notorious creature of Bothwell's, and his company; and Mary, it was repeated, so far from being overwhelmed by grief, was leading a gay life at Seaton with the conspirator lords. She and Bothwell amused themselves with shooting at the butts against Huntley and Seaton; and so incongruous was this conduct of the queen with the recent terrible death of her husband, and the rumours busy all over the country, that public feeling was shocked; and the very evening after Bothwell's furious appearance in the city, there were displayed two placards, one with the initials M.R. and a hand holding a sword, the other with the initials of Bothwell, and above them a mallet, alluding to the only wound discovered on the king as if perpetrated by such an implement.
Everything demonstrated the necessity of the queen exerting herself to discover the murderers of her husband. Sir Harry Killigrew arrived from Elizabeth, bearing a message of condolence, but at the same time urging the absolute necessity of the trial of Bothwell. Killigrew found the capital in a most excited state, clamorous for inquiry, and loud in its censures of the queen. At the same time a letter arrived from Bishop Beaton, her ambassador in France, stating in plainest terms that she was publicly accused there of being herself the chief mover of the whole dark business, and telling her that if she did not exert herself to take a rigorous vengeance she had better have lost life and all. Mary promised Killigrew that Bothwell should be brought to strict trial; but so soon as he was gone means were taken to secure Bothwell more completely from any effectual inquiry. The Earl of Mar was induced to give up the possession of the castle of Edinburgh to Bothwell, Morton had his lands and his castle of Tantallan restored to him, and, in return, supported Bothwell with all his influence. The castle of Blackness, the Inch, and the superiority of Leith were conferred on Bothwell; and Murray, who neither liked to play the second to the aspiring favourite, nor to run any risk of exposure in those inquiries which must sooner or later ensue, requested permission to visit France.
Mary could not possibly be happy in such circumstances. Whatever might be the state of her conscience, her character was fearfully implicated, and on all sides came calls for inquiry, which she did not seem to have the power or the will to make. She was observed to be no longer the same woman. She was oppressed with melancholy, often surprised in tears, and the ravages of her internal feelings were marked in a deep change from her former health and beauty. The climax to her trouble was put by the queen-mother of France and her uncle, the cardinal, sending her the most cutting message of reproach; calling on her without delay to avenge the death of the king, and to clear her own reputation, or regard them as no longer her friends, but the proclaimers of her utter disgrace. There was no possibility of putting off a show of inquiry any longer, but every means was adopted to make it a mere mockery. Bothwell was now so completely lord of the Court, and had so many offices and means of injury in his hands, that no one was to be found hardy enough to oppose him. The Earl of Lennox, who had hitherto demanded inquiry in vain, was now suddenly summoned to appear and make his charge against Bothwell on the 12th of April; but Lennox, appalled at the prospect of meeting his antagonist backed by all the power of the State, without the utmost preparation, prayed for more time, that he might collect his friends and his evidence. It was refused, and he ​then wrote to Elizabeth, who sent a despatch, urging on Mary the reasonableness of the request of Lennox. She stated that Lennox represented that there was a combination to screen Bothwell, and prevent justice being attained, and exhorted her, as she valued her reputation, to see that a fair trial was given.
The letter of Elizabeth was forwarded by the provost of Berwick, who arrived with it on the morning of the trial, but Bothwell and his accomplice Maitland pretended that the queen was asleep, to prevent her seeing the letter, or being known to see it, before the trial. The provost, indeed, from the moment he entered the city, was quite satisfied that no justice was intended. The palace and the castle were entirely in the hands and surrounded by the retainers of Bothwell and his accomplices. The provost, though known as the envoy of the Queen of England, was rudely treated, and called an English villain, who had come to prevent the trial. When Bothwell and Maitland came out of the palace, he handed them his despatches, with which they returned, but soon came out again, and without deigning him an answer, mounted and were riding away. But the provost, who resolved to assert his proper dignity, pressed up to them and called for his answer. They assured him that the queen was asleep, and could not be disturbed. Such conduct and such an excuse, when an envoy from the Queen of England had come express on most important business, showed a determination to pursue a concerted course at all risks. Moreover, a servant of De Croc, the French ambassador, at the very moment that Bothwell and Lethington rode out, saw Mary standing at an upper window of the palace with the wife of Lethington, and pointed her out to the provost, who observed her give a friendly nod to Bothwell as he went away.
The trial was precisely such as might be expected under the circumstances. The Court was surrounded by the retainers of Bothwell, the jury was selected from those in his interest, the judges were all under the awe of his power, and the Earl of Lennox, who was approaching, accompanied by his friends, was forbidden to enter the Court with more than six of them. It would have been madness to proceed, especially as the hagbutters of Bothwell, who crowded round the door, would have suffered no material witness to enter, if any such daring mortal could be found. Lennox demanded more time, and liberty to bring forward his friends and proofs; it was refused: the jury, without hearing any evidence, pronounced a unanimous acquittal of Bothwell. On this being decided Bothwell challenged any gentleman who dared to accuse him of the king's murder. Sir William Drury wrote at once to Cecil to pray the queen that he might accept the challenge, being perfectly sure of Bothwell's guilt, but it does not appear that the queen consented, for nothing came of it.
The public of Scotland were greatly scandalised at these proceedings, and the people of Edinburgh openly expressed their disgust in the streets; the very market-women calling out to Mary as she rode through the city, "God preserve your grace, if you be innocent of the king's death." Drury wrote to Cecil that not only had Bothwell insulted the public sense by riding to the trial on Darnley's favourite horse, but that he was assured that Mary sent him an encouraging message and token during the trial. In fact, so completely had this unfortunate princess now become infatuated by her passion for the murderer of her husband, that nothing could open her eyes, so that the people declared that Bothwell had bewitched her with love philtres. As if to defy the public opinion, Mary called a Parliament, appointed Bothwell to bear the crown and sceptre before her as she rode thither, and passed a bill fully confirming his acquittal at the trial. To win the clergy, she abolished all laws restricting the free enjoyment of religious liberty, and made provision for the poorer members of the ministry. The Assembly, however, unwarped by such favour, presented to her an address praying for a searching inquiry into the king's murder, which she took in very ill part.
Rumours now arose that Bothwell was about to divorce his wife, the sister of Huntley, to whom he had only been married six months, and to marry the queen; but in the face of this Mary conferred on him the castle and lordship of Dunbar, with extension of his powers as high admiral. As the rumours of the queen's intended marriage with Bothwell grew, Murray, her brother, stole away out of the contact with danger or responsibility, and retired to France. But, nevertheless, she did not lack warning. Her ambassador at the Court of France entreated her, in the most serious manner, to punish her husband's murderers, and not allow the world to use such freedom with her character as it did. "Lord Herries," according to Melville, "went to her and told her what bruits were passing through the country of the Earl of Bothwell murdering the king, and how she was to marry him; requesting her Majesty, most humbly upon his knees, to remember upon her honour and dignity, and upon the surety of the prince, which would be all in danger of tincell, in case she married the said earl, with many other great persuasions to eschew such utter wrack and inconvenients as that would bring on. Her Majesty marvelled of such bruits without purpose, and said there was no such thing in her mind."
She had equally strong letters from her friends in England, which Melville showed to her, and was advised by Maitland of Lethington to get away from Court for fear of Bothwell. Bothwell, however, soon put the matter beyond doubt. He invited the principal nobility to a tavern, kept by one Ansley, and there he drew out of his pocket a bond, expressing his innocence of the murder of Darnley, as established by the bench and the legislature, and his intention to marry the queen, and containing, it is said, her written warrant, empowering him to propose the matter to the nobility. The company was composed partly of his friends and accomplices. The rest were taken with confusion, but they had all now been deeply drinking, and they found the house surrounded by 200 of Bothwell's hagbutters. Under this constraint, eight bishops, nine earls, and seven lords, subscribed the paper. The Earl of Eglinton contrived, notwithstanding the hagbutters, to make his escape, but there yet remain to the copy of this bond in the State Paper Office the signatures of the Earls of Morton, Argyll, Huntley, Cassillis, Sutherland, Glencairn, Rothes, and Caithness; and those of the Lords Hume, Boyd, Seaton, Sinclair, and even Herries, who had strongly dissuaded the queen from this very measure. ​But the daring ambition of the man now roused even his old accomplices to conspire against him, for the safety of the young prince and Government. Morton, Argyll, Atholl, and Kirkaldy of Grange were at the head of this plot; and they wrote to Bedford the day after the supper at Ansley's, saying it was high time that his dangerous career was checked, and engaging by Elizabeth's aid to avenge the murder of the king. Kirkaldy, who was the scribe, added, that the queen had been heard to say that "she cared not to lose France, England, and her own country for him, and would go with him to the world's end in a white petticoat, before she would leave him."
An anonymous letter, but undoubtedly from some of this party, soon followed, declaring that the queen had concerted with Bothwell the seizure of her person. "This is to advertise you," it says, "that the Earl Bothwell's wife is going to part with her husband; and a great part of our lords have subscribed the marriage between the queen and him. The queen rode to Stirling this last Monday, and returns this Thursday. I doubt not but you have heard how the Earl of Bothwell has gathered many of his friends, and, as some say, to ride into Liddesdale, but I believe it is not, for he is minded to meet the queen this day, called Thursday, and to take her by the way, and to bring her to Dunbar. Judge you if it be with her will or no?"
The correctness of this information was immediately proved. On Monday, the 21st of April, the very day foretold, Mary rode to Stirling to visit her son, where the Earl of Mar, entertaining strong suspicions of her intentions, refused to allow her access to him with more than two attendants, to her great indignation. On her return, as had been foreseen in the letter quoted, Bothwell met her at the head of 1,000 horse, at Almond Bridge, six miles from Edinburgh; and, according to Melville, who was in the queen's train, taking the queen's bridle, he boasted that "he would marry the queen, who could or who would not; yea, whether she would herself or not." He says that Captain Blackadder, one of Bothwell's men, told him that it was with the queen's own consent. Whether this were so or not, has been argued eagerly on both sides, but it is probable from what we have seen that Mary really was a consenting party. The Royal retinue was suffered to continue its journey with the exception of Melville, Maitland, and Huntley, who were conducted along with the queen to the castle of Dunbar, the recent present of Mary to Bothwell. The queen seems to have made no loud outcries against the apparently forcible abduction, and the country was so convinced of the real nature of the affair, that there was no attempt to rescue her.
The divorce of Bothwell from his wife was now hastened, and after detaining the queen five days at the castle of Dunbar, he conducted her to Edinburgh, and led her to the castle, where she was received with a salute of artillery, Bothwell holding her train as she dismounted. Melville and Kirkaldy of Grange had not only informed Elizabeth of all that would take place, but when it had occurred, entreated her to aid the coalition of nobles, now become anxious to avenge the king's murder and rescue the queen. But Elizabeth, who was no doubt pleased with the degradation of the Queen of Scots, and with the destruction of her authority, so far from acceding, blamed them for using such language regarding their queen.
The ministers of the Church were ordered to proclaim the banns of marriage betwixt the queen and Bothwell, but they declined; and Craig, the colleague of Knox, who was absent, declared that he had no command from her Majesty, who was held in disgraceful constraint by Bothwell. This brought to him the justice-clerk with a letter under the queen's own hand, declaring that the assertions he had made were false, and commanding him to obey. Craig still refused till he had seen the queen herself; and, before the Privy Council, charged Bothwell with murder, rape, and adultery. No punishment followed so daring a charge, and the preacher having done his duty, obeyed the Royal mandate, and published the banns, at the same time exclaiming, "I take heaven and earth to witness that I abhor and detest this marriage, as odious and slanderous to the world; and I would exhort the faithful to pray earnestly that a union against all reason and good conscience may yet be overruled by God to the conform of this unhappy realm."
Nothing moved by these public expressions of censure and disgust, the queen appeared, on the 12th of May, at the high court of Edinburgh, and informed the chancellor, the judges, and the nobility that, though she was at first incensed against the Earl of Bothwell for the forcible detention of her person, she had now quite forgiven him for his subsequent good conduct. That day she created Bothwell Duke of Orkney and Shetland, and with her own hand placed the coronet on his head. On the 15th they were married, at four o'clock in the morning, in the Presence-Chamber of Holyrood. The ceremony was performed by the Bishop of Orkney, according to the Protestant form, Craig being present; and afterwards, privately, according to the Romish rite. Mary, strangely enough, was married in her widow's weeds. Melville describes Bothwell that day, as seen by him, drinking after supper, and using very vile language, his companions being the justice-clerk, and Huntley, the Chancellor, and brother of Bothwell's divorced wife.
But the misery of such a marriage was swift in showing itself. The queen herself appeared unhappy. De Croc, soon after the marriage, relates that the queen sent for him; and on his perceiving something strange in her behaviour, he writes, "She attempted to excuse it, and said, 'If you see me melancholy it is because I do not choose to be cheerful—because I never will be so, and wish for nothing but death.'" In fact, though Bothwell studied to appear respectful, and refused to be covered in her presence—which she would playfully resent, and, snatching his cap, place it on his head—yet his nature was so brutal and overbearing, that she must soon have felt that she was fallen under a vulgar and intolerable tyranny, for which she had forfeited the respect of her people and of the whole world. Still, amidst it all, she made an appearance of contentment, put off her mourning, assumed a gay dress, and rode abroad with Bothwell. But this was only assumed.
Bothwell could not rest till he had the young prince in his hands; and though Mary had resigned her own life and honour to him, she refused to put that of her child into his power. The paroxysms of agony into which his importunity wrought Mary were such that she was ​tempted to destroy herself. One day, says De Croc, when she and Bothwell were in the room with the Count D'Aumale, she called aloud for a knife to kill herself; the people in the ante-room heard it. He adds, "I believe that if God does not support her, she will entirely fall into despair. On the occasions when I have seen her I have given her advice, and consoled her as well as I was able. Her husband will not be able to contain her long, for he is too much hated in the kingdom, and the people will always be convinced that the death of the king was his work."
The tempest around her would have broken sooner but for the refusal of Elizabeth to consent to the deposition of the queen and the crowning of the prince, which shocked all her notions of Royal authority. "To crown her son, "she replied to the conspirators, "during his mother's life, was a matter, for example's sake, not to be digested by her or any other monarch." It was, in fact, a matter of secret gratulation to Elizabeth to see her hated rival, who had so strenuously persisted in maintaining her claim to her crown, thus daily sinking herself lower and lower in the world's eye. But it was with difficulty that the spirit of Mary's indignant subjects was restrained. Maitland and Huntley, though apparently friends of Bothwell's, and still retaining their posts at Court, were pledged in the secret bond to his destruction. Bothwell grew suspicious of them, and they resolved to kill him; but Mary threw herself betwixt them, and declared that if a hair of Bothwell's head perished, it should be at the peril of their life and lands. The conspirators kept Murray in France well informed of all that passed; and Elizabeth, though she could not aid the rebels, sent the Earl of Bedford to the north to watch every movement of both parties.
On the other hand, Mary and Bothwell dispatched Robert Melville, whom the queen deemed one of the most trusty of her servants, to Elizabeth and Cecil, with apologies for their conduct; but Melville at the same time was the sworn ally of the conspirators, and carried letters from Morton to the English queen, to whom he recommended him as the trusty friend of the combined lords.
Meantime, circumstances hastened the insurrection in Scotland. Mary had summoned her nobles to accompany her on an expedition to Liddesdale, but many disobeyed the order. Murray had now arrived in England, and was using all his influence with Elizabeth to make a movement for the expulsion of Bothwell from his usurpation; and even Maitland, who to the last had remained at Court, wearing the air of a stanch supporter of the queen, slipped away and joined the opposition. These were ominous circumstances, and suddenly, whilst the queen and Bothwell were at Borthwick Castle, about ten miles from Edinburgh, the conspirators made a rapid night march, and morning saw the castle surrounded by nearly 1,000 borderers, under the command of Hume and other border chiefs, with whom were Morton, Mar, Lindsay, Kirkaldy, and others of the nobles.
The confederates deemed the queen and Bothwell now safe in their hands, but they were deceived. Bothwell escaped through a postern to Haddington, whence he reached Dunbar; and the queen also eluding them, disguised as a man, rode booted and spurred after him. The confederates, disappointed of their grand prize, marched upon the capital, forced the gates, and entered, proclaiming that they came to revenge the death of the king, and to rescue the queen from the murderer. There the Earl of Athol and Maitland joined them, and a banner was displayed on which was painted the body of the murdered king lying under a tree, and the young prince kneeling beside it, exclaiming, "Judge and avenge my cause, O Lord!" The people flocked to this exciting standard, and they saw themselves at the head of a strong force. Mary and Bothwell, meantime, summoned the nobles and people around Dunbar, and the Lords Seaton, Tester, and Borthwick, appeared in arms, with a body of 2,000 men. Impatient to quell the confederates at once, they marched to Seaton, where Mary issued a proclamation, declaring that all the pretences of the confederates were false; that her husband, the duke, was no murderer, but had, as they knew, been fully acquitted; she was under no restraint, but freely married to Bothwell, by consent and approbation of these very nobles; nor was her son in any danger, unless it were from them, for he was in their hands. Mary advanced and intrenched herself on Carberry Hill, in the old works which the English had thrown up before the battle of Pinkie.
The confederates marched out of Edinburgh and confronted the Royal army, eager for the battle. De Croc, the French ambassador, now attempted to mediate betwixt the two parties, and carried a message to Morton and Glencairn, offering the queen's pardon, on condition that they all returned to their allegiance; but Glencairn replied that they were not come there to seek pardon, but rather to give it those who had sinned; and Morton added, "We are not in aims against our queen, but the Duke of Orkney, the murderer of her husband, and are prepared to yield her our obedience, on condition that she dismisses him from her presence, and delivers him up to us."
It was clear that these terms must be complied with or they must fight; and it was soon perceived that the soldiers of the queen's army began to show symptoms of disaffection; Bothwell, therefore, rode forward, and defied any one who dared to accuse him of the king's murder. His challenge was accepted by James Murray of Tullibardine, the same baron who was said to have charged Bothwell with the murder, by the placard affixed to the Tolbooth gate. Bothwell declined to enter the lists with Murray, on the plea that he was not his peer, whereupon Lord Lindsay of the Byres offered himself and was accepted, but at the moment of action the queen forbade the fight. By this time the defection in the queen's army became so conspicuous that Mary rode amongst them to encourage them, assuring them of victory; but her voice had lost its charm, and the soldiers refused to fight in defence of the alleged murderer of the king. Whilst this was passing, it was observed that Kirkaldy of Grange was wheeling his forces round the hill to turn their flank, and the panic becoming general, the queen and Bothwell found themselves abandoned by all but about sixty gentlemen, and the band of hagbutters.
To prevent Grange advancing his troops so as to cut off their retreat towards Dunbar, the queen demanded a parley, which was instantly granted. Grange went
Surrender of Mary, Queen of Scots, at Carberry Hill.
​king. The queen promised to acquiesce, and she held a moment's conversation with Bothwell, gave him her hand, and followed Grange; Bothwell turning his horse's head and riding off in another direction. Mary did not follow Grange far till she saw Bothwell out of danger, when she reminded him that she relied on the assurances of the lords, on which Grange, kissing her Majesty's hand, took her horse by the rein, and led her towards the camp. On reaching the lines, the confederate lords received the queen on their knees, and vowed to obey and defend her as loyally as ever the nobility of the realm did her ancestors; but they very soon showed the hollowness of these professions, and the common soldiers assailed her ears with the most opprobrious language.
The very first wish that Mary expressed, that of communicating with the Hamiltons, who had advanced, as if to her aid, as far as Linlithgow, they refused. Indignant at this conduct, Mary asked them whether that was keeping their word, and how they dared to treat her as a prisoner? They returned her no answer. She then called for Lord Lindsay, noted for his fierceness, and desiring him to give her his hand, she said, "By this hand I will have your head for this." The speech was imprudent, for now the confederates, by letting Bothwell escape, had got rid of the danger of their exposure as accomplices in the murder of the king, for Bothwell held the bond signed by them; and this no doubt actuated them to let him escape, whose murder of the king they proclaimed as the cause of their rising.
The unfortunate queen at every step learned more plainly her real situation, and the faith which she was to put in these nobles. She was conducted like a captive into Edinburgh, the soldiers, with the vilest language, constantly waving before her eyes the banner on which was painted the murdered king. The mob was crowding round in thousands, shouting and yelling in execration, and the women heaped on her all the coarsest epithets of adulteress and murderess. On arriving in the city, instead of conducting her to her own palace, the perjured nobles shut her up as a solitary prisoner in the house of the provost, not even allowing her to have her women to attend her; and in the morning she was greeted by a repetition of the scenes of the previous day—the same hideous banner was hung out opposite her window, and the yells of the mob were furious. Driven to actual delirium by this treatment, she rent the clothes from her person, and almost naked attempted to speak to the raving populace. This shocking spectacle roused the sympathy of the better class of citizens, and they determined on a rescue of the insulted queen, when the heartless nobles removed her to Holyrood. There they held a council, and concluded to send her prisoner to Lochleven Castle, at Kinross, under the stern guardianship of Lindsay and the savage Ruthven.
Mary's journey to her prison was but a continued course of the same popular insult which marked her passage from Carberry Hill to the capital. She was mounted on a sorry hack, and exposed all the way to the gaze and the reproaches of the mob. Kirkaldy of Grange, who had pledged his word for her honourable treatment, remonstrated against this gross violation of their duty, but they put into his hand a letter which they said Mary had written to Bothwell whilst in their hands, declaring that she would never desert him. This was, in all likelihood, a forgery; for Mary could have little opportunity for writing or sending such a letter; and the character of these men, traitors to their sovereign from the first and most innocent part of her reign, warrants us in believing them quite ready for the commission of all such frauds.
On securing the queen in this prison, the confederates wrote to Elizabeth and to the King of France to justify themselves. They assured Elizabeth that their only object in taking up arms was to punish Bothwell—an object which they notoriously avoided by letting him escape. They declared, moreover, that they had never for a moment dreamt of crowning the young prince; and they finished with their usual postscript of wanting more money, on the receipt of which they pledged themselves to throw overboard all the tempting offers of France. To the King of France, who was anxious to have the prince sent to him to be brought up, they held out encouraging hopes of compliance, but took care to give him only words till they heard what Elizabeth would do: and they pressed Murray and Lennox to hasten to Scotland.
On the 20th of June the confederates professed to have made a grand discovery—namely, a silver casket belonging to Bothwell, and containing certain sonnets and love-letters from Mary to Bothwell, completely decisive of her guilt. This casket, we shall find, came to play a conspicuous part in the after history of the Scottish queen. The whole story is suspicious; and though the lords dispatched George Douglas, one of their number, on a special mission to the Earl of Bedford on the very day of the alleged discovery, no mention is made of it at this period in the correspondence with Cecil.
Elizabeth had a difficult game to play under the present circumstances of Scotland, but she played it with her usual duplicity. She openly protested against the violation of the prerogatives of their sovereign by the lords, but privately she supported them. She was quite aware that the lords had no intention of restoring Mary to her liberty and throne, and, therefore, she could with perfect security urge them to do so; and could sympathise with Mary in her letters to her. She furnished Robert Melville with despatches suited to each party, the confederates and the queen, and sent that double-faced man home with them. She also sent Sir Nicholas Throckmorton soon after to Edinburgh as her ambassador. There the confederates were busy pretending to bring the murderers of the king to justice. They seized three: one Captain Cullen, a daring tool of Bothwell's, who they boasted had confessed all, but who does not seem to have been brought to trial; probably they were afraid that he might prove too much. Another, Captain Blackadder, they tried and executed, but he died protesting his innocence, and revealing nothing; and the third, one Sebastian de Villours, a foreigner, was discharged.
The public were not likely to be satisfied by these proceedings, nor the Hamiltons, who claimed the throne next to Mary and her issue, and who might probably hope that if the young prince was sent for protection to France, and Mary was reinstated, they might secure the chief power, for the Duke of Chatelherault, their head, made no secret of attempting the liberation of the queen. They were joined by Argyll, Huntley, Herries, Crawford, ​Seaton, and Fleming. The Archbishop of St. Andrew's, and Lesley, Bishop of Ross, were the directors of their counsels. Such a party was formidable, and the confederates flew to the clergy to rouse the people on their side. In return for these services the confederate lords promised to restore the possessions of the Church, to place all education in the hands of the clergy, and to take care that the prince was educated in the strictest principles of Protestantism. They prevailed on Knox, Douglas, Dow, and Craig, to seek an interview with the Hamiltons, and persuade them to an accommodation, but in this they failed.
Meantime, although Queen Mary was shut up in the island castle of Lochleven, under the strictest surveillance, she was not idle. No confinement could be more hateful or more severe. The castle was in the keeping of Lady Margaret Erskine, daughter of Lord Erskine, who had been the mistress of James V., the father of Mary, and was by the king the mother of the Earl of Murray. She afterwards married Sir Robert Douglas, and had by him a family. Her eldest son, William Douglas, was now proprietor of the castle, but Lady Douglas always boasted that she had been the lawful wife of James V., and that therefore her son, the Earl of Murray, was the rightful heir of the throne. Mary was, in her eyes, only a usurper and supplanter of her son; and proud and stern as she was by nature, we may imagine the jealous rigour with which she executed the office of jailoress to the Queen of Scots. To aid her in this office she had the cordial assistance of those two iron men, Ruthven and Lindsay of the Byres.
But such jailors and such a prison did not crush the spirit of Mary Stuart. She continued to convey an account of her situation and sentiments to the courts of both France and England. The French monarch dispatched M. Villeroy to have an interview with her, but this was not allowed, and the messenger whom she had chosen to state her case to Elizabeth, we have seen was a traitor.
By various letters of this Melville on his return to Edinburgh, in the State Paper Office, dated June and July, and addressed to Cecil, we find him engaged in a scheme for prevailing on Mary to resign in favour of her son, and, as it would appear, under threat of bringing her to trial for the murder of her husband if she refused. Accordingly, though on the very day on which one of his most significant letters to Cecil is dated, the 1st of July, Melville went to Lochleven, and delivered to her the letter of the Queen of England. At this interview, Ruthven, Lindsay, and Douglas were present, so that, had he wished it, he could enter into no private communication; but eight days after they sent him again to her, and allowed him to be alone with her. On this occasion he endeavoured to persuade her to abandon Bothwell, but she refused.
Both France and England were anxious to obtain the person of the prince, and whilst France was ready to give up the queen for that object, Elizabeth of England professed to wish for her enlargement and the punishment of the murderers. Neither of these plans found favour with the confederate lords. If France obtained the person of the prince, it would be in a condition to dictate to every party in Scotland, and the lords themselves saw no security for their own ascendancy. If they set the queen at liberty, they assured Throckmorton they should only sign their own death-warrants. France tried to win over Murray by splendid offers, to join with it and desert the confederates; but Murray, who saw only his interest in maintaining the rights of the queen and the prince against the confederate lords, now joined Elizabeth in demanding justice for the queen; and he dispatched his confidential servant, Nicholas Elphinstone, to Mary to assure her of his devotion to her cause. How far he was honest subsequent events soon proved. Elphinstone in his passage through London had a private interview with Elizabeth, who entered into all his views, which were to support the confederates to a certain extent, but not by destroying the queen to render them independent of her. She ordered Cecil to write a letter in her name to Mary, confessing that she could not write herself because "she had not used Mary well in those broken matters that were passed." She bade him assure Mary that Murray had never defamed her in regard to the death of her husband, never plotted for the secret conveying of the prince to England, but was the most faithful and honourable servant that she had in Scotland. Elizabeth, with her deep insight into character and events, saw clearly that so long as she supported Murray in conjunction with the interests of his own family, she might continue to lean on him for aid; whilst the Protestant lords, once free of Mary and united with the Church, would set her at defiance.
But the confederate lords, having the queen in their hands, alike refused admission to the envoys of France, England, or Murray. They themselves endeavoured to induce her through Melville, whom they admitted to her presence as a friend, and as a favour, to resign the crown, abandon Bothwell, and consent to the crowning of her son. Melville had a third interview with her, on the 18th of July, for this purpose, and conveyed to her a letter from Throckmorton advising her to the same course. Mary, who believed herself with child, would not even consent to the divorce from Bothwell, because it would illegitimate her expected offspring, and on Melville's retiring, she presented him with a letter to Bothwell, which Melville refused to take charge of, and which she then angrily threw into the fire.
This resistance of the queen was noised abroad by the confederates, through both press and pulpit; and the public mind was worked up to such a pitch, that the populace began to cry for her head if she would not consent to give up Bothwell. There was now a new doctrine advanced, calculated not only to alarm Mary but Elizabeth herself; it was that of the right of the nation to call its sovereign to account for any crimes that he or she might commit. "It is a public speech," wrote the astonished Throckmorton to Elizabeth, "that their queen hath no more liberty nor privilege to commit murder or adultery than any private person, neither by the laws of God nor the laws of the realm."
Knox, Craig, the rest of the ministers of the Church, with the celebrated Buchanan, promulgated loudly this startling doctrine, destined to take such effect on the grandson of Queen Mary, and to produce such marvellous consequences in this and other kingdoms. It was a doctrine greedily imbibed by the people, and the General ​Assembly taking advantage of it, proceeded to call upon the Lords of the Secret Council to bring the queen to trial and put her to death. Throckmorton remonstrated with them most solemnly against any such proceeding, and the Assembly, lowering its tone, determined to send to her Lords Lindsay and Ruthven and Robert Melville. They carried with them three instruments ready prepared for the queen's signature: by the first she resigned the crown to her son; by the second she appointed Murray regent till he was of age; and by the third constituted the Duke of Chatelherault, the Earls of Lennox, Argyll, Atholl, Morton, Glencairn, and Mar, a council of regency till the arrival of Murray, with power to continue in that office if he refused the charge.
Melville was employed to prepare Mary by exciting her terrors. He was first admitted, and assured her that if she refused to sign these papers her death was certain. To induce her more readily to comply, he hinted to her that her signing under restraint would be wholly invalid, and might enable her at some fortunate moment to repudiate them, and he brought messages to the same purport from Atholl, Maitland, and Throckmorton. Mary indignantly refused, but on the entrance of Lindsay, who had never forgotten her menace of the loss of his head at Carberry, his stern countenance and fierce manner so overawed her that, probably inwardly adopting Melville's suggestion, she took the pen and without even reading the documents signed them all. So far the confederates had obtained a grand triumph, but before it was completed they must perpetrate another illegal outrage. It was necessary that this resignation and appointment should pass the privy seal, and when Ruthven and Lindsay presented the deeds to Thomas Sinclair, deputy-keeper, he refused to affix the seal, the queen being under restraint; on which Lindsay collected a posse of his retainers, assaulted the keeper in his house, and compelled him to affix the seal by force.
The Lords of the Secret Council now lost no time in completing their work, and crowning the young king. The Hamiltons, however, refused to admit of it, till it was conceded that it should in no way prejudice the right of the Duke of Chatelherault; and Knox contended that he should not be anointed, which was a more Jewish rite, but simply crowned. This latter point was overruled; and the infant being carried in the arms of Mar, his governor, from the castle to the high church in Stirling, and the Lords Lindsay and Ruthven swearing a most false oath—a little matter to them—that the queen resigned the crown to her son of her own free will, James VI. was there crowned by the Bishop of Orkney, on the 29th of July, 1537. Bonfires, dancing, and universal mirth throughout the city testified the real exultation of the people.
Elizabeth, on receiving the news of the deposition of the Queen of Scots, expressed the utmost indignation. She did not like Mary, but she respected in her the rights of sovereigns, and regarded with horror such new and ominous proceedings as that of subjects at will discrowning their sovereigns. Besides, the confederates had taken care to hold their new king fast, and to send for Murray, so that there was a great probability that the Scottish Government would adopt a tone of independence to which it had long been unaccustomed. She, therefore, instructed Throckmorton to keep aloof from the coronation, which he did, and to put in her most decided remonstrance against the whole proceeding. But the confederate lords, who had come to Edinburgh to await the arrival of Murray, paid a visit to Throckmorton though he would not go to them, and after hearing his remonstrance, showed him the folly of it. They communicated to him that the Hamiltons, through the Archbishop of St. Andrew's and the Abbot of Kilwinning, had proposed to execute the queen, as the best mode of reconciling all parties. They contended that if she ever recovered her liberty she might marry and have numbers of children, whereas now there was nobody but this crowned child betwixt their claim and the throne.
Throckmorton expressed his horror at this disclosure of the murderous treachery of the Hamiltons, who had so lately professed themselves the stanch friends of the queen; and suggested that it was policy as foolish as it was wicked, for the queen might be brought to divorce herself from Bothwell, and marry a son of the duke's or a brother of Argyll's. To this Murray of Tullibardine replied, that all that had been discussed, and the Hamiltons deemed nothing so secure as the queen's death.
All obstacles being removed to his triumphant return, the Earl of Murray set out from France for Scotland. This able, but cold-blooded and unprincipled man, had, as we have seen, always taken care, after putting into play the machinery which should serve his own ambition, to retire out of the way, and leave others to do the dirty and bloody work. Like the spider, however, he kept up a close watch in the distant obscurity of his retreat, and was ready to start forward at the right moment, and secure his own advantage. Had he been as generous and just as he was clever, he would have been one of the great men of the age. Had he stood firmly by his sister, he might have corrected the defects in her character, protected her from her enemies, the most dangerous of which were her own ardent feelings, and led her and himself through a noble career of prosperity and material blessing.
He had sent to Elizabeth, by Elphinstone, to represent himself as his sister's friend and defender, and, therefore, Elizabeth received him on his way through London, and expected to find him such as he had professed himself. She calculated that, with his friendship, the Queen of Scots would be maintained in her private position in security as a check against the ambition of the nobles; but Murray, with all his art, had not the policy to conceal his true sentiments, and Elizabeth perceived, with astonishment and anger at the deceit which he had practised upon her, that he was a decided enemy to his sister, the ex-queen. They rose in their conversation to high words, and parted with mutual ill-will.
Murray now pretended that much as he had been disposed to support the cause of Mary, he had recently received such proofs of her guilt as entirely changed his sentiments towards her; at the same time it was well known that he had been in the most constant and complete communication with the confederates, through their whole proceedings. But he now saw the supreme power within his grasp, during the minority of his nephew, and he began to withdraw his mask.
This arch-dissimulator proceeded on his way, accompanied by M. de Lignerolles, the French envoy ​commissioned to convoy a message to the lords of the Council, but in reality sent to keep a strict watch on the proceedings of both them and the regent. He was met at Berwick by Sir James Makgill, lord clerk-registrar, and Sir James Melville, sent by the two parties, those most desperate against the queen, and those inclined to more moderate measures. Makgill urged on Murray the absolute necessity of his accepting the regency; but the hypocritical statesman professed to have many scruples, and rode on.
At the Bound Rode, a line separating the two countries, he found 400 noblemen and gentlemen assembled to receive him. They rode on with him to Whittingham, where Morton and Maitland also received him. Only eighteen months before, the death of Darnley had been planned by Bothwell and these very men, and afterwards the resolution communicated to Murray. He had now reaped the benefit of the deed from which he had seemed to keep aloof; and on Morton and Maitland congratulating him on the success of their plans, the pious Murray now expressed deep horror of the deed and declared his resolution to take vengeance for it.
On arriving in the capital, he was received by the assembled population of nobles, clergy, and commons, with enthusiastic acclamations, for they all looked to him as the man who was to establish all their claims, to fix Protestantism as the established faith, to give the clergy confirmation of the Church property, to please the people by maintaining a noble guardianship of their infant king, and to sanction all the revolutionary measures by his near kinship to the king they had set up and the queen they had put down. Such was his pretended conscientiousness, that he would decide on nothing till the whole history of the late transactions, with all the proofs, had been duly laid before him, and he had had time to weigh them well. The evidences of Mary's guilt were spread before him; and so well did he act his part, that the deep and practised Throckmorton was satisfied that he was proceeding on most sincere and honourable motives. The English minister promised his best endeavours to reconcile his mistress to the new state of things; De Lignerolles anticipated no lasting difficulties on the part of France; the opposition of the Hamiltons appeared to melt away; and the conscientious Murray at length expressed himself almost persuaded to accept the regency. Only one point repelled him: the resignation of the crown, the transfer of it to her son, and his own appointment as regent, he said, was asserted to have been extorted by force. If that were the fact, nothing could induce him to accept the office, and he demanded to see the queen and learn from her own lips the truth. This demand appeared to startle the lords, for Murray had expressed to Throckmorton, if not to others, much pity and concern for his sister; but he had no doubt expressed himself otherwise to some of the lords, for, after a seeming reluctance, his request was conceded.
On the l5th of August, Murray made this visit, and was accompanied by Lindsay, Morton, and Atholl. This interview was one of the most painful which history can show. Murray was all that he was through the generosity of his unhappy sister. Throughout her life she had delighted to honour, to elevate, to enrich him. She had to the last moment demonstrated her confidence in him, and though he had stood aloof in the days of her indignities and distress, she had yet placed him, by her own free-will—for she had offered that before called on to sign the three documents—in the post of supreme authority. A noble-minded man, with the firmness and authority of Murray, would now have repaid all these benefits; and, if he could not restore his only sister, he might have shielded her from insult, and made her retirement as easy as possible.
Mary received the deputation with natural agitation. She complained passionately and with tears of the wrongs she had suffered, and then, taking Murray aside, she conjured him to be candid with her, and to let her know what her enemies intended and what he intended. But the brother, who had basked in the sunshine of her prosperity, who had so lately even professed to be her warm and stanch friend, was now cold, gloomy, and reserved. After supper she again conversed with him in private; she appealed to him as a brother, her only friend, her only near relative, and conjured him, if he could not make up his mind to serve her, at least to let her know his will. She told him that he was her only dependence; and if he did not stand by her, where was she to look? Any man of ordinary feeling, thus appealed to by an affectionate sister, who had covered him with benefits, and who had never, whatever was her guilt, sinned against him, would have felt bound to alleviate her suffering as much as possible, if he could not have removed it altogether. But this heartless man only wished to secure at her expense the utmost advantage to himself. He, therefore, commenced a ruthless examination of her past life, and drew as foul and revolting a picture of it as his powers of mind enabled him. It was done more, says Throckmorton, in the spirit of an ascetic confessor than a counsellor, much less a brother. The murder of Darnley, the plain guilt of Bothwell, her criminal passion for him, her obstinate refusal to surrender him, the shameful parade of this before all the people, their consequent utter and hopeless alienation, the proofs of all this from her own letters, and the determination of the lords to bring her to mortal punishment for it, were all piled upon her outraged and affrighted soul with a pitiless cruelty which overwhelmed her in agony and despair. It was in vain that she interrupted him to protest, to deny, to explain, he went on in merciless rigour with his narrative; and when, crushed by the recital and the menaced doom, she appealed, in terms that might have softened a tiger, to him for succour and protection, he coldly bade her look to God for mercy, and withdrew to his chamber.
The next morning, having allowed a night of inconceivable horror to subdue her to his mood, when she sent for him, he assumed a more conciliating tone; professed that he would do everything in his power to save her life—nay, he would even sacrifice his own for it; but then he reminded her that he had to contend with every party in the nation, with the lords, the Church, and the people. He warned her, therefore, that if she attempted to escape, or to intrigue with the French or English Government, or retained her stubborn attachment to Bothwell, no effort of his could save her. If, on the contrary, she was careful to avoid correspondence with England and France, expressed sincere penitence, and abandoned Bothwell, she had much to hope for as far as life was concerned, ​but as to liberty, she must entertain no hope of it at present.
Thus this artful man tied, as it were, her hands, and secured his own position at all points, even whilst he affected to feel the charge of the regency too perilous for him. Mary clasped him in her arms, and, in the most agonised terms, implored him to accept the regency, as the only means of saving her life and securing the rights of her son. Murray declined, and it was only after a long conflict that he appeared to give way; and the overjoyed queen requested him to take charge of her jewels, and whatever articles of value she possessed, and then to secure all the forts without delay. Thus, whilst he made the queen appear to have gained her object, he had in reality gained his; and leaving her filled with gratitude to him, he returned to Morton, Ruthven, and Atholl, and recommending Lindsay and Douglas to use the queen gently, took his leave. From Lochleven he and his grim companions took their way to Stirling on a visit to the king. On the 22nd of August, Murray was solemnly proclaimed regent amid the acclamations of the people, and the intelligence of the fact dispatched to the Courts of France and England.
Mary Stuart about to sign her resignation at Lochleven Castle.
No sooner was Murray installed in the chief seat of power than he began to assume a very different tone from that which he had hitherto employed. To Throckmorton, the ambassador of Elizabeth, he, and his chief secretary, Maitland, spoke very largely. "Mr. Ambassador," said ​Maitland, in an interview sought by Murray soon after his election, and in which Throckmorton delivered the remonstrance of his mistress against their late proceedings and her demand of liberty for the queen, "be assured nothing will be more prejudicial to her interests than for your mistress to precipitate matters. It may drive us to a strait, and compel us to measures we would gladly avoid. Hitherto have we been content to be charged with grievous and infamous titles; we have quietly suffered ourselves to be condemned as perjured rebels and unnatural traitors, rather than proceed to anything which might touch our sovereign's honour. But beware, we beseech you, that your mistress, by her continual threats and defamations, by hostility, or by soliciting other princes to attack us, do not push us beyond endurance.
Mary Queen of Scots in Imprisonment.
"For your wars," he continued, "we know them well. You will burn our borders, and we shall burn yours; if you invade us, we do not dread it, and are sure of France: for your practices to nourish dissension amongst us, we have an eye upon them all. The Hamiltons will take your money, laugh you to scorn, and side with us. At this moment we have an offer of an agreement with them in our hands. The queen, your mistress, declares she wishes only for our sovereign's liberty, and her restoration to her dignity; but is equally zealous for the preservation of the king, the punishment of the murder, and the safety of the lords. To accomplish our queen's liberty much has been done, for the rest, absolutely nothing. Why does not her majesty fit out some ships of war to apprehend Bothwell, and pay 1,000 soldiers to reduce the ​forts and protect the king? When this is in hand we shall think her sincere; but for her charge to set our sovereign forthwith at liberty, and to restore her to her dignity, it is enough to reply to such strange language, that we are the subjects of another prince, and know not the queen's majesty for our sovereign."
Throckmorton, after listening to this new language, turned to Murray, and said that he trusted that such sentiments did not meet his approval; that he was not "banded" with these lords, nor had joined in their excesses. But Murray very soon undeceived him, by indorsing all that had been said, and declaring that, being made regent, he would reduce all men to obedience in the king's name, or that it should cost him his life.
Throckmorton at once informed Elizabeth that his stay there was now useless, and obtained his recall. On taking his leave he requested an interview with Mary, which, as he expected, was refused; but a piece of plate was pressed on his acceptance in the name of the king, which he declined with very decided expressions, and quitted the capital for England on the 29th of August.
Murray now endeavoured to strengthen himself in his government with much vigour. Bothwell was still at large, capable any day of exposing the Council's participation in Darnley's murder; there were the actual perpetrators also at liberty, and in danger of divulging too much; there were castles and forts in the hands of the queen's party. In the first place he dispatched Grange and Tullibardine with three armed vessels in quest of Bothwell. This desperado had been suffered quietly to retire to his castle of Dunbar. Thence he passed by water into Morayshire, where he remained some time, consulting with the friends of Mary on the possibility of rescuing her, and next sought shelter in the Orkneys, where his nominal subjects refused to receive him. On this he took to the sea with a band of pirates, and vowed to scour the ocean with a blood-red flag. In this course he was overtaken by the ships of Orange and Tullibardine; and, in endeavouring to escape from them, was driven by a tempest on the coast of Norway. On being discovered, Frederick the king refused to see him, and sent him prisoner to the castle of Malmo, in Schonen. Thence, at different times, he addressed the king in vindication of his conduct, and made him an offer of the Orkneys and Shetland Islands, to be annexed to the Crown of Denmark and Norway, on condition that he should fit out an expedition for the liberation of the Queen of Scots. The offer was declined, and Bothwell lingered in prison till 1576, when he died. Both Murray and Lennox, during his short regency, claimed Bothwell of the King of Denmark, but he refused to give him up; and on his death-bed he is said to have confessed that Murray, Morton, and himself perpetrated the murder of Darnley, but that Mary was perfectly innocent of it. Mary, whilst in captivity in England, endeavoured to get a copy of this confession, or testament as it is called: Elizabeth was said to have received a copy, but suppressed it, as it exculpated Mary; and another was said to have found its way to the Court of Scotland, and was afterwards published by Keith, but deserves no credit.
Murray next made a bargain with Sir James Balfour, who held the castle of Edinburgh, for its surrender. Balfour was the intimate friend of Bothwell, and one of the most notorious of the murderers of the king: but this did not prevent Murray from giving him both immunity and reward on condition of his yielding the castle. The villain bargained for a sum of £5,000 paid down, a full indemnity for his share in the murder, the priory of Pittenweem for himself, and an annuity to his son. Murray gave all these without hesitation, showing that, notwithstanding his declaration of his resolve to punish the murderers of the king, he cared only for his own advantage. In two days after obtaining the regency he was in possession of the castle.
But whilst he thus let the chief actors escape, he determined to be rid of the inferior ones. Captain Blackadder, we have seen, was already executed; he now arrested John Hay of Tollo, Durham, a page of the king, black John Spens, John Blackadder, and James Edmonson. But no sooner did he attempt to proceed with the trial of these men, than Hay began to open up such a scene of villany, and to implicate so many in high places, that the trials were postponed, and the parties kept close in prison.
Murray now proceeded to summon the castle of Dunbar, still held for Bothwell, to suppress some disturbance of the Hamiltons, and on the 15th of September announced to Cecil that the whole kingdom was quiet. On the 15th of December he summoned a Parliament, which sanctioned the transfer of the Crown, and the appointment of the regency, declared the Protestant religion the religion of the State, but refused to restore to the clergy the property of the Church as had been promised. The imprisonment of the queen was confirmed, and a bill was passed exonerating all the lords who had risen to prosecute the murder, and declaring that they should never be subject to any prosecution for what they had done. But it required much management to prevent the crimes of these nobles bringing them into trouble; and Murray was compelled to resort to such flagrant partiality in order to screen them, as soon brought him into great discredit.
It appeared that the jewels of Mary, her apparel, and other effects, had been deposited in the castle of Edinburgh. On its surrender to Murray by Sir James Balfour, he delivered the jewels and apparel to Murray; but the "bond" in which the murderers had bound themselves to that act, and which Bothwell had kept possession of, was seized by Maitland and committed to the flames, thus extinguishing this evidence of guilt, bearing the signatures of himself, Huntley, Argyll, and Balfour, according to the assertion of Ormiston, one of the accomplices, who had seen it. Along with the jewels, was said to be found the celebrated silver box, which was submitted by Morton to the Privy Council. In this box, or casket, were certain letters of the queen to Bothwell, and love sonnets: but as Mary was never permitted to see them, or to have them tested by her friends, they may have been forgeries prepared by these murderers and usurpers, to justify themselves by criminating the queen, making her cognisant of the murder of her husband. Murray suffered these to be preserved and exposed, to the dishonour of his sister, whilst he allowed the bond of the assassins to bo destroyed before his face. These facts, distinctly stated in the letters of Bedford, Randolph, and Drury, to Cecil, still in the State Paper Office, began to tell strongly on the public against Murray; and the ​proceedings against the ruffians who did the bloody work of these sanguinary lords, wofully confirmed it. We have seen how the disclosures of Hay of Tollo had startled Murray and his accomplices, and made them thrust him and his fellows back into their dungeons. Meantime, Grango and Tullibardine, though they had failed in the main object of their expedition, the seizure of Bothwell, had secured one of his ships containing Hepburn of Bolton, one of the accomplices; and his confession, taken in private, was of a like tenor with that of Hay. It was, therefore, deemed the only safe course, to prevent their disclosures becoming public to the certain conviction of the real instigators of the murder, to get them out of the world as fast as possible. They were, therefore, arraigned—that is, Hepburn, Hay, Dalgleish, and Powrie—convicted, and hanged in all haste on one day, the 3rd of January, 1568. Yet they did not entirely succeed in suppressing the truth. Hepbern, on the scaffold, boldly proclaimed that not only Bothwell, but Argyll, Huntley, and Maitland, had signed the bend for the king's death. Notwithstanding this, no inquiry took place, for these were the very men who maintained Murray in his place. The judicial confessions of this very man, however, as well as the rest, were garbled, and afterwards brought forward in England, in proof that they implicated no one but Bothwell and themselves. To conceive a complete idea of the iniquity by which these proceedings were accomplished, we must include the facts that Argyll, one of the authors of the murder, was Lord Justice-General, that the confessions were made before the Privy Council—and who were those Privy Councillors? The chief of them were Morton, Huntley, Argyll, Maitland, and Balfour, all parties to the murder; whilst Murray, the regent and ruler, was the man called and set up by this extraordinary junto of assassins.
To maintain his pre-eminence, it was necessary that Murray should bribe these coadjutors and supporters. To Maitland he gave the sheriffship of Lothian; to Hume, that of Lauderdale; to Morton, the post of Lord High Admiral, forfeited by Bothwell; to Kirkaldy, the governership of Edinburgh Castle; to Huntley and Argyll, his daughter and his sister-in-law in marriage. But he could not satisfy them, and they soon began to look coldly on each other; whilst less favoured men, or those who thought themselves so in comparison of their imagined merits, grew jealous and hostile. Herries and the Melvilles, the Hamiltons, and Atholl were all suspected of disaffection and resentment. Balfour, with all his great bargain, did not deem himself sufficiently paid or respected, and quitted the Court in disgust. As for Maitland, he was double-faced to every party from the beginning; and the people, perceiving, as their passions subsided, the real state of things, were the most ill-affected of all. Instead of the glory and power to which Murray imagined himself mounting, by baseness in himself, upon base materials, he found himself in the midst of a discordant chaos of hateful and incompatible natures. Whilst all seemed crumbling and shaking around him, an earthquake suddenly heaved beneath his feet.
The queen, seeing herself deserted and deceived by Murray, and destined by him to perpetual captivity, resolved to exert every faculty to effect her escape. Probably some rumours of the unsatisfactory condition of the Government, and the returning affection of the people, had penetrated the recesses of her prison-house. She assumed gradually an air of resignation, of cheerfulness. Instead of treating the Douglases with the haughty distance of an injured captive, she opened to them the natural charms of her mind and conversation. No person, man or woman, could long remain insensible to her fascinations. George Douglas, a younger brother of the house of Lochleven, became deeply in love with her; and the proud mother relaxed her severity, and in the brilliant prospect of a marriage of this young and gallant son with the Queen of Scotland, forgot the interests of her son the regent, who left her to occupy, distant from Court, the odious office of a turnkey. George Douglas entered into the plot to effect the queen's escape, with all the ardour of youth and passion. He had planned to convey her to shore disguised as a laundry-woman, but on the passage she was detected by the remarkable whiteness and delicacy of her hands, and was carried back, whilst Douglas was expelled from the castle.
The most rigid surveillance was now maintained over Mary; but, with her indefatigable lover on shore, she never despaired. He was more useful there than in the castle, for he was flying about rousing the Hamiltons and the Seatons to muster their forces, and to be ready at some favourable moment to receive and defend her. Within the castle he had a very ingenious coadjutor in a relative, William Douglas, a boy of fifteen or sixteen, called the Little Douglas. The Little Douglas acted as page to the castellan; and on Sunday, the 2nd of May, 1568, he contrived, while waiting at supper, to drop a napkin over the key of the castle, which lay at the castellan's side, and abstract it unobserved. He flew with it to the queen, who, taking one of her maidens with her, hurried down to the outer gate, which they locked after them, and flinging the key into the lake, entered the boat and rowed away. The signal to the parties on the watch on shore, was to be a light left in a particular window of the castle. The boy had not forgotten this, and Lord Seaton and a party of his own people and the Hamiltons were eagerly awaiting them on the shore. A man, lying at length on the shore, soon gave notice that he could perceive a female figure with two attendants flying hastily from the outer gate of the castle, and springing into the boat. Soon the preconcerted sign, the white veil of the queen with its red fringe was visible, and presently the little boat approaching, Mary sprang on shore, in the rapture of recovered freedom. The faithful George Douglas was the first to receive her; she was immediately surrounded by Lord Seaton and his friends, and being mounted on a swift steed, they galloped with all speed to the ferry, crossed, and pursued their flight to Niddry, in West Lothian, where the next day she proceeded to Hamilton, attended by Lord Claud Hamilton, who had met them on the road with fifty horse. At Niddry she had snatched time to write a hasty announcement of her escape to France; and, true to her unconquerable affection to Bothwell, dispatched a letter to him, sending Hepburn of Riccarton to Dunbar to summon the castle to surrender to her, and then to speed onwards to Denmark, and convey to Bothwell the news of her freedom.
The news of the escape of the queen flew like lightning in every direction; the people, forgetting her failings in ​her beauty and her sufferings, gathered amain to her standard; she who a few days before saw herself a deserted captive, now beheld herself at the head of 6,000 men. Many of the nobility, and some of those who had sinned deeply against her, now flocked around her. Argyll, Cassillis, Eglinton, and Rothes, Somerville, Yoster, Livingstone, Harris, Fleming, Boss, Borthwick, and other lords and gentlemen, joined her at Hamilton. To these she at once declared that her resignation of the crown was an act of force and not of will: her council declared by a resolution the whole of the proceedings by which Murray had become regent were treasonable and void. Nine earls, nine bishops, eighteen lords, twelve abbots and priors, and nearly a hundred barons signed a bond pledging themselves to defend her, and to restore to her her crown and kingdom.
But, though rejoiced at this wonderful demonstration of the reaction of the public in her favour, Mary, with her usual tendency to kindness and forgiveness, dispatched a messenger to Murray with offers of pardon and reconciliation. The regent was at the moment at Glasgow, not eight miles from the queen's camp, with few of his friends or troops at hand. The blow came like a thunderbolt, and the effect became instantaneously evident. Numbers began to steal away to join the royal standard, and ordinary prudence would have dictated acceptance of the queen's offer. But Murray, who could not forgive under such circumstances, and who knew that his participation in the murder scheme was now no secret, could not really believe in forgiveness in the injured queen. His selfish instinct and his ambition at once decided him to reject the proposal, though his cunning led him to seem to weigh it. He begged time to reflect, and passed that time in writing a proclamation, and dispatching couriers to call up his allies in all haste. There were plenty whose consciences, like his own, prompted the instant conviction that their only safety lay in resistance; and Morton, Glencairn, Lennox, who fought to avenge his son, Semple, Mar, and Grange, mustered their forces, and hastened to his support. In ten days he found himself in possession of a body of 4,000 men.
Mary, on her part, proposed to make for Dumbarton Castle, which had never been yielded by her firm adherent Lord Fleming, and there to make her position as strong as possible till her friends had time to gather in overwhelming force. Meantime she dispatched a messenger to England to solicit the support of Elizabeth, who professed herself determined to send to her her warm congratulations, and the fullest promises of support, provided she would follow her councils, and not call in foreign aid. At the same time M. de Beaumont, the French ambassador, entered her camp, and offered his services to procure an accommodation with Murray. But Mary's wise plan of retiring to Dumbarton, and there awaiting the accumulation of troops in her interest, was defeated by the rash and overbearing conduct of the Hamiltons, who were bent on falling on Murray and crushing him at once. Mary prevailed on them still to march towards Dumbarton; but on the way, falling in with Murray, they rushed headlong into the fight, and risked everything.
Murray, on the first news of their movement, marched out of Glasgow, and took possession of a small hamlet called Langside, surrounded by gardens and orchards, which occupied each side of a steep narrow lane directly in the way of the queen's army. Instead of avoiding this position, and making their way to Dumbarton by another course, Lord Claud Hamilton charged the troops there posted with his cavalry, 2,000 strong, in perfect confidence of driving them thence; but the hagbutters, who had screened themselves behind walls and trees, poured in on the cavalry a deadly fire which threw them into confusion. Lord Hamilton cheered them on to renew the charge, and with great valour they pushed forward and drove the enemy before them. But, pursuing them up the steep hill, they suddenly found themselves face to face with Murray's advance, composed of the finest body of border pikemen, and commanded by Morton, Home, Ker of Cessford, and the barons of the Merse, all fighting on foot at the heads of their divisions.
The battle was unequal, for the troops of Murray were fresh, whilst those of the queen were out of breath with their up-hill battle. Notwithstanding, the main body of the queen's forces coming up, there was a severe battle, and the right of the regent's army began to give way. Grange, who was watching the field from above, quickly brought up reinforcements from the main body, and made so furious a charge on the queen's left as to scatter it into fragments; and Murray, who had waited with the reserve for the decisive moment, rushed forward with so much impetuosity, that the main battle of the queen was broken, and the flight became general. Mary, who had surveyed the conflict from the castle of Crookstane, on a neighbouring eminence, and about four miles from Paisley, beholding the route of her army, turned her horse and fled, and never drew bit till she found herself at the abbey of Dundrennan, in Galloway. She was accompanied by Lords Herries, Fleming, and Livingstone.
So rash and so ill-conducted was this decisive battle—a battle which involved such momentous interests, that it lasted only three-quarters of an hour. Only one man, it is said, fell on the side of the regent, and only 300 on that of the queen—or half that number, as some authorities contend. Ten pieces of cannon and a great many distinguished prisoners were taken, amongst them Lords Seaton and Ross, the eldest sons of the Earls of Eglinton and Cassillis, Robert and Andrew Melville, and a long list of lairds and gentlemen.
If Mary had fled to the east coast, secured a vessel and made her way to France, she would have met with a cordial reception. Unfortunately, she was always too trusting; and, judging of Elizabeth as she felt she should have acted herself if she had fled to her for protection from her rebellious subjects, she was impatient to reach the soil of England, where she deemed she should be safe. The nobles and the rest around her, forming a juster estimate of the character of Elizabeth, knelt and implored their sovereign not to enter the English borders till she had some guarantee for her safety. Lord Herries wrote, says Chalmers, on Saturday, the 15th of May, to Lowther, the deputy-captain of Carlisle, informing him of the queen's misfortune, and desiring to know, if she should be reduced to the necessity of seeking refuge in England, if she might come safely to Carlisle. Lowther wrote a doubtful answer, saying that Lord Scroope, the warden of that march, was at London, to whom he had written; ​but if the queen should be pressed by necessity to cross the borders, he would meet her and protect her till his mistress's pleasure were known; but such was her terror of falling again into the hands of her cold-blooded brother and the lords, that, without waiting for the answer, she entered a boat, and with her riding-dress soiled with her flight, and without any change of raiment, without a shilling in her pocket, she landed at Workington, in Cumberland. Here she wrote to Elizabeth, expressing her strong confidence that Elizabeth would receive her and protect her against her rebellious subjects. She concluded her letter with these words:—"It is my earnest request that your majesty will send for me as soon as possible, for my condition is pitiable, not to say for a queen, but even for a simple gentlewoman. I have no other dress than that in which I escaped from the field. My first day's ride was sixty miles across the country, and I have not since dared to travel except by night."
Elizabeth, on reading this letter, felt that Mary was now entirely in her power; and all her art was exerted to draw her over into the heart of the kingdom, so that she could neither retreat nor escape to France. She took every measure to avoid alarming her. She dispatched letters to the sheriff of Cumberland, commanding him to treat the Scottish queen with all honour, but to keep the strictest watch over her, and to prevent any possibility of escape. She sent Sir Francis Knollys with letters of condolence, and ordered Lady Scroope to give her her personal attendance. But there wanted that genuine cordial tone in Elizabeth's letters which alone could assure her; and the manner of those placed about her inspired her with misgivings. Doubts seem to have been suffered to escape as to the probability of her reception by the queen, from the suspicions which attached to her of connivance in the plot against her husband. Alarmed by these circumstances, Mary wrote again to Elizabeth, urging her to allow her to come at once to her, and explain and satisfy her of everything. She said she had sent Lord Herries to communicate with her, and Lord Fleming to bear her letters to France; and she desired that, if any one had succeeded in prejudicing the queen against her, she might be allowed to depart the realm as freely as she had come. She had been detained like a prisoner, she said, for fifteen days, and she confessed that it felt to her strange and hard. She accompanied this letter by a ring, to which some particular circumstance attached, and which was probably the gift of Elizabeth. It bore the impression of a heart: and she added, "Remember, I have kept my promise. I have sent you my heart in the ring, and now I have brought to you both heart and body to knit more firmly the tie which binds us together."
But nothing was farther from Elizabeth's intentions than to enter on friendly and amicable terms with the Queen of Scots. She had never forgiven her the offence of insisting on her claims of succession to the crown of England. She had a personal jealousy of the fame of her superior beauty; and, with such a counsellor as Cecil, it was certain that a selfish and suspicious policy would prevail. In those days, honour and high principle were of little account: expediency was the only statesmanship. It was, therefore, easy for Elizabeth and her ministers to plead the accusations against Mary—the imprudence of her conduct, and her still unabated infatuation for the murderer Bothwell. Mary was a firm Papist, Murray was a high professing Protestant, and to favour him and his party was to be the champion of Protestantism. To let Mary escape to France was not to be thought of, for of all things it was essential to keep asunder the union of French and Scottish interests. It was clear, therefore, that Mary must be detained in England, at least for the present; and little, under all circumstances, could be said against it, so that she was detained as became a queen and a relative. But here again the cold, base, and ungenerous policy, which was the natural offspring of Cecil's narrow but clear-sighted mind, unfortunately prevailed. It was urged that it was most dangerous to permit Mary to have, as it were, open access, and to hold open Court, amongst the discontented Papists of England, and that her arrival had made a lively impression on those Catholics of the north, and many indignant words were uttered on the flagrant injustice and discourtesy of keeping her as a prisoner. These had such an effect on Sir Francis Knollys, that he did not hesitate to declare his impatience of being placed in the position of her gaoler.
Knollys had, indeed, very unpleasant duties to perform. The nobility and gentry of the north naturally were anxious to pay their respects to the Scottish queen, and nothing could excite the jealousy of Elizabeth more than this. She kept Mary close prisoner in Carlisle Castle; and when the Earl of Northumberland, attended by Sir Nicholas and Sir William Fairfax, and other gentlemen, came to wait upon her, Lowther, as deputy-warder, refused to admit any one with him except his page, Knollys, on his arrival, replied to the earl's complaint that he understood that he wished to take the Scottish queen out of Lowther's hands, which was unwarranted by any order of her Majesty, and, therefore, Lowther had only done his duty. Northumberland replied that it was true; that he considered Lowther too base a man to have the charge of the Queen of Scotland; and that he had brought warrants from the Council at York empowering him to enter on that duty. But Northumberland and all these gentlemen were Romanists, and therefore the jealousy that arose.
Notwithstanding the ebullitions of public opinion, condemning the conduct of the English Court in treating the Queen of Scots as a prisoner and an enemy, rather than as an independent sovereign in distress, it was resolved to keep Mary a prisoner for life, and to support Murray in his usurped power. This proceeding was so totally at variance with all the past professions of Elizabeth, that it has cost some of our historians much rhetoric to raise a plausible vindication of what is altogether incapable of vindication. On the insurrection of the Scottish lords against Mary, Elizabeth had expressed the most virtuous indignation. She had vowed that she would reinstate her on the throne; she had prohibited Randolph and Throckmorton, her ambassadors, attending the coronation of her son; she had refused to confirm Murray in the title of regent, and had called upon him loudly to return to his duty and liberate his rightful sovereign. She had endeavoured to obtain access to Mary by her ambassadors, and to the last moment had maintained the mask of friendship and the words of ​condolence or congratulation. But all this time she had been in secret and close correspondence with her enemies; had furnished them money, even while giving them, publicly, reproof; and had given an asylum at her Court, or in the kingdom, to the rebels whom she affected to denounce.
In reality, therefore, she did not now alter in the least her policy, except in that it became more honestly hostile; she was still the same woman—she only dropped her mask. Elizabeth and her subtle minister Cecil now so planned their proceedings as to secure the greatest amount of injustice under the greatest appearance of fairness. Mary urged her demand for a personal interview with Elizabeth, when she promised to state to her things that had never yet been uttered by her to any mortal. But these disclosures the politic queen, and her equally politic servant, were too well aware would touch too nearly, not only the guilty conspiracies of Murray and his colleagues, but on those of Elizabeth and Cecil themselves. They, as we are now fully informed, were all along cognisant of the murder scheme which the Scotch lords had carried out. With the charges which Mary could bring home to Murray and Maitland—for she openly accused them and Morton of the murder of Darnley—it would not be so easy for them, with a show of honour, to support these nobles against their queen. Therefore, it was used as a precaution against any such interview, that Mary lay herself under charge of participation in this murder, and also of adultery, from which she must first clear herself.
For this purpose Elizabeth dispatched Mr. Middlemore to Mary, and thence to the regent. To Mary she disclaimed all intention of detaining her as a prisoner; her object, she said, was merely to secure her from immediate pursuit of her enemies: but as to a personal interview, that was at present inadmissible, because Mary having chosen the Queen of England as her judge, it was necessary, to prevent any charge of partiality, not to receive either party before the trial, or indeed, as regarded her, till she had established her innocence.
"Judge! trial!" exclaimed Mary, in indignant amazement. "What did the Queen of England mean? She had appointed no one her judge, and could accept no trial, where she could have no peers. She had come freely to seek the protection of Elizabeth, and was as freely willing to accept her mediation. She had offered to explain all the circumstances of her case to her sister, the queen; but she could submit to no trial, being an independent sovereign like herself. As to Murray and the rest of the rebels, it seemed that Elizabeth proposed to hear them against their queen, who was not to be allowed to be present to hear and rebut their traitorous charges. Was that impartial? Was that due to a sovereign to listen to the charges of traitors against their prince? Yet, if they must needs be heard, let them come, but let her be there to answer them, and she suspected that they would not be very eager for the opportunity."
When Mary learned that a message was actually on its way to call Murray and his accomplices to England, to prefer their charges against her, she protested vehemently against such a proceeding, and declared that she would rather die than submit to such indignity. The conduct of Elizabeth was, indeed, a violation of all the rights of sovereign princes, and as unjust as it was mean. Murray received his summons with his usual artful coolness. He was required by Elizabeth to prefer his charges against the Queen of Scots, but in the meantime to refrain from all hostilities. He obeyed the requisition; placed his soldiers in quarters; but demanded to know what was to be the result of the inquiry. If the queen was declared innocent, what guarantee was he to receive for his own security? If guilty, what then? He said he had already sent copies of his proofs by his servant Wood; and if they were found to be faithful to the originals, would they be deemed conclusive?
Thus the cunning regent was seeking to ascertain whether he had already evidence deemed by the selected judge sufficiently damnatory, or whether he should fabricate more. Nothing can be conceived more unwarrantable than such a proceeding, and nothing ever was more serpentine than Elizabeth's dealings in reply. She assured Murray, and also Mary, that she did not set herself up as a judge of the Scottish queen, far less as an accuser; that her sole object was to settle all the disputes betwixt Mary and her subjects, and to reinstate her at once in their good opinion and in her full power; but in secret she assured Murray, as we learn from Goodall and Anderson, that, whatever were her assurances to Mary, she really meant to try her, and, if she could find her guilty, to retain her in perpetual imprisonment.
Thus encouraged, Murray engaged to meet her Majesty's commissioners at York; and, indeed, it was high time for him to do something to sustain his position. His unpopularity was become extreme. His unnatural situation as the dethroner of his sister and benefactor, when he had declared that he would be her champion, and his severity in punishing those who had espoused her cause, offended the people's natural sense of right, and alarmed even his supporters. Murray of Tullibardine, who had so vigorously pursued Bothwell, now excited discontent by pointing out the discrepancy betwixt the regent's pretended zeal against the king's murderers and his real lukewarmness. He pointed to the infamous Sir James Balfour, who had openly confessed himself one of the murderers, and bargained for his security and reward, as now the confidential and right-hand man of the soi-disant virtuous Murray. Encouraged by the manifest discontent, Argyll, Huntley, and the Hamiltons were once more on foot; they met at Largs on the 28th of July, and determined to raise the borders to make incursions on England, and applied to the Duke of Alva for his aid. It was absolutely necessary, both for the security of Murray and his own borders, that the conference at York should come off as early as possible. Lord Herries was therefore sent post haste to Bolton Castle, to which Mary had been removed, where, in the presence of Scroope and Knollys, he delivered these distinct proposals from Elizabeth:—"That if the Queen of Scots would commit her cause to be heard by her highness's order, but not to make her highness judge over her, but rather, as to her dear cousin and friend, to commit herself to her advice and counsel,—that if she would thus do, her highness would surely set her again in her seat of regiment, and dignity regal, in this form and order: First, her highness would send for the noblemen of Scotland that be her adversaries, to ask account of them, ​before such noblemen as this queen herself should like of, to know their answer, why they have deposed their queen and sovereign from her regiment, and that if in their answers they do allege some reason for them in their so doing (which her highness thinks they cannot do), that her highness would set this queen in her seat regal, conditionally that those her lords and subjects should continue their honours, estates, and dignities to them appertaining. But if they should not be able to allege any reason of their doings, that then her highness would absolutely set her in her seat regal, and that by force of hostility if they should resist."
Queen Mary protesting against the Commissioners appointed to inquire into her conduct.
Nothing could be plainer than this proposition. In any case it was declared to be Elizabeth's resolve to restore Mary to her throne: nothing could be more hollow and false. By these fair pretences did Elizabeth and her icy calculator Cecil draw Mary to concede to the conference. As the conditions on which all this was to be done, Mary was to renounce all claim to the throne of England during the life of Elizabeth or her issue, to abandon mass and adopt the Common Prayer. Mary finally accepted the conditions, but she had speedy cause to repent of her acquiescence. At the request of Elizabeth, she sent to demand that Huntley and Argyll, now at the head of a strong force and hastening to crush Murray before he could summon Parliament to proclaim them traitors, should cease hostilities. They obeyed; but Murray, whom Elizabeth promised to keep in check, immediately took advantage to assemble Parliament and pass a bill for their attainder and forfeitures. Maitland, generally so deceitful, on this ​occasion stood forward boldly for the barons; but, notwithstanding, the Archbishop of St. Andrew's, Lord Claud Hamilton, the Bishop of Ross, and others, became the victims of his vengeance. Murray followed up his advantage, marched out with a powerful force, overran Galloway and Annandale, and was only arrested by a peremptory order of Elizabeth to lay down his arms and appear at York, or she would liberate Mary and restore her at the head of an army, as an innocent person whom he dared not to meet.
There was no possibility of further delay; Murray, therefore, appointed his commissioners—the Earl of Morton, the Bishop of Orkney, Lord Lindsay, and the commendator of Dunfermline, who were to be assisted by Maitland, Buchanan, and Makgill. Elizabeth appointed, as hers, the Duke of Norfolk, the Earl of Sussex, and Sir Ralph Sadler. Maitland, at this juncture, whilst engaged on the part of Murray, sent Mary copies of the letters which Murray intended to present against her, and begged her to say what he could do to assist her. She replied, that he should use his influence to abate the rigour of Murray, influence the Duke of Norfolk as much as possible in her favour, and rely on the Bishop of Ross as her sincere friend. She then named, on her part, the said Bishop of Ross, the Lords Herries, Boyd, Livingstone, the abbot of Kilwinning, Sir John Gordon of Lochinvar, and Sir John Cockburn of Stirling.
The commissioners, Murray attending in person with his own, met at York, on the 4th of October. Some obstruction of business was occasioned by the Duke of Norfolk insisting that, as the regent had consented to plead before Elizabeth, he must first do homage to the English crown. This was refused, and was, therefore, waived. This step discovered the desire of Elizabeth to seize on this occasion to achieve what none of her ancestors could accomplish—the acknowledgment of the feudal vassalage of Scotland. The next betrayed the duplicity of her promises to the two parties. Mary's commissioners claimed that the engagement of Elizabeth to place Mary on the throne of Scotland in any case, should appear in their powers; and Murray's, on the contrary, pleaded the queen's promise that if Mary were pronounced guilty she should remain a prisoner. These contradictory powers were granted, and Mary's commissioners opened the conference with their charges that Murray and his associates had rebelliously risen in arms against their lawful sovereign, had deposed and imprisoned her, and compelled her to seek justice from her royal kinswoman.
Murray was now called upon to reply, but, instead of openly and boldly stating his reasons for the course he had pursued, and of producing and substantiating, as Elizabeth hoped and expected, the charges of her participating in her husband's murder, which he had so long and loudly vaunted, he solicited a private interview with the English commissioners, before whom he stated his defence. In this defence, to the unmitigated astonishment and disappointment of Elizabeth and her ministers, he made no charge against Mary of participation in the murder of Darnley; but reiterated the charges against her of marrying Bothwell, and the danger thereby incurred by the prince. Nor was this all: Mary's commissioners did not so far excuse him; they accused him boldly of complicity with Bothwell and the murderers, and of being on the most friendly terms with Bothwell whilst the marriage with the queen was in progress. Murray, with all his art, was confounded and silenced. It is said that the arguments and disclosures of the Duke of Norfolk had, at this moment, greatly staggered him. Norfolk had conceived the design of marrying the Queen of Scots; and, in order to deter Murray from pressing the worst charges, intimated to him privately that he was pursuing a dangerous course, for that Elizabeth, it was well known, never meant to decide against Mary. Murray was rendered sufficiently cautious to abstain from the public accusation of the queen; but he laid privately before Norfolk, Suffolk, and Sadler the alleged contents of the celebrated silver casket, consisting of love-letters and sonnets, addressed by Mary to Bothwell, and a contract of marriage in the handwriting of Huntley. Copies of these were transmitted to Elizabeth.
Being now in possession of Murray's charges, Elizabeth determined to compel him to make them openly, her grand object being to establish an accusation of Mary sufficiently atrocious to warrant her detaining her a perpetual prisoner. For this reason she summoned the commission to Westminster, alleging that York was too distant for a quick transaction of business. When Murray appeared before Elizabeth, he found, to his dismay, that she was perfectly informed of his private interviews with Norfolk, and she insisted that he should make a public accusation of Mary, menacing him, in case of refusal, to transfer her interests to the Duke of Chatelherault, and to favour his claim to the regency. But Murray was not inclined to make this accusation, unless assured that Elizabeth would pronounce sentence on Mary, which Norfolk had led him very much to doubt. Mary, on the other hand, received information from Hepburn of Riccarton, a confederate of Bothwell's, that Elizabeth was of all things really anxious to compel Murray to this accusation. To prevent this, she ordered her commissioners, if any such attempt was made at accusing her, to demand her immediate admission to the presence of Elizabeth, and, if that were refused, to break up the conference.
These conferences were opened in the painted chamber at Westminster, the commissioners of Mary refusing to meet in any judicial court; and, acting on the instruction of their queen, they at once demanded the admission of Mary to Elizabeth's presence, on the reasonable plea that that privilege had been granted to Murray. This was again declined, on the old ground that Mary must first clear herself; and on the retirement of the commissioners it was demanded of Murray to put in his accusation in writing. Bacon, the lord-keeper, assuring him that, if Mary were found guilty, she should be either delivered to him, or kept safe in England. To this Murray replied, that he had prepared his written accusation, but that before he would give it in he must have an assurance, under the hand of Elizabeth, that she would pronounce judgment. On this Cecil said, "Where is your accusation?" and Murray's secretary, Wood, taking it imprudently from his bosom, replied, "Here it is, and here it must remain till we have the queen's written assurance." But whilst he spoke the paper was snatched from his hand by Bothwell, Bishop of Orkney, who ​rushed over the table, pursued by Wood, and handed it to the English commissioners. It was received amid roars of laughter, and Cecil, who had now gained his great object, became radiant with exultation. The confusion of the scene was extraordinary; Lord William Howard, a blunt sea-officer, shouting aloud in his glee, and Maitland whispering to Murray that ho had ruined his cause for ever.
But as there was now no going back, the paper was read, and found to contain the broadest and most direct charge against Mary, not only for being an accomplice in the murder of her husband, but even of inciting Bothwell to it, and then marrying the murderer. This was totally different to Murray's former declaration to the English ministers; but it was now backed by a similar one from Lord Lennox, demanding vengeance for the death of his son. No sooner did the commissioners of the Queen of Scots hear this than they most indignantly condemned the conduct of the English commissioners, declared themselves prepared to prove that Murray and his friends themselves were the actual authors, and some of them the perpetrators of the murder. They demanded instant admittance to the presence of Elizabeth; complained loudly of the breach of the contract that nothing should be received in prejudice of their queen's honour, in her absence; demanded the instant arrest of the authors of the foul charge, and, on that being refused, broke off the conference.
Memento Mori Watch of Mary Queen of Scots.
Here, indeed, the conference really ceased. Elizabeth, spite of the withdrawal of Mary's commissioners, summoned Murray to produce his proofs; and the pretended love-letters and sonnets, of which Elizabeth had already had copies, were spread before her commissioners. The originals of these celebrated documents have long disappeared, but the copies which remained have been evidently tampered with, and have been pronounced most suspicious by all who have examined them. Mary, on hearing this, demanded by her commissioners the right to see these papers, declaring that she would prove the exhibitors of them the real murderers, and expose them to all Christian princes as liars and traitors. This most reasonable request was refused, and Elizabeth, having now all she wanted, delivered by her council this extraordinary decision:—That neither against the Queen of Scotland, nor against Murray, had any convincing charge of crime, on the one hand, or treason on the other, been shown. That the Queen of England saw no cause to conceive an ill opinion of her good sister of Scotland. It was conceded that Mary should have copies of the papers in the casket, on condition that she should reply to them, which she consented to do, provided that Murray and her accusers were detained to abide the consequence. This, however, did not suit the object of Elizabeth: Murray and his associates were permitted to retire to Scotland; but it was declared that, on many grounds, the Queen of Scots must be detained in England. From first to last, it must be pronounced, that the whole transaction on the part of Elizabeth was of the most arbitrary and unjustifiable character. The plainest principles of justice demanded that Mary should be admitted, if not to the presence of the queen, at least face to face with her accusers; that whatever was advanced against her should undergo the most public and rigorous scrutiny; and that the accused queen should have every opportunity afforded her of replying to such infamous charges against her. All this, notwithstanding her constant demands and remonstrances, was systematically and persistently refused; and still, after the extraordinary announcement by the Privy Council of England that no charge was sustained against the Queen of Scots, nor any which had been preferred were of such weight as to influence the Queen of England's opinion of Mary, to determine on the detention of Mary was yet a more violent breach of all right and honour.
Murray, on the 10th of January, 1569, was permitted to return home; but it was not so easy to perceive how he was to get there alive. His notorious breach of faith with the Duke of Norfolk had enraged that nobleman, ​who, as lord warden of the northern marches, had all the military force of that quarter of the kingdom in his hands, and who determined not to suffer him to pass alive. If by any means he could escape from this danger, on the other side of the borders the friends of Mary were in arms and burning with indignation against him. Mary had appointed the Duke of Chatelherault and the Earls of Huntley and Argyll as lieutenants, and Lord Boyd and other powerful barons were zealous in her cause. All the south of Scotland swarmed with her enraged partisans, and Murray and any force which he could assemble to meet them must inevitably be crushed. Yet from this apparently insurmountable danger the wily and supple genius of the man relieved him. He made fresh overtures to the Duke of Norfolk, expressed the deepest regret for the part which he had been compelled to take against Mary, but protested that he had never altered his opinion as to the excellence of the arrangement for the marriage betwixt the duke and her. He declared that he still regarded it as a measure of the highest advantage to both kingdoms, and expressed himself ready to promote it to the utmost of his power. The duke, who was extremely ambitious of the match, was moved, and Murray at once opened communication with the Bishop of Ross, who proposed it to Mary; and so completely did he convince all parties of his earnestness, that Norfolk procured him a loan of £5,000 from Elizabeth, and sent the strictest orders to the north that the regent should not be obstructed or molested in any manner on his journey. Mary at the same time dispatched similar orders to her adherents in Scotland, and Murray proceeded in the utmost quiet to Edinburgh. Once there, he threw off the mask. He called an immediate convention of the states at Stirling, procured a ratification of his proceedings in England, and ordered a speedy muster of forces in every quarter of the kingdom. It was in vain that the friends of Mary attempted to oppose him: his movements were so rapid and well-obeyed, that, though they proclaimed him a traitor and usurper, they were speedily compelled to come to terms with him. It was agreed that the nobles in the interest of Mary should disband their forces and return to their estates till the 10th of April, when they should meet at Edinburgh for the settlement of the affairs of the country. They complied with this, and Murray liberated the prisoners which he had taken at Langside, but he took care not to disband his own forces. At a meeting at Stirling, Lord Herries, the Earl of Cassillis, and the Archbishop of St. Andrew's placed themselves in Murray's hands as hostages; and no sooner had they done this than Murray marched towards the borders and chastised their adherents in that quarter. When the meeting took place at Edinburgh, on the 10th of April, Murray demanded that the Duke of Chatelherault should acknowledge the king, which he refused until the questions relating to the queen had first been publicly discussed and settled; and on this refusal Murray arrested the duke and Lord Herries, and sent them to the castle of Edinburgh.
This arbitrary act occasioned much resentment in the country; but it intimidated his two most powerful opponents, Argyll and Huntley, who held the western and northern highlands. They had refused to sign the late treaty, but they now saw him supported by England, and at the head of a powerful army. They therefore soon came to terms with him; and having received hostages from Huntley, he immediately marched into the highlands; and levying heavy fines on all who had risen in favour of the queen, vigorously reduced the clans to swear allegiance to the young king, and returned triumphant and enriched by the expedition.
Meantime Elizabeth had removed Mary farther from the Scottish border. She evidently doubted the security of the Queen of Scots so near her Scottish subjects, and in a part of the country so extremely Popish. Mary, on her part, was quite sensible of the views of Elizabeth, and protested against going farther into the interior of the country. She did not hesitate to express her opinion that it was the intention of Cecil to make away with her. But resistance on her part was now hopeless. She was in the hands of a powerful and unscrupulous woman, who every day felt more and more the difficult position in which she had placed herself by thus making herself the gaoler, against all right and honour, of an independent queen. She sent express orders to Scroope and Knollys to permit no person to approach the Queen of Scots who was likely to dissuade her from her removal, and furnished them with a list of such well-affected gentlemen as should attend her on her way through the different counties. On the 26th of January, in most wintry weather, Mary and her attendants were obliged to quit Bolton Castle, and, mounted on miserable horses, to take their way southward. On the 2nd of February they reached Ripon, and thence proceeded to Tutbury Castle, a ruinous house, belonging to the Earl of Shrewsbury, who was now her keeper. The castle lay high above the valley of the Dove, and was a wretched abode for a crowned head; and Mary was watched and guarded with the utmost anxiety lest some of her partisans should find means of communicating with her. Nicholas White, afterwards Master of the Rolls in Ireland, visited her there, and wrote to Cecil that, if he might give advice, there should be few subjects of this land have access to or conference with her; for, he observed, "beside that she is a goodly personage, she hath withal an alluring grace, a pretty Scottish speech, and a searching wit clouded with mildness. Fame might move some to relieve her; and glory, joined to gain, might stir others to venture much for her sake."
But not only were the Roman Catholic subjects of Elizabeth greatly discontented with the detention of the Scottish queen, whom Elizabeth had again removed to Wingfield Manor, in Derbyshire, in April, but the sovereigns of the continent remonstrated with Elizabeth on the injustice of treating a crowned head—as much a sovereign as herself—as a captive and a criminal; but she feeling that she had now little cause to fear them, replied that they were labouring under a mistake; that so far was she from treating the Queen of Scots as a captive, she was giving her refuge and protection against her rebellious subjects, who sought her life, and laid the most grievous crime to her charge.
The Duke of Norfolk, and the Earls of Arundel and Pembroke, as friends of Mary, were extremely hostile to Cecil, regarding him as the real mover and influencer of the queen against her. They succeeded in securing the ​favour of Leicester to their design against him, who ventured to lay their complaints, as the complaints of the country, before Elizabeth, representing the clamour against the measures of Cecil, and the belief that his policy was prejudicial to her reputation and injurious to the interests of the realm, as universal. Elizabeth defended her favourite minister with zeal; but the politic Cecil was struck with a degree of alarm at their combination, which might have eventually proved formidable, had they not stumbled on the scheme of marrying Norfolk to Mary. The results of that scheme, however, we must postpone till we have noticed some anterior affairs. We have seen how Elizabeth assisted the Huguenots in France. In the Netherlands she was not the less active. The commercial natives of these countries had not only grown rich under the mild sway of the Dukes of Burgundy, but they had exercised privileges which did not accord with the bigoted and despotic notions of Philip II. Not only Protestants but Romanists murmured at his harsh and arbitrary government. The latter complained that opulent abbeys in the possession of natives were dissolved to form bishoprics for Spaniards. The Protestants groaned under a stern persecution, and every class of subjects beheld with horror and disgust the Spanish Inquisition introduced. Not only Protestants but Papists united in a league to put down this odious institution. The league, from including both religious parties, was named the Compromise, and the Prince of Orange and the Counts Egmont and Horne took the lead in it. The Duchess of Parma, who governed the country, gave way to the storm, and abolished the Inquisition, which had the effect of separating the Roman Catholics from the Protestants. The latter deemed it necessary, when thus deserted, to conduct their worship with arms in their hands; and the duchess, alarmed at this hostile attitude, issued a proclamation, forbidding all such assemblies. In Antwerp, and other cities where the English and German Protestants greatly abounded, no notice was taken of her proclamation; but it was resolved no longer to remain on the defensive, but to carry the war into the enemy's quarters.
The people, assembling in April, 1567, in vast crowds, proceeded to demolish the images and altars in the churches, and even to pull the churches down. On the feast of the Assumption, as the priests were carrying an image of the Virgin through the streets, the crowd made terrible menaces against it, and the procession was glad to hasten back to the church whence they bad set out. But a few days after the people rushed to the cathedral, which was filled with rich shrines, treasures, and works of art, and closing all the doors, set systematically to work to smash and destroy every image that it contained. Amongst them was a famous crucifix, placed aloft, the work of a famous artist, which they dragged down with ropes, and knocked in pieces. The pictures, many of them very valuable, they cut to shreds, and the altars and shrines they tore down and utterly destroyed. From the desecrated cathedral they proceeded to the other churches, where they perpetrated the same ruin, and thence to the convents and monasteries, driving the monks and nuns destitute into the streets. The example of Antwerp was zealously followed in every other province in the Netherlands, except in the Walloons. The iconoclasts were at length interrupted in their work by the Duchess of Parma, who fell upon them near Antwerp, and defeated them with great slaughter. Philip dispatched the notorious Duke of Alva to take vengeance on the turbulent heretics, and overran the Netherlands with his butcheries. The Prince of Orange retired to his province of Nassau, but Horne and Egmont were seized and cast into prison.
The Huguenots in France, alarmed at this success of Alva, and believing that he was appointed to carry into execution the secret league of Bayonne, for compelling the Protestants of France, Spain, and Flanders, to give up their religion or their lives, rose under Condé, and attempted to seize the king, Charles IX., at Monceaux. Charles, however, was rescued by his Swiss guards, who, surrounding him in a body, beat off the Huguenots, and conducted him in safety to Paris. There, he was, nevertheless, a prisoner, till he was released by the defeat of the Huguenots at the battle of St. Denis, where his principal general, the constable Montmorency, was killed. Condé had fallen in the battle of Varnac. Norris, the English ambassador, was accused of giving encouragement and aid to the insurgents, and the king was compelled to make a treaty with his armed subjects.
In the spring of 1568, 3,000 of these French Huguenots marched into Flanders, to join the Prince of Orange, who had taken the field against Alva. After various successes, the prince, at the close of the campaign, was obliged to retreat across the Rhine. Throughout these struggles, both in France and Belgium, Elizabeth lent much aid and encouragement in the shape of money; but, with her usual caution, she would take no public part in the contest, and all the while professed herself the friend of Philip, and most hostile to all rebellions.
The summer of this year was distinguished by a remarkable scheme for the marriage of the Duke of Norfolk to the Queen of Scots, which ended fatally for that nobleman, and increased the rigour of Mary's incarceration. The scheme was said to have originated in the ever busy brain of Maitland. Murray fell into it, probably under the idea that Mary would then content herself with living in England, and leave the government of Scotland in his hands; or it might have entered into his calculations that it would, on discovery, so exasperate Elizabeth, as to lead to what it did, the closer imprisonment of the Queen of Scots, which would be equally acceptable to him. Elizabeth was not long in catching the rumours of this plot, and she burst out on the duke in her fiercest style; but Norfolk had the art to satisfy her of the folly of such an idea, by replying that such a thing had, indeed, been suggested to him, but that it was not a thing likely to captivate him, who loved to sleep on a safe pillow. The plan, however, went on, and from one motive or another, it eventually included amongst its promoters the Earls of Pembroke, Arundel, Bedford, Shrewsbury, Northumberland, and Westmoreland. Leicester and Throckmorton were induced to embrace it, and even Cecil was made aware of it, and favoured it. In Scotland, Murray, Maitland, the Bishop of Ross, Lord Boyd, were favourable to the measure; and Mary was sounded on the subject, and professed her readiness to be divorced from Bothwell; but as to marriage, from her past sorrowful experience, would ​rather retain her solitary life; yet, if the approbation of Elizabeth was obtained, would consent to take Norfolk—not, as all her miseries had flowed from her marriage with Darnley, contrary to the Queen of England's pleasure. The duke, on his part, when it was proposed to him, had recommended Leicester rather, and on his declining, his own brother. Lord Henry Howard. How far either party was sincere in these statements matters little; the promoters were urgent, and they acquiesced.
Assassination of the Regent Murray. (See page 467.)
The Bishop of Ross, with the apparent approbation of Murray, undertook to negotiate with Elizabeth for the restoration of the Scottish queen, on condition that neither she nor her issue should lay claim to the English throne during the life of Elizabeth; that Mary should enter into a perpetual league, offensive and defensive, with England, and establish the reformed religion in Scotland. Elizabeth affected to listen to these proposals, and the matter went so far that, on the assembling of the Scottish Parliament, in July, Murray professed to be quite agreeable to the liberation of Mary, but took care to reject the proposals approved of by Elizabeth, and opposed the appointment to examine the queen's marriage with Bothwell. Maitland at once fathomed the long-concealed deceit of the regent, and dreading his vengeance on those who had committed themselves in the matter, took a hasty flight into the fastnesses of Atholl.
Queen Elizabeth’s Kitchen.
​bearing full details of the propositions laid before the Scottish Parliament, and the consent received from Bothwell in Denmark to the divorce. The marriage with Norfolk, which was the end and object of all these plottings, had never been communicated to Elizabeth; for, though Leicester had promised to impart it to her, he had not ventured to do it. Elizabeth immediately invited Norfolk to dine with her at Farnham, and, on rising from table, reminded him, in a very significant tone, of his speech when charged with such a design some time before, saying, "My lord duke, beware on what pillow you lay your head." Alarmed at this expression, Norfolk urged Leicester to redeem his promise, and speak to the queen on the subject; and this he did, under pretence of being seriously ill, whilst the queen was sitting by his bedside. The rage of Elizabeth was unbounded, but on Leicester expressing the deepest regret for his meddling in the matter, she forgave him, but sent for Norfolk and poured out on him her wrath and scorn. Norfolk expressed himself perfectly indifferent to the alliance, though so strongly recommended by his friends; but his words and manner did not deceive the deep-sighted queen. She continued to regard him with stern looks, and the courtiers immediately avoided him as a dangerous person. Leicester, who had promised him so much, lowered upon him as a public disturber. Norfolk felt it most agreeable to withdraw from Court, and his example was followed by his stanch friends Pembroke and Arundel. From Norfolk he wrote to Elizabeth, excusing his absence, and expressing fears of the acts and slanders of his enemies. Elizabeth immediately commanded him to return to London. Her first information from Murray had been increased by the treachery of that nobleman and of Leicester, who had hastened to reveal to her all the secret correspondence of Norfolk with them. His friends advised him to fly, but he did not venture on this, but wrote to Cecil to intercede with the queen. Cecil assured him there was no danger; the duke, therefore, proceeded to London, and was instantly arrested and committed to the Tower.
At the same time Elizabeth joined the Earl of Huntingdon, an avowed enemy of the Queen of Scots, in commission with her keeper, the Earl of Shrewsbury, and Viscount Hertford, to secure more completely the person of Mary, who was again removed to Tutbury, and to examine her papers for further proofs of the correspondence with Norfolk. Her confidential servants were dismissed; her person was surrounded by an armed force; and her cabinets and apartments were strictly searched for this correspondence, but without effect. It is also asserted that it was determined to put her to death, if, as it was expected, the Duke of Norfolk should attempt her rescue by force. The friends of Mary blamed the duke for not taking arms for her rescue, declaring that a short time would have brought whole hosts to his standard, but Norfolk must have too well known the hopelessness of such an enterprise.
The disclosure of the plot produced consternation and distrust on all sides. Murray, in revealing the correspondence with Norfolk, had not been able to escape suspicion himself. Elizabeth saw enough to believe that he had been an active promoter of the scheme; she saw still clearer that Maitland had been the originator of it; she was, moreover, incensed at the double-faced part which Murray's secretary, Wood, had been playing in the matter in London: and she ordered Lord Hunsdon, and her other agents in the north, to keep a sharp eye on Murray, and the movements of the leading Scots. To propitiate Elizabeth, Murray determined to sacrifice Maitland: he, therefore, lured him from his retreat by some plausible artifice, when, on the demand of Lennox, he was arrested in the council as one of the murderers of his son Darnley. Sir James Balfour, whom Lennox also accused, was seized with his brother George, spite of the pardon which had been granted him on this head. In the midst of Murray's exultation over his success, Kirkaldy of Grange, dreading fresh disclosures, attacked the house where Maitland was kept, and carried him off.
The truth of the assertion that had the Duke of Norfolk risen in arms he would have found extensive support, was now manifested by what took place in the north of England. The fascinations of the Queen of Scots were felt by all who approached her. Her beauty and her wrongs deeply stirred the enthusiasm of the generous, and the attempts to defame her character only resulted in raising her up hosts of friends, who regarded her as a martyr to the cause of her religion. Many were the offers of service, to the utmost extent of life and fortune, which she received from chivalrous gentlemen who beheld with indignation her unworthy treatment, or who doubly sympathised with her through the oppression of the common faith. So long as the Duke of Norfolk was her great champion, she referred all their offers to him; but when he fell, and she found two of her mortal enemies appointed the guardians, or rather keepers, of her person, she entertained the deepest fears for her life, and exerted all her eloquence to rouse her friends for her liberation. She dispatched secret messages—verbal ones they seem to have been, for they never could be traced—to the Earl of Westmoreland, whose wife was the sister of Norfolk, and to the Earl of Northumberland, who had his own causes of complaint against the Council. These were forwarded by them to Egremont Radcliffe, brother of the Earl of Sussex, to Leonard Dacres, the uncle of the late Lord Dacres, to the Nortons, Tempests, Markenfields, and others who had tendered their services. She did not scruple in conversation to assert that Cecil would never rest till he had her made away, and she wrote to demand that the two hostile keepers should be removed, one of whom was not only her own enemy, but had said at table that the Duke of Norfolk should "be cut shorter er it weare long."
As the autumn approached, there were repeated rumours of rebellion in the north, which alarmed the court of Elizabeth. On inquiry, however, no trace of such a thing could be discovered, and the Earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland, when questioned, gave such apparently honest and satisfactory answers, that the Government was perplexed. Suddenly, however, in the commencement of October, the two earls received a summons to York on the queen's business, and the Earl of Sussex was instructed when he once had them, to forward them to London. The fate of Norfolk, and their consciousness of their actual secret proceedings, determined them to disobey the summons. ​But, unfortunately for them, their plans of action were yet so immature that they were not prepared to assume arms. Whilst consulting what course to take, the summons of Sussex arrived, and at the same time a rumour that an armed force was on the march to arrest Northumberland at Topcliffe. He and his countess hastened to Branspeth Castle, where the Earl of Westmoreland had already assembled around him his guests and retainers. Northumberland was still of opinion that they should avoid hostilities, for which they were unprepared; but others, and amongst them the Countess of Westmoreland, the sister of Norfolk, the Markenfields and Nortons, demanded war. Northumberland still dissented, and resolved to set out for Alnwick; but was detained by force, and the banner of revolt was unfurled.
The insurgents proposed, as their first object, to march to Tutbury, and liberate Mary; and now it was visible how necessary had been the caution of Elizabeth in removing her to the midland counties. Had she been in the north, her rescue would have been almost certain: as it was, the insurgents dared not even whisper their intention, or Mary would have been hurried away south, if not at once to the scaffold. The war-cry of the earls was religion. They represented her majesty to be surrounded "by divers newe set-upp nobles, who not onlie go aboute to overthrow and put downe the ancient nobilitie of the realme, but also have misused the quene's majestie's owne personne, and also have, by the space of twelve yeares nowe past, set upp and mayntayned a new-found religion and heresie, contrary to God's word." On this ground they called on all true subjects of the realm to come forward and help to restore the Crown, the Church, and the Government to their due condition.
The northern counties, according to the assertion of Ralph Sadler, who knew them well, were so entirely papist that "there are not," he says, "in all this country ten gentlemen that do favour and allow of her Majesty's proceedings in the cause of religion." Dr. Nicholas Morton, a prebendary of York, and recently arrived from Rome with the title of Apostolic Penitentiary, had been very active in rousing them at the call of the Pope to rebellion; and it was a strong argument, furnished by Elizabeth herself, that it was lawful to take up arms against your own sovereign where your religious liberty was infringed. Elizabeth had made herself a universal champion on this side of the question. In Scotland, France, and the Netherlands, she had long and notoriously supported by her money and agents the subjects in defiance to their Governments, on the ground of invasion of their religion. What was allowable to Elizabeth was, they contended, equally allowable against her.
The first step of the insurgents was to occupy the city of Durham. So insignificant was their number at this moment, that only sixty horsemen followed the banner of the two earls. But their appeals to rise and defend their ancient faith found a strong response. Mass was celebrated in the cathedral before some thousands of people, who tore up the English Bible, and destroyed the communion table. They then, continually increasing in numbers, marched through Staindrop, Darlington, Richmond, and Ripon, everywhere turning out the apparatus of the Reformed worship from the churches, and reinstating the ancient ritual.
They proceeded as far as Branham Moor, where they mustered their forces, or, as some say, on Clifford Moor, near Wetherby, where their forces were found to amount to 1,700 horse, and something less than 4,000 foot, but many of them badly armed. The earls, who were famous for their hospitality, had but little ready money; Northumberland bringing only 8,000 crowns, and Westmoreland nothing at all. The Roman Catholics did not rise in their favour, as they had calculated. The insurgents had sent to the Spanish ambassador, soliciting his aid, but he referred them to the Duke of Alva, and the duke waited for orders from Philip. Their aid not arriving cast a damp on the Romanists, who now, doubting of the expedition, lay still, or went over to the Royal army under the Earl of Sussex. To add to their confusion, 800 horse, whom they had dispatched to secure the Queen of Scots at Tutbury, returned with the news that she was removed thence to Coventry. They were confounded by this intelligence, and still more by the rumours of the numerous forces raising under Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick, and the Lord Admiral, whilst Lord Hunsdon from Berwick was hastening down upon them with his garrison and Royalists from the borders. Dissension now began to appear in their ranks and amongst the leaders. The Earl of Westmoreland, who at first was the most daring, now began to hesitate; and Northumberland, who was, in a manner, dragged into the rising, on the contrary, counselled bold measures, as they had committed themselves. The result, however, was that they retreated to the Earl of Westmoreland's castle of Branspeth. They there issued a new manifesto; and as the Papists had not come forward as they expected, they now dropped tho argument of religion, and took up the plea that there was a determination at Court to exercise arbitrary power over the lives and liberties of the subject, and that it was necessary to drive from her Majesty's counsels the persons who gave her pernicious advice.
But this retreat had shaken the confidence of the public; and the different noblemen to whom they sent messengers followed the example of the Earl of Derby, and arrested them and sent them to the queen. The measures on the part of Elizabeth's Government were active and effectual. Orders were issued to muster a large army in the south. The Earl of Bedford was dispatched to maintain quiet in Wales. A regiment of well-disciplined troops were marched from the Isle of Wight to defend the person of the sovereign, and suspected persons were arrested. To prevent any communication with the foreign princes, the mail-bags of the Spanish and French ambassadors were stopped and examined. Leicester entreated to be sent against the rebels, but Elizabeth would not risk his precious life, and kept him near her as her chief adviser, Cecil being indisposed.
The patience of Elizabeth was greatly tried by the cautious delay of the Earl of Sussex, who was her commander in the north, and especially as his procrastination allowed the two earls to besiege Sir George Bowes in Barnard Castle for eleven days, which then opened its gates. There were even insinuations that Sussex was in secret league with the rebel earls. On the approach of ​the army of the Earl of Warwick, 12,000 in number, the insurgents held a council at Durham, on the 16th of December; but dissension again broke out betwixt Westmoreland and Northumberland to such a degree that the forces scattered, and the enterprise was at an end. The foot got away to their homes, and the earls fled across the border with 500 horse.
Elizabeth, who is characteristically represented, in the fine old ballad of "The Rising of the North," as swearing stoutly on the first news of this rising—
"Her grace she turned her round about, And like a royal queen she swore— 'I will ordaine them such a breakfast,
As never was in the north before,'"—
now demanded the surrender of the fugitives. Murray, by bribes and menaces, induced Hector Armstrong of Harlow, with whom Northumberland had sought refuge, to give him up; but Murray did not dare to send his captive to England, but shut him up in Mary's old prison, the castle of Lochleven, where he continued till 1572, when Morton, having become regent, surrendered him to Lord Hunsdon, at Berwick, when he was sent to York and executed. Westmoreland escaped to Flanders. The Countess of Northumberland, Ratclide, Markenfield, Swinburn, Tempest, and other exiles continued safe amongst the border clans of Hume, Scot, Carr, Maxwell, and Johnstone. The brave old Norton, who bore the banner of his house, which displayed "the cross,
'And the five wounds our Lord did bear,'"
surrounded by his nine gallant sons, is said by the old ballad, which has been followed by Wordsworth in "The White Doe of Rylstone," to have fallen:
"Thee, Norton, with thine eight good sons, They doomed to die, alas! for sooth;
Thy reverend locks thee could not save.
Nor them their fair and blooming youth."
Francis, the eldest son, who refused to fight against his sovereign, is represented as being killed in endeavouring to rescue the family banner. Other authorities, however, assert that Norton escaped into Scotland with the rest. In England no severity was spared in punishing the fallen insurgents. Those who possessed property were reserved for trial in the courts, to secure the forfeiture of their estates. These, and the fugitives together, amounted to fifty-seven noblemen, gentlemen, and free-holders, so that their wealth would form a good fund for the payment of the expenses of the campaign, and the reward of the officers and soldiers. On the poorer class Sussex let loose his vengeance with a fury which was intended to convince Elizabeth of his before-questioned loyalty. In the county of Durham he put to death more than 300 individuals, hanging at Durham at one time sixty-three constables; and Sir George Bowes made his boast that, for sixty miles in length, and fifty in breadth, betwixt Newcastle and Wetherby, there was hardly a town or village in which he did not gibbet some of the inhabitants as a warning to the rest; a cruelty, says Bishop Percy, "which exceeds that practised in the west after Monmouth's rebellion; but this was not the age of tenderness or humanity." Sussex, in writing to Cecil, says, "I gesse it will not be under six or seven hundred at leaste of the common sort that shall be executed, besides the prisoners taken in the field."
When the vengeance was completed, Elizabeth issued a proclamation that all others should be pardoned who came in and took the oaths of allegiance and supremacy. She declared that she was accused of persecuting for religious opinion, but she denied that, affirming that she should molest no one for their religious sentiments, provided they did not gainsay the Scriptures, nor the creed apostolic and catholic; or for their practice, so long as they outwardly conformed to the laws of the realm, and attended regularly the divine service in the ordinary churches, as by statute required.
No one who went out on this expedition acted a stranger part than Leonard Dacres, the head of the house of Gillsland. He was deep in the plots for the restoration of Mary, but at the time of the "rising of the north," he was at the Court of Elizabeth, gathering all the information of affairs that he could. On the outbreak taking place, he hurried to the north, on the pretence of mustering forces for Elizabeth, but in reality for Mary. But, on his arrival, the rebel army was in full retreat from Hexham to Naworth on its way to Scotland. Adroitly calling out his retainers, he pursued his flying friends, and made a number of prisoners, by which he acquired much reputation for his loyalty amongst his neighbours, who were greatly amazed to find, soon after, the Earl of Sussex attempting to arrest him, the Council in London being much better acquainted with his real character than those about him. He then turned about, and on the 20th of February, 1570, sent a defiance to Lord Hunsdon from Naworth Castle. After a bloody skirmish on the banks of the Chelt, the Dacres were defeated, and Leonard fleeing, secured himself first in Scotland, and afterwards in Flanders.
This escapade of the Dacres is supposed to have been excited or encouraged by an event which had just taken place in Scotland—the murder of the regent Murray. The regent, finding that there would never be any rest for either England or Scotland whilst the Queen of Scots was detained in her unjust captivity, entered into serious negotiations with Elizabeth, to have her surrendered to his own custody, when it would have been in his power to get rid of her on some pretence. Knox, in no equivocal language, in a letter to Cecil which still remains, had recommended her being put out of the way, telling him, "If ye strike not at the root, the branches that appear to be broken will bud again, and this more quickly than man can believe, with greater force than we could wish." On the day on which this letter was dated, Murray dispatched Elphinstone to Elizabeth, to impress upon her the absolute necessity of some immediate and decisive dealing with Mary. He assured her that the faction in her favour both at home and abroad was daily acquiring fresh force; that the Spaniards and the Pope were intriguing with the Romanists of England and Scotland, and that daily succours were expected from France. He demanded that she should, therefore, at once exchange the Queen of Scots for the Duke of Norfolk, and enable him, by a proper supply of money and arms, to resist their common foes. He entreated her to remember that the heads of all these troubles—no doubt meaning Mary and Norfolk—were at her command, and that if she declined this arrangement, he must forbear to adventure his life as he had done. ​These negotiations, however private, did not escape the knowledge of Mary's friends. The Bishop of Ross immediately entered a protest before Elizabeth against the scheme, which he declared would be tantamount to signing the death-warrant of the Queen of Scots. He induced the ambassadors of France and Spain to enter like protests; but whether they would have been effective remains a mystery, for Elizabeth had dispatched Sir Henry Gates to the regent on the subject, when the news of Murray's end altered the whole position of affairs.
Private revenge and public had combined to accomplish this tragedy. James Hamilton, of Bothwellhaugh, an estate adjoining the celebrated Bothwell-brig, was one of the Hamilton clan who fought at Langside, and was there taken and condemned to death, but got off with the forfeit of his estate. The loss of his property of itself might have been cause enough of discontent to a proud and high-spirited gentleman, but this was rendered tenfold more intolerable by the seizure of that of his wife, and her ejectment from it in the most brutal manner. She was the proprietor of Woodhouselce, a small estate on the Esk, and was living there in imagined security, when Murray gave the place to his favourite Bellenden, the justice clerk. This heartless wretch turned out the wife of Bothwellhaugh in the most barbarous manner, in a bitter winter's night, with only her night-clothes on. In the morning she was discovered in the woods in a state of furious madness. Bothwellhaugh vowed destruction to the ruffian lawyer. The Hamiltons encouraged him from political hatred to the regent; and he is said by Calderwell to have made two abortive attempts to shoot the regent, when a most favourable opportunity presented itself for the execution of his inextinguishable vengeance.
Murray was about to proceed from Stirling to Edinburgh, and had arranged to pass through Linlithgow. The Archbishop of St. Andrew's, the uncle of Bothwellhaugh, had an old palace in the High-street of that town, through which Murray must pass. Bothwellhaugh took possession of this, and made all his preparations for the murder with the coolest exactness. He barricaded the front door, so that no one could, without considerable delay, force their way in to seize him. In the back yard he placed a powerful and swift horse, ready bridled and saddled for flight; and even removed the head of the doorway, so as to admit him to spring upon his steed, and ride through it without the moment's delay of leading the horse there. He then cut a hole through a praulet below a window, in a sort of wooden gallery, from which he could survey the procession, large enough to admit the barrel of his gun. To prevent his booted steps being heard, he laid a feather bod on the floor; and to prevent the possible casting of a shadow, hung up behind him a black cloth. These preparations being made, he stood ready, with his piece loaded with four bullets.
The regent had been duly warned of his danger by a faithful servant named John Herne, who seems to have had full knowledge of Bothwellhaugh's plan and place of ambush, and offered to take the regent where he could seize the assassin on the spot. With that fatal neglect which so often attends such victims, Murray agreed to avoid the public street, but took no means to secure the murderer. The crowd on entering the town became so great that he allowed himself to be densely surrounded—as it were, borne irresistibly along the fatal street. The throng, moreover, compelled him to move slowly, giving his enemy ample time to take aim. As he passed the archbishop's house, Bothwellhaugh fired so accurately that he shot him through the body, and killed the horse of the person riding next to him. The confusion which followed allowed the assassin to escape before his barricade could be forced, and he was just seen galloping away towards Hamilton. There the archbishop, the Lord Arbroath, and the whole clan of the Hamiltons received him in triumph, as the liberator of his country from an unnatural tyrant who was plotting the murder of his sister and sovereign. They immediately flew to arms, and resolved to march to Edinburgh, liberate the Duke of Chatelherault, and assume the government.
The character of Murray, perhaps, cannot be better summed up than in the words of Mr. Tytler, the historian of Scotland:—"As to his personal intrepidity, his talents for state affairs, his military capacity, and the general purity of his private life, in a corrupt age and court, there can be no difference of opinion. It has been recorded of him that he ordered himself and his family in such sort, that it did more resemble a church than a court; and it is but fair to conclude that this proceeded from his deep feelings of religion, and a steady attachment to a reformation which he believed to be founded on the Word of God. But, on the other hand, there are some facts, especially such as occurred during the latter part of his career, which throw suspicion upon his motives, and weigh heavily against him. He consented to the murder of Rizzio; to compass his own return to power, he unscrupulously leagued himself with men whom he knew to be the murderers of the king; used their evidence to convict his sovereign, and refused to turn against them till they began to threaten his power, and declined to act as the tools of his ambition. If we regard private faith and honour, how can we defend his betrayal of Norfolk, and his consent to deliver up Northumberland? If we look to love of country—a principle now, perhaps, too lightly esteemed, but inseparable from all true greatness—what are we to think of his last ignominious offers to Elizabeth? If we go higher still, and seek for that love which is the only test of religious truth, how difficult is it to think that it could have a place in his heart, whose last transaction went to aggravate the imprisonment, if not to recommend the death, of a miserable princess, his own sister and sovereign!"