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MARY STUART 
 
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 FLORENCE A. MACCUNN 
 
 AUTHOR OF "A LIFE OF JOHN KNOX " 
 
 WITH FORTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 SECOND AND CHEAPER EDITION 
 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 E. P. DUTTON & CO. 
 
 1907 
 
*+*» 
 
 
 First Published . . . October igoj 
 Second and Cheaper Edition . June igoy 
 
TO MY SISTERS 
 E. C. S. C H. M. M. V. D. 
 
 
CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. The Mother ..... i 
 
 December 1542 — July 1548 
 
 II. At the French Court . . . .13 
 
 July 1548—1557 
 
 III. Marriage with the Dauphin ... 23 
 
 April 1558 — December 1560 
 
 IV. Le Deuil Blanc . . . . .37 
 
 December 1560 — August 1561 
 
 V. Mary's Return to Scotland . . .50 
 
 August 1561 — January 1562 
 
 VI. Holyrood ...... 60 
 
 January 1562 — November 1562 
 
 VII. Mary and Elisabeth . . . .69 
 
 October 1562 — September 1564 
 
 VIII. Darnley ...... 85 
 
 February 1565— July 1565. 
 
 IX. Riccio's Murder . . . . .96 
 
 August 1565 — March 1566 
 
 X. Jedburgh . . . . • .109 
 
 March 1566— November 1566 
 
 XI. Kirk o' Field . . . . .119 
 
 December 1566 — February 1567 
 
 XII. Bothwell's Assize . . . . • 135 
 
 February 1567 — May 1567 
 
 XIII. Carberry Hill . . . . .150 
 
 15th June 1567 
 
 rii 
 
vm 
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAP. 
 
 XIV. Loch Leven 
 
 June 1567 — May 1568 
 
 XV. The Conference at York . , 
 
 June 1568 — January 1569 
 
 XVI. Norfolk ..... 
 
 February 1569 — July 1569 
 
 XVII. Two Pictures .... 
 
 XVIII. The Northern Rising and the Ridolfi Plot 
 
 1569. 1571—1572 
 
 XIX. Life at Sheffield 
 
 1572— 1580 
 
 XX. Catholic Plots .... 
 
 1580— 1583 
 
 XXI. The Beginning of the End . 
 
 1584— 1585 
 
 XXII. The Babington Conspiracy . . 
 
 January 1585 — September 1586 
 
 XXIII. FOTHERINGAY .... 
 
 nth October 1586— 4th February 1587 
 
 XXIV. The End . 
 
 PAGE 
 l62 
 
 I84 
 200 
 
 212 
 
 2l6 
 
 2 35 
 250 
 
 263 
 
 271 
 
 290 
 306 
 
 February 8th, 1587 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS 
 
 Mary about 1579 . . . . . Frontispiece 
 
 Given by her to Thomas Andrewes, Sheriff of Northamptonshire, from whose 
 
 descendants it passed into the possession of Messrs Shepherd Bros., 
 
 by whose permission it is here engraved. 
 
 To face page 
 
 James V. and Mary of Guise .... 3 
 
 In the Collection of the Duke of Devonshire. From a Photograph by 
 Mr Franz Hanfstaengl. 
 
 The Court of Linlithgow Palace ... 7 
 
 From a Photograph by Messrs Valentine & Sons. 
 
 The Convent on the Lake of Monteith . . 10 
 
 From a Photograph by Messrs Valentine & Sons. 
 
 Mary of Guise . . . . . .11 
 
 From the Drawing by Janet. 
 
 Mary at Nine Years Old . . . .13 
 
 In the Collection of the Due d'Aumale at Chantilly. By permission 
 of Messrs Goupil & Co. 
 
 Diane de Poictiers ..... 14 
 
 The Dauphin ...... 15 
 
 From a Drawing in the Bibliotheque Nationale. 
 
 The Cardinal of Lorraine . . . .18 
 
 Francis of Lorraine, Duke of Guise . . .20 
 
 From a Drawing by Dumoustier (?). 
 
 be 
 
x LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 To face page 
 
 Mary Stuart as a Child ..... 23 
 
 From a Drawing by Francois Clouet. 
 
 Henry II, King of France . . . .30 
 
 Le Deuil Blanc, Mary in her Widow's Dress . 39 
 
 Catherine de Medici . . . . .42 
 
 Maitland of Lethington ..... 44 
 James Stuart, Earl of Murray . . . 53 
 
 From a Picture at Holyrood. 
 
 Plan of Edinburgh ..... 60 
 
 From a contemporary Drawing in the Ballantyne Miscellany. 
 
 Palace of Holy Rood House . . . .64 
 
 From a Sixteenth Century Drawing by Gordon of Rothiemay, in the 
 Ballantyne Miscellany. 
 
 Mary Beaton . . . . . .71 
 
 From a Picture at Balfour, Fife. From a Photograph by Messrs G. W. 
 
 Wilson & Co. 
 
 Queen Elizabeth, the "Ermine" Portrait . . 73 
 
 Don Carlos ...... 79 
 
 Henry, Lord Darnley . ...» 87 
 
 From an original in the Royal Palace of St James's. 
 
 James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell 
 Jean Gordon, Lady Bothwell . 
 
 From J. J. Foster's " The Stuarts" (from originals belonging to the 
 Hon. Mrs Boyle), by permission of Messrs Dickinsons. 
 
 103 
 
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. xi 
 
 To /ace page 
 
 Mary's Chamber at Holyrood . . . .105 
 
 From a Photograph by Messrs Valentine & Sons. 
 
 Hermitage Castle. . . . . .114 
 
 From a Photograph by Messrs Valentine & Sons. 
 
 The House where Queen Mary lodged at Jedburgh 116 
 
 From a Photograph by Messrs Valentine & Sons. 
 
 Kirk o' Field ...... 130 
 
 From a contemporary Plan. 
 
 Loch Leven Castle . . . . .162 
 
 From a Photograph by Messrs Valentine & Sons. 
 
 Charles IX., King of France . . . .163 
 
 Wingfield Manor ...... 206 
 
 From a Photograph by Messrs Valentine & Sons. 
 
 Bess of Hardwick ...... 207 
 
 From the Painting in the National Portrait Gallery. 
 
 Bolton Castle . . . . . .212 
 
 From a Photograph by Messrs Valentine & Sons. 
 
 Henry III., King of France .... 239 
 Sheffield Manor ...... 247 
 
 From a Photograph by Messrs Valentine & Sons. 
 
 Don John of Austria ..... 248 
 The Earl of Morton ..... 254 
 Philip II., King of Spain . . . . . 258 
 
xii LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 To face page 
 
 Tutbury Castle . . . . . .271 
 
 From a Photograph by Messrs Valentine & Sons. 
 
 Sir Francis Walsingham ..... 275 
 The Trial at Fotheringay .... 294 
 
 From a contemporary Plan. By permission of Lord Calthorpe 
 and Messrs A. & C. Black. 
 
 Sir Amyas Paulet ...... 298 
 
 The Execution of Mary, Queen of Scots . . 312 
 
 From a contemporary Plan. By permission of Lord Calthorpe 
 and Messrs A. & C. Black. 
 
 The Effigy in Westminster Abbey . . . 314 
 

 MARY STUART 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE MOTHER 
 
 December 1542 — July 1548 
 
 A NY one wishing to know what the direct influence 
 ** of women would be in the o-overnino- of nations 
 has only to make a study of Western Europe in the 
 latter half of the sixteenth century. The English throne 
 was occupied successively by two women sovereigns, 
 and simultaneously in Scotland a queen regent was 
 followed by a queen in her own right, while in France 
 the widowed Catherine of Medici swayed the wills and 
 directed the policy of her two effeminate younger sons 
 for almost thirty years. 
 
 The epigram of the Duchess of Burgundy, that 
 the times are happy when women rule because then 
 men direct the policy, holds good only in the case of 
 Elisabeth, paradoxically the most imperious and self- 
 willed of the five. 
 
 Of these crowned ladies, thus fatefully and fatally 
 placed at the head of affairs, none presents a figure 
 so touching, dignified and attractive as Mary of 
 Guise ; none had so difficult and thankless a task. 
 In her worst difficulties Elisabeth was upheld by 
 the instinct that she had behind her the life of a 
 great people, the consciousness that she had their 
 enthusiastic sympathy. Neither the bitterness of 
 personal disappointment nor the loneliness of un- 
 popularity could deprive Mary Tudor of the con- 
 
2 MARY STUART 
 
 solation of thinking herself God's chosen instrument 
 to bring back the English nation to the true faith. 
 Through her long widowhood Catherine gratified to 
 the full that passion for power which had been 
 famished and repressed during her married life. 
 
 Mary of Guise alone had no personal ends to 
 serve, nor did she find support and sympathy in her 
 lonely task. The end of her unceasing labours was 
 to keep secure the inheritance of a child she was 
 barely to see after her seventh year ; she spent her 
 life ruling over aliens and saw her early popularity 
 turning into suspicion and sour dislike ; she tried to 
 hold Scotland as an appanage of France, and France 
 let her die at last besieged and defeated, looking in 
 vain for adequate succours ; all her actions — her high 
 endeavours and her serious mistakes, her patience 
 and her dissimulation alike — were prompted by one 
 constant motive, devotion to the fortunes of France 
 and of her daughter. 
 
 The eight children of Claude of Guise — Duke 
 Francis at the head of the armies of France, the 
 three younger brothers in their several commands by 
 sea and land, the two cardinals in their plurality of 
 benefices, Renee and Antoinette praying in their 
 convents, Mary in alienated Scotland carrying out 
 the family policy in defiance of her better judgment, 
 were all united in one great aim, the glorification of 
 the House of Guise. This family of magnificent 
 adventurers was a cadet branch of the Dukes of 
 Lorraine, one of those smaller semi-royal houses 
 which, like Burgundy, held now to the Empire now 
 to France. Consequently the Guises knew no real 
 patriotism. They gained victories at the head of 
 French armies but they recklessly sacrificed French 
 
THE MOTHER 3 
 
 troops to the visionary hope of gaining the crown 
 of Naples for their house. Though they had 
 been the chief counsellors at the courts of four 
 French kings, they owed no loyalty to the House 
 of Valois. They bore eight royal quarterings in 
 their arms and the idea of founding a dynasty 
 haunted the imagination of the whole family. This 
 family destiny was only fulfilled in the persons of 
 Mary of Guise and her daughter. In her girlhood 
 Mary Stuart was simply the flower in which the 
 family tree had blossomed. 
 
 Why Mary of Guise was chosen to play her 
 important part in the family fortunes while her two 
 sisters were suffered to spend their days praying for 
 them, we are not told. Probably her appearance and 
 her alert, practical character marked her out for her 
 part. She had been thought of at one time as the 
 bride of the French King, Henry II., before his 
 brother's death raised him to importance. She just 
 escaped making one in the succession of Henry 
 VIII.'s wives. There is a picture of her beside her 
 second husband James V. The head is small in 
 comparison with the tall figure and pillar-like throat, 
 the face firm, intelligent and serenely friendly> a far 
 stronger, happier face than that of her husband. It is 
 from her father that Mary Stuart inherited the fine 
 lines of her features, the delicate eyebrows and long 
 soft eyes, but the resolve and animation come from the 
 other side. 
 
 These fine qualities were needed to carry Mary 
 of Guise through her troubled and anxious life, they 
 never secured her prosperity or tranquillity. In the 
 quiet old home at Joinville her mother, the Duchess 
 Antoinette, had many anxious thoughts about the 
 
4 MARY STUART 
 
 high-spirited heavily-laden daughter in Scotland. In 
 one of her simple, motherly letters she writes to her : 
 " You have had so little joy in the world, and pain 
 and trouble have been so often your lot, that 
 methinks you hardly know now what pleasure 
 means." 
 
 She can hardly have been happy with James V. 
 She came to Scotland a young widow of twenty-three, 
 leaving behind her an only child and the memory 
 of her first short but happy marriage, to find a 
 husband of twenty-eight who had in innumerable 
 transitory passions wasted a heart and character richly 
 endowed. The pathos and romance of his marriage 
 in the previous year with Madame Madeleine, the 
 consumptive little daughter of Francis the First who 
 died a few weeks after landing in Scotland, had 
 touched the heart or at least the sensibility of James 
 Stuart, but the marriage with Mary of Guise was a 
 pure matter of policy. The real true love of his 
 fickle heart had been Janet Erskine. He had made 
 tentative efforts to obtain her divorce from her 
 husband, Douglas of Loch Leven, meaning to marry 
 her and thus to legitimate the son she had borne him. 
 This son, James Stuart, was afterwards to save his 
 country and accuse his sister Mary as the Regent 
 Murray. Had King James succeeded in his plan, it 
 would have saved a world of woe. 
 
 Two sons were born to Mary of Guise, but both 
 died in babyhood within twenty-four hours of each 
 other. James, worn out by dissensions with his 
 nobles and all the difficulties of his short life and lono- 
 reign, saw in the loss the judgment of Heaven, and 
 it served to deepen the depression and lassitude that 
 were settling down upon him. At thirty-two, to the 
 
THE MOTHER 5 
 
 jolly " King of the Commons," the popular " Gudeman 
 of Ballangeioch," life meant only new difficulties and 
 disappointments ; a strong and menacing uncle across 
 the Border ; disaffected nobles at home ; children of 
 his begetting in other men's houses, but no heir to 
 his throne. Yet there should have been hope. A 
 child was expected, and, in the stately palace at 
 Linlithgow, the queen was awaiting the event. 
 
 The king was in the south, organising the attack 
 on England that ended disastrously at Sol way Moss. 
 Stricken to the heart with shame, and unable to face 
 the new difficulties of the situation, he had returned 
 for a week to Linlithgow where, if ever, his wife 
 required his presence. Then, finding his inward 
 wound too intolerable, he crept off by himself to 
 Falkland. 
 
 Never was woman in more desolate case than 
 Mary. She was alone in a strange land, her husband 
 was dying, indifferent to her and to the child she was 
 to bring him ; men talked of little but defeat and the 
 fears of invasion, even the earth was bound in an 
 early and vigorous winter. Under such conditions 
 Mary Stuart was born on the 8th of December 1542. 
 Hardly the birth of a son would have roused James 
 from his sorrowful apathy ; the news of the birth of 
 a daughter only deepened his gloom : " Devil go 
 with it," he muttered. "It came with a lass, it will go 
 with a lass." 
 
 It was Cardinal Beaton who brought the news 
 of her husband's death to Mary at Linlithgow. The 
 two were firm allies, the cardinal was "as good a 
 Frenchman as she was a Frenchwoman." It was 
 rumoured that in those early days they had put their 
 
6 MARY STUART 
 
 heads together and had secretly sent to the French 
 king for aid. Women in those days had little time 
 or peace to mourn their husbands ; and never were 
 woman and child more surrounded by enemies and 
 dangers than Mary and her baby queen. France 
 was many days' journey away, the Scotch nobles 
 were hostile or at least suspicious, and across the 
 Border, like the ogre in a fairy-tale, was Henry VIII. 
 It amounted to an obsession, this desire of Henry's to 
 profit by his nephew's death, to seize the strongholds 
 of Scotland, and to gain possession of the child. 
 Once he had her in England, betrothed to his young 
 son, he hoped to be practically Governor of Scotland. 
 By the end of January all the prisoners taken at 
 Solway Moss were sent back deeply pledged to forward 
 Henry's policy at any cost of patriotism and honour. 
 
 Much as Mary dreaded the English alliance for 
 her child, another danger seemed nearer and more 
 urgent. The next heir to the throne, the Earl of 
 Arran, had been appointed governor. A stupid, 
 vacillating mediocrity, he was not formidably ambitious, 
 but his nearness to the throne was the one fact of any 
 importance to him, and this made him eager to let no 
 chance go past. He made proposals for a marriage 
 between the little queen and his seven year old son. 
 Such proposals were repugnant to the French queen 
 mother but she dissimulated and received them diplo- 
 matically. Once, years later, when falsely accused of 
 a breach of faith in her policy, she likened herself to a 
 little bird constrained to build herself a nest as a 
 "bield" from her foes; and certainly in the winter of 
 1543 she might have compared herself to a wild bird 
 using all her cunning to keep her enemies from her 
 nest. To deceive both Henry and Arran and, if 
 
THE MOTHER 7 
 
 possible, to sow distrust between them was a game 
 that required patience and deftness. Her one friend 
 the cardinal was powerless to help. The first action 
 of the " Enelish Lords" on their return had been to 
 embolden the governor to throw his rival into 
 prison. 
 
 When in March, Sadler, the English Ambassador, 
 brought the formal proposal of marriage from Henry 
 VIII. the queen dowager received it with apparent 
 cordiality, and took the opportunity to discredit Arran. 
 "'The governor,' quoth the queen, 'said that the 
 child was not like to live, but you shall see whether 
 he saith truth or not.' Therewith she caused me 
 to go with her to the chamber where the child was 
 and showed her unto me, and also caused the nurse to 
 unwrap her out of her clothes that I should see her 
 naked. I assure your Majesty it is as goodly a child as 
 I have seen of her age and as like to live with the grace 
 of God." Forty-three years later Sadler was among 
 the judges who condemned the Queen of Scots to death! 
 Dissimulation and a patient waiting on circumstance 
 were the only policy possible for the queen mother. 
 Henry was urgent with his adherents to kidnap the 
 two queens or, better still, the child without the 
 mother. Edinburgh Castle was too near the Border 
 to be safe ; it was probably for security that Arran 
 kept them virtually prisoners at Linlithgow. 
 
 Nothing in the short history of Mary Stuart's 
 reign in Scotland is more romantic than the number 
 of sudden flights she was constrained to make, 
 hasty, unexpected rides through summer dawns or 
 the blackness of winter nights. The first of such 
 flights was when, in July (1543), the cardinal and his 
 party — the cardinal was again at liberty and re- 
 
8 MARY STUART 
 
 establishing his ascendency — carried off the two queens 
 from under the very hands of the Hamiltons and 
 conveyed them to Stirling. Meantime the marriage 
 contract between Henry and the governor had been 
 signed, with no great alacrity on the side of the Scots. 
 
 The child was to be handed over to her grand- 
 uncle at the age of ten. If force were used to 
 get possession of her before that age, Sir George 
 Douglas informed Sadler that the women would rise 
 with their distaffs and the small boys would hurl 
 stones against English intruders. When such is 
 the temper of one of the contracting parties, any 
 accident or delay is sure to be fatal to the transaction. 
 Hostages to be sent to England were not readily 
 come by ; the governor suddenly and without explana- 
 tion rode off to join the cardinal ; Henry lost his 
 temper and arrested Scotch merchant ships in his 
 harbour. Since the death of the Maid of Noroway 
 there had been no such opportunity of uniting the two 
 kingdoms ; it was lost by the impatience of the Tudor 
 temper. On the ioth of September the child was 
 crowned at Stirling. Sadler sneers at the lack of 
 costly ceremonial, and indeed Coronations were not 
 very joyous affairs in Scotland. Three infants in 
 succession, Mary, her father and her son, were all 
 crowned in seasons of blackest national anxiety. In 
 spite of an attack of smallpox in the spring, the little 
 one flourished at Stirling. The mother with playful 
 fondness noted this to Sadler. " The queen told me 
 that her daughter did grow apace, and soon she would 
 be a woman if she took after her mother, who indeed 
 is of the largest size." 
 
 While she grew and throve, various sinister 
 influences were at work shaping her destiny. In the 
 
THE MOTHER 9 
 
 gossiping pages of Pitscottie we read that two Scottish 
 nobles were rivals for the hand of Mary of Guise, 
 Patrick, Earl of Bothwell, and Matthew, Earl of 
 Lennox, a curious anticipation of the tragic situation 
 of twenty-four years later. Mary entertained both 
 with diplomatic courtesy, but " having been a king's 
 wife her heart was too high to look any lower." 
 Unlike all the other widowed queens of Scotland, 
 her predecessors, she never allowed passion, nor 
 vanity nor personal weakness to complicate the 
 difficult situation. 
 
 The presence of Lennox was in itself a complica- 
 tion. A rival claimant to the throne with Arran, he 
 had been brought from France by the cardinal as 
 a menace and counterweight to the governor. The 
 reconciliation of those two heads of opposing factions 
 and the firm attitude of the dowager sensibly 
 diminished Lennox's importance. Chagrined and 
 knowing no motive but self-interest he, in the autumn 
 of 1543, sold himself to Henry. He used his credit 
 with the envoys sent from France to seize arms and 
 money landed at Dumbarton. For this treachery his 
 lands were confiscated and he himself was exiled for 
 more than twenty years from Scotland. As a reward 
 for his services Henry, in the next year (1544), gave 
 him in marriage the Lady Margaret Douglas, daughter 
 of Margaret Tudor, widow of James IV. and of 
 Douglas, Earl of Angus, the hereditary enemy of the 
 Stuarts. His nearness to the Scottish throne — Arran 
 the other claimant was of doubtful legitimacy ; — her 
 close relationship to the Royal Family of England; 
 her claims to the confiscated estates of the Douglas ; 
 his embittered regrets for the forfeited lands of 
 Lennox — here were elements to produce a hungry, 
 
10 MARY STUART 
 
 restless, intriguing household life ; and in this home 
 Darnley, Mary's future husband, was to grow up. 
 
 The five first years of Mary's life are filled with 
 invasions, lawlessness and the treachery of Scottish 
 noblemen. In this turmoil we lose sight of the 
 widowed Queen and her child. The guardians of 
 the little Queen, Lindsay, Livingston, Erskine and 
 Montrose held themselves ready at a moment's notice 
 to carry her off to a place of safety. Once, with the 
 English foeman within reach of Stirling, she was 
 hurried off to Dunkeld in the inaccessible Highlands. 
 In 1547 the battle of Pinkie almost repeated the 
 disaster of Flodden. Then, also, men asked one 
 another when the English invader would be at their 
 gates. The child was sent off to the island convent 
 on the lake of Monteith, on the Borders of the 
 Highlands. 
 
 Because no other place connected with Mary is 
 free from associations of pain and fear, modern 
 imagination has dwelt fondly on the picture of the 
 six-year-old child in that peaceful place, fancying 
 pleasant things hardly compatible with her short 
 wintry visit. At least there was freedom from alarm 
 and the child had merry company in the four little 
 Maries, chosen as her attendants from the loyal houses 
 of Beaton, Livingston, Fleming and Seton. If the 
 old French soldier of fortune who a few months later 
 accompanied the child to France, described her as 
 "the most perfect child in the world," one may be 
 sure that the good leisurely monks of Monteith were 
 equally charmed and amused by their little guest. 
 
 Mary of Guise had profited by the national fear of 
 England and hatred of Somerset to draw closer the 
 alliance with France. The point she had always 
 
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MARY OF GUISE 
 
THE MOTHER 11 
 
 aimed at was attained when in July 1548, she per- 
 suaded the council and governor to consent to the 
 little Queen being affianced to the Dauphin, and sent 
 her off at once to be brought up in France out of reach 
 of the rough wooing of the English Protector. 
 
 Quickly, secretly, the departure was arranged. A 
 French fleet sailed out of the Forth, then swept round 
 the north of Scotland and put in again at Dumbarton. 
 It was a large party that went on board ; the four 
 Maries accompanied the queen as well as several of 
 her half-brothers and the governor's children. Mary 
 was under the care of her governess, Lady Fleming, 
 her father's half-sister, a merry, pretty woman curiously 
 lacking in the discretion necessary for her post. 
 
 Here the story must follow the child to France, 
 to prosperity and happy days, leaving the childless 
 mother to carry on her troublesome task alone. The 
 old Duchess of Guise knew what it meant to part 
 with a child across the seas. She wrote pitying her 
 daughter for her sorrow in the parting, " But at least 
 you must hope that this loss of your child will mean 
 rest and repose for the little creature." . . . She adds 
 the fervid hope that she herself may see her daughter 
 again before she died. She was to live to mourn not 
 only that daughter's death, but the imprisonment of 
 the little granddaughter she was so eager to welcome. 
 Her own badly-spelled letters reveal in Mary of Guise 
 not only indomitable courage — that she shared with 
 most of her family — but a tender-hearted perception 
 of suffering: that she had learned in her own troubled 
 life. She complains of the depredations of the French 
 soldiers on the Scotch peasant, she knows the ruin 
 brought on them by ruthless requisition, she grieves 
 over their tables and chairs seized on for fuel. Of her 
 
12 MARY STUART 
 
 own severe sufferings — the sciatica which was the 
 consequence of constant night alarms and hasty pre- 
 parations — she speaks cheerfully and without self- 
 pity. One lingers the more willingly in her company 
 because we shall find no other character of such worth 
 and attraction in the whole history of her daughter. 
 
 Note. — While these chapters are passing through the press my 
 attention has been called to a delightful anecdote of the baby Queen. 
 When she was only three or thereabouts, Cardinal Beaton entered the 
 room where she was, apparently in his red robes. In sudden terror the 
 child cried out, " Kill Redeaton ! Kill Redeaton ! He will take me 
 away." The rhyme that was running in the quick-witted little creature's 
 head was the old Scottish nursery tale : 
 
 " The red Etin of Ireland, 
 He lived in Ballygan, 
 He stole King Malcolm's daughter, 
 The King of fair Scotland ; 
 He beats her, he binds her 
 He lays on her a band, 
 And every day he dings her 
 With a bright silver wand." 
 
 To us who know Queen Mary's history even her baby prattle has a 
 strangely ominous ring. 
 
 Another new discovery is that, on her voyage to France, she alone of 
 her company was free from sickness — she was child enough to laugh at 
 her neighbours {Balcarres Papers). 
 
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 MAin AT I UK AGE OF NINE 
 
CHAPTER II 
 
 AT THE FRENCH COURT 
 
 July 1548— 1557 
 
 THE brilliance and corruption of the French court 
 at which Mary was brought up is so much a 
 commonplace of history that there is a strong tempta- 
 tion to find it false. It may at least be conceded that 
 the court of Henry II. was neither so brilliant as the 
 court of his father Francis I. nor was it by any means, 
 as coarse, cruel and corrupt as it became later when 
 the widowed Catherine bore sway during the reigns 
 of her sons. 
 
 Catherine played indeed no greater part at the court 
 of her husband than she had played during her father- 
 in-law's lifetime. She was merely the mother of the 
 king's children ; whatever consideration she received 
 at his hands she owed to the careless, secure kindness, 
 and sense of decorum of her rival Diane de Poictiers. 
 Beautiful, with a peculiar, white, smooth beauty, this 
 remarkable woman kept her hold on the dull heart of 
 her royal lover to the end of his days. She ruled his 
 life, his court, his policy, superintended his children's 
 education and dictated his behaviour to his wife. It 
 has been finely said of her that her influence was 
 blighting and unfruitful as that of the moon which she 
 adopted as her symbol. 
 
 A few years before Henry's accession evangelical 
 religion had been in vogue in his household ; the 
 psalms of Clement Marot were on every tongue. But 
 
 13 
 
14 MARY STUART 
 
 soon religious liberalism shrunk before the dangers 
 and difficulties of Reform ; the French court definitely 
 chose the line of reaction and persecution. The love 
 of serious study and the patronage of literature was 
 represented by the second Madame Margaret of 
 France, the learned sister of Henry II., the patroness 
 of Ronsard. The love of art that had glorified the 
 court of Francis survived chiefly in the arts that adorn 
 luxury and pomp, splendid architecture, applied to 
 royal residences, delicate jewelry, and sumptuous 
 bindings, and finely printed books. 
 
 With a self-control that does her no honour, 
 Catherine acquiesced in her abasement before the 
 favourite. Her passion for power, thwarted and 
 repressed, instinctively sought to raise up means of 
 influence through her children. From the time they 
 emerged from childhood till they were married she 
 caused her elder daughters Madame Elisabeth and 
 Madame Claude to sleep in a room within hers and 
 to know no authority nor influence but her own. She 
 terrorised her daughters; Margaret — the third Madame 
 Margaret of France — the youngest and most spirited 
 of the children, has recorded that her mother's eye 
 upon her struck a chill of fear to her heart. 
 
 Of her father, the king, her reminiscences are 
 charmingly genial. She describes herself at the age 
 of five as sitting on his knee and discussing her boy 
 lovers. 
 
 The royal children had an establishment of their 
 own, and it was an amiable trait in the king that he 
 liked to pay them visits when "he could have them 
 all to himself." He showed the greatest eagerness 
 to see the little Queen of Scots when in August 1548 
 she arrived at St Germain-en-laye where the court 
 
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 THE DAUPHIN 
 
AT THE FRENCH COURT 15 
 
 was residing. He was enchanted with the beautiful 
 child. According to Brantome she spoke in her 
 native speech, rendering its harshness musical by her 
 sweet voice. Nor did she suffer from shyness. " I 
 find her and the Dauphin as familiar as if they had 
 known each other all their lives," wrote the king. It 
 was probably the delicate little boy of four and a half 
 who required most to be put at his ease. 
 
 Diseased and mean-looking from his birth Francis, 
 like many another frail little boy, had an imagination 
 preoccupied with the romance of weapons and of 
 warfare. There is a pretty letter dictated by him 
 at the acre of five in which he thanks the Duke of 
 Guise for the gift of a little suit of armour and 
 challenges him to a single combat. In this he hopes 
 to have the favour "d'une dame belle et honnete qui 
 est votre niece." 
 
 The brilliant beauty and vitality of Mary Stuart 
 distinguished her from the ailing, neurotic children 
 of Catherine. Though the four little Scottish Maries 
 were removed for a time that she might the quicker 
 learn French, she had no lack of companions. Thirty- 
 seven children of the nobility shared the studies and 
 sports of the children of France. So large a party 
 involved an army of household servants. Twelve 
 butlers with ten assistants looked after the cellars, the 
 kitchen staff amounted to over fifty, wardrobes and 
 stables were manned on a similar scale. It throws 
 a curious light on the habits of the time that there 
 was but one water-carrier for all this crowd, while, in 
 some years, only two laundresses accomplished all the 
 washing required. Doctors and apothecaries were 
 attached to the household, and one could wish that a 
 place had been found near Mary's person for a certain 
 
16 MARY STUART 
 
 honest Scotch doctor, named William Bog, warmly- 
 recommended to Mary of Guise. The letter of 
 recommendation insists on the importance of a doctor 
 who could "diagnose Scotch temperament" — "You 
 know what a difference there is between a doctor of 
 one's own country and a foreigner. My friend besides 
 being of that nation is both a skilful druggist and 
 doctor, and above all a lover of religion and of his 
 country's liberty." Mary was at all times familiarly 
 kind and affectionate with those of her own household ; 
 a good, wise, middle-class Scotchman like the excellent 
 Bog might have given her an insight into " Scottish 
 temperament" and their "love of their country's 
 liberty " which would have saved her from fatal 
 blundering. Almoners, priests, confessors made part 
 of the household, also tutors and masters of music 
 and dancing. 
 
 Classical learning was in those days one of the 
 privileges of princesses and noble ladies. They were 
 supposed to read and write Latin, to know enough 
 Greek to justify the presence of fine editions on their 
 bookshelves and to talk the languages of the principal 
 European courts. Now as these royal and noble 
 ladies were often married at the age of twelve and 
 were little older when they appeared at court, a great 
 deal of education must have been compressed into 
 these early years, even if tutors were complacent and 
 ready to make a royal road. The eternal prerogative 
 of childhood, the right to be a child, was fatally denied 
 to all those poor, important little ladies. 
 
 In an age of learned women, Mary was no prodigy. 
 She had not the pure love of letters of Jane Gray, nor 
 could she, like Elisabeth, exchange courtesies in Greek 
 with heads of colleges. But with her fine wit and 
 
AT THE FRENCH COURT 17 
 
 high spirit she took kindly to her studies. She had 
 to write priggish little Latin themes, moral reflections 
 on the duties of princes ; even copy books were made 
 to minister to that self-importance which cruelly 
 robbed little royalties of " the first garden of their 
 simpleness." At thirteen she entertained king and 
 court by an harangue in Latin, and though the argu- 
 ments might be the arguments of her tutor the voice 
 and manner were the same that years after forced her 
 Scottish subjects to exclaim, " Vox Dianae. . . . Was 
 there ever orator spake so properly and so sweetly ? " 
 Still greater was the charm of her intimate conversa- 
 tion. Even as a child she would entertain the king 
 by her wise and witty conversation, "just like a woman 
 of five and twenty," writes the exultant Cardinal of 
 Lorraine. 
 
 The encouragement of learning, the patronage of 
 poets, even the practice of verse-making and especially 
 the collecting books in beautiful bindings, were all 
 fashions in vogue at court. We have still an inventory 
 of the books Mary brought to Scotland with her, 
 books which the ignorant carelessness of Murray and 
 Morton suffered to be dispersed and destroyed. 
 Among these books many are of a religious com- 
 plexion, controversial as well as devotional. One is 
 surprised to find Calvin's Institutes among them, but 
 the cardinal was determined that his niece should 
 know the reformed doctrines so as to be able to refute 
 them. It was not from his mother that James VI. 
 was to inherit his passion for theological subtleties. 
 " She could not reason," she once told Randolph, "but 
 she knew what she ought to believe " — an unassailable 
 position into which many a simple gentlewoman is 
 glad to follow her ! If she did not readily commit 
 
18 MARY STUART 
 
 herself to her own confession of faith, she had an 
 instinct for the weak places in her adversaries' argu- 
 ment that no dialectic could have bettered. 
 
 Religious orthodoxy was one of the assets of the 
 Guises. The old Duchess Antoinette — in her private 
 relations a faithful, tender-hearted woman — carried on 
 religious persecution on her estates with single-minded 
 conviction. Her two daughters were abbesses of 
 convents. The cardinal, the churchman, though a 
 materialist and worldling, recognised the advantage 
 to his house of being the acknowledged champions 
 of Catholicism, but the soldier, Duke Francis, had in 
 addition to the family orthodoxy some genuine religious 
 instinct. He could pause in the heat of battle to urge 
 a dying comrade to make his peace with God. 
 
 Her uncles therefore saw to it that, in Mary's 
 education, "God was worshipped after the old fashion." 
 Loyalty, in Mary's nature, was so strong a virtue that 
 it redeems even the sins that have been laid to her 
 door. The same faithfulness she showed to her kins- 
 folk, her friends and the humblest of her servants, she 
 showed also to the religion in which she had been 
 brought up. "The religion which I profess," she was 
 to assure Throckmorton on the eve of her departure 
 for Scotland, " I take to be most acceptable to God ; 
 neither do I know or desire to know any other. Con- 
 stancy becometh all folk well but none better than 
 princes . . . and especially in matters of religion." 
 Only once in her life was she to waver in this constancy. 
 It is the measure of her infatuation for Both well that 
 she consented to marry him with Protestant rites. 
 
 A larger space on Mary's shelves was occupied by 
 classical than by religious books. Most of the Latin 
 classics and a creditable number of Greek are in this 
 
mU " ■> — 
 
 CAROLVS CARDINALIS 
 
 H 4^ 
 
 THL CARDINAL OF LORRAINE 
 
AT THE FRENCH COURT 19 
 
 fascinating collection. History too is largely repre- 
 sented. She had a special liking for this study. 
 When she was in Scotland she read portions of Livy 
 every day with Master George Buchanan. In captivity 
 the English Chronicles were her favourite reading. 
 
 It is, however, to the lighter volumes, the romances 
 and poetry, that one turns to learn what one can of 
 Mary's personal tastes. Probably the best loved of her 
 books and the most frequently read were the volumes 
 of contemporary French poetry. The two most im- 
 portant poets, Joachim du Bellay and Ronsard, were 
 attached by special ties to Mary. Du Bellay had been 
 on board the ship that brought her as a child from 
 Scotland. As a page Ronsard had accompanied her 
 father's first wife, Queen Madeleine, to Scotland. In 
 the dulness of a long winter at Holyrood he made his 
 first acquaintance with Homer. The courtly, gray- 
 haired poet had a special kindness for the Scottish 
 queen. In the most conventional of Ronsard's verses 
 there is a charm fresh and sweet and rich as of a 
 summer garden. He addresses many poems to Mary; 
 he praises her fair, slender hands, her white body 
 born in spring among sister lilies ; when she goes 
 away he likens France to a field despoiled of its 
 flowers, a wood stripped of its green mantle, a ring 
 that has lost its precious stone. 
 
 Mary herself wrote verses as a graceful pastime ; 
 a fatal pastime it was to prove, luring Chastelard on 
 to fatuous presumption and weaving evidence against 
 herself and Bothwell. Among her books is " Ane 
 book of French sonnettes in writ." One wonders if 
 these were her own or Chastelard's. She had several 
 volumes of romances, nine at least of Amadis of Gaul, 
 Ogier the Dane, Launcelot of the Lake and others, 
 
20 MARY STUART 
 
 mostly apparently in Italian. These endless fantastic 
 stories into which Spanish and Italian fancy had 
 elaborated the earlier mediseval tales, were evidently as 
 familiar to the young people of the French court as the 
 stories of " Ivanhoe " and " The Talisman" to children 
 of our day. The Venetian ambassador gives a pretty 
 picture of Mary and the Dauphin, and the other noble 
 children playing at these romances in the glades of a 
 wood. There were also lighter tales in Mary's 
 library, the " Decameron," the " Heptameron," and 
 collections like " Le jardin de Plaisance " and " La 
 mer des Histoires." 
 
 These tales her ladies would read aloud to her 
 while she worked, for the slender hands — " votre 
 longue et gresle et delicate main " is Ronsard's lovely 
 phrase — were rapid and skilful in all sorts of needle- 
 work. Some of her embroidery is still in existence. 
 We can still touch the gauntlet embroidered for 
 Darnley, the leading strings she made for her baby at 
 Stirling, the altar cloth she sewed in the long winter 
 at Loch Leven. She touched her lute delicately, 
 though Melville acknowledges with less skill than 
 Elisabeth. Dancing in that age was a serious art, 
 half-dramatic and wholly rhythmical and stately, and 
 Mary excelled in dancing. 
 
 Hunting was a passion with the Valois kings. 
 Frail little Francis was to wear out his courtiers in the 
 field as relentlessly as his vigorous grandfather. From 
 an early age the royal children followed the chase on 
 their little "haquenes." We even know the names 
 of Mary's favourite horses ; Bravane and Madame 
 Real. 
 
 The cardinal directed Mary's education in all points. 
 Her diet, her jewels, her servants, all received minute 
 
rnncoU 2>uc dt (fai*^, fee*** 
 Jemm /*/hvf mtu.,L ?4-f**' *S£* 
 
 
 / 
 
 rt l Li 1 
 
 FRANCIS OF LORRAINK, DUKE OF GUISE 
 (Diaitousticr ?) 
 

 
 
AT THE FRENCH COURT 21 
 
 attention. He was the friend and close ally of Diane 
 de Poictiers ; between him and the Queen there was 
 mutual suspicion and constant tacit opposition. It 
 was with the aim of withdrawing her from Catherine's 
 influence that he persuaded his sister to give her 
 daughter a separate establishment. Thus at the age 
 of twelve Mary began her lifelong task of assuaging 
 jealousies, reconciling enemies, distributing favours, 
 reading character and keeping a wary reticence under 
 the sweet frankness of her manners. 
 
 There is a letter to her mother written when she 
 was fifteen, full of the perplexities of her position. Lady 
 Fleming was no longer her governess, Catherine and 
 Diane had been equally resolved that the fascinating 
 Scottish lady should remain no longer in the neigh- 
 bourhood of the susceptible king. The French 
 governess who succeeded her was elderly, ailing, 
 jealous and a mischief-maker. She had taken umbrage 
 at Mary's open-handedness. " A man's life consisteth 
 not in the things that he hath," but there are many 
 women who out of their possessions create much 
 of the charm and individuality of their lives. We 
 read with mere amusement of the three thousand 
 dresses left by Queen Elisabeth, or of the cloth of 
 gold under which Margaret of Navarre could hardly 
 walk, but Mary Stuart's possessions seem to keep the 
 warmth of her touch, the charm of her personality. 
 Her jewels are curiously interwoven with her history. 
 The gross of buttons with Diana's crescent moon in 
 black and white ; Elisabeth's diamond heart worn as 
 her sole ornament at a Twelfth Night party at Holy- 
 rood ; the diamond ring left to Darnley because " with 
 this ring he married me " ; the mourning ring with 
 white enamel tears, sent to Bothwell ; the "great 
 
22 MARY STUART 
 
 Harry," the diamond Lady Murray embezzled and 
 refused to part with ; have these not all the romance of 
 magical gifts in a fairy-tale ? There is something of 
 the same witchery even in her clothes. This is partly 
 due to the generous habit she had of distributing them 
 to her friends and servants. Later on her French 
 stores at Holyrood were to provide wedding gowns 
 and holiday suits for all her friends, but even as a 
 child she had this habit of open-handed giving. This 
 it was that excited the irritable jealousy of Madame 
 de Paroy. Probably there was an unwritten etiquette 
 which gave certain perquisites to the governess, and 
 this Mary chose to disregard. Yet the special act 
 of generosity was innocent enough. She had be- 
 stowed her robes to make altar cloths in the two 
 convents where her aunts presided. Later on she was 
 to reverse the process and cut up beautiful old altar 
 cloths to make doublets for Bothwell. 
 
tfS/TY 
 
 OF 
 
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 -**& 
 
 I # I) 
 
 :/ 
 
 MARY STUART AS A Gl 1:1 
 
CHAPTER III 
 
 MARRIAGE WITH THE DAUPHIN 
 
 April 1558 — December 1560 
 
 A S early as 1557 when Mary was only fifteen and 
 -L*- the Dauphin younger, the French king was 
 eager for the marriage. 
 
 During the whole sixteenth century the external 
 policy of France knew one principal aim, to counter- 
 balance the power of Spain. Now Philip of Spain by 
 his marriage with Mary Tudor had added strength to 
 his position. It secured him a safe passage at all times 
 to his possessions in the low countries, it placed the 
 ships and armies of England at the disposition of 
 Spain. The French king was forced to find a counter- 
 weight in a closer alliance with Scotland. 
 
 Ignoring the passionate jealousy of the Scots of 
 all foreign domination, Frenchmen were slipping into 
 the habit of looking on Scotland as an appanage of 
 the French crown. Mary of Guise had her instructions 
 to rule on this supposition. When in 1551 she paid 
 her one visit to her own country, she was received 
 with enthusiasm as a good soldier might be who was 
 holding a dangerous frontier post. Before the year 
 was out her proud, irritable, suspicious Scotch follow- 
 ing were quarrelling with their French hosts and the 
 king was weary of a guest whose affairs required so 
 much help financial and diplomatic. It was the last 
 time Mary of Guise saw her daughter. In 1554 Mary, 
 having been declared of age, appointed her mother 
 
 23 
 
24 MARY STUART 
 
 Regent in Scotland. Arran, the governor had 
 accepted the affront, at the price of various bribes. 
 The French king had bestowed on him the title of the 
 Duke of Chatelherault. Henceforth we shall hear 
 him generally styled " the Duke." 
 
 The queen-mother's rule failed as signally in its 
 best right endeavours as in its worst mistakes. She 
 lost popularity by her efforts to enforce law and order. 
 " The people used to love me and now they wish I 
 were dead," she wrote once to her brothers with clear, 
 sad perception. Tolerant by nature she yet never 
 departed from her brother's instructions, and when, in 
 1555, Knox first crystallised the dispersed Protestants 
 into a coherent party, she placed herself firmly in op- 
 position. But her most fatal mistake was that she 
 bestowed all the posts of importance on Frenchmen, 
 thus embittering most of the Scottish nobility. In 
 1556 the cardinal was urgent that she should come 
 to France to arrange the preliminaries of Mary's 
 marriage, but the state of affairs in Scotland did not 
 permit of her absence. 
 
 In 1558 the star of the Guises was resplendent. 
 Duke Francis had checked the victorious march of 
 Spain on French soil and had wrested Calais from the 
 English, thus healing a wound in the national honour 
 that had been bleeding for two centuries. In a further 
 respect the loss of Calais to the English had heightened 
 the value of the Scotch alliance. Mary Tudor had 
 received a blow under which neither her gloomy spirit 
 nor her wearied body seemed able to bear up ; Mary- 
 Tudor dying childless would leave a disputed succes- 
 sion and men began to speculate. 
 
 No Catholic could regard the daughter of Anne 
 Bullen as legitimate, and Mary Stuart, the grand- 
 
MARRIAGE WITH THE DAUPHIN 25 
 
 daughter of Margaret Tudor and great granddaughter 
 of Henry VII., was next in succession. One can 
 imagine the glad excitement with which Mary Stuart 
 began to recognise herself as heir to a third crown. 
 She was old enough and high-spirited enough to know 
 the part she had to play in the fortunes of her House, 
 for at this time all her loyalty belonged to the Guises. 
 Scotland, remote both in space and in childish memory, 
 was only valuable for what it enabled her to bestow. 
 
 In the autumn of 1557 the Scottish parliament had 
 consented to the marriage ; in the following April 
 eight commissioners, bishops and lords (and among 
 them the Lord James Stuart, Mary's half-brother) 
 were sent from Scotland to represent their country and 
 to safeguard its liberties. The country was to keep 
 its independence and to be ruled by its own " lovable 
 laws and customs " ; failing Mary the crown was, in 
 simple justice, to pass to the Duke of Chatelherault 
 and his heirs. The agreement was signed with the 
 less demur that there was no intention of carrying out 
 the provisions of it. Several days before Mary had 
 signed three papers. One of these, in the case of her 
 dying without children, made over Scotland and her 
 prospective rights in England unconditionally to the 
 French king. Another undertook that the king should 
 be reimbursed for all his expenses in the defence of 
 Scotland during Mary's minority. In a third Mary 
 disavowed any agreement that might be come to with 
 the Scotch commissioners. These commissioners were 
 all strangers to Mary ; there was no one near her to 
 warn her that nations — least of all the Scottish nation 
 — were not property that could be passed from hand to 
 hand like jewels, no one to call up in her any loyal or 
 romantic feeling about the kingdom of her fathers. 
 
26 MARY STUART 
 
 On one point the commissioners were firm, they refused 
 to grant Francis the crown matrimonial, which would 
 have put his authority in Mary's kingdom on an 
 equality with hers. The sudden death of four of the 
 commissioners at Dieppe from " Italian posset or 
 French figs " was sinisterly interpreted, but there 
 seems no adequate motive for such an atrocity unless 
 some of them were supposed to have learned the 
 nature of Mary's secret convention with the French 
 king. 
 
 The marriage of Mary and the Dauphin, joyous 
 and prolonged like any other royal wedding, is to us 
 chiefly noticeable from the contrast it forms with the 
 curiously hasty marriage with Darnley, and that 
 ominous early morning in May, when in defiance of 
 her people and the disillusionment of her own heart, 
 she plighted her troth to Bothwell. This first 
 marriage at least was triumphant, offering the fairest 
 prospects. Henry II. "joyeux et humain" made the 
 wedding party show themselves to the populace of 
 Paris, a populace always devoted to the brilliant 
 Guises. The princes and nobles who played their 
 parts in the evening pageant were all young, all kins- 
 folk or familiar friends. One thing only was ominous. 
 Half way through the banquet the bride com- 
 plained of the weight of her crown and had to lay 
 it aside. 
 
 In the following November Mary Tudor died and, 
 unquestioned, Elisabeth ascended the throne. Henry 
 II. might listen complacently to court poets prophesy- 
 ing that his daughter-in-law would have : 
 
 " une couronne encore derechef 
 Pour joindre ensemble a la terre ecossaise," 
 
 but impoverished by the wars with Spain and en- 
 
MARRIAGE WITH THE DAUPHIN 27 
 
 grossed in suppressing heresy in his own dominions, 
 he could only reserve his right of remonstrance to 
 another day. Meanwhile he signified his protest 
 by causing the Dauphiness and her husband to 
 assume the arms of England quartered with those 
 of France and Scotland. These arms were flaunted 
 at tournaments and on other public occasions. All 
 through her life Mary was to pay for this idle 
 decoration. 
 
 On April 2, at Cateau Cambresis a peace was 
 patched up which included Spain, France, England 
 and Scotland. Mary signing the special treaty 
 between England and Scotland subscribed herself 
 Queen of Scotland, England and Ireland. Cardinal 
 Granvelle and the Duke of Alva exchanged smiles, 
 "This will cause new trouble before long," said one 
 to the other. 
 
 Troubles indeed were rising for Mary in more 
 quarters than one. For some years past a certain 
 forcible, fervid, iron-grey minister had been at Geneva 
 absorbing from John Calvin the scheme of salvation, 
 and revolving in his own passionate Scottish heart 
 democratic views of the rights of nations and the 
 limits of the authority of princes. The importance 
 of Knox, "the Reformer of a Kingdom," is out of 
 all proportion to that of other persons in the story. 
 His was to be a living influence in the national 
 life of Scotland long after Mary and Darnley and 
 Bothwell were dust, and their loves and sorrows 
 and sins a tale that is told. In that tale indeed 
 Knox was to play a part — the part of a deter- 
 mined and pitiless opponent. More than any one 
 he was to stand between the young Queen and any 
 chance she might have had of understanding her 
 
28 MARY STUART 
 
 people. His passionate rancour against her justifies 
 her failing to give a patient hearing to the religion he 
 taught. 
 
 It was as the author of a pamphlet pouring con- 
 tempt on her sex and impugning her right as a queen 
 that Mary first heard of Knox. Driven from England 
 by the persecution under Mary Tudor, resentful of a 
 personal offence given him by Mary of Guise, angrily 
 suspicious of his own young Queen and her bringing 
 up, he had swept them together in a common con- 
 demnation and had blown his Blast against "the 
 Monstrous Regiment of Women." On the ioth of 
 May 1559 Knox was back in Scotland. At the end 
 of the month came sudden ominous news to the 
 French court. The Protestant lords and preachers 
 had drawn to a head, menacing rebellion ; among the 
 "rascal multitude" rebellion had practically broken 
 out. At Perth, Knox's sermon had been followed by 
 the destruction of altars and the sacking of convents 
 and churches. 
 
 No one among the reforming party pretended 
 that they aimed at obtaining toleration for their 
 opinions. They meant to overthrow the existing 
 order of things in the Church, and to expel idolatry. 
 They might for the present keep up forms of respect 
 for the temporal power, but that power would be no 
 check upon their action. Names of weight were in- 
 volved ; the Queen's half-brother Lord James and the 
 Earl of Argyle were the strength of the reforming 
 party. The Duke of Chatelherault, too stupid to 
 hold convictions either way, still hung dubious. His 
 son Arran was still in France, a Captain in the Scots 
 Guards ; and Mary — whose habit of prompt action was 
 so often to disconcert her enemies — sent at once to 
 
MARRIAGE WITH THE DAUPHIN 29 
 
 have him arrested. A strange, moody, excitable 
 creature, Arran had little personal weight, but in 
 certain contingencies he would inherit the Scottish 
 throne. He was young and a Protestant, and politic 
 heads both in England and Scotland were already 
 speculating on the possibility of a marriage which 
 might unite the two kingdoms in defiance of Catholic 
 Europe. Throckmorton, the English ambassador, 
 contrived to smuggle him across the frontier to 
 Geneva, where his ill-balanced nature, ready for any 
 fanaticism, eagerly adopted extremest Calvinism. 
 
 The suppression of rebellion in Scotland would 
 have fallen in fitly with Henry's larger scheme of 
 repressing heresy in his own kingdom. At last 
 there was peace between the kingdoms of France 
 and Spain. If each government were at leisure to 
 order religious questions in their several dominions, 
 the future of Protestantism would be black indeed. 
 Fortunately the jealousy of the two powers was too 
 deep-rooted to be removed by treaty or alliance 
 or even by common religious interests. Madame 
 Elisabeth, Mary's best-loved play-fellow, had carried 
 the olive branch between the two countries when, a 
 mere child, she was married to Philip II., the most 
 forbidding of bridegrooms. The marriage of his 
 second little daughter, Madame Renee, had been a 
 triumph for the Guises, for the bridegroom was the 
 head of their house, the Duke of Lorraine. In June 
 Henry was celebrating the marriage of his sister 
 Madame Margaret with the Duke of Savoy. Vain of 
 his dexterity and prowess, Henry tempted fate in the 
 lists till a splinter from the lance of a reluctant opponent 
 entered his brain and dealt a mortal wound. 
 
 When courts are ruled by favourites an inevitable 
 and indecent hurry attends the death of kings. The 
 
30 MARY STUART 
 
 Guises could hardly await Henry's latest breath. In 
 the middle of the night they roused young Francis 
 from his bed to receive their homage ; by the next 
 morning the young couple had their cue, and Mary 
 was prepared "de faire le bee" at the Connetable and 
 his nephews and the other favourites of the late king. 
 These were left to pay the last honours to dead 
 royalty while their triumphant rivals hurried the royal 
 party off to the Louvre. Stricken with genuine grief 
 and draped in heavy mourning the queen-mother was 
 about to step into the carriage after her son, but even 
 in that moment her instinct of etiquette recognised 
 that her place was changed, and, stepping back, she 
 motioned to her daughter-in-law to go first. Catherine 
 was the more punctilious in her behaviour to Mary 
 because of the rancour she bore her. 
 
 During the years when she had been abased and 
 ignored she had amassed experience, gained patience 
 and tenacity, and learnt the weaknesses and secrets of 
 all about her. The Guises were to discover with 
 dismay the strength of her veiled opposition, the 
 subtlety and shamelessness of her intrigues. Towards 
 her daughter-in-law her hostility had a personal edge. 
 Mary Stuart had her tongue and her manners in 
 such prudent control that when she spoke out reck- 
 lessly and freely — as she did on several occasions 
 in her life — it was with the deliberate purpose to 
 wound. " Once," writes the Venetian ambassador, 
 "she told her mother-in-law that she would never 
 be anything but a merchant's daughter." In her 
 dealings with Queen Elisabeth also, Mary never 
 forgot that she herself was royal or noble to the 
 last of her quarterings, while Elisabeth was but Anne 
 Bullen's daughter. She could comment with edge on 
 
' : 
 HENRY II, KING OF FRANCE 
 
MARRIAGE WITH THE DAUPHIN 31 
 
 Elisabeth's undignified love affairs or her bursts of 
 plebeian temper. She intended, doubtless, that her 
 biting jest on Elisabeth's fatuous flirtation with Lord 
 Robert Dudley should reach her cousin's ears. 
 "The Queen of England" she said, "was about to 
 marry her groom who had killed his wife to make 
 room for her." It was in later times a satisfaction to 
 Catherine and Elisabeth that policy constantly dictated 
 the duty of thwarting the schemes of the sister queen 
 whose victorious grace and confident high-breeding 
 was an implicit insult to both. 
 
 There was little joy and brilliance in the eighteen 
 months of Mary's queenship in France. Catherine's 
 heavy black robe and sour face were a cloud on the 
 court. The rivals of the Guises had withdrawn them- 
 selves suspicious and resentful. The cardinal was 
 controller of finance ; the duke was head of the 
 forces ; Mary's will dominated the little king ; yet the 
 policy of the three was ineffective. In Scotland 
 the arrival of an efficient French force would have 
 stamped out the rebellion in the autumn of 1559. 
 So half-hearted and suspicious of one another were 
 many of the lords of the congregation that with a 
 small contingent of trained men the regent was 
 keeping them in play. She wrote urgently for 
 effective help, but the Guises, being soldiers and 
 diplomatists, not statesmen, were dazzled with larger 
 ambitions and missed their opportunity. The army 
 they meant to send to Scotland was to be on such a 
 scale that it could proceed to invade England and 
 make good their niece's claim to the crown. Such 
 a force took time to prepare. A fleet had to be 
 brought round from the Mediterranean. Meanwhile 
 English statesmen took alarm and compelled their 
 
32 MARY STUART 
 
 reluctant Queen to give aid to the protestant lords, 
 at first secretly, then more or less openly. 
 
 There was a curious irony in the position of 
 Elisabeth. As despotic a monarch as her father and 
 as devout a believer in the duty of passive obedience 
 as her successor, her constant policy, from the force 
 of circumstance, was to support rebellion against 
 neighbouring governments, now in Scotland, now in 
 France, now in the Low Countries. Her religious 
 convictions were still to seek but her taste and 
 intelligence were all on the side of a reasonable 
 Catholicism, yet she was to find her allies among 
 the extreme Protestants whose views political and 
 religious she abhorred. 
 
 All pretence of peace between the two queens had 
 worn thin by the end of the year. The congregation 
 were openly placing themselves under Elisabeth's 
 protection. Money and men were filtering into 
 Scotland. The regent had been formally deposed. 
 
 Arran with his new-fangled Genevan fanaticism 
 had added the weight of his position to the Protestant 
 party. The project of his marriage with Elisabeth 
 was taking definite shape in many minds and behind 
 it were visions of a united kingdom, an established 
 Protestant Church, Scotland loosened from the 
 French alliance, and Mary and her authority whistled 
 down the wind. English ships were in the Forth 
 before Mary's uncle d'Elboeuf had completed his 
 preparation. When at length his fleet started, a winter 
 storm scattered and destroyed his ships ; only a hand- 
 ful under the gallant Martigues arrived in the Forth. 
 
 In her bitter disappointment and resentment 
 Mary wished to send out another expedition forth- 
 with and to head it in person. But before any steps 
 
MARRIAGE WITH THE DAUPHIN 33 
 
 were taken unforeseen dangers and difficulties of their 
 own were closing round the Guises. Their rule was 
 detested on all hands. Persecution and the dread of 
 harsher measures were rousing the Huguenots to plans 
 of self-defence. English gold was secretly passing 
 amongst them ; the English ambassador was in 
 their confidence. The peace had let loose hordes of 
 idle, penniless officers and soldiers. The greed of 
 the Cardinal refused to recognise their claims, his 
 cowardice forbade their access to court. Here were 
 elements enough of discontent and disorder. In 
 February the king hunting in the neighbourhood of 
 Blois, came on a band of such lawless, landless men. 
 The Cardinal was demoralised by fear. He insisted 
 on the court removing up the Loire to the safer 
 retreat of Amboise. Sailing in barges up the river 
 gay ladies and cavaliers enlivened the time with 
 pageants and masques and singing, while in the back- 
 ground the forces of misery and disorder were silently 
 drawing up against them. It reads like a scene out 
 of the " Decameron." But such forces unfortunately 
 are generally impotent against the compact order of 
 tyrannical authority. 
 
 The conspiracy of Amboise, this menacing 
 combination of many elements of discontent against 
 the hated House of Guise, failed through treachery and 
 lack of cohesion. Fair promises were made to the 
 conspirators when they appeared formidable at the 
 very gates of Amboise, promises broken in dastardly 
 fashion on the morrow. Duke Francis crushed the 
 rebellion, but in the wholesale cold-blooded executions 
 which followed we trace the panic-stricken cruelty of 
 the Cardinal. The very Chancellor, who had con- 
 demned the conspirators, turned on him at last with 
 
34 MARY STUART 
 
 " wicked Cardinal, you damn yourself and all of us 
 along with you." 
 
 By an ingenuity of cruelty the victims were 
 brought out for execution in front of the palace 
 windows "to afford pastime to the ladies." Ranged 
 at their ease, as at a play, the boy princes and the 
 royal ladies watched men die — brave and righteous 
 men among them — without any sign of pity or horror. 
 Only one woman's voice was heard pleading for 
 mercy, that of Anne d'Este, the wife of Duke Francis. 
 Nothing that Mary was to find of lawlessness and 
 cruelty in her own country — not even the murder of 
 Riccio in a queen's chamber — can compare with this 
 surfeit of human agony. Nerves and imagination 
 ^ trained in a more humane and reasonable age need 
 not attempt to understand how a girl like Mary 
 Stuart — generous and pitiful in all private relations — 
 looked on at horrors so ghastly even in narrative. 
 Years later Knollys was to say of her — but it was 
 after she had suffered bitter wrong — " She desires 
 above all things to be revenged of her enemies." Of 
 the starving soldiers defrauded of their pay, and citizens 
 persecuted for their religion, she only knew what her 
 uncles told her, that they were enemies who aimed at 
 her life and the lives of her husband and uncles. 
 
 But there was another side to the Guises. They 
 inflicted death ruthlessly but (with the exception of 
 the Cardinal), they could meet it fearlessly. To the 
 best of them, to Duke Francis, to Mary of Guise and 
 to her daughter, death was less an ill they had to 
 endure than a deed they had to carry through with 
 honour. Neither the last magnanimous hours of the 
 murdered Francis at Orleans, nor the anxious hours 
 at Jedburgh when Mary Stuart deliberately faced 
 
MARRIAGE WITH THE DAUPHIN 35 
 
 death and gave her calm considerate directions, were 
 so touching as the lonely death of Mary of Guise in 
 Edinburgh Castle in the June of this year (1560). 
 
 In the clear light which approaching death some- 
 times throws upon the perplexities of life, she 
 admitted that her policy might have been mistaken, 
 was reconciled to her enemies, received with courtesy 
 the Protestant preacher intruded on her, but quietly 
 and faithfully received the last consolations from her 
 own church. 
 
 The news of her death had been known at the 
 French court for ten days before any one ventured 
 to tell the young Queen, and so vehement was her 
 grief that she fell seriously ill. " She loved her 
 mother incredibly, much more than daughters usually 
 do," writes the Venetian ambassador sympathetically. 
 The causes for which Mary of Guise had fought, the 
 French alliance and the Catholic faith, were lost causes 
 in Scotland. On the 6th of July a peace was con- 
 cluded between the French plenipotentiary on the one 
 hand, and Sir William Cecil and Dr Wotten and 
 their Scottish allies on the other. Of necessity it was 
 an irregular triangular sort of treaty. With one clause 
 in it we shall grow so tediously familiar in the course 
 of the story that it is necessary to understand what 
 it involved. Mary and her husband were "in all 
 times coming to abstain from bearing the title and 
 arms of the kingdom of England or Ireland." At 
 every juncture the English government were to urge 
 the ratification of the treaty, at every juncture Mary 
 found plausible reasons for delaying it. Her claim 
 on the English crown was the highest card in her 
 hand. Various possible events might upset the throne 
 of the illegitimate and usurping Elisabeth ; her own 
 
36 MARY STUART 
 
 Catholic subjects might rise against her ; some change 
 in European politics might induce Philip to withdraw 
 his protection from the Protestant Queen. The words 
 "in all times" might be taken to debar Mary and her 
 children from their lawful succession in case of 
 Elisabeth dying childless, and Mary affected to 
 believe that the words were used in this sense. Later 
 on, Lord James was to propose a reasonable com- 
 promise. Mary was to renounce all claim to the 
 English throne while it was occupied by Elisabeth 
 or any lawful children she might have, and in 
 return, Elisabeth, failing offspring of her own, was 
 to acknowledge Mary and her children as next in 
 succession. 
 
 Elisabeth was as obstinate in the matter of the 
 succession, as Mary in that of the ratification. In 
 the first place, Gloriana could not bear to think of 
 herself as mortal, or to imagine England with any 
 other monarch but herself. It would be like hanging 
 up her winding sheet to name a successor, she told 
 Lethington peevishly. In the next place to nominate 
 a Catholic successor would have been to give a head 
 and purpose to all the restless and discontented 
 elements in the country ; a very real danger. Finally, 
 whatever her own wishes had been, men like Cecil, 
 Bedford and Bacon would have persistently and 
 successfully opposed the nomination of the Scottish 
 Queen. 
 j On this deadlock between the two queens, the 
 
 tragedy of Mary's life was to hinge. 
 
CHAPTER IV 
 
 LE DEUIL BLANC 
 December 1560 — August 1561 
 
 T3ETWEEN partnership with her uncles in their 
 ■■— " bid for power and vigilant attention to the 
 actions of her mother-in-law, Mary Stuart acquired 
 that cool knowledge of men and affairs which was to 
 astonish English politicians. She had not been two 
 months in Scotland before Randolph was to find that 
 " all the policy in all the chief and best-practised 
 heads in France ; whatso craft, falsehood or deceit 
 there is in all the subtle brains in Scotland is either 
 fresh in that woman's memory or she can bring it 
 back with a wet finger." 
 
 She knew courts, she knew nothing of national 
 life. It was the most serious of her misfortunes that 
 with a heart so generous, a spirit so frank as hers, she 
 was never to lose (and in losing to find) her own life 
 in oneness with the life of her people. Still more 
 curious was the contrast between her precocious 
 knowledge of the world and her ignorance of her 
 own nature, its passions and instinct of self-surrender. 
 She had grown up among the Guises ; she knew 
 no plan of life other than the one they followed so 
 consistently. She could not suspect that her own 
 nature was more Stuart than Guise. Beneath her 
 prudence and ambition lay that reckless romance 
 which impelled more than one member of her race 
 
 to wreck cause or kingdom for the sake of passion. 
 
 37 
 
38 MARY STUART 
 
 She was a Stuart, but it was not for nothing that 
 her grandmother had been the sister of Henry VIII. 
 The coarser Tudor elements, the infatuation of love 
 chafing at delay or obstacle, the bursts of unrestrained 
 anger, the unbridled violence of speech, these only 
 emerged once or twice in the life of Mary, but they 
 were the fatal elements of her character. 
 
 In her dignified and prosperous youth, these 
 hidden forces only showed in delicate and lovable 
 instincts. She was warmly affectionate, with a need 
 and infinite capacity for devoting herself to those she 
 loved. Her childish letters to her mother eagerly 
 protest her love and obedience. It is curious to find 
 the same desire to follow another's will, in the letters 
 addressed to Norfolk, in that last and most shadowy 
 of Mary's love affairs. It is because this note is so 
 emphatic and reiterated in the Casket Letters that 
 one doubts the capacity of the forger to catch any- 
 thing so subtly characteristic. 
 
 She seems to have accepted her first marriage as 
 the women of her time and rank mostly did, simply as 
 a means to greatness. The marriage did not last 
 long. Francis had suffered chronically from a painful 
 and repulsive malady. The insanely long hunting 
 expeditions, which were his one form of energy, kept 
 him in a constant state of fever. In November 1560, 
 the court was at Orleans. Great events were pend- 
 ing ; the Guises were playing for high stakes ; their 
 rival, the Prince de Conde, was in prison, condemned 
 to death ; his brother, the King of Navarre, was in 
 daily fear of arrest. Suddenly Francis fell alarmingly 
 ill. The Guises concealed the gravity of the situation ; 
 day and night they were in attendance ; their hurried 
 meals were served in an anteroom. There is nothing 
 
OF THE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF 
 

 - ilua^K- 
 
 LE DEU1L BLANC 
 
 MARY IN HEU u H 'S DRESS 
 
LE DEUIL BLANC 39 
 
 so hideous as rivalries, suspicions and stifled dislike 
 meeting in a sickroom. Night after night with bitter 
 ceremoniousness Mary and Catherine disputed the 
 right to watch by the dying boy lying speechless and 
 troubled between them. On the night of the fifth 
 December, Francis died. At midnight Catherine 
 called a meeting of council, the Guises secured 
 themselves in their lodgings, the Bourbons breathed 
 again, courtiers hastened to transfer their allegiance 
 and the widowed girl of eighteen was left with 
 the dead. The Venetian ambassador — the same 
 who had sympathetically noted Mary's sorrow for 
 her mother — wrote now, "So by degrees every one 
 will forget the death of the late king except the 
 young Queen who is no less noble-minded than 
 beautiful." 
 
 On the following day with dignified promptitude 
 Mary restored the royal diamonds to her brother-in- 
 law, assumed the white mourning of a Queen of 
 France and shut herself up for forty days in rooms 
 draped with black and lighted only by torches. She 
 had life to begin all over again ; she was just eighteen, 
 and the world — her world — had strangely changed in 
 twenty-four hours. The young husband she had 
 lost had been her play-fellow, he had loved her, and, 
 in spite of the inequality of their natures she had felt 
 affection for him. There is a little poem of hers, 
 singularly melodious and tender, written, so Brantome 
 tells us, on this occasion. 
 
 She writes of herself as one : — 
 
 " Qui en mon doux printemps 
 Et fleur de ma jeunesse 
 Toutes les peines sens 
 D'une extreme tristesse 
 
40 MARY STUART 
 
 Et en rien n'ai plaisir 
 Qu'en regret et desire 
 * * # * 
 
 Si en quelque sejour 
 Soit en bois ou en pre 
 Soit sur l'aube du jour 
 Ou soit sur la vespree 
 Sans cesse mon coeur sent 
 Le regret d'un absent." 
 
 But the chief part of her sorrow was unaffected 
 regret that she had fallen from her great estate, her 
 main anxiety was how to order her affairs — and in her 
 case this meant the bestowal of herself in marriage 
 — that she might recover her position. It was at this 
 moment that Elisabeth was outraging the feelings of 
 her responsible servants by her flirtation with Dudley. 
 Throckmorton, her ambassador in France, was not 
 unwilling to point a moral at his mistress when he 
 wrote of Mary, " She more esteemeth the continuation 
 of her honour and to marry one that may uphold her 
 to be great than she passeth to please her fancy." 
 The prudence and dignity of the white young widow 
 impressed Throckmorton, but what appealed most 
 strongly to him as a straightforward, high-spirited man, 
 often galled by Elisabeth's caprice and disloyalty, was 
 her modesty, the fact that she thought herself " not to 
 be too wise but is content to be ruled by good counsel 
 and wiser men." Perhaps Throckmorton admired 
 this womanly dependence less when Mary resisted 
 both him and Bedford urging the ratification of the 
 Treaty of Leith on the plea that she could take no 
 step without consulting her Scottish council. 
 
 It soon became clear to Mary that there was no 
 place for her at the French court. She was of no 
 further use to her uncles, nay, if their only chance lay 
 
LE DEUIL BLANC 41 
 
 in affecting an alliance with Catherine, the presence of 
 the rival dowager, young, beautiful and sure of a train 
 of followers, would embarrass their action. A visit to 
 her sister-in-law, the prosperous self-satisfied little 
 Duchess of Lorraine, convinced Mary how little she 
 herself was fitted to take a second place. Even in 
 the first weeks a crowd of possible suitors all over 
 Europe were turning their eyes towards Joinville 
 whither the young widow had withdrawn with her 
 grandmother. 
 
 Beautiful, self-confident and accustomed from 
 childhood to the foremost place, Mary imagined 
 nothing lower than the world-wide empire which 
 marriage with the heir of Spain would secure for her. 
 For five years her imagination was dazzled by hopes 
 of this foremost position in Europe ; if she ever 
 thought of inquiring into the personal qualities of the 
 Spanish prince, diplomatic reticence must have been 
 complete, for at no point was she deterred by the con- 
 sideration that Don Carlos was a degenerate imbecile. 
 Two more of her suitors were to end in madness, 
 Eric, King of Sweden and the Earl of Arran. The 
 latter, recently rejected by Elisabeth, hastened on the 
 first opportunity to lay his heart at his cousin's 
 disdainful feet. Two sons of the Emperor were 
 among the aspirants, also the King of Denmark. 
 The light-hearted King of Navarre was pondering 
 whether he could find a pretext to divorce his uncom- 
 fortably superior wife, Jeanne dAlbret, and marry the 
 beautiful dowager. In Yorkshire the restless, am- 
 bitious Lady Lennox was already considering how 
 she could commend her fair, long-limbed son, Lord 
 Darnley, to his cousin's favour. And like the two 
 jealous step-sisters of this princess of many lovers, 
 
42 MARY STUART 
 
 Catherine and Elisabeth were intent on thwart- 
 ing her schemes. A King of Spain with sovereign 
 rights in Scotland and a claim on the English crown 
 was as fearful to Catherine as to Elisabeth. The 
 English Queen had already made up her mind and 
 was instructing her Scottish allies that Mary must 
 only be suffered to marry a Scottish or English noble- 
 man who would add nothing to her importance. 
 
 The months passed, no decision was come to, and 
 Mary felt more and more that there was no place for 
 her in France. The pressing question arose : was 
 there room for her in Scotland, her native kingdom ? 
 The Venetian ambassador wrote pityingly of her as 
 deprived of the crown of France and with little hope of 
 recovering that of Scotland. In the last year indeed, 
 Scotland had been drifting complacently into a sort 
 of commonwealth. Master Knox saw in it already 
 such a theocracy as he read into the Old Testament, 
 such as he had seen with his own eyes at Geneva. 
 Without a misgiving he was prepared to be the 
 inspired guide of this commonwealth, to dictate its 
 policy, to cleanse its land of idolatry and to compel 
 righteousness of life and purity of religion. " Devout 
 imagination" Maitland of Lethington had called 
 such visions, in his clear-sighted witty fashion, but 
 it was a "devout imagination" which was stamping 
 itself with fatal distinctness on the consciences and 
 brains of a compact body of middle-class Scotsmen 
 — a class which seems to have sprung into being at 
 the voice of Knox. This was the section of her 
 people whom Mary was never to conciliate. 
 
 By gifts, of which they were insatiably greedy, 
 and by delicate womanly flattery of their Scottish 
 pride, she was easily to appease the suspicions of her 
 
CATHERINE DE MEDICI 
 
LE DEUIL BLANC 43 
 
 nobility; the voices of the "rascal multitude" were 
 won without difficulty to cry "God bless that sweet 
 face" by the frank, smiling beauty of the young 
 Oueen. But the bulk of serious burohers and their 
 wives listened week after week with sour satisfaction 
 to Knox denouncing from the pulpit her " dancing and 
 skipping," and the "stinking pride" of her "targetted 
 tails." For Mary, full of ambitions — Spanish 
 marriage, English succession — or possessed by her 
 more fatal dream of love and happiness, these sober- 
 suited people hardly existed, yet they and their crude, 
 sincere instinct of conduct proved to be the unregarded 
 stone which, falling on her, was to grind her to powder. 
 It was the strength of the position of the Lord 
 James, Mary's half-brother, that he represented the 
 faith and aspirations of this class. The change in 
 religion had given James Stuart the position of v 
 power and responsibility he coveted, for which he was 
 fitted, and from which he had seemed excluded by the 
 accident of his birth. The son of the woman 
 James V. had nearly married, the woman he had 
 loved most dearly, Lord James had a position quite 
 different from that of Lords John and Robert, 
 Mary's other half-brothers, wild young bloods who 
 were to take cordially to their royal half-sister and 
 to fill her court with noise and brawling, love- 
 making and cheerfulness. His position so near the 
 throne, yet with no such claims as gave fictitious 
 importance to Chatelherault and Lennox, explains 
 much in the character of James. He had the 
 capacity of a ruler without the generous instincts of 
 a king ; he had a conscience but at no point of his 
 life did he show any warmth of heart ; he served the 
 cause of God as he recognised it but never arrived at 
 
44 MARY STUART 
 
 indifference to the tangible rewards of land and money. 
 He owed it to the good Protestants who believed in 
 him to be jealous over his reputation for righteousness, 
 and if he profited by other men's crimes he was 
 careful to remain in ignorance of them. Serious by 
 nature, he felt at home in the austere walk and con- 
 versation which Protestantism was rapidly grafting 
 on to the fierceness of Scottish life, a walk and con- 
 versation to which his colleague, Maitlandof Lethington, 
 hardly made a pretence of conforming. 
 
 Lethington was one of a long line of Scotsmen 
 who have never felt quite at home till they have 
 found themselves on the English side of the Border. 
 The perfervidum ingenium of their countrymen is a 
 weariness to the taste and critical instincts of such 
 men, and a constant temptation to their sense of 
 humour. At the court of Elisabeth, Lethington was 
 in his element. " A Scottish Cecil " the French 
 ambassador called him ; Elisabeth gracefully described 
 him as " the flower of the wits of Scotland." If 
 Knox accepted the English alliance because it 
 furthered "the religion," Lethington accepted Pro- 
 testantism as a means of drawing the two countries 
 nearer together. That Scotland should take her place 
 among the great civilised states was his enlightened 
 political aim, and this she could best do in close alliance 
 with England. With this view he had tried to further 
 the marriage of Elisabeth with Arran, just as later, 
 with the same view, he strove to have Mary recognised 
 as Elisabeth's heir. 
 
 Arran, the suitor of two reigning sovereigns, was 
 singularly unfit for the important place into which he 
 was being pushed. His religious fanaticism was part 
 of a generally unsettled mental condition ; his father's 
 
MAITLAND OF LKTHINGTON 
 
LE DEUIL BLANC 45 
 
 penuriousness stood in the way of the young man's 
 dignity and popularity. 
 
 These three men, with Knox behind them, were 
 guiding affairs in Scotland when Mary resolved to 
 return to her own kingdom. 
 
 Mary of Guise is supposed to have prepared a 
 written document for her daughter's use, summing up 
 the characteristics of all the leading noblemen of 
 Scotland. If written in the last year of her life, it 
 can hardly have been creditable to most of them, but 
 one man would certainly have stood well in those 
 pages, James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell. This 
 "glorious and hazardous young man" was the only 
 one of the nobles of whom Mary of Guise could have 
 said that he had been both faithful and efficient in her 
 cause. He had waylaid and carried off a consignment 
 of money secretly sent from England to the Lords of 
 the Congregation ; when the days were darkening 
 round the dying Queen he had arrived at the French 
 court to urge the need of further succours. At a time 
 when the Protestant faith, in its first earnestness, was 
 calling on all men to purify their lives, it is a whimsical 
 fact that this reckless, sensual swash-buckler — as 
 regardless of the honour of women as of the lives of 
 men — should never, either for fear or favour, have 
 deviated from the Protestantism he professed. 
 
 In April two envoys from Scotland reached Mary 
 where she was staying at Vitry in Champagne within 
 two days of each other. One, John Leslie, a young 
 ecclesiastic, came on behalf of the Catholics in Scotland 
 and with definite proposals from the Catholic Earl 
 of Huntly that she would land at Aberdeen and trust 
 herself and her cause to him and the inchoate northern 
 forces he had at his command. For all his bluster and 
 
46 MARY STUART 
 
 boasting Mary knew Huntly to be fickle and ineffectual. 
 A day later than Leslie, arrived Lord James, the 
 accredited envoy of the Parliament. Leslie had 
 warned Mary against her brother, had even urged 
 his being detained in France, but Mary had received 
 other and more prudent counsels. The French- 
 men recently come from Scotland, her mother's old 
 friend d'Oysel and the soldierly Martigues who had 
 starved gallantly behind the walls of Leith, were 
 convinced that she should frankly ally herself with 
 the ruling faction and use the services of Lord James. 
 
 For four years this strangely situated brother and 
 sister were to act in concert ; she was to follow his 
 suggestions and heap honours and wealth upon him. 
 He was to affect to be her protector and to espouse 
 her interests, yet one doubts if there was ever a move- 
 ment of cordiality or confidence between them. At this 
 first meeting Mary frankly avowed her policy : she 
 would refuse to ratify the treaty, she would discontinue 
 the alliance with England, she would marry some 
 foreign prince. Lord James noted her conversation 
 and a few days later reported it all to Throckmorton. 
 No wonder the English ambassador urged his mistress 
 to reward substantially so good a friend. 
 
 Mary's frankness argued no simple-minded con- 
 fidence in her half-brother, but rather a bold deter- 
 mination that from the beginning her subjects should 
 know what to expect. She would not repeat her 
 mother's mistake and rule Scotsmen with the help of 
 French advisers and soldiers. Unlike that mother 
 she was no alien but their native princess, the daughter 
 of their kings. Once and again, at the end of her 
 troubled life, she declared that her last words should 
 be those of a daughter of the Church and a Queen of 
 
LE DEUIL BLANC 47 
 
 Scotland. She might have blazoned these words as 
 her device from the beginning. She was going 
 among a people who had defied her authority and 
 discarded her religion, without any alien support, 
 trusting entirely to her natural authority and innate 
 courage. 
 
 Three of her uncles and many French gentlemen 
 were to escort her to Scotland, but purely as a guard 
 of honour and pledged to an early return. The 
 journey alone offered dangers enough to daunt a less 
 resolute woman. To secure her passage through the 
 narrow seas Mary sent her ambassador to ask for a 
 safe conduct from Elisabeth with promise of accom- 
 modation if she were driven by stress of weather to 
 land on the English coast. It was little enough to 
 demand ; there was peace between the two countries ; 
 but when the request was made by Mary's ambassador 
 Elisabeth refused it with a burst of passion in the 
 presence of the whole court. Afterwards, it is true, 
 she sent a message that if Mary would ratify the 
 treaty she might have free passage through England 
 and the queens might meet in friendly conference. 
 The difficulties Elisabeth afterwards threw in the way 
 of all proposed meetings give one the measure of her 
 sincerity in this invitation. She had the habit of 
 making generous proposals when she had taken 
 security against their being accepted. 
 
 Mary received the first affront with admirable 
 dignity. There must have been extraordinary lucidity 
 and grace in her speech. Throckmorton, Randolph 
 and Knox have all reported long dialogues, and with 
 how much faithfulness is proved by the fact that in 
 almost every case they leave the victory with her. 
 Throckmorton's interest and admiration are evident 
 
48 MARY STUART 
 
 from the small space occupied by his counter-argu- 
 ments. Mary had a genius for putting her opponents 
 in the wrong, and on no one did she exercise it with 
 finer skill than Elisabeth. When she received 
 Throckmorton she dismissed her attendants " not 
 knowing," she explained with some edge, " my own 
 infirmity, nor how far I may with my passions be 
 transported, and not liking to have so many witnesses 
 of my passions as the Queen your mistress was content 
 to have when she talked with M. d'Oysel." As to 
 the ratification, her reasoning was clear and pointed. 
 The original treaty had been drawn up in the name 
 of her late husband and herself; circumstances had 
 changed ; as independent Queen of Scotland she 
 would sign no treaty without the advice of her 
 Scottish Council ; her uncles being Frenchmen might 
 have no part in her councils. On that same evening, 
 when the English ambassador came to take his leave, 
 her mood had changed. She was as dignified as 
 before, but there was a girlish pathos in her demeanour. 
 It may have been reaction from the effort of the 
 morning, it may have been a dramatic pose, it may 
 have been that the danger and loneliness of her lot 
 had swept over her soul. She seemed to realise the 
 unkindness of her cousin's action. She trusted that 
 she would not need to land in England, but if she did 
 fall into her cousin's hands, she said, " she may then 
 do her pleasure and make sacrifice of me. Peradven- 
 ture that casualty might be better for me than to live ; 
 in this matter God's will be fulfilled." But in a 
 lighter tone she added that she trusted all might yet 
 be well. Then, in the curiously frank manner of the 
 time, she embraced Throckmorton and said good-bye. 
 The contrast with Elisabeth was complete when, next 
 
LE DEUIL BLANC 49 
 
 day, Mary was careful to send him the present for- 
 gotten in the hurry of the farewell. 
 
 On August 15th she set sail from Calais. 
 
 Brantome, who tells us the story of her passage, 
 was in her train, admiring, obsequious, letting no 
 picturesque detail escape his notice ; Bothwell may 
 have been there, with his soldierly swagger and rough, 
 arresting, forcible face, undistinguished as yet from 
 other mettlesome young men ; Damville was there, 
 the Connetable's son, a declared lover of the Queen, 
 and in his train, a rash, inflammable, young poet 
 Chastelard. 
 
 There is a charm of naturalness and individuality 
 about every reported action of Mary. As long as 
 the coast of France was visible she leaned on the 
 bulwarks, the big tears falling unrestrained. Her 
 ladies succumbed to the discomforts of the sea, but 
 she, wholly given up to her emotion, insisted on 
 having a couch dressed for her on deck. Thence, 
 sitting up at dawn next morning she looked her last 
 at the low grey coast-line of receding France. 
 
 The ship was a great galley rowed by wretched 
 prisoners chained to the oar, men whose sufferings 
 no one regarded ; but Mary, claiming her royal pre- 
 rogative of spreading content and happiness wherever 
 she came, insisted that no blow should be struck in 
 the ship as long as she was on board. Yet this same 
 girl had seen unmoved the torments of the victims 
 of Amboise ! The one incident gives us the measure 
 of her natural goodness of heart, the other the intensity 
 of the religious and political rancours of the time. 
 
CHAPTER V 
 
 mary's return to Scotland 
 
 August 1561 — January 1562 
 
 A COLD, dark morning in a Scotch August, an 
 ^*- easterly haar creeping over the sea, the squalid 
 little port of Leith hardly alive and stirring at seven 
 o'clock in the morning, and, three miles off, the Capital 
 taken at unawares, all unprepared to welcome the 
 returning Queen ; such was Mary's return to her 
 native kingdom. Similar mischances were not 
 unknown to Royalty in the sixteenth century. Two 
 years before, Madame Elisabeth, on her way to the 
 proudest throne in Europe, had been storm-stayed 
 in the Pyrenees, and between the delays of Spanish 
 etiquette and the heaping snow-drifts had run the 
 risk of falling short of supplies. 
 
 For several hours on that cheerless August day, 
 Mary and her party had to wait in the house of 
 Captain Lambie, a citizen of Leith. In the course 
 of the morning noblemen, hastily advertised of her 
 presence, hurried singly or in companies from 
 Edinburgh to welcome the Queen. Lord James was 
 one, and Argyle (who had married one of Mary's half- 
 sisters), Huntly also, and Atholl and others of the 
 Catholics. Brantome declares that the Queen shed 
 tears over the sorry hackneys hurriedly collected 
 to carry the party to Holyrood, but he is probably 
 reflecting his own feelings rather than the Queen's. 
 Mortification she may have felt, but courage and 
 
 5° 
 
MARY'S RETURN TO SCOTLAND 51 
 
 courtesy, her two prevailing instincts, would have for- 
 bidden such an expression of feeling. 
 
 The ample plenishing that Mary was bringing with 
 her did not arrive till a month later ; meanwhile the 
 modest luxury Holyrood could afford consisted of 
 furniture that had belonged to Mary of Guise. In 
 prosperous times luxury may be reckoned to double 
 with each generation, but Mary's possessions were 
 more than three times as numerous as her mother's. 
 Instead of nine beds she had forty-five, thirty-six 
 Turkey carpets instead of two, and arras cloths 
 of state and other furniture in like proportions. She 
 had the finest jewels of any lady in Europe. All 
 this splendour was by no means without effect 
 on her Scottish nobles. The richest of them was 
 mortified when he contrasted his poor and defective 
 equipment with that of the French and English 
 nobility, his peers. To a man they were rapacious 
 in grasping any means of enriching themselves. The 
 sight of Mary's possessions dazzled their rude 
 imaginations and lightened for her the task of 
 winning their allegiance. But experience of her 
 large bounty increased their cupidity without exciting 
 their gratitude. 
 
 Till her possessions arrived she had only smiles 
 and thanks and gracious words to bestow, and of those 
 she was no niggard. Brantome's French ears might 
 be tortured by the serenade of some honest men of 
 the town — psalm-singing to the accompaniment of \ 
 rebecks — but Mary not only declared that the music 
 liked her well, but in her graciousness begged that 
 it might be repeated on further evenings. The 
 absence of all comfort and dignity in her surround- 
 ings could no more detract from Mary's queen- 
 
\ 
 
 52 MARY STUART 
 
 Hness than could any elaboration of ceremonial 
 stiffen her vivacity and womanly sweetness. She 
 received the envoy sent by the Lennoxes to con- 
 gratulate her on her return, sitting in the midst of 
 her luggage, the most royal creature that ever graced 
 throne or packing-case. She might, in private, join 
 in the laughter or the grumbling of her French 
 attendants, but she was her father's daughter as 
 well as niece to the Guises. She had come to gain 
 the heart of her Scottish subjects, and in the excite- 
 ment of those early days it is clear that her- own 
 heart went out to meet theirs. Of the Protestant 
 nobles her conquest was rapid and complete. They 
 who had but yesterday avowed themselves 
 servants to Elisabeth now wrote to the English 
 council resenting Elisabeth's denial of a free pass- 
 port and hinting plainly at the recognition of Mary as 
 next heir to the throne. It flattered the national 
 vanity to have a queen who might match with any 
 crown in Europe and bring two kingdoms as her 
 dowry. 
 
 Had it not been for the religious question Mary 
 and her people in these early days would have been 
 heartily at one. Knox, in writing of Mary, constantly 
 uses the word "dissimulate" and most unfairly, for 
 there was entire clearness and decision in all her 
 actions regarding religion. She had refused to ally 
 herself with the Scottish Catholics, she had come 
 unguarded by a single French soldier, for a whole 
 week she had successfully conciliated her influential 
 Protestant subjects, but on that first Sunday she un- 
 hesitatingly ordered the chapel of the palace to be 
 prepared for the celebration of the mass. 
 
 There was no privacy at court in those days 
 
JAMKS STUART. EARL OF MURRAY 
 
MARYS RETURN TO SCOTLAND 53 
 
 many of the noblemen had their lodging in the small 
 crowded palace itself, others quite near in the aristo- 
 cratic suburb of the Canongate. " The hearts of the 
 godly were pierced," writes Knox, as if it were a 
 quite unlooked for occurrence. The clash of arms 
 was heard in the court and, distinct above the cry of 
 angry men, the voice of the Master of Lindsay, in 
 whom as we shall see, ferocity had stern alliance with 
 fanaticism, proclaiming death to the idolater priest. 
 The French household were terror-stricken but Mary 
 never faltered. 
 
 " To have her mass in private, who should stay 
 her?" so Lord James had asked the Council, with 
 what should have been convincing commonsense. 
 The cogency of his own remark was being uncomfort- 
 ably forced home upon him. With the instincts of 
 gentlemen and the kindliness of kinsmen Mary's three 
 half-brothers stood by her. Lords Robert and John 
 protected the priest back to his lodging, Lord James 
 guarded the door during the service. It was a 
 serious matter for this man whom " all the godly did 
 most reverence " ; it compromised his character with 
 these severe, unreasoning judges. But he was not 
 alone in his defection. Beyond the court precincts, 
 in the crowded streets of Edinburgh, or in St Giles 
 and especially in Knox's study the Lords of the 
 Congregation might rage against the new scandal, 
 but in the presence of the beautiful, cordial young 
 Queen all protest faltered and men read their own 
 weakness in the abashed, pleased countenances of 
 their neighbour. " I think there be some enchant- 
 ment whereby men are bewitched," said sober Campbell 
 of Kinyeancleuch to a late-comer, Lord Ochiltree. 
 
 Edinburgh was a small town in those days. Pro- 
 
i 
 
 54 MARY STUART 
 
 bably not more than thirty thousand inhabitants were 
 packed between the narrow walls. But each inhabitant 
 of the steep crowded streets and wynds had hands 
 quick to strike, a tongue ready to wag and a fiery heart 
 to espouse any cause good or bad. On Sundays, Knox 
 was accustomed to sway to his liking the better part 
 of this energetic and dangerous community. On the 
 Sunday that followed the Queen's mass, in a passionate 
 address, he declared that " this one mass was more 
 fearful to him than if ten thousand enemies had landed 
 in the country." Behind Mary he saw the Guises, 
 a Cardinal who might one day be Pope and a soldier 
 who might any day by a caprice of court favour have 
 irresponsible control of French armies. Behind the 
 mass at Holyrood he saw the massacres of Amboise 
 and the inextinguishable hatred of Huguenot and 
 Catholic. Knox was right. It was as plainly in- 
 cumbent on the Catholic Mary to destroy him and 
 his sermon if she could, as it was the duty he felt to 
 be laid upon himself to suppress her mass and, if need 
 be, herself along with it. Such was the position of 
 religious parties in the sixteenth century. 
 
 He might have allowed Mary the benefit of the 
 doubt. There is little evidence that the Queen at this 
 time felt strongly a mission to restore her country to 
 the true fold. She was determined to be true herself 
 to her religion, partly because loyalty was of the 
 essence of her nature, partly because she knew that to 
 turn Protestant would disqualify her for the leading- 
 part she meant to play in European diplomacy. At 
 this moment she was set on the English succession, 
 and for this end she needed the support of her Pro- 
 testant subjects. It is possible, just possible, that a 
 modus vivendi, such as Elisabeth had found, might 
 
MARY'S RETURN TO SCOTLAND 55 
 
 have been found for Mary also, but Knox was re- 
 solved that such a thing should not even be hoped 
 for. 
 
 It is the inhuman element in Calvinism which 
 teaches that the effort to save a large proportion of 
 souls is useless if not impious. Knox, " as if he were 
 of God's privy council " — the expression is that of the 
 friendly Randolph — was determined that Mary "could 
 never come to God nor ever have one single good 
 thought of Him." He had hated her with theological 
 hatred before she touched the Port of Leith, but there 
 was a personal edge to his rancour after the first fort- 
 night when he had seen his party broken up and his 
 influence weakened by the magic of her presence. To 
 this " idealism of hate " we owe the minute and vivid 
 touches of all his references to Mary. 
 
 We know how largely Mary bulked in Knox's 
 mind. It would be interesting to know the place he 
 occupied in hers. It was certainly far smaller than he 
 would have believed possible. At any time it argues 
 singular originality of heart and brain when a woman 
 of privileged position understands and approves 
 opinions and sentiments opposite to those in which 
 she has been brought up. There was nothing in 
 Mary's experience or character that could dimly suggest 
 to her that she was face to face with a new force, a 
 force she was bound, at the peril of life and crown, to 
 estimate duly. I f she failed — failed tragically — to under- 
 stand the power and quality of her enemy, she had at 
 least the high spirit which was determined to lose no 
 time in meeting- him face to face. She relied on the con- 
 troversial commonplaces she had learnt from her uncle ; 
 on the mere authority of the crown — never in her sur- 
 roundings called in question ; on her own quick wits ; 
 
56 MARY STUART 
 
 and if she calculated also on the effect of personal 
 fascination the experience of the last fortnight 
 entirely justified her. 
 
 As Knox reports the dialogue, the bulk of the 
 speaking was on his side. Mary showed indeed most 
 unfeminine patience, never interrupting, and once 
 enduring a pause which lasted fifteen minutes. Knox 
 lectured her on his own credentials, on the limits of 
 the obedience of subjects, on the idolatry of the mass. 
 She kept her head and once and again revealed the 
 weak points of his argument. When he bade her 
 look upon it as the greatest glory that flesh can be 
 heir to on earth to be in subjection to the Church of 
 God, she asked pertinently which church ? When he 
 referred her to the authority of the Scripture, she 
 asked "who shall be the judge and interpreter?" 
 When he argued that it was the duty of subjects to 
 disobey their princes when their consciences were 
 otherwise, she brought the case home by saying, 
 " Well, then, I perceive that my subjects shall obey 
 you and not me. ... So must I be subject to them and 
 not they to me." It would have been difficult to sum 
 up Master Knox's scheme of government more fairly. 
 
 It was indeed a strange impossible game of 
 diplomacy, patience and self-repression that this high- 
 spirited girl was called on to play with occasional 
 self-interested partners, but no genuine allies, against 
 a compact body of aggressive public opinion. In this 
 game she was eventually to lose everything, crown, 
 liberty and reputation. The wonder is that she kept 
 it up so long and scored so many points against her 
 opponents. 
 
 Even in the pageants that welcomed her return, 
 insults were flung at her religion ; there was an implied 
 
MARY'S RETURN TO SCOTLAND 57 
 
 menace in the symbolical burning of Korah and Dathan 
 which ended the rejoicings in the High Street of 
 Edinburgh. She was too prudent to make remon- 
 strance, but the insults stung. Once during a similar 
 pageant in the town of Dundee she turned suddenly 
 faint and had to be lifted from her horse. 
 
 This prudence, however, argued no lack of spirit. 
 A month after her arrival the provost and bailies of 
 Edinburgh issued a proclamation coupling priests, 
 friars and nuns with drunkards, whore-mongers and 
 other scandalous livers and banishing them from the 
 town. Instantly the royal authority swooped down 
 upon the insolent magistrates, swept them into ward in 
 the Tolbooth and issued a mandate for a new election. 
 
 Aggressive policy in matters of religion would 
 have been futile and dangerous : to gain a sour, un- 
 certain toleration for her own mass was the utmost 
 she could achieve. Meanwhile the Pope, singularly 
 ill-informed as to the true state of matters in the utter- 
 most isles of the sea, was expecting for the Church 
 some first-fruits of Mary's return. In the following 
 July [1562] a papal ambassador by name Goudanus was 
 sent secretly to Scotland to report on the state of 
 religion and to invite the Queen and bishops to send 
 a representative to the Council of Trent. The 
 Scottish bishops of that day were not the stuff martyrs 
 are made of. With one consent they refused even to 
 receive Goudanus, save the Bishop of Dunblane, who 
 made him assume the disguise of a banker's agent. 
 The Queen risked even more than they in receiving 
 an emissary of the Pope, but she was of quite other 
 mettle. 
 
 For a month Goudanus had to skulk about 
 Edinburgh in disguise, till one Sunday morning when 
 
58 MARY STUART 
 
 he was secretly conducted through outlying fields to 
 Holyrood and smuggled up to the Queen's chamber. 
 It was the time of sermon at St Giles and Lord James 
 and other people of importance would be safely 
 occupied for several quiet hours. The Queen was all 
 Goudanus could have wished in cordiality and in 
 assurances of faithful attachment to the Church, but she 
 was too prudent to make any promises for the future. 
 The papal court never understood Mary's diffi- 
 culties, and suspected her of lukewarmness while 
 Knox was thundering at her anti- Protestant zeal. 
 Irksome and anxious as was this constant friction 
 about religion, ominous as we who have seen the end 
 know it to be, it did not bulk disturbingly in Mary's 
 eyes. She accepted all arrangements in Scotland, 
 religious and political, as provisional. She looked 
 forward to a diplomatic triumph in the Spanish 
 marriage, to an alliance that would remove all 
 restraints and difficulties, and put her opponents 
 below her feet. Meantime she could tolerate and 
 wait, absorbed in her plans and enjoying — as there is 
 evidence to show she did enjoy — her position as an 
 independent sovereign. 
 
 There is an incident, merely an incident, out of 
 the main current of her story, which gives a natural 
 and winning picture of her girlish eagerness to use her 
 power for the service of her friends. Returning from 
 the English court in January [1562] Lethington had 
 brought sinister rumours of suspicion and disgrace 
 fallen on the Guises. De Foix, an ambassador sent by 
 Catherine, gave further details. An ugly story was 
 current at the French court of an attempt to carry off 
 ^ Monsieur, the little Duke of Orleans, the next heir to 
 the throne. The man accused of this wild enterprise 
 
MARYS RETURN TO SCOTLAND 59 
 
 was the Duke of Nemours acting in the interests and 
 at the instigation of the Guises. 
 
 Mary promptly and with angry tears denied the 
 truth of such a tale. She would go bail for the honour 
 of all her house. But she was filled with apprehension, 
 and in this mood she sat down to write her heart out 
 to her uncle. If any evil befell her friends she " would 
 never have joy again having lost all, all that I held 
 dear except only them." But the writer is not merely 
 an affectionate woman pouring out sympathy, but a 
 young queen offering all the resources of her power 
 and influence. 
 
 It was at this moment that she and Elisabeth had 
 begun their interchange of vows of devotion and 
 mutual service. Mary acts on the assumption that 
 all is sincerity between them. She entreats from 
 Elisabeth for her uncles the favour of the services of the 
 English ambassador at the French court. She is half 
 apologetic, half triumphant as she relates to her uncle 
 this stroke of diplomacy. But there is an unmistak- 
 able note of girlish exultation when she imagines the 
 feelings of her uncle's enemies " if they see us, the 
 Queen of England and me, getting on so well that she 
 desires her ambassador to serve you as you appoint 
 lm. 
 
 All this generous scheming was unnecessary ; at 
 the very time of writing, the storm had blown past and 
 the Guises were reinstated in their own place. 
 
CHAPTER VI 
 
 HOLYROOD 
 January 1562 — November 1562 
 
 THE six years of Mary's reign in Scotland are 
 perhaps the swiftest and completest tragedy in 
 history, but they began like a May game or the last act 
 of a comedy, so full of play and pageant and love 
 affairs and marriages were the first few months. All 
 the court was young, the queen herself but nineteen. 
 All her life she had been a Oueen but never a ruler till 
 now. Her first marriage had been a foregone con- 
 clusion : now she was waiting for the wooers who 
 should come from over seas. Most of her ladies were 
 young and unmarried. The four Maries seem to have 
 had the character and warmth of heart of Scotswomen 
 and the grace and vivacity of France. 
 
 There was only one woman at the English court ; 
 the sighs and amorous glances of young gallants were 
 as steadily directed to the virgin Queen as were the 
 portfolios of ministers or the despatches of ambassadors, 
 but at the Scottish court Mary Beaton might enter- 
 tain a supper-table by her wit or Mary Fleming queen 
 it at a Twelfth Night party in her mistress's finest 
 jewels and cloth of gold. 
 
 We can only skirt past the coarseness, corruption 
 and cold cruelty of Catherine de Medici's court, but the 
 minute and spiteful gossip of hostile critics such as 
 Knox and — to a lesser degree — Randolph fail to prove 
 any scandal in the gay doings at Holyrood. The 
 
 Co 
 

 
 
 I 
 
 
 
 o 
 
HOLYROOD 61 
 
 affection Mary excited in her intimate women friends 
 survived her disastrous love affairs, her shame and 
 sorrow, her long imprisonment. At the court of 
 Elisabeth, love affairs had to be carried on sur- 
 reptitiously and marriages commonly ended in the 
 Tower, but love and marriage were the element in 
 which Mary lived. It was she who delighted to 
 clothe the bride in cloth of silver with white taffety 
 lining or other sumptuous fabric from her French 
 stores ; she who signed the contract, she who led the 
 dance or figured in the masque. 
 
 In the January after her arrival her three half- 
 brothers held their weddings with a state and luxury 
 which, in the case of Lord James, was a scandal to 
 the godly. But he could afford to stand a little aloof 
 from Knox and his sermons ; his star was in the 
 ascendant ; he had been made Earl of Mar, had 
 married after " long love " the daughter of Earl 
 Marischal. In all points his sister seemed to bend to 
 his advice. 
 
 Gay and approachable as Mary might be in the 
 intimate life of her court, claiming little privilege 
 beyond what every other lady fondly accorded to her 
 natural pre-eminence, she could sharply shut off the 
 frivolities of her social life from the cares of state and 
 diplomacy. She astonished Randolph by her clear 
 recollection of all the craft and policy of the preceding 
 years both in France and Scotland. Of all men 
 Lethington had most dreaded her return ; he had not 
 been ashamed to hint to the English government the 
 desirability of her capture ; he had foreseen " great 
 tragedies " if her return were allowed, but almost at 
 once Lethinoton went over to her allegiance and 
 became the most assiduous, as he certainly was the 
 
62 MARY STUART 
 
 ablest of her servants. She does not appear to have 
 exercised her special, personal spell on his cool, 
 observant nature, nor did she bribe him with gifts and 
 honours as she did Lord James, but each soon re- 
 cognised in the other a diplomatist with whom it would 
 be easy and profitable to work Lethington's favourite 
 scheme of a closer union between Scotland and 
 England, and Mary's ambition to be recognised as 
 Elisabeth's successor were plans that could be worked 
 together. Together they concocted adroit and cogent 
 letters to Elisabeth on the eternal subjects of the 
 ratification of the treaty and the settlement of the 
 succession. While on these two points neither queen 
 retreated for a moment from the positions each had 
 taken up yet, during the first year, a remarkable 
 change passed over their relations to one another. 
 
 Ignoring any intention she may have had of captur- 
 ing her cousin on the seas, Elisabeth gravely sent an 
 envoy to congratulate her on her safe return. Then, as 
 if by mutual consent, both ladies began a game of 
 romantic devotion to each other. It is difficult to guess 
 how far each imagined that she deceived the other ; it 
 is possible that at moments the deception extended even 
 to themselves. Elisabeth had a curious pleasure in 
 imagining herself in quite impossible situations as when 
 she told the Spanish ambassador that what she would 
 really like would be to be a nun. It is more difficult to 
 believe that Mary ever persuaded herself that Elisabeth 
 would enjoy playing the part of elder sister or mother 
 to her triumphant youth ; still the pretty game went 
 on, graceful and symmetrical as a contre-danse, and 
 about as serious. Mary almost persuaded the English 
 ambassador, the observant and suspicious Randolph, 
 of her sincerity. She would declare in jest that she 
 
HOLYROOD 63 
 
 would have no husband but the Queen of England. 
 She would carry Elisabeth's letters in her bosom and 
 on occasions would wear no jewels except the diamond 
 of her giving, while in stilted phrases that carry no 
 conviction Elisabeth declared that it would be easier 
 for her to forget her own heart than the heart of 
 Mary, " ce cceur que je garde." Even a wise man 
 like Lethington persuaded himself — so full of hopeful- 
 ness and glamour was the time — that substantial 
 advantages might pass across this rainbow bridge of 
 feminine sentiment. He assured Randolph — and 
 apparently quite gravely — that Mary " would never 
 come to God unless the Queen's Majesty should draw 
 her." 
 
 Negotiations were afoot for a meeting between 
 the two queens in the summer of 1562. In desiring 
 this interview Mary was entirely sincere ; she had 
 everything to gain. She knew how many there were 
 in Elisabeth's kingdom "inclined to hear offers"; 
 she knew precisely the view that devout Catholics 
 were bound to take of Elisabeth's position ; the last 
 few months had taught her the political value of a 
 marriageable young queen with a kingdom in her 
 dowry, and feminine instinct was not reluctant that 
 a discerning world should see herself and her cousin 
 face to face and measure their beauties and their wits. 
 
 Two contradictory delusions haunted Mary up to 
 the end of her life ; either that Elisabeth with sudden 
 generosity would yield her all she wanted, or that she 
 could raise a party from Elisabeth's own subjects to 
 enforce her rights by violence. 
 
 They were genuine tears of mortification which 
 Mary shed when, at midsummer, Elisabeth decided 
 that the meeting could not take place. It was probably 
 
64 MARY STUART 
 
 one of the many plans that Elisabeth had played with 
 and never intended to carry out, but the fresh religious 
 troubles which the ill-considered action of the Guises 
 had caused to break out in France, furnished the 
 English Queen with sufficient excuse for postponing 
 her journey northwards. 
 
 If Mary had found in Lethington a partner in 
 foreign diplomacy, she could join hands with Lord 
 James in the administration of the country. Both 
 were true Stuarts in their determination to enforce 
 order in a country torn by factions and knowing no 
 law but that of the strongest. 
 
 In the November after Mary's arrival Lord James 
 was sent to the Border with free hand to deal with 
 rievers and robbers. Whilst he was absent at 
 Jedburgh — dispensing justice in a wholesale, probably 
 quite necessary fashion — there occurred one night a 
 mysterious alarm at Holyrood. A sudden rumour 
 rose — no one knew how — that Arran was at hand 
 with an armed force to carry off the Queen. Panic 
 spread amongst the women, the men hastily organised 
 themselves into a bodyguard and occupied outposts 
 round the palace all night. 
 
 With daylight the terror vanished nor could any 
 sufficient cause for it be found. But kidnapping 
 princes had been the recognised policy of Scottish 
 nobles during- the nonage of more than one Stuart 
 king and a queen young and marriageable would have 
 been a valuable prey. The Hamiltons were not 
 above suspicion. Old Chatelherault held aloof cling- 
 ing to the one political fact he had ever mastered, his 
 own position as heir to the throne, but his son Arran 
 in his crazy brain was brooding over two wrongs ; his 
 own rejected suit and the insult offered to "the religion" 
 
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HOLYROOD 65 
 
 by Mary's mass. This he gently characterised "as 
 more odious in God's sight than the sin of murder." 
 To a man in his morbid condition offences were not 
 slow to offer themselves. 
 
 Few men have ever excited more ill-will among 
 their peers than the Earl of Both well. In the late 
 quarrel he had discomfited the Protestant lords, 
 capturing supplies from England and making patent 
 their dependence on Elisabeth. But that had been 
 the fortune of war ; the hostility of men like Lord 
 James and Lethington was founded on personal 
 qualities. He was too boastful, violent and dangerous 
 for genuine friendship or political alliance ; too little 
 of a time-server to pretend to either. With Arran 
 he had a personal feud, and, in consequence, both 
 moved about with a dangerous and expensive follow- 
 ing. " Black Ormistons," Hepburns of other ilks, 
 reckless young scions of impoverished Border families, 
 made up Bothwell's train, men ready for any deed of 
 blood or rapine if he raised a finger. 
 
 Now it happened that the Earl and Lord Robert, 
 the queen's half-brother, while hospitably making her 
 uncle the Due d'Elbceuf acquainted with the lawless 
 pleasures of the town, had crossed the Earl of Arran 
 on a similar quest. A street brawl, on an unusually 
 large scale, had ensued, bringing down Mary's dis- 
 pleasure on the heads of all four. 
 
 Then quite suddenly and unaccountably Bothwell 
 sought to be reconciled with Arran, using, oddly 
 enough, Knox's good offices in the affair. He passed 
 at once into suspicious intimacy with his former 
 enemy. Four days later, Arran, excited and dis- 
 tressed, sought out Knox and poured out wild, 
 incoherent accusations against Bothwell. He had 
 
66 MARY STUART 
 
 proposed, according to Arran, that they two should 
 murder Lord James and Lethington, kidnap the 
 Queen and have all the kingdom in their power. It 
 may have been — it probably was — a crazy delusion 
 on the part of Arran. But Bothwell was at any time 
 capable of making a reckless throw for fortune, and at 
 that time he had nothing to lose either in wealth or 
 credit. Here at any rate was an opportunity for the 
 crown to reap substantial results and for Lord James 
 to clear away more than one rival. Mary might 
 soften to poor old Chatelherault's protestations of 
 innocence but Dumbarton was nevertheless taken out 
 of his charge. Arran was shut up in the prison from 
 which he never emerged, and Bothwell was put in 
 ward in Edinburgh Castle. Men thought that Mary 
 gave that last order reluctantly, and that she was not 
 ill-pleased when a few months later he broke his 
 prison. He was on his way to join her uncles in 
 France when he was wrecked on the English coast. 
 Two years he was kept a prisoner in England, then, 
 on Mary's entreaty, was set free and retired to France. 
 For three long years he disappears out of the story. 
 
 Bothwell removed from the Border, the power of 
 the Hamiltons weakened in the west, there remained 
 the north where Huntly with his wealth, his Highland 
 hordes and his self-willed unscrupulous sons, was a 
 standing menace to law and order. Catholic though 
 he was he inspired the Queen with no confidence, and 
 Lord James had a personal animus against him. He 
 held in irregular possession that Earldom of Murray 
 on which Lord James' heart was set, and fortune in 
 this case forwarded the godly. 
 
 John Gordon, Huntly's son, had been sent to prison 
 for the customary crime of stabbing his enemy in the 
 
HOLYROOD 67 
 
 street. He had the effrontery to break his ward, defy 
 the Queen's authority and flee to his father. Huntly 
 had the imprudence to uphold his son's action. Mary 
 happened to be on her northward progress at the time. 
 Bitterly displeased, she refused to be the guest of 
 Huntly at Strathbogie. Incredulous that she would 
 carry matters to an extremity with the most powerful 
 Catholic in her kingdom, Huntly remained sullenly 
 recalcitrant till Lord James' action, prompt and 
 authoritative, drove him into open rebellion. The 
 overthrow of this great house was complete, Huntly 
 himself died of apoplexy in the moment of defeat, his 
 eldest son was imprisoned during the queen's 
 pleasure, John Gordon, the chief offender, was be- 
 headed in Aberdeen. The queen was present at the 
 execution, some thought unwillingly and constrained 
 by her half-brother. The sumptuous plenishings of 
 Strathbogie were forfeited and carried south to 
 Holyrood. 
 
 Mary's high spirit had been roused by opposition, 
 she had entered with zest into the dangers and excite- 
 ment of the campaign, envying the men who, with 
 casque and buckler, came in from their night-watch in 
 the field ; but the complete triumph of Murray — for 
 the coveted earldom had, without loss of time, been 
 openly conferred upon him — was not a main object of 
 Mary's policy. 
 
 It is curious that Mary's history was to be more 
 intimately involved with the ruined House of Huntly 
 than with any other family in Scotland. On the 
 Sunday following the murder of Riccio it was old 
 Lady Huntly who visited the deserted young queen 
 with schemes for her escape. At Craigmillar, at 
 Kirk o' Field, at Almond Bridge, Huntly was ever at 
 
68 MARY STUART 
 
 Bothwell's right hand. Tapestry hangings from Strath- 
 bogie covered the nakedness of the wretched chamber 
 where Mary took her last good-night of Darnley her 
 husband. The only human being whom Mary ever 
 cruelly and selfishly injured was Lady Jean Gordon, 
 the young and virtuous wife of Bothwell. 
 
 
CHAPTER VII 
 
 MARY AND ELISABETH 
 October 1562 — September 1564 
 
 T7ORTUNATELY for posterity a gift for gossip 
 -*• was, in the sixteenth century, an essential part 
 of a diplomatist's equipment. We have seen the skill 
 with which Throckmorton could report conversation ; 
 Philip of Spain was kept informed by his ambassador, 
 the Bishop of Aquila, of the phases of Elisabeth's 
 flirtation with Lord Robert Dudley with a minuteness 
 that would satisfy a novel reader. 
 
 When two queens rule neighbouring, mutually 
 suspicious countries ; when each, by curious fate, 
 centres in herself the hopes of two opposing religious 
 parties ; when both are young, handsome and of 
 marriageable age, their personal inclinations and am- 
 bitions, their love affairs, their offers of marriage 
 become of vital moment in the history of politics and 
 diplomacy. It was necessary for Elisabeth and Mary 
 that each should have at the court of the other an 
 envoy, not only devoted to the interests of his mistress, 
 but with eyes quick to mark jealousies, moods, 
 alliances ; ears ready to pick up court scandals, 
 quarrels, rumours and even sentiments, and a lively 
 pen skilled to present the court of either queen agree- 
 ably to her rival. 
 
 Few men have had a finer gift for gossip than Sir 
 
 James Melville, on one occasion Mary's envoy at the 
 
 court of Elisabeth. Driven by some impish fate, 
 
 69 
 
70 MARY STUART 
 
 working in the interests of posterity, Elisabeth de- 
 livered herself into the hands of this lively and adroit 
 courtier. There is no more humorous and telling 
 piece of portraiture in history than his representation 
 of the virgin queen. 
 
 This is not the great queen who could say with 
 truth " I have always behaved myself so that, under 
 God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safe- 
 guard in the loyal heart and good-will of my sub- 
 jects"; not the high-hearted Englishwoman who 
 defied Spain at the head of her soldiers, declaring that 
 " in her woman's body she had the heart of a king and 
 a Kinor of England too, and thought foul shame 
 that Spain or any prince of Europe should dare to 
 invade the borders of her realm." 7 It is the very 
 feminine Elisabeth, vain, jealous, sentimental, undigni- 
 fied, treacherous, the Elisabeth that appears habitually 
 in the story of Mary. / 
 
 She evidently intended to make an impression on 
 Melville, wore every day a new gown, and consulted 
 him as to which became her best ; she laid an 
 elaborate plot that he might surprise her in solitude 
 playing on the virginals ; he had to delay his return 
 for two days that he might not lose the chance of 
 seeing her dancing " high and disposedly." She spoke 
 half a dozen languages that he might see her accom- 
 plishments. She was shamelessly eager to extract from 
 him whether she were not as fair, as tall, as golden- 
 haired as her younger cousin. She talked sentimentally 
 to him about Lord Robert Dudley as the man she 
 loved "as a brother," produced his portrait from her 
 cabinet but could hardly be persuaded to show it to 
 Melville. With incurable, romping levity she must 
 needs tickle Lord Robert's neck during the serious 
 
MAkY BEATON 
 
MARY AND ELISABETH 71 
 
 ceremony which invested him with the earldom of 
 Leicester and this in the presence of all the foreign 
 ambassadors. Rarely has any woman had so small a 
 sense of natural propriety. 
 
 Sir James' narrative excites suspicion by its very 
 picturesqueness. Far more convincing are the life- 
 like conversations, descriptions, and anecdotes that 
 crop up incidentally in the despatches of Thomas 
 Randolph, Elisabeth's ambassador at the court of 
 Mary. Honestly devoted to his own mistress and 
 her interests, and the friend of Lethington and 
 Murray, he might be flattered by Mary's gracious- 
 ness into cordiality but seldom out of his suspicion of 
 her. At times he irritated her ; she was always on 
 her guard with him ; but she admitted him to her 
 intimacy, and probably watched with amusement his 
 attentions to his "dear mistress, worthy Beaton." 
 To him we owe many winning pictures of the frank 
 simplicity of Mary's court life. 
 
 Her family affections, as we have seen, were 
 singularly warm, and the death of her uncle the Duke 
 of Guise in February 1563 had been a bitter grief to 
 her. She was at St Andrews when Randolph arrived 
 bringing her a letter of condolence from Elisabeth. 
 He found her hawking in the neighbourhood and 
 presented his letter. Her tears flowed so abundantly 
 over the kind words, that when she rejoined her party 
 at the dining-place her sorrowful face cost him many 
 angry looks from her ladies till Mary explained how 
 much consolation her good cousin's letter had given 
 her. On this same occasion Mary Beaton " the 
 hardiest and wisest " of her Maries, had to break to 
 her the death of another uncle, dead of his wounds, 
 and her sorrow broke out afresh. Yet Randolph goes 
 
72 MARY STUART 
 
 on to say that that evening he and Lethington and 
 Murray succeeded in wringing some laughter from her. 
 There is another charming picture of her two 
 years later, again on a visit to St Andrews. She 
 lodged with a small train in a merchant's house in 
 South Street, saw few people, and "lived merrily like 
 a Bourgeois wife with her little troop," and there 
 received the English ambassador. 
 
 When Randolph wanted to introduce the eternal 
 subject of her marriage she reproached him for inter- 
 rupting the pastime with his great and grave matters. 
 " I pray you, Sir, if you be weary here, return to 
 Edinburgh and keep your gravity and great ambassage 
 until the queen come thither. . . . You see here 
 neither cloth of state nor such appearance that you 
 may think there is a queen here ; nor I would not 
 that you should think that I am she at St Andrews 
 that I was in Edinburgh." He adds that it pleased 
 Mary to be very merry and to call him by many nick- 
 names, the sober, serious, self-conscious man of affairs ! 
 Randolph's letters and Knox's narrative alike fail 
 to show any weakness in Mary. She never lacked 
 dignity nor presence of mind. Anger she showed, 
 and sorrow, but never vanity nor indecision nor any 
 I of the more ignoble faults. Yet it was the woman of 
 v the warmer heart, the more generous hand, the finer 
 nature who was to meet with treachery and ingratitude 
 "X on a ^ hands, while neither her caprice nor her shame- 
 less disloyalty were to deprive Elisabeth of the most 
 devoted and efficient services ever rendered to a crown. 
 In Elisabeth's service men suffered bankruptcy, so 
 great was her parsimony ; they took their credit in their 
 hands knowing that she would not scruple to disown 
 their actions if it suited her convenience ; they bore 
 
QUEEN ELIZABETH 
 
MARY AND ELISABETH 73 
 
 with her temper, her violent language, her foolishness 
 even when these jeopardised their wisest schemes. 
 
 The fact is that the two countries were at quite 
 different stages of development. England was waking 
 up to a consciousness of her national life, in every 
 direction she was feeling after her destiny. To the 
 Englishmen of that day, to soldiers, adventurers, poets 
 as well as to statesmen, some symbol was necessary of 
 the national greatness for which they were labouring. 
 Such a symbol they found and worshipped in their 
 maiden queen. And in truth there were qualities in 
 Elisabeth to justify this worship. She had, as it were, 
 an instinct divining the thought of her people and 
 prescient of their destiny, she used the large full utter- 
 ance characteristic of the time, she shared its audacity, 
 its love of adventure, she was the heart of England. 
 
 In Scotland, too, under thwarting factions and 
 greedy barbarisms, the national life and conscience 
 were struggling into being. For a century and a 
 half to come, this life was to develop solely along the 
 line of a narrow, intense, absorbing religious conscious- 
 ness. Alone among nations Scotland had to adjust 
 her relations to the Almighty before she took her 
 place among civilising powers. It was the doom of 
 the later Stuart kings to be one and all in mortal 
 hostility to the spiritual instincts of their people. The 
 nobler among them, those who held convictions of 
 their own, Mary, Charles I., James II. perished in the 
 conflict, James VI. and Charles II. escaped through 
 sheer frivolity. This cleavage began fatally and 
 inevitably with Mary and was due as much to her 
 finer qualities as to her faults. 
 
 Randolph tells us incidentally that Mary disliked 
 Edinburgh. It was not the steep, red-roofed romantic 
 
n MARY STUART 
 
 little town that excited her dislike, but the sense she 
 had of a spirit in its inhabitants, inquisitive, censorious 
 and directly hostile to herself. Month by month the 
 strain between her and her people grew more tense. 
 In the year 1562-63 civil war was raging in France, 
 a war for which her uncles were mainly responsible. 
 Elisabeth openly supported the Huguenots; Mary could 
 not afford to quarrel with Elisabeth but her sympathies 
 were naturally with her kinsfolk. As naturally the sym- 
 pathies of her subjects were on the other side. The 
 populace of Edinburgh, always demonstrative, could 
 barely be restrained from posting placards wounding 
 to Mary's feelings on the doors of her palace. 
 
 News filtered in at long intervals. She was mainly 
 dependent on the English ambassador for information, 
 and it was hard for her and her ladies to command 
 their countenances when Glencairn or Randolph 
 hastened to report some Protestant success. If she, 
 on her side, showed signs of satisfaction when the 
 fortune of war leaned the other way, immediately 
 the godly were vociferous, accusing her of rejoicing in 
 the sufferings of God's people. A ball at Holyrood 
 which took place about the time that news arrived of 
 the fall of Rouen was the subject of an angry sermon 
 from Knox. Indeed the "dancing and flinging" of 
 Mary and her "French fillocks" (fillettes) occupied 
 a quite undue amount of the reformer's attention. 
 There was surely a forlorn and commendable courage 
 in the fact of these ladies still professing, in un- 
 toward circumstances, "joyeusete" as their plan of 
 life. To pass one's days dissimulating all spontaneous 
 feeling, and affecting toleration of all that goes against 
 the grain is so heavy a part that one wonders how 
 Mary could keep it up so long. Life at Holyrood, 
 
MARY AND ELISABETH 75 
 
 after the first excitement was past, must have been 
 dull enough. The very language of her nobles was 
 unfamiliar and uncouth to her ears. What had she 
 in common with Ochiltree and Glencairn, stiff, honest 
 Puritans ? What with the fierce Lindsay, the greedy 
 truculent Morton and the sinister Ruthven ? Small 
 wonder if she and her ladies welcomed eagerly anyone 
 bringing with him the old gay habits and artistic 
 charm of the French court. 
 
 In the winter of 1563 Chastelard was back in Scot- 
 land drawn by the irresistible fascination which was to 
 be his doom. A passion for some royal lady was part 
 of the equipment of a court poet, and he made no 
 secret of his devotion, pouring out sighs and sonnets 
 at the feet of the Oueen of Scots. Such offerings were 
 frankly welcome to Mary. Daily readings in Livy 
 with a thin-skinned pedant like George Buchanan 
 were dry nourishment for a romantic young woman. 
 The polished Latin verses he wrote for her masques 
 might be the admiration of Europe, but they lacked 
 the sweet intimate flattery of Ronsard's or du Bellay's 
 courtly verse. Chastelard was a poet of the same 
 school as these. He was an adept in that quick- 
 witted, half-intellectual, half-frivolous social inter- 
 course to which Mary had been accustomed. He 
 knew the catchwords of her circle, he could recall 
 old laughter and reawaken forgotten sentiment. And 
 at all times Mary was hungry for pleasantness and 
 easy flattery. She rubbed up her accomplishment 
 of verse-making to return him sonnet for sonnet. 
 They were skilful partners in those elaborate Re- 
 naissance dances which, in graceful pantomime, 
 suggest dramas of passion or of sentiment. 
 
 From the times of James III. and earlier, the 
 
76 MARY STUART 
 
 Scottish nobility had hated foreigners and despised 
 artists. They resented it bitterly when they found 
 this " abject varlet " (so they chose to call Chastelard, 
 sister's son to the Chevalier Bayard) hanging about 
 Mary at all hours, talking talk to her which was 
 meaningless to them. 
 
 Once and again Mary was to make the mistake 
 of allowing familiarity where she found sympathy. 
 Chastelard was but a feather-brained youth, and 
 passion and vanity turned his head. On the evening 
 of February 12th [1563] Mary was sitting up late 
 discussing important matters with Lethington and 
 Murray. Her ladies waiting in her bed-chamber had 
 fallen asleep, and Chastelard had the audacity to step 
 in and hide below her bed. Fortunately the grooms 
 of the chamber discovered and drove him out before 
 Mary's approach. When informed of his effrontery 
 she angrily dismissed him, and thought the whole 
 painful business at an end. 
 
 Nothing could stop Chastelard's infatuation. Two 
 nights later at Burntisland he burst into Mary's bed- 
 room, fortunately before she had dismissed her 
 ladies. The cries of dismay brought instant help. 
 Murray was the first on the spot. Mary adjured 
 him to avenge her on the man who had insulted her. 
 Murray did rightly in preserving Chastelard for the 
 slower vengeance of the law, but one could have for- 
 given some degree of heat and even of violence in an 
 elder brother called in to defend a sister's honour ! 
 
 The relations of Mary and her half-brother were 
 all the more uneasy because of their necessary close- 
 ness. Three objects Murray had at heart ; to keep 
 a steady eye on his own interests, to keep the Queen 
 of England his friend, and to uphold the Protestant 
 
MARY AND ELISABETH 77 
 
 religion. At any moment one or all of these was 
 bound to run counter to his allegiance to Mary. 
 With curious subtlety he reconciled these three 
 principles with cordial approval of the Spanish 
 marriage. He probably hoped that such a marriage 
 would — after the birth of an heir to the throne — re- 
 move Mary from Scotland and leave the regency in his 
 hands. Lethington was even more ductile. "What- 
 soever she most liketh, that he most alloweth," Ran- 
 dolph said of him at a later date. In 1563 with all 
 the force of her will and brain, all the glow of her 
 imagination, Mary was working at her scheme for 
 the Spanish marriage, and Lethington was devoting 
 all "his wisdom to conceive and his wit to convey" 
 to furthering her plans. On the very night of 
 Chastelard's first attempt he had received final in- 
 structions. He was accredited to the courts of 
 England and France, but had also secret messages 
 for Aquila the Spanish ambassador in London. 
 
 It was not without some justification that Buchanan 
 with heavy satire described Lethington as a chameleon. 
 It would be difficult to recognise the brain of the 
 Protestant rebellion in Scotland, the constant advocate 
 of union with England in the complacent envoy sitting 
 in confidential midnight tete-a-tete with the Spanish 
 ambassador, easily talking away all objections to the 
 match. The Scottish nobles, he declared, would like 
 the alliance ; the religious difficulty could be adjusted. 
 Then to quicken the Spaniard's zeal a hint was 
 thrown out of an alternative scheme of marrying 
 the Scottish queen to her brother-in-law the young 
 King of France — a plan that would indeed have been 
 news to Catherine de Medici. 
 
 The advantages to Spain were obvious. Aquila 
 
78 MARY STUART 
 
 caught fire at once, so did Granvella when the plan 
 was communicated, even the sluggish imagination of 
 Philip seemed kindled for a moment. But true to 
 his motto, " io y el tempo," he delayed action and 
 allowed difficulties to accumulate and become in- 
 superable. Objections arose on all sides. The 
 Cardinal of Lorraine had been so accustomed to 
 manage Mary's affairs, that without consulting her 
 he had offered her hand to the Emperor for his 
 second son. Archduke Charles, a sensible and educated 
 gentleman, was at a discount as a suitor. Elisabeth 
 objected to him that his head was too large. Mary 
 that his wealth and power were insufficient. Still the 
 negotiation complicated matters with Spain. Philip 
 was unwilling to enter into competition with his uncle, 
 the Emperor. 
 
 The Spanish marriage had always been a night- 
 mare to Catherine. Such a policy would be ruinous 
 to France, such elevation of her daughter-in-law the 
 bitterest humiliation to herself. French opposition 
 was another obstacle to the irresolute Philip. The 
 English government also got word of the negotia- 
 tions, and a letter to the Queen of Scots made it 
 perfectly clear that Elisabeth would resent as a 
 hostile act either the Spanish or Austrian marriage, 
 or indeed any alliance that would increase Mary's 
 power and position. This practically limited her 
 choice to one of Elisabeth's subjects or one of her own. 
 Even Murray was inclined to resent such interference. 
 
 Meantime the most formidable difficulty lay at 
 home among Mary's own subjects. The Spanish 
 negotiations were to be kept an absolute secret, but 
 Knox had correspondents everywhere and few events 
 at the courts of France and England failed to reach 
 
1)()N CARLOS 
 
MARY AND ELISABETH 79 
 
 his ears. In May when the negotiations between 
 Lethington and Aquila were most promising and 
 seemed most secret, Knox suddenly fulminated from 
 St Giles. " Dukes and the brethren of emperors and 
 kings were " he knew " suitors to the queen." With 
 prophetic sternness he warned the nobility that in the 
 day when they consented "that an infidel — and all 
 papists are infidels — shall be head to your sovereign 
 ye do so far as in ye lieth to banish Jesus Christ from 
 the realm." We have only to remember the bitter 
 struggle of the Netherlands against Spanish tyranny 
 to recognise the entire reasonableness of Knox's fears. 
 In this he was the guardian of the future liberties alike 
 of England and Scotland. But from Mary's point of 
 view his sermon was a monstrous, unwarrantable in- 
 terference. She sent for him and in a vehement fume 
 heaped reproaches on him. 
 
 " What have ye to do with my marriage ? or what 
 are ye within this Commonwealth ? " 
 
 " A subject born within the same and, as God 
 hath made me, a profitable member." 
 
 We hear the echoes of this notable phrase in 
 Solemn Leagues and Covenant, in Declaration of 
 Rights, in Revolution Settlements, but the sound was 
 too mighty to be caught by contemporary ears. 
 Mary's burst of angry tears is hardly a comma in 
 the march of a great period. 
 
 Finally it was neither Knox, nor Catherine nor 
 Elisabeth who thwarted Mary's dearest ambition. 
 In these high political alliances one forgets that 
 personal qualities went for anything. The inhuman 
 dislike Philip had to his own son probably quickened 
 his perception that Don Carlos' ill-developed body, 
 dulled wits and brutalised instincts unfitted him for 
 
80 MARY STUART 
 
 the part of Mary's husband and partner of her great- 
 ness. True to his nature Philip took months to arrive 
 at this conclusion and the negotiations wore on and 
 gradually dwindled from lack of response from the side 
 of Spain. It was a cruelly trying time for Mary. She 
 had borne with the constraint and disquiet of her lot 
 because she judged them to be temporary, but from 
 the autumn of 1563 all avenues of escape seemed to 
 be closing upon her. Her body, vigorous enough but 
 highly strung, always responded to the mood of her 
 soul. She was ill and depressed, weeping often with- 
 out apparent cause. Her moods varied. At times she 
 still asserted that she might marry where she pleased, 
 at others would complain that she was sought by 
 nobody. Again, more in Elisabeth's vein, would 
 praise the widow's life as best. 
 
 Three feminine powers, like three fates, were 
 working at Mary's destiny. Catherine's activity was 
 limited to thwarting where she could. Lady Lennox, 
 Mary's aunt, had been Elisabeth's prisoner in the tower 
 for the two previous years, but in the summer of 1563, 
 by a sudden freak of Elisabeth's policy, the whole 
 family were released and invited to court. Here they 
 were much made of, especially the boy Darnley who 
 was on all occasion recognised as first prince of the 
 blood. At this period, too, Elizabeth first petitioned 
 Mary for the return of the Lennoxes to Scotland. 
 
 The real arbiter of Mary's fate was however 
 Elisabeth. She had posed as mother or elder sister 
 to her cousin. On her lay the onus of proposing 
 some marriage she would approve since she had 
 thwarted those already mooted. She could not have 
 made a more impossible and insulting proposal than 
 the one she had hinted at for months and openly pro- 
 

 MARY AND ELISABETH 81 
 
 pounded in February 1564. Lord Robert Dudley 
 was the second son of the Earl of Northumberland 
 who had died attainted of treason. All his wealth 
 and position he owed to that infatuation of Elisabeth 
 which had been the scandal of courts and the gossip 
 of ambassadors. The suspicion that hung round the 
 death of his wife, Amy Robsart, had never been cleared 
 away, he had played with all religious parties and 
 Cecil, for one, was under no delusion as to the worth- 
 lessness of his character. The prudent Secretary was 
 eager to remove from the side of his own mistress a 
 man who was a constant temptation to her folly. 
 It is more difficult to follow Elisabeth's motives. She 
 believed the man whom she offered to her cousin to 
 be passionately in love with herself. Perhaps with 
 the perverted sentimentality of a woman devoid of 
 natural, elementary feeling, she imagined that this 
 would continue when he was Mary's husband, and that 
 " Dudley, so trusty and loving " would always put her 
 interests before those of his wife ! 
 
 Mary read her cousin's motives with feminine 
 subtlety. A man accepted by one queen might be 
 regarded as an eligible suitor for another, Elisabeth 
 might be only using her cousin to enhance her 
 Dudley's value. The negotiations, unreal as they 
 were, became more serious and absurd. Elisabeth 
 went the length of suggesting that they three should 
 form one household "at her charges." The simplest 
 explanation is that she wished to put on her cousin 
 the onus of refusing the suitor offered. This would 
 justify Elisabeth in refusing approbation of any 
 other. But Mary never failed to put Elisabeth in 
 the wrong. She would neither refuse nor accept 
 till Elisabeth declared definitely what she proposed 
 
82 MARY STUART 
 
 to do for her. Vague promises had no meaning. If 
 she abased herself to such a match and Elisabeth 
 herself married and had children or in anyway 
 disallowed her claim, where would Mary find herself, 
 her friends alienated, her dignity lowered and nothing 
 gained ? 
 
 Along with this singular negotiation other strands 
 were being worked into Mary's destiny. In the 
 summer of 1563 we have seen Elisabeth, in a sudden 
 twist of policy, petitioning Mary for the recall of the 
 Lennoxes. But a year later, when Mary had lent 
 a willing ear to the request, Elisabeth suddenly backed 
 out of the responsibility, She had the effrontery to 
 suggest that Mary should retract her permission to 
 Lennox to return, and should do this as if on her 
 own initiative. 
 
 Elisabeth had been straining Mary's patience for 
 many preceding months. It must have been a relief 
 to the Scottish queen to explode in righteous anger 
 at the intolerable proposal. Dissimulate and deceive 
 as she might, Mary's pride at all times forbade her 
 to go back on her plighted word and she had little 
 motive to do so to please her cousin. When Lennox 
 arrived in September [1564J he had a gracious 
 reception. He was bidden to alight at Holyrood 
 and was merely allowed time to remove his boots 
 before he was summoned into the royal presence. 
 His restoration to titles and lands was solemnly 
 proclaimed at the cross of Edinburgh. With 
 mischievous and exulting irony the proclamation 
 declared emphatically that the restoration was for 
 the sake and at the recommendation of the Queen's 
 good cousin the Queen of England. 
 
 Twenty years of exile and waiting on chance had 
 
MARY AND ELISABETH 83 
 
 not changed Lennox. He was vain, weak, treacher- 
 ous and at once servile and overbearing. During the 
 first months of his return he was prodigal of gifts 
 and civilities. It was noticeable that in a shower of 
 gifts none was bestowed on the Earl of Murray. 
 
 Lennox's arrival was the signal for old feuds to 
 revive, making curious cross-divisions in religious and 
 political parties. Outwardly conciliation was the order 
 of the day. 
 
 Reconciling irreconcilable enemies was one of 
 Mary's constant occupations, but neither she, nor the 
 principals engaged, nor any one else, had any con- 
 fidence in the professed amity between Lennox and 
 the Hamiltons. The Earl of Morton held aloof till 
 he was certain that no claim would be made on the 
 forfeited land of Angus which he was enjoying. The 
 whole country dreaded the possible return of Lady 
 Lennox as "a plague no less formidable than the 
 return of the French soldiery." 
 
 There was a second thread in the web that was so 
 soon to entangle Mary in its meshes. Ever since 
 Bothwell had been detained in England in 1562, 
 petitions had been sent from Scotland for his release. 
 It is surprising to find Lethington's good offices 
 employed on behalf of a man whom he disliked. 
 " Lethington wishes to be too great with all men " ; so 
 Randolph explained his character. But in this case 
 subtler influences were at work. The two most active 
 workers for Bothwell were the Queen and Mary 
 Fleming ; they alone felt any satisfaction when he 
 obtained his freedom in 1564. 
 
 He went to France and joined the king's guard, a 
 penniless, swaggering adventurer, free in his talk, eager 
 to pick up the coarse, loose gossip of the guardroom. 
 
84 MARY STUART 
 
 Yet another thread. Gossip about the Leicester 
 marriage had spread at the French court. Mary 
 believed that Raulet, her French secretary, had been 
 indiscreet and he was dismissed. For three years 
 Mary had had among her ''chamber varlets " an 
 Italian called Riccio, " a merry fellow and a good 
 musician." At the end of 1564, he took Raulet's 
 place as French secretary, and very quickly his 
 influence with Mary became unbounded. 
 
CHAPTER VIII 
 
 DARNLEY 
 February 1565 — July 1565 
 
 TT is curious that in all the chronicles we have of 
 -*- Mary's reign we never light on a sunshiny 
 morning till we reach the fatal day at Carberry. 
 Then, as now, the sun rode high over Arthur's Seat 
 at the summer solstice and meadows were green and 
 daisied round the Nor Loch. But in the corres- 
 pondence of the time no one noticed such pleasant 
 normal things, but constantly we find references to 
 snowstorms and fogs, harvests mildewed in the fields, 
 and times of dearth and sickness. 
 
 The winter of 1565 was bitterly cold, so cold that 
 no tapestry hangings, nor Turkey carpets nor sea- 
 coal fires could make Holyrood comfortable. In the 
 worst of the storm Mary simply remained in bed as 
 a means of keeping warm. Ways were blocked, and 
 the court, shut up more and more within the small, 
 crowded palace, was specially active in banqueting, 
 dancing, intriguing, gossiping and love-making. 
 
 The spell which had kept the four Maries un- 
 married was broken. Mary Livingstone, called "the 
 Lusty," was to show her mistress the way to the altar. 
 Young Semple of Belrees was said to have danced 
 himself into his lady's favour. Mary Fleming could 
 boast a more distinguished suitor. Lethington, for 
 all his forty years and subtle mocking spirit, surprised 
 and amused his old friends by the ardour of his love- 
 
 ss 
 
86 MARY STUART 
 
 making. "We that are lovers are always in merry 
 pin," he wrote to Cecil. If Randolph sighed in 
 moderation for the wise and spirited Beaton, yet his 
 affection was constant ; fourteen years later he was to 
 write to the Regents of Scotland begging their favour 
 for " my dear friend Lady Boyne." Mary Seton alone 
 seems to have lacked a lover. Years afterwards in the 
 colourless days at Sheffield she was to have a gentle, 
 elderly romance of her own. But it closed sadly, and 
 she alone of all the five ended her life in religion. 
 
 Meantime to the Mary of Maries, a suitor was at 
 last coming from across the hills. All through the 
 winter of 1564-65 diplomacy was carrying on the 
 lifeless old game. All hopes of the Spanish 
 marriage was dying down. There had never been 
 any reality in the Leicester proposal, but for Mary 
 to refuse it categorically would have been to lose 
 a point to Elisabeth. Alarmed at the possibility 
 of being taken at her word and either losing her 
 minion or humbling herself to Mary by withdrawing 
 the proposal, Elisabeth sought about for some way 
 out of what she described as a " labyrinth." A new 
 suitor must be found to engage Mary's attention ; 
 later, he might be negatived in the usual way. 
 Cecil, Leicester and Elisabeth agreed that Darnley 
 mieht be allowed to join his father in Scotland. 
 For this Lennox had been preparing by flatteries 
 and banquetings, for this his far cleverer wife had 
 • been intriguing with letters and gifts. 
 
 Rarely has any lad of nineteen gone out to meet 
 his fortune with fairer hopes and with smaller 
 deservings. From his childhood the wrongs of the 
 forfeited lands of Angus and Lennox had been dinned 
 into one ear and into the other his closeness to the 
 
OF ^ WE 
 
 UNlVERs /Ty 
 
 '^-IFOB 
 
HENRY, LOUD DARN LEY 
 
DARNLEY 87 
 
 thrones of England and of Scotland. Marriage with 
 his beautiful cousin the Queen of Scots was the goal 
 for which his mother had planned his education. He 
 was bred a Catholic that he might become the centre 
 of Catholic disaffection in England, but his convictions 
 were not suffered to take inconvenient hold upon him. 
 He had the accomplishments of the gilded youth of 
 all times, could ride, hawk, hunt, tread a measure, 
 touch a lute. For the rest, he swaggered and ruffled 
 it, bullied where he might with impunity, and could 
 cringe and apologise painfully when he was frightened. 
 Just before his death, in the emotional weakness of 
 recovery from sickness, he was to plead with Mary 
 " I am yet but young," and at the bar of history — 
 singularly relentless always to Darnley — the smooth 
 boyish face with the wide, vacant eyes still pleads in 
 extenuation of sins and follies, " I am but young." 
 
 Early in February 1565 he crossed the Border 
 which he was never to recross. Mary was in Fife on 
 one of her numerous progresses. At Edinburgh, 
 Darnley was the guest of Lord Robert, the wild, 
 genial young blood, ready at all times to share the 
 follies of any man, of d'Elboeuf or Bothwell or Darnley. 
 Either from poverty or boyish lack of prevision 
 Darnley came unprovided with horses and borrowed a 
 pair from Randolph to speed him to Fife. At 
 Wemyss Castle on the north shore of the Firth of 
 Forth the two cousins met on February 17th. 
 
 For four years Mary had been a widow, for four 
 years every unmarried man in Europe of suitable 
 rank had been spoken of as her husband, but during 
 all that time she had seen no man — except poor mad 
 Arran — who might venture to address his suit to her 
 or speak words of love that were neither conventionality 
 
88 MARY STUART 
 
 nor effrontery. She was wearied, disappointed and 
 exasperated with all the marriage negotiations ; she 
 was young, beautiful, warm-hearted, and passionate. 
 
 Of vanity and the desire for conquest there is 
 little trace in Mary ; she had the stronger, more 
 primitive, more fatal desire for self-surrender. If she 
 were a queen she would love like a queen, laying 
 her crown and authority at the feet of him on whom 
 she would bestow her heart. 
 
 She had been lonely all these years. Of those 
 who had guided her youth, Duke Francis was dead 
 and the last months had convinced her of the purely 
 self-regarding policy of the Cardinal. He was fighting 
 for place and influence and used her marriage simply 
 as a counter in his own game. " Truly I am beholden 
 to my uncle," she had said in bitter disillusionment ; 
 "so that it be well with him, he careth not what 
 becometh of me." There was no man of all about 
 her court whose advice she would take, indeed there 
 was not one whose advice would be disinterested. 
 Her ladies, fond and faithful, were accustomed to 
 give sympathy not counsel. She had recklessly 
 accustomed herself to confidence and intimacy with 
 a mere servant like Riccio, and, by understanding 
 her wishes and hastening to meet them, the Italian 
 had acquired extraordinary influence over her. As 
 soon as he saw her thoughts inclining towards Darnley 
 he cultivated his intimacy and became his ardent 
 advocate. 
 
 Darnley spent but one night at Wemyss, but he 
 had made a favourable impression : he was " the 
 lustiest and best proportioned long man she had 
 seen," she said. He returned with her to Edin- 
 burgh and enjoyed all the pleasures the capital 
 
DARNLEY 89 
 
 could offer. Murray was intent on being hospitable 
 and Darnley on being" gracious. To please his host 
 Darnley attended Knox's sermon in the morning, 
 to please his guest Murray invited him to dance a 
 galliard with Mary in the evening. Murray, who 
 could be splendid on occasion, gave a banquet at 
 Holyrood and the company laughed when Mary sent 
 a merry message complaining that she had not been 
 included among the guests. 
 
 With joyous excitement Mary felt her heart 
 following the path to which policy was pointing. On 
 March 1 6th Elisabeth nettled and insulted her bya letter 
 which made it clear that marriage would do nothing 
 towards settling the succession of the English crown. 
 In her anger Mary calculated that marriage with Darnley 
 would double her legal right to that succession and 
 would show Elisabeth how lightly she, Mary, regarded 
 the minion of the English Queen. Nor need she 
 forego her favourite triumph of putting Elisabeth in 
 the wrong. The English Queen had limited her choice 
 to a Scotch or English nobleman and Darnley was 
 both. So love-making went on apace with lute play- 
 ing and games of bowls, with masking and merry- 
 making, with laughter and sweet low whispering. 
 
 Mary never liked Edinburgh, nor Holyrood lying 
 in its low damp meadows. Early in April the court 
 was at Stirling. Then, as if to prove how much he 
 was a child, Darnley must needs fall ill of the measles. 
 A feverish, irritable boy suffering from a nursery com- 
 plaint seems hardly a consort for a heroine of romance, 
 but Mary's affections were already deeply engaged. 
 Pity, anxiety, the womanly passion for nursing, all 
 hurried her along the path she was so willing to tread. 
 Early and late ° he hath tendance of the greatest and 
 
X 
 
 90 MARY STUART 
 
 fairest," writes Randolph. She was so reckless in the 
 long, late hours she spent in his room that tongues 
 began to wag. The gossip reached Lady Lennox — 
 once more a prisoner in the Tower — and filled her 
 with undisguised exultation ; it also shocked the 
 maidenly reserve of Elisabeth, and she begged 
 Lethington to contradict the report. 
 
 At this time Mary had freed herself from the re- 
 straining influence of Murray and of Lethington. The 
 latter was sent to England in April, ostensibly with 
 a message to the English court, but it was com- 
 paratively indifferent to Mary whether Elisabeth 
 approved her marriage, or disapproved it as she was 
 morally certain to do. If she could persuade the 
 King of Spain to sanction her marriage with Darnley 
 and support their double claim to the English succes- 
 sion, she would have little reason to regret the Spanish 
 marriage and might triumphantly follow the leading 
 of her own heart. The real object of Lethington's 
 embassy to London was discussed in secret and satis- 
 factory interviews with the Spanish ambassador. 
 
 In April Mary had quarrelled with Murray who had 
 suddenly taken the line of opposing her marriage with 
 Darnley. In dudgeon he had retired to St Andrews. 
 She was heartily tired of the long dissimulation of her 
 relations to her half-brother. 
 
 There is no doubt that Mary was " fey " in these 
 spring days at Stirling. She was carried away by 
 excitement, defiantly challenging criticism, eager for 
 new forms of amusement. In his romantic youth her 
 father had wandered freely among his subjects in 
 various disguises. The freak seized Mary to repeat 
 these mystifications. One day she and her ladies 
 dressed up — a most transparent disguise — as burgher 
 
DARNLEY 91 
 
 wives and teased and cajoled the passers-by to give 
 them money for a banquet. She was not under 
 happy influences at this time. Like other lonely 
 great ones she was too prone to be influenced by 
 servants. Riccio, flexible and of ready resource, 
 was her chief counsellor. He managed her foreign 
 affairs, quickened and extended her correspon- 
 dence with Philip and the Pope. In her impatience 
 of public opinion she was careless of conciliating her 
 Protestant subjects. Easter was celebrated this 
 spring with defiant publicity and elaboration. In 
 domestic affairs Riccio shaped his counsel to his 
 mistress' desires, and was the serviceable friend of 
 Darnley and the constant advocate for the marriage. 
 So were all the men who in these reckless days were 
 Mary's intimates. Lennox, eager and subservient, was 
 ready to countenance any rash act that would advance 
 his son ; Lord Robert was cheerfully working for a 
 state of things that promised less restraint and more 
 enjoyment. Lord Ruthven, a kinsman of Lady 
 Lennox, had acquired sudden influence ; men 
 whispered of rings and bracelets, and spells cast by 
 his unholy skill. And meantime the Maries, these 
 wise, prudent ladies were clean out of favour and 
 mostly stayed at home when their mistress rode 
 abroad, each probably consoling herself with her own 
 particular love affair. 
 
 Most of the accounts that we have of Mary at this 
 time come from Randolph, and Randolph was at a com- 
 plete discount and kept at a distance. He and 
 Murray would meet and discuss Mary's looks and 
 behaviour, and, like the virtuous men they were, would 
 hope the best and insinuate the worst ; and then the 
 English ambassador with many an " I could an I 
 
92 MARY STUART 
 
 would " and " saving your presence " would convey the 
 worst impression he could to his correspondent Cecil. 
 
 As the weeks passed on he reported varying moods 
 on Mary's part. Her very beauty he declared was 
 altered from what it was ; also, he was convinced, 
 she had "fallen into contempt with all men"; her 
 passions struck this fastidious observer "as more fervent 
 than is comely for even meaner persons." Also he 
 had to report rather uneasily the general belief in 
 Scotland that Darnley had been sent by Elisabeth 
 that Mary might fall into the trap and mate herself 
 meanly. However, neither facts nor the detection of 
 facts ever disconcerted Elisabeth. Early in May 
 Mary's old friend Throckmorton was sent down with 
 a peremptory message to Mary to stay the marriage, 
 and to Lennox and his son to return to England. 
 
 He travelled to Scotland with Lethington, and 
 probably was taken in by the Secretary's indignant 
 condemnation of the rashness of his mistress the 
 Queen of Scots. But while Throckmorton was 
 detained at Edinburgh by royal prohibition, Lethington 
 had joined the Queen at Stirling and had relieved her 
 mind by the assurance that de Silva — the able and 
 urbane successor of the Bishop of Aquila as Spanish 
 ambassador — had smiled upon her project and was 
 communicating the same to the King of Spain. Even 
 without this assurance, Mary was prepared to defy 
 Elisabeth, Murray, the Hamiltons, Argyle, and the 
 Protestant ministers and to marry the man of her 
 heart in spite of them. On the 15th of May in the 
 presence of her chief nobility she created Darnley 
 Earl of Ross with sundry other titles. During the 
 ceremony the English ambassador rode up to the 
 castle, but Mary's spirit was up and she kept her 
 
DARNLEY 93 
 
 doors closed upon him till leisure served to grant 
 him an interview. 
 
 There was always a good understanding between 
 Mary and this honest ambassador of Elisabeth's, and 
 she showed him plainly that for no consideration would 
 she give up marriage with Darnley. All he gained 
 was the promise that the marriage should be delayed 
 for three months. Mary probably calculated the time 
 to allow of an answer from Philip and the arrival of 
 the papal dispensation — always necessary in the 
 marriage of near kinsfolk. 
 
 It was clear to Throckmorton's observing eye 
 that parties were drawing into hostile camps much 
 as they had done in the Queen's mother's time in 1559. 
 Murray, Chatelherault and Argyll were forming a bond 
 for mutual defence. A message was secretly conveyed 
 to them, not through the English ambassador but 
 through Randolph, that, in the worst extremity they 
 might look for help in the accustomed quarter. This 
 confirmed Murray in his recalcitrancy. He refused to 
 attend a Parliament summoned at Perth, because he 
 declared that he had evidence that Darnley and his 
 father were plotting to murder him. To show their 
 abhorrence of such devices he and Argyll made a 
 counterplot to fall upon Mary, Darnley and Lennox, on 
 their way from Perth to Edinburgh. Mary got wind 
 of this plot. The day had been fixed for her return ; 
 she made no panic-stricken change of plans but ordered 
 her horses at daybreak, and she and her train had 
 galloped past within four miles of Loch Leven before 
 Murray was fully awake in his chamber in the castle. 
 
 On the 7th of July a special envoy, sent to the 
 English court, returned and with melancholy visage 
 brought angry injunctions to the Lennoxes to return, 
 
94 MARY STUART 
 
 but in secret conveyed a missive to the Queen in 
 which Philip of Spain sanctioned her marriage with 
 Darnley with a warmth and decision rare indeed in 
 his correspondence. 
 
 It was all the lovers had been waiting for. Two 
 days later they were privately married, and at eight 
 o'clock in the summer twilight rode off to Lord 
 Seton's house on the Firth of Forth. Let the reader, 
 as Master Knox would say, note the place. The 
 papal dispensation, he may also note, had not yet 
 arrived. As a matter of fact it was not signed 
 at Rome till the end of September. It is the measure 
 of her infatuation that so good a Catholic as Mary 
 could marry her cousin without a dispensation. This 
 would at a later time have been a sufficient reason 
 for a divorce if a mere divorce had sufficed to solve 
 the Darnley difficulty. 
 
 On the 28th of July, in defiance of Elisabeth and 
 with three of her most important kinsmen on the edge 
 of rebellion, Mary was publicly married to Darnley in 
 the chapel of Holyrood. Yet to those about her 
 Mary had, at times, seemed anxious and depressed, 
 like one that has " a misliking of her own deeds." 
 
 There is a painful interest in following the de- 
 meanour of Darnley through those months of court- 
 ship. We saw him in the early days gracious to all 
 and bent on popularity. But soon it seemed as if the 
 undisciplined boy had nothing more urgent to do than 
 to make enemies of the older men, men whose vindic- 
 tiveness and pride and relentless hate his slender 
 understanding could not gauge. In a mischievous 
 moment Lord Robert had shown him on a map the 
 large estates of the Earl of Murray, and, as if resent- 
 ing encroachments on a kingdom already his, Darnley 
 
DARNLEY 95 
 
 pronounced them too large. He had to apologise to 
 Murray for his rash words, the first of other apologies 
 he was to be forced to make. Nor were rash words 
 his sole offence. The feud between the Lennoxes 
 and Hamiltons had always run high. Probably the 
 feverishness of measles was added to Darnley's natural 
 pettishness when he declared that he would break the 
 Duke's pate for him — the Duke being old enough to 
 be his grandfather! He actually drew his dagger on 
 the Justice Clerk, one of his own supporters, who had 
 to break a disappointment to him. His bursts of 
 childish rage have led historians to believe that even 
 in these early days he indulged in those bouts of 
 drinking which later caused Mary such painful morti- 
 fication. He was no less frivolous than violent. 
 When Elisabeth's peremptory recall was announced 
 to Lennox and his son, Mary wept ; Lennox was 
 downcast but Darnley treated the message with airy 
 insolence. The basest side of his character appears 
 in his treatment of Mary. There is no indication 
 that he gave any affection in return for the passionate, 
 self-forgetful devotion she lavished on him. 
 
 From the moment she gave him her heart, she 
 gave him also "honour, submission and obedience as 
 to her husband and king." He had no sense of her 
 generosity and condescension in this. The delusion 
 of " next heir to the throne " had been dinned into his 
 ears from childhood. In all she bestowed he thank- 
 lessly saw only his due and his deservings. One 
 wonders if anything could have burnt the stupidity out 
 of such a man. It certainly needed no prophetic gift 
 in Randolph to fear that such a creature " could have 
 no long life among this people." 
 
CHAPTER IX 
 
 RICCIO'S MURDER 
 August 1565 — March 1566 
 
 "IMMEDIATELY after her marriage Mary was 
 '*■ face to face with open rebellion. She was well 
 prepared for it, nay, she had precipitated it by 
 summoning her brother to appear in his own justifica- 
 tion. This he not unnaturally refused to do, and on 
 August 6th he was " put to the horn." 
 
 Murray calculated that the situation of 1559 would 
 be repeated with improved conditions. For five 
 years the preachers had had their way and their say. 
 It was not too much to expect that they had raised 
 up a Protestant power solid and stout to fight against 
 the idolatry they denounced. If it had been Elisabeth's 
 interest to interfere between Mary of Guise and her 
 subjects, would she be less eager to strike a blow at 
 a rival whose designs on her throne had become a 
 definite menace? There was much to justify these 
 calculations but they were entirely falsified by the 
 event. 
 
 The promptitude of Mary's action paralysed the 
 
 rank and file of the Protestants. The citizens of 
 
 Edinburgh, Knox's congregation, closed their doors 
 
 and their purses to Murray's appeal, and at the sound 
 
 of Erskine's guns from the Castle, urged him to quit 
 
 their town. The gift of ^3000 which Randolph 
 
 smuggled into the hands of Lady Murray was as far 
 96 
 
RICCIO'S MURDER 97 
 
 as Elisabeth would go in fulfilling her promise. She 
 could not risk a quarrel with Mary with her own 
 Catholic subjects ready to rise at the first signal 
 from Spain. 
 
 After weary marches and flat failure to raise the 
 country, Murray and his confederates found themselves 
 in October at Dumfries, lacking soldiers, money, 
 credit or hope of help from England. This un- 
 expected result was entirely due to the high spirit 
 and promptitude of the Queen. Even before her 
 wedding she had summoned her lieges to meet her 
 in Edinburgh within fifteen days " boden in feir of 
 war." Her object was to secure allies abroad and 
 gather round her efficient servants at home. Riccio 
 and she sent urgent messages to the King of Spain 
 and to the Pope entreating for help in the shape of 
 money, and representing their present jeopardy as due 
 to religious differences with her subjects. 
 
 Half of her nobles were among the factious ; of 
 those who remained, there were few whom she could 
 really trust. Lethington had not joined his old friends 
 — love of Mary Fleming prevented his deserting her 
 mistress — but there was room for only one con- 
 fidential secretary and it was a serious mortification to 
 Lethington to see his post occupied by an Italian 
 upstart. Morton could be calculated on to consult 
 nothing but his own interests. Others such as 
 Ruthven had ties of kinship with the Lennoxes but 
 were accustomed to act with the Protestant lords. 
 Mary needed strong men at her side whose interest it 
 would be to be faithful to her. Lord Gordon, the 
 representative of the Huntlys, was released from his 
 long captivity and restored to his title. His hatred 
 of the Earl of Murray would be sufficient guarantee 
 
98 MARY STUART 
 
 of his faithfulness. And at the end of August she 
 summoned from France the Earl of Bothwell. 
 
 In the previous March that keen observer, Kirk- 
 caldy of Grange, had said that Mary kept Bothwell in 
 her pocket to shake out against her enemies. She 
 knew his serviceableness ; he knew that her enemies 
 were his enemies, beyond this there seemed as yet to be 
 no tie between them. In the preceding spring [1565] 
 Bothwell, braving the law and the Queen's authority, 
 had dared to return to his home on the Borders. 
 Mary raised no finger to restore him when he should 
 have " stood his day of law " in Edinburgh. Murray 
 was suffered without remonstrance to occupy the city 
 with 6000 men. If such methods of overriding law 
 and justice were in those wild days employed by men 
 like Murray and Knox, it can hardly be wondered at 
 that Bothwell followed the precedent on a later " day 
 of law." On this occasion he sullenly recognised the 
 strength of his enemies and withdrew again to France. 
 Bothwell had reason enough to hate Murray and 
 Lethington if there were any truth in the story he 
 alleged. One of his servants confessed in a moment 
 of panic that he and two others had been bribed by 
 his enemies to murder their master. They were 
 actually on the door-step of his chamber with intent 
 to murder, when the dread of his fierceness threw 
 such a chill upon them that they collapsed and in 
 terror fled from the castle. A brave, fierce soldier 
 of fortune, Bothwell was as unscrupulous with 
 his tongue as he was violent with his sword. " His 
 own Queen and the Queen of England would not 
 together make one honest woman," he scoffed, and 
 doubtless the words had been reported to the Scottish 
 Queen. Rough and insolent, he was still a man and 
 
RICCIO'S MURDER 99 
 
 a soldier, and Lennox and his son were neither. So, 
 such as he was, Bothwell was the man for Mary's 
 purpose. She herself — it is the hostile Knox who 
 is our authority — was the best man in the country, 
 a far more notable warrior than the boy in the fine 
 gilded corslet by her side. She unaffectedly loved the 
 stir of camps, the fierce joy of fighting, the eager 
 pursuit of revenge. In this she was a true daughter 
 of the House of Guise, the kinswoman of men who 
 would risk a defeat by their inability to resist the 
 hazard of a brilliant cavalry charge, men who bore 
 the nickname of " Le Balafre" as an hereditary title. 
 In the wet and slush and shortening days of a Scottish 
 autumn, "albeit the most part waxed weary, yet the 
 Queen's courage increased manlike so much that she 
 was ever with the foremost." 
 
 It was at Dumfries that Murray, beaten, dis- 
 heartened and alarmed, turned a cruel and cowardly 
 weapon against his sister. To Drury, the special 
 envoy from England, and to Bedford — both his corre- 
 spondents — he gave hints of horrid scandals which he 
 might reveal. "His sister hated him," he averred, 
 " because he knew that concerning her which respect 
 would not suffer him to reveal." This is the first 
 suggestion we have of the Riccio slanders. Murray 
 was the author of them in the first place ; Elisabeth 
 was not slow to report them with feigned reluctance 
 to the French ambassador. By the end of October 
 Murray and his associates had fled to England, there 
 to suffer public mortification at the hands of the 
 unscrupulous Queen. But that belongs to the story 
 of Murray — a story, curiously enough, still unwritten. 
 
 Mary had cleared her path of her enemies ; her 
 credit stood high. She had comfortable assurances 
 
100 MARY STUART 
 
 from her allies abroad. But if she thought that she 
 was at last to rule at her pleasure, she was quickly to 
 learn that there is no bondage so great as that of a high 
 spirited woman married to a self-willed fool. As early 
 as December Randolph reports friction between them. 
 With a conventional smile he speaks of amantiwn 
 irce. Unfortunately the differences lay far deeper, 
 in a fundamental inequality of nature. Mary had 
 instinctive authority, a lifelong habit of rule, an 
 unusual power of giving her whole energies to affairs. 
 Darnley had merely the restless desire of an inefficient 
 and conceited boy to make himself felt and to hamper 
 other men's plans with his own self-importance. There 
 was bound to be friction with every decision, with every 
 act, public or private. The first important disagree- 
 ment was early in September. Darnley, regarding the 
 kingdom merely as his family inheritance, demanded 
 the governorship of the Border for his father. Instead 
 Mary appointed Bothwell, himself a Borderer and 
 allied with all the bravest and fiercest Border families, 
 and a sworn enemy to England. She knew the 
 character of Lennox and had been irritated by the 
 accounts that had reached her of his extortions at 
 Glasgow. 
 
 All this autumn her mind was set on further 
 ambitions and foreign alliances and subsidies to be 
 obtained from the Pope and the King of Spain. 
 Closeted with Riccio she worked out her daring and 
 subtle schemes, ignoring the sulky frivolous boy 
 incapable of counsel, but furious at being ignored. 
 
 After a time it is evident that she not only ex- 
 cluded him from her counsels, but shaped her policy 
 in total disregard of his feelings and interests. In 
 August she had insisted to Elisabeth's envoy that 
 
RICCIO'S MURDER 101 
 
 her husband should receive the title of king, but 
 when it suited her later on to conciliate her cousin, the 
 husband was quietly dropped into the background. 
 
 It was good policy on her part to grant a mitigated 
 pardon to old Chatelherault and his sons for the part 
 they had taken in the rebellion, but she did it with the 
 greater alacrity that the pardon of their rivals was a 
 blow to her husband and his father. With vain im- 
 portunity did both weary Mary about the granting of 
 the crown matrimonial — a title that would bestow 
 equal rights during Mary's life-time and undisputed 
 succession to the throne if he survived her. On this 
 point Mary was firm. So the king hunted and 
 hawked, going off on sporting expeditions to Peebles 
 and into Fife, signed documents when the humour 
 took him, neglected his wife when she was ill and 
 direfully disgraced her by his brawling dissipated 
 habits. Once, when they were guests of a certain 
 honourable burgher in Edinburgh, Mary with tears 
 tried to restrain her husband from drinking to excess 
 and encouraging others to do the same. Rambouillet, 
 a French nobleman, was sent from the French king 
 to confer on him the Order of the Cockle, and the 
 young king thought it a good joke to mark the 
 occasion by making two of his gentlemen intoxicated 
 with aqua composita (probably whisky). It is small 
 wonder that Mary, with angry contempt, removed 
 him from her counsels. A stamp was made of his 
 signature and this Riccio kept and appended to 
 documents. 
 
 Unable to bend her judgment to his will, and feel- 
 ing his hold on her affections going fast, Darnley 
 was in the mood when he must oppose and thwart. 
 She was in a careless and worldly vein at Christmas 
 
102 MARY STUART 
 
 time (1565), sitting up late into the night playing cards 
 with Riccio and others, and Darnley must needs point 
 the moral at her by the punctiliousness of his religious 
 exercises ; he was in the excited, embittered state 
 when evil suggestions find ready response. 
 
 Yet if Darnley had been a little older, or if he had had 
 any instincts of natural affection or the first elements 
 of manliness, one fact should have stood between him 
 and the cruel treachery to which he was to lend him- 
 self. Mary was about to become the mother of his 
 child. She herself knew the strength that the posses- 
 sion of an heir would be to her political position, and 
 elated with her far-off ambitions and schemes she was 
 curiously blind to what was going on about her. 
 
 In her early married days she had sought to pacify 
 the Protestants by proclamations disclaiming any 
 intention of altering religion and by sending Darnley 
 to St Giles to lose his temper over Knox's sermon ; 
 but now her foreign negotiations could not be kept 
 secret, and the Protestants were anxious, suspicious 
 and bitterly incensed against that "vile knave Davie." 
 His fine clothes, his greed, his confidential airs with 
 Mary infuriated the nobles, though the proudest of 
 them could cringe and flatter the intrusive foreigner if 
 it served their interest. Even Murray sent him a 
 diamond and a humble letter from Newcastle. 
 
 Besides her faithful and futile following, Setons, 
 Livingstons, Flemings and Athol, Mary could count 
 on the loyalty of Huntly and Bothwell. Common 
 interests and a common lawlessness of character had 
 drawn the two young noblemen together. It was 
 probably only by hard pressure that Huntly had 
 persuaded his grave young sister Lady Jean Gordon 
 to marry his friend. She was in love with Ogilvy of 
 

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 < 
 
 z 
 
 o 
 
 o 
 
 'J 
 
 
RICCIO'S MURDER 103 
 
 Boyne, but a girl's affections counted for little in the 
 marriages of the time. Nor had her religious scruples 
 received greater consideration. She was a devout 
 Catholic, and Bothwell, that robust Protestant, refused 
 to be married without sermon and minister in the Church 
 of the Canongate. There were other considerations 
 which must have weighed with Lady Jean. Both- 
 well's amours had been notorious. He must have 
 been quite young when he was hand-fasted to a lady 
 of the house of Beaton, a strange, powerful woman 
 afterwards married to the Laird of Buccleuch and 
 credited with practising magic. A more shameless 
 and serious matter was Bothwell's actual marriage 
 with a noble Danish lady, Anne Trondeson. He 
 had passed to Denmark on his way to France to 
 solicit help for Mary of Guise, had there met the lady, 
 married her, and departed with her through Germany. 
 There at a seaport town he heartlessly deserted her, 
 sailing away with all the money she had brought him 
 as dowry. There is a tradition that after his banish- 
 ment in 1562, she came to Scotland to seek for her 
 husband, and was received at Queen Mary's court. 
 The story at any rate must have been known to the 
 Queen. 
 
 The wedding of Bothwell and Lady Jean Gordon 
 took place on the 22nd of February (1566). Mary 
 signed the contract and gave the bride her wedding- 
 gown. Of all the women whom he loved and betrayed 
 this sad young wife seems to have had the firmest hold 
 of Bothwell's affection and respect. 
 
 If Mary could have brought herself to pardon 
 Murray and his associates she would have cut the 
 ground from under the feet of her enemies. One 
 of the honestest of her friends, Elisabeth's servant 
 
104 MARY STUART 
 
 Throckmorton, wrote frankly and kindly declaring 
 that such a step would greatly forward her cause 
 among English Protestants. But the injuries she had 
 suffered had passed like poison into her blood. She 
 summoned for an early date in February a Parliament 
 at which the rebel lords should be forfeited. 
 
 All hostile elements drew secretly together during 
 February. Devout Protestants, keeping a national 
 fast, felt vaguely that vengeance and deliverance were 
 in the air. By the end of February Randolph — at 
 Berwick now shut out of the country by Mary on the 
 discovery of the support he had given her rebels — 
 and Bedford knew that a plot was being formed. 
 Lethington wrote significantly to Cecil of " chopping 
 at the very root of the mischief." Morton had his 
 own grievance in the expected transference of the 
 chancellor's seals from himself to Riccio. Not one of 
 these men but had grudges against one another, not 
 one but had received benefits from the generous hand 
 of the Queen, yet neither her youth nor the child who 
 stirred under her heart appealed to the pity or loyalty 
 of any of them. An instrument was needed to cover 
 their guilt with a show of legality. The boy Darnley, 
 muddled in wits, sore in his feelings and open to any 
 flattery, was a tool made to their hands. Riccio stood 
 between him and the crown matrimonial ; he was 
 easily persuaded that Riccio stood between him and 
 his wife. 
 
 Kinsmen and connections of his on the Douglas 
 side — strangely reviving the old Douglas animosity 
 to the Stuarts — met in secret conclave round old 
 Ruthven's sick-bed. Messengers passed to the 
 banished lords at Newcastle, Murray (who had refused 
 his consent to the Darnley marriage because he feared 
 
o 
 o 
 
 o 
 x 
 
 
RICCIO'S MURDER 105 
 
 that " he would do little to forward the cause of 
 Christ ") swore to support his quarrel against all his 
 enemies, without exception, and to secure for him the 
 crown matrimonial. Darnley, the hope of the Catholics, 
 undertook to establish the Protestant religion and 
 restore the banished lords. 
 
 On Thursday, 7th March, Mary rode to the Tol- 
 booth to open Parliament. Darnley from shame or 
 sulkiness or pure frivolity refused to accompany her, 
 and all that day rode races on the sands of Leith. 
 
 On Saturday at seven in the evening Mary with 
 Riccio and her half-sister the Countess of Argyll, her 
 brother Lord Robert, and with the equerry Arthur 
 Erskine, in waiting, sat down to supper in a little slip of 
 a room, opening out of Mary's bedchamber at Holy- 
 rood. Behind the arras of the bedchamber a small 
 winding private staircase led down to Darnley's 
 apartment. There the conspirators had come to- 
 gether. Huntly, Bothwell, Athol and other lords of 
 Mary's following were in their quarters in Holyrood. 
 
 While the supper was proceeding, Darnley appeared 
 at the entrance of the little room. His appearance 
 there uninvited aroused his wife's suspicions ; when 
 however the white, gaunt face of Ruthven in his steel 
 cap, and other crowding, menacing figures filled the 
 doorway, Mary recognised instantly and without a 
 shadow of doubt the object of their coming. Her 
 first instinct was to rise and thrust her womanly 
 helplessness, her royal immunity, between the cower- 
 ing, blanching victim and his murderers ; her next 
 to turn with swift withering conviction on her husband, 
 11 Is this your work?" She had to submit to be 
 held in his hated control while lights went out and 
 the board toppled over and, in the darkness, the 
 
106 MARY STUART 
 
 shrieking wretch was dragged through the neighbour- 
 ing room and hacked and stabbed to death. 
 
 From the court below came the clash of arms and 
 the ill-omened cry " A Douglas ! A Douglas ! " 
 Huntly and Bothwell had striven to reach the stairs 
 but were driven back and took refuge in their own 
 quarters. Some explanations, hurried and lame, were 
 offered them, they sullenly acquiesced, but in the night 
 escaped by back windows and fled. 
 
 Coming out of the merciful swoon which, for the 
 moment, had dulled her senses, Mary first of all 
 recovered her political prudence, and gave orders that 
 the Secretary's desk, containing her cipher and foreign 
 correspondence, should be brought to her at once. 
 Staggering and moribund, Ruthven sat down in her 
 presence and called for wine. With bitter scorn she 
 railed on him and on the dull, brutalised boy who 
 called her wife. But for once she was powerless ; 
 keen wit and rarest fascination are as helpless as 
 simplicity before brute force. At one moment help 
 seemed near ; the trampling of feet outside announced 
 the arrival of the city guard, and from below the 
 window came the Provost's voice asking if all were 
 well with the Queen. But when she would have 
 moved forward Lindsay brutally threatened to cut her 
 in collops and throw her out, and Darnley, leaning from 
 the window, assured the townsmen that all was well. 
 
 They left her at last ; their sworn followers guard- 
 ing her room and intruding on her privacy. Some 
 accounts describe her as spending the night alone, her 
 ladies shut up in another part of the palace. Years 
 afterwards Nau her secretary, who wrote down her 
 own recollections of these events, got the impression 
 that old Lady Huntly spent the night with her. 
 
RICCIO'S MURDER 107 
 
 Betrayed, outraged, agitated with the pitiful 
 agitation incident to her state, she spent the night 
 pacing up and down, her high spirit and subtle wit 
 already planning escape and revenge. Her ladies 
 returned to her next day. Old Lady Huntly brought 
 a message from her son and from Bothwell suggesting 
 that she might escape from a window ; the old lady 
 actually brought a rope concealed in a dinner dish, to 
 further the plan. By six in the evening the Newcastle 
 lords drew rein at the door. With his usual prudence 
 Murray had timed his arrival just twenty-four hours 
 after the crime was committed. 
 
 Next morning Mary sent for him and when they 
 met, it seemed for a moment, as if the two children 
 of James V. might at last have understood each other. 
 She threw herself into his arms crying, " If you had 
 been here, you would not have let them do it," and 
 the tears rose in the eyes of Murray. But both 
 were too deeply committed to their former selves, and 
 by the afternoon Mary silently recognised how com- 
 pletely her brother had thrown in his lot with the 
 other side. 
 
 There was another way of escape and an easier. 
 Could she but disguise her repugnance to her husband, 
 she knew the ascendency she could at any moment gain 
 over him. She opened his eyes relentlessly to the danger 
 he was in, among traitors and murderers who had used 
 him for their own ends. When terror had delivered 
 him into her hands, she steadily set herself to cajole 
 and flatter him. He must have the guard removed 
 that night and join her in her flight to Dunbar. An 
 alarm of illness, the midwife's hurried advent, forced 
 the lords — sceptical and reluctant as they were — to 
 accede to the request to have the guards removed. 
 
108 MARY STUART 
 
 At midnight Mary and Darnley groped their way 
 through a ruinous gap in the palace wall and stumbled 
 through the charnel house where Riccio's grave was 
 still raw and new. Was it Darnley himself or the 
 female attendant who narrated to Lennox that Mary had 
 paused above it and sworn that " a fatter than Riccio 
 should lie as low ere another year was out ? " Darnley 
 is said to have muttered some words of vague remorse. 
 
 Outside the Abbey walls, in the frosty air, stood 
 the horses ; the faithful equerry, Arthur Erskine, was 
 in charge. The Laird of Traquair, Darnley's servant 
 Antony Standen, and the waiting woman made up 
 the little company. 
 
 It seemed barely possible that the escape of so 
 many could be unobserved. Darnley looked round 
 constantly in abject terror. Mary rode on a pillion 
 behind Erskine who moderated his pace to suit her 
 weakness, so fearful was she of imperilling the life 
 of her child. Hereupon the king put himself into a 
 fury : " Come on," he said, " in God's name come on. 
 If this baby dies we can have more." The words 
 were to rankle in Mary's memory all her life. At the 
 moment they excited bitter scorn. " She bade him 
 push on and take care of himself. This he did very 
 thoughtlessly." Such was his panic that he hardly 
 noticed the contempt of men's faces nor the plainness 
 of their reproaches when finally the party came up 
 with Both well and Huntly and their following. At 
 Dunbar Mary found chill, unfurnished rooms ; the 
 only food forthcoming consisted of eggs, which she pre- 
 pared with her own hand. No practical difficulty, small 
 or great, ever found her without immediate resource. 
 
CHAPTER X 
 
 JEDBURGH 
 March 1566 — November 1566 
 
 ON Monday, nth March, we have seen Mary a 
 prisoner in her own palace, in fear of her life ; 
 physically in anxious plight; her friends far-off; her 
 enemies triumphant and insolent ; all her schemes 
 apparently overthrown. A week later, she rode in 
 triumph up the High Street of Edinburgh. Her 
 courage and promptitude had simply reversed the 
 position. In the days that followed her flight to 
 Dunbar, Glencairn and Rothes had submitted and 
 been pardoned. An army under Both well and Huntly 
 had rallied round her. The conspirators, seeing that 
 the game was up, fled to England. They had at least 
 the generosity to bid Murray stay and make his own 
 peace regardless of them. Sir James Melville met 
 Mary at Haddington with a submissive letter from 
 her brother. So little perception had Darnley of 
 the position he occupied in men's opinion that he 
 asked Melville if Murray had sent no message for him. 
 Rather than occupy the haunted rooms at Holy rood 
 Mary lived in a house in the High Street till the Castle 
 could be prepared for her use. Her vengeance could 
 only reach some minor actors in the crime, betrayed 
 by Darnley. He himself appeared before the Privy 
 Council to declare his innocence of all conspiracy. 
 Mary might pretend to shut her eyes to what her 
 
 109 
 
110 MARY STUART 
 
 quick wits had discovered in the first moment of the 
 crime. But those whose friends had been betrayed 
 had no interest to serve in leaving a rag to cover the 
 shame of the king. Relentlessly they laid before 
 Mary's eyes the bond by which her husband had tried 
 to secure her crown for himself at the price of her 
 danger and dishonour. 
 
 For this wretched boy of twenty there was no 
 place left for repentance. Mary was at her old royal 
 task of pardoning and reconciling ; even Bothwell and 
 Murray consented to a pretence of reconciliation. Only 
 for Darnley was neither forgiveness nor alliance. He 
 lived in a state of piteous isolation. Even his father, 
 banished to his own lands in the west, refused to for- 
 give his son for leaving him behind in Holyrood on the 
 night of the flight. So abject was Darnley, that to avoid 
 the presence of the new French ambassador, he feigned 
 to be ill. Nor did the pretence avail ; the ambassador 
 visited him in company of the Queen and Privy 
 Council and reproached him severely for his conduct. 
 
 Only once do we catch a momentary softening of 
 Mary's feelings towards her husband. To the women 
 of that day the shadow of death lay always athwart 
 the hour of birth. Even in early prosperous days Mary 
 had spoken to Throckmorton as if the thought of death 
 were neither strange nor unwelcome to her. Facing 
 the gravity of the issue, she made her will in the month 
 of May. No kinsman, no servant, no friend of youth 
 was forgotten. She left many valuables to the king, 
 among others " the ring wherewith he married me." 
 
 If the fear of death weighed lightly with this brave 
 woman there were other dangers which she foresaw 
 and provided against. What if Murray should seize 
 the hour of her helplessness to contrive the return of 
 
JEDBURGH 111 
 
 Morton and his crew, or even to invite an invading 
 English army ? Bothwell and his friends advised her 
 to put her half-brother in ward. She did more wisely. 
 Bothwell, the only nobleman free from all suspicion 
 of trafficking with England, was set to guard the 
 Border. Murray and Argyle with their wives she 
 invited to be with her in the castle of Edinburgh 
 where the faithful Lord Erskine commanded the 
 guns. 
 
 Before noon on the 19th of June Mary Beaton — 
 married now to Lady Bothwell's old lover Ogilvy of 
 Boyne — sped James Melville on his way to London 
 with the news of the birth of a man-child, an heir born 
 to Mary and Elisabeth alike. It was a cry from the 
 depths of nature, that bitter remark of Elisabeth's. 
 " The Queen of Scots hath a fair son and I am a 
 barren stock." A son, one who united the claims of 
 both sides of the house, was politically an important 
 additional strength to Mary ; otherwise the baby 
 afforded her little pleasure. "He is only too much 
 your son," she had said to Darnley when he was 
 brought in to see and acknowledge his child, referring 
 probably to some physical defect in the boy. 
 
 Mary made an indifferent recovery, was restless 
 and depressed, and the dislike she had of Darnley 
 became an uncontrollable repugnance, a matter of 
 nerves and instincts. She longed for change and ex- 
 citement and to get away from his presence. Bothwell 
 was High Admiral and he and his sailors carried her 
 up the Forth on one of his ships to Alloa where she 
 was to be the guest of the Earl of Mar. Murray 
 accompanied her and his presence should be guarantee 
 enough of the propriety of the expedition, but Buchanan, 
 writing under Murray's inspiration, makes it one of 
 
112 MARY STUART 
 
 the licentious acts of which he accuses the Queen and 
 Bothwell. Bedford, writing at this time but from the 
 distance of Berwick, reported that Bothwell ruled all 
 at court and was hated much as Riccio had been. 
 He reported also that the Queen would suffer no 
 one to be friends with her husband, even quarrelling 
 with her complacent courtier Sir James Melville for 
 complimenting the king with the gift of a spaniel. 
 Darnley visited his wife at Alloa, but received so iron 
 a welcome that he stayed but one day. More cordial 
 was the welcome accorded to Lethington when he was 
 admitted to Mary's presence. By September he had 
 secured something like his old standing, and that 
 autumn married his faithful Fleming. 
 
 She was the third Mary whom marriage had re- 
 moved from her mistress' side. Now if ever the Queen 
 required the companionship of prudent and affectionate 
 ladies. Sick in body, her affections deadened by the 
 disillusionment of her disastrous marriage, she was 
 just in the condition to fall a prey to any excitement 
 or passion. And she fell under evil influences. Of 
 Mary Seton — evidently the least influential of the 
 four — we hear nothing at this time, but a certain 
 elderly woman, a Mrs Forbes of Reres, seems to have 
 been in constant attendance on the Queen. A sister 
 of the uncanny Lady of Buccleuch, she herself had been 
 light in her youth and gossip had even connected her 
 name with her sister's lover, Lord Bothwell. Though 
 now grown elderly and stout she had gained neither in 
 gravity nor propriety. The gallantries of which she 
 could no longer be the object were still her absorbing 
 concern in life. The old tie with Bothwell made her the 
 active, subservient agent of his interests. That Mary 
 should have tolerated and even sought the familiarity 
 
JEDBURGH 113 
 
 of such a woman indicates the evil excitement that was 
 secretly taking hold on her. 
 
 Lady Reres was in attendance on the Queen when, 
 in September, Mary lodged for some days in a house 
 in the Canongate, to go into the business of her 
 revenues. A garden sloped from the back of this 
 house and adjoining it was the garden belonging to 
 one Mr David Chalmers. He was a creature of 
 Bothwell's and to his house the earl was accustomed 
 to resort. On this juxtaposition Buchanan founds the 
 grossest and least credible of his scandalous stories. 
 Of contemporary evidence of these there is no trace ; 
 indeed du Croc the French ambassador wrote at this 
 time that he had never seen Mary more loved, 
 esteemed and honoured by her people. And at the 
 very time when the scandals, of which he recounts 
 every particular, were supposed to be taking place, 
 Master George Buchanan was shut up polishing Latin 
 verses in praise of the Queen's chastity and wisdom, 
 for the approaching christening festivity. 
 
 Darnley's impenetrable stupidity prevented his see- 
 ing that the only possible policy for him was to keep 
 out of everyone's way. He did the opposite of this. 
 He would force some manifestation of feeling from his 
 wife, some return of fondness, some fear, even some ex- 
 pression of irritation. He had dared to write to the 
 Catholic princes complaining of Mary's lukewarmness 
 in religion, but his character and position were clearly 
 understood in all European courts. Now he suddenly 
 appeared in Edinburgh with a wild scheme of sailing 
 off in a ship to France or Flanders, or on a piratical 
 raid on the Scilly Islands, anything to force Mary 
 into some expression of feeling towards him. 
 
 She had in perfection the feminine art of putting 
 
 H 
 
114 MARY STUART 
 
 her adversary in the wrong. She summoned the 
 Privy Council, invited the presence of the French 
 ambassador, and, standing before them all, dangerous 
 in her beauty and dignified meekness, took the sulky 
 boy by the hand and asked him to state clearly and 
 publicly if she had done him any wrong. With those 
 strange level eyes on him and hostile faces all around, 
 Darnley lost what presence of mind he might have 
 had. After a muttered excuse he took his leave of 
 her with " Adieu Madame, you shall not see my face 
 for a long space." 
 
 His cowardice irritated her as much as his perfidy. 
 " She was one who loved to hear of brave deeds even 
 in an enemy." It was at Borthwick on her way to 
 Jedburgh to hold an assize, that she learned that in 
 an affray with a Border robber, Bothwell had received 
 a severe sword wound and had barely escaped with 
 his life. In her heart she made bitter comparisons 
 between the strong man wounded in her service and 
 the frivolous boy who was merely a torment and 
 mortification to her. Some months later looking at 
 his fair face flushed with wine or temper she taunted 
 him, saying that it would " do him good to be a little 
 daggered like my Lord of Bothwell." 
 
 Murray was with his sister at Jedburgh. Murray 
 knew that for a whole week she was occupied in 
 holding Justice Courts before she rode in his com- 
 pany to visit Bothwell at Hermitage ; but Murray 
 suffered Buchanan to make wild assertions about this 
 ride in his " Detectio." In the short October day Mary 
 and her brother and her suite rode to Hermitage and 
 back over rough pathless moors. The next day Mary 
 fell ill with a sudden mysterious attack in which she 
 lay for some hours like one dead. In the hall and 
 
JEDBURGH 115 
 
 galleries of that high roofed house in Jedburgh men 
 met with anxious brows. There were whispered 
 counsels, mutual suspicions, sudden alliances, such as 
 attend the mortal sickness of kings. But to the 
 biographer of Mary these days when her life hung in 
 the balance, are like a sudden opening between 
 thunderclouds through which the blue, authentic 
 Heaven is visible. Perplexed, driven by earthly 
 passions, fiercely resentful of wrongs as she was, there 
 was in Mary, as there was in her mother and in her 
 uncle, Duke Francis, an inalienable instinct for the 
 things of the spirit. When death approached any of 
 these three generous and living souls, the passions, 
 ambitions, nay, the very sins which had filled their 
 days seemed to slip off them like a garment, and they 
 faced death with head erect and steady eyes as one 
 with whom they had long been reconciled. 
 
 The age was different from our own. Men spent 
 their lives among lusts and sufferings and deeds of 
 violence and of heroism, and beyond such life they 
 saw clearly two alternatives; endless torment or a 
 rapture of peace and glory. Some sudden, miraculous 
 interposition of mercy, some corresponding movement 
 of appropriating faith were a necessity postulated by 
 human nature, a necessity met by Catholicism and 
 Protestantism alike. For the faithful believer the 
 Church had strong arms of comfort in the sacraments 
 and in assurances of participation in a kingdom of 
 which she held the keys. For this Protestantism, 
 stooping to human weakness, had substituted a 
 miraculous change in the sinner's own apprehension, 
 a conviction that by no sin of his own could he lose 
 his place among the elect, if elect he were. Ruthven, 
 dying a few months after the murder of Riccio, 
 
116 MARY STUART 
 
 had a comfortable vision of angels in the hour of 
 death. 
 
 Mary, believing herself to be in extremis in 
 Jedburgh, declared that she lightlied the honours 
 and triumphs in which she had lived, and cast herself 
 at the feet of her Creator ready to embrace His will. 
 She reminded her noblemen that she had never 
 pressed them in their consciences, and she pleaded 
 for those of the old Faith Catholic, "and if ye knew 
 what it were of a person that is in extremity as I 
 am, and that it behoved him to think that he maun 
 render count of his faults as I do, ye would never 
 press them." Then turning to her half-brother she 
 added impressively, " I pray you brother, Earl of 
 Murray, that you trouble none." Her enemies and 
 those who had repaid her kindness with ingratitude 
 she left to the judgment of God. 
 
 There was to be no such swift and complete 
 solution of the difficulties that beset Mary's path, 
 her strong vitality reasserted itself and she recovered 
 quickly. Darnley had been duly informed of his 
 wife's illness and danger, but he delayed so long that 
 his tardy appearance seemed almost an affront and 
 only added to Mary's irritation against him. In 
 marked contrast was the welcome accorded to 
 • Both well, who had caused himself to be carried to 
 Jedburgh in a litter as soon as his state allowed him 
 to be moved. By the middle of November Mary 
 had returned to Edinburgh after visiting the eastern 
 border, but still avoiding Holyrood she was staying at 
 Craigmillar, a castle within a few miles of the town. 
 With returning health the nature of her position 
 became only more galling. If no way were found to 
 free her from her husband, she declared at times that 
 
5 
 
 3 
 
 
 
 O 
 
JEDBURGH 117 
 
 she would lay hands on herself. Others than Mary had 
 come to look on the removal of Darnley as a necessity. 
 Some sort of bond had been signed against him in 
 the autumn of this year. Murray and Lethington 
 were pledged to work for the restoration of Morton 
 and his friends ; they were not the men to let an 
 obstacle like Darnley stick in their path. Bothwell, 
 too, had his own ends to serve in his removal. 
 
 The only account we have of the actual com- 
 pact made at Craigmillar is from the two members, 
 least vitally interested, Argyll and Huntly. Their 
 evidence is not beyond suspicion of prejudice but it 
 is all we have to go on. According to their narrative 
 Lethington was the chief contriver of the scheme, he 
 and Murray proposed it to Huntly and Argyll and 
 then brought Bothwell into it. There was no need 
 that Mary should be categorically informed of any 
 plot or bond, nor be required to give formal consent 
 to what they had in hand. She demurred at the 
 project for a divorce, thinking it would injure the 
 position of her son. Lethington, reassuring her, 
 hinted at another more sinister means of meeting the 
 difficulty. " Madam soucy ye not ; we are here of 
 the principal of your grace's nobility and Council 
 that shall find the moyen that your Majesty shall 
 be quit of him without prejudice to your son ; and 
 albeit my Lord of Murray here present be little less 
 scrupulous for a Protestant than your grace is for 
 ane Papist, I am assured he will look through his 
 fingers thereto and will behold our doings and say 
 nothing thereto." Historians may thank Lethington 
 for a phrase that touches off the character of Murray 
 as no analysis could do. A bond was signed and 
 probably all the signatories had copies. Bothwell 
 
118 MARY STUART 
 
 certainly had in his possession a bond by which 
 Huntly, Argyll, Lethington, and Bothwell himself 
 undertook to support one another in "the putting 
 forth by one way or other" of the "young fool and 
 proud tyrant," the king. A few months later he 
 showed this document to one of his followers, 
 Hepburn of Bowton, signed with the four names, with 
 the addition of Sir James Balfour's ; Lethington's 
 signature is at the bottom with a long space between 
 his name and the next above ; a space to be filled 
 with nobler signatures that were never obtained. 
 
CHAPTER XI 
 
 KIRK O' FIELD 
 December 1566 — February 1567 
 
 FOR a time at least Mary could subordinate to her 
 delight in pomp and ceremonial both her restless 
 unhappiness and those stirrings of passion which in 
 turn offered wild hopes of deliverance and threatened 
 more complicated distress. The baptism of her son 
 at Stirling was in appearance the triumphant moment 
 of her life (December 17). 
 
 Such power and security had she acquired in her 
 Protestant kingdom that no remonstrance was made 
 against her determination to have the full Catholic 
 ceremonial performed by Archbishop Hamilton. She 
 had borne part in costlier pageants, but none of such 
 significance as this one when the sovereigns of France 
 and England stood sponsor at a Catholic font for the 
 little heir of two Protestant kingdoms. In France 
 she had merely been a Queen Consort ; here she and 
 she only was the central figure. That was the strange 
 and ill-omened feature of the feast. The father of 
 the little prince was indeed in the castle at Stirling 
 but rigidly secluded, sulky, miserable, unable to 
 appear yet refusing to go away. He was unwilling 
 to meet the English ambassador, knowing that 
 Bedford would certainly have received orders to 
 ignore his claim to be addressed as king. If he were 
 refused all part in the ceremonial he would at least 
 
 stay to throw a shadow on his wife's triumph. 
 
 ii 9 
 
120 MARY STUART 
 
 As if to mark his insignificance the suit of cloth of 
 gold ordered for him was delayed by the tailor, while 
 Bothwell pranked it in blue and Murray and Lethington 
 wore red and green suits all of the Queen's ordering 
 and giving. Special honour was paid to Bedford the 
 English envoy, but he with those other stout Protest- 
 ants, Murray and Bothwell and the Catholic Huntly, 
 stood outside the chapel door while the rest of the 
 company attended the Catholic order of baptism. 
 Mary sat between the ambassadors of France and 
 England at the banquet, serene, gracious, triumphant, 
 equally ignoring the miserable husband eating his 
 angry heart out in solitude, and the strong masterful 
 man — courteous and subservient for the moment in 
 his place in that great company — who was secretly 
 acquiring such hold on her affections and her fears. 
 When the lights were out and the compliments 
 and gracious speeches had served their turn, she 
 had fits of sadness ; she would sigh at times and 
 complain of the old pain in her side, and once du 
 Croc the French ambassador surprised her weeping 
 bitterly. 
 
 The air was heavy with rumours. When great 
 crimes are on hand the secret must needs pass 
 through many lower agents ; men with consciences 
 half affrighted hover round the subject in their 
 common talk ; hints and warnings crop up in un- 
 expected places urging danger on dulled ears. Gossip 
 had travelled to Paris and home again of a design of 
 Darnley and his father to seize the child and set up 
 a regency. On the other hand rumours of a design 
 against Darnley had been spread in Glasgow the 
 centre of the Lennox country. While the king was 
 still at Stirling his father sent to warn him that 
 
KIRK O' FIELD 121 
 
 he was aimed at by certain agreements dating from 
 Craigmillar. 
 
 The vague fear in which Darnley habitually lived 
 took definite form when he learned that Mary had 
 signed a pardon restoring the Riccio murderers. On 
 that same day (Dec. 24) he rode from Stirling, falling 
 sick with deadly sickness before he reached his 
 father's house in Glasgow. Poison was of course 
 suspected but the illness proved to be a virulent 
 attack of smallpox. 
 
 A more ominous circumstance than the pardon of 
 Morton, to us who are wise after the event, was the 
 effort Mary made to restore his consistorial jurisdic- 
 tion to Archbishop Hamilton. Such consistorial 
 jurisdiction gave all decisions in cases of marriage 
 and divorce into the hands of a bishop in his own 
 diocese. Now the archbishop's diocese included the 
 Lothians, and Bothwell's castle of Hailes was in East 
 Lothian. 
 
 There was doom and dreadful resolutions in the 
 air : it was time for Murray to remove himself out 
 of sight and knowledge of what might be going on. 
 He retired to St Andrews where he entertained the 
 Earl of Bedford. Mary's restlessness was growing 
 on her. We have no need to go to Buchanan's ugly 
 calumnies to feel how evil a spell had fallen on this 
 bright and beautiful woman. In these weeks of mid- 
 winter she visited at the castles of several of her 
 nobles, and everywhere and daily more intimately 
 the Earl of Bothwell appeared at her side. 
 
 At last, but not till January 14th, Mary wrote to 
 her husband offering to come and see him. H is jealousy 
 broke out in coarse insult. Messages, the most intimate 
 and important, were often confided verbally to the 
 
122 MARY STUART 
 
 messenger in those days when writing was a tedious 
 art to many. With what countenance could the 
 Queen listen to some malapert groom reporting that 
 her husband wished that Glasgow might be Hermitage 
 and he the Earl of Bothwell as he lay there, and then 
 he doubted not that she would be quickly with him 
 undesired ? Words sting only when love is still 
 quick : nothing done or said by her husband could do 
 more than deepen Mary's impatient loathing. He 
 had some instinct of his own helplessness ; as she 
 approached, his mood of insolent petulance changed 
 into abject submission and longing for reconciliation. 
 
 On January the 20th she rode out of Edinburgh, 
 Bothwell accompanying her half-way to Lord Living- 
 ston's house, where she spent the night. Paris, 
 Bothwell's confidential valet, had passed from his 
 service into the Queen's ; Joseph Riccio was her 
 secretary and the ominous Lady Reres was her lady 
 in waiting. Not without reason had Darnley inquired 
 anxiously of her avant-coureur of whom her household 
 was made up. Outside Glasgow she was met by 
 various gentlemen. Among them was a servant of 
 her husband's, Crawford of Jordanhill. He excused 
 his master, old Lennox, that he had not come to 
 meet her, saying that for various causes he was afraid 
 to do so. " Against fear," Mary told him coldly, 
 " there is no medicine." 
 
 Darnley was still lying sick in his father's house. 
 He had been annoyed that lodgings had been pro- 
 vided for her elsewhere. She went to see him that 
 evening before supper. Weak, excited, like a sick 
 child, he wished her to stay longer, to give him his 
 food, to sit up with him at night ; he was querulous 
 that she continued pensive. She could stand no 
 
KIRK O' FIELD 123 
 
 more than two hours at a time ; the windows were 
 closed, the air heavy and infected. In the far corner 
 of the bed — his poor disfigured face perhaps already- 
 covered with his taffeta mask — lay the sick man tear- 
 fully affectionate, eagerly deprecating, at once fearful 
 of the beautiful, watchful woman sitting at the further 
 corner of his bed and yet clinging to her as to his 
 one hope of safety. What was it, she asked, that he 
 complained of in his letters. With a wail he poured 
 out his boyish repentance and excuses always with 
 the piteous overword " I am young." 
 
 So little, in his blind self-pity, did he understand 
 the bitterly alienated woman by his side that he 
 pleaded hard that all might be as it had been before, 
 that they might be as husband and wife together. 
 She made some sort of promise for the future, but 
 vaguely and coldly. In the meantime he must be 
 completely cured of his illness ; she had brought a 
 horse-litter, he must accompany her to Craigmillar 
 and follow a course of treatment. Then she probed 
 him on points difficult to evade or to answer, asking 
 what rumours had reached him of plots formed against 
 him at Craigmillar. He assured her that he was 
 convinced that she who was his own flesh would do 
 him no hurt. She was on dangerous ground when 
 she asked his opinion of Lady Reres. He liked not 
 her sort, he said, he prayed that she would always 
 serve the Queen to her honour. 
 
 It was probably after Mary had left him on the 
 second night that, nervous and restless, he called 
 Crawford to him and related in full all his conversation 
 with his wife. Crawford was suspicious of the horse- 
 litter, it suggested the position of a prisoner. Nor 
 had Craigmillar a reassuring sound. The sick man 
 
124 MARY STUART 
 
 assented, but added that he would put himself into her 
 hands though she should cut his throat and besought 
 God to be a judge unto them both. If Mary had come 
 to her husband's sick bed to lure him to his death, it is 
 clear from Darnley's words that she had used no 
 flattering promises nor feminine guile. She had 
 established her ascendency over him by a terrible 
 fascination of fear. Her loathing for her husband as 
 well as the nobler instincts of her nature made all 
 blandishments hateful to her where he was concerned. 
 
 Meanwhile Bothwell, in consultation with Lethington 
 and Sir James Balfour, had found Craigmillar incon- 
 venient for the king's lodging. 
 
 On the south side of Edinburgh where the ground 
 sloped up steeply from the valley of the Cowgate, lay 
 the ruinous Collegiate Church of St Mary in the Fields. 
 It lay just outside the city walls, a solitary place 
 among its own fields and gardens. The Church was 
 roofless, the houses built on the four sides of a quad- 
 rangle were deserted and, for the most part, ruinous ; 
 at their best they had been small, mean dwellings. 
 On the north side of the square was a little two 
 storeyed house abutting on the city wall. Small and 
 inconvenient as it was, it was sufficiently in repair to 
 permit of being hastily put in order for the king's 
 accommodation. It belonged to Sir James Balfour's 
 brother and could be hired without fuss or question. 
 
 The vaults consisted of a low cellar with a 
 door opening through the city wall. Above this was 
 the ground floor. It contained a long anteroom or 
 hall with an outer door into the quadrangle, and a 
 room with a second door opening into the garden. 
 This room was prepared for the Queen and she seems 
 to have occupied it for several nights. A small turn- 
 
KIRK O' FIELD 125 
 
 pike stair led to the upper storey consisting of the 
 room prepared for the king and two small cabinets 
 occupied by his servants. 
 
 Three doors entering from different quarters made 
 the little house singularly accessible. The quality of 
 the neighbourhood may be guessed from the fact that 
 the lane on the other side of the wall, on which 
 Darnley's window looked out, was called " The 
 Thieves' Row." Only one other house stood near — 
 also outside the walls — Hamilton House which was 
 occupied at this time by the hereditary enemies of 
 the Lennoxes, Archbishop Hamilton and his nephew 
 Lord Claude. To this lonely and deserted dwelling 
 Mary brought her husband at the end of January. 
 
 The inside of the house had indeed been sump- 
 tuously furnished with the Huntly tapestries from 
 Strathbogie, Turkey carpets and beds of state. There 
 was a constant crowd of people filling the tiny house. 
 Darnley had only a few chamber boys of his own, 
 young and helpless, but the servants of Mary and of 
 Both well went in and out at their pleasure. It is 
 startling, if true, that French Paris, BothwelPs confiden- 
 tial valet, now in Mary's service, talked confidentially 
 to her while she washed her hands in her low bedroom. 
 It was he who was sent by Margaret Carwood the 
 queen's waiting-woman to fetch away the furred 
 coverlet from her bed on Friday the 7th February. 
 
 During Mary's absence in Glasgow Bothwell had 
 tried to strengthen the plot by the adherence of Morton. 
 Set as he was on revenging himself on Darnley for 
 his treacherous desertion, Morton was too selfishly 
 prudent to risk again the life and liberty he had so 
 recently hazarded. Without a written authorisation 
 from the Queen he would take no active part. He 
 
126 MARY STUART 
 
 would look on grimly satisfied, and could be trusted to 
 convey no whisper of warning to his young kinsman. 
 
 Wherever the question of Mary's guilt has been 
 canvassed, whether in the conferences at York and 
 Westminister or at the bar of history, the question 
 has always hinged upon the authenticity of a certain 
 letter which she has been accused of writing to 
 Bothwell from Glasgow. In deciding her moral guilt 
 there is another letter which weighs more heavily 
 against her, a poor, boyish, happy letter of Darnley's 
 written to his father three days before his death. "My 
 Lord," it runs, " I have thought good to write to you 
 by this bearer of my good health, I thank God, which 
 is the sooner come through the good treatment of such 
 as hath this good while concealed their good will ; I 
 mean of my love the Queen which, I assure you, hath 
 all this while and yet doth use herself like a natural 
 and loving wife." From this it is clear that under 
 the stimulus of partnership Mary had brought herself 
 to play that soft and alluring part which at Glasgow 
 had been too abhorrent to her. 
 
 Yet there were circumstances which would have 
 made anyone but Darnley uneasy. The envoy from 
 the Duke of Savoy was in Edinburgh. Mary would 
 not allow him to wait upon her husband, relentlessly 
 reminding the latter that he would naturally resent 
 the death of Riccio his former servant. Darnley might 
 have seen that Riccio still ran in her mind. Men 
 came in and out of his room ; men who knew and 
 men who suspected the doom that threatened him, and 
 only one voice was raised in warning. Lord Robert 
 was a mere boon companion, ready for any mischief 
 or revelry, but Lord Robert felt pity where Murray 
 felt none. On Friday the 7th February he gave 
 
KIRK O' FIELD 127 
 
 Darnley warning. The wretched boy under the spell 
 of his wife's renewed kindness must needs carry the 
 tale to her, betraying the only friend he had. Next 
 morning she confronted her brother in Darnley's 
 presence and no course was open to Lord Robert but 
 complete denial and indignant reproaches against 
 Darnley. So hot were both the young men that it 
 would have come to blows between them — perhaps 
 Mary hoped that it would — had not Murray interfered. 
 This occurred on Saturday the 8th and probably sug- 
 gested to Murray's unfailing instinct of prudence that 
 it was time for him to be out of sight and hearing. 
 He received a message that his wife was ill and on 
 the morning of Sunday, 9th, departed to Fife to visit 
 her. 
 
 It was the wedding-day of one of Mary's French 
 servants. As usual Mary gave the wedding-gown 
 and provided the feast. She supped that night with 
 the Bishop of the Isles in Sir James Balfour's house 
 in the company of Huntly, Cassilis and Bothwell. 
 Between nine and ten the Oueen with lighted torches 
 went up the Black Friar's Wynd on her way to Kirk 
 o' Field. Had any of her train cared to look behind 
 they might have seen in the shadow of the narrow 
 street two pack horses laden with bags led by two of 
 Bothwell's serving men. It was not Bothwell's way to 
 leave detail to the possible blundering of subordinates. 
 At a "slap" [gap] in the wall he and his kinsman 
 Hepburn of Ormiston and young Hay of Talla, 
 " Bothwell's lambs," received the bags of powder 
 from Wilson and Powrie his serving men. 
 
 In the Queen's room on the ground floor French 
 Paris kept the passage door locked, and the powder 
 was probably carried in by the garden door and piled 
 
128 MARY STUART 
 
 up on the floor. Meanwhile Bothwell had rejoined 
 the party in the king's sick-room. 
 
 We have a detailed picture of the scene. The 
 room was lit by the firelight and perhaps by some 
 wax candles. The walls were hung with tapestry 
 — curiously familiar it must have looked to Huntly's 
 eyes. In one corner was a big bath covered in rude 
 fashion by an old door. The bed was of brown-purple, 
 a stately bed once the possession of Mary of Guise. 
 In it lay Darnley in his taffeta mask. On a small 
 table covered with green velvet Huntly, Bothwell 
 and Cassilis played at dice. On a high chair covered 
 with purple velvet drawn beside the bed, sat the 
 Oueen. She was in her gentlest mood, talking low 
 and familiarly with her husband. Yet once — as if her 
 tongue in spite of her will must speak truth and give 
 warning — she reminded him that it was almost a year 
 now since Riccio's death. 
 
 Once there were sounds from below and Bothwell 
 slipped downstairs to order quiet. 
 
 On his return Paris appeared behind him ; it was 
 the appointed signal ; Argyle knew it and rose. 
 Mary rose too exclaiming that she must not forget 
 her promise to Bastian to be present at his masque. 
 When she said good-night to her husband she kissed 
 him and gave him a ring. 
 
 It would seem that knowledge of the details of 
 the crime had been kept from her. As she mounted 
 her horse, the light of the torches showed Paris' face 
 begrimed with powder "Jesus, Paris, how black you 
 are," she cried impulsively. 
 
 In spite of the ring and the gracious manner 
 Mary's remark about Riccio had agitated her husband. 
 He repeated it uneasily to his chamber-child after 
 
KIRK O' FIELD 129 
 
 she was gone. Then together they sang a psalm. 
 The psalm is given severally in two accounts as the 
 fifty-fifth and fifth. It is strange how either fits into 
 the circumstances. " There is no faithfulness in their 
 mouth," runs the fifth Psalm, "their inward parts 
 are very wickedness ; their throat is an open sepulchre ; 
 they flatter with their tongue." Or if the psalm were 
 the fifty-fifth they must have sung these words : " For 
 it was not an enemy that reproached me ; then I could 
 have borne it . . . but it was thou . . . my com- 
 panion and my familiar friend." Then he drank to 
 his servants and fell asleep. 
 
 If only one might believe that there had been no 
 awaking! If only the poor soul, having taken his 
 good-night of the world with holy words, had been 
 hurled swiftly, abruptly to where there is reconcile- 
 ment even for such as he ! The facts forbid such 
 imagining. His body with that of his page was 
 found next morning lying at some distance from the 
 shattered house, with limbs unbroken, clothes un- 
 scorched, their faces not even blackened. 
 
 In one of the confessions of the subordinate 
 murderers, it was said that a certain Captain Cullen — 
 one of Bothwell's followers and one experienced in war 
 — had declared that explosives could not be depended 
 on to destroy life. And in truth Nelson, one of 
 Darnley's servants, was found alive under the wreck. 
 
 A woman who lived on the town side of the wall 
 deponed before the Privy Council that lying awake 
 in her bed before the explosion she had heard a 
 piteous voice pleading for mercy in the name of 
 Christ. 
 
 Darnley, it is probable, awakened from his first 
 sleep to find his agonised fears a reality. Sounds 
 
 i 
 
130 MARY STUART 
 
 were heard from below not to be mistaken. Hastily 
 putting on his furred bed gown, he would seem 
 to have tried to escape with his servant by the 
 window. He may have alighted among armed men 
 guarding the house, or the noise he made climbing 
 down the wall may have brought them in haste from 
 the house and garden. Some say that he was seized 
 and hurried to a neighbouring stable and there 
 strangled. However it were, the unhappy boy would 
 find himself alone and helpless, surrounded by 
 familiar faces whose looks of angry hate brought to 
 his brain the swift certainty of death, the hopelessness 
 of struggle and of prayers. 
 
 Twenty years later at Fotheringay, Mary was to 
 look round an assembly of England's most weighty 
 counsellors and note the same implacable look on 
 each grave face, " So many counsellors and none for 
 me." Twenty-one years of penance we shall have to 
 weigh against the brief agony of her boy husband. 
 
 But meanwhile pity had no more entrance than 
 remorse into her "heart of diamond." She hated 
 Darnley, but mere hatred to a creature brought so 
 low could not have supplied sustaining motive in a 
 heart as naturally generous as Mary's. She meant 
 to remove Darnley because he stood between her 
 and something that she rated higher than life, some- 
 thing that had come to be for the moment her very 
 life. When her love for Bothwell began we, who dis- 
 count the slanders of Buchanan, can never definitely 
 determine. After the Riccio murder she had clearly 
 come to lean on him as she leaned on no one else. 
 He was courageous even as she was courageous, and 
 she hated the cowardice of Darnley and distrusted 
 the pusillanimity of Lethington. Murray had sickened 
 
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KIRK O' FIELD 131 
 
 her with hypocrisy and self-interest, and so far was 
 Bothwell from being a hypocrite that even she could 
 never persuade him to deviate from his professed 
 Protestantism. Lethington, Murray, all the Pro- 
 testant lords, in fact, had intrigued with England 
 at one time or another, and were ready at any moment 
 to accept pay from the English government and 
 flatter Queen Elisabeth ; Bothwell's pronounced 
 hostility to both had never wavered. Selfish am- 
 bition he had, but it was not the deep-seated love 
 of power of Murray nor the calculating greed of 
 Morton ; his was a gambler's ambition, the instinct 
 to hazard all on a throw. 
 
 Mary persuaded herself that her love and her 
 person were the stakes for which he was ready to 
 risk everything. She believed it because she herself 
 had staked everything. She was blinding herself 
 wilfully, recklessly to the prohibitive barriers that lay 
 between them. Below her politic brain, her courtly, 
 civilised grace, her disciplined prudence lay a nature 
 primitive and passionate, craving for self-surrender 
 into the hands of another, stronger, more masterful 
 than herself. This, with tragic infatuation, she thought 
 she had found in one whose strength was mere brute 
 courage, whose most romantic feeling was the passion 
 of an hour, whose force of will was unscrupulous 
 ignorance. 
 
 Mary stayed but one hour at the masque. When 
 she retired to her own apartments in Holyrood, 
 Bothwell remained some time in conversation with 
 her. Was feeling so callous that each spoke plainly 
 to the other, or did she look at him with sidelong eyes 
 and white lips and speak of indifferent things ? 
 
 Bothwell's movements that night are known 
 
132 MARY STUART 
 
 minutely by the confessions of his servants. Hastily 
 changing his fine suit into rougher clothes, he slipped 
 out into the night with a couple of servants. 
 
 " Ouha is that ? " from the sentinel below the 
 south garden wall. 
 
 " Friends." 
 
 "Quhat friends?" 
 
 " My Lord Both well's friends," apparently a 
 sufficient password. 
 
 There was a short stop at Ormiston's lodgings, a 
 hurried call up a dark staircase, but prudence kept 
 him irresponsive, and without delay the party passed 
 on along the Friar's Wynd to the silent house beyond 
 the walls. 
 
 Bothwell passed in through the gap, the servants 
 waited a breathless half hour till three dark figures, 
 Bothwell, Hepburn of Bowton, and Talla, appeared at 
 the gap. Then the flash and thunder of an explosion 
 and all scatter as they may. 
 
 Frightened citizens rushing to their doors saw 
 parties of armed men speeding down the wynd. 
 
 One spirited woman, a servant in Hamilton House, 
 seized one of the fliers by the cloak and felt it to be 
 silk, no serving man's apparel. It could never be 
 established who and how many were present. 
 Doubtless, Bothwell had taken sufficient security that 
 Huntly and Lethington should bear their share. A 
 certain Archibald Douglas, a cousin and henchman 
 of Morton, was certainly present, one of his velvet 
 slippers was lost on the scene of the murder ; he would 
 hardly have been present without the connivance of 
 Morton. Some said that a moment after the explosion 
 a light was suddenly extinguished in the archbishop's 
 house close at hand. 
 
KIRK O' FIELD 133 
 
 For years afterwards, when men wished to ruin 
 a political adversary, they brought and could generally 
 substantiate an accusation of being "art and part" in 
 the king's murder. 
 
 Bothwell and his servants failed to scramble over 
 the city wall as they had intended, probably his hand 
 was still stiff from the wound of six months before. 
 They had to brave the certainty of recognition and a 
 second time to rouse the keeper of the Netherbow 
 Port. Bothwell was safely in his room and feigning 
 sleep when a frantic knocking at his door told him 
 that the palace was aroused. Mary's servant, George 
 Hacket, was not in the secret. He could not speak 
 articulately with terror. " The king's house is blown 
 up and I trow the king is slain ! " " Fie Treason ! " 
 cried Bothwell starting up. 
 
 With what countenance did he and Huntly break 
 the news to the Queen ? For one so shameless it was 
 an easier matter to head the body of armed men who 
 hurried through streets, still dark but all alive with 
 terrified, chattering citizens, to the scene of the 
 murder. He commanded the two bodies to be carried 
 into a stable near, where neither piety nor decency 
 provided any observance of the dead. 
 
 Next morning the abject valet Paris, creeping with 
 white terror-stricken face into Holyrood was met by 
 Bothwell with surly taunts. Why should he look so 
 sickly over an affair in which gentlemen — indicating 
 Talla, Bowton and the Ormistons — had risked lands 
 and life ? 
 
 Neither royal bedchambers nor the first hours of 
 widowhood could command decent privacy in the 
 crowded palace of Holyrood. Paris*— if we may 
 believe him — slipped into Mary's bedroom. The 
 
 * Cf. next page. 
 
134 MARY STUART 
 
 black cloth was being hung on the walls, the windows 
 were darkened and candles seemed to prolong the 
 hideous night. A French lady of the court was 
 serving up Mary's breakfast— a fresh egg — and, 
 standing beside the bed within the curtain, Bothwell 
 was conversing with the Queen. 
 
 Note. — It is fair to state that some of the details in the preceding 
 narrative are drawn from the evidence of French Paris. This evidence 
 is open to suspicion. He was examined in August 1569 at St Andrews. 
 In his first deposition he accused Bothwell and others ; it was only in 
 his second deposition under terror of the rack that he accused Mary. 
 His depositions are at times irreconcilable with one another, sometimes 
 with the accepted dates of events. Immediately after his examination 
 he was put to death. 
 
CHAPTER XII 
 
 bothwell's assize 
 
 February 1567 — May 1567 
 
 FOR months previously the minds of the most im- 
 portant people had been set on one object, to clear 
 outof their road the useless, dissolute lad who, traversing 
 their ambitions, had incurred their relentless hatred, 
 but now that he was dead on their hands, at a stroke 
 he had become an embarrassment, an appalling fact 
 for which they were suddenly called on to account. 
 Strong in united resolution they had forgotten to 
 reckon with any outside opinion ; indeed it hardly 
 existed for them. They were the leaders of the 
 country. Both well had his bands of moss-troopers 
 ready to mount and ride at his whistle ; Huntly held 
 again all the power of the north, Argyle commanded 
 the western clans, Lethington was the man of keenest 
 wit and Sir James Balfour the freest from scruples of 
 any in Scotland. A little apart from this compact 
 company was Murray, watchful to see how the crimes 
 of bolder men could be worked round to his advantage, 
 and Morton enjoying in comparative irresponsibility 
 the vengeance wreaked by other hands on the 
 kinsman who had betrayed him. What chance had 
 the conscience of any individual among them to assert 
 itself before such a large consent in crime ? 
 
 With steady countenance did Mary preside at a 
 meeting of the Privy Council on the day following 
 Darnley's death, where these men met the rest of the 
 
 135 
 
136 MARY STUART 
 
 nobility to concert means of discovering the murderers 
 and bringing them to justice. 
 
 Meanwhile, Darnley's body lay in the outhouse 
 guarded by a treacherous groom, Sandy Durham, and 
 the people met in the street conjecturing, pointing and 
 whispering names below their breath. Something the 
 Privy Council had to affect to do. Clues there were 
 many, but it was unsafe to follow up any of them. 
 The sentinels were never called who could have identi- 
 fied the " Friends to the Earl of Bothwell " who passed 
 in the darkness, nor the gate-keeper who had twice 
 passed three armed men through the Netherbow Port. 
 Nelson's evidence seems to have been stopped when 
 it came to a question of the custody of the keys of the 
 lower room. On Wednesday [ 1 2 th] the Council arrived 
 at the point of offering a reward of ^2000 and a free 
 pardon to anyone, whether party to the murder or not, 
 who would give information. 
 
 Meanwhile a plausible story had to be prepared 
 for the courts of Europe, a task for the subtle pen of 
 Lethington. A letter which arrived on Monday 
 morning from Mary's ambassador in Paris, the faithful 
 Archbishop of Glasgow, gave warning of vague 
 dangers threatening the Queen. Mary and Lethington 
 were quick to take their cue from this hint. They 
 answered that the warning was well-timed but had 
 come too late ; disaster had indeed occurred and only 
 by the merest chance — the hypocrisy of the age 
 sanctioned the recognition of a diviner agent — had the 
 Queen escaped the death that was doubtless intended 
 for her also. 
 
 Moretta, the Savoyard ambassador, who left 
 Edinburgh thirty-six hours after the crime, brought 
 the first news of it to London. 
 
BOTH WELLS ASSIZE 137 
 
 Countries and courts were isolated in those days. 
 It would take days before light from the public 
 opinion of other disinterested, more civilised societies 
 could be flashed upon the moral darkness of the 
 Scottish court. But in the meantime another public 
 opinion, a stubborn, importunate opinion, familiar and 
 particular with names, was making itself heard, 
 secretly at first in dark anonymous utterances, but 
 every week with increasing plainness and rising 
 indignation. 
 
 On Friday, the 14th, late at night the king's body 
 was interred at the vault at Holyrood with lack alike 
 of royal pomp and decent piety. The next night a 
 placard appeared on the door of the Tolbooth accusing 
 the Earl of Bothwell, his friend Sir James Balfour, 
 Mr David Chalmers and one, " black Mr John Spens " 
 of the murder. It was the consciousness of this 
 angry muttering, this instinct in the populace for 
 tracking the scent of murder that made Edinburgh 
 hateful beyond all enduring to Mary. After her first 
 husband's death she had been content to sit out her 
 forty days in darkened rooms, a model to all queens 
 and wives, but before a week was over of her second 
 widowhood the air of Edinburgh had become stifling 
 to her. 
 
 Some miles from the town, on the shore of the 
 Firth of Forth, lay Seton, the house of her faithful 
 Setons, a place to which she had often gone for 
 pleasure. It was a fresh, pleasant place, winds blew 
 in from the sea, and whatever sunshine a Scotch 
 February could boast flashed on blue waters and fair 
 meadow lands. Here Mary spent most of the ensuing 
 weeks, going backwards and forwards into Edinburgh, 
 and here Bothwell, Lethington and Huntly were con- 
 
138 MARY STUART 
 
 stantly her visitors. Here they could ignore the 
 voices that in the midnight streets of Edinburgh 
 denounced the murderers by name, the placard which 
 morning after morning kept up the excitement of the 
 town, and forget that they had yet to face the suspicions 
 and awkward questions of other governments. 
 
 Gossip of course was busy with the Queen's words 
 and actions. Some spiteful tongue told old Lennox 
 that one evening she had called for the tune "Well 
 is me, since I am free." At Berwick tales reached 
 Drury of shooting-matches at the butts and games 
 of pall-mall, and of a dinner at Tranent which she and 
 Bothwell had won from Huntly and Lord Seton at 
 a shooting-match. Into the ghastly frivolity of these 
 sports crashed like successive bombs uncompromising 
 pronouncements from the courts of England and of 
 France. Du Croc had been the first to bring the news 
 to Paris, news received with such horror — genuine or 
 affected — that the king's first impulse was to dissolve 
 his Scottish guard. Spite had its share in Catherine's 
 conviction that her daughter-in-law was at the bottom 
 of the crime, but indeed the impression seems to have 
 been general. Mary's ambassador could not withstand 
 the prevailing conviction. He wrote with a noble and 
 touching candour not concealing the fact that she 
 " was wrongously calumniated to be the motive 
 principal of the whole and all done by her command." 
 He adjures her to take rigorous vengeance " otherwise 
 it would be better that she had lost life and all." 
 
 For once Elisabeth — touched alike in her family 
 pride and in her sense of the common dignity of 
 princes — came out with generous frankness. To the 
 Spanish ambassador she defended Mary's slowness 
 in pursuing the murderers on the plea that she was 
 
BOTHWELL'S ASSIZE 139 
 
 in terror of her nobles, the real criminals, but to 
 Mary herself she wrote with admirable directness 
 warning her how men interpreted her reluctance to 
 investigate the crime, and urging fcer to show herself 
 a noble princess and a loyal wife. 
 
 Even if she had wished to do so, all independent 
 action was out of Mary's power. A common guilt 
 delivers all the participants into the hands of the least 
 scrupulous. In the weeks that followed the murder 
 Bothwell was insatiable in annexing new powers and 
 honours. Mary bestowed on him the fortresses of 
 Dunbar and Blackness and the superiority of the 
 Port of Leith. At the end of March, the heart of the 
 kingdom, the Castle of Edinburgh, was taken out of 
 the faithful hands of the Earl of Mar and bestowed 
 upon a creature of Bothwell's. Bothwell had need of 
 all these supports in this desperate game. Mary 
 yielded everything as if anxious to propitiate him ; a 
 touch of fear, an eager anxiety to please and to attach 
 already mingled with her passion. She had also her 
 poor feminine delight in bestowing rich gifts on her 
 lover ; furs inherited from her dead mother, rare old 
 altar cloths and church embroideries cut up to make 
 scarves and doublets. 
 
 Meantime, where was the Earl of Murray, the 
 hope of the godly? Apparently at St Andrews 
 waiting on his sick wife. It was not till quite the 
 end of February that he was expected in Edinburgh. 
 
 Early in March Killegrew was sent from Elisabeth 
 on a formal visit of condolence to her cousin, and 
 Mary had to hurry back from Seton to be in time to 
 darken her rooms and light her candles. One evening 
 he was Murray's guest at supper and the rest of the 
 party consisted, oddly enough, of Lethington, Bothwell, 
 
140 MARY STUART 
 
 Huntly and Argyle. No one can believe that Murray 
 was unaware of the suspicions that attached to all, 
 and were loudly proclaimed in connection with one 
 of the party. It was obviously not his cue to follow 
 up investigations of the murder. That duty was left 
 to the father of the dead man. Old Lennox was 
 broken-down, discredited, and terribly solitary in a 
 country where a man's safety depended on the number 
 and kindness of armed kinsfolk. He was separated 
 even from the capable, ambitious wife who had planned 
 the fatal scheme of family aggrandisement. She, 
 stricken mother and thwarted woman, was in the 
 Tower impotently clamouring for revenge. 
 
 At first Lennox could get no definite answer from 
 his daughter-in-law. He had urged that the men 
 who were by name branded as murderers should be 
 arrested. She asked, in answer, which names he 
 meant ; many were advertised on anonymous placards. 
 When he urged an early investigation and trial of the 
 murderers she answered smoothly that a Parliament 
 was convened for April, and that she could not in- 
 convenience her nobles by a double summons. Yet 
 when he took courage and named in his letter those 
 suspected of the murder — Bothwell, Chalmers, Balfour 
 and other creatures of the earl's — she suddenly 
 changed her policy, and on the 23rd of March 
 announced to him that the trial was appointed for the 
 ensuing week and invited him to be present at the 
 same, if it suited his leisure and convenience. 
 Throughout she wrote with suave indifference as of 
 a matter which concerned no one but Lennox. In 
 eager remonstrance he replied that the time allowed 
 was far too short for him to collect evidence and 
 summon witnesses. He recognised with sickening 
 
BOTHWELL'S ASSIZE 141 
 
 certainty the hopelessness of his cause when such 
 reasonable representations made but little alteration 
 in the date. An Act of Council of March 28th 
 appointed the trial of the Earl of Bothwell for April 
 1 2th. Oddly enough Bothwell's name stands among 
 those who signed the Act. 
 
 He could count confidently on the forces at his 
 command to defeat the ends of justice ; but the 
 general atmosphere of suspicion and the anonymous 
 accusations tried his nerves and exasperated his 
 temper. When men spoke to him his colour came 
 and went, his hand played instinctively with the 
 handle of his dagger ; fifty armed men clattered after 
 him when he rode up the High Street. Matters 
 grew worse when the anonymous accusers coupled 
 the Queen's name with his in their proclamations, and 
 hinted not obscurely at a purposed divorce between 
 him and his wife. 
 
 As yet the band of conspirators held together. 
 Huntly was entirely " at Bothwell's devotion," partly 
 from the ascendency of the stronger man's nature but 
 more because Huntly's interests were bound up with 
 those of his brother-in-law. As the price of the 
 complete restitution of his lands and titles Huntly 
 consented to the repudiation of his virtuous young 
 sister by her husband. The wrong done to this 
 innocent lady leaves a stain of dishonour on Mary's 
 character darker than even her pitiless vengeance on 
 Darnley. 
 
 The politic brain of Lethington was powerless to 
 arrest the current of events ; timidity kept him at 
 Bothwell's side though he hated him and knew how 
 fatally his clumsy selfishness would ruin the political 
 position which Mary and himself had laboriously 
 
142 MARY STUART 
 
 gained through years of diplomacy. Murray may 
 merely have dreaded Bothwell's ascendency. It is 
 hardly fair to assert that he foresaw the ruin towards 
 which Mary was tending, and calculated that time 
 would work most profitably for him in his absence. 
 Whatever his motives, he was suddenly and with no 
 ostensible reason possessed by an urgent desire to 
 visit France and left Edinburgh on April 9th. 
 
 Even in this time when all Mary's nobler nature 
 was under eclipse, she retained at least one of her 
 finer characteristics. Loyalty to fellow-sinners may 
 not be high virtue ; but it was fearfully lacking in the 
 men who, a few months later, were only too thankful to 
 make the one woman a scapegoat for their common sin. 
 Mary at least was prepared to stand by her partners. 
 
 One of the minor conspirators complained of an 
 accusation made against himself, and gave the writing 
 first to Bothwell and then to Mary. Having read it 
 she handed it to Huntly, and turning her back "gave 
 ane thring with her shoulder, passed away and spake 
 nothing." She had no words for one who for fear or 
 favour hesitated to stick to his friends. 
 
 Lennox had written to Elisabeth to entreat her 
 interference in procuring delay. With what friends 
 and followers he could collect he was at Linlithgow 
 the day before the trial. A mandate reached him 
 there that he must come accompanied by no more 
 than six followers. It was a sufficient indication of 
 the justice he might expect to meet with. Fearing 
 for his personal safety he merely sent a servant to 
 lodge a remonstrance. Six thousand of Bothwell's 
 men filled the town on the day of assize, he rode from 
 Holyrood with a guard of two hundred hackbutters. 
 
 At daybreak a messenger had arrived, dusty and 
 
BOTH WELLS ASSIZE 143 
 
 sweating from Berwick, bearing Elisabeth's remon- 
 strance, but was denied admittance though he waited 
 hour after hour in the throng before the palace gates. 
 Late in the morning Bothwell and Lethington coming 
 out together spied him and took in his letter. Half 
 an hour later Lethington informed him that the Queen 
 was still asleep and might not be disturbed. Yet the 
 fellow maintained that he saw the Queen and the 
 Lady Lethington [Mary Fleming] at a window waving 
 good-bye to Bothwell as he rode away. 
 
 The court was presided over by Argyle ; the jury, 
 all members of the nobility, had one and all sufficient 
 reason for not offending Bothwell ; in Lennox's 
 absence no accusation was formally lodged, Bothwell 
 pleaded not guilty and in the absence of all evidence 
 to the contrary was unanimously acquitted ; a more 
 shameless farce never mocked the name of justice. 
 
 The only acts passed in the Parliament which sat 
 for the ensuing five days are significant. Several acts 
 restored to Huntly the forfeited possessions of his 
 house ; gifts of lands were ratified to Murray, Morton, 
 Lethington, to Sir James Balfour's father-in-law and 
 to Mr David Chalmers. An angry proclamation 
 denounced the placards which continued daily to keep 
 the city in excitement ; concessions were made with 
 unusual liberality to the Protestant establishment. 
 
 A delusive sense of triumph possessed Bothwell, 
 but he dared not stop on the path he was treading ; a 
 moment's stay or hesitation would have set aflame the 
 sullen jealousy smouldering in the hearts of his peers. 
 He cowed them and kept them in hand by sheer 
 audacity. On the evening of the 19th, the day the 
 Parliament adjourned, he bade a number of noblemen 
 to a supper at a tavern kept by one Ainslie. 
 
144 MARY STUART 
 
 We have no evidence as to the amount of drink- 
 ing common among gentlemen on convivial occasions 
 in those days. What follows would be at once more 
 credible and more creditable if we could believe that 
 on that evening all the most considerable of the 
 Scottish nobility had been drunk. At a late hour 
 in the evening Bothwell suddenly produced a paper 
 or bond, which not only established his innocence of 
 the king's murder but recommended him as a suitable 
 husband for the widowed Queen, and to this he 
 demanded their signatures. Had one man resisted, 
 protested and threatened, the rest for shame's sake 
 would have stood by him, but they were taken by 
 surprise, flustered and demoralised, and when one or 
 two had signed, the rest shamefacedly followed. 
 Later, as an excuse, some of them asserted that they 
 had become suddenly aware that bands of armed men 
 filled the house and guarded the street. It is possible 
 that Morton when he signed was playing a deeper 
 game. He may have foreseen that Bothwell was 
 madly forcing on the impossible and must inevitably 
 fall dragging down the Queen in his ruin, a set of 
 circumstances out of which the Scottish nobility could 
 make their profit. Did Bothwell that evening add 
 the Ainslie bond to certain other documents which he 
 was afterwards believed to have kept in a silver Casket 
 in careful custody at this time at Dunbar ? 
 
 The biographer of Mary must be cautious in using 
 material the authenticity of which has been matter of 
 endless controversy and of minutest criticism that 
 never yields a certain result ; but some index we must 
 have if we would even attempt to follow and under- 
 stand the inner history of the Queen of Scots during 
 the feverish months that lie between Glasgow and 
 
B0THWEL1/S ASSIZE 145 
 
 Carberry Hill. The authenticity of the most im- 
 portant of the Casket documents, the long Glasgow 
 letter, must be left in the hands of experts. # The 
 ordinary reader after numberless perusals finds 
 himself in the same dilemma, discrediting on the one 
 hand the power of any forger to produce a composition 
 so subtly characteristic, so dramatically convincing, so 
 inimitably inconsecutive, and on the other unable to 
 believe that any two accounts of a conversation could 
 concur as exactly as does the account of Mary's and 
 Darnley's conversation in the Letter with the account 
 which Crawford swore had been given him by Darnley. 
 There is less difficulty in accepting the Casket 
 Sonnets as genuine. They reveal a situation so 
 strained and peculiar that it is difficult to imagine 
 any forger subtle enough to have imagined it. If 
 they are the genuine expression of Mary's passion, 
 this is the drama — pitiful and humiliating but desper- 
 ately sincere and consequently human — that they 
 reveal. It is a bitter, relentless struggle between two 
 women for the love of a man, a struggle in which all 
 worldly advancement, all the glory and charm of the 
 richer nature, all the reckless passion that stops at no 
 sacrifice and proudly discounts dishonour are on the 
 side of the one woman, and on the other, only the 
 legal status of a wife, the dignity of unmerited wrong 
 and the hold a gentle, passionless nature has at times 
 on the reckless and headstrong. It was this hold 
 that Mary felt she could not break. She herself 
 withheld nothing ; honour, conscience, her high estate, 
 the kindness of friends, the safety of her kingdom — - 
 she threw them all into the balance, and yet the 
 
 * The curious reader is referred to Mr Lang's " Mystery of Mary 
 Stuart" for a full and masterly analysis of the Casket Letters. 
 K 
 
146 MARY STUART 
 
 tears of pale Lady Jean Both well outweighed 
 them all. 
 
 But Bothwell, for the sake of his giddy and ill-calcu- 
 lated ambition, was as ready to sacrifice the heart of 
 the woman he cared for as to accept the dishonour of 
 the woman who loved him. By some persuasion, 
 either by pressure from her brother, or by the sense 
 of her helpless isolation, or perhaps by the quiescence 
 of a naturally passive character, Lady Bothwell was 
 brought to consent to the action for divorce. She 
 went a step further in her submission and locked up 
 in her charter chest the Papal Dispensation which had 
 sanctioned her union with Bothwell, her far-away cousin. 
 It was on the ple^jiLcQnsanguinity-that the marriage 
 was annulled. Even in that lawless age the produc- 
 tion of the Dispensation would have stayed proceed- 
 ings, but she had no heart for such a contest. 
 Contemporary opinion confirms the situation we find 
 in the Sonnets. Observers thought little of Bothwell's 
 love for Mary, while the Queen's " inordinate love for 
 Bothwell " was gossip on every tongue. 
 
 Kirkcaldy of Grange, a Protestant but above the 
 average of the time for honesty, was as vigorous with 
 his pen as with his sword. In a letter to Bedford on 
 April 20th, the morning after Ainslie's tavern, he 
 wrote: "She has said that she cares not to lose 
 France, England and her own country for him and 
 will go to the world's end in a white petticoat ere she 
 leave him." There is a fine recklessness in the phrase 
 that carries conviction. 
 
 On Monday the 21st Mary was at Stirling visiting 
 her son, Darnley's child, who had so slight a hold on 
 her affection. Meanwhile, Bothwell had gathered a 
 body of his friends together, ostensibly to ride into 
 
BOTHWELL'S ASSIZE 147 
 
 Liddesdale, but wild rumours were flying as to his 
 intentions. On the very day when Mary was to ride 
 from Linlithgow to Edinburgh an anonymous corres- 
 pondent was foretelling her abduction to Cecil. 
 
 We seem at this point to pass from history into 
 the pages of a conventional romance. A beautiful 
 Queen is riding at high noon between two towered 
 cities in the richest and most frequented district of her 
 country. In her company are her most trusted 
 counsellors Melville and Lethington, and Huntly 
 a courtier and soldier. All at once, at a point where 
 their road crosses a bridge, there is the flash of 
 light on steel caps, the clatter of horses, confusion 
 and loud orders to halt. Strangely, no resistance is 
 offered. The leader of the hostile band seizes the 
 Queen's bridle and she, the woman of highest courage 
 and most imperious temper in the country, neither 
 blazes out into anger nor cries aloud for help ! 
 
 Mary's attendants were dismissed ; Edinburgh 
 was within a few miles, yet it would appear that none 
 of the fugitives appealed to the burghers to attempt 
 pursuit and rescue. Huntly, Lethington and Melville 
 were carried off with the Queen. A follower of Both- 
 well, a Captain Blackadder, riding at Melville's bridle 
 assured him that all was done with the Queen's consent. 
 
 Dunbar was as strong a place as any in Scotland, 
 the grey North Sea swinging on the rocks on three 
 sides of it. Inside it was probably as chill and 
 unfurnished as on the February morning when Mary 
 had found refuge there fleeing from Riccio's murderers. 
 She had come without attendants, rough women from 
 the garrison, hastily brought in, may have waited on 
 her needs ; her comings and goings were exposed to 
 the curious eyes and ribald tongues of the men-at-arms. 
 
148 MARY STUART 
 
 The following day Melville was dismissed. It 
 must soon have become clear to Lethington that 
 Huntly was in the plot. He was himself in evil 
 plight and physical peril unnerved Lethington. 
 Huntly at one point openly threatened him, but 
 fallen and infatuated as she might be, Mary had not 
 ceased to be a queen ; sweeping round on Huntly she 
 threatened to deprive him of lands and life if a hair of 
 Lethington's head were touched. Nay, she could 
 defy Bothwell himself in defence of an unarmed man. 
 By some means Lethington had received a message 
 from some of the nobles assembled in Council relating 
 to the rescue of the Queen. He was up in her chamber 
 giving this message and probably urging on her a 
 plan of escape. 
 
 Bothwell, suspicious of Lethington's influence, 
 appeared stealthily in the open doorway of Mary's 
 room. Lethington's back was towards him and 
 Bothwell had raised his dagger to stab him when 
 Mary slipped in between and drove Lethington into 
 the ruelle between the bed and the wall — it was not 
 the first time that slender body had thrust itself 
 between an unarmed man and drawn daggers. It 
 needed entreaties, alas ! as well as authority to stem 
 the brutal wrath of Bothwell. 
 
 It was not Lethington's policy to publish the fact 
 that he owed life itself to his Queen ; the incident 
 was told years afterwards in an apology for William 
 Maitland of Lethington written by his son, and he 
 may have had the story from his mother who never 
 to the end lost her love of her mistress. 
 
 Of the ten days that Mary and Bothwell spent at 
 Dunbar in strange, unnatural isolation we have only 
 two fragmentary bits of information which tell us 
 
BOTHWELL'S ASSIZE 149 
 
 nothing. An Englishman from Berwick in passing 
 by saw the pair walking together strongly guarded, 
 Bothwell in gorgeous apparel. The second glimpse 
 is politically more important. These ten days had 
 given the rest of the nobility, Erskine, Athol, Glencairn, 
 Morton and others, time to draw together and to 
 realise that, Ainslie bond or no Ainslie bond, they 
 would never endure that Bothwell should be promoted 
 over their heads. This point was clear to them but 
 nothing else. To them Mary wrote a formal letter 
 saying that it was true that she had been " evil and 
 strangely handled, but since, so well used as she had 
 no cause to complain," willing them to quiet themselves. 
 Meantime the Law Courts were at work to set 
 Bothwell free to marry the Queen. On the third of 
 May the Consistorial Court divorced Lady Bothwell on 
 the ground of her husband's adultery with one of her 
 maids, on the seventh Archbishop Hamilton dissolved 
 the marriage on the ground of consanguinity, though 
 a little more than a year previously he had himself 
 signed the Dispensation for the marriage of the pair. 
 
 Of all the characters in this tragical history Lady 
 Bothwell alone was to live and see good days. 
 While Mary was expiating the sins and follies of 
 her youth hour by hour through twenty heavy years, 
 while Bothwell was fretting his soul into madness in 
 his Danish prison, Jean Gordon, the honoured wife 
 of the Earl of Sutherland, was superintending agri- 
 cultural improvements and rearing up sons one of 
 whom was to write a pious and affectionate eulogy 
 of his mother. In the evening of her life she married 
 her first love, Ogilvy of Boyne, Mary Beaton, his first 
 wife, being dead. 
 
CHAPTER XIII 
 
 CARBERRY HILL 
 15th June 1567 
 
 ON the 6th of May Mary and Bothwell re-emerged 
 into the world, a world more changed and 
 hostile than it was possible for Mary to conceive. At 
 all times it is incredible to a young and beautiful 
 woman that fate and men's minds can be relentless 
 where she is in question : in the sixteenth century 
 princes and potentates ignored the existence of any 
 public opinion beyond that of courts and governments. 
 The first task that lay before Mary was confront- 
 ing the courts of England and France with a plausible 
 apology for her proposed marriage. She must have 
 had perplexing and dispiriting visions of how Bothwell 
 would fit into that delicate game of European politics 
 in which she would inevitably have to resume her 
 part. Could she imagine this swaggering Borderer 
 an ally of Philip of Spain, or a welcome kinsman 
 to the Cardinal of Lorraine ? Could she imagine the 
 new Pope, the devout Pius V., sending her his bless- 
 ing [and subsidy] on her new marriage ? She had 
 never lost sight of her prospect of some day wearing 
 the English crown, could she dream seriously of 
 sharing- it with Bothwell ? Ambition had been the 
 very breath of her life, diplomacy the art in which 
 she excelled all women of her time, yet — if we are to 
 believe the Sonnets — she had thought these not too 
 
 dear a sacrifice to pay for love. But till it was 
 
 150 
 
CARBERRY HILL 151 
 
 clear that the sacrifice was to be exacted she made 
 a bold effort to piece the new life on to the old. 
 
 The last service Lethington rendered as Secretary 
 was to draw up instructions for Robert Melville and 
 the Bishop of Dunblane severally accredited to the 
 courts of England and France. To represent the 
 Earl of Bothwell as a suitable consort for a Queen of 
 Scots and Dowager of France and at the same time 
 to represent Mary as the innocent victim of his 
 masterfulness was a tour de force beyond even 
 Lethington's subtle pen. Nor were the curt, uneasy 
 letters which Bothwell himself addressed to Elisabeth 
 and to the French king calculated to improve his 
 position with sovereigns certain to resent the sudden 
 equality with themselves into which he had, momen- 
 tarily, thrust himself. 
 
 Paris and London, however, were far off, there 
 were more dangerous critics to be faced at home. It 
 was a shabby court that Mary kept at Holy rood in 
 those May days. Sir James Balfour held the Castle 
 in Bothwell's interest, for Sir James' complete lack 
 of principle inspired Bothwell with confidence, quite 
 misplaced as it turned out. Huntly remained, but 
 he was so bound up with the whole story that 
 his presence counted for nothing. The faithful and 
 uncritical among Mary's friends, the Flemings, 
 Livingstons, Setons remained with her of course. 
 Another friend, Lord Herries, was devoted enough to 
 ride from his home in the Borders to throw himself 
 at her feet and beg her to stop on the fatal course 
 on which she had entered. Far from resenting her 
 neglect of his advice, he was to stand by her in the 
 darkest hour of her fortunes. 
 
 It may have been partly curiosity as well as 
 
152 MARY STUART 
 
 kindness that brought Sir James Melville to court 
 in those days. A letter from a scandalised English 
 adherent which he one day handed to the Queen, 
 conveyed the warning he wished to give her. She 
 read it and, turning angrily on Lethington, said that 
 this was one of his devices. The Secretary, uneasy 
 and alienated in a quasi-imprisonment, added nothing 
 to Mary's dignity or security. Meantime at Stirling 
 the nobles were drawing together, hostile and watch- 
 ful. If they were aloof and sullen, the populace in 
 the streets of Edinburgh were plain-spoken enough. 
 No carriage in those days sheltered or concealed the 
 great. Mary walking or riding up the steep High 
 street was watched by curious eyes from stair-head 
 and window. "God bless your Grace if you are 
 saikless of the king's murder," cried the women after 
 her in their loud, fierce Scots. 
 
 Twice before Mary had faced a conspiracy of nobles 
 and scattered them by the force of her high spirit and 
 capacity ; she could trust to success and her own 
 fascination to win back the fickle mob, but between 
 these two lay the solid, unconsidered but determined 
 and determining conscience of the country, the 
 ministers and their following of decent burghers and 
 country gentlemen. 
 
 Knox was still an exile in England, but the 
 rebuke uttered in the pulpit of St Giles was more 
 effective as coming from a modest and courageous 
 man, his coadjutor John Craig. When constrained to 
 publish the banns of marriage before the congregation 
 of St Giles, Craig denounced the iniquity of such an 
 union, and poured contumely on a nobility whose 
 silence and flattery connived at such abomination. 
 Not only from the security of the pulpit did this 
 
CARBERRY HILL 153 
 
 simple minister put to shame the natural leaders of 
 the people, alone before the Privy Council he accused 
 Bothwell of murder, rape, adultery and collusion in 
 the matter of the divorce. Bothwell muttered fiercely 
 that he would have the minister hanged with a 
 cord. 
 
 By two organs did public opinion find expression, 
 the pulpit and placards. The latter were found 
 nailed up on the very gates of Holyrood. On the eve 
 of her marriage, the night of the 14th May, this line 
 from Ovid was posted up : — 
 
 " Mense malas Maio nubere vulgus ait." 
 
 Early on that summer morning Mary, dressed in 
 her " dule weed," was married to Bothwell in the Council 
 Hall of Holyrood. Adam Bothwell, the renegade bishop 
 of the Orkneys, performed the ceremony according to 
 the Protestant rites, for so and only so would Bothwell 
 have it. It was the last sacrifice Mary brought him 
 and was probably the hardest strain on her conscience. 
 The wedding was poorly attended. The French 
 ambassador du Croc, like Throckmorton a true friend 
 to Mary in good or evil fortune, refused to be present. 
 Later in the day he visited the couple and was aware 
 of a painful constraint between them. Mary excused 
 it, saying that she had no wish to be cheerful ; then, 
 suddenly breaking down, she cried that she wished 
 she were dead. Two days later Huntly and Melville 
 standing outside her little closet heard the two voices 
 raised in agitation and, finally, the Queen threatening 
 passionately to kill herself. 
 
 The cause of their common unhappiness was 
 neither the sting of remorse nor the sense of isolation — 
 together they would have stifled conscience and defied 
 
154 MARY STUART 
 
 the world — but they found no comfort in one another. 
 Bothwell held the cynical views of one who had 
 met with signal success in his many and varied 
 gallantries. A day or two before the marriage Sir 
 James Melville found him at supper with Huntly and 
 others and, on his invitation, joined the company. 
 But the conversation took so licentious a turn that 
 Melville — no Puritan but simply a decent gentleman — 
 left the table in disgust and joined the Queen, "who," 
 he adds, " was very glad to see me." To a man of 
 Bothwell's calibre, the reckless generosity of Mary's 
 love was merely a cause of suspicion ; he knew, he 
 said brutally, " qu'elle aimait son plaisir autant qu'un 
 autre." So jealous was he that he would hardly 
 suffer her to speak to man or woman. The bitterest 
 jsang of all was that Mary knew and all the world 
 Hcnew thatrie still corresponded with his wife at Crichton, 
 writing to her once or twice a week, doing thus a 
 strange, unnatural dishonour to both women. 
 
 Those who have felt and loved the charm and 
 noble qualities of Mary — and in this almost all her 
 biographers are among her servants — must be thank- 
 ful for the rapid fatality that was overtaking her. 
 Some great and signal tragedy was the only possible 
 escape from such degradation. 
 
 At the beginning of June Lethington had slipped 
 away from court and joined the lords at Stirling. 
 Their policy had at last become clear to them. The 
 outcry of foreign nations about the king's murder had 
 touched them in their national honour ; besides, 
 pursuit of the murderers was safe, now that the scape- 
 goat was isolated and discredited. Punishment of the 
 murderers was one avowed object, another the pro- 
 tection of the little prince, a third the liberation of the 
 
CARBERRY HILL 155 
 
 Queen from Bothwell, a legal fiction this last, to save 
 them from the appearance of rebellion. 
 
 Things looked so menacing- that on the usual 
 pretence of establishing order on the Border, Mary 
 sent out proclamations calling on the lieges to meet 
 her and Bothwell at Melrose. Together they moved 
 southward to Borthwick Castle. At the same 
 moment Athol and Lethington entered Edinburgh, 
 nor had the latter much trouble in persuading Sir 
 James Balfour to betray the Castle into their hands. 
 
 Bothwell had already left Borthwick when, on the 
 night of the ioth of June, it was surrounded by a 
 hostile band calling loudly on him to surrender and 
 shouting insults at the Queen. Nevertheless when 
 they found that he was gone, to save appearances 
 they rode back to Edinburgh. The next evening 
 Mary in a page's dress slipped out of the castle and 
 rode towards Dunbar. She was unattended, but a 
 mile or two out was met by her husband. At three 
 in the morning, with the summer dawn broadening 
 over the sea, they, for the third time, reached that 
 windy fortress, more tragically bound up with Mary's 
 fortune than even Holyrood or Fotheringay. 
 
 Here probably some woman of the garrison 
 supplied her with clothes, a short red petticoat, a velvet 
 hat, and sleeves with points, the ordinary costume 
 of an Edinburgh burgher wife. She was in such 
 mean apparel when, on the morning of the 15th of 
 June, she and Bothwell led out their army and occupied 
 Carberry Hill. 
 
 Troops had been slow to come in. Besides the 
 Queen's bodyguard of two hundred hackbutters they 
 could count on little over 2500 men and most of 
 these were tardy and uncertain. Lord Seton was 
 
156 MARY STUART 
 
 the only nobleman, and some Lothian lairds, neigh- 
 bours of Bothwell's, the only men of position in 
 their army. 
 
 With all his reckless courage Bothwell had not 
 "that in his face which men would fain call Master: 
 Authority." A few weeks before in the very hall at 
 Holyrood the soldiers had mutinied for lack of pay 
 and he, knowing no method but that of violence, had 
 struck their leader and had barely escaped their 
 vengeance. But if he could not keep an army 
 together he could dispose it skilfully and lead it 
 " gaillardement " as du Croc noticed when he rode up 
 to make a last attempt at an accommodation between 
 the two parties. His efforts were fruitless. The 
 nobles would hear of two conditions only ; either 
 Mary must abandon Bothwell and return to them, in 
 which case they would serve her on bended knees, 
 or, if Bothwell would try the ordeal by combat, they 
 were ready to supply half a dozen champions. The 
 first condition Mary would not consider for a moment. 
 She who never abandoned the meanest of her servants 
 was not likely, at a crisis, to desert the man she loved. 
 
 She complained bitterly that the nobles had them- 
 selves cleared Bothwell of onilt and had recommended 
 him to her as a husband. Bothwell had been 
 marshalling his troops and rode up at this instant. 
 He was willing he declared to accept the combat but 
 the Queen interposed ; it was her quarrel as well as 
 his, she would not suffer him to try it alone. 
 
 Then Bothwell gaily bade du Croc stay to enjoy 
 the spectacle of the battle, quoting a parallel from 
 classical history. If the passage is not to be found, it 
 proves at least that Bothwell's pulses were beating 
 evenly. So gallant and assured was his bearing, so 
 
CARBERRY HILL, 157 
 
 skilful his disposition of his troops that du Croc left 
 with the impression that he would have the better in 
 the fight if only his men proved trustworthy. That 
 was the fatal weakness. When the two armies stood 
 opposite, the men on Mary's side refused to advance 
 and insisted on negotiations being renewed. No 
 conditions were offered except the renewed offer of 
 single combat. 
 
 What can have been the reason of Mary's un- 
 willingness to permit the combat ? It is not unusual for 
 high-spirited women, insensible to personal fear, to be 
 tremulous for the far stronger men — husbands and sons 
 — whom they love. But one cannot help thinking 
 that superstition or conscience shook Mary's courage. 
 The judgment of God was still believed to nerve the 
 arm and sharpen the weapon against the guilty. Grange 
 and Tulliebardine were rejected as not being Bothwell's 
 equals. The same could not be urged against Lord 
 Lindsay but the Queen would have none of it. He 
 was her husband, he should fight with none of them. 
 
 By this it was late in the afternoon. Mary's troop 
 had dwindled, the men slipping off in search of pro- 
 vender. Through long hours of waiting her fiery 
 spirit had chafed against delay, now, sick at heart, she 
 recognised that no fighting was possible that day. Then 
 her one object was to secure a safe retreat for Bothwell. 
 
 From Grange she had learned that, for her 
 husband, no terms were to be made. The noblemen 
 were resolved to have his blood ; for herself, if she 
 would leave him, she should have all honour and 
 obedience at their hands. 
 
 Meanwhile the hostile army disturbed at the 
 absence of Grange, was seen to be advancing ; it was 
 time that Bothwell was away. 
 
158 MARY STUART 
 
 A certain French soldier of fortune, but a man of 
 sensibility, has described their parting. " Wherefore 
 she caused the duke # to depart with great pain and 
 anguish, and with many long kisses they took farewell, 
 and at last he asked her if she would keep the faith 
 she had given him and she answered that she would. 
 Thereupon she gave him her hand and he with a 
 small company galloped off to Dunbar." 
 
 Yet before Bothwell left the Queen he had 
 provided her with a weapon against her enemies. 
 He assured her of the complicity in Darnley's murder, 
 of Lethington, Balfour and Morton, and gave her 
 some paper signed by Lethington. [This was not the 
 Craigmillar document, the bond Bothwell had shown 
 to Bowton before the murder ; that document had 
 been left in Balfour's keeping, and Randolph, writing 
 long afterwards, declared that it had been destroyed 
 by him and Lethington.] 
 
 All that hot June day from five in the morning till 
 eight at night Mary had endured, foodless and shelter- 
 less, a prey to the crudest emotions. Her mood was 
 not one of lassitude or abasement, rather of fury and 
 bitterness, when she met the hostile lords. " How is 
 this, my Lord Morton," she cried tauntingly, " I am 
 told that this is done to get justice against the king's 
 murderers. I am told also that you are one of them." 
 Seeing Lindsay, her anger overflowed " Ah, my Lord 
 Lindsay, I will have your head for this." 
 
 Below the fine politic brain of the Guise, below 
 the generous recklessness of the Stuart was a sub- 
 stratum of Tudor coarseness and violence which once 
 or twice in her life-time came to the surface in furious 
 
 * Shortly before the marriage Mary had created Bothwell Duke of 
 the Orkneys. 
 
CARBERRY HILL 159 
 
 speech. All the way into Edinburgh she railed at 
 her captors. 
 
 The brutal cry of the soldiers, " Burn the whore," 
 was a sudden horrible revelation of public feeling- 
 moving her to angry tears till Grange silenced the 
 speakers, striking with the flat of his sword. Flaunted 
 in front of her, men carried a banner on which was 
 depicted her murdered husband lying under a tree and 
 her infant son invoking the vengence of Heaven on 
 the murderers. 
 
 Up the crowded streets of Edinburgh they carried 
 her, dishevelled, dusty, hardly able to sit her horse. 
 Street windows and stair-heads were crowded by an 
 excited populace crying vengeance on her, the women 
 being especially impudent and vociferous. At a corner 
 of the High Street where a steep wynd led down to 
 the Cowgate stood a stately house where the Provost, 
 Simon Preston of Craigmillar, had his lodging. 
 There in a small room looking out on the High Street 
 Mary spent the night. 
 
 Food she would have none nor was sleep possible 
 in the narrow space she shared with her guards, mere 
 rough soldiers. No woman was allowed to wait on 
 the unfortunate Queen in her bitter need. It would 
 seem that she contrived to write to Bothwell merely 
 to assure him of her love and faith, but the paltry knave 
 to whom she entrusted the letter handed it to the 
 lords. 
 
 Early in the morning dishevelled and with dis- 
 ordered garments she leaned from her window, com- 
 manding, entreating the passers-by to rescue her. 
 She saw Lethington below in the street and called to 
 him to come up. He crushed his hat further on his 
 head and would have passed on, but feeling among the 
 
160 MARY STUART 
 
 mob was divided and running high and for very 
 shame's sake he went up. 
 
 Mary's bitterest grievance was still that they had 
 parted her from her husband. Either to cure her 
 infatuation or to relieve spiteful feelings of his own, 
 Lethington said the crudest thing he could think of; 
 Bothwell was not worth her regretting, he had always 
 preferred his own wife to her, he had assured Lady 
 Bothwell of it in letter after letter. A week earlier 
 the words would have cut to the quick ; now the fact 
 of separation had swept jealousy and suspicion aside. 
 Let them place her, she cried, on a ship with Bothwell 
 to drift at the winds' will. On this point she was 
 clearly impracticable, but on others she was clear- 
 headed and dangerously aware of the points she held 
 in her hand. 
 
 Later in the day Lethington was with her again. 
 She declared that she was willing to join in prosecuting 
 the murderers, and told him plainly that she had seen 
 his signature and knew from Bothwell of Morton's 
 and Balfour's complicity. 
 
 It was clear defiance. Each knew enough to hang 
 the other. At first Lethington was inclined to accept 
 it as such, but prudence and compromise were of 
 the essence of the man. He left the Queen with 
 some vague promise of serving her at a future time. 
 It was clearly for his interest and Morton's that 
 she should be moved out of the way. Besides the 
 mob had to be reckoned with, it might rise at any 
 moment either to wreak vengeance on Mary or to 
 rescue her. 
 
 At eight in the evening the lords conducted her to 
 Holyrood ; she, poor soul, believed that they meant 
 to reinstate her there. A body of 300 hack- 
 
CARBERRY HILL 161 
 
 butters guarded her down the street, Morton and 
 Athol walked on either side of her. 
 
 The only softening touch is supplied by the 
 presence of two faithful Maries, Mary Livingston — 
 now Mary Sempill — and Mary Seton. By their kind 
 care the Queen now wore a bedgown of shot silk. 
 After supper, of which she again refused to partake, it 
 was announced to her that she must mount and ride 
 that very night, must cross the Firth and make no 
 stay till she reached the castle of Loch Leven. From 
 Leith onwards she was guarded by Lord Lindsay and 
 Lord Ruthven. 
 
 She knew that Huntly and the Hamiltons, though 
 they had failed to appear at Carberry, still held the 
 field. She had a wild hope that a rescue might be 
 attempted and tried, during the long night ride, to 
 slacken the pace, pleading weariness, but relentlessly 
 her companions spurred on the tired jades that carried 
 them. 
 
 Early on the morning of Tuesday, June 17th, she 
 reached the island-castle of Loch Leven in a half faint- 
 ing- condition. Nature was merciful and for a fortnight 
 her physical condition dulled her mental misery. 
 
CHAPTER XIV 
 
 LOCH LEVEN 
 June 1567 — May 1568 
 
 IFE with its burden of remembrance and fear, of 
 ■*— ' thwarted passion and unquenchable vitality, 
 came back rapidly to Mary. She had been isolated 
 during the days of her sickness with two waiting 
 women and her apothecary. Now she found herself 
 in the middle of a crowded household, boxed up in 
 narrow buildings on a small island. Day after day she 
 was to look out across the placid grey lake at her feet, to 
 rounded lines of green hills. About a mile across the 
 water a huddled group of low roofed cottages repre- 
 sented the only point from which help or excitement 
 or new terrors could reach her in her island prison. 
 
 The place was remote, cut off from the larger world, 
 
 yet in itself afforded neither solitude nor privacy. 
 
 But at first the crowded life in the castle, the eyes 
 
 that looked at her with curiosity, hostility or furtive 
 
 sympathy, the figures that passed her on the narrow 
 
 stair or crossed the court below her windows, were but 
 
 moving shadows to the dulled perceptions of the Queen. 
 
 Two instincts absorbed all her powers of feeling and 
 
 of willing ; a haunting terror of what might be done 
 
 to her and determination to resist all demands to give 
 
 up her husband. At times she looked for nothing but 
 
 death. Once seeing a page below her window she 
 
 called out to him to bid her friends pray God for her 
 
 soul for there was little hope for her body. Yet no 
 163 
 
u 
 
[Thomas tie Leu) 
 
 CHARLES IX, KINO OF FRANCE 
 
LOCH LEVEN 163 
 
 fear shook her constancy. Between her and Bothwell 
 at this time there was a bond which even a less loyal 
 and affectionate woman could not have disregarded. 
 She believed that she carried Bothwell's unborn child 
 below her heart. When, after the agitation of the 
 abdication, that prospect was swept away, her mind 
 recovered its spring and all her energies bent them- 
 selves to reconstituting her life and recovering liberty 
 and position. 
 
 One of the sorest troubles of her captivity — and 
 through the long years in England it was the same — 
 was that she was cut off from all news of the outer 
 world except such things as her gaolers chose to 
 communicate, and these were always disheartening or 
 alarming. 
 
 Day after day she must have dreaded to hear 
 that Bothwell was in the hands of his enemies. With 
 her unconquerable — and inexperienced — hopefulness 
 she counted up the friends on whose help she could 
 depend. There was Elisabeth, the sister-queen, with 
 whom she had exchanged false, fervid vows of fidelity ; 
 there was the King of France with whom she had 
 been brought up ; surely also there was the whole 
 chivalry of that French court where she had been 
 admired and loved ; there was the King of Spain on 
 whom her religion gave her a claim ; and, coming 
 nearer home, there was her brother the Earl of 
 Murray, to whose return she looked forward with ill- 
 founded hopes of comfort and protection. 
 
 Lady Murray certainly visited her in the first 
 weeks of her captivity. The two ladies met in tears 
 and parted with sorrow from one another. We know 
 little of Agnes Keith, Lady Murray, save the "long 
 love " she had borne her husband before marriage 
 
164 MARY STUART 
 
 and the ugly greed with which she, later, clung to 
 Mary's jewels when these passed into her charge, 
 but the tears she shed with the unhappy Queen may 
 be counted to her for righteousness. 
 
 Could Mary have known all that was passing in 
 the outer world it would have added nothing to her 
 peace. Two days after she had been spirited off to 
 Loch Leven fortune brought a windfall to the Lords 
 which strengthened their hands materially. 
 
 Word came to Morton and Lethington as they 
 sat at dinner that three of Bothwell's personal servants 
 had passed into the Castle. At once a search was 
 made for them, and by the treachery of a certain 
 "good fellow," one of them, George Dalgleish, was 
 run to earth in a house in the Potterrow. The papers 
 he had in his possession, infeftments and the like, 
 served no purpose of the finders, but when the poor 
 wretch was brought face to face with the rack, he 
 collapsed entirely, and leading Mr Archibald Douglas 
 — Morton's Jackal — to his lodgings, drew from under 
 the seat of the bed a silver box. This was delivered 
 into Morton's hands and next morning opened in 
 the presence of Athol, Mar, Glencairn, Home, 
 Sempill, Sanquhar, the Laird of Tulliebardine and 
 Lethinoton. The contents were said to have been 
 " sighted " by those present. 
 
 Whether the letters that have come down to us 
 are the same as were then sighted, or whether these 
 were garbled, changed and added to, is not the 
 question here. It is certain that "some testimony in 
 her own handwriting " of her complicity in the king's 
 murder was used by the Lords as a constraining argu- 
 ment in compelling Mary's abdication. They kept 
 the letters under lock and key and the dubious 
 
LOCH LEVEN 165 
 
 custody of Morton, but sent the report of them or 
 actual copies of them to ruin what reputation Mary 
 might still have at the courts of France and England. 
 
 Elisabeth, whatever her private opinion may have 
 been, professed — and it is to her honour — to the Spanish 
 ambassador her disbelief in the discovery of com- 
 promising letters. Indeed at this juncture Elisabeth 
 was Mary's only friend. Mary had been faithless to 
 her church, and the Pope, the fervent Pius V., would 
 have nothing more to do with her "unless in time 
 to come he should see better signs of her life and 
 religion than he had witnessed in the past." 
 
 At the court of France, where Mary might have 
 looked for sympathy, there was total indifference if 
 not a spice of malicious satisfaction in her 
 downfall. Martigues alone, the gallant Martigues 
 who had starved inside Leith in 1561, the husband 
 of an early friend of Mary, offered to restore her to 
 freedom and power if the king would grant him three 
 thousand arquebusiers, but Catherine remarked sourly 
 that they had enough irons in the fire. But up to a 
 certain point the English Queen was prepared to 
 interfere. The sanctity of kingship had been out- 
 raged in a sister sovereign, a precedent that 
 made Elisabeth furious. She was accustomed to 
 look upon the Scottish nobility as men at her 
 devotion, she thought that she had only to scold 
 them for their rebellion and dictate the terms on 
 which they should be reconciled to their sovereign. 
 At the same time she wrote severe but protecting 
 letters to her cousin. It was her plan, that Mary, 
 humble and grateful, should owe everything to her 
 magnanimous rival. 
 
 It is an argument of her good faith that Elisabeth 
 
166 MARY STUART 
 
 chose as her envoy Sir Nicholas Throckmorton. 
 Throckmorton is always a welcome figure in the 
 story of Mary, for in the company of her Scottish 
 nobles one loses all recollection of what constitutes a 
 man of the world and a man of honour. For six 
 weeks prudently and courageously, though with in- 
 finite distaste for the men he had to deal with, he 
 worked in Mary's interest. 
 
 At the end, if he effected nothing towards her 
 restoration, he was soberly convinced that it had been 
 his persistent efforts alone that had saved her life. 
 
 The nobles resolutely refused to grant him access 
 to Mary, yet he managed to have a jewel conveyed to 
 her, a token of good faith from Elisabeth. 
 
 They covered their delay in negotiating with him 
 with endless excuses. Once it was a fast and " they 
 must first seek the matters of God and take counsel 
 of Him who could direct them " before they could 
 attend to business. Lethington used to come con- 
 fidentially to Throckmorton's lodgings, and with a great 
 show of candour gave him clearly to understand that 
 the nobles had once and again found such cold comfort 
 at Elisabeth's hands that they were slow to trust her. 
 France, on the other hand, was eager for the old 
 alliance and would make no troublesome conditions 
 about the Queen. 
 
 It was brought home to Throckmorton that if 
 Elisabeth insisted too hotly on Mary's liberation it 
 would throw Scotland into the arms of France, and 
 would be the signal for Mary's death. "In case you 
 do, on the Queen's behalf your mistress, press this 
 company to enlarge the Queen my sovereign and to 
 suffer you to go to her ... I assure you, you will put 
 the Queen my mistress in great jeopardy of her life." 
 
LOCH LEVEN 167 
 
 Behind the nobles, urging them on and really- 
 dictating the policy,was a stubborn and vociferous public 
 opinion. " The women be most furious and impudent 
 and yet the men be mad enough," Throckmorton wrote. 
 The general excitement even threatened his own life. 
 He was distinctly preached against from the pulpit. 
 The ministers, especially Knox and Craig, were very 
 austere. " They preached hot cannons against her," 
 is Throckmorton's vivid phrase. 
 
 Clear-cut and rigorous fell their verdict that their 
 Queen " hath no more liberty nor privilege to commit 
 murder or adultery than any other private person, 
 either by God's laws or the laws of the realm." 
 They threatened God's judgment on the country if 
 the guilty Queen were not brought to punishment. 
 There was a hideous old Scottish law which condemned 
 a wife guilty of compassing her husband's death to be 
 burnt alive. Nor was this law a dead letter. That 
 very autumn in Edinburgh a certain Hamilton was 
 put to death for taking his brother's life, but his sister- 
 in-law, the partner of his passion and his sin, suffered 
 death by fire. Possibly, even in the case of the 
 Queen, the preachers, with an angry populace behind 
 them, might have clamoured for the extreme penalty. 
 
 But a Council on which sat Morton, Balfour and 
 Lethington could not face a public trial. If they 
 had testimony in her own hand against her, she had 
 proof that meant hanging for them. Their wisest 
 course was so to work upon her fears as to force her 
 to abdicate. 
 
 In the first weeks she had in her terror made various 
 offers. She would retire to France and enter a 
 convent or live with her grandmother the old Duchess 
 of Guise, she would resign the government to Murray 
 
168 MARY STUART 
 
 or to old Chatelherault. With forlorn dignity she 
 entreated her nobles, if they would not treat her as 
 their Queen, to use her at least as the daughter of the 
 king whom many of them remembered and the mother 
 of their prince. She ends with a pathetic request 
 that an embroiderer may be sent to her. She had 
 the feminine instinct to keep crowding fears and 
 torturing memories at bay by the small familiar art of 
 the needle. The altar cloth she worked at Loch 
 Leven is still in preservation. The velvet is brittle 
 and the silk and gold thread tarnished, but still we can 
 touch the fietirs-de-lis and angels of her shaping. In 
 one of her letters to Sir Robert Melville at this 
 anxious time she asks him to send her a weight of 
 crimson silk and silver thread. 
 
 Dejected and restless as she might be, "the 
 enchantment whereby men are bewitched" was 
 inseparable from Mary and independent of any effort 
 of hers. When Lord Ruthven, presuming on her 
 helplessness and forgetting his own place of trust 
 about her person, dared to speak to her of love, she 
 treated it as an insult and complained to the lady of 
 the castle. 
 
 Lord Ruthven was removed ; yet it was he who, 
 with Lord Lindsay and Sir Robert Melville, was sent 
 on the 24th of July to extort her consent to the 
 abdication. Melville contrived to secure a private 
 interview with the Queen, before the arrival of his 
 colleagues, in her bedchamber where she was lying 
 sick. His advice was honest and friendly. Let her 
 sign the deed of abdication for the sake of peace ; 
 being extorted under compulsion such consent need 
 not bind her afterwards. 
 
 That strange, variable creature Lethington had 
 
LOCH LEVEN 169 
 
 sent her a token, an enamel representing a mouse 
 freeing a lion from the toils with this inscription, 
 "A chi basta l'anima non mancano le forze." One 
 wonders how far the steady affection of Mary Fleming 
 deflected the policy of her restless husband. Her 
 brother-in-law Athol and the Laird of Tulliebardine 
 also sent tokens. 
 
 To the politic arguments of Melville Mary would 
 not yield, but when Lindsay in a "boisting" humour 
 threatened to have her dragged out of bed and carried 
 away from those who, from gaolers, suddenly appeared 
 to her as protectors, she hastily consented, and, sick 
 and dispirited, signed the deed in the presence of two 
 notaries. 
 
 Five days later the baby prince was crowned at 
 Stirling. With gratuitous brutality the Laird of Loch 
 Leven allowed his servants to celebrate the event 
 with bonfires and acclamation. When Mary learned 
 the cause of the rejoicings she laid her head on the 
 table and wept aloud calling on God to avenge her 
 cause. 
 
 The time was now ripe for the return of the Earl 
 of Murray. The news of his sister's defeat and 
 captivity had reached him at the end of June in 
 France. He may have persuaded himself that he 
 was shocked and distressed at her downfall. By his 
 servant, Nicholas Elphinston, he sent her a letter. 
 Elphinston, in an interview with Elisabeth, conveyed 
 the impression that his master was sending comfort- 
 able messages to his sister. Notwithstanding this, 
 Elisabeth received Murray with reproaches when, on 
 his way north, he stopped at the English court. He 
 apologetically assured her that he would do his best 
 for his own Queen. 
 
170 MARY STUART 
 
 Few writers have had a finer mastery of the difficult 
 art of reporting conversations than the Spanish am- 
 bassador de Silva ; no diplomatist had ever more 
 consummate skill in making men involuntarily turn 
 themselves inside out. He took Murray's measure 
 to a nicety. By his tone and by the difficulties he 
 raised, de Silva recognised that, though the Scotsman 
 kept returning to his desire to help the Queen, it was 
 not altogether his intention. Had de Silva spoken of 
 Mary as guilty, Murray would have posed as her 
 apologist. The acute Spaniard did the reverse. He 
 gave Murray the gratifying assurance that Mary's 
 confessor, when he visited him on his way back to 
 France, had emphatically asserted her innocence of all 
 knowledge of the murder. This was too much for 
 Murray. He burst out in accusation of his sister and 
 in deep confidence gave de Silva curious and particular 
 details of a letter from Mary to Bothwell which a 
 friend of his had seen in Scotland. As reported, this 
 letter differs essentially from the famous Glasgow 
 letter, nor was it ever produced in evidence. It 
 contained direct proposals for the poisoning of Darnley 
 and of Lady Bothwell, and alluded to a long-matured 
 plan for an explosion with gunpowder. Murray may 
 have spoken excitedly and from a half- remembered 
 impression, but that would have been unlike his usual 
 prudent procedure. He may have been deceived by 
 a forged letter afterwards rejected as too crude. De 
 Silva at the end of the interview was satisfied that 
 Murray would do little for Mary and much for 
 himself. 
 
 In spite of her knowledge of him and his ways it 
 took a final experience to convince Mary that, under 
 her brother's cold manner and affectation of blunt 
 
LOCH LEVEN 171 
 
 honesty, there was neither pity nor warmth of heart. 
 She had counted anxiously on his return without 
 realising what she expected from him. He arrived 
 in Edinburgh on the nth of August, and though 
 Throckmorton thought him sincere and full of com- 
 miseration for his sister, he saw that his mind was 
 mainly occupied with the regency, and was already 
 calculating with what show of decent reluctance he 
 could allow it to be forced on him. He belonged to 
 that large class of good people who cannot gratify 
 their heart's desire without putting a colour of duty 
 upon it. 
 
 But for Throckmorton's persistence he would have 
 been put off going to see his sister by the unwilling- 
 ness of the Lords to countenance his visit. When 
 finally he arrived at Loch Leven, Athol and Morton 
 were in his company. But Mary, with a burst of 
 weeping, led him apart and for two hours they talked 
 till supper-time, Murray torturing his sister by his 
 reserve and ambiguity. 
 
 In all her humiliation she never forgot that she 
 was a Queen, and at supper reminded him that he had 
 not been too proud to hold the napkin for her. It 
 was Murray himself who described to Throckmorton 
 the poignant and painful scene that followed, — Murray, 
 the confederate of Darnley's murderers, Morton, 
 Lethington and Balfour ! 
 
 " After supper, every one being retired, they con- 
 ferred together till one of the clock after midnight 
 . . . and the said earl did plainly and without dis- 
 guising, discover unto the Queen all his opinion of her 
 misgovernment and laid before her all such disorders 
 as either might touch her conscience, her honour or 
 surety. I do hear that he behaved himself rather 
 
172 MARY STUART 
 
 like a ghostly father unto her than like a counsellor. 
 Sometimes the Queen wept bitterly, sometimes she 
 acknowledged her unadvisedness. . . . Some things 
 she did confess plainly — (it is Murray's account of 
 course) — some things she did excuse, some she did 
 extenuate. In conclusion the Earl of Murray left her 
 that night in hope of nothing but God's mercy, willing 
 her to seek that as her chiefest refuge." 
 
 It gives one a shiver to think of the poor soul 
 creeping away to bed and lying wide-eyed and 
 horror - stricken with waking visions of relentless 
 judges and feverish, broken dreams of the "fiery 
 death." 
 
 And Murray ? He who would venture a glimpse 
 into that dark and subtle mind would need to be 
 deeply versed in the human heart, its instinct of self- 
 deception, its confused interpretation of the voice of 
 conscience, its ignorance of the passions and desires 
 that are impelling it along its course. 
 
 Next morning Mary sent for him betimes, and now 
 in the clear daylight he appealed less to her fears. 
 Her life he thought he might save ; her honour he 
 would try to preserve ; but for her freedom, she 
 must not hope for it, " nor was it good for her to 
 have it." 
 
 After the terrors of the nisfht these meagre 
 promises seemed a new gift of life, of the life which 
 ran so full and strong in the veins of this beautiful 
 woman of five and twenty. She took her brother in 
 her arms and kissed him, and begged him to accept 
 the regency. Murray demurred at first, he demurred 
 also to take the charge of her jewels, but finally he 
 consented to both. [The jewels provided the sinews of 
 war against Mary's party after the battle of Langside.] 
 
LOCH LEVEN 173 
 
 At parting, Mary kissed him again with a fresh burst 
 of tears, but afterwards when the immediate terror 
 was removed the remembrance of his reproaches and 
 injurious language " cut the thread of love and credit 
 betwixt the Oueen and him for ever." 
 
 In the weeks that followed Mary came to herself 
 again. The overmastering - infatuation for Bothwell 
 passed away like an evil dream. 
 
 She had held to him at the imminent risk of her 
 own life, she had insisted that he should be treated no 
 worse than she herself. But while she had dared 
 everything he had lacked audacity as well as resource. 
 He had skulked in the north with Huntly until the 
 latter, realising that the game was up, wearied of his 
 guest. A kinsman of Bothwell, a wicked old Bishop 
 of Moray, well over eighty, held the Castle of Spynie, 
 and thither Bothwell and his outlawed " lambs " drew 
 to a hold. The illegitimate sons of this bishop, law- 
 less Hepburns themselves, resented the intrusion and 
 bribed an English prisoner to murder Bothwell, but, like 
 a wolf at bay, he turned on his kinsmen, slew one and 
 turned the others out of doors. But these experiences 
 had convinced him that life and livelihood were no 
 longer to be found for him in Scotland, and so he 
 sailed with his band to take possession of his Dukedom 
 of the Orkneys. They seized two ships from a Bremen 
 trader in the island and planned to live as pirates on 
 the high seas. In September, Grange, the only man 
 among the Confederates whose quarrel was with 
 Bothwell rather than with Mary, pursued Bothwell 
 and almost took him in a narrow strait between the 
 islands, but his ship ran aground and Bothwell escaped 
 to Denmark. There, being shipwrecked, he was 
 taken prisoner by the king, languished in prison, 
 
174 MARY STUART 
 
 growing gradually mad from inactivity and vacuity 
 and so passes miserably out of the story. 
 
 Practically he had passed out of Mary's life in 
 the autumn of 1567 at Loch Leven. After all the 
 shattering experiences of the last twelve months, Mary 
 found that she had both vitality enough to live again 
 and courage to reconstruct her broken life. 
 
 Though she was cut off from confession and the 
 consolations of religion, in spirit she reconciled herself 
 with the Church, that great, human-hearted, hospitable 
 Church which takes the sins of the faithful into her 
 own responsibility and in her many mansions has 
 room for saint and sinner alike. The good old Arch- 
 bishop of Glasgow in Paris had much consolation in 
 learning that " she had begun to serve God better, 
 with more devotion and greater diligence than she 
 had been wont to do for some time previously." The 
 news was gladly received by those who loved her and 
 loved the Church. In Madrid, her old friend Madame 
 Elisabeth assured the Nuncio that "she had ac- 
 knowledged her fault and become quite Catholic and 
 spiritual." She used the little room above her own 
 as her oratory : it was the apothecary's, and the only 
 corner where she could secure privacy. 
 
 For within the narrow castle buildings there was 
 crowded life, and where there were men and women 
 with hearts to be won and imaginations to be dazzled, 
 there Mary had still a kingdom. 
 
 As early as October the Lords were disconcerted, 
 because they learned that she had " won the favour 
 and goodwill of all the household, as well zvornen as 
 men," a curious state of things if she were the mere 
 wanton some of them declared her to be. But it was 
 never otherwise with this strangely winning and 
 
LOCH LEVEN 175 
 
 lovable woman, and surely it is by the qualities of 
 the heart that a woman appeals to other women. 
 The deeply injured old Lady Huntly had stood by 
 Mary at the time of the Riccio murder. The Lady 
 of Loch Leven, Janet Erskine, her father's old true 
 love, had little reason to love Mary of Guise's daughter, 
 yet by the end of September among those "who were 
 drawn from their former ill-will and envy to pity," 
 the most important was the Regent's mother. Per- 
 haps the sorrows of the beautiful, younger woman 
 touched a heart that was warm and human, if we 
 may judge by the one or two letters of the lady's 
 that are still extant. Perhaps there were tricks of 
 eyebrow and of voice in James' daughter that brought 
 back memories of youth and all its love, its gladness 
 and its grieving. 
 
 In spite of the narrow dwelling and her inactive 
 life, Mary's health was good, her graciousness and 
 high spirit invincible. It was even reported that she 
 was " waxing fat and making show of mirth." Once 
 or twice she seems to have gone out fishing in a boat 
 with the Laird. He, it is evident, never came under 
 her spell, nor Robert the next brother, but two young 
 girls, the Laird's daughter and niece, who actually 
 shared the Queen's room with her, had for the 
 beautiful and mysterious stranger that admiring de- 
 votion which is the romance of early girlhood. In 
 the Laird's third brother George, "bonnie Geordie" 
 as he was nicknamed, Mary was to find a servant, 
 as ardent and chivalrous as any hero in the long 
 romances she loved to read. 
 
 Had she found in any of them a more romantic 
 situation than this, of a beautiful queen imprisoned 
 in an island-castle, and a passionate, silent young man 
 
176 MARY STUART 
 
 in a very "fantasy of love" watching her fair, white 
 fingers, working with crimson silk and silver thread ; 
 a slave to her graciousness and fitful mirth, humble 
 and reverent before her wrongs and sorrows, above 
 all, ardent to effect something for her service ? The 
 long, slow, fire-lit evenings of a Scottish winter when 
 wild geese flew screaming overhead and the wind 
 whistled round the Tower, the endless dulness of 
 December days when the mist lay low on the lake, 
 hardly hung heavily on her hands when within she 
 was busy securing all the romantic hearts in the castle. 
 A mixed group they were. George Douglas, a page, 
 Willie Douglas (only fourteen years old but full of 
 sense and spirit), the two young girls, a soft-hearted 
 laundress from the mainland, and the noble Lady 
 herself. 
 
 In the meantime the Scottish nobility were busy 
 securing their own immunity should inquisition be 
 made into the murder. In October Drury wrote, "The 
 writings which comprehend the names and consents 
 of the chiefs for the murdering of the king are turned 
 into ashes, the same not unknown to the Queen, and the 
 same which concerns her part kept to be shown." In 
 a Parliament held in December, all the action of the 
 nobles was approved on the plea that "all was in the 
 Queen's default ; diverse, her privy letters, written 
 wholly with her own hand and sent to James, Earl 
 of Bothwell, proving that she was privy, art and part, 
 and of the actual device and deed of the murder of 
 the king." 
 
 On January 3rd, three of Bothwell's followers, 
 Dalgleish, Hay of Talla, and Hepburn of Bowton 
 were "justified." Confessions had been wrung from 
 all three incriminating the Queen. In Bowton's con- 
 
LOCH LEVEN 177 
 
 fession the account of the Craigmillar Bond shown 
 to him by Bothwell was carefully burned and never 
 appeared at the examination at Westminster. The 
 fear of the rack had influenced Talla's confession, 
 but in the hopeless, fearless freedom of the scaffold 
 he openly denounced Huntly, Argyle, Lethington and 
 Balfour as the contrivers of the murder. So great 
 was the popular indignation, that the four men named 
 suddenly left Edinburgh. 
 
 Murray was finding the Regency difficult beyond 
 his expectations. He had, as Throckmorton re- 
 cognised, intended to rule the country less like a 
 modern statesman " than as one who had led Israel," 
 to establish the reign of righteousness after the fashion 
 of Knox. To do this in alliance with men like 
 Morton, Lethington and Balfour involved a con- 
 stant compromise which became intolerably irksome. 
 If Mary were at liberty but consenting to his 
 Regency it would make him independent of those 
 allies. 
 
 In August, he had left her in hope of nothing 
 but God's mercy ; in the following March " he was 
 making fair weather towards her," and had a startling 
 proposition to make. It is incredible that he ever 
 named Morton to her as a possible husband, but he 
 certainly proposed that she should marry Lord 
 Methven, a blameless young nobleman and a Stuart. 
 To his amazement Mary suggested his own brother 
 George as a possible husband. The old Lady may 
 have lent herself to this wild scheme ; Mary com- 
 plained to her of Murray's lack of kindness to his 
 brother. She can hardly have been serious, at any- 
 rate not deliberate, but she would have bought 
 liberty at any price, and in a situation as troubled 
 
 M 
 
178 MARY STUART 
 
 as hers, excitement, sensibility, gratitude and sheer 
 desperation will play riot in judgment and emotions. 
 
 By Murray's orders young George was banished 
 from the island, but continued to be active as Mary's 
 agent among the scattered elements of her party. 
 
 What party had she to trust to ? To trust to, 
 none ; for all were ready to sell her at a moment's 
 notice if it served their interest. The Hamiltons 
 had held aloof from the Regent and his confederates. 
 Tulliebardine assured Throckmorton that, in the 
 anxious days of July and August, they would have 
 joined the Confederate Lords if they had put the 
 Queen to death, and recognised their rights. With 
 a bastard Stuart all powerful as Regent, their tepid 
 loyalty had shifted back to the Queen. The un- 
 alterably faithful Setons, Flemings, Livingstons, were 
 ready to rise at the first signal, Lord Herries was 
 restless in the south, Argyle and Huntly tentatively 
 reconciled to the government, might still be expected 
 to declare for the Queen if occasion offered. 
 
 " The Queen's liberty by favour, stealth or force, 
 is shortly to be looked for," Drury wrote at the end 
 of March. 
 
 Early in April an attempt to escape almost 
 succeeded. A laundress from Kinross had been 
 rowed to the island with her basket of clean linen. 
 On the return journey the good woman sat quite 
 silent with her hood drawn low over her face. Some- 
 thing in her bearing roused the suspicion of one of 
 the boatmen who tried to peer below the hood. In- 
 stinctively the laundress raised her hands to shield 
 her face. Alas ! for the longue et gresle et ddlicate 
 main that Ronsard had kissed and sung ! So fair 
 a hand belonged to one woman only in Scotland. In 
 
LOCH LEVEN 179 
 
 spite of tears and entreaties the boatmen put back 
 to the island but, to their honour, did not betray her. 
 
 When on the 2nd of May a second attempt was 
 successful, it was owing to the pluck and ingenuity 
 of little Willie Douglas. 
 
 His preparations were made with a secrecy and 
 completeness unusual in a conspirator of fourteen. 
 He had previously scuttled all the boats but one. 
 Mary, in cloak and muffler, awaited the signal in an 
 upper room. The Laird was at supper, the dusk was 
 gradually deepening in the hall. All the house keys 
 lay beside him on the table ; the page while serving 
 his master, deftly dropped a napkin over them and 
 noiselessly swept them off the table. The old Lady 
 we are told "was of the counsel" and probably kept 
 her son engaged while two silent cloaked figures, 
 moving swiftly, followed the eager boy to the landing- 
 place. He had the coolness to lock each door as they 
 passed out, and, once in the boat, dropped the keys 
 into the lake. 
 
 Anxious friends were on the watch in the little 
 village of Kinross. John Beaton, faithful like all 
 his race, a brother of the Archbishop in Paris, 
 the Laird of Riccarton, a friend of Bothwell, and the 
 devoted George himself. He had collected all the 
 Laird's horses. To avoid delay one had been provided 
 with a side saddle for Mary, but she refused to start 
 till she had seen the boy Willie mounted also. Four 
 miles further they met Lord Seton, and, before they 
 reached the north shore of the Firth, Lord Claude 
 Hamilton and a small force. It was a wild, exhilarat- 
 ting ride with the sweet chill spring wind in her face 
 and liberty and hope in every throb of her heart. 
 That night they crossed the Firth and never halted 
 
180 MARY STUART 
 
 till they reached Lord Seton's house at Niddry. Even 
 then they rested but an hour or two. Mary de- 
 spatched Beaton with despatches to the courts of 
 France and England and secret messages to the 
 Spanish ambassador, while Riccarton rode to Dunbar 
 to try and secure the fortress for the Queen. Then 
 to horse again and across Scotland to Hamilton, where 
 immediately an astonishing number of noblemen 
 flocked to join her. Lord Herries in his memoir may 
 well say, " The Queen, an active lady, was herself 
 the chief means of her escape ! " 
 
 Unfortunately it needed more than a woman's 
 ardour and active brain to turn escape into victory. 
 Mary's party lacked neither numbers nor credit nor 
 devotion, but they were destitute of brains. The 
 faithful Catholic following, Setons, Livingstons, 
 Flemings, the Protestant Herries, had the same 
 qualities which made later Jacobitism the most loyal 
 and luckless of parties. The Hamiltons were an un- 
 distinguished group, the only one among them of any 
 ability, the bastard Archbishop, carried weight with 
 no one from lack of disinterestedness. Mary had 
 never had confidential relations with their house and 
 had small grounds to trust them, but friendships grow 
 rapidly in dire straits. In her proclamations she calls 
 " the good Duke of Chatelherault " her dearest 
 father. 
 
 Murray was at Glasgow when he heard of his 
 sister's escape and promptly summoned the lieges to 
 defend the young king's government. Meantime at 
 Hamilton a counter proclamation was being concocted, 
 the most singular piece of unrestrained vituperation 
 ever woman set her hand to. 
 
 This is no carefully worded appeal calculated 
 
LOCH LEVEN 181 
 
 prudently to excite sympathy with Mary's wrongs 
 and indignation against her enemies ; it is rather the 
 gusty outbreak of a woman heedless of everything 
 but the relief of crying aloud in the ears of the world 
 her hate and intolerable sense of wrong. 
 
 It is mere violence when she writes of her enemies 
 as "Hell-hounds," "bloody tyrants without souls or 
 fear of God," " mansworn ethnics," but there is a 
 personal sting when she writes of Murray. He had 
 been at the pains of bringing home her sins to her ; 
 here she recklessly lays all the troubles of her reign 
 at his door. The downfall of the House of Huntly, 
 the estrangement between herself and Darnley, the 
 murder, even the ravishment by Bothwell, are traced 
 to the suggestion of the " spurious bastard — although 
 named our brother — whom we promovit from a re- 
 ligious monk to earl and lord." It is improbable 
 that this writing was published, certainly another and 
 a far more moderate proclamation was current. 
 
 The proper policy for Mary was to make for the 
 fortress of Dumbarton and there wait till her party 
 should solidify at home and help come from abroad. 
 Between Hamilton and Dunbar lay Glasgow where 
 Murray had collected his forces. His army was 
 smaller than the mixed feudal band that held for 
 Mary, but he had artillery and he had knowledge of 
 warfare. Moreover Kirkcaldy of Grange, the best 
 soldier in Scotland, commanded his troops. 
 
 On the 13th of May the two armies met at 
 Langside. From Cathcart Knowe Mary watched the 
 battle close at hand. She heard the artillery duel 
 that opened the struggle, she may have seen the fierce 
 encounter on the hill-top and the disordered down 
 rush of the Hamiltons as Kirkcaldy drove them back 
 
182 MARY STUART 
 
 on the main body. Argyle who was leading Mary's 
 forces collapsed in an unexplained fashion. There 
 is no reason to suspect him of treachery, but he had 
 either some sort of fit or a sudden failure of nerve at 
 the critical moment. 
 
 When Mary knew that the day was lost, she, for 
 the first and last time in her life, gave way to panic. 
 She could not face the prospects of fresh interviews 
 with Murray. Behind him she saw prison gates 
 closing in again upon her and judgment and the "fiery 
 death"; she turned her horse and fled precipitately. 
 For sixty miles she rode with hardly a break, south- 
 ward into Lord Herries' country. Sour milk and oat- 
 meal at a peasant's door, a few hours of sleep on a 
 clay floor were all the refreshment she allowed herself 
 till they reached the northern shore of the Solway. 
 
 Some miles inland, in a little valley, far withdrawn, 
 lay the Abbey of Dundrennan, as solitary a home of 
 peace as the Monastery on the Lake of Monteith 
 that had sheltered her childhood. Thither, startling 
 the simple inmates with the noise and terrors of the 
 outer world, rushed the fugitives on their wearied 
 horses, but only for a moment's breathing space. 
 
 Whither could Mary turn? Lord Herries under- 
 took to keep her in safety till her friends could gather 
 to a head or her enemies fall out with one another. 
 After a week or two she might retire on Dumbarton 
 or take ship for France. 
 
 France was far off, her ties to her old friends had 
 slackened. She could count on no welcome from 
 the Cardinal if her presence embarrassed his position, 
 her mother-in-law would look sourly on a banished 
 suppliant of tarnished reputation. Such a contrast 
 with her former self was more than she could face. 
 
LOCH LEVEN 183 
 
 On the other hand, in spite of all experience, Mary 
 again and again fell into the delusion that she could 
 trade either upon Elisabeth's generosity or her fears. 
 And indeed the sympathy which Elisabeth had gone 
 out of her way to lavish on Mary during her captivity 
 justified the most sanguine views. At this very time 
 a messenger from the English Queen was on his way 
 to congratulate Mary on her escape. 
 
 England was near, visible across the Solway, and 
 seemed to offer an asylum from the nightmare of 
 recapture by Murray. She wrote to her cousin from 
 Dundrennan, but too feverish to rest, refused to wait 
 for an answer and insisted on embarking on the 
 following day for England. She sailed in a fisher- 
 man's boat accompanied by Herries, George Douglas 
 and some sixteen more of her friends. 
 
 In one of her sentimental moods Elisabeth, at 
 a later time, compared Mary to a bird which, to 
 escape the pursuit of the hawk, had fled to her feet 
 for protection. A wild bird beating its wings against 
 the bars of a pitiless cage is hardly a happy symbol 
 of royal protection. Could Mary have foreseen the 
 slow sap of years of captivity, and at the end the 
 very fate from which she was fleeing, how thankfully 
 would she have turned back to try with a small 
 faithful following the last extremity of battle ! 
 
CHAPTER XV 
 
 THE CONFERENCE AT YORK 
 June 1568 — January 1569 
 
 NO sins nor crimes of which we may be guilty 
 come home to roost so rapidly and inevitably 
 as our insincere sympathies, our cheap offers of 
 benevolence. Elisabeth had sent a jewel to Mary 
 at Loch Leven as a pledge of her faithful friendship, 
 she had committed herself to expressions of warm 
 sympathy for a sister sovereign outraged by her 
 subjects. Now, on the top of news from Scotland 
 of the defeat and flight of the Queen, came an urgent, 
 confident letter from Mary herself dated Dundrennan 
 Abbey, followed next day by another written from 
 Workington in Cumberland. She wrote without 
 misgiving as to one already engaged on her side. 
 She brings a string of accusations against her 
 enemies, astutely making Elisabeth responsible by 
 describing them as those " whom I pardoned at your 
 request." She longs to pour out the story of her 
 wrongs in Elisabeth's presence, and urges that she 
 may be sent for at once : " for I am in a piteous 
 condition not merely for a queen but for a simple 
 gentlewoman. For I possess nothing in the world 
 out what I stand up in." 
 
 It is the French ambassador who describes, not 
 without a touch of humour, Elisabeth's reception of 
 this letter. She was conscious that, as she said, " all 
 the eyes of Christendom were on her," and that she 
 
 184 
 
THE CONFERENCE AT YORK 185 
 
 ran the risk of calumny whatever course she took. 
 Her first impulse of generous sympathy was pro- 
 bably genuine, though when she declared that she 
 meant to receive Mary in accordance with her former 
 grandeur, and not her present fortune, she must have 
 known that she was safe to offer what Cecil and 
 Bedford would never have suffered her to perform. 
 The Frenchman adds that he shrewdly suspects 
 that if the two queens were together eight days their 
 rival beauty and favour would turn friendship into 
 envy and jealousy. He adds, that when he saw 
 Elisabeth again her sympathy had taken the safe 
 form of regretting effusively all she was unable to 
 do for her cousin. What she said of the Scottish 
 Queen " turned rather to accusation than to her 
 defence." 
 
 Meanwhile, impatient as she might be for 
 Elizabeth's answer, Mary was enjoying a triumph 
 of sympathy and partisanship. 
 
 The conservative North had remained Catholic. 
 All the great, landed houses were connected by blood 
 or marriage, all were knit together by common 
 memories of the Pilgrimage of Grace and by devout 
 adherence to the Church of Rome. If outwardly 
 loyal to Elisabeth, they despised, distrusted and 
 feared the new men like Cecil and Bedford who 
 guided her policy. Crowds of these country gentle- 
 men flocked to welcome Mary, first at Workington and 
 then at Carlisle, whither by Elisabeth's orders, the High 
 Sheriff, Lowther, had conducted her with all due honour. 
 
 She received them all into her presence, dressed, 
 it would appear, in the travel-stained habit in which 
 she had ridden from Langside, but with all her in- 
 alienable charm and greatness. It was solace and 
 
186 MARY STUART 
 
 excitement to her to pour out the tale of her wrongs 
 and her innocence to listeners prejudiced in her 
 favour. 
 
 The greatest among them, the Earl of Northum- 
 berland, was anxious to remove her to his own house, 
 but this Lowther had the prudence to resist. 
 
 The renewed confidence that Mary drew from all 
 this show of devotion did not dispose her to submit 
 patiently to what course it might be Elisabeth's 
 pleasure to take with her. She had the fatal 
 feminine habit of arranging in imagination both 
 events and other people's actions to suit her own 
 wishes. She pictured herself, a beautiful and inno- 
 cent suppliant, repeating the tale that so powerfully 
 moved these northern squires, at the feet of a com- 
 placent Elisabeth, and firing English courtiers and 
 foreign ambassadors with an eloquent tale of her 
 wrong's. 
 
 Her disappointment was poignant, her indigna- 
 tion bitter, when Elisabeth's answer finally came. 
 Warm expressions of sympathy and confidence were 
 worthless, since they only preluded regrets that it 
 was impossible for the English Queen to receive her 
 cousin till she had cleared herself from sinister reports 
 connecting her with her husband's murder, reports 
 which Elisabeth affected indeed to disbelieve, but 
 which, in the meantime, placed a barrier between 
 her own immaculate virtue, and Mary's damaged 
 reputation. 
 
 The bearers of this crushing reply were two of 
 the most important noblemen in the kingdom, Lord 
 Scrope, warden of the West Marches, and Sir Francis 
 Knollys, Elisabeth's kinsman on the Bullen side. 
 
 It would be hard to find at any period of English 
 
THE CONFERENCE AT YORK 187 
 
 history a finer type than Sir Francis Knollys, of 
 what we proudly claim to be an English gentleman. 
 He was deeply engaged in public affairs, and brought 
 to these perfect disinterestedness, a clear judgment, 
 patience, and a constant preference for plain dealing. 
 For six months he had the task, to him most dis- 
 tasteful, of being Mary's keeper. During that time 
 he was in anxiety about his wife's health, and vexed 
 with the constant cross of Elisabeth's servants, lack 
 of necessary funds, yet he never failed in courtesy, 
 patience and cheerfulness. He read Mary's character 
 clearly, doing full justice to her great qualities. On 
 his arrival at Carlisle on the 28th May, he describes 
 her thus : " We found her in her answers to have an 
 eloquent tongue, a discreet head, a stout courage and 
 a liberal heart." And a little later he exclaims, 
 " Surely this princess is a notable woman ! " He is 
 struck by her naturalness, her indifference to ceremony, 
 "beyond acknowledging her royal estate"; her high 
 spirit, " she delights to hear of hardiness and valour, 
 approving all approved hardy men of her country, 
 even though they be among her enemies, and not 
 concealing cowardice of friends." Mary tried her 
 fascination upon the elderly man ; he recognised the 
 fact with a quiet humour which proved his security. 
 " And surely she is a rare woman, for as no flattery 
 can lightly abuse her, so no plain speech seemeth 
 to offend her if she think the speaker thereof an 
 honest man ; and by this means I would make you 
 believe, she thinks me an honest man ! " When, from 
 policy, Mary was affecting willingness to be converted 
 to Anglican usages, Knollys enjoyed being her in- 
 structor without having too serious a belief in her 
 good faith. He had been ill of the gout when he 
 
188 MARY STUART 
 
 wrote, "for recovery I have wanted no princely 
 courtesy, nor princely medicine, nor princely music, 
 but the music was singing of Psalms to the 
 virginals." 
 
 One little incident must have been humiliating to 
 Knollys, both as a well-bred man and as Elisabeth's 
 kinsman. Mary was, as we have seen, destitute of 
 clothes and money and possibly Carlisle was ill supplied 
 with cloth merchants and mantua-makers ; at anyrate 
 she had applied to Elisabeth to supply her needs. 
 For the simplest gentlewoman in her train Mary at 
 need would have turned out all her stores. Knollys 
 was present when the parcel sent from one queen to 
 the other was opened. It contained two torn shifts, 
 two small pieces of velvet and two pairs of shoes. 
 Mary's "silence argued scorn rather than gratitude," 
 and Knollys deeply mortified could only mutter 
 that the maid who packed the things had made a 
 
 mistake. 
 
 When Mary first realised the disappointment of 
 all her hopes, the tone of her letters changed at once 
 to indignant upbraiding. She had chosen Elisabeth 
 for the honourable distinction of being the restorer of 
 a queen, but if Elisabeth refused such a chance let 
 her permit Mary to depart to other princes who would 
 gladly take up her cause, " for, thank God, I am not 
 so destitute of friends." 
 
 Simultaneously with the arrival of Scrope and 
 Knollys she had sent her own envoys, Fleming and 
 Herries, to court. Herries to advocate her cause with 
 Elisabeth and Fleming to pass on to France. 
 
 Not unnaturally, Elisabeth refused to allow Fleming 
 to leave the country. Mary restored to her throne by 
 French soldiers and Scotland once more at the devo- 
 
THE CONFERENCE AT YORK 189 
 
 tion of France was too dangerous a prospect for the 
 English government. The refusal galled Mary and 
 showed her perhaps her helplessness in the trap into 
 which she had stepped inadvertently. 
 
 Herries was hardly a prudent ambassador, he took 
 up the same lofty position as Mary ; if Elisabeth 
 would not help his mistress, they would apply to 
 other princes, to the Pope. " The Pope ! " repeated 
 Protestant Bedford in horror. " Aye or to the Grand 
 Turk," answered the boastful Scotsman. 
 
 Mary demanded that she should be heard in 
 Elisabeth's presence in her own vindication. From 
 Scotland Murray offered to enter himself a prisoner 
 to Elisabeth, if he failed to prove his sister's guilt and 
 the righteousness of her deposition. Here was a 
 chance for Elisabeth to declare herself arbitrator 
 between them, and so to hold both at her pleasure. 
 
 At the end of June Middlemore was despatched 
 to Scotland to bid Murray suspend hostilities. He 
 was to take Carlisle on his way north and explain to 
 Mary Elisabeth's plan concerning her. There was no 
 courtliness nor sympathy in Middlemore to soften the 
 harshness of the message he brought. He spoke of 
 " trial being made of her innocency," and referred to 
 Elisabeth as "the judge" between her and her subjects. 
 She would admit no judge but God, Mary retorted 
 in passionate indignation, nor could any take upon 
 themselves to judge her ; she knew her estate well 
 enough ; of her own will she would allow her sister to 
 judge her cause, but only if she were admitted to her 
 presence. 
 
 No experience ever shook Mary's conviction that 
 kings were above judgment. Moreover she had come 
 to look upon herself as innocent of the crime imputed 
 
190 MARY STUART 
 
 to her by constantly dwelling on the treachery and 
 hypocrisy of those who had shared the sin and now 
 were the accusers. She held like an amulet the in- 
 criminating paper Bothwell had given her at Carberry 
 Hill. " Desire my good sister the Queen," she said to 
 Middlemore, " to write that Lethington and Morton 
 (who be two of the wisest, and most able of them 
 to say most against me) may come and then let me be 
 there in her presence, face to face to hear their accusa- 
 tions and to be heard how I can make my purgation ; 
 but I think Lethington would be very loth of that 
 commission." 
 
 Meantime Herries had succeeded in wringing 
 terms from Elisabeth which he delusively believed to 
 be favourable. The real question of Mary's guilt or 
 innocence was of no moment to any one ; the whole 
 question turned on how much it would be judicious to 
 prove against her. Herries was among the most 
 devoted of Mary's friends, yet no enemy could have 
 struck a more fatal blow at her reputation than he 
 did by an impulsive remark. Elisabeth disclaimed 
 all idea of being her cousin's judge. She effected to 
 believe that Mary's subjects could have no grounds for 
 the accusations against her. " But madame if it should 
 appear otherwise — which God forbid ? " The amaz- 
 ing part is that Herries repeated this remark to Mary 
 with no explanation nor apology ! Nor had it any 
 effect on Elisabeth. Even in such a case she pledged 
 herself to protect her cousin's honour and safety. 
 
 The terms she offered her cousin by Herries were 
 perfectly distinct. Mary's subjects were to be brought 
 up for judgment for their disloyal and rebellious con- 
 duct. " Even if they allege some reason for so doing 
 (which her Highness thinks they cannot do) her 
 
THE CONFERENCE AT YORK 191 
 
 Highness would set this queen in her seat condition- 
 ally, the lords continuing in honour and estate." If 
 they were not able to allege sufficient reasons Mary 
 was to be restored unconditionally, if need be by force. 
 Believing herself fully safeguarded Mary made the 
 mistake of consenting to Elisabeth's conditions. 
 
 Murray also had to be reassured before committing 
 his cause to Elisabeth's judgment. To him the con- 
 ditions ran quite differently, "If her guilt be plainly 
 proved, her majesty would think her unworthy of a 
 kingdom ; if there be only suspicions, her majesty would 
 have it considered how she might be restored without 
 danger of relapse." 
 
 Behind Elisabeth was Cecil, determined that, 
 whether proved guilty or not, Mary should not be 
 suffered to escape to work mischief against his mistress 
 and her government. 
 
 As the autumn weeks passed by, it was torture to 
 Mary to hear of her partisans in Scotland besieged in 
 their castles, despoiled of their lands, forfeited in 
 Parliament. Both sides had undertaken to keep a 
 truce, but Murray on the pretext of repressing disorder, 
 and Mary's party on the plea of self-defence, kept up 
 a cruel internecine warfare. It cut Mary to the quick. 
 " They break down the houses of my servants and I 
 cannot make it up to them, the masters are hung and 
 I can do nothing, and yet they remain faithful to me." 
 Mary was a prince in all points save in the proverbial 
 matter of ingratitude. 
 
 In the first week of October the Commission of 
 Inquiry met at York. 
 
 There is no more complicated tangle in history 
 than the story of this Conference ; a tangle of secret 
 motives, of crossing interests, of conflicting and lying 
 
192 MARY STUART 
 
 evidence. No one, except possibly two of the English 
 commissioners, Sussex and Sadler, even wished for a 
 clear issue. The third, the Duke of Norfolk, went 
 into the conference deeply pledged to Mary. His 
 sister, Lady Scrope, was at the time Mary's hostess at 
 Bolton and had assured her of her brother's good-will ; 
 the idea had even been mooted of a marriage between 
 them. 
 
 We have seen how wavering was Lord Herries' 
 belief in Mary's innocence ; the other most important 
 of her commissioners, Bishop Leslie, was equally 
 sceptical ; it was the object of both to work for a com- 
 promise and a general hushing-up of evidence. 
 
 Murray came to the Conference with entire dis- 
 belief in Elisabeth's good faith. He had no intention 
 of sparing Mary, her dishonour was the security of 
 his position as Regent ; but he was reluctant to break 
 with her completely. Elisabeth might change her 
 policy and force back on Scotland a Queen irreconcil- 
 ably estranged from her brother. If little James died 
 he might continue to hold the Regency, as it were, for 
 Mary, but if she were so disgraced as to be as good as 
 non-existent, the crown would pass to the Hamiltons. 
 
 Even more delicate and full of danger was the 
 position of Lethington. Mary had " that in black and 
 white that would hang Lethington by the neck," and 
 he knew it. A compromise, with Mary safely bestowed 
 in England and, if possible, creditably married and 
 reconciled to himself, such was the subtle and difficult 
 plan Lethington was working for by methods tortuous 
 and ingenious. Morton was in the same case as 
 Lethington, but he had a face of brass and meant to 
 bear down Mary's accusations by the weight of those 
 fatal letters of which he was custodian. One man in- 
 
THE CONFERENCE AT YORK 193 
 
 deed there was at the Conference wholly and tragically 
 in earnest, one who came well furnished with evidence 
 and eager to be heard, old Lennox, the father of the 
 murdered man. The slight attention paid to his 
 pleading is a measure of the unreality of the proceedings. 
 Behind this simulacrum of a commission was Elisabeth, 
 determined that Mary should be disgraced without 
 Murray gaining thereby any independence of action 
 and without loss to herself of the appearance of 
 general benevolence. 
 
 Secret messengers passed frequently between 
 York and Bolton. Mary was passing through a 
 troubled and exciting time. She, less than any one, 
 desired a real sifting of the truth, but she was alert and 
 dangerous, ready to fight to the end. Knollys had 
 been at York and on his return on the 14th of 
 October she asked, " When will they proceed to 
 their odious accusations ? or will they stay and be 
 reconciled to me? or what will my good sister do 
 for me ? " Knollys thought that accusations would be 
 made. " If they fall to extremities," she replied, 
 " they shall be answered roundly and at the full, and 
 then we are past all reconciliation." 
 
 The Bothwell marriage and Mary's abdication 
 wasted the time of the Commission in their public 
 sittings. On the nth October, privately and in- 
 formally, the Scottish lords produced their strong 
 card, the famous Casket with its enclosures. 
 
 There are certain mineral debris, hideous, dis- 
 torted masses with the living ore scorched out of 
 them, which Nature refuses either to reabsorb or 
 to cover with decent verdure. There are certain 
 things also in human affairs which neither time nor 
 death nor tragic circumstances can soften or dignify. 
 
 N 
 
194 MARY STUART 
 
 Such is the written record of lawless passion, already 
 extinct and turned to shame and loathing while those 
 who gave it utterance are yet quick with the desires 
 of life. It is "the expense of spirit in a waste of 
 shame." No familiarity, not even the critical analysis 
 to which it has been a hundred times subjected, can 
 stale the terrible vitality and dramatic horror of 
 that one among the Casket Letters on which the 
 evidence hinges, the so-called Glasgow letter. 
 
 It purports to be a letter written by Mary to 
 Bothwell, and sent by French Paris from Glasgow at 
 the time she visited Darnley on his sick-bed. It 
 appears to have been written at various times, chiefly 
 at night. It gives full, vivid, pitiless descriptions of 
 the Queen's conversations with her husband. 
 
 The heart of the writer is sorely at odds with 
 itself, now boasting of its hardness " as of a diamond," 
 now sickening at the part it has to play. Throughout, 
 the writer is in complete and confidential accord with 
 her correspondent ; she renders an account of all her 
 actions as to one who has the right to control both 
 them and her ; she is painfully anxious to please and 
 conciliate, she darkly foreshadows some purpose held 
 in common. 
 
 Other papers were shown, some more letters, the 
 series of eleven sonnets, two marriage bonds — one in 
 Huntly's handwriting — a bond guaranteeing those 
 who should sign the Ainslie bond ; this last of very 
 doubtful authenticity. 
 
 The Commissioners were men of the world and of 
 the court at a time when neither were squeamish ; 
 they were colleagues and friends of Leicester who 
 had never cleared up the mystery of Amy Robsart's 
 death, but they were startled and aghast at this 
 
THE CONFERENCE AT YORK 195 
 
 evidence of Mary's guilt. Next day they wrote to 
 Queen Elisabeth: "They showed us one horrible 
 and long letter in her own hand, as they say, con- 
 taining foul matter and abominable with diverse fond 
 ballads of her own hand . . . the said letters and 
 ballads do discover such inordinate love between her- 
 self and Bothwell, her loathsomeness and abhorring of 
 her husband that was murdered, in such sort as every 
 good and godly man cannot but abhor the same." 
 
 Yet even in the first horrified account there is a 
 note of dubiety ; twice they repeat " if the said letters 
 be written in her own hand " ; either there was some- 
 thing suspect in the letters themselves or some one 
 had the art to hint a doubt of their authenticity. 
 
 It has been ingeniously conjectured, and with 
 much apparent probability,* that Lethington — whose 
 object it was to disarm and propitiate Mary — was 
 anxious to shake the faith of the Commissioners in 
 the damning evidence of the letters. On the 16th, 
 a Sunday, Lethington had a long ride with Norfolk 
 during which Norfolk told him that it was Elisabeth's 
 purpose that everything should come out to Mary's 
 dishonour. What Lethington told him in return, we 
 do not know ; but whereas Norfolk had before advised 
 Mary to accept a compromise even if it involved ab- 
 dication, he now sent a message to bid her refuse 
 all reconciliation. 
 
 Now Norfolk had personal motives for wishing 
 to find Mary innocent. There was no such motive on 
 Sussex's part, yet it was Sussex that wrote, "If her 
 adverse party accuse her of the murder by producing 
 of her letters, she will deny them and accuse the 
 most of them of manifest consent to the murder, 
 
 * By Mr Lang in "The Mystery of Mary Stewart," chapter xi, 
 
196 MARY STUART 
 
 hardly to be denied ; so as upon the trial on both 
 sides, her proofs will judicially fall out best, as it is 
 thought." 
 
 Things were at a dead-lock and might have 
 drifted into compromise with a show of saving her 
 honour, but that would not have suited Elisabeth. 
 She was impatient for the disclosures which were to 
 deliver her cousin helpless into her hands. Moreover, 
 she had heard that about the Duke of Norfolk which 
 made her uneasy. She suddenly broke up the Con- 
 ference, or rather transferred it up to Westminster. 
 
 The tension of the next few months would have 
 broken down and driven to a humiliating submission 
 any woman with less magnificent courage than Mary. 
 A wild creature at the last will turn at bay and attack 
 its pursuers, but with what hope of success if it finds 
 itself in a trap overmatched by superior cunning? 
 Mary was a prisoner at four days' distance from the 
 scene where her fate was being decided ; her judges 
 were partial ; her accusers were admitted to their 
 presence, while she was denied the right of the 
 meanest criminal, that of being brought face to face 
 with her accusers and permitted to reply to them. 
 Yet the English jurists had themselves admitted that 
 this right could not in fairness be denied her. Further, 
 in defiance of all justice, she never even saw the 
 evidence brought against her. She had to act through 
 Commissioners with whom — owing to the distance — 
 she could only communicate at intervals. She was de- 
 pendent for information on her keepers, who made no 
 pretence of believing her to be anything but guilty. 
 Yet not for a moment did she lose heart or hope. 
 At the height of her anxiety Knollys wrote of her 
 with half-reluctant admiration, " She has courage 
 
THE CONFERENCE AT YORK 197 
 
 enough to hold out as long as any jot of hope may be 
 left to her." 
 
 It is necessary to sketch as briefly as may be the 
 miscarriage of justice at this Westminster Conference. 
 
 Mary's Commissioners had been instructed that if 
 the action were changed, and she were put in the place 
 of the accused instead of the accuser, they were to 
 break off negotiations. Unfortunately she also in- 
 structed them to try and effect a reconciliation before 
 any accusation should have been made. 
 
 Elisabeth was bent on wringing out of Murray 
 the worst that could be said about his sister. She 
 did this on the pretence that she believed so implicitly 
 in his inability to prove Mary's guilt that she desired 
 that he should be condemned out of his own mouth. 
 With a show of reluctance — kept up till the incriminat- 
 ing documents were snatched in rough horse-play 
 from his secretary's bosom — Murray produced his 
 accusation. It had grown in definiteness and heinous- 
 ness. Now Bothwell is the mere executer of the 
 murder, it was devised and commanded by Mary. 
 
 At this stage Mary's Commissioners demanded 
 that the action should be stopped and their mistress 
 allowed to appear to answer to these accusations. 
 They went down to Hampton Court to press their 
 demands on Queen Elisabeth. Unfortunately they 
 fatuously took the opportunity of suggesting to Cecil 
 and Leicester that matters might yet be compromised, 
 the accusation withdrawn and Mary and her subjects 
 reconciled. 
 
 Elisabeth took advantage of this blunder. To 
 compromise at this stage would be to the dishonour 
 of her good sister, it would look as if she were afraid 
 of the evidence that might be brought against her. 
 
198 MARY STUART 
 
 : ' She did so much prefer the estimation of her sister's 
 innocency that before she would allow the matter to be 
 stayed she must have the Earl of Murray roundly and 
 sharply charged with his audacious defaming of his 
 sovereign." As to Mary's pleading her own cause, 
 Elisabeth affected to believe the evidence so certain 
 to break down that her presence would be unnecessary. 
 
 That evidence, unsoftened, uncurtailed, Elisabeth 
 was determined to have, determined also that it should 
 be known to all her chief nobility. More members 
 had been added to the Commission. Cecil, of course, 
 and Bacon, and now were added the men known to 
 be most favourable to Mary's cause, Northumberland, 
 Westmoreland, Derby, Shrewsbury and others. 
 [Whatever their opinion of the evidence against her 
 may have been we shall find several of them raising 
 rebellion on her behalf in the course of the ensuing 
 months.] 
 
 In three days, and these among the shortest and 
 darkest of the year, the mass of incriminating papers 
 were examined. They lay scattered on the table and 
 were taken up at hap-hazard. There was no cross- 
 examining, nor calling of witnesses, nor was an expert 
 in handwriting consulted. 
 
 At the end only four of the noblemen present, 
 Cecil, Sadler, Leicester and Bacon, declared them- 
 selves convinced. Others were diffident of judging, or 
 thought that the Queen of Scots should have been 
 heard in her defence. Yet they were brought round to 
 agree that, as the case did now stand, Elisabeth could 
 not admit Mary into her presence, " the rather as 
 they had seen such foul stuff." 
 
 There was a show of offering Mary a right of 
 reply. It was proposed that some accredited noble- 
 
THE CONFERENCE AT YORK 199 
 
 man might be sent down to hear what she had to 
 say or she might appoint someone to answer for 
 her. 
 
 Knollys was convinced that she would never 
 answer the accusations except by declaring them false 
 on the word of a princess. She sent a long and 
 vehement counter accusation of her enemies, but it 
 was indefinite, and the last bolt in her quiver, the 
 incriminating paper, she never discharged. 
 
 The worst and weakest point in the whole travesty 
 of law and justice was the final summing up of 
 Elisabeth on the ioth. Nothing had been proved, 
 she declared, to the discredit of Murray and his allies 
 nor on the other hand had they produced anything 
 "whereby the Queen of England should conceive or 
 take any evil opinion of the Queen her good sister 
 for anything yet seen." 
 
CHAPTER XVI 
 
 NORFOLK 
 February 1569 — July 1569 
 
 AT the trial of the Duke of Norfolk in January 
 1572 Sergeant Barham, the hectoring advocate 
 for the crown, made this rhetorical inquisition into the 
 Duke's motive for wishing to marry the Queen of 
 Scots. 
 
 " You never saw her, you could not then be carried 
 with love of her person ; you conceived ill opinion of 
 her . . . the fame of her good qualities and virtuous 
 condition you never heard much of except it were by 
 herself or the Bishop of Ross " ; and he goes on to 
 draw the conclusion that Norfolk was attracted to 
 Mary solely as to one claiming a right to Elisabeth's 
 throne, and that consequently all his action in regard 
 to her was an act of high treason. 
 
 When one follows Norfolk's career from point to 
 point, one sees reason enough for the Sergeant's 
 question. He was the last man in the world to head 
 a great conspiracy. He had not the elementary 
 requisite of knowing what he wanted. On all points 
 he halted between two opinions. He was never sure 
 that Mary was not the murderess and adulteress he 
 once admitted to Queen Elisabeth that she was, yet he 
 risked life, lands and honour for the sake of marrying 
 her. He was ever doubtful whether " the religion " he 
 and she meant to establish was to be a Protestantism 
 such as Murray would approve, or a Catholic reaction 
 
NORFOLK 201 
 
 such as would secure the support of Philip of Spain. 
 He conspired at one and the same time to obtain 
 Mary in marriage at the hand of Queen Elisabeth, 
 and to free her by force and set her on the throne 
 with the aid of an invading Spanish army. 
 
 At the time of the York Conference he was restless 
 and discontented. He, with the rest of the older 
 nobility, could not see with complacency the 
 ascendency of the new and abler men to whom 
 Elisabeth entrusted the conduct of affairs. He was 
 only thirty-three and a widower for the third time. 
 His domestic bereavements had built up his fortunes. 
 To rise by alliances was the frankly worldly habit of 
 all great and noble houses. Lands and possessions 
 Norfolk had already secured, the vision of a crown in 
 possession and another in reversion appealed to a 
 vanity which masqueraded as ambition. Perhaps the 
 simplest explanation of his ill-calculated action lies in 
 the fascination that vast and complicated ambitions 
 have for the incapable. 
 
 Yet fate dealt patiently with Norfolk. At every 
 stage there were clear indications of danger given and 
 a way left open by which he could have retreated with 
 safety and honour. But half-heartedly, lacking alike 
 conviction and personal devotion, he stumbled along 
 the path which led only to dishonour and the scaffold. 
 He was to die for the sake of a woman who was 
 nothing to him, and to reflect bitterly that "nothing 
 that anybody goeth about for her nor that she doeth 
 for herself prospereth." 
 
 Whether the idea of a marriage between Norfolk 
 and the Oueen of Scots originated with him or had 
 been suggested by Leicester, as some thought, it 
 had certainly been mooted to Mary before the York 
 
202 MARY STUART 
 
 Conference. Then came the revelation of the Casket 
 Letters which gave Norfolk pause — as it well 
 might ! 
 
 In his private talk with Murray in the gallery of 
 his lodging, before the revelation of the letters, Norfolk 
 had persuaded the Regent to suppress his accusations 
 and work for a compromise ; though in his earlier 
 talks with Lethington he had seemed to repudiate the 
 idea of the marriage. 
 
 There must have been an extraordinary persuasive- 
 ness in the apparent frankness and clear reasonable- 
 ness of Lethington, as contrasted with the sancti- 
 moniousness and embarrassment of Murray. That 
 Sunday ride at Carwood seems to have brought 
 Norfolk back to his first views and plans. Yet, so 
 unstable was he, that it was probably during the 
 Westminster Conference that he vehemently defended 
 himself to Elisabeth from the accusation of aiming at 
 such a marriage. 
 
 " To what end should I seek to marry her, being so 
 wicked a woman, such a notorious adulterer and 
 murderer? I love to sleep on a safe pillow. In my 
 bowling-green at Norwich, I account myself as good 
 a prince as the Queen of Scots ; the revenues of 
 Scotland are not comparable to mine own that I 
 enjoy by your goodness. If I should seek to match 
 with her, knowing as I do, that she pretendeth a title 
 to the present possession of your crown, your Majesty 
 might justly charge me with seeking your crown from 
 your head." 
 
 Yet this was nothing but the exaggerated heat of 
 deception, for at the end of the Conference a serious 
 warning was conveyed to Murray that he had 
 incensed the Duke by his broken pledges and open 
 
NORFOLK 203 
 
 accusation of his sister. The whole of the North, he 
 was told, was at the Duke's devotion and he ran 
 serious risk of having his throat cut between York 
 and Berwick on his homeward journey. The danger 
 was so real, that Murray — though he was no coward 
 where his person was concerned — remained in the 
 south unwilling to take the risk. 
 
 Throckmorton, always a friend to Mary and the 
 Scottish succession, worked for an understanding 
 between Norfolk and Murray and arranged a secret 
 meeting in the Park of Hampton Court. There is a 
 theatrical and self-conscious ring about the speeches 
 of both the noblemen. Murray protested that Mary 
 had once been the creature on earth dearest to him, 
 and that if she would come to herself and renounce 
 her godless marriage with Bothwell, and especially if 
 she married some pious and honest gentleman, he 
 would find it in his heart to love her as well as ever 
 he did. Norfolk, in equally noble and touching diction, 
 ended up with " Earl of Murray, thou hast Norfolk's 
 life in thy hands." At the very time of the interview 
 Mary was being removed from Bolton and the care 
 of Knollys and Scrope to Tutbury and the charge of 
 the Earl of Shrewsbury. Sir James Melville, hastily 
 despatched by Norfolk, met her at Ripon, and from 
 thence she wrote to Westmoreland bidding him and 
 his friends to leave the Scottish Regent unmolested. 
 
 The energy with which Mary had struggled 
 against removal from Bolton proves the necessity there 
 was for the step. Knollys was being relieved of his 
 charge ; single-handed, Scrope's guardianship was not 
 to be trusted. Lady Scrope was sister to Norfolk 
 and also to Lady Westmoreland. Messages passed 
 frequently between Mary and the northern Catholics, 
 
204 MARY STUART 
 
 hopeful, exciting messages, fatal alike for her and 
 them. 
 
 Early in January, triumphantly ignoring Com- 
 missioners, accusations and disgrace, she had written 
 to the Bishop of Ross, "Tell the Spanish ambassador 
 that if his master will help me, I shall be Queen of 
 England in three months, and mass shall be said all 
 over the country." 
 
 Spain had always floated, a golden mirage, on 
 Mary's horizon. There had always been personal 
 difficulties, jealousies and antipathies in her dealings 
 with the French and English governments. In 
 dealing with Spain she was dealing with a prince 
 personally unknown to her, so that she had no diffi- 
 culty in crediting him with disinterested regard for 
 her and generous pity of her woes. She was on firmer 
 ground when she believed that the Catholic cause in 
 the British Islands had a strong claim on Philip's 
 religious zeal. For twenty years she was to be the 
 victim of his promises and his lethargy. 
 
 The Queen of Spain, Madame Elisabeth, the only 
 really lovable child of Catherine de Medici, had sent 
 her old play-fellow a letter of sympathy in her troubles. 
 Mary seized eagerly the opportunity of placing her 
 case intimately and favourably before Elisabeth's 
 husband. She could report that England was 
 Catholic at heart, that she had gained the affection 
 of many to her cause, and that, however appearances 
 might seem to be against it, she was prepared to die 
 for the cause of religion. 
 
 Even if Madame Elisabeth had tried her gentle 
 advocacy with her husband it would not have filled his 
 empty treasury, nor appeased Alva's mutinous Spanish 
 soldiers, nor repressed the gathering storm in the 
 
NORFOLK 205 
 
 Netherlands. Not the most arbitrary of rulers, not 
 the most Catholic of kings was free to follow his con- 
 victions and his sympathies in the sixteenth any more 
 than in any other century. Madame Elisabeth might 
 have done something perhaps to restore Philip's con- 
 fidence in the Queen of Scots, sorely shattered by her 
 Protestant marriage ; whatever her influence might 
 have done, it was removed a few months later by her 
 early death. 
 
 It seemed in the winter of 1569 as if events would 
 compel Philip to justify Mary's hopes. From various 
 causes relations between the Spanish and English 
 governments had been strained to the cracking point. 
 De Silva, the Spanish ambassador, whose good sense, 
 toleration and enlightened sense of honour, were all 
 o-uarantees of peace, had been replaced by de Guerau 
 d'Espes a man of different calibre. As eager a plotter 
 as was ever de Silva's predecessor, the Bishop of 
 Aquila, he was also imbued with fanatical, aggressive 
 neo-Catholicism, the spirit which, from Pius V. down- 
 wards, was putting new and living force into the 
 Church. De Guerau's lodging at the Spanish Embassy 
 soon became a centre of restless disaffection. 
 
 Meanwhile, though she was buoying herself up 
 with the belief that events were working for her, the 
 winter was passing dismally enough for Mary at 
 Tutbury, the most cheerless of her prisons. 
 
 Discomfort had been severe enough at Loch 
 Leven, but the walls of the four-square tower were 
 several feet thick ; fresh air blew from the surround- 
 ing hills and the occasional sunshine was flashed upon 
 her windows from the sparkling waters of the lake. 
 At Tutbury, on the top of a windy eminence, a low, 
 rambling timber and plaster house was sunk between 
 
206 MARY STUART 
 
 the walls of a square enclosure in such a manner 
 that the walls rose on one side as high as the roof 
 of the house and on another were no more than 
 six yards distant from the windows. The house was 
 occasionally used by the Shrewsburys as a hunting 
 lodge, and was thoroughly out of repair, the roof 
 leaking and the plaster peeling off in strips. A 
 bare vegetable plot was all the view from Mary's 
 windows ; the two rooms she inhabited were so 
 draughty that all the carpets and hangings brought 
 by the Shrewsburys from Sheffield were quite in- 
 effectual to keep out the wintry chill, and the walls 
 were so damp that mould gathered on the furniture in 
 four days. In the midst of this dilapidation and with 
 hygienic conditions incredible to modern experience a 
 certain pomp and ceremonial were yet sustained. Mary 
 had her cloth of state and services of gold and silver, 
 even her hand-basin was of precious metal. After a 
 few weeks Lord Shrewsbury, impatient of the dis- 
 comfort of Tutbury, obtained permission to remove 
 his charge to his own manor of Wingfield, as fair and 
 stately a mansion as any in England. It was always 
 to Tutbury that Mary was hurried when any crisis 
 made stricter imprisonment advisable. 
 
 In the small crowded dwelling-house at Loch 
 Leven the human drama, at least, had been intense 
 and intimate. Mary's health, on the whole, had been 
 good there, her nerves tense, her mind occupied with 
 winning favour and affection. At the bottom of Scot- 
 tish hearts there has always been a contradictory 
 romantic vein, at any moment ready to swing round 
 to the ancient kings against whom they were the first 
 to rebel. Mary never fully realised that with her 
 advent on English ground her spells were broken, 
 
BESS OF II VUnWK'K. 
 
NORFOLK 207 
 
 Her familiar servants indeed were to hold to her with 
 passionate devotion ; later on she was to become the 
 ideal figure for whom ardent Catholics were to plot 
 and die, but, as far as her gaolers were concerned, the 
 " enchantment whereby men were bewitched " was to 
 fall powerless on English gentlemen, secure in loyalty 
 to Gloriana, in national prejudice and in the friction 
 of daily arguments on the limits of their charge's liberty. 
 In addition to these securities Lord Shrewsbury was 
 protected from too warm an interest in his beautiful 
 charge by lively preoccupation with his own health, 
 by the constant economic worries inseparable from 
 Elisabeth's service, and by a wife who, whether she 
 were kind or curst, played too large a part in his life 
 to leave room for another woman. 
 
 Lady Shrewsbury, the famous Bess of Hardwick, 
 was not likely to be carried away by generous sym- 
 pathy with the captive Queen, though she watched the 
 political sky keenly and accommodated her behaviour 
 to Mary according as her prospects brightened or 
 darkened. Through Lady Shrewsbury's long, active 
 and prosperous life she single-mindedly pursued her 
 own interests and those of her eight Cavendish chil- 
 dren. She built houses, added field to field, accumu- 
 lated house-stuff, secured settlements and jointures 
 from four successive husbands, intrigued for marriages 
 for her children, quarrelled with most of her relations, 
 and died at a good old age, the ancestress of half the 
 great houses in the kingdom. 
 
 In the early days when any political change or 
 chance might have landed Mary on the throne, or at 
 least have declared her next heir, it was worth Lady 
 Shrewsbury's while to be polite and serviceable. Mr 
 Richard, the third of the Cavendish sons, was in 
 
208 MARY STUART 
 
 the Duke of Norfolk's company and partly in his 
 confidence. 
 
 In the summer of 1569 Elisabeth, realising the 
 danger and inconvenience of keeping Mary a prisoner, 
 was entertaining her cousin with the first of endless 
 negotiations for her restoration. Over and over 
 again the same conditions were to be offered to Mary 
 with no intention of their being fulfilled. She was to 
 give up her claim to the English throne, to be reconciled 
 to her rebels, to renounce the old alliance with France 
 and form a closer one with England, and accept Elisa- 
 beth's dictation as to her marriage and conduct generally. 
 
 While these negotiations were pending, Mr Caven- 
 dish arrived at his step-father's mansion with a secret 
 proposal from some of the most important lords of the 
 Privy Council, Lord Lumley, Lord Pembroke, Lord 
 Leicester, Lord Arundel and others. They suggested 
 that Mary should accept some English nobleman in 
 marriage and pointed out the Duke of Norfolk, the 
 head of the English peerage, as the fittest for the 
 purpose. Even Cecil affected to be favourable to the 
 proposal. Leicester was so deep in the scheme that 
 he wrote Mary a separate affectionate letter — a letter 
 carefully preserved to be used if ever it should be 
 advisable, as a thorn in Elisabeth's flesh. 
 
 The proposal was an earnest that these noblemen 
 meant that Mary's right of succession should be recog- 
 nised. Mary's answer was admirable in prudence and 
 dignity. She referred to the vexations of her former 
 marriages and declared that she was now minded to 
 live a solitary life all her days ; still if the Queen and 
 nobility of England desired her re-marriage she could 
 be content, and " especially in favour of the Earl of 
 Norfolk whom she liked before all others." 
 
NORFOLK 209 
 
 Perhaps her reluctance was not all feigned. She 
 had other strings to her bow. A rising of the 
 Catholics in her favour, a Spanish army landing on 
 the east coast, a sudden raid on Wingfield, a rescue, 
 and she herself again at the head of armed men 
 marching in triumph on London ; these were the 
 visions with which she preferred to kindle her 
 imagination. 
 
 It was the mistake of her policy that she must 
 needs entertain every offer made to her. So the 
 Norfolk negotiations went on and the Norfolk corre- 
 spondence began, that curious series of unreal love 
 letters with their frozen expressions of affection. 
 Unconvincing as is the devotion they express, they 
 are painfully characterised by Mary's habit of offering 
 unreserved submission to her lover. Norfolk responded 
 in a similar artificial vein. He sent her, by Lord 
 Boyd, a ruby which she wore beneath her gown, and 
 subscribed his letter with a warmth which Mary did 
 not allow him to forget. 
 
 Lord Boyd then proceeded on his way to Scotland 
 with a joint commission from both to the Scottish 
 Lords. The main difficulty in the matter had not 
 been faced ; no one had dared to approach Elisabeth 
 with the suggestion of such a thing. Any news of an 
 intended marriage was apt to irritate Elisabeth ; a 
 marriage proposal for her cousin that would involve her 
 recognition as next heir would produce a storm before 
 which the bravest might quail. It was judged more 
 politic that the proposal should come from Scotland 
 and that Lethington, always a grateful presence to 
 Elisabeth, should be the spokesman. 
 
 Norfolk, whose duplicity of character was equalled 
 by his simplicity of understanding, calculated on 
 
210 MARY STUART 
 
 Murray's loyal support. He delivered himself into 
 his hands when he wrote to him on July ist, 1569. 
 " I have proceeded so far therein that I can neither 
 with conscience revoke what I have done nor with 
 honour proceed further until you shall remove all 
 such stumbling blocks as are hindrances to our more 
 apparent proceedings. When these obstacles are 
 removed, the rest shall follow to your contentment 
 and comfort." 
 
 Yet "these obstacles," i.e. the Bothwell marriage, 
 were precisely the safeguards of Murray and his 
 Scottish supporters and they were in no hurry to 
 remove them. 
 
 The Scottish Parliament met in July, in Perth, 
 to consider and reject Elisabeth's proposals for 
 Mary's restoration. Then came the question of the 
 Bothwell marriage. Two years earlier Mary's refusal 
 to consent to a divorce had been made the pretext for 
 her imprisonment, almost for her death, nowihey treated 
 the proposal as impious and not to be entertained. 
 Murray, while affecting to favour his sister's request, 
 was working dead against her. It was in vain that 
 Lethington scorched the inconsistency of the Lords 
 with the fire of his fine wit. Ever since York he had 
 been working hard for Mary and the Norfolk alliance, 
 and had consequently become an embarrassment and 
 source of irritation to the Regent. The evidence of 
 his complicity in the murder had been suppressed 
 as long as it suited Murray's convenience, but now it 
 was suddenly sprung upon him. Crawford of Jordan- 
 hill, a Lennox man, accused him in an open meeting 
 at Stirling and he was imprisoned. He was shortly 
 afterwards placed in the charge of Kirkcaldy of Grange, 
 now Captain of the Castle of Edinburgh. The soldier 
 
NORFOLK 211 
 
 was no more contented than the Secretary with Murray 
 and Morton and their policy. Together they were 
 to form a party which for three more years were 
 to uphold Mary's forlorn cause in Scotland. 
 
 In the meantime, if a marriage between Mary and 
 Norfolk were to be placed in a favourable light 
 before Elisabeth, it would not be by the persuasive 
 voice of the Flower of the Wits of Scotland. 
 
CHAPTER XVII 
 
 TWO PICTURES 
 
 ' I S HE effort to follow the course of these negotia- 
 ■*■ tions leaves the historical student perplexed and 
 wearied, baffled in every effort to understand or 
 respect the motives of anyone of the actors. But 
 hunting among the documents he is relieved to catch 
 again and again glimpses of the Scottish Queen, 
 the living, authentic woman whom he came to know 
 in France, at Holyrood and at Loch Leven. She is 
 always the same — alert, high-spirited, irresistibly 
 natural and gracious. 
 
 As much from instinct as from deliberate policy 
 she never lost an opportunity of winning hearts and 
 captivating imaginations. Here are two pictures of 
 her in the first year of her captivity in England. 
 
 The first is from the lips of a young Catholic 
 gentleman, Mr Christopher Norton, who happened to 
 be serving under Knollys and Scrope at the latter's 
 Castle of Bolton. He was later imprisoned for his 
 share in the Northern Rising and it was in the course 
 of his defence that he gave the following charming 
 and unaffected account of his acquaintance with the 
 Queen of Scots. He formed one of the guard who 
 kept watch on her and her attendants. Through the 
 good offices of Lady Livingston he had had one 
 interview with the queen. She had done him a 
 kindness in writing to the Spanish ambassador on 
 
TWO PICTURES 213 
 
 behalf of a kinsman of Norton's, a prisoner in Spain. 
 She who knew everything that it concerned her to 
 know, knew him to be a member of one of those 
 noble, devout, old Catholic houses of the North, 
 always romantically ready to risk life and lands for 
 their religion, and she recognised him to be a gallant 
 and generous young gentleman whom it would not 
 be hard to win. We owe to him an unforgettable 
 picture of a winter afternoon at Bolton Castle. 
 
 " One day when the Queen of Scots had been 
 sitting at the window, knitting of a work, after the 
 board was covered, she rose and went to the fire- 
 side, and, making haste to have her work finished, 
 would not lay it away but worked at it while she 
 was warming herself and looked for one of her own 
 servants which were all gone to fetch their meat. 
 Seeing- none of her own folk there, she caused me to 
 hold her work as I was looking at my Lord Scrope 
 and Sir Francis Knollys playing at chess. I went, 
 thinking it would not become me to refuse. Lady 
 Scrope standing by the fire and many gentlemen in 
 the chamber saw that she did not speak to me and 
 I do not think Sir Francis Knollys saw or heard 
 when she called me. When he had played his mate, 
 seeing me standing by the Queen he called my 
 captain and asked if I watched. Then he com- 
 manded that I should watch no more and said the 
 Queen would make me a fool." 
 
 Is not this candid narrative like a perspective glass 
 through which we see clearly these figures sitting and 
 moving in the firelight in the dim November afternoon ? 
 
 If the next account we have of Mary in her 
 prison lacks the vividness of Chris Norton's narrative, 
 it is because the writer is making an effort to be 
 
214 MARY STUART 
 
 impressive and is too reminiscent of his own share 
 in the conversation. 
 
 Mary was already settled in the lugubrious Castle 
 of Tutbury under Lord Shrewsbury's care when Mr 
 Nicholas White, a correspondent of Cecil, turned 
 aside on his way to Ireland to visit the Earl. In 
 these early days Shrewsbury was a lenient gaoler 
 and strangers had easy access to the Queen. Mary 
 received White in a room where the costly hangings 
 and furniture could not cover the dilapidation. 
 He marked the device embroidered on her cloth of 
 state. En ma fin est mo?i commencement, and was 
 perplexed as to its meaning. To Mary and her 
 embroiderer it probably meant some pious common- 
 place, to us it foreshadows volumes of controversy 
 and a tale of such undying interest that each genera- 
 tion must tell it afresh. 
 
 The sight of a strange face must have been a 
 pleasant variety to Mary, otherwise the pedantry and 
 sermonising of Master Nicholas must have tried 
 her patience and politeness. No woman was ever 
 more preached at than Mary. White brought her 
 the news of Lady Knollys' death, and she was so 
 sincerely sympathetic that it was unnecessary to 
 explain to her that she was the innocent cause of 
 the lady's lonely death-bed. 
 
 With admirable politeness Mary accepted Master 
 Nicholas' admonition to cultivate a grateful spirit not 
 only to God but to her cousin the Queen of England, 
 and to " think herself rather prince-like entertained 
 than hardly restrained of anything that was fit for 
 her grace's estate." " This," the self-complacent 
 moralist declared, "she very gently accepted"; he 
 did not perceive her delicate irony when she added, 
 
TWO PICTURES 215 
 
 "that as for content in this her present state, she 
 would not require it at God's hands but only patience 
 which she humbly prayed him to give her." 
 
 There is a charm about the exclusively feminine 
 art of needlework that women, whatever their quality 
 or gifts, should be slow to relinquish. It softens 
 one's heart to this queenly creature, the perplexity 
 of every European government, the terror of English 
 statesmen, to think of her amusing her tedious days 
 matching her silks and covering curtains and altar- 
 cloths with pretty devices. " She said that all the 
 day she wrought with her needle and that the 
 diversity of the colours did make it seem less tedious, 
 and continued so long at it till very pain did make 
 her to give it over." One habit of the Queen, White 
 mentions, which seems to have been characteristic 
 of her all her life, the habit of sitting up late. " The 
 Queen over-watches them all, for it is one of the 
 clock at least every night ere she goes to bed." 
 It was then that she was occupied with her 
 correspondence. 
 
 Cased as he was in a double armour of loyalty 
 to his own Queen and preoccupation with himself, 
 Master Nicholas felt the fascination of the Scottish 
 Queen to be so dangerous that he seriously advises 
 Cecil that " few subjects in this land should have 
 access to this Lady." " For besides that she is a 
 goodly person— yet in truth not comparable to our 
 Queen — she hath withal an alluring grace, a pretty 
 Scottish accent, and a searching wit clouded with 
 mildness." 
 
CHAPTER XVIII 
 
 THE NORTHERN RISING AND THE RIDOLFI PLOT 
 
 I5 6 9. 1571— 1572 
 
 NORFOLK accompanied Elisabeth on her progress, 
 hung about her in gardens and other leisurely- 
 places but could find no moment when courage and 
 occasion coincided. Leicester professed to be paving 
 the way for his confidences. Elisabeth herself seemed 
 at times to invite them. On his arrival from London 
 she asked meaningly if he brought no news of a 
 marriage. Once, in her hoydenish way she gave him 
 a nip and bade him look well to his pillow. So long 
 as it was mere suspicion, she played with the idea, 
 but, when either through the faithless Leicester's con- 
 fession or the gossip of her ladies, the plan was made 
 clear to her the usual burst of fury fell upon Norfolk. 
 
 Elisabeth's next step was to demand from Murray 
 a full account of his dealings with Norfolk. With 
 unhesitating alacrity, Murray delivered into her hand 
 the unfortunate man who had subscribed himself his 
 " faithful friend and natural brother." 
 
 In his first resentful excitement Norfolk had 
 
 ridden from Andover to London persuading himself 
 
 that he was going to seize the Tower and raise a 
 
 rebellion, but the excitement ebbed away and with it 
 
 all his resolution. Spirits more fiery and chivalrous 
 
 than his, the Northern Lords, were prepared to rise 
 
 at a moment's notice, but he only sent them a chilling 
 
 message bidding them postpone their rising. He 
 216 
 
THE NORTHERN RISING 217 
 
 retired to his own estate in Norfolk and incensed 
 Elisabeth by refusing to return to court at her 
 command and then disheartened his friend by obeying 
 the summons when obedience had lost all grace and 
 could only be attributed to fear. 
 
 It was one of the torturing conditions of Mary's 
 captivity that the first indication she had of any of 
 her plans miscarrying was a sudden unexplained 
 increase of rigour in the conditions of her imprison- 
 ment. At the end of September, Shrewsbury's ill- 
 health was made the pretext for associating with him 
 in his charge Huntingdon and Hertford, both claimants 
 to the English succession, and consequently little 
 inclined to treat Mary with favour or leniency. She 
 was suddenly spirited off from pleasant, roomy Wing- 
 field to the gloom and discomfort of Tutbury, and at 
 one stroke her household was reduced from sixty 
 servants to thirty, while all letters and messages sent 
 out or received had to pass through her jailor's 
 hands. 
 
 Three days after her arrival at Tutbury, a surprise 
 visit was paid to her rooms and all her own and her 
 servant's coffers ransacked, while men with loaded 
 pistols guarded the doors. She made the most of the 
 indignity both to Elisabeth and to the French 
 ambassador. Her papers she had had the prudence to 
 destroy. She had probably been in secret communica- 
 tion with the Northern Lords. Late in October, Lord 
 and Lady Northumberland were at Wentworth House 
 in the neighbourhood of Sheffield. The Lady was 
 eager to introduce herself into the household at 
 Tutbury disguised as the mid-wife for Bastian's 
 wife. Had she succeeded she had meant to change 
 clothes with the Queen, and Mary, once in friendly 
 
218 MARY STUART 
 
 Catholic hands, would have headed the Northern 
 Rising in person and given it the rallying point it 
 needed. 
 
 This gallant, generous, ill-fated rebellion forms, 
 with the Pilgrimage of Grace and the Derwentwater 
 Rebellion, the tragic trilogy of the loyal and conserva- 
 tive North of England. 
 
 Alva, on whose co-operation everything turned, 
 had given no sign, the Duke of Norfolk, who was to 
 raise the Southern Counties, had missed his chance 
 and was in the Tower. Northumberland and West- 
 moreland were half-hearted, high-spirited ladies like 
 Lady Northumberland were precipitate, devout priests 
 were urgent, and noble gentlemen, like old Norton 
 and his eleven sons, felt their honour too deeply 
 engaged to retire. 
 
 The first signal to Mary that her friends had risen 
 was the influx of a hundred armed guards into her 
 prison, the coming and going of mounted scouts, and 
 the throwing up of embankments round the house. 
 The alarm of her jailors must have filled her with 
 exultation. The danger grew nearer, the rescuing 
 host was within. 58 miles, when orders came suddenly 
 from court, Huntington, who had been absent, returned 
 and within twenty-four hours Mary was carried off to 
 Coventry. There she had to be accommodated in an 
 inn but was strictly kept from all concourse of people, 
 the two Earls jealously watching one another. For 
 them it was an anxious time. Elisabeth's ministers 
 considered the chance of rescue so probable that it 
 was afterwards believed that they sent down the Great 
 Seal to Coventry so that if the rebels approached in 
 force, the Queen might be suddenly executed with 
 due legality. 
 
THE NORTHERN RISING 219 
 
 The Northern Rising was stamped out in blood 
 and fire. The chiefs fled across the Border to Scot- 
 land. M urray outraged the national sense of hospitality 
 by taking Northumberland prisoner and using him 
 as a convenient piece in the game he was playing 
 with Elisabeth. Then the storm died down and 
 Mary was brought back to Tutbury where the rigour 
 of her captivity was gradually relaxed. 
 
 In January 1570 came the news that Murray had 
 been assassinated, shot down in the streets of Linlith- 
 gow by a Hamilton who owed him a private grudge. 
 Mary made no pretence of concealing her satisfaction 
 " Bothwellhaugh acted without any prompting from 
 me," she wrote to the Cardinal, "but I am as 
 grateful to him as if it had been done by my advice." 
 Out of her French dowry she settled a pension on 
 the assassin. 
 
 And so Murray passes out of the story. 
 
 If history were written on the principle of " The 
 Ring and the Book," the great desideratum for the 
 understanding of the period would be a biography of 
 Murray. We know the events from Mary's point of 
 view, from Elisabeth's and from Knox's ; an attempt 
 has been made to unravel the subtleties of Lethington's 
 changing motives ; poetry has even thrown a doubt- 
 ful light on the disconcerting commonplaceness of 
 Bothwell's character ; events would take a strangely 
 altered aspect if we could see them as Murray saw 
 them, " through his fingers." 
 
 Murray's death brought little advantage to Mary's 
 party in Scotland. Old Lennox was sent down as 
 Regent and guardian of the little king. Our old 
 acquaintance Randolph accompanied him to earn 
 diligently what special malediction waits on those who 
 
220 MARY STUART 
 
 are the direct opposite of peacemakers. An English 
 army marched across the Border to punish Mary's 
 supporters for the protection extended to Elisabeth's 
 rebels. 
 
 The constant ill news from Scotland, the sufferings 
 of her friends cut Mary to the quick. For days she 
 would go about with eyelids swollen and red from 
 weeping. Often, too, ill news was followed by the 
 peculiar malady she was subject to. She had pro- 
 longed fainting fits and sickness, such as she had 
 had at Jedburgh ; at other times she had feverish 
 colds and the old weary pain in her side. She 
 never minimised her sufferings, they were useful 
 for playing on the fears and feelings of her cousin. 
 Elisabeth was pitiless with the pitilessness of a self- 
 satisfied, sentimental egotist, but she had a curious 
 anticipation of how posterity would pronounce between 
 the two queens. She dreaded above all things that 
 Mary should die on her hands. 
 
 To understand the changing and apparently 
 capricious treatment of Mary by Elisabeth it would 
 be necessary to follow every movement in European 
 politics. With the sensitiveness of a thermometer the 
 household life at Tutbury or Sheffield registered 
 Elisabeth's relations to the courts of France or Spain. 
 In the summer of 1570, it again suited Elisabeth to 
 enter into negotiations with Mary for her restoration 
 and, this time, with such apparent seriousness that in 
 October Cecil himself and Mildmay were sent to 
 make arrangements with the Scottish Queen. 
 
 The Shrewsbury household had moved over the 
 hills to Chatsworth that summer by reason of the 
 plague which was devastating the country. It was 
 prevalent in London also, especially in the populous 
 
THE NORTHERN RISING 221 
 
 district about the Tower, so that Norfolk had been 
 released in August and was only kept in ward in his 
 own house. Before leaving the Tower, he had given 
 Elisabeth a written promise to renounce all intention 
 of marrying the Queen of Scots and had sealed it 
 with his arms. This was the last door through which 
 Norfolk might have beaten an honourable retreat, and 
 returned to the conventional loyalty and splendid 
 nonentity for which he was suited. His wishes as 
 well as his honour probably pointed that way ; but 
 honour unrelated to honesty is but a blind leader of 
 the blind. Letters from Mary expressing absolute 
 dependence on his will and signed " Your own, my 
 Norfolk, faithful to death," confused still more that 
 troubled sense of honour and committed his halting 
 resolution. "If you mind not to shrink in this 
 matter I will die and live with you," she wrote, 
 "Your fortune shall be mine, therefore let me know 
 in all things your mind." 
 
 With such firm, light threads the web was woven 
 from which he found no escape. 
 
 The Norfolk correspondence was only one of the 
 many strands Mary held in her hand. She was in 
 active correspondence with Lethington, now the 
 life and brain of her party in Scotland. Constant plots 
 were made for her escape. Inside and outside of 
 the Shrewsbury household romantic young gentlemen 
 or enterprising agents were at watch and ward. 
 Some trusty servant of Mary would give them 
 rendezvous at daybreak on the moors above Shef- 
 field ; the height from the ground of her windows was 
 measured, page's or scullion's dresses provided. But 
 Lethington's advice was against such attempts, the 
 risk was too great. He advised unconditional consent 
 
222 MARY STUART 
 
 to Elisabeth's terms ; once restored and on her throne 
 Mary might rescind her compliance. 
 
 Besides the former conditions offered to Mary, 
 there were two at which she demurred. She was to 
 hand over Northumberland and all such rebels as 
 were in the custody of any subject of Scotland. 
 With a side glance at the treatment she was herself 
 receiving, Mary answered that it might not stand 
 with her honour " to deliver those who are come for 
 refuge within her country, as it were, to enter them in 
 a place of execution." 
 
 Another point was her placing her son in the 
 hands of Elisabeth to be brought up in England. 
 There is no sign that Mary had any motherly yearn- 
 ing over her poor, deserted little son, but as King of 
 Scotland and Elisabeth's heir he was a valuable piece 
 in her game, to be offered to Philip of Spain, or con- 
 ceded to Elisabeth, as policy dictated. The most 
 human feeling she showed in connection with him was 
 the outburst of indignation when she heard that 
 George Buchanan, the unscrupulous defamer of the 
 mother, had been appointed as tutor to the son. 
 When the question was raised at Chatsworth of the 
 boy's education in England Mary, who never lost an 
 opportunity of gaining a friend, wrote to his grand- 
 mother, old Lady Lennox, to consult her wishes. 
 The blandishment had no effect at the time, but two 
 years later the ladies were reconciled. 
 
 It was thus at Chatsworth that Mary had her first 
 and only meeting with the most implacable of her 
 opponents. Cecil was the more dangerous because 
 his opposition was entirely on public grounds. He 
 was probably quite sincere when he praised Mary to 
 Leslie as "a lady of gentle and clement disposition." 
 
THE NORTHERN RISING 223 
 
 Had she been an angel from Heaven his feelings 
 would have known no softening as long as she 
 was a menace to Elisabeth and the Protestant 
 religion. 
 
 Reluctantly, and with small faith in its fulfilment, 
 Mary accepted the treaty, taking care to inform the 
 Pope and other foreign princes of all it cost her to 
 concede so much to her Protestant enemies. But she 
 did definitely accept the conditions. 
 
 The treaty had further to be endorsed by three 
 Scottish Commissioners of her party and three of 
 the other side. Her Commissioners were in London 
 and ready to sign by December but Morton Makgill 
 and Pitcairn, who were to sign on behalf of the King's 
 government, delayed their coming for months and 
 then came only to raise difficulties. It was all that 
 Elisabeth wanted. She had grained the time to so 
 deeply into negotiations for the Anjou marriage, the 
 political game she was playing at the moment. Fear- 
 ing now no interference of France in Scottish affairs 
 she could afford to drop all further reference to the 
 treaty with Mary. 
 
 It is small wonder and quite excusable that Mary 
 came to regard her relations to her cousin as simply 
 a state of war in which cunning and dissimulation were 
 legitimate weapons. 
 
 She had had a wretched winter at Sheffield Castle, 
 Lord Shrewsbury's chief seat. She always felt the 
 cold, and the winter was rigorous. She had one 
 attack so alarming that two doctors were sent down 
 to attend on her. Hope deferred tried her nerves and 
 suspended for a time her active plotting but by March 
 1 571, having lost all faith in the treaty, having no 
 hope from Scotland and seeing France closed against 
 
224 MARY STUART 
 
 her by the Anjou courtship, she threw herself unre- 
 servedly on the King of Spain, inviting him definitely 
 to aid her cause and that of the Catholics by an in- 
 vasion of England. 
 
 Three men, born plotters and busy-bodies, de 
 Guerau, the Bishop of Ross, and Ridolfi, a rich 
 Florentine banker in London and at the same time a 
 secret agent of the Pope, arranged all the details of 
 the scheme and dragged the irresolute Duke of 
 Norfolk along with them. 
 
 In Mary's letter to Philip she makes no pretence 
 of merely asking for help to punish her rebels in 
 Scotland, she aims distinctly at the throne of England 
 and the restoration of the Catholic religion. She 
 explains that others besides the Catholics are dis- 
 contented with Elisabeth's government, and excuses 
 Norfolk's delay in declaring himself a Catholic on the 
 ground that he would lose his influence with the 
 Protestant malcontents by such a step. Addressing 
 the Pope she applies for release from her "pretended 
 marriage " with Bothwell, telling the story of the 
 abduction in the incredible and colourless form in 
 which she liked to think of it in later years. To pro- 
 pitiate Philip, she was emphatic that no one in France, 
 not even her own kinsfolk, should have an inkling of 
 the conspiracy. 
 
 The accompanying letter from the Duke of Norfolk 
 was concerned with the numbers and arms of the in- 
 vading Spanish army. He gave definite promise of 
 co-operation and discussed the ports suitable for a 
 landing. A list was added of the English nobility 
 marked according to their several sentiments ; a 
 majority was marked as favourable to a change of 
 government. Armed with these letters Ridolfi first 
 
THE RIDOLFI CONSPIRACY 225 
 
 visited Alva at Brussels, then went to Rome and ended 
 at Seville where he found the Spanish king. 
 
 Slow to take up ideas as he was, Philip was 
 certainly arrested by a plan so distinct and promises 
 so definite. Alva, his hands full with rebellion ferment- 
 ing in the Netherlands and discontent in his army, 
 saw difficulties. Of the plan, it is true, he approved, but 
 it must be on the clear understanding that the English 
 Catholics would undertake, by some means or other, 
 to remove Queen Elisabeth. Only when this was an 
 accomplished fact would he advise his master to risk 
 so great an enterprise as an invasion. The Pope, 
 Pius V., smoothed the way for conscientious Catholics 
 by launching a Bull of excommunication against 
 Elisabeth. Even in Catholic times these missiles had 
 fallen innocuously on our shores ; in the Protestant 
 days of Elisabeth the Bull fell practically unnoticed. 
 
 So the plot halted between the timidity of Norfolk, 
 who would not move till backed by an invading army, 
 and the prudence of Philip, who would not move till 
 the English Catholics were committed to open re- 
 bellion ; sorry allies these for the fiery fettered spirit at 
 Sheffield ! 
 
 Modern ingenuity has invented no detective story 
 of more engrossing interest than the method by which, 
 stage after stage, the Ridolfi conspiracy was brought 
 to light by Cecil and his agents. But the fascination 
 of such stories lies in detail and slow development, 
 and for these the reader is referred to the pages of 
 Mr Froude where full justice is done to every ingenious 
 and painful particular. 
 
 The chief minister of state, deliberately ordering 
 poor wretches to the rack, or, worse, surprising their 
 confidences through the hypocritical sympathy of 
 
226 MARY STUART 
 
 spies masquerading as fellow-sufferers, is a hideous 
 spectacle, however much we may apply a trained 
 historical imagination to the study of the facts. 
 
 Small treacheries sicken one more than great 
 betrayals, when they trade on some generous or com- 
 passionate instinct in the victim. Burghley, in some 
 treacherous game which he and Sir John Hawkins 
 were playing with the Spanish king, required for his 
 tool a letter of credit from the Scottish Queen. It 
 made it no better that the honest Catholic gentleman, 
 employed for this end, was himself a dupe. He was 
 introduced to Mary as one having friends in a Spanish 
 dungeon on whose behalf he begged for her good 
 offices with Philip. There is a touching dignity in 
 her reply. She seemed doubtful at first, yet said that 
 " She must pity all prisoners for that she was used as 
 one herself, having all intelligence taken from her ; yet 
 she would do any pleasure she could to relieve any 
 Englishman out of prison." " All intelligence taken 
 from her," that was one of the nightmare conditions 
 of her captivity. 
 
 All summer (i 57 1) Burghley and his servants were 
 seeking for more evidence of the plot. The Bishop of 
 Ross put them off with half admissions ; he and his 
 mistress had been in correspondence with Philip and 
 Alva, but only with regard to help against the rebels 
 of Scotland. 
 
 So far nothing could be traced to Norfolk and his 
 friends, Lumley and Arundel. In September the clue 
 to the whole matter came accidentally into Cecil's 
 hands. The Anjou courtship notwithstanding, the 
 French government, was unwilling to lose all hold on 
 Mary. A sum of six hundred pounds destined for the 
 Queen's party in Scotland was sent under cover to La 
 
THE RIDOLFI CONSPIRACY 227 
 
 Mothe, the French ambassador ; it was to be conveyed 
 by means furnished by the Duke of Norfolk. With 
 the slackness in detail, characteristic of a weak man, he 
 left the arrangement of the matter to his secretary, who 
 entrusted the money and a letter in cipher to a casual 
 burgess of Shrewsbury returning to his city from the 
 Capital. The man's curiosity discovered the nature 
 of the packet he carried, and his discretion conveyed 
 the discovery at once to Cecil. 
 
 The paper, when deciphered, told something ; Nor- 
 folk's servants taken prisoners, examined separately 
 (each being threatened with the other's admissions), 
 and tortured on the rack, betrayed all they knew. 
 One of them, Higford, had been entrusted with the 
 burning of all letters received from Mary or Leslie. 
 He had treacherously preserved them and now pro- 
 duced them from their hiding-place. The game was 
 up, and even the Bishop of Ross, when threatened 
 with death or the rack, made a full avowal of what 
 had passed between Norfolk and Mary. In the 
 excitement of abject terror the bishop is said to have 
 uttered the wildest calumnies against his mistress 
 calumnies which leave Mary's reputation where it was 
 and only prove the wretched, hysterical stuff the 
 bishop was made of. 
 
 " She was," he cried, " unfit for any husband. She 
 poisoned her first husband, consented to the murder 
 of Darnley, brought Bothwell to the field to be 
 murdered, and last of all she pretended marriage with 
 the Duke of Norfolk with whom she would not long 
 have kept faith." 
 
 " Lord ! " cried Dr Wilson, who conducted the 
 examination, " what a people ! and what a queen ! and 
 what an ambassador ! " 
 
228 MARY STUART 
 
 Norfolk made no fight at all. Confronted with 
 the accusation against him, he wept and fell on his 
 knees. At first he was prepared to deny everything, 
 then, seeing that all was known he cried bitterly, " I 
 am undone." 
 
 Yet at the end he stood his trial with a simple 
 patience not without dignity. To Elisabeth he 
 wrote a sincere and sorrowful letter commending- his 
 children to her kindness. Of the woman who, unseen 
 and unloved, had been the cause of his treason he 
 spoke with a fearful shrinking : " He vows to God that 
 if he had to choose to have that woman in marriage 
 or death, he would rather take this death, that now he 
 is going to, a hundred times." 
 
 It is a commonplace, with which dramatic art has 
 made us familiar, that when a man and woman are 
 partners in some secret and unlawful undertaking, it 
 is the woman who knows neither faltering, nor 
 remorse. In this case, indeed, the guilt of Mary and 
 of Norfolk were incommensurate. He was prepared 
 to betray his country, his faith and his sovereign, and 
 to break his plighted word ; Mary was carrying on an 
 old and recognised quarrel with the only weapons 
 possible to a captive. 
 
 On the eighth of September (i 57 1) she was 
 suddenly confronted by Lord Shrewsbury with letters 
 from Elisabeth. All was known, her efforts to escape, 
 her traffickings with Norfolk and with the King; of 
 Spain, all the plans for the Spanish Invasion. At once 
 her household was to be reduced to sixteen, all the 
 rest of her servants were to be dismissed at two hours' 
 notice, the French to France, the Scots to their own 
 country. 
 
 Sudden dangers, such as this, always called out 
 
THE RLDOLFI CONSPIRACY 229 
 
 every faculty in Mary, not only her courage and 
 defiance and practical alertness but the greatness and 
 faithfulness of her heart. The accusations she brushed 
 aside either with flat denial or the haughty declaration 
 that she was an independent princess and answerable 
 to no one. At first she looked upon death as inevit- 
 able, and the thought of her own death always left 
 her unmoved, but for her servants, her " little flock," 
 she was full of grief and thronging fears. Turned 
 suddenly adrift in a strange and hostile land, how 
 would they fare ? With what fate would her faithful 
 Scots meet, returning to a country where their home- 
 steads were unroofed, their names defamed, their 
 enemies in power? About two she was specially 
 concerned, Master John Gordon, a learned young 
 Scottish gentleman who had written in her defence, 
 and Willie Douglas, the boy whose courage and 
 cleverness had contrived her escape from Loch Leven. 
 There is, in her special message to him, a kindness that 
 is both royal and loyal. " As for you, Willie Douglas, 
 be assured that the life you risked for mine shall 
 never be destitute as long as I have a friend alive." 
 
 She wrote on behalf of her servants to the French 
 ambassador, to Burghley, to her own ambassador at 
 Paris. The two hours were lengthened into several 
 days, and on the eighteenth she addressed a collective 
 letter to all who were leaving- her. 
 
 It is difficult to write of this letter. We have 
 grown familiar with Mary in her deep and complicated 
 dissimulation. At this very time she was defiantly 
 denying her own acts, lying without misgiving. Yet 
 who dare say that this letter to the servants, who 
 loved her and whom she loved, is other than heartfelt 
 and sincere ? It is noble in its patience, its earnest- 
 
230 MARY STUART 
 
 ness, its concern for the souls of those for whom she 
 feels herself responsible. She prays them to be 
 patient, to hold fast the true Catholic faith — knowing 
 that out of the Ark of Noah, there is no salvation — 
 she bids them live in peace with one another, com- 
 mends them to her kinsfolk in France and begs them 
 to believe that, if she had failed in any way as their 
 mistress it was never from lack of will but only from 
 lack of power. She begs that some of them on arriv- 
 ing in France, will carry her farewell to the old grand- 
 mother at Joinville, and sends messages to her special 
 friends, to George Douglas, Lord Fleming, and the 
 good old Archbishop of Glasgow. 
 
 For herself she bids them not to sorrow. If her 
 time is come to die her one regret will be that she is 
 unable to reward them better. 
 
 The rigours of her captivity increased, her re- 
 maining servants might not go beyond the gates nor 
 speak to Lord Shrewsbury's household. She was 
 confined to her own rooms. A horrible contrivance 
 was proposed, a false door by which at any time, by 
 day or night, her jailors might intrude upon her. 
 Once or twice as a concession Lord Shrewsbury took 
 her to walk on the Castle leads, "or in his large dining- 
 room with himself or his wife in her company avoiding 
 all other's talk, either to herself or any of hers." An 
 exhilarating form of exercise ! 
 
 Her letter to Elisabeth of 29th October has the 
 pathetic dignity of a dying appeal, though there is a 
 sting in the prayer with which it closes that Elisabeth's 
 heart may be acceptable to God and profitable to 
 herself. Looking only for death, Mary makes three 
 requests for herself. She begs for the presence of 
 one of the French Embassy with whom she can 
 
THE RIDOLFI CONSPIRACY 231 
 
 arrange her temporal concerns, her debts and the 
 pensions of her servants. She begs to have a priest 
 who may give her consolation, and finally she begs 
 permission to write a farewell letter to her son. 
 
 She asked for bread and they flung her a stone, 
 for fish and they gave her a serpent. A month 
 later she writes in bitter indignation to the French 
 ambassador. The messenger who had carried to 
 Elisabeth her request for a priest brought down 
 instead of the consolations of religion, a book of 
 defamation and calumny by "the Atheist Buchanan." 
 It was of course the notorious " Detectio " in which 
 all the painful and shameful episodes of her life were 
 interwoven with coarse scandals, exaggerations and 
 lewd interpretations. 
 
 Sick, defeated, isolated from all counsellors, 
 ignorant even of what was being unravelled, she 
 kept her courage high and her wits sharp and 
 clear. 
 
 Elisabeth had evidently sent her a letter detailing 
 all her own good and gracious deeds, her cousin's 
 perfidies and ingratitude, and Mary meets her point 
 by point. Elisabeth was hard put to it when she 
 counted it a virtue that she had refused to accept 
 Mary's crown when offered to her by Mary's subjects. 
 Mary expresses amazement at this, the first news 
 she has had of any such obligation, and wonders if 
 her subjects would acknowledge the facts and insinu- 
 ates that it would only be of a piece with their later 
 rebellion in which they have had support from 
 Elisabeth. A hit, a palpable hit. 
 
 When Elisabeth lays claim to having rescued her 
 life from the vengeance of her own subjects, Mary 
 prefers to attribute her safety to the good offices of the 
 
232 MARY STUART 
 
 French king, and points out that on two later occasions 
 Elisabeth was prepared to hand her over to Murray 
 and to Lennox severally, and "God knows how often 
 since." This shaft went nearer the mark than the 
 archer knew. 
 
 Her acceptance of the office of godmother to the 
 little prince is another benefit put to her own credit 
 by Elisabeth. Perhaps the honour was the other 
 way is Mary's answer. At least the French king 
 was content to accept it as such, and but for doing 
 Elisabeth honour, her old friend the Spanish Queen 
 would have been a more natural choice. 
 
 But the finest stroke is when Mary recalls to 
 Elisabeth three occasions, still held by her in grateful 
 recollection, on which kindness was really shown to 
 her by Elisabeth. The friendly patronage extended 
 to the Guises at Mary's request the year of her return 
 to Scotland ; the ring sent with the assurance that 
 it would always be a talisman to secure Elisabeth's 
 support in any time of need ; and, thirdly, a certain 
 Parliament where Elisabeth had supported Mary's 
 claim to the succession. Facts that must have made 
 Elisabeth wince. 
 
 Lord Shrewsbury was among the Peers who tried 
 the Duke of Norfolk. While he was necessarily 
 absent Sir Ralph Sadler — Mary's earliest acquaint- 
 ance among Englishmen — took his place. During 
 the days of Norfolk's trial Mary remained shut up in 
 her rooms shrinking from the callous tongues that 
 never spared her reproaches and reflections. 
 
 Delight in carrying ill news of any kind belongs 
 to vulgar natures. When the news of Norfolk's con- 
 demnation arrived at Sheffield Lady Shrewsbury 
 hurried to Mary's rooms to be the first to tell. But 
 
THE RIDOLFI CONSPIRACY 233 
 
 the tidings had travelled faster than she. She found 
 the queen " all bewept and mourning." " Thereupon," 
 adds Sadler, "the queen became silent and had no 
 will to talk more of the matter." A day or two later 
 he writes again, " she is fallen into great contempla- 
 tion, fasting and prayer," and he adds a Protestant 
 sneer at the inadequacy of such measures to help the 
 Duke of Norfolk. 
 
 One advantage Mary reaped from the rigorous 
 seclusion of the months that followed. She withdrew 
 herself definitely from attendance at the Anglican 
 forms of worship. In her heart she had never wavered 
 in devotion to the Church of her faith, but for political 
 reasons she had given the Church of England a fair 
 hearing. All through one Lenten season preachers 
 from Coventry had preached before her (and some- 
 times at her), but after hearing them all she had not 
 found two who agreed as to doctrine. 
 
 From the date of Norfolk's death onwards she 
 never made the smallest approaches to Anglicanism. 
 More and more, every year, did she identify herself 
 with the cause of the Church. Her sufferings were 
 part of the storm and stress that Church was under- 
 going for the present in England. Her endless 
 plotting and scheming — with all the lying and 
 dissimulation which they involved — were, she per- 
 suaded herself, as much for the cause of God and 
 His Church as for her own freedom and greatness. 
 And undoubtedly this thought did give her constancy 
 and vigour where otherwise even her vitality would 
 have been worn down by years of thwarted and 
 fallacious hopes. In her own inner life, alongside of 
 the restless plotting, there grew up a strange patience. 
 Inasmuch as they came from hostile and powerful 
 
234 MARY STUART 
 
 human beings, she would resent her wrongs and fight 
 for revenge up to the last breath with concentrated 
 bitterness, but these same wrongs wore a different 
 aspect when she laid them as a sacrifice on the altar 
 and drew from thence the consolations of religion. 
 
CHAPTER XIX 
 
 LIFE AT SHEFFIELD 
 !57 2 — I 5 8 ° 
 
 MARY had written that God alone knew how 
 often Elisabeth had offered to deliver her up 
 into the hands of her enemies. 
 
 The most dastardly offer of this kind was made in 
 the autumn of 1572. Scarcely had the disquietude 
 caused by the discovery of the Norfolk plot settled 
 down, when the news of the St Bartholomew Massacre 
 (Aug. 1572) spread panic through the country. Men 
 looked every moment for some Catholic demonstration 
 and, as usual, located the danger at Sheffield. Elisabeth 
 was urged to let the same vengeance fall on Mary that 
 had overtaken Norfolk. Elisabeth had a horror of 
 violence, she shrank from pain, especially from pain- 
 ful decisions. How little pity had to do with her 
 obstinate refusal to take her cousin's life is proved by 
 the cowardly scheme she formed of getting rid of her 
 prisoner without incurring responsibility or dangerous 
 consequences. 
 
 In a private Council of herself, Leicester and 
 Burghley, it was resolved to send Killegrew on a secret 
 mission to Scotland. He was to persuade Mar, the 
 Regent, and Morton the virtual ruler, to receive Mary 
 back into her own country and to undertake to have 
 her executed within four hours of her return. To make 
 
 matters comfortable for Elisabeth, the demand was to 
 
 235 
 
236 MARY STUART 
 
 come, as it were, spontaneously from the Scottish side. 
 By September Killegrew was in Scotland. Mar at 
 first made demur — the Erskines had so far kept them- 
 selves comparatively clean from blood — but Morton 
 knew no scruples. It was for his interest to get Mary 
 out of the way, he went also on the settled plan of 
 keeping on terms with the Queen of England. But in 
 matters of life and death, as in matters of faith and 
 salvation, Morton's first eye was always on the business 
 aspect. If they were to incur such invidious responsi- 
 bility, Elisabeth must make it worth their while. 
 Mary must be accompanied by some nobleman of 
 weight, Bedford or Huntington, and by two or three 
 thousand soldiers. These, having witnessed the 
 execution, were then to help in besieging the Castle 
 where Mary's friends still made a stand. The final, 
 most characteristic demand was that Elisabeth should 
 pay all arrears owing to the soldiers of the King's party. 
 , Either Elisabeth found these terms too high or the 
 sudden death of the Regent Mar put a stop to the 
 negotiations, at any rate the scandalous scheme was 
 suffered to drop out. Morton succeeded as Regent. 
 Six months later at the end of May 1573 the Castle 
 fell and with it the last hopes of Mary's party in Scot- 
 land. 
 
 A few months earlier, with the pitiless levity that 
 served only to emphasise the grimness of the country 
 and epoch, the St Andrews students had entertained 
 Knox with a dramatic representation of the fall of the 
 Castle. Later, on his death-bed, Knox had prophesied 
 concerning his old friend Grange that he should be 
 hung with his face against the sun ; ominous signs, 
 both, of the temper of the people. 
 
 A lost cause, a garrison mostly sick, the healthy 
 
LIFE AT SHEFFIELD 237 
 
 remnant mutinous, Lethington so worn with disease 
 that the firing of the guns caused him intolerable 
 anguish, most of Mary's jewels pawned and the 
 exchequer empty ; yet even under such conditions, 
 Grange might have held out if English guns from 
 across the Norloch had not battered the Castle walls 
 and set them " running like sand," as Knox had seen 
 them in his vision. To Morton the Captain refused 
 to yield, but from Drury, the English general, he de- 
 manded the terms due to honourable foes. 
 
 There is a piteous letter written by Lethington 
 and Grange, both proud men, to Cecil, recalling the 
 days of their old intimacy and begging for his inter- 
 vention. It was all in vain. It suited Elisabeth's 
 policy to hand them over to Morton, and Morton was 
 pitiless. Lethington was saved by timely death, from 
 what he most dreaded, a public execution. So 
 perished miserably for a cause he had betrayed, the 
 finest wit and most enlightened intelligence in Scot- 
 land. After the revolting custom of the day his 
 enemies would have kept the dead body unburied till 
 it had been tried and condemned in open court if the 
 heart-broken entreaties of Mary Fleming had not 
 moved Cecil to remonstrate. 
 
 Grange had been Morton's friend and had acted 
 by his side in sundry affairs. This was no deterrent 
 to Morton's determination to have him out of the 
 way. He was hung " with his face against the sun " 
 to pacify the clamours of the preachers. History 
 has few tragedies more complete than the fall of the 
 Castle. On June 7th the news reached Sheffield. It 
 added a pang to Mary's sufferings that ill news was 
 always conveyed by those eager to mark how she bore 
 herself under it. " She makes little show of any 
 
238 MARY STUART 
 
 grief," wrote Lord Shrewsbury, "and yet it nips her 
 very near." 
 
 Her cause in Scotland fell with the fall of the Castle, 
 (May 1 573) just as in England it had seemed to fall with 
 the execution of Norfolk. In neither case was Mary's 
 grief mainly selfish. A Scottish nobleman of the time 
 complained bluntly that foreign princes treated their 
 servants like "de vieilles bottes," and we have seen 
 how callously Elisabeth would sacrifice any servant to 
 save her purse or her credit. In this Mary differed 
 from all other princes. She had never lost her affection 
 for Mary Fleming, twelve years later she was eager 
 to have her company and service, and Mary Fleming 
 was equally willing to share her mistress' captivity, 
 but from one cause and another the project came to 
 nothing. 
 
 The years that lie between 1573 and 1580, seven 
 tedious years, were to all appearance the quietest and 
 least eventful of Mary's captivity. It seemed as if, 
 for this spell, Europe had agreed to ignore the 
 " daughter of debate " and her claims, each ruler 
 turning to his own particular problem. 
 
 Philip of Spain never lost sight of Mary as a 
 weapon for menacing Elisabeth when the time 
 should be ripe for his great enterprise, but Philip's 
 faith in time — " io y el tiempo " — only grew greater 
 as available time shortened. Meantime, with the 
 Turk in the Mediterranean, rebellion growing com- 
 pact and formidable in the Netherlands, and English 
 gentlemen adventurers harassing Spanish fleets on 
 the high seas and even on the Spanish Main, 
 Philip's hands were full. The Queen of Scots was 
 not forgotten, but she must wait. 
 
 Henry III. had succeeded Charles IX. on the 
 
HENRY III, KING OF FRANCE 
 
LIFE AT SHEFFIELD 239 
 
 throne of France, inheriting also the fierce religious 
 strife that was wearing down the life of the country. 
 The friendship of the English queen was essential 
 to the French king, the freedom of his sister-in-law 
 would add nothing either to his strength or security. 
 By a stretch of the old courtesy the French ambas- 
 sador was enjoined to act for Mary. It was he 
 who, reluctantly, conveyed her letters and messages 
 to Queen Elisabeth, the endless, worrying business 
 of her dowry passed through the embassy, even 
 Mary's numerous shopping commissions seem to have 
 been attended to by the amiable de La Mothe and 
 his successor Castelnan de Mauvissiere. 
 
 For a time Mary ceased to struggle with Elisa- 
 beth. Instead of letters of angry remonstrance, where 
 mother-wit steeped in gall scored point after point 
 against her correspondent, we have now letters — 
 more painful to read — of patient resignation and 
 plaintive appeals. 
 
 As the years slipped on and small indulgences 
 were granted her and increased benignity in Elisabeth's 
 letters gave Mary hopes of winning her cousin's 
 favour, she began to shower gifts on the English 
 Queen. French confections were presented in her 
 name by the French ambassador. Mary set her uncle 
 the Cardinal's wits to work to find suitable devices 
 and mottoes which, engraved on ornaments after the 
 sentimental fashion of the day, might convey her 
 feelings towards her cousin. She had a feminine 
 genius for millinery and invented and executed 
 miracles of lace and gauze and needlework. Presents 
 of sleeves, head-dresses and ruffles were sent to 
 court as propitiatory offerings. Elisabeth was as 
 greedy over a ruffle as over a revenue, yet she 
 
240 MARY STUART 
 
 had some twinges of shame in accepting so much 
 and giving nothing in return. With humorous 
 effrontery she bade the ambassador warn her young 
 cousin that as people grew old they accepted with 
 two hands and gave with one finger. 
 
 In no point is the contrast between the cousins 
 greater than in this matter of giving. Elisabeth 
 provided so illiberally for Mary's expenses that 
 Shrewsbury was always out of pocket. At one stroke 
 she reduced his monthly allowance from ,£120 to ^80, 
 and while she impoverished the poor, faithful gentle- 
 man, she fretted him into nervous fevers by her 
 constant suspicions. 
 
 By instinct, even more than by policy, Mary was 
 open-handed and considerate. On one occasion there 
 was some confusion about an apothecary's bill. She 
 wrote promptly to the French ambassador bidding 
 him settle it without dispute. She would, she said, 
 rather pay twice over than defraud the poor man or 
 distress him with unjust suspicions. Her open hand 
 and frank courtesy won her everywhere friends and 
 servants. Guard her as closely as he might, Shrews- 
 bury was at all times uneasily aware of letters and 
 messages passing from hand to hand, finding their 
 way to and from the prisoner for whom he was 
 responsible. 
 
 Mary's usual abode was at Sheffield Castle, a 
 lordly dwelling lying in nine miles of richly wooded 
 park. Just beyond the Castle gates lay the busy, 
 thriving little town, and in it many idle or daring 
 spirits open to a bribe or ready for an adventure. 
 In vain Shrewsbury tried to keep Mary's people from 
 contact with the outer world. A main danger seems 
 to have been the laundresses. It was characteristic 
 
LIFE AT SHEFFIELD 241 
 
 of the time that while embroiderers — male and 
 female — were an integral part of all great households, 
 the washing was either given out or laundresses came 
 in to their work and returned at night to their homes. 
 Linen baskets offered admirable hiding-places for 
 letters or other parcels and, if we are to believe Lord 
 Shrewsbury and Sir Amyas Paulet, washerwomen 
 were a venal class. 
 
 A curious lot of servants and messengers Mary 
 had in her service. We read of one Kynlough, " a 
 learned man or conjuror," Caldwell a schoolmaster, 
 a glover also and a porter who had their rendezvous 
 at the house of an ale-brewer, Staining Lane, 
 London. There was also " a Thames waterman with 
 a squint " who was Morgan's man and conveyed letters 
 between London and the Scottish Queen. 
 
 This Morgan, a Welshman, had been Shrewsbury's 
 secretary in the early days of Mary's captivity, but 
 had been dismissed on suspicion of dealing with her. 
 He settled in Paris ostensibly to manage the business 
 of her dowry ; later on we shall find him deep in all 
 the plots of Guise and Spain. He was her chief agent 
 and had her entire confidence. Another of Shrews- 
 bury's servants, the tutor of his boys, managed his 
 services to the Queen so discreetly that for two years 
 his master refused to admit any suspicion of him. 
 
 Seven years they were of deadly monotony. 
 Occasional changes of abode were necessary. When 
 Mary's rooms at the Castle required to be " sweetened " 
 — and in those insanitary days, spring cleanings were 
 even more imperative than in our times of smoke and 
 gas — she was removed to the Manor. This was a 
 house lying on the edge of a high tableland about two 
 miles from the Castle, commanding wide open views 
 
 Q 
 
242 MARY STUART 
 
 of beautiful hill country. But to one constantly re- 
 strained in the house and only allowed exercise under 
 restrictions, fine air and open country are but Tantalus' 
 gifts. 
 
 Mary's health was always ailing. Rheumatism 
 and an affection of the liver added the weight of 
 depression to her other sorrows. Every year Elisabeth 
 gave reluctant permission to her cousin to visit the 
 spa at Buxton, and then in agitation tried to recall or 
 limit it. Such were the outward changes of Mary's 
 life. 
 
 Inside, the days passed dully enough. "We live 
 here the life of a convent," she wrote once to her 
 uncle. Prayers and the offices of the Church occupied 
 much of the time. She was concerned to keep alive 
 the religious life of her household. Sometimes a 
 chaplain was vouchsafed to her : once, when there was 
 a difficulty about this, a devoted priest in disguise 
 obtained a situation as a gardener at the Castle. 
 When plots and persecutions were toward, she was 
 always deprived of her priest. In view of such times 
 she had secretly obtained from Rome the extra- 
 ordinary privilege of partaking of the consecrated 
 elements at her own hand. 
 
 In 1577 a shadowy little romance broke the 
 monotony of life in Mary's household. Five beautiful 
 Maries had been young together, had danced and 
 sung and laughed, and turned the heads and won the 
 hearts of their lovers. In 1577 they were barely what 
 we now consider middle-aged, but the best of life was 
 over for all. Mary Fleming, a widow and in poverty, 
 had joined, with her children, the sad restless company 
 of Catholic exiles at Louvain. Mary Livingston's 
 husband, John Semple, had been persecuted by 
 
LIFE AT SHEFFIELD 243 
 
 Morton on account of his faithful stewardship of 
 Mary's jewels. Of Mary Beaton we only know that 
 she was alive in 1578 and that she died before her 
 husband Ogilvy of Boyne. And now in sober, middle- 
 aged guise, love came to Mary Seton, the last of the 
 five. 
 
 The Beaton's were among the most loyal of 
 Mary's friends. A brother of the Archbishop passed 
 constantly between Paris and Sheffield entrusted with 
 all her confidential affairs. Early in 1577, this faithful 
 Andrew Beaton proposed for the hand of Mary Seton. 
 The lady was reluctant. Mary had first to talk her 
 out of some religious scruples concerning a vow she 
 had made, and then to laugh her out of a character- 
 istically Scottish difficulty. Andrew Beaton was only 
 a younger son, and at the best it was doubtful if a 
 Beaton were a quite equal match for a daughter of 
 the House of Seton. It was not put to the proof. 
 On his next journey back from Paris, Andrew fell ill 
 on the road and died in an inn. A couple of years 
 before Mary's death, Mary Seton left her mistress 
 and may have adopted the religious life. 
 
 Amusements were scanty at Sheffield and 
 pathetically mild for a woman like Mary. As an 
 occasional indulgence Shrewsbury took her hawking 
 in his beautiful park, but this might at any moment 
 bring an angry rebuke on him. Life had to be 
 arranged for indoors. " Besides reading and working 
 I take pleasure only in all the little animals I can get." 
 She had Barbary fowls in wooden cages, and small 
 birds and " pretty little dogs" sent from France. 
 
 It is more touching to hear that the practically 
 childless, rapidly aging woman almost adopted a 
 small grandchild of Lady Shrewsbury. Little Bessie 
 
244 MARY STUART 
 
 Pierrepoint seems to have shared the Queen's room 
 from the time she was four years' old. It was an 
 interest to the Queen to train up the little creature in 
 courtly breeding and accomplishment, " bringing her 
 up as carefully and as virtuously as if she had been 
 my own daughter." She took a simple, motherly 
 pleasure in superintending her frocks. Sentences like 
 the following in one of her letters to " ma mie," " my 
 well-beloved bed-fellow, Bess Pierrepoint," have an 
 amusingly familiar ring. " I shall cause your black 
 dress to be made and sent to you as soon as I have 
 the trimming for which I have written to London." 
 
 The adoption of Lady Shrewsbury's grandchild, 
 and the further fact that Mary stood sponsor to a 
 Talbot grandchild born in the Castle, are proofs that 
 however rigidly Lord Shrewsbury might stick to his 
 role of jailor, there must have been considerable 
 intimacy between Mary and Bess of Hardwick. The 
 furious quarrel between the ladies some eight or nine 
 years later is in itself an argument of this. 
 
 Lady Shrewsbury had permission to spend long 
 mornings with the Queen, both ladies busy over their 
 embroidery frames. Court gossip and spicy stories 
 of Queen Elisabeth enlivened their conversation. 
 Through Lady Shrewsbury reassuring messages 
 reached Mary even from men in high favour at 
 court. After all, nothing could alter the facts that 
 she was next heir to the crown, and that not the 
 most fulsome of courtiers could attribute immor- 
 tality to Gloriana. Even her minion, Christopher 
 Hatton, sent Mary a message, that as soon as Elisabeth 
 was dead he would ride down to Sheffield, and escort 
 her to London. 
 
 It seems to have been with Mary's approval that 
 
LIFE AT SHEFFIELD 245 
 
 the ambitious countess contrived and carried out — in 
 defiance of Elisabeth's known dislike to matrimony — 
 a marriage between one of her daughters and Charles 
 Stuart, Darnley's brother. After the usual storm of 
 Elisabeth's indignation had rolled over their heads, 
 the young couple would have settled down happily, 
 for it was a love match and the lady of a sweet dis- 
 position, but death removed first the young husband, 
 and a year or two later, the wife. The little orphaned 
 daughter, Arabella, was to inherit all the ill-hap that 
 attended her race. 
 
 The marriage of Charles Stuart and Elisabeth 
 Cavendish had probably been the occasion of a sort 
 of reconciliation between Mary and Lady Lennox. 
 Before she died the old countess certainly affected 
 to believe in her daughter-in-law's innocence of her 
 husband's murder. 
 
 If proofs of her innocence of that almost forgotten 
 crime could have helped Mary, a document was sent 
 from Denmark, May 1576, purporting to be a con- 
 fession of Bothwell, in which he cleared the Queen of 
 all participation in the crime and laid the blame heavily 
 on Murray and the Protestant lords. Bothwell's mind 
 had been unhinged before he died at the end of seven 
 long years of captivity. Moreover the document is 
 of doubtful authenticity and seems to have had little 
 or no effect on public opinion at the time. 
 
 The chief interest of the episode is the effect it 
 had on the poor, shrinking soul of little ten-year-old 
 King James. Sticklers as were his tutors for the 
 Levitical Law, one gentle precept they had scrupu- 
 lously disregarded. They had been careful to seethe 
 the kid in the mother's milk. From the pulpit, in the 
 very prayers of the Church the mother's shame had 
 
246 MARY STUART 
 
 been rubbed into the sensitive soul of the child. 
 Tulliebardine had got hold of this confession of 
 Bothwell's and mentioned it inadvertently in the boy's 
 presence ; eagerly the child asked to see the document. 
 So dull of heart was Tulliebardine that he could not 
 account for the high spirits the boy was in all the rest 
 of the day, and wrung from him the explanation that 
 the knowledge of his mother's innocence had lifted 
 a weight from his heart. 
 
 Four or five years later when James was a reigning 
 king and treated on all hands as a grown man, the 
 old suffering from these ugly tales was still acute. 
 The rough kind-heartedness of a simple man, Lord 
 Hunsdon's courier, Cuddy Armour, had opened his 
 heart and James complained with tears of the vulgar 
 gibe that called him " the son of Signor Davie." 
 
 There had been room for many changes in Mary's 
 world during the seven dull years at Sheffield. Even 
 in her own household there were important changes. 
 In 1574 Raulet, Mary's secretary, lay dying, unable 
 to manage her correspondence, but so resentful if any 
 one else wrote for her that, with her usual considerate- 
 ness, she did most of her writing with her own 
 hand. In his place, a certain young Frenchman, 
 Nau by name, was sent to her in the following year. 
 A partisan of the Guises and with his own fortune to 
 make, he plunged with zeal into all Mary's plots and 
 schemes. From chance remarks in her letters, it is 
 clear that Mary recognised the selfish and quarrelsome 
 nature of the man, but she had confidence in his 
 ability and his final faithlessness was a painful shock 
 to her. It was to this Nau that Mary related minutely 
 the circumstances of her life between the Riccio 
 murder and the flight from Loch Leven. Untrusf.- 
 

LIFE AT SHEFFIELD 247 
 
 worthy as a record of facts, Nau's history is interesting 
 as a revelation of Mary's mind. The passion for 
 Bothwell had perished as though it had never been, 
 but the resentment against Darnley was as fresh as 
 though his sins against her were of yesterday. 
 
 In the larger world there were more momentous 
 changes. In 1574 the Cardinal of Lorraine died. 
 He had acted a selfish part by his niece. In the 
 matter of her dowry he had neglected and mismanaged 
 her business even if he were guiltless of malversation. 
 By various expressions in her letters, it is plain that 
 Mary was under no delusions as to his character, yet, 
 when he died, she remembered nothing but the fact 
 that he had fathered her youth. " Alas ! " she wrote, 
 " I am a prisoner and God has taken from me the one 
 of all his creatures whom I most loved. ... I had 
 no need to be told of this event, as I had a frightful 
 dream from which I awoke fully convinced of that 
 which was subsequently confirmed." Several years 
 later, the old Duchess Antoinette died full of years, 
 of fulfilled ambitions and of heart-breaking disappoint- 
 ments. The headship of the family now devolved 
 on Mary's cousin the young Duke of Guise, Duke 
 Francis' son, who, from a wound in his face, was 
 proud to bear the title of the younger " Balafre." 
 
 Like the earlier generation of Guises, this young 
 man was haunted by dreams of founding a royal 
 dynasty and with one diseased and childless Valois 
 succeeding the other on the throne — while the next 
 heir was a pronounced Huguenot — there was room 
 in France for ambitious dreaming. To this end 
 Guise cultivated assiduously the hereditary popularity 
 of his family with the Parisian mob ; to this end he 
 plunged recklessly into debt ; to this end he — the son 
 
248 MARY STUART 
 
 of the conqueror of Metz and Calais — intrigued with 
 the enemy of his country, becoming a pensioner of 
 Philip, and bound to the interests of Spain ; to this 
 end he remembered that he had a cousin, next heir 
 to the throne of England, the centre of Catholic 
 hopes and devotion. He was to be a chief actor 
 in the great Catholic and Spanish plots of the closing 
 years of Mary's life. 
 
 The first of these plots hardly touched Mary 
 personally. She knew of it but had nothing to do 
 with its planning, indeed it never took definite nor 
 practical shape. 
 
 There was perhaps only one man in Europe who 
 in position, person, heroic quality and romantic charm 
 was Mary's equal, Philip's bastard brother, Don John 
 of Austria. A writer of romance must needs have 
 brought the two together though a continent and a 
 wilderness of monsters had divided them. 
 
 Their very appearance declared them made for 
 each other. Don John's spare, upright figure, nobly 
 poised head and dark Spanish face would have matched 
 the beauty of Mary in her youth. When de Tassis — 
 the Spanish ambassador at Paris — wrote that Don 
 John's "bright and vivacious eyes were winning all 
 hearts," and when another writer describes his " Circe- 
 like charm over the minds of men," one cannot but be 
 reminded of early days at Holy rood and the " enchant- 
 ment whereby men are bewitched." 
 
 Don John was the son of a king, but at the 
 same time an adventurer eager to carve out with his 
 sword a kingdom of his own ; he was a child of the 
 Church as loyal and devout as Mary herself. If the 
 two had actually been united in a place of power they 
 might have plunged Europe back for generations 
 
lOAN'MEs' AVSTBJACVS CAR..V.F. PHI JLXAV NO AFVD BELG.GVB.E.T CAPIT GENFJ 
 
 DON JOHN OF AUSTRIA 
 
LIFE AT SHEFFIELD 249 
 
 into tyranny and obscurantism, so irresistible would 
 have been their force, so united their aims ! 
 
 In 1577 Don John was appointed Governor of the 
 Netherlands. At Rome he had found the Pope full 
 of a scheme by which Don John should suddenly 
 carry his Spanish soldiers across the sea, make a 
 descent on England, deliver Mary and re-establish 
 the Catholic faith. English exiles at the Roman 
 court, weary of inaction and sick for home, pledged 
 themselves that the Catholics in England would 
 eagerly co-operate with him. On his way to the 
 Netherlands, Don John went disguised to Paris and 
 there, in a secret interview, discussed the scheme 
 with the Duke of Guise, the head of "our house" 
 as Mary fondly called her mother's family. Both 
 young men were ardent for the enterprise. 
 
 But the reconquering or reconciliation of the 
 Netherlands was a task beyond even the genius 
 and spirit of the hero of Lepanto. It was no part 
 of Philip's scheme that his brother should be too 
 successful. Straitened for money, ill-supplied with 
 soldiers, worn out by a wasting fever caught in the 
 camp — if indeed more sinister agents were not at 
 work — Don John died at the end of two years leaving 
 his task almost unattempted. "Tout avec le temps," 
 he had said, finger on lip and smiling mysteriously 
 when some one had told him of the straitness and 
 hopelessness of Mary's imprisonment. But alas ! 
 Time was his conqueror and the lady looked in vain 
 for her deliverer. 
 
CHAPTER XX 
 
 CATHOLIC PLOTS 
 1580— 1583 
 
 MARY was not old as we count age. In 1580 
 she was not more than thirty-eight, but time 
 and trouble had dealt hardly with her. Her hair was 
 gray, her health so broken that she spent half her 
 time in bed, rheumatism had so crippled her limbs 
 that she had at times to be carried about the grounds 
 in a Sedan chair. 
 
 Much of her sufferings were what we should now 
 recognise as nervous. She was specially apt to have 
 crises at the times when Elisabeth was renewing the 
 weary old farce of negotiating terms for setting her 
 cousin at liberty. When accredited ministers were at 
 Sheffield, lights would be put out in the Queen's 
 rooms, voices lowered, and agitated attendants would 
 give anxious reports of the patient. The Shrews- 
 bury's were sceptical about these attacks, but of Mary's 
 frequent suffering and discomfort there can be no 
 doubt. 
 
 In moments of lassitude and deep despondency 
 she craved for mere liberty that she might live at 
 peace and concern herself with her salvation. The 
 wonder is rather that such moods were rare and only 
 half genuine. 
 
 Not only was she broken in health, but so shame- 
 less had been the peculation and malversation in 
 
 250 
 
CATHOLIC PLOTS 251 
 
 the business of her dowry, that in 1583 her income 
 had dwindled from ;£ 12,000 a year to .£1200 — and 
 money is the mainspring of conspiracy. She was 
 cut off from all counsel, news reached her only inter- 
 mittently and she had no security that her letters would 
 reach her correspondents. Yet for six more years this 
 extraordinary woman kept the principal governments 
 in Europe poised between peace and war, and at last 
 drove the strong and settled government of England 
 into the crime of executing her simply from fear of 
 what she could effect. 
 
 That room at Sheffield where the lights, burning 
 late into the night, showed Mary and her secretaries 
 busy with her correspondence, was the centre of a 
 network whose secret and complicated threads 
 reached to Paris, to Madrid, to Rome, to the Spanish 
 Embassy in London, to the English seminary at 
 Rheims, to country manor houses in England and to 
 weather-beaten towers across the Border. 
 
 The Catholic reaction was in full flood. The 
 positive, aggressive, heroic spirit had passed from the 
 reforming over to the conservative Church. The 
 society of Jesus, disciplined to face any difficulty, 
 ardent to brave any danger, was setting itself to 
 reconquer the world for the Church. In 1580 a 
 chivalrous band of young English priests trained 
 abroad set themselves to the glorious task of bring- 
 ing back their country to the obedience of Rome. 
 In various disguises they rode about the country ; 
 Pious ladies in country houses received them to their 
 own peril. These priests celebrated the mass and 
 heard confessions in quiet corners. Many well-born 
 youths, who, like Francis Throckmorton and Antony 
 Babington, were halting between the claims of their 
 
252 MARY STUART 
 
 faith and the allurements of a worldly career, were 
 won by the fervour and heroism of these young 
 priests. 
 
 If to this enthusiastic Catholic party the English 
 government was schismatic and Elisabeth an illegiti- 
 mate and excommunicated usurper, Mary appeared 
 the rightful heir and a martyr for the Catholic faith. 
 She was to them an ideal figure, a type of the suffer- 
 ing Church. A year or two later one of them wrote 
 of her as "the only saint I know living on earth." 
 To the exalted imagination of these missionaries the 
 whole country seemed ripe for rebellion. The national 
 life of the English people was a fact too large and 
 obvious for them to perceive, the life of the contented 
 masses who bought and sold and laboured and blessed 
 the Queen who loved her country and kept it in peace 
 and prosperity. 
 
 The English government saw the danger of all 
 this missionary zeal and met it with a persecution 
 as searching — though not as sanguinary — as that 
 carried on in Catholic countries. But to ardent 
 spirits, such as Edmund Campian, martyrdom was a 
 goal in itself; to the astute heads of the order of 
 Jesus, martyrdoms were the most effective means of 
 spreading the faith. To stay the sympathetic excite- 
 ment which accompanied these executions, the govern- 
 ment was careful to profess that they punished political 
 treason not religious persuasions. 
 
 All Catholic interests, from the mere charitable 
 care of poor prisoners in the Tower, to the subversion 
 of the throne, found a centre at the Spanish Embassy. 
 Of all the notable men sent as ambassadors by Spain 
 to England Bernardino Mendoza is the most striking 
 figure. He was a typical Spaniard ; so devout a 
 
CATHOLIC PLOTS 253 
 
 Catholic that it was said of him that " he was con- 
 fessed, shriven and holy-watered " before every 
 audience with Elisabeth and her Council ; so conscious 
 of his blue blood and high breeding that he distinctly 
 despised the English court and thought Elisabeth 
 vulgar. His grip of affairs, small and great, his 
 sources of information, his power of vivid and forcible 
 writing are alike amazing. He had spies in Elisabeth's 
 very bedchamber. He gives every detail of her 
 preposterous and hypocritical love affair with the poor 
 little Duke of Alencon, the third of Mary's brothers- 
 in-law, who aspired to the hand of Elisabeth. It is 
 to Mendoza we owe the story of Elisabeth flinging 
 her shoe at Walsingham's head and calling him 
 "Knave" and "Puritan." He adds the comment 
 "she often behaves in this rude manner." 
 
 He must also have had a correspondent at the 
 Scottish court, so closely did he follow the shifting 
 movements there. For in the complicated game of 
 European politics Scotland was again taking a part. 
 The subserviency to England which had been Morton's 
 steady policy had come to an end. In 1580 James, a 
 boy of fourteen, was a reigning sovereign, and the 
 various powers were awaking to the fact of his 
 importance. 
 
 Brought up between Morton and George Buchanan 
 and shrinking in fear and hatred from both, James 
 early developed a power of duplicity that astonished 
 that veteran deceiver, Elisabeth. In reaction from 
 the austerity of his upbringing he had a passion for 
 pleasure and a habit of levity which delivered him 
 into the hands of any one who could keep him 
 amused. His intellect, naturally subtle, had been 
 early stimulated and was a source of infinite conceit to 
 
254 MARY STUART 
 
 him. His vanity as a theologian was to turn out, at 
 a crisis, a stronger bulwark of the Protestant faith 
 than the warmest personal piety would have been. 
 
 In the five last eventful years of her life, her son's 
 character was one of the stubborn facts that Mary 
 had to reckon with. Mary had more than once 
 offered to Philip to have her son placed in his 
 hands to be brought up a Catholic, without however 
 suggesting how so chimerical a plan could be carried 
 out. More practical was the plan of her kinsman 
 the Duke of Guise. If James were not to become 
 his mother's most formidable rival he must be won 
 over to adopt her cause and, if possible, her religion. 
 To this end he dispatched to Scotland, James' 
 cousin on the father's side, the seigneur d'Aubigny 
 (Sept. 1 581). Mary disliked the project, she had 
 rooted mistrust of the false, selfish Lennox blood. 
 She recalled the incident of her own childhood when 
 old Lennox had betrayed the cause of France for 
 Henry VIII.'s gold. 
 
 D'Aubigny, though lacking both character and 
 courage, had every art of pleasing. When he saw 
 the difficulty of altering James' religious views, he 
 cunningly professed to be converted to Protestantism 
 by the arguments of the youthful Solomon. 
 
 The next step necessary was the overthrow of 
 Morton. For this the Frenchman's courage and 
 influence were insufficient. But another favourite of 
 the king's, James Stewart [a son of Lord Ochiltree 
 and — oddly enough — a brother-in-law of John Knox], 
 possessed the qualities for that characteristic Scotch 
 crime, murder with a show of legality. On the last 
 day of the year 1580, the useful old accusation of being 
 art and part in the murder of Darnley was, for the last 
 
rquAMHftTK' 'V 
 
 THE KARL OF MORTON 
 
CATHOLIC PLOTS 255 
 
 again, brought into play. That hungry grave of 
 Darnley had called for many atoning victims ; two 
 more and the tale would be complete. 
 
 When she learned the fate impending over Morton, 
 Elisabeth raged and threatened but only two argu- 
 ments would have carried weight, heavy bribes or an 
 army marching across the Border, and these costly 
 measures Elisabeth would only employ at the last 
 extremity. In Scotland, no "banded" noblemen, no 
 faithful kinsmen rose to defeat the ends of justice on 
 Morton's behalf. His greed, pride and cruelty had 
 left him isolated in a world rejoicing at his fall. 
 
 It was a strange age, when lives of reckless and 
 ignoble passions ended in deaths of deliberate nobility. 
 Morton laid down his pride of place and power, his 
 hoards of ill-gotten wealth as if he were weary of 
 them. He claimed the grace of God as his pre- 
 destined, inalienable heritage, and died not without 
 sombre grandeur. He was one of the few enemies 
 left who had brought her to shame on Carberry Hill, 
 and Mary rejoiced unrestrainedly in his fall and death. 
 
 The French government, seeing the way open for 
 regaining their old influence in Scotland, proposed to 
 send an ambassador to James, without however with- 
 drawing the countenance they still affected to show 
 his mother. To make her son an ally and a strength 
 to her claims became a first object to Mary : to keep 
 mother and son separate and to play one against 
 the other was a new motive for Elisabeth. She 
 renewed the old meaningless negotiations with her 
 cousin; while Mary proposed to James an "Act of 
 Association " by which her son was to admit her right- 
 ful possession of the crown and she, in turn, promised 
 to re-transmit it to him. 
 
256 MARY STUART 
 
 If he remained a Protestant and an ally of Elisa- 
 beth's this Association offered no advantages to 
 James, if he identified himself with his mother it 
 would secure him the enthusiastic support of that 
 extended and complicated Catholic conspiracy which 
 was daily taking more definite body and form. It 
 was primarily a religious, even an ecclesiastical plot. 
 Philip and the Pope were, it was confidently hoped, at 
 the back of it with troops and money. 
 
 In Paris Mary had only too many agents. Guise, 
 deeply engaged to Spain, was yet most reluctant to 
 arouse the suspicion of his own government. Arch- 
 bishop Beaton, Mary's faithful old servant, was too 
 conservative to trust to any other alliance than the 
 French, the other Scotsmen took the same view. 
 Beaton was jealous of the younger and newer men, and 
 so anxious to keep matters in his own hands that 
 Mary complained half humorously, half bitterly, that 
 he wished to keep even her out of her own affairs 
 altogether. Of Mary's other friends Morgan was 
 whole-heartedly Spanish, so were Dr Allen, head of 
 the Seminary at Rheims, and the other priestly 
 plotters. 
 
 Early in 1582 Jesuits were sent to Scotland to 
 report on the feeling in the country. The sight of 
 tumbled-down churches quickened their pious zeal ; 
 the social standing to which Morton's policy had 
 reduced the ministers moved their contempt. They 
 stayed with Catholic noblemen like Eglintoun and 
 Seton, saw in the country only what they wished to 
 see and totally failed to gauge the compact power of 
 Church and people. On one point only they did not 
 delude themselves. Father Crichton admitted that 
 he had small hopes of the King's conversion. Vanity 
 
CATHOLIC PLOTS 257 
 
 and his own habitual arguments bound James to the 
 faith of his upbringing, but from political reasons he 
 was ready to welcome the support of Spain. The 
 Catholic nobles declared that if James' convictions 
 stood in the way, they would not hesitate to depose 
 him or carry him off abroad. 
 
 D'Aubigny was as ardent and as unpractical as the 
 priests themselves. He wrote to Mary that he 
 desired nothing more than to fight in her cause. But 
 his conditions were exacting. He sent them clearly 
 formulated to the conspirators in Paris. He was to 
 have 20,000 men by the autumn with pay for eighteen 
 months and was himself to be in supreme command. 
 Father Crichton, with no better authority than his 
 own hopeful spirit, lightly promised that his demands 
 should be acceded to. The ardour, confidence and 
 officiousness of these holy men would have wrecked a 
 less complicated plot. In the spring of 1582 they 
 were back in France, and sent Mendoza an eager 
 message inviting him to meet them at Rouen. " The 
 good men say this as if I could do such a thing," he 
 writes half amused and wholly provoked at their 
 simplicity. They called everybody into Council at 
 once, Morgan, Guise, Beaton and Dr Allen, confided 
 everything as completely to de Tassis, the Spanish 
 ambassador in Paris, as they did to Mendoza, to the 
 latter's extreme irritation. Then one good Father 
 bustled off to Rome to consult the Pope and the other 
 to Madrid to stir up Philip. 
 
 Mary and Mendoza clearly recognised each other 
 as the only two capable persons concerned in the plot. 
 Their attitude of mind towards their priestly allies 
 was identical. " These good people may blunder 
 seriously unless they have wise counsel and advice," 
 
 R 
 
258 MARY STUART 
 
 Mary wrote anxiously. In similar words Mendoza 
 complains, " The priests though ardently zealous, 
 cannot be trusted with matters of state unless taught 
 word by word what to say." 
 
 In April 1582, Mary begs Mendoza to take the 
 management of the whole affair ; in writing to Philip 
 Mendoza describes Mary as virtually the mainspring 
 of the plot. 
 
 Cardinal Granvella was living in retirement in 
 Spain ; there much of the king's correspondence 
 passed through his hands. He was struck by the 
 ability of Mary's suggestions. " She must have some 
 very intelligent person near her who writes her letters. 
 ... It is impossible to lay down with greater 
 clearness the lines upon which the affair should be 
 conducted, the support that will be necessary and the 
 kind of force required." 
 
 Skilful plans, pious zeal, golden opportunity, all 
 knocked at Philip's door in vain. He would not stir 
 till all his plans were completed, till he and his ally 
 "el Tiempo" were at one. It was his purpose, from 
 which he never faltered, to crush Elisabeth, conquer 
 England, and restore it to the Faith. It was never 
 part of his plan that Mary Stuart and her son should 
 benefit by his labours. Two years later, in 1584, 
 when he let another opportunity slip of accomplish- 
 ing the pious enterprise, Sir Francis Englefield, a 
 Catholic exile who looked after Mary's interests at 
 Madrid, wrote to him, " If she perish, as is to be 
 feared, it cannot fail to bring some scandal and 
 reproach upon your Majesty because, as your Majesty 
 is, after her, the nearest Catholic heir* of the blood 
 
 * Philip's claim was remote, based on his descent from a daughter of 
 John of Gaunt. 
 
PHILIP II, KING OF SPAIN 
 
: : 
 
CATHOLIC PLOTS 259 
 
 royal of England, some false suspicion might naturally 
 be roused at your having abandoned the good Queen." 
 This " false suspicion " commends itself very naturally 
 to the student of history. 
 
 While Philip held back from the Catholic plot, 
 a Protestant plot in Scotland, favoured and financed 
 by the English government and sanctioned by the 
 Kirk, had suddenly kidnapped James while the guest 
 of Lord Ruthven, clapped Arran into prison — James' 
 favourite, Captain James Stuart, had been raised to 
 the Earldom of Arran — and driven the panic-stricken 
 dAubigny into the stronghold of Dumbarton. 
 
 Brave and practical always, Mary, on hearing of 
 this sudden check to her plans, wrote to Guise urging 
 that French troops might at once be poured into 
 Dumbarton. Her letter fell neatly into the hands of 
 Francis Walsingham, Secretary of State. This Francis 
 Walsingham was the most tenacious and dangerous 
 of all Mary's enemies. As good a Protestant as 
 Burghley, he dreaded above all things a Catholic 
 successor on the throne. Elisabeth might call him 
 names, ruin him in unrepaid expenses, fling her 
 slipper at his head and thwart him at every turn, he 
 toiled unremittingly in her service ; nay, in that 
 service, lent himself to mean and treacherous devices. 
 He had spies everywhere, even in Catholic seminaries ; 
 in the Tower renegade priests purchased their lives 
 at his hands by worming themselves into the con- 
 fidence of genuine sufferers. At this very time, 
 the clerk at the French Embassy, entrusted to copy 
 out Mary's ciphered letters, was in his pay and sent 
 him deciphered copies. 
 
 As usual, it was by the tightening of her im- 
 prisonment that Mary knew that something was 
 
260 MARY STUART 
 
 discovered. She was always greatest when she was 
 indignant. On the 8th November 1582 she wrote 
 to Elisabeth. The letter is autograph, and beautifully 
 written in her fair, Renaissance handwritine. The 
 support afforded by the Queen of England to the 
 rebels who had kidnapped her son was but another 
 move, she declared, in the treacherous and unneigh- 
 bourly game Elisabeth had played with her from the 
 beginning. She arraigned her cousin before the judg- 
 ment seat of God and bade her consider the succession 
 of wrongs she had inflicted on her nearest kinswoman. 
 No point in the indictment was false or even strained. 
 Elisabeth had again and again supported Mary's 
 rebellious subjects against her, she had allured her 
 into England by the promise of assistance, she had 
 kept her in prison against all law and justice. The 
 right to be heard in her own defence, vouchsafed to 
 the meanest criminal, was denied to the next heir to 
 the throne. That title, Mary added bitterly, was the 
 real cause of the injustice. She was treated not as 
 a state prisoner but as a slave whose life might be 
 sacrificed at any moment to the caprice of her enemies. 
 This was a fact not to be gainsaid. The letter would 
 have been stronger if Mary had been content to put 
 Elisabeth in the wrong and leave it alone. But she 
 was ill, sick with disappointment, and galled by the 
 rigours of her captivity. At the end she breaks down 
 in passionate pleading. " I beg you, madame, for the 
 sake of the sorrowful passion of our Saviour and 
 Redeemer to allow me to retire from this kingdom 
 to some place of peace where I may comfort this poor 
 body, worn out by so many troubles and, in freedom 
 of conscience, prepare my soul for God who daily- 
 calls for it." 
 
CATHOLIC PLOTS 261 
 
 Just as the traveller, lost in some featureless waste, 
 finds with dismay that he has come round again upon 
 his own traces, so the student of this period, wearied 
 and bewildered, finds himself facing again and again 
 the same set of conditions. In the spring of 1583 
 Elisabeth was renewing the stereotyped negotiations, 
 but these had ceased to delude Mary. By the equally 
 delusive hopes from Spain she was constantly buoyed 
 up to her undoing. 
 
 In the spring James, under the influence of the 
 English party among his nobles, had leaned to alliance 
 with Elisabeth and had shown plainly that his mother's 
 continued captivity would be no inconvenience to him. 
 In June he effected his escape from his enemies, by 
 his own good wits, as he was careful to inform all 
 other princes, and was making servile advances to 
 Guise and the Pope. But as Philip wrote, speaking 
 from the Catholic point of view, "his liberation was 
 not much cause for rejoicing." 
 
 Guise was busy all that summer, imploring the 
 Pope for money and Philip for men. This time 
 England was to be the point attacked : the Catholic 
 nobles were to be ready to rise at the first signal. 
 It was the old situation of the Northern Rising over 
 again. All that autumn Guise looked for the sails of 
 that Spanish fleet which was not to cross the sea till 
 Time, his old ally, had betrayed the King of Spain, 
 and the opportunity so often offered was irreparably 
 lost. 
 
 A new and sinister element, born of impatience 
 and disappointment, had crept into the plots. Con- 
 vinced that England was Catholic at heart, and the 
 Queen and her ministers the only strength of 
 Protestantism, the plotters raised the question whether 
 
262 MARY STUART 
 
 the murder of an excommunicated usurper might not be 
 a righteous act. Priests boldly justified it from the 
 pulpit. A Catholic gentleman Somerville, crazed 
 with vanity, was arrested in the autumn of 1583 
 for boasting of his intention to murder the Queen, 
 and drew others down in his ruin. Walsingham's 
 attention was aroused, his spies set on the trail, and 
 a young Catholic gentleman, of position, a nephew 
 of Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, arrested. He was 
 deep in the secret of the Spanish plot. Mendoza 
 was anxious to see how he would stand the rack, 
 having small confidence in an Englishman's powers 
 of endurance. Three times did gallant young 
 Throckmorton endure the torture, but when threatened 
 a fourth time he gave way. The names of the con- 
 spirators, the list of landing places, the Queen's com- 
 plicity in the plots, all the important facts were drawn 
 out of him with no reserves. Then he broke down 
 and sobbed that he had betrayed the dearest Queen 
 on earth. 
 
 The most important result of these discoveries was 
 that Mendoza was turned out of the country. He 
 left with passionate threats. He had failed to 
 please Elisabeth as a minister of peace, he would 
 satisfy her, he vowed, as a minister of war. He 
 became Spanish ambassador at Paris and gratified his 
 desire to be revenged on Elisabeth by fostering all 
 the plots started against her. 
 
CHAPTER XXI 
 
 THE BEGINNING OF THE END 
 
 1584— 1585 
 
 FN the spring of 1584, anew and agitating personal 
 -^ trouble distracted Mary's thoughts from her constant 
 preoccupation with conspiracy. We have seen the 
 footing she was on with Lady Shrewsbury, we may 
 suspect that it was even more intimate than appears. 
 But with the growth of the Lennox grandchild, 
 Arabella Stuart, new ambitions, hostile to Mary, 
 were taking hold of the grandmother. 
 
 In December 1582, Leicester had proposed a 
 marriage between his son and little Arabella — the 
 Dudleys, like the Guises, were always haunted by 
 the vision of a crown. We have Mary's word that 
 Lady Shrewsbury's ambition for her grandchild was 
 the origin of the quarrel. But there were other 
 elements in it. Bess of Hardwick had quarrelled 
 with her husband — chiefly about money — and perhaps 
 wished to hit both him and the Scottish Oueen with 
 one stone. 
 
 An ultra - Protestant neighbour, one Topcliffe, 
 seeking a handle against any suspected of Catholic 
 leanings, started the scandal that Lord Shrewsbury 
 had been too intimate with his charge and that she 
 had borne him a child. Lady Shrewsbury had 
 
 laughed with the Queen at the atrocious slander. 
 
 263 
 
264 MARY STUART 
 
 But after a time, being desirous to pick a quarrel with 
 her guest, she took up the report, and she and her 
 two sons spread it everywhere. The misery and 
 wrath this caused Mary swept from her mind every- 
 thing beyond the desire of being revenged on her former 
 friend. For a time indeed she restrained herself from 
 making revelations. She valued her own reputation for 
 loyalty and feared to alienate other serviceable friends, 
 but we have seen how, once or twice before in her 
 life, she sacrificed the long results of self-restraint for 
 the infinite relief of pouring out the gall and fury 
 that oppressed her heart. She was sick, dis- 
 heartened, deserted, she may have felt that she 
 might as well lose everything by one great 
 stroke of vengeance against two women who had 
 cruelly wronged her. She wrote a letter to Elisabeth 
 which, for calculated malice and relentless plainness 
 of speech, has probably no parallel in correspondence. 
 She repeats all the idle and highly spiced gossip Lady 
 Shrewsbury was in the habit of imparting to her, 
 as if she were doing a friendly act to her cousin. 
 Lady Shrewsbury's tales are too much after the taste 
 of her own day to be quotable in ours. In her 
 recitals the lightness and indecorum of Elisabeth's 
 conduct with Leicester, Hatton, Alencon and his 
 gentleman-in-waiting, Simier, have taken gross and 
 monstrous form. Equally nettling and more morti- 
 fying — if it had ever reached Elisabeth's eye — 
 is the picture of her credulous vanity and vulgar 
 violence. Lady Shrewsbury was in the habit of 
 mimicking her royal mistress for the amusement of 
 Mary's ladies. She would quote the fulsome flatteries 
 offered to Elisabeth by her courtiers, and describe how 
 she and Lady Lennox would not catch each other's 
 
THE BEGINNING OF THE END 265 
 
 eye for fear of bursting into laughter. There were 
 stories, too, of broken fingers and cut hands among 
 the maids of honour. Mary ended her accusations, 
 though not without signs of being a little ashamed, 
 with an account of the homage Lady Shrewsbury and 
 her daughter, Lady Talbot, had offered her personally. 
 
 The letter is like an impish flame suddenly darting 
 up from a witch's cauldron, luridly illuminating and 
 distorting the figures of the three ladies standing 
 round it. Had it reached Elisabeth she would have 
 been almost justified in the eye of posterity for 
 taking her correspondent's life. The letter — a 
 beautifully written autograph — lies among the Hat- 
 field papers. Perhaps the prudence of Burghley 
 arrested it. It is more probable that Mary, having 
 eased her bosom of this perilous stuff, laid it aside 
 where it was found with her other papers when her 
 drawers were rifled, two years later at Chartley. 
 
 Lady Shrewsbury and her sons were forced to 
 make public acknowledgment of their faults. Pro- 
 bably the incident hastened if it did not cause Mary's 
 removal out of the hands of Lord Shrewsbury. 
 The much-enduring but irritable earl received a new 
 office which would necessarily take him much from 
 home. When he kissed Elisabeth's hands on his 
 appointment, he thanked her for freeing him from two 
 she-devils. 
 
 For years Mary had dreaded this change of keeper. 
 She had a haunting fear of poison or secret violence, 
 and believed that either might be her fate if she fell 
 into the hands of Huntingdon or any other follower 
 of the unprincipled Earl of Leicester. But when the 
 change actually came she acquiesced in it hopefully. 
 She was removed to Wingfield, as ample and pleasant 
 
266 MARY STUART 
 
 a dwelling as any she had ever occupied ; the servants 
 were chosen from the familiar household at Sheffield ; 
 her jailor, Sir Ralph Sadler, if not easily won to 
 sympathy, was a just and honourable gentleman. 
 Mary believed that the change was a preliminary to 
 a modified liberty with residence in England. 
 
 Her hopes of help from abroad were at the lowest. 
 There had been a change of Popes. Guise had 
 thoughts and ambitions for nothing but the Holy 
 League of which he was the head ; Philip gave no 
 sign ; the very priests in exile were disheartened and 
 were resigning themselves to merely spiritual activity. 
 Nothing remained for Mary but to make such terms 
 as she could for herself. 
 
 The danger of plots and assassination had driven 
 the English government to an extreme measure. 
 An "Association" was drawn up in September (1584) 
 and signed with enthusiasm by nobles and magistrates. 
 This bound all Englishmen to prosecute to the death 
 such as should conspire against the Queen, and 
 declared also that all, on whose behalf such a con- 
 spiracy was made, were ipso facto deprived of any 
 right they might claim to the succession, a measure 
 aimed pointedly at the Queen of Scots. Mary was 
 now reckless in the concessions she was prepared to 
 make, she went the length of promising to sign, her- 
 self, the Bond of Association, though she knew and was 
 prepared for the fact that this treaty would cut her off 
 from her foreign allies and alienate Catholic sympathies. 
 As an earnest of sincerity she wrote to the Arch- 
 bishop of Glasgow to bid Guise and her other friends 
 stop plotting on her behalf. 
 
 Every year was adding to the political importance 
 of James ; henceforth he had to be included as a 
 
THE BEGINNING OF THE END 267 
 
 third party in every negotiation between the two 
 Queens. To Mary this seemed to add strength to 
 her position. Like other indifferent parents, she had a 
 simple faith in the unquenchable instinct of filial affec- 
 tion. In the spring of 1584 she had said confidently 
 to Waad, one of Elisabeth's commissioners, " I know 
 the child doth love me and will not deal with the 
 Queen without my advice. " She believed, or rather 
 took for granted, that her son had gratefully accepted 
 the proposed Act of Association with her, though it 
 had neither been confirmed by Parliament nor 
 published to the world. Alas ! benefactions are 
 differently regarded by donors and recipients. To 
 Mary the legal status confirmed to her son by the 
 Act of Association and the alliance of her friends and 
 kinsfolk, the Catholic powers, seemed inestimable 
 boons. To James, a ruler de facto from infancy, the 
 advantages seemed shadowy, while the possibility that 
 a headstrong, capable, Catholic woman (practically a 
 stranger) might claim a share in his government, 
 offered serious inconveniences. 
 
 Arran, the omnipotent favourite, was in bad 
 repute with the Catholics. He suddenly persuaded 
 James to form the closest alliance with England to 
 the exclusion of all foreign powers. James was not 
 merely prepared to abandon his mother but to buy 
 the Queen of England's favour by a complete revela- 
 tion of the plots of the past five years. 
 
 When Mary learned that her son's ambassador 
 to the English court was to be the young Master of 
 Gray, she was at first reassured, she knew him as a 
 young man devoted to her interests. A year or two 
 earlier he had been in the Duke of Guise's household. 
 Old Beaton, confident in the good faith of a " Brother 
 
268 MARY STUART 
 
 Scot," had initiated him far more than Morgan thought 
 prudent into the secrets of the Catholic plot. He 
 had been in correspondence with Mary herself. On 
 hearing of his coming to London, she warmly com- 
 mended him to the French ambassador. 
 
 It is difficult to understand how the figure of 
 Patrick, Master of Gray has — up till quite recently — 
 escaped the hands of the historical romance writer. 
 He could step without alteration into a novel of Louis 
 Stevenson. He was of singular beauty and possessed 
 many graces and accomplishments including the culti- 
 vation of romantic friendship characteristic of the time. 
 He had the grace to covet, and the charm to win the 
 affection of Sir Philip Sidney, the purest spirit of the 
 age, while at the same time treachery and cold-hearted 
 cruelty were as instinctive with him as attractive 
 manners and free and forcible utterance. 
 
 A letter from him to Mary after his arrival in 
 London is one of the saddest landmarks in her 
 history. It marks the fact that she was no longer of 
 any account, and might be neglected and insulted with 
 impunity. 
 
 At this time Mary had, as ambassador at the 
 Scottish court, Fontenay, a brother of Nau. Both 
 these Frenchmen were clever, talkative, self-important 
 men, probably underbred and certainly offensive to 
 the Scottish and English noblemen with whom they 
 had to do business. To Fontenay Mary had written 
 uneasily of rumours which had reached her of Gray's 
 intended defection. The letter arrived before the 
 Master's departure south. Fontenay showed it to 
 James and he, knowing no reticence with any of his 
 favourites, showed it at once to Gray. 
 
 Gray in writing to the Queen showed all the 
 
THE BEGINNING OF THE END 269 
 
 irritation of an injured school-boy. He accounted 
 himself ungratefully used and evil-requited, and swore 
 that while he lived he would not meddle with her 
 service again "even if it might advantage me ten 
 millions of money. " He sneers at her majesty's 
 employing such a fantastic creature as Fontenay as 
 her ambassador ; advises her, with insolent patronage, 
 to "follow some quiet, calm, and solid course," and 
 "to take with the Queen of England some honest, 
 friendly and quiet dress." 
 
 It took weeks of waiting to force on Mary the 
 suspicion that her son was deliberately separating her 
 interests from his own. She vehemently entreated 
 the French ambassador to go to Scotland or to send 
 a Scottish Commissioner to her. She wrote to 
 Burghley and to Elisabeth begging to have her 
 letters sent on to her son. There is a pitiful little 
 fragment of a letter to James on the 5th January 
 [ I 5^5] "I never heard of any difficulty you had 
 raised before so that Gray's conduct seems to me 
 horribly strange, I never imagined that either you 
 whom I love so much, nor he who had given so 
 many assurances of his service, could have tried to 
 gain advantage by this treaty at my cost." 
 
 Gray carried his embassy to the desired issue. 
 James repudiated the " Act of Association," and 
 deserted his mother for vague promises of the 
 succession, a pension of five thousand a year — cut 
 down afterwards to four — and a gift of six couple of 
 bloodhounds. "The king's mind did so run on these" 
 that their delay nearly upset the negotiations. As 
 Mary had said in the first hour of his birth, he was only 
 " too much " Darnley's son. The dark, silent days 
 brought to Mary the slow conviction that what she 
 
270 MARY STUART 
 
 refused to believe was only too true. Fortunately for 
 herself the passion of indignation was always stronger 
 with her than the meaner instinct of self-pity. She 
 wrote to the French ambassador requiring him to 
 withhold the title of king from James. " A mother's 
 curse shall light upon him, I will deprive him 
 of all the greatness to which through me he can 
 pretend in the world. He shall have nothing but 
 what he inherits from his father. No punishment 
 human or divine will be adequate to such enormous 
 ingratitude." 
 
 She went a step further in her concessions to 
 Elisabeth. She offered to renounce all pretensions 
 to the English succession alike for herself and her 
 posterity. Of this last offer no notice was taken, 
 but such new rigours were shown in her treatment 
 that, looking back on the long and painful years at 
 Sheffield, they must have seemed, in comparison, a 
 time of ease and liberty. 
 
CHAPTER XXII 
 
 THE BABINGTON CONSPIRACY 
 January 1585 — September 1586 
 
 IN the dead of the winter — January 1585 — when 
 Mary's hopes were lowest and her anxieties most 
 acute, Sir Ralph Sadler received orders to remove his 
 charge to Tutbury. (The double courts and extensive 
 buildings at Wingfield made it a difficult and expensive 
 place to defend.) Of Tutbury Mary had nightmare 
 recollections. It had been the scene of her first 
 imprisonment sixteen years previously ; a favourite 
 lady-in-waiting, Mademoiselle Rallay, had died there ; 
 so great had the discomfort been on the earlier visit 
 that the Shrewsbury household could only endure it 
 for a month or two at a time. During the intervening 
 years, the draughty, sunless rooms had stood vacant, 
 plaster was falling from the walls, neither hasty 
 repairs, nor the furniture brought from Lord Paget's 
 forfeited house in the neighbourhood, could remove 
 the clammy chill that clung to flagged floors and 
 dilapidated walls. Household stuff was inadequate, 
 the linen sent down by Elisabeth was so worn and 
 coarse that Mary's servants refused to use it. Faith- 
 ful servants are capable of great sacrifices but they are 
 rarely prepared to endure small discomforts. Many 
 of Mary's household desired to throw up their posts, 
 but from lack of passports were forced to stay on, 
 
 reluctant and complaining. 
 
 271 
 
272 MARY STUART 
 
 The friendly servants of Lord Shrewsbury had been 
 left at Wingfield. Mary realised how hostile and how 
 acridly Protestant a household she had fallen into 
 when, from her window, she saw Sir Ralph Sadler's 
 servants roughly tormenting a young Catholic gentle- 
 man who was kept a prisoner in close proximity to 
 the Queen. One morning when she looked out she 
 saw him hanging from his window. Probably misery 
 had driven the poor wretch to suicide, but it quickened 
 in the Queen her constant terror of sudden violence. 
 
 In April matters grew worse when Sir Ralph Sadler, 
 urging his age as a reason, gave up the distasteful 
 office of Mary's keeper. 
 
 Of his successor, Sir Amyas Paulet, Mary had 
 heard much from her friends in France where he 
 had been English ambassador for several years. She 
 knew him to be a Protestant of the kind which was 
 beginning to be called " Puritan," and as one bitterly 
 opposed to her claims. There is no need to go to 
 his enemies for an account of Amyas Paulet ; they 
 could not draw a more repellent portrait of the 
 man, than we gather from his own numerous letters. 
 
 It is difficult to imagine Shrewsbury, and far less 
 Sir Francis Knollys, lending themselves to the cold- 
 blooded plot by which Walsingham decoyed Mary to 
 her ruin, but Paulet played his part in it, not only with 
 sanctimonious satisfaction in the ends, but with a sort 
 of hard pleasure in the means. A solemn, dull man, 
 he waxes jocose when he describes her physical 
 sufferings or impotent bursts of indignation. Duty 
 appealed most to his conscience in the form of 
 thwarting his charge. 
 
 A day or two after Sir Ralph's departure he tore 
 down the cloth of state in the dining-hall, declaring 
 
THE BABINGTON CONSPIRACY 273 
 
 that as Mary was so much confined to her own room, 
 these insignia of royalty were unnecessary and un- 
 suitable. He put a sudden stop to the liberal distribution 
 of alms which she caused to be made in the neighbour- 
 ing little town. She belonged to a church which teaches 
 that the prayers of the poor are the wealth of the 
 faithful, and in days of sickness and depression the 
 thought of these humble bedesmen had been a comfort 
 to her, but Paulet was convinced that the only chance 
 of safety lay in cutting off the Queen and her house- 
 hold from all human fellowship. His religious zeal 
 was eager to get rid of one of Mary's servants whom 
 his instinct had "smelled out" to be a priest, but on 
 this point Elisabeth would give him no authority. 
 Incorruptible he was and, it would seem, that Mary 
 recognised this, and never tried to bribe him with 
 hopes of advancement at her accession as Morgan had 
 advised her to do. A notable householder, he entered 
 with zeal into Elisabeth's plans for reducing expendi- 
 ture, so that Mary was constrained at last to complain 
 to the French ambassador of the quality of the food 
 supplied to her. 
 
 A succession of French ambassadors had been, ex 
 officio, helpful and courteous friends to Mary without 
 lending themselves to plots against Queen Elisabeth. 
 Her special friend Castelnan de Mauvissiere was in 
 this summer recalled, and when, in August, Monsieur 
 de Chateauneuf took his place, Mary was suddenly 
 informed that this, her one approved mode of com- 
 munication with the outside world, was to be closed 
 and that henceforth her letters, to her kinsfolk, her 
 son, her ambassador in Paris and her men of business, 
 were all to go through the hands of Walsingham. 
 
 It was, as we shall see, part of Walsingham's 
 
 s 
 
274 MARY STUART 
 
 scheme for reducing Mary to desperation. Almost 
 simultaneously with this disconcerting arrangement, 
 Mary learned the rapprochement between her son 
 and Elisabeth. In her helpless anger she began to 
 nurse the chimerical idea that she might, if James 
 persisted in his heresy, cut him off from all the rights 
 he inherited through her and transfer them to Philip 
 of Spain. A document to this effect was found in 
 the following year among her papers at Chartley. 
 
 In total ignorance of what was passing in the 
 great world outside, her life seemed to be narrowing 
 down to a round of physical suffering and petty 
 annoyances at Tutbury. In this mood she probably 
 wrote these mournful verses, so different in their 
 sombre reality from the conventional, melodious, little 
 elegy on her first husband's death. 
 
 " Que suis-je, helas et a quoi sert ma vie ? 
 Je ne suis fors qu'un corps prive de coeur, 
 Un ombre vain, un objet de malheur 
 Qui n'a plus rien que de mourir envie. 
 ..... • 
 
 Et vous, amis, qui m'avez tenu chere 
 Souvenez-vous que sans heur, sans sante 
 Je ne sgaurais aucune bonne ceuvre faire 
 Souhaitez done fin de calamite." 
 
 Having cut her off from all communication with 
 the outer world, her enemies might have ceased to 
 dread her as a danger to the Commonwealth. But 
 nothing could alter the facts that she was the next 
 heir to the throne and that a majority of the English 
 nobility would prefer her right to that of James or 
 any other claimant. Though Elisabeth steadily re- 
 fused to face the fact of her own mortality, Walsingham 
 was perfectly alive to what would happen at her death. 
 To secure the accession of a Protestant sovereign 
 
SIR I RANCIS WALSINGHAM 
 
THE BABINGTON CONSPIRACY 275 
 
 the Catholic heir-apparent must be got out of the way 
 at all costs. A case must be made out against Mary 
 that would bring her within reach of the Bond of 
 Association, she must be proved accessory to a plot 
 against the life of Elisabeth. 
 
 Such plots were being hatched continually. The 
 idea of regicide had become fatally familiar among 
 the Catholic conspirators in France. More than one 
 wrong-headed enthusiast like Parry or Savage had 
 come to England with murderous intention. But 
 either opportunity was lacking, or they were over- 
 awed by the serene courage of Elisabeth, who would 
 allow no precautions to be taken. 
 
 A large body of habitual plotters necessarily 
 counts a certain number of traitors in their ranks. 
 Amongst the Catholic exiles almost all were cut off 
 from any means of livelihood except what could be 
 wrung from Mary's slender means or the uncertain 
 liberality of the Spanish king. Poverty and oppor- 
 tunity furnished Walsingham with a competent selec- 
 tion of spies drawn from Catholic and a few even 
 from priestly ranks. Among these was a certain 
 Gilbert Gifford. His family was creditably known 
 for its devotion and suffering in the Catholic cause. 
 He was in deacon's orders and had been brought up 
 from boyhood in the seminary at Rheims. His name 
 and his intimate knowledge of all that concerned the 
 Church were sufficient credentials among English 
 Catholics. He had quick parts, extraordinary flexi- 
 bility and that entire absence of heart and conscience 
 which an exclusively religious upbringing produces in 
 an irreligious nature. He was well known to Morgan, 
 Paget, Mendoza and Mary's other friends in Paris. 
 When, in the spring of 1585, he offered his services 
 
276 MARY STUART 
 
 to Walsingham, he must have seemed the very 
 instrument the Secretary was in search of. Another 
 of Walsingham's creatures, a man Phelipps, had 
 a special, highly developed knack of making out 
 ciphers. At one time he had offered his services 
 to Morgan who had mentioned his name to Mary. 
 Through these men Walsingham was determined 
 that a way should be opened by which Mary could 
 communicate with her friends. Elisabeth was, from 
 the first, privy to the plan, though one is glad to 
 believe that Burghley was not consulted. 
 
 All summer Mary had complained of the squalor 
 of her lodging at Tutbury, hardly expecting her 
 complaints to be attended to, but, in September, her 
 guardian was ordered to inspect various houses in the 
 neighbourhood. One was actually the family home 
 of the Giffords. It was rejected, but Chartley the 
 adjoining property was chosen. The house was 
 roomy and well built, surrounded by a moat and easy 
 to defend. The place and neighbourhood were 
 thoroughly familiar to Gifford ; he could come and go 
 with less suspicion. From previous knowledge of 
 the townsfolk he could select an agent among 
 the baser sort in the neighbouring town of Burton. 
 This agent he found in the brewer who weekly 
 supplied beer to the Scottish household at Chartley. 
 
 In the middle of January [1586] a hint was con- 
 veyed to Nau to watch the next barrel that should 
 be delivered. In it was found a water-tight box and 
 in that a ciphered letter from the faithful Morgan, the 
 first communication from her friends that had reached 
 Mary for months. The letter, dated the previous 
 October, was entirely in recommendation of the bearer 
 Gifford to whose skill and faithfulness Morgan declared 
 
THE BABINGTON CONSPIRACY 277 
 
 that Mary could safely commit her correspondence. 
 She acted in this confidence, and all her letters passed 
 at once into Walsingham's hands. 
 
 To her it was a new spring of life. The great, 
 living world with its friendly powers, its secret com- 
 binations, its exhilarating possibilities, were hers 
 again, and all her dormant energies rose up fully 
 alive. She accepted Gifford's credentials without 
 misgiving, showered rewards with a lavish hand on 
 him and on " the honest man " (the cant name by 
 which Paulet and Walsingham refer to the brewer), 
 and on every subordinate messenger. For months 
 her correspondence had been accumulating at the 
 French embassy. By Gifford's contrivance, a large 
 packet of letters was conveyed in succeeding barrels. 
 Soon Mary and her secretaries were vigorously at 
 work, weaving the old web of intrigue with Spain 
 and Guise and the Catholic nobility both of Scot- 
 land and England. 
 
 The hopes from Spain, though they were to prove 
 mirage to Mary, were of course founded on the 
 reasonable grounds that Philip's vast preparations 
 were already well known. She put herself at once 
 into touch with Mendoza, informed him of her inten- 
 tion of transferring all her rights to his master and 
 begged that he would take her under his protection. 
 The Catholics in Scotland had compacted themselves 
 into a party ; she wrote to Lord Claude Hamilton 
 appointing him her lieutenant, and planning a rising 
 in Scotland to be simultaneous with the Spanish 
 invasion of England. So far it was the familiar, 
 hopeful and hopeless old game. But the letters that 
 kept pouring in during the spring (1586) brought new 
 elements into the plot. 
 
278 MARY STUART 
 
 To Mendoza, Paget and Morgan, the desperate 
 remedy of regicide seemed the only effectual policy ; 
 the casuistry and fanaticism of certain priests at 
 Rheims added a halo of religious heroism to the deed. 
 Early in 1586 a soldier, Savage by name, had been 
 stirred up by Gifford's brother — a sincere Catholic — 
 to undertake the deed and was in England watching 
 for his opportunity. About the same time, a priest 
 called Ballard, after consultation with Mendoza, Paget 
 and Morgan, arrived in England with a more organised 
 plan for the same object. A few days later he fell 
 in with a young Catholic gentleman of fashion, Antony 
 Babington. 
 
 Four miles across the uplands from Wingfield, 
 lay the Manor house of Dethick, the home of the 
 ancient family of Babington. The family was Catholic 
 and the mother a devout woman. On his father's 
 death in 1571 Antony, a boy of ten, became the ward 
 of Lord Shrewsbury. Young gentlemen of quality, 
 in those days, usually received the better part of 
 their training as pages in the house of some great 
 nobleman. It is probable that Antony passed a year 
 or two at Sheffield Castle at the impressionable age. 
 He may there have given his young devotion, as 
 Willie Douglas did at the same age, to the tall, sorrow- 
 ful woman with the haunting eyes and winning grace 
 of manner. 
 
 Later he went to London and was well received 
 at court. In the midst of a career of pleasure, there 
 came upon him the religious quickening inspired by 
 the preaching and death of Campian. With other 
 young men of the same way of thinking he formed a 
 Catholic league and was for some time in correspond- 
 ence with Mary and her agents. 
 
THE BABINGTON CONSPIRACY 279 
 
 His associates in London, courtiers and young 
 men of fashion, shared also his religious faith and 
 his political hopes. Among them, several were 
 members of Elisabeth's household, all were frequenters 
 of her presence ; but in a society where promotion 
 went by court favour there must always have been a 
 number of disappointed or impatient men, restless, 
 selfish spirits eager to welcome any change. 
 
 Religious zeal, vanity, boyish romance, the fascina- 
 tion of a secret combination, and the contagion of 
 the sterner enthusiasm of men like Savage and Ballard 
 carried those poor lads beyond all bounds of prudence 
 and conscience. At the end of May they had a 
 complete scheme to submit to Mendoza who, with 
 hearty approbation, forwarded it to Philip, urging his 
 support of a work " so christian just and advantageous 
 to your majesty." 
 
 The plot had three distinct objects, the old plan 
 of a Catholic rising to synchronise with a Spanish 
 invasion. The prelude was to be a dash on Chartley 
 to rescue the Queen and simultaneously, the assassina- 
 tion of her rival. Six gentlemen, of whom Savage 
 was one, volunteered for the more dangerous task, 
 Babington was himself, with ten other gentlemen, to 
 head the body of horsemen who were to deliver the 
 Queen of Scots. 
 
 Prudence on the part of the conspirators should 
 have kept Mary in entire ignorance of the darker 
 aspects of the plot, but they were accustomed to look to 
 her as to the brain and will controlling all their actions. 
 Morgan hesitated, indeed, to mix her up with a 
 desperate man like Ballard, "a priest well disposed 
 for your majesty's service, at present following matters 
 of consequence, the issue of which is uncertain." But 
 
280 MARY STUART 
 
 his exultation breaks out unguardedly in his postscript 
 to Curie, " I am not unoccupied, although I be in 
 prison, to think of her majesty's state and yours which 
 endure with her ; and there be many means in hand to 
 remove the beast that troiibleth all the world." 
 
 About the same date Morgan urged Mary to 
 reopen communication with Babington. On June 25th 
 she wrote him a gracious little note encouraging him to 
 write to her. All letters, both written by her or to her, 
 passed through Walsingham's hands. Through his 
 secret agents he knew also every movement of 
 Babington and his excitable young following. Gifford, 
 that impenetrable traitor, was so deep in their counsels 
 that it was he and not Ballard who, early in August, 
 communicated the completed scheme to Mendoza. 
 
 Alert and vigilant, Walsingham's secret service 
 concentrated all attention now on Mary and Babington. 
 On the sixth of July Babington wrote his fatal letter to 
 his " very dear sovereign." He explained the plans 
 for the invasion, for her rescue and for the assassina- 
 tion, and he begged her to assure the six gentlemen 
 who were to undertake the " tragic execution " of 
 honourable recompense " either of themselves if they 
 survived or in their posterity." 
 
 The prey was almost in Walsingham's grasp. To 
 obviate all risk of delay or miscarriage, his decipherer 
 Phellipps, was sent down to Chartley while Babington's 
 letter reached Mary through the usual channel. 
 
 Quite unconscious of her danger Mary noted a 
 stranger saluting her smilingly as she drove past. 
 She learned his name and, wondering vaguely if he 
 were the man Morgan had once mentioned to her, 
 wrote this description of him, " He is of low stature, 
 slender every way, dark, yellow-haired on the head 
 
THE BABINGTON CONSPIRACY 281 
 
 and clear yellow-bearded, pitted in the face with 
 smallpox, short-sighted and, as it appears, about forty 
 years of age." There is something horridly suggestive 
 of a weasel about this description, and there was some- 
 thing of the cold-blooded cruelty of the animal in the 
 man's nature. Eagerly Paulet and Phellipps lifted the 
 return packet from the barrel and tore it open. But 
 they found merely letters to Lord Claude and to the 
 French ambassador, and a short note to Babington 
 promising a full reply by the next opportunity. " We 
 attend her very heart in the next," wrote Phellipps to 
 Walsinaham. 
 
 o 
 
 It was indeed all "her heart" they found and all 
 her brain, the buoyancy that after so many disappoint- 
 ments could rise responsive to a new hope, and the 
 politic energy that could provide for all practical points. 
 She suggested three alternative plans for her own 
 rescue, urged secrecy, expedition, a careful leaning 
 on Spain and — further? 
 
 This letter to Babington has been the subject of a 
 controversy almost as voluminous and heated as that 
 which has raged round the Casket Letters. As it 
 stands in the decipher made by Phellipps at Chartley 
 [and neither the original sent to Babington nor any 
 draught prepared by Mary for her secretaries was ever 
 found] the letter accepts the fact of the assassination 
 without a tremor, and arranges in a business-like way 
 for messengers on swift horses who are to convey the 
 news to her deliverers before it can reach her jailors. 
 
 Both Tytler and Prince Labanoff have made out 
 a good case for a forgery, and to them the curious in 
 such matters must be referred. It is perfectly credible 
 that the passage in Mary's letter explicitly discussing 
 the plan for the assassination may have been inserted 
 
282 MARY STUART 
 
 by Phellipps ; for the age was unscrupulous and 
 Walsingham required definite evidence. But that 
 Mary knew and approved of the plan is proved by a 
 sentence in a letter from Mendoza to Philip written in 
 the following September, " I believe the Queen of 
 Scots to be acquainted with the whole affair from a 
 letter she has written to me." That letter Mendoza, 
 it would appear, did not forward to Philip, at least it 
 has not been found at Simancas. 
 
 If Mary's consent to the murder be a crass fact, 
 not to be got over, it is of small use to condemn her 
 or to apologise for her. She was fighting in a life 
 and death struggle. " Mors Elisabethae vita Marise, 
 vita Mariae mors Elisabethae," so Mendoza had 
 summed up the case some years previously. The 
 Bond of Association had infinitely increased the 
 danger on Mary's side. If judge her we must, let it be 
 by the standard of an age when Knox applauded the 
 murders of Beaton and Riccio, and Elisabeth and her 
 ministers were disappointed that the Scots Lords had 
 failed to make away with Arran and dAubigny. 
 
 Walsingham had secured what he wanted. It 
 was now time to put a stop to the plot and to scatter 
 the plotters, lest in a sudden access of resolution they 
 should really make an attempt on Elisabeth's life. 
 
 Ballard was the first whom it was proposed to 
 seize. He had as many doublings as a hare and 
 gave his pursuers considerable trouble. Babington 
 became alarmed ; in an agony of uncertainty, he fled 
 from London one day and braved Walsingham in his 
 office the next. On August 3rd he wrote an agitated 
 letter to Mary entreating her for the love of God not 
 to give way to discouragement. "It is an enter- 
 prise honourable before God. We have vowed it 
 
THE BABINGTON CONSPIRACY 283 
 
 and we will carry it into effect or it shall cost us our 
 lves. 
 
 Poor boys ! they had vowed and vapoured, taken 
 sacraments and pledged toasts, but when it began to 
 look like business, they had little stomach for the 
 deed. They tried to egg each other on to the point 
 of appearing at court but their hearts failed and dis- 
 tractedly they scattered and fled. A night or two 
 was spent sleeping out in the bosky solitudes of St 
 John's wood ; a hospitable Catholic household at 
 Harrow offered an asylum for the night to one or 
 two of the fugitives (their host afterwards atoned for 
 his tender-heartedness on the scaffold). One after the 
 other they were caught, and within a few days all 
 were lodged in the Tower. 
 
 What Walsingham required was more written 
 evidence, evidence in Mary's own hand. If the slight- 
 est suspicion reached Chartley all documents would 
 be destroyed ; it was necessary to take her and her 
 secretaries at unawares. 
 
 Her new hopes had put new life into Mary. In 
 pleading for more liberty she had often urged that the 
 weakness of her body made escape impracticable ; 
 now she was eager to persuade her friends that, as of 
 old, she was fit for rapid riding and long endurance. 
 At this time she wrote to Morgan, " I can still use my 
 crossbow against a deer and gallop after the hounds." 
 
 On the eighth of August Paulet invited her and 
 all her household to hunt in Sir Walter Ashton's park 
 at a few miles' distance. She was attended by both 
 her secretaries, Andrew Melville the master of her 
 household (the third of three loyal brothers), Bourgoign 
 her physician and other attendants. 
 
 Just outside the park gate they were suddenly 
 
284 MARY STUART 
 
 joined by a body of horsemen. What wild hopes 
 may have surged up in Mary's heart of the expected 
 rescue party or what dread of renewed rigours may 
 have chilled her spirit is merely a matter of speculation 
 to the picturesque historian. 
 
 Riding up, Sir Amyas Paulet introduced the Queen 
 of England's messenger Sir Thomas Gorges. Briefly 
 but unmistakably his message was delivered : the 
 plot was discovered, the proofs of it were in Elisabeth's 
 hands, the Queen of Scots' servants were involved 
 and must at once be removed, Sir Amyas would tell 
 her the rest. 
 
 As always Mary's instinct was for resistance ; she 
 called on her servants to defend her. What could 
 peaceful gentlemen, with crossbows and riding wands, 
 effect against Paulet's armed escort ? She broke into 
 passionate, impotent invective but, undisturbed, some 
 of the party proceeded to secure Nau and Curie while 
 Waad and others galloped back to Chartley to search 
 for the papers, and Sir Amyas Paulet led the rest of 
 the party off in an opposite direction. 
 
 Mary dismounted and refused to go any further ; 
 quite unmoved, Sir Amyas offered to send for her 
 coach. She yielded at last because she was power- 
 less. In the account preserved for us by Bourgoign, 
 her physician, he describes her as retiring behind a 
 tree and making a touching and eloquent prayer. It 
 may have been so, for the habit of devotion was strong 
 in Mary and the vision of a crown of martyrdom in 
 place of an earthly crown may have begun already to 
 haunt her imagination. But the incident does not 
 persuade one of its genuineness and it is easier to 
 think of her riding to Tixall, fierce, stricken, and with 
 death in her soul. 
 
THE BABINGTON CONSPIRACY 285 
 
 The horrible fortnight that ensued was strangely 
 like the first weeks of her imprisonment at Loch 
 Leven. She was in an unknown house, among 
 strangers, shut up in one small apartment. Two of 
 her women, an equerry, and her apothecary were alone 
 allowed to visit her. No provision seems to have 
 been made for a change of clothes. It is painful to 
 think of the length and silence of those July days. 
 She was kept in total ignorance of the proceedings 
 against her ; no one came even to reproach or accuse 
 her ; she was not allowed the use of pen or ink. In 
 an unending feverish round she must have gone over 
 the chances in her favour, tortured herself to remember 
 what papers had, and what had not, been destroyed, 
 weighed with lessening confidence the probability of 
 her secretaries remaining staunch, or snatched at some 
 mad hope of a sudden intervention from Spain. 
 
 Can one grudge her the consolation she drew from 
 the persuasion that she was suffering for the sake of 
 her religion, that her faithfulness to her Church was 
 the cause of her enemies' persecution ? 
 
 If only to soften the bald agony of it all, one would 
 gladly, if one dared, place in those blank days at Tixall 
 the composition of a prayer which tradition has always 
 attributed to Mary.* 
 
 " O Domine Deus speravi in te 
 O care mi Jesu nunc libera me 
 In dura catena 
 In misera poena 
 Adoro, imploro 
 Ut liberes me." 
 
 * Unfortunately the authority for this beautiful verse can be traced no 
 further than the eighteenth century ; the same century which pro- 
 duced another poem attributed to Mary, "Adieu charmant pays de 
 France." 
 
286 MARY STUART 
 
 Elisabeth had entered into all the arrangements 
 for springing the trap upon her prisoner. One 
 can forgive her more easily for acts of harshness than 
 for the callousness of her message to Paulet " bidding 
 him write unto her the whole story of those things 
 done in this matter, to the Queen of Scots. Not for 
 any other cause but that her Majesty might take 
 pleasure in the reading thereof." 
 
 She probably also "took pleasure" in handling 
 the jewels and objects of bric-a-brac which were 
 brought from Chartley, the list of which is candidly 
 endorsed " Goods stolen from the Queen of Scots." 
 In a letter written to " Amyas, my most faithful and 
 careful subject," she sent a message to that " wicked 
 murderess " who had fallen so horribly, " far passing 
 a woman's thought, much less a prince's." She urges 
 her " to repent lest the fiend possess her and so her 
 better part be lost, which I pray (i.e. for her repent- 
 ance) with hands uplifted to Him that may both save 
 and spill." It is well to carry this letter in one's mind, 
 when one comes to consider a later communication of 
 Elisabeth to her "faithful Amyas." 
 
 On August 26th Mary was brought back to 
 Chartley. As she rode away from Tixall a crowd of 
 beggars hung about the gate. " I have nothing to 
 give you," she cried with tears, " I am a beggar as well 
 as you, all is taken from me." 
 
 Her first act on arriving at Chartley was character- 
 istic of the warm-hearted woman whom all her servants 
 adored as a mistress. The shock of her husband's 
 arrest had caused Curie's wife to be prematurely con- 
 fined. Mary went at once to visit the anxious young 
 wife and said, in her queenly way, that whatever 
 accusation was brought against Curie, she would take 
 
THE BABINGTON CONSPIRACY 287 
 
 it all upon herself. The baby, a little girl, was alive. 
 Mary's priest had been removed, Sir Amyas gladly 
 seizing the opportunity for dismissing him, nor would 
 he even admit an Anglican clergyman to perform the 
 rite of baptism. Mary, herself, taking the little one 
 on her knees sprinkled the water on its face saying, 
 " Mary, I baptise thee in the name of the Father, the 
 Son, and the Holy Ghost." She was but fulfilling a 
 tender provision of the Church for securing baptism 
 for the frailest of her little ones, but to Sir Amyas, 
 looking on sourly, she seemed " to make no conscience 
 of breaking all laws of God and man." 
 
 Meanwhile the trial of the conspirators had been 
 proceeding with little of resolution or heroism on the 
 one side and no glimmering of mercy on the other. 
 In the Tower Babington had been confronted with 
 Phellipp's decipher both of his own letter to Mary and 
 of her long one in reply. He admitted the authenticity 
 of both, but under what compulsion and terror of 
 torture, we do not know. 
 
 On the seventeenth of September, he and six of 
 his fellow-conspirators were put to death with circum- 
 stances, which prove that " stern English common 
 sense," as Mr Froude calls it, had nothing to learn 
 from Spain in refinement of cruelty. But the English 
 appetite for cruelty, if keen, was quickly surfeited. 
 Next day when seven more were executed Elisabeth 
 forbade all prolongation of suffering. 
 
 There remained Curie and Nau and a third under- 
 secretary, Pasquier, who had joined them. They 
 were imprisoned in Walsingham's household, and 
 between threats of torture and promises of life and 
 liberty, their minds were so enervated that as early as 
 September 3rd, Walsingham wrote of them, " Both 
 
288 MARY STUART 
 
 Curie and Nau are determined to throw the burden 
 on their mistress." 
 
 No minute of Mary's letter to Babington either 
 French or English could be found at Chartley to 
 Walsingham's great annoyance, " I would to God 
 these minutes were found," he wrote. It was the 
 weak link in his chain of evidence. All that was 
 found were certain notes in Nau's writing in which he 
 referred to "un coup " which might be taken to mean 
 the attempt on Elisabeth. Step by step and with 
 many shufflings, both Secretaries were brought to 
 attest that the deciphers of the Babington letter and 
 of Mary's fatal reply were " the same or similar to 
 what they had written and ciphered." To remove all 
 blame from themselves they had been careful to 
 explain that all letters were dictated by Mary and 
 were again revised by her after they had been written 
 and translated. 
 
 One more act of petty tyranny Mary had to 
 endure before she was removed from Chartley. 
 She was sick in bed, when one morning Sir 
 Amyas appeared accompanied by a strange gentle- 
 man, and turning all her attendants out of the room, 
 said that he had received orders to remove all her 
 money lest she should attempt to corrupt his servants. 
 In vain she refused to yield the keys of her cabinet, 
 her impassive jailor called for bars to prise the doors 
 open. To stay further extremities, the unfortunate 
 lady slipped out of bed, opened her cabinet and handed 
 over a canvas bag where she kept a little hoard to 
 provide for her servants against the day of her 
 death. 
 
 Considerable sums were found in the private room 
 of Secretary Nau. Many knew his epicurean nature 
 
THE BABINGTON CONSPIRACY 289 
 
 when she wrote bitterly of him and Pasquier. " lis 
 sont gens qui veulent vivre en tous mondes s'ils 
 peuvent avoir leurs commodites." 
 
 On September the 25th, Mary was removed to 
 Fotheringay. 
 
CHAPTER XXIII 
 
 FOTHERINGAY 
 nth October 1586 — 4th February 1587 
 
 AT every turn Mary was to be a perplexity to her 
 enemies and not least in their moment of 
 triumph. " I see this wicked creature ordained of 
 God to punish our sins and unthankfulness, for her 
 Majesty hath no power to proceed against her as her 
 own safety requireth," wrote Walsingham with pious 
 irritation. 
 
 Elisabeth's private message to Mary urging her 
 to acknowledge her guilt and throw herself on her 
 cousin's mercy had been met, on Mary's part, with a 
 contemptuous refusal to prejudice her case. Even if 
 she had had any faith in the practical advantages of 
 such a course, she was in no mood to humble herself. 
 Life in a prison, straiter and more humiliating than 
 any she had yet known, might indeed chill her soul, 
 but on the other hand her imagination had accustomed 
 itself to dwell nobly and with a certain exultation on 
 the thought of death, death in the sight of Europe, 
 death for the cause of God and the Church, death that 
 would forever put her enemies in the wrong. 
 
 It was in this tense mood of defiance that she met 
 the Commission sent down to Fotheringay to try her 
 cause. Forty lords and gentlemen, the greatest men 
 in the kingdom, attended by some 2000 armed 
 horsemen — for the times were dangerous — arrived at 
 
 290 
 
FOTHERINGAY 291 
 
 Fotheringay on Saturday 1 1 th October. That evening 
 a copy of the Commission was delivered to Mary. 
 She scanned the list eagerly, seeking in vain for one 
 friendly or impartial name. 
 
 The Commission was composed of the earls and 
 barons of the Privy Council, of six judges, and two 
 doctors of Civil Law ; forty-two in all, the finest wits, 
 the most experienced heads, the most honourable 
 names in England. Among the noblemen were 
 various whose correspondence with Mary had been 
 discovered at Chartley. Elisabeth had generously 
 burnt their letters, but their uncertainty of their own 
 position effectually precluded their showing any kind- 
 ness to Mary. Walsingham, Crofts, Bromley and 
 Burghley were open enemies ; the fact that Leicester 
 and Hatton had had secret dealings with Mary made 
 them but the more dangerous. Old Sir Ralph Sadler 
 was on the Commission to judge the woman he had 
 seen as a baby ; more soft-hearted, Lord Shrews- 
 bury had urged illness as a reason for staying away. 
 
 Mary had always had the quickest instinct for 
 spying out a weak point. She noticed that the 
 statute under which she was to be tried was that 
 brand-new Bond of Association framed purposely 
 against her barely two years before. This statute 
 gave power to prosecute and condemn to death any 
 one laying claim to the English crown or trying to 
 deprive Elisabeth of the same by way of conspiracy 
 or foreign invasion. Mary had not only forced the 
 English government to frame laws especially against 
 her ; before they could obtain a verdict they had to 
 nullify the ordinary procedure of justice. 
 
 Elisabeth had a fatal habit of putting herself 
 in the wrong by small meannesses and discourtesies ; 
 
292 
 
 MARY STUART 
 
 the letter delivered to Mary, peremptorily ordering 
 her to submit herself to the judgment of the Com- 
 mission, was addressed baldly " To the Scottish." 
 
 Mary met the command by a flat refusal. As a 
 queen, she could not allow herself to be judged by 
 subjects without betraying the prerogative of her son, 
 of her descendants, of all princes everywhere. She 
 would not acknowledge herself subject to the laws of 
 a country where she had been kept in prison in 
 defiance of law. Finally, she would not plead in a 
 court where she was deprived of an advocate, of her 
 papers, even of time to prepare her own case. 
 
 Her refusal was taken down, submitted to her 
 and forwarded to Elisabeth. 
 
 All the next day (a Sunday) was spent in receiving 
 formal deputations from the Commissioners and 
 arguing from point to point ; one quick witted woman 
 keeping at bay forty trained and experienced men, 
 men who, moreover, knew her to be guilty of the 
 charge brought against her. 
 
 Again she urged her immunity as a queen, and 
 declared that as a stranger she was not subject to 
 laws that had afforded her no protection. She 
 sharply criticised their new law which offered no 
 precedent by which she could guide herself; she 
 demanded to be judged by true Civil Law, with con- 
 sultation of foreign jurisconsults or to be heard before 
 a free Parliament. At other times, breaking out into 
 eloquent speech, she made bitter reflections on Elisa- 
 beth's claim of having afforded her protection, warned 
 her judges that the theatre of the world was wider 
 than England or, taking refuge in her last strong- 
 hold, expressed her willingness to shed her blood in 
 the cause of her religion. 
 
FOTHERINGAY 293 
 
 The October dusk was falling and Burghley's 
 patience was wearing out when that child of the 
 world, Christopher Hatton, brought an argument to 
 bear that made Mary pause. The Queen of England, 
 he assured her, was only too anxious that she 
 should establish her innocence. If she refused to be 
 questioned by the Commission she would give the 
 world cause to believe her guilty, her honour would 
 suffer nothing by her submission. Burghley added 
 the practical argument that in her absence, as in her 
 presence, the Commission would proceed with the 
 case. 
 
 Late that evening a courier arrived post-haste 
 from Elisabeth. The letter to Mary was no less 
 peremptory than the former had been, but the final 
 sentence held out a gleam of hope. " But answer fully 
 and you will receive the greater favour from us." 
 
 During the wakeful hours of the night, Mary 
 came to a decision. Elisabeth's message may have 
 had something to do with it, for an instinctive clinging 
 to life underlies our most heroic resolutions. Hatton's 
 words weighed more, for, above all things, Mary 
 desired to convince the world that, if she were con- 
 demned, it was for no crime of her own, but on 
 account of her religion and her nearness to the 
 throne. Stronger than all reasoning was the passion- 
 ate desire to speak her heart out in ears that, at last, 
 must give her a hearing. 
 
 She knew the effect of her eloquent tongue, of 
 her noble presence, the pathos of her circumstances. 
 We need not look to Mary for the simplicity and 
 sincerity of the martyr. There was much in her life 
 to forget, much to conceal ; if much had been repented 
 of, that repentance was kept sacred between her own 
 
294 MARY STUART 
 
 soul and her Maker, but against the outer world she 
 had an unassailable defence in her sense of the 
 immeasurable wrongs that had been done her. 
 
 Again and again she had formulated her grievance 
 in letters that had been neglected. Here at last, 
 whatever came of it, she could lift up her voice and 
 cry aloud and spare not. She was a woman to 
 whom it was a first necessity to play a part in the 
 world's eye ; we may be grateful to her that it was 
 generally a magnanimous and always a dignified one. 
 Her speeches, both at the trial and later to those 
 who came to announce her sentence to her, read like 
 speeches that a passionate heart and active brain would 
 fashion in solitude and rehearse again and again with 
 new point and circumstance to imaginary audiences. 
 They were too complete in themselves, too little 
 drawn from immediate circumstance to have the 
 calculated effect on an audience hardened to resist 
 them. Her auditors were intent on bringing home 
 to Mary her guilt on a particular point, she was 
 intent on vindicating her whole course of life and 
 bringing counter arraignment. 
 
 On the morning of Tuesday, 14th October, the 
 Commission was assembled in a larger upper room 
 directly above the hall. A dais, with a cloth of state, 
 was dressed at the upper end to represent the presence 
 of Elisabeth, a chair of red velvet with a footstool 
 was placed at one side for the Scottish Queen. She 
 entered in her black robes and flowing lawn veil, 
 supported on either side by Bourgoign and the good 
 Andrew Melville. 
 
 Glancing at the dais, she cried impulsively, " I 
 am a Queen by right of birth, my place should be 
 there." 
 

 ■ •"»-■.."*.■■■ ■■?■'■" t*- ■ : 
 
 Si y 
 
 
 
 
 
 - 77: • 
 
 
 THE TRIAL AT FOTHERINGAY 
 
FOTHER1NGAY 295 
 
 The Commissioners uncovered as she entered. 
 Looking from one grave face to the other, a sudden 
 anguish of solitariness swept over her, and she said 
 to Melville, " Alas ! there is a great number of 
 councillors here and yet not one of them is for me." 
 
 But the reading of the indictment restored her 
 courage and roused the fighting instinct. She re- 
 peated her protest that as a queen she could be 
 subject to no tribunal but that of God, that she had 
 consented to come thither to answer to one specific 
 charge. She met the production of the copies of the 
 Babington and other letters, with a flat repudiation, 
 and the pertinent demand that the original letters and 
 not copies should be brought as evidence. When the 
 point came up again (as it did more than once in the 
 interminable and disorderly proceedings) she carried 
 the war into the enemy's camp by a sudden attack on 
 Walsingham. He was her enemy and the enemy 
 of her son ; how could she be certain that he had not 
 forged her cipher to procure her condemnation, she 
 knew that he had had traffickings with one Ballard 
 whom she knew to be a traitor. It was a home-thrust, 
 and Walsingham was curiously agitated for a man 
 blameless in the matter. He rose to vindicate him- 
 self, "God is my witness that as a private person, I 
 have done nothing unworthy of an honest man, and 
 as Secretary of State nothing unbefitting my duty." 
 A sentence open to casuistical interpretation ! 
 
 When confronted with the fact that Babington had 
 acknowledged the genuineness of the correspondence 
 and that Nau and Curie, her secretaries, had also 
 confirmed this, she asked why Babington had been 
 put to death before he had been brought face to face 
 with her or why, her secretaries being still alive, 
 
296 MARY STUART 
 
 they were not produced in her presence as witnesses 
 against her. 
 
 There was no arrangement in the proceedings, no 
 cross-examination, matters old and irrelevant, such as 
 Mary's adoption of the English arms in her early 
 French days, were again dragged forth. At the end, 
 disorder supervened, questions were no longer asked. 
 Mary was attacked by assertions and accusations, 
 especially on the part of the legal members of the 
 Commission. This mismanagement Mary, with her 
 usual cleverness, turned to her own advantage. Next 
 morning she protested haughtily that she had expected 
 to be examined by noblemen and gentlemen who knew 
 what was due to princes, and not by lawyers accus- 
 tomed to the pettifogging and brow-beating of courts 
 of law. Without an advocate to defend her, what 
 could one woman do against so many united in accus- 
 ing her ? Thenceforward Burghley kept the question- 
 ing in his own hands. 
 
 On this day Mary made large admissions. She 
 acknowledged the letters to Mendoza, Paget and 
 Morgan, which were produced, to be hers, and admitted 
 that her secretaries had held communication with 
 Babington. She admitted also that, for her own liberty 
 and the comfort of oppressed and persecuted Catholics, 
 she had solicited aid from foreign princes. Where 
 she stood absolutely firm was in her denial of any 
 knowledge of the attempt on the life of Elisabeth. 
 
 More than once in the course of these proceedings 
 Mary had broken into vehement speech. The atmos- 
 phere was charged with hostility. She understood 
 men too well to hope to move their pity. It was as 
 a relief to her own indignant pain that she spoke, now 
 rehearsing the sufferings of her fellow Catholics, now 
 
FOTHERINGAY 297 
 
 declaiming bitterly against the monstrous illegality 
 of her trial, now protesting her faith in God and 
 willingness to shed her blood in His cause, and again 
 and again returning to the burthen of her heavy 
 wrongs. Once she took a ring from her finger and 
 held it up. " Here, my Lords, is the pledge of love 
 and protection which I received from your Mistress. 
 Look well at it. It was in reliance upon this that 
 I came amongst you. Nobody knows better than 
 yourselves how this pledge has been kept." 
 
 It was well for Mary that she was appealing to 
 "a wider theatre than England," and to times more 
 just and pitiful than her own. Burghley sneers 
 impatiently at " the Queen of the Castle " and her 
 "long and artificial speeches," and adds, "I am sure 
 that the audience did not think her worthy of much 
 pity," he himself, as he affirms, having refuted her 
 allegations on all points. 
 
 The Commission would have given their verdict 
 that night, but an urgent message from Elisabeth 
 forbade any decisive action and bade them adjourn 
 for ten days. On Wednesday (15th October) the 
 Commissioners left Fotheringay. 
 
 A unanimous verdict of the Commission, an Act 
 of Parliament, the earnest petition of both Lords and 
 Commons, were alike powerless to bring Elisabeth 
 to the point of condemning her cousin to death. She 
 had no real intention of sparing Mary's life but she 
 had an unreasoning desire to escape the responsibility 
 for such a decision. On November 20, she sent 
 Lord Buckhurst and Secretary Beale to Fotheringay 
 to inform the Queen of Scots of the verdict against 
 her, and warning her to prepare for death. 
 
 In her last letter to her faithful old servant the 
 
298 MARY STUART 
 
 Archbishop of Glasgow, Mary herself describes the 
 interview. She was to be put to death they told her, 
 first because the Queen's life and crown were not safe 
 so long as she was alive, and secondly because her 
 life was a constant menace to the established religion. 
 This was precisely the acknowledgment of her 
 importance which Mary most desired. She thanked 
 God and them for the honour vouchsafed to her of 
 shedding her blood in the Church's quarrel. With 
 Enoflish bluntness Lord Buckhurst hastened to assure 
 her that she was no saint and martyr but was to be 
 put to death for plotting against the Queen's life. She 
 denied the accusation and affirmed that, sinner though 
 she might be, God in His mercy would accept the 
 sacrifice of her life which she was ready to lay down 
 for the good of the Church. The ministrations of the 
 Dean of Peterborough or any other Protestant divine, 
 she quietly declined, and begged that the services of 
 her own priest might be restored to her. 
 
 Her calm cheerfulness with its touch of triumph 
 discomposed Sir Amyas Paulet. It upset his pre- 
 conceived notions that she neither humbled herself 
 to entreat for mercy nor felt the terrors of a guilty 
 conscience. It was his duty to convince her of her 
 lost condition both in this world and the next. 
 
 Her cloth of state had accompanied her in all her 
 prisons. It had been her mother's and bore the arms 
 of Scotland quartered with those of Lorraine. On 
 the day Lord Buckhurst left, the 21st November, 
 Paulet entered Mary's room unceremoniously, told 
 her that she was now but a dead woman in the eyes 
 of the law, having no claim to the honour and dignity 
 of a queen and so ordered her cloth of state to be 
 pulled down. Mary replied that being born an 
 
SIR AMYAS PAULET 
 
FOTHERINGAY 299 
 
 anointed queen, she held her royal estate from God 
 alone and would only render it back into His hands 
 with her life. 
 
 The next day when Paulet entered her room, he 
 found that in the place where her royal emblazonments 
 had hung, she had placed ten pictures of the Passion 
 of her Saviour. This act to Mary was symbolical of 
 the attitude of her mind. Paulet only saw " ten paper 
 pictures of the Passion of Christ and other like stuff 
 fastened upon the hangings." 
 
 To bring her to a sense of her position he remained 
 covered in her presence and had her billiard table 
 removed, amusement being unsuitable for a woman 
 under sentence of death. But he had lost all power 
 to wound or irritate his victim. 
 
 She had striven hard for liberty, she had fought 
 and plotted and struggled for that larger share in the 
 world's life to which she was entitled alike by birth 
 and natural endowment. Up to the last she had 
 been prepared to grasp at any chance that offered. 
 But now that every effort was frustrated and hope was 
 dead, she turned her undiminished vitality on to her 
 last great task of dying. 
 
 There are four or five letters of Mary's written 
 within two days of Lord Buckhurst's visit, the noblest 
 and simplest of all her correspondence. No secretary 
 had expanded and weakened the terse clearness of 
 the writing, no malice embittered its spirit. 
 
 In writing to Elisabeth, she blesses God for the 
 end set at last to the weary pilgrimage of her life. 
 The requests she has to make are these : seeing no 
 hope in England of Sepulture with Catholic rites she 
 begs that her servants may have permission to carry 
 her body to France to bury it beside " my honoured 
 
300 MARY STUART 
 
 mother," "so that this poor body of mine may find at 
 last that rest that it never found, as long as it was 
 joined to my soul." 
 
 She had been studying the English Chronicles and 
 was haunted by the fates of Edward II. and Richard 
 II. ; so she begs in the second place that she may be 
 put to death publicly, so that her servants and others 
 may bear witness to her dying declaration of faith. 
 
 Her last request is for her servants that they may 
 have permission to return home, with security "for 
 such small wealth as my poverty allows me to bestow 
 on them." 
 
 Scotland, with its short years of youth and passion, 
 fear and sin, had long been remote and dim ; now 
 England, with its barren hopes and futile struggles, 
 was falling away from her like a dream when one 
 awakens, but France and the old times of her girlhood, 
 seem to have been vividly present to Mary's recollec- 
 tion. She thought of herself, no longer as a Stuart 
 nor as a descendant of Henry VII., she had gone 
 back in spirit to the old Guise kinship. She wrote to 
 take farewell of her cousin and assured him that her 
 constancy would be " worthy of our house." 
 
 She and Mendoza had never met in the flesh but 
 each had recognised in the other a kindred spirit ; 
 their diplomatic relations had ripened into personal 
 intimacy and regard. Of him, too, she took farewell 
 and sent him the diamond with which Norfolk had 
 pledged his faith to her and which she had always 
 worn. To the Pope she sent a solemn avowal of her 
 adherence to the Catholic faith. 
 
 While Mary was thus preparing herself for the 
 death that might at any moment free her from the 
 "rack of this tough world,'' her allies and kinsfolk 
 
FOTHERINGAY 301 
 
 were trying to secure for her some such death in life 
 as would render her innocuous and save their credit. 
 The King of France and his mother had little enough 
 concern for Mary, but her life was useful to them in 
 their dealings with Elisabeth, besides the national 
 honour was galled that a former Queen of France 
 should fall by the hands of an executioner. 
 
 In December a special envoy, M. Bellievre, arrived 
 to plead for Mary. His long and quaintly pedantic 
 discourse has yet a sort of genuine ring about it. But 
 foreign opposition only served more effectually than 
 the urgency of her ministers to hasten Elisabeth's 
 mind towards a sterner decision. 
 
 From Mary's own son, the Scottish king, it had 
 seemed at first that little opposition was to be feared. 
 There are sentences in a letter of September written 
 by the Master of Gray to the Scottish ambassador, 
 Archibald Douglas, which read like satire but are 
 simple statements of fact. "His Majesty is very 
 well content with all your proceedings but chiefly 
 touching his bucks and hunting-horses, I pray you 
 negotiate so well that you fail not to effectuate 
 substantially that point. As for his mother ... I can 
 assure you he is content that the law go forward — her 
 life being safe — and would gladly wish that all foreign 
 princes should know how evil she hath used herself to 
 the Queen's Majesty." 
 
 At various points of the proceedings against his 
 mother assurances were sent to James that his title to 
 the succession should not be invalidated. Left to 
 himself he would have been contented with the 
 negative course of not taking part against his mother. 
 To do so, even Walsingham admitted, would be 
 against bonos mores. 
 
302 MARY STUART 
 
 His ruling favourite the Master of Gray is said to 
 have summed up his advice to Elisabeth in the Latin 
 he so often affected. " Mortua non mordet." But public 
 opinion was too strong for both king and favourite. 
 D'Esneval the French Ambassador extraordinary told 
 James that if he allowed his mother to be tried he would 
 be disgraced throughout Christendom ; the Scottish 
 noblemen, even those who opposed Mary, felt them- 
 selves pricked in their national honour ; the common 
 people hooted James in the High Street. Most frank 
 of all, James' cousin, Francis, Lord Bothwell, told him 
 that if he let his mother suffer he would deserve to be 
 hanged. This Francis was the son of Mary's half- 
 brother, Lord John of Coldingham, whose marriage 
 with Bothwell's sister was among the festivities which 
 graced Mary's return to Scotland in 1561. Either 
 from love of her brother who died early or from 
 sentiment for Bothwell Mary had always taken a 
 special interest in young Francis, looking after his 
 concerns even in her captivity. Gratitude in the 
 story of Mary has been a flower of such rare growth 
 that it feels like a touch of wholesome mother earth to 
 meet this young nobleman " who was prompt and free 
 of speech and affectionate to the Queen of Scots and 
 such an one as would not, if he discovered treachery, 
 conceal it." 
 
 A man of this character would be no welcome 
 colleague to the Master of Gray, accordingly he was 
 rejected as a possible ambassador, and Mary's old 
 friend Sir Robert Melville was associated with the 
 Master in a special embassy to Elisabeth. 
 
 In his usual forcible diction the Master describes 
 his perplexity at having this embassy forced on him. 
 He must either " crab " his master by refusing to go, 
 
FOTHERINGAY 303 
 
 or offend the English queen by the message he 
 brought. If in spite of his mission the Queen die 
 "men will think I lent her a hand, and live she by 
 my travail I bring a staff on my own head." 
 
 In the end, however, two national instincts were too 
 strong in him, the instinct to resent any action of the 
 "auld enemy," and the instinct to let no one but them- 
 selves bully their " ancient kings." 
 
 " If I take it in hand, I must do the duty of a good 
 subject. I must be a Scotsman, and lean to Scottish 
 means." And, to do him justice, this part he 
 resolutely played. 
 
 Still Elisabeth was not mistaken in feeling that 
 James' protest was more formal than formidable, and 
 that "with time he might be moved to digest the matter." 
 
 All through January Elisabeth had seemed as far 
 as ever from decided action. Suddenly on ist 
 February, from mere weariness of the matter, she 
 sent for her secretary, Davison, and bade him bring 
 the warrant. She signed it along with other papers 
 with seeming carelessness, made a jesting allusion to 
 Walsingham's satisfaction at the fact, and bade 
 Davison take it to the Lord Chancellor. She desired 
 to hear no more about the matter till all was over. But 
 as Davison was leaving the room she called him back. 
 
 Twice in Mary's life, as we have seen, she was 
 confronted with her own letters, words written in 
 secret proclaimed on the house-tops, plans conceived 
 in darkness judged in the fiercest light. Let these 
 letters be weighed in the scale of moral judgment 
 against the letter which Elisabeth — living at ease and 
 in freedom — now dictated to Davison and Walsineham 
 two "honourable men" for Amyas Paulet and his 
 colleague, Sir Drue Drury. "... Her Majesty doth 
 
304 MARY STUART 
 
 note in you both a lack of that care and zeal of her 
 service, that she looketh for at your hands in that you 
 have not, in all this time, of yourselves (without other 
 provocation) found out some way to shorten the life 
 of that queen. . . . Wherein besides a kind of lack of 
 love towards her, she noteth greatly that you have 
 not that care of your own particular safeties or rather 
 of the preservation of religion and the public good 
 . . . especially having so good a warrant of your 
 consciences towards God and your credit towards the 
 world as the Oath of Association . . . and therefore 
 she taketh it most unkindly that men professing love 
 towards her should, for lack of the discharge of your 
 duties, cast the burden upon her, knowing as you do, 
 her indisposition to shed blood." 
 
 This letter written on ist February was received 
 on February 2nd at five p.m. By six p.m. the 
 recipients had written and despatched their reply. 
 It is due to Sir Amyas to give his own words, con- 
 fused, incoherent, but hot with indignation and heavy 
 with horror. " I would not fail to return my answer 
 with all possible speed which shall deliver unto you 
 with great grief and bitterness of mind in that I am 
 so unhappy as to have lived to see this unhappy day, 
 in the which I am required by direction from my 
 most gracious sovereign to do an act which God and 
 the law forbiddeth. . . . God forbid that I should 
 make so foul a shipwreck of my conscience, or leave 
 so great a blot to my poor posterity and shed blood 
 without law or warrant." 
 
 Perhaps now it flashed through Paulet's mind what 
 Mary had said a few days earlier, rising from the 
 study of the Chronicles of England. " Your history 
 is full of blood." 
 
FOTHERINGAY 305 
 
 When signing the warrant Elisabeth had desired 
 to hear no more of the matter till all was over. Her 
 Council, knowing her infirmity of purpose, took her at 
 her word. Lord Kent and Lord Shrewsbury were 
 appointed Commissioners to see the warrant executed. 
 On Saturday, 4th February, Secretary Beale carried 
 the warrant down to Fotheringay. On Monday 
 evening the Earl of Kent arrived, and Shrewsbury 
 on Tuesday about noon. Walsingham had sent down 
 the executioner on Sunday night by a trusty servant ; 
 he was kept secretly at an inn at Fotheringay till the 
 day was settled for the execution. 
 
CHAPTER XXIV 
 
 THE END 
 February 8th, 1587 
 
 AS the weeks went by with no sign of impending doom, 
 Mary had resumed her ordinary life with appar- 
 ent calm. Reading and devotions occupied her days : 
 her health and diet received the attention she always 
 bestowed on them in the winter. If the arrival of the 
 two earls was a shock to her, she braced herself up to 
 meet them with composure. She had been ill and 
 received them sitting on a couch at the foot of her 
 bed. After respectful greetings the Commissioners 
 proceeded at once to read the sentence. " She seemed 
 not to be in any terror from ought that appeared by 
 any of her outward gestures or behaviour but rather 
 with smiling cheer and pleasing countenance, digested 
 and accepted the said admonition of preparation to her 
 (as she said) unexpected execution." She said in a 
 brave voice " that that soul was unworthy of the joys 
 of Heaven forever whose body would not in this 
 world be content to endure the stroke of the exe- 
 cutioner for a moment." Here she paused and, 
 nature having her way, " she wept bitterly and re- 
 mained silent." 
 
 A few weeks previously she had been again de- 
 prived of her confessor. She begged now for his 
 services to prepare her for death. It is difficult to 
 believe that Elisabeth, notoriously indifferent in the 
 
 306 
 
THE END 307 
 
 matter of creeds, should have commanded this last 
 wanton unkindness. It is quite conceivable that 
 blundering Protestants like Kent and Paulet may 
 have honestly thought that the terror of death might 
 shake Mary's lifelong convictions, and drive her at the 
 last moment to " the only stronghold of God's word." 
 
 They urged on her the ministrations of the Dean 
 of Peterborough, who could show her the truth and 
 " convince her of the folly and abomination of Popery." 
 With vehemence she refused the offer. Nor could they 
 give her the consoling assurance that her wearied body 
 should rest in the kindly earth of France. They be- 
 lieved that arrangements would be made for restoring 
 her servants to their homes. They granted her only 
 one night to settle all her business and make provision 
 for her dependents. Her papers and accounts they 
 were unable to restore. There is a flash of the old 
 unregenerate Mary in her question if Nau were dead, 
 and her remark that he had caused her death to save 
 himself. 
 
 They left her, warning her that she should be sent 
 for next morning at eight. Practical always, Mary's 
 first business was to take care of the nerves and 
 emotions of her household, her "little flock." She 
 bade them hasten supper for she had much to do. She 
 ate, as usual, abstemiously but spoke cheerfully to her 
 physician, and before rising pledged her little com- 
 pany. She had meant to go down into her wardrobe, 
 but they told her that the soldiers were on guard in 
 the passage and she refrained. 
 
 Having laid aside the robe and petticoat and 
 wimple, which were for the last time to express her 
 queenly state, she sat with an inventory dividing her 
 clothes and jewels and valuables among her servants. 
 
308 MARY STUART 
 
 Her money she divided into little bags with the 
 owner's name written on each. 
 
 She was an excellent woman of business and 
 anxiously exact in matters of debt. Without advisers, 
 papers or account book, she drew up her will. Even 
 Curie is remembered, the money promised on his 
 marriage is to be secured to him ; his pension and even 
 that of Nau are to be paid if they are proved innocent ; 
 under any circumstances Curie's wife is to be re- 
 membered. Her last letter was to the King- of France. 
 Shortly, clearly and calmly, she describes her situation 
 cut off from help and religious consolation, but glad and 
 willing to die for her faith. Earnestly and with feel- 
 ing she commends her servants to him. Her chaplain 
 — a young and simple man — was shut up in another 
 part of the Castle. She wrote and asked him to spend 
 the night in prayer for her. She hoped to see him in 
 the morning to receive his benediction and absolution. 
 
 By this time it was two in the morning and they 
 entreated her to take some rest. It was her custom 
 to have the Lives of the Saints read aloud to her before 
 she went to rest. This night Jane Kennedy was the 
 reader. Mary bade her look for the life of a saint 
 who had once been a great sinner. She stopped her 
 at the life of the penitent thief. "In truth he was a 
 great sinner but not so great as I have been. I wish 
 to take him for my patron for the time that remains to 
 me. May my Saviour have mercy on me and re- 
 member me and have mercy on me as He had on 
 him at the hour of his death." 
 
 She lay on her bed for some hours. Her ladies 
 were already in mourning dresses and knelt about the 
 room with lighted tapers, weeping or telling their 
 beads, but she lay quite still and they thought that she 
 
THE END 309 
 
 was praying. "This soul hath penance done and 
 penance more will do." 
 
 At six she roused herself and bade them wash her 
 feet. She had chosen a fine lawn kerchief to be used 
 in binding her eyes. She had herself attired with 
 care and great stateliness ; her petticoat and bodice 
 were of dark crimson, over these she wore a black 
 satin bodice and petticoat, with a long satin train 
 furred and with hanging sleeves. Her head-dress was 
 of lawn with a long flowing white veil. She had an 
 Agnus Dei round her neck and two rosaries hung 
 at her belt. 
 
 The door leading to her rooms was locked in the 
 inside and she was kneeling with her maids in prayer 
 when a loud knocking announced the Sheriffhad come 
 to fetch her. All her life, others had waited on her 
 leisure and now she sent to bid them wait till her 
 prayers were ended. They feared resistance and after 
 brief consultation, were preparing to use force, but, on 
 the Sheriff knocking again, the door opened at once 
 and he was startled to see that queenly figure in front 
 of him, adorned and composed as if for a state 
 occasion. One of her servants carried the ivory 
 crucifix from her altar in front of her, the rest followed, 
 weeping. To their dismay they were summarily 
 turned back at the door of their apartments. 
 
 Mary now carried the crucifix and folded 
 kerchief in her own hands and was conducted by 
 Paulet's halberdiers. 
 
 On the first landing she was met by the two earls 
 who marvelled to see her so composed. At the foot 
 of the stairs she met Andrew Melville, her steward. 
 He was to carry the news of her death to Scotland. 
 " It will be the sorrowfullest message that ever I 
 
310 MARY STUART 
 
 carried," he sobbed kneeling at her feet. But she 
 comforted him saying, " Good Melville, to-day thou 
 seest the end of Mary Stuart's miseries and that should 
 rejoice thee." She bade him tell her friends that she 
 died a true woman to her religion, a faithful Scottish 
 woman and a true French woman. 
 
 Before she entered the hall, she spoke again to 
 Sir Amyas about her servants and their future well- 
 being. Then she begged that some of them might 
 attend her to the scaffold, and when the earls 
 demurred she added with the old womanly charm, 
 " Alas ! poor souls, it will do them good to bid me 
 farewell and I hope that your mistress, being a maiden 
 queen, in regard of womanhood will suffer me to have 
 some of my own people about me at my death." 
 
 She undertook for her maids that they would not 
 weep nor make a commotion. From her gentlemen 
 she chose Melville, Bourgoign, Gorion the apothecary, 
 and a fourth, Balthazar Hulley, an old man. Of her 
 maids, Elisabeth Curie and Jane Kennedy. With 
 these following her she moved into the hall and, 
 cowering in the folds of her dress, unnoticed of all, a 
 little dog kept close to his mistress' side. 
 
 A fire burned in the large fire-place of the hall ; 
 near it a platform was hung all round with black. On 
 three sides a balustrade kept off the gentlemen 
 assembled in the hall to witness the deed, on the 
 fourth it could be ascended by steps. The two 
 executioners masked, in black clothes and white 
 aprons, stood motionless on the platform ; stools were 
 placed for the Queen and the two earls ; there was 
 also a black draped block and a stool, and the axe 
 was leant against the balustrade. 
 
 While the Queen's Commission was being read the 
 
THE END 311 
 
 Scottish Queen sat collected and indifferent as if what 
 she heard concerned her not at all. 
 
 Unless he were a man of ardent faith or infinite 
 self-sufficiency, the Dean of Peterborough must have 
 been in the painfullest case. He approached that 
 august and disdainful presence and, bowing low, got 
 four times as far as " Madame, the Queen's most 
 excellent Majesty." She stopped him firmly. " Mr 
 Dean I am settled in the ancient Catholic religion and 
 mind to spend my life in defence of it." He tried to 
 condense all he had to say in one sentence, bidding her 
 lay aside her unclean dregs of superstition, repent her 
 wickedness and set her faith on Christ to be saved. 
 
 The earls, foreseeing a controversy, interposed and 
 said that, as she would not listen to exhortation, they 
 would all pray for her. While all the company joined 
 in prayer for Mary's repentance, for a blessing on the 
 Queen's Majesty and confusion to her enemies, Mary 
 began to recite aloud the penitential psalms in Latin, 
 slipping from her seat and praying with great fervour. 
 When the rest had finished she continued her prayers, 
 praying specially for Elisabeth, that she might serve 
 God aright. She held the Cross in her hand, often 
 striking it against her breast. Lord Kent could not 
 moderate his zeal and cried, " Madame, settle Christ 
 Jesus in your heart and leave these trumpery things." 
 
 But the crucifix meant much to Mary. As she 
 ended her prayers she kissed it and said, " even as Thy 
 arms, Oh Jesus, were spread here upon the Cross, so 
 receive me into the arms of Thy Mercy." The 
 executioner approached to help her to undress but, 
 with a touch of playfulness, she said, " Let me do this. 
 I understand this business better than you, I never 
 had such a groom of the chamber." Then she 
 
312 MARY STUART 
 
 beckoned to her two ladies to help her. The 
 affectionate, familiar service under such appalling 
 circumstances moved them beyond bearing, and they 
 began to sob aloud, but she placed her finger on their 
 lips and said with the old authority, " Ne criez pas, 
 j'ai promis pour vous," she kissed them and made the 
 sign of the Cross over them. 
 
 She was still a noble and comely woman as she 
 stood in her crimson undress, her white shoulders and 
 long round throat bare. The slender figure had 
 grown stouter without losing its stately carriage, the 
 face had broadened, the chin was full and powerful, 
 Elisabeth Curie weeping, kissed the kerchief and 
 bound it round her eyes. 
 
 Then she sat down on her stool, raised her head 
 and stretched her neck expecting the sword stroke, 
 for such was the privilege of royal persons condemned 
 to death in France. No stroke came but a confused 
 sound of voices and a giving of new directions — a 
 fearful strain on her tense nerves. The executioners 
 helped her to rise and to arrange her head on the 
 low-lying block. 
 
 With eyes darkened, but with hand clasping the 
 Cross of Christ, through the terrible silence of that 
 crowded room, she cried with unfaltering voice. " In 
 manus tuas Domine me commendo." Then the axe fell. 
 
 When, after the savage fashion of the time, the 
 executioner held up the head before the assembled 
 people, the head-dress fell off and showed the hair 
 below it quite white and short ; in the anguish of 
 death the beautiful face had contracted suddenly and 
 looked worn and pinched like that of an old woman. 
 The faithful little dog still lay cowering beside the 
 dead body and could not be induced to leave it. 
 
THE EXECUTION OF MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS 
 
THE END 313 
 
 One last service her ladies were earnest to render 
 to her. For years they had tended her in sickness 
 and in health, they begged that only the hands that 
 loved her might touch her body. It was roughly 
 denied to them and they were rudely hurried back to 
 their rooms. 
 
 Everything that had belonged to her, her beads, 
 robes, mantles, the very drapery of the scaffold stained 
 with her blood were burnt in the great hall fire 
 lest they should be carried away and honoured as 
 relics. 
 
 Meantime Henry Talbot, mounted on a swift horse, 
 was already on his way to bear the news to London 
 and the court. 
 
 • ••••• 
 
 For a moment all the history of the time seemed 
 concentrated in the hall at Fotheringay. But a 
 moment more and the world was again plunging 
 along its anxious, ambitious way. 
 
 Elisabeth's one anxiety was to escape all responsi- 
 bility for the execution of her cousin. She stormed 
 at her Council, banished Burghley from her presence, 
 and flung all the blame on Davison, pursuing him 
 with fines and imprisonments till he was a ruined man. 
 She wrote abject letters to James assuring him of her 
 innocence and cajoling him with an increased pension 
 and greater assurance of the succession. 
 
 Scotland was in a ferment. Francis, Lord Both- 
 well, put on his armour as the only suitable " dule 
 weed " and made a raid into England as the only 
 adequate expression of sorrow. Had James been 
 any other than James, the anger of his nobles would 
 have driven him into war with Elisabeth, but he 
 tarried and negotiated till it was decent for him to 
 
314 MARY STUART 
 
 drop his indignation and renew alliance with his 
 mother's enemies. 
 
 In Paris, so great and universal was the emotion 
 when the news arrived that the English ambassador 
 expected a declaration of war. But France had 
 troubles enough of her own to attend to and the 
 excitement ended in tears and windy words. Mean- 
 while Philip of Spain continued to gather men and 
 ships and stores for his great enterprise, and laid 
 before the Pope Mary's demission of her claims in his 
 favour. 
 
 So half the world forgot and half made profit of 
 the death of the woman who had for years kept 
 Europe in a ferment. 
 
 And when they turned again to their scheming and 
 lying and fighting, and invading, she, thank God, was 
 out of it all and at rest. 
 
 Again and again her story has been told, a story 
 strange and pitiful and terrible, and of undying interest. 
 Volumes have been written to prove her innocence, 
 and counter volumes to prove her guilt, but innocent 
 or guilty she has never lost her hold on the hearts and 
 imaginations of men. 
 
 Her judges would not allow the plea she put 
 forward so proudly, that being a queen she could be 
 judged by none but God alone ; her biographer may 
 plead for her, that, seeing that she was a woman of 
 queenly nature, she may be left to the mercy of that 
 Infallible Judgment. 
 
 " Cry unto her that her warfare is accomplished, 
 that her iniquity is pardoned, for she hath received at 
 the Lord's hand double for all her sins." ; 
 
 
r. 
 2 
 
 
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INDEX 
 
 Ainslie Bond, the, 143, 149, 195 
 
 Alencon, Duke of, 253 
 
 Allen, Dr, 256, 257 
 
 Alva, Duke of, 27, 204, 218, 225 
 
 Amboise, Conspiracy of, 33-34 
 
 Anjou, Duke of, 223 
 
 Aquila, Duke of, Spanish Ambas- 
 sador, 77, 90 
 
 Argyle, Earl of, 28, 50, 92, III, 118, 
 128, 140, 177 
 
 Argyle, Countess of, 105 
 
 Armour, Cuddy, 246 
 
 Arran, Regent, see Chatelherault 
 
 Arran, Earl of, son of Chatelherault, 
 28, 32, 44, 64, 87 
 
 Arundel, Lord, 208, 226 
 
 Athol, Earl of, 102, 149, 155, 161, 
 164, 169, 171 
 
 Babington, Antony, 251, 278-287, 
 
 295 
 Bacon, Sir Nicholas, 198 
 Balfour, Sir James, 124, 127, 135, 
 
 137, 143, 151, 158, 167, 171, 177 
 Ballard, 278, 279, 282 
 Barham, Sergeant, 200 
 Bastran, 128, 217 
 Beale, Secretary, 297 
 Beaton, Andrew, 243 
 Beaton, Archbishop of Glasgow, 
 
 136, 174, 230, 256, 257, 266, 267, 
 
 298 
 Beaton, Cardinal, 5, 12 n. 
 Beaton, John, 179 
 Beaton, Mary, 10, 60, 71, 86, III, 
 
 I49» 2 43 
 Bedford, Earl of, 40, in, 119-121, 
 
 185, 189 
 
 Belliere, French Envoy, 301 
 
 Blackadder, Captain, 147 
 
 Bog, William, 16 
 
 Bothwell, Francis, Lord, 302, 313 
 
 Bothwell, James Hepburn, Earl of, 
 19, 21, 22, 26, 45, 49, 65-66, 83, 
 qS-ioo, 105, 106, 109-118 passim, 
 
 119-134, 134-161, 163, 173, 176, 
 
 181, 190, 193, 197, 210, 224, 227, 
 
 245 
 Bothwell, Lady, see Lady Jean 
 
 Gordon 
 Bourgoign, Mary's apothecary, 283, 
 
 284, 310 
 Boyd, Lord, 209 
 Brantome, Sieur de, 29, 49, 51 
 Bromley, Lord, 291 
 Buccleuch, Lady of, 103, 112 
 Buchanan, Master George, 75, 77, 
 
 in, 113, 121, 130, 222, 231, 253 
 Buckhurst, Lord, 297 
 
 Campian, Father Edmund, 2152, 278 
 
 Carlos, Don, 41, 79 
 
 Carwood, Margaret, 125 
 
 Casket Letters, the, 38, 126, 145, 
 
 164, 193-199 
 Cassilis, Lord, 127, 128 
 Castelnan de Mauvissiere, French 
 
 Ambassador, 239, 279 
 Catherine de Medici, 1, 13, 21, 30, 
 
 39, 42, 58, 60, 77, 165, 182, 301 
 Cavendish, Elizabeth, 245 
 Cavendish, Mr Richard, 207 
 Cecil, Sir William, 35, 81, 86, 147, 
 
 185, 191, 197, 198, 208, 214, 220, 
 
 225, 227, 235, 276, 291, 313 
 Chalmers, Mr David, 113, 137, 144 
 Charles IX., King of France, 77, 163, 
 
 238 
 Chastelar, 19, 75-77 
 Chateauneuf, French Ambassador, 
 
 273 
 Chatelherault, Duke of, 6-9, 24, 25, 
 
 28, 43, 64, 92, 180 
 Claude de Valois, Duchess ot 
 
 Lorraine, 14, 29, 41 
 Craig, John, 152, 167 
 Craigmillar Bond, 117-118, 177 
 Crawford of Jordanhill, 122-123, 
 
 210 
 Crichton, Father, 256 
 
 315 
 
316 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Croc, du, French Ambassador, 113, 
 
 138, 153, 156 
 Crofts, Sir John, 291 
 Cullen, Captain, 129 
 Curie, Secretary, 280, 284-289, 295, 
 
 308 
 Curie, Elizabeth, 310 
 
 Dalgleish, George, 164, 176 
 
 Damville, Sieur de, 49 
 
 Darnley, Lord, 10, 21, 26, 41, 68, 
 80, 85-95, 99-io8, 109-134, 146, 
 170, 181, 194, 227, 255, 269 
 
 Davison, Secretary, 303, 313 
 
 Derby, Earl of, 198 
 
 D'Elboeuf, Duke, 32, 65 
 
 Diane de Poictiers, 13, 21 
 
 Douglas, Archibald, 132, 164, 301 
 
 Douglas, George, 175-183, 230 
 
 Douglas of Loch Leven, 169, 179 
 
 Douglas, Lady Margaret, see Lady 
 Lennox 
 
 Douglas, Willie, 176-179, 229, 278 
 
 D'Oysel, 46-48 
 
 Dudley, Lord Robert, see Leicester 
 
 Drury, 99, 179, 237 
 
 Drury, Sir Dure, 303 
 
 Du Bellay, 19, 75 
 
 Elisabeth, Queen of England, 1, 
 16, 20, 21, 24, 26, 30, 32, 35, 42, 
 44, 47, 54, 58, 61-64, 69-84, 86-95 
 passim, 100, III, 131, 138, 142, 
 151, 163, 165, 169, 183, 184-314 
 passim 
 
 Elisabeth of Valois, Queen of Spain, 
 14, 29, 50, 174, 204, 232 
 
 Elphinston, Nicholas, 169 
 
 Englefield, Sir Francis, 258 
 
 Eric, King of Sweden, 41 
 
 Erskine, Arthur, the Equerry, 105, 
 108 
 
 Erskine, Janet, wife of Douglas of 
 Loch Leven, 4, 168, 175, 177 
 
 Erskine, Lord Mar, 96, ill, 139, 
 149, 164, 235-236 
 
 Fleming, Lady, 11, 12 
 Fleming, Lord, 151, 188, 230 
 Fleming, Mary, 10, 60, 83, 85, 97, 
 
 112, 143, 168, 232,237 
 Fontenay, 268 
 Francis II., King of France, 15, 20, 
 
 26, 30, 33, 38, 39 
 
 Gifford, Gilbert, 275-289 
 Glencairn, Earl of, 74, 109, 149, 164 
 Gordon, Adam, Bishop of the 
 
 Orkneys, 153 
 Gordon, Lady Jean, 68, 102, 146, 
 
 149, 160, 170 
 Gordon, John, son of Earl of 
 
 Huntly, 66, 141 
 Gordon, Master John, 229 
 Gorges, Sir Thomas, 284 
 Gorion, 310 
 
 Goudanus, Papal Envoy, 57-58 
 Granvelle, Cardinal, 27, 258 
 Gray, Patrick, Master of, 267-270, 
 
 3°i, 303 
 
 Guerau, de, Spanish Ambassador, 
 
 205, 224 
 Guise, Antoinette, Duchess of, 3, 1 1, 
 
 167, 247 
 Guise, Antoinette de, daughter of 
 
 above, 2 
 Guise, Claude, Duke of, 2 
 Guise, Francis, Duke of, 2, 15, 18, 
 
 24, 31-34, 54-59, 7i,88, 115 
 Guise, Henri, Duke of, son of above, 
 
 247-249, 254-261, 266, 300 
 
 Hacket, George, 133 
 
 Hamilton, Archbishop, 125, 149, 180 
 
 Hamilton, Lord Claude, 125, 129, 
 
 277, 281 
 Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, 219 
 Hatton, Christopher, 244, 291, 293 
 Hawkins, Sir John, 226 
 Hay of Talla, 127, 132, 176-177 
 Henry II., King of France, 3, 13, 
 
 23, 26, 29 
 Henry III., King of France, 238, 
 
 301 
 Henry VIII., King of England, 3, 
 
 6-9, 38 
 Hepburn, Bishop of Moray, 173 
 Hepburn of Bowton, 118, 132, 158, 
 
 176 
 Hepburn of Ormiston, 127, 132 
 Hereford, Earl of, 217 
 Herries, Lord, 151, 178, 180-183, 
 
 188, 190, 192 
 Higford, 227 
 Home, Lord, 164 
 Huntingdon, Lord, 217, 218 
 Huntly, Earl of, 45, 51, 66-68 
 Huntly, George, Earl of, son to 
 
 above, 67, 97, 102, 105, 106, 120, 
 
INDEX 
 
 317 
 
 132, 135-140, 147, 153) l6l > *73, 
 
 177 
 Huntly, Lady, 67, 107 
 
 James V., King of Scotland, 3-5, 
 
 175 
 James VI., King of Scotland, 119, 
 
 222, 245, 253-262, 266-270, 274, 
 
 3 QI , 3 X 3 
 John, Don, of Austria, 248-249 
 
 Kennedy, Jane, 308 
 Kent, Earl of, 305, 311 
 Killegrew, 139, 235-236 
 Kirkcaldy of Grange, 146, 1 57-1 59, 
 
 173, 181, 210, 236 
 Knollys, Sir Francis, 34, 186-188, 
 
 193, 196, 199, 203, 212-214, 272 
 Knox, John, 27, 42, 47, 54-56, 74, 
 
 78-79, 96, 98, 102, 152, 167, 177, 
 
 236 
 
 La Mothe FENELON, French Am- 
 bassador, 227, 239 
 Leicester, Earl of, 31, 40, 70, 81, 
 
 84, 86, 194, 197, 198, 200, 208, 
 
 216, 235, 265, 291 
 Lennox, Earl of, 43, 82-83, 86, 98, 
 
 no, 122, 126, 137, 140, 142, 193, 
 
 219 
 Lennox, Lady, 9, 41, 80, 86,90, 222, 
 
 232, 264 
 Leslie, Bishop of Ross, 45, 192, 204, 
 
 224, 226 
 Library, Queen Mary's, 17-20 
 Lindsay, Lord, 53, 107, 157, 158, 
 
 161, 168 
 Livingston, Lord, 10, 122, 151 
 Livingston, Lady, 212 
 Livingston, Mary, 10, 85, 243 
 Lorraine, Cardinal of, 18, 20, 31, 33, 
 
 54, 78, 88, 150, 182, 242,247 
 Lowther, High Sheriff, 185 
 Lumley, Lord, 208 
 
 Maitland of Lethington, 36, 42, 
 44, 58, 61, 71, 76-78, 83, 85, 90- 
 97, 117-118, 131, 136, 141, 147, 
 148, 152-160, 164, 166, 171, 177, 
 190-199, 202, 209-211, 221, 237- 
 238 
 
 Makgill, 223 
 
 Mar, Earl of, see Lord Erskine 
 
 Margaret of Valois, Queen of 
 
 Navarre, 14, 21 
 Martiques, Sieur de, 32, 46, 165 
 Mary of Guise, 1-12, 23, 28, 31, 35, 
 
 45, 51,96, 115, 128 
 Mary Tudor, 1, 23, 24, 26, 28 
 Maximilian, Emperor of Germany, 
 
 41 
 
 Melville, Sir Andrew, 283, 294, 309, 
 
 310 
 Melville, Sir James, 20, 69, 109, 112, 
 
 147, 148, 152-154 
 Melville, Sir Robert, 151, 168, 
 
 302 
 Mendoza, Bernardino di, Spanish 
 
 Ambassador, 252-262, 275, 279, 
 
 282, 296, 300 
 Methven, Lord, 177 
 Middlemore, 189 
 Mildmay, Sir Thomas, 220 
 Moretta, Savoyard Ambassador, 
 
 126, 136 
 Morgan, Thomas, 241, 256, 268, 
 
 275, 276, 279 
 Morton, Earl of, 17, 75, 83, 97, no, 
 
 121, 125, 132, 135, 144, 158, 164, 
 
 167, 171, 190-199, 222, 235-237, 
 
 2 53, 255 . , T J 
 
 Murray, Agnes Keith, Lady, 22, 61, 
 
 96, 163-164 
 Murray, James Stuart, Earl of, 17, 
 25, 28, 36, 43, 5°, 58, 64, 67, 71, 
 76, 78, 83, 89-95, 96-99, 103, 107, 
 109-118, 120, 127, 131, 136, 139, 
 169, 183, 189-199, 202, 211, 216, 
 219, 232 
 
 Nau, 106, 246, 276, 284-289, 295, 
 
 3°7, 308 
 Nelson, 129, 
 Norfolk, 38, 192-199, 200-211, 216- 
 
 233, 235 
 Northumberland, Earl of, 186, 193, 
 
 217, 218, 222 
 Northumberland, Lady, 217, 218 
 Norton, Mr Christopher, 212, 213 
 Norton, father of above, 218 
 
 Ochiltree, Lord, 53, 75 
 
 Ogilvy of Boyne, 102, in, 149, 
 
 243 
 
 Paget, Lord, 271, 275, 290 
 Paris, French, 125-128, 133, 194 
 
318 
 
 INDEX 
 
 Paroy, Madame de, 22 
 
 Parry, 275 
 
 Pasquier, 287, 289 
 
 Paulet, Sir Amyas, 241, 272-289, 
 298, 303, 3io 
 
 Phellips, 280-281 
 
 Philip, King of Spain, 23, 29, 78, 93 
 97, 151, 201, 204, 224, 238, 249, 
 257-262, 274, 277, 279, 314 
 
 Pierrepoint, Bess, 244 
 
 Pitcairn, 223 
 
 Pius V., Pope, 150, 165, 225 
 
 Powrie, 127 
 
 Rallay, Mademoiselle, 271 
 
 Rambouillet, 101 
 
 Randolph, 17, 37, 47, 55. 60, 71-73, 
 
 87, 90, 100, 104, 158, 219 
 Raulet, Secretary, 84, 246 
 Reres, Mrs Forbes of, 112, 113, 
 
 122-123 
 Riccio, David, 84, 88, 91, 99-108, 
 
 115, 126, 128, 246 
 Riccio, Joseph, 122, 127, 147 
 Ridolfi, 224 
 Robsart, Amy, 194 
 Ronsard, 14, 19, 75, 178 
 Ruthven, Lord, 75, 91, 104-106, 115 
 Ruthven, son of above, 161, 168, 
 
 259 
 
 Sadler, Sir Ralph, 7-8, 192-199, 
 
 232, 266, 271, 272, 291 
 Sanquhar, Lord, 164 
 Savage, 275, 278, 279 
 Scrope, Lord, 186, 203, 213 
 Scrope, Lady, 192, 203 
 Sempill, Lord, 164 
 Sempill of Beltrees, 85, 343 
 Seton, Mary, 10, 86, 112, 161, 243 
 Seton, Lord, 137, 151, 156, 180 
 Shrewsbury, Lord, 198, 203, 206, 
 
 214, 217, 220, 228, 230, 240, 265, 
 
 272, 278, 291, 305 
 
 Shrewsbury, Lady, 207, 232, 243- 
 
 ^245, 263-265 
 
 Sidney, Sir Philip, 268 
 
 Silva, de, Spanish Ambassador, 170, 
 
 205 
 Somerset, Regent, 10 
 Somerville, 262 
 Spens, "black Mr John," 137 
 Standen, Antony, 108 
 Stewart, James, Earl of Arran, 254, 
 
 259 
 Stuart, Lady Arabella, 245, 263 
 Stuart, Lord Charles, 245 
 Stuart, Esme", Due d'Aubigny, 254- 
 
 257 
 Stuart, Lord James, see Murray 
 Stuart, Lord John, 43, 302 
 Stuart, Lord Robert, 43, 65, 87, 91, 
 
 94, 105, 126 
 Sussex, Earl of, 192-195 
 
 Talbot, Henry, 313 
 
 Talbot, 265 
 
 Throckmorton, Francis, 251, 262 
 
 Throckmorton, Sir Nicholas, 18, 29, 
 
 40, 46, 47-49, 92, 104, no, 166, 
 
 171, 177, 203, 262 
 Topcliffe, 263 
 Traquair, Laird of, 108 
 Trondeson, Anne, 103 
 Tullibardine, Laird of, 157, 164, 169, 
 
 178, 246 
 
 WAAD, 267 
 
 Walsingham, Sir Francis, 259, 262, 
 272-289,290, 291, 295, 301, 303, 
 
 305 
 Westmoreland, Earl of, 198 
 Westmoreland, 203 
 White, Nicholas, 214-215 
 Wilson, Bothwell's servant, 127 
 Wilson, Dr, 227 
 Wotton, Dr, 35 
 
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