HISTORY OF SCOTLAND
T H K
HISTORY OF SCOTLAND
FROM AGRICOLA'S INVASION TO THK
REVOLUTION OF 1688
BV
J ( ) H N II I L L H U R T O N
VOL. IV.
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD AND SONS
KDlMH'Rr, H AND LONDON
MDCCCL.XVI I
\U7
t
CONTENTS OF FOURTH VOLUME.
CHAPTER XXXVII.
Reformation.
PAOR
GOVERNMENT OF MARY OF LORRAINE HER INABILITY TO UNDER-
STAND THE CONSTITUTION OF SCOTLAND FRENCH PRACTICE?
FRENCHMEN PROMOTED TO HIGH OFFICES ATTEMPT TO PUT
THE FORTRESSES IN THEIR HANDS PROPOSAL OF A STANDING
ARMY, AND ITS RECEPTION QUEEN MARY's MARRIAGE TO THE
DAUPHIN HIS ACCESSION TO THE CROWN OF FRANCE THE
COUNTRY ALARMED BY PROJECTS OF ANNEXATION TO THE
CROWN OP FRANCE RISE OF SUSPICION AND DISLIKE OF
FRANCE AND THE FRENCH ALLIANCE THE ALIEN CHARACTER
OF THE CHURCH IN SCOTLAND HOW FAR THE DOCTRINES OF
THE REFORMERS WERE SPREADING SECULAR CAUSES OF EN-
MITY TO THE CHURCH WEALTH AND LUXURIOUSNESS OF THE
CHURCHMEN THEIR MORAL CONDITION THEIR TEMPORAL
POWER AS ADMINISTRATORS OF THE LAW THE POWER OF EX-
COMMUNICATION OR CURSING ITS USE *FOR LEVYING DEBTS
AND FOR ACTS OF PERSONAL OPPRESSION SPECIMEN OF A
CURSING THE CHURCH CONSCIOUS OF ITS OWN DEFECTS
INTERNAL EFFORTS AT REFORMATION REFORMING COUNCILS
ARCHBISHOP HAMILTON'S CATECHISM THE TWOPENNY
FAITH, . . . 1-47
vi CONTENTS.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
JK Reformation.
(Continued.)
POLITICAL POSITION OF THE REFORMATION QUESTION IN EURO-
1'KAN POLITICS ARRIVAL OF KNOX CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS
NATURE AND INFLUENCE HIS COADJUTORS AND THEIR MO-
TIVES MAITLAND OF LETHINGTON THE FIRST RAND OR
COVENANT THE LORDS OF THE CONGREGATION EMBODIED
PRESSURE ON THE QUEEN-REGENT HER DUPLICITY THE
FIRST OUTBREAK ATTACKS ON THE SYMBOLS OF POPISH WOR-
SHIP AND THE BUILDINGS OF THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS CON-
SIDERATION HOW FAR THE CONDITION OF OLD ECCLESIASTICAL
BUILDINGS IN SCOTLAND DUE TO THE REFORMERS THE CON-
GREGATION AT PERTH DEALINGS WITH THE REGENT OCCU-
PATION OF EDINBURGH CONDITION AND DANGERS OF ENGLAND
QUEEN ELIZABETH KNOX AND THE "BLAST" AGAINST
FEMALE RULE CECIL AND KNOX IN TREATY DIFFICULTY OF
FINDING A LEGITIMATE HEAD TO TREAT WITH IN SCOTLAND
TREATY OF BERWICK WAR SIEGE OF LEITH DEATH OF
THE REGENT DEPARTURE OF THE FRENCH, AND TREATY OF
EDINBURGH REFORMATION STATUTES, . . 48-89
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Condition of UK Jlntion from UK Jitar of Jfntepcntence
to UK Reformation.
THE CONSTITUTION OF SCOTLAND THE POWER OF THE ESTATES
OF PARLIAMENT THEIR EXERCISE OF THE EXECUTIVE LORDS
OF THE ARTICLES THE ESTATES AS A FINAL COURT OF LAW
LORDS AUDITORS DAILY COUNCIL ESTABLISHMENT OF
THE COURT OF SESSION ON THE MODEL OF THE PARLIAMENT OF
PARIS INFLUENCE OF THIS IMITATION CHARACTER OF THE
INSTITUTIONS ADAPTATION OF THE CIVIL LAW ABSENCE OF
THE PREROGATIVE OR INVIDIOUS RIGHTS WHICH SET CLASS
AGAINST CLASS CONSTITUTIONAL AND HISTORICAL RESULTS
POPULARITY OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTIONS PROVISIONS FOR
THE EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE GRAMMAR-SCHOOLS UNI-
VERSITIES THEIR TESTIMONY TO AN ELEMENT OF ENLIGHT-
CONTENTS. vii
ENKD LIBKKALITV IN THE CHURCH THEIR MODEL BROUGHT
FROM FRANCE VESTIGES OF THIS INFLUENCE IN UNIVERSITY
CONSTITUTION AND PRACTICE, . . . 90-116
CHAPTER XL.
Contrition of tljc Ration from the 11 ai of
to the Reformation.
(Continued.)
SCOTTISH SCHOLARS THEIR EARLY FAME ABROAD COMMENCE-
MENT OF NATIONAL LITERATURE THOMAS OF ERCILDOUN
RISE AND PECULIAR CONDITIONS OF A PATRIOTIC LITERATURE
BARBOUR, BLIND HARRY, WYNTOUN, FORDUN, BOWER, BOECE,
MAJOR, BUCHANAN, LESLIE ' THE COMPLAYNT OF SCOTLAND'
INFLUENCE OF THE PATRIOTIC LITERATURE DUNBAR, MONT-
GOMERY, AND THE OTHER POETS LANGUAGE OF SCOTTISH
LITERATURE VESTIGES OF CELTIC LITERATURE PRINTING
THE ARTS SIGNIFICANCE OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL AND BARO-
NIAL REMAINS SHOW THE POVERTY FOLLOWING THE WAR,
AND THE INFLUENCE OF FRANCE MATERIAL CONDITION OF THE
COUNTRY EXPORTS AND IMPORTS MINING GOLD, SILVER,
LEAD, AND COAL A SPANISH AMBASSADOR'S ACCOUNT OF SCOT-
LAND IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY, . . 117-164
CHAPTER XLI.
DEATH OF THE KING OF FRANCE - VISITORS TO THE YOUNG
QUEEN - HER BROTHER, AFTERWARDS EARL OF MURRAY - EM-
BASSY FROM HUNTLY AND THE ROMISH PARTY - PERTINACIOUS
DEALING OF QUEEN ELIZABETIl's AMBASSADORS IN 'FRANCE -
QUEEN MARY'S RETURN HER COMPANIONS HER RECEPTION
HER PAST AND FUTURE POSITION COMPARED - A PAGEANT -
THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY - THE QUESTION OF TOLERATING
IDOLATRY - CALVIN CONSULTED - METHODS OF REVILING THE
OLD CREED AND CEREMONIES - INTERVIEWS WITH JOHN KNOX
- THE FIRST BOOK OF DISCIPLINE - FAILURE OF THE CLERGY
TO GET IT CONFIRMED BY PARLIAMENT REASONS FOR THE LAY
MEMBERS OF THE CONGREGATION DWLIKING IT CONTAINS
PROVISIONS FOR APPROPRIATING THE TEMPORALITIES OF THE
viii CONTENTS.
CHURCH WOULD THUS TAKE THEM FROM THE LAY LORDS
WHO HAD SECURED THEM INSTANCES OF THE METHOD OF
GETTING AT THEM ROASTING A COMMENDATOR KNOx's
WRATH THE COMPROMISE MURRAY'S MARRIAGE AND ELEVA-
TION A CLEARING AMONG THE BORDER THIEVES, . 165-198
CHAPTER XLII.
C"lurcn
(Continued.}
DANGERS IS THE NORTH POSITION OF IIUNTLY AS LEADER OF
THE ROMANIST PARTY MURRAY'S DESIGNS A ROYAL PRO-
GRESS HUNTLY'S FEARS FROM IT HE ARMS BATTLE OF
CORRICHIE RUIN OF THE HOUSE OF HUNTLY QUEEN MARY'S
POLICY IN ASSISTING IN THE RUIN OF HER FRIENDS POSITION
OF MARY'S GOVERNMENT ASPECT OF FIRMNESS AND MODERA-
TION HER HOME-LIFE AND AMUSEMENTS HER POPULARITY
FURTHER DIALOGUES WITH KNOX QUESTION AS TO WHAT
LANGUAGE THEY WERE HELD IN? PROSECUTIONS OF ROMAN-
IST PRIESTS ARCHBISHOP HAMILTON THE QUEEN'S DEVOT-
EDNESS TO HER CHURCH HER FOREIGN COMMUNICATIONS
ASSASSINATION OF HER UNCLE PARLIAMENT TENDENCY TO
A REACTION AGAINST THE PROTESTANT PARTY FURTHER
ALTERCATIONS BETWEEN THE QUEEN AND KNOX RIOTOUS
ATTACK ON OFFICIATING PRIESTS THE RIOTERS BROUGHT TO
TASK FEELING AMONG THE PROTESTANT CLERGY, 199-235
CHAPTER XLII I.
( Continued. )
THE QUEEN AND HER ADMIRERS - MYSTERIOUS STORY OF THE
PROJECT OF ARRAN AND BOTHWELL - BOTHWELL INDICTED
FOR IT - HISTORY OF CHATELAR HIS ADVENTURES - HIS FATE
POLITICAL IMPORTANCE OF THE QUEEN'S MARRIAGE -- THE
PROJECTS OF THE HOUSE OF GUISE - QUEEN MARY'S OWN
VIEWS - PROJECT FOR UNION WITH THE HEIR OF THE SPANISH
MONARCHY - POLITICAL PROSPECTS OF SUCH A UNION - MARY ? S
FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE ABOUT IT HER SCHEMES TRA-
VERSED BY CATHERINE OF MEDICI - OTHER PROJECTS QUEEN
CONTENTS. IX
ELIZABETH HER ESCAPADES ABOUT LEICESTER PROPOSED
MEETING OF MARY AND ELIZABETH MARY MEETS HENRY
STEWART, LORD DARNLEY MARY*S SECRET EMISSARIES
DAVJD RIZZIO REACTION IN FAVOUR OF THE ROMANIST
PARTY GLOOM AND DIFFICULTIES OF THE REFORMERS PRO-
TESTANT RIOT SUPPRESSED QUESTION OF CONSULTING THE
ESTATES ABOUT THE MARRIAGE MARRIAGE OF MARY AND
DARNLEY, . . 236-277
CHAPTER XLIV.
iTUtcrn 4 Han\
( Continued. )
A STRONG GOVERNMENT DARNLEY GETS THE TITLE OF KING
PARLIAMENTARY DISPLEASURE WITH THE ASSUMPTION ARM-
ING OF MURRAY AND HIS SUPPORTERS THEIR DISPERSAL-^-
PRESENT THEMSELVES TO ELIZABETH HOW TREATED BY HER
DANGER OF ELIZABETH AND THE PROTESTANT CAUSED- PRO-
JECTS OF THE ROMANIST POWERS CONFERENCE AT BAYONNE
PHILIP, CATHERINE OF MEDICI, AND ALVA DARNLEY's
CHARACTER DEVELOPS ITSELF ODIOUS AMONG THE COURTIERS
HIS WIFE'S APPRECIATION OF HIM PROGRESS OF RIZZIo's
INFLUENCE PROJECT FOR PUTTING HIM OUT OF THE WAY
THE BAND FOR HIS SLAUGHTER ARRANGEMENTS FOR EFFECT-
ING IT THE SUPPER-PARTY RIZZIO DRAGGED QUT AND
SLAIN INQUIRY WHEN THE QUEEN KNEW OF HIS DEATH?
HER CONDUCT BEFORE AND AFTER THAT KNOWLEDGE LURES
BACK HER HUSBAND RETURN OF MURRAY AND HIS FOLLOW-
ERS FROM ENGLAND MURRAY MAKES PEACE SECRET AR-
RANGEMENT OF THE QUEEN AND HER HUSBAND THEIR ESCAPE
TO DUNBAR, . ... 278-316
CHAPTER XLV.
(Continued?)
THE CONFEDERATE LORDS AND THEIR DANGER - PROJECTS OF RE-
TALIATION - THE SLAYERS OF RIZZIO SEEK REFUGE IN ENG-
LAND - A PARLIAMENT - THE FIT OF CONJUGAL ATTACHMENT
PASSES - SYMPTOMS OF MARY*S FEELING TOWARDS HER HUS-
THE
HISTORY OF SCOTLAND,
CHAPTER XXXVII.
Reformation.
GOVERNMENT OF MARY OF LORRAINE HER INABILITY TO UNDER-
STAND THE CONSTITUTION OF SCOTLAND FRENCH PRACTICES
FRENCHMEN PROMOTED TO HIGH OFFICES ATTEMPT TO PUT THE
FORTRESSES IN THEIR HANDS PROPOSAL OF A STANDING ARMY,
AND ITS RECEPTION QUEEN MARY'S MARRIAGE TO THE DAUPHIN
HIS ACCESSION TO THE CROWN OF FRANCE THE COUNTRY
ALARMED BY PROJECTS OF ANNEXATION TO THE CROWN OF
FRANCE RISE OF SUSPICION AND DISLIKE OF FRANCE AND THE
FRENCH ALLIANCE THE ALIEN CHARACTER OF THE CHURCH IN
SCOTLAND - HOW FAR THE DOCTRINES OF THE REFORMERS WERE
SPREADING - SECULAR CAUSES OF ENMITY TO THE CHURCH
WEALTH AND LUXURIOUSNESS OF THE CHURCHMEN THEIR
MORAL CONDITION THEIR TEMPORAL POWER AS ADMINISTRA-
TORS OF THE LAW - THE POWER OF EXCOMMUNICATION OR
CURSING ITS USE FOR LEVYING DEBTS AND FOR ACTS OF PER-
SONAL OPPRESSION SPECIMEN OF A CURSING THE CHURCH
CONSCIOUS OF ITS OWN DEFECTS INTERNAL EFFORTS AT REFOR-
MATION - REFORMING COUNCILS ARCHBISHOP HAMILTON'S
CATECHISM THE TWOPENNY FAITH.
MARY of Lorraine, the queen-mother, when in 1554
she entered on her acknowledged power as regent, had
been sixteen years in Scotland. In these years, how-
ever, she had not so sufficiently r#vd the character of
VOL. iv. A
2 THE REFORMATION.
the people as to be able to avoid cause of mortal
offence. She might have seen how the interference of
England was detested, and thus have judged that, when
France interfered in Scotland, the old ally would get
no better toleration than the old enemy. It was to be
in the arrangement of events that France was to inter-
o
fere, and in a vital and unpardonable shape. But even
before such projects were ripened, the queen- regent,
as if she had intended to awaken all suspicions, tam-
pered where she might easily have let alone. The Scots
could never be brought to tolerate foreigners, English
or Continental, in political offices of trust or power.
"We have seen how poor De la Bastie's elevation ended.
There was the unpopular history of the other French
friends of Albany, and their holding of Dumbarton
Castle national offences to the country, only mitigated
by the preponderance of the offences committed by
England. There never appears a foreigner on the lists
of the holders of high political office in Scotland down
to this time ; and that there were few foreigners pro-
moted in the Church, we may gather from the notoriety
surrounding one instance in which a foreigner got pro-
motion. His name was Damien. He was made Abbot
of Tongueland ; and because he, a Frenchman, obtained
this Scots benefice, he was the object of the satirical
lash of the poet Dunbar.
The office 1 of chancellor was held by the Earl of
Huntly, perhaps the greatest territorial lord of the day.
A deputy or vice-chancellor was appointed, who did
the work of the office and held the power, and the per-
son so appointed was a Frenchman named De Roubay.
For some cause not fully cleared up, and only known
to be connected with his intervention in Highland
REGENCY OF MARY OF LORRAINE, 1554-60. 3
quarrels, Huntly came under the letter of the treason
law, and had to compound with the crown by a money
payment. His humiliation was doubly coupled with
favour to Frenchmen. He held a lucrative office, con-
nected apparently with the collection of the revenue
in Orkney, whence he is called Governor of Orkney.
This office, whatever may have been its exact name,
was given to a Frenchman, M. Boutot. On the list of
comptrollers of the exchequer, too, there appears the
name of the famous De Roubay, and, as his successor,
Bartholomew Villemore. Another Frenchman, D'Oysel,
though not endowed with office, was supposed to have
such influence in the counsels of the regent as none but
a native Scot ought to exercise.
The regent remembered how convenient it was to
France to hold a real position in the soil of Scotland,
by having Dunbar Castle garrisoned and governed by
Frenchmen. She would have done well, too, to remem-
ber how offensive that was to the people, and how it
imperilled the French alliance. At Eyemouth, to the
south of Dunbar, a fort was built on the new method
of fortification adopted abroad a step towards the
Vaubau type of fortresses. It was garrisoned by
French troops. She pondered how she might, one by
one, pick the strongholds of the great barons out of
their hands and make them royal fortresses. Of these,
old Angus's Castle of Tantallou was the most tempt-
ing ; and she began to ply its owner with hints, which
drew from him, according to tradition, a celebrated an-
swer, marked by his own peculiar cast of grim derision.
Yes, his castle and all he had were at her grace's com-
mand; but before God he vowed that he must himself be
the governor, for no other person could hold it so well.
4 THE REFORMATION.
The Scots monarclis had not only no standing army,
but they had scarcely a guard for the protection of the
royal person and residence. When Henry VIII. sup-
plied his sister with money to support two hundred
men for her son's protection, it was a material boon,
though one dangerous to accept, as suspiciously eyed.
The only force the monarch could bring into the field
was the feudal array, and it was a self-willed force,
given to stand upon limitations and privileges, as we
have often seen. The queen-regent saw a different
sight when she visited the French Court. It had long
been surrounded by troops of armed protectors, con-
spicuous and supreme among whom was that picked
body of men, the Scots Guard. Beyond these, too, the
monarch had a considerable standing army, supported
by taxes and feudal dues. The queen-regent thought it
would be an improvement on the institutions of Scot-
land to have a standing army, so that the Government
might no longer be left in absolute dependence on that
capricious institution, the feudal array. It was repre-
sented that the nation would thus be greatly strength-
ened against their old enemies of England. A force
might be always kept on the border, so as to save the
country from the sudden surprises and raids from
which it had suffered so vitally for several generations.
The project required a new tax. An act for raising
it passed the Lords of the Articles. It authorised a
minute inquiry into the possessions of every subject
lord, landowner, farmer, merchant, and craftsman.
The "inquisition" was to be made by a parochial
organisation under the sheriff' of each county ; and
the whole arrangements are so stringent that the
o o
act might be supposed to have been prepared by
REGENCY OF MARY OF LORRAINE, 1554-60. 5
some one anxious to make it seem as offensive as
lie could. 1
By a contemporary noticer of events we are told that
discontent at this project broke out through the country
in many " privy assemblies and conventions." These
tokens of discontent concentrated themselves into a
meeting in the Abbey of Holyrood, where some three
hundred of the principal territorial magnates assembled.
They sent a deputation to the regent and her Council,
" desiring most humbly not to alter the ancient custom,
laws, and liberty of the realm, in putting them to such
charges of payment, and sums of money, affirming
that their forefathers and predecessors had defended
the same many hundred years valiantly with their own
hands/' They maintained that the present inhabitants
of the realm were " of as good courage and hardiment,
able and valiant to defend their realm, as others their
forebears have been in times past ; and therefor would
fecht with their own hands, and defend the same with
their bodies, for they could not trust any waged man
that he wad so faithfully defend their liberty, wifes,
bairns, lands, and possessions." They held next that
there was not such " substance" in the country, " as to
sustain so many idle men as were necessary for the
defence of the borders," meaning that a force was idle
when not actually fighting or employed against an
enemy. But they had a conckisive reason for pro-
testing trusting to mercenaries, the country would
lose its old strength. As it is put by Leslie, " that
the same should cause the lords, barons, gentlemen,
fall into sic idleness and unskilfulness through lack of
use of bearing and exercising their armour, that they
1 Act. Parl., ii. 604.
6 THE REFORMATION.
should become an easy prey to whatsoever nation that
would invade the realm." In this protestation there
stands a curious little constitutional definition. It
is noted that the monarch is not king or queen of
Scotland, but of the Scots. " In that respect the king
has been called at all times King of Scots that is,
rather in respect of men, nor of money and substance
of the country." l The obnoxious tax and its occasion
the standing army were together abandoned. Since
she could not get an army at the absolute disposal of
the crown, the regent endeavoured to get the feudal
force committed to the policy of France by an invasion
of England. As their old troubles on the borders
were breaking out, and there was possible danger from
England, an army assembled for the defence of Scot-
land, but its leaders refused to invade England.
Thus there were symptoms of variance between
the queen - dowager, as a sort of representative of
French interests and principles, on the one hand, and
the Scots people on the other. Some great events,
however, came to pass, which seemed to remove all
discordant influences, and bring the two nations into
closer union than ever. In the winter of 1557 the
Estates were reminded by the King of France that the
proper time had come for completing the promised
marriage between his son and the Queen of Scots. A
commission was appointed to go to France and re-
present Scotland on the occasion. It consisted of six
persons, among whom was Beaton, the Archbishop of
Glasgow. There were two others, whose appointment to
such a purpose was significant James Stewart, Prior
of St Andrews, the queen's illegitimate brother, and
1 History, Scots version, 255.
QUEEN MARY'S MARRIAGE, 1558. 7
Erskine, the Laird of Dun ; these, as we shall presently
see, became the leaders of the Reformation party.
The marriage was celebrated with due splendour
on the 24th of April 1558. Stipulations, in all forms
deemed necessary for the purpose, were made for the
maintenance of the Scots nationality and the inde-
pendent privileges of the people. If there were a son
of the marriage, he was to succeed to both thrones ; if
there were but daughters excluded from the French
succession the eldest was to reign in Scotland : such
were the public and ostensible conditions of the mar-
riage. There is little doubt, however, of the fact that,
some days before the ceremony, the queen signed three
papers, the object and intent of which was to convey
her kingdom, as if it were her private property, to the
house of Valois. The documents were drawn on the
principle so common in all attempts to dispose of
governments on parchment. One of them contained
the conveyance ; another, in case this should be ineffi-
cient, pledged the country for a million of gold pieces,
or any other sum that might be claimed as due by
the queen for her entertainment in France ; the third
nullified any deeds signed by her, under the instruc-
tions of her Parliament, of a tenor inconsistent with
those now executed : so was one worthless document
to prop up another. It is not clear whether these
documents were procured merely, by the private deal-
ing of her uncles the Guises, or were sanctioned by
the King of France himself or by his other advisers.
It was agreed that the Dauphin should have the
distinction, as it was termed, t)f being called King of
Scots. The Scots commissioners were required to send
for . the honours of Scotland, as they were termed
8 THE REFORMATION.
the crown, the sceptre, and the other decorations which
had been used in the coronation of a king of Scots.
The commissioners would do nothing to commit them-
selves to compliance with this request. Had they re-
presented, however urgently, the propriety of sending
these precious articles to France, the Estates certainly
would not have permitted them to leave the country.
The demanding of them was eminently suspicious. It
betokened that the house of Valois wanted to have
something more than the nominal or honorary title of
king for the Dauphin ; and if the honours once left
the country, it was very unlikely that they would ever
be brought back.
A mysterious calamity gave a sinister meaning to the
rumours about this and some other matters, calculated
to raise suspicion among the Scots. When the six com-
missioners reached Dieppe on their way home, three of
them the Lords Rothes and Cassilis, and Reid, Bishop
of Orkney sickened and died suddenly. It was held
that things had been said to these men in France which
it was very undesirable that they should repeat in Scot-
land, and so they were poisoned out of the way. At
that time, in France, such an act was quite within
the bounds of likelihood ; and instead of rejecting
the suspicion as ungenerous, one is inclined to be
surprised that it was not pressed more strongly, and
that no investigations or explanations were demanded
regarding the cause of so remarkable a fatality.
The surviving commissioners, on reporting the com-
pletion of their important business to the Estates,
which met in November, tendered to them a request,
in the name of the queen, which was and has continued
to be a cause of much discussion. It wae, that the
QUEEN MARY'S MARRIAGE, 1558. 9
Crown Matrimonial might be conferred on her husband.
This involved an actual ceremony of coronation, with
a crown made for the purpose, and sent over in charge
of a special embassy. The commissioners, in putting
the request to the Estates, said that it was to be " by
way of gratification during the marriage, without any
manner of prejudice to her highness's self, the succes-
sion of her body, or lawful succession of her blood
whatsomever ; " and it was authorised by the Estates,
with this limitation, and a declaration that the distinc-
tion was to last "during the marriage allenarly." 1
It was said, however, that there was a deep meaning
in this device. It came from the Guises, and it was
believed that they were prepared to interpret its true
meaning from certain precedents, when the right time
came. The meaning of the term was much pondered
on the occasion of Queen Mary's second marriage, and
it was believed that it meant a complete partner-
ship, in the crown ; so that, in default of children, it
would go to the survivor and the survivor's heirs. On
that principle, if Queen Mary died childless before the
Dauphin, the crown of Scotland was transferred to
the house of Valois. 2
Among those Scots who still held by the French
1 Act. Purl., ii. 506.
* Some hints dropped by the Cardinal of Lorraine are thus noted :
" Monsieur le Cardinal me respondit, scion <Jue j& il m'en avoit fait le
discours une fois au commenehement de mars pas.se, que les coiumis
d'Escosse au fait dudict mariaige, entre lesquels estoit le due de Chastel-
lerault, pere du conte d'Haran, firent instance au feu roy Henry que
le royaulme d'Escosse, des lors pour tousjours, fut adjoinct a celluy de
France, y eust enffans dudict mariaigto ou non, et que la couronne
d'Escosse fut incontinent transportee a St Denys, afin que, couronnant
le Roy de celle de France, il fut aussi couronn6 de celle d'Escosse, et
voulo.ient que les escussons de France fussent escartelez de France et
Escosse." 4th May 156O, M. de Chantonay ; Teulet, i. 536.
10 THE REFORMATION.
alliance, throughout France, and over great part of
Europe, the marriage was hailed as an event full of
splendid promises for the future. It was celebrated in
verse and prose by countless pens, conspicuous among
whom was the greatest Latin poet of the day, Buchanan,
and the French chancellor, L'Hopital, whose literary
genius would have been more renowned had it not
been overshadowed by his more illustrious fame as
a jurist, who, in the comprehensiveness of his survey
and his accurate sense of true justice, was centuries
beyond his age. 1
Within a few months the greatness that was in store
for Scotland seemed to be perfected. In a tournament
with the Sieur de Montgomery, Henry II. of France got
a wound in the face which proved mortal, and he died
on the 10th of July 1559, making Catherine de Medici
a widow, and the young beauty whom she hated Queen
of France. Yet were there already symptoms that all
this grandeur was not to be to the profit of Scotland.
The tone held by the Court of France towards Scotland
had changed, becoming patronising, if not domineering.
Complete rights of citizenship were exchanged between
1 As being less known, at least in this country, than Buchanan's Epi-
thalaniium, I take from L'Hopital the, following laudatory reference to
the services of the Scots in France :
" Parvurn (inquis) parvum fateor, componimus illud
Si nostro. Sed cujus openi sensitque paratum
Non semel auxilium labefactis Gallia rebus,
Cum belluni gererent nostris in finibus Angli,
Desertam illorum patriam simul agniine facto
Scoti incursabant. Metus liic sua protinus illos
Respicere, et nostris cogebat cedere terris.
Quinetiam Tellus his tarn fiecunda virorum,
Tamque ardens animus bellique incensus amore.
-. Ut cuiun alius premeret vicinum exercitus hostem
Suppetias alius nobis laturus eodem
Tenipore, rfpnilei transmitteret sequora ponti."
Hospitalii Epistol., lib. iv.
FRENCH INFLUENCE, 1555-60. II
the two countries ; but even in the Lettres de Grande
Naturalisation, in which the Scots were in all courtesy
received as citizens of France, there was perceptible a
tone of superiority and condescension as where the
citizenship of France is compared with that of Rome,
sought after by all nations, and the presence of King
David at the battle of Poictiers is spoken of as one
might praise the conduct of a faithful dependant. 1 It
was known that the government of Scotland was dis-
cussed in French councils as if it were a French affair,
1 Lettres de Grande Naturalisation accordees par Henri II. aux Ecos-
sais, a 1'occasion du Mariage de Marie Stuart avec le Dauphin ; Teulet,
Pieces, i. 303. The letters have all that prolixity for which the French
offices of the crown were remarkable, though other government offices
kept up with them as well as they could in tediousness of detail. The
letters were registered by the Parliament of Paris, with the commentary
referred to in the text. The precis of the substance of the letters is com-
mendable : " Veult et statue que les Escossois puissent tenir offices et
benefices en ce royaulme, y puissent acquerir biens, disposer d'iceulx
et les transmettre a leur posterite, ainsy que s'ils estoient originaires,
nez natifs et habitans perpetuels de ce royaulrne, sans- pour ce obtenir
lettres de naturalite, payer finance ny estre subjectz a aultre particu-
liere dispense." P. 307.
After recording this neat abstract of the letters, the 'Parliament com-
pares them with the early Roman extension of citizenship, and does so
with a distinct hint that, as the Romans were in early times parsimonious
in conferring such distinguished boons, they ought not to be lavishly
bestowed by the great monarchy of France. In this the draftsmen of
the Parliament are not so concise as in their abridgment of the royal
letters. They begin thus : " Ces lettres sont pleines de' tesmoignages de
la grandeur de ceste monarchic de France a qua jus civium postulatur,
sicut antiqttitus a populo Romano jura Quiritum, jus Latii vet*ris,jus
Latinitatis, jus ltalicum,jus civitatis peti sotibat et magni beneficii loco
concedi. De ce furent du commencement fort espargnans les anciens
Remains, tellement que non nisi authoritate senatus et rogaiione populi
tale jus donabatur, etc" It is observable that the royal letters, in all
their pomposity, give courtesy to Scotland, as a country whose sovereign
belongs to the royal house of France ; owt the Parliament's registration
interprets them as a gracious concession to a community favoured at
court. Verification par le Parlement de Paris des Lettres Patentes du
Mois de Juin en faveur des Ecossois, 307.
12 THE REFORMATION.
and it was even officially suggested that tins part of
the Kiii of France's dominions mio-ht make a suitable
o o
appanage for a second son of the house of Valois. The
Lords of the Congregation in Scotland were not far in
the wrong when they complained that projects were
afoot for converting Scotland into a province of
France. 1
Without any absolute public acts tending to annexa-
tion or domination, many incidents gradually dropped
into the minds of the Scots the impression that the
independence of the country was endangered by France ;
and such impressions were strengthened by the conduct
of the regent and her friends. The quartering of arms,
for instance, which we shall find offensive to England,
had something to awaken the suspicions of the Scots,
who asserted that the manner of the quartering rather
represented the annexation to the crown of the province
of Scotland, than the personal union between the house
of Valois and the house of Stewart ; and whatever
offence might thus be given was not in the mere
pedantic manipulation of the heralds, but was matter
of state policy. 2 In recent times, too, documents ha,ve
turned up, which, had they been known to the Scots
statesmen of the time, might well have fed their sus-
picions. One of these is a state paper, by the Parlia-
ment of Paris, on the government of Scotland in 1552,
1 In a letter of M. de Chaiitonay to the Bishop of Arras, dated 4th
May l")(i( ) (Teulet, i. 530), there are remarks which may interest heraldic
students on the question whether after all the quartering of Scot-
land with France as a united kingdom is the correct one, and hinting a
preference for something that would show more distinctly how Scotland
is at the disposal of the house of Valois. As King Henry put it, " Que
Icdict royaulme demeura a la disposition du Roy son filz et de sa femme
pour en faire le partaige d'ung segond filz."
1 See above note.
FRENCH INFLUENCE, 1555-60. 13
while yet Queen Mary was in her twelfth year. 1 It
has all the external character of a piece of puerile
pedantry, the fruit of the propensity of the civilians to
draw subtle distinctions and adjust theoretical difficul-
ties. The question is, whether Queen Mary, when she was
eleven years old, had reached the age of puberty. At
that period of life, by the civil law, young persons took
a step towards self-government, by the choice of cura-
tors, who were to supersede those tutors who, appointed
in infancy, were not of their own selection. The age
of male puberty was fourteen ; of female, twelve. The
question here was, whether, in the case of sovereigns,
it came at the beginning, instead of waiting till the
completion of the year, so as to entitle Queen Mary
to choose her curators when she had completed her
eleventh year. There is no reference in the document
to the peculiar government of Scotland, or to the all-
powerful Estates. Precedents are called up from
French history, as if the matter concerned Touraine,
Aquitaine, or any other province of France. 2 So little
1 Declaration clu Parlement de Paris sur le Gouvernement de 1'Ecosse ;
TVulet, Pieces et Documents, i. 2G1.
1 " A scavoir que, pour la puberte des rois de France, pour les cou
runner et administrer, Ton n'a point attendu que les xiv ans soient com
pletz, eombien que, en tutelles privtes, la perfection soit requise, car les
rois ne sont cent reins a la loy positive ;
" Mais, pour le Men des royaulmes, avant les xiv ans accomplis ont este
couronnes et ont admhiistre le royaulme. Charlemagne, vivant le roy
Pepin, fut couronne roi ; et apres fist eouronner Louis dit le Debon-
naire son filz, en berceau, qu'il fist porter en liticre jusques a Rome oil
il fut couronne. Charles, dit le Simple, avant les xiv ans, administra;
le roy Robert filz de Hue Capet, le roy Philippes ler. de ce nom, le roy
Louis dit le Gros, le roy Philipes-Auguste, avant les xiv ans administra,
le roy sainct Louis avant ledict temps.
" Le roy Charles V. ordonna que Charles VI. son filz auroit gouver-
neurs jusques a ce qu'il eust xiv ans accomplis ; toutefois, apres son
trespas, et apres plusieurs remonstrances faictes par un advocat du roy
I4 THE REFORMATION.
does the document carry the tenor of a practical policy,
that it is difficult to realise the natural supposition,
that the discussion must have arisen in the contem-
plation of a plan for governing Scotland by curators
appointed in Paris by the young queen.
Let us now turn to other events as momentous as
these, with which they will be found ultimately com-
bining in the development of great historical conclu-
sions. On the 17th of November 1558, the death of
Mary, the Popish Queen of England, opened the suc-
cession there to her sister Elizabeth. By the same
event, Philip of Spain ceased to be King of England.
The effects that were to come of this change were not
immediately visible. Philip was dreaming of, and
aiming at, universal dominion the restoration of the
old Roman Empire over the world, to act in unity with
the spiritual empire of the Popedom. The loss of his
hold on England might, to a less sanguine and trusting
aspirant, have seemed to weaken his chances of suc-
cess ; for, while he was the husband of Queen Mary,
he supposed himself to be absolute master of that king-
dom, and believed that, next to his own peninsula, it
was the most devoted among the European powers to
the support of the Popedom in all its spiritual su-
premacy. In this dutiful course, he had no doubt
England would continue gratefully accepting of his
en Parlement, nomine Desmarets, fut conclu par le trois Estate du
royaulme qu'il seroit couronne avant ledict temps et que le royaulme
seroit adminifltrd soubz son nom, et receveroit en sa personne les hom-
mages des vassaux.
" Le semblable fut conclu par le roy Charles VIII. ; ct encor, du temps
du feu Roy, fut faict ordonnance, luy estant en Espagne, que Mon-
seigneur le Dauphin son filz, non ayant encore xiv ans, seroit couronn^
roy de France, vivant son pere, qui fut verifiee en la cour du Parle-
ment." Teulet, i. 263, 264.
ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND, 1558-60. 15
guidance. He was hard of belief when rumours
reached him of the heretical propensities of the young
queen. It was for his consideration whether he ought,
for the sake of the good cause, to marry Queen Eliza-
beth. Looking to the object of such a union, the Pope
would not, of course, hesitate to give a dispensation.
Influenced by such ideas, he continued to dictate and
advise about the conducting of the English Govern-
ment much as he used to do when he styled himself
King of England.
When Elizabeth's heresy was put beyond question,
consolation came from another quarter ; she was not
the rightful heiress to the English throne. A king of
Spain should be the last man to overlook what led to
that conclusion. Her father's marriage to his own
collateral ancestress, Catherine, was not legally dis-
solved when Elizabeth was born; and Mary of Scot-
land, the Dauphiness of France, was the rightful Queen
of England. As Europe stood at that time, the assertion
of this right was a very formidable thing for Elizabeth
and her advisers to look at. The title of Queen of
England was taken by the Court of France for Queen
Mary in a quiet, off-hand way, that was almost more
provoking than a loud proclamation, because it was not
so easily answered. The arms of France and Scotland
were quartered with those of England, and the English
ambassador in France complained that the offence was
thrust under his very eyes and nostrils, for the quar-
tered coat was emblazoned on the dishes set before
him at royal entertainments. A claim that might
bring Spain, France, and Scotland all at once down on
England was truly formidable ; and there was a great
Romish party in England, whose consciences would
1 6 THE REFORMATION.
compel them to co-operate with invaders coming under
the banner of the Pope.
The great chance of safety was to detach Scotland
from such a combination. It was known that the
country was not keen for Romanism, since subjects of
England, during the late persecuting reign, had found
refuge there. This was a good sign, and Elizabeth's
great adviser, Cecil, resolved to make of it what he
could ; for never had an alliance with France been more
imminently sought for the safety of Scotland than an
alliance with Scotland now was for the safety of Eng-
land. The negotiations for the great European treaty
of Chateau Cambresis were hastening to an end ; they
were finished on the 2d of April 1559. There were
two things for which England fought hard in that diplo-
matic discussion the restoration of Calais, which had
just been taken from England by the Duke of Guise,
Queen Mary's uncle, and a peace with Scotland. In
the matter of Calais, some arguments were used on the
part of France which cut far deeper than the question
at issue. Suppose that France were in any way bound
to make the restoration, to whom was it to be made ?
If rendered up to the person who now called herself
Queen of England, the duty would not be discharged ;
for what if the rightful heiress, their own Dauphin's
wife, were to claim it as hers ? Calais had to be aban-
doned in the mean time, if the other alternative were
to be pushed ; and the English representative at the
conference got instructions, if necessary but only if it
were so found at the last moment to give up every
other claim, provided Scotland should be included in
the peace. This was done ; but it was a step only to
the end. The sensitiveness of the Scots had, on other
ENGLAND AND SCOTLAND, 1558-60. I/
occasions, made them restive when France professed to
treat for them. France, on the face of the transaction,
and in form, got the peace extended to Scotland, her
ally ; but Cecil laboured at the same time, and under
great difficulties, to contract a separate alliance with
Scotland.
These affairs brought a political crisis there. We
have seen how, in 1543, there was a like critical period
in the nation's destiny. Sixteen years had passed the
boys of that day into manhood, and many other things
had occurred to change the tenor of the opinions and
predilections of the people. It is at this juncture that
we must count the Reformation as a power in the
state. As in almost all other nations, so in Scotland,
its operations were fashioned, not according to the
quiet course of internal changes in the religious opinions
of one after another of the people, but by conjunction
with great external political movements. There has
been a natural enough disinclination to see this ; and
the tenor of history has been swayed at least, if not
absolutely perverted, by a tendency to trace to the
impulse of religious zeal events and actions prompted
by motives of a more secular character. 1
1 Our own confidence in the absolute soundness of our own religious
persuasions, deceives us into a reliance on any histories which show our
special creed advancing and prevailing through the force of absolute
collusiveness and truth. When we boast of the power of resistance to
the invasion of other faiths, we are more likely to be accurate. Con-
verts crossing the great gulfs such as that between Popery and Protes-
tantism are very rare in quiet times. They are apt to make a noise,
and produce on the timid the effect of numbers, usually creating
among the old steady members of the creed they join even more
alarm than they have left among th> faithful whom they have
deserted ; for they are restless creatures they are on the move, and
though they may have reached the ultimate temple in the line of their
changes, and can go no further, they are apt to move about very rest-
VOL. IV. B
18 THE REFORMATION.
A period of many years had now passed over, in
which there had been at intervals several persons put
to death for what the Church counted heresy. We
must not suppose that in their own day these victims
were treated as illustrious martyrs. For that crown
their memory had to wait until Protestantism became
triumphant. The executions were disagreeable affairs
connected with church matters, and the laity in gene-
ral kept as well aloof from them as they could. Even
the death of Wishart, with its picturesquely tragical
retribution, was an isolated matter. The party in
favour of the French alliance or, it would be more
explicit to say, the party determined to resist English
domination swept all before them, and the affair had
really very little visible influence. In 1550 there was
another victim of the fire, named and described by
Knox as "Adam Wallace, alias Fian, a simple man,
lessly and troublesomely to their new neighbours, in that abode which
they have chosen as the only refuge from doubts and difficulties. Thus
individual conversions make a noise ; but at any time the number of
persons who have changed faith through calm conviction is very small.
Such a process has contributed \-ery little to the distribution of the reli-
gious persuasions among the European nations. The Romish and the
Protestant communities stand as they were left by the great struggle of
the sixteenth century as modified in some measure by the Thirty Years'
War. There are millions of tolerably accurate practisers of the require-
ments of the Church of Rome who would have been good Protestants
had they been bom and brought up in the Protestant communities ;
just as, on the other hand, there are millions of sound Protestants who
would have been faithful observers of the Romish formularies had they
been born and brought up in any of the states which held by the old
Church. The boundaries of the Romish and Protestant states have not
varied to any perceptible effect for two hundred years ; some of them
are as they were three hundred years ago. The Netherlands are Romish
up to the boundary where Spain held dominion over them Protestant
beyond. The old decayed city of Nuremberg early put in its lot with
the Reformation ; and the city of Nuremberg is Protestant, though sur-
rounded by communities which still hold by the old Church.
WALTER MILL, 1558. 19
without great learning, but one that was zealous in
godliness, and of an upright life." 1 In 1558 Walter
Mill was burned in St Andrews. His fate created more
real excitement than all the others that had gone before.
He was a man past eighty years of age, a quiet country
priest, of blameless life. Incidents were told about his
burning which showed that such scenes were becoming
odious. There was difficulty, it was said, in getting
the necessary intervention of the civil power, and in
securing persons to undertake the executioner's work.
It was further said that the people piled stones to make
a cairn on the place where he suffered, and ever as they
were removed they were replaced. This execution was
at St Andrews, and it recalled the death of Wishart
there fourteen years earlier, with its wonderful retribu-
tion. A horror of such events was creeping into the
people's minds. The like had not been known in Scot-
land in days of old. To the clergy, they were deeds of
duty and humanity. What was the extinction of a life
or two to the spread of heresy, which would ruin mil-
lions of souls ? And as to the victims themselves, their
torture in this world was short, and would expiate for
them an infinitely greater amount of torture in the
next. In such views the lay population could not
sympathise. About other matters, more closely con-
nected with the vulgar routine and objects of life, the
two classes were drawing off from each other. The
ecclesiastics were becoming peculiar, as a rich and
luxurious class. The estates conferred on the prelacies
and monastic houses centuries before had come, from
being almost worthless, to produce great revenues.
While there was a continual shifting in the possessions
1 History, i. 237.
20 THE REFORMATION.
of the lay barons, the ecclesiastical estates remained
unchanged, and ever grew in fertility and value.
There were two social specialties in the clergy apt
to be irritating to a poor and homely landed gentry.
They were rich, and they were aliens in taste and
training, spending their affluence in conformity with
foreign and luxurious fashions. Among the many
Scots who sought a foreign education, those training
themselves for the Church predominated. They were
thus initiated into foreign tastes and connections,
which fitted only too well into their foreign allegiance
to the hierarchy of Home. There were in this widened
intercourse liberalising and humanising influences, but
those of another kind prevailed. On the one side we
may see the rich accomplished scholar and French
courtier Elphinstone munificently endowing a univer-
sity after the model of the University of Paris ; but
a type of the other and prevalent side is Beaton, auda-
cious in his profuseness and profligacy. 1
For all that the Scots had a rooted prejudice against
any precedents coming from England, the revelations
made by Henry VIII.'s raid on the monastic houses
cannot but have caused a deep impression, and made
thinking men ask whether it might be that like con-
ditions were to be found in the noble clusters of
buildings which lodged the Regular fraternities and
sisterhoods in their own country. Henry's commission
1 ' For my niaist princely prodigality
Among prelates in France I bore the prise.
I schew my lordly liberality
In banqueting, playing at cards and dyce.
Into such wisdom I was haldcn wise,
And sparit not to play with king or knight
Three thousand crowns of gold upon a night."
Sir David Lindsay, The Tragedy of the Cardinal.
CONDITION OF THE CLERGY, 1550-60. 21
of inquiry was a marvellous success. The designs and
motives by which it was inspired had no claim to
approval, but the result put to silence all that could
be said against them. Public rumour, too, and the
exaggeration of the designing, deepened the darkness
of the revelation. Worse things than those that were
done could not be invented by malicious tale-tellers ;
but the rare or solitary crime was spread over a wide
area, and from an individuality became a generality.
The whole story was told in the coarsest and broadest
terms to the Government of Scotland by Sir Ralph
Sadler, and by others who desired the English prece-
dent to be followed there. Enumerating a loathsome
and unrepeatable catalogue of vices, we find Sir Ralph
telling King James V. that the same will be found in
his own dominions, " unless your monks be more holy
in Scotland than ours are in England." The king did
not stand up for their purity ; but there was no pressure
on him to follow an English example, and the disap-
pointed ambassador has to relate, " 'Oh/ quoth the king,
' God forbid that if a few be not good, for them all
the rest should be destroyed. Though some be not,'
qnoth he, 'there be a great many good ; and the good
may be suffered, and the evil must be reformed ; as ye
shall hear,' quoth he, 'that I shall help to see it re-
dressed in Scotland, by God's grace, if I brook life.' " l
Some families of the poorer landed gentry held in
relation to churchmen a position that could not but
subject them to humiliation. Their sisters or daughters
were the known concubines of rich priests, and held
rank accordingly. For many* of the clergy who lived
in concubinage according to the letter of the law, there
1 Sadler State Papers, i. 31.
22 THE REFORMATION.
was doubtless the plea that morally they led a life of
man-led domesticity. They were dissenters or schis-
matics, rather than sinners. They repudiated the
doctrine of clerical celibacy; and, holding that the
clergy ought to be permitted to marry like other men,
they took to their homes women who held the same
view, and lived with them in soberness and constancy,
regretting that perverse laws denied them the legal
privileges of wedlock, but with consciences void of
offence, doing what seemed to them right amid the
difficulties by which they were surrounded. Whole
branches of the Church had acted on this principle,
and given to it the respectability of an established in-
stitution. So we have seen it among the old Culdees,
and perhaps its spirit lingered in Scotland down to
the Keformation. At the best, however, it was a lax
and dangerous system. Every man who practised it
was a law unto himself. There was no distinct sanc-
tion drawing, as the law of marriage draws, an obvious
unmistakable line between domesticity and profligacy.
And of many of the great rich churchmen, such as
Cardinal Beaton and his successor, it was known that
they did not profess these humble domestic views, or
place themselves in the position of dissenters from the
Church, by affecting the life of married persons. They
flared their amours in the face of the world, as if proud
of the soundness of their taste for beauty, and the
rank and birth that had become prostrate to their soli-
citations. It seemed as if their very greatness as tem-
poral grandees enabled them to defy the ordinary laws
of decorum, while their spiritual rank secured to them
immunity from that clerical punishment which it was
their duty to pronounce against less gifted sinners.
CONDITION OF THE CLERGY, 1550-60. 23
This blot upon the Romish establishment was not a
matter of debate, like the soundness of its doctrines.
The proceedings of ecclesiastical councils, and other
documents having to deal with discipline and conduct,
are profuse in wailings and denunciations of the ever-
pervading irregularities. In Scotland they are de-
nounced in the earliest ecclesiastical canons those of
the thirteenth century and they are denounced with
increased emphasis in the proceedings of the latest
provincial council held by the Romish clergy. These
denunciations make no distinction between those
unions which were a virtual protest against the laws
of celibacy, and the others which testified to defiant
profligacy. Probably the more decorous kind were
considered the more dangerous, as a following up of
their principles by serious men professing to walk
uprightly according to their false lights. But, taken
in any way, the protestations and lamentations of
the Church itself proclaimed within it -a sore which
centuries of endeavour had not cured which had
rooted itself all the deeper through all the efforts to
eradicate it. We can only know the extent and
influence of this social specialty by familiar acquaint-
ance with contemporary documents. Those who, at
a later period, interpreted the history of the times,
when they found that some eminent person who had
got a good start in life, and pursued the advantage
into a career of eminence, was the son of a Popish
clergyman, thought they had traced him to an origin
more infamous than ordinary illegitimacy. It was, in
his own days, actually more respectable, as coming of
a usage countenanced by a party. This unconformity
between the spirit of the age and the spirit of the
24 THE REFORMATION.
writer dealing with it is productive occasionally of
indistinctness. 1
The result in the social condition of the country
was that the rule of celibacy, though observed in law,
was abrogated in practice among those of the clergy
who were rich enough to support households. This
was so much of an acknowledged system that, when
there was moderation and constancy, the union was
deemed respectable. The concubines of the dignified
clergy and their illegitimate children had a fixed place
in society. Such connection and parentage, instead
of being huddled into obscurity, was expressly and
definitely set forth in public documents and the title-
deeds of estates. But nothing could remove a certain
degree of stigma from the class of persons thus marked
off. It was felt that what they got from society was
bought by sheer wealth, not given by gratuitous social
respect. The worshipful houses which had to submit
to such alliances felt the humiliation of them, and
were led to ponder on the problem whether the wealth
of the clergy could not be got at in some more direct
and less unpleasant way.
King James V. did his best to foster the alienation
of the laity from the clergy, by distrusting the heads of
1 Of the excellent Bishop Elphinstone of Aberdeen, one of the most
enlightened of the patrons and advocates of the higher reaches of edu-
cation, we are told that " there is no doubt that he was, like so many
well-educated men of his time, the offspring of a churchman who could
not legally marry, but whose connection and family, in violation of his
vows, were then tolerated by society, and almost sanctioned by the prac-
tice of the highest of his order." As appropriate to the remark made
above, it is stated in a note to this how two writers of the eighteenth
century Crawfurd and Keith have covered this disgrace under the
convenient and pious fiction that the bishop's father took orders after
he became a widower. Innes's Sketches, 260.
VIEWS ON ECCLESIASTICAL PROPERTY, 1550-60. 25
the feudal houses and taking counsel of the churchmen.
o
We have seen how hard he pressed upon the aristocracy
with forfeitures and penalties. These enabled him to
enrich his favourites among the clergy, and the landed
gentry felt as if their property and power were gra-
dually dropping away from them to enrich their rivals.
The two Beatons kept up a magnificence which none of
the nobles, except perhaps Arran, could rival. It was
said that the elder had prepared a list of forfeitures,
and that King James V., taking note of the sum total
represented by it as a conclusion, was, by a gradual
process of suction, to draw the land away from its lay
owners for the enrichment of his clerical advisers.
Such rumours, well or ill founded, led men to fa-
miliarity with the converse of the process. Long
before the crisis of Elizabeth's accession, the lay gentry
of Scotland had their eyes pretty steadily fixed on the
estates of the Church and clergy. When a set of
teachers arose whose doctrine pointed to the conclusion,
that these clergy were false prophets who had no title
to their position, and consequently no just right to the
wealth it brought to them, there was a disposition to
listen. The new doctrines, as presented to these greedy
laymen, were expressed, after Knox's peculiar method,
in the most abrupt and emphatic word's, and in the
most startling contrast to old received opinions. But
if they were thus likely rather to shock and alarm
than to conciliate the cautious and selfish, there was
in the end a little sentence concerning the things of
this world carrying compensation for novel and un-
usual doctrines bearing on the* lext it announced that
the tithes did not by God's law belong to the church-
men. Perhaps KnOx regretted that he had put this
26 THE REFORMATION.
view too generally when the lay impropriators inter-
preted it for themselves, and acted on their interpreta-
tion in such manner as to make him call down the
divine vengeance on " the merciless devourers of the
patronage of the Kirk." 1
In later times it has been acknowledged that the
race of churchmen who lived in the fifteenth century
had left to the world a noble legacy in the establish-
ment of universities, and in other efforts for the pro-
motion of learning arid the education of the people.
1 The articles are announced by Knox himself in thorough character.
The date is 1547.
" The bastard bischope, who yit was not execrated (consecrated thei
call it), wrait to the Suppriour of Sanctandrois, who (sede vacante) was
vicare-generall, ' That he wondered that he suffered sic hereticall and
schismaticall doctrin to be tawght, and nott to oppone himself to the
same.' Upoun this rebuck, was a conventioun of Grey Freiris and
Black Feindis appointed, with the said suppriour, Dean Johnne Wyn-
rame, in Sanct Leonardis yardis, whareunto was first called Johne
Rowght, and certane articles redd unto him ; and thairafter was Johnne
Knox called for. The caus of thare conventioun, and why that thei
war called, was exponed ; and the articles war read, which war these :
" I. No mortall man can be the head of the Church.
" II. The Pape is ane Antichrist, and so is no member of Christis
misticall body.
" III. Man may nether maik nor devise a religioun that is acceptable
to God ; butt man is bound to observe and keap the religioun that fra
God is receaved, without chopping or changeing thairof.
" IV. The sacramentis of the New Testament aucht to be ininistred as
thei war institut by Christ Jesus and practised by His apostles ; nothing
awght to be added unto thame ; nothing awght to be diminished from
thame.
" V. The messe is abominable idolatrie, blasphemous to the death of
Christ, and a prophanatioun of the Lordis Suppar.
" VI. Thare is no purgatorie, in the which the sanies of men can
eyther be pyned or purged after this lyef ; butt heavin restis to the
faythfull, and hell to the reprobat and unthankful!.
" VII. Praying for the dead is vain, and to the dead is idolatrie.
"VIII. Thare is no bischoppes, except thei preach evin by thame-
selfis, without any substitut.
"IX. The teindis by Goddis law do not apperteane of necessitie to the
kirkmen." History, i. 193.
OFFENSIVE POWERS OF THE CHURCH, 1550-60. 27
But the contemporaries whose ignorance prompted the
clergy to this work were not likely to appreciate it.
On the contrary, they felt invidiously the power which
these churchmen were gathering to themselves through
their superior learning. It enabled them to consoli-
date and strengthen their ever-accumulating estates.
They were helped towards this end, and towards the
oppression of the laity, by becoming the administrators
of the law. There was no obdurate conglomerate of
local customs, like the common law in England, to bid
defiance by its bulk and weight to the subtle influence
of the civilians and canonists. The Scots, indeed,
when their lot was severed from that of their English
fellow-Saxons, avowedly adopted the two foreign sys-
tems from their allies of France. The canon law, the
child of the civil law, was part of the professional
training of the churchman; and having the key to both
systems, he had many chances beyond the layman of
rendering himself a dexterous adept, and monopolising
the administration of justice.
The office of Chancellor was nearest to the throne,
and its holder was the head of the law. When the
chief of any great house was aggrandising it into su-
premacy over all others, he would take this office to
himself. So it had been held by Oichton, by Boyd
the favourite of James III., and by Angus. Gradually,
however, the office became absorbed in the Church,
and no layman had held it since the beginning of the
century. When the Court of Session was established,
it was to consist half of clergy, half of laymen ; but its
first president was the Abbot of Cambuskenneth.
There was, at the same time, a large department in
the administration of justice over which the Church
28 THE REFORMATION.
arrogated entire management and control as a matter
vitally connected with its spiritual functions. After
centuries of pressure, the Church had been able to
establish in practice throughout Christendom, that her
sacrament was necessary to the estate of matrimony
and the legitimacy of offspring. The Church could not
trust it to the lay authorities to ascertain and deter-
mine whether the sacred mystery had been duly per-
formed, and the corresponding privileges acquired.
Questions of the validity of marriages, of their dissolu-
tion, and of the legitimacy of offspring, were conse-
quently retained by the Church. This made church-
men the arbiters of succession. The feudal law was so
far a barrier that they could carry their ecclesiastical
law no farther than to separate those who, by illegiti-
macy, were excluded from its benefits. But the law of
succession to other property was entirely worked by
them. Where there were settlements, their interpreta-
tion, and where there were no settlements, the distribu-
tion of the estate among the next of kin, were business
all managed by the bishop's consistory. The working of
the system was all the more amenable to suspicion, that
the Church or individual churchmen were often party
claimants in the distribution of a dead man's goods.
To all these legitimate judicial services, the Church
was enabled, by a very curious process, to add a large
portion in the coercive functions of the common law.
It became a practice, when any person undertook an
obligation, that he should make a vow or oath to per-
form it, and that oath was put on record. Now the
breaking of an oath was an ecclesiastical offence, for
which a man became liable to Excommunication, or to
Cursing, as it was aptly called in Scotland. Exacting
OFFENSIVE POWERS OF THE CHURCH, 1550-60. 29
the oath was an established practice of the money-
lend el's, and the borrowers, with the proverbial thought-
lessness of their class, took it with other risks. It was
not the spiritual influence of excommunication that was
the temptation for this use of the oath. Persons under
process of cursing were subjected to legal execution
against person and property. It was the preliminary
step of a warrant for arrest and imprisonment, and for
the impounding and seizure of goods. Hence " letters
of cursing" were as much the usual order in debit and
credit transactions as any common writ of later times
for seizing the person and distraining the goods. 1 Scot-
land had by no means reached that stage in the devel-
opment of social science, in which those concerned in
executing the severities of the law are to be revered
as a terror to evildoers, and a praise and protection to
them that do well From the burning of the heretic
O
down to the troubling of the poor debtor, the Church
was monopolising all this unpopular business to itself
it was inquisitor, hangman, and bailiff. It was ever
endeavouring to widen its powers, even when they were
of this unenviable kind. For instance, it had become a
practice for the ecclesiastical authorities to curse the exe-
cutive officers of the civil courts for giving effect to their
decisions. So early as the year 1484, we find steps taken
against this aggression. It was adjudged by the Lords
1 This anomalous process became, in the course of events, the parent
of one of the most useful and effective means for obtaining rapid justice
known in modern legal practice. When the great change came, as a
substitute for the oath and the consequent cursing, came the " clause of
registration," a clause binding the parties to any deed or contract, on its
being recorded in the roll of a court, to submit to its terms as if a judg-
ment of the court to that effect had passed against them. It has gone
into England in an imperfect shape, as the " warrant to confess judg-
ment."
30 THE REFORMATION.
of Council that, for any such wrongous and inorderly
cursing of the king's officer in the performance of his
duty, by any bishop or other ecclesiastical person, " the
said bishop or other ecclesiastical person may be cor-
rected and punished by the king's highness, that the
same may be an example to others to abstain from all
such doings in time to come." l
This process, as well as many others of the old eccle-
siastical tribunals, has excited considerable ungratified
curiosity. It is observable that, while we have in
abundance the title-deeds and other documents of
ecclesiastical bodies which connected them with the
outer world, we have very few vestiges of their judicial
and executive proceedings, whether for the suppression
of heresy or for other purposes. 2 The disappearance of
all such records may be likened to what is said about
the general burning of private letters in government
departments when a change of ministry is undoubted.
It hence happens that a very magnificent specimen
of letters of cursing found lately among the English
state papers is all the more curious. It was trans-
mitted in 1525 by Magnus, an emissary in Scotland,
to Cardinal Wolsey, as a document worthy of notice. 3
1 Balfour's Practiks, 565.
2 We have the form of an excommunication, or cursing in the vernacu-
lar, to be read to the people four times a-year. It enumerates the vari-
ous sins supposed chiefly to beset the community, and dooms those who
remain in them unrepentant to perdition, by the symbol of extinguish-
ing a lighted candle by dashing it down. The expressions of this docu-
ment are pretty strong, and not unlike those in use on ceremonial occa-
sions in some Protestant communities. But, issued as it is against hypo-
thetical offenders, it has not that direct impulsive vehemence which seems
to have been inspired by the realisation of the offences committed and the
persons committing them. The form will be found iii the Statuta Eccle-
siae Scoticana;, 6.
s Of Magnus, see above, chap, xxxii.
AN ECCLESIASTICAL CURSING, 1550-60. 31
The occasion was one of public importance an at-
tempt, through this kind of spiritual warfare with its
civil consequences, to subdue the border rievers, and
make them give up their evil ways. The document may
have risen to the occasion. It is called by Magnus " a
terrible cursing," and may be, perhaps, an exaggera-
tion on the chastisement administered to the swindler
or defaulting debtor. It is certain that, as concerning
this document, the usual charges against the Church
of Rome regarding unknown tongues, and obscure and
ambiguous phraseology, do not apply. After a pre-
amble the cursing comes forth as follows :
" I denounce, proclaim, and declare all and sundry the
committersof the said sackless murders, slaughters, burn-
ings, heirschippes, reiffes, thefts, and spulies, openly upon
daylight, and under silence of the night, as well within
temporal lands as kirklands ; together with their part-
takers, assistars, suppliars, wittanlie resetters of their
persons, the goods reft and stolen by them, art or part
thereof, and their counsellors and defenders of their
evil deeds; generally cursed, waried, aggregate, and re-
aggregate, with The Great Cursing. I curse their head
and all the hairs of their head ; I curse their face, their
eyes, their mouth, their nose, their tongue, their teeth,
their crag, their shoulders, their breast, their heart,
their stomach, their back, their waime, their arms, their
legs, their hands, their feet, and every ilk part of their
body, from the top of their head to the sole of their
feet, behind and before, within and without. I curse
them going, I curse them riding ; I curse them eating,
I curse them drinking ; I curse them waking, I curse
them sleeping ; I curse them rising, I curse them lying ;
I curse them at home, I curse them from home ; I
32 THE REFORMATION.
curse them within the house, I curse them without
the house ; I curse their wives, their bairns, and their
servants participant with them in their deeds. I warie
their corn, their cattle, their wool, their sheep, their
horse, their swine, their hens, and all their quick goods.
J curse their halls, their chambers, their kitchens, their
stables, their barns, their byres, their barnyards, their
kailyards, their ploughs, their harrows, and the goods
and houses that is necessary for their sustentation and
welfare. All the malisons and waresouns that ever
gat worldly creature since the beginning of the world
to this hour, mot light upon them. The malediction of
God that lighted upon Lucifer and all his fellows, that
struck them from the high heaven to the deep hell, mot
light upon them. The fire and sword that stopped
Adam from the yetts of paradise, mot stop them from
the glory of heaven, till they forbear and make amends.
The malison that lighted on cursed Cain, when he slew
his brother just Abel without cause, mot light upon
them for the saikless slaughter that they commit daily.
The malediction that lighted upon all the world, man
and beast, and all that ever took life, when all was
drowned by the flood of Noah, except Noah and his ark,
mot light upon them, and drown them, man and beast,
and make this realm cumberless of them for their wicked
sins. The thunder and lightning that went down as
rain upon the cities of Sodom and Gomorrah, with all
the lands about, and burnt them for their vile sins, mot
rain upon them, and burn them for open sins. The
malison and confusion that lighted on the giants for
their oppression and pride, building the tower of Babel,
mot confound them and all their works, for their open
robberies and oppression. All the plagues that fell
AN ECCLESIASTICAL CURSING, 1550-60. 33
upon Pharaoh and his people of Egypt, their lands,
corn, and cattle, mot fall upon them, their tacks,
rowmes, and steadings, corn, and beasts. The water
of Tweed, and other waters where they ride, mot
drown them as the Red Sea drowned King Pharaoh
and the people of Egypt pursuing God's people of
Israel. The earth mot open, rive, and cleave, and
swallow them quick to hell, as it swallowed cursed
Dathan and Abiram that gainsaid Moses and the
command of God. The wild fire that burned Korah
and his fellows to the number of two hundred and
fifty, and others 14,000 and 700 at once, usurping
against Moses and Aaron, servants of God, mot sud-
denly burn and consume them daily gainsaying the
commands of God and holy Kirk. The maledic-
tion that lighted suddenly upon fair Absalom, riding
against his father King David, servant of God, through
the wood, when the branches of a tree freed him of his
horse and hanged him by the hair, mot light upon
them riding against true Scottishmen, and hang them
siclike that all the world may see. The malediction
that lighted upon Holofernes, lieutenant to Nebuchad-
nezzar, making war and heirschippis upon true Christian
men ; the malediction that lighted upon Judas, Pilate,
Herod, and the Jews that crucified our Lord, and all
the plagues and troubles that lighted on the city of
Jerusalem therefor and upon Simon Magus for his
simony, bloody Nero, cursed Decius, Maxentius, Oly-
brius, Julianus Apostata, and the lave of the cruel
tyrants that slew and murdered Christ's holy servants,
mot light upon them for their cruel tyranny and mur-
therdom of Christian people. And all the vengeance
that ever was taken since the world began for open sins,
VOL. iv. c
34 THE REFORMATION.
and all the plagues and pestilences that ever fell on
man or beast, mot fall on them for their open robbery,
saikless slaughter, and shedding of innocent blood. I
dissever and part them from the Kirk of God, and
deliver them quick to the devil of hell, as the apostle
St Paul delivered Corinthion. I interdict the places
they come in from divine service, ministration of the
sacraments of holy Kirk, except the sacrament of
baptism only ; and forbid all kirkmen to shrive or
absolve them of their sins, till they be first absolved
of this cursing. I forbid all Christian man or woman
to have any company with them, eating, drinking,
speaking, praying, lying, going, standing, or in any
other deed doing, under the pain of deadly sin. I
discharge all bands, acts, contracts, oaths, and obliga-
tions made to them by any persons, either of lawte
kindness or manrent, so long as they sustain this
cursing; so that no man be bounden to them, and
that they be bounden to all men. I take from them,
and cry down all the good deeds that ever they did
or shall do, till they rise from this cursing. I declare
them partless of all matins, masses, even-songs, dirges,
or other prayers, on book or bead ; of all pilgrimages
and almous deeds done or to be done in holy Kirk,
or by Christian people, enduring this cursing. And,
finally, I condemn them perpetually to the deep pit
of hell, to remain with Lucifer and all his fellows, and
their bodies to the gallows of the Boroughmuir, first
to be hanged, syne riven and rugged with dogs, swine,
and other wild beasts, abominable to all the world.
And as their candles go from your sight, so may their
souls go from the visage of God, and then* good fame
from the world, till they forbear their open sins afore-
SECULAR OFFENCES OF THE CHURCH, 1550-60. 35
said, and rise from this terrible cursing, and make
satisfaction and penance." *
We can suppose all this to have had a very terrifying
effect, so long as it was believed that the curses pro-
claimed by man were sure to be ratified by God. But
if doubts and questions arose on this point, then would
the whole resolve itself into wild ribaldry, and the
cause of ribaldry in others. The practice came to be
ridiculed by the satirists. About the beginning of the
sixteenth century, a poet named Rowl a priest, as it
would appear issued a rhyming cursing against per-
sons who had robbed his poultry-yard and his garden. 2
In 1535 an act was passed for rendering more effec-
tive and severe the civil execution to follow upon
cursing; and the reason assigned for this was, "because
1 State Papers (Henry VIII.), iv. 418, 419.
1 Reprinted in Laing's Select Remains of the Ancient Popular Poetry
of Scotland :
" Herefollowis
Tkt cursing of .S't'r Jofui Rowlis
Upoun the steilaris of kin fowlis.
" Devyne power of michtis maist
Of Fadir, Sone, and Haly Ghaist,
Jesu Chryst and His appostellis,
Peter, Paul, and His discipillLs,
And all the power under God ;
And now of Rome that beiris the rod ,
Under the hevin to loose and bind,
Paip Alexander that we do fynd,
With that power that Peter gaif.
God's braid malison next they half,
And all the blude about their heart.
Black be their hour black be their part,
For five fat geese of Sir John Rowlis, .
With capons, hens, and uthir fowlis,
Baith the holders and concealers,
Resetters and the pror^ stealers,
And he that sauls, seizes, and damns,
Beteich the devil, their guts and gammis,
Their tongue, their teeth, their hands, their feet,
And all their body haill complete,
That brak his yaird and stole his frute."
36 THE REFORMATION.
the damnable persuasions of heretics and their perverse
doctrine gives occasion to lightly the process of cursing
and other censures of holy Kirk," &C. 1
John Kuox tells us of a friar named Arth who, in
the year 1534, preached at St Andrews, and in the
presence of several dignified clergymen, a sermon in
which he attacked some usages in high favour with the
Church, and that in such manner that only great skill
could have prevented him from falling into the terrible
pitfall of provable heresy. He said of cursing, that,
" if it were rightly used, it was the most fearful thing
upon the face of the earth, for it was the very separa-
tion of man from God ; but that it should not be used
lightly, or for very slight cause, but only against open
and incorrigible sinners." And he continued to say,
" But now the avarice of priests and their ignorance of
their office have caused it altogether to be vilipended ;
for the priest, whose duty and office it is to pray for the
people, stands up on Sunday and cries, ' Ane has tynt
a spurtle. There is ane flail stolen from them beyond
the burn. The good wife on the other side of the gait
has tynt ane horn spoon. God's malison and mine I
give to them that knows of this geere, and restores it
not ; " and he followed up with further illustrations
" of how the people mocked their cursing." 2
This process of excommunication or cursing had an
ugly alliance with another fertile source of quarrel
between clergy and laity the levying of tithes, or, as
the equivalent word stood in Scotland, teinds. A tithe
uncommuted to a fixed payment becomes a tax in-
creasing in its pressure with the productive industry
of the people. Whatever it had been in early times, it
1 Act. Parl., ii. 342. * History, i. 39.
SECULAR OFFENCES OF THE CHURCH, 1550-60. 37
was felt in the sixteenth century to be heavily press-
ing on a number of small agriculturists or cottars who
were rising into a class respectable and collectively
powerful, but individually so little above poverty that
a careful parsimony was necessary to the preservation
of the self-supporting independence which they loved.
The tithe, which this class felt as an oppressive impost,
was levied on them, like other debts, through the pro-
cess of cursing and the civil execution following on it;
and naturally they felt that the clergy, by secular inflic-
tions and spiritual anathemas, extracted from them
poor, and hard workers the fruit of their industry, to
swell their own wealth and minister to their pampered
appetites. There were a quantity of other established
dues exacted by the Church, the most offensive of which
appear to have been made conditional on the rite of
burial, which brought them on families in the time of
affliction, and often when they were stricken with sud-
den poverty. Among these exactions we find " the kirk
cow " and the " upmost cloth" recurring in the docu-
ments and the popular literature of the day as grievances
keeping the common people in continual irritation. 1
1 Sir David Lindsay, in the Satire of the Three Estates, puts the in-
cidents of such an extortion into the words of the mendicant who breaks
in upon the performance. It is a highly-coloured illustration of the
grievance. His father and mother have died, leaving him a small agri-
cultural stock " a mare that carried salt and coal, and three kye baith
fat and fair," of the purest Ayrshire breed, then as now celebrated. The
misfortunes begin with a feudal exaction :
' Our gude grey mare was bating on the field,
Our land's laird took her for his haregeld.
The vicar took the best cow bv the head,
Incontinent, when my father Wtls dead.
And when the vicar heard how that my mother
Was deed, fra hand he took fra me ane uther.
Then Meg my wife did mourn baith even and morrow,
Till at the last she deit for very sorrow ;
38 THE REFORMATION.
All these transactions, in which the clergy gave
offence to the people in matters affecting their secular
affairs or interests, had much more influence on the
coming change than any differences regarding matters
of doctrine. It no doubt aggravated all these matters
of offence, that the persons who had so much of the
country's wealth and power, and had so much influ-
ence over the fate of tire private citizen, took their
instructions from and held themselves responsible to
a foreign potentate. In other shapes, too, foreign
influences and ties were strengthening their hold upon
the Church. Its head was not only cardinal a later e
from Rome, but was Bishop of Mirepoix, in France ;
and there was a busy intercourse between the Scots
clergy and those of the great Continental despotisms.
The internal condition of the Church was not, like
many other matters of accusation and defence con-
nected with the times, a question on which there were
two sides. The worldliness of the churchmen, regular
and secular, their luxurious and profligate living, their
neglect of their sacred functions, and their unscrupulous
dealings with the property of the Church even the
offensive usages which made the clergy the instruments
And when the vicar heard tell my wife was dead,
The third cow then he cleiket by the head.
Their upme.st claithes, whilk was of raploch grey,
The vicar gart his clerk bear them away.
When that was ga.ne, I micht make na debate,
But with my bairnis part for to beg my meat.
Now have I told you the black verity,
How I am brocht into this misery.
Iti.ligtiice. How did the parson ? was he not thy gride friend ?
Poor man. The devil stick him ! he cursed me for my teind."
Act ii. Scene 1.
To feel the significance of this, one must remember that it belongs to
a piece which was ejninently popular through the country several years
before the Reformation, and while the Romish hierarchy was in the full
flush of the powers and prerogatives against which its satire was levelled.
SECULAR OFFENCES OF THE CHURCH, 1550-60. 39
of secular oppression, were objects of continued alarm
and reprehension within the Church itself, and of censure
from its best friends without. There was much internal
disquiet from the same cause in the several branches
of the Church throughout Europe ; but in Scotland it
appears to have been excessive. Indeed, from the time
of the great Catholic revival under the sons of St Mar-
garet in the twelfth century, the Church's self-reproaches
seem to have run on as if the leaven of the old disre-
putable Culdees still remained in it. In the year 1424
the Estates recorded among their acts a solemn admo-
nition, addressed in the king's name, to the heads of the
Benedictine and Austine houses, lamenting their irre-
gularities, and sternly calling them to better order if
they would save their establishments from ruin. 1
Leslie, Bishop of Eoss, an ardent partisan of the old
Church, attributed its abuses to the influence of the
crown at the Court of Rome overshadowing that of the
local Church. Whatever may be said of his skill in
pointing to the cause, his description of the effect is
brief and emphatic. " The abbeys catne to secular
abuses, the abbots and priors being promo vit furth of
the Court, wha lived court-like, secularly, and volup-
tuously. And there ceased all religious and godly
minds and deeds, wherewith the seculars 'and temporal
men, being slandered with their evil example, fell fra
all devotion and godlyness to the .works of wickedness,
whereof daily mikel evil did increase." '
1 Act. Parl., ii. 25. Statuta Ecclesiao Scoticansc, Int., Ixxxiv.
5 History, 40. A generation earlier, another eminent ecclesiastic,
Archdeacon Bellenden, had expressed Wmself to a like effect at greater
length (Chronicles, xii. 17). A portion of the passage has been already
cited, as questioning the policy of the profuse establishing of religious
houses in King David's reign (see chap, xiii.) The archdeacon's reproof
40 THE REFORMATION.
In 1541 the Estates resumed consideration of the
abuses of the clergy, and passed a second and broader
censure, to be issued in the name of the king, call-
ing on the prelates, " and every kirkman in his own
degree, to reform themselves, their obedienciaries and
kirkmen under them, in habit and manners to God
and man." This injunction, expanding into particu-
lars was inspired by no Calvinistic teaching ; for among
the abuses which it denounces as scandals to the Church
is a lapsing from the proper observances to " the Virgin
Mary and all holy saints." l
But the censures coming from external authority
were gentle in comparison with those uttered by the
Church against its own unworthy members. A pro-
vincial council, held in 1549, before the Reformation
was yet a visible power in the state, resolved upon a
sweeping reform, and in the remedies it enacted, echoed
the depth of the abuses it laid open. A writer of our
own day has furnished a narrative of the doings of that
council, at once so full, so brief, and so distinct, that any
attempt to recast it would be injustice to the reader.
The injunctions on the clergy were : " To put away their
concubines, under pain of deprivation of their benefices,
to dismiss from their houses the children born to them
in concubinage, not to promote such children to bene-
fices, nor to enrich them the daughters with dowries,
the sons with baronies from the patrimony of the
Church. Prelates were admonished not to keep in
their households manifest drunkards, gamblers, whore-
is the more emphatic that he went out of his way to render it. His book
professes to be a translation of Boece's History ; but this passage is an
addition of his own.
1 Act. I'arl, ii. 370.
INTERNAL REFORMATION, 1549-60. 41
mongers, brawlers, night-walkers, buffoons, blasphemers,
profane swearers. The clergy, in general, were exhorted
to amend their lives and manners, to dress modestly
and gravely, to keep their faces shaven and their heads
tonsured, to live soberly and frugally, so as to have
more to spare for the poor, to abstain from secular pur-
suits, especially trading.
" Provision was made for preaching to the people ;
for teaching grammar, divinity, and canon law in
cathedrals and abbeys ; for visiting and reforming
monasteries, nunneries, and hospitals ; for recalling
fugitives and apostates, whether monks or nuns, to
their cloisters ; for sending from every monastery one
or more monks to a university ; for preventing unquali-
fied persons from receiving orders, and from holding-
cure of souls ; for enforcing residence, and for restrain-
ing pluralities ; for preventing the evasion of spiritual
censures by bribes or fines ; for silencing pardoners, or
itinerant hawkers of indulgences and relics ; for com-
pelling parish clerks to do their duty in person, or to
find sufficient substitutes ; for registering the testa-
ments and inventories of persons deceased, and for
securing faithful administration of their estates, by
bringing their executors to yearly account and reckon-
ing ; for suspending unfit notaries, and for preserving
the protocols of notaries deceased ; for reforming the
abuses of the consistorial courts.''
That in all this there was no intention of a sur-
render to the new doctrines is shown in the tenor
of the further reformatory injunctions, as follows :
" Strict inquest for heresy waS ordered to be made
by every ordinary in his diocese, by every abbot
or prior in his convent. That the inquest might
42 THE REFORMATION.
be the more effectual, the inquisitors were supplied
with a schedule of the chief points of heresy. These
were speaking against the rights and sacraments of
the Church, especially the sacrifice of the mass, the
sacraments of baptism, confirmation, extreme unction;
penance ; contempt of the censures of the Church ;
denial of the reign of the souls of saints with Christ in
glory ; denial of the immortality of the soul ; denial of
recompense for works of faith and charity ; denial of
purgatory ; denial of prayer and intercession of the
saints ; denial of the lawfulness of images in Christian
churches ; denial of the authority of general councils
in controversies of faith ; neglect of the fasts and festi-
vals of the Church. Heretical books, especially poems
and ballads against the Church or clergy, were to be
diligently sought after, and burned." l
This national ecclesiastical council was held while
the Council of Trent was in the middle of its work.
There had been some intention that Scotland should
send representatives to that memorable assemblage, since
funds were provided to pay the costs of their mission,
but none went. 2 Towards the conclusion of its long
sittings that council adopted, in the issuing of its cele-
brated catechism, a cautious and restricted precept to
give the laity religious instruction in their vernacular
tongue. The curious? in the minor religious literature
of the period are aware that books of devotion were at
1 Joseph Robertson, Preface to Statnta Ecclesise Scoticanso, cxlix. cl.
8 There seems at all times to have been little interest in Scotland in
the proceedings of councils-general. From foreign authorities we know
that at the Council of Basle, in the fifteenth century, a certain Thomas,
Abbot of Dundrennan, was a distinguished and leading member ; but his
eminence there has no echo at home, and nothing is said about him in
the chronicles and the other sources of history. The fullest inquiry
after traces of him will be found in the Preface to the Statuta, xcviii.
INTERNAL REFORMATION, 1549-60. 43
that time published for popular use in several parts of
Europe, with the sanction of the local Church while
still adhering to Rome. One of the most remarkable
of these was sanctioned in .1551 by a Scots provincial
council. It is known as Archbishop Hamilton's Cate-
chism ; but its authorship has been attributed to him
on account of the conspicuous way in which his name
and style appear in front, as conferring on the work
the sanction of the Church. 1
The catechism is a fine piece of composition, full of a
spirit of charity and gentleness. It so carefully avoids
whatever might irritate those who have a remnant of the
old faith- by which they may still be drawn back, that
Protestants not gifted with a powerful instinct for the
discovery of heterodoxies might read much of it with-
out finding cause of offence. It exhorts the world to
peace and concord : " Since so it is, as St Paul says, that
we are all regenerate in Christ with ane baptism all
oblaissed to have ane faith all redeemed with ane
blood and dede of our Mediator Jesus Christ all
livand in ane hope of the eternal glory all subjectet
to the service of ane Lord all guidet by the direction
of the Haly Spirit, whilk is ane daily teacher and
governour of the haill universal Kirk,^what can be
mair convenient, yea, mair necessarie, than that we al,
baith prelates and subjects, superiours and inferiours,
1 " The catechisme That is to say, ane commonc and catholick instruc-
tioun of the Christin people in materis of our catholick faith and reli-
gioun, quhilk na gud Christin man or woman stild misknaw : set furth
be the niaist reverend father in God, Johne, Archbischop of Sanct
Androus, Legatnait and Prymat of the Kh^c of Scotland, in his provin-
cial counsale haldin at Edinburgh the xxvi day of Januarie, the yeir of
our Lord 1551, with the advise and counsale of the bischoppis and uthir
prelatis, with doctours of theologie and canon law of the said realme of
Scotland present for the tyme."
44 THE REFORMATION.
always agree and concord together in the brute of ane
catholic doctrine concerning all points belonging to our
Christian religion?''
Even so critical an injunction as the denial of the
right of private judgment is uttered with somewhat of
persuasive gentleness, thus :
" Seek not to understand thay things that is above
thy intelligence ; seek naught to ken thay things
whilk are above thy capacity ; but evermair remember
of thay things that God has commanded thee to do,
and be not curious to understand the marks of God
whilk is naught necessary or profitable to thee to
knaw for thy salvatioun."
The authors of this manual of religious instruction to
the laity had no benefit from the celebrated catechism
of the Council of Trent, which was not issued until a
later time. 1 The Scottish work had the advantage of
itself appearing in a shape to be read by the people,
instead of affording a mere aid to the clergy in the
expositions they were told to make in the vernacular.
But throughout its whole tone and tendency one
would pronounce the Scottish catechism as the much
more skilfully adjusted of the two, both for baffling
and appeasing the common enemy.
The Church seems to have been less fortunate in
another vernacular exposition, avowedly intended for
the laity, and written down to their capacity. It
1 The committee to adjust the catechism, the breviary, the missal, and
the list of prohibited books, was appointed in the second session of Pius
IV., or 1562 ("Sess. xxv. de Indice Librorum et Catechismo"). The
object was to afford a manual whence the clergy might give instruction
in the vernacular to prepare those coming to the sacraments. " Quam
episcopi in vulgarem linguam fideliter verti, atque a parochis omnibus
populo fxponi curabunt." Sess. xxiv. ch. vii.
INTERNAL REFORMATION, 1549-60. 45
was a brief exhortation issued by the national provin-
cial council of 155.9. Its immediate object brought it
at once to a point of hostility with the new doctrines.
It was to be read as a preparation for receiving the sac-
rament of the Eucharist, supplying what in later times
has been called " A Companion to the Altar." Hence
it begins with an exposition of the dogma of the real
presence. 1 It was received with much scorn by the
Reformers, and is spoken of by Knox in one of his
exulting sneers as "the Twopenny Faith.'' 2
The occasion of this hapless effort to meet one of the
popular cries of the day, was a meeting of the clergy
in provincial council, to make a last effort at internal
reform. Meeting in the spring of 1559, while the exist-
ence of the Church itself stood at issue, the delibera-
tions of this body got so little attention that they have
almost dropped out of history. The business of the
1 " Devote Christian men and women, wha at this present time are to
resave the blysset sacrament of the altar, wyt ye perfectly and believe
ye firmly, that under the form of bread, whilk I am now presently to
minister to you, is containet treuly and really our Salvjor Jesus Christ,
heale in Godhead and manhead that is, baith His body and blood and
suule conjoinit with His Godhead, wha in His mortal life oft'eret Himself
upon the croce to the Father of heaven ane acciptable sacrafice for our
redemption fra the devil, sin, eternal dede, and hell ; and now, in His im-
mortal life, sits at the richt hand of the Eternal Father in hevin, whom
in this blisset sacrament, invisibly containit under the form of bread, I
am to minister to you."
* Mr Laing says it has often been confounded with Hamilton's Cate-
chism, and that " of the Twopenny Faith printed in 1559 no copy is
known to be preserved." Note to Knox's History, i. 291. The editor of
the Statuta Ecclesise (p. 177) identifies it with a paper which he prints
as part of the proceedings of the council, with the title, ' Ane Godly
Exhortation made and set forth be the maist reverend father in God,
John, Archbishop of St Andrews, Primate of Scotland, Legate, &c.,
with the avice of the provincial counsal? halden, &c., to all vicars,
curates, and others, consecrate priests, lawful ministers of the sacrament
of the altar, to be read and shawn by them to the Christian people
when any arc to recave the said blessed sacrament.'
46 THE REFORMATION.
council was to consider certain suggestions by a body
of gentlemen well affected to the Catholic establish-
ment, remitted by the regent to the consideration of
the council. 1
These men had no sympathy with the new doc-
trines on the contrary, the maintenance of Catholic
orthodoxy, and the suppression of heresy within the
Church, were among the objects desired by them. The
changes they sought were in discipline and conduct.
They pressed obedience to the injunctions of 1549
against the profligacy, the extravagance, and the idleness
of the clergy. They had several proposals for the ex-
tended use of the vernacular tongue in church services
and devotion. The most important portion of their
original suggestions, however, bore on the strictly sec-
ular functions of the Church looking to the shorten-
ing and simplifying of procedure in the ecclesiastical
courts, and to the abolition or commutation of the
odious taxes on the burial of the dead, and other
ecclesiastical services.
The dealing of the council with these suggestions
loses nearly all its importance, as being virtually an
unheard voice in the tumult. The proposals for ver-
nacular services were discountenanced, though, as we
have seen, one little morsel in native Scots, not of
a hopeful tenor, was issued. Something was passed
towards checking ecclesiastical exactions. The most
effective part of the resolutions of the council, however,
went to the preservation of internal discipline among
1 Articles proponit to the Queen-Regent of Scotland by some temporal
lords and barons, and sent by her grace to the haill prelates and princi-
pals of the clergy convened in their provincial council in Edinburgh.
Statuta Ecclesiae Scoticanae, ii. 146.
INTERNAL REFORMATION, 1549-60. 47
the clergy ; and we are told that the efficiency of these
was of a kind so little contemplated by the framers,
that they served by their strictness to drive many of
the churchmen over to the Eeformers. 1
1 Bishop Leslie calls these " sharp statutes," " whilk was the principal
cause that a great number of young abbots, priors, deans, and beneficed
men assisted to the enterprise and practice devised for the overthrow of
the Catholic religion, and tumult against the queen and Frenchmen,
fearing themselves to be put at according to the laws and statutes." His-
tory, 271. A little more particularity as to a matter so curious would
have been desirable.
CHAPTER XXXVIII.
information.
(Continued^
POLITICAL POSITION OF THE REFORMATION QUESTION IN EURO-
PEAN POLITICS ARRIVAL OF KNOX CHARACTERISTICS OF HIS
NATURE AND INFLUENCE HIS COADJUTORS AND THEIR MOTIVES
MAITLAND OF LETHINGTON THE FIRST BAND OR COVENANT
THE LORDS OF THE CONGREGATION EMBODIED PRESSURE ON
THE QUEEN-REGENT HER DUPLICITY THE FIRST OUTBREAK-
ATTACKS ON THE SYMBOLS OF POPISH WORSHIP AND THE BUILD-
INGS OF THE RELIGIOUS ORDERS CONSIDERATION HOW FAR THE
CONDITION OF OLD ECCLESIASTICAL BUILDINGS IN SCOTLAND
DUE TO THE REFORMERS THE CONGREGATION AT PERTH
DEALINGS WITH THE REGENT OCCUPATION OF EDINBURGH
CONDITION AND DANGERS OF ENGLAND QUEEN ELIZABETH
KNOX AND THE " BLAST " AGAINST FEMALE RULE CECIL AND
KNOX IN TREATY DIFFICULTY OF FINDING A LEGITIMATE HEAD
TO TREAT WITH IN SCOTLAND TREATY OF BERWICK WAR
SIEGE OF LEITH DEATH OF THE REGENT DEPARTURE OF THE
FRENCH, AND TREATY OF EDINBURGH REFORMATION STATUTES.
THEEE were early symptoms that Scotland would not
struggle hard for the old religion. In 1542 a project
already referred to was laid before the Estates, as a bill
is now read in Parliament, authorising the common
reading of the Scriptures, " baith the New Testament
and the Auld, in the vulgar tongue, in Inglis or Scottis,
PRELIMINARY MOVEMENTS, 1558-59. 49
of ane good and true translation." * The Archbishop
of Glasgow, on behalf of the clerical estate, protested
against this measure until the question should be dis-
cussed at a general council ; but it was adopted by the
Estates. From 1554 to 1558 that is, during the reign
of Queen Mary in England many English converts to
the doctrines of the Reformation thought it prudent to
seek refuge in Scotland, where anything that had in it
an element of opposition to the ruling power in England
was still sure to find welcome. Among these was a
distinguished preacher named Willock. John Knox,
too, was virtually a fugitive from the same danger. He
went first from England to France; but in 1555 he
returned to Scotland, and there taught for a time,
until, for reasons about which there has been much
dispute, he went to take charge of the English con-
gregation at Geneva, There was nothing in Scotland
parallel to the English persecutions under Philip and
Mary. The Scots looked upon the troubles there
as on the sufferings of their enemies, and would
readily listen to Knox's sonorous denunciations of
that wicked woman of Spanish blood who was perse-
cuting the faithful.
It is of great importance, in understanding how the
spirit of the Reformation was silently consolidating
itself in Scotland, to keep in view that as yet the
French connection, however distasteful it was becoming-
otherwise, did not of necessity involve hostility to the
new doctrines. France, indeed, was that enemy, or at
all events unsatisfactory servant, of the Popedom which
the Empire, Spain, and England had been united in
holy league to bring to reason. Their religion hung
1 Act. Parl., ii. 415.
VOL. IV. D
50 THE REFORMATION.
lightly on the people, especially those of the higher and
educated classes. The doctrines of the more moderate
Reformers, which oozed into the northern provinces
from England and Germany, were gaining on them
before the cause was injured by the fiery and sanguinary
zealots of the south. As yet the great discovery had
not been made, that disloyalty to the Church was the
partner of disloyalty to the Crown. This was a very
significant discovery, for it involved the fate of France,
and almost of Europe, for half a century. It was the
stock in trade with which the great house of Guise
worked. It enabled the head of that house to defy
the sovereign, and almost drive him from the throne,
the house of Guise being more loyal to Church and
king than the house of Valois itself. The conspiracy of
Ambois may be dealt with as the turning-point at which
the party of the league and of the Huguenots appear to
have taken up their respective positions, and this event
dates in 1560. During the time of the persecution in
England, therefore, the queen-regent had not received
the hint from her brothers that the enemies of the
Church of Rome were to be dealt with as enemies of
the state. Indeed there is strong reason to believe that
the information she gave of her own experience in
Scotland in the years 1559 and 1560, helped her bro-
thers to that important conclusion. So little hostility
did she at first show to the preachers of the Reforma-
tion, that she was supposed privately to favour them ;
and this supposition reacted on her, by deepening the
charges of treachery to which she became amenable
afterwards.
Queen Elizabeth had been scarce half a year on
the throne when, on "the 2d of May 1559, arrived
JOHN KNOX, 1559. 51
John Knox from France." 1 Such are the words in
which he enters the event in his own chronicle. Hence-
forth for a time we live in the broad clear light of that
wonderful book. There certainly is in the English lan-
guage no other parallel to it in the clearness, vigour,
and picturesqueness with which it renders the history
of a stirring period. Whoever would see and feel the
spirit of the Reformation in Scotland and in England
too, for that matter must needs read and study it.
The reader who may happen not to be a zealous Cal-
vinist will deal with it as the work of a partisan. From
first to last there is no mistaking it for anything else.
It is throughout the living spirit of partisanship strong,
resolute, and intolerant. But, for all that, it is full of
truth. In fact the author had achieved a perfection
of positivism which is incompatible with dissimulation
and concealment. Whatever is done by him and his
is so absolutely right, and so valuable as an example
and encouragement to others, that the more loudly and
fully it is proclaimed to the world the better.
Of all the revelations in this book, none is more re-
markable than its writer's own character. His arrival
in Scotland is an important event all his doings are
important in his own eyes, as well as in those of others.
Whether it be for the adoration of the just or the malig-
nity of the wicked, "John Knox" is ever the conspicu-
ous figure in John Knox's book. When the regent, Mary
of Lorraine, is seized with a fit of untimely exultation,
it is against him that she flings. " She burst forth in
her blasphemous railing, and said, ' Where is now John
Knox his God ? My God is now stronger than his,
yea, even in Fife/ " 2 Speaking of the last ecclesias-
1 History, i. 318. 2 Ibid., ii. 8.
52 THE REFORMATION.
tical council which attempted the internal reform of
the Church, he says, " The bishops continued in their
provincial council until that day that John Knox
arrived in Scotland," as if this conjunction aggravated
the audacity of their doings. 1
The way in which he thus sets forth his motions, as
if he were writing the biography of some great man
whose deeds he had the good fortune to witness, might
be called egotism or vanity in one less in earnest. But
it all comes of natural impulse, and reads naturally.
All the world is astir, and he, John Knox, is the centre
of its motion. He was a man of thorough practical
experience, who had seen life in all grades from the
court to the galley-slave's bench. He was signally
acute in penetrating political mysteries, and unfolding
the designs of men when these were hostile ; but he
was as signally blind to the true character of compliant
or perfidious partisans. Working with greedy selfish
men intent on their own aggrandisement, he deemed
them to be as completely as himself under the influ-
ence of an unselfish religious spirit ; and when the evi-
dence of sordidness was all too flagrant, he turned his
honest eyes on it with surprise, like one who beholds
his sober sedate friend take suddenly to drinking, or
go off in a fit of acute madness.
Although the spirit of the Reformation in Scotland
cannot be felt without a full study of the works of
Knox, yet his testimony must be limited to the part
of the field of battle in which he acted. He viewed
the whole conflict as a triumph of the pure faith
through its sole purity and acceptance with the Deity,
and took little heed of the political and personal forces
1 History, i. 101.
JOHN KNOX, 1559. 53
at work. Of these we form a livelier notion from the
works of Sir David Lindsay, of which note is taken
elsewhere. His attacks on the Church were earlier
than Knox's, and indeed belong to a time when there
was great danger for those who came within the ban
of heresy. That this bold satirist and denouncer
should have been spared when others less conspicuous
and far less formidable suffered death may at first
sight be hard to account for, but is in reality very
simple. In attacking the clergy for licentiousness,
greed, and cruelty, he was but repeating what the
authorities of the realm asserted and the Church itself
mournfully confessed. Anything might be said to this
purport, if he who said it were so skilful as to avoid
points of heresy such as the denial of purgatory, the
real presence, and the intermediating power of the
saints. To justify his burning, the heretic must have
committed the sin which could only be expiated for
his soul in the next world by the burning of his body
in this.
When Knox arrived in Scotland, it was to take up
the work where he had left it in 1554. It was scarcely
then of sufficiently conspicuous magnitude to affect the
tenor of history. It influenced private conferences,
and sometimes broke out into polemical discussion.
But it is in connection with the public influence of his
return that these earlier doings become significant.
We have one of his earliest triumphs among the
politicians of his country told by himself, and in the
full spirit of his own temper and character. It is in
the year 1555, when the Reformers, far from suprem-
acy, have not even achieved toleration when every-
thing tended towards the supremacy of the Romish
54 THE REFORMATION.
power, and the Protestant party in Scotland were
coming to an understanding with each other in quiet
secrecy, doing the while all they could through their
external conduct to evade inquiry and notice. Among
these Knox naturally found " divers who had a zeal
to godliness make small scruple to go to the mass, or
to communicate with the abused sacraments in the
papistical manner." The singleness of purpose that
belonged to his infallibility rendered this intolerable,
and he began, " as well in privy conference as in doc-
trine, to show the impiety of the mass, and how dan-
gerous a thing it was to communicate in any sort with
idolatry." His political coadjutors, who understood
his vehement, intractable zeal much better than he
understood their selfish aims, were disturbed by this.
A conference was held at a supper in the house of
Erskine of Dun, one of the few among the landed
adherents of the Reformation who seems to have had
religion at heart.
Knox had the advantage which the headstrong and
single-purposed often have the others must break
with him, or submit. " The question was proposed,
and it was answered by the said John, that nowise it
was lawful to a Christian to present himself to that
idol." He admits that there was much ingenious plead-
ing for the " temporisers," and that especially they put
forward very plausibly the precedent " that Paul, at the
commandment of James and of the elders of Jerusalem,
passed to the temple and feigned to pay his vow with
others." 1 But Knox repudiated the precedent. Pay-
1 This refers to the narrative in the latter portion of the twenty-first
chapter of the Acts. When Paul, having come to Jerusalem, is told that
a great crowd of Jews will gather, knowing of his arrival, and that from
JOHN KNOX, 1559. 55
ing vows and attending mass were not the same thing.
Then he greatly doubted " whether either James's com-
mandment or Paul's obedience proceeded from the Holy
Ghost." But his most telling point was, that the in-
cident was recorded for a warning rather than an ex-
ample ; for, in reality, it preceded and was probably
the source of St Paul's danger and calamities. Both in
broad determination of purpose and in skilful biblical
criticism, he was master of the situation ; and he tells,
with his usual chuckling exultation, how young Wil-
liam Maitland of Lethington, " a man of good learning,
and of sharp wit and reasoning," admitted himself to
be utterly defeated by Knox's reasoning, saying, " I see
perfectly that our shifts will serve nothing before God,
seeing that they stand us in so small stead before men." l
He, and deeper men than he was, found that, if they
were to get service from Knox to their cause at that
juncture, they must go with him as far as he would
drag them. In such times of revolution, the man who
in quiet times would be counted an obstinate and
troublesome enthusiast, taxing the dexterity of people
to keep out of his way, if he is anything at all in the
councils of his party, is its leader.
Few things have perhaps ever been said more insin-
cere than the admission which thus imposed on a man
whose sagacity in some directions was marvellous.
what they have heard of his attacks on the observances of the law they
may be dangerous, the brethren recommend to him an act of conformity
calculated for the time to disarm suspicion. " Do therefore this that we
say to thee : We have four men which have a vow on them ; them take,
and purify thyself with them, and be at charges with them, that they
may shave their heads : and all may know that those things, whereof
they were informed concerning thee, are nothing ; but that thou thyself
also walkest orderly, and keepest the law."
1 History, i. 247* 248.
56 THE REFORMATION.
The statesman found that at this time he must go with
the stream of their absolute opinions, if he were to
make a political use of Knox and his followers. They
had other contests of wit, in which Maitland found it
more suitable to cast a sneer at the absolute zeal of the
polemical leader than to follow his dictation ; and then
he would be commemorated, not in praise of his piety
and docility, but in fierce rebuke for his worklliness
and profanity. This young Maitland, also, had a
character and a sphere of his own. He is well known
in history simply as " Lethington," the name of his
paternal estate. He was deep in all the political doings
of that busy time, and perhaps knew more of its bloody
mysteries than any other man. His name was a
byword for subtlety and statecraft. Yet, though it
ever comes up in connection with events as that of one
supposed to pull the hidden strings, if we look at his
life and doings, we do not find that he was one of those
who have left the mark of their influence upon their
age. He appears to have been too artificial and techni-
cally subtle to have great weight. He was an accom-
plished scholar, and bethought himself to draw on the
resources of his reading for political influence to bring
the sagacity of the whole world of political authors
and actors to aid his own. But if it succeed elsewhere,
that is not the teaching that makes strong-handed
statesmen in this country. Craft and sagacity did
much in Maitland's day ; but it was the craft and
sagacity of those w r ho were familiar with the political
forces close at hand, and all the craft and wisdom of
Machiavelli or Aristotle would have added little to
their resources. Among men like these, the avowed
scientific politician, whose intellect was stuffed with
KNOX AND LETHINGTON, 1559-60. 57
foreign subtleties, was a man to be feared and sus-
pected. He was like an actor among men who seemed
to follow where truth and nature led them ; and he
was consequently more easily seen through than those
who had not a like reputation for subtlety. Withal,
he had great abilities, but they were rather those of
the wit and rhetorician than of the practical man. He
had marvellous and dangerous powers of repartee, and,
like others so gifted, let fly the shaft when he had
better have reserved it. We can see, in occasional
growls of pain and wrath, how Knox himself winced
under such punctures, and repaid them with solid
blows.
Knox, on his second coming, was not uninvited.
His presence, indeed, was urgently demanded, as that
of one who had for a time deserted his post of honour
and danger. There were several preachers dispersed
over the country who were in use to gather the people
and read to them the English service-book of King-
Edward. A considerable body of the landed gentry
had an understanding with one another, as friends of
the new religion. They soon saw that an ecclesiastical
revolution would set free a great stretch of land for
new owners. This, too, made a common interest, which
held them firmly together when they professed a union
for purely religious objects. In the winter of 1557
they adopted a plan which we have seen in practice in
Scotland from a very early day. Many of them signed
a band or bond to co-operate with each other for the
purposes set forth in the document. This was termed
the First Covenant ; and as it is a short, expressive
enunciation, it may be allowed to explain its own
object :
58 THE REFORMATION.
" We, perceiving how Satan, in his members, the
Antichrists of our time, cruelly doth rage, seeking to
overthrow arid to destroy the evangel of Christ and His
Congregation, ought, according to our bounden duty, to
strive in our Master's cause even unto the death, being
certain of the victory in Him. The which our duty
being well considered, we do promise, before the majesty
of God and His Congregation, that we (by His grace)
shall with all diligence continually apply our whole
power, substance, and our very lives, to maintain, set
forward, and establish the most blessed Word of God
and His Congregation ; and shall labour at our possi-
bility to have faithful ministers purely and truly to
minister Christ's evangel and sacraments to His people.
We shall maintain them, nourish them, and defend
them, the whole Congregation of Christ, and every
member thereof, at our whole powers and wearing of
our lives, against Satan, and all wicked power that
does intend tyranny or trouble against the foresaid
Congregation. Unto the which Holy Word and Congre-
gation we do join us, and also do forsake and renounce
the congregation of Satan, with all the superstitious
abomination and idolatry thereof : and moreover,
shall declare ourselves manifestly enemies thereto, by
this our faithful promise before God, testified to His
Congregation, by our subscriptions at these presents.
At Edinburgh, the 3d day of December 1557 years."
Having met to subscribe this document, they passed
two resolutions, in these terms :
" First, It is thought expedient, devised, and ordained,
that in all parishes of this realm the Common Prayer
be read weekly on Sunday, and other festival days,
publicly in the parish churches, with the lessons of the
FIRST PUBLIC ACTS, 1558. 59
Old and New Testament, conform to the order of the
Book of Common Prayer. And if the curates of the
parishes be qualified, to cause them to read the same ;
and if they be not, or if they refuse, that the most
qualified in the parish use and read the same.
" Secondly, It is thought necessary that doctrine,
preaching, and interpretation of Scriptures be had and
used privately in quiet houses, without great conven-
tions of the people thereto ; while afterward that God
move the prince to grant public preaching by faithful
and true ministers."
The first occasion on which the Protestants came
forth as a public power in the state, and had anything
resembling a contest with their natural enemies, was in
1558. The affair is thus narrated by Knox :
" They kept their conventions, and held councils
with such gravity and closeness, that the enemies
trembled. The images were stolen away in all parts
of the country; and in Edinburgh was that great idol
called St Giles first drowned in the North Loch,
after burnt, which raised no small trouble in the town.
For the friars rowping like ravens upon the bishops,
the bishops ran upon the queen, who to them was
favourable enough, but that she thought it could not
stand with her advantage to offend such a multitude
as then took upon them the defence of the evangel,
and the name of Protestants. And yet consented she
to summon the preachers ; whereat the Protestants,
neither offended, nor yet thereof afraid, determined to
keep the day of summons, as that they did. Which
perceived by the prelates and priests, they procured a
proclamation to be publicly made, ' That all men that
were come to the town without commandment of the
60 THE REFORMATION.
authority, should with all diligence repair to the
borders, and there remain fifteen days ;' for the Bishop
of Galloway, in this manner of rhyme, said to the
queen, ' Madam,
' Because they are come without order,
I rede ye, send them to the border.'
Now so had God provided that the quarter of the
West-land (into the which were many faithful men)
was that same day returned from the border, who,
understanding the matter to proceed from the malice
of the priests, assembled themselves together, and
made passage to themselves, till they came to the
very privy-chamber, where the queen-regent and the
bishops were. The gentlemen began to complain
upon their strange entertainment, considering that
her grace had found into them so faithful obedience
in all things lawful. While that the queen began
to craft, a zealous and a bold man, James Chalmer of
Gadgirth, said, ' Madam, we know that this is the
malice and devise of the jefwellis, and of that bastard
(meaning the Bishop of St Andrews) that stands by
you. We avow to God we shall make ane day of
it. They oppress us and our tenants for feeding of
their idle bellies ; they trouble our preachers, and
would murder them and us. Shall we suffer this any
longer ? No, madam ; it shall not be.' And there-
with every man put. on his steel bonnet. There was
heard nothing of the queen's part but ' My joys, my
hearts, what ails you ? Me means no evil to you
nor to your preachers. The bishops shall do you no
wrong. Ye are all my loving subjects. Me knew
nothing of this proclamation. The day of your
preachers shall be discharged, and me will hear the
LORDS OF THE CONGREGATION, 1558-59. 6l
controversy that is betwixt the bishops and yon.
They shall do you no wrong. My lords/ said she to
the bishops, ' I forbid you either to trouble them or
their preachers.' And unto the gentlemen, who were
wondrously commoved, she turned again, and said,
' my hearts, should ye not love the Lord your God
with all your heart, with all your mind ? and should
ye not love your neighbours as yourselves ?' With
these and the like fair words she kept the bishops
from buffets at that time." l
The burning of Walter Mill was a sort of declaration
of war, rousing the Protestant party to wrath and
action. The leaders now called themselves " the Lords
of the Congregation," and in that capacity laid a remon-
strance before the regent charging the Church with,
cruelty. " There abideth," they said, " nothing for us
but faggot, fire, and sword, by the which many of our
brethren most cruelly and most unjustly have been
stricken of late years within this realm, which now
we find to trouble and wound our consciences ; for we
acknowledge it to have been our bounden duties before
God, either to have defended our brethren from these
cruel murders, seeing we are a part of that power which
God hath established in this realm, or else to have
given open satisfaction of our faith with them, which
now we offer ourselves to do, lest that by our continual
silence we shall seem to justify their cruel tyranny."
They then demanded a reformation of abuses, and the
establishment of religion on the basis of their bond
and resolutions. 2 The queen-regent received this and
other remonstrances respectfully, and pressed nothing
against them but moderation and delay. Her winning
1 History, i. 256-58. 2 History, 302. Calendar of State Papers, 7.
62 THE REFORMATION.
pleasant manner had great influence over those she
spoke to ; and it was chiefly owing to a reliance on her
good feeling that the meeting of the Estates, in the
winter of 1558, passed over without a fierce discussion
of the great question. Knox even was won by the
gentleness of her dealing and its tone of sincerity. "In
public letters," he says, " to that excellent servant of
God, John Calvin, we did praise and commend her for
her excellent knowledge of God's Word, and goodwill
towards the advancement of His glory, requiring of
him that, by his grave counsel and godly exhortation,
he would animate her grace constantly to follow that
which godly she had begun." It was to his after mor-
tification that he went still farther, and did " sharply
rebuke both by word and writing all those who ap-
peared to suspect in her any venom of hypocrisy, or
were contrary to that opinion which we had conceived
of her godly mind." l
De Bethencourt soon afterwards arrived as ambassa-
dor from France, now closely knit to Scotland by the
recent marriage ; and it is supposed that he expounded
to the queen-regent the policy of her brothers, which
was to be war a deadly unsparing war with the pro-
pagators of the new opinions. In the words of Knox,
" Then began she to frown, and to look frowardly to
all such as she knew did favour the evangel of Jesus
Christ. She commanded her household to use all
abominations at Pasche ; and she herself, to give
example to others, did communicate with that idol in
open audience. She comptrolled her household, and
would know where that every ane received their sac-
rament. And it is supposed that after that day the
1 History, i. 315.
ENGLISH ALLIANCE SUGGESTED, 1559. 63
devil took more violent and strong possession in her
than he had before ; for, from that day forward, she
appeared altogether altered, insomuch that her coun-
tenances and facts did declare the venom of her
heart." It is just at the same time in January
1559 that we find the suggestions of an alliance
with England taking shape.
Arran, now called Duke of Chatelherault, or " The
Duke," had a meeting with Sir Henry Percy, in which
the position of England and Scotland was discussed.
The duke admitted that the connection with France
was becoming oppressive to Scotland. He said the
old enmity to England was dying out ; and he men-
tioned, as an instance of this, how the queen-regent
had lately ordered a Scots army to invade England,
but that, acting otherwise in all duty, they had refused
to cross the border, as not a service demanded by their
feudal duty. Sir Henry Percy spoke of the favour
which England bore to the right-thinking portion of
the Scots. The realm was suffering too much, how-
ever, from the consequences of the late reign to offer
any assistance in the mean time, and nothing was con-
cluded between the two representatives. 2 The old
project for a marriage of Queen Elizabeth to the duke's
son, now Earl of Arran, was renewed. The father was
not a man likely to press such a matter, or plot in-
geniously in its favour. The proposition was simply
made, and courteously declined by the queen.
That ecclesiastical council of 1559 which attempted
the adjustment of projects of internal reformation in
the Church was then assembled in the hall of the
1 History, i. 315.
2 Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 1 559, 98.
64 THE REFORMATION.
Dominican monastery at Edinburgh. 1 It rose on the
10th of April, and adjourned until Septuagesima Sun-
day of the year 1560 ; but never met again. The
projects entertained and those adopted, with their
relations to each other, might have become an import-
ant chapter in ecclesiastical history ; but all was swept
away by the torrent from without. It has been generally
understood that the regent laid the demands of the
Reformers before this council. 2 We have seen that
there came before the council certain propositions,
offered by those well affected to the Church, who
pleaded for internal reformation. These are respect-
fully recorded ; but the proceedings of the council
bear no reference to any proposals by a hostile body. 3
Hence it would appear either that the regent did not,
in an official form and from authority, desire the at-
tention of the council to the demands of the Protest-
ants, or that, if she did so, the council took no formal
notice of the document laid before them.
They knew that she was prepared to back them in
resistance to the new force, and it was during the sit-
ting of the council that she was observed to take an
attitude of distinct hostility to the Reformers. A
deputation from the Congregation touched on the
symptoms of her change of policy, and reminded her
of the encouragement which she had given to the
cause of the Reformation. It was to these visitors
that she was accused of making the too characteristic
remark, that " it became not subjects to burden their
princes with promises further than it pleaseth them to
1 See above, p. 45.
* M'Crie's Knox, Works, i. 123. Grub, Ecclesiastical History.
3 See the Record in Statutn Ecclesiae Scoticanse, ii. 146 et seq.
DISCUSSIONS, 1559. 65
keep the same." She was about to give a still clearer
example of her opinions on this head. She cited cer-
tain of the preachers to appear before the Privy Coun-
cil at Stirling, to answer for their conduct. A large
body of men of influence were prepared to accompany
them, and assembled at Perth for the purpose. The
regent begged that they would abandon their project,
and return home ; and to induce them to do so, she
promised to withdraw the citations. They dispersed
accordingly, but she had no intention of keeping her
promise. The names of the ministers cited were called
in court in the usual manner ; and as they did not ap-
pear, they were treated as fugitives from justice, and
in common form outlawed and proclaimed as rebels.
News of this came to Perth, where still there was
a remnant of the gathering, who were hearing John
Knox preach and exhort ; and here came the first
outbreak of popular reforming zeal into actual violence.
The scene may best be told in Knox's own words :
" The manner whereof was this : the preachers
before had declared how odious was idolatry in God's
presence ; what commandment He had given for the
destruction of the monuments thereof; what idolatry
and what abomination was in the mass. It chanced
that the next day, which was the llth of May, after
that the preachers were exiled, that after the sermon,
which was vehement against idolatry, that a priest
in contempt would go to the mass ; and to declare
his malapert presumption, he would open up ane
glorious tabernacle which stood upon the high altar.
There stood beside certain godly men, and amongst
others a young boy, who cried with a loud voice,
' This is intolerable, that when God by His Word
VOL. IV. E
66 THE REFORMATION.
hath plainly damned idolatry, we shall stand and see
it used in despite.' The priest, hereat offended, gave
the child a great blow, who in anger took up a stone,
and, casting at the priest, did hit the tabernacle, and
broke down ane image ; and immediately the whole
multitude that were about cast stones, and put hands
to the said tabernacle, and to all other monuments
of idolatry, which they despatched before the tent-
men in the town were advertised (for the most part
were gone to dinner), which noised abroad, the whole
multitude convened, not of the gentlemen, neither of
them that were earnest professors, but of the rascal
multitude, who, finding nothing to do in that church,
did run without deliberation to the Grey and Black
Friars', and, notwithstanding that they had within
them very strong guards kept for their defence, yet
were their gates incontinent burst up. The first
invasion was upon the idolatry, and thereafter the
common people began to seek some spoil ; and in
very deed the Grey Friars' was a place so well pro-
vided, that unless honest men had seen the same, we
would have feared to have reported what provision
they had. Their sheets, blankets, beds, and cover-
lets were such as no earl in Scotland hath the better;
their napery was fine. There were but eight persons
in convent, yet had eight puncheons of salt beef
(consider the time of the year, the llth day of May),
wine, beer, and ale, besides store of victuals effeiring
thereto. The like abundance was not in the Black
Friars', and yet there was more than became men pro-
fessing poverty. The spoil was permitted to the poor;
for so had the preachers before threatened all men,
that for covetousness' sake none should put their hand
MISCHIEF TO RELIGIOUS HOUSES, 1559. 67
to such a reformation, that no honest man was en-
riched thereby the value of a groat. Their conscience
so moved them that they suffered those hypocrites take
away what they could of that which was in their places.
The Prior of Charterhouse was permitted to take away
with him even so much gold and silver as he was well
able to carry. So was men's consciences before beaten
with the Word that they had no respect to their own
particular profit, but only to abolish idolatry, the places
and monuments thereof, in which they were so busy
and so laborious that within two days these three
great places, monuments of idolatry to wit, the
Grey and Black thieves, and Charterhouse monks (a
building of a wondrous cost and greatness) was
so destroyed that the walls only did remain of all
these great edifications.'' l
This passage introduces us to a notorious feature of
the Scottish Reformation the destruction that befell
the monuments of early ecclesiastical architecture
throughout the country. Two conditions are apt to
give an exaggerated notion of the destruction perpe-
trated by these Reformers. One is the frank admission
of Knox, that his followers heartily set their hands to
demolition. The other is the total disappearance of
many ecclesiastical buildings, and the mere ruinous
shreds which show where others existed. Tradition, too,
has joined to swell the charge against the iconoclasts,
or to enhance their glory as it may be otherwise put.
Round the ruins of multitudes of Gothic churches
there crowd traditions of the righteous Reformers de-
stroying the citadels of superstition and infamy. Even
in far lona we are asked to believe that a mob tore to
1 History, i. 320.
68 THE REFORMATION.
pieces great masses of Norman masonry, and that they
even carried off some hundred or so of monuments.
But there were other elements of destruction. The
most merciless has been mere neglect. In England,
the Reformation was not antagonistic to the old build-
ings and the old forms ; in Scotland it was. Ecclesias-
tical architecture came to a stand in 1560. It seemed
as if necessity only would make people submit to
worship in the fanes of the old religion, and they
raised no new buildings after the same model. The
churches thus fell to pieces from exposure and neglect.
The several stages of destruction from this cause passed
unnoticed. After many years perhaps the roof would
give way, then the wet getting into the chinks of the
stones the walls would fall piecemeal, so the pillars,
and in the end all would be a heap of rubbish, becom-
ing more and more chaotic, until, on the revival of the
love of Gothic architecture, within the memory of the
present generation, the Government Board of Works
would make an effort to preserve such fragments as
could be saved. Among all the great churches of
Scotland the most nearly obliterated is that of Elgin.
Yet we know from old prints that about the time of
the Revolution its walls were complete, and the pro-
gress it had made towards destruction went no farther
than the falling-in of the roof.
The Reformation mobs, in their destruction of every-
thing savouring of idolatry, destroyed not merely the
gaudy and valueless symbols by which the Church of
Rome strove to impress the minds of the ignorant, but
a deal of the fine interior decorative masonry of the
first pointed and the flamboyant styles, which are now
so much prized. But beyond things thus savouring of
MISCHIEF TO RELIGIOUS HOUSES, 1559. 69
idolatry, the fabric of the churches did not excite their
destructive indignation. The cloisters and other dwell-
ing-places of the regulars, however, did. These were,
in a manner, fortresses of the enemy. Hence we must
believe in the destruction of the monasteries at St
Andrews and at Perth as described by Knox, as well
as of many others. 1 It is noticeable at the present
day that, even where the churches of the monastic
houses still exist, the remnants of the cloisters and
other domestic buildings which had surrounded them
are extremely scanty.
We have, in one instance at least, the formal instruc-
tion under which the sweepers-away of the matter of
offence did their work. It refers to the Cathedral of
Dunkeld. That building as it now stands, no doubt,
bears mark of rough handling; but it probably suffered
more injury in standing a siege of Highland Jacobites
after the Revolution than it received from the Re-
formers. At all events, the Directions, while they
contain a full and hearty licence for the destruction of
images, altars, and all monuments of idolatry, profess
carefully to guard against any injury either to the
stone or wood work of the fabric of the church.' 2
In the history of the invasions directed by King
1 Sadler, on the 29th of September 1559, when he announces the
arming of the Lords of the Congregation and his information on the
matter from his spy, says, " He told us also that they had suppressed the
Abbeys of Paisley, Kilwinning, and Dunfermline, and burned all the
images, idols, and Popish stuff in the same." State Papers, i. 468.
2 The authority subscribed by Argyle and Ruthven on 12th August
1560, requires the Lairds of Arntully and Kinvaid " to pass incontinent
to the Kirk of Dunkeld, and tak doun the haill images thereof, and bring
furth to the kirkyard, and burn them openly. And siclyke cast doun
the altars, and purge the kirk of all kinds of monuments of idolatry; and
this ye fail not to do as ye will do us singular empleasure, and so com-
70 THE REFORMATION.
Henry and Somerset, we have seen enough to account
for large items in the ruin that overcame ecclesiastical
buildings in Scotland. For Melrose, Kelso, Jedburgh,
and the many other buildings torn down in these in-
roads, the Scots Reformers have no censure to incur
beyond that of neutrality or passiveness. The ruined
edifices were not restored, as they naturally would
have been had the old Church remained predominant.
Knox, and those who followed him for conscience'
sake, had not intended that their followers should
perpetrate even what mischief befell ; but once done,
and done in the cause, they were not to disavow it
or abandon those coadjutors whose only defect was a
superabundance of zeal. And, besides, might not the
finger of God have been shown in the method of the
destruction of idolatry? and was it for them to question
His will, or the method in which He fulfilled it ? They
issued several manifestoes to the regent, to the French
commanders, and to others all casting defiance, and
standing on the argument, which never can be refuted,
that their work was sanctified, and that they must
continue to serve God rather than man. The briefest
and perhaps the most characteristic of these documents
was the following : -
" To the generation of Antichrist, the pestilent pre-
lates and their shavelings within Scotland, the Con-
gregation of Christ Jesus within the same sayeth
" To the end that ye shall not be abused, thinking
to escape just punishment, after ye in your blind fury
have caused the blood of many to be shed, this we
mils to the protection of God. Fail not but ye tak good heed that neither
the desks, windocks, nor doors be onyways hurt or broken, either
glassin work or iron work." Statistical Account of Scotland, x. 976.
THE REGENT AND THE CONGREGATION, 1559-60. ?I
notify and declare unto you, that if ye proceed in this
your malicious cruelty, ye shall be entreated, whereso-
ever ye shall be apprehended, as murderers and open
enemies to God and unto mankind ; and therefore
betimes cease from this blind rage. Remove first from
yourselves your bands of bloody men of war, and re-
form yourselves to a more quiet life ; and thereafter
mitigate ye the authority which, without crime com-
mitted upon our part, ye have inflamed against us ;
or else be ye assured that, with the same measure that
ye have measured against us, and yet intend to measure
to others, it shall be measured unto you that is, as ye
by tyranny intend not only to destroy our bodies, but
also by the same to hold our souls in bondage of the
devil subject to idolatry, so shall we, with all force
and power which God shall grant unto us, execute
first vengeance and punishment upon you ; yea, we
shall begin that same war which God commandeth
Israel to execute against the Canaanites that is, con-
tract of peace shall never be made till that ye desist
from your open idolatry, and persecution of God's
children. And this we signify unto you, in the name
of the Eternal God, and of His Son Christ Jesus
whose verity we profess, and gospel we have preached,
and holy sacraments rightly administered so long as
God will assist us to gainstand your idolatry. Take
this for advertisement, and be not deceived." }
This was the critical point in the contest, and it may
safely be said that, if the queen-regent had kept her
promises, and had not attempted to carry her point by
French money and French troops, the Reformation in
Scotland would have borne a character different from
1 Printed in Keith, 87; Knox (History), i. 335 ; and elsewhere.
72 THE REFORMATION.
what it actually took. Argyle, the Lord James
Stewart, afterwards Earl of Murray, Lord Semple, and
other men of mark of the party of the Congregation,
joined the regent, to show their respect for law and
order; and had they found her faithful to the moderate
courses which she readily promised, they might have
remained by her side. The Congregation strengthened
themselves in Perth, and a French force marched to
Auchterarder, fifteen miles southward of them. A
battle was imminent. Argyle, the Lord James, and
Semple went to commune with the Protestants, and
had much talk with Knox, in which they found that
the yielding of any point on that side was a hopeless
expectation. Towards the maintaining of moderation
on the other side, however, there came to their assist-
ance an unanswerable argument in a small army of two
thousand five hundred men, brought to the aid of the
Congregation by Lord Glencairn. The enemy now
came to terms, which were a distinct triumph to the
Congregation. They were that
" 1. Both the armies shall be disbanded, and the town
left open to the queen.
" 2. None of the inhabitants shall be molested on
account of the late alteration in religion.
" 3. No Frenchmen shall enter the town, nor come
within three miles of it ; and when the queen retires,
no French garrison shall be left in the town.
" 4. That all other controversies be left to the next
Parliament." ]
The Congregation dispersed from Perth ; but ere
they went, Knox preached a sermon, in which he said,
" I am assured that no part of this promise made shall
1 Keith, 89.
THE REGENT AND THE CONGREGATION, 1559-60. 73
be longer kept than till the queen and her Frenchmen
have the upper hand." He was quite right the articles
were preadjusted, with a defect which gave the means
of discarding them. The Congregation knew that the
regent could not levy a feudal force for her purposes,
and they thought themselves safe if no French force
could be brought against them. But the regent had
French money, and with that she hired a native force
to garrison Perth, and went thither with a French force
under D'Oysel they were her body-guard, and not a
garrison. The Congregation counted that the stipulation
not to " molest " the inhabitants was grossly violated.
This affair gave sudden strength to the Reformers,
like a rush of new blood. The influential men who
had departed from them for a while came back, and
multitudes flocked to them from distant places. They
invaded St Andrews. The archbishop threatened a
vigorous resistance, but found it hopeless. Knox
preached, and his sermon was followed by the usual
demonstration against idolatry, and the wrecking of
the religious houses. The queen's army marched from
Linlithgow to sweep them away, but St Andrews was
found to be well fortified and strongly garrisoned.
Again there was treaty and stipulations. No French-
men were to remain in Fifeshire, and certain commis-
sioners were to be appointed by the regent to adjust
finally with the leaders of the Congregation. No such
commissioners were appointed, however, and it became
clear that the regent was working for delay up to the
time when a fresh force should arrive from France.
On the 29th of June 1559, the Congregation made a
decisive stroke by marching on and occupying Edin-
burgh, whence the Court and the French had to retire.
74 THE REFORMATION.
It was charged against the new occupants that here
they took on themselves to perform some of the func-
tions of a government ; for instance, that they took
and used the coining irons, or the dies of the national
mint. They had, doubtless, done enough to cost them
all their heads, if their enemies had power to work
their will on them. But there was more yet to come.
On the 23d of October 1559, a solemn proclamation
professed to depose the regent. It was issued with
the nearest practicable approach to Parliamentary form.
The spiritual lords of the Estates were not parties to
it, but the burghs were represented, and the whole
body set forth that they acted in " our sovereign lord
and lady's name," " whose council we are of native
birth in the affairs of this our common weal/'
The regent and her party took no notice of this
document. In the quietness of inaction, some of the
Protestants repented of their course and dropped off.
Most conspicuous among these was the wavering duke.
Yet the moment should have been one to excite his
interest. The driving forth of the Jezebels, mother and
daughter, and a change in the succession of the crown,
were freely talked of. The natural channel to shift the
succession into was the house of Hamilton. Young
Arran, the heir of that house, was then in France. It
was deemed of moment that he should make his appear-
ance in Scotland, and he escaped from France and
wandered northward through England in disguise.
There is a romantic legend that he thus providentially
preserved his life, for the Guises had resolved to strike
some distinguished members of the Reform party, and
he was selected as the first victim.
It was evident, however, that, when a French army
THE REGENT AND THE CONGREGATION, 1559-60. 75
arrived, the cause would be lost unless England came
to the rescue. In existing conditions, the policy of that
step was undoubted ; but for the same reason, inter-
ference at the present stage would be the admission
of principles against which Queen Elizabeth had a
horror. She was a champion of the divine right of
sovereigns. She felt that her own right required every
sanction she could get, and it might be a precedent to
react on herself were she to countenance subjects in
opposing their sovereign. It might be otherwise if
there were disputed claims, and a legitimate leader to
be acknowledged. We shall see how far these demands
were supplied by the ingenuity of English statesmen ;
but to the end the countenancing of opposition to a
crowded and anointed queen was a difficulty.
Cecil set his wisdom to work upon the difficulty in
" a short discussion of the weighty matter of Scotland,"
dated in August 1559. In his perplexity he had recourse
to some views which at this day sound grotesquely
when connected with so great a name for sagacity.
He proposed to set to work the claim of feudal supe-
riority over Scotland, but after a quite original plan.
It was not for the purpose of subjugating the country
to a foreign yoke, after the example of King Edward,
but that the people might be relieved by the masterful
exercise of English power from the foreign yoke now
holding them, and might be restored to their native
customs and their liberties. But after all, perhaps,
looking at it from Cecil's side, the scheme was not so
mad as it appears. He, no doubt, seriously believed in
the superiority ; for being, as he was, a busy man, if
he looked into the documents relating to the matter,
he would find at that time the whole story in a very
76 THE REFORMATION.
complete form, aud supported by abundance of records
which he would have no reason to distrust, though
they have been since denounced as forgeries. 1 After
he had got some experience of the country he was
dealing with, Cecil was wise enough to keep silence
on the question of the superiority. Intercourse with
practical Scotsmen made him better acquainted with
the political conditions. Early in the year we find
him in communication with Kirkcaldy of Grange.
That ardent and ambitious young man is among the
first to strike the key-note of the great change in the
1 " The crown of England hath a just and unfeigned title, of longer
continuance than the friendship betwixt Scotland and France, unto the
superiority of Scotland ; and for the right thereof, it is as good, and in
some respect better, than the right of the French queen to the realm of
Scotland, as hereafter shall appear. To prove the antiquity and con-
tinuance of the right of this superiority, remain good, ancient, and
abundant stories ; and which is the best proof, the authentic and
manifest writings under the seals of Scotland, declaring from age to age,
from king to king, from parliament to parliament, the homages done to
the kings of England by the kings of Scots ; coming sometimes to York,
sometime to London, sometime to Lincoln, sometime to Canterbury.
By which title of superiority, the crown of England hath upon dif-
ferences decided the controversies, and appointed the crown of Scotland
as to it was thought fit. And by this title and dignity doth the French
queen, as Queen of Scots, owe homage to the crown of England ; and so
consequently ought the crown of England to defend the liberties, the
laws, the baronage, and people of Scotland, from oppression, and that in
honour and conscience, no less than the emperor ought to defend the
state of Milan, or the kingdom of Bohemia, being vassals to the empire.
And therefore, if it may appear that the French king, by pretence of
the marriage of an heir of Scotland, will alter the laws, liberties, and
customs of Scotland, and will subvert the lawful heirs of the Scottish
blood to the crown, and deprive the barons and states of the realm of
their inheritance, whereby the French nation and blood may possess that
land ; then the crown of England is bound in honour and conscience to
defend and protect the realm of Scotland against the French. And so
doth the first question alter in the most principal point ; for then is not
the case betwixt subjects and a natural prince, but betwixt a superior
king and a realm of the one part, and an inferior king alone joining with
strangers on the other part." Sadler State Papers, i. 378, 379.
ELIZABETH AND KNOX, 1559-60. 77
national sentiments terror of France, and a desire for
common cause with England. We find the Scotsman
pressing on the English statesman the danger of both
countries, and the infinite importance of England
securing the aid of a people who had heretofore been
true to themselves, and would be true to their ally in
the hour of danger. 1
There was one thing of vital importance to the
views of Cecil and his fellow-statesmen of England
they must secure the hearty co-operation of John Knox.
His own temper and capacity, working under peculiar
political conditions, had raised up the preacher to be
one of the dictators of the political movements of
Europe. Environed by perils as Elizabeth's Govern-
ment was, to secure the help of Scotland was an object
almost vital. The new party there were influenced by
many motives arising from selfish hate and greed; but
the cry which united them as a power was the "evangel"
of the Reformation, and of that Knox was master. If
the self-seeking aristocracy did not satisfy him that
their zeal in this cause was orthodox and sufficient, he
could break up their power ; and nothing would prevent
him from doing so, if he so willed. He must, if possible,
be made to see, then, that his own cause and that of
England were one. It would not suffice to show him
that worldly prudence suggested this union of forces-
worldly prudence might go to the winds; but he might
be made to see that a junction of forces between
the English Government and the Scots Reformers was
the shape which the ways of Providence were taking
towards the blessed result.
To deal with one so absolute in his own spiritual
1 Calendar of State Papers, 1558-59, 385.
78 THE REFORMATION.
empire demanded caution and patience. Cecil seems to
have required all the training to the ways of a pliant
statesman, which his experience of Henry and his
daughter had given him, to endure arrogance and dic-
tation from so unwonted a quarter. He got a scolding,
after Knox's peculiar manner, to begin with. It has
generally been thought that Cecil behaved with unex-
pected spirit when he retired from Court during the
reign of Mary Tudor, carrying with him the avowal
of Protestantism. This did not satisfy Knox ; he
should have lifted his testimony against the Jezebel,
and he is told, " As the benefit which ye have received
is great, so must God's justice require of you a thank-
ful heart ; for seeing that His mercy hath spared you
being traitor to his majesty seeing, further, that
amangs your enemies He hath preserved you and last,
seeing, although worthy of hell, He hath promoted
you to honour and dignity, of you must He require,
because He is just, earnest repentance for your former
defection, a heart mindful of His merciful providence,
and a will so ready to advance His glory, that evi-
dently it may appear that in vain ye have not received
these graces of God to performance whereof, of neces-
sity it is, that carnal wisdom and worldly policy to
the which both ye are bruited too much inclined give
place to God's simple and naked truth." *
Whatever of this kind, however, Cecil had to bear was
a trifle to another difficulty. His wilful mistress hated
Knox for that book of his against the right and the
capacity of women to govern. It was necessary that
he should do something to appease her on this point,
but would he do it ? To men with ordinaiy motives
1 History, ii 17, 18.
ELIZABETH AND KNOX, 1559-60. 79
the opportunity was a brilliant one ; the denouncer of
feminine rule had only to say that he had drawn his
philosophy from bad examples he was fallible, like
all men he had now seen a brilliant reverse of the
wretched experience on which he had drawn, and must
recant his broad conclusions. It soon became apparent
that anything like this was hopeless. The Reformer
had many times to admit, with due sorrow, that he
had been deceived in the character of individual men
who had professed zeal in the great cause and after-
wards abandoned it. But that he, John Knox, should
admit himself to have been fallible in a broad declara-
tion of doctrine as soon expect the holy Court of
Rome to drop the keys of St Peter, and recant its
whole traditions as wretched fallacies ! He stood by
what he maintained to the utmost. He heard that a
refutation of his doctrine was to appear : let the author
of such an attempt beware, lest it call forth a more con-
clusive denunciation, for he must stand by the truth.
Yet he could not but feel that it was through Eliza-
beth that his great cause could triumph that it could
even escape destruction ; and that no other power seemed
destined for its work save this which he had denounced
as a kind contrary to the Word of God. He had a re-
medy, however, and it was as strange and original as
everything about the man. It was, in a manner, breaking
through the difficulty instead of solving it. He offered
to the queen, in his own fervent style, such devotion
as is due to a beneficent and powerful human being.
He admitted that she was the chosen instrument
for the work of the gospel. But it was a special act
of Providence a sort of miracle accomplishing a
great end by the smallest and basest of human means.
80 THE REFORMATION.
All would go well, if she would feel the due humility
of one selected for her nothingness rather than her
eminence. So it behoved her to remember that it was
not her Tudor descent, nor yet her wisdom or ability,
that had any concern with the exalted work on hand,
and to demean herself with a humility befitting the oc-
casion. At least this appears to be the tenor of his ex-
planation to Cecil, and of a letter to the queen herself. 1
In this latter document he put the hardest pressure
1 " The wreitting of that booke I will nott deny, but to prove it treas-
sonable I think it salbe hard. For, sir, no more do I doubt of the treuth
of my principall propositioun, then that I doubt that was the voce of
God which first did pronunce this penaltie aganis woman, ' In doloure
sail thou beare thy chyldrein.' It is bruitted that my booke is or salbe
writtin against. If so be, sir, I greatlie feare that flattereris sail rather
hurte nor mend the mater, which thei wald seame to mainteine ; for,
except that my error be plainlie schawin and confuted be better autho-
ritie then by suche lawis as frome yeir to yeir may and do change, I dar
nott promitt silence in so wechtie a besines, leist that in so doing I sail
appear to betray the verretie whiche is not subjected to the mutabilitie
of tyme. And if ony think me ather enuemye to the persone or yet to
the regiment of her whoine God hath now promoted, thei are utterlie
deceived of me. For the miraculouse wark of God, contorting His
afflicted by ane infirme veschell, I do acknawledge, and the power of
His most potent hand (raiseing up quhome best pleiseit His mercie to
suppresse such as fecht aganis His glorie) I will obey, albeit that boyth
nature and Goddis most perfyt ordinance repugne to suche regiment.
Moir plainlie to speik, if Quene Elizabeth sail confesse that the extraor-
dinarie dispensatioun of Goddis great mercie macketh that lauchfull unto
her whiche boyth nature and Goddis law do deny to all women, then sail
non in England be more willing to mainteine her lauchfull authoritie
then I salbe ; but if (Goddis wonderouse werk sett asyd) scho ground
(as God forbid) the justnes of her title upoun consuetude, lawis, or
ordinances of men, then I am assured that, as suche foolishe presump-
cioun doeth heyghlie offende Goddis supreame majesty, so do I greatlie
feare that her ingratitude sail nocht lang lack punishement. And this
in the name of the Eternall God, and of His Sone Jesus Chryst (befoire
quhonie boyth you and I sail stand, to mak accomptes of all counsall
we geve), I require you to signifie unto her grace in my name ; adding,
that onlie humilitie and dejectioun of herself before God salbe the
firmitie and stabilitie of her throne, quhilk I knaw sail be assaulted mo
wayis then one." History, ii. 20, 21.
ELIZABETH AND KNOX, 1559-60. 8 1
on his nature, to draw from it something soothing and
satisfactory; and when we consider that nature, he was
wonderfully successful. He cheers her with the expec-
tation that all shall go well if, forgetting her birth,
and " all title which therefrom doth hang," she, with
O' '
due humility, remember that her power is held of spe-
cial dispensation, " which only maketh lawful to your
grace what nature and law denieth to all women." l
Cecil managed in the end that Knox should be pro-
pitiated, and even that attention should be shown to
his wife on her way through England from France to
Scotland. It was proposed that there should be an
interview between the two great powers at the minis-
ter's country mansion of Hatton, in the very centre of
England. Whether there was danger, or other reason
against it, no such meeting could be held. It had to
suffice that Knox should meet the Governor of Berwick
on Holy Island. There they had an instructive con-
ference. Knox did not enlarge on the topics which
charmed his audiences from the pulpit ; but put it
plainly, that Scotland wanted men and money from
England, with the assistance, if possible, of a fleet.
Cecil, and other advisers of Queen Elizabeth, strongly
pushed this policy. They represented that the oppor-
tunity for severing Scotland from France, and securing
as a friend the worst enemy of England, had now at
last come, and might pass. It was an object on which
money ought not to be spared. The queen, who was
keenest of all for setting this barrier against France,
yet was, from her odd contradictory nature, the impe-
diment to any fair, open-handed help to the Scots in
their extremity. She suggested many things that her
1 History, ii. 29, 30.
VOL. IV. F
82 THE REFORMATION.
advisers might do as " from themselves." Among
these was the advancing of the money; it would come
better from them as private persons having sympathy
with the Scots, than if it came from the English Gov-
ernment. But they knew that not only were they
unlikely to be repaid their advances, but if matters
took an awkward turn, they might be delivered over,
without remorse or hesitation, to be dealt with by the
English treason laws. Among other clumsy pieces of
trickery suggested, one was that an army should
assemble in the north, and, without instructions from
the English Government, cross the border as sympa-
thisers with the Scots cause. They would then be
proclaimed traitors for attacking a state at peace with
England, and, unable to return, would have nothing for
it but to fight out a position for themselves in Scot-
land; but no body of men thought proper to put them-
selves in this complex and peculiar position.
At length, on the 20th of August, Sir Ralph Sadler
was sent to the borders to hold communication with
the Lords of the Congregation. He was intrusted with
three thousand pounds, but he represented that this
would merely be so much money wasted if more were not
sent. A larger sum was afterwards sent, but the bearer
of it fell into the hands of the notorious Bothwell, who
had much occasion for such a fund for his own uses.
Sadler found political conditions directly the reverse of
those he had seen sixteen years earlier. Then, there
was dread of England, and the French alliance was all
popular ; now, the current was running rapidly the
other way, and he found some politicians helping it
onwards. " It seemeth," he says, " they make little or
no account of the French power, which is looked for
out of France, willing that the same should rather
THE TWO SIDES, 1559-60. 83
come than not ; for, as the number cannot be great, so
think they that the same should so stir and irritate
the hearts of all Scotsmen as they would wholly
and firmly adhere and stick together, whereby their
power should so increase as they should be well able
both to expel the French out of Scotland and also
better achieve the rest of their whole purpose." l If
this was the view held by the Scots Protestants, it is
certain that they were far less frightened than Queen
Elizabeth's Privy Council. Their view of the prospects
of both countries is set forth with gloomy brevity.
" They think that the French mean, after their forces
are brought into Scotland, first, to conquer it which
will be neither hard or long to do and next, that they
and the Scots will invade this realm, principally upon
the north parts." :
Meanwhile the Lords of the Congregation, their
people dropping off from time to time, found them-
selves too weak to hold Edinburgh against such a force
as the queen-regent could bring against it. Again
there was treating, but with merely temporary aims,
and charges that promises were not kept. The Lords
of the Cono-reg-ation retired westward. There came
O D
then an addition of a thousand troops to the French
force, and a fortress or intrenched camp of great strength
was constructed by them at Leith. There the regent,
with her army, held out, abiding events, vainly besieged
by the Congregation. These noticed, and reported to
their friends in England, some very menacing special-
ties of the new influx of French troops. They seemed
to come, not for a campaign, and its mere fighting-work,
1 Sadler State Papers, i. 400.
2 Privy Council to Queen Elizabeth, 24th Dec, 1559 ; Calendar of State
Papers (Foreign), 221.
84 THE REFORMATION.
but for permanent establishment in the country. These
features were described as " the inbringing of soldiers,
with their wives, bairns, and instruments for manuring
the ground, such as ploughs and suchlike, and for as-
saulting strengths, such as mattocks, spades, &c." J
The Congregation were joined, at this emergency, by
an important deserter or refugee Maitland of Leth-
ington whose character has been already discussed.
Young as he then was, he was deemed a match for
Cecil, as a sagacious, long-headed politician. He had
given, he said, unpalatable advice to the queen-regent,
to whom he was secretary of state, and he considered
himself no longer safe in the camp at Leith. He under-
took to do the business of the Congregation in England ;
and one like him, who had held high office in Scotland,
was likely to have double influence.
In January 1560 a treaty was adjusted between
Queen Elizabeth and the Congregation, called the
treaty of Berwick. In a thing so unprecedented as
combining with England against France, the Scots felt
something like the misgiving that attends great changes
of policy ; and they showed their jealousy to the last
in the punctiliousness with which they insisted on their
dignity and equality. They would not go to England,
but met the English on benches erected in the middle
of the Tweed, where it was the national boundary ;
and the English complained that from one cause or
another, and especially the excessive vigilance of the
Scots in guarding their punctilios, they were at last
taken over to treat on Scots ground.
This treaty of Berwick required very subtle diplo-
matic handling. It was, in reality, an arrangement to
which the parties were on the one side, the English
1 Calendar of State Papers (Foreign), 1559, p. 225.
TREATY OF BERWICK, 1560. 85
emissaries, sent to watch the affairs of Scotland ; and,
on the other, that body called the Lords of the Congre-
gation, who were at war with the representative of
their sovereign. But if it were a treaty, it must be
between royalties ; and how were they to be brought
into it ? Queen Elizabeth was to be the one party but
where was the other party to be found ? The treaty
on the English side was ratified by the Duke of Nor-
folk " in the name and behalf of her highness ; " but on
the other side there was no authorised representative of
royalty, and though a body of commissioners acted, they
were accepted neither by the young queen in France
nor her mother the regent. The best that could be
done was to make the commissioners act " in the
name and behalf of the noble and mighty prince, James
Duke of Chatelherault, second person of the realm of
Scotland ; and the remanent lords of his party joined
with him in this cause for the maintenance and defence
of the ancient rights and liberties of their country."
To bring the duke a step still nearer to royalty, it is set
forth that he is "declared by Act of Parliament in Scot-
land to be heir-apparent to the crown thereof." We
learn the significance of the phraseology of this part of
the treaty by the correspondence of the time, in which
Queen Elizabeth's advisers are at their wits' end to
find a political head with whom it might become her,
as a crowned and anointed queen, to communicate. It
is evident that what they most desired was that some
one whose position fitted him for such a project should
aspire to the throne. Queen Elizabeth would then be
supporting the cause of the right sovereign, at least of
the side she thought proper to adopt in a disputed
succession. The head of the house of Hamilton was,
of course, looked to ; but he was not the man to play
86 THE REFORMATION.
so bold a game. Hints were given to the Lord James ;
he was the son of the late king, and though he was
illegitimate, that was a difficulty that had often been
overcome in other instances. Whatever his conscience
may have said, however, his prudence was sufficient to
keep him from so perilous a project. 1
These difficulties adjusted as best they might be, the
treaty goes into thorough business. Queen Elizabeth's
object is the preservation of the realm of Scotland in its
old freedoms and liberties during a dangerous crisis,
and the expulsion from it of the foreign troops, who
are virtually foreign invaders. The imminence of the
occasion comes out. Her majesty is certain, from the
information received by her, and the career of the
French troops in Scotland, " that they intend to con-
quer the realm of Scotland, suppress the liberties
thereof, and unite the same unto the crown of France
perpetually." Then comes the practical stipulation
for averting this catastrophe, or "for expelling out
of the same realm such as presently and apparently
goeth about to practise the said conquest ; " that
"her majesty shall, with all speed, send unto Scot-
land a convenient aid of men of war on horse and
foot, to join the powers of Scotsmen, with artillery,
munition, and all other instruments of war meet for
the purpose, as well by sea as by land, not only to
expel the present power of France within that realm
oppressing the same, but also to stop, as far as con-
veniently may be, all greater force of French to enter
therein for the like purpose." There was a clause
coming after these substantial undertakings, which
served better than the preliminaries to save Queen
Elizabeth from the scandal of treating with subjects.
1 Calendar of State Papers, 404, 461, &c.
WAR, 1560. 87
Her aid is to be given to the Lords " as long as they
shall acknowledge their sovereign lady and queen, and
shall endure themselves to maintain the liberty of their
country and the estate of the crown of Scotland."
There is a provision which, if it do not hint sus-
picion, yet shows precaution bred of old jealousy of
England. Whenever the English force take fortified
places from the French, they are either to be demolished
at the hand of the Scots or given over to the duke and
his party, and the English auxiliaries are not to fortify
themselves anywhere in Scotland without the permis-
sion of the duke and his followers. 1
This arduous piece of diplomacy accomplished, it
was resolved at last to send hearty aid. The French
army, under D'Oysel, made a progress along the coast
of Fife, plundering and burning, and purchasing undy-
ing enmity among the people, as English armies had
done some ten or twenty years earlier. They beheld
strange sails in the Firth, which they believed to be a
reinforcement from France ; but they were undeceived
when they saw the strangers seize their own transports.
The new vessels, in fact, brought an English force of
six thousand men. There was now a scene, new and
interesting Scots and English fighting together against
foreigners. But the French, and those who stood by
them, held the new fortress at Leith with great firm-
ness. There was, evidently, far more engineering science
within the walls than without. The attacks were dis-
astrous, and repeatedly driven back ; and so far as the
position of the two forces was concerned, it seemed
likely that the fortress might remain permanently with
its holders. Affairs, however, were working elsewhere
towards changes. In March 1560 the conspiracy of
1 Fcedera, xv. 569.
88 THE REFORMATION.
Ambois made a crisis in France. If it rendered the
retention of Scotland to France and the Church of
Rome all the more desirable, yet on the other hand it
called for the return of all available troops to France.
After a conference, it was agreed that the French troops
should return home, and that no foreigners should be
employed in Scotland without the consent of the
Estates. The adjustment in which this and other
matters were arranged was called " the treaty of Edin-
burgh." One important stipulation in it afterwards
the cause of much curious discussion was a condition
that the young queen and her husband acknowledged
Elizabeth as Queen of England, and were to be bound
not only to abstain from any pretences on England by
the blazon of arms or otherwise, but to do their best to
suppress any such attempts when made by others. 1
The queen-dowager, sick and wearied with anxieties,
was taken when the siege of Leith began to the Castle
of Edinburgh. She died there on the 10th of June
1560. On her deathbed she showed that air of mag-
nanimity and high generous feeling which her remark-
able race could assume on all fitting occasions, inso-
much so that she left a profound impression even on
the hard minds of the sturdiest of the Reformers. She
sent for the Lord James, and spoke regretfully, and
almost as if penitently, of the past ; and suffered
Willock, the preacher, without interruption, to deliver
some of the exhortations which his own order deemed
good for such occasions. The cause of the Congrega-
tion was now triumphant, and about finally and empha-
tically to express itself.
The Estates convened in August. On the 17th the
Confession of Faith, containing a rendering, in English
1 Fcedera, xv. 593.
REFORMATION STATUTES, 1560. 89
or Scots, of the principles of the Geneva Church, was
approved of as " hailsom and sound doctrine, grounded
upon the infallible truth of God's Word." At the same
time there was a general repeal or revocation of all
acts authorising any other form, of belief or worship,
and the authority of the Bishop of Koine was abjured.
It was provided that the administering, or being pre-
sent at the administration, of the mass, should be
punishable for the first offence, by forfeiture of goods,
and corporal infliction at the discretion of the magis-
trate ; for the second, by banishment from the realm ;
for the third, by "justifying to the deid," or death.
These Acts were passed on the 25th of August. They
have little organisation or legislative detail for the pur-
pose of practical application, and may be held, as many
Scots Acts then were, to be rather a resolution and
declaration of opinion by the triumphant party in the
States, than Acts of Parliament in the present consti-
tutional meaning of the term. 1 It will be observed,
in what has hereafter to be said, and makes a very
significant point in the character and policy of Queen
Mary, that these Acts never got the royal assent.
On the face of the parliamentary record it would
seem as if the Reformation in Scotland were the work
of one day. On the morning of the 25th of August
1560, the Romish hierarchy was supreme; in the
evening of the same day, Calvinistic Protestantism was
established in its stead. But the departure of the
French and the treaty of Edinburgh were the conclu-
sion of past events ; and as to the Acts of Parliament,
whether they were of any avail or not depended on
events yet to come.
1 Act. Parl., ii. 526 ft seq.
CHAPTER XXXIX.
Contrition of tfje Nation from tfje 2!Har of Intiepentience
to tjje Reformation.
THE CONSTITUTION OF SCOTLAND THE POWER OF THE ESTATES
OF PARLIAMENT THEIR EXERCISE OF THE EXECUTIVE LORDS
OF THE ARTICLES THE ESTATES AS A FINAL COURT OF LAW
LORDS AUDITORS DAILY COUNCIL ESTABLISHMENT OF THE
COURT OF SESSION ON THE MODEL OF THE PARLIAMENT OF
PARIS INFLUENCE OF THIS IMITATION CHARACTER OF THE
INSTITUTIONS ADAPTATION OF THE CIVIL LAW ABSENCE OF
THE PREROGATIVE OR INVIDIOUS RIGHTS WHICH SET CLASS
AGAINST CLASS CONSTITUTIONAL AND HISTORICAL RESULTS
POPULARITY OF THE NATIONAL INSTITUTIONS PROVISIONS FOR
THE EDUCATION OF THE PEOPLE GRAMMAR-SCHOOLS UNIVER-
SITIES THEIR TESTIMONY TO AN ELEMENT OF ENLIGHTENED
LIBERALITY IN THE CHURCH THEIR MODEL BROUGHT FROM
FRANCE VESTIGES OF THIS INFLUENCE IN UNIVERSITY CONSTI-
TUTION AND PRACTICE.
IT is now proposed to pause for a while in the narra-
tive, and look back upon such isolated occurrences or
established facts as are suggestive about the progress
of the nation in wealth, civilisation, literature, the ad-
ministration of justice, and other matters coming within
the compass of a country's social condition. In the
similar retrospect of progress before the War of Inde-
pendence, the materials for distinct knowledge were so
ESTATES OF PARLIAMENT, 1350-1560. 91
meagre that every trifle had to be seized with avidity.
The materials, too, for the succession of historical
events were too scanty to supply the significant spe-
cialties which enable us to see the manners and condi-
tions of a people in the mere telling of the narrative.
The fuller particulars of the later periods ought of
themselves to tell about the social condition of the
several actors who come forward, more expressively
than a general dissertation can. On this occasion,
then, nothing seems to be appropriate or required
beyond a rapid grouping of such specialties as nar-
rative does not naturally carry with its current.
The reasons have been given for supposing that there
was much comfort, if not affluence, in Scotland when
the War of Independence broke out.
In the earlier summary of national progress we find
traces of laws, which had grown up no one knew how,
older than the traces of the existence of a parliament-
ary body. We have seen how, through the feudal
institutions moulded by the spirit of the people, a
parliament gradually grew, under the title of the
Estates of the Realm ; and we have seen that in the
reign of Robert the Bruce, if not earlier, the citizens of
the burghs were represented in that body. During
the period now referred to, the Estates continued to
exist, and to act as a constitutional establishment of
the nation. We have had many opportunities of no-
ticing the laws passed by the Estates, and the other
transactions in which they were concerned. In some
of these instances it may have been observed that the
Estates interfered with transactions which, according
to modern English constitutional notions, belong to
the executive ; and from this it would be inferred,
92 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
by many practical politicians, that the Estates of Scot-
land were not a properly constitutional parliament.
There can be no doubt of the superiority of the
practice of the present British Parliament on all
points in which it differs from the practice of the Scots
Estates anterior to the Reformation. But may we not
find that the perfection of the British system has
grown with the other political conditions surrounding
it, and that it is as vain to seek it in the Scotland of
the sixteenth century, as to seek the peace, the security,
and the other blessings of our civilisation in the same
conditions of time and place ?
Take, for instance, two features in which the British
Constitution has gone far beyond any other human
institution in the way to perfection, by affecting the
rapid action of a despotism without weakening or
checking the influence of popular control and responsi-
bility. The one is the sacredness of the sovereign from
personal responsibility, while every act of government
must pass under the hand of some minister of the crown,
who is personally responsible for what is done ; the
other is, that it lies with the sovereign to make peace
and war, Parliament only having the power of review-
ing the conduct of the ministers who have made them-
selves responsible for the line of policy adopted in
each instance. But these principles were not adjusted
by the political skill of wise lawgivers. They were
the offspring of strife and bitter enmity. Parliament
never conceded the inviolability of the royal person.
All the world has heard of the conflict, designed to
extinguish in blood that slavish doctrine, when it was
resuscitated by the civilians from the maxims which
the Roman Empire had taken from Eastern nations.
ESTATES OF PARLIAMENT, 1350-1560. 93
Nor, on the other hand, did the crown advisedly give
up to Parliament the power of controlling the con-
duct of the sovereign's servants. Every devise of the
constitution has a complex and contradictory shape,
because it has been a remedy found in the period of
power, for something that has been lost in the period
of weakness. Thus every specialty in the constitution
was either the fruit of some victory gained, or the
result of a compromise and treaty between two hostile
powers. The purport of what was so gained or lost
was recorded with scrupulous exactness, and hence
came that precision in the working of the machinery
of the constitution which is so infinitely valuable in
the present day.
In this view the English Constitution survived
memorable perils, and it is no matter of wonder that
a neighbouring constitution should avoid the risk of
abandoning the holds it already had, with the dubious
prospect of recovering them in a more perfect shape.
The Scots Estates did not admit the irresponsibility
of the sovereign. We have seen them bringing King
James III. to task, and the precedent was made all the
more emphatic by the attempt of the lawyers of the
seventeenth century to conceal it by mutilating the
record in which it" is set forth. The punishment of
bad sovereigns is a thing in which the literature of
the country deals in a tone evidently directed towards
practice. We find the Estates of Scotland dealing with
many things now deemed the peculiar function of the
executive. They kept in their own hands the power of
making peace and war. We repeatedly find ambassadors
receiving special instructions from the Estates ; and
there was a political crisis about the great question of
94 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
marrying Queen Mary to the Prince of England, be-
cause a treaty had been negotiated under instructions
from an imperfectly constituted parliament. 1 While
the power of Rome yet existed, the Estates had made
visible progress in establishing such a lay headship
over the Church as the crown acquired in England by a
sudden stroke. We shall find that at the time we have
reached, a critical question was standing over, Whether
the crown had a veto on the acts of the Estates ? in
other words, Whether the consent of the sovereign was
necessary to an Act of Parliament ? and down to the
union with England this question was not decided.
In forming the constitution of the Scots Estates, there
was an element never felt by the English Parliament.
There, throughout, the enemy was at home it was
the prerogative. The vigilance of the Scots Estates
was ever exercised against the conquering encroach-
ments of England. There are scarcely any traces of
a conflict between the crown of Scotland and the
Estates. These, in fact, were the careful guardians
of the crown against peril from subjugation by the
common enemy. Such faint traces as we have of the
Estates coming in conflict with the crown are when
there is suspicion that the sovereign is in too close
amity with the enemy of England to be trusted with
the keeping of the independence of Scotland.
1 In the close discussions with France, at the time of Queen Mary's
marriage, the power and functions of the Scots Estates puzzled the
French courtiers. When Montluc, Bishop of Valence, had a discussion
with the Lords of the Congregation, and put the point of loyalty to
them, he says, " Us repliquerent, que le royaulme d'Escosse est gouverne
aultrement que ne sont les aultres, et que s'il y a differends entre le Roy
et les subjects, il faut qu'il soit debatu et d<5cid par les Estats ; et
mesmes que les roys n'ont puissance de faire ligue ni ordonner la
guerre sans leur consentement." Teulet, Pieces, i. 593.
ESTATES OF PARLIAMENT, 1350-1560. 95
The many calamities of the royal family gave the
Estates the opportunity of independent action, and
made it a great national duty. From the death of
Alexander III. to the majority of James VI. there is a
period of 300 years. If we count in these the years
when there was a minor king, and the period of the
absence in England of King David, we shall have
to deduct 134 years from the 300, leaving 166 years
during which the kingdom was ruled by an adult
monarch. It is less to be wondered at that, with
such opportunities, the Estates should have acquired
functions unsuited to a representative body, than that
the monarchy should have been strictly preserved, and
that it should have kept the exact course of hereditary
descent unvaried, save by a slight oscillation from the
shock of the great War of Independence.
This precise observance in Scotland of the strict rule
of descent is all the more remarkable from the chaos
of the Wars of the Roses in England. Perhaps it may
be said that this was because Scotland did not happen,
like England, to be afflicted by royal collaterals, whose
power enabled them to break in upon any abstract
principle, such as that of hereditary descent; but at
least it is due to the Estates of Scotland that they
took up the true rule of descent, and were careful that
there should never be a deviation from it.
The Estates were not divided into two Houses, like
the English Parliament, but transacted their business
in one place of meeting. We have nothing to help us
to the method in which this business was transacted,
like the precise record of the votes and proceedings of
the English Parliament ; but, again, this precision was
the growth of contest, everything done by either House,
96 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
with the method of doing it, being recorded as a pre-
cedent for after reference, in case it should come to be
impugned either by the crown or by the other House
of Parliament.
The practice of passing projects of law from one
House to another has been a great protection against
impulsive legislation, by requiring that every measure
should be reconsidered, even after it seems finally
matured ; and this, like the other specialties, was in
England the growth of contest. The Scots Estates did
the best they could towards the same end, by working
through permanent committees, having, after their ap-
pointment, the character for the time of separate legis-
lative chambers. We find the appointment of such a
legislative committee in the reign of David II. there
are marks in the wording of the appointment which
show that the institution was then a novelty. In the
first parliament of the reign of James I., we find that
such a committee had gradually become a permanent
institution, under the name of the " Committee of
Articles," or the " Lords of the Articles." It w r ould
appear that from that time the legitimate method of
transacting the legislative business of Parliament was
that, on the assembling of the Estates, they decided on
the tenor of the measures which it was desirable to
pass. Certain persons were then chosen from each
Estate to be the Committee on the Articles. To them
the preparation and maturing of each measure was
confided, somewhat after the method in w T hich, at the
present day, a committee of the whole House deals with
a bill referred to it after the second reading. The
Estates stood adjourned while this committee was at
work. When the several projects of law were matured,
THE CONSTITUTION, 1350-1560. 97
the Estates reassembled. The committee reported to
the meeting the bills matured, and they were then put
finally to the vote for adoption or rejection. In later
times this, the legitimate form of action, was some-
times invaded or perverted. The courtiers of the later
reigns, when they desired to influence the proceedings
of the Estates, found the delegation of business to this
committee to be the weakest part of the organisation
of the legislature, and they accomplished their ends by
corrupting its constitution.
The Estates, in their jealousy of all prerogative powers
exercised by the crown, strove against its monopolising
the administration of justice. While the king's chan-
cellor, justiciars, and sheriffs exercised their remedial
jurisdiction, the Estates or high court of Parliament
professed to administer justice, or give " remeid of law"
to those who might apply to them. For this branch
of work a separate committee was appointed, called the
Lords Auditors of Complaints. The proceedings of this
committee, from 1466 to 1494, have been printed by
the Eecord Commission, and are a substantial contri-
bution to our means of becoming acquainted with the
early law and forensic practice of the country. A
like contribution is afforded in the proceedings of the
Lords of Council from 1478 to 1495. l
This tribunal was recast in the year 1503, by an
act of the Estates. The lords were to be appointed by
the crown, and to "sit continually in Edinburgh, or
where the king makes residence, or where he pleases." ''
One reason for establishing such a court was that
1 ' Acta Dominorum ad Causas et Querelas Andiendas Electorum,' and
' Acta Dominorum Concilii,' both printed by the Record Commission in
1839.
2 Act. Parl., ii. 241.
VOL. IV. G
98 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
the Lords Auditors had authority only during the
sitting of Parliament, so that the procedure before
them stopped when Parliament rose. It became the
practice to hand the unfinished litigations before the
Auditors, at the end of a session, over to the Lords of
Council. The jurisdiction of both was alike. The
same men often served on both, and the staff of officers
seems to have been common to both. 1
We find that the sheriffs, as representing the crown,
occasionally resist the orders of the Auditors, or fail in
due compliance, and then orders are issued for their
" warding " or imprisonment, raising contests about
" privilege," resembling in some measure those which
have so often disturbed the equanimity of the English
Houses of Parliament. The Church took to itself all
legal adjustments which depended on an answer to the
question whether the sacrament of marriage had been
duly performed ; and so all litigations raising the
question whether any persons were man and wife, or
whether any person was born in wedlock, so as to take
the privileges of legitimacy, fell to the ecclesiastical
courts. Hence the Lords Auditors, or the Lords of
Council, sometimes found that a question raised is not
within their jurisdiction, but belongs to the proper
ecclesiastical court. They found, too, occasionally,
that a person who has entered appearance as a litigant
is under sentence of " cursing " or excommunication,
and cannot be heard until that ecclesiastical doom is
removed. With ecclesiastical tribunals and persons,
1 In one instance, in the record of the auditors, the clerk is found set-
ting down a decision as by " the lords of counsale," but, recollecting him-
self, he scores his pen through the words and writes " auditors." Act.
Parl., 10.
THE CONSTITUTION, 1350-1560. 99
the Lords, although acting as a supreme court, seem
generally loath to be authoritative. In a case before
them, for instance, a priest is in possession of writs
which will help to a right decision ; but the Auditors,
instead of taking steps to enforce production of them,
apply to the bishop, exhorting and praying him to
compel the priest to produce them. 1
On the proceedings of the Lords Auditors, little ap-
peal business is perceptible. Perhaps they were shy of
exercising the power of reversing the judgments of the
king's justiciars. Enough appears, however, to show
that, holding delegated power from the Estates as the
supreme court of Parliament, they counted themselves
a court of review on appeals from the king's courts.
On any occasion when this power is exercised, the
minute of the finding of the Auditors is expressed with
unwonted distinctness and ceremonial. 2
We find this high court of Parliament, in one in-
stance at least, taking upon itself to give such remedy
in an international question as we may well believe
the inferior courts would not venture to apply. The
1 Actn, &c., 94.
2 " The Lords Auditors chosen be the three Estates in this present Par-
liament for the decision of the dooms, decreets and delivers that the doom
given in the Justice Aire of Cupar, in the tolbooth of the same, before
John Haldane of Gleneagles, ane of our sovereign lord's General Justice
on north half the water of Forth, be the month of [ ] Dempster,
the 25 day of Februar, the year of God 1477, for the burgh fnndin be
Alexander Spence, advocate and forespeaker for John Dischinton of
Ardross, upon thre breve of mortancestry, purchast be Andrew Bisset,
upon the lands of Kinbrachmont, and agane a recontre made be William
Richardson, advocate and forespeaker for the said Andrew, was evil
given and well again said by the said William, for divers and mony
reasons produced and shown before the lords." Acta, &c., 66. The words
" evil given and well again said " are equivalent to finding the court
below in error, and admitting the appeal. This mere reversal is followed
by findings for putting the judgment of the court of appeal in force.
100 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
case is remarkable, from the practical testimony afforded
by it to the closeness of the exchange of citizenship
between France and Scotland even before the marriage
of Queen Mary. A certain William Richardson, who
is called a burgess of Dieppe, while his name shows
him to be of Scottish origin, had got a decision in his
favour against William Lennox of Kail, for the sum of
six score pounds, fourteen shillings, and fourpence of
Parisian money. The decision was by a French court
of law; it was pronounced by "James Disome, licen-
tiate in the law and Lieutenant-General at the Table
of Marbre in the Palace of Paris, under a noble lord,
Louis, Lord Grauil, Councillor to the King of France,
and Great Admiral of France." This foreign decision
was held to be authenticated " by a process, sentence,
and certain letters executorial direct by the foresaid
James Disome, thereupon shown and produced before
the lords." Thereupon they directed that the lands
and goods of William Lennox should be distrained for
the debt decerned against him by the celebrated court
of the Marble Table in Paris. 1
The French connection conies up in another shape,
when it was found that the two tribunals the Lords
Auditors and the Lords of the Council did not work
well ; and it was judged fitting to recast the adminis-
tration of justice, and organise a supreme court of law.
Hence in 1532 that Court of Session was created
which, modified from time to time, still exists as the
great fountain of justice in Scotland. It was formed
on the model of the Parliament of Paris ; and this
French constitution, infused into it at the beginning,
gave peculiarities to its constitution all along. The
1 Acta, &c., 181.
THE CONSTITUTION, 1350-1560. IOI
French Parliaments partook of the double nature, of
courts of law, and deliberative bodies with powers of
a legislative character. The French crown cultivated,
under due subordination, the legislative tendencies of
the Parliaments, as superseding the functions of the
States General, and at last rendering it unnecessary to
assemble that troublesome body. In like manner the
Court of Session professed general remedial powers,
which pressed close on the office of the legislator. So
lately as the early part of the eighteenth century, they
raised a storm in Edinburgh by fixing the conditions
on which it was just and right that the city brewers
should brew their ale. Throughout, the propensity of
this court has been to give its remedy on a general
view of the whole question before it ; and only by
degrees, and with hard adjustment, has the method,
long brought to precision in England, of absolutely
separating the law from the fact, been brought into
Scottish practice.
This court took two peculiarities by its constitu-
tional descent. It was deemed illogical to appeal from
the Court of Session to Parliament, since the Court of
Session was but a remodelling of that committee of
Estates which was itself the high court of appeal, as
exercising the full powers of Parliament. We shall
find this specialty opening up troublesome questions
in the reign of Charles II. The other peculiarity was,
that the practice of the court made no provision for
trial by jury. It has been maintained that this, too,
was keeping clear of an illogicality, since the court
represented Parliament, the grand jury of the nation.
As to the substance of the law administered by the
tribunals of Scotland, we have seen that, before the
102 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
War of Independence, there was a tendency in this,
as in other institutions of the country, to follow the
example set by England. After that war, each country
went its own way. England, which alone among
Christian nations repudiated the Civil law, busily piled
up that extraordinary mass of precedents known as
the Common law. Much as the civil law was pro-
fessedly detested in England, the country had to draw
upon it for relief from the strange vagaries and utter
injustices committed by the chaotic common law when
let loose with absolute power. Against it protection
was sought in the Equity jurisdiction, presided over by
that high officer the Lord Chancellor, and the means
of extending such protection to the subject were found
in the civil law. Scotland received the civil law as
all-sufficient. Hence, looking across the Tweed, the
English common or equity lawyer could see a pheno-
menon not easily understood by him a country under
one harmonious system of jurisprudence ; and he could
sometimes only express the nature of a thing so mon-
strous, by saying that the tribunals there were courts
both of law and equity.
The English horror of the civil law came of the auto-
cracy at its head, and the ample use made of it in
Continental despotisms. It is a flexible system, how-
ever, easily adaptable to the desires of a free people.
Take from one end of it the divine right prerogative of
the emperor, and from the other end the institution of
slavery, we have a system made to meet all possible
exigencies, on the broad principle that all are equal in
the eye of the law. There is no precedent for privilege
of peerage, for forest law, or for game law, to be found
there ; hence it suited Scotland, where the spirit of the
THE CONSTITUTION, 1350-1560. 103
community did not readily adapt itself to the preroga-
tives of class, which the Normans had established ill
England. There are but scant vestiges of this spirit
in the old customs of Scotland. There was no prero-
gative law of trespass a law rendering it an offence
for a person to be in a particular place whether his
being there caused harm to any one or not. Cultivated
lands and crops, whoever owned them, were protected
by the exaction of damages or recompense from any
one doing injury to them. We have seen how certain
French visitors were alike amazed and indignant when
they found such claims asserted by very peasants. On
the other hand, the bare moor was open to all men.
Of the English forest laws the prolific parent of a
troublesome offspring, the game laws of later times
we have seen that they were but feebly and dubiously
imitated in Scotland. The country was full of wild
animals ; the people were active and armed, and fond
of field sports when they had no more serious work
for their weapons. It could not be, therefore, but
that there should be legislation about game. The
tenor of this legislation, however, was to render game
abundant, and available for sporting purposes, by pro-
hibiting the slaying of animals at the period when
slaughter is fatal to their increase, and for the suppres-
sion of those methods of killing them which are ini-
mical to sport by facilitating the means of converting
the animals into butcher-meat. 1 There were restraints,
1 Thus there were penalties against taking the eggs or nests of wild
fowl : " Wyld fulis sic as pairtriks, plovers, black-cocks, grey-hens,
mure-cocks sould not be taken frae the beginning of Lentern till Au-
gust." Act, 1427. "Na man should slay does, roes, deer, in time of
storm or snaw, nor their kids until they be ane year auld." Act, 14/4.
Among the precautions for economising the game for the purpose of
104 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
at the same time, to prevent mischief-doing in the
pursuit of the chase. 1 There are provisions for pro-
tecting to the owners the animals within enclosed parks
or chases, and some other restraints ; but there is no
trace of any of those subtle distinctions by which
one man might have the possession and cultivation
of the ground, while another enjoyed the prerogative
right of following the game reared upon it. We
must come down to a period later than we have
yet reached ere we shall find the Scottish legislature,
in imitation of the practice of England, enacting that
the ownership of land is a necessary qualification for
the privilege of slaying wild animals. The oldest
author who professes to give a general survey of the
law of Scotland bluntly lays it down, that "it is
leasum and permitted to all men to chase hares and
all other wild beasts, being without forests, warrens,
parks, or wards." 2
No doubt the feudal aristocracy of Scotland had
great power ; and where there is power, there will be-
more or less of oppression and injustice. The events
sport, the use of firearms was prohibited. We must remember that this
referred to a heavy machine for deliberate use, a weapon very different
from our modern fowling-piece. " The art of ' shooting flying' is one of
very recent acquisition, dependent on the improvements in the mechan-
ism of the modern fowling-piece ; and the legislation of earlier times,
while it encouraged the well-established and authorised use of hounds
and hawks, uniformly directed the severest penalties against the em-
ployment of such ' indirect' means of destroying game as ' hackbut, gun,
net, and fowler's dog.'" Irvine on the Game Laws, Introduction, xxix.
Here will be found the best account of the early legislation of Scotland
on the matter of wild animals.
1 u That na man tak upon hand to ride or gang in their neighbours'
cornis, in hawking and hunting, frae the first of Pasch until the time the
samen be shorn, and that na man ride or gang upon wheet na time of
the year." Act of 1555.
9 Balfour's Practiks, 542.
THE CONSTITUTION, 1350-1560. 105
which have been narrated must be left to give their
own impression of the relations to each other of the
different orders of society. It has been seen that acts
were passed for fixity of tenure to the peasant, and
for other checks on the abuse of feudal power. But a
large specialty may here be noticed, which, as it is
negative, does not naturally come up in the narrative.
It was in the spirit of the constitution to confer such
powers as were deemed fit for public use ; but not to
confer the empty privileges and exemptions, which are
invidious to those excepted from them, and have it in
their nature to set class against class. Among the
multitudinous exemptions from the obligations bind-
ing on common men, which made up the privilege of
peerage in England, there seems to be no trace in
Scotland. In later times these nearly all merged into
the one substantial privilege of exemption from im-
prisonment for debt. 1
In the administration of criminal justice there was
no separate tribunal of their own for the trial of peers,
as there was in England. Important cases of treason
Avere generally tried by the Estates, whether the ac-
cused were lords or commoners. The Estates were ever
jealous of leaving political offences to be dealt with by
the king's courts. But for other offences, however
high, a lord had to " thole an assize/' or stand by the
verdict of a jury, like any other subject. The jury
1 At the Union the English privileges were extended to all Scots peers,
whether they were returned to Parliament or not. The exasperated
party opposed to the Union garnered up every testimony to selfishness
and corruption which they could cast against its supporters ; and
among the.se, it was said that exemption from imprisonment for debt
was a cunnin" device to buy the votes of the impoverished peers of
Scotland.
106 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
was in some measure modified to equality in rank
with the accused. If he were a " landed man," or pro-
prietor of land, the jury must have been chosen from
the same class ; and if he were a freeholder, a certain
proportion of the jury must have held the same rank.
But the best testimony to the character of the na-
tional institutions is to be found in the tenacity of the
people in holding to their " auld laws and lovable
customs." In the hostile face they ever presented to
all attempts towards annexation by England, it is not
so much the sentiment of a national sovereignty that
is at work, as the dread of innovation on the national
customs. We have seen how this is specially noted
by the English statesmen who reported on the national
feeling to Henry VI1L, and especially by the acute and
observant Sadler. The influence of the feeling was
acknowledged in the later attempts at annexation,
which were accompanied by engagements to preserve
the old laws and customs of the country engagements
which could not be taken with reliance from kings
who were ever striving to cancel the charters con-
ceded to their subjects of England.
As yet we have come across no contest of class
against class. It would be difficult to trace the history
of any other part of Europe, through the same centuries,
without finding this sort of testimony to the dissatis-
faction of the people with the institutions among
which they lived. In Scotland there was no Jacquerie
no Wat Tyler or Jack Straw. Whether or not the
Scots were, as some have held, subjected to a hard
feudalism, their condition seems to have been congenial
to them. High and low, they fought together, and
were of one mind ; and it was only when the natural
EDUCATION, 1350-1560. 107
leaders were supposed to have betrayed the country
to the common enemy that there was variance between
classes, and the peasant would no longer follow where
his feudal chief would lead him.
In almost all the periods of the history of Scotland,
whatever documents deal with the social condition of
the country reveal a machinery for education always
abundant, when compared with any traces of art or
the other elements of civilisation. Perhaps book-learn-
ing is the first of the intellectual pursuits which an
inquisitive and ambitious people take to, the others
following in their turn. We have naturally no statis-
tics of education which would be sufficient to afford
an idea of the number of schools in the country,
and the matters taught in each, even so far down
as the Reformation. But in documents much older
than the War of Independence, the school and the
schoolmaster arc familiar objects of reference. They
chiefly occur in the ehartularies of the religious houses ;
and there is little doubt that the earliest schools were
endowed and supported out of the superfluous wealth
of these houses, whether with the object of supplying
a body of scholars from which the Church might take
its recruits, or in a general enlightened view of the
O O
blessing of knowledge to mankind. 1 In later times,
schools are found attached to the burgh corporations.
They got the name of grammar-schools, and we see
from the way they are spoken of that Latin was taught
in them.
In 149G an Act was passed requiring, "through all
1 The casual notices of schools in the early part? of the ecclesiastical
chartularies have been often cited. They will be found summed up in
Innes's ' Sketches of Early Scotch History,' 134 et seq.
108 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
the realm, that all baroiis and freeholders that are of
substance put their eldest sons and heirs to the schools,
fra they be aught or nine years of age ; and till remain
at the grammar - schools until they be competently
founded and have perfect Latin ; and thereafter to re-
main three years at the schools of art and jure, so that
they may have knowledge and understanding of the
laws." The baron or freeholder who should fail in
obedience to this injunction was to forfeit 20 to the
crown. The forfeiture is to follow upon "knowledge
gotten" of the failure a protective condition, since it
must have been hard to prove "that the youth, if sent
to school, had not got " perfect Latin." But, like many
other Scots Acts, this one was in a great measure an
exhortation from authority rather than a law to be
rigidly enforced.
We hear, at the commencement of the sixteenth
century, of men acquiring distinction as mere school-
masters a sure sign of the respect in which the
teacher's mission was held. Among these were An-
drew Simson of Perth, and John Vans of Aberdeen,
who was so ambitious as to write a grammar of the
Latin tongue, Ninian Winzet or Winyet, a distin-
guished scholar, was master of the grammar-school of
Linlithgow. As a member of the old religion, he was
superseded at the Reformation. He went abroad to
hold the high office of Superior of the Scots Convent
of St James, at Ratisbon. 2 It does not appear to have
been thought that the command over this eminent
religious house was a startling contrast to the position
of teacher of the grammar-school of Linlithgow. Ad-
1 Act. Parl., ii. 238. * See chapters iv. and xii.
THE UNIVERSITIES, 1410-1560. 109
vancement it certainly was, but not to a dizzy eleva-
tion. 1
But however powerful the school education of his
time may have been, the Scotsman ambitious of acquir-
ing the learning that went beyond the knowledge of
languages must have sought it abroad, until the estab-
lishment of universities in Scotland. Three universities
had been founded in Scotland more than half a century
before the Keformation St Andrews in 1 4 1 0, Glasgow
in 1450, and Aberdeen in 1495. It may with truth be
said that, in the history of human things, there is to be
found no grander conception than that of the Church
of the fifteenth century, when it resolved, in the shape
of the universities, to cast the light of knowledge
abroad over all the Christian world. The skill and
energy brought to its completion were worthy of the
greatness of the design. It was a thing altogether
apart from the public-school system, which doles out
1 Winzet lamented the necessity that parted him from his old friends
and accustomed pursuits. When addressing the " gentil reader," he
says, " When I, for denying only to subscrive thair phantasy and faction
of faith, was expelled and shot out of that my kindly toun, and fra my
tender friends there, whas perpetual kindness I hoped that I had con-
quest, by the spending about ten years of my maist nourishing age,
naught without manifest utility of their commonwealth." His esti-
mate of the office of the teacher seems worth noting, as the utterance
of a Scots burgh schoolmaster of the time before the Reformation :
" I judgeit the teaching of the youthhood in virtue and science,
next after the authority with the ministers of justice, under it and
after the angelical office of godly pastors, to obtain the third principal
place most commodious and necessar to the Kirk of God. Yea, sa
necessar thought I it, that the due charge and office of the prince and
prelate without it, is to them, after my judgement, wondrous pain-
ful and almost insupportable, and yet little commodious to the com-
monwealth, to unfeignet obedience and true godlyness, when the people
is rude and ignorant ; and contrary, by the help of it to the youthhood,
the office of all potestates is light to them, and pleasant to the subject."
Winzet's Tracts ; see Irving, ' Lives of Scottish AVriters,' i. 100.
110 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
the rudiments of knowledge to the totally ignorant,
giving them a little of it with calculated parsimony, as
paupers are fed and clothed. The universities called
on all the ardent spirits of the age to come and drink
their fill at the great fountains of knowledge. Every-
thing about the universities was on a scale of liberality,
splendour, and good taste sufficient to adjust them to
the habits of the aristocracy. Yet the poorest and
humblest among the people the children of craftsmen
and serfs were tempted to resort to them and partake
of their munificence, on the condition of earnestly em-
bracing the scholar's life and devoting themselves to
the acquiring of learning.
The university was to be the same in rank, and if
possible in wealth and grandeur, whether it arose in
the populous capital of some powerful state, or was
planted in some distant region among a scanty people,
poor and rude. It was to be the same at Upsala
and Aberdeen as at Paris and Bologna ; the same at
Greifswalde, on the flats of Pomerania, then but
recently rescued from heathendom by the crusades
of the Teutonic knights. Thus were there spread
over the world organisations for tending and rearing
learning wherever the Q-erms of it were to be found
o o
in youth with an aptitude and a will for study. It
waa the fulfilment of the Church's mission to raise
up an intellectual power fit to cope with brute force,
feudalism, burgher wealth, and the elements of the
material governing influences. Surely, too, it must
have been seen by those enlightened churchmen who
designed it, that it would prove an organisation to
protect the world from the influence of superstition
and priestcraft.
THE UNIVERSITIES, 1410-1560. Ill
In Scotland some curious relics of the ancient uni-
versities are preserved ; but from England they were so
effectually cast forth, that Cambridge and Oxford are
in many things antagonistic to the spirit of the institu-
tion. In these the original uniformity, with its broad
liberal basis, has been eaten out, as it were, by the
growth of internal corporations, rich, invidious, and
engrossing, under the names of colleges, halls, inns,
and entries. These are, doubtless, illustrious institu-
tions ; but it is with another glory than that which
gave lustre to the university of the fifteenth century.
The tendency of their working is not to level material
distinctions, and make knowledge all in all. They
have got into the hands of the wealthy, who have
made them the institutions in which they seek high
tuition and all stimulants to scholarship for their sons.
Vestiges exist of the old arrangements for securing
those scholars who had not worldly means against the
pressure of the sordid wants of life. But instead of
tending to a general equality of position, as in the old
literary republics, they only degrade the stipendiary
student by contrast with the luxurious wealth sur-
rounding him. Perhaps it has been from their poverty
that the small universities of Scotland have been better
custodiers of the traditions of the " universitas " or
" studium generale " of the fifteenth century.
In this the Scots universities are perhaps rather to
be counted as interesting relics of a grand old policy,
than as institutions responding to the spirit and the
demands of the present day. However much we might
desire it, we could not have a university in the old
sense. The essentials of it were that it belonged not to
a province or nation, but to the Christian world. The
112 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
universities were a great conglomerate of co-operations,
giving and taking among each other. The man who
held a certain rank in one, held the same in all. The
catholicity of the rank was not affected by national
partitions, or even national conflicts. To make this
reciprocity perfect, a head was necessary, and that
was found in the Court of Eome. The Pope's bull
was the conclusive writ establishing the university,
and that franked it as a member of the university
system stretching over the Christian world. In what-
ever efforts there may have been to preserve the spirit
of this communication by voluntary concession, England
has had no part. Her university honours are her own ;
and she neither acknowledges those of other kindred
institutions, nor cares to take anything from them.
The catholic spirit of the old universities was shown
in the division of the students into groups, according
to the nations or districts of the Christian world whence
they had flocked to the seat of learning. These groups
were called the Nations. Among vast assemblages,
such as those congregating to the University of Paris,
it is easy to understand that this division was of
great moment. Each country, or group of countries,
associated under one Nation, on the supposition that
they had common local interests, had a corporate
standing of its own, and was represented in general
proceedings by its Procurator. In Glasgow and Aber-
deen " the nations " still flourish and act, though their
functions may perhaps be counted little better than a
mimicry of those originally vested in the institution.
There is a nobler remnant of the old spirit at the
competition-table for bursaries at Aberdeen, where any
man from any part of the world may step forward and
THE UNIVERSITIES, 1410-1560. 113
sit down among the others; and if he be a better Latin
scholar than his neighbours, may, by the rank which his
exercise takes in the competition, carry off a pecuniary
prize so solid, that it shall provide for all his needs
while he sojourns at the university, obtaining there
such a training in the higher walks of learnino- as it is
o o o
capable of supplying to him.
These things have a place here because, as subsisting
relics, they show us how thoroughly the Scottish uni-
versities were part of the Catholic Continental system.
If the Scots universities had any specialties, they were
those of France, whence they came. King's College
in Aberdeen was an exact model of the University of
Paris. Its founder, Bishop Elphinstoue, had been a
professor at Paris and at Orleans. Its first principal,
Hector Boece, the friend of Erasmus, printed two
editions of his celebrated History at Paris. A worthy
effort seems to have been made to do credit to such
companionship, both in the eminence of the men
brought to the spot, and the amenities by which they
were surrounded. As the enmity towards the monastic
orders did not extend to the universities, the greater part
of the original building still remains, retaining more of
the seclusion appropriate to the cloister and the ancient
retreat of learned leisure, than perhaps anything else in
Scotland. It is perhaps from its remoteness that the
thoroughly Parisian elements have there, in name at
least, had a more tenacious life than with its neigh-
bours. There is still the Chancellor. Of old he was
the bishop of the diocese, according to the practice of
the Continental universities a practice from which
Paris happened to be an exception. There is the Rec-
tor, chosen by the Procurators of "the nations," repre-
VOL. IV. H
114 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
senting the republican spirit of the institution. There
are Regents, who are the governing body as of old,
though they are now also the teachers. There are
Deans, or doyens, a Principal, and a Sacristan. It is
perhaps, however, in the humblest grade that we shall
find the most expressive vestige of Parisian customs.
The fresh student during his first session receives the
name of Bejeant, from the Bejaune a class for whose
protection from the snares by which they were sur-
rounded many ancient regulations of the University of
Paris make anxious provision. The Scots universities
had privileges of exemption from the jurisdiction of
legal tribunals, like their more populous and wealthy
contemporaries. As it affected the universities in
great Continental cities, to which students flocked by
thousands, these exemptions represented a great policy,
whether it was a wise one or not. The place dedicated
to learning, and those abiding in it, were a separate
independent state, with all the necessary machinery of
government. The privilege did not end here, where
its boundaries were distinct, but followed the denizens
of the place when they went beyond its walls, creating
inextricable entanglements with other authorities. The
O
great Continental universities enjoyed the countenance
both of the civil and the spiritual powers, and carried
their privileges with a high hand. In Scotland such
instances of a government within a government did
not fit easily into the national institutions ; and the
universities, losing in their infancy, as it were, the
protection of the Church, could not fight a strong battle
for them. They did, however, occasionally fight for
having them in their utmost purity, as they might be
enjoyed in Paris or Vienna, Such contests, especially
THE UNIVERSITIES, 1410-1560. 115
brought down as they were into the eighteenth century,
are, when mixed up with the contemporary current of
events, only incidental troubles overcome and forgotten.
But when we connect them with the history of the
great confederation of literary republics to which the
humble universities of Scotland nominally belonged,
they are curious relics of a great policy, intended to
influence the whole Christian world.
Whatever influences for good or evil these privileges
may have had, it cannot be doubted that each of these
universities was a centre of civilising or enlightening
influences. In later times, plans for planting the
apparatus of a high education in poor and remote
districts have mortified their projectors by imperfect
results or utter failure. For a long time, however, the
Scots universities were a great success. They came
just in time to serve the Reformation party, among
whom there had arisen an ardent zeal for scholarship.
Their opponents desired to be armed in like manner
for the controversy. Hence it was that, during the
latter half of the sixteenth century and the early por-
tion of the seventeenth, the foreign universities swarmed
with learned Scotsmen. They might be both teachers
and learners, for the absolute distinction now estab-
lished between the two grades did not then exist. The
old-established staff of professors in the Scots univer-
sities are called regents. The regents, as we have seen,
were the governors or administrators of the several
establishments, and were not necessarily or exclusively
the teachers belonging to it. By later practice, how-
ever, the regents monopolised the teaching, and regent
and professor became generally synonymous. Of old,
however, every graduate had the privilege of teaching.
Il6 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
Thus the Scot, having acquired such learning as his
native university supplied, would pass over to foreign
parts, and do his work teaching what he could com-
municate, or learning what he desired to know, accord-
ing to the condition of his means and motives. This
gave to the Scots, cut off as they were from the natural
brotherhood of their close neighbours of the same
family, privileges of citizenship and community over
Europe, the breadth and fulness of which it is difficult
now to realise.
CHAPTER XL.
Condition of tje Ration from tjje 2Har of Inoepcntrcnce
to tjjc information.
(Continued?)
SCOTTISH SCHOLARS THEIR EARLY FAME ABROAD COMMENCE-
MENT OF NATIONAL LITERATURE THOMAS OF ERCILDOUN
RISE AND PECULIAR CONDITIONS OF A PATRIOTIC LITERA-
TURE BARBOUR, BLIND HARRY, WYNTOUN, FORDUN, BOWER,
BOECE, MAJOR, BUCHANAN, LESLIE ' THE COMPLAYNT OF
SCOTLAND' INFLUENCE OF THE PATRIOTIC LITERATURE
DUNBAR, MONTGOMERY, AND THE OTHER POETS LANGUAGE OF
SCOTTISH LITERATURE VESTIGES OF CELTIC LITERATURE
PRINTING THE ARTS SIGNIFICANCE OF THE ECCLESIASTICAL
AND BARONIAL REMAINS SHOW THE POVERTY FOLLOWING THE
WAR, AND THE INFLUENCE OF FRANCE MATERIAL CONDITION
OF THE COUNTRY EXPORTS AND IMPORTS MINING GOLD,
SILVER, LEAD, AND COAL A SPANISH AMBASSADOR'S ACCOUNT
OF SCOTLAND IN THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY.
IT was among the many misfortunes brought to Scot-
land by her ceaseless struggle for national existence,
that an excessive proportion of her intellectual affluence
was given to foreign lands. This sacrifice was, no
doubt, obvious to the founders of the universities, who
thought there might be a fairer balance of trade in the
matter of scholarship if their own country could com-
mand quiet retreats for learned leisure, amid comfort,
Il8 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
the luxuries of the age, libraries, and good society.
The earliest native of Scotland to gain a lasting fame
in letters was John Duns, commonly called Scot or
Scotus. At the time when Eobert Bruce was fighting
at the head of the national party, John the Scot was
teaching divinity and metaphysics in Paris and Cologne,
and making to himself so brilliant a reputation that it
might be a fair question for discussion whether or not
he was the most illustrious intellectual leader of his day.
In the religious world, he was the leader of the Fran-
ciscans ; in the philosophical world, he was so much
the author of Kealism that the school who opposed the
Nominalists got from him the name of Scotists.
Scotland at that time had work all too serious at
home to participate in the intellectual treasures which
her illustrious son was bestowing on the world. To
trace in detail his history, and that of his countrymen
who afterwards signalised themselves in the great
republic of letters, would be away from the present
purpose. Having taken note of him as foremost in
the rank of a great body of men who made their
country famous abroad, let us turn to such Scottish
literature as had a home influence. Of this, even, there
can be no room here for a full critical examination.
It must sufiice that the conspicuous specialties, and
chiefly those which had a peculiar national charac-
ter or exercised a strong influence on national feel-
ing, be noticed.
Whether the metrical tale of Sir Tristrem belonging
to the romance school which dealt with King Arthur
and his knights was written by a Scotsman, is a ques-
tion that has been discussed in a great critical contest.
The author to whom Scott and others, who maintain its
LITERATURE, 1280-1350. 119
Scottish origin, trace it, is Thomas of Ercikloun, or
Thomas the Rhymer. His name was popular in Scot-
land, and is still remembered. He had the fame not
only of an epic poet or bard, but of a prophet, occupy-
ing in his own country somewhat of the position held
by Merlin in England, and afterwards by Nostradamus
in France. All great national events all national cala-
mities, especially such as the English invasions were
reputed to have been prophesied by him in rhymes
repeated by the people. When compared with the
corresponding events, it was ever the specialty of the
prophecies of " True Thomas " that they had been
uttered in vain to a careless and credulous people, who
culpably neglected the warning thrown out by the
patriotic seer; yet it is hardly consistent with the
logic of prophecy that it should preclude its own ful-
filment. His fame was founded in other shapes. The
wildest and strangest of the fairy ballads of Scotland
are devoted to True Thomas, and his dealings in
fairyland with the Queen of Elfin and other persons
in authority there. It is, indeed, around his name
that the great bulk of the fairy lore of Scotland is
found to cluster.
Thomas of Ercildoun was a real man; his name was
Learmonth, and his property of Ercildoun has been
traced in charters. He died a very old man, about
the time when Edward I. was shaping his projects
against Scotland, leaving by repute, as a legacy to his
countrymen, a prophetic warning of the destiny in pre-
paration for them. His name became known abroad
as that of a rhymer or poet. 1
1 In the Epitome Bibliothecse Conradi Gesneri, piiblished in 1555,
we have "Thomas Leinnont vel Ersiletonus, natione Scotus, edidit
120 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
At the opening of the romance of Sir Tristrem there
is mention of Ercildoun and Thomas. Some boy, or
mischievous trifier, has, however, mutilated the pas-
sage, by cutting out of it an illuminated letter on its
reverse, little conscious, no doubt, of the exciting diffi-
culty which the mutilation was to launch into the lite-
rary world, in the decision of the question, whether
Thomas was referred to as the author of the romance,
or in some other capacity. 1 It may be said, however,
of Sir Tristrem, and of the romance of Launcelot of
the Lake, also attributed to a native of Scotland, that
they cannot be counted national literature, in the more
interesting shape in which we shall find it growing in
later times. There is nothing of a national tone and
there are no local allusions in Sir Tristrem, to give help
to the argument that it was written by a Scotsman.
King Arthur and his chivalry were the materials of a
romance literature common to all Europe. To Thomas
Learmonth it would have made no perceptible differ-
ence in language and tone of feeling, had he lived on
the south instead of the north side of the Tweed. It
would be known to him only, if he was the prophet he
was afterwards held to be, that a time would come
when the people inhabiting his Ercildoun and the
neighbouring glens would hate, with the deepest feel-
ings of national hatred, their neighbours on the other
side of the river.
In the next stage of Scottish literature we find it
rhythmica quaxlam, et ob id Rhythmicus apud Anglos cogriominatus
est. Yixit anno 1286." This, with many other valuable notices, is not
to be found in the Bibliotheca itself, only in the Epitome.
1 The substance of the discussion will be best read in Scott's edition
of the romance, and in Price's edition of Warton's History of English
Poetry.
LITERATURE, 1350-1500. 121
animated by that hatred. On this account it is a lite-
rature coming especially under the notice of the histo-
rian, who, when he deals with it, has to regret that its
coming was so long delayed. There is, indeed, a great
gap in the home sources of Scottish history. It was
about the year 660 that Adamnan wrote his Life of St
Columba. Adamnan was not a native of Scotland,
but he lived in lona, where he was abbot ; and what he
gives us of Scots history, or national peculiarities, comes
from one who was living in Scotland. We have
nothing else written about the annals of the country,
by one dwelling in it, until we come to John of For-
dun, who wrote about the year 1350 six hundred
years later. There is the Chronicle of Mailros, sup-
posed to have been kept by the monks of that great
Cistercian abbey. But during the period it covers,
which is before the War of Independence, these
churchmen were to be considered as Englishmen
rather than Scotsmen, owing their spiritual allegiance
to the successors of St Cuthbert. The history of Scot-
land does not preponderate in the chronicle ; it re-
ceives little more notice there than from the ordinary
chronicles of the English monks.
Our excessive poverty in this kind of literature is
shown in the greed with which we seize on every
crumb that reaches us from the affluent collection of
English chronicles. We have first the help to be
found in the writings of Bede, exceedingly precious,
although they profess only to bear on ecclesiastical
matters. They bear their value in their own internal
evidence, and it is certified by the precision with which
his narrative fits into that of Adamnan. The narra-
tive of both is carried on in the chronicle attributed to
122 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
Simeon of Durham ; and whether written by himself,
or by another monk named Turgot, it is the work of
one who lived and saw what was going on in the year
1100. It is from Ailred of Rievaulx and Richard of
Hexham, as contemporaries, that we have accounts of
Scots affairs at the time of the Battle of the Standard.
For what of chronicle information we receive about
the wars of Wallace and Bruce's time, we must still
take the English chroniclers the Scalacronica, the
Chronicle of Lanercost, Hemingford, Trivet, and
Langtoft. The succession of chronicles kept by the
monks of St Albans, and especially those of Wal-
singham and Rishanger, contribute, out of their abun-
dance, notifications about the affairs of Scotland of
the utmost value to the gleaner of intelligence. It is,
for instance, Rishanger who has preserved to us that
signally interesting incident omitted in the English
records that the community of Scotland had put in a
pleading against King Edward's claim of superiority,
while the nobles and the Church were silent. There
are, besides these, Mathew Paris, Roger of Wendover,
Florence of Worcester, William of Malmsbury, Henry
of Huntingdon, and Mathew of Westminster. One
might go on enumerating the English chroniclers to
whom Scots history is indebted, but the process would
only be a long list of names. 1
1 The treasury of English chronicle lore is so vast, that hitherto those
best acquainted with it have shrunk from the gigantic task of estimating
and analysing its resources, so as to let the outer world have a notion of
what they are. A gallant effort in this direction was made by Bishop
Nicholson in his three Historical Libraries. We owe much to the
labours of Hearne, and not less for the chronicles edited by himself, than
for his resuscitation of the memoranda of readings among the chronicles
left behind him by that voracious devourer of parchment lore, Leland.
Everything that has been done in this shape, however, will be totally
LITERATURE, 13501500. 123
What it is of moment to remember is that, during
' O
the several centuries when Scotland had no recorder of
passing events, England had always one or more, con-
temporary with the times of which he was the annalist.
It is a necessary result of this that, during a period
when she had her life-struggle with her great enemy,
Scotland must take the account of her own conduct
almost entirely from the side of that enemy. When
Scotsmen began to write their own annals, they did so
in a tone of vehement patriotism, inspired by the hot
struggle not yet over. Barbour's Bruce was written
about the year 1350, and Blind Harry's Wallace a full
century later. We have seen something of the charac-
ter of both works, in going over their historical ground.
It may be questioned if either author reaches the
standard of poetry according to the aesthetic notions
of the present day; nor, indeed, did their task, as
rhyming chroniclers, demand that they should. But
the national feeling, burning within them, forces itself
out occasionally in composition which has the dignity
and power of the heroic. These passages may be
counted as examples of the old Roman idea expressed
by Juvenal in his first Satire, that strong passion
comes forth in poetry.
In the period between these two, we have another
rhymer Andrew Wyntoun, the Prior of the Mona-
eclipsed by the great work of Mr Duffus Hardy, the ' Descriptive Cata-
logue of Materials relating to the History of Great Britain and Ireland
to the End of the Reign of Henry VII.' Two volumes of this work
have been issued, coming down to the year 1200. The service thus
already conferred on British history can only be estimated by those who
have gone to the book for practical assistance. The learning and
sagacity concentrated in this service are on a scale reminding one rather
of the Benedictines of St Maur, than of the common run of contribu-
tions to En-dish historical literature.
124 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
stery of St Serf, on an island in Loch Leven. His was
an ambitious project a metrical history of the world
from the creation to his own time. He has given so
large a place to his own country in the general dis-
pensation of human affairs that his work is virtually a
chronicle of Scotland, burdened with a quantity of sur-
plus matter, easily removed from the part really valu-
able. Wyntoun is less poetic even than the others ;
and, from the view which he took of his task, he would
probably have been as little grateful for compliments
to his poetic power as any historian of later times is to
those who call him flowery and imaginative. To many
of the metrical chroniclers, indeed, the use of rhyme
rather served for restraining verbal luxuriance than for
encouraging poetic licence. The couplet became the
measure within which a distinct assertion or proposition
had to be set forth.
Wyutoun bands us over to the most characteristic
class of early Scots authors those who wrote the com-
plete history of their native land. The " Scotichroni-
con," so often referred to in these pages, was written,
down to the middle of the eleventh century, by John of
Fordun ; and was thence continued, by Walter Bower or
Bowmaker, Abbot of Inchcolm, down to the middle of
the fifteenth century. Although it is usual to speak of
the work as Fordun's Chronicle, yet the continuation,
as coming from one who told of events, all of them
nearer to, and some of them contemporary with, his
own day, is the more valuable part of the work. In
Fordun and Wyntoun we have the earliest detailed
narrative of that fabulous history which has had so
great an influence on Scottish literature, and even on
political events. It owed its most egregious develop-
LITERATURE, 1500-1560. 125
ment to Hector Boece, who added to the history of
Scotland many wonders, some of which have been
already noticed. Through his History two editions of
which were printed in Paris the wondrous tale of the
annals of Scotland got a hold on the European mind.
It is noticeable that Hector Boece's narrative, wild as
it would now be counted, was skilfully adjusted to the
conditions of belief in his own time. In whatever
savours of the supernatural, he deals w r ith far more
caution and reserve than Geoffrey of Monmouth, the
chronicler of the Anglo-British heroics, or Geoffrey
Keating, the historian of Ireland. It is easy, indeed,
on a comparison, to imagine a time when these would
be dealt with as wild romances, while Boece's w r ork
might be accepted as sober history. As credulity faded
before advancing knowledge, however, there were others
to adapt the tale of Scotland's ancient and glorious his-
tory to the taste of the age. Even while Boece lived,
the sceptical could find relief from his exaggeration
in the sobered narrative of John Major, a doctor of the
Sorbonne, with a European reputation as a commen-
tator on The Sentences. But it was the splendid His-
tory of Buchanan, welcomed by the learned world as
the restoration of classic Latinity, that gave the his-
tory of Scotland its strong position as part of the
annals of mankind. If there were orthodox Romanists
to question the tale of the brilliant heretic, there was
his contemporary, the devout Bishop Leslie, telling in
homelier Latin the same tale, and realising it by the
actual portraits of Father Fergus and his descendants,
worthily executed for the editions of his History pub-
lished in the holy father's own capital of Rome. This
community of testimony is characteristic of Scottish
126 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
sentiment and conduct. There was hot controversy
between Scotsmen then, and long afterwards ; but
each party, however fierce in abuse of the other, stood
up for the ancient dignity of the native land common
to both.
The fabulous history of Scotland, as we are now
bound to call it, was brought into existence with a
great national object. It was to vie with the equally
fabulous history of England, and to establish a case for
ancient independence, which might neutralise the story
told by King Edward to the Papal Court about Brutus
of Troy and his three sons. 1 The tenor of the case for
Scotland was as follows : We are first introduced to an
unfortunate division in the royal family of Greece at
the period of Moses. It ended in Nicolas, King of
Greece, sending his son Gathelus out of the country.
The young prince went to Egypt, where he became
attached to and married Scota, the daughter of that
Pharaoh who was drowned in the Ked Sea. The young
couple took to Avandering, and getting out of the Medi-
terranean, they founded a state called Portus Gatheli,
and now known as Portugal. At length they arrived
in Scotland, and settled there. Long afterwards,
Ptolemy, King of Egypt, sent ambassadors to Scotland,
who were surprised to find how well the country, ruled
by the descendants .of the Egyptian princes, adhered
to the ways of the dwellers on the banks of the Nile.
" They persaivet/' says Bellenden, in his translation of
Boece, "the same writs, the same manner of writing,
the same tongue, and the same habits and ceremonies,
as was usit among the Egyptians." Some time elapsed,
however, before the country resolved itself into a firm
1 See above, vol. ii. p. 318.
LITERATURE, 1500-1560. 127
monarchy. It was about three hundred years before
Christ that a descendant of Gathelus and Scota, named
Fergus, reigned supreme. Descending from him, the
"Fergus, father of a hundred kings,'"' there was an
unbroken royal line. Malcolm Caumore, the first in
whom we can now, from authentic sources, identify
the attributes of a king of Scotland, stands in this
dynasty as the eighty-sixth king.
So skilfully was this story told that, in the modified
version of Buchanan, it lived after the fabulous ele-
ments were deducted from the history of England and
of many other countries. Scotland received homage as
the most ancient of European monarchies. After the
union of the crowns, it was usual to distinguish Scot-
land from her neighbour as "the Ancient Kingdom."
The fabulous history had great political influence. A
belief in the antiquity of the royal line had a consti-
tutional effect in favour of the monarchy, which was
valuable to those who ruled so restless and self-willed
a people as the Scots. After the Revolution, however,
it had a disturbing influence in favour of the Jacobite
cause. The loss of the house of Stewart was believed
to be the loss of the most august dynasty in the world
a dynasty that raised Scotland in the scale of nations.
In the thirteenth century, such a house as that of
Guelph, with its legends of Roman ancestry, could only
think of the Stewart of Scotland as the possible descen-
dant of a Norway pirate, holding humble office under
another, who, although he was called a king, had no
nobler orioin. The connection with the Celtic house
o
of Riadha, which opened to it the succession to the
throne, would hardly have given any legitimate lustre
to the house of Stewart. The founding on such a
128 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
connection might have carried little more than a ple-
beian family of later times would gain by establishing
a descent from an American cazique, or some question-
able Oriental pasha.
When the Hanover dynasty came over to reign in
Britain, its best friends would not have measured its
ancestral claims with those of the descendants of Fer-
gus. It was not ancestral lustre, but respectability
and political utility, that commended the new dynasty.
Curious incidents of the picturesque in literature
might be found in the rage with which the earliest
doubts about the antiquity of the race of Fergus were
received. The doubting went on for ages before it
established disbelief, if it has even yet done so. The
first malignant whisperings came from the English
antiquaries Lloyd and Stillingfleet. The doubters
were assailed with hearty goodwill by Sir George
Mackenzie, in his Defence of the Royal Line of Scot-
land. Sir George was then lord advocate. He seems
to have thought that it became him, as the public
prosecutor of offenders, to punish, in what fashion he
might, those who threatened to abbreviate the line
of his majesty's ancestry; and he hinted that, had
the perpetrators lived within the country in which
he exercised his powers, he might have felt it his
duty to bring them to justice as political offenders
against the crown.
The peculiar character and influence of this special
literature commend it to the consideration of the his-
torian ; but it is not intended, on this occasion, to
give more than a brief allusion to other departments
of Scottish literature, which, in the eyes of the critic,
might be equally or more important. With Major and
LITERATURE, 1450-1560. 129
Buchanan there arose a school of Scottish authors in
prose and verse who, addressing themselves to the
learned world at large, wrote in Latin. These were but
beginning at the period we have reached, and the bulk
of their services belong to a later age. As a character-
istic morsel of the patriotic literature of the country, we
must include ' The Complaynt of Scotland,' printed in
1548, and proving itself to have been chiefly written
while Henry VIII. was pressing on the country with
cruel wars and treacherous offers of peace. Who was
the author of this piece is matter of dispute. 1 The
work is a prose pastoral, with a strong tinge of the
practically political. Its writer is by courtesy a shep-
herd. He thus belongs to the class best fitted to take
a survey of human life at large, or any portion of it.
They are not subjected to " the corrupt infection and
evil air that is generit in ane city, where most con-
fluence of people resorts;" but "we live on the fra-
grant fields, where we are nourished with the most
delicious temperate air, and there is neither hatred,
avarice, nor discord among us." 5
For his meditative and reflective purposes he takes
up his position with much picturesqueness :
" I passed to the green wholesome fields, situate maist
commodiously fra distempered air and corrupt infection,
to receive the sweet fragrant smell of tender grasses,
and of wholesome balmy flowers most odoriferant.
Beside the foot of ane little mountain there ran ane
fresh river as clear as beryl, whar I beheld the pretty
1 ' The Complaynt of Scotland ' was reprinted by Leyden, with a co-
pious introduction, in which the question of the authorship is examined,
along with much other matter suggested to that accomplished scholar by
the matter of the book.
2 Ibid., 70.
VOL. IV. I
130 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
fish wantonly stcrtland with their red vcrmyl films, and
their skails like the bright silver. On the other side of
that river there was ane green bank full of rammel
green trees, whar there was mony small birds hoppand
fra busk to twist, singan melodious reports of natural
music in accords of measure of diapason prolations,
tripla and diatesseron, that heavenly harmony appeared
to be artificial music." l
The devious meditations which start so pleasantly,
find a gloomy present in the country tortured by the
harassing assaults of King Henry, and contemplate a
gloomy future, only brightened up by exhortations to
the author's countrvmen to take heart and fight out the
/ O
battle of national independence to the last. The book
is so saturated in classicalities, that any glimpses we
have of the condition of the country have to be seen
through a Greek or Roman medium, by which they are
sadly distorted ; and at the points where curious in-
formation might be expected, a grotesque mixture of
modern purpose and ancient illustration comes in its
stead. 2
1 < The Complaynt of Scotland,' 57.
2 So we have a parable of a cordinar or shoemaker from the internal
contests in Rome, after the slaying of Julius Caesar :
" He by gret subtlety nourised tvva young corbies in twa cages, in twa
sundry hooses, and he learned them baith to speke. He learned ane of
them to say, 'God save thy grace, noble victorious Augustus Caesar!'
and he learned the tother to say, ' God save thy grace, noble victorious
Emperor Anthonius ! ' Then this subtle cordinar set ane of his corbies
that gave loving til Augustus forth at his window in the plain rue
when he beheld any gentilman of Augustus allya pass or repass before
his hous ; and siclike he set forth his tother corby at his window when he
beheld any of the allya of Anthonius pass or repass before his house. The
whilk thing he did to that effect that he might win the favour of Augustus,
and not to tyne the favour of Anthonius. Of this sort he was like to the
sword with the twa edges. Then when Augustus Caesar vanquished An-
honius, and was peaceable emperor, this subtle cordinar presented the
LITERATURE, 1450-1560. 131
There were several writers in verse who, aspiring
beyond the mechanical rhyming of the annalists, aimed
at true poetry. Such were King James I., James V.,
or whoever wrote the poems attributed to him, Henry-
son, Dunbar, Montgomery, Bishop Douglas, and many
others. 1
Those who, after overcoming the difficulties of the
spelling, are able to enter into the spirit of their poems,
are generally surprised, when remembering the tenor of
the times in which they were written, by the tenderness
and beauty of the sentiments, and the polished harmony
of the versification. Their tone generally belongs to
corby til Augustus, whilk gave him loving in her artificial speech, of the
whilk Caesar was very glad, wherefore he gave to the cordinar fifteen
hundred pieces of gold. But soon thereafter it was reported to Augustus
Caesar that the said subtle cordinar had ane corby that gave as great loving
to Anthonius. Then Augustus caused the said corby and the cordinar to
be brought to his presence ; and when he persavit the cordinar was ane
astute subtle fellow, and dissimulate, he gart hang him on ane potent
before the Capitol, and his twa corbies beside him." P. 285, 286. The
moral of the story is the folly of dubious councils, and the especial folly
of temporising with the King of England, from whom nothing is to be
gained or hoped. If he comes in war, let him be resisted ; if he comes
with proffers of kindness, let them be suspected and flung back upon
the treacherous giver. "War to the utmost, all men turning " special
valiant defenders " of their native country, " is the true policy of Scots-
men." " For as Thucydides says in the thirteenth chapter of his first
beuk, quoth he, As it is convenient to honest and prudent men to live
in peace when their neighbours does them no outrage nor violence ;
siclike it is honest and convenient to virtuous men to change their
peace, and rest in cruel war fra time that they have receivit outrage
and violence from their neighbours. For the changing of ane dis-
simulat peace into a cruel war shall be occasion for ane firm and faithful
peace." P. 290, 291.
1 For a critical account of the productions of these early poets, see 'The
History of Scottish Poetry,' by Dr David Irving, a posthumous work,
edited from his manuscripts by his friend Dr Carlisle. Dunbar and Hen-
ryson should be read in the accurate versions edited by David Laing, and
with the aid of his valuable explanatory matter. Hopes are entertained
that we may soon have the works of Sir David Lindsay dealt with after
the same fashion, by the same accomplished hand.
132 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
what in modern sesthetical phraseology is called sen-
suous. There are descriptions extremely minute of
real objects or real actions, and with these are connected,
by the poet's skill, associations and sentiments touched
with some passionate thought generally of a pensive
kind. These early Scots poets draw largely on nature.
They are full of descriptions of natural objects fresh
waters, woods, flowers, and birds. In this dealing
with the world of nature there is a notable peculiarity.
The present tone of the literature of natural objects
would lead us to expect that in Scotland a poet of
nature would seek a topic suited to his genius in the
mountain scenery of which the country has so many
grand examples. We would expect something of the
tone of which the poems of Ossian, as rendered by
Macpherson, are so full. But the inner eye for these
things had not been opened in the early Scots poets.
They might have written what they draw from nature
and rural life in the flattest parts of England, or in
Holland. It is safe to say that, in all this school of
poetry, there is not a single reference to mountain gorge
or cataract as an object of poetic thought. There is
one poem, indeed, that, in the character of a flagrant
exception, proves the rule that these poets were in-
capable of feeling sublimity or beauty in mountain
scenery. In the Lament of Duncan Laideus there are
pensive reminiscences of some tracts of Highland
scenery much beloved at this day by tourists. Now
Duncan Laideus was a robber and a cut-throat a
leader of Highland cateran. He is supposed to utter
his pensive recollections within sight of the halter.
The spots his recollection fondly dwells on are the
scenes of his robberies and murders, and the author
LITERATURE, 1450-1560. 133
of the piece thought it good irony to make the man of
horrible character talk with admiration and affection of
those horrible places. 1
There were some satirists in this group of poets
among these Sir David Lindsay stood unrivalled.
Tliis is the class of poetry that most imperatively of all
demands that, to relish its character, we should be con-
versant with the nature of the times with the persons
and the things on which it alights. Old Davy Lindsay
was transcendently popular. We see the marks of his
influence on the history of the times, and can understand
how it was so, when we read his potent attacks on the
abuses of the day. He was a consummate artist. His
riotous wit seems to drive him before it ; but when his
sarcasm is sharpened for a hit it never misses its aim,
but strikes the victim right in the face. We have seen
in the history of the Reformation some traces of his
handiwork.
The literary merits of Knox's works would claim a
place here, were they not also referred to in connection
with their political influence. It may be mentioned
that in more than one quarter Kuox was charged
with innovation on the old language of his country,
which he corrupted by modern innovations. When
put in a friendly shape, the import of the charge is
that he improved the language of his country, as he
reformed its religion; and it is a singular coincidence,
that Luther has the fame of reforming the language
of Germany, and Calvin of reforming the language of
France.
The language of this literature was fundamentally a
pure Teutonic of the Anglo-Saxon family. It took
1 See the Lament in The Black Book of Taymouth,' 149.
134 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
nothing, as we have seen, from the Celtic dialect spoken
by the inhabitants of a great portion of the country
the language of those who gave it the name of Scotland.
The relations of Scotland with France were too super-
ficial to affect the structure of the language, or even its
vocabulary farther than in the supply of a few words,
which avowed themselves to be foreign in the method
of their use. The old Scots has less of classic admix-
ture than the old English. This is one of the things
that can only be stated as a general opinion taken
from general reading. Where such things are matter of
degree, there is seldom a means of coming to precise
comparison; and here we have it, as a disturbing ele-
ment, that in both countries some authors affected
words of Greek or Roman origin more readily than
others. That the Scots should have less of this
element than the English, is in conformity with
historical conditions. The Teutonic nations of the
Continent admit no mixture of the classical if they
have words of Greek or Roman origin, these are
distinctly marked off as foreign. There is no doubt
that the mixture confers an unexampled richness
and subtlety on the English language, by giving the
means of expressing abstract or spiritual terms with-
out having recourse to the words used for the practical
purposes of everyday life ; and affording a double
nomenclature, which may be called the real and the
ideal, as in the words "cleanness" and "purity;" in
" age " or " oldness," as a different quality from " anti-
quity," and the like.
There cannot be a doubt that England took this,
with so many other things distinctive of the English
people, from the Normans, who brought with them the
LITERATURE, 1450-1560. 135
language of the most eminent of the Latin races. "We
have the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle written in the purest
of Teutonic while Norman-French was the language
of the Court, and there emerges the English of later
times enriched with words of classic origin stripped
of their French garb. This, like the other novelties
coming of Norman usage, spread but faintly into Scot-
land, and so the language there remained nearer to the
character of the old Teutonic stock. 1
It would be difficult to realise the difference in pro-
nunciation between the languages of the two countries
three hundred years ago, and were it conceived it
could not be expressed. The living persons are very
few who remember the separate language of Lowland
Scotland as spoken by people of education and condi-
tion. It lingered with a few living secluded lives in
remote districts, yet holding a local position which
put them above the necessity of compliance with in-
novating fashions ; and those who have heard these
lingering vestiges of a national tongue must ever
retain an impression of its purity, force, and beauty.
It was not the Eno-lish Ianpriam3 of the cultivated
O O O
classes of the present day; yet though distinct, it was
not so far apart from it as the language of the un-
1 An interesting inquiry might be directed to the words belonging to
the Scots but not to the English language, which are still used in any of
the Continental Teutonic nations ; and to make complete results, the
next question in each case would be, whether the word common to both
was Anglo-Saxon, though it has ceased to be English. Every Scotsman
travelling abroad feels that the pronunciation of the languages which have
not admitted any classical mixture is more akin to his own than to the
English. Three consecutive numerals in Scots will be almost sufficient to
show this : sax, seyven, aucht. " Half audit " means half-past seven an
idiom which Englishmen who have been in Germany will at once iden-
tify both in pronunciation and idiom with one of the national oddities.
136 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
educated iii Scotland, and for that matter in England
too. 1
To this negative account it is difficult to add any-
thing save further negatives. The spelling of old
Scots, tried by the modern powers of letters, is not to
be taken as a test of its pronunciation. All readers
of old books are familiar with the eclecticism of their
spelling how, even after the art of printing made a
pressure on uniformity, the same word might appear
on the same page in two, sometimes three, different
spellings. Spelling varied more easily than pronuncia-
tion ; and, apart from any such generality, it can be
easily shown that the sounds expressed by letters used
in both nations in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries
were quite different from the sounds expressed by the
same letters in modern times. 2
1 It is fortunate that a man with capacity and patience for the task
should have set himself to store up a record of the peculiar language of
the Scots people ere yet it had entirely ceased to be spoken by the edu-
cated. The Etymological Dictionary of the Scottish Language, by Dr
Robert Jamieson, is of great value to the present generation, and pro-
mises a value in the future to an extent not to be easily pre-estimated.
2 Of the language as used in literature, state papers, and some other
kinds of documents, several specimens will be found in the preceding
pages specimens, perhaps, all the more suited to afford a fair test of
the character of the language, that they have not been selected with
that object, but each for some separate purpose appertaining to itself.
This opportunity may be taken for explaining the manner in which the
author has rendered passages so cited, in the matter of spelling. Words
which are especially Scots, -whether because they were never used in
England, or have become obsolete there, are scrupulously retained. Of
words still in use, however, the spelling in which they are found is not
always employed. Those who must have literatim spelling do not
trust to histories, but go to the earliest rendering in manuscript or print.
For providing the reader with a notion of the words used, the original
spelling would be very fallacious. Besides many instances in which it
is likely that letters have changed their powers while spoken words have
not, we know many instances in which the change in the power of the
letter is certain. There are the well-known instances of j for i, and
LITERATURE, 1450-1560. 137
It was not until the year 1507 that the art of
printing came in aid of the national literature of Scot-
land. It was brought in by Walter Chepnmn, under
v for u and iv. The letter o had sometimes the sound of the diphthong ce
with a leaning to the e, as where the pronoun she is written sho. Quh
was used to express the sound of wh. Z was identical with our present
y, and you, was spelt zou or zu. The Scots peasantry, in dealing with
names, tell this to the present day. Thus where certain family names
are spelt and pronounced by Englishmen thus, Mackenzie and Menzies,
they are pronounced by the peasantry as Mackmyie and Jfenyies. So
of places Cockenzie, Edzel Castle, and Culzean Castle, which are re-
spectively called Cockenyie, Edyd, and Culyean. The dealing with the
letter y itself is a specialty of a troublesome kind. It represents one of
the last remaining of all the Gothic contractions, which made a theta in
the alphabet, as representing the sound of th. This letter was very like
the y, differing only in having the left limb elongated upwards, and a
horizontal line from it to the other limb, making a triangle. When this
remained as the last of the contractions, the printers of the sixteenth
century began to use the y instead of it, whence came the well-known ye
for the, and yat for that. As a specimen of the way in which the author
thinks the spelling of these old writings may be changed with every
chance of making it a better representative of the sound, the following
passage is given as it is literatim printed by the scrupulous editor of the
State Papers of Henry VIII. It is a passage of no great moment, taken
from a letter by the widow of James IV., that Queen Margaret who
was an English princess, yet spent the greater portion of her days in
Scotland :
" I haif resaiffit zour lettir be Mons. Gozolis wyth ane letter of ye
lordis ; ye quhilk hes schawin me ye ordinance yat ze and yai haif maid,
and how yai have prait and ordand me yat I sail nocht abide wyth ye
kyng my sone, bott toctim quhilles and se hym. My lord, I thynk it
rycht strange yat yis is zour will, seing ye gud and trew part yat I haif
kepit to ye king my sone, and to zou, and to yis realme, and ye dis-
plesure yat I haf had of ye kyng my broyer, my frendis, for zour part."
The author thinks that the words used by the writer will be better
rendered to the present generation thus :
" I have receivet your letter by Monsieur Gonzales with ane letter of
the lords ; the whilk has shown me the ordinance that ye and they have
made, and how they have praid and ordaind me that I sail nought abide
with the king my son, but to come whiles and see him. My lord, I
think it right strange that this is your will, seeing the good and true
part that I have keeped to the king my son, and to you, and to this realm,
and the displeasure that I have had of the king my brother, my friends,
for your part." State Papers (Henry VIII.), iv. 59.
138 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
the favour of James IV., who, curious in shipping and
other mechanical triumphs, seems to have felt much
interest in the printing-press. Chepman, with an
assistant who is supposed to have provided capital for
their joint undertaking, got a grant of exclusive privi-
lege, or letters-patent, as the document might have
been called in England. It gave authority for print-
ing the ritual books of the Church ; and through
Chepman's press there is fortunately preserved to the
present day the national service-book, elsewhere men-
tioned as the Breviary of Aberdeen. 1
This book of church service, remarkable as a fine
specimen of early printing, was, like the foundation of
King's College in Aberdeen, due to the munificence of
Bishop Elphinstone. When it was issued, copies of
the 'Usum Saruni' were excluded from Scotland as
contraband goods. Besides the national prayer-book,
the Acts of Parliament and other works of public
utility were referred to in the grant of privileges to
the first printer as books likely to come from his press
and to justify the grant of privileges. These were
deferred until a later period. The earliest productions
of the press in Scotland, so far as vestiges remain,
were knightly legends, and the productions of Dunbar
and other contemporary poems. 2
1 See chapter viii.
2 A volume of these, of which the only copy known is preserved in
the Advocates' Library, was reprinted in facsimile by David Laing,
with an instructive introduction. The reprint is an extreme rarity, as
the impression was nearly all burned by a fire in the establishment
where it was printed. The editor gives, in his introduction, the grant
of exclusive privileges by the Privy Council, in 1507, to Chepman and
his partner Millar. It is set forth that they, "at his majesty's request,
for his pleasure, the honour and profit of his realm and lieges, had
taken upon them to furnish and bring hame ane print, with all stuff
LITERATURE, 1450-1560. 139
The later history of religion and education in the
Highlands would not lead us to suppose that the press
had early fruit in Gaelic literature ; yet of the liturgy
commonly called John Knox's, a translation was print-
ed for the use of the Celtic inhabitants of the Isles not
long after it had been published in the vernacular. 1
This leads to the recollection that the language now
and for long called Scotch is not the only language
spoken in Scotland that indeed there is another,
which, whether or not it be older in common use, is
certainly older in literature.
Any glance taken over the literature of Scotland at
this period will naturally comprise that of the Low-
lands only, omitting the Highlands as naturally as
the critic of the Elizabethan period of English litera-
ture passes by the Welsh bards and anything they
have to say. That the sovereign state of Scotland
took its name from that of the Irish Celts who colon-
ised the country, and that these were the first to teach
the art of writing and to spread learning and civilisa-
tion through the country, had been buried under the
eventful history of their Teutonic neighbours, who had
gradually pressed them out of the districts available
for agriculture into the rocky region of the west.
That the despised Celt might treasure the remnant
belonging thereto, and expert men to use the same, for imprint-
ing -within the realm of the Looks of the laws, Acts of Parliament,
chronicles, massbooks, manuals, matin-books, and partures, after the
use of the realm, with additions and legends of Scottish saints now
gathered to be eked thereto, and all other books that shall be seen
necessary; and to sell the same for competent prices, by his majesty's
advice and discretion, their labours and expenses being considered."
Laing's Introduction to reprint of ' The Knightly Tale of Golagras and
Gawane.'
1 Skene, Introduction to the Book of the Dean of Lismore, xxxviii.
140 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
of the old heroic poetry sung in the days when his
ancestors were civilised and those of the Lowlander
were barbarian, was unlikely to occur to the scholars
who studied in the French universities, or to the other
leaders of opinion in Scotland, at the period we have
reached.
It is now known, however, that the traditions of the
Irish mythical history, which supplied the skeleton
of Macpherson's poems, existed at least down to the
Eeformation. James Macgregor, Dean of Lismore, the
ecclesiastical metropolis of Argyle, who lived nearly
down to the Eeformation, left a written volume con-
taining transcripts of poems preserved orally or other-
wise among the Highlanders. They contained much
vague reference to Highland affairs near their own
time, and to obscure matters of monkish tradition
which may have had a Highland local influence in
their day. What gives them their chief interest, how-
ever, is that they possess, at least in the names of
the heroes who come forth in them, a conformity
with those traditions which Irish scholars believed to
be history, and out of w r hich James Macphersou made
his noble poems. It would be hard to conceive that
in the language they were translated from, or in any
language into which they could be put, the legends
preserved by the Dean of Lismore could take shape as
poetry. The tenacity, however, with which the origi-
nal Irish legends, and especially the notion of a great
conquering and regenerating king called Fin or Fian,
have been thus preserved, is an interesting feature
in ethnology, if not in literature ; and it is satis-
factory to consider that ' The Dean of Lismore's Book '
has been given to the present age with everything
ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE, 1350-1560. 141
that Highland zeal and Celtic scholarship could do
for it, 1
All that can be said of the condition of early art in
Scotland comes within narrow compass, but tells an
impressive history. A country possessing the means
and the skill to raise edifices of stone, or even of brick,
is likely in them to leave the clearest testimony to its
condition, unless it has advanced so many stages farther
in civilisation as to leave a treasury of literature and
art. Scotland, before she had many other means of
telling her condition to later ages, had buildings eccle-
siastical and baronial. These afford, perhaps, but a
narrow source of information ; but it is, so far as it
goes, distinct and complete. We have seen that, down
to the opening of the war, many noble churches had
been built. They followed or accompanied the pro-
cession of the same class of buildings in England.
First we have the round-arched Norman the tran-
sition stage between classic, and Gothic or pointed
architecture. Next comes the earliest type of pointed
architecture, which proves its origin by the name it
has been longest known by the Early English. In
the estimation of many this is the noblest style of
Gothic architecture the true type of the school, be-
side which all others are to be held either as the
imperfect development or the degeneracy. Its leading
character was the aspiration after loftiness, by a tend-
ency to height rather than breadth in all its features,
the spirit of the pointed arch ruling the whole. It was
frugal in decoration, trusting more to the general influ-
1 ' The Dean of Lismore's Book, a selection of ancient Gaelic poetry,'
edited by the Rev. Thomas M'Lauchlan, with an introduction by William
F. Skene.
142 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
cnce of size and structure. The buildings of this style
were lighted by separated, long, narrow windows, termi-
nating in the characteristic pointed arch. When the
Gothic shifted out of this solemn simplicity into the
next style, called the second-pointed, the most re-
markable type of the change was the grouping of these
long, solemn, simple windows together, so as to bring
them into a structural connection ; and next, by nar-
rowing and decorating the separations between the
openings, to resolve the line of solemn, separated,
pointed openings into the large Gothic window of a
later age, in which groups of lights were intersected
by narrow stonework, according to the varied fantastic
shapes which every one is acquainted with in a mul-
lioned Gothic window.
It is useful to note the facts of this transition, be-
cause they interpret the historical testimony which the
ecclesiastical remains of Scotland furnish to us. We
have seen that there yet exist noble specimens of the
Norman. There are vestiges of early English on a yet
greater scale ; but after this stage in the transitions of
Gothic building, the Scottish specimens become dis-
tinctly impoverished. It was but a short time before
the War of Independence that the early English type
shifted to the "second-pointed" in its own country, Eng-
land ; it may have been a generation later in travel-
ling to Scotland. We may count that it took no root
there before the war, and that the struggle for national
life found the Scots expending their wealth on build-
ings raised in that noble style of architecture which
they had borrowed from their good neighbours on the
other side of the Tweed.
Judging from existing remains, the greatest Gothic
ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE, 1350-1560. 143
buildings Scotland ever had were the three cathedrals
of St Andrews, Glasgow, and Elgin. In each of these
the architectural forms which Scotland copied from
England are so predominant as to fix the type of the
building instances of the styles of other periods are
incidental adjuncts. What we know of the history of
the buildings agrees with the story told by their frag-
ments. The consecration of the completed Cathedral
of St Andrews followed close on the battle of Ban-
nockburn, and was in some measure an act of com-
memorative homage to St Andrew, the patron saint of
Scotland, for that goodwill to the cause of his devo-
tees without which they might not have been vic-
torious. The cathedral had been upwards of a hundred
years in building, and was probably almost completed
before the war began.
The remains of Elgin give us very beautiful speci-
mens of the early English style. The later work on
this building is, in comparison with these old massive
fragments, scanty and meaningless. We know, how-
ever, that the cathedral had to be rebuilt, as it was
said, after its destruction by the Wolf of Badenoch ;
and perhaps its condition in the earliest representations
we have of it, about a century and a half ago, give it
much as he left it the later work having decayed
through time, while the more massive masonry of the
early English survived alike his burning and the
wasting influences to which the fabric was subjected
from the Reformation downwards.
Glasgow Cathedral is the only eminent Gothic
building in Scotland still in good preservation. The
whole tone of the building and the fundamental parts
of its structure are early English, what there is of the
144 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
succeeding stage being secondary detail. We hear of
the completion of the building during the War of
Independence. Wishart was at that time Bishop of
Glasgow. We have seen his name in curious shapes
connected with the attempt to subdue Scotland ; and
his title of the "Warlike Bishop'' is in harmony with
the charge against him, that having been licensed by
King Edward to cut timber for the completion of the
wood-work of the cathedral, this timber he employed
in the construction of instruments of war for the siege
of the Peel of Kirkintilloch, then held by the English.
The second English stage of Gothic architecture,
that of second-pointed, had spread to Scotland before
the war, but it was not long enough coeval with the
fortunate period of the country to produce any great
edifice. We owe to it only a change in the later works
of the great remnants, and a few secondary buildings.
There is visible, to any one who looks at the remains
of Scots ecclesiastical architecture, a distinct gap. The
war did not at once stop church-building. The finish-
ing touches were given to the great buildings planned
and nearly completed, and small buildings arose here
and there. But there was a collapse, which lasted so
long that, when the country was again able to raise
costly churches, the national taste and ways had wan-
dered far away from companionship with England.
Foreign types came to predominate ; and while the
ecclesiastical architecture of Scotland down to the
war was identical with that of England, the school
which succeeded it was as different from the contem-
porary method of church-building in England as any
other foreign style might be.
The only ecclesiastical building in Scotland that in
ECCLESIASTICAL ARCHITECTURE, 1350-1560. 145
magnificence can be compared to those either entirely
or nearly completed when the war broke out, is the
far-famed church of Melrose Abbey. It was a very
ancient convent, and buildings of some sort had be-
longed to it as long ago at least as the earliest speci-
mens of Scots church-architecture extant. The Cis-
tercian monastery there was a favourite of the great
King Robert Bruce, who largely endowed it. When
he thus added to its wealth there were, doubtless, the
ordinary monastic buildings and a church there, though
probably at some little distance from the present ruin.
It was, however, some hundred and fifty years after
his day ere, from the rents of his endowments and their
other wealth, the fraternity were able to build their
beautiful church. Perhaps Scotland was then becom-
ing rich enough to multiply such examples of archi-
tecture ; but the Reformation was not in favour of the
development of Gothic architecture, and wealth had no
farther opportunity of displaying itself in that shape.
Before Scotland had so far recovered from her de-
pression as to be able to raise distinguished buildings,
the style of her church-architecture had long ceased
to come from England, and had, indeed, gone into a
direction which separated the two from each other by
fundamental differences. The best means of briefly
estimating the character and extent of the divergence
will be by comparing the ecclesiastical architecture of
England and Scotland at the time of the Reformation.
The style then prevalent in England was called the
Tudor, but it has had other names, such as the " per-
pendicular " and the " depressed." Among eminent
specimens of this style are Henry VII.'s Chapel and
Christ Hospital Chapel in London, the Chapel at Wind-
VOL. IV. K
146 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
sor, and Christ Church Hall and Brazen Nose College
in Oxford ; but in fact it abounds throughout England
in specimens great and small. The contemporary style
in Scotland was an adaptation of the French flam-
boyant, a school utterly at variance with the specialties
of the Tudor. In the larger features of the latter,
straight lines, horizontal and perpendicular, predomi-
nate. The mouldings and other decorations, including
especially the mullions of the windows, have a ten-
dency to geometrical division by angles and straight
lines. On the other hand, the French flamboyant,
sometimes called the florid, luxuriates in curves, and
has a tendency to throw out from a centre, or an upright
line, a symmetrical design coming out in curves, which
return as loops to their starting-point after having
thrown out lateral curvilinear tracery, the process
going on to any extent. To take a very common form
of this process the centre of the design is parallel to
the spring of the arch of a pointed Gothic window,
and of course midway between the two sides. If all
round this point there are grouped curved or loop-
shaped departments of the window, they will be
narrow towards the centre and will broaden outwards ;
hence comes the flame shape of the tracery of the
windows which has given to the style the name of
flamboyant. Fair specimens of this style may be seen
in the Cathedrals of D.unkeld and Brechin, the Church
of Linlithgow, and the Chapel of King's College in
Aberdeen.
It will perhaps afford a more distinct notion of di-
vergence from English practice to speak of what is to
be found there in abundance, and is not to be found in
Scotland. The arch of the Tudor period is peculiar to
BARONIAL ARCHITECTURE, 1350-1560. 147
England. It is neither circular like the Roman and
Norman arch, nor pointed like the Gothic of the first
and second periods. It is from the peculiarity of
the arch that the style has been called the depressed
Gothic ; and to those unaccustomed to it, an arch of
this type is apt to justify the term by suggesting that
it had been originally pointed, but that the superincum-
bent weight had pressed on it on either side, and given
a horizontal curve to the ribs of a pointed arch. This
form has another name the four-centred arch, because
the variation in the curve requires that on either side
it should be drawn from a double centre. This arch is
abundant all over England, in buildings both baronial
and ecclesiastical : there is probably no English county
in which it is not the conspicuous and characteristic
feature of several buildings. In Scotland it may be
said that it is unknown ; if there be a single instance
of it, that instance must be an exception of mark. 1
These facts suggest two inferences. The one that,
for many generations after the War of Independence,
Scotland had not wealth enough to raise ecclesiastical
buildings on the scale of those completed, or nearly
completed, when the war broke out. The other is
that, when the country was again rich enough to spend
1 Of course an old exception is supposed. In the attempts at the
restoration of Gothic architecture in Scotland, this and all the other
features of the Tudor type are common. There can be no objection to
this ; the style has its merits, and if any modern architect can produce a
building vying with Henry VII.'s Chapel, it should be thankfully ac-
cepted, without consideration for the ethnical history of the style. It is
provoking, however, that restorations of buildings of thoroughly Scottish
type have often been made in this style. St Giles's, in Edinburgh, is a
flagrant instance. There are windows of the four-centred arch in King's
College Chapel, in Aberdeen, which the Author might admit to be the
exception he anticipates above, had he not himself seen them let into
the wall.
148 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
money in this shape, it was no longer England that
she sought as her teacher in architecture, but France.
The same conclusions are shown by the remains of
baronial or castellated architecture, and perhaps even
more emphatically. We have seen that there is in
Scotland no known remnant of the Norman school
the method of castle-building, from the Conquest down,
let us say, to the reign of Henry III. The oldest exist-
ing castles in Scotland belong to the succeeding period,
known in England as that of the Edwards. As these
are the oldest castles in Scotland, so also they are the
most magnificent. Not even Tantallon, Glammis, or
Craigmillar, the greatest efforts of any later age, can
vie with them. A general mystery hangs over them.
We do not seem to have means of knowing, as to any
one of them, what particular lord of the soil it was who
had it built. The remains of some of them stand on
the possessions of the Norman houses which were so
eventfully connected with Scotland those, for instance,
of Corny n and Bruce. But it would be difficult posi-
tively to contradict any one who should maintain that
they were all built by the English invaders. The
structural history of this noble class of buildings can
be traced step by step from the simple square tower of
the Conqueror's reign. It has been the natural growth
of European fortification to expand into flanking works.
At the period of the War of Independence, castles had
so far developed in that direction that they consisted of
great walls or screens flanked by strong round towers.
In England the process of expansion went on down to
the Vauban fortress, spreading over an expanse of
country. In Scotland the expansion suddenly stopped ;
nay, more, castle-building went back to the simple
BARONIAL ARCHITECTURE, 1350-1560. 149
square tower, which was a novel feature in England
two hundred years earlier. The two were so much
alike that strangers taking a cursory tour in Scotland
have returned with the impression that the country
contains a great many Norman keeps. A close in-
spection, however, shows distinctions which to the
adept are conclusive. The details of the Norman
castles are in the style of work still called Norman
the transition between the Roman and the Gothic.
The Scots square towers show the work of the four-
teenth or fifteenth century, and in their general
masonry are inferior to the oldest English castles.
Among the square towers so large as to be mistaken
at a distance for Norman keeps may be counted Clack-
mannan, Borthwick near Edinburgh, Melgund in For-
farshire, Niddry in Linlithgowshire, Hunting-tower near
Perth, and many others. The same class of work, how-
ever, was repeated in smaller shapes. The country
was in one sense amply fortified. The buildings were
meagre, significant of the limited means of impoverished
builders, but they were very numerous. Many of them,
indeed, though for accommodation and the means of
O
domestic comfort they would not have in England been
admitted to the rank of yeoman's granges, were still
strong fortresses. The peel or bastle-house, which
spread a considerable exterior before the eye, would
contain three, perhaps only two, small chambers mere
cells let into a solid mass of masonry. These humble
fortresses were naturally numerous on the border.
Along the banks of the streams they may there be seen
at short intervals, more or less in ruins. They are
the only remnants of old buildings designed for human
habitation in that district. In the border towns, such
ISO CONDITION OF THE NATION.
as Hawick, Roxburgh, and Kelso, the absence of old
houses is observable, and at once accounted 'for by
the recollection of the many burnings by the English
invaders.
The necessity of some flanking work for these square
towers seems to have been soon felt, and the impover-
ished owner supplied it in an economical shape credi-
table to his ingenuity. Instead of attempting to run
up from the ground flanking round towers like those
of the Gothic castles, he perched turrets or machicola-
tions on the corners of the top of the tower. Generally
there was one on each corner ; but sometimes the laird
had to be content with two, which, if placed at oppo-
site angles, would serve to flank the whole four sides
of the square block.
Before the time we have reached, the country had
been recovering from its prostration, and acquiring the
means for enlarged efforts in this and in other direc-
tions. It did not, however, follow the example of Eng-
land; but, as in church-architecture, took its models
from friendly France. The spiral character of the
French chateau-architecture is well known. It had
begun to appear in Scotland, but its full development
there was in the beginning of the seventeenth century.
Even already, however, it touched the grim square
tower with relieving features. The spiral roof of the
French flanking tower was set on the corner machico-
lation, and by the clustering of ornamental chimneys,
and other devices taken from the same source, a certain
rich variety was given to the top at least of the old
peel tower. Had the houses of the gentry been subject
to the influence not of the French chateau but of the
English hall and mansion style, known as the Tudor,
ART, 13501560. 151
the internal condition of Scotland would not have
admitted of such a method of building. It was one
incident to a country where there was a strong central
government keeping internal peace. The English
squire could turn his castle into a mansion two hundred
years before the Scots laird could imitate his example.
Some of the royal residences partook in the profusely
decorative character of the Renaissance; remnants of it
may still be seen in Stirling, Linlithgow, and Falkland.
Among feudal castles, the only one that now preserves
the ambitious design and extensive decoration belong-
ing to the period which followed the pointed Gothic,
is Crichton Castle, the stronghold of that Chancellor
Crichton who had a struggle for supremacy with the
Douglases in the reign of James II. In its "stony
cord," with "twisted roses laced," its "courtyard's
graceful portico," and the "fair hewn" facets rising
row on row above the cornico, it stands in signal
contrast to its grim square neighbour Borthwick.
Among the few other instances of ambitious decora-
tion on the buildings belonging to subjects in that
early period, the best specimens are to be found in a
spot where one would hardly expect to find such
things the village of Maybole in Ayrshire. This,
however, was the ancient capital of the bailliary of
Carrick, the domain of the Bruces ; and within it the
Lord Cassilis, the hereditary bailie, and the other
magnates of the district, had their hotels or town
residences, and formed a little court by themselves.
We know nothing of the personal history, or even
the identity, of the architects who planned the palaces,
the ecclesiastical buildings, or the feudal castles of the
day we cannot even tell whether they were foreigners
152 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
or natives. 1 We can only suppose, from other condi-
tions, that Scotland had not within herself sufficient
art to compass the finer work in the palaces and
churches, and that it was done by foreigners. The
mason must go to the spot where the work of his
hand is to remain ; and whatever was to be wrought
in stone by foreigners must have brought them to
Scotland.
We have no testimony to the practice of the portable
arts, as they may be called painting and sculpture in
Scotland, within the early period now in view, unless
we may count some illuminations on manuscripts made
in the cloisters as specimens of art. The carved wood-
work of the churches, and the beautiful oaken sculpture
in the Palace of Stirling, known as "the Stirling heads,"
were doubtless foreign work. Perhaps the finest piece
of carved work, both for beauty of Gothic design and
practical finish, existing in the British Empire, is that
of the screens, stalls, and canopies in King's College
Chapel in Aberdeen ; but it is a testimony to the
comparative richness of the Church and her zeal for
education, rather than to the progress of national art.
While thus artificially destitute and dependent on
others for these physical fruits of intellectuality,
Scotland was in other departments of intellectual
work giving far more than she got. The contrast is
a curious exemplification of the conditions necessary
to the prosperity of what are called the fine arts. The
stuff that made those great scholars and rhetoricians
who rendered Scotland illustrious abroad, could have
also given inspiration to the painter, the sculptor, and
1 See the observations connected with the violent death of Cochrane
the mason in King James III.'s reign.
TRADE, 1350-1560. 153
the architect; but these could only grow in a soil pre-
pared for them by peace and prosperity.
About the material progress of the nation during the
three hundred and fifty years since the War of Inde-
pendence, there is little to be said. Much of stirring
life as we have during that long period, there occur no
instances of impulse given to trade, manufactures, or the
other producers of wealth. We have seen that at the
outbreak of the war the elements of wealth and comfort
were noticeably large. The impression left on more
than one of those who have mused over such testimony
as can be had from the records of this long period is,
that though Scotland had somewhat recovered from
deep depression, the country was not so rich at the
time of the Reformation as the long war found it.
France gave facilities of trade to her ancient ally, by
exemption from customs duties, and otherwise ; but the
opportunities so offered seem to have met but a languid
co-operation. In foreign places where the Scots had a
commercial treaty, it became the practice to appoint a
" conservator of privileges," whose function resembled
that of the consul of the present day ; the office, in one
instance at least, remained as a sinecure after its uses
had come to an end, and even been forgotten ; and
John Home, the author of Douglas, was provided for
as " the conservator of Scots privileges at Campvere."
There is extant the record of transactions or ledger
of Andrew Haliburton, conservator of the Scots privi-
leges at Middleburg. It runs over ten years from
1493 to 1503. 1 He seems to have been himself as
1 This is likely to be the earliest of the collection of " chronicles and
memorials " relating to Scotland to be issued under the auspices of the
Lord Clerk Register.
154 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
many consuls now are an agent or dealer in mercantile
transactions. The aspect of his book does not assure us
of an active intelligent commerce, conducted with the
newest arrangements for facilitating business. Book-
keeping had advanced so far in practice among the Geno-
ese and Netherlands merchants, that daring the period
of Haliburton's transactions it had been systematised
in a literary treatise. But he has none of it. Further
than that there is a separate statement of transactions
with each of his employers or correspondents, there is
no analysis, with corresponding figures, to enable the
state of his business to be posted up. Each account is
a history, the money equivalent being stated in Roman
figures, and of course supplying no means for arithme-
tical adjustment. Were one to judge by comparing his
accounts with those of the lord chamberlain so far back
as 1263, it might be inferred that in the interval there
had been no improvement in account-keeping. The
transactions are narratives. From these he might have
told any correspondent which of the two was the
other's debtor, and for how much; but he could not
have wrought out his own pecuniary position, by making
up anything approaching to the nature and services of
a balance-sheet. 1 The goods he receives from Scotland,
1 Of book-keeping as an exact art, which gives no more expression to
the success or failure of the transactions recorded in it than so many
algebraic formulas, the conservator had so little conception that his
entries of pecuniary payments and receipts bear marks of the joys or
griefs associated with them. Having to record a hopeless balance against
a correspondent, which a modern book-keeper would perhaps "write off"
into the limbo of bad debts, he puts a note, " God keep all good men
from such callants ! " and of another hopeless customer he notes, " He
mansworne me with evill malyssious langag ; and to be quyt of hym in
tym to cum, I gaf hym a hayll quittans, and whyll I lyff never to deal
with him." P. 269.
MINES AND METALS, 1350-1560. 155
and sells abroad, are all raw produce salmon, herrings,
hides, furs, and wool. It would be difficult to find in
his record any article of Scots handiwork, farther than
that the wools may have been sorted, since they are of
various quality. The fish must have been cured for
keeping, and the hides probably tanned. He sends
back wine, with spices and other articles, now called
colonial produce, evidence that Scotland bought these
things from the Continental merchants instead of im-
porting them from the place of production. On this
side of his transactions are textile fabrics and other
manufactures. It is observable that a large proportion
of the goods he sends to Scotland are for churchmen,
in the shape of books of devotion, sacerdotal robes,
reliquaries, images, and the like. Thus we see that the
large revenue drawn by churchmen from the land
made the supply of their professional and personal
wants fill up a great proportion of the traffic of the
country a certain sign of the narrowness of its trade.
The mineral riches of Scotland were so far sought
that we can trace a small export trade in metals. We
have seen that gold belongs to the geological forma-
tion of Scotland. Down to the period we have
reached, it seems to have been from time to time found
disintegrated from the rock. Bishop Leslie describes
the streams of the Lanarkshire heights carrying so much
of it in the gravel brought down by the floods, as if
each were a very Pactolus ; but he makes a significant
admission in telling us that the sifting of this gravel
for gold is the occupation of the poor. 1
1 De Origine, &e., 11. The 'Scotiso Uescriptio,' in which such matters
are mentioned, has no counterpart in the vernacular history by Leslie,
often referred to above.
156 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
Among the Acts passed in the busy Parliament held
by James I. when he returned from England, gold
and silver mines were made the property of the crown,
" as is usual in other realms." The form of the Act is
peculiar, as being an offering of this prerogative to the
crown by the lords of Parliament. At the same time
a duty was laid on all gold and silver exported from
the realm. 1 At the time when Henry VIII. was casting
greedy eyes on Scotland, the richness of the gold-fields
of the country seems to have been an object of con-
sideration, as affecting the value of the proposed plun-
der. Wharton sends a specimen of " gold coined in
Scotland, the time of Duke Albany being there," from
nuggets found on Crawford Moor, and says, " If it
shall so stand with the king's majesty's pleasure, I
shall cause the ground to be seen without suspicion
thereof, and the manner and order of the work, as the
same hath continued and at this present standeth, and
shall make certificate thereof accordingly." But Whar-
ton seems to have taken too sensible a view of the
affair to stimulate much hope of riches from such a
source. Sir Adam Otterburn told him how James IV.
" made great work upon the moor, and all that he did
find was gold in pieces loose in the earth, and never
could find any vein thereof ; and, as he said, the
charges of workmen surmounted the value of the thing
gotten." '"
Lead was extracted, at a very early period, in the
district of the present Wanlockhead mines. The
method of separating any portions of silver that might
be in the matrix of lead must have been early in use,
1 Act. Par!., ii. 5.
2 State Papers (Henry VIII.), v. 575.
FOREIGN NOTICES, 1435-50. 157
as the royalty established in favour of James I. applies
to those mines where " three halfpennies of silver may
be found out of the pound of lead." Whenever any
names come up in connection with mining operations,
they generally belong to Englishmen, Germans, or
Dutchmen. 1 About the time we have reached, a con-
tract was entered on for giving a foreigner the work-
ing of the lead mines, on the condition of his sending
a certain amount of silver to the royal cunyie-house,
coin-house or mint. 2
That there was iron in Scotland was known at an
early age ; but there are but faint, if any, traces of its
having been wrought, and there is nothing until long
after the period we have reached to show that the
country was conscious of the enormous source of wealth
it contained in this shape.
Coal was used, but probably only found where it
cropped out on the surface of the soil. We are told of
its use, and of other customs, by an eminent observer,
known to literature as ./Eneas Sylvius Piccolomini, and
to history as Pope Pius II., who visited Scotland in
the year 1435, to transact business about some obscure
affair of ecclesiastical patronage. The notes left by
such visitors are naturally considered very precious ;
but we may find, as on this occasion, that there is not
much of distinct truth to be gained from their appreci-
ation of the broad social conditions of a country. In
1 See several details about early mining, picked out of charters and
other documents, in Chalmers's Caledonia, iii. 733.
2 " Herefore we bind and oblige us faithfully to the queen's majesty,
and her said treasurer in her name, to deliver to her grace's cunyie-hous,
betwix this and the first day of August next to cum, forty-five unce of
utter fine silver for every thousand stanewecht of the said twenty thou-
sand stanes of led-ore." The Discoverie and Historic of the Gold Mynes
of Scotland, by Stephen Atkinson, Appendix, 88.
158 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
his judgment regarding feminine modesty and decorum
in Scotland, lie utterly contradicts, at least in essen-
tials, another observer, Don Pedro de Ayala, who a
few years afterwards had fuller opportunity of notic-
ing the social conditions of the country.
Piccolomini tells what we can easily believe very
noticeable to an Italian belonging to a distinguished
and wealthy family that the country was very poor ;
that many houses in it were built without lime, and
roofed with turf ; and that the towns were not fortified.
He says something much more distinct to the interests
of the present day, when he reports, to his own special
audience, a practice of the Scots, which he gives with
the exactness of a man who knows that he is telling
truth to the incredulous. He finds, among the other
poverties and barbarisms of these Scots, that they dig
out of the earth a mineral of sulphurous quality, and
use it as fuel. He tells, with the misgiving of a man
who scarcely expects to be believed, how he first noticed
the value set on this black mineral. He observed that
the half-naked beggars at the church doors received
portions of it as alms, and went away thankful. It
is, on the whole, treated compassionately, rather than
otherwise, that a people should be reduced to the use
of so sordid a fuel. He notes that the country is tree-
less. Perhaps it was so in the district of the south,
which alone he saw. He would have both reason and
opportunity for observing the bareness of the ten long
miles of country over which he walked twice bare-
footed on the frozen ground on a pilgrimage, though
that district is now thickly wooded. 1 The Highlands,
on the other hand, were covered with native forests,
1 De Europa, Sylvii Opera, 443. See above, iii. 35.
FOREIGN NOTICES, 1490-1500. 159
which have been destroyed in later times. John Major,
who was acquainted with other countries, mentions the
dense forests of the Highlands, or Caledonian Alps,
enhancing their inaccessible nature. Hence came a
significant element in the distinction between the two
races inhabiting the land the Saxon Lowlander delv-
ing the ground, and striving to extract nourishment
from the sterile soil on which his lot was cast; the
mountaineer hiding in the deep forests which clothed
his mountains, and issuing from fastnesses nearly inac-
cessible, to plunder from time to time his industrious
neighbour.
Although it has been noted, as a general impres-
sion created by the tenor of the Author's reading, that
Scotland was not so rich at the Eeformation as at the
beginning of the War of Independence, it is proper
to note that there was one period of evidently rapid
prosperity in her annals. This was during the reign
of James IV., when the Wars of the Eoses kept the
national enemy busy at home. We have seen how,
in that reign, Scotland obtained a considerable diplo-
matic position among the European powers, and how
an ambassador from the proud monarchs of Spain
was observing, with close interest, the turn of Scottish
politics. We have seen his picturesque description of
the King of Scots transmitted to his own court. He
reported at the same time on the institutions of the
country its agriculture, its trade, and in some measure
on its social conditions and customs. He writes as one
who had found on his mission a powerful and prosper-
ous community, with which it were better to be in alli-
ance than at war. On the sources of revenue he says,
" The import duties are insignificant, but the exports
160 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
yield a considerable sum of money, because there are
three principal articles of export that is to say, wool,
hides, and fish. The customs are worth about 25,000
ducats a-year. They have much increased, and will
continue to increase." This revenue on exports would
some fifty years ago have been denounced by the
prevalent school on the economy of trade as a gross
folly, leading to certain national ruin ; but the later
school of political economy has left import and export
duties pretty nearly on a balance against each other.
The ambassador reported to his court on many
matters coming under his notice in Scotland. From
his Spanish training, even had he cultivated the faculty
of observing political institutions at the Court of the
Emperor or at Paris, he was not likely to form a clear
notion of the political and social condition of such a
country as Scotland. In the dearth, however, of
notices of the country from without, his should not be
thrown away. They want the -coherence which might
be given to the facts coming under his notice, if we
had them now as he got them. In some things, too,
he has been mistaken ; and his estimate of the force of
mounted men available for war in Scotland is so pre-
posterous that we must suppose it to have come of a
slip of the pen.
Without seeing a way to anything more precise or
instructive by way of commentary upon the following
passages, they are given as they stand in the report on
the Court of James IV. and the people of Scotland, in
the year 1498, sent by the protho-notary, Don Pedro
de Ayala, to Ferdinand and Isabella :
" They spend all their time in wars, and when there
is no war they fight with one another. It must, how-
FOREIGN NOTICES, 1490-1500. l6l
ever, be observed that since the present king succeeded
to the throne, they do not dare to quarrel so much with
one another as formerly, especially since he came of
age. They have learnt by experience that he executes
the law without respect to rich or poor. I am told that
Scotland has improved so much during his reign that
it is worth three times more now than formerly, on
account of foreigners having come to the country, and
taught them how to live. They have more meat, in
great and small animals, than they want, and plenty of
wool and hides.
" Spaniards who live in Flanders tell me that the
commerce of Scotland is much more considerable now
than formerly, and that it is continually increasing.
" It is impossible to describe the immense quantity
of fish. The old proverb says already ' piscinata Scotia.'
Great quantities of salmon, herring, and a kind of dried
fish, which they call stock fish (stoque fix), are ex-
ported. The quantity is so great that it suffices for
Italy, France, Flanders, and England. They have so
many wild fruits which they eat, that they do not
know what to do with them. There are immense
flocks of sheep, especially in the savage portions of
Scotland. Hides are employed for many purposes.
There are all kinds of garden fruits to be found which
a cold country can produce. They are very good.
Oranges, figs, and other fruits of the same kind, are not
to be found there. The corn is very good, but they do
not produce as much as they might, because they do
not cultivate the land. Their method is the following :
they plough the land only once when it has grass on it,
which is as high as a man, then they sow the corn, and
cover it by means of a harrow, which makes the land
VOL. IV. L
162 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
even again. Nothing more is done till they cut the
corn. I have seen the straw stand so high after harvest,
that it reached to my girdle. Some kind of corn is
sown about the Feast of St John, and is cut in August.
" The people are handsome. They like foreigners so
much that they dispute with one another as to who
shall have and treat a foreigner in his house. They
are vain and ostentatious by nature. They spend all
they have to keep up appearances. They are as well
dressed as it is possible to be in such a country as that
in which they live. They are courageous, strong, quick,
and agile. They are envious to excess.
" The kings live little in cities and towns. They
pass their time generally in castles and abbeys,
where they find lodgings for all their officers. They
do not remain long in one place. The reason thereof
is twofold. In the first place, they move often about,
in order to visit their kingdom, to administer justice,
and to establish police where it is wanted. The second
reason is, that they have rents in kind in every pro-
vince, and they wish to consume them. While travel-
ling, neither the king nor any of his officers have any
expenses, nor do they carry provisions with them.
They go from house to house, to lords, bishops, and
abbots, where they receive all that is necessary. The
greatest favour the king can do to his subjects is to go
to their houses.
" The women are courteous in the extreme. I men-
tion this because they are really honest, though very
bold. They are absolute mistresses of their houses, and
even of their husbands, in all things concerning the
administration of their property, income as well as
expenditure. They are very graceful and handsome
FOREIGN NOTICES, 1490-1500. 163
women. They dress much better than here (England),
and especially as regards the head-dress, which is, I
think, the handsomest in the world.
" The towns and villages are populous. The houses
are good, all built of hewn stone, and provided with
excellent doors, glass windows, and a great number of
chimneys. All the furniture that is used in Italy,
Spain, and France, is to be found in their dwellings.
It has not been bought in modern times only, but
inherited from preceding ages.
" The queens possess, besides their baronies and
castles, four country-seats, situated in the best portions
of the kingdom, each of which is worth about fifteen
thousand ducats. The king fitted them up anew only
three years ago. There is not more than one fortified
town in Scotland, because the kings do not allow their
subjects to fortify them. The town is a very consider-
able borough, and well armed. The whole soil of Scot-
land belongs to the king, the landholders being his
vassals, or his tenants for life, or for a term of years.
They are obliged to serve him forty days, at their own
expense, every time he calls them out. They are very
good soldiers. The king can assemble, within thirty
days, 120,000 horse. The soldiers from the islands
are not counted in this number. The islands are half
a league, one, two, three, or four leagues distant from
the mainland. The inhabitants speak the language
and have the habits of the Irish. But there is a good
deal of French education in Scotland, and many speak
the French language. For all the young gentlemen
who have no property go to France, and are well
received there, and therefore the French are liked.
Two or three times I have seen, not the whole army,
164 CONDITION OF THE NATION.
but one-third of it assembled, and counted more than
12,000 great and small tents. There is much emula-
tion among them as to who shall be best equipped, and
they are very ostentatious, and pride themselves very
much in this respect. They have old and heavy artil-
lery of iron. Besides this, they possess modern French
guns of metal, which are very good. King Louis gave
them to the father of the present king in payment of
what was due to him as co-heir of his sister, the Queen
of Scotland." l
1 Bergenrotli, Simancas Papers, 168-75.
CHAPTER XLI.
<Euecn fflarg.
DEATH OF THE KING OF FRANCE VISITORS TO THE YOUNG QUEEN
HER BROTHER, AFTERWARDS EARL OF MURRAY EMBASSY FROM
HUNTLY AND THE ROMISH PARTY PERTINACIOUS DEALING OF
QUEEN ELIZABETH'S AMBASSADORS IN FRANCE QUEEN MARY'S
RETURN HER COMPANIONS HER RECEPTION HER PAST AND
FUTURE POSITION COMPARED- A PAGEANT THE RELIGIOUS
DIFFICULTY THE QUESTION OF TOLERATING IDOLATRY CALVIN
CONSULTED METHODS OF REVILING THE OLD CREED AND CERE-
MONIES INTERVIEWS WITH JOHN KNOX THE FIRST BOOK OF
DISCIPLINE FAILURE OF THE CLERGY TO GET IT CONFIRMED
BY PARLIAMENT REASONS FOR THE LAY MEMBERS OF THE CON-
GREGATION DISLIKING IT CONTAINS PROVISIONS FOR APPROPRI-
ATING THE TEMPORALITIES OF THE CHURCH WOULD THUS TAKE
THEM FROM THE LAY LORDS WHO HAD SECURED THEM IN-
STANCES OF THE METHOD OF GETTING AT THEM ROASTING A
COMMENDATOR KNOX's WRATH THE COMPROMISE MURRAY'S
MARRIAGE AND ELEVATION A CLEARING AMONG THE BORDER
THIEVES.
QUEEN MARY'S husband, Francis II., died on the 15th
of December 1560. The effect of such an event is
immediately obvious. It was a relief to the great new
party predominant in Scotland. It left but little
strength in the hold by which Scotland seemed bound
over to the ambitious schemes of the Guises. If to a
large portion of the Scots people their queen was also
to be their enemy, she had lost her power to injure.
166 QUEEN MARY.
Her earl} 7 return was now desired, and preparations
were made accordingly.
In the mean time, one in her position would natu-
rally have to receive important visitors. Among these
were two countrymen of her own, who, representing
the two opposite parties in the great contest, reached
her simultaneously at Vitry in Champagne. The one
was her brother, the Lord James. What counsel he
gave her becomes obvious from his position as leader
of the lay members of the Congregation. The other,
who came after him, was John Leslie, afterwards the
Bishop of Eoss, and her stanch friend and supporter
in her adversities. We have his errand from himself.
He represented the party of the old Church, especially
the Lords Huntly, Athole, Crawford, Marishal, Suther-
land, and Caithness. He says he offered the devoted
duty of his party, and that it was thankfully received.
He further tells the significant fact that he recom-
mended her to land at Aberdeen, where twenty thou-
sand troops would be at her disposal ; and that he was
accompanied by one high in command in Huntly 's
armed force, who was to arrange her convoy to Aber-
deen, if she consented to land there. This was. no less
than the offer of the power of the north to strike at
once a great blow against the Congregation and for the
old religion. However it came to pass, the landing at
Aberdeen was not effected ; but the proposal will be
seen to have an intimate connection with events im-
mediately following the queen's return to Scotland. 1
1 History, vernacular version, 294. It is in the Latin version that the
affair is more distinctly marked as a project of the Romish party, and
that the army to be collected at Aberdeen is mentioned. The leader
of the convoy was to be "Jacobus Cullenus, ipsius Huntlsei cognatus,
vir militiae terrestris ac navalis scientia plurimum valens, qui illam
MARY'S WIDOWHOOD. 167
She afterwards received sedulous attentions from
Bedford and Throckmorton, the English ambassadors
at Paris. They were very anxious that she should con-
firm the treaty of Edinburgh, with its important clause
acknowledging Elizabeth as the rightful Queen of Eng-
land. It might be said that their pertinacity in this
matter extended to rudeness, and even cruelty, were
not the vital issues at stake an excuse for earnest en-
deavour. If these veteran statesmen expected to mould
the beautiful young widow in her solitude and sorrows
to their purpose, they were mistaken ; and they got
experience to teach them that their mistress had a
dangerous neighbour, so far as plausibility and seduc-
tive influence might go. On the very weakness of her
condition as a new - made widow among strangers,
she founded an insuperable barrier against all their
efforts. How r could they ask her to transact business
important business, too without her proper advisers
about her ? Queen Elizabeth had, in a manner deemed
presuming, recommended her in all things to follow
the advice of the native nobility of her realm. This
little offence served her in good purpose. Had not the
mistress of her tormentors the Queen of England, her
gracious sister most kindly advised her in this matter?
and would they have her disregard the counsel so
graciously given her by their mistress ? Oh, and in-
deed in regard to her they had broken a promise. She
and her gracious sister were to exchange portraits.
She had sent her own, but she had not got her sister's.
tutam ac incolumem Aberdoniam duceret." P. 532. These particulars
are repeated in Gordon's History of the Family of Gordon (i. 198),
whether on Leslie's or other authority. See also Gordon's Genealogical
History of the Earldom of Sutherland, 139.
1 68 QUEEN MARY.
She begged that there might be no delay in the reci-
procity; nay, she could not rest until she beheld the
dear resemblance.
Before they had done with her they had a sample
of another of her accomplishments, and found with
what royal grace she could pass a sarcastic rebuke on
an unworthy act. She had asked a safe-conduct from
Queen Elizabeth, that she might pass through England.
It was refused ; and indeed it was believed that an
attempt would be made to intercept her. She spoke
of all this with a kind of easy scorn. Elizabeth's
father had tried to kidnap her when she came to
France as an infant. He failed ; and perhaps Provi-
dence would be equally kind to her again, and bring
her safe through the traps set by his daughter. And
if Queen Elizabeth were successful well, then, she
would be at the mercy, no doubt, of the person who
had so acted, and what would be the end ? For her-
self, easy enough she had but to submit to her fate ;
but for the other ? The end of all was that the ambas-
sadors got no confirmation of the treaty, and scarcely
any satisfaction concerning it. Queen Mary embarked
to return to Scotland on the 14th of August 1561.
She and her escort sailed from Calais in two of the
galleys then almost peculiar to France, as vessels which
went before the wind when they could, and Avere row r ed
by galley-slaves on benches at other times. Two ordi-
nary sailing vessels attended, the whole making a fleet
of four. She was well escorted. There were with her,
besides many minor nobles of France, her two uncles,
the Duke of Aumale and the Marquis of Elboeuf ; her
two adorers, Marshal d'Amville, and Chastellar, whose
adoration afterwards cost him so dear. There was
HER RETURN, 1561. 169
Strozzi apparently the son of the general who be-
sieged St Andrews and La Noue, afterwards known
in the Huguenot wars as Bras de Fer. 1 By far the
most interesting, however, of her attendants to us at
the present day was Brantome, who sailed in the same
galley with her. 2 Her conduct during the voyage has
been treasured and told in various shapes ; but as the
original source of all of them is a few precious sentences
by that vivid writer in his little book 'Des Dames
Illustres/ it may be well to adhere to what is so said.
A light wind sprang up; the crew of galley-slaves were
released from their labours, and the sails set. As the
lumbering vessels moved slowly away, the queen sat
beside the helm, as the place where she would be
nearest to the land she was leaving. She gazed on it
with her fine eyes, and wept bitterly throughout the
remaining five hours of daylight, repeating over and
over the simple words, "Adieu, France !" When the
sight of land faded into the darkness, she uttered
passionate words about the jealous night drawing its
curtain before her, and, with tears falling faster and
faster, exclaimed that the sight of France was now
lost to her she would never see it more. She then
became conversable, and spoke of herself with her
eyes bent on the land, dropping a sentiment about her
1 M. de Castelneau, 1. iii. ch. i.
2 It might be inferred, from what Leslie says, that she was then accom-
panied by her evil genius, Bothwell : " Not long efter, the Earls Both-
well and Eglintoun, the Bishop of Orkney, and sindry other noblemen
and clerks, arrivet in France, wha returnet in Scotland witli the queen's
majesty again." P. 295. In the Latin version, Bothwell's going to France
is mentioned ; but in the train coming to Scotland with the queen, only
the French are mentioned, as in Brantome. The author of a contempo-
rary diary says : " Upon the 21 day of Februar, my Lord Bothwell
landed in Scotland out of France." Diurnal of Occurrents, 64.
I/O QUEEN MARY.
reversing the attitude of Dido, who, when .^Eneas
departed, ever gazed on the sea. She slept on the
deck, desiring the pilot to waken her immediately,
should the land become again visible at dawn. The
wind fell, and the slaves were set to their slow
labours again, so that next morning the coast was
still to be seen ; and sitting up, she looked on it till
it vanished, crying " Adieu la France, cela est fait.
Adieu la France, je pense ne vous voir jamais plus !"
The fleet, having taken about a week on the voyage,
arrived in the harbour of Leith one morning at six
o'clock the exact day is disputed. The arrival of
their queen was announced to the nearest inhabitants
by the discharge of the guns mounted on the galleys.
Whatever arrangements were in preparation for the
event had not been completed, and the contrast between
Scotland and France was rather exaggerated than modi-
fied. She and her following had to wait some time at
Leith ere horses there were no carriages could be
procured for them. Brantome, whose narrative still
accompanies us, says the queen burst into tears at the
sorry contrast with the gorgeous processions of France.
He says nothing more, however, against the equipage,
save that it consisted of the horses of the country, with
conformable harness ; but this he seems to have thought
enough.
Some zealous citizens sought to enliven her first
night at Holyrood by a serenade, in which it is said
that fiddles with three strings bore a conspicuous and
discordant part. Whatever effect the discord may
have had on the queen herself, it seems to have grated
direfully on the nerves of Brantome, who describes the
attempt as some five or six hundred " marauds" perform-
HER RETURN, 1561. 171
ing on medians violons -and pet its rebecs ; continuing,
by way of aggravation apparently, that the music,
abominably performed by them, partook of the nature
of psalmody. The serenade is described by an observer
of a different order in Knox's History, where we are
told that " a company of most honest men, with instru-
ments of music and with musicians, gave their saluta-
tions at her chamber window," and that the queen said
the melody " liked her well," and she wished the same
to be continued some nights after.
The spoilt beauty expected to find in the land of her
destiny a dreary contrast with that of her adoption,
and she found her expectations fully realised. France,
though now more closely and economically cultivated,
scarcely bears to outward appearance a richer raiment
of civilised fruitfulness than it did then. Wherever
royalty was likely to resort, there were palaces arid
chateaux, walled towns, fine churches, and great
stretches of pleasure-ground. Scotland was yet igno-
rant of the high cultivation which has warmed its cold
landscape and softened its dreary winds. There was a
greater contrast even in the people than in the country.
England was behind France in a certain kind of civili-
sation ; the Court and the aristocracy were more home-
spun and yeoman-like. Scotland was a much greater
distance behind England, and lacked the solid respec-
tability which was then ripening into a civilisation
more firm and true than that of France. The common
people of Scotland were perhaps as well off as those of
France, but they were not subdued to the same sub-
missive order, being self-willed, boisterous, and, down
to the very humblest grade, even proud. In France,
the Court, through its power and wealth, could effec-
1?2 QUEEN MARY.
tually isolate itself from the people, clearing away
whatever was sordid and disagreeable, wherever it
moved. In Scotland, the common people, such as
they were, pressed close around the palace door, and
haunted royalty wherever it went. The contrast
between the two nations, thus considerable in the
lowest sphere of society, increased rather than dimi-
nished with the ascending grades, and was greatest
among the courtiers immediately surrounding the
throne. There were many country seigneurs in France
who practised rough hospitality and tyranny in their
own domains, and were seen but on rare occasions at
Court, where they were the objects of ridicule and
horror. But those who frequented the Court had
mounted as high in the scale of external elegance and
fastidiousness as the world has ever reached. Though
corroding vices were eating all morality out of it, the
Court abounded in as much elegant luxury and exter-
nal refinement as it has ever known at any later age.
There was a high polish in the very vices of the
period. If there were gluttony and drunkenness, they
exercised themselves in the most skilfully prepared
meats and costly wines. French cookery had made
wonderful strides as a skilful art, and had produced
one master mind. Sensuality indulged itself in exqui-
site works of art and inspired poetry. The men even
were profuse in silks and velvets, indulged in perfumes,
and kept diminutive monkeys and silky spaniels as pets.
Murder itself was refined, by a preference of subtle
poisons, skilfully prepared, over the bloody brawls of
earlier times. A portion of these vices and triviali-
ties, covered with a thin polish, had been transferred
by the French courtiers to their faithful allies of Scot-
HER RETURN, 1561. 173
land ; but these tended rather to expose and aggravate
than to subdue the natural character of the Scottish
aristocracy. Their dress \vas that of the camp or
stable ; they were dirty in person, and abrupt and
disrespectful in manner, carrying on their disputes,
and even fighting out their fierce quarrels, in the pre-
sence of royalty, which had by no means accomplished
the serene imperial isolation which the sovereigns of
France had achieved since the days of Francis I.
With the exception of one or two castles which had
been built in the French style, the best families were
crowded into narrow square towers, in which all avail-
able means had been exhausted in strength, leaving
nothing for comfort or elegance. The royal residences
were little better. The more roomy portions of Lin-
lithgow, Stirling, and Falkland, as we now see them,
did not then exist. Holyrood, though then very dif-
ferent from what it now is, was probably an exception
to the general sordidness. It was the new palace, and
was consequently built up to the taste and luxury of
the age. It had been completed but a few years pre-
viously by James V. The park included the fine
mountain-range of Arthur Seat. The lands of Dud-
dingston, with their loch, had just been added to it ;
and thus, with rocks, trees, and water, the palace and
its park bore some faint analogy to the glories of
Fontainebleau.
On one important point a difference between the two
Courts was disagreeably and alarmingly conspicuous
the unprotected condition of the sovereign and her
Court, from the want of any armed force, whose duty
it was to guard the royal person. In France, besides
many other armed retainers of the household, there was
QUEEN MARY.
the thoroughly disciplined body of the Scots Guard-
mercenary foreigners, in the usual phraseology of later
times, but at the same time a body of honourable true
men, entirely devoted to their employer, and by their
foreign birth disconnected with the native aristocracy,
against whom they were the crown's chief support.
While every head of a considerable family in Scot-
land, down to the humblest landowner, had some regular
armed following, the crown alone had none. The feudal
tenants of the crown were bound, indeed, to furnish
their quotas to the national armament ; but the troops so
assembled were entirely under their feudal leaders, and
were often questionable supporters, if not dangerous
neighbours, to the sovereign. Memorable incidents, some
of which were yet to come, show how unprotected the
royal person might be in Scotland. The early Stewart
kings were men and soldiers who could always manage
to keep a force of some sort at their call ; but Mary
severely felt the want of a permanent armed body,
whose duty it was, without interference on her part, to
be always protecting her and her feminine Court and
her son was scarcely better fitted to dispense with it.
All Mary's efforts, however, to establish a royal guard,
were, like the attempt of her mother, sternly resisted,
calling out a deep national antipathy to anything ap-
proaching to the character of a standing army. When
an alarm arose in the palace that the excited Earl of
Arran was going to seize the queen, and sudden efforts
were made for her protection against dangers which
soon turned out to be unreal, she was suspected of
having got up the alarm to prove the necessity of
establishing a household guard. 1
1 See Knox. ii. 293.
HER RETURN, 1561. 175
On the 2d of September, a fortnight after her land-
ing, she had to undergo the ordeal of a popular demon-
stration by the citizens of Edinburgh. They were to
make a " propine " or goodwill-offering to her. It was
a present of a cupboard " double overgilt," which had
cost 2000 merks. The giving of it was to be the
occasion of a pageant, which was to salute her in a
progress through the city. It was witnessed by one
who chronicled in their order the events of the time,
and the show delighted him, so far as to inspire some
spirit into a narrative, the general merits of which are
to be found in the brevity and precision with which he
states in their proper order of sequence the events of
that stirring period. 1
1 The crisis of the pageant is as follows :
" And thairefter, when she was rydand down the Castellhill, thair met
hir hienes ane convoy of the young men of the said burgh, to the nom-
ber of fyftie or thairby, thair bodeis and theis coverit with yellow taf-
fateis, thair armes and leggs, fra the kne doun, bair, cullorit with blak,
in maner of Moris, upon thair heiddes blak hattis, and on thair faces blak
visouris, in thair mouthis rings, garnesit with intellable precious staneis,
about thair nekkis, leggis, and armes insynit of chenis of gold ; togidder
with saxtene of the maist honest men of the toun, cled in velvet gownis
and velvet bonettis, berand and gangand about the paill under the whilk
hir hienes raid, wliilk paill wes of fyne purpour velvet lynit with reid
taffateis, freingiet with gold and silk ; and after thame wes ane cart with
certane bairnes, togidder with ane coffer whairin wes the copburd and
propyne whilk suld be propynit to hir hienes. And when hir grace come
fordwart to the butter-trone of the said burgh, the nobilitie and convoy
foirsaid precedand, at the whilk butter-trone thair was ane port made of
tymber in maist honourable maner, cullorit with fyne cullouris, hungin
with syndrie armes, upoun the whilk port wes singand certane barneis in
the meist hevinlie wyis ; under the whilk port thair wes ane cloud opyn-
nand with four levis, in the whilk was put ane bonny barne. And when
the quenes hienes was cumand throw the said port, the said cloude opyn-
nit, and the barne discendit doun as it had bene ane angell, and deliverit
to hir hienes the keyis of the toun, togidder with ane Bybill and ane
Psalme-buik coverit with fyne purpourit velvet ; and after the said barne
had spoken some small speitches, he deliverit alsua to hir hienes thre
176 QUEEN MARY.
The Protestant clergy, and those of their political
partisans who were also their followers in religion, had
mixed the sentiment of the English Puritan with the
Calvinism of the Huguenots, and disliked exhibitions
and pastimes. On this occasion, however, there was
something to propitiate them. There was the signifi-
cant presentation of a Bible to the Popish queen ; and
the children resembling angels, who presented the
propine, " made some speech concerning the putting
away of the mess, and thereafter sang ane psalm." 1
There were pageants or exhibitions of a less inno-
cent character, which yet had in them a tendency that
made them not entirely unwelcome to the Congrega-
tion. These were the ritualistic revels, called by the
French the fetes des foux. They are not to be con-
founded with the legitimate mysteries, which were
attempts, however unseemly, to impress religious
notions on the people by the acting of the critical
events in Scripture history in such a manner as to
seize the attention and attract the admiration of the
uninstructed. The others had nothing in them pro-
fessing to aim at the reverent or devout, but were acts
of profane ribaldry, of which the point was the traves-
tying, by some lewd and brutal antithesis, the most
solemn ordinances of the Church. They were generally
pinned to something or other in sacred history. Con-
spicuous among them was the Feast of Asses. Its chief
writtingis, the tennour thairof is uncertane. That being done, the barne
ascendit in the cloud, and the said chid stekit." Diurnal of Occur-
rents, 67.
1 Ibid. See an account of the same pageant, Knox's History, ii. 287, 288.
He says, " The verses of her own praise she heard, and smiled ; but when
the Bible was presented, and the praise thereof declared, she began to
frown."
THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY, 1561. 177
actor was the ass of Balaam, or one supposed to stand
beside the manger, or that on which the Saviour rode.
Whichever it might be, a donkey clad in grotesque
canonicals was brought into the most sacred parts of
the church, and there a brutal mob made sport with
the beast to the full satiety of their lust of the profane.
Another feast, more formidable if less disgusting, was
dedicated to the Innocents, and brought the whole
children of the neighbourhood to do their will among
the vestments, ornaments, and shrines of the church.
These things had been allowed to become an estab-
O
lished formula of the decorous Church of Rome. How
they arose, is a mystery which has defied solution. It
has a literature of its own, and is worthy of far more
zealous efforts to reach its causes and early history
than any yet made.
If such observances were troublesome when the
Church was powerful and revered, it is easy to believe
what they would become when it was tottering to its
fall. If there were rules by which the licensed ribaldry
was restrained and measured out, the populace broke
through them. They could thus, in following up old
traditional usages of the Church, inflict the most sting-
ing insults on the priesthood ; and if the Church had
thus provided a means of mortal injury in the house
of its friends, its enemies were not naturally called on
to interfere for its relief.
But the populace was impartial, and would have the
revels condemned by the new Church as well as those
that might offend the old. Queen Mary had arrived
almost in time to find the city of Edinburgh tossed by
a bloody tumult. The tradesmen of the city would
have the old pageant of Robin Hood and Little John.
VOL. IV. M
1 78 QUEEN MARY.
The Congregation would not abide it, and they had an
Act of Parliament for its suppression, on their side. A
riotous shoemaker was committed to the Tolbooth the
well-known Heart of Midlothian. He was so far impli-
cated that death was to be his doom. We see the in-
fluence at work in this rigid act, when we are told that
his friends besought JohnKnox to procure his release;
but Knox of course was obdurate, and would " do no-
thing but have him hangit." His comrades collected.
They seized and locked up the magistrates, and tore
down the gibbet ; next they battered in the door of the
prison and released their comrade, while, with a good-
fellowship common to such occasions, they permitted
all the inmates of the prison to escape. There was no
force sufficient to contend with them, and the magis-
trates were glad to make terms on the foundation of
a general amnesty. 1
To return to the young queen, set down amid all
these contending elements, great and small. She had
many difficulties to deal with, formidable among which
was that she, a thorough member of the Church of
Rome, had come among a people of whom the greater
portion, including all the ruling men, had become
Protestants. There was little toleration in that
age, and it was a thing undreamed of in France,
whence both parties took their principles. When at
any time there was religious quietness there, and Pro-
testants had rights as well as their opponents, it was
in reality but a truce between enemies prepared soon
to fly at each other's throats each abstaining only
because the other was too nearly his equal in strength
to be easily prostrated.
1 Diurnal of Occurrents, 65.
DIALOGUE WITH KNOX, 1561. 179
The contest broke out on the first Sunday after her
arrival. It was known, of course, that she would hear
private mass in her chapel ; and whether on the grounds
of Christian toleration, or of the promises made to her,
it was useless to argue with men who, in the words of
Knox, " began openly to speak, ' Shall that idol be
suffered to take place again within this realm ? It
shall not;'" or with the Master of Lindsay and his
followers from Fife, " The idolater priest shall die the
death according to God's law." Some violence was
done to a priest carrying a candle ; and the chapel
would have been burst open had not the Lord James
defended the door an act for which he was rebuked
by Knox, who says in conclusion, " And so the godly
departed with great grief of heart."
A proclamation was issued, denouncing, on the one
hand, as penal, any attempt to interfere with the
form of religion which the queen found publicly and
universally standing at her arrival in the realm; and,
on the other hand, requiring that her French followers
should not be molested in the private exercise of their
religion. Inspired by a bold thought, however, the
queen resolved to go to the root of the evil, and
endeavour to talk over the formidable head of the
Church. In demanding an interview with Knox, there
is little doubt that she anticipated a triumph from her
never-failing blandishments; and she courted the ordeal
of the discussion as one seeks an arena where triumph
seems secure. She had seen little in France to pre-
pare her for the rugged nature on which she was to
play her wit and allurements. No other person was
present in the same room but the Lord James. It
has been said that the Reformer treated the queen on
l8o QUEEN MARY.
the occasion with gross insult. It is probable that he
did not observe very closely the complicated etiquettes
of the French Court ; but neither would the Scottish
nobles of the day, Protestant or Romish. Her grave
brother would, doubtless, have protected her from ab-
solute insult, had any been offered. Though there are
many accounts of this renowned dialogue, the one
given by Knox himself in his History is the source of
all the others, and to that we must go back as the sole
authority for the scene. 1 It is extremely picturesque
and lifelike, and has the appearance of doing honest
justice to the ready wit of the queen, as it certainly
does to the relentless bigotry of the narrator. She
first rallied him on his attacks upon feminine rule in the
tract which had been his stumbling-block with Queen
Elizabeth the Blast of the Trumpet against the mon-
strous Regiment of Women. He seems to have felt
that, with matters of difference behind it far more
serious, he need not have a contest on this with the
Popish queen ; and it was easily, if not gracefully, got
over. He did not deny his objection to feminine rule,
but he did not intend specially to attack her title
" that book was written most especially against that
wicked Jezebel of England," Mary Tudor. For his part
in the particular instance before him, " if the realm
finds no inconvenience from the regiment of a woman/'
that which his countrymen approve he shall not gain-
say, but shall be as well content to live under her
grace " as Paul was to live under Nero." He after-
wards, however, gave a casual but significant infer-
ence to this strong comparison, by arguments which
referred to Paul living quietly at Rome because he
1 History, ii. 277 et seq.
DIALOGUE WITH KNOX, 1561. i8l
was powerless and could not resist, while the Paul of
Edinburgh was powerful, and had another line of duty
before him. The queen turned the argument on re-
sistance to princes. Her opponent asked, what would
have been the fate of mankind had all adopted the
religion of their princes had Abraham worshipped
with Pharaoh, and the apostles submitted to the reli-
gion of the Eoman Emperors? " and so, madam, ye may
perceive that subjects are not bound to the religion of
their princes, albeit they are commanded to give them
obedience." With a ready dialectic power of which
the Keformer, hurried on by his zeal, seems to have
been unconscious, the queen marked off the difference
between passive resistance, in which each subject in-
dividually worships according to his own conscience
without regarding the religion of the ruler, and that
desire to coerce the ruler to his own views, of which
she accused Knox. But the very words of this por-
tion of the dialogue are necessary to express its import.
The queen remarked that none of those he had re-
ferred to raised their sword against their princes.
" ' Yet, madam,' quoth he, ' ye cannot deny but that
they resisted ; for they that obey not the command-
ments that are given, in some sort resist.'
" ' But yet,' said she, ' they resisted not by the sword.'
" ' God,' said he, ' madam, had not given unto them
the power and the means.'
" ' Think ye,' quoth she, ' that subjects having power
may resist their princes ? '
" ' If their princes exceed their bounds,' quoth he,
' and do against that wherefor they should be obeyed,
it is no doubt but what they may be resisted even
by power. For there is neither greater honour nor
1 82 QUEEN MARY.
greater obedience to be given to kings or princes than
God has commanded to be given unto father and
mother. But so it is, madam, that the father may be
stricken by a frenzy in the which he would slay his
own children. Now, madam, if the children arise, join
themselves together, apprehend the father, take the
sword or other weapons from him, and finally bind his
hands and keep him in prison till that his frenzy be
overpast, think ye, madam, that the children do any
Avrong ? Or think ye, madam, that God will be
offended with them that have stayed their father to
commit wickedness ? It is even so/ said he, ' madam,
with princes that would murder the children of God
that are subject unto them. Their blind zeal is
nothing but a very mad frenzy; and therefore to take
the sword from them, to bind their hands, and to cast
themselves in prison till that he be brought to a more
sober mind, is no disobedience against princes, but
just obedience, because that it agreeth with the will
of God.'"
The narrator here tells us that " at these words the
queen stood, as it were, amazed more than the quarter
of an hour." Nor can this be wondered at, if she saw
the full import of the exposition, as showing that her
profession of Romanism was like the frenzy of the
parent a thing which entitled the children to seize
and bind, in self-protection against the bloody conse-
quences. She spoke of her conscience, but was told
that conscience required knowledge, and it was to be
feared that of the right knowledge she had none. But
she had heard and read so had the Jews who crucified
Christ ; they heard the law and the prophets, she the
Pope and the cardinals. " ' Ye interpret the Scriptures,'
THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY, 1561. 183
said she, ' in one manner, and they interpret in ane
other whom shall I believe, and who shall judge?"
The answer is ready. " ' Ye shall believe,' said he,
' God that plainly speaketh in His Word ; ' " or, as a
duller mind than hers would plainly see, she must
obey Kiiox and the Congregation. Throughout the
whole dialogue he does not yield the faintest shred of
liberty of conscience, or leave it for one moment
doubtful that the queen has any other course before
her save submission.
And yet the interview seems in some measure to
have warped the stern rigidity of his original purpose.
He joined with those who were for giving her a trial,
a backsliding of which he seems afterwards to have
bitterly repented. It was plainly put, he says, that
" she will be content to hear the preaching; and so, no
doubt, but she may be won and thus of all it was
concluded to suffer her for a time." " So careful was
I," he continues, " of that common tranquillity, and so
loath was I to have offended those of whom I had con-
ceived a good opinion, that in secret conference with
earnest and zealous men I travailed rather to mitigate,
yea, to sloken that fervency that God had kindled in
others, than to animate or encourage them to put their
hands to the Lord's work, whereintil I unfeignedly
acknowledge myself to have done most wickedly."
This view of the state of the Reformer's mind at
that juncture is singularly confirmed by a remarkable
letter written by him to Calvin, which has been lately
found. It is dated from Edinburgh on the 24th of
October 1561. It is the more curious as a private
pouring out of its writer's griefs, that Knox had offered
his services to obtain the opinion of Calvin and the
1 84 QUEEN MARY.
fathers of the Geneva Church on the course which the
Protestants should pursue in Scotland, and was stayed
by Lethington, who offered to take that function on
himself he was trimming at the time between the
Court and the Congregation, and Knox charged him
with making the offer as an expedient to gain time. 1
Whatever Lethington may have done, the researches
of the French antiquaries have shown, by producing
the very document, that Knox was not to be deterred
from his purpose in consulting Calvin. 2 It is the letter
of a man sad at heart, and sincerely penitent for not
having, in the hour of trial, been strong enough to do
the stern duty which his faith demanded of him, and
now willing to atone. He tells the mournful news
that the idolatrous mass had again been set up in
purified Scotland. There were those of gravity and
authority who had thought that they could not in
conscience stand by and permit this thing to be done.
It had been pleaded that the clergy of Geneva, and
himself, Calvin, had expressed an opinion that they
were not entitled to prohibit the queen from openly
professing her own religion. He desires to know if
this is true ; he courteously acknowledges how trouble-
some he has been for advice, but there is no other
bosom on which he can repose his cares. He had
never before seen how formidable and difficult it was
to contend with hypocrisy, disguised under the name
of piety. Never, in the midst of his hardest struggle
with open enemies, had he despaired of victory; but
so wounded was he by this perfidious defection from
1 Knox, ii. 292.
1 See the letter, which is in Latin, with a facsimile, Teulet,
ii. 12.
THE RELIGIOUS DIFFICULTY, 1561. 185
Christ which its perpetrators chose to term indul-
gence that strength was failing him for the labour
before him.
It is probable that this letter never reached its des-
tination. The answer it would have received can be
easily anticipated. Even the faint remaining scruples
entertained by Knox himself would have been at once
dispersed by the conclusive logic of him who knew no
doubts, and permitted no paltering between truth and
error. We have here the beginning of a series of
events in which it will be seen that, when it came to
actual deeds, the Scottish nation shrank from enforcing
the rules of faith and action which they received from
the sanguinary Huguenots. 1
Knox, before he wrote this letter, had in reality seen
grounds for penitence in the alarming reaction towards
Komanism. The Congregation had gradually lost a
good deal of that absolute power which seemed to
leave it as a question of discretion with them whether
they would tolerate their sovereign's religion or not.
The magistrates of Edinburgh had been in the practice,
on their election, of issuing a proclamation against cer-
tain classes of criminals and profligates, calling them
by names which, however appropriate, it is not now
1 Dr M'Crie, criticising the observation of an anonymous French
writer who compares Popery with Calvinism, says of the reception of
Queen Mary : " I maintain that, in the state of men's spirits at that time,
if a Huguenot queen had come to take possession of a Roman Catholic
kingdom with the slender retinue with which Mary went to Scotland,
the "first thing they would have done would have been to arrest her;
and if she had persevered in her religion, they would have procured her
degradation by the Pope, thrown her into the Inquisition, and burnt her
as a heretic. There is not an honest man who can deny this." P. 177.
Perhaps not, if the affair had taken place in France or Spain. But there
is no reason to suppose that any Roman Catholic prince who fell under
the power of the French Huguenots would have experienced a better fate.
1 86 QUEEN MARY.
deemed decorous needlessly to repeat. On tins occa-
sion they added to the list the "massmongers" and the
" obstinate Papists, that corrupted the people;" " which,
blown in the queen's ears," says Knox, " there began
pride and maliciousness to show the self.'' Proceedings
were taken against the magistrates, and the town coun-
cil were constrained to appoint others in their stead,
who issued a proclamation of a different tenor, " and
so got the devil freedom again where that before he
durst not have been seen in the daylight upon the
common streets. Lord, deliver us from that bondage !"
Such is the pious ejaculation with which the Reformer
relieves his mind ere passing from this deplorable
event. 1
At a public banquet given by the city of Edinburgh
to the queen and her Court, including her French
followers, a mystery was performed, in which was
enacted the destruction of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram,
for burning strange fire on the altar. There was nothing
palpable in this which might not tell against the
one priesthood as well as the other, although it might
be easy to know which was meant. But when the
actors went on to parody the mass, and burn in effigy
a priest in his canonicals, the Popish Earl of Huntly
was permitted audaciously to suppress the performance.
But there were other and more serious indications of
the tendency of events, insomuch that "the devil,
guiding his reins, ran forward in his course, and the
queen took upon her greater boldness than she and
Baal's bleating priests durst have attempted before." 5
A sort of crisis was brought on by the solemn celebra-
tion of Hallow mass. A meeting of the Congregation,
1 Knox, ii. 289, 290, with Laing's notes. * Ibid., 291.
THE BOOK OF DISCIPLINE, 1561. 187
lords and clergy, was held in the house of Macgill, the
lord clerk register, where it was gravely discussed
" whether that subjects might put to their hand to sup-
press the idolatry of their prince." The laymen present,
with the Lord James and Lethington at their head,
were for the most part favourable to the proposition
" that the queen should have her religion free in her
own chapel, to do, she and her household, what they
list." The ministers seem to have unanimously voted
against this proposition, maintaining that ere long
" her liberty should be their thraldom." But the lay
votes carried the proposition, so far as that meeting
was concerned.
Another dispute among the Protestants, in which
the clergy, nearly alone, held one side, carried the war
into their own ground. They had adopted, besides the
Confession of Faith, a Book of Discipline, being an out-
line of an organisation for the new Church. It is known
as 'The First Book of Discipline/ They desired that it
should have the sanction of the Crown and Parliament,
and be made the law of the land.
The Protestant nobles and lairds were ready to accept
all denunciations of Antichrist and Popish idolatry,
nor did they hesitate at accepting the Calvinistic doc-
trines of the new faith just as Knox and his assistant
ministers set them forth ; they had, hence, at once
adopted the Confession of Faith in Parliament. But
the Book of Discipline affected practice as well as faith,
and enforced certain stringent restraints to which it
would have been inconvenient for some who were the
readiest to subscribe propositions of theological meta-
physics to submit. Several, it is true, had found it ex-
pedient to sign the document ; but Lethington, with a
1 88 QUEEN MARY.
sneer, asked how many even of these would be subject
to the conditions of that book ; and he emphasised the
taunt by saying, " Many subscribed these in fide paren-
tum, as the bairns are baptised," meaning that the sub-
scription was but the mere temporary conformity for
obtaining an object, which men submit to when they
ask for a ceremonial such as a baptism. Knox, whose
ire was roused, reminded him that the book " was read
in public audience ; and by the space of divers days the
heads thereof was reasoned, as all that here sit know
well enough, and ye yourself cannot deny." Another
of the laymen expressed the general impatience among
them, by telling him at once " to stand content that
book will not be obtained." " Let God," said Knox,
finding farther discussion useless, "require the lack
which this poor commonwealth shall have of the things
therein contained, from the hands of such as stop the
same." l
Elsewhere, in a general view of the dispute, he leaves
this emphatic testimony to the conduct and motives of
his lay comrades in the work of reformation, when
dealing with the Book of Discipline : " Some approved
it, and willed the same had been set forth by a law.
Others, perceiving their carnal liberty and worldly com-
modity somewhat to be impaired, thereby grudged, in-
somuch that the name of the Book of Discipline became
odious unto them. Everything that impugned to their
corrupt affections was called in their mockage ' de-
vout imaginations.' The cause we have declared some
were licentious ; some had greedily gripped to the
possessions of the Kirk ; and others thought that they
would not lack their part of Christ's coat, yea, and
1 Knox, ii. 298.
TEMPORALITIES OF THE CHURCH, 1561. 189
that before that ever He was hanged, as by the preach-
ers they were oft rebuked. The chief great man that
had professed Christ Jesus, and refused to subscribe
the Book of Discipline, was the Lord Erskine ; and no
wonder, for besides that he has a very Jezebel to his
wife, if the poor, the schools, and the ministry of the
Kirk had their awn, his reckin would lose two parts
and more of that which he unjustly now possesses.
Assuredly some of us have wondered how men that
professes godliness, should of so long continuance hear
the threatenings of God against thieves and against
their houses, and knowing themselves guilty in such
things as were openly rebuked, and that they never
had remorse of conscience, neither yet intended to
restore anything of that which long they had stolen
and reft. There was none within the realm more un-
merciful to the poor ministers than were they which
had greatest rents of the churches." l
The inspiring cause of this wrath was a matter,
partly involved in the question of the Book of Dis-
cipline, which also came in a separate shape. It was an
affair of the keenest temporal interest to both sections
of the Congregation the lay and the spiritual ; an
interest not common, but antagonistic. It was the
weighty question of the temporalities on which the Re-
formed Church was to be supported. The Protestant
clergy had no fixed source of income, though the Book
of Discipline dealt with them as persons entitled to and
obtaining a comfortable provision. There is, indeed, a
savour of practical sense and worldly wisdom in this
portion of the original standards of the Presbyterian
Church, which says much for the discernment and
1 Knox, ii. 128, 129.
IQO QUEEN MARY.
ability of its founders in matters of secular importance.
After setting forth the appointments and supplies pro-
per to a minister's house, in which are included " forty
bolls meal and twenty-six bolls malt, to find his home-
bread and drink," there is provision for the education
and up-setting of his sons, and for his daughters being
" virtuously brought up and honestly doted when they
came to maturity of years." These requirements, the
framers of the document protest, are not so much for
their own sakes as for the increase of virtue and learn-
ing, and the profit of the posterity to come ; for "it is
not to be supposed that any man will dedicate himself
and children so to God, and to serve His Kirk, that they
look for no warldly commodity. But this cankered
nature whilk we bear is provoked to follow virtue when
it seeth honour and profit annexed to the same ; as con-
trarily, then, is virtue of many despised when virtuous
and godly men live without honour. And sorry would
we be that poverty should discourage men from study,
and from following the way of virtue, by whilk they
might edify the Kirk and flock of Christ Jesus."
The Assembly passed some acts or orders professing
to exercise authority over the tithes and other endow-
ments of the Church, and charitably resolved " that
all such as have been in the ministry of the Pope's
Kirk, good and well -conditioned persons, that they
shall live upon the alms of the Kirk with the number
of the poor." As yet, however, they had not touched
the temporalities. These yet remained with those
Popish beneficiaries whose ecclesiastical functions were
1 Buke of Discipline. The Fifth Head, concerning the provision for
the ministers, and for the distribution of the rents and possessions justly
appertaining to the Kirk.
TEMPORALITIES OF THE CHURCH, 1561. 191
abolished by law ; but, in a great measure, the property
was theirs only nominally. Many of the ecclesiastical
corporations, hopeless apparently of ultimate victory
in the struggle, disposed of the property committed to
them in long leases, mortgages, or absolute convey-
ances, under conditions which would not easily bear
inspection in reference to the fairness of the transactions
and the disinterestedness of the parties to them. The
lords and lairds who obtained legal claims over eccle-
siastical property by such arrangements were likely
to hold their own with a much firmer gripe than the
tottering ecclesiastical foundations, and that was the
reason why it was deemed politic to make arrange-
ments with them. For a few years both before and
after the eventful epoch of 1560, there was a continued
process of absorbing ecclesiastical within temporal do-
mains, or a continuous " birsing yont," as it has been
expressively called, by the lay landholders.
The transference was not effected without some
pressure on the hopes and fears of the ecclesiastics
who had the pow r er to make the desired arrangements,
arid even some violence to their persons. Of how this
might come to pass, the method pursued by Gilbert,
Earl of Cassilis, called in his own neighbourhood the
" King of Carrick," may be taken as an expressive ex-
ample. We are told by the family historian that this
Gilbert " was ane particular man, and ane very greedy
man, and cared not how he gat land, so that he
could come by the same," He had his eye on a few
of the estates of the Abbey of Glenluce, and had deal-
ings with the abbot about them. That abbot, however,
died before the writs were signed, " and then he dealt
with ane monk of the same abbacy, wha could counter-
192 QUEEN MARY.
feit the abbot's hand-writ and all the haill convent's,
and gart him counterfeit their subscriptions." When
this was done, fearing that the monk might make
unpleasant revelations, he got a certain carl to " stick "
or stab him, and then he got one to accuse the carl of
theft, " and hang him in Crosragall, and so the lands
of Glenluce were conquest." 1
The next step was the " conqueshing " of the estates
of the Abbey of Crossraguel, of which the extensive
ruins may yet be seen. The domestic buildings of the
fraternity have not here been so completely destroyed
as in other places, probably because the " King of Car-
rick" preserved them for his own use. It was his desire
that certain writs should be executed in his favour-
to wit, " a five-year tack and a nineteen-year tack, and
a charter of feu of all the lands of Crossraguel." The
commendator of the abbey was unwilling to sign the
writs, and shy of approach. He was waylaid, how-
ever, and brought face to face with the " king," who
introduced him to a chamber where there was a roaring
fire, prepared, as the host said savagely facetious, for
roasting meat. The commendator saw his fate at a
glance, but held out until he was stripped or "skinned,"
as the narrator says, basted with grease, and scorched
until his hand barely retained power to sign the deeds.
The Privy Council so far took notice of this affair as
to require Cassilis to find security, to the extent of
2000, not to molest the person or the property of the
commendator. 2 Men who had done such things to
1 History of the Kennedies, Bannatyne's Journal, 55. In Scotland, the
landed property which any one has acquired by purchase is still ex-
pressly called " conquest," to distinguish it from that which he may have
inherited.
2 Douglas's Peerage, i. 332.
TEMPORALITIES OF THE CHURCH, 1561. 193
acquire lands were not likely to part with them with-
out knowing why.
The Protestant clergy, sagacious as they were about
many things, seem to have made the mistake of sup-
posing that the active energy with which their lay
brethren helped them to pull down Popery was actu-
ally the fruit of religious zeal, and to have expected
that they took from the one Church merely to give to
the other. The landholders, on their part, thought such
an expectation so utterly preposterous, that they did not
condescend to reason with it ; but, without any hypo-
critical attempt to varnish their base selfishness, called
the expectations of the ministers " a fond imagination."
There were, thus, three classes of claimants on the
property of the Church the old clergy, the laymen
who had obtained rights from them, and the ministers
of the Eeformation. The Privy Council resolved to
deal with this matter by a process which had the merit
of simplicity. They were to appropriate to the crown
the fourth, and, if necessary, the third of the ecclesias-
tical benefices for new uses ; it was found necessary to
take the third, and the transaction is known in law
and history as " the assumption of thirds of benefices."
It was carried out by a series of Acts of Council, very
secular in their tenor, and seeming as if they avoided
the nomenclature of the Catholic hierarchy on the one
hand, and of Presbyterian perfection and supremacy
on the other. 1 The purposes to which these thirds
were to be applied are thus set forth : " Sae muckle
thereof to be employed to the queen's majesty, for
entertaining and setting forward of the common affairs
1 The most accurately printed copies of these Acts of the Council are
in Mr Laing's edition of Knox.
VOL. IV. N
IQ4 QUEEN MARY.
of the country ; and sac muckle thereof unto the min-
isters, and sustentation of the ministry, as may reason-
ably sustain the same, at the sight and discretion of
the queen's majesty foresaid; and the excrescence and
surplus to be assigned unto the old possessors." One
department of ecclesiastical property was to be speci-
ally dealt with. The revenues drawn within towns by
monastic establishments, whether in the shape of rents
of property or in the more invidious form of local
taxes or privileges, were specially designed for the
entertaining of " schools and colleges," and other like
uses ; and it was at the same time recommended that,
as "nothing is more commodious" for such uses than
the friaries and other edifices which had belonged to
the monastic bodies, such of them as had not been
demolished should be kept up for these uses.
When there was delay in giving in the valuations
of the Estates, stewards were sent down by the Council
to estimate the " rentals." As these officers would be
apt to affix a higher value to the estates than those in
possession, the alternative had the effect of stimulating
the preparation of the returns in the proper quarter.
As a sort of sanction against the under-estimating of
the rentals, the tenants on the ecclesiastical estates
were authorised to hold the rents returned as the
maximum which they were bound to pay; for instance,
if a farm were returned by the holder or owner as of
so much " rental " or annual value, the tenant farm-
ing it was acquitted if he paid that amount of rent.
For all the precautions taken, however, it seems
clear that the returns were imperfect and to a great
extent false. Of the three parties interested, the
ecclesiastics, unless Archbishop Hamilton be an ex-
TEMPORALITIES OF THE CHURCH, 1561. 195
ception, do not seem to have complained. Such a
remnant of their possessions was a boon which in
recent years had been beyond their expectation ; and
if something was taken from them, what remained
was secured, so far as anything could be in that age,
by an adjustment which professed to be final. The
two-thirds of the fund unappropriated were supposed
to remain in the hands of the ecclesiastics of the old
Church, on the principle of each retaining a vested
life-interest in the greater part of his old income. As
these died out, the benefices seem to have fallen to
the Crown for miscellaneous disposal. But there is
no doubt that a very large portion of these revenues
had already, in the manner referred to, got into
lay hands. It might have been expected that these
lay holders, who had come recently into possession,
and held in many instances by questionable tenures,
should have readily acquiesced in an arrangement
which secured to many of them a lion's share in the
two-thirds. But in the general case they seem to
have thought the chance of keeping what they could
with the strong hand a preferable alternative, and
there was on all hands much growling at the dis-
gorgement they were called on to make.
It was to the ministers, however, who were to be
sustained out of the thirds, that the arrangement was
least pleasing, since they had settled in their own
minds that the sudden overturn of the Eomish Church
was virtually a transference of its wealth to their own
body. They protested vehemently from their pulpits,
Knox giving them the key-note, and saying, " Well, if
the end of this ordour, pretended to be taken for the
sustentation of the ministers, be happy, my judgment
196 QUEEN MARY.
faileth me ; for I am assured the Spirit of God is not
the author of it; for first I see twa parts freely given to
the devil, and the third maun be divided betwixt God
and the devil. Weel, bear witness to me that this
day I say it. Ere it be long the devil shall have three
parts of the third, and judge ye then what God's por-
tion shall be." A commission collected the money, and
adjusted the claims on it. To pay the ministers'
stipends was the special function of the Laird of
Pittarrow, " an earnest professor of Christ," whose con-
duct in the business was, however, such as to call forth
the suggestive analogy, " Who would have thought that
when Joseph ruled Egypt, that his brethren should
have travailed for victuals and have returned with
empty sacks unto their families ?" T
The allowance made to the ministers varied from
one hundred to three hundred merks a -year. The
amount gave rise to a curious comparison, which shows
how extremely poor many of the Scottish aristocracy
then were, and how considerable were the merely
worldly aspirations of the Protestant clergy. It was
said that there were many lords who had not so much
to spend. Whereon it is remarked in Knox's His-
tory, w r here the justness of the comparison seems to be
admitted, " Men did reason that the vocation of minis-
ters craved of them books, quietness, study, and tra-
vail, to edify the Kirk of Jesus Christ ; and therefore
that the stipends of ministers, who had none other
industry but to live upon that which was appointed,
ought not to be modified according to the livings of
common men, who might and did daily augment their
rents by some common industry." 2 So enormously rich
1 Knox, ii. 310. Ibid., 312.
TEMPORALITIES OF THE CHURCH, 1561. 197
had the Eomish hierarchy become, that a mere frag-
ment of their wealth much less than a third was
sufficient to endow a ministry on terms bearing com-
parison with the incomes of the aristocracy.
There were several political causes urging the queen's
Government to moderation ; and in the person of her
brother, the Lord James, who took the helm as if
it naturally belonged to him, she had a pilot will-
ing to take this course, and able to keep it with a
strong hand. Elizabeth sent her ambassador Throck-
morton ostensibly to see to the fulfilment of the treaty
of Edinburgh, but at the same time to keep his eye on
many other things. The question of Mary's right to
succeed Elizabeth in the English throne was opened,
and though it was not conceded, neither was it denied.
The negotiations on this point went so far that, when
a meeting of the two queens in the north of England
was proposed, Elizabeth consented to it, though
whether she ever intended to be present at it no one
can tell it was never held. The Guises, with a con-
siderable French following, still remained in Scotland;
and they thought it wise, while this great question of
the English succession stood in doubt, to help rather
than interrupt the moderate councils of the Lord
James. This able man was gradually strengthening
his hands. In 1562 he married the daughter of the
powerful Earl Marishal. The wedding was followed
by a grand banquet, destined by its magnificence to
provoke the cynical reproaches of Knox, who was ever
doomed to find the world regaining possession of those
whom he fondly believed that he had snatched from
its influences. On this occasion Mary performed one
of those graceful and effective courtesies for which she
198 QUEEN MARY.
possessed a gift. She drank to the health of Queen
Elizabeth in a heavy golden cup, which she presented
to Randolph the ambassador. 1 The Lord James was
at the same time created Earl of Mar a title presently
merged in the earldom of Murray, by which he is
better known to the world.
He was immediately afterwards engaged in one of
the many expeditions against the thieving borderers.
Of this expedition, which must have been full of in-
terest, we have nothing but the results fifty-three of
the most noted outlaws apprehended, of whom eighteen
were drowned " for lack of trees and halters,'"' and six
were hanged in Edinburgh. 2 There is no trace of these
punishments to be found in the criminal records. By
a sort of tacit understanding, border thieves, like High-
landers, were not deemed within the pale of the law;
and the slaughter of them was a matter of interest
solely as to its amount, as marking, like the head of
game brought down in a day's sport, a successful or
an unsuccessful raid. There are, however, several pro-
secutions for " abiding from the raid of Jedburgh," as
it was called that is to say, for not complying with
the royal proclamation to join the expedition a de-
falcation which, in the instance of any border chief,
was naturally deemed suspicious. From these trials it
appears that the raid lasted for twenty days, beginning
on the 13th of November 1562. 3
1 P. F. Tytler, vi. 258. 2 Ibid., 259.
3 The excuse pleaded for absence was generally extreme ill-health.
Ramsay of Dalhousie, for instance, protested that he was " vexed with
sic distress in his person that he might not ony ways travel, nother on
horse nor foot, to na space, by reason his hail left side was so occupied
and troubled with evil and malign humours, sic as he can nought de-
clare nor specify that his haill arms, fingers, and leg on that side,
wherethrough that he might not move the same." Pitcairn, i. 422.
CHAPTER XLII.
(Eiuccn JHartJ.
(Continued?)
DANGERS IN THE NORTH POSITION OF HUNTLY AS LEADER OF
THE ROMANIST PARTY MURRAY'S DESIGNS A ROYAL PROGRESS
HUNTLY'S FEARS FROM IT HE ARMS BATTLE OF CORRICHIE
RUIN OF THE HOUSE OF HUNTLY QUEEN MARY'S POLICY IN
ASSISTING IN THE RUIN OF HER FRIENDS POSITION OF MARY*S
GOVERNMENT ASPECT OF FIRMNESS AND MODERATION HER
HOME- LIFE AND AMUSEMENTS HER POPULARITY FURTHER
DIALOGUES WITH KNOX QUESTION AS TO WHAT LANGUAGE
THEY WERE HELD IN ? PROSECUTIONS OF ROMANIST PRIESTS
ARCHBISHOP HAMILTON THE QUEEN'S DEVOTEDNESS TO HER
CHURCH HER FOREIGN COMMUNICATIONS ASSASSINATION OF
HER UNCLE PARLIAMENT TENDENCY TO A REACTION AGAINST
THE PROTESTANT PARTY FURTHER ALTERCATIONS BETWEEN
THE QUEEN AND KNOX RIOTOUS ATTACK ON OFFICIATING
PRIESTS THE RIOTERS BROUGHT TO TASK FEELING AMONG
THE PROTESTANT CLERGY.
WE next follow Murray to a contest in the opposite end
of the country, the cause and character of which can
only be seen by going back a little way into the past,
We have found that the policy of the Crown in dealing
with the old half-independent districts, inhabited chiefly
by people of Celtic race, was to root out the power of
their original local chiefs, and to encourage the pre-
200 QUEEN MARY.
dominance over them of some neighbouring family of
rank and power. Thus, in the west, the house of
Argyle governed ; in the north, that of Huntly. Even
in such hands, however, the spirit of the old trouble-
some Maarmorate had a tendency to develop an inde-
pendent principality. The family of Huntly possessed
estates on the east coast, estates cultivated by the most
industrious among the Lowland tenantry. From these
they drew a goodly revenue. This enabled them to
keep high court, and strengthen their rule over the
vast Highland territory to the north and west ; for
over all the district now beyond the Caledonian Canal
and the lakes it unites, the " Cock of the North " was
supreme in one shape or other. He kept princely state
in his Castle of Strathbogie ; and events afterwards
revealed that its sumptuous furnishings shamed those
of the royal palace. He had the flourishing town of
Aberdeen, with its university and cathedral, by way
of capital. Here he seems to have had a small fleet,
with which he kept up foreign communications, as little
under restriction from the Court of Holyrood as those
of the King of Norway or Denmark might be. The
Earl of Huntly of that day was an accomplished man
and a politician. He frequented the Court of France,
where he received the decoration of St Michael, and
would be honoured much as the sovereign of any second-
ary German or French state. What he might be doing
in strengthening himself by alliances, or surrounding
himself by troops, was not easily to be discovered by
those outside of his own dominions. The Government
in Edinburgh could but guess at them, as our rulers in
India might at the doings of some native prince who
professes to hold by British protection in a distant in-
CONTEST WITH HUNTLY, 1562. 2OI
accessible territory. He had been playing some deep
game with the Lords of the Congregation. It seemed
to them at one time that they had him, havino- bouo-ht
J O O
him with a price a large share in the ecclesiastical
estates so profusely distributed. But there is little
doubt that he determined to stand forth as leader in a
great contest for the old faith, and had made arrange-
ments accordingly, treating with the Guises, and organ-
ising the people under his own banner. Murray, when
his followers jostled those of Huntly's ambassador in
the village of Vitry, must have come to the knowledge
that Huntly had deep projects. Whether or not he
knew exactly that an army of twenty thousand men
had been offered to the queen, he knew enough to tell
him that he must crush Huntly ere the power he yet
held as head of the Congregation slipped from his grasp.
Murray had further and personal motives for trying
his strength with Huntly. The estates belonging to
his own new earldom were in Huntly's hands, whether
under any regular title or by mere occupancy, and
would not be ot for him who owned them under a
O
crown charter, except by force.
It was determined that the queen and Murray should
make a royal progress northwards, and visit Himtly.
Ostensibly the Court was to do him honour ; but he
had his own reasons for suspecting that something of
another kind was in view. Matters at Strathbogie
Castle were not in a condition to be inspected by eyes
like Murray's. Incidentally we know that the vest-
ments and treasures of the Cathedral of Aberdeen
the monuments of idolatry, as they would be called
were deposited in Huntly's stronghold, that they
mi o lit be restored to the Church in its day of tri-
202 QUEEN MARY.
umph. 1 These things might be hidden out of sight,
to be sure ; but it would be impossible to obliterate
all testimony that here were the headquarters of the
enemy.
An incident that seemed in itself of little moment con-
nects itself with this affair. A quarrel which Huntly 's
son, Sir John Gordon, had with Ogilvy of Fiudlater
broke into a bloody conflict on the streets of Edin-
burgh. Gordon was seized, and put in prison ; but
the Scottish prisons were ever notorious for their un-
retentiveness of prisoners of his rank. This Sir John,
who was not the heir of Huntly, but only his fourth
son, was among the countless lovers with whom Queen
Mary's name is mixed up. The historian of the earl-
dom of Sutherland says he was " a comely young
gentleman, very personable, and of good expectation,
whom she loved entirely." '"
Soon after this affair, the queen with her brother took
their royal progress northwards. They started in August
1562. To have gone without a sufficient force, would
have been a folly of which Murray was not likely to be
guilty; and Huntly felt by no means satisfied with the
form in which his sovereign approached him. Wisely
keeping at a distance himself, he sent his wife, as a sort
of ambassador and spy, to meet the queen at Aber-
deen, and try to discover whether she came in peace
or war. She was courteously invited to the earl's
fortress-palace at Strathbogie. She declined, how-
ever, to countenance the house of Huntly while one
of its members was a fugitive from justice, and de-
manded that Sir John Gordon should " enter himself
1 See Inventories of Queen Mary's Jewels, pref. xxv. p. 53.
2 Gordon's History of the Earldom of Sutherland, 140.
CONTEST WITH HUNTLY, 1562. 203
in ward" again that is, go back to prison. It appears
that he went so far southward with the intention of
doing so, but changed his mind. The royal party ran
some risk. Murray, had he fallen into the hands of
the Gordons, would not have been spared ; and they
would have had little hesitation in keeping the queen
herself in pledge for their lives and fortunes. It ap-
pears that when sojourning in the stronghold of the
Leslies of Balquhain, of which a battered tower still
remains, about twenty miles from Aberdeen, the queen
and Murray both made a narrow escape from seizure.
They passed on to Inverness, where, desiring admission
to the castle, it was closed against them. A siege
was begun. In this conflict with royalty, some of the
clans which had submitted hitherto to the iron rule of
Huntly found that they had an opportunity of desert-
ing with the merit of loyalty. The Clan Chattan re-
membered how their chief had, a few years before, been
beheaded before the gate of Strathbogie Castle ; and,
with the Frasers and Monros, they abandoned the
banner of Huntly. The castle was taken, and the
governor hanged. When the queen and Murray
retired to Aberdeen, Huntly, who seemed to think
that his best chance of avoiding ruin was in war
rather than submission, followed them, designing
some bold stroke. There was a fight sometimes
called a battle on the declivity of Corrichie, a long
flat hill from fifteen to eighteen miles west of Aber-
deen. Huntly 's force, which had dwindled down,
was easily defeated. The earl was found dead on
the field smothered, as it was said, in his armour.
His body was brought to Edinburgh, that doom of
forfeiture might be pronounced on it; and there i
204 QUEEN MARY.
extant the record of certain payments to an adept for
treating it with vinegar, aqua vitse, pOAvders, odours,
and other necessaries, to prevent it from putrifying. 1
Sir John Gordon was convicted of treason, and be-
headed at Aberdeen, where the queen attended his
public execution.
The power of the house of Huntly was thus broken,
and the event, though in the ordinary phraseology of
history it was but the suppression of a rebellion and
the punishment of its leaders, was an important
national revolution. The breaking and dispersal of
so great a fabric of power by a single day's events
afforded to the Reformed clergy a great occasion for
addressing their hearers on the vanity and uncertainty
of human greatness, and the punishment which in due
time visits those who lift themselves up against eter-
nal power. One of them no doubt it was Knox
himself in pointing, for the benefit of Mary's cour-
tiers, the moral of the event, affords a curious personal
sketch of the public deportment of the great earl :
" Unto you do I say, that that same God who from
the beginning has punished the contempt of His word,
and has poured forth His vengeance upon such proud
mockers, shall not spare you, yea, He shall not spare you
before the eyes of this same wicked generation, for the
pleasure whereof ye despise all wholesome admonitions.
Have ye not seen ane greater than any of you sit
picking his nails, and pull down his bonnet over his
eyes, when idolatry, witchcraft, murder, oppression,
and such vices were rebuked ? Was not his common
talk, ' When the knaves have railed their fill, then they
will hold their peace' ? Have ye not heard it affirmed
1 Laing's Knox, ii. 359 note.
CONTEST WITH HUNTLY, 1562. 205
in his own face, that God should revenge that his
blasphemy even in the eyes of such as were witness to
his iniquity? There was the Earl Huntly accused
by you as the maintainer of idolatry, and only hin-
derer of all good order. Him has God punished even
according to the threatenings that his and your ears
heard, and by your hands hath God executed His judg-
ments. But what amendment in any case can be
espied in you ? Idolatry was never in greater zest
virtue and virtuous men were never in more contempt
vice was never more bold, and less feared punish-
ment. And yet w r ho guides the queen and Court ?
Who but the Protestants ? horrible slanderers of
God and of His holy evangel ! better it were unto you
plainly to renounce Jesus Christ, than thus to expose
His blessed evangel to mockage." *
That the queen should have dealt so hardly with the
champion of that faith to which she was ever devoted,
and of which we shall find that she was working for the
restoration, has been felt as one of the mysteries of his-
tory. She not only did what had to be done, but seemed
to do it with heart and will. It was in riding to the field
of Corrichie that she was reputed to have said that she
wished to be a man, to ride forth in jack and knapscull.
But for the solution of such a mystery, familiarity with
the tenor of Scottish, or even of English history, does
not prepare us. In these we find many deeds of passion,
and cruelty, and rapine some pieces of perfidy too,
such as the kidnapping projects of Henry VIII., or his
daughter's barefaced mendacity. But all was something
utterly different from the profound dissimulation of
that political school of which Catherine of Medici was
1 Knox, ii. 302.
206 QUEEN MARY.
the chief instructor, and her daughter-in-law an apt
scholar. Covered over as the underworking of wicked-
o
ness were by a fair outside of art, literature, courtesy,
gentleness, and loving-kindness, it was likened by the
oft-used parallel of a fair country, with its meadows,
gardens, and peaceful homes, covering volcanic fires that
might any day break through it. To feel the spirit
in which this young queen could assist in the ruin of
her friend, we must realise the halls of the Louvre,
with their splendid tapestries and statues, their per-
fumes and pet poodles, filled with an assemblage of
gallant courtiers and gay ladies, full of wit and
pleasantry and courtly kindness, w T hile Henry of Na-
varre, the gayest of all, his pleasant face beaming with
jollity and careless good-humour, has yet all his facul-
ties at their utmost tension to detect the first premo-
nitions of murder ; or we must enter the chamber of
the wounded Coligny, and find that vain headstrong
youth who had tried to murder him, and was preparing
to try again, pouring meek condolence into the ear
of the wounded man, and seducing him to the belief
that his king held him in love and honour.
The queen was in the hands of the Protestant party,
and it was her policy to abide by them, and appear to
do so with a willing heart ; it was her duty, and she
endured it, trusting that the day of retribution would
come. If we believe one of her faithful friends, this
policy was sketched out for her before she left France,
by those statesmen who knew by experience what Scot-
land was : " Monsieur de Martigues, Monsieur d'Oysel,
Monsieur la Brois, the Bishop of Amiens, Monsieur
Roubay,and sich other Frenchmen as were lately carried
out of Scotland within the English ships, resorted unto
CONTEST WITH HUNTLY, 1562. 207
the queen, and declared unto her the haill progress and
success of their pretences. And as well they as the rest
of her friends advised her to return in Scotland, and
encouraged her with the hope to succeed unto the crown
of England, rather than to abide the queen-mother's
disdain in France ; and for her best, willed her to serve
the time, and till commode herself discreetly and gently
with her own subjects, and to be most familiar with
my Lord James, Prior of St Andrews, her natural
brother, and with the Earl of Argyle, wha had married
Lady Jane Stewart, her natural sister, and to use the
Secretaiy Lethington and the Laird of Grange most
tenderly in all her affairs, and in effect to repose most
upon them of the Reformed religion." l
It would be difficult to find in history a closer re-
semblance than the early government of Mary bore to
a strong and deep-rooted moderate policy, holding in
check the factious extremes of either side. The country
had become Protestant, and the members of the Govern-
ment were Protestants; yet they desired to protect the
queen herself in the exercise of her religion, and broke
with the extreme clerical party, which owned Knox as
its head. But the elements of the political condition
of the country, even without reference to subsequent
events, are sufficient to show that the short peace was
but an armed truce, in which each party was prepared
to fly at its opponent's throat. It was the reproach of
both, though pleaded by each in extenuation of its
deeds, that the one could not permit the other to live
without danger to its own existence.
Protestantism, nominally supreme, asserted its dignity
in judicial proceedings against some adherents of the
1 Sir James Melville's Memoirs, 88.
208 QUEEN MARY.
old religion. Oil the 17th of March 1562, Sir .lames
Arthur, a priest, was prosecuted for solemnising bap-
tisms and marriages "in the old abominable Papist
manner." He came to the queen's will that is to say,
submitted to her mercy, and probably went unpunished. 1
In spite of the lowering of the political atmosphere,
and some actual storms, the first two years of Mary's
reign were passed by her in a gaiety and geniality
sadly in contrast with the gloomy remainder of her
days. She possessed a strong elasticity of spirit, and,
after the first shock was over, set herself to draw as
much enjoyment as could be extracted from the
humbler resources now at her disposal. It was no
longer as in France, where a court party, roving on
some sudden impulse to the distant bank of a stream,
or the centre of a wood, found there all the luxuries of
the palace laid at their feet by an expert and costly
commissariat. Yet she was not to be imprisoned in
a palace, and forfeit all the enjoyments of a free foot.
The English ambassador Kandolph, in his minute re-
ports, details some little scenes of innocent gaiety,
which it would be refreshing to meet with among the
partly arid and partly appalling events he has to re-
cord, if the reader could feel any assurance that they
were the outward symbol of an innocent and guileless
heart. She went, for instance, with a few attendants
to the house of a burgess in St Andrews. There Ran-
dolph followed her, and waited for three days in de-
vouring impatience for an audience. When he could
hold out no longer, and pressed through the light fence
1 Pitcairn, i. 420*. It is curious that the record of his trial hears, that
an extract of it was sent to the regent in 1569, as if he might then make
some use of it.
THE COURT, 1562. 209
which royal raillery had set between them, she said,
" I see now well that you are weary of this company
and treatment. I wish for you to be merry, and to
see how like a burgess's wife I live with my little
troop ; and you will interrupt the pastimes with your
great and grave matters. I pray you, sir, if you be
weary here, return home to Edinburgh, and keep your
gravity and great ambassade until the queen come
thither ; for, I assure you, you shall not see her here
nor I know not myself where she is become." l
Knox admitted that " in presence of her Council she
kept herself very grave," but that the scene was changed
when business and ceremony were over; and " how soon
soever the French fillocks, fiddlers, and others of that
band gat the house alone, then might be seen skipping
not very comely for honest women." In weighing the
full merit of these old denunciations of the innocent
amusement of dancing, it must be remembered that in
that age the dance had often a meaning beyond the
mere graceful cadenced exercise. The forms of the
dance were often symbolical of interesting situations ;
and of how far these were delicate or decorous, we may
judge by the books, such as those of Brantome and
Margaret of Navarre, which were the favourite litera-
ture of the dancers. Knox lifts his testimony against
the dance " called the purpose," which the queen trod
with Chatelar, and it is easy to believe it to have been
sufficiently indecorous. In fact, the Puritans from that
day having taken a loathing towards dancing such as
they saw it, shut their eyes to it for the coming ages ;
and thus, to the amazement and ridicule of later times,
blindly continued their old railing against it long after
1 Raumer, Oontribiitions, 26.
VOL. IV. O
210 QUEEN MARY.
it had been purified of its indecorums. The wrath
of Knox on this particular was raised to its climax by
a suspicion that the queen made her dancing an active
expression of her heterodoxy and malignancy; "and
among others, he was assured that the queen had
danced excessively till after midnight, because that she
had received letters that persecution was begun in
France, and that her uncles were beginning to stir
their tail, and to trouble the whole realm of France."
On this text he preached a stirring sermon, which
brought about one of his renowned interviews with the
queen. After having given her his mind with his usual
freedom and emphasis about her uncles, he concluded
by explaining to her that he was a public functionary
doing his public duty, from which he was not to be
drawn to waste his valuable time in dialogues with in-
dividual persons, unless in cases of urgency. " If your
grace," he said, " please to frequent the public sermons,
then doubt I not but ye shall fully understand both
what I like and mislike, as well in your majesty as all
others." He had no objection to her solemnly setting
apart an occasion for his publicly expounding in her
presence " the form and substance of doctrine which is
proposed in public to the subjects of this realm" a sug-
gestion towards which the queen kept silence, probably
not without a shudder. " But to wait," he continued,
"upon your chalmer door or elsewhere, and then to have
no farther liberty but to whisper my mind in your grace's
ear, or to tell to you what others think and speak of you
neither will my conscience nor the vocation to which
God hath called me suffer it." He was pleased to de-
part from this interview with "a reasonable merry coun-
tenance ;" and when he heard it remarked of bystanders
THE COURT, 1562. 211
that he was not afraid, he made the genial remark often
quoted, "Why should the pleasing face of a gentlewoman
affray me ? I have looked on the faces of many angry
men, and yet have not been affrayed above measure."
A question will naturally arise, Were these dialogues
held in the language in which Knox reports them ?
Singularly enough, among the many personal details
about Queen Mary, none informs us distinctly of the
extent to which she could understand or use the
language of her people. It is not likely that she could
speak it fluently on her arrival in Scotland, but we
hear nothing of progress made in acquiring it ; and in
the various dialogues in which her sayings are reported
even in these sharp trials of wit and language with
Knox no instance occurs to us in which she appears,
or is said to have been, at a loss for a proper expression,
When Knox reports the sayings of her mother, they
are generally in an imperfect or broken Scots ver-
nacular, as the instances cited in previous chapters
have shown. It is clear that her daughter was, while
in Scotland, extremely chary of writing in any other
language but the French. Running the eye over
LabanofF's collection, it will be noticed that a letter
taken from an autograph is invariably French. It
must be inferred from this that the letters in the ver-
nacular are not only in the handwriting, but in a great
measure the composition of a secretary. Sometimes
to such a letter there is a postscript, autograph and in
French. The only specimen preserved in her autograph
in the vernacular seems to be a postscript of a letter
to the Earl of Argyle, of 31st March 1566, in these
terms : " Wat ever bis sayed, bi sur off my gud
mynd, and that ye sal persayve, command my to our
212 QUEEN MARY.
bruder." 1 It must be inferred from this that her
habitual language was French ; and if we are to take
from her the merit of disputing with Knox in the
language which he learned when a boy in East Lothian,
we must concede to him the accomplishment of speak-
ing French so well that he did not fear an encounter
in that language with a very clever woman, mistress
of every art for enhancing her native qualities which
the highest courtly training in the world could bestow.
But, indeed, Knox had his own training to the task,
for he had lived and preached in France.
The prosecution of a considerable body of recusants
in 1563 was preceded by some discussions of a highly
suggestive kind. Of course, in a country so little
under control, the old religion was privately observed
wherever the predominant feudal power of the district
gave it any countenance. In the north, though the
power of Huntly was broken, there cannot be a doubt
that the bulk of the people, in as far as they were
Christians, were Komanists ; but they were too remote
from the eye of justice to be prosecuted, or even
watched. In the western districts south of the Clyde
the territorial influence was so far divided that in
some places the Romanists were enabled to resume
their worship and observances, but not without risk
from the vengeance of their Protestant neighbours.
These were sternly urged by the clergy to put in force
those laws against Popery which the Government
were neglecting. The brethren " determined to put to
their own hands," and " that they should neither com-
plain to queen nor Council, but should execute the
punishment that God has appointed to idolaters in His
1 Labanoff, i. 340.
THE TWO CHURCHES, 1562-63. 213
law, by such means as they might, wherever they
should be apprehended." 1 The work was begun, and
some seizures had been made, when the queen, who
was at Lochleven, desired to have a conference with
Knox. He went, and the dialogue is given with the
usual emphasis in his History. The question why the
royal prerogative was usurped by subjects was at once
met by conclusive reasons and apt cases in point.
" The sword of justice, madam, is God's, and is given
to princes and rulers for one end, which if they trans-
gress, sparing the wicked and oppressing innocents,
they that, in the fear of God, execute judgments when
God has commanded, offend not God. Although
kings do it not, neither yet sin they that bridle kings
to strike innocent men in their rage. The examples
are evident ; for Samuel feared not to slay Agag, the
fat and delicate King of Amalek, whom King Saul had
saved; neither spared Elijah Jezebel's false prophets
and Baal's priests, albeit that King Ahab was present;
Phinehas was no magistrate, and yet feared he not to
strike Cozbi and Zimri," supplying, in the plainest
words, the statement of their guilty conduct, which the
terms of Scripture leave to be inferred. 2 The queen,
of course, was not prepared to admit the soundness of
the principles so explained and exemplified ; and " she,
being somewhat offended, passed to her supper." Knox,
sullen and resentful, determined to return next morn-
ing to Edinburgh ; but before the early May sunrise,
messengers from the queen desired him to stay. They
had an interview, in which, judging from the only
account of it that of her antagonist the queen
showed consummate tact. She was " at the hawk-
1 Knox, ii. 371. l See Numbers, chap. xxv.
214 QUEEN MARY.
ing," so she chose her own battle-field, suited to
her light weapons and restless strategy. The traces
of last night's anger were totally obliterated all
was sunshine, gaiety, and good-humour. The talk
skipped lightly from topic to topic at the queen's
guidance, until she could get it settled down on
some topic on which her formidable companion could
be kept interested. There was the offering of a ring
to her by Lord Ruthven he was one of her Council ;
but she could not love him, for she knew him to use
enchantment. This failed to excite much interest.
She next referred to Knox's own movements. He
was going to Dumfries to act in the appointment of
a superintendent of the Church there ? " Yes, those
quarters have great need, and some of the gentlemen
so require." She then brings up the claims of the
favoured candidate, Alexander Gordon, titular Arch-
bishop of Athens, a son of the Master of Huntly, who
held high preferment in the hierarchy, and having
turned Protestant, desired to serve the new Church,
and keep the emoluments he had from the old. She
warned Knox against him, saying, " Do as ye will, but
that man is a dangerous man ; " and, oddly enough,
Knox shows in his narrative that he afterwards found
this to have been a sound warning. Still the queen,
passing lightly from topic to topic, had found nothing
to interest and enchain her formidable gossip ; but she
hit on it at last, by soliciting his services in restoring
the heads of a great family to the observance of
domestic duties and moralities. The Earl of Argyle
had been married in 1554 to the Lady Jane Stewart.
The queen, telling Knox that she must have his help
in one of the gravest matters that had touched her
THE TWO CHURCHES, 1562-63. 215
since she came to the kingdom, threw herself with
amiable simplicity on his friendly and confidential
assistance, explaining that this sister of hers had not
been so circumspect in all things as should be desired ;
" and yet," said she, " my lord her husband, whom I
love, entreats her not in many things so honestly and
so godly as yourself would require." The function
of mediator, or rather of dispenser of discipline in
such a matter, was one thoroughly to Knox's own
heart. His colloquy with the queen became cordial
and earnest ; and he fell immediately to his congenial
task, by writing to the earl a letter, setting forth the
domestic duties which he had hitherto neglected, and
was now called on to perform, with as much peremp-
tory distinctness as it is possible to suppose any like
injunction to have been given privily from the confes-
sional. The letter is printed in his History. In the
mean time, Knox having become interested in the
task before him, the queen seized the favourable
moment to get through, briefly and without cross-
questioning, with the disagreeable business of their
original meeting the prosecution of the officiating
Romanist ecclesiastics. " ' And now,' said she, ' as
touching our reasoning yesternight, I promise to do as
ye required. I shall cause summon all offenders, and
ye shall know that I shall minister justice.' ' I am
assured then/ said he, ' that ye shall please God, and
enjoy rest and tranquillity within your realm, which
to your majesty is more profitable than all the Pope's
power can be,' and thus they departed." So is the
conclusion of the interview set forth in Knox's History.
His account of it reads like a true account of the part
of the dialogue which it contains, and at the same
2l6 QUEEN MARY.
time does iiot look as if it suppressed any important
part. What afterwards passed through his mind about
the whole affair, when he put it in writing, seems to
be noted in the following words, with which, referring
to the sayings of the day before, he begins the narra-
tive of the second day's conference : " Whether it was
the night's sleep, or a deep dissimulation locked in her
breast, that made her to forget her former anger, wise
men may doubt but thereof she never moved word." 1
It must be held as the consequence of her pro-
mise that, on the 19th of May 1563, no fewer than
forty-eight persons, some of them eminent Romish ec-
clesiastics, were indicted for celebrating mass and en-
deavouring to restore Popery in Paisley and Ayrshire.
They were charged with collecting tumultuous assem-
blies in one instance, of two hundred people. The
law which they were accused of transgressing was that
dubious proclamation by the queen, requiring that no
one should innovate on the state of religion as she
found it publicly and universally standing on her arrival
in Scotland ; and the accused were said to have trans-
gressed this injunction by " ministering and abusing,
irreverently and indecently, the sacraments of haly
Kirk namely, the sacraments of the body and blood
of our Lord Jesus otherwise and after ane other order
than the public and general order of this realm was, the
time of the queen's majesty's arrival foresaid." Auricu-
lar confession was another form of transgression taken at
Paisley in the " kirk, toun, kirkyard, chambers, barns,
middens, and killogies thereof." 2 The charge of offi-
ciating in " middens " or dunghills, and in killogies or
kills, which gives a ludicrous tinge to the proceedings,
1 Knox, ii. 373. Pitcairn, i. 428*, 429.
ROMISH REACTION, 1563. 2I/
shows, in harmony with the tenor of the correspond-
ence of the period, that these recusants courted secrecy.
Several of the accused were sentenced to be " put in
ward" within the royal fortresses during the queen's
pleasure. There was one man, by his station and
history, prominent among these offenders so promi-
nent, indeed, that the prosecution may in some measure
be considered a trial of his strength. This was John
Hamilton, Archbishop of St Andrews, the illegitimate
brother of the head of the house of Hamilton. He had
become hateful to the Protestants by the martyrdom of
Walter Mill. At the same time there were reasons
why neither the Eomish party nor the queen's personal
friends should then -be strongly inclined to back him.
Restless, fierce, and ambitious, if he had shown devotion
to his Church, he had shown still more devotion to his
own interest, and was believed to be working for a com-
promise between the two extreme parties, in which there
would be enough of Protestantism to satisfy the lay
Reformers, and enough of Popery to preserve for him his
high dignities and emoluments ; so that his deficiency
in zeal may even have contributed to his sufferings.
At the same time he was the leading spirit of the dubi-
ous policy of the Hamiltons, and had fought the battle
of Arran the regent against the queen's mother. In
Knox's History it is told with great glee how the
bishop, hesitating to appear as a criminal in the Earl of
Argyle's court, was at last " compelled to enter within
the bar;" and how "a merry man, who now sleeps in
the sod, Robert Norwell, instead of the bishop's cross,
bare before him a steel hammer." 1
But the most instructive consideration in connection
1 Knox, ii. 380.
218 QUEEN MARY.
with these prosecutions is that, while they were carried
on in the queen's name, she was resolutely bent on the
restoration of the old religion. It is unnecessary, in
confirmation of this, to found solely on that steady un-
shrinking adherence to her own faith, which must ever
stand forth as the noblest, if not the sole redeeming
feature of her character. Fragments of correspondence
show that, while nominally prosecuting Papists at home,
she held close communication with the great leaders
of the Romish party abroad, and even with the Pope
himself. In January 1563 she wrote to Pope Pius IV.,
expressing her devotion to the Church, and her readi-
ness to sacrifice for it her life. She mourns over the
new opinions and damnable errors which she found
prevalent on her return to her kingdom, and regrets
that this will defeat a design she would otherwise fain
have carried out to send certain prelates to represent
Scotland in the Council of Trent. She writes at the
same time to her uncle the cardinal, going over the
same topics more fully and earnestly, announcing her
desire to restore the Catholic faith in her dominions,
though at the peril of her life, and declaring that she
will rather die than change her faith, and give encour-
agement to heresy. The bearer of these dangerous
communications was that Cardinal Granville who was
conspicuous even among the relentless Spaniards for
his zeal in the forcible suppression of heresy. 1
1 Labanoff, i. 175 etseq. The letters are translated copies, but there
is no reason to doubt their genuineness. Since this was written the
ground has been gone over by Joseph Robertson (Statuta Ecclesiae Scoti-
canse, Pref. clxiii.) Whoever desires to enter critically into the question
how far the tenor of the correspondence here attributed to Queen Mary
is supported by evidence, will find there all the information he can
desire. But in truth Queen Mary's entire devotion to her Church is so
steadily distinct through her whole history as to leave neither excuse
nor temptation for resting it on narrow testimony.
ROMISH REACTION, 1563. 219
We must henceforth, indeed, view Knox and the
queen as engaged in a contest, each for the extermina-
tion of the other. He also had his correspondents on
the Continent, and seems to have known the steady
consistency with which she preserved her communica-
tions with France, Spain, and the Court of Rome. For
all the skill with which she had represented herself as
a simple unprejudiced person seeking knowledge and
open to conviction, his sagacity early revealed to him
that she was an assured unwavering champion of the
old faith. So early as October 1561, he said, writing
to Cecil, " The queen neither is, neither shall be, of our
opinion ; and in very deed her whole proceedings do
declare that the cardinal's lessons are so deeply print-
ed in her heart that the substance and the quality
are like to perish together. I would be glad to be
deceived, but I fear I shall not/' l
But the state of the Continent at that time required
that the queen should keep her policy profoundly
hidden in her bosom. She had just witnessed, before
she left Paris, the reaction against the Guises, and
the formidable combination of the Huguenot princes.
Catherine of Medici, not having that assured faith which
belonged to her daughter-in-law, held herself in grim
reserve, watching the contest, and determined not to
commit herself until she saw which side should de-
velop the elements of decided superiority. She made
herself courteous to the Huguenot preachers, and held
colloquies with them like those of Queen Mary and
Knox. Then followed the celebrated edict of January
1562, and the establishment of the Huguenots in many
of the strongest towns in France, where idolatry was
1 Quoted, M'Crie, 183.
220 QUEEN MARY.
forthwith suppressed as in Scotland, the religious re-
cluses driven out of their monasteries, and the churches
defaced of their sculpture and decorations. It was, no
doubt, with secret joy and pride that Mary watched
how, step by step, her illustrious uncle consolidated
the fragments of the Catholic party, and, after gain-
ing the victory of Dreux, was wrenching from the
Huguenots their chief stronghold Orleans ; but all
hopes thus excited were doomed to sudden and bitter
disappointment, by the news that he had been assassi-
nated by a Huguenot fanatic. He fell on the 18th of
August 1563. That was undoubtedly no time for his
niece to try the strength of the Catholic cause in
Scotland. But in fact it continued from that epoch
rapidly to advance in France, with the Guises still at
its head. And as it achieved predominance, so we
shall find, at humble distance, its champion in Scot-
land warily stirring herself from the prostrate con-
dition she had found it necessary to accept on her first
coming, and arming herself for a conflict which, to all
human appearance, was likely seriously to endanger,
if not to overwhelm, the cause of the Eeformation in
Scotland, if not in England too. The 'concurrence was
noticed by Knox in his own peculiar fashion, in the
passage already cited, in which he represented the
queen as inaugurating the rise of persecution in France
by excessive indulgence in the offensive exercise of
dancing.
Among the elements of power which she brought
into this contest, what she possessed in her own
person and personal qualities must not be overlooked.
Scarce ever a sovereign entered upon rule with so
many attributes of popularity. The blood of an an-
ROMISH REACTION, 1563. 221
cient and beloved line of monarchs ran in her veins.
She was the descendant of the heroic Bruce, the liber-
ator of the land. With this illustrious blood she
united that of the heroic line of Lorraine, with whose
deeds Europe was ringing. She herself, by her mar-
vellous beauty, her accomplishments, and her wit, had
even widened the renown of her country, known as it
was so well over Christendom. She dazzled the com-
monalty with new court glories to which sombre
Scotland was unaccustomed ; and her regal pageants
were no mere chaotic displays of profuse barbaric
splendour, but were brought under the rule of a
thoroughly refined taste. The splendours of her Court
were not invidious to the people, since they came not
from the national exchequer, but were decorated by the
jewellery and supplied from the dowry of a queen-dow-
ager of France. The old warlike and chivalrous feel-
ing of the people found more to stir it in this delicate
woman than in many a hero. She had often shown
her beautiful face under the helmet, mounted on her
charger at the head of her troops. In more peaceful
days, the peasantry of the borders and the Highlands
were familiar with the airy form sweeping past on a
milk-white steed, at the stag-hunt or the hawking,
followed by all the chivalry of her Court. Such scenes
were not confined to the exclusive precincts of parks or
royal forests ; they were not secluded from a suspected
population by a jealous retinue of guards. They were
seen by her people at large ; and there were few corners
of the land so remote but some were there who could
tell of having seen them. Hence the queen naturally,
from year to year, acquired a strength in her own popu-
larity, which must have weighed formidably against her
222 QUEEN MARY.
opponents, and might have served her in good stead
had not those things taken place before which no
popularity could stand.
There was in the mean time such reaction as chafed
the impetuous spirit of Knox, and drew forth the fol-
lowing expressive notice in his History : " While that
the Papists were so confounded that none within the
realm durst more avow the hearing or saying of mass
than the thieves of Liddesdale durst avow their stealth
in presence of an upright judge, there were Protestants
found there ashamed, not at tables and other places, to
ask, ' Why may not the queen have her own mass and
the form of her religion ? What can that hurt us or
our religion ? ' And from these two why ? and what ?
at length sprang out this affirmative, ' The queen's mass
and her priests will we maintain ; this hand and this
rapier shall fight in their defence/ &c."
If Knox and his friends had found reason for
genuine satisfaction in the prosecution of Hamilton
and the western Papists, it did not last many days. A
Parliament was called, from which they expected much
and got nothing. It met on the 4th of June 1563. Now
was the occasion for ratifying with the royal presence
the Keformation, which had been passed in a mere con-
vention, and for devoting to its proper spiritual pur-
poses the Church property which had been seized by
the Church's lay friends ; but both these objects were
effectively evaded. The Acts passed by the convention
of 1560 remained unconfirmed, and care seemed to be
taken to avoid any reference to the proceedings on that
great occasion, as if they involved questions tacitly set
aside by both parties for subsequent adjustment. The
1 Knox, ii. 266.
THE CONGREGATION AND THE CLERGY, 1563. 223
Estates commenced business by passing an " Act of
Oblivion," to protect from prosecution all concerned in
the troubles immediately preceding the queen's arrival.
The period of time covered by its protecting clauses
was from 6th March 1558 to 1st September 1561.
The chief object of this Act was to secure from dis-
pute the transactions about Church lands during that
period transactions which the Protestant clergy
looked on as a robbery of their Church, but which many
of their lay supporters had reasons for keeping quiet,
even when adherents of the old Church were the
chief gainers by them. For any other purpose than
this, the Parliament need not have assembled, since all
its other business consisted of petty regulations about
cruives and yairs, the export of bullion, the manufac-
ture of salt unless it may be considered an exception
to the general triviality of the proceedings that a
statute was passed discharging all persons, of what-
somever estate, degree, or condition, to use any manner
of witchcraft, sorcery, or necromancy, under the pain
of death, " as well to be execute against the user,
abuser, as the seeker of the response or consultation."
This is the first announcement on the statute-book of
a persecution for which Scotland became rather noto-
rious. It was much desired by Knox, to whom the
progress of witchcraft and the kindred arts had been
giving alarm ; but it was not sufficient to propitiate
him in the absence of the more solid results which a
Parliament should have brought forth. The proceed-
ings of this Parliament filled up the cup of Knox's
gathering wrath against the Protestant lords, on their
lukewarmness in the great cause, and over- anxiety
about their worldly interests. He signified his dis-
224 QUEEN MARY.
pleasure on the occasion by solemnly breaking with
Murray. It is very significantly suggested in Knox's
History that Murray wanted the estates and honours
which he had obtained through the ruin of the
Gordons effectively secured ; and that these things
and other convenient arrangements for supporters
being accomplished, he left the rest to the course of
events, not choosing to take the strong hand with the
queen farther than the assembled Estates might call
for it. The feud is thus told in Knox's History :
" The matter fell so hot betwixt the Earl of Murray
and some others of the Court and John Knox, that
familiarly after that time they spake not together
more than a year and a half; for the said John, by
his letter, gave a discharge to the said earl of all
further intromission or care with his affairs." l
A few days afterwards, Knox preached a renowned
discourse. It was addressed to the Protestant lords,
most of whom were present, and was sharpened with
all his sternest eloquence, as a last appeal of duty to
their obdurate hearts. He described, with picturesque
pathos, how he and they had worked together in
the evil days of temptation and danger. " In your
most extreme dangers I have been with you. St
Johnston, Cupar Moor, and the Craigs of Edinburgh
are yet recent in my heart; yea, that dark and dolorous
night, wherein all ye, my lords, with shame and fear
left, this time is yet in my mind, and God forbid that
ever I should forget." 5 And where had they cast the
great truth for which all this temptation and danger
and scandal had been braved, now that the perfecting
of it was in their own hands ? " Shall this be the
1 Knox, ii. 382. l Ibid., 384.
THE CONGREGATION AND THE CLERGY, 1563-64. 225
thankfulness that ye shall render unto your God, to
betray His cause, when ye have it in your own hands
to establish it as ye please ? The queen, say ye, will
not agree with us. Ask ye of her that which by God's
Word ye may justly require, and if she will not agree
with you in God, ye are not bound to agree with her
in the devil." Before concluding, he sounded an
admonitory blast of the trumpet on a matter then under
busy discussion, although it had not yet pointed to an
individual conclusion the queen's marriage. " And
now, my lords, to put end to all I hear of the queen's
marriage. Dukes, brethren to emperors and kings,
strive all for the best game ; but this, my lords, will I
say, Note the day, and bear witness after, whensoever
the nobility of Scotland, professing the Lord Jesus,
consents that an infidel and all Papists are infidels-
shall be head to your sovereign, ye do so far as in ye
lieth to banish Christ Jesus from this realm ; ye bring
God's vengeance upon the country, a plague upon
yourself, and perchance ye shall do small comfort to
your sovereign/' l
When Mary heard of this she resolved to have
another controversy with her assailant, trusting, as on
previous occasions, to her own unaided wit. She had
no one present but the pacific Erskiue of Dun. It
brought her little satisfaction. When asked why he
went out of his way as a clergyman to meddle with
the affairs of her marriage, Knox explained that it was
his duty to admonish, and, where practicable, premonish
his congregation of their sins ; and if he saw them pre-
pared to stand by inactive, and permit her to take to
herself an idolatrous husband, he was constrained to
1 Knox, ii. 385, 386.
VOL. IV. P
226 QUEEN MARY.
admonish them on their sinfulness and responsibility.
According to his own account, he was on this occasion
encountered by passionate bursts of weeping. His His-
tory states that " the said John stood still, without any
alteration of countenance for a long season," until it
occurred to him to put in a word of comfort, founded
on his domestic experience. Weeping was far from
pleasant to him, and he could scarce stand that of his
own boys when under paternal flagellation. But on
the present occasion, that he should be assailed by
tears, was more unreasonable, the queen having no just
cause for offence, since he had but spoken the truth, as
his vocation craved of him. He was thrust for a time
into an anteroom among the queen's ladies, a body for
whom he had often expressed intense disgust, railing at
their " stinkin' pride," and the " targetting of their tails
and the rest of their vanity," all calculated to " provoke
God's vengeance not only against those foolish women,
but against the whole realm." The grim preacher was
probably no more welcome to them than they to him ;
but he resolved to improve the occasion, and to this
accident we owe a sentence of quaint and solemn
moralising, which may fairly match with Hamlet's over
Yorick's skull : " fair ladies, how pleasant were
this life of yours, if it should ever abide, and then in
the end that we might pass to heaven with all this gay
gear ! But fie upon that knave Death, that will come
whether we will or not ! And when he has laid on us his
arrest, the foul worms will be busy with this flesh were
it never so fair and so tender ; and the silly soul, I
fear, shall be so feeble that it can neither carry with it
gold, garnishing, targetting, pearl, nor precious stones." 1
1 Knox, ii. 389.
THE CONGREGATION AND THE CLERGY, 1563-64. 22/
This, according to his History, was spoken by him
" merrily," though it is not said to have been received
in the like spirit. After a short abiding, he was de-
sired to depart, and the Court ladies and he were re-
lieved of each other's presence.
The conflict between the contending powers was
soon afterwards brought to closer issue by an occurrence
which did not leave the penal law entirely in the hands
of the Protestants, but emboldened the Catholics also
to seek its protection. In the summer of 1563 the
queen made a progress in the western shires, hunting
and hawking as far northward as Argyle. She not
only took her idolatry with her, and set it up in sundry
places, according to Knox's sure information, but the
followers left behind attended mass in the Chapel of
Holyrood. One Sunday evening they appear to have
been joined by an unusual number of the citizens,
" which understanding, divers of the brethren, being
sore offended, consulted how to redress that enormity ;
and so were appointed certain of the most zealous and
most upright in religion to wait upon the abbey, that
they might note such persons as resorted to the mass." 1
Had the performance merely been deemed a public
scandal, this deputation would have been liable to the
reproach of increasing the publicity and the scandal.
But the act was looked upon as a crime which it is the
citizen's duty to detect and denounce. Several persons
were thus indicted, according to the established form,
for making innovations and alterations on religion con-
trary to the queen's proclamation, but it does not ap-
pear that they were punished. 2 They appear all to
have been citizens of Edinburgh, and not the French
1 Knox, ii. 393. 2 Pitcairn, i. 435*.
228 QUEEN MARY.
followers, whom Knox terms dontibours, a term of
equivocal origin. The noting and identification of the
massmongers, however, being exciting work for the
zealous and upright men who undertook it, there
appears to have been violence. In Knox's History it
is said, " Perceiving a great number to enter into the
chapel, some of the brethren burst also in; whereat the
priest and the French dames being affrayed, made the
shout to be sent to the town." l Whatever may have
been the extent of the violence committed, two of the
party Andrew Armstrong and George Boyd, bur-
gesses were indicted for "carrying pistols within
the burgh, convention of the lieges at the palace, and
invasion of the queen's servants." 2 This gave high
offence to the Protestant clergy; and Knox, who said
he had been intrusted with authority to convene the
champions of the cause in case of danger or emergency,
considered that the hour had come for which this pre-
caution was taken, and issued a circular warning to
the faithful, calling on them to assemble in Edinburgh
on the 24th of October, the day fixed for the trial of
Armstrong and Boyd. Such pains seem to have been
taken to preserve secrecy in this summons, although
very widely circulated, that Knox is loud in his de-
nunciations of the treachery by which it was made
known to the queen's advisers. These considered that
at last they had Knox at their mercy, with a charge
of treason hanging over him for convocation of the
lieges. Some efforts of Murray and the Master of
Maxwell to get him to accept of leniency, founded on
a partial admission of error, were received with haughty
scorn, and he was cited to appear before the queen in
1 Knox, ii. 393. 2 Pitcairn, L 434*.
THE CONGREGATION AND THE CLERGY, 1563-64. 229
Council. The assemblage does not appear to have been
limited to the Privy Council, nor was it a meeting in
full of the Estates, but something like a committee of
the Government officers and chief members of Parlia-
ment. The queen attended, and took a leading part
in the business. Her approach is described in her
opponent's History as that of a haughty and prema-
turely-exulting foe. " Her pomp lacked one principal
point to wit, womanly gravity ; for when she saw
John Knox standing at the other end of the table
bareheaded, she first smiled, and after gave ane gawf
lauchter; whereat, when her placeboes gave their plau-
dite, affirming with like countenance ' This is ane good
beginning,' she said, ' But wit ye whereat I laugh ?
Yon man gart me greet, and grat never tear himself.
I will see if I can gar him greet/ " * There was a
long discussion, Knox stern and unbending as usual.
The sum of his defence or rather justification, for he
scorned to demean himself as one pleading to a charge
was that convocation of the lieges for evil purposes
was doubtless a crime ; but his was for a good purpose,
a holy purpose he was " doing the duty of God's
messenger" in writing this letter. The assemblage
declined to inculpate him. Their motives on the occa-
sion are not very clear, for there seems to have been a
strong feeling, even among the zealous lay Keformers,
that it would be dangerous to let such an act pass. It
is open to the reader to believe, with the exulting
accused, that " there was not ane that plainly durst
condemn the poor man that was accused, this same
God ruling their tongue that formerly ruled the tongue
of Balaam when gladly he would have cursed God's
1 Knox, ii. 404.
230 QUEEN MARY.
people. 7 ' 1 It may also have had its influence on the
assemblage that, "the bruit rising in the town that
John Knox was sent for by the queen, the brethren of
the Kirk followed in such number that the inner close
was full, and all the stairs, even to the chamber door
where the queen and Council sat/' 2 On being told that
he might depart homewards, he turned to the queen
and prayed that God would purge her heart from
Popery and preserve her from the counsel of flatterers. 3
A General Assembly was held immediately afterwards,
and there Knox sought, and of course immediately re-
ceived, a full justification of his conduct. So the affair
ended. There are no traces of ultimate proceedings
against the rioters. The lay friends of the Reformation
got no thanks for any leniency shown on this occa-
sion ; on the contrary, from that time the wrath of the
preachers became ever louder against them as partici-
pators in the idolatry of her they served. They antici-
pated the Divine vengeance on the land for these sins,
and soon found it executed. " God from heaven, arid
upon the face of the earth, gave declaration that He was
offended at the iniquity that was committed even within
this realm; for upon the 20th day of January there fell
wet in great abundance, which in the falling freezed
so vehemently that the earth was but ane sheet of ice.
The fowls both great and small freezed, and might not
flee ; many died, and some were taken and laid beside
the fire that their feathers might resolve. And in that
same month the sea stood still, as was clearly observed,
and neither ebbed nor flowed the space of twenty-four
hours. In the month of February, the 15th and 18th
days thereof, was seen in the firmament battles arrayed,
1 Knox, ii. 411. s Il>R, 403. 3 Ibid., 411.
THE CONGREGATION AND THE CLERGY, 1563-64. 231;
spears, and other weapons, and as it had been the join-
ing of two armies." l
The gloom which had been gathering over the pro-
spects of the zealous Reformers now deepened apace.
The clergy besought the mitigation of God's wrath for
the sins of the land in their prayers, which, as they
freely exposed the great cause of all the evils, became
thus a powerful weapon of assault. Knox adopted a
form of prayer for the occasion, which he freely
repeated when questioned for the last time about his
conduct. It was in these terms :
" Lord, if Thy pleasure be, purge the heart of
the queen's majesty from the venom of idolatry, and
deliver her from the bondage and thraldom of Satan,
in the whilk she has been brought up and yet remains,
for the lack of true doctrine ; and let her see, by the
illumination of the Holy Spirit, that there is no mean
to please Thee but by Jesus Christ Thy only Son, and
that Jesus Christ cannot be found but in Thy Holy
Word, nor yet received but as it prescribes, which is
to renounce our own wits and preconceived opinion,
and worship Thee as Thou demandest ; that in so doing
she may avoid that eternal damnation which abides all
obstinate and impenitent unto the end ; and that this
poor realm may also escape that plague and vengeance
which inevitably follows idolatry maintained against
Thy manifest Word and the open light thereof." '"
This prayer came under question in the following
shape. A General Assembly was held in the summer
of 1564, at which the lay lords expected their clerical
friends to take violent measures. At the first sitting,
these lay lords, called The Courtiers, were not present,
1 Knox, ii. 417. * Ibid., 428.
232 QUEEN MARY.
and it was proposed that measures should be taken
with them to compel them to do their duty as humble
members of the national Church. The courtiers were
accordingly summoned to attend, and they appeared
next day; but instead of mixing with the assembled
clergy and their brother-elders at once, it appears
that they passed into an inner council-room to hold
a preliminary conference. Thence they sent a mes-
sage requesting the superintendents " and some of the
learned ministers " to confer with them. The Assem-
bly answered that they could not spare their principal
members, and that it better became the courtiers to
take their part in the general deliberations than to
draw away those whose services were the most valu-
able to the Assembly. After an angry discussion, it
was at last agreed that a preliminary conference might
be held between the lay and clerical leaders, on the
understanding that they should conclude nothing,
but that all should be redebated in open assembly.
Among the courtiers there were Hamilton, Argyle,
Murray, Morton, Glencairn, Marishal, Rothes, the
Laird of Pittarrow, and chief of all, as him on whom
the labour of the controversy fell, Secretary Lething-
ton. On the clerical side were Erskine of Dun,
Spottiswood, Winram, and Willock, who, according to
an arrangement for providing a governing body in the
new Church, were Superintendents of districts. They
were assisted by Row, Craig, and Hay. Knox, who
for some unexplained reason seems to have been re-
luctant to appear, was forced into the discussion on
the infallible plea that his own conduct was to be
questioned, and his absence would be cowardice. Once
there, the whole conduct of the conflict naturally fell
THE CONGREGATION AND THE CLERGY, 1563-64. 233
into his hands. He was opposed by the ready-debat-
ing talent and subtle wit of the secretary. But the
laymen had an assailable point, which rendered victory
to the others secure from the beginning. A rumour
had been ominously whispered about among the clergy,
and had gained such palpable force that some of them
had in fear and grief sought to relieve their hearts con-
cerning it in their public prayers. It was to the effect
that some of their lay friends had been heard to doubt
if the queen's mass really were the idolatry which must
be punished with death. It was the great aim of Knox's
rhetoric and his taunts to drive his opponents to the
avowal of this doubt; but whatever they inwardly
thought, none of them had courage for the avowal.
Thus the clergy had all the advantage possessed by
men with one simple clear conclusion which they de-
lighted in avowing, over those who wished to avoid
avowals, and to carry the controversy into subsidiary
channels. The clergy were charged with dwelling too
strongly on the queen's impenitence. Why should
they propagate the impression that she was obdurate
in her sins ? why not make allowance for penitence
coming in due time ? But this argument tottered
under its own inherent weakness. The supposition of
her repentance was a farce nothing was farther from
her thoughts ; and all of them knew by that time, if
they did not before, that she was as thorough a bigot
to her own creed as the most zealous of themselves
was to his.
Then supposing her to be sinful and impenitent, yet
she was a queen, and could not be punished or con-
trolled in her personal actions ; and for subjects to rail
at them, whether in pulpits or elsewhere, was dis-
234 QUEEN MARY.
respect to the Lord's anointed, if not worse. Lething-
ton had the imprudence to throw out a challenge that
Scripture precedents could not be found for such
arraignments of the conduct of princes. This was a
call to Knox to draw on the resources of his great
arsenal of Bible-learning. He had so abundant a choice,
that with characteristic pride he cared not to cite pre-
cedents except from the doings of the greater prophets.
There were Elisha and King Jehoram ; Jeremiah, who
cried aloud to the kings Zedekiah and Jehoiakim ; and,
happiest instance of all, " Ahab was ane king, and
Jezebel was ane queen, and yet what the prophet
Elijah said to the one and to the other, I suppose ye
be not ignorant." l " The idolater shall die the death."
" God's laws pronounce death to idolaters without ex-
ception of any person." Such was the terrible burden
of the preacher's argument to the conclusion ; and the
courtiers had nothing to answer it with. Craig, who
had led a strange wandering life, appealed to a prece-
dent of later times, when Protestantism had for a short
time dominion in Bologna, and it was resolved by the
eminent doctors there that idolatrous rulers must be
deposed by subjects sound in the faith.
The discussion was taking a dangerously practical
direction, when Macgill, the clerk-register, diverted it
by reminding the meeting of the previous proposal to
consult Calvin and the Continental heads of the Pro-
testant faith how far obedience was due to infidel
princes. Lethington admitted that he had undertaken
that duty, but that when it came to be done he shrank
from deliberately inquiring of foreigners whether it
was his duty to depose his sovereign. Knox was
1 Knox. ii. 4.32.
THE CONGREGATION AND THE CLERGY, 1563-64. 235
pressed to write such a letter to Calvin, but declined.
It is odd enough that he never alludes to his having
already written one. 1 The conference ended without
any practical conclusion. No vote was taken in the
General Assembly ; and the reason why there was
none appears to be because the committee of leaders,
which, as we have seen, the Assembly were averse to
sanction, once finding themselves set apart, and divided
into two parties eager for controversy, debated so long
that the Assembly got tired, and dispersed. The lay
Protestants the Lords of the Congregation with
Murray at their head, had by this time their own
deep anxieties to deal with. They could not, on the
one hand, bring the clergy to what they thought
reason ; on the other, they saw more clearly, day by
day, that there was no room for a temperate party ; that
Knox and Craig were right in holding the queen to
be obdurate and impenitent in her idolatry, and that
in the great conflict hers was the party the more likely
of the two to be successful. The point on which the
question of Protestant or Roman Catholic appears at
that time to turn was the queen's marriage; and before
narrating that event, with its wondrous consequents,
it may be proper to glance at some of its precedents.
1 Knox, ii. 460.
CHAPTER XLIII.
dtteen
(Continued?)
THE QUEEN AND HER ADMIRERS MYSTERIOUS STORY OF THE
PROJECT OF ARRAN AND BOTHWELL BOTHWELL INDICTED
FOR IT HISTORY OF CHATELAR HIS ADVENTURES HIS FATE
POLITICAL IMPORTANCE OF THE QUEEN'S MARRIAGE THE
PROJECTS OF THE HOUSE OF GUISE QUEEN MARY'S OWN
VIEWS PROJECT FOR UNION WITH THE HEIR OF THE SPANISH
MONARCHY POLITICAL PROSPECTS OF SUCH A UNION MARY'S
FOREIGN CORRESPONDENCE ABOUT IT HER SCHEMES TRA-
VERSED BY CATHERINE OF MEDICI OTHER PROJECTS QUEEN
ELIZABETH HER ESCAPADES ABOUT LEICESTER PROPOSED
MEETING OF MARY AND ELIZABETH MARY MEETS HENRY
STEWART, LORD DARNLEY MARY'S SECRET EMISSARIES DAVID
RIZZIO REACTION IN FAVOUR OF THE ROMANIST PARTY
GLOOM AND DIFFICULTIES OF THE REFORMERS PROTESTANT
RIOT SUPPRESSED QUESTION OF CONSULTING THE ESTATES
ABOUT THE MARRIAGE MARRIAGE OF MARY AND DARNLEY.
EVER since the death of her husband, the admirers of
the young queen had been very troublesome. Besides
the members of reigning houses who were offered or
spoken of after the usual fashion of projected royal
alliances, her steps were infested by audacious and
demonstrative adorers, who had no claims to such a
destiny. Whether the passive influence of her won-
derful wit and beauty rendered this phenomenon in-
ARRAN AND BOTHWELL, 1562-63. 237
evitable, or it might be in any measure promoted by
some little touches of seductive fascination in her
manner, is a question which students of her history
will in general decide for themselves. The most eminent
among these miscellaneous admirers, and the one who
came nearest to the rank which might have justified
the expectation of her hand, was D'Amville, the second
son of the Constable Montmorency, who afterwards
succeeded to the offices and honours of his family the
most illustrious among the unregal nobility of France.
He was one of those who accompanied the queen to
Scotland. He had a wife ; but to such homage as he
was entitled to tender, that was no hindrance.
Arran, the heir of the house of Hamilton, was num-
bered among the queen's suitors. The position of that
family at the juncture of Mary's return was very pecu-
liar, and so was their conduct. The head of the house
was next heir to the crown, and held this position not
merely by genealogical tenure, but by the repeated
acknowledgments of Parliament, which had made pro-
vision for his claims being made good if the succession
opened. It was not in human nature that the man so
placed should enter, with the indifference of an ordi-
nary subject, into questions about the most suitable
alliance for his sovereign, and the desirableness of a
direct heir appearing to the house of Stewart. Whe-
ther from temper or policy, he evaded the usual
demands of homage paid by the nobility. His ab-
sence from Court was of course noticed, and was in
fact rather the assumption of a diplomatic position
than an ordinary discourtesy. Something of menace,
too, appeared in his movements, and especially in his
jealously fortifying and keeping well garrisoned the
238 QUEEN MARY.
fortress of Dumbarton. The annalists of the day men-
tion a sudden alarm arising in Holyrood House one
summer night in the year 1561, when the Lord James
was absent suppressing the borderers, and the palace
was peculiarly unprotected. This incident is isolated
unconnected with any train of events preceding or
following it. It is briefly recorded in the quaint
manner of Knox's History, in a spirit of latent sarcasm :
" The queen upon a night took a fray in her bed, as
if horsemen had been in the close, and the palace had
been enclosed about. Whether it proceeded of her
own womanly fantasy, or if men put her in fear for
displeasure of the Earl of Arran, and for other pur-
poses, as for the erecting of the guard, we know not.
But the fear was so great that the town was called to
the watch." The shape into which the cause of this
panic was put, was a design by young Arran to seize
the queen and carry her into the district where the
house of Hamilton was supreme. If the queen had,
as Knox and others thought, no ground for her appre-
hensions, yet such an enterprise was not at all incon-
sistent with the spirit of the times, and it is impossible
to disconnect it with certain subsequent transactions in
which the name of so very practical a person as the
Earl of Both well is mixed up. The alarm in Holyrood
must have occurred in November 1561, the date of
Murray's absence on the border ; the further incidents
now to be noticed belong to the spring of the following
year. Knox was intimately concerned in them, and
they are narrated with much distinctness in his His-
tory. The affair begins by Bothwell desiring a private
interview with Knox, which was gladly conceded ; and
they met in the house of James Barren, a worshipful
ARRAX AND BOTHWELL, 1562-63. 239
burgess of Edinburgh. The scene resolved itself into a
sort of Protestant confessional. The earl bewailed his
sinful life, and entered into particulars of his offences,
whereof he heartily repented. But there remained be-
hind a practical object in which he desired the Reformer's
intervention it pressed hard on him that he was at
enmity with the Earl of Arran, and he solicited Knox's
good offices for their reconciliation. Knox undertook
the task with hearty goodwill ; in some way or other it
is evident that the heart of the austere preacher was
gained. He said his grandfather, father, and father-in-
law had served under the banner of the Hepburns
this by the way, as connecting them together by the
obligation of their " Scottish kindness : " but he had
another and a more solemn function as the public mes-
senger of glad tidings, and so he bestowed on the peni-
tent a suitable admonition to prove the sincerity of his
penitence by his reformation. Bothwell stuck to the
practical point of a reconciliation with Arran. Knox
busied himself in the matter, and after overcoming
some practical difficulties, he had the satisfaction to see
them meet and embrace, the Earl of Arran saying to
his new friend, " If the hearts be upright, few cere-
monies may serve and content me." Knox, who seems
to have been mightily pleased with his handiwork, left
them with the benediction following : " Now, my lords,
God hath brought you together by the labours of simple
men, in respect of those who would have travailed there-
in. I know my labours are already taken in an evil part,
but because I have the testimony of a good conscience
before my God, that whatsoever I have done, I have
done it in His fear, for the profit of you both, for the
hurt of none, and for the tranquillity of this realm.''
240 QUEEN MARY.
The good work seemed to be perfected, when next day
Both well and " some of his honest friends came to
the sermon with the earl foresaid, whereat many re-
joiced."
But in a few days the scene was changed. Arran
came repeatedly to Knox, and poured into his ears a
tale how Bothwell had offered to help him to carry off
the queen, and put her in his hands in Dumbarton
Castle, proposing at the same time the slaughter of
Murray, Lethington, and the others that "misguide
her." These revelations seem to have gone on for some
time, when Knox at last found that his informant was
raving. " He devised of wondrous signs that he saw
in the heaven; he alleged that he was bewitched; he
would have been in the queen's bed, and affirmed that
he was her husband; and finally, he behaved in all
things so foolishly that his frenzy could not be hid." :
He was subjected to the process by which in Scot-
land insane persons are deprived of the management
of their property. 2 His madness cannot be doubted,
whether or not it was rightly atributed to his despair-
ing love for the queen. However it arose, his accusa-
tions against Bothwell, to which he resolutely adhered,
were not only gravely considered and examined at the
time, but were three years afterwards, when Bothwell
returned from France, solemnly resuscitated in the
form of a criminal indictment or summons of treason.
In this document it is specifically set forth that Both-
well proposed a plan for seizing the queen when she
was hunting in the fields, or in one of her rural merry-
makings, and conveying her with a sufficient force to
Dumbarton Castle. There she was to be at the dis-
1 Knox, ii. 322-29. z Mor. Diet. Dec., 6275.
STORY OF CHATELAR, 1563. 241
posal of Arran ; and it was part of the charge that by
this Bothwell seduced him to join in the enterprise. As
Bothwell did not appear to answer to the charge, he was
outlawed, and the affair was forgotten amid the more
stirring historical incidents in which he was to figure. 1
As the conclusion of this episode, it is proper to note
that in the end of April 1562, a month after the date
attributed to Bothwell's conversation with Arran, the
Castle of Dumbarton was yielded up to Captain
Anstruther, to be held for the queen. 2 In Knox's His-
tory the extraction of this fortress from the hands of
the Hamiltons is spoken of as a breach of faith, on
the ground that the custody of it had been granted
to them " till that lawful succession should be seen
of the queen's body." 3 Thus the fortress was under-
stood to stand as a material guarantee for the protec-
tion of the house of Hamilton's right of succession to
the throne.
It has been already recorded how the unfortunate
Sir John Gordon, the son of the rebel Earl of Huntly,
conducted himself as a lover of the queen. But the
most troublesome and preposterous of all her train of
admirers was a Frenchman named Chatelar or Chas-
telard, who also fell a victim to his follies. Little is
known of him, except from the pages of Brantome ;
but his mere appearance there, accompanied by expres-
sions of eulogy and warm attachment, is sufficient to
mark him as a man of distinction. The biographer
says he was a native of Dauphine, and a grand-nephew
by his mother of the illustrious Bayard, whom he resem-
bled in person. According to the same authority, he
owned in a high degree not only all the warlike and
1 Pitcairn i. 462*. - Diurnal of Occurrents. 3 Knox, ii. 330.
VOL. IV. Q
242 QUEEN MARY.
polite accomplishments of a high-bred gallant of the
day, but possessed original literary genius, and could
accompany his lute by his own poetry " usant dune
poesie fort douce et gentile en cavalier." He was a
follower of the Constable Montmorency, with whom he
joined the body of gentlemen who escorted the queen
from France. A gentil mot of his on that occasion
has been recorded that when a fog sprang up, and
the necessity of lights was spoken of, he said the
bright eyes of their mistress were sufficient to light
the fleet past all dangers.
He had certainly been admitted on terms of some
familiarity with the queen. Brantome says her love
of letters led her to admire the young man's poems, of
which she was often naturally the theme, and that she
answered him in verses which raised within him the
wildest aspirations. It is difficult to mark the limits
within which at that period a royal personage at any
of the French or Italian Courts might legitimately
flatter and encourage a person of good birth, endowed
with the literary accomplishments of the troubadour.
The homage paid to Ronsard, by beauties of princely
rank, was more like adoration than patronage. But
Knox certainly shows ignorance of the fitting usages
of a court at that time, when he says, " The queen
would lie on Chatelar's shoulder, and sometimes privily
she would steal a kiss of his neck; and all this was
honest enough, for it was the gentle entreatment of a
stranger. But the familiarity was so great, that on a
night he privily did convey himself under the queen's
bed.'' * That he committed this folly, whatever his
encouragement may have been, is beyond doubt, though
1 Knox, ii. 368.
STORY OF CHATELAR, 1563. 243
Eandolph states that by his own account his hiding-
place was a part of the establishment still less adapted
for romance or lovemakino^. 1 The occurrence was in
O
Holyrood. For this first offence, though flagrant
enough, he was spared and warned. Next day, how-
ever, as Mary spent the night at Burntisland, on her
way to St Andrews, he burst into her private apart-
ment, either to plead a palliation for his conduct or to
plead his suit. It is said in Knox's History that Mary
desired him to be forthwith put to death, but that
Murray, who was present, maintained it to be due to
the fair course of justice, and more conducive to her
own good repute, that he should be brought to trial.
He was tried at St Andrews, condemned, and executed.
The records of the Court of Justiciary for that period
having been lost, we are deprived of any light which
they might have cast on this strange story. Whoever
desires to read how he died, like a true knight-errant,
turning to the direction of his bright particular star,
though obscured from his view, and unheard address-
ing her as the most lovely and cruel of her sex, may
turn to the lively pages of Brantome. Chatelar's ad-
ventures fed many preposterous rumours, and the King
of Spain was told that he had been hired in France to
do as he did, for the purpose of ruining the queen's
matrimonial prospects. 2
Chatelar had been sent back to France with the
other attendants of the queen soon after her arrival,
and had found his way back to the centre of attrac-
tion. One of the few wise things done by Mary and
her advisers was the speedy restoration to their own
country of this foreign train, whose presence in Scot-
1 Raumer, 22. J Teulet, iii. 1.
244 QUEEN MARY.
land, however discreetly they might have conducted
themselves, would have fostered a special growth of
jealousies and animosities, in addition to the already
luxuriant crop. What the rest would have incurred
we learn in the brief history of one of them who
remained behind the others D'Elboeuf, the queen's
uncle. He was charged with having joined some dis-
sipated Scotsmen in a nocturnal riot, in which they
forced an entrance to the house of a citizen, seeking
access to a damsel living there. It is not stated that
they committed violence on her, or even got access to
her ; and her own conduct was so far from being irre-
proachable, that the affair arose out of a dispute as to
the person to whom she had for the time being sold
her blandishments, and the object of the riot was to
put one of the claimants in possession. The criminal
records of the day convey a very false impression of
the social condition of the country, if far heavier
offences of the same character were not of daily occur-
rence. Yet the participation of D'Elboeuf raised this
paltry riot to a place in history. In Knox's Book
it is said that " the horror of this fact, and the rarity
of it, highly commoved all godly hearts." l A sort of
General Assembly was convened on the occasion, who
addressed the queen in a long remonstrance about the
impiety, " so heinous and so horrible that, as it was a
fact most vile and rare to be heard of within this realm,
principally within the bounds of this city, so should
we think ourselves guilty of the same if negligently,
or yet for worldly fear, we pass it over in silence."
They predicted that its going unpunished might cause
God's sore displeasure to fall on her and her whole
1 Knox, ii. 315.
PURITAN REACTION, 1561-64. 245
realm. 1 The queen resisted the prosecution of the
offenders, but promised measures for better order in
time coming.
It must be admitted, however, that, so far as the
clergy were concerned, they do not seem to have applied
to the Frenchman a more rigid rule of virtue than
that which they followed themselves and endeavoured
to enforce on the community generally. They were
under the impulse of that great reaction against the
profligacy of the age the reaction which, driven out of
France, where it had its origin, swept England under
the name of Puritanism, and established a permanent
influence over opinion in Scotland. Calvin had to
take his notions of the absolute rule of saintship away
from France, where the Huguenots were in a minority,
to the small state of Geneva ; and Knox sought to
establish in Scotland the same iron rule which his
master was able with difficulty to hold over that small
and peculiar state. The rigidness of the rule by which
he and his brethren of the clergy had resolved to walk
is better exemplified by one exceptional case of back-
sliding than by their professions of godliness. One of
the new clergymen Paul Methven, minister of Jed-
burgh was accused of connubial infidelity. Instead
of any effort to conceal this reproach to their body,
they proclaimed it aloud as an awful and inscrutable
judgment, and hunted the accused man until, whether
guilty or not, he fled from his pursuers. The excite-
ment aroused in a considerable body of men by the
revelation among them of this one black sheep, points
to the conclusion that such sins were rare in the com-
munity to which Methven belonged. Had there been
1 Knox, ii. 316. Book of the Universal Kirk, 29th May 1561.
246 QUEEN MARY.
other instances of flagrant offence, these too would
have been made known ; for it was a peculiarity of the
Presbyterian bodies to blazon the infirmities of their
own members as judgments and warnings, while those
of the opposite religion were dealt with by ecclesias-
tical superiors, and shrouded in what they deemed
decorous privacy.
While thus perplexed by immoralities without and
within, the new Church had to look to the more serious
question of its own safety, and the preservation of the
reformed faith. The question, which party should be
supreme in Scotland, seemed to depend so much upon
the queen's marriage, that both preserved a sort of armed
neutrality until that event should take place, and de-
clare for the one or the other. The anxiety on the point
travelled indeed for beyond the bounds of Scotland : for
if Mary, with her claims on the crown of England, were
married to some great Catholic potentate, no one could
calculate what strength such an event might bring to
the cause of Rome ; while, on the other hand, a Protes-
tant king in Edinburgh would secure Scotland, at all
events, to the cause of the Reformation. Her ambitious
relations the Guises were fully alive to the important
influence which the event must have on their own
designs and prospects. It is only in the events of
later times that we can appreciate the scope and ten-
dency of the projects of that illustrious race, and see
how near they were to the accomplishment of a great
revolution. They appeared in all their lustre at a
time when the French had few great men, and were
becoming discontented with the position they found
themselves holding among European powers. What
the family of Bonaparte has since achieved, this ambi-
MARRIAGE NEGOTIATIONS, 1563-65. 247
tious house were on the point of achieving in the six-
teenth century. If we look into the history of each of
the several great men of the house, we shall find them
all strengthening their position by a marvellously
dexterous use of every available instrument, and uniting
to propagate an impression throughout the world that
some wonderful destiny was in store for them. They
gave themselves out as the true descendants of Charle-
magne, through that Lothaire, the founder of Lotha-
ringia or Lorraine, whose race was superseded on the
throne of France by the dynasty of Hugh Capet ; and
though they would have found it hard to prove this
descent to fastidious genealogists, the history of their
family gave plausibility to their claim. When their
niece ascended the throne of France, they received a
solid accession of power ; and whatever may have been
the form of their ambitious dreams for the future, they
had the certainty, while she and her husband lived, of
ruling supreme in France.
The death of the young king was a severe blow to
them. They had just perfected their measures for
crushing the house of Bourbon, where, from the physi-
cal condition of the remains of the Valois family, they
saw the future probable successors to the throne of
France. With the change of fortune, they were com-
pelled to give up their hold on Conde', Coligny, and
the other illustrious victims through whom the cause
of the Huguenots and the Bourbon family were to be
crushed ; and they found in Catherine of Medici, the
mother of the boy who succeeded to the throne, one
who had the will, and might very soon have the power,
to trample them under her feet.
Far from abandoning their great projects, however,
248 QUEEN MARY.
the history of their country has declared how they
came back to the contest with redoubled efforts and
new resources. The marriage of their niece was again
in their hands, as a means of giving strength to their
position. They bethought them that, with her claims
on the crown of England, were she married to the heir
of the King of Spain, the most powerful monarch of
the day, there would arise a more glorious prospect for
her and themselves than even that which the death of
King Francis had extinguished. Accordingly they
laboured hard to bring about her marriage with Don
Carlos, the heir of the Spanish crown, then in his six-
teenth year. The project was unsuccessful, and of the
manner in which it was defeated we at least know this
much, that Catherine of Medici was indefatigable in
her efforts to baffle it. Among other evidence of her
industry, some letters written in cipher to the Bishop
of Limoges, the French ambassador in Spain, have
lately been deciphered. 1 They are interesting in them-
selves, as specimens of the subtle and tortuous method
by which this incomprehensible woman worked for her
ends. One reading these letters cannot of course fathom
their ultimate objects, which are laboriously concealed
from the bishop himself; but the overpowering inten-
sity of her eagerness to stop the match between her
daughter-in-law and Don Carlos breaks through all the
avowed objects of the correspondence.
Philip's own intentions lie hidden among the other
mysteries of his policy ; but it seems clear that he
entertained, if he did not push, the match. Cath-
erine's suspicions were directed against him at so early
a period that, when Don Juan de Manriquez was sent
1 (Jheruel, Marie Stuart et Catherine de Medicis, &c., 22.
MARRIAGE NEGOTIATIONS, 1563-65. 249
from Spain to France on a message of condolence
for the death of Francis IL, Catherine said this was
a pretence ; for his actual mission, in which he ex-
erted himself, was to negotiate with the Guises for
the marriage of their niece with Don Carlos. The
preponderance which such an event would give to
Spain, influenced the policy of France in relation to
the resumption of the Council of Trent, as seriously
affecting the influence which Spain, aggrandised by
such an alliance, would exercise among the Catholic
powers. 1
The immediate object most keenly urged by Cath-
erine is a personal meeting with Philip. She seems
to have thought that, if she once had an oppor-
tunity of talking with him, all her objects were gained
a curious instance of her thorough reliance on her
diplomatic powers, since it would be difficult to point
in history to a potentate more obdurately and hope-
lessly self-willed. Intensely as she desired the inter-
view, it must seem unpremeditated ; and she laid down
a little chain of events through which it might be
brought to pass as if it were fortuitous. In September,
as she ascertained, the King of Spain would attend a
public spectacle in Aragon. Towards the end of July
her sou would make his public entry into Paris, after
his consecration at Rheims. She might herself go as
far as Touraine under the natural pretext of visiting
Chenenceau, the beautiful chateau out of which she
had driven her hated rival, Diana of Poictiers. Her
son the king would be with her, and they might pro-
bably go on to Gascony, where the King of Navarre
had a project for letting the people see their young
1 Castelnau, Laboureur Additions aux Menioires, i. 480, 554.
250 QUEEN MARY.
king ; so she would be near Spain, and the meeting,
which must appear to the world an affair of chance,
might be accomplished. If the meeting had been
held, she was to prove to Philip that the proposed
marriage would in reality be disastrous to the inter-
ests of the Church, the promotion of which was the
avowed object for urging it. She knew that Philip
held the interest of the Church beyond all things
at heart ; and could she but obtain this interview,
there were innumerable shapes in which they could
combine to promote that object, the dearest to her
heart as it was to his. The Guises, though the self-
constituted champions of the Church, were not truly
devoted to it they were too ambitious and worldly.
Even now they were in league \vith the King of
Navarre, whose interests would predominate in France
along with theirs. Let the King of Spain sap this
worldly coalition, and take to his bosom her own young
son the King of France, inspire him with true zeal,
and so raise up a hero worthy to serve with him in
his great enterprise for the restoration of the rights of
the Church. This pleading is a signal instance of the
plausibility and subtle duplicity of the woman. She
was then contemplating and preparing for an alliance
of her own interests with those of the Guises, as
likely to be the best security for her supremacy ; but
she did not desire that her prospective ally should
acquire an influence which would give him the
mastery. She relied thoroughly on the absorbing
character of Philip's religious bigotry, though she
had none herself; and yet at the same time she laid
before him a small temporal bait, in case he should
possess some latent element of worldliness, in her
MARRIAGE NEGOTIATIONS, 1563-65. 251
allusions to the King of Navarre, who was then dis-
puting with the King of Spain the possession of cer-
tain territories.
She did not obtain her interview, but she gained her
ultimate end in breaking the match. She bore, in her
objections to it, on the King of Spain's ear through all
available channels, not forgetting his confessor. Her
most available ally, however, seems to have been her
own young daughter, who had been married to Philip
after the death of Mary, Queen of England. Catherine
had known and keenly felt the humiliation of giving pre-
cedence to the haughty beauty as reigning queen, on the
death of her husband, and could tell her own daughter
what she had to anticipate in a similar position. The
mother, indeed, suggested that her daughter, the Queen
of Spain, should endeavour to keep this preferment for
her own young sister, Marguerite of Valois, the same
who became afterwards the wife of Henry IV. It ap-
pears that at last Catherine of Medici even influenced
the Guises to abandon their project, 1 But it was not
abandoned by Mary herself. When she was not under
the influence of the violent attachments to which she
afterwards yielded, and while she viewed her marriage
as a politic arrangement, she scorned anything but a
thoroughly great alliance. So when it was proposed
to marry her to the Archduke Charles, the second son
of the emperor, she contemptuously rejected him for
substantial reasons. As a stranger, he would have no
following or political influence in Scotland. Estimating
him among the powers of Europe, he was nothing but
a younger son, without fortune or title, and with no
power to assert her birthright the entire sovereignty
1 See Authorities in Mignet, chapter iii.
252 QUEEN MARY.
of Britain. 1 It was the more mortifying to her also to
find that, when this marriage was proposed, Philip II.
drew back in courtesy to his uncle the emperor. When
he learned Queen Mary's repulse of the German alli-
ance, he reopened the negotiation, observing that he
would have been well pleased to have seen his relation
the archduke husband to the Queen of Scotland, if
that alliance would have furthered the views he had
at heart ; but he really believed a marriage with his
own son would be more effective in settling religious
difficulties in England. In the year 1563, when Don
Alvaro de la Quadra was Spanish ambassador in Eng-
land, there was at the same time a Spanish gentleman
connected with his embassy named De Paz, who went
to Scotland as representative of Spain, with special
instructions about the proposed marriage of Mary with
Don Carlos, and, to shroud his journey in secrecy,
passed round by Ireland. 2
The negotiations of De Paz, and their immediate
result, are as yet buried in mystery. We know, how-
ever, that Mary herself renewed the negotiations for the
marriage, if they can be ever said to have died. She
wrote earnest letters about it to Granvelle, her uncle
the cardinal, and her aunt the Duchess of Arschot.
Castelnau, when he went to Holyrood after having
delivered to Queen Elizabeth the mocking proposal for
her marriage with the young King of France, said,
probably with truth, that Queen Mary held easy and
confidential communications with him about the several
princes named to her, as the Archduke Charles, the
Prince of Ferrara, several princes of Germany, and the
1 See Documents, Labanoff, i. 248, 295.
* Cheruel, 35. Papiers d'Etat du Cardinal de Granvelle, vii. 208.
MARRIAGE NEGOTIATIONS, 1563-65. 253
Prince of Conde, an alliance with whom would accom-
plish the desirable end of bringing the house of Bour-
bon on closer terms with the house of Guise. The
ambassador hinted that a marriage with the Duke of
Anjou would enable her to return to France. To this
she said, with a touch of graceful sentiment quite her
own, that indeed no other kingdom in the world had
such a hold upon her as France, where she passed her
happy youth, and had the honour to wear the crown ;
but appropriate to this honour, it would hardly be
becoming for her to return thither to fill a lower
place, leaving her own country a prey to the factions
by which it was rent ; and then as to the matter of
dignity, she had high expectations from certain sug-
gestions about an alliance with Don Carlos, who would
succeed to the great empire of Philip II. It was on
this alliance that her mind was bent, for she spoke
of it twice emphatically, in the midst of the slighting-
remarks in which she passed the others in review. 1
She intrusted her secret foreign messenger Raulet,
and one less known, called Chesein, to make for her
those more full and confidential communications which
she could not always trust on paper. 2 What remains
of this correspondence shows that much more existed,
and that there were many communications to her friends
abroad, which she rather trusted to the spoken explana-
tions of faithful agents than to letters.
The fragmentary traces of her exertions in this cause
give some insight into the extent of the system of
secret communication with her friends on the Continent
which she had established. Alava, the Spanish am-
1 Memoires, liv. v. c. 11.
* See LabanoiF generally, down to 1564. Che'ruel, 37.
254 QUEEN MARY.
bassador in France, is found writing repeatedly to
Philip II. himself, in the year 1564 and in the early
part of 1565, with statements how Beaton, the exiled
Archbishop of Glasgow, whom he calls Queen Mary's
secretary, presses for a definitive determination from
Madrid on the question whether the marriage is to be
or not. On the 15th of March 1565, he communicates
the assurance of Beaton that unless the King of Spain
come to the rescue, she will be compelled to throw
herself away on a cousin of her own namely, Henry
Darnley; and it is represented that she is deserted by
her brother Murray, and driven by Queen Elizabeth to
this undesirable union. A despatch of the 4th of June
states that there is yet time, for she is not yet married,
and ardently desires the protection of the King of
Spain. This last appeal was written seven weeks
before her marriage. 1
It is doubtful whether Queen Elizabeth, if she knew
even that this project had been entertained, was aware
how pertinaciously it was pressed. Knox, w T hose com-
munications gave him means of accurate intelligence
from the Continent, seems to have known something
of what was going on, when he made those allusions
to the queen's marriage which aroused her high dis-
pleasure. There is evidence that the ever vigilant
Catherine of Medici had considerable knowledge of
the affair, and continued to be busily counterplotting.
In letters written in cipher she earnestly pressed it on
Bochetel, Bishop of Rennes, the French ambassador at
the Emperor of Germany's Court, to defeat the Spanish
1 Extraits des Correspondances de Don Frances de Alava, du Secre"-
tair Aguilon, &c., Ambassadeurs ou Charges d' Affaires de Philippe II. en
France de 1563 a 1 587. Teulet, vol. iii. 1 et seq.
MARRIAGE NEGOTIATIONS, 1563-65. 255
match by pressing the proposal for Mary's marriage
with the Archduke Charles. 1 She sent Castelnau to
Britain professedly to arrange a marriage between
Mary and her son the Duke of Anjou, the King of
France's younger brother, and consequently the brother
of Mary's dead husband. It was on the same mission
that Castelnau was intrusted with the equally sincere
proposal of a marriage between the young King of
France and Elizabeth.
This king himself was among the reputed expectants
of the hand of Mary; he is even said to have been
deeply in love with her. Any project for their union,
if it was ever really entertained at any time, had not
vitality enough to call out the king's mother's active
opposition, though her opinion against it is pretty clear.
She says the rumours about it were carried so far as
to contain an assertion that the Pope's dispensation
for a marriage so far within the forbidden degrees had
been applied for, and was expected to arrive ; but at
the same time she says that this rumour was circulated
for the purpose of concealing a project for marrying
the young king to a granddaughter of the emperor, and
that the author of the rumour was the King of Spain,
who sought in this manner to stop a marriage which
would too closely unite France and the house of
Hapsburg. 2 It is on the correspondence of the period,
too, that, conscious how strongly the poor youth was
attached to her, Mary threatened to accept him, in
the hope that the threat would bring Philip II. to
terms. 3
1 Additions aux Memoires de Castelnau, liv. iii. 552.
8 Ibid.
3 Spanish Correspondence quoted, Mignet, i. 134.
256 QUEEN MARY.
Among the other Continental dignitaries not already
named who, by their own desire or the schemes of
diplomatists, were counted among the suitors for
Queen Mary's hand, there were the young Count of
Orleans, of the house of Dunois, the nephew of her
mother's first husband ; the Duke of Nemours, of the
house of Savoy ; and the Duke of Ferrara. Greater
than any of these was the young King of Denmark.
The unhappy Eric, King of Sweden, was another
competitor for her hand ; and his suit was pressed with
considerable earnestness for nearly three years after
her arrival in Scotland. His subsequent misfortunes
were caused by personal defects, which were not likely
to be considered in the estimate of his claim. Politi-
cally, such a union would have been the best that
could be found for the Protestant party; and Queen
Elizabeth, if the affair had not been one about which
female caprices and jealousies had got possession of
her, would certainly have felt that a union between
Scotland and a Protestant state fast rising into the
position of a great European power was sound policy
for the Protestant interest, and would have furthered
the claims of the King of Sweden with her usual energy.
Mary herself had, as we have seen, her own designs,
to which it was not convenient to attract attention by
the peremptory rejection of other proposals, and the
negotiation with Sweden was allowed barely to live
until it exhausted itself.
All this while there passed between the two queens
expressions of cordial sympathy and intimacy, Mary
throughout leaning with seductive confidingness on
o o o
the counsel of her royal sister in the serious affair of
her marriage. It is observable, however, that among
MARRIAGE NEGOTIATIONS, 1563-65. 257
her many letters to Queen Elizabeth which have been
preserved, none are in the genial easy spirit of her
French letters written with her own hand to her
friends abroad. Whether she could write in English
or Scotch at that time is, as we have seen, questionable.
The few letters to Elizabeth in French, and the much
larger number in Scotch, are drawn by secretaries, and
only pass out of the etiquette of state papers to express
the feeling of cordial attachment and sympathy which
the draughtsman was instructed to throw into his
communication. Throughout, in the midst of the
most profuse professions of regard and confidence,
Mary is firm on the one essential point between them
she will give no distinct assent or ratification to the
treaty Of Edinburgh; and in the arrangements for their
meeting, it was stipulated that "the said Queen of
Scots shall not be pressed with anything she shall
show herself to mislike, before that she be freely re-
turned into her own realm." 1 This meeting, which
was never to be, went so far on the face of the nego-
tiations that the French ambassador De Foix reported
to Catherine of Medici how it was to be held at Not-
tingham on the 8th of September 1562. He wrote in
great alarm, anticipating a cordial alliance between the
two queens, which would extinguish all remains of the
ancient alliance with Scotland, and give England such
an increase of power as would probably soon be proved
in the recapture of Calais. 2
But at that time the great civil war had begun in
which the Guises led the contest against the Hugue-
nots, as representing not only the interests of Catholi-
cism but the throne itself, since the king was in their
i Labanoff, i. 152. 2 Teulet, ii. 24.
VOL. IV. R
258 QUEEN MARY.
possession. Queen Elizabeth sent over troops to aid
the Huguenots. Randolph officially communicated
this act to Queen Mary, who received the information
in sadness, but in candour and courtesy, saying she
believed her uncles were true subjects of their prince,
and did but execute their orders; adding, that " she was
not so unreasonable as to condemn those who differed
from her in opinion, still less was she inclined on their
account to abate anything of the friendship she felt for
his mistress the Queen of England." The astute re-
porter of this scene assured Cecil, his master, in the
end of December 1563, that Mary heard almost as
seldom from France as the King of Muscovy. 1
In fact, the gifted pupil of the Italianised French
Court, under her winning smile and the bland courtesy
which seemed also so full of candour, kept impene-
trably hidden a subtle dissimulation, which was high
art beside the clumsv cunning of Elizabeth and her
/ CJ
English advisers, who could not rid themselves of the
consciousness that they were doing what was uncon-
genial to British natures, and were ever apt to overact
or otherwise bungle their part. At Holyrood the
practised statesman felt secure in his communications
with a woman, young, gentle, and inexperienced, whose
weaknesses were a careless frivolity and too easy re-
liance on others. At Westminster the same practised
statesman would have an uneasy consciousness that
there was duplicity in the communication with him,
though he might not be able to trace it home.
In the course of the friendly messages between the
two queens, which chiefly now bore on the question of
the marriage, Sir James Melville was sent to Elizabeth.
1 Document quoted, P. F. Tytler, vi. 269.
ELIZABETH AND LEICESTER, 1564-65. 259
He was a shrewd observer with a strong sense of the
ludicrous, as well as an accomplished courtier ; and his
account of the attentions paid to him, the professions
lavished on him, and the tricks, as they might be
termed, to secure his confidence, is highly amusing.
He was not for a moment deceived, and set down the
whole as dissimulation and jealousy. 1 His mission
occurred at a curious juncture in the affair of the mar-
riage, which gives a zest to his personal sketches of
Darnley, Leicester, and other bystanders, as well as
of Elizabeth herself. We are told how she stealthily
shows him Leicester's picture, comparing the hand-
some courtierly man it represents with " yonder long
lad" the Lord Darnley, and drives the faithful courtier
nearly frantic by determining to have his candid opinion
on her own personal beauty as compared with that of
his mistress. At his wits' end how to give her some
honest praise, he had his opportunity at last, when it
was managed that by chance he should hear her per-
forming on the virginals, and pleaded that while wan-
dering about " his ear was ravished with her melody,
which drew him into the chamber he could scarcely
tell how." 2
Just before this visit Elizabeth had declared herself
on the question of the marriage. She had objected to
every claimant brought forward by others. Her posi-
tion seemed unreasonable ; but when she changed it
for a positive recommendation, she only added amaze-
ment to the other misgivings and difficulties, by pro-
posing her own favourite, Leicester. What did she mean
by this ? was it to extinguish temptation by fixing a
gulf between her and one whom she loved not wisely,
1 Memoirs, 129. * Ibid., 125.
260 QUEEN MARY.
but too well ? Was it to shut the mouth of scandal,
by a sort of protest that she was totally indifferent to
him ? Was it a mere clash into the diplomatic pro-
ceedings about her royal sister's marriage, for the pur-
pose of throwing them into confusion ? These are
questions which those only who know what kind of
sentiments may vibrate through such sinewy hearts as
hers can profess to solve. The proposal scattered dis-
may among Elizabeth's sage advisers, who wist not
what to do. Leicester had been giving himself airs
among them ; and though they might consider him a
rash young man, whose intellect was inflated by intoxi-
cating draughts of regal caresses, yet some of the
wisest of them covertly sought his good wish, as that
of the man who might some day soon be their master.
Randolph, in his confidential communings with Cecil,
muttered his uneasiness in conjectures about "how
unwilling the queen's majesty herself would be to
depart from him, and how hardly his mind could be
diverted or drawn from that worthy room where it is
placed, let any man see, where it cannot be thought
that it is so fixed for ever, that the world would judge
worse of him than of any living man, if he should
not rather yield his life than alter his thoughts." 1
Mary not having fallen in love with Leicester
whom, by the way, she never saw did not abandon
her ambitious projects of a great regal alliance ; and
after having slighted suitors who, if below her mark,
were still royal, received the proposal to marry the
upstart favourite of her rival with an angry disdain,
which she could not or did not wish to conceal.
Murray seemed desirous of the match, at least he spoke
1 Quoted, Tytler, vi. 288.
DARNLEY, 1565. 261
well of it. Leicester himself seems to have been silent,
awaiting his destiny at the hands of Elizabeth.
To this point had come the various negotiations and
intrigues for providing Mary with a husband, when the
tall person and fresh boyish face of a foolish youth
settled the matter by love at first sight. It was at
Wemyss Castle, a weather-beaten fortress on a rock
rising from the northern coast of the Firth of Forth,
that Mary first saw her cousin, Henry Stewart, Lord
Darnley, about the middle of February 1565. He had
just come from England to join his father, and finding
the queen absent from Edinburgh on one of her many
progresses, he took the privilege of a relation to push
on and visit her. They had no sooner met than the
many keen eyes who watched the young widow and
the handsome youth saw what was to be.
The meeting was by no means a matter of accident
on the part of others, though Mary does not appear to
have furthered or expected it. The young man's birth
placed him naturally within the view of those who
busied themselves about the disposal of her hand. He
was of a family wdiich had branched off from the old
Stewart stock before it became royal, and several early
intermarriages connected his ancestry with the reigning
line of the family. His connection with the throne of
Scotland followed that of the house of Hamilton. He
was more closely allied to the English throne, since
his mother, Margaret Douglas, was a daughter of Henry
VJII/s sister Margaret, the widow of James IV., by her
marriage with Angus. According to the rules of strict
lineal descent, Mary was at that time heir to the crown
of England, as the child of Margaret's son, and he was
next after her in succession as the descendant of Mar-
262 QUEEN MARY.
garet's daughter. He was the nearest prince of the
blood in Queen Elizabeth's Court, and Sir James Mel-
ville saw him take that place in one of the ceremonials
of Leicester's promotion. There was much parade, and
some difficulty, about his father, Lennox, obtaining leave
to visit Scotland about his personal affairs, as if both
Elizabeth and the other parties concerned felt that
there was something more in view than the mere
object avowed. It was with the becoming and very
natural profession of joining his father that the young
Darnley visited the queen, and at once found himself
on the summit of fortune's wheel. Elizabeth professed
herself extremely indignant that two of her subjects
should have taken the opportunity of their leave of
absence to transact business so important.
To Murray and the Protestant lords the crisis was
now approaching, and they felt it. Darnley belonged
to the Church of Rome, and thus the question which
religious party should have the influence of the queen's
husband on its side was coming to a determination.
Matters might have been much worse ; and few people
either in England or Scotland then knew the imminent
risk, that the most powerful monarch of the day, who
was at the same time the most ardent champion of
the Popedom, might have a legitimate right to dictate
to Scotland. The Protestant lords felt, however, that
in the prospect of the marriage the queen was showing
the flag of her true party.
Murray resolved at this juncture to try his strength
in a form which suggests strange associations with
subsequent events he tried it not against Darnley him-
self, but against Bothwell, who had just returned from
France, where he had sought refuge from the criminal
DARNLEY, 1565. 263
charge already spoken of. That charge Murray now
urged against him it was the same strange plot
against the queen in which he had the mad Arran
as his confidant arid denouncer.
The indictment against Bothvvell for high treason
came up for trial on the 2d of May 1564, before the
Earl Argyle as Lord Justice-General, one of Murray's
supporters. It is one of the most remarkable instances
on record of a judicial proceeding being turned into a
trial of party strength, yielding only in this character-
istic to another and more memorable trial to which
Bothwell was called. Finding his enemy too strong
for him, he disappeared and was outlawed. Eandolph
reported the triumphant support given to Murray in
these terms : " The company that came to this town in
favour of my Lord of Murray are esteemed five or six
thousand, and for my part I assure your honour I never
saw a greater assembly." It was put on the record of
the trial at Bothwell's instance that he " dare not com-
pear for fear of his life at this time and place, by
reason of the great convention of his enemies and
unfriends." 1 Thus, though his power was tottering,
Murray found and showed that he still ruled in Scot-
land. The terms in which Eandolph continues his let-
ter are curious and significant, as the first traces noted
by a contemporary on the spot of the queen's partiality
for Bothwell yet what the agent meant to convey
was probably rather the evidence of her antipathy to
Murray. "The queen," he says, "has shown herself
now of late to mislike of Murray that he so earnestly
pursued him" namely, Bothwell ; " and further, the
queen would not that the justice-clerk should proceed,
1 Pitcuirn, i. 464*.
264 QUEEN MARY.
which hath bred here so mighty mislikc, and given
occasion to such kind of talk against her grace for
bearing with such men in her own cause, that that
which is already spoken passeth all measure. So many
discontented, so large talk, so plain and open speech,
I never heard in any nation ; and, in my simple judg-
ment, see not but it must burst out to some great
mischief." 1 These sentences, which, estimated by the
light of subsequent events, seem inspired by the spirit
of prophecy, are but Randolph hinting, with the proper
technical mysteriousness, that Murray is going down,
and a new ruling influence arising in Scotland.
It is at this juncture that another remarkable actor
in the tragic events to come appears on the stage
David Rizzio, the Italian. As he is never spoken of
among his contemporaries except either in contempt
or hatred, it is difficult to know his social position
and his personal qualities. He certainly had not that
distinction of birth which would enable him to refer
to his family as one publicly known for its emi-
nence. But people seldom asked about the family of
any of the Italians, so numerously scattered among
the European courts : they were gentlemen at least by
training and education, and able by their subtle talents
to hold their own place among the local feudal aristo-
cracy. Buchanan, to whom we owe nearly all that is
known of his early history, says he was a native of
Turin, and came to Scotland in the train of Morette, or
Moretti, the Piedmontese ambassador, who arrived in
the year 1561, and that he entered the queen's service
as a musician, being a skilful singer and performer. 2
Some writers on the history of Scottish music have
1 Raumer, 46. 2 Buchanan, xvii. 44. See Teulet, ii. 50, 76.
DAVID RIZZIO. 265
suggested, but on no better foundation than his reputed
skill, that he may have been the author of the old
melodies so much loved by natives and admired by
strangers. That he was old, deformed, and strikingly
ugly, has been generally accepted by historians, but is
not said of him by either Knox or Buchanan, both of
whom had opportunities of seeing him, and were not
inclined to forget anything likely to render him odious.
The common notion of his personal appearance seems
to have been derived from the account of Adam Black-
wood, who is very unlikely to have ever seen him ; but
it is a matter of no real moment in the events with
which the poor man was connected.
It is more important to correct another common
supposition, that Mary advanced him to high offices of
state. Such an act might seem naturally a continu-
ation of the practice established under Mary of Lor-
raine as regent ; but the two things are, when examined,
very different. Rizzio was at best a man who had to
find his own livelihood, employed at what his services
were worth to his employer ; the foreigners promoted
by the regent were Frenchmen of high rank sent to
Scotland to carry out the French projects of domina-
tion. There can be no doubt, however, that the Italian
was very valuable to the queen, and very powerful.
Knox seems accurately to describe his official position
in saying, " The queen usit him for secretary in things
that appertainit to her secret affairs in France or else-
where." 1
A skilful person, versed in foreign languages, on
whom she could rely, was extremely valuable to her at
this time. Some other persons flit casually across her
1 Knox, ii. 422.
266 QUEEN MARY.
own correspondence, and the other letters of the period,
in the same capacity. One, named Chesein, carries de-
spatches to her Guise relations and other correspon-
dents, and is also intrusted with verbal communications. 1
A man called Yaxley an Englishman apparently, who
had been secretary to the Council in the reign of
Edward VI. was sent on a special mission to the
Netherlands, where, through the Duchess of Arschot, he
communicated with the Duchess of Parma, the regent,
who thought his communications so important that
she passed him on to deliver them at the Court of
Spain. This man seems to have been a babbler, who
boasted of his diplomatic services and his influences,
and there is no trace of his having been again em-
ployed. His revelations were reported to Elizabeth,
who founded on them in her complaints of the risk
she incurred from the machinations of Mary. 2 Another
of her emissaries was David Chambers, a follower of
Bothwell, a scholar and an author, who had studied
and served abroad, knew the politics and the customs
of most European states, and had no scruples.
The French ambassador mentions an Italian, Fran-
cisque, her maitre d'hdtel, as one of her confidential
advisers ; but the one who, next to Eizzio, seems to
have been deepest in her counsels, was named Eaulet.
He was in the Low Countries transacting business with
the Spanish authorities at this juncture, while Beaton
represented her in France. Rizzio then was virtually
her secretary for the foreign affairs, in relation to which
these were her emissaries or ambassadors. 3 There was
1 Labanoff, i. 200, 209. See above, p. 253.
4 Teulet, ii. 53, 84.
3 Ibid., 76. Labanoff, i. 200, 202.
FOREIGN RELATIONS, 1564-65. 267
serious business in hand for them all, since the crisis
was approaching which found Mary a member of the
Catholic League. It is part of the mystery, however,
of the poor Italian's history, that, though he was thus
deeply occupied in politics, scarcely any traces of his
movements have survived. He is not referred to so
frequently as Eaulet and Chesein in the correspond-
ence before his death. There is scarcely a known
document under his hand, and it has been difficult to
identify his signature.
It was rumoured at the time that the Italian did
his best to forward the marriage with Darnley. Such
a course was natural ; it would unite duty with self-
interest. Darnley belonged to " The Church," and so
the claims of religion were satisfied. He was not a
man likely to govern without help, and supersede the
queen's adviser ; while under any great foreign poten-
tate Bizzio might have been nobody. It was well, too,
if other objects did not preponderate, to keep favour by
giving the advice most agreeable to his patroness.
On the 15th of May 1565, a special council or
assembly of great feudal lords and officers of state was
held at Stirling. It was not a Parliament, nor was it
a mere Privy Council. There is no authentic list of
those present, nor are there the means of ascertain-
ing the criterion on which they were selected. It is
stated, however, that among those present were Hamil-
ton, Duke of Chatelherault, always called " The Duke,"
with the Lords of Athole, Ruthven, Morton, Glen-
cairn, Lindsay, Rothes, Glammis, Semple, Boyd, and
several others high in feudal influence. Murray
was present ; but singularly enough, considering the
business to be transacted, the name of Lennox does
268 QUEEN MARY.
not occur on the lists. 1 To tins assemblage Mary
announced her intended marriage with Darnley. A
curious incident happened outside the castle where
the meeting was held. Throckmorton, coming post
from England to argue and protest against the pro-
ceedings which were to take place that day, arrived at
the gate of Stirling Castle while the lords were assem-
bled. Though he had sent his cousin Middlemore
before him to demand an audience, he found the gate
shut, and a deaf ear given to all his demands and
prayers for admission. He was obliged to seek his
own lodging in the town, whence he w^as afterwards
called by the queen to an audience. 2 After his audience
was over, Darnley was created Lord of Ardmanach and
Earl of Koss, as steps to the rank he was presently to
be lifted to. This earldom, bringing down the tradi-
tions of the old Maarmorate, was, as we have seen, re-
served as a title to the royal family, after the manner
in which the French monarchy reserved for the princes
of the blood the titles of the royal fiefs which were
from time to time annexed to the crown.
Difficulties were now thickening round Murray and
the Protestant party. The Lennox family recovered
their great feudal power in the west. In the north
the Gordons, being left for some time unmolested, were
gathering up the fragments of their old authority.
Other men of influence, who were secret Romanists
or but doubtful Protestants a body larger among the
aristocracy than the Reformation party now found
that they could act according to their inclinations or
interests without danger. There was but one reliance
for the Reformation party that England would come
1 Keith (8vo edition), ii. 280. 2 Ibid.
REACTION OF THE OLD CHURCH, 1564-65. 269
to the rescue. The opportunity for carrying out the
policy begun by Henry VI 1 1., and establishing an
English supremacy supported by Protestantism in
Scotland, had never been so good as now, when two
parties, hating each other, and each in fear of extirpa-
tion by the other, were trembling in the balance. The
opportunity was so good that the Protestant party in
Scotland seemed not to doubt that it would be seized.
Elizabeth's advisers thought so too, and felt provoked
as the time for action slipped past. Eandolph, in his
impatience, pressed it on Cecil that if troops were not
to be sent, money alone, and but little of that, might
accomplish great things. " A little now spent in the
beginning affordeth double fruit. What were it for
the queen's majesty, if she list not to do it by force,
with the expense of three or four thousand pounds, to
do with this country what she would ?" l
Elizabeth, however, was sullenly immovable. She
had protested in various forms against the marriage,
and even by some stretch of the law had got the only
member of Darnley's family left in England his
mother, Lady Lennox committed to the Tower. She
had even obtained resolutions by the English Council
condemnatory of the marriage, as a matter affecting
an English subject of the blood royal and the succes-
sion of the crown of England. But there were reasons
why the Queen of England's opposition should be
limited to mere words. The marriage was, on the
whole, not unsatisfactory. It was to the two queens
what an act of folly or imprudence is in ordinary life
rivals and competitors must for decency's sake protest
against it, but are not sincerely vexed at heart to hear
1 Quoted, Tytler, vi. 344.
270 QUEEN MARY.
of a fall which will substitute pity for rivalry. If,
when the Armada was in the Channel, Elizabeth knew
and remembered how near, to all human appearance,
her rival was to the throne of Spain, she must have
more fully estimated the peril escaped by England
and Protestantism in the advancement of her worth-
less cousin.
The profession of amity, however, between the two
queens was kept up, and, on Mary's side at least, with
great skill to the last. She commissioned Lethington,
who was in England, to press for Elizabeth's approval
of the marriage. That rather self-willed and tortuous
statesman, however, had his own views, and resolved
to pursue them. He was on his way back to Scotland,
probably alarmed at the course of matters there, when
he met Beaton, Mary's messenger, at Newark, and
finding his worst fears confirmed by the instructions
sent to him, instead of returning to London, joined
Throckmorton, the ambassador sent from England to
remonstrate with Mary; and, like the other chiefs of
the Protestant party, consulted with him how to
thwart the marriage. She sent afterwards John Hay,
commendator of Balmerinoch, called also her " prin-
cipal master of requests," with instructions dated 1 4th
June 1565, in which she professed an anxiety to con-
ciliate Elizabeth, and obtain her approval of the now
arranged marriage. 1
It was necessary, however, that professions of amity
between the sovereigns should cease ; and Randolph,
who had the disagreeable part of the discussion on his
hands, was the first to feel the change. Writing to
Leicester on the 5th of February 1564, he says in
1 Koith, ii. 293 ; LaVmnoff, i. 271 : Teulc-t, ii. 56.
REACTION OF THE OLD CHURCH, 1564-65. 271
his simplicity, " It may please your lordship to under-
stand that this queen is now content to give good
ear unto the queen's majesty's suit in your behalf."
Blandly satisfied about his reception in Scotland, he
continues : " Greater entertainment or greater honour
could not be done to the greatest ambassador that
the queen's majesty could have sent unto this queen
than was done to me at St Andrews. For four days
together I dined and supped daily at her grace's
table. I sat next unto herself, saving worthy Beton,
our mistress. I had longer talk and conference with
her than any other during the time ; enough, I assure
your lordship, if I were able to report all, can make all
the ill-willers to both these queens' felicities to burst
asunder for envy." l Afterwards, on the 2d of July,
when he had been, partly with persuasion and partly
with threat, urging Darnley to go back like an obedient
subject to England, and thereupon craved audience of
the queen, " I was received," he says, " in stranger
sort than ever I was before, as a man new and first
come into her presence, whom she had never seen." 2
So far as the Court was concerned, the English con-
nection might now be considered at an end. The
Court of France was not in a position to exercise its
old influence in Scotland ; but when the civil conflicts
were over and the Guises supreme, the French alliance
might be expected to revive with renewed vigour.
It is stated in Knox's History and elsewhere that
the queen strove hard to persuade Murray to assent
to the marriage. His determined refusal was the key-
note to the views of those who still adhered to the
1 Wright's Queen Elizabeth, i. 188.
8 Letter to Cecil, Keith, ii. 298.
2/2 QUEEN MARY.
Protestant party. It was intended to hold a Parlia-
ment at Perth, and there solemnly desire the assent of
the Estates of Scotland to the union ; but the position
taken up by Murray and his friends suggested that it
would be the safer policy to evade a Parliament, as its
concurrence could not be calculated on, and discus-
sions of which no one could foresee the result might
arise from bringing together parties fiercely opposed.
A General Assembly meeting in Edinburgh at the
time when it was intended that the Parliament should
have met at Perth, afforded in the mean time a sort of
rallying-point for the more zealous of the Protestant
party. This meeting had been preceded by a local
event of an exciting nature. It had become the practice
to expect a scuffle with the followers of the old religion
during their Easter celebrations. It is related in Knox's
History how some of the brethren, " diligent to search
such things," having with them one of the bailies of
Edinburgh, " took one Sir John Carvet, riding hard, as
he had now ended the saying of the mass, and con-
veyed him, together with the master of the house and
one or two more of the assistants, to the Tolbooth,
and immediately revested him, with all his garments
upon him, and so carried him to the market-cross,
where they set him on high, binding the chalice to
his hand, and himself fast tied to the said cross, where
he tarried the space of one hour, during which time
the boys served him with his Easter eggs. The next
day following, the said Carvet, with his assistants, were
accused and convinced by an assize, according to the
Act of Parliament ; and albeit for the same offence he
deserved death, yet for all punishment he was set
upon the market-cross for the space of three or four
REACTION OF THE OLD CHURCH, 1564-65. 273
hours, the hangman standing by and keeping him, the
boys and others busy with egg-casting." l
Then arose a tumult in which the poor priest might
have fared still worse, but the provost coming with the
town guard carried him back to the Tolbooth. The
magistrates received a royal letter, calling on them to
prosecute the rioters, and altogether in a more peremp-
tory tone than any of the previous communications
from the queen in matters where her own religion was
concerned. The priest was released, and the matter
went no further.
This was felt, however, as a heavy grievance by the
Protestant clergy, and helped with many other things
to strengthen the zeal with which they met in General
Assembly, in the Nether Tolbooth, on the 25th of June
1565. They resolved, in the first place, "that the
papistical and blasphemous mass, with all papistry and
idolatry of Paip's jurisdiction, be universally suppressed
and abolished throughout the haill realm, not only in
the subjects, but in the queen's majesty's own person,
with punishment against all persons that shall be
deprehended to transgress and offend the same ; and
that the sincere Word of God and His true religion
now presently received might be established, approven,
and ratified throughout the whole realm, as well in the
queen's majesty's own person as in the subjects, with-
out any impediment." 2
It was further proposed that there should be a cer-
tain amount of compulsory attendance at worship by
Act of Parliament. The Assembly took the opportunity
to urge that the large ecclesiastical revenues other-
wise disposed of, under the arrangement made in
1 Knox, ii. 476. 2 Book of the Universal Kirk.
VOL. IV. S
274 QUEEN MARY.
1563, should be transferred to the Protestant Church.
Five members of the Assembly were appointed to pre-
sent these "articles" to the queen ; and it is observable
that they were all, though worshipful gentlemen, persons
of little note in the history of the period, as if the pre-
sentation were a mere form, and not an agreeable one.
The five commissioners were Walter Lundie of
Lundie, in Fifeshire ; William Cunningham of Cun-
ninghamhead, in Ayrshire ; William Durham of
Grange, in Forfarshire ; George Hume of Spot, in
Berwickshire ; and James Barren, burgess of Edin-
burgh. 1
These commissioners went to the queen at Perth,
and waited on her, " desiring and requiring her high-
ness most humbly to advise therewith, and to give
them an answer." Having retired to their quarters,
expecting next morning to be summoned to receive the
answer, they found that the queen had slipped out of
their hands and gone to Dunkeld. Thither they fol-
lowed her. They obtained audience, and were told
by the queen that she required the advice of her Coun-
cil in the matter, but that she proposed in a week to
be in Edinburgh, and then they would get answer.
The answer, in as far as it has been preserved,
exemplifies a peculiar distinction in practice between
the two great creeds that Roman Catholics, when not
predominant, profess principles of toleration ; w^hile
among Calvinistic Protestants, the time when they
have least power is that in which they profess their
most intolerant doctrines. She assured her loving
subjects that as she had not in times past, so would
she not hereafter, "press the conscience of any, but
1 Knox, ii. 486, Laing's note.
REACTION OF THE OLD CHURCH, 1564-65. 275
that they may worship God in such sort as they are
persuaded in their conscience to be best." She meekly
desired the same toleration for her own conscience.
But even in this placid document there were sugges-
tive allusions to the quarter to which the queen was
then looking for strength and support, and it was not
one from which the principles of toleration were likely
to radiate. Among the reasons why she must .ad-
here to her religion was that by apostasy " she should
lose the friendship of the King of France the married
ally of this realm and of other great princes her
friends and confederates, who could take the same in
evil part, and of whom she may look for their great
support in all her difficulties." The abandonment of
the ecclesiastical revenues, so far as they were in the
possession of the crown, was civilly declined. 1
It appears to have crossed the thoughts of the more
zealous members of the Assembly in the mean time to
organise an armed resistance ; for we are told that
they assembled on St Leonard's Craig, a small rocky
eminence between Edinburgh and Arthur's Seat,
" where they concluded they would defend themselves,
and for the same purpose elected eight persons of
the most able, two of every quarter, to see that the
brethren should be ready armed." 2 Four burgesses
were cited to answer for this affair ; but the prosecu-
tion, of which this was the preliminary step, seems to
have been abandoned. 3 This incident was supposed
to be connected with the designs of Murray, who was
then in his mother's Castle of Lochleven, ill or pretend-
ing to be so. The queen was living at Perth, where
the Parliament was to be held. She had promised to
1 Knox, ii. 488, 489. 8 Ibid., 487. 3 Ibid., 490, Laing's note.
2/6 QUEEN MARY.
attend the christening of the Lord Livingstone's heir
at Callander House near Falkirk, and was prepared to
ride thither in company with Darnley. They started
together, with a strong escort, at an early hour, and
reached Callander by ten o'clock : and the reason as-
signed for the feat was that thus they avoided an
ambush, to be laid by Murray and his confederates,
to attack and seize them at a point where the road
passed through a rugged defile of the Ochils. The
elements of the conspiracy have been very distinctly
set forth. Murray himself held Lochleven Castle, on
the line of their journey; the Earl of Argyle was to
descend with a force from his fortress of Castle Camp-
bell, on the brow of the Ochils ; and the Duke of
Chatelherault had made his preparations at Kinneil,
near to the feny where the betrothed lovers would
cross the Forth. It would not be difficult to believe
in such a conspiracy, if tolerably well vouched; but
there is scarcely a vestige of evidence in its support. 1
Murray, on his part, maintained that his life was in
danger, and kept himself among his own immediate
supporters. He was summoned to Court, and offered
a safe-conduct for himself and eighty attendants ; but
he declined to appear he was making arrangements
for armed resistance. To prepare for a crisis, a royal
summons was issued on the 22d of July, for a " raid "
or general gathering of the crown vassals and their
attendants.
The marriage of the queen and Darnley, who had
just been created Duke of Albany, was celebrated on
the 29th of July 1.365. It was preceded by a Papal
i See all that can be said for it in Chalmers, i. 140 ; Tytler, vi. 349 ;
Miss Strickland, iv. 148.
MARRIAGE TO DARNLEY, 1565. 277
dispensation, on account of affinity in blood, and the
ceremony was performed according to the office of
the Romish Church. The queen, following the eti-
quette of a widow of France, wore her solemn state
mourning dress, or dule robe, until the festival after
the ceremony, when, as a wedded wife, she cast it off,
and put on gayer attire. At the festival the cere-
monials were imitated from the French Court, which
was foremost in the practice of exacting menial ser-
vices to the person of royalty from subjects of the
highest rank. Lord Athole served as sewer, Morton
as carver, and Crawford as cupbearer. 1
1 Randolph's Letter, in Wright, i. 202, and elsewhere.
CHAPTER XLIV.
(Continued^
A STRONG GOVERNMENT DARNLEY GETS THE TITLE OF KING -
PARLIAMENTARY DISPLEASURE WITH THE ASSUMPTION ARMING
OF MURRAY AND HIS SUPPORTERS THEIR DISPERSAL PRESENT
THEMSELVES TO ELIZABETH - HOW TREATED BY HER DANGER
OF ELIZABETH AND THE PROTESTANT CAUSE PROJECTS OF THE
ROMANIST POWERS - CONFERENCE AT BAYONNE - PHILIP,
CATHERINE OF MEDICI, AND ALVA - DARNLEY's CHARACTER
DEVELOPS ITSELF - ODIOUS AMONG THE COURTIERS - HIS
WIFE'S APPRECIATION OF HIM PROGRESS OF RIZZIo's INFLU-
ENCE - PROJECT FOR PUTTING HIM OUT OF THE WAY THE BAND
FOR HIS SLAUGHTER ARRANGEMENTS FOR EFFECTING IT THE
SUPPER-PARTY RIZZIO DRAGGED OUT AND SLAIN - INQUIRY
WHEN THE QUEEN KNEW OF HIS DEATH? - HER CONDUCT BEFORE
AND AFTER THAT KNOWLEDGE LURES BACK HER HUSBAND
RETURN OF MURRAY AND HIS FOLLOWERS FROM ENGLAND
MURRAY MAKES PEACE SECRET ARRANGEMENT OF THE QUEEN
AND HER HUSBAND THEIR ESCAPE TO DUNBAR.
THE world has been so accustomed to treat this mar-
riage as a rash love-match, that what political signifi-
cance it had is overlooked. This was far less momen-
tous than the questions which a union with Spain or
France might have raised, but it was not without im-
portance. Darnley's mother did not forget that she,
like Elizabeth, was a granddaughter of Henry VII.,
A STRONG GOVERNMENT, 1565. 279
with this difference, according to the notion of herself
and her religious party, that she was not, like the
woman on the throne, tainted with illegitimacy. 1
The new sovereigns began their reign with measures
of successful vigour, which seemed to promise a strong
and orderly government under the old religion and the
old regal authority. A portion of the Protestant barons,
including Murray, Glencairn, Eothes, and Kirkcaldy of
Grange, resolved to combine against the new order of
things. They stated that the laws against idolatry
were not enforced, and that the mass and other abomi-
nations were tolerated. They stated, further, that the
true religion was oppressed; and though this was not
according to strict fact, unless the countenance given
to Popery were to be set down as oppression, yet it is
plain that Protestantism was in imminent danger ; for
the queen and her supporters were as fully determined
to suppress Heresy whenever they were able, as Knox
and his party were to suppress Idolatry. But there
were other grounds for opposition of a constitutional
character. The queen had not ventured to face a Par-
liament, and ask their sanction to her late doings. She
had not only taken to herself a husband without con-
sulting the great Council of the nation an indecorous
and ungracious thing but she had proclaimed her hus-
band as King of the Scots. It was maintained that this
was illegal, since the monarch reigned by the assent of
the Estates of the realm, and could not transfer any
portion of the sovereign power to another without the
intervention of these Estates. The power asserted by
the Estates in such constitutional matters was very wide,
1 For an animated account of the little opposition court presided over
by Lady Lennox, in Yorkshire, see Froude, vii. 387, 389.
280 QUEEN MARY.
and there was at least no precedent to support a denial
of the claim in question. The portion of the declara-
tion issued by the discontented barons at Dumfries
which refers to this matter is extremely valuable, as
one of the few lights, other than what the acts of the
Estates themselves give us, on the constitutional power
claimed for the Parliament of Scotland. They say
" Of the same sinister counsel doth proceed that her
majesty, without the advice of her Estates, yea, without
the advice of the nobility either demanded or given,
hath made and proclaimed a king over us, giving unto
him, so far as in her highness lieth, power over our
lands, lives, and heritages, and whatsoever is dearest
unto us on the earth. In the which doing the ancient
laws and liberties of this realm are utterly broken, vio-
lated, and transgressed, and the liberty of the crown
and state royal of Scotland manifestly overthrown, that
he was made king over us that neither hath the title
thereof by any lineal descent of blood and nature,
neither by consent of the Estates." l It was after-
wards put by Cecil to the French ambassador Le Croc,
as a justification of the conduct of Elizabeth, that the
assumption of the title of king without the assent of
the Estates was contrary to law; and the Frenchman
was reminded that even so illustrious a personage as
the queen's first husband, Francis, had not taken the
title of King of Scotland until it had been accorded
by consent of the Estates. 2
Meanwhile Randolph and Mr Tamworth, who had
been sent to join him as a sort of colleague and adviser,
with special instructions as to the views of the English
Court on the affair of the marriage, found it expedient
1 Caldenvood, Appendix, ii. 573. * Teulet, ii. 73.
A STRONG GOVERNMENT, 1565. 28l
to adopt the view of the declaration, and to deny
Darnley's right to act as King Henry. Tamworth
suffered in the body for a rigid adherence to this
principle. Refusing to accept of a safe-conduct in
the name of " King Henry," he was detained on his
way back to England by the border freebooters, who
secured him in Hume Castle, an act which he said had
been suggested to them from Holyrood.
Those bound to give suit and military service were
repeatedly required to attend the " raid" or array. The
absence of important persons from these levies pointed
them out as disaffected, and at the same time afforded
means of punishing them by feudal forfeitures for de-
fault. It was thought fit at the same time specially to
cite Murray and a few of the great discontented leaders
by public proclamation, with the usual threat of prose-
cution for treason in case of disobedience. On the 1st
of August, Murray was charged to appear under threat
of denunciation " to the horn," or by public blast of
trumpet ; and on the 6th he was denounced accordingly,
for, not being a man who would voluntarily place him-
self in the power of his enemies, he did not appear.
He, with the other discontented barons-, assembled
at Paisley. Those who had joined the royal raid
at the same time marched to Glasgow, so that the
two forces were close together. The discontented
lords, who with their followers made altogether about
a thousand horsemen, passed by Glasgow within sight
of the royal pair, and took up their position at Hamil-
ton. The duke was their avowed leader; but he had
purposes of his own, differing from theirs, to serve, and
they did not work well into each other's hands. They
left him, and rode on to Edinburgh. There a provost
282 QUEEN MARY.
had been chosen from their own party; but, in obedi-
ence to a royal letter, the appointment was cancelled,
and a nominee of the Court appointed, who, when the
cavalcade approached, directed the alarm-bells to be
rung, and endeavoured to prevent the strangers from
getting within the gates. They succeeded in entering
the town, but were fired at from the castle. They
issued missive writings, calling on the Protestants to
rally round them; but they utterly failed in their en-
deavour, and gained no recruits. The royal army, about
five thousand strong, had in the mean time marched to
Hamilton, and was on its way to Edinburgh. Unable
to meet it, the malcontents retreated to Dumfries,
whence they issued the remonstrance already referred to.
The king and queen now took prompt measures,
for indeed the shortness of the service which could be
exacted from the feudal levy required that what was
done should be done quickly. They were joined at
that juncture by Bothwell, an adherent invaluable
when daring and promptitude were needed. This was
the beginning of the effective services which placed
him, although a subject, in the position of one to
whom his monarch owed heavy obligations. He came
then from France, bringing with him an agent of many
of his doings David Chambers, a scholar and an
author, whose naturally dark and subtle spirit was
thoroughly trained in the unscrupulous policy of the
Court of France. There arrived nearly at the same
time from France the Lord Seton, a zealous member
of the old faith, and an able and daring man. He
was the head of a house which had been powerful,
until the triumph of the Reformation had over-
whelmed it ; but now, when the day of reaction had
A STRONG GOVERNMENT, 1565. 283
come, he returned to re-establish its influence. At
the same time George Lord Gordon, the representative
of the ruined house of Huntly, who was in law a de-
nounced fugitive, was first relieved from this penal
condition, and then step by step restored to the honours
and, as far as that was practicable, to the vast pos-
sessions which had enabled his father to wage war
with the crown. This occurred in August. Some
months afterwards, as we shall see, Huntly 's sister
was married to Both well ; it was a political alliance for
strengthening the cause of the queen and her husband.
They seem in the mean time to have pressed pretty
hard on the country in exacting the feudal levy. It
could not be detained for a period sufficient for a
campaign, and an attempt seems to have been made
to remedy this by repeated citation. On the 23d of
July, before the marriage, the whole feudal army
had been cited to appear at Edinburgh, with fifteen
days' provision. On the 6th of August there was
another citation of a raid to attend the king and
queen on a progress through Fife. On the 22d of
August all were again called to Edinburgh, with fifteen
days' provision ; and on the 1 7th of September the
fencible men of the southern counties were cited to
appear at Stirling on the 1st of October. Absence
from these raids incurred feudal forfeitures. These
had to be levied by the courts of law ; and it would
depend on the question whether the sovereign or some
party among his subjects had the upper hand, how far
the penalties would be levied. On the present occa-
sion the crown was triumphant, and the recusants had
to fear the worst. Their danger enabled the sovereign
to extract aids from them in the shape of compromises,
284 QUEEN MARY.
in which the legal proceedings were bought off.
Making a progress northward through Fifeshire, money
was thus raised from several of the gentry and royal
burghs, including a considerable sum extracted from the
town of Dundee. Edinburgh was peculiarly disaffected.
Certain of the citizens being required to appear at Holy-
rood, a composition was demanded, which they refused
to pay, trusting probably that they would be able to
evade or defy its enforcement by the courts of law.
A transaction curiously suggestive of the feudal usages
of the day followed. Money was much needed by the
Court, and if threats would not force enough from the
citizens of Edinburgh, any other available means must
be taken. In the end a bargain was concluded, and
they advanced a thousand pounds, receiving in pledge
of repayment the superiority or feudal lordship of the
neighbouring town of Leith. The Government re-
pented of the bargain, and tried to cancel it ; but the
corporation of Edinburgh had already taken feudal
sasine, and their hold was absolute, through the un-
yielding forms of the feudal law. It was the privilege
of the burgesses of royal burghs to be the direct vassals
of the crown ; but by this transaction one corporation
was made feudally subordinate to another an arrange-
ment which naturally occasioned many irritating dis-
putes in later times.
Mary loudly demanded aid from France, and had it
been obtained the peril of Elizabeth's crown and the
Protestant cause would have been greatly increased.
But it was not for Catherine of Medici, if she could
decently help it, to let the fast ally of Philip of Spain
and her own old rival in France become Queen of
England. Castelnau de Mauvissiere was sent to
A STRONG GOVERNMENT, 1565. 285
Scotland to keep matters quiet, and a better messenger
for such a purpose could not be found. Grave, con-
scientious, friendly, and peaceful, lie was beyond his
age, and was peculiarly free of the impulsive, warlike,
and ostentatious propensities which have characterised
his countrymen in all ages. His lengthy, and to all ap-
pearance faithful, record of his endeavours, only recently
become known, throws a powerful light on the inner
workings of the political mechanism. He brought with
him certain letters from the young King of France to
the discontented lords, urging them to quietness and to
compromise. This, it will be observed, was in accord-
ance with that patronising practice of the French
Court, which was apt to overlook the diplomatic rule
that sovereigns are only to communicate with sove-
reigns. In a four hours' interview which Castelnau
had with Mary, she tried on him all the various re-
sources of her passionate and subtle nature. She
became tempestuously angry, she cried, she besought
him with seductive remindings of his old kindly
attachment to the house of Guise surely he would
not do to her, a crowned queen, the dishonour of
holding communication in name of another sovereign
with her rebel subjects. Rather let it go forth that his
mission is to arrange for the powerful armament that
is to be sent by her brother of France to crush them.
She spoke, seemingly, with the vehement impetuosity
of one who had cast her fortunes on a die and was to
abide the issue. The Frenchman spoke earnestly of
the miseries of civil war, of which he had seen only
too much at home ; it might be so, but she was a sove-
reign, and was not to let her kingdom become a re-
O ' o
public she would die sooner; and so, whether helped
286 QUEEN MARY.
from France or not, she would go at the head of her
faithful subjects and put down the rebels. Castelnau,
following his instructions, and totally unsuspicious of
what was to occur in his own country, told her that
the discontented lords only sought what was conceded
to the Huguenots of France permission to follow in
peace their own religious observance, what we in this
day call toleration ; but she indignantly answered that
they were her rebellions subjects, that they were con-
spiring against her own and her husband's life.
Castelnau ventured respectfully to hint that this was
an exaggeration put into her head by their calumnious
enemies ; for courts, he said, were haunted by back-
biters, who attacked the absent and defenceless ; and
as to the faults of her subjects, it were better that she
should overlook these than drive them to the extremity
of civil war. Those councillors who were loudest for
war were not always the most valiant when it came
to action ; and many were the princes who had begun
a civil contest in the haughty resolution of humbling
ambitious subjects, and had come to see the day when
they would have been glad to buy peace with the con-
cessions at first arrogantly denied. The sage and mo-
derate statesman pleaded in vain ; the haughty queen
had now taken the course she had long kept in the
impenetrable recesses of her own bosom. It is signi-
ficant that, in the same Memoir in which he describes
the beginning of her headlong career, he mentions
Bothwell as her right-hand man, and likely to be made
lieutenant-general of the kingdom so began this
man's disastrous influence. 1
1 Discours sur la Voyage cle Sieur cle Castelnau en Escosse ; Teulet,
ii. 101.
A STRONG GOVERNMENT, 1565. 287
On the 8th of October the royal army, with the
queen and her husband at its head, left Edinburgh
and marched by Stirling and Crawford towards Dum-
fries. On their approach the discontented barons re-
treated into England, abiding at Carlisle, and dismissing
their small band of followers. To all appearance the
Reformation had now been virtually subdued, and the
old Church was again predominant in Scotland. At
Queen Elizabeth's Court this was naturally deemed a
serious calamity. It has been seen that she was re-
commended to strike a blow before the fatal marriage
was accomplished. If she ever entertained such a
design, she hesitated in execution till it became too
late. Circumstances had now greatly changed. To
have conferred on Murray and his party an overwhelm-
ing power, while they were yet nominally at peace
with their sovereign, would have seemed nothing else
than strengthening the established Government. The
queen would have found it necessary, with all proper
grace, to submit to the influence of the Lords of the
Congregation, as she had done in the campaign against
Huntly and the punishment of the western Romanists.
But now these lords were in arms against their sove-
reign, and to support them would be countenancing a
principle for which Elizabeth had a despot's thorough
detestation. When the lords, therefore, applied to her
for an army of three thousand men and a fleet, they re-
ceived no answer. At the same time, if it could be done
with propriety and safety, it was extremely desirable
that Murray and his party should be saved from utter
extinction. The English representatives, Randolph
and Tarn worth, gave them encouragement, and raised
expectations not to be realised. There has long been
288 QUEEN MARY.
known a characteristic letter from Elizabeth to the Earl
of Bedford, Warden of the Marches, which develops
with clearness and precision the policy of the English
Court on this nice question. If Murray is in such
want of money that a thousand pounds will be of service
to help him to defend himself, it may be conveyed to
him as from Bedford himself. As to armed assistance,
she had "no intention, for many respects, to maintain
any other prince's subjects to take arms against their
sovereign;" but in this instance there were to be
diplomatic representations made, not only by herself,
but by the French ambassador, that Murray and his
friends might have a fair trial and a just and mer-
ciful consideration that they were not then in a
position to levy actual war, but were in reality offer-
ing to submit themselves as good subjects, and were
only defending themselves from extermination. The
matter being viewed in this light, Bedford might
secretly gather a small force by way of strengthening
the garrison of Carlisle, as a Scottish army was about
to approach the border. If he found he could make this
force effectual for the protection of the lords, he might
then, at the critical moment, move on Dumfries. 1
As a key to the significance of these events, and
especially of Elizabeth's share in them, it is necessary
to remember that the cause of the old religion had
received at that juncture a great impulse in Europe,
which had not yet been met by a reaction. There
was good ground to apprehend that France and Spain
were to abandon their rivalry, and, with the guidance
and temporal aid of the Supreme Pontiff, to enter on
an alliance to crush heresy wherever they could find it.
1 Robertson, Appendix, xiv.
DANGERS OF PROTESTANTISM, 1565. 289
Scotland, the Italian states, and the Catholic states of
Germany, were converging to the same centre of action.
The French Huguenots felt the peril which afterwards
drove them into civil war, but were not yet prepared
to act In the north of England a large body of
Romanists were restless and expectant. The Scottish
queen, by declining to accept of the treaty of Edin-
burgh, adhered to her claim on the English throne;
and the Catholic powers, leagued as they were together,
would seize it for her if they could. A letter of private
information by the French ambassador De Foix to
Catherine of Medici, dated 29th September 1565, in its
calm and guarded estimate of Queen Elizabeth's posi-
tion, gives a lively notion of the dangers of the junc-
ture. He is of opinion that Queen Elizabeth cannot
give any assistance to the rebel lords ; she has enough
to do to protect herself. Though he has heard that
Queen Mary made the idle boast that she would march
at the head of her army until it reached London, he
gives it as his own mature opinion that she will not
venture to cross the border. But then the council
which Elizabeth had summoned, separated, not without
a suspicion that some favoured the claim of Queen
Mary. The Lords of Northumberland, Westmoreland,
and Cumberland were summoned to Court, that they
might be delivered from the temptation of joining
Queen Mary's army if it crossed the border. To these
symptoms which to the Frenchman were matters not
of alarm, but of study was added the news that the
great O'Neil whom he calls " Le Grand Honvel" had
taken two of the principal royal fortresses in Ireland in
the service of Queen Mary as Queen of Ireland, and
that to arrange about this affair, she sent over to him
VOL. IV. T
290 QUEEN MARY.
two Highland ambassadors gentlemen " du pais des
sauvages d'Ecosses" who could speak his language. 1
The juncture was one of imminent peril to the liber-
ties and the Protestantism of England. Elizabeth dared
not quarrel with any of the powers which looked on
England with silent menace, and she found it abso-
lutely necessary to propitiate them, each in its turn.
She was not in a position to attack the Queen of Scots.
She was especially anxious to retain the amity of
France, and professed even to encourage a proposal
for becoming the wife of the young king. Both the
Spanish and French ambassadors at her Court dropped
ominous hints of suspicion that she was secretly aiding
the Protestant lords of Scotland in rebellion against
their sovereign. So pressed, Elizabeth did not hesitate
to cast them off, and succeeded in doing so with flag-
rant publicity. Murray and the Commendator of Kil-
winning went to London to plead the common cause.
They were received, no doubt by prearrangement, in
the presence of the French and Spanish ambassadors,
where, to their amazement, they encountered a hearty
scolding for their audacity, rebels and traitors as they
were to their legitimate sovereign, in appearing before
her, a sovereign too. She demanded of them a declara-
tion that she had never given them any countenance
in their traitorous resistance. Murray knew very well
that if he attempted to thwart her, he was ruined for
ever. He deemed it the wiser policy and the result
showed him to be right to play into Elizabeth's game,
and clear her of suspicion. The reward of the sacrifice
had to be patiently waited for.
In tracing the direct effect on Scotland of the impulse
1 Teulet, ii. 85.
THE CATHOLIC LEAGUE, 1565. 291
given to Romanism abroad at that time, it is convenient
to look at events occurring in the remote French town
of Bayonne, on the Spanish frontier. Catherine of
Medici had repeatedly expressed an eager desire to
have a personal interview with her son-in-law, King
Philip of Spain, and planned a method of accomplish-
ing such a meeting without attracting suspicion to it
as a solemn conference, by suggesting that Philip
should hold a progress through the north-eastern pro-
vinces of his dominions, while she and her son held a
like progress in the south of France. Each might then
step a short way aside, and meet, as it were, by a
fortunate casualty. Such a progress Catherine and her
son made in the beginning of the year 1565, passing
deliberately from town to town with great pomp and
splendour, and slowly approaching the Spanish fron-
tier. Catherine's daughter, the Queen of Spain, went
dutifully to Bayonne to meet her mother. Philip him-
self did not join them, but he sent one well fitted to
represent him his destroying general, Alva. From
his recently-discovered letters we have his own account
of the secret conclaves to which the two dark spirits
retired from the ostensible gaieties of the royal meet-
ing. They soon found that, though each was unscrupu-
lous, their aims were not in unison. Philip had one
single object before him the Church, of which he
had become the sworn champion. For the Church,
but for the Church alone, and for nothing else in
this world, he was prepared to plunder and torture
and forswear himself to do anything required. It
was not external conformity that, like politic and
worldly princes, he looked to, but sincere faith and
true belief. He therefore, instead of waiting till it
2Q2 QUEEN MARY.
made itself visible, tried to find heresy wherever it
lurked, that he might extirpate it by fire, axe, and cord ;
believing that whatever cruelties brought the victim
to orthodoxy, and consequently to salvation, were, in a
higher estimate than that of the world, acts of benefi-
cence, and that if the cruelty failed to convert, it
accomplished the next best thing, by destroying the
earthly tabernacle of heresy.
In this spirit Alva addressed the Italian, demanding
of her why heresy was not extirpated in France.
When he was told of the strength of the Huguenot
party, he considered its existence all the greater a scan-
dal. Not only could he see no reason why greatness
and power should save any one from the destruction
that was his due, but he flung it as a reproach on the
Government of France that there were princes of the
blood and heads of the first houses favourable to the
heretics, and the very chancellor himself was a Hugue-
not. It was put as an immediate practical measure of a
modified kind, that France should expel the Huguenot
clergy and exact conformity, or should, as an alterna-
tive, try to strike terror by cutting off some five or six
of the principal heads. The Italian tried her diplo-
matic art by suggesting some royal marriages advan-
tageous to both countries, and hinting that, if these
were brought to a satisfactory conclusion, France might
join Spain in the good work of extirpation ; but these
suggestions were haughtily checked as evidence that
France had not her heart in the cause, since, instead of
going straight to the good work, she made it a matter
of policy, and indeed sought a bribe. The subtle
Monti uc, who was present, agreed in opinion that it
would have been better had the right course been taken
THE CATHOLIC LEAGUE, 1565. 293
in time, and before the political power acquired by the
Huguenots had rendered its adoption precarious ; but
he pledged himself that the queen was thoroughly
sincere, and would rather be cut in two than be-
come Huguenot. Alva, however, was dissatisfied and
disappointed, though the Frenchmen whom he met,
especially the Cardinal of Guise, gave him thorough
sympathy. 1
The object of Philip II. in this famous conference
was known at the time probably through the active
emissaries of the Huguenots. It was not known that
his proffers met a cold return, and naturally the sub-
sequent massacre of St Bartholomew was set down as
the consummation of a plot then prepared. Farnianus
Strada, the great Romanist historian, the only person
who professed to know something about the conference
from an authentic source a letter about it from Philip
II. to the Duchess of Parma, his sister rather con-
firmed this notion by saying dryly, that whether the
massacre was planned on this occasion he has no means
of asserting or denying, but he rather thinks it was. 2
The impression at the time was that a special
religious league had been contracted between the two
powers. The foolish young King of France was sup-
posed to reveal the secret by the looks and words which
he cast at the Protestant leaders. His savage nature
seems to have been roused by the persuasion of the
Spaniards, which his wily mother heard impassively.
It went forth that he deeply pondered on a metaphor of
1 Papiers cl'Etat clu Cardinal de Granvelle, ix. 312-324. See also
Wiesener, ' Marie Stuart et le Comte de Bothwell,' p. 86, and his refer-
ence to the letter of the Bishop of Mondovi in Labanoff, vii. 107.
2 De Bello Belgico, lib. iv.
294 QUEEN MARY.
Alva's, that one salmon was worth a multitude of frogs,
as illustrating the view that the more effective and
economic method of suppressing heresy was to cut off
the heads of the party by some sudden stroke, rather
than to fight out the question in controversies and
battles. The Huguenot leaders, thoroughly frightened
for their heads, and knowing that the tempting moment
for a stroke or coup was when they were assembled in
council or near each other, separated as far apart as
they could, each occupying and fortifying one of his
own strongholds.
These Huguenots communicated their peril to the
Protestants of Scotland, who in their turn believed
that Mary had joined the league. A French envoy,
who brought the insignia of the order of the Saint
Esprit to be conferred on Darnley, was believed to
have brought the league for Mary's signature, and to
have obtained it. 1 Randolph wrote to Cecil in February
1566 : " There was a band lately devised, in which the
late Pope, the Emperor, the King of Spain, the Duke
of Savoy, with other princes of Italy and the queen-
mother, were suspected to be of the same confederacy
to maintain Papistry throughout Christendom. This
band was sent out of France by Thornton, and is sub-
scribed by this queen." ' If such a bond existed, the
French Government was no party to it. But whether
in the form of a bond or not, beyond doubt Mary was
the close ally of the King of Spain in all his formid-
able views and projects for crushing the new religion.
Indeed the state paper which reveals the true history
of the conference at Bayonne is followed by a letter
from Alva, undated, but seemingly also written from
1 Tytler, vii. 15. * Wright's Queen Elizabeth, i. 219.
THE CATHOLIC LEAGUE, 1565. 295
Bayonne, in which he explains to his master the man-
ner of his carrying out the policy he was authorised to
use towards Scotland. At the solicitation, he says, of
the Cardinal of Guise, he gave audience to an envoy
from the Queen of Scots. That envoy told him there
would certainly be a revolution in England, and he
desired to know what course his mistress ought to
adopt. That, he was told, would depend on the
strength of parties. Mary must in the mean time con-
duct herself not merely with reserve, but dissimulation
towards Elizabeth. If she conducted herself to the
satisfaction of the King of Spain, he would bring to
her such aid, at the time when it was least expected,
that she would certainly accomplish her object. Here
was laid the scheme of the Armada, which was de-
signed to place Mary on the English throne, and
restore with her the old religion. By the signal tardi-
ness of its projector it was cast forward into a later
historical period, when all the conditions on which it
depended for success had passed away. It is remark-
able that Alva pressed on the envoy the necessity of
keeping this intimation a dead secret even from the
Guises ; for, once in their possession, Catherine of
Medici might get at it. The envoy, whose name is not
mentioned, enchanted with the brilliant prospect, sent
his brother to Scotland to tell the happy news. 1
But at this time events fast following upon each
other cleared away alike the hopes and the fears that
Scotland was to prove the means of subduing the
British Isles to the dominion of the old Church. The
period during which the marriage of Mary and Darnley
had the aspect of a happy union was short. If there
1 Papiers d'Etat du Cardinal de Granvelle, ix. 329.
296 QUEEN MARY.
had not been worse qualities in either of them, there
was an utter incompatibility. The wife had great
genius and sagacity; the husband was a fool, and
a vicious and presumptuous fool. There is scarcely
to be found in his character the vestige of a good
quality. The resources of his power and rank seem
to have been considered by him only as elements of
animal enjoyment, and of a vainglorious assumption
of superiority. He indulged in every vicious appetite
to the extent of his physical capacity; he surrounded
himself with all manner of costly luxuries, over-ate
himself, and drank hard. He did his wife that wrong
which to a woman who retains the smallest remnant
of attachment is the sorest of all. His amours were
notorious and disgusting, and they had not the courtly
polish which would entitle them to the compromising
designation of intrigues ; for he broke the seventh
commandment with the most dissolute and degraded,
because they were on that account the most accessible,
of their sex. Such is a general summary of the char-
acter and habits which appear in those numerous
accusations by his contemporaries, from which no one
seems to have thought of vindicating his memory. 1
Without any ambition to govern, he was haughty and
supercilious to a pitch that drove the proud Scots no-
bility rabid; and in his irritable or drunken fits he could
not restrain his hand, from the blow, inflicting on fierce
and vindictive men the insult never to be forgiven.
Apart from her own injuries as a wife, the queen
had too much natural good taste, and was too thorough
1 The philippic of Buchanan, which must be dealt with afterwards,
may be thought an exception ; but there the faint praise is put in for
artistic effect.
DARNLEY AND BOTHWELL, 1565-66. 297
an adept in the court polish of Italy and France, to
tolerate vice in such a form as this. Not many weeks
of their married life seem to have passed before cold-
ness appeared, and it soon deepened through estrange-
ment into enmity. Their domestic bickerings became
offensively notorious. Darnley ostensibly fixed his
quarrel on her in the shape of a complaint that she had
promised him the crown-matrimonial, and had after-
wards refused to take any steps for accomplishing this
promise. In his foolish passion he offered violence to the
high officer of the law who brought him the disappoint-
ing intelligence that he was unsuccessful. How this ex-
pression " crown-matrimonial " came into use, and what
it meant, have already been referred to as difficulties
arising out of the schemes of the Guises. A French
politician is the best interpreter of the term ; and we
find Mauvissiere saying that, in the case of Mary's death,
it would have passed the crown to her husband en-
tirely, and then to his heirs. If this arrangement were
absolute, then a daughter by Mary might have been
superseded by a son born to a subsequent wife ; but
whether it went thus far or not, it was one of the
matters in which the Hamilton family had the chief
interest, and probably through their influence it was
that the claim was defeated.
On the 24th February 1566 there was a marriage-
ceremony, which would not have belonged to history
but for after-events. Bothwell was then married to
the Lady Jane Gordon, a daughter of the Earl of
Huntly. This was made a Court affair, and there was
a royal banqueting for five days. The queen took an
interest in the lady, and specially bequeathed to her
some jewels. She belonged to the old Church ; and it
298 QUEEN MARY.
is said in Knox's History that " the queen desired
that the marriage might be made in the Royal Chapel
at the mass, which the Earl of Bothwell would in no-
wise grant." The interest she took in this marriage
has been pitted against the many presumptions that
her heart then belonged to Bothwell. But experience
in poor human nature teaches us that people terrified
by the pressure of temptation do sometimes set up
barriers against it which they afterwards make frantic
efforts to get over. In the natural course of things a
crisis was now at hand; for the Parliament was to meet
on 4th March 1566, and the question was whether
Murray and his exiled companions would appear .there
and fight their own battle, or would stay away and
be to a certainty outlawed, and stripped of every dig-
nity and every acre of their possessions.
The spies of Queen Elizabeth were in sore perplex-
ity, watching the shadows of coming events ; and their
correspondence has the tone of men labouring under
a weighty consciousness that terrible explosions were
coming, yet without any certain indication when or in
what form they may be expected. This correspond-
ence is very interesting and suggestive, if we take its
general tone ; but, written without that distinct know-
ledge of the mighty projects of the inscrutable King
of Spain, which were at the back of all that was doing
in Scotland, the letters do not throw a steady and dis-
tinct light on the causes of what followed, and indeed
contain so many rumours and predictions some of
which were fulfilled, while others were not that the
advocate of almost any historical theory about subse-
quent events is apt to find among them something
temptingly calculated to support his views. We hear
DARNLEY AND RIZZIO, 1565-66. 299
that Darnley is in danger of his life : so is Bizzio ;
so is the queen herself; so is Murray, who is said to
be, unfortunately for his own safety, in possession of a
secret involving his sister's fair fame. On one sig-
nificant affair we can depend on these newswriters,
because it was not a guess or prognostication, but a
matter of fact passing before their eyes ; and also be-
cause, although subsequent events confer a momentous
import on it, yet it was looked on as but an ordinary
matter at the time. Bothwell, whether for public or
private reasons, was rising high in the queen's favour,
and beginning to wield an influence in rivalry of the
king's. " This also," says Randolph, " shall not be
unknown to you, what quarrels there are already risen
between her and her husband : she to have her will
one way, and he another ; he to have his father lieu-
tenant-general, and she the Earl of Bothwell ; he to
have this man preferred, and she another." 1
But another actor in the great tragedy was to pre-
cede him. The Italian was daily becoming more
offensive ; and, utterly unconscious of his position, he
flaunted before the eyes that looked murder on him,
giving himself many arrogant airs, decorating his per-
son extravagantly, and dealing offence in the very state
and rank betokened by his costume. He seems to have
felt no fear, and even to have disdained some friendly
warnings. He was sure of the favour of the queen,
and he was not accustomed to governments in which
those who are well with the supreme power need be
afraid of what subjects can do. His thorough and
almost exclusive knowledge of the great secrets be-
tween his mistress and the King of Spain very prob-
1 Raumer, 69. See tliis referred to by Mauvissiere, in Teulet, ii. 99.
300 QUEEN MARY.
ably added to his arrogance ; and a dim consciousness
that he was working at Popish intrigues made him all
the more dangerous and odious to the Protestant party.
The miscellaneous circle of enemies who aggregated
round the poor man secured the aid of Darnley by the
most powerful of motives he became, or he was made,
jealous of the Italian, and coarsely expressed his sus-
picion that he and the queen were too intimate. Mary,
no doubt, held him in her usual chains ; for she seems
to have been incapable of holding converse with any
one of the male sex without setting her apparatus of
fascination at work. Farther than this she is not
likely to have gone ; but the ugly stories that long pre-
vailed are aptly attested by the saying attributed to
Henry IV., that King James's title to be called the
Modern Solomon was, doubtless, that he was the son
of David who performed upon the harp.
It was settled that the man should be put to death,
and that before the great parliamentary contest about
the exiled lords came on. A band or bond was entered
into, according to the old practice in Scotland, in which
those concerned owned their responsibility for the deed,
and their resolution to stand by each other. It was
absolutely necessary to have a hold like this on so
slippery a person as Darnley, whom no one trusted.
Or as Euthven puts it, " they, considering he was a
young prince, and having a lusty princess to lie in his
arms afterwards, who might persuade him to deny all
that was done for his cause, and to allege that others
persuaded him to the same, thought it necessary to
have security thereupon." It is worthy of remark that
the bond contemplates more than one victim, the whole
being described as " certain privy persons, wicked and
DARNLEY AND RIZZIO, 1565-66. 301
ungodly, not regarding her majesty's honour, ours, nor
the nobility thereof, nor the commonweal of the same,
but seeking their own commodity and privy gains,
especially a stranger Italian called Davie," whom they
mutually engage to punish according to their de-
merits ; " and, in case of any difficulty, to cut them off
immediately, and to take and slay them wherever it
happeneth." If any of the banders should get in trouble
for doing so, Darnley stipulates to fortify and maintain
them to the utmost of his power, " and shall be
friends to their friends, and enemies to their enemies."
The document, drawn by a skilful lawyer, ends with
a specific clause that, "because it may chance to be
done in presence of the queen's majesty, or within her
Palace of Holyrood House, we, by the word of a prince,
shall accept and take the same on us now as then, and
then as now ; and shall warrant and keep harmless the
foresaid earls, lords, barons, freeholders, gentlemen,
merchants, and craftsmen to our utter power. In wit-
ness whereof, we have subscribed this with our own
hand at Edinburgh the 1st of March 1565-66." l
Darnley 's side of the bond has been preserved, but
not the other, so that we do not know with certainty who
all were concerned in the plot. On the 6th, Bedford
and Randolph thus intimated to Cecil that it was pre-
sently to come off : " Somewhat, we are sure, you have
heard of divers disorders and jeers between this queen
and her husband, partly for that she hath refused him
the crown-matrimonial, partly for that he hath assured
knowledge of such usage of herself as altogether is
intolerable to be borne, which, if it were not overwell
known, we would both be very loath to think that it
1 Ruthven's Relation.
302 QUEEN MARY.
could be true. To take away this occasion of slander,
he is himself determined to be at the apprehension and
execution of him whom he is able manifestly to charge
with the crime, and to have done him the most dishon-
our that can be to any man, much more being as he is.
We need not more plainly to describe the person you
have heard of the man we mean of." l
There was at the same time another bond, involving
ostensibly much larger political adjustments, in which
Darnley was on one side. Those on the other side
were in the same interest with the banders against
Bizzio, but there is no evidence that they were exactly
the same persons ; and, indeed, it might be supposed
that they were persons of too much dignity and serious-
ness of character to entertain a proposal for the murder
of a minion. If we may believe Ruthven's account of
the origin of this band, when Darnley besought him to
get Rizzio disposed of, he protested that he would
have nothing to do with the matter unless Darnley
would bind himself to " bring home" Murray and the
others, " who were banished only for the Word of God,"
as Ruthven put it. Darnley, to carry his point, agreed
to the terms. " After long reasoning and divers days'
travelling, the king was contented that they should
come home into the realm of Scotland, so that the
said Lord Ruthven would make him sure that they
would be his, and set forward all his affairs. The said
lord gave answer to the king, and bade him make
his own security, and that he should cause it to be
subscribed by the aforesaid earls, lords, and barons."
The title of the formal document they subscribed is
instructive. It is called, " Certain Articles to be ful-
1 Tytler, vii. 25.
DARNLEY AND RIZZIO, 1565-66. 303
filled by James, Earl of Murray ; Archibald, Earl of
Argyle ; Alexander, Earl of Glencairn ; Andrew, Earl
of Kotlies ; Robert, Lord Boyd ; Andrew, Lord Ochil-
tree ; and their complices to the Noble and Mighty
Prince Henry, King of Scotland." The subscribers
bound themselves to " take a loyal and true part with
the said noble prince in all his actions, causes, and
quarrels, against whomsoever, to the utmost of their
powers; and shall be friends to his friends and enemies
to his enemies, and neither spare their lives, lands,
goods, nor possessions." They specially undertake to
do their best in Parliament to secure for him the crown-
matrimonial, and promise their interest to secure for
him the friendship of Queen Elizabeth and the relief of
his mother and brother from detention by her. Darnley,
on the other hand, engages to do his best to protect
the exiled lords from punishment, and to restore to
them their estates and dignities. Nothing is trusted
to generalities, but the course he is to adopt is set forth
with specific distinctness by some able conveyancer
probably Balfour, who afterwards drew another band
in which Darnley was concerned, but to which he was
no party. He was not to suffer any forfeitures to pass
against them, nor to let them be accused in Parliament,
and, if need be, was even to prevent the holding of a
Parliament ; and if he succeeded in obtaining the
crown-matrimonial, he was then to use his prerogative
in their favour. The safety of the Protestant religion
the really important part of the arrangement is pro-
vided for, with a curious circumlocuitous shyness, as
" the religion which was established by the queen's
majesty our sovereign shortly after her arrival in this
realm, whereupon acts and proclamation were made,
304 QUEEN MARY.
and now again granted by the said noble prince to the
said earls, lords, and their complices." l
Thus had the Protestant cause received a new and
unexpected ally. Mary says afterwards, in a letter to
her councillor, Bishop Leslie, that the arrangement was
kept a dead secret from her, and that she was uncon-
sciously arranging for her Parliament, "the spiritual
estate being placed therein in the ancient manner,
tending to have done some good anent restoring the
auld religion, and to have proceeded against our rebels
according to their demerits." ' All was now ready for
the blow. The Parliament assembled, the exiled lords
were on their way back, and the time and method of
disposing of the Italian were adjusted. 3
On the 9th of March, Morton, the chancellor, com-
manded the force who were to act about a hundred
and fifty men. Having the king with him, he got
1 Ruthven's Relation.
s Labanoff, i. 342.
3 The account of its execution I propose to take from three sources :
first, the queen's own statement, sent to her faithful adviser, Bishop
Leslie ; second, a state paper drawn up by the Earl of Bedford and
Randolph for the information of the Privy Council of England. It is
the fruit of inquiries made of the actors themselves after they had taken
refuge in England, and from other sources, the whole being sifted and
examined with the practical acuteness with which the authors of the
paper were so amply endowed. The third is a narrative professing to
have been written by Lord Ruthven, the chief actor in the affair. All
the three correspond with a precision uncommon in the accounts of
exciting events ; but the third is the most minute in its detail, and the
most practical and lifelike throughout. Queen Mary to Bishop Leslie ;
Labanoff, i. 341. The Earl of Bedford and Randolph to the Council of
England; Wright's Queen Elizabeth, i. 226. 'A Relation of the Death
of David Rizzio, chief favourite to Mary, Queen of Scotland, who was
killed in the apartment of the said Queen on 9th of March 1565-66 ; writ-
ten by the Lord Ruthven, one of the principal persons concerned in that
action.' Printed in 1699, and reprinted in Scotia Rediviva, 1826. It is
also in the Appendix to Keith, book ii. No. xi., and in Triphook's Mis-
cellanea Antiqua, 1814.
MURDER OF RIZZIO, 1566. 305
possession, silently and without contest, of the great
gate and the various outlets of the Palace of Holyrood,
so as to make prisoner all within it. A considerable
part of his force seems to have been stationed in
the royal audience-chamber down-stairs. From this
Darnley brought some of them into his own chamber,
whence he ascended, by a secret stair, to the queen's
apartments, showing Euthven, who was to follow, the
way. It was seven o'clock. Darnley had supped early,
to prepare for work. The queen, who had two cham-
bers entering to each other, was in the inner, called
the cabinet, twelve feet square. She was seated at a
small table on a couch, or "low reposing-bed," as
Bedford and Randolph call it, with the Lady Argyle
and Rizzio, who sat, as it was noted, with his cap on;
and this sight was perhaps the more offensive that a
few Scotsmen of good rank her brother the Com-
mendator of Holyrood House, Arthur Erskine, the
Laird of Creech, and others attached to the household
seem to have been in attendance as domestics, while
" Signor Davie " sat with his cap on. He was clothed
in "a nightgown of damask, furred, with a satin
doublet and hose of russet velvet." The little party
seem to have been unconscious of anything unusual,
until after Darnley, who put his arm round his wife's
waist and chatted with her kindly, was followed by
the grim Ruthven, who had risen haggard from a sick-
bed, and required to be helped up-stairs, though he
was clad and armed more suitably for a foray than a
queen's cabinet. He told his business forthwith. " It
would please your majesty to let yonder man Davie
come furth of your presence, for he hath been over long
there." Then there was a sharp dialogue, in which, as
VOL. iv. u
306 QUEEN MARY.
in all the dialogues even reported by an opposite party,
the queen appears to have held her own. She wanted
to know why her servant should be demanded. She
was at last told, in terms sufficiently suggestive, if not
quite explicit.
" It will please your majesty, he hath offended your
majesty's honour, which I dare not be so bold as speak
of. As to the king your husband's honour, he hath
hindered him of the crown-matrimonial, which your
grace promised him, besides many other things which
are not necessary to be expressed. And as to the
nobility, he hath caused your majesty to banish a
great part, and the most chief thereof, and forefault
them at this present Parliament, that he might be
made a lord;" and so he passed to particulars. He
then tells how, when he had finished, the queen rose
up. She stood before the recess of a window. The
Italian drew his hanger mechanically, as it appears,
with no spirit to defend himself ; for he seems to have
read his doom in the face of the intruder, and he
crouched behind his mistress, clutching at the folds
of her gown. Ruthven was alone all this time, and
nothing had occurred to tell the inmates of the cabinet
that there were others at hand. As Ruthven was pal-
pably rude, the attendants laid hands on him ; but he
shook them off fiercely, drawing his hanger and say-
ing, " Lay not hands on me, for I will not be handled ! "
and as he spoke others rushed in, filling the small
apartment, and upsetting the supper-table with the
candles on it. The Lady Argyle snatched up one of
the candles, and preserved the group from darkness.
There was some rough scuffling ere the wretch could
be torn from his clutch of the queen's gown ; and she
MURDER OF RIZZIO, 1566. 307
declared that a hanger was thrust at David over her
shoulder, and a hackbut or pistol held as if aimed at
herself. In the end, Kuthven took the queen and
placed her in her husband's arms, telling her not to
be afraid they would sooner spend their own hearts'
blood than she should suffer harm, and they were doing
but the bidding of her own husband. So they passed
her, and dragged the trembling wretch out of the recess
of the window. It had been their intention to take him
to Darnley's chamber, there to hold a sort of court of
judgment on him, and afterwards hang him ; but in
the press and confusion he was hurled into the
queen's "utter chamber" or anteroom, and the crowd
of enemies about him " were so vehemently moved
against the said Davie that they could not abide any
longer." All that could get near enough stabbed him,
until " they slew him at the queen's far door in the
utter chamber." The body was hurled down-stairs to
the porter's lodge, where the porter's assistant, stripping
off the fine clothes as it lay on a chest, said, " This
hath been his destiny; for upon this chest was his
first bed when he entered into the place, and now
here he lieth again, a very ingrate and misknown
knave."
Those great officers who had apartments within the
precincts of the palace, including Bothwell, Huntly,
and Athole, were naturally surprised and angry at the
presence of the large addition unexpectedly made to
the armed inmates of the palace ; and there was likely
to be a contest between their followers and the follow-
ers of the conspirators. Darnley intervened and kept
peace, owning the strangers as his own men ; and
there was much rapid talk, with explanations and
308 QUEEN MARY.
some professions of reconciliation, in the crowd of
men several of them at feud with each other who
had been so singularly brought together. Very few on
either side seem to have yet known of the slaughter.
A body of the townspeople, armed, and headed by the
provost, hearing that there was turbulence and drawing
of swords in the palace, hurried thither ; but, assured
by Darnley that the queen and he were uninjured,
and all was right, they went their way, also ignorant
of the tragedy of the night. While these things were
going on, Ruthven and Darnley were back in the
queen's cabinet, talking to her ; and she also was
ignorant of her favourite's fate. Ruthven, indeed,
assured her that he was safe, and for the time in her
husband's apartment, where he supposed the body to
be safe in his own sense of the word. The queen
uneasily observed the absence of her husband's hanger.
It was left sticking ostentatiously in the Italian's body,
as a testimony whose deed the slaughter was ; but she
professed to be satisfied that nothing more had taken
place but what she had seen, and then began a wordy
war between the husband and wife.
He charged her with the change in her ways towards
him " since yon fellow Da vie fell in credit and famili-
arity" with her. Especially she used of old to seek
him in his chamber ; and now, even if he came to hers,
there was little entertainment for him there, save so
far as Davie might be the third with them ; and then
they set to cards, and played on till one or two of the
clock after midnight late hours certainly for that age.
To this she made answer with her usual felicity, that
" it was not gentlewomen's duty to come to their hus-
band's chamber, but rather the husband to come to the
MURDER OF RIZZIO, 1566. 309
wife's chamber, if he had anything to do with her." He
rejoined, like a petulant boy, " How came ye to my
chamber at the beginning, and ever till within these few
months that Davie fell in familiarity with you ? Or am
I failed in any part of my body ? Or what disdain have
you at me ? Or what offence have I made you, that you
should not use me at all times alike, seeing that I am
willing to do all things that becometh a good husband
to do to his wife ?" These words recalled the outrage
that had just taken place, and were followed by a little
outburst from her, very remarkable when contrasted
with the tone we shall find her taking when she knew
that her favourite had been actually put to death.
" Her majesty answered and said, That all the shame
that was done to her, that, my lord, ye have the weight
[blame] thereof; for the which I shall never be your
wife, nor lie with you, nor shall never like well till I
gar you have as sore a heart as I have presently."
Here Ruthven interposed with good-humour, recom-
mending the queen to take a sensible view of things, be
reconciled with her husband, and with him follow the
advice of good friends. Exhausted apparently by this
effort, a little scene follows, which must be told in his
own words. " The said lord being so feebled with his
sickness, and wearied with his travel, that he desired
her majesty's pleasure to sit down upon a coffer, and
called for a drink for God's sake ; so a Frenchman
brought him a cup of wine." His interruption of
the matrimonial colloquy, and his insolent familiarity,
turned the storm upon himself; and he says that, " after
he had drunken, the queen's majesty began to rail
against the said lord." She alluded to her position,
having been six months pregnant, and said that if she
310 QUEEN MARY.
died, or her child, in consequence of what had been
done, she was not without friends capable of revenging
her. There was the King of Spain, the Emperor, the
King of France, and her uncles, not to speak of his
holiness the Pope. Ruthven answered, with grave sar-
casm, " that these noble princes were over-great person-
ages to meddle with such a poor man as he was, being
her majesty's own subject." Then there was a partly
political discussion, in which Ruthven maintained that
the queen had abandoned her constitutional advisers,
and sought counsel of the Italian and other strangers,
who taught her to set her own arbitrary power above
the Estates ; that she had especially interfered to name
the Lords of the Articles in the ensuing Parliament, for
the purpose of securely crushing her brother Murray
and the other exiled lords. It is observable that, while
this brisk dialogue went on, not a word came from
Darnley, though Ruthven appealed to him. At last he
observed that the queen was tired, and advised her
husband to bid her farewell. She was left with certain
attendants who could be trusted, and Ruthven kept
charge of Darnley, with whom he had business still to
transact. Ere they separated two proclamations were
adjusted, to be issued next day by Darnley as king.
The one called a muster of the well-affected inhabitants
of Edinburgh, who were to keep ward in the streets,
" and to suffer none others to be seen out of their houses,
except Protestants, under all highest pain and charge
that after may follow." The other proclamation dis-
charged or dissolved the Parliament, requiring all the
members to leave Edinburgh within three hours, save
such as the king might specially require to remain.
Having adjusted these matters to his satisfaction, we
MURDER OF RIZZIO, 1566. 311
are told that, " the gates being locked, the king being
in his bed, the queen's majesty walking in her chamber,
the said Lord Euthven took air upon the lower gate
and the privy passages." One other event, however,
happened in the night, not so propitious as those
which preceded it. Bothwell and Huntly managed to
make their escape ; and, from Mary's own account of
the matter, it would seem that they had contrived to
establish a communication with her, engaging to relieve
her from without, or to help her to escape. 1
The great affair of next day, which was Sunday,
was the arrival of the banished lords, who reached
Edinburgh about seven o'clock in the evening. Thus
were they on the spot to profit by the recent tragedy
without having defiled themselves with it. There can
be little doubt that they were prepared for it. Among
the many scraps of paper which contain merely the
rumours of the day, Murray is set down in some as a
contriver in the plot. There is no sufficient evidence
that he was so, and such a thing is not consistent with
his steady, careful, decorous walk in life. That, know-
ing it was likely to take place without throwing any
responsibility on him, he should have gone out of his
way to hinder it, was beyond the human nature of his
age. The name of Knox, too, is to be found on these
to
lists. It is still less likely, however, that he should
have compromised his position as a minister of the
Word by either executing or plotting an assassination.
Whether, knowing that it was to be done, he would have
interrupted it, or would have bidden the perpetrators
God-speed, is an idle question, since, with his usual
candour, he has left in his History his thorough ap-
1 Labanoff, L 348.
312 QUEEN MARY.
proval of the deed. Moralising on the fallen condition
of the conspirators afterwards, when they became fugi-
tives, he utters a warning against supposing that they
are deserted of God, who may yet raise them up again
to His glory and their comfort. "And to let the world
understand in plain terms what we mean, that great
abuser of this commonwealth, that poltroon and vile
knave Da vie, was justly punished on the 9th of March,
in the year of God one thousand five hundred threescore
five [six], for abusing of the commonwealth, and for
his other villany, which we list not to express, by the
counsel and hands of James Douglas, Earl of Morton,
Patrick, Lord Lindsay, and the Lord Euthven, with
others assisters of their company, who all, for their just
act, and most worthy of all praise, are now unworthily
left of their brethren, and suffer the bitterness of
banishment and exile." 1 Much of the accusation and
defence wasted on the characters of that age arises
from the supposition that, like a well-principled citizen
of the present day, any one hearing of an intended
crime was expected to go and inform the police.
People in the public world had too much anxiety about
themselves to think of others, and only the strongest
personal motive would prompt one to interfere with
any act of violence. An attempt to thwart a crime
by which his cause would profit, might have justly
exposed a man to the charge of insanity or gross
duplicity.
Sunday the 10th was a busy and anxious day at the
palace. At what time the queen heard of Rizzio's
death is not certain ; it must have been pretty near
the time when she also beard that the banished lords
1 Knox, i. 235.
MURDER OF RIZZIO, 1566. 313
were to arrive. 1 It is certain, however, that she at
once altered her tone to Darnley. She resolved on luring
him back, along with such of the other enemies sur-
1 The question when and how the queen knew of Rizzio's death seems
to be of great moment, in its bearing on the evidence against her for
the murder which followed. It is quite clear that Rizzio was not, as is
generally supposed, slain before her face. In Bedford and Randolph's
narrative it is said distinctly, " He was not slain in the queen's presence,
as was said, but going down the stairs out of the chamber of presence."
In her own narrative sent to her faithful coimcillor, Bishop Leslie, she
says, " The said Lord Ruthven perforce invaded him in our presence (he
then for refuge took safeguard, having retired him behind our back), and
with his complices cast down our table upon himself, put violent hands
on him, struck him over our shoulder with whinyards, one part of
them standing before our face with bended dags, most cruelly took him
furth of our cabinet, and at the entry of our chamber gave him fifty-six
strokes with whinyards and swords." This tends to confirm Ruthven's
narrative, by showing that Rizzio was taken alive out of the cabinet and
killed in the anteroom. It is not a necessary inference that he was
wounded, though she says they struck him over her shoulder with
whinyards; their object, undoubtedly, was to get him out of the queen's
presence in the first place. In the queen's short account of her contro-
versy with Ruthven, when speaking of Rizzio, she says, " whom they had
actually put to death." If this stood alone, it might be doubtful whether
she mentions that as a fact merely which she might afterwards have
known, or states that she was told it at the time by Ruthven. In the
narrative of Bedford and Randolph, who were undoubted masters of all
the facts, it is stated that, in her conversation with Ruthven and her
husband, the queen spoke for Rizzio's safety partly in entreaties, partly
in threats, saying, " Well, it shall be dear blood to some of you if his be
spilt." In whichever sense it be taken, this explanation is further proof
that she did not see him slain (see the letter in Labanoff, i. 344, 345).
Spottiswoode (p. 195) gives the following distinct account of her acquaint-
ance with the end : " The queen, bursting forth in many tears after a
great tiding she kept with the Lord Ruthven, sent one of her maids to
inquire what was become of Davie, who quickly returning, told that he
was killed ; having asked her how she knew it, the maid answered that
she had seen him dead. Then the queen, wiping her eyes with her
handkerchief, said, 'No more tears I will think upon a revenge'
Neither was she seen after that any more to lament." For this account,
accepted in several quarters, I am aware of no better authority than
Spottiswoode's mere statement, and the dubious memoirs attributed to
Lord Herries. If better vouched, it would be formidable evidence of her
intention to work for what afterwards came to pass.
QUEEN MARY.
rounding her as she could win over. With her foolish
husband she accomplished her purpose with the ease
of a great artist ; the others seem to have kept them-
selves beyond the magic circle. It was part of her
policy to make him think she believed in his absurd
protestations that he had no concern in her favourite's
death. The day was spent by Darnley in vibrating
between the two parties coming from the queen to
demand concessions for her, getting scolded for his
weakness and the peril he was bringing them all into
by yielding to her blandishments, and going back for-
tified against her, to return again as her humble mes-
senger. Early in the day she recovered her women,
through whom she communicated with Bothwell,
Huntly, and other friends. The alarm was more than
once raised that a miscarriage was approaching, and
the necessary attendants were summoned ; but Euthven
thought he saw under all this a project for her escaping
among the miscellaneous throng of women hurrying
out and in, and it was regulated, much to the queen's
annoyance, that no gentlewoman should pass forth
" undismuffled."
It was arranged, as a signal token of reconciliation,
that Darnley was to share the queen's couch that night.
As men will do, however, when they have got a heavy
piece of business satisfactorily through, he took a
drowsy fit probably, too, he was saturated with wine ;
so he fell dead asleep in his own chamber, and when
he awoke too late, scolded those who had failed to
break his slumber. Probably the queen did not much
regret a new insult which relieved her of a portion
of her work of dissimulation. She was next day all
smiles and caresses. The meeting with the banished
MURDER OF RIZZIO, 1566. 315
lords cannot be better told than in Ruthven's own
words :
" She took purpose, and came out of the utter cham-
ber, led by the king. The said earls and lords sitting
down upon their knees, made their general oration by
the Earl of Morton, chancellor, and after their par-
ticular orations by themselves. And after that her
majesty had heard all, her answer was, that it was not
unknown to the lords that she was never bloodthirsty
nor greedy upon their lands and goods sithence her
coming into Scotland, nor yet would be upon theirs
that were present, but would remit the whole number
that was banished, or at the last dead, and bury and
put all things in oblivion, as if they had never been ;
and so caused the said lords and barons to arise on
their feet. And afterwards her majesty desired them
to make their own security in that sort they pleased
best, and she should subscribe the same. Thereafter
her majesty took the king by the one hand and the
Earl of Murray by the other, and walked in her said
utter chamber the space of one hour, and then her
majesty passed into her inner chamber." l
The desire that they should "make their own security"
had reference to a new band appropriate to the occa-
sion, which a skilful conveyancer was in fact at that
moment preparing, under the vigilant inspection of the
returned exiles, or of the king's party, as they were
then but only for a few hours named. Soon after
six o'clock in the evening the king joined them, or at
least their committee, consisting of Murray, Morton,
Ruthven, and Lindsay, who handed to him their band
of security, ready for his signature and the queen's,
1 Rutliven's Relation.
316 QUEEN MARY.
"which the king took in hand, as soon as he had
supped, to be done." He made a request, however,
which inflamed their still slumbering suspicions, by
desiring them to remove their own people, and leave
the queen in the hands of her proper guard. The
lords had been telling Darnley all along, in pretty
plain terms, that there was duplicity at work and they
were only led on to be betrayed ; and at this proposal
Ruthven, bursting out in anger, told him that what
should follow and what blood he shed should come on
his head and that of his posterity, not on theirs. The
guards seem not to have been removed; but the lords
themselves adjourned to Morton's house to sup a step
attended with risk, yet in which there was a certain
policy, because it was expedient that the queen, in
whatever she signed, should have as much appearance
of free will as it was safe to allow. After supper they
sent Archibald Douglas to see if the queen had sub-
scribed the band. No, she had not ; the king said she
had read the articles and found them very good, but
she was sick and going to bed, and delayed the sub-
scribing until the morning.
About an hour after midnight the queen and Darn-
ley managed, by connivance, to slip out through the
wine-cellar. Outside, Arthur Erskine, captain of her
guard, met her by arrangement with six or seven
mounted followers. The queen seated on a crupper
behind Erskine, they all rode straight to Seton House,
where the Lord Seton gave them an escort on to
Dunbar. The governor of that strong fortress was
amazed, early on Tuesday morning, by the arrival of
his king and queen, hungry, and clamorous for fresh
eggs to breakfast.
CHAPTER XLV.
iueen
(Continued?)
THE CONFEDERATE LORDS AND THEIR DANGER PROJECTS OF RE-
TALIATION THE SLAYERS OF RIZZIO SEEK REFUGE IN ENGLAND
A PARLIAMENT THE FIT OF CONJUGAL ATTACHMENT PASSES
SYMPTOMS OF MARY'S FEELING TOWARDS HER HUSBAND HE
IS AVOIDED, AND BECOMES ALARMED RISE AND CHARACTER
OF BOTHWELL HISTORY OF HIS HOUSE AS RENOWNED FOR
ROYAL LOVE-AFFAIRS WOUNDED IN A BORDER SCUFFLE THE
QUEEN'S RIDE FROM JEDBURGH TO HERMITAGE TO VISIT HIM
BIRTH OF THE PRINCE PECULIAR CIRCUMSTANCES OF HIS
BAPTISM PROJECTS AGAINST DARNLEY MOOTED DARNLEY's
ILLNESS THE QUEEN'S NEW PROFESSION OF RECONCILIATION,
AND VISIT TO HIM IN GLASGOW HIS FATHER AND HE AFRAID
OF MURDER HIS OWN EXPRESSIONS ON THE MATTER DARNLEY
BROUGHT TO THE KIRK-OF-FIELD A BAND FOR PUTTING HIM
OUT OF THE WAY THE PREPARATIONS THE COMPLETION OF
THE MURDER.
THUS the confederate lords arose in the morning to
find themselves outwitted and in great danger. They
despatched a messenger to Dunbar on the useless
errand of procuring that signature to their band which
the royal fugitives had neglected to leave. The
messenger was detained two days before his message
could be delivered, and it was not even honoured
with the formality of an answer.
318 QUEEN MARY.
The queen dictated letters pleading her cause and
vindicating herself. One letter to Queen Elizabeth
has .been preserved. It is dated from Dunbar on the
15th of March, and contains this passage: "We
thought to have written this letter with our own
hand, that ye might have better understood all our
meaning, and taken mair familiarly therewith ; but of
a truth we are so tired and evil at ease, what through
riding of twenty miles in five hours of the night, as
with the frequent sicknesses and evil disposition by
the occasion of our child, that we could not at this
time, as we was willing to have done." J
Bothwell meanwhile was busy in collecting a force
for the queen's protection. He seems to have imme-
diately brought to Dunbar a sufficient number of fol-
lowers to render an attack on that fortress desperate;
and on the 28th of March he accompanied the royal
pair back to Edinburgh at the head of two thousand
horsemen. The opposition had in the mean time,
with few exceptions, either fled to England or re-
tired to a safe distance. The exiled lords who had
returned from England made their appearance at
the Tolbooth, where the Parliament was held, on the
day for which they were cited the day after the
escape. There was of course no Parliament, for it had
been dissolved by the proclamation which they had
influenced Darnley to issue; but there was some subtle
technical fencing, the lords protesting that they had
appeared when summoned, and since there was no one
to arraign them, all charges against them fell ; while
on the other hand, Robert Crichton, the queen's advo-
cate, entered a counter-protest on such grounds as he
1 Labanoff, i. 337.
RIZZIO'S MURDERERS, 1566. 319
thought most tenable. The lords thought it wise to
retreat to Linlithgow. There was, however, no inten-
tion of pressing further on them as a party the cause
of the restoration of the old religion, which was the
cause of antagonism to them, had to be abandoned for
more urgent contests. The queen gave several of them
letters of remission. Melville, as interim secretary, was
occupied in preparing these documents at Haddington
while the Court was on its way from Dunbar to Edin-
burgh. 1 They were not, however, directly received into
favour, but were desired to retire to their own estates ;
and they professed to obey this instruction, remaining
sharply on the watch for each turn of events.
The recent outrage was the point on which all poli-
tical events for the present turned. Rizzio's body was
removed from the Canongate graveyard, where it had
been buried, and was solemnly, and with the proper
rites of his Church, laid with the dust of the kings of
Scotland within the Chapel of Holyrood. In scornful
bravado the queen appointed the dead man's brother,
Joseph Eizzio, a youth who had just arrived to seek
his fortune, to the office of her foreign secretary. The
one object of her life seemed then the avenging of the
murder, and the one class of men who felt that there
could be no compromise for their lives were those
who could be proved to have actually committed the
deed. Morton, Ruthven, Lindsay, Douglas the Postu-
late, Ker of Faudonside, and several others, were cited
to answer for the murder, and having fled to England,
were outlawed and " put to the horn." A few minor
persons forming part of the force which held the
palace were convicted and executed.
1 Melville, 132.
320 QUEEN MARY.
Darnley showed the reckless perfidy of his nature by
eagerly helping to denounce and capture his fellow-
murderers. In speaking of them to Melville, he used
an expressive trope applicable to men left to their
doom, " As they have brewed, so let them drink." * It
was not part of his wife's policy to attempt to bring
him to justice with the others; and so, to put a decor-
ous appearance upon his position, he acted the farce of
solemnly declaring his innocence of the crime before the
Privy Council at least the queen assured Beaton, her
own ambassador, that he had declared to herself and
the Council "his innocence of this last conspiracy; how
he never counselled, commanded, consented, assisted,
nor approved the same." ' His reconciliation with the
queen had, however, now served its turn. She no
longer required to separate him from the party of the
exiled lords, who had more to trust to from herself than
from him. The distaste she had felt before, deepened
by the intervening tragedy, broke out in a palpable
loathing visible to every one around them. Melville
noticed it even on the journey from Dunbar, and he
thought the subsequent rapid movements of the queen
were for the purpose of avoiding her hated husband.
Melville takes credit for having pleaded, until he re-
ceived a rebuff, for the unhappy young man. Kan-
dolph, whose eye caught the sudden change of con-
duct, attributed it to Mary having been shown the
band for the murder of Kizzio, with her husband's
signature to it ; but a woman of her penetration, and
with her opportunities of knowing the facts, did not
require such evidence.
Her wretched husband had now effectually divested
1 Melville, 153. * Labanoff, i. 119.
BIRTH OF A PRINCE, 1566. 321
himself of every hold he ever had on any party or
considerable person in the realm. Grave and cal-
culating statesmen distrusted and despised him from
the first. Desperate plotters convicted him of the
unpardonable crime of treachery to his banded con-
federates. The Protestant party hated him, and the
scorn of the queen cast him off from the Romish
party ; and so, as Melville says, " he passed up and
down his alane, and few durst bear him company."
There was not even the external pretence of consulting
him on business ; and he had nothing to do but to go
about like a tabooed schoolboy, bemoaning his condi-
tion to any, whether Scots or foreigners, who would
listen to him a practice which, by exposing the family
brawl to the world, only made him the more odious
and despicable to his wife.
An event occurred, however, which for a short time
suspended the matrimonial discord. Mary had retired
to the Castle of Edinburgh, as a safe retreat for the
occasion ; and on the 19th of June a son was born to
her, afterwards known as James VI. of Scotland and
I. of England. It was noticed at the time as a
memorable fact that Darnley acknowledged the infant
as his own ; and that this should have been deemed
a fact of importance is curiously suggestive of the
unsatisfied and suspicious feelings which had become
prevalent. Sir James Melville was sent to announce
the auspicious news at the Court of England, and he
has left an amusing picture of the rigid Elizabeth
yielding to an impulse of curious vexation when
abruptly startled by the news in the midst of a Court
banquet at Greenwich, and lamenting that the Queen
of Scots was the mother of a fair son while she herself
VOL. iv. x
322 QUEEN MARY.
was but a barren stock. Next day, however, at a
public audience, she was kind and courteous, and pro-
fuse in her congratulations and the proffers of her
sympathy.
The family quarrel was suspended only for a brief
period by this event. The position of Darnley was
ever becoming more conspicuously isolated and feeble,
by the queen's policy of reconciliation with those who
had been her political enemies. All but those who
had actually laid hands on Bizzio were welcomed back.
Thus Murray, Argyle, Glencairn, and even the man
she most feared and disliked on public grounds,
Lethington, with other minor persons who had been
in disgrace, were received into favour, and, nominally
at least, co-operated with Both well and Huntly.
Darnley in his desolation seems to have become
alarmed for his safety. He resolved to go to France
" in a sort of desperation," as the French ambassador
called it in short, to escape. His father, Lennox, who
suffered with his declining fortunes, and seems to have
shared in his alarm, wrote to the queen about this
design, and said there was a ship ready to receive him.
She, however, resolved that he should not go. Some-
thing is muttered in the correspondence of the time
about his forming a party with the Romanists against
the queen, on account of her favour to the Protestant
party and her abandonment of the project of restoring
the old religion ; but Mary and her policy were far
too deeply rooted in the councils of Rome and Spain
to give the foolish young man the smallest chance of
doing mischief there was no danger in that direction,
and there can have been no genuine fear. The reason
for detaining him seems to have been that which Le
o
DARNLEY'S POSITION, 1566. 323
Croc refers to the scandal that must arise from the
separation and its manner, aggravated as it would be
by the young man's incontinent tongue. He knew too
much, foolish as he was, to be safely trusted at a
distance.
His wife took this occasion to put herself in the
right and him in the wrong, and did so with her usual
skill. She said she had discussed the matter with
him in private, and could get no satisfactory answer ;
so she resolved on a matrimonial dialogue in solemn
manner, before an assemblage of the nobility both
those who were her confidential friends and the others
who were for the time being her political allies.
Le Croc was brought within the charmed circle over
which Queen Mary exercised her influence she had
taken great pains apparently to gain him. " I be not
able," he says, " sufficiently to express the honour and
bounty the queen here shows me; for she often prays
me to ask money from her, or any other thing I stand
in need of." And he paid her back, by intimating to
his Court, " I never saw her majesty so much beloved,
esteemed, and honoured, nor so great a harmony
amongst all her subjects, as at present is, by her wise
conduct." Of the scene of matrimonial diplomacy
which he was called on to witness, the ambassador
gives the following distinct and animated account:
" And thereafter the queen prayed the king to de-
clare in presence of the lords and before me the reason
of his projected departure, since he would not be pleased
to notify the same to her in private betwixt themselves.
She likewise took him by the hand, and besought him
for God's sake to declare if she had given him any oc-
casion for this resolution ; and entreated he might deal
324 QUEEN MARY.
plainly, and not spare her. Moreover, all the lords
likewise said to him, that if there was any fault on
their part, upon his declaring it, they were ready to
reform it. And I likewise took the freedom to tell
him that his departure must certainly affect either his
own or the queen's honour that if the queen had
afforded any ground for it, his declaring the same
would affect her majesty; as on the other hand, if he
should go away without giving any cause for it, this
thing could not at all redound to his praise : therefore,
that since I was in this honourable employment, I could
not fail, according to my charge, to give my testimony
to the truth of what I had both formerly seen and did
presently see. After several things of this kind had
passed amongst us, the king at last declared that he
had no ground at all given him for such a deliberation;
and thereupon he went out of the chamber of presence,
saying to the queen, ' Adieu, madam ; you shall not see
my face for a long space : ' after which he likewise bade
me farewell, and next turning himself to the lords in
general, said, ' Gentlemen, adieu.' " l
It was about this time, becoming evident that there
was something in the queen's sentiments towards Both-
well of a warmer character than could be rationally
attributed either to a just sense of his public merits or
simple gratitude for his services to herself. That she
should fix her love on him has always been deemed
something approaching the unnatural ; but when the
circumstances are considered, the conclusion ceases to
become so absolutely startling. Mary was evidently
one of those to whom at that time a great affair of
the heart was a necessity of life a necessity increased
1 Keith (8vo ed.), ii. 451.
DARNLEY'S POSITION, 1566. 325
in intensity by her utter disappointment in her last at-
tachment, and the loathing she entertained towards its
object. Who then were near her to be the first refuge
for her fugitive affections ? None but her own nobles,
for she was not in a position to treat with a foreign
prince ; and in looking round among the most eminent
of these, including Huntly, the brother of a former
suitor, Argyle, Athole, and Arran, there were none
who, on the ground of rank and position, had claims
much higher than Bothwell, unless it might be Arran
by reason of his royal blood, and he was already a re-
jected suitor. In personal qualifications Bothwell was
infinitely above them all. He had a genius for com-
mand, with a dash of the chivalrous, which made
Throckmorton describe him to Queen Elizabeth in
1560, as "a glorious, rash, and hazardous young
man." l He had lived at the Court of France, and thus
had over his harder and more effective qualities the
polish and accomplishments which were all that Darn-
ley had beside his handsomeness to recommend him.
Bothwell was restrained by no conscientious scruples.
They were not, indeed, a necessary of life, or even
an ordinary possession of the social circle in which
he figured. There, unless a man were notoriously
addicted to vices now unnamed Bothwell was but
faintly accused of them by bitter enemies he might
keep his fame clear. For the matter of ordinary pro-
fligacy, it lay between himself and his physical con-
stitution ; and a man like Bothwell had, whether from
judicious control or the strength of his northern
constitution, the satisfaction of keeping his head
clear and his arm steady long after many of his
1 Harthvicke's State Papers, i. 149.
326 QUEEN MARY.
companions in like courses had sunk into premature
senility. He was at a period of life when the manly
attractions do not begin to decline, for he had just
passed if he had passed his thirtieth year. Tradi-
tion says that he was ill-favoured ; but I do not re-
member any contemporary authority for the assertion,
except the cursory sketch of him by Brantome, who
may have met him, but does not speak as if he had. 1
The question cannot now be decided by the eye, for
there does not exist a picture which has even the repu-
tation of being his portrait. 2
With regard to his rank, it aimed at something
higher than his means. He was comparatively poor ;
but his recent ancestors had been the rivals, and
in some measure the successors, of the Douglases,
who themselves had been the formidable rivals of
1 "Ce Bothuel etoit le plus laid homine et d'aussi mauvaise grace q'il
se pent voir." Des Dames Illustres, Disc. iii. Buchanan speaks of him
as like an ape ; but this was when writing at him, and is no more to be
taken as accurate than any other scolding objurgation.
* The Author happened once to be reading in the Library of the Anti-
quaries, in Edinburgh, when, shifting his position, a small picture caught
his eye and kept it. It represented a human head with a rather aquiline
nose and high cheek-bones a Scotch face, and decidedly of the humblest
plebeian type. Something like a dirty shepherd's plaid wrapped round
the neck seemed in harmony with this character in the face. There was
a pinchedness about the features which, along with the copperish colour
of the skin, seemed to speak of extreme old age. One eye seemed injured,
the other was closed in what seemed a drunken sleep. Altogether there
was something loathsome about the picture, and it was a loathsomeness
that somehow fascinated the eye. All this was felt before it was known
what the painting represented. It was a portrait of Bothwell's head,
painted by Otto Bache, when his embalmed body was disentombed in
1861. The editor of Queen Mary's Inventories gives an account of the
circumstances in which the likeness was taken (Preface, xcv.), and he
quotes the remark of Mr Horace Marryat, " I defy any impartial English-
man to gaze on this body without at once declaring it to be that of an
ugly Scotsman." But who is to say how much of this ugliness may have
been contributed bv an abode of three centuries in the tomb ?
BOTHWELL'S RISE, 1566. 327
the crown. He was thus in the interesting position
of the head of a decayed house striving to restore
* O
its ancient lustre. In that age of revolutions and
forfeitures, when property and power rapidly changed
hands, such a man, to make himself the most powerful
subject in the realm, required only royal favour ; and
this, as we shall presently see, was not denied him.
It is incidentally curious that Bothwell's family had
acquired a reputation for affairs with royal ladies, and
is in some measure significant, as helping to mitigate
that colour of the marvellous in which his audacious
projects and their success are generally painted. In
the Castle of D unbar, held by his father's great-grand-
father Hepburn of Hales, the widow of James L, the
renowned and beautiful Joanna Beaufort, spent her
latter days and died. She had lived in a questionable
obscurity for some time ; and how or why she was
under the same roof with Hepburn, whether by her
own consent or by force, was matter of unsatisfied
conjecture at the time. A son of this Hepburn was
reputed among the many lovers of Mary of Gueldres,
the widow of James II. Bothwell's father, according
to the chronicles, was the rival of Darnley's father,
Lennox, as a suitor of Mary of Guise. 1 The expense
which the disappointed aspirant had incurred in sun-
ning himself at Court in his wooing contributed, it
was said, greatly to the decay of the family.
It has to be added to all this, that Both well had
proved the devoted champion of the queen, protecting
her alike from the calculating ambition of her brother
and the base insults of her wretched husband. The
turning-point seems to have been the murder of Bizzio,
1 Pitscottie's Chronicle, 452. See Wood's Douglas, i. -228.
328 QUEEN MARY.
when Darnley showed how much treachery and cruelty
could be the companions of his folly and feebleness;
and her champion, by his dexterous escape and rapid
muster of followers, placed her at once in safety and
power. In fact, but for the crimes which paved the
way to the conclusion, the union of Bothwell and Mary
would have been the natural winding-up of a legitimate
romance. Remove the unpleasant conditions that both
were married, and that there was a husband and a wife
to be got rid of ere the two could be united, substitute
honour and virtue for treachery and crime, and here
are the complete elements out of which the providence
which presides over romance develops the usual happy
conclusion.
The fluctuations in the old property of the Church
at that time afforded substantial prizes for a powerful
favourite. Bothwell got out of this affluent source the
two rich Abbacies of Melrose and Haddington. 1 He
was invested with the lordship and fortress of Dunbar.
He was appointed Lord High Admiral and Warden
of the Scottish Borders. This last office made him the
most powerful man in the kingdom. Of course it was"
necessary to confer the wardenship on some local mag-
nate whose territories and leadership gave him inde-
1 The editor of Queen Mary's Inventories has added a very curious
item to valuables with which the queen endowed Bothwell. There
is an entry ten pieces of caps, chasubles, and tunicles taken from
Huntly's castle, whither they had been sent from the Cathedral of Aber-
deen for their safety. On these the recipient notes : " In March 1567,
I delivered three of the fairest, whilk the queen gave to the Lord Both-
well ; and mair took to herself a cap, a chasuble, four tunicles, to make
a bed for the king all broken and cut in her own presence." P. 53.
Here the object of the gift is not so remarkable, as that so zealous a de-
votee of the Church should have turned ecclesiastical robes to secular
purposes.
BOTHWELL'S RISE, 1566. 329
pendent authority there; and when to this was added
the royal authority to command all the other border
magnates, the powers of the warden were so great that
the Government was extremely chary in the bestowal of
the office. To break up the power so exercised among
rivals, it was usual to appoint three wardens one for
the west, another for the middle marches, a third for
the east and it was an unusual, as well as significant
fact, that the whole three were conferred on Both-
well. 1 In England, also, there were three wardens.
We can see the sagacity of the two crowns in this
arrangement, by looking to the origin of certain minor
royalties in Germany called Margraviates, made out of
the power coming to the hands of the great officers
commissioned to protect the marches.
Of the influence he held at Court, contemporary
estimates, however imperfect, are far more valuable
than those made with a view to account for subse-
quent events. So on the 27th of July, Bedford the
English ambassador wrote to Cecil, " Bothwell carries
all the merit and countenance in Court. He is the most
hated man among the noblemen, and therefore may
fall out somewhat to his cumber one day, if the queen
takes not up the matter the sooner ;" and a few days
later, " It is said that the earl's insolence is such as
that David was never more abhorred than he is now."
Again, on the 12th, "I have heard that there is a
device working for the Earl of Bothwell, the particu-
larities of which I might have heard, but because such
dealings like me not, I desire to hear no farther
thereof. Bothwell has grown of late so hated that he
1 Laing, and "Wood (Peerage, i. 230) say the wardenships never had,
on any previous occasion, been united.
330 QUEEN MARY.
cannot long continue. He beareth all the sway, and
though Murray he there, and has good words, yet can
he do nothing." l
A memorable occurrence is connected with the exe-
cution of his duties as warden of the marches. There
came one of those times of more than average harry-
ing and quarrelling which arose at intervals, and it
was determined to hold a solemn justice aire at Jed-
burgh, which the queen herself was to countenance by
her presence. Both well went to his own Castle of
Hermitage, in the centre of the disturbed district, to
collect offenders for trial at the great court. His
function was more like that of an invading general
than a head-constable. He had a good deal of hard
fighting, in the course of which he was dangerously
wounded by Elliot of Park. There are disputes about
the manner of the event, but this is of less consequence
than that it occurred on the 7th October. Next day
the justice aire was opened. When the proceedings
had gone on for a week, Mary took horse one day
and rode to the Hermitage, where Both well lay await-
ing recovery from his wound ; and according to Lord
Scrope, who sent the news to Cecil, she remained two
hours, " to Both well's great pleasure and content," and
then galloped back to Jedburgh. She had with her
there, as official documents show, Murray, Huntly,
Athole, Kothes, and Caithness, with three bishops and
the judges and officers of court ; but to what ex-
tent she was attended on her ride is not very clear.
It is certain that she could not have had a force suffi-
cient to make the adventure safe in a country which
was not merely lawless in the usual sense of the term,
1 Raumer, 86-88.
BOTHWELL'S RISE. 1566. 331
but where the sovereign of Scotland was looked on as
the great public enemy. The double journey extended
to at least forty miles over a country which would be
felt as singularly wild, difficult, and dangerous to a
rider of the present day. 1
About the strength and courage necessary to such
a feat there can be no question. About the motives
which induced the queen to perform it there have been
disputes. The affair looked as if she had been under
that irresistible influence over which selfish reason has
no control to know by the sight of the eyes and the
hearing of the ears the chances for life or death of
some beloved object hovering between the two. On
the other hand, it has been supposed that she thought
it right to undertake this journey in the way of busi-
ness, that she might confer with the wounded warden
of the marches on details connected with his perform-
ance of his official duties. Whatever was her motive,
she paid the penalty of her exploit in a strong fever,
which ran its course, leaving the issues of life and
death uncertain until the tenth day, when she began
to revive physically, while those around her still noted
symptoms of mental suffering, for which each account-
ed according to his prepossessions and knowledge.
When able to move, she went by short journeys
to Craigmillar, close to Edinburgh. There Le Croc
saw her in the beginning of December, and said :
" She is in the hands of the physicians, and I do
assure you is not at all well ; and I do believe the
1 The Author knows, from having walked over the ground, that Her-
mitage Castle is a stiff twenty miles' journey from Jedburgh. It is
reported, on the authority of tradition, that her horse floundered in a
marsh, thence called the Queen's Myre ; but if she passed this spot, she
must have diverged from the direct track.
332 QUEEN MARY.
principal part of her disease to consist of a deep grief
and sorrow nor does it seem possible to make her
forget the same. Still she repeats these words, ' I
could wish to be dead.' We know very well that the
injury she has received is exceeding great, and her
majesty will never forget it. The king her husband
came to visit her at Jedburgh the day after Captain
Hay went away. He remained there but one single
night, and yet in that short time I had a great deal of
conversation with him. He returned to see the queen
about five or six days ago ; and the day before yester-
day he sent word to desire me to speak with him half
a league from this, which I complied with, and found
that things go still worse and worse. I think he in-
tends to go away to-morrow ; but in any event, I am
much assured, as I have always been, that he won't be
present at the baptism." :
A document of later date throws very instructive
light on the condition of the Court at this time. It is
called " The Protestation of the Earls of Huntly and
Argyle touching the Murder of the King of Scots." 2 It
opens with an enumeration of the group surrounding
the queen at Craigmillar, including the protesters
themselves, Bothwell, Murray, and Lethington. The
two latter, it states, came to Argyle's bedroom before
he had risen. Lethington spoke of the hardship of
Ruthven, Morton, and the others continuing in banish-
ment for the affair of Rizzio, seeing it was done to stop
the Parliament and prevent the forfeiture of Murray
and his friends, and said they thought him bound in
1 Keith (8vo ed.), xcvi.
5 This document has been frequently printed. It is in Keith, Book
II. App. xvi.
PREPARATIONS FOR AN EVENT, 1566. 333
all fairness to use his influence for their restoration.
Lethington then proposed, as the best means of gaining
the queen's consent to the restoration, to find means
of divorcing her from Darnley. Huntly was then sent
for, and the matter propounded to him, with the
special inducement that the opportunity might l>e
taken to do something in his own favour by the resto-
ration of forfeited lands. He said he would not stand
in the way of the project, and the four then went to
lay it before the queen. Lethington, still acting as
spokesman, opened up on the " great number of grievous
and intolerable offences" which her ungrateful husband
had perpetrated against her, "and continuing every
day from evil to worse." The divorce was then pro-
posed as her best mode of relief. After they had plied
her with persuasions, the reception given by her to the
proposal is thus stated by the protesters : " Her grace
answerit, that under twa conditions she might under-
stand the same the ane, that the divorcement were
made lawfully; the other, that it war not prejudice to
her son otherwise her hyness would rather endure
all torments, and abyde the perils that might chance
her in her grace's lifetime. The Earl of Bothwell
answered, that he doubted not but the divorcement
might be made bot prejudice in anywise of my lord
prince, alleging the example of himself, that he ceased
not to succeed to his father's heritage without any dif-
ficulty, albeit there was divorce betwixt him and his
mother."
That she should fear the effect of a divorce on the
legitimacy of her child is at first calculated to start
strange suspicions as to the facts which such a process,
if founded on the respective conduct of the husband
334 QUEEN MARY.
and wife, would disclose ; but Buchanan, in his cele-
brated Detection, lets us see that the ground of divorce
pointed at on the occasion was consanguinity. There
next follows a passage of a strangely suggestive kind:
" Then Lethington, taking the speech, said, ' Madam,
fancy 1 ye not we are here of the principal of your
grace's nobility and Council that sail find the moyen
that your majesty sail be quit of him without prejudice
of your son ; and albeit that my Lord of Murray here
present be little less scrupulous for ane Protestant nor
your grace is for ane Papist, I am assurit he will look
throw his fingers thereto, and sail behold our doings,
saying nothing to the same.' The queen's majesty
answered, ' I will that ye do nothing whereto any spot
may be laid to my honour or conscience, and therefore
I pray you rather let the matter be in the estate as it
is, abiding till God of His goodness put remeid thereto ;
that ye, believing to do me service, may possibly turn
to my hurt and displeasure.' ' Madam,' said Lethington,
' let us guide the matter amongst us, and your grace
sail see nothing but good, and approved by Parlia-
ment.'" There is reason to believe that this conversa-
tion is pretty accurately reported. In the first place,
Huntly and Argyle were men of such repute for pro-
bity as the times permitted; and Murray, not criticising
the accuracy of the statement, merely denied that he
had entered into any band or engagement for the mur-
der, and in fact justified the expressive gesture described
by Lethington, of holding his hand before his face, as
if to hide what was in progress from his eyes, yet seeing
1 This word "fancy" is supposed to be a mistake for "soucy" se
soucier ; but whatever may have been the intended word, it does not
much affect the tenor.
PREPARATIONS FOR AN EVENT, 1566. 335
it all the while. Let us look at the object of the pro-
testation. Its object was to vindicate the queen from
the charge that she had been " of the foreknowledge,
counselled, devised, and commanded the murder." The
protesters count that Lethington, in the words quoted,
did announce the murder; and the manner in which
they make this bear on the queen's vindication is that,
being assured that the deed would be done by others,
there was no occasion why she should dip her own
hands in blood no occasion for her to " counsel, devise,
persuade, and command" the deed. True, what was
to be done was to be " approved by Parliament," and
Parliament did not approve of it in the way in which
it came to be done. But whether there was a sincere
intention to walk in such a manner as to secure the
sanction of the Estates, the one thing clear is that a
promise was made to rid the queen of her unendurable
husband, and that without a divorce. Huntly and
Argyle, it may be noticed, did not pen their protest
for an age when it would be considered either very
improbable or very horrible that a woman situated as
Mary was would be glad of the assurance that she
would be relieved of her husband without requiring to
do anything that would compromise her own safety.
As all seemed to expect, Darnley was absent from
the baptism of the young prince on the 7th of Decem-
ber; and his conduct was the more emphatic, as he was
then living in Stirling Castle, where the ceremony was
performed. Bothwell did the honours of the occasion,
as one to whom such a function came naturally ; and
it was remarked as rather anomalous that a Protes-
tant should have been selected to adjust and direct a
ceremonial conducted under the forms of the Romish
336 QUEEN MARY.
Church. The despised husband went about pouring
liis grievances into all who would listen to them, and
O '
became so troublesome that the French ambassador had
to threaten that if Darnley entered his house by one
door he would himself leave it by the other. Mean-
while, among the events now hurrying upon each other,
those who pressed for the pardon of Eizzio's murderers
were successful as to all but George Douglas and Ker
of Faudonside, who had committed, or at all events
threatened, violence in the royal presence.
Darnley was now seized with a sudden and acute
illness, which broke out cutaneously. Poison was at
first naturally suspected. The disease was speedily
pronounced to be smallpox ; but it has been con-
jectured that it may have been one of those forms of
contamination which had then begun to make their
silent and mysterious visitation in this country, while
the immediate cause by which they were communi-
cated was yet unknown. From what occurred after-
wards, it became a current belief that he had been
poisoned. He was removed to Glasgow, and tended
under the direction of his father, Lennox.
His enemies waited to see if nature would relieve
them of the work before them; but as he began to
recover, they began to be active. Their hands were
strengthened by the assistance of Morton, Kuthven,
and the other fugitives who had been pardoned, and
whose restoration was no doubt facilitated by the work
in prospect for them. That all things might be done
duly and in order, a bond for the slaughter of the king
was prepared. The drafting of this important docu-
ment was committed to James Balfour, the greatest
lawyer of his day. No copy of it has been preserved,
PREPARATIONS FOR AN EVENT, 1566. 337
and what we chiefly know about it is from dubious
sources. 1 In the confession afterwards uttered by
Morton on his downfall, he stated that Bothwell met
him at Whittinghame, and in a long communing tried
to persuade him to join in a plot for the murder of the
king, telling him it was the queen's desire that he
should be removed, and " she would have it to be done."
Morton says, having just got out of one troublesome
affair, he was averse to immediately engaging in an-
other; and put it off at the time by desiring, before he
committed himself, to be assured of the queen's wish
under the evidence of her own hand. He says that
afterwards, when he was in St Andrews visiting the
Earl of Angus, Archibald Douglas came to him from
Bothwell to press the matter ; but he had now the
good excuse that he had been promised a writing
under the queen's hand, and had not received it.
When asked why he did not reveal the plot, he said,
significantly, " I durst not reveal it for fear of my life ;
for at that time to whom should I have revealed it ?
To the queen ? She was the doer thereof. I was
minded, indeed, to the king's father [viz., Darnley
himself], but that I durst not for my life ; for I knew
him to be such a bairn, that there was nothing told
him but he would reveal it to her again." 2
Completely in harmony with the part acted by
1 The Laird of Ormiston, in his confession, professed to cite a part of
it from memory, to this effect : " That for sacmickle it was thought ex-
pedient and maist profitable for the commonwealth, by the haill nobility
and lords under subscryvit, that sic ane young fool and proud tyrant
suld not reign or bear rule over them ; and that for divers causes, there-
fore, they all had concluded that he suld be put off by ane way or an-
other and whosoever suld take the deed in hand, or do it, they suld
defend and fortify it as themselves." Pitcairn, i. 512*.
2 Confession, in Bannatyne's Memorials ; Bannatyne edit., 317.
VOL. IV. Y
338 QUEEN MARY.
these performers in the tragedy, a change came over
the conduct of the queen. She employed her ductile
arts on her diseased, suspicious, terrified husband. She
set herself to the task of quieting his fears and luring
him back to her arms. She announced that she would
visit him on his sick-bed ; and she set forth on her
journey on the 22d of January 1567. A gentleman
of Ins father's household, named Thomas Crawford,
was sent to meet her. Crawford was a confidential
adherent of Lennox, intrusted to attend this critical
meeting between the husband and wife, and to observe
and tell to his lord all that passed. It was a duty of
some moment; for Lennox evidently believed that the
visit was connected with some deadly purpose, and he
was striving to fathom it. Crawford was instructed
to report everything he saw and all he heard passing
between the two. The question how they conducted
themselves and what they said to each other became
afterwards momentous, and holds so important a place
in the history of a year or two later, that we may pass
it over for the present, merely noting that Mary pre-
vailed on her husband to agree that, after he had
made some advance towards recovery, he would live at
Craigmillar Castle for a time, and take the bath there.
After the queen departed, there came a word or two
between her husband and Crawford, remarkable in
their way. The sick man asked Crawford what he
thought of the project for removing him. Crawford did
not like it. Taking her husband to Craigmillar instead
of his own place of residence was odd it seemed as if
she were going to take him more like a prisoner than a
husband. Then came this from the sick man : " He
answered that he thought little less himself, and feared
THE KIRK-OF-FIELD, 1567. 339
himself meikle save the confidence he had in her
promise only ; notwithstanding, he would go with her,
and put himself in her hands, though she should cut
his throat, and besought God to be judge unto them
baith." x
A few days afterwards she had her husband removed
to Edinburgh, so that he arrived there on the last day
of January. The purpose of conveying him to Craig-
millar was changed. Yet he was told that he would
not be taken to Holyrood, but to a place close to the
city wall called the Kirk -of -Field. He knew that
there stood the great hotel of the Hamilton family,
and expected to be taken to it ; but the house destined
for him was a smaller building, the residence of the
provost of the religious house of St Mary-in-the-Fields,
which conveniently belonged to Robert Balfour, the
brother of the drafter of the bond. This was one of
the monastic establishments wrecked by the English
invaders. From this or some other cause the provost's
house seems to have been singularly destitute of
defences for a building of that age ; and Nelson,
Darnley's page, tells that a small door, which appears
to have given access to the whole building from the
courtyard, was taken off by the queen's orders, to
cover the vat or tub in which the convalescent took
his bath, as if nothing more appropriate could be found
for such a purpose. Several incidental details speak
clearly of the hasty occupation of a building which,
however suitable for other purposes, was not adapted
to tranquillity and security. An effort seems to have
been made to give comfort and even a touch of regal
magnificence to the apartments by hangings and furni-
1 Record Office, Scotch Correspondence, vol. xiii No. 14.
340 QUEEN MARY.
ture, conveniently afforded from the affluent supplies
obtained by the plunder of Strathbogie in the conflict
with Huntly. 1 For all that could be thus superficially
done for it, the establishment seems to have been of
the most sordid and slovenly character. The key of a
door leading out through the city wall could not be
found, and the door had to be nailed up from within.
Of the other keys it was remarked that they were left
in the possession of Balfour's people ; and the conspir-
ators appear, for more security, to have forged dupli-
cates of them in case they should have been required
to give them up. 2
1 " The hall was hung with five pieces of tapestry, part of the plunder
of Strathbogie. It had a high chair or chair of state covered with
leather, and a dais or cloth of state of black velvet fringed with black
silk. The walls of the king's chamber on the upper floor were hung
with six pieces of tapestry which, like the hangings of the hall, had been
spoiled from the Gordons after Corrichie. The floor had a little Turkey
carpet. There were two or three cushions of red velvet, a high chair
covered with piirple velvet, and a little table with a broad cloth or cover
of green velvet, brought from Strathbogie. The bed, which had belonged
to the queen's mother, was given to the king in August 1566. It was
hung with violet-brown velvet, pasmented with cloth of gold and silver,
and embroidered with cyphers and flowers in needlework of gold and
silk. It had three coverlets, one being of blue taffeta quilted. . . . The
wardrobe, which seems to have been on the upper floor, was hung with
six pieces of tapestry, figuring a rabbit-hunt. Here there was a cabinet
of yellow shot taffeta, fringed with red and yellow silk. In a chamber
on the ground floor, directly under the king's chamber, there was a little
bed of yellow and green damask, with a furred coverlet, in which the
queen slept on the nights of Wednesday and Friday, and intended to
sleep on the very night in which the king was murdered." Queen
Mary's Inventories, Pref. xcviii.-c.
From the same accurate pen we have the following estimate of the
accommodation of the house : " The provost's place contained a hall,
two chambers or bedrooms, a cabinet, a wardrobe, and a cellar, besides
a kitchen, apparently under another roof. Of these rooms only three or
four seem to have been furnished from Holyrood." Ibid.
2 Buchanan, in his Detection, gives a hideously-eloquent description
of the sordidness of the place ; and as he appealed to a public who knew
it as well as he did, he cannot well have gone beyond bounds :
THE KIRK-OF-FIELD, 1567. 341
Sunday, the 9th of February, was at last fixed for
the great project, probably because, being the marriage-
day of the queen's favoured French domestic Bastiat
to one of her women, the ceremonials and festivities of
" "Whidder then is he led ? Into the maist desolate part of the towne,
sumtyme inhabitit while the Papische preistis kingdome lestit, bot for
certane yeiris past without ony dwaller, in sic a hous as of itself wald
haif fallin downe, yif it had not bene botched up for the tyme to serve
the turne of this nichtis sacrifice. Why was this place cheifly chosin?
Tliay pretend the helsumnes of air. O glide God ! going about to mur-
ther hir husband, seikis scho for ane helsum air ? To what use ? Not
to preserve his lyfe, bot to reserve his body to torment. Heirto tend hir
wyfelie diligent attendance, and hir last cair of hir husbandis lyfe. Schoe
feiris leist he suld, be preventing deith, be delyverit from pane, schoe
wald fane have him feill himself die. Bot let us se what maner of hel-
sumnes of air it is. Is it amang deid mennis graves to seik the preserv-
ing of lyfe ? For hard by thair were the ruynes of twa kirkis : on the
eist syde, ane monasterie of Dominike freiris ; on the west, ane kirk of
our Lady, whilk, for the desolatenes of the place, is callit the Kirk in
the Feild ; on the south syde, the towne wall, and in the same, for com-
modious passage every way, is ane posterne dure ; on the north syde ar
ane few beggeris cotages, then reddy to fall, whilk sumtime servit for
stewis for certane preistis and monkis, the name of whilk place dois
planely disclois the forme and nature thairof, for it is commounly callit
the Theif Raw. Thair is never ane uther hous neir bot the Hammil-
tounis hous, whilk is about ane stanis cast distant, and that also stude
voyde. Thether remuisit the Archebischop of Sanctandrois, wha alway
befoir was wont to be ludgeit in the maist populous partis of the towne.
He also watchit all that nicht that the king was slane.
" Now I beseik yow, sen ye cannot with your eyis, yit at the leist with
your myndes behald, ane hous whilum of auld preistis, amang graves,
betwene the ruynes of twa tempillis, itself also ruynous, neir to the
theifis hant, and itself ane resetter of theifis, not far from the fort and
garrisoun of his enemeis, that stude richt over aganis the dure, be whilk
yif ony man suld fle out, he culd not eschaip thair traterous ambusch-
ment. The verray schape of this place, when ye considder in your mynd,
when ye heir of the ruynes of kirkis, graves of deid men, lurking cor-
neris of theifis, bordelhousis of harlotis, dois not, I say, not the hous
only, bot also everie part neir about it, seme to proclame mischeif and
trecherie ? Semis heir ane king to have gane into a hous for ludgeing,
or to be thrust into ane den of theifis ? Was not that desolate waistnes,
that unhantit place, abill of itself to put simpill men in feir, to mak
wyser men suspicious, and to give nouchtie men schrewit occasionis?"
P. 66-60.
342 QUEEN MARY.
the occasion afforded opportunities for doing what was
to be done. From the testimony and confessions after-
wards taken, imperfect as they are, a clear enough his-
tory can be gleaned of the greater part of the doings
of the active hands, even if we should exclude from
consideration those portions in which they exculpate
themselves, along with those which, as directly incul-
pating the queen, are maintained by her champions to
be incredible.
To follow accurately the course of events, it is neces-
sary to keep in view one or two specialties which will
enable one to single out from existing Edinburgh the
geography of the ground gone over. The town formed
itself then on the two great thoroughfares running east
and west, the High Street and the Cowgate. The city
wall cut through on the line where St Mary's Wynd
and Leith Wynd now meet at the foot of the High
Street, and there stood the Canongate Port, the space
between it and Holyrood being occupied by the suburb
of Canongate. Where the wall passed the Cowgate, at
the foot of the present St Mary's Wynd, was the Cow-
gate Port. The wall there kept the same southerly
direction to a bastion or turret near the present Infir-
mary, where it turned at right angles, running west.
The next break was the Potterrow Port, before reaching
which it passed close on the grounds of the Kirk-of-
Field, the nearest existing landmark to which is the
present College.
The persons known beyond the arch-conspirator as
having had an actual hand in carrying out the plot
were, Nicholas Hubert, called French Paris, a creature
of Beth-well's, whom he had brought from France and
placed in the service of the queen ; George Dalgleish
THE KIRK-OF-FIELD, 1567. 343
and William Powrie, in Bothwell's service and confi-
dence ; Hepburn of Bolton, his relation ; Patrick Wilson,
his tailor or master of the robes ; Ormiston, the laird
of that ilk, and his uncle, called Hob Ormiston ; and
Hay, the heir of Talla, a district in the wildest part of
the border mountains.
The first event noticed on Sunday was that Murray,
after breakfast, bade a formal farewell to the queen as
he was departing to join his wife ; and Hubert, who
took note of this, says he saw that that good man
desired to be away while mischief was going on. The
queen attended the marriage of her favourites, partook
of the marriage -dinner, and then supped with the
Countess of Argyle, apparently about four o'clock.
Hubert, who stood behind a chair, says she was solicit-
ous about a coverture of marten-skins which she had
directed him, through Margaret Crawford, to remove
the day before from the Kirk -of -Field. She asked
him now if it had been removed, and he satisfied her
that it had. Bothwell was among the guests ; and
when they rose, he went to his mother's apartments,
attended by Hubert. They then went and found
Ormiston and his uncle Hob, with whom they joined
Hay and Hepburn on the street of the Canongate.
Bothwell then took Hubert to the Kirk-of-Field, and
gave him such directions that, when the others came
to transact business there, he should be on duty in the
king's chamber.
The rest returned to the abbey or palace, where it
has to be observed that Bothwell had permanent apart-
ments. In these a quantity of powder was stored in
bags or " pocks." Two large receptacles were provided
for the removal of these, one of them apparently a
344 QUEEN MARY.
common trunk, the other a mail or travelling-trunk.
These were carried by two horses, and it took two
journeys to remove the whole. They were taken round
by the outside of the wall. Near the Kirk-of-Field
there was an old gate in the wall, called the Blackfriars'
Gate, not one of the regular occupied ports. Ormiston
managed to get on the other side of the wall by the
help of some ruins, and opened the gate. They had
brought a cask with them to stow the powder in, but
it was too large to get admission to the room where
the train was to be laid. This room was the queen's
bedroom, just under the king's, and her bed had to
be shifted to make room for the train. It was brought
in by the men in the original sackfuls, and this appears
to have been a long, silent process. Both well at one
time feared that it might be heard in the room above,
and with a fierce whisper enjoined more quietness.
They were at a loss for light ; and, among other inci-
dents, we are told that they bought six halfpenny
candles from Geordie Burns's wife in the Cowgate.
Powrie and Wilson took back the empty boxes, and
on their way saw " the queen's grace, with torches
before her," going along the Blackfriars' Wynd to join
the king. This seems to have been about ten o'clock.
It was understood that, according to recently-estab-
lished practice, she was to sleep that night in the
chamber under the king's. She went first, however,
up to the king's chamber, passing the door of her own,
like an affectionate wife, whose first care was her sick
husband. There was general conversation in the room,
in the midst of which she suddenly recollected that she
had promised to attend the masked ball to be held in
the palace in honour of Bastiat's marriage, and must
MURDER OF DARNLEY, 1567. 345
be off immediately. She bade her husband a very
affectionate farewell for the night, and departed. Had
she gone into her own chamber, she would have seen
the bed removed and the sacks of powder lying there.
But she did not go to it ; and it is for every one to
conjecture whether it was or was not known before-
hand that she would keep out of that apartment. To
prevent stray intrusions, Hubert kept the key.
The queen and her attendants, including Bothwell,
having gone, Hepburn of Bolton and Hay of Talla
only of the conspirators remained. How they occu-
pied themselves is now the chief mystery in the
whole affair ; and from subsequent circumstantial evi-
dence it has been conjectured that the intended vic-
tim, with his page, discovered them, attempted to
escape, and got even over a wall into a garden, when
they were seized and strangled. They were found
without any marks from the explosion, but with marks
of other violence.
Bothwell went to his apartments in the palace and
changed his black velvet hose and doublet of satin, both
trussed with silver, for a coarser doublet and dark
muffled cloak, such as the Schwartz-ritters wore, and
passed forth, accompanied by his immediate followers,
Dalgleish, Hubert, Powrie, and Wilson. They were
challenged by the sentinels on duty at the palace, but
they said they were friends friends of the Earl of
Bothwell, and this powerful name silenced every-
thing. They came to the Canongate Port, and finding
it closed for it was now twelve o'clock called out to
Galloway, the keeper, to open for friends of my Lord
Bothwell ; and here, again, there was immediate obe-
dience. They took this way apparently that they
346 QUEEN MARY.
might pick up Ormiston ; but lie managed not to be
found, though he told in his confession that he was in
bed asleep, and the rest went down by the Blackfriars.
There Both well left his followers behind the wall, and
joined Hepburn and Hay, who had already lighted the
train. It seems to have been carefully laid, and burned
so long that Bothwell, overcome by impatience, was
on the point of going to look at it when the great
crash came.
He was not a man to do things by halves ; and he
seems to have provided so large a train that the effect
exceeded his expectation. Little was known then of
the expansive force of gunpowder, and the extent of
its destructiveness when confined within walls; and
the building was so completely shattered, as to lead to
the supposition that it had been systematically mined.
The explosion shook the earth, and all Edinburgh was
roused from sleep. The murderers had to escape
rapidly, and it is probable that they may thus have
been obliged to abandon a small detail necessary for
the completion of their work in a satisfactory manner.
Certainly they either intended to kill their victim by the
explosion, or make it appear that he had been so killed.
If he was killed in trying to escape, then of course it
would have been desirable that the body should be
taken back into the house, that it might, wherever
it should be found, bear marks of the explosion, from
which it was observed to be exempt. If he tried to
escape, and was murdered after the lighting of the lint,
it was too late to bring the body back; and, with all the
world rushing to the spot, it was hopeless to remedy
the matter after the explosion. The party were within
the town walls, and seemed desirous to escape through
MURDER OF DARNLEY, 1567. 347
the streets by an outlet distant from the Kirk-of-Field.
They attempted what they thought a weak part of the
wall at Leith Wynd, but found it too high for them,
and had to apply again to the keeper of the Canongate
Port, who again yielded to the demand of the Lord
Both well's friends, and let them pass. Bothwell got as
rapidly as possible to his apartments in the palace, took
a draught of wine, and tumbled into bed, to be roused,
as if from slumber, half an hour afterwards, by a mes-
senger informing him of the tragedy. He called out
treason, donned his garments, and went forthwith to
the queen, along with Huntly, who joined him. It
was then, apparently, between three and four o'clock.
Of the way in which the masked ball came off, we
hear but little. It was probably a very gay and joyous
affair; for Bastiat, in whose honour it w r as held, was a
merry fellow, and especially expert at getting up mum-
meries. It was he who, on the occasion of a Court
pageant, had disturbed the equanimity of the English
embassy, by the provocative manner in which his satyrs
wagged their tails in the face of these grave person-
ages. The mask was long over, and all had retired
before the explosion roused them. Bothwell and
Huntly, when they sought audience of the queen at
an untimely hour, had of course the excuse of a general
alarm; and ostensibly, it appears that they informed her
that there had occurred an accident from gunpowder
at the Kirk-of-Field, as to which immediate inquiry
was promised. Bothwell, it appears, returned between
eight and nine o'clock to inform her that she was a
widow, and held audience with her within the curtain
of her bed a matter which the royal customs of the
time render of no further moment than as it imported
348 QUEEN MARY.
that the communing was close and secret, excluding
all other of the queen's advisers. 1
Meanwhile a crowd gathered round the scene of the
explosion, eager and anxious to find what the late dawn
of the winter sun would reveal.
1 Sir James Melville says that " Bothwell, when he came furth, told
him that her majesty was sorrowful and quiet." He then told Melville
that one of the most extraordinary things had come to pass that powder
had come down from the " luft " or sky, and burnt the house of the
king, whose body was found under a tree. He recommended Melville
to go and see the body, and observed u how that there was not a hurt
nor a mark in all his body ; " but Sir James was not successful in his
attempts to get access to the place where the body lay. Memoirs, 174.
CHAPTER XLVI.
(Continued?)
THE MORNING AFTER THE MURDER DOINGS AT HOLYROOD -
FEELING OF THE PUBLIC DISPOSAL OF THE MURDERED MAN*S
BODY SUSPICIONS AND ACCUSATIONS POINTING TO BOTHWELL -
WHISPERS ABOUT THE QUEEN - CORRESPONDENCE WITH DARN-
LEY'S FATHER, WHO DEMANDS A TRIAL - HOW IT WAS EVADED -
BOTHWELL ADVANCED AND FAVOURED - THE QUEEN GETS WARN-
INGS - SOJOURN AT SETON - THE SUPPER AT ANNESLY's - THE
BAND FOR BOTHWELL'S MARRIAGE WITH THE QUEEN THE IN-
TERCEPTION AND CARRYING OFF OF THE QUEEN TO DUNBAR
HER FORMAL ENTRY INTO EDINBURGH BOTHWELL'S DIFFICUL-
TIES AS A MARRIED MAN - ARRANGEMENTS FOR BEING RID OF
HIS WIFE - HOW THE PROTESTANT PARTY AND THEIR CLERGY
TAKE MATTERS THE MARRIAGE OF MARY AND BOTHWELL - THE
MARRIED COUPLE HER APOLOGY FOR HER CONDUCT.
THE smallest doings at Holyrood immediately after the
murder, the very inertness itself, almost reaching a
sort of political paralysis, deserve close attention from
their significance. It is useless to join in the common
wonder, founded on the practice regarding crimes in
the present day, why immediate investigation was not
made as to the procuring and carrying of the powder,
the making of the false keys, the movements of the
perpetrators, and the like. The question was not so
much who could speak, as who would ; and the latter
350 QUEEN MARY.
question would have to be decided by the tenor of
political events. In fact all the world knew who were
the doers of the deed. Among persons conspicuous in
the history of the time there was one, and only one,
person who seemed to be ignorant of the party guiltiest
of all. It was a knowledge along with which some
entertained an approval of the deed, while others were
prepared to employ it in punishment if they should
have the opportunity. The one exception to this
general admission was the queen, who could not or
would not believe that her beloved follower was the
great criminal.
Bothwell immediately did the part of the prompt
and considerate friend, who in the hour of calamity
relieves the bereaved of the irksome duties of the
household. He took on himself, in fact, the functions
of Governor of Scotland, and with immediate success ;
for there was nobody who could cope with one so
prompt and audacious, supported as he was by the
devout reliance of his royal mistress. As morning
dawned, the citizens naturally continued to gather to
the Kirk-of-Field. Bothwell sent a strong guard to the
spot, and directed the bodies to be removed. During
the day the ambassadors of France and Savoy desired
an inspection of the king's body, which was refused.
This was cited, along with other like instances, to show
that the murderer was keeping out of sight the chief
real evidence of his crime ; but such suspicions are
natural to such an event. They are caused by ex-
citement and disappointed curiosity. In this instance
there was little concealment or motive for it. No
one pretended that the death had been accidental, or
breathed a doubt that there had been murder.
AFTER THE MURDER, 1567. 351
Mary at first adopted the decorous gloom proper to
her situation, and shut herself out from the world. It
was a carriage not only blameless but laudable, yet it
aptly served the purpose of him who was becoming the
ruler of her actions. On the second day of her widow-
hood we have the earliest indication of the policy she
intended to pursue. It is addressed to her worthy
councillor, Beaton, the Bishop of Glasgow, in whose
eyes she ever wished to stand well. The letter is so
significant that it is given in full :
" Most reverend father in God, and trusty councillor,
we greet ye well. We have received this morning
your letters of the 27th January by your servant,
Robert Dury, containing in ane part such advertise-
ment as we find by effect over true, albeit the success
has not altogether been such as the authors of that
mischievous fact had preconceived in their mind, and
had put it in execution, if God in His mercy had not
preserved us, and reserved us, as we trust, to the end
that we may take a rigorous vengeance of that mis-
chievous deed, which or it should remain unpunished,
we had rather lose life and all. The matter is horrible
and so strange, as we believe the like was never heard
of in any country. This night past, being the 9th
February, a little after two hours after midnight, the
house wherein the king was lodged was in an instant
blown in the air, he lying sleeping in his bed, with
such a vehemence that of the whole lodging, walls and
other, there is nothing remained, no, not a stone above
another, but all either carried far away, or dung in
dross to the very ground-stone. It mon be done by
force of powder, and appears to have been a mine.
By whom it has been done, or in what manner, it ap-
352 QUEEN MARY.
pears not as yet. We doubt not but, according to the
diligence our Council has begun already to use, the
certainty of all shall be usit shortly; and the same
being discovered, which we wot God will never suffer
to lie hid, we hope to punish the same with such
rigour as shall serve for example of this cruelty to
all ages to come. Always, whoever have taken this
wicked enterprise in hand, we assure ourself it was
dressit as well for us as for the king ; for we lay the
most part of all the last week in that same lodging,
and was there accompanied with the most part of the
lords that are in this town that same night at mid-
night, and of very chance tarried not all night, by
reason of some mask in the abbey; but we believe it
was not chance, but God that put it in our head.
" We despatched this bearer upon the sudden, and
therefore write to you the more shortly. The rest of
your letter we shall answer at more leisure, within four
or five days, by your own servant. And so for the
present commit you to Almighty God. At Edinburgh
the llth day of February 1566-6 7." l
The original of this letter is now lost, and we have
not the means of knowing whether it was written in
her own hand. The probability is that it was not. 2
But there is no doubt that it is her own. Whether
her own device or that of her master, it was a bold
stroke. It was to stamp at once the impression that
she was to have been one of the victims, and that her
own escape was a great marvel of the tragedy. The
attempt was a failure. Circumstances at once showed
that the safety of the queen was essential to the de-
signs of the conspirators, and they were too expert to
1 Labanoff, ii. 3, 4. * See above, p. 211.
AFTER THE MURDER, 1567. 353
be likely to make any serious blunder. There is a
secondary point in this letter, in which it agrees with
the first impression made by the immediate aspect
of the affair. She promptly assumes that the explo-
sion came from a mine. This idea prevailed elsewhere,
and the question of her good faith in starting it de-
pends on whether she knew or did not know that
the powder was piled in her own sleeping-room.
On Wednesday, two days after the discovery of
the bodies, proclamation was made that a reward of
two thousand pounds would be paid to any one who
would reveal the author of the murder. Among the
community, who knew perfectly the chief actor at
least, none ventured to earn this money by an open
denunciation ; but a writing was affixed to the door
of the Tolbooth or Parliament House, naming Both-
well, Balfour, Chambers, and " black Mr John Spence "
as the guilty persons. Another placard followed, nam-
ing, as inferior actors in the tragedy, Signer Francis,
Bastiat, John of Bordeaux, and Joseph Kizzio.
The event seems to have caused much more excite-
ment among the citizens than its perpetrators ex-
pected. The age and the country were familiar with
violent deaths. In France, Spain, and the Empire, the
labours of the civilians had surrounded sovereigns with
a sort of sanctity which claimed inviolability for their
persons. Violence to monarchs was thus by degrees
removed into a separate category from other outrages,
and partook of sacrilege. This doctrine had, however,
but faintly penetrated to Scotland, where the people
were practically familiar with stories of the death of
kings. A party was arising who argued that rulers
should be specially responsible for their misconduct ;
VOL. iv. z
354 QUEEN MARY.
but then these were people of sober rigid walk, who
abjured crime and violence, and demanded that the
responsibility should be enforced with order and de-
corum. The method, too, of the deed, developing in
an astounding manner the unknown, and it might be
illimitable powers of the mysterious chemical agent
just added to the forces at the command of man, was
far more adapted to rouse the populace than any
common stabbing or hanging. The feelings of the
citizens of .Edinburgh rapidly heated up to strong
excitement, and Buchanan mentions that voices were
heard in the street at dead of night denouncing the
murderers. 1 It was a natural result of the general
excitement that those who dared not speak openly
should give utterance in the dark, and also that mid-
night denunciations were heard with mysterious awe.
Two days after the proclamation, the body of the
murdered man was buried in the Chapel of Holyrood
with a secrecy that attracted as much attention as any
1 As all the picturesque accounts of the state of the public mind at
this time are taken from Buchanan, we will get at the clearest statement
by taking his own words : " Leist the mater suld seme not to be regardit,
out gais ane proclamation with rewardis promysit to him that culd gif
information of it. But wha durst accuse the quene 1 Or (whilk was
in maner mair perillous) wha durst detect Bothwell of sic ane horribill
offence, specially when he himself was baith doer, judge, inquyrer, and
examiner ? Yit this feir whilk stoppit the mouthis of everie man in
particulaire, culd not restrane the haill multitude in general ; for baith
be buikis set out and be pictures, and be cryis in the darke nicht, it was
sa handillit, that the doeris of the mischevous fact micht esilie under-
stand that thay secreitis of thairis wer cum abrode. And when everie
man was now out of dout wha did the inurther, and wha gaif further-
ance unto it, the mair that thay laubourit to keep thair awin names
undiscloisit, sa mekle the pepilis grudge restranit, brak out mair op-
pinlie." Detection, Anderson, ii. 25, 26. More tersely it is put in his
History : " Nam et libellis propositis, et pictura, et nocturnis per tene-
bras clamoribus effectum est, ut patricidse facile intelligerent arcana sua
nocturna in vulgus prodiisse." Lib. xviii. 20.
AFTER THE MURDER, 1567. 355
feature of the affair. It is noted that on the day of
the funeral Bothwell obtained an accession of fortune
in a gift of the reversal of the feudal superiority over
the town of Leith, and that Darnley's servant Drum-
mond, who stood under heavy suspicion of treachery,
got a pension and an office near the person of the infant
prince. 1 Two days afterwards, on the Sunday after the
murder, the queen went to Seton Palace, in Hadding-
tonshire, about twelve miles from Edinburgh. 2 There
she had for her Court the ever-present Bothwell, with
his supporters Argyle, Huntly, Seton their entertainer,
Secretary Lethington, and John Hamilton, the restless
Archbishop of St Andrews. 3
The caterers for information to be sent to England
picked up expressive stories of the way in which the
group conducted themselves. The queen and Bothwell,
it was said, amused themselves in shooting at the butts,
and having together won a match against Seton and
Huntly, the losers entertained the winners at dinner
in Tranent. 4 What means that place possessed for
entertaining royalty in the sixteenth century it were
hard to say : it is now a smoky, cindery, colliers'
village, rife with whisky-shops, and lately achieved
notoriety, in the course of the Government sanitary
inquiries, by its excessive filth and unhealthiness. The
1 Laing, i. 49.
8 The Lest authority for the exact sequence of the events is the
Diurnal of Occurreiits.
3 In the Diurnal of Occurrents, however, it is stated that she " left the
Erlis of Huntly and Bothwill in the Palice of Halyrudhous, to keip the
prince unto her returning."
4 Drury to Cecil, cited by Tytler. That there were light doings at
Seton is asserted also by Buchanan. In a diary of occurrences marked
by Cecil (Forbes, ii. 269), it is said that at Seton she and Bothwell "passed
their tyine meryly."
356 QUEEN MARY.
queen's visitors are justified in holding that such a
scene was much at variance with the usual decorum
of her deportment, and the less partial will admit it
to be inconsistent with her powers of dissimulation;
but there remains the consideration that she was then
the victim of an infatuation which broke through all
the defences of her strong nature. However it be, she
had presently more important matters to occupy her.
The denunciatory placards were repeated, and Joseph
Rizzio, Bastiat, and the other humble foreigners whose
names appeared on these formidable documents, pru-
dently managed one by one to slip out of the country,
knowing that whatever turn matters took they must
be in imminent peril.
A new actor now steps upon the scene one likely
to bring practical conclusions out of the general chaos
of doubts, mysteries, and suspicions. The father of
the murdered man demands justice, and calls on the
widow, as the person who has the power, and ought
of all others to be the most earnest towards that end,
to take vigorous steps for the discovery of the guilty
persons. The correspondence between the queen and
old Lennox is among the most significant of all the
tell-tale documents of that crisis, and is well worthy
of careful examination. Unfortunately the beginning,
a letter from Lennox and the queen's answer, is lost.
The reply of Lennox on the 20th of February is as
reverential as, coming from the meanest of the queen's
subjects, it could have been. He has received her most
comfortable letter, for which he renders her highness
most humble thanks, and he trusts never to deserve
otherwise than as he has received of her highness's
hands. Since she takes in good part his simple advice
LENNOX AND BOTHWELL, 1567. 357
and counsel, he ventures to continue therein. As he sees
that all the travail and labour she has manifested have
hitherto come to naught, he makes bold to put his poor
and simple advice in a practical shape, " that your
highness wald with convenient diligence assemble
the hail nobility and Estates of your majesty's realm ;
and they, by your advice, to take such order for the
perfect trial of the matter," as he doubts not through
God's grace shall so work on the hearts of her majesty
and her faithful subjects as that the bloody and cruel
actors of the deed shall be manifestly known. A
sprinkling of piety there is towards the conclusion ; but
the last words have a touching simplicity, in desiring
that she will bear with him should he seem trouble-
some, " being the father to him that is gone."
This appeal received prompt attention. It was
written at Houston, in Renfrewshire, on the 21st of
February, and the queen's answer left Seton next day.
It was written in excellent taste, with such courtesy
as a young sovereign might show to a venerable sub-
ject parentally related to her. The kindness and good-
will for which Lennox was so grateful were but her
duty, and came of that natural affection, of which he
might feel as assured himself at that time, and so long
as God gave her life, as ever he had been since the be-
ginning of their acquaintance. Then to business. For
the assembly of the nobility and the other Estates of
Parliament, which he recommended "for a perfect trial
of the king our husband's cruel slaughter," she so en-
tirely concurred in that plan, that before receiving his
letter she had ordered a Parliament to be proclaimed,
"where first of all this matter, being maist dear to
us, sail be handlit, and nathing left undone whilk may
358 QUEEN MARY.
further the clear trial of the same." This state paper
does credit to the diplomatic skill of its author.
Lennox was at once taken up as desiring a formal
meeting of Parliament. As of course something must
be done, no step could be more desirable than that,
since it was a matter of parade and delay, which
would give a long breathing-time. The Estates, in
fact, did not assemble until the 14th of April. What
Lennox wanted was a general assembling of the chief
subjects of the crown, that counsel might be taken
among them, the hands of justice strengthened, and
assurance given to those who were afraid to reveal
what they knew.
The next letter from the old man slips into the tone
of one who is angry at being made a mockery of.
After short words of courtesy, he explains the misap-
prehension of his meaning. With a touch of sarcasm,
he expresses his assurance that, although her highness
is pleased to await the assembling of Parliament, she
will feel the time as long as he does until the matter
be tried, and the doers of the deed condignly punished.
The matter is not for Parliament, but the criminal ad-
ministration of justice; and " of sic wecht and import-
ance, whilk ought rather to be with all expedition and
diligence sought out and punished, to the example of
the hail world." He reminds her that certain persons
have been denounced on the Tolbooth door as the mur-
derers, and comes to this practical conclusion : " I shall
therefore most humbly beseek your majesty, for the
luif of God, the honours of your majesty and your
realm, and well and quietness of the same, that it will
please your majesty forthwith, not only to apprehend
and put in sure keeping the persons named in the said
LENNOX AND BOTHWELL, 1567. 359
tickets, but also with diligence to assemble your majes-
ty's nobility, and then by open proclamation to ad-
monish and require the writers of the said tickets to
compear." If, assured of full protection, they failed to
come forth and back their secret denunciations, then
these would go for naught.
o o
In the queen's next letter, dated the 1st of March,
there is some fencing about the cross purposes concern-
ing the Parliament. She did not mean that the affair
was for the Parliament, or that it should lie over until
the Estates met ; " but rather wad wish to God that it
might be suddenly and without delay tried, for ay the
sooner the better." Then coming to the point : " And
where ye desire that we should cause the names con-
tainit in some tickets affixt on the Tolbooth door of
Edinburgh to be apprehended and put in sure keep-
ing there is sa mony of the said tickets, and there-
withal sa different and contrarious to [each] other in
compting of the names, that we wit not upon what
ticket to proceed." Perhaps this was the best subter-
fuge that could be found, but it was lamentably inferior
to the subtle device in the previous letter. If Mary
expected it to go for anything but an effort to gain
time, this would strengthen the other evidence that the
terrible strain on her nervous system was telling on her
intellect. She ended by saying that, if he would inti-
mate to her the names of any of the persons denounced
whom he thought deserving of being brought to trial,
she would direct them to be brought to trial according
to law; "and being found culpable, sail see the punish-
ment as rigorously execute as the weight of the crime
deserves." On this hint Lennox spoke, and that
plainly : " And for the names of the persons foresaid,
360 QUEEN MARY.
I marvel that the same has been keeped frae your
majesty's ears, considering the effect [purport] of
the said tickets, and the names of the persons is so
openly talkt of that is to say, in the first ticket the
Erie Both well, Master James Balfour, Mr David Cham-
bers, and black John Spence ; and in the second ticket,
Seigneur Francis, Bastian, John de Bourdeaux, and
Joseph, Davie's brother, whilk persons, I assure your
majesty, I for my part greatly suspect. And now your
majesty knawing their names, and being the party, as
well and mair nor I, although I was the father, I doubt
not but your majesty will take order in the matter
according to the weight of the cause, which I maist
entirely and humbly beseek."
This bears date the 17th of March. On the 24th
the queen intimated to him an entire compliance with
his demands. Next week the nobles were to convene,
and the persons denounced by the earl to be put to
trial, and punished if guilty; and then comes an in-
junction such as would make one in Lennox's position
ponder : " We pray you, if your leisure and commo-
dity may suit, address you to be at us here in Edin-
burgh this week approachand, where ye may see the
said trial, and declare thay things which ye knaw may
further the same; and there ye sail have experience of
our earnest will and effectuous mind to have an end
in this matter, and the auctors of so unworthy a deed
really punished." ]
Here there is a formidable change of tone, which was
not without its sufficient cause. In the oscillations
1 The set of these letters is completed by using Anderson's Collection
and Keith's History with Labanoff, who gives the most reliable rendering
of the queen's part of the correspondence.
BOTHWELL'S ASCENDANCY, 1567. 361
of immediate events the tables had been turned. The
man sought as a criminal was himself the pursuer, and
the accusers had to look to themselves.
It was consistent neither with the nature nor the de-
signs of the man against whom so many accusations
were levelled to act the part of the hunted hare. On
the contrary, he took his stand as the great statesman
the actual governor of the realm, insulted by base and
skulking calumniators, who dared not confront him. He
swore vengeance against the authors of " the tickets ; "
and inquiry was made, or professed to be so, for their ex-
posure and punishment. Picturesque descriptions were
furnished to the English Court how, in his rage and
defiance, he rode through the town of Edinburgh with
fifty of his armed ruffians, and there before the multi-
tude told how he would serve the authors of the tickets
if he could find them. 1 As a small incident, showing
the contempt with which such accusations were re-
ceived, a pension was bestowed on the Signer Francis
so often referred to, the grant being dated at Seton on
the 20th of February. 2 For nearly a month there was
inaction in Court while the story of accusation raged
outside; and men passed from Both well, as the principal
criminal, to seize on the name of one still higher. It
is remarked that the Privy Council, the natural imme-
diate resort on a political emergency, did not assemble
between the 12th of February, when the reward for
the detection of the murderers was issued, and the 1st
of March, when it met to transact mere routine busi-
ness. 3 Another equally barren meeting was held on
1 Letters cited in Tytler, vii. 74.
2 Privy Seal Record, quoted, Laing, i. 50.
3 Ibid.
362 QUEEN MARY.
the 11 th, where it is noticed that Murray was present. 1
He had the day before obtained leave to retire to
France, and departed a few days later, not much to the
regret, it may be believed, either of his sister or the
man in whose hands he left her.
As to him, the career of Court prosperity, in which
he had been advancing, now took a rapid run it
could not but compromise the giver as well as the re-
ceiver of the rewards; and that he should have pur-
sued his fortune so eagerly at such a juncture, may be
attributed either to the recklessness of his ambition
and greed, or to the necessity of fortifying himself
from the coming attack, as the governor of a threat-
ened garrison seizes the latest opportunity afforded to
him to run up fresh defences.
Meanwhile those who were near enough to the Court
to see what went on there found themselves driven to
a new and astounding conclusion. They saw such dis-
tinct evidence of the queen's infatuated love for Both-
well that they believed she would marry him, and that
the merely superficial impediment of his having a wife
alive would be got over. There is little satisfaction in
the accounts which those professing after the event to
recall what they expected to happen say about their
suppositions. We all like to be considered sagacious
and prophetic; and the most candid will give a touch
of strength to their anticipations when recording them
after the event. We have, however, to the present
point a narrative of incidents, small in themselves, but
sufficient to show that there was a practical belief, even
while they were enjoying holiday life at Seton, that
these two would be united in wedlock. These inci-
1 Laing, i. 55.
BOTHWELL'S ASCENDANCY, 1567. 363
dents are given us in the Memoirs of Sir James Mel-
ville, where they follow on a remark that the " bruit "
began to arise that the queen would marry the Earl
of Bothwell, " who had six months before married the
Earl of Huntly's sister, and would part with his own
wife;" "whereat," he continues, " every good subject
that loved the queen's honour and the prince's security
had sad hearts, and thought her majesty would be dis-
honoured, and the prince in danger to be cut off by
him who had slain his father." He then tells how the
Lord Herries, coming to Court, attended by fifty fol-
lowers, on a special errand for the purpose, told her
in the plainest terms the tenor of the rumours, " re-
questing her majesty most humbly upon his knees to
remember her honour and dignity, and upon the secu-
rity of the prince, whilk would all be in danger of tin-
sell in case she married the said earl, with many other
great persuasions to eschew such utter wrack and in-
convenients as that would bring on." Her majesty,
it seems, marvelled at such bruits without purpose,
" and said that there was na sic thing in her mind."
Herries, having done what he deemed his duty, fled
quickly with his followers to his own country, to
evade the wrath of Bothwell. 1
A story like this is always liable to be inaccurate;
but in what follows Melville was himself a party, and
must be correct, unless we charge him with wilful
fabrication. He says he had made up his mind to
speak to her majesty in the same terms as Herries.
One Thomas Bishop, however, whom he describes as a
Scotsman long resident in England, and a warm advo-
1 There seems to be no reference to this in the ' Memoirs ' attributed
to Herries.
364 QUEEN MARY.
cate of Mary's title to the English throne, anticipated
his intention by writing a letter, which he desired
Melville to show to the queen. It took up the same
tone as the warning by Herries, " but more freely,
because he was absent in another country." Telling
how the rumour of the coming event had penetrated
to England, he assured her that if it came to pass she
would lose her own reputation, the favour of God,
and the kingdoms of England, Ireland, and Scotland
" with many other dissuasions and examples of his-
tories, whilks wald be ower lang to rehearse." He
says that he showed the letter to the queen, as he was
desired; and when she had read it, she called out to
Secretary Lethington that she had been shown a strange
writing, " willing him also to see it." He asked what
it was, and she said, "A device of his own, tending to
the wreck of the Earl Bothwell." Melville continues,
"He took me by the hand and drew me apart; and
when he had read it, he asked what was in my mind,
and said, ' So soon as the Earl Bothwell gets word, as
I fear he shall, he will not fail to slay you.' " Melville
muttered something about its being a sore thing to see
that good princess running to utter wreck, and nobody
to warn her ; but Lethington, telling him he had done
" more honestly than wisely," became more specific in
his warning, and recommended Melville to be off before
Bothwell should come up from his dinner. He took
the advice, and says he was hotly pursued. He says
the queen interceded for him once and again. On Both-
well's rejecting her first intercession, she " was miscon-
tent, and told him that he would cause her to be left of
all her servants." He then promised to spare Melville
so much influence had the siren still on the savage
BOTHWELL'S ASCENDANCY, 1567. 365
humour of her lord. Melville says that, when he after-
wards saw the queen, he reverted to the matter, back-
ing Bishop's counsel with his own. The last touch is
curious, and carries an unsatisfied impression: " She
said, matters were not that far agaitwart, but she had
na will to enter in the terms." 1
From other quarters come warnings equally signifi-
cant. We have seen how the queen wrote to Beaton,
her ambassador in France, endeavouring to stamp on
the first news of the tragedy the impression that she
had herself made a providential escape. He expresses
in his answer his thankfulness that she has been pre-
served to take a rigorous vengeance for the crime
committed, and then says, "Kather than it be not
actually tane, it appears to me better in this warld
that ye had lost life and all." Unless this be an
implied rebuke on her pretence, he passes entirely
the ideal danger, but presses on her solemnly the
dangers that were real and imminent. All Europe
rings with the terrible story and the wretchedness of
poor Scotland ; nay, people make free with her own
name, and in short charge her with the deed. These
are calumnies, no doubt ; but they bring deep sorrow
on all her faithful servants, and she must nerve her-
self to such action as shall for ever confute them. " It
is needful," he says, " that ye show now rather than
ever before the great magnanimity, constancy, and
virtue that God has granted you, by whose grace I
hope ye sail overcome this most heavy envy and dis-
pleasure of the committing thereof, and preserve the
reputation of all godliness ye have conqueshed of long,
which can appear no way so clearly than that ye do
1 Memoirs, 175-77.
366 QUEEN MARY.
such justice as the haill world may declare your inno-
cence, and give testimony for ever of that treason that
has committed, but fear of God or man, so cruel and
ungodly a murther." l
It must ever be kept in view, as the key-note to all
that preceded and followed, that never was wretched
victim more distinctly and loudly warned of the
gulf that was opening at her feet. She had still not
finally committed herself at the date of a letter in
which Kirkcaldy of Grange, writing to Lord Bedford,
expresses his belief that the marriage will occur. He
quotes a saying reported of the queen. Whether he
gives it accurately or not, it imparts his belief in her
infatuated devotion to the lord of her heart. It bore
that " she cared not to lose France, England, and her
own country for him ; and shall go with him to the
world's end in a white petticoat before she leave
him." 2
The tone of the history of Scotland now takes a
peculiar turn. Events on the surface contradict the
tenor of the influences below ; and the plot hurries on,
like that of a romance or a drama, to be reversed when
the unseen powers find their opportunity and reveal
themselves. The death of Darnley was not an event
to be regretted or very zealously avenged ; but a new
light sprang up in men's minds when they saw the
mighty reward at which the chief actor aimed. Then,
indeed, it was time for them to act too. In the mean
time, however, their enemy was too strong; and the
policy adopted was to let the evil destinies that ruled
the land have their swing. Lethington, Morton, Lind-
1 Keith, i. civ.
3 Quoted by P. F. Tytler, vii. 88.
THE TRIAL, 1567. 367
say, Murray, all the subtlest and boldest spirits of tlie
day, were alike silenced for a time. The political con-
ditions of the situation were unprecedented in Scot-
land. On some occasions the crown had been strong
enough to bear hard on the great local potentates. In
others, some potent feudal house had been able to defy
the crown for a time. But here was a new combina-
tion, showing what might come of a connivance of the
crown with such a feudal house. The result for a time
was the existence, at least in the south of Scotland, of
a despotism which it was hopeless to resist until the
time for reaction came.
The first performance on the stage thus cleared for
the movements of the great actors was the trial which
was to cleanse the hero of the piece from all taint, and
especially to put matters finally right at the foreign
Courts, where an inconvenient amount of interest was
shown about the recent transactions in Edinburgh.
The proceedings taken were exceptional and anoma-
lous. The established practice was, when a criminal
prosecution was determined on, for the crown to take
the office of accuser, treating any persons who had
been the first accusers or informers merely as witnesses.
In the documents connected with Both well's trial Lord
Lennox is brought up as the accuser, and the tenor of
the procedure looks like an arbitration in a dispute in
which he and Bothwell hold opposite sides. On the
28th of March the Privy Council gave instructions for
the trial. There were nine councillors present : Both-
well himself; the Lords Huntly, Argyle, and Caithness;
Leslie, Bishop of Eoss ; Gordon, Bishop of Galloway;
Secretary Mai tland; Stewart, the Treasurer; and Justice-
Clerk Bellcnden. The Act of Council appointed the
368 QUEEN MARY.
12th of April ensuing for the trial, and directed that
Matthew Earl of Lennox be warned personally, or at his
dwelling-place, as well as all others who came forward
as accusers. Royal letters were issued for the citation of
Lennox ; and in these, instead of the crown, according
to usual form, setting forth the accusation, in name of
the crown counsel it was stated that these gentlemen
" are informed that our well-beloved cousin and coun-
sellor, Matthew Earl of Lennox, father of our most dear
spouse, has asserted that James Earl of Bothwell, Lord
Hailes and Crichton, &c., and some others, were the
contrivers of the traitorous, cruel, and detestable mur-
ther," &c. As another reason for the proceedings, which
kept up their tone as a settlement of a dispute rather
than a trial of a murderer, is " the humble request and
petition of the said Earl Bothwell made to us, and in
our presence, offering to submit himself to a fair trial
of what he is charged with." The messengers intrusted
with the citation of Lennox made formal returns, im-
porting that they did not get access to him personally,
but took the usual means for making their citations
public and notorious. 1
Lennox did not appear. Sir James Melville says
he was ordered by the queen to bring none with him
but his own household. He had a body of men-at-
arms three thousand, it was said prepared to follow
him. And there is no doubt that the policy which
allowed the accused to be undisputed master of the
capital, obviated what would probably have been the
most bloody of all the street-conflicts that had dis-
turbed Edinburgh.
There exists a letter from Lennox to the queen. As
1 Anderson's Collections, i. 50.
THE TRIAL, 1567. 369
it bears date on the previous clay, it may be questioned
whether it was delivered before the trial. It pleads
sickness as his reason for not appearing, but shows that
he did not think himself safe in Edinburgh. He begs
that the trial may be postponed until he can prepare
his evidence, and convene his friends for his protection.
He demands that, like other persons accused of crimes,
those charged on this occasion shall be taken into cus-
todv; and throws out a taunt that, instead of beinor
v s ' <~>
treated as suspected criminals, they are not only at
liberty, but great at Court, where they enjoy her
majesty's special countenance and protection. 1
On the day of the trial a messenger arrived with a
letter from Queen Elizabeth to Queen Mary, but in
the confusion and excitement of the event of the day
it is not known whether she received it.
From the same authority which mentions the arri-
val of this letter it has been inferred that the queen
openly showed before the citizens her sympathy with
the accused, as an affectionate wife might telegraph
her good wishes to a husband going forth to a contest
or other critical ordeal. 2 But these specialties are of
small moment beside the larger facts, among which
the most significant is that Bothwell had four thou-
sand armed men on the streets an overwhelming
force in itself in addition to his command of the
presiding fortress.
The proceedings of the day were pedantically formal.
The Earl of Argyle presided as justiciar. Fifteen
j urymen were empanneled, according to the practice of
Scotland, and the Earl of Caithness was chosen their
1 Anderson's Collections, i. 52.
2 Documents quoted by Tytler, vii., App. v.
VOL. IV. 2 A
370 QUEEN MARY.
chancellor or foreman. John Spence, the queen's advo-
cate, and Robert Crichton, appeared for the prosecu-
tion. Still, however, the distinction was kept up, that
it was not a case taken up by the crown, but a contest
with Lennox, who was called upon to appear as a
party. There came forward a gentleman of his house-
hold, Robert Cunningham, who explained that the earl
could not appear in safety, and protested against the
proceedings, should they end in the acquittal of those
notoriously known to have been the murderers of the
king. To meet this the earl's letters, demanding a
speedy trial, were read and recorded, and the court
solemnly decided to proceed with business ; " and there-
fore the said Earl of Bothwell being accused by the
said dittay of the crime foresaid, and the same being
denied by him, and referred to the deliverance of
the said assize, they removed furth of the said court,
and altogether convened ; and after long reasoning
had by them upon the said dittay, and points thereof,
they, and ilk ane of them for themselves, voted, deliv-
ered, and acquitted the said James Earl of Bothwell of
art and part of the said slaughter of the king."
Through the pedantic formality of the proceedings
it is visible that the jury did not like what they were
set to do. It was a practice of the time to put jurors
on trial for false verdicts, or, as it was termed, " wilful
error." Lord Caithness and the rest of the jurors had
honesty and courage enough to record a protest that
they ought not to be liable to such an ordeal for acquit-
ting the person accused before them, because not a
particle of evidence was given in there was nothing
whatever put before them but the indictment. They
therefore had no alternative but to acquit The chan-
THE TRIAL, 1567. 371
cellor of the jury was at the same time so punctilious
as to insist on having it recorded that this their verdict
was not founded on a quibble which the indictment
put at the service of the jury, by stating the date of
the crime as the 9th of February; "for that in deed
the murther was committed the next day, being the
x day, in the morning at two hours after midnight,
whilk in law was, and ought to be, truly accompted
the x day."
A careful study of the proceedings so much of
them as we have leaves the impression that judges
and jury were anxious to put on record what would
tell that, if there were a defeat of justice, it was not
their fault. They could not be blamed for their
acquittal of the accused they had everything, resting
on the maxim that rigidity of form is the safety of the
innocent, to justify them. All they had was an accu-
sation put into shape. No evidence was called to
justify the accusation, and so the jury acquitted. If
the world knew no more than the record of the trial,
nothing would seem more fair and appropriate. The
affair ended in a bravado, the acquitted man offer-
ing, by public cartel, to fight, after the old way of the
ordeal of battle, any one who should still charge him
with the murder. 1
The Estates met on the 14th of April; and were one
to judge solely from the internal evidence of the for-
mal procedure, never did Parliament assemble under
conditions of more quietness and order. Yet it might
be fancied that, in the very cautiousness of all its trans-
actions, there were symptoms of apprehension that a
storm was coming. It was a Parliament of precautions
1 The record of the trial in State Trials, L 902.
3/2 QUEEN MARY.
and confirmation of acquisitions. It began by exoner-
ating Erskine of the command of Edinburgh Castle,
acknowledging that he had held his trust as a good
and true soldier, and would never be liable to question
for what he had done in the course of his duty. There
comes next an Act in favour of religious peace and
toleration. It narrates how thoroughly tlie queen had
kept her word, in her promise not to attempt anything
contrary to the religion which she found " publicly
and universally standing at her arrival;" for which all
her subjects who have so enjoyed the rights of con-
science in peace shall have occasion to praise God for
her good, happy, and gracious government, and crave
of Him, from the bottom of their hearts, that He would,
of His infinite goodness, prosper and bless her majesty
and her posterity with long life, and good and happy
government, to rule and reign over them. We have
not here the equivocation of supporting the Church by
law established as in the Act of 1563. But through its
multifarious clauses, promising and reiterating protec-
tion to the persons referred to in the exercise of their
religion, there is an exceeding care to avoid any speci-
fic definition of what that religion is, whether by the
use of the nomenclature or the characteristics of Pro-
testantism, or by the points of its difference from the
Church of Rome. Such as it was, Bothwell had the
credit of having gained this boon to his own ecclesias-
tical party. It did not propitiate them, however. If, as
it would seem, he expected to secure the Reformation
party, he was signally defeated. They were becoming
the champions of Puritanism as well as Protestantism,
and looked askance at murder, though the victim was
a Papist and the doer one of themselves. There
THE TRIAL, 1567. 373
were several ratifications of private gifts of estates.
Lethington looked after himself on this occasion ; and
David Chambers, one of the Lords of Session, was
rewarded with domains " for the good, true, and obe-
dient service done in all time past to her majesty's hon-
our, well, and contentment," and that through imminent
peril and danger. He was an able man, a jurist and
historian, writing both in French and Latin ; but he
was a creature of Botlrw ell's, and so vehemently sus-
pected of participation in the murder, that his name
appeared on the midnight placards. Morton and Mur-
ray were confirmed in their acquisitions at great length ;
so was the queen's other illegitimate brother, Robert,
the Commendator of Holyrood House. There were
several other such ratifications, the most significant of
which was the virtual restoration to Huntly of a large
portion of the old domains of his house. He was
expected to reciprocate in services of a peculiar kind.
Both well, of course, comes in for his share of the royal
bounty. In general terms his right is confirmed to
all and sundry " his lordships and barony of Hailes,
Crichton, and Liddesdale ; and all others his lands,
lordships, baronies, castles, towers, fortalices, mills,
fishings, woods, parts, pendicles, &c., together with the
offices of admiralty of Scotland, and the offices of the
sherirfships of Edinburgh principal, and within the
constabularies of Haddington and Lauderdale." But
there was a more special object in the ratification, nar-
rating her highness's regard and consideration " of the
great and manifold good service done and performed,
not only to her highness's honour, well, and estimation,
but also to the commonwealth of this realm and lieges
thereof," by which he " superexpended himself" and
374 QUEEN MARY.
burdened his lands. This was, indeed, the fact. Most
of his great territories he had from his ancestors ; but
by his own extravagant living, succeeding that of his
father, he became hard pressed for available means, and
the estates were heavily burdened. The object of the
ratification was to amend this defect ; and to enable
him to support his rank as Governor of the Castle of
Dunbar, certain lands in its neighbourhood, apparently
of considerable agricultural value, were vested in him.
His wealth and power were now enormous. He had
the command of Edinburgh Castle and of the county
of Edinburgh, with Haddington and Lauderdale. The
two great feudal towers, still remaining, twelve miles
from Edinburgh, Crichton and Borthwick, were his.
He had the original possession of his family Hailes
and the friary lands of Haddington. This almost
joined his lordship round Dunbar, where he com-
manded a strong fortress. Another, the Hermitage,
guarded his estates in Liddesdale, w T hich were almost
joined to the rich possessions of Melrose Abbey in the
vale of Tweed; and he was Warden of all the three
marches, and Lord High Admiral. One significant
feature in the legislation of the session was for the
suppression of the anonymous denunciations which
had been so troublesome. Any person first seeing
or finding such a document was to destroy it, other-
wise he would be punished as an accessory to its
promulgation. This was no novel effort of ingenuity ;
it was, in fact, the old Roman law of famosi libelli,
and the Act was little more than a translation of the
provisions which may be found in the 47th book of
the Pandects.
Parliament rose on the 19th. On the afternoon of
A PARLIAMENT, 1567. 375
that day there was a great supper of the influential
members in a tavern owned by a man named Annesly.
They had the distinction to be surrounded by an
armed guard of Both well's followers. Suppers were at
that time, like state dinners of the present day, a suit-
able occasion for political movements. This one began
at four o'clock, and went, amidst much carousal, pretty
deep into the night. Before the revellers separated a
document was presented for their acceptance, drawn
up with that special skill for such draftsmanship which
Balfour had more than once exhibited. It contained, in
the first place, an assertion of Bothwell's innocence, and
a resolution to hold it against all impugners. There is
next an obligation, in the usual tenor of bonds of man-
rent, to stand by Bothwell in all his quarrels. Then
comes last the great stroke. In case his distinguished
services to her majesty, " and his other good qualities
and behaviour," should move her to condescend to
receive him as her husband, all the undersigned deter-
mine to further and promote such a marriage to the
utmost of their capacity ; and they recommend it as a
proper step to be taken for the public good in the
widowed condition of the queen. That there was
shown to the assembled magnates a writing expressive
of the queen's desire for the match is a disputed ques-
tion. What is, however, a lamentable fact is, that the
document was adopted by a meeting of the first men
in the country. This is an affair which not only lacks
sufficient explanation, but scarcely affords material for
a plausible theory. Simple coercion will hardly ac-
count for it. Among the men there assembled the
vices were many and grave, but poltroonery was not
conspicuous among them. It was noticed that next
376 QUEEN MARY.
morning the bulk of them rapidly dispersed to their
separate territories, leaving the political epoch to its
own development. 1
Events now followed each other rapidly, and thick-
ened to a conclusion. On the 21st of April the queen
went to Stirling to visit her child ; and so dangerous a
repute did she carry with her, that Mar the governor
was frightened into vague fears about his precious
charge, and would not permit the mother to bring into
his presence any other attendants than two of her
women. Bothwell prepared to intercept her on her
return, and whether this was done by her own con-
nivance is one of the secondary questions in the great
controversy. Whether she were aware of the enter-
prise, it was so well known to others that, between
her departure and return, one of the Edinburgh cor-
respondents of the English Court writes to say that
the Earl of Bothwell has gathered a body of men
professedly to ride to the border, but the writer be-
lieves that presently after he writes they will be em-
ployed to intercept the queen and take her to Dunbar ;
and he sarcastically asks the receiver of the letter to
judge whether this be with her will or not. 2 Sir James
Melville in his Diary dryly says he was told by Cap-
tain Blackadder that the queen was seized by her own
consent, but he does not give us the benefit of his
own comment on this assertion. Bastiat, the French
page, says in his testimony or confession that, on the
1 Anderson's Collection, i. 107-111, iv. 60. There are lists of the par-
ties to this manifesto ; but they are given from memory, and not to be
depended on. The name of Murray, for instance, occurs in them, though,
apart from all question of probability, he was absent from Scotland at
the time.
J Cited by P. F. Tytler, vii. 88.
THE CARRYING OFF, 1567. 377
evening before the seizure, the queen sent him from
Linlithgow with letters to Bothwell, who bade him
in answer assure her majesty that he would meet her
on the road at the bridge. Bothwell took with him
eight hundred spearmen to the western entrance of
Edinburgh ; he had military resources at his disposal
which, for any such enterprise as he had on hand,
might be called inexhaustible. The spot where he
met the queen is now called Fountainbridge, a sort of
mixed suburb to the west of the old town of Edin-
burgh, having to the south the new suburbs of Green-
hill and Merchiston, and to the north the western verge
of the new town. The affair passed quietly. 1
It is provoking when men who have partaken in
critical events tell of them, and yet tell so sparingly
and dryly as to leave a world of untold matter which
every reader longs to know; but such are often the very
points on w^hich practical men's words are fewest, be-
cause they do not like to commit themselves. Sir James
Melville, who has left so many lively sketches of more
trifling matters, was one of the queen's escort on the occa-
sion, and he tells us nothing more than that " the Earl
Bothwell was in her gait with a great company, and took
her majesty by the bridle. His men took the Earl of
Huntly, the Secretary Lethington, and me, and carried
1 Buchanan finds a very subtle plot in the " Ravishment." It was
desirable, all things considered, that Bothwell should be furnished with
the technical protection of a royal pardon. It was the practice in such
documents to set forth the principal crime committed by the malefactor,
that the boundaries of the indemnity might be fully denned, and to
slump minor offences in a general definition. It was not expedient to
name the murder of her husband ; but a treasonable attack on her own
person was a very heavy crime, and by a little sophistry might be made
out to go further than the other, so as to leave it in the group of minor
offences.
3/8 QUEEN MARY.
us captives to D unbar; all the rest were letten go free."
Next day Melville himself was released, so that, if he
held his tongue about what was afterwards done within
the grim fortress, he disappointed no just expectations.
A young and lovely princess taken captive and immured
in the fortress of a profligate and unscrupulous baron
is one of the most approved elements of old romance,
giving room for the imagination to revel in all horrors
and tyrannies. On the question whether or not the
queen was treated with violence in Dunbar Castle
there is no end of speculation, but there is very little
means of distinct knowledge. To the shifting unsa-
tisfactory character of all foundations for a conclu-
sion she herself added, by expressions which were
intended, and with subtle skill adapted, to raise a
doubt about her exemption from personal violence,
and to leave that doubt unsolved.
The next step was to rid Bothwell of the burden of
his existing wife, and make him free to take another.
In the letter in which the English statesmen are told
of the intended seizure, they are also told of the inten-
tion to separate Bothwell from his wife so well was it
known that this was to be, although the method might
not be exactly anticipated. Since it had to be forced
through, the method adopted is instructive about the
state of the public institutions of Scotland at that time,
as well as of the character of the persons concerned.
The old power of the Romish hierarchy to judge in
matters of marriage and divorce as part of the canon
law was abolished by the Acts of 1560, which abolished
the Papal supremacy. As there was at first no dis-
tinct substitute for the power so exercised, some incon-
venience was felt. By a suppliant to the Court of
THE DIVORCES, 1567. 379
Session in 1562, it was represented " that, because the
consistorial jurisdiction is abolished, the said com-
plainer could get no cursing" that is to say, no civil
process followed on the excommunication which the
ecclesiastical court could launch against the person
who had wronged him in a matter in which the canon
law, as administered by the old hierarchy, would have
given him redress. 1 To fill up the gap thus caused in
the administration of civil justice, a court of four com-
missaries was erected by royal authority in 1563, and
was recast in 1566. In this court Both well's wife sued
out a divorce against him on the ground of adultery;
and it appears to have been very easy to find, on an
analysis of her husband's actions, enough to justify
a decision in her favour. Sentence of divorce was
accordingly pronounced against him, at the instance
of his wife, on the 3d of May. 2
The exceptional condition, however, in which her
destined successor stood made something more neces-
sary for the satisfactory conclusion of the affair. The
superseding of the bishops' court by that of the com-
missaries was occasioned by those reforming Acts to
1 RiddelTs Peerage and Consistorial Law, 427.
2 The marriage with Lady Jane Gordon was on the 22d of February
1566, so that she was his wife for a year and two months. It is curious
to trace, in the pages of the genealogists, the after-life of one who was in
a manner drifted in among the stormiest incidents of her day, and then
after a short interval floated off into calm waters. She lived to an old
age, which left far behind all the political conditions of her first-married
life, and passed through successive scenes performed by successive relays
of actors. She had her vicissitudes, but the way in which she took
them showed a quiet spirit, fitted to make the best of existing condi-
tions. The account given of her in Wood's Peerage, after her first mar-
riage is disposed of in proper form, is, "Secondly, 13 December 1573, to
Alexander, eleventh Earl of Sutherland, and had issue ; thirdly, to
Alexander Ogilvy of Boyne ; and died in 1629, ctiat. eighty-four. She
was a lady of great prudence."
380 QUEEN MARY.
which the queen had never given the royal assent,
which she believed consequently to be invalid, and
which everybody believed she in her secret heart
intended to repudiate when the proper time came.
Farther, by the doctrine of her own Church, and the
practice of the old consistorial tribunal in Scotland,
separation of man and wife for adultery was not that
nullifying of the marriage which permitted the divorced
person to marry again. 1 It was, therefore, desirable to
get the marriage annulled under the old law, and by
the old hands, on such grounds as would admit of
Bothwell marrying again. There were many difficul-
ties in the way of this, and the steps taken to overcome
them make a rather complicated history.
According to the view of the queen, and doubt-
less of all sincere followers of her Church, the Acts
abolishing the power of the Komish hierarchy were a
nullity; but it would not do to publish such a view
by acting on it, and that on a very critical and con-
spicuous occasion. By a warrant of the queen, act-
ing under her notions of prerogative, the consistorial
authority was formally restored, with the Archbishop
of St Andrews as its head. This court was constituted
in the month of December 1566, and therefore that
act in itself cannot have been done, as historians
generally say it was, for the special purpose of carry-
ing out this divorce. It was, in fact, an attempt
following up the triumph of the Romish party a trial
how far a quiet step could be safely taken for the
restoration of old things. It did not pass in silence,
1 The General Assembly in 1566 desired the resumption of this prin-
ciple viz., that the culpable party in such a divorce should not be free
to marry. Book of the Universal Kirk, 54.
THE DIVORCES, 1567. 381
for the Reformed Church uttered a loud testimony
against it. The General Assembly memorialised the
Privy Council, saying that although the commission
included some of themselves, " yet can the Kirk
noways be content that the Bishop of St Andrews,
ane common enemy to Christ, use that jurisdiction,
and also in respect of that coloured commission
lie might again usurp his old usurped authority."
They attribute it to their own negligence that Satan
had so far prevailed within the realm of late days.
" We therefore," they say, " in the fear of our God, and
with grief and anguish of heart, complain unto your
honours ; yea, we must complain unto God, and to all
His obedient creatures, that that conjurit enemy of
Jesus Christ and cruel murtherer of our dear brethren,
most falsely styled Archbishop of St Andrews, is
reponed and restored by signature to his former
tyranny." They strongly suspect that the end of such
things will be "to cure the head of that venomous
o
beast whilk once within this realm, by the potent hand
of God, was so banished and broken down that by
tyranny it could not hurt the faithful." And then
follow some protestations, instructive in communicat-
ing to us the constitutional notions prevalent at the
time. " The danger may be feared, say ye ; but what
remedy? It is easy, and at hand, Right Honourable,
if ye will not betray the cause of God and leave your
brethren, whilk never will be more subject to that
usurped tyranny than they will unto the devil himself.
Our queen belike is not well informed. She ought
not, nor justly may not, break the laws of this realm ;
and so, consequently, she may not raise up against us,
without our consent, that Roman Antichrist again,
382 QUEEN MARY.
for in ane lawful and free Parliament as ever was in
the realm before was that odious beast deprived of all
jurisdiction, office, and authority within this realm." 1
The new tribunal thus protested against did not
supersede the Protestant court, and does not seem to
have transacted judicial business. 2 Its history stands
by itself entirely clear of the great personal question
of the day. In fact, before the severance of Bothwell
from his wife could be accomplished, Mary had to
come personally forward and issue a special authority
for that end.
On the 27th of April the queen issued a special
commission to the archbishop and certain other clergy,
to give judgment in an action of divorce by the
Earl Bothwell against the Lady Jane Gordon, on the
canonical ground of relationship within the fourth
degree of consanguinity, and the celebration of
marriage without the necessary dispensation. 3 So
rapidly did this tribunal get through its one piece of
1 Book of the Universal Kirk.
8 The "signature", or commission under the sign-manual restoring the
consistorial jurisdiction of the archbishop is in the Register of the Privy
Seal (vol. xxxv. 99). It is in absolute terms, superseding the author-
ity of the Commissaries and the Court of Session, and providing compen-
sation for the judges of that court, whose salaries partly consisted of
commissariat fees. It bears date 23d December 1566. The remonstrance
of the Assembly bears date 27th December. It is addressed to the Privy
Council, requesting them to " stay" the commission. The record of the
Great Seal, which, however, is imperfect, does not contain the com-
pleted commission, nor is there any evidence of its having been accepted
by the Privy Council. From this, and the circumstances mentioned in
the text viz., the proceedings before the Commissaries and the sepa-
rate commission to the archbishop to adjudicate in the special case it
may be questioned whether the restoration of the archbishop's jurisdic-
tion passed through all the proper forms, or was, on the other hand,
" stayed."
8 Riddell's Peerage and Consistorial Law, 433.
THE DIVORCES, 1567. 383
work that the proceedings, begun on the 5th of May,
were finished by judgment of divorce on the 7th. The
peerages and genealogies will be searched in vain for
the evidence of propinquity. His mother was a Home
and hers a Keith. It has been noticed that both
houses the Hepburns and the Gordons were
descended from the Earl of Buchan, the illegitimate
brother of James II.; but this circuitous connection
would bring Bothwell as near in consanguinity to the
queen as to Lady Jane. By the practice of the Church
of Rome in Scotland and some other countries, the
rule that the prohibition extended to affinity by mar-
riage as well as by blood was extended to concubinage.
If, therefore, Bothwell had had illicit intercourse with
any relation of the Lady Jane, that would impart to
him the same nullifying privilege which he would
have held had he himself been as nearly related
to her as his paramour was. It seems probable,
therefore, that in this, as in the other process, he was
favoured by his extensive participation in the prevalent
vices of the day. 1
1 Buchanan asserts that this was the method in which he got his
divorce : " Apud judices Papisticos, ordinum quidem decreto vetitos,
tamen ab Archiepiscopo Sancti Andreae ad hanc caussam cognoscen-
dum datos, accusatur, quod ante matrimonium cum propinqua&xoris
stupri consuetudinem hahuisset : celato interim Pontificis mraiani
diploma te, quo venia ejus culpse facta erat." Detectio, Jebb, i. 248.
A portion of the proceedings in both suits is given by Principal
Robertson in his Appendix, No. xx. In the process before the Commis-
saries, a certain Bessie Crawford has a story to tell, which removes all
difficulties. As appropriate to the whole occurrence, the French ambas-
sador commented on the peculiar facilities for divorce in Scotland : " Ilz
ont une coustume estrange en Angleterre, mais plus prattiquee en Escosse,
de pouvoir se repudier 1'un 1'aultre quant ilz ne se trouvent bien en-
samble ;" and then he cites instances. Teulet, ii. 157. But that the
French too were familiar with such things, is shown by an apt case in
point. When, on Queen Mary's first widowhood, the Duke of Aumale
384 QUEEN MARY.
There still remains a nicety in this complicated
business. It was the policy of the Church, in stretch-
ing her authority over the social as well as the religious
condition of the people, to find a method of counter-
acting every power she exercised. If she helped those
who were eager to break the marriage-tie, she could
protect those who desired to make it indissoluble.
Hence it was customary for the prudent relations of a
bride to obtain a Dispensation from the nullifying
influence not merely of actual propinquity, if such
there were, but of anything that might be founded
on the vicious life led by the other party. We find
Buchanan asserting that such a Dispensation had been
obtained on the marriage of Bothwell with Lady Jane
Gordon, and that it was abstracted or concealed : as
the charge stands in the vernacular version, "All this
while they kept close the Pope's bull, by whilk the
same offence was dispensed with."
In the process for the dissolution of the marriage it
is expressly set forth that no dispensation had been
obtained, and the statement to the contrary was gene-
rally set down as one of Buchanan's calumnies. Later
inquiries, however, show that such a dispensation ex-
isted, that it was granted by Archbishop Hamilton in
virtue of his legatine powers, and that, although he did
not bring it up to interrupt the divorce, it was per-
was making love to her, the gossips of the Louvre had it that she would
marry him if he were free " qu'elle declara, qu'elle 1'epouseroit, si par
la mort de sa femme, Antoinette de la Marck fille du Due de Bouillon, ou
autrement, il rentroit en Iibert4 de se remarier." Mem. de Castelnau, i.
528. The gossips were at fault, for, as we have seen, the young widow
had other designs ; but it is clear that the Duke's having a wife was con-
sidered only a temporary impediment to such a marriage if the two de-
sired it
THE DIVORCES, 1567. 385
mitted, whether through his connivance or not, to get
into the possession of the house of Hamilton, who had
a strong interest to preserve a document that might
some day or other prove that offspring of Queen Mary
was illegitimate. 1
1 There is still a mystery about this Dispensation. If the ground on
which it proceeded is given accurately in. Ty tier's Inquiry (edit. 1790,
p. 401), it sets forth what is contradicted by all the books of genealogy,
that an Earl Bothwell was married to Margaret, daughter of George,
second Earl of Huntly. A key to all available information on this
affair will be found in p. 181 of the Preface to the Statuta Ecclesise
Scoticanse, by the late Joseph Robertson.
On this, the last occasion in which I have to seek help from his last
work, I cannot avoid the opportunity of dropping a few words about its
author. In making use of his admirable account of the Provincial
Council of 1549, I described it as the work of a " living" author. When
the passage came to be corrected in proof, this description was no longer
applicable. His recent death is a blow to all who take interest in his-
torical literature ; but it concerns myself in an especial manner. It is
not only that he and I followed common pursuits. He was my com-
panion in boyhood, and from that time my steadfast friend on to the
end. Many years ago, from the peculiar knowledge he had stored up. I
had set before him, as his special duty, the work which I have myself
attempted in these volumes. The bent of his mind was, however, rather
towards archaeology than history; and thus it may be said that he pre-
ferred the science to the art. We had a constant interchange of ideas,
suggested by what we read from time to time ; and to those who knew
what was in him, I need not observe how largely the balance of benefit
from such a commerce was on my side. In fact, intercourse with a mind
like his, so accurate and sagacious, was a sort of education or training in
archaeological science.
He was profuse, almost to a weakness, in giving away to every claimant
the fruits of his skill. Where others would have complained of discoveries
appropriated without acknowledgment, he was content to see that the
truth was spreading into new quarters. If you had a casual discussion
with him on some obscure point, you were sure to receive from him next
morning a letter full of minute and curious erudition concerning it. He
was ever ready with his help. I know that I could have counted on him
to revise the sheets of this book, had I wished him to do so. I hold, how-
ever, to the opinion that no one should venture on the publication of a
work unless he is prepared to take the undivided responsibility of every-
thing contained in it. He took a keen, friendly interest in the progress
of my book to the last ; and desired to see what I had printed, after the
VOL. IV. 2 B
386 QUEEN MARY.
The affair of the divorces was adjusted, though not
concluded, while the queen was still in Dunbar Castle.
On the day when the Protestant divorce was issued, the
two entered Edinburgh with a large body of followers,
who on the journey threw away their arms, to give the
assemblage the appearance of a peaceful pageant. On
the 12th occurred one of those curious pieces of
pedantic formality which accompany the several steps
of this wild story. It was said that the supreme
courts of law had doubts whether their proceed-
ings were valid while the queen, in whose name they
end was so near that it was necessary to circumscribe his sources of in-
terest or excitement. Among the last words whispered by him to a dear
friend common to both was an injunction to keep me right " about that
charter of William Rufus."
Of the kind of work in which his strength lay he had that early pre-
sentiment so often the companion of true genius. Rummaging among
old letters, I find signal evidence of this. He wrote to me on the 7th
of August 1833, saying, "The Ultima Thule of my desires would be
a situation in the Register House." Then, diverging into other plans and
possibilities, he comes back in the end to the same point, " My desires
are towards the Register House, and about January I shall make a set
upon it, and, if unsuccessful, then consider what is to be done next."
He had to wait just twenty years for the fulfilment of this dream. He
was then let into the establishment to hold a small appointment, for which
little was given, while little service was expected in return. It was enough,
however, that he got access to those grand sources of knowledge on which
his heart was set. For many years the great institution he now belonged
to had been treated merely as an establishment for the concentration and
hoarding of the records of the current business of the day. The proceed-
ings of the courts of law, the transactions as to property, the vital and
social statistics of the country, were here registered. These objects were
duly seen to ; but it had been long forgotten that here also was the great
storehouse of the national archives of all that remained to show the
career of Scotland as an independent sovereignty. It was on these that
Robertson's designs lay ; and if working among them he was unnoticed
and unremunerated, it was well also that he was unmolested.
At length external changes brought a kind and discriminating eye to
bear upon him and his services. A new head came to the institution,
who, seeing that there had been a long dormancy in some of its depart-
ments, resolved to bring all into life again. In that inner recess where
THE WEDDING, 1567. 387
acted, was a captive. Whether or not they really
experienced such doubts, the opportunity was taken
for a solemn proclamation of their groundlessness. It
is on record in the proceedings of the Court of Session,
which mentions the presence of the prelates, the high
officers of state, and the Provost of Edinburgh. The
o
" declaration of the queen's liberty" followed that
equivocal tone in which she all along spoke of the
affair : " Albeit her highness was commovit for the
present time of her taking at the said Earl Bothwell,
yet since syne, by his guid behaving towards her high-
Robertson had been toiling in silence and almost in secrecy for twelve
years, he found much of the work done ready to his hand, and he resolved
that the public benefactor should not go unrewarded.
Robertson's day had now dawned. His name was to have an honour-
able place in connection with his services, and his income was to be in
better harmony with their value. Social position, distinction, wealth,
were to be his. It would surely be hard to find a sadder example of
that uncertainty in human affairs, ever teaching the lesson that neither
skilfulness of arrangement nor excellence of aim can make the projects
of man secure. The flame was too nearly burnt out for fresh nutri-
ment to aid it. January was to see him enter on his new fortunes,
but he was buried in December. None felt more keenly than the high
officer with whom he was to co-operate the greatness of the loss to the
world.
It is generally difficult to take a measure of the loss caused by the
death of an intellectual worker sometimes difficult to prove that it is a
loss at all. The poet, the novelist, the leader of opinion, may have
exhausted his mission. The literature in which he has excelled
changes its tone. A new school prevails ; and it is idle to ask whether
the dead man, had he lived, could have kept his own in the face of it.
But here the work to be done was all laid out. The sheaves were piled
on the threshing-floor, awaiting the work of the husbandman. This will
have to be left undone, or to be done by other hands. It will be a hardy
aspiration in any one to expect to match the samples by which such work
must be tested. It is my belief that time will raise the public estimate
of Robertson's powers, as shown in the works he has left. When no
more is expected from the same source, the world will go back on them,
and find them isolated from others in that exhaustiveness of examination
and perfectness of finish which give them a place by themselves in the
triumphs of archaeological scholarship.
388 QUEEN MARY.
ness, and haifing sure knowledge of his thankful ser-
vice done by him in tyme bygone, and for mair
thankful service in tyme coming, that her highness
stands content with the said earl, and has forgiven
and forgives him and all others his complices." She
intimated that she was minded to promote him to fur-
ther honour for his services foresaid. 1 The first instal-
ment of the further honour made its appearance on
the same day, when he was created Duke of Orkney
and Shetland.
And now the wedding was to come on. Some of
the preliminaries had already been adjusted. To those
who knew the character of the queen, the tendency of
these must have been the most astounding evidence
yet furnished of the absoluteness of the mastership
that had been established over both her heart and her
intellect. No man's life could more thoroughly deride
the Puritanic religion professed by him than Bothwell's ;
yet he, an adventurer eagerly grasping at the advance-
ment in his reach, would take it in no other than the
Protestant form, while she, the bigoted devotee of the
old Church, who was sacrificing everything else, sacri-
ficed this too, and accepted the new form. The ecclesi-
astical functions proper to the occasion would have
rested with Knox. He, however, was absent, a thing
to be regretted by all who would desire to add an
additional touch of picturesqueness to the scene. His
assistant John Craig, however, represented him pretty
faithfully. Craig proclaimed the banns from his pul-
pit, and when afterwards called in question for doing so
by the General Assembly, he gave this account of the
transaction. He had refused to make the proclamation,
1 Acts of Sederunt.
THE WEDDING, 1567. 389
when a messenger came from the queen to desire it.
Being afterwards shown a command under her hand,
he consulted his session or congregational court. Their
discussion seems to have been strong ; but the conclu-
sion come to was, that the intention of the sovereign
might be announced, leaving the final responsibility
on those who should carry out such intentions ; and
Craig, in giving effect to this view, argued ingeniously
enough that, if the act to be carried out was so out-
rageous and abominable as it was pronounced to be, it
was doing good service to give the world previous
warning of the intention to perpetrate it ; and it was
not his proclaiming, but the silence of others, that per-
mitted the event to come to pass. The session came
at the same time to a resolution that they could neither
assist in nor approve of such a marriage, as it was con-
trary to a resolution of the General Assembly to unite
again in wedlock a person divorced for misconduct.
He made it, he says, a condition of the proclamation
that he should declare his mind to Both well himself in
the presence of the Privy Council. It seems to have
been thought prudent to submit to this ; and Both well
had to listen to a castigation, for his conjugal miscon-
duct and other irregularities ; " the suspicion of col-
lusion betwixt him and his wife ; the sudden divorce-
ment and proclaiming within the space of four days ;
and last, the suspicion of the king's death, whilk his
marriage wad confirm." The object of this tirade
naturally enough, as its author says, " answerit nathing
to my satisfaction." Craig threatened to carry his views
before a more congenial audience ; and he kept his
threat next Sunday, when from the pulpit, as he
says, " I took heaven and earth to witness that I ab-
390 QUEEN MARY.
horred and detested that marriage, because it was
odious and scandalous to the world ; and seeing the
best part of the realm did approve it either by flattery
or by their silence, I desired the faithful to pray ear-
nestly that God would turn it to the comfort of this
realm that thing whilk they intended against reason
and good conscience." On this he was called before
the Council for having passed the bounds of his com-
mission, and there, still following his own narrative,
" I answered, the bounds of my commission, whilk were
the Word of God, good laws, and natural reason, were
able to approve whatsoever I spake ; yea, that their
own conscience could not but bear witness that sic a
marriage wad be odious and slanderous to all that
should hear of it, if all the circumstances thereof were
rightly considered." 1
On the 14th, the day before the marriage, two docu-
ments were executed. One of them was a short assur-
ance by the queen, that the persons who had signed the
bond urging Bothwell on her as a husband should
never be called in question for doing so. It is doubted
whether the bond referred to is that signed at the cele-
brated supper, or one of later date. The other paper is
a contract of marriage. It is cleverly and plausibly
drawn, probably by that accomplished draftsman Bal-
four, and manages with much skill to neutralise the
inequality of the match between the widow and " the
right noble and potent prince, James, Duke of Orkney,
Earl Bothwell, Lord Hailes, Crichton, and Liddesdale,
Great Admiral of this realm of Scotland." With equal
skill it throws the responsibility of this step on the dis-
tinguished persons who recommended it, and represents
1 See the proceedings in Anderson, ii. 278.
THE WEDDING, 1567. 391
her majesty as yielding, after full consideration, to their
urgent prayers, because she considered their choice so
thoroughly appropriate. There was no discussion, as
on the two previous occasions, about the crown-matri-
rnonial ; but she virtually did her best to raise him to
a joint occupancy of the throne, by stipulating that the
signature of both should be necessary to all state docu-
ments passing under the sign-manual. 1
A fit person for the performance of the ceremony
was found in Adam Bothwell, who had been Roman
Catholic Bishop of Orkney, and was a convert or an
apostate, according to the estimate people took of his
sincerity. The ceremony was performed on the 15th
of May. Sir James Melville says he went little about
Court at that time ; but it seems he could not resist the
temptation to be present at so remarkable a wedding,
though he entertained considerable fear of Bothwell,
o
which would hardly be modified by his consciousness
that he was then negotiating for his enemy's destruction.
BothwelTs savage nature, however, seems to have been
soothed by prosperity. He had some familiar talk and
banter, trying to act the condescending prince to one
whose sphere he had now left far below him. There
was but little said, and that not very brilliant ; but it
is valuable, as the sole instance in which one finds that
mysterious demon of our history unbending into any-
thing like geniality : " I found my Lord Due of Orkney
sitting at his supper. He said I had been a great
stranger, desiring me to sit down and sup with him.
I said that I had already supped. Then he called for
a cup of wine and drank to me, that I might pledge
1 The two documents here referred to have often been printed, and
are in Labanoff, ii. 22, 23.
392 QUEEN MARY.
him like a Dutchman. He bade me drink it out to
grow fatter; ' for/ said he, ' the zeal of the commonweal
has eaten you up and made you sa lean/ I answered
that every little member should serve to some use ;
but that the care of the commonweal appertanet maist
til him and the rest of the nobility, who should be as
fathers to the same. Then he said, I wist well he would
find a pin for every bore." This was in reference to
an old allegory about nature having made so many
circular holes and so many angular, with a set of pins
made to fit each, but mismanagement so confused the
whole that the angular pins were forced into the cir-
cular holes and the circular into the angular. Both-
well, in administering the high functions likely to
devolve on him, was not to make this mistake a con-
ceited announcement arrogating capacities for states-
manship which his career by no means warrants. The
conclusion of the short scene is characteristic : " Then
he fell in purpose of gentlewomen, speaking sic filthy
language that I left him and passed up to the queen,
wha was very glad of my coming." 1 If in this sort
of eloquence he could shock one who had seen in
that age so much of the world, and that not always
the best of it, he must have been a master indeed in
the invention and expression of lubricity.
Although one chronicler mentions that the ceremony
was performed in the Chapel Royal, the probability
lies with the other authorities who name the Council
Chamber as the place. Le Croc, the French ambas-
sador, said he was urged to attend, but declined. The
attendance was meagre, the ceremonial strictly in the
Protestant form. It was noted at the time, as one
1 Melville, 178.
AFTER THE WEDDING, 1567. 393
type of the reckless haste with which the affair was
driven through, that it was not delayed to the expiry
of the month of May, held by an old traditionary pre-
judice to be unpropitious to the nuptials it claims as
celebrated within its own limits. The prejudice still
has a lingering existence. As placarding had become
the received method of expressing public opinion, a
line from Ovid's Fasti, importing that they turned out
to be wicked women who accepted wedlock in that
forbidden month, was affixed to the palace door on the
night after the wedding. 1
The beginning of their wedded life resembled that
of any innocent young couple affluent in the sources
of magnificence and luxury. They were a good deal
seen in public, and frequently rode together in much
bravery. Stories were told how, when he, still pre-
serving the etiquette of sovereign and subject, would
attend her cap in hand, she would playfully snatch it
and place it on his head. It may, indeed, be counted
one of the most remarkable phenomena of the whole
situation, that one of the subtlest and acutest women
ever born should, in her fool's paradise, have been to-
tally unconscious of the volcano she was treading on.
Some business had to be done, however ; and, among
other things, came up the proper diplomatic communi-
cation of the event to foreign Courts. A long docu-
ment of extreme interest contains her instructions to
William Chisholm, Bishop of Dunblane, sent as a spe-
cial envoy to France to convey the intelligence and
1 " Nee vidure taxlis eadem, nee virginis apta
Tempora ; quse nupsit non diuturna fuit.
Hac quoque de causa, si te proverbia tangunt
Mense inalas Maio nubere vulgus ait."
Fasti, lib. v.
The last was the line selected.
394 QUEEN MARY.
make suitable explanations. This document is curi-
ously wavering and inconsistent. It begins with a
eulogistic biography of her husband what the French
would call an cloge. His great services and merits are
set forth at length ; and since it has to be admitted that
he was sometimes under the cloud of the royal displea-
sure, this is attributed to the envyings that ever dog
high merit, and are successful for a time in obscuring
it. In this portion of the document it is made clear
that Both well amply deserved his preferment.
Having shown that what she had done was exactly
what in justice and duty she should have done, she
next tells how the surrounding conditions coerced her,
so that, as a political necessity, she could not do other-
wise. She found that his'emiuent services to the state
and to her own person had not been achieved without
exciting ambitious thoughts. She saw the somewhat
audacious tenor of these, and tried to administer a
judicious check to them. She failed. There was
another element besides ambition which made him
rash and headstrong in his acts a devouring love for
her. These combined motives conduced to rash acts,
which brought her into his power. Then, when she
considered her position, it was not merely that she was
at the mercy of a man exulting in the consciousness of
unparalleled heroism and statesmanship, and frantically
in love with herself, but the whole nation was with
him. She referred to the bond signed at the notable
supper as a great demonstration of the chiefs of the
state, such as a sovereign cannot without danger resist.
The current in Bothwell's favour was so strong that
not one man in Scotland appeared to stand up for her.
Then she bethought her if she was right in her obsti-
AFTER THE WEDDING, 1567. 395
nate resistance. She began to yield to the wishes of
her people, and at the same time her heart relented to
the merits and the deep affection of her lover. Fur-
ther, wearied out by the turbulence of the country she
has to rule over, she feels how great a relief it will be
to herself, how great a gain to law and order, that she
shall have for her husband a man who has command
in his nature, and can be trusted to rule her fierce sub-
jects. These, indeed, would never " digest a foreign
husband ; " and of her own subjects " there was none,
either for the reputation of his house or for the wor-
thiness of himself, as well in wisdom, valiantness, as
in all other good qualities, to be preferred or yet com-
pared to him whom w T e have taken." Again the docu-
ment takes a twist. There must be something said to
palliate the extraordinary haste in this royal marriage.
Such alliances were generally affairs on which a sort of
congress of friendly royalties deliberated. It was but
common decorum that she should have consulted the
King of France, the queen-mother, her uncle the car-
dinal, and some others. Here, again, she throw's the
blame on the importunity of her lover, and the impa-
tient pressure of the ruling powers of the country.
Then, as if the writer felt alarm that what she said in
her own vindication must react against the other, she
pleads vehemently that all her friends must be the
friends of him who is inseparably joined to her. The
past is past. If he has been to blame, it was because
his devotion overcame his discretion.
In some measure there is a key to the enigmas of
this set of instructions, in another given to Sir Robert
Melville for his guidance in explaining the affair to
Elizabeth. This document is much shorter than the
396 QUEEN MARY.
other. It bears solely on the political necessities which
brought about the marriage the necessity that she
should have a husband capable to rule her turbulent
people, their detestation of foreigners, the eminent ser-
vices and merits of her husband, and the pressure of
the ruling families. Nothing is said about the machi-
nations of Bothwell, so fully set forth in the other
letter. If we abstract these portions from the instruc-
tions for France, the remainder is in substance identical
with the English letter. A comparison of the two
leaves the impression that a note of the general policy
to be adopted in communicating the marriage to foreign
powers had been drawn up with care and deliberation,
and that the queen had added her own particular story
to the French instructions. This would account for
the motley and almost contradictory character of the
document. It is unsafe to adopt absolute theories on
such internal evidence; but there is no escaping the
vivid impression that, however the document was put
together, those portions which narrate the personal
conduct of Bothwell towards her are directly from her-
self. They endeavour to make out that she yielded to
what could not be resisted ; yet there is a conscious-
ness throughout that she was guilty in not resisting.
While she makes out to her old friends of France that
the man she has married is in every way deserving of
her love and of his eminent position that he was the
man of all others best fitted to be her husband that
political conditions made the act a necessity, how
comes it that she gives other and meaner reasons for
her conduct, and gives them in an apologetic a plead-
ing almost a penitential tone ? My own opinion is,
that her conscience then accused her of her one act
AFTER THE WEDDING, 1567. 397
of disaffection to the Church of Rome, On all other
occasions when she pursued Huntly to ruin and death
when she engaged to support the Church by law
established when she tolerated, or even caressed her
brother and his heretic followers she could plead that
she bent to circumstances, in order that, when the right
time came, she might stand up in fuller strength as
the champion of the Church. But here she was strug-
gling, and struggling in vain, to prove that the force
of an engrossing passion had swept her for a time
away from her allegiance; nor could she well assuage
her own conscience or the wrath of her party by a
brief declaration that, though forced to unite herself
to a heretic, she will hold fast by her religion, and
does not intend to leave the same for him or any
man upon earth. 1
The newly-wedded couple were left much to each
other's society. Le Croc, the French ambassador,
notices the melancholy emptiness of Holyrood, with
a touch of the ennui which people of his nation are
apt to feel in deserted banquet-halls. 2
1 These letters are published by Keith from what he calls "shattered
MS." They have been on all hands accepted as genuine, and are re-
printed by Labanoff, ii. 31 et seq. Obtaining them from a printed
source, that careful editor was not able to follow towards them his laud-
able practice of explaining whether each document printed by him was
taken from a contemporary copy or from the original, and in the latter
case whether it was merely signed by Mary or holograph. It cannot be
believed that she was sufficiently acquainted with the vernacular to
have wiitten the long letter for France straight off in her own hand.
But whether or not it be a contemporary translation of a letter written
by her in French, I believe that virtually all that criticises her husband's
conduct is her own.
2 Teulet, ii. 155.
CHAPTER XLVII.
tteen
(Continued^)
SYMPTOMS OF A RISING THE QUEEN AND BOTHWELL TAKE ALARM
AND LEAVE HOLYROOD - THE QUEEN IN BORTHWICK ESCAPES
THENCE AND JOINS HER HUSBAND THEY TAKE REFUGE IN
DUNBAR PROVISIONS FOR THE SAFETY OF THE INFANT PRINCE
THE CONFEDERATE LORDS GET POSSESSION OF EDINBURGH
THE ARMED CONFERENCE AT CARBERRY - THE QUEEN'S SURREN-
DER, AND REMOVAL TO EDINBURGH - DIFFICULTIES IN DEALING
WITH HER THERE SHE IS TAKEN TO LOCHLEVEN - DISCOVERY
OF A CASKET ITS CONTENTS SAID TO BE POEMS AND LOVE-
LETTERS ADDRESSED BY MARY TO BOTHWELL HOW THE CON-
FEDERATES RESOLVED TO DEAL WITH THIS DISCOVERY EXAMI-
NATION OF THE LETTERS - THEIR NARRATIVE OF THE QUEEN'S
VISIT TO DARXLEY AT GLASGOW COMPARED WITH ANOTHER
NARRATIVE OF THE SAME BY LENNOX'S SPY QUEEN MARY
ABDICATES - CONCLUSION OF A HISTORICAL EPOCH ACCOUNT
OF BOTHWELL'S ADVENTURES AND FATE.
SOME time passed over before anything occurred
to break the surface of the tranquil happiness which
the new-married couple appeared to enjoy. The first
alarm of danger seems to have occurred in this man-
ner. On the 28th of May the usual proclamation was
issued for a " raid," or assemblage of the feudal force,
for an attack upon the border marauders. The array
was called upon to meet the queen and " her dearest
THE RISING, 1567. 399
spouse" the force of the midland counties on the 15th
of June, that of the border on six hours' warning. 1 It
was said at the time that the intention was to use the
army when assembled for other purposes. However
this may be, instead of the usual clanging and bustling
preliminaries of such a gathering, there was an omin-
ous silence ; and \vhatever was doing among the barons
and their retainers, they were not flocking to the bor-
der. Those who were absent from Court stayed at
home; those who had remained in Edinburgh slipped
gradually away. Among them was Lethington, who
said his life was in danger. It was as with Macbeth
when he said, " The thanes fly from thee." Frightened
by this silence, and probably by other hints, on the 6th
or 7th of June the queen and her husband suddenly
left Holyrood, and shut themselves up in Borthwick
Castle, twelve miles from Edinburgh. Edinburgh
Castle would have been the natural place of retreat ;
but that, for reasons to be presently mentioned, was
not available. They were scarcely safe in Borthwick
when the Lords Morton and Hume suddenly appeared
with a hostile following of some six or eight hundred
men these were part of a larger force which had crept
from various districts towards Edinburgh, expecting to
seize the queen and her husband in Holyrood.
Borthwick, a thick-walled square tower like the old
Norman keeps in England, was strong for a private
fortalice, but could not stand artillery, as Cromwell
afterwards showed by the results of a round or two.
It could not accommodate a sufficient garrison to cope
with an army such as was gathering round it, and the
fugitives in their haste had not brought even such a
1 See the proclamations in Keith, 395.
400 QUEEN MARY
garrison as it could hold. There was nothing for it
but flight or surrender for Bothwell ; as to the queen,
the muster professed rather to deliver than to attack
her. Bothwell managed to escape. The queen might
have joined the party arrayed against the castle; for if
she had hitherto acted under either coercion or fear of
her husband, both were at an end. With him all was
suddenly over there was not the faintest chance of
his finding a party that would hold out for himself
alone.
She took a different course, however. At dead of
night she got herself let out alone, dressed as a page,
and, mounting a pony, rode out upon the wild moor-
land. About two' miles south-west of Borthwick is the
tower of Cakemuir or Black Castle. There she met
Bothwell with a small party of followers. There could
be nothing more natural and seemly, under ordinary
conditions, than that the captive wife should flee into
the arms of her husband; but the specialties of the
event made it significant and unfortunate for the sta-
bility of some amiable theories. They rode through
the night to Dunbar; and thus, on a third memorable
occasion, the queen entered that fortress.
So came the outbreak of a combination which had
been rapidly maturing. The royal pair, having made
no preparation to meet it, seem not to have been
conscious of their danger; but it was palpable to the
French ambassador, who, within three days after the
marriage, wrote home that Bothwell was a doomed
man. 1
Before the marriage, the leading barons had been
arranging with each other to cope with Bothwell.
1 Teulet, ii. 155.
THE RISING, 1567. 401
Gradually their objects went farther, and they spoke
of dealing with the queen herself as one whom it was
dangerous to leave in possession of the power she held.
They opened communications with Elizabeth's minis-
ters. That active spirit, Kirkcaldy of Grange, was the
soul of their consultations and projects. He was one
of themselves, as a landed man, who could bring some
followers into the field ; yet was he not restrained to
the diplomatic reserve of the heads of the great houses,
but could go about making himself busy everywhere
as adviser, exhorter, or messenger. When they had felt
their way so far as to know what reliance they could
place in each other, they sought Elizabeth. She was
so far with them that she was prepared to express any
amount of reprobation against the chief actors in the
late events in Scotland. There is reason to believe
that these really vexed the rival, and rather malignant
rival as she was, of the great actress in them. The utter
ruin of one rival is not always pleasant to the other.
It annihilates those elements of comparison which im-
part a zest to emulation and rivalry. There is nothing
cither to boast or feel internal satisfaction at in being
something better than an utter wreck. Elizabeth had
thus sufficient inclination to pour any amount of cen-
sure on the offenders ; but she was startled when the
Scots spoke to her about bringing their queen to justice,
and making a new provision for the head of the govern-
ment in the name of the infant heir. All her sensitive-
ness to the danger of letting subjects question the do-
ings of their sovereigns was roused at once. To meet
o o
the exigency that the young prince was in danger, she
offered to take him into her own charge a proposal
likely to excite derisive smiles among the Scots lords,
VOL. iv. 2 c
402 QUEEN MARY.
who felt that the essence of their whole strength lay in
the existence and the possession of the puling infant.
The question, indeed, of his safety proved an import-
ant turning-point in the progress of events. Mar,
who had him in charge in Stirling Castle, was uneasy
for his safety, judging the castle not sufficiently strong.
Sir James Melville hints, but does not flatly say, that
the queen herself had pressed Mar to give up the cus-
tody of her son, and that he had resisted, refusing to
do so without the authority of the Estates of Parlia-
ment. 1 The question w r as, What was to be done in
the difficulty of all the places sufficiently strong to
retain so precious a charge being in the hands of the
enemy ?
Melville claims much credit for the diplomatic skill
with which he conquered this difficulty. Edinburgh
Castle was in charge of one of Bothwell's creatures,
Sir James Balfour. His master, however, had lately
shown some suspicions that his devotion was not suffi-
ciently implicit. Melville, giving a direction to the
uneasiness thus created, informed Balfour that he had
it from Whitelaw, the captain of the Castle of Dunbar,
that Bothwell was determined to take Edinburgh
Castle from its present captain, and appoint the Laird
Beauston, a Hepburn, in his place. Melville then
enlarged on the great part Balfour would play, if he
1 " My Lord Mar, wha was a true nobleman, wald not deliver him out
of his custody, alleging that he could not without consent of the three
Estates. Yet he was sa oft pressed be them that had the autority in
their hands*, that he was put to ane strait after that he had made divers
refuses ; that he made his moan to me among others, praying me to help
to suif the prince out of their hands wha had slain his father, and had
made his vaunt already among his familiars that, if he could get him
ains in his hands, he suld warrant him fra revenging of his father's
death." Melville, 179.
THE CONFEDERATES, 1567. 403
should be the means of saving the queen and the
prince from the man who was also going to sacrifice
himself. 1
The immediate consequence of this dealing seems to
have been that, contrary to the general expectation,
when the confederates returned to Edinburgh from
Borthwick they were not fired on from the castle, but
easily forced the city gates and entered welcome to
the inhabitants, who saw them pour in from the alleys
leading to the gates and form on the High Street.
James Beaton, the archbishop's brother, having gone
to offer his duty to the fugitives at Dunbar, was sent
by them with a message to Balfour to hold the castle
for the queen and punish the rebels. 2 He found that
the confederates had established a watch on the Castle-
hill ; and having managed to pass it, two of the
leaders the Lairds of Tullibardine and Eossythe
followed him to within twenty paces of the castle
gate and brought him back. He managed afterwards
to evade their diligence and get access to Balfour ; but
he found " the captain very cauld in his answering to
her majesty's commandments.'' Presently afterwards
Secretary Lethington appeared among the confede-
rates a token that there was life in their cause, and
more to be thrown into it. He went to the castle,
and, according to Beaton, " spak with the captain the
space of three hours." This seems to have been con-
clusive, and the great fortress passed from Bothwell to
the confederates. These took rapid steps to bring the
machinery of government into their own hands, to be
worked, of course, in the queen's name, and for the
1 Melville, 18().
2 Letter printed in Laing, ii. 106.
404 QUEEN MARY.
purpose of releasing her out of the restraint in which
she was held. They invaded the " cunyie-house" or
mint, and took possession of the fount and the " cunyie
irons," or matrices for stamping coins. They offered a
bounty for recruits, and readily obtained them. Find-
ing themselves decidedly popular with the citizens,
they made a curious appeal to their susceptibility by
hanging up a picture of the rinding of Darnley's body,
the young prince bending over it with the legend,
" Judge and avenge my cause, Lord ! "
One of the earliest steps of the confederates was
to issue a manifesto ; and as they were strong and in
command of the capital, it was pitched in a high tone
of authority. It is dated on the llth June. It is
a powerfully -reasoned and eloquent document very
different in tone from the pedantic formality of the
bonds and other documents so plentiful on the other
side. It refers to the murder in due terms of horror
and indignation; and points out that, in a nation where
such crimes not only go unpunished but uninvesti-
gated, no one knows what deeds may be committed,
and no one, high or low, can feel security for life.
They are banded together for the investigation of this
crime; for the release of the queen from the bondage
in which she is held ; " to cause justice be ministrate
equally to all the subjects of this commonweal, and to
purge this realm of the infamy and slander where-
with as yet it remains bruited among all nations." In
this document there is not a breath of suspicion or
disloyalty to the queen ; the object held most promi-
nently forward of all is to rescue her from her present
misfortunes. 1
1 Anderson, i. 128.
THE CONFEDERATES, 1567. 405
Next day a proclamation was issued in the name of
"the Lords of the Privy Council and the nobility."
It charged Bothwell with having murdered the king,
and afterwards used other unlawful means to seduce
his sovereign into " ane unhonest marriage." It nar-
rates, in its own way and with its own colours, the
other events that had occurred, and asserts that he
had made preparations " whilk we look can be with na
other effect but to commit the like murther upon the
son as was upon the father." Officers -at -arms are
directed to pass to the market-crosses of Edinburgh,
Perth, Dundee, St Andrews, Stirling, and other places,
and charge all the lieges to be ready, at three hours'
warning, to join their banner, and aid them in deliver-
ing the queen from captivity, punishing the mur-
derers, and rescuing the royal infant from his father's
fate. 1
On the night of the 14th the confederates heard
that Bothwell was approaching Edinburgh with a
force, and they resolved to go forth and meet him.
One of their reasons for not abiding his attack in their
stronghold appears to have been that they could not
have much reliance on the new-born virtue of the cap-
tain of the castle, should he be tempted by the presence
of his old master at the head of a considerable force.
They marched at two o'clock next morning. They were
in all eighteen hundred horsemen and four hundred
footmen half of these were craftsmen, accustomed to
watch -and -ward duty in the town. They came in
sight of their enemy as they approached Musselburgh.
Let us look now to the other side. The fugitives
reached the fortress of Dunbar at three o'clock in the
1 Anderson, i. 131.
406 QUEEN MARY.
morning. The author of the Diary, attributed to the
captain of Inchkeith, hearing of their arrival, set off to
join them. He found them at Dunbar with hardly any
one but a few domestics. He noticed the peculiarity
of the queen's dress, especially the brevity of the red
petticoat, and that she had prepared a couple of casts
of hawks and two single birds for the field. She had
other matters, however, to busy her, and was deep in
despatches and messages to bring together a force.
She set off next day to Haddington, with a guard of
two hundred harquebussiers and sixty horsemen. By
her own exertions and her husband's, she had six hun-
dred horsemen round her when she reached Hadding-
ton. Their recruiting was in the very centre of the
estates and jurisdictions with which she had invested
him; and the old retainers of his house on the border,
where he reigned almost supreme as warden, were
within reach. The queen went on to Seton, her old
haunt, and when there she could count sixteen hun-
dred followers. At what point in the progress her
husband joined her, those who narrate the affair, other-
wise so minute, give no information. On the 15th,
however, he had a gathering that, in numbers at least,
seemed fit to cope with the confederates. These, how-
ever, had greatly the advantage in condition for
the field. With the exception of a few sturdy bur-
gesses, as the eye.witnesses note, they were mounted
gentlemen, trained to fighting, and in excellent condi-
tion and discipline. Eighteen hundred of them were
mounted; and in the sixteenth century, though artillery-
was breaking down the enormous superiority of horse-
men over footmen, that would have been a formidable
element in a considerable army. Le Croc, who noticed
THE CONFEDERATES, 1567. 407
the preponderance of horsemen and their fine condition,
also noticed, as a specialty he seems not to have seen
before, that the Scots horsemen when halting aban-
doned the saddle, and only mounted for actual fight-
ing. Both well's men were hastily collected ; there
had been no time to handle them, so as to know what
they were fit for. He had no good captains ; and, as
an onlooker remarked, they were chiefly " commons "
or peasants. He had with him a few cannon brought
from Dunbar, and a portion of these he posted at a
ford a little above Musselburgh.
To those anywise acquainted with the ground, it will
be best understood how the two armies stood to each
other by noting that the Esk, which passes Dalkeith
and Musselburgh, was between them when they first
saw each other. Bothwell's troops were on the south-
east side, keeping the upper ridge of the hills or banks.
The confederates crossed the river, and competed for
the higher ground. They seem to have fidgeted
about, trying as well to occupy high ground as to get
rid of the annoyance of the sun being in their face,
for it was a clear hot day. The country presents no
decided sweep of predominant rising ground, but undu-
lates ; and so both forces occupied an elevation, with a
burn running in the declivity between, now cut by a
branch railway. The position taken up by Both well
on Carberry Hill, where there remained some of the
earthworks left by the English army after the battle
of Pinkie, is still called Queen Mary's Mount.
While they were watching each other, Le Croc, the
French ambassador, appeared on the scene, his diplo-
matic mind sorely perplexed by the anomalous sight.
Here was royalty on the one side, and rebellious sub-
408 QUEEN MARY.
jects on the other. "With these was the bulk of the
rank, statesmanship, and military capacity of the coun-
try the men with whom he used to hold counsel as
its government heads here, too, was an army, small,
but respectable both for the social condition of the
men and their effective training. On the side of
royalty he saw crime, folly, a few border lairds for
a court, and a force of undrilled peasants. Le Croc,
however, wished to be of service. He was a man of
kindly nature, and, as representing the crown that
had so long exercised a high influence in Scotland,
he sought to do what he could to stay a conflict
that must be the first of a civil war. In fact he must
have felt that whatever he did on the occasion might
have a material influence on the interests of his own
country, and on his own position and repute as a states-
man. The tone of the diplomacy of the day shows
that the French Court at once took the alarm about
the ancient alliance. It was predicted that the end
of the doings at Holyrood would be that Scotland,
severed from France, would be attached to England.
The instructions to Le Croc and others pressed him to do
his utmost to avert this calamity; and, in the sincerity
of urgent pleading, the importance of keeping a hold
on Scotland was set forth in terms that would have
made any true Scot on either side indignant 1 His
way led first to the force of the confederates. With
these he held talk, but not so long as to give the
impression that he favoured their cause. Finding
there no opening for accommodation, he left them, and
" Le desir ct intention principale de sa majestd est de conserver le
royaume d'Escosse a sa devotion." Memoir to, or communicated to, Le
Croc ; Teulet (8vo ed.), ii. 324.
CONFERENCE AT CARBERRY, 1567. 409
returned in three hours to find the aspect of things
unchanged. He besought them, for the love of God,
and in the name of his master, who wished well both
to the queen and to them, to try and find a way to
accommodation. They said there was no other but
the queen's giving up her husband to them. Speak of
it, he said, as they would, their act was war against
their queen ; and should God favour them so that they
gained a battle, they would be more than ever at a
loss how to act. They said there were just two ways
of averting bloodshed : the one was for the queen to
part with the traitor in whose hands she was, the other
was for him to step forth prepared for single combat.
He would find one ready to fight him, and another,
and another, up to ten or a dozen, if he desired it.
The ambassador said both alternatives would be offen-
sive to the queen, and he would have to do with
neither : had they nothing else to offer ? No, nothing;
and in strong language they swore that they would get
the truth of the king's death laid bare. He seems to
have found himself in controversy with them. He
intended, apparently, if he saw any hope of good
results, to have passed at his ease between the two
forces, bringing matters by degrees to a reconciliation.
Having found as yet nothing but defiance among the
confederates, he proposed to cross over and speak with
the queen. This was objected to. He complained
loudly of the awkward position in which he was thus
placed. Communicating with them alone, he would
appear to throw his weight into their side. They had
no right to put him in that position ; he must retire
if he were not to see the queen. No restraint was
put on him ; but to pass over to the queen's force he
410 QUEEN MARY.
required to have a proper convoy. He does not tell
who they were who were so discourteous as to refuse
him this ; but he describes with vividness how Secre-
tary Lethington came forward with graceful courtesy,
expressed his respect for the ambassador of so great a
kin, to whom he and his friends offered their humble
O'
duty, desiring earnestly that the old alliance between
the two nations might exist uninterrupted. He told
the ambassador frankly that he was free to come and
go at his will between the two forces, and would be
provided, so far as concerned their side, with the means
of doing so. They gave him an escort of fifty horse,
who had to take him beyond their own proper lines ;
for he found that there had already crossed the brook,
in advance on the queen's party, some two hundred
troopers, with nine hundred as a support.
He was brought first in presence of the queen alone ;
and having paid his duty, he told her what grief the
knowledge of her present position would bring to the
King of France, and^ also to the queen as to whom,
however, the sincerity of his remark may be doubted.
He told her that he had spoken with the confederate
lords and what they had said, begging her to weigh
their words and intentions well ; for they were still her
loving subjects, though the position they had taken
might look otherwise. She said that they used her
very ill, since she had only complied with their own
bond, and taken the husband they had dictated to her.
Nevertheless, if they would acknowledge his position
and ask his pardon, she was ready to open her arms
to them.
At this point the husband came up. He and the
ambassador saluted each other ; but the proud French-
CONFERENCE AT CARBERRY, 1567. 411
men specially notes that he declined the embrace of
friendship. He tells how Bothwell demanded, with an
air of assurance, and in a loud voice that his followers
might hear, if it was he that was wanted. The am-
bassador answered aloud that he had spoken to the
other force, and they had assured him they were the
very humble subjects and servants of the queen ; and
then, in a whisper for his own particular ear, that they
were his mortal enemies. Bothwell, again speaking so
as to be heard around, asked what he had done to them.
He had never wished to offend any one, but desired to
please all ; they were influenced by mere envy of his
greatness ; but every man was free to enjoy his own
good fortune ; and there was not one of them but would
gladly be in his place. Then he became very earnest,
and besought the ambassador, for the love of God, to
relieve the queen from a position which gave him great
pain, and also to prevent bloodshed. Le Croc was free
to tell the confederates that, though he had the honour
to be husband to the queen, he would enter in gage of
battle with any of them, provided he were of proper
quality; and he would fight, holding his cause to be so
just that he felt assured God would be with him. But
the queen forbade this, and Le Croc declined to take
the message.
Bothwell then remarked that more talk was useless ;
he saw his enemies coming, some of them having
passed the brook. He hinted to the ambassador that,
if he desired to imitate him who mediated between
the armies of Scipio and Hannibal, he should hold
himself impartial, and take part with neither side, but
stand aloof during the fighting, and see the best fun
that ever was ; and if he would imitate this example,
412 QUEEN MARY.
lie would have the like, for he would see good fighting.
Le Croc said it was not where the queen and these
two armies were concerned that he would enjoy such
a sight ; on the contrary, it had never been his lot to
behold a scene that could so grieve him. Some more
talk of a general character they seem to have had
before parting. Both well boasting of his own strength,
the other admitted that he had a greater number of
men four thousand, while they had some five hundred
fewer, and he had three pieces of artillery but were
all to be trusted to hold by his cause ? Le Croc had just
come from a force gallantly and sagaciously led, where
there were several wise heads, and all were resolute; but
here was no one to be depended on but the leader, and
he questioned if more than a half would stand by him.
In fact several slipped over to the other side, and the
force was much weakened by many others falling out
to refresh themselves in the hot day. Le Croc bade
adieu to the queen with extreme regret, leaving her
with the tear in her eye. He went back to the con-
federate lords, and told them the condition on which
the queen would be reconciled to them ; but they were
resolute, and would have no more talk ; and each
taking his morion in his hand, bade him for God's sake
depart, thanking him for his well-meant efforts. He
withdrew accordingly, and returned to Edinburgh with
a heavy heart.
After he went, the two forces, which had stood im-
movable from eleven in the forenoon till five in the after-
noon, crept near each other ; but each still sought an
elevation, and when they were very close, it required
that the one making the attack should go down into a
little valley in the first place. The ambassador noticed
CONFERENCE AT CARBERRY, 1567. 413
the banners. The queen's was the royal lion ; that of
the confederate lords, their favourite picture of the
murdered man and the infant prince. 1
Presently a small party of the queen's force de-
scended and proffered a parle. They were joined by
a like body on the other side, and it was determined
between them that the gage of battle should be tried.
Tullibardine, understood to have been active in the
affair of the accusatory placards, came forward, but
Bothwell declined to acknowledge him as of sufficient
rank. He wished to measure swords with Morton, but
this life the confederates thought too valuable to be
so risked. Lindsay was the next. He imitated, so far
as was consistent with Protestant usage, the religious
ceremony of the old gage of battle, and prayed on his
knees conspicuously between the two forces. When
the queen's consent was asked, she wavered, appeared
to yield to such a sacrifice for the avoidance of blood-
shed, but in the end forbade the combat.
The confederates now were determined to advance ;
and it became clear to Bothwell that his own party,
thinned by deserters, and not all disposed to combat,
would not stand the charge of the well-disciplined force
descending into the hollow. Seeing this, it became
part of the policy of the confederates to prevent the
] Le Croc describes it : " Une enseigne blanche, on il y avoit ung
homme mort aupres d'un arbre, et ung enfant qui est a genoulx, repre-
sentant le prince de ce royaume, qui tient ung escrit ou il y a ' Revenche,
O mon Dieu, de ma juste cause ! " The captain of Inchkeith, who seems
to have had a heraldic mind, describes it with a characteristic difference :
" Une ansigne blanche en quoy estoit tire ung arbre vert, ayant une
branch rompue, ung homme mort au pied, vestu d'une chemise blanche,
dans un champ vert, et ung enfant assis audessus de son chef, tenant
ung escriteau en sa main, disant, '0 Seigneur, juge et revange ma
querelle !'" Teulet (8vo ed.), ii. 306, 318.
414 QUEEN MARY.
escape of Bothwell ; and Kirkcaldy of Grange was
detached, with two hundred mounted men, to flank
the enemy, and intercept his retreat to Dunbar. The
queen observing Kirkcaldy, sent a message desiring to
have conference with him ; and having got a safe-con-
duct, he consented. He appears to have bluntly told
the queen that all would honour and serve her if she
would abandon the murderer of her husband. Melville
tells us that, while he so spoke, " the Earl Bodwell had
appointed a soldier to shoot him, until the queen gafe
a cry, and said that he should not do her that shame
wha had promised that he should come and return
safely." This incident is not mentioned by the other
narrators. It is not quite clear whether it was then,
or when called on a second time to confer with the
queen, that the confederates grew uneasy about his
detention, and continued their advance. A hasty stip-
ulation then passed that Bothwell should, unmolested,
depart for Dunbar, and the queen render herself.
They parted, as we are told, like fond lovers, with many
kisses, and much sorrow on her part. 1 He mounted
and galloped off with a slender train. His last words
to the queen were an exhortation to continue true to
her plighted faith.
At that moment the cup of the wretched woman's
bitterness must have been filled to the brim. One by
one every refuge had been closed ; and over the wide
world at home, as well as abroad, there was no quarter
to which she could look for countenance. England
from the first was not to be thought of. But at the
Court of France the door was even more hopelessly
1 " Avecque grande angoise et doulleur de son coust^ ; et plus sou-
ventefoia s'entrebesserent." Captain of Inclikeith ; Teulet, ii. 307.
CONFERENCE AT CARBERRY, 1567. 415
closed. There was strong suspicion there of her guilt ;
and the deed was not one of those acts, perpetrated
with Italian subtlety and external decorum in the
inner recesses of courts, of which people circulate timid
whispers, but was a flagrant act the common talk of
her own people. At all events she had become the
husband of one guilty beyond all question of the crime
held in chief abhorrence at Court; and not only so, but
she had brought scandal on the royalty of France she,
the queen-dowager, allying herself with one too well
known in Paris noble, no doubt, as all Scots were,
but a needy adventurer, seeking fortune wherever and
however he could find her, and notorious for indulgence
in vices of a low cast. Then the bulk of what was
honourable and respectable among her own subjects
had taken arms against her, and the rest would not
strike in her defence. But sorest, perhaps, of all the
arrows at her heart, was the unkindness of him for
whom she had encountered all. This dread skeleton in
the house can generally be kept in its secret receptacle
in the courts of princes, and even the abodes of mode-
rate respectability ; but everything in Holyrood went
on too passionately and flagrantly for concealment.
Many noticed that she was an oppressed, insulted wife.
But little incidents referred to by persons present are
more expressive than general accusations. Le Croc
said that, immediately after the marriage, she was
curious to know whether he had noticed somewhat
of her husband's strange usage towards her, and told
him not to wonder if her manner were sad, for she
was in deep distress. Once, too, in an inner chamber,
where she was alone with her husband, she was heard
to weep, and to say she wished she had a knife,
416 QUEEN MARY.
that she might put an end to her existence. By
a rare coincidence this was heard both by Le Croc
and Melville - - it was reported by the former to
the King of France, and recorded by the latter in
his Diary.
Such incidents are serviceable to those who hold that
the unhappy woman was the mere helpless victim of
fraud and force a sort of realisation of the old stories
about giants and enchanters, or of the romances with
the tyrant lord who, gifted with powers almost as pre-
ternatural, seizes and imprisons the doomed princess.
But there is another cause for such phenomena, with
which the daily world is unfortunately more familiar
the woman with many gifts, and the one fatal weak-
ness that induces her to throw them at the feet of
an unworthy object ; the victim of a blind imperious
passion, giving herself over, body and soul, to one so
thoroughly selfish and brutal, that no attachment or
gratitude, no prudential restraint, will even for a brief
space suspend the impulses of his sensual and tyran-
nical nature.
Whatever at that moment passed through her mind,
the queen acted her part with her usual grace and
princely decorum. According to Melville's Diary, she
said, " ' Laird of Grange, I render me unto you, upon
the conditions ye rehearsed to me in the name of the
lords ;' and gave him her hand, whilk he kissed, and led
her majesty by the bridle down the brae unto the lords,
who came forward and met her." Her selection showed
a sagacious instinct, and her courtesy that day is be-
lieved to have won for her a champion. We are told
that the lords used all dutiful reverence; " but some of
the rascals cried out despitefully," until they were put
THE SEPARATION, 1567. 417
down by indignant remonstrances and chastisement.
And so the queen returned to Edinburgh. 1
The confederates were not destined to find in their
captive the meek resignation of a broken spirit. After
the first touch of depression was over, a reaction seems
to have come, which hurried her on into one of those
outbursts of rage which, more than once in the course
of her life, got the better of her usual subtlety. She
let loose her formidable tongue, and hit right and left
with maddening effect. She seems to have been par-
ticularly successful in finding a sore in the gruff and
surly Lindsay, and to have torn at it remorselessly
with her sharp sarcasm, while he, accustomed to wea-
pons of a different kind, could retaliate nothing. What
was more serious, however, than all this, she swore she
would have all their lives ; and spoke, even as she
then was, like one luxuriating in the execution of her
vengeance. 2
When the captive reached Edinburgh, the procession
got an ugly reception from the common people. The
great High Street was filled with a mob deeply excited,
who uttered revilino-s and accusations in abundance.
1 The account of these transactions is, with some little assistance from
Melville's Diary, taken from the accounts of three eyewitnesses, all hap-
pily uniting in the minuteness and the general conformity of their de-
tails. One is the ' Letter of James Beaton, the Archbishop of Glasgow's
brother, to his brother Mr Andrew, to be given to the archbishop, con-
taining the Proceedings in Scotland from the llth to the 17th of June
1767 ;" printed in Laing, ii. 106. Another is a long letter by Le Croc
to the King of France; printed by Teulet (8vo), ii. 312. The third is
called ' Recit des Evenements du 7 an 15 Juin 1567, par le Capitain
d'Inchkeith ;' printed by Teulet, ii. 300. The Captain was a Frenchman ;
it was agreed at the treaty of Edinburgh that a small French garrison
should continue to occupy this island in the Forth.
2 " Ne parla jamais que de les faire tous pendre et crucifier, et con-
tinue tousjours." Le Croc to Catherine of Medici ; Teulet, ii. 310.
VOL. IV. 2 T>
4 i8 QUEEN MARY.
It was observed that the loudest and fiercest denuncia-
tions came from her own sex, and not the most virtu-
ous portion of it. The scene in the celebrated banner,
drawn apparently on a large scale, was spread before
her, with sedulous endeavours to catch her eye what-
ever way she turned. A portion of the natural ex-
citement of the time appears oddly enough to have
expended itself on painting. Several representations
seem to have been made of the discovery of the body,
with more or less of allegorical machinery; and several
other pictures made their appearance, which, either
through allegory or an attempt to represent facts, gave
shape to the feelings of their producers. Caricatures
they could not be called, for they had a deadly earnest-
ness about them and still less were they entitled to
be called specimens of historical art ; but they were
deemed as signs of the times, so important that some
of them may now be found among the documents of
the period, which were preserved in the State Paper
Office. 1
Another phenomenon of the time may be found in
the creation of the Edinburgh mob. The strange ex-
citing history passing before it gave it life; and, finding
its strength, it continued, down to within the memory
1 There is one in which an attempt is made to represent the whole
scene of the murder the shattered house, the Duke of Hamilton's house
beside it, the city gate and wall, the remnant of the old Kirk-of-Field,
the bodies, and the assembled crowd of citizens. A copy of this will be
found in Chalmers's Life of Queen Mary. It is curious to observe how
that industrious and earnest author, while deeply immersed in the fur-
therance of one of his hobbies, the vindication of Queen Mary, seizes the
passing opportunity to give a lift to another which bore on the prevalence
of the Celtic language and cxistoms in Scotland. He takes the slight
liberty of dressing about one-half of the attendant mob in the kilt and
other elements of the modern Highland costume. A more correct render-
ing of the picture will be found in Living's ' Registrum Domus de Soltre.'
SCENES IN EDINBURGH. 419
of persons still living, a permanent and formidable
institution. The well-trained force of the confederates
was perhaps sufficient to control any actual violence.
The condition of the town, however, was from the first
embarrassing. It appears to have been owing to this
that it was thought imprudent to convey the captive
down the High Street and Canongate to Holyrood.
Hence she was lodged in the house of the provost,
which stood on the north side of the cross, where the
Council-house and the Exchange buildings now stand. 1
Her conduct there is one of the most astounding fea-
tures in the whole narrative. Several times during the
afternoon she appeared at the window so scantily and
carelessly dressed that the sight was inconsistent with
proper feminine decorum ; and there she moaned and
cried and wailed to the mob that gathered thick upon
the street. Beaton, with a touch of good feeling and
that minute attention to detail which makes his story
so valuable, says, " Na man could look upon her but
she movit him to pity and compassion. For my ain
part, I was satisfied to hear of it, and micht not suffer
to see it." That she, who never was known to depart
from the etiquette of her rank except to dignify that
departure by her grace and wit, should so revolt
against her proper nature, was an expressive addition
to the astounding events that had excited the Edin-
burgh populace. It goes, with other incidents, to show
that the terrible excitement of her recent life must
have in some measure disordered her brain.
1 Le Croc, when reporting this to his master, makes haste to remove
the impression likely to be created at the French Court by this bour-
geoisement treatment of royalty : " Je sais bien, sire, que ce nom de
prevost sera bien odieux en France, mais en ce pays c'est comme la prin-
cipale niaison de la ville." Teulet, ii. 319.
420 QUEEN MARY.
Lethington was an eyewitness of this scene. He
went into the provost's house, and tried to soothe the
queen. The street in front was cleared of the mob ;
but the excitement of the people had got an impulse,
and Le Croc found that by evening there was much
alarm about the preservation of peace in the city.
Le Croc expressed himself satisfied that the confeder-
ates were reasonable in their ultimate views that they
only wanted to get her separated from Both well, in the
belief that they might then safely return to their duty
towards her as their sovereign. His chief anxiety, in-
deed, was lest they should not feel strong enough to
cope with their enemy, and might seek assistance from
Elizabeth, a contingency that might be fatal to the
French alliance. He seemed to hint to them that,
rather than this should be, they might expect aid from
France ; but he implored them, if possible, to get this
affair brought to a conclusion.
But under Le Croc's eyes, and even while he was
explaining these views to Lethiugton, the affair took
a sudden and disagreeable turn. Believing that the
queen led a miserable life with her husband, the con-
federates thought she would be easily severed from
him. Her wild talk the night before, however, had
led them to suspect that she was frantic to return
to his arms, and she had acted so as to confirm
this view. Le Croc was told by Lethington that he
had had a conversation with her, in which she re-
proached him for severing her from the husband with
whom she hoped to live and die with all the satisfac-
tion in the world. He answered that he and his com-
rades were far from feeling that they did her injury
by this separation ; on the contrary, they believed it
THE REMOVAL TO LOCHLEVEN. 421
to be in every way the best thing for her future hon-
our and tranquillity. He tried what jealousy would
do, and said her husband was still in correspondence
with his former wife, and had told her that she was
his real wife and the queen his mistress. The queen
gave an angry denial to this, and he shortly replied
that the letters would show it. Lethington said the
conference ended by her asking if she and her husband
would be permitted to depart together in a ship, to sail
where fortune should direct. To this draft on the pre-
cedents of the romances the " Chameleon," as Buchanan
calls him, made answer, evidently in a vein of dry
sarcasm, that, provided the pair did not happen to land
in France, he thought it about the best thing they
could do. It seems clear, too, that she wrote a letter
to her husband, which the messenger she had hired
to convey it faithlessly delivered to the confederates.
Melville renders its purport as " calling him her dear
heart, whom she should never forget nor abandon for
absence ; and that she sent him away only for his
safety, willing him to be comforted, and to be upon
his guard."
In this state of matters the city in commotion, a
frantic queen within it, and an unscrupulous enemy at
hand, whom she would do everything to help the
leading men seem to have adopted a hurried resolution
that there was no alternative but to get the queen
" sequestered " in some place, quiet, remote, and safe.
Le Croc, who carefully watched what was doing, and
immediately reported it home, was unable to give the
same satisfactory account of these hasty movements as
of the deliberate proceedings of the confederates. He
knew that at nine o'clock in the evening she had been
422 QUEEN MARY.
conveyed to Holyrood as if to reside there in her usual
state, hut that during the night she had been taken to
the port of Leith, where a vessel received her with her
attendants and a guard. Farther than this he was at
fault. In his letter to his king dated 1 7th June, he
presumed that their destination was Stirling ; but in
his next he said the queen had been taken to Loquelin,
or Lochleven.
The 20th of June, three days after these stirring
events, is the date of an incident small in itself, and
known at the time to few, which proved, however, of
mighty moment in the politics of the day, and has
since given occasion for a whole library of critical and
disputative literature. Bothwell, in his hurry to leave
Edinburgh, left behind him, as people on such occa-
sions are apt to do, an article which he highly valued.
It had been taken with him into the Castle of Edin-
burgh, and there left. It is described as a casket about
a foot long, decorated with silver over gilt, and bear-
ing the crown of France and the initials of Francis II.,
from whom it had passed to his widow, and then to
her third husband. It contained papers of value, and
Bothwell was very anxious to recover them. He sent
his servant, George Dalgleish, to bring the casket from
Edinburgh to Dunbar. The man was intercepted, how-
ever, and the casket found its way to Morton's hands.
It is possible that a hint may have been given of the
removal by Balfour the governor ; but as Dalgleish was
then wanted as an accessory of the murder of Darnley,
the probability is that he was apprehended on this
ground, and the casket found with him. The papers
afterwards produced as the contents of this casket,
whether, indeed, they were its real contents or mere
DISCOVERY OF THE CASKET, 1567. 423
forgeries, were the ground on which the subsequent
actions of Queen Mary's opponents rested ; and hence
it is that the little incident of the discovery of the
casket expands into a great political event. 1 Besides
the contract of marriage already referred to, and some
other documents, the momentous portion of these
papers consisted of eight letters and some poetry called
sonnets, all declared to be in the handwriting of Queen
Mary, and in that Latin or Italian form of waiting
which she was about the first to practise in Scotland,
and which at once distinguishes her manuscripts from
the ordinary Gothic writing of the period.
The literary history of these letters and sonnets is
curious. The originals have long been lost. They were
among Morton's effects when he was executed; and
there has been an impression that they passed into the
hands of King James, by whom they were destroyed. 2
1 The chivalrous class to whom Mary's innocence is a creed rather
than an opinion will not blame me for having constructed my narrative
without reference to the contents of the casket. In the supposition that
they are genuine, they were a secret between two criminals which did not
yet begin to influence others; and it seemed to be the historian's proper
duty to deal with what was known to, and consequently influenced, the
actors at large on the political stage. From the 20th of June 1567, how-
ever, the ruling power in Scotland took its stand upon the import of
these letters; and it is, therefore, from that day that they properly be-
come a part of public history.
2 In a letter to me by the late Joseph Robertson, one of the last
he wrote, is the following curious passage :
" I have often puzzled myself as to the fate of the letters produced
from the silver casket. I am not satisfied with the story which Principal
Robertson tells in a note to the later editions of his History, and which
may now be read at more length in Sir R. Bowes's Correspondence,
printed by the Surtees Society. To my mind, there is a more significant
passage in a book where no one would think of looking for such a thing,
in Round's edition of Bishop Ken's Prose Works, London, 1838. It is in
a letter from the nonjuring antiquary, Dr Thomas Smith, written in
1707:
424 QUEEN MARY.
The source from which we now know their nature is
a Latin translation of them appended to Buchanan's
Detection of the Doings of Queen Mary, published in
1572. In the translation of that work, which appeared
in the same year, and is attributed to Buchanan him-
self, there is a rendering of the whole into the Scots
vernacular, and of nearly the whole into French. Hav-
ing them in this shape, we have no means of critically
judging of the style of the original; and any evidence
that might be found in the minuter turns, of expression,
sometimes so effective when the general tenor of the
writing is ambiguous, is lost. The tone of these
papers is, however, so impetuous, and their tenor so
emphatic and distinct, as to leave, at least in the es-
sentials, no doubtful meanings which a reference to
the original might have cleared. These same qualities
render it practicable to give a description of the docu-
ments, and a brief rendering of their more emphatic
" ' However the great ministers by whose counsels she [Q. Eliz.] was
influenced and governed, thought lit to have registered the commission
by which Q. Mary was tryed, and the whole processe of her tryall,
amongst the rolls of the Exchequer : of which I shall give your lordship
a briefe account from a paper under the hand of Mr Arthur Agard, one
of the Deputy Remembrancers of the Exchequer, which I met with in
the Cottonian Library, and signed by him in February 1603 :
" ' " The Commission, with a written booke touching the execution of
it, was delivered into the receipt office of the Exchequer, Westminster, by
the L. Treasurer Burleigh in the year ] 595, but was taken thence by the
command of K. James, 20 June 1603, and delivered to the L. Treasurer
Buckhurst, and was neyer restored though demanded."
" ' I conclude, I think not unjustly, from this last passage, that it was
utterly destroyed, K. James I. taking effectual care that this record
.should never appear in after times to the infamy of the queen his
mother.' P. 91, 92.
" King James did not reach London till the 7th May 1603, and his
possessing himself of the proceedings against Q. Mary on the 2()th June
1603, a month before his coronation, is a curious proof of his zeal to
destroy everything which told against her."
THE CASKET DOCUMENTS, 1566-67. 425
passages, without the risk of injustice. To feel the
significance of these passages, it is only necessary to
keep in view the chain of events which begins with the
queen's visit to her sick husband in Glasgow. 1
The first letter is very long. It goes over many mi-
nute transactions, to some of which we have now no clue.
It is apparent, however, that to a forger they must have
been perilous material, as affording numerous points
from which his work might be assailed. She apologises,
indeed, for writing about everything, however trifling,
in order that the receiver of her letter may have the
means of estimating the significance of all the occur-
rences. In this abridgment it is considered unneces-
sary to glean from the document anything that has
not in itself a plain meaning, or a reference to some
known and significant event. She begins with a sen-
timent: having gone from the place where she had left
her heart, it will easily be believed how unable she was
to enjoy society, insomuch that, until dinner-time, she
spoke to no one, nor did any one venture to address
her. Four miles from Glasgow she was met by a
gentleman of Lennox's household the same Craw-
ford whose account of these transactions is elsewhere
referred to. There was some rather exciting talk.
Crawford had to explain how Lennox did not come in
person he was scared by the harsh words the queen
had used to Cunningham probably the same who after-
1 It is scarcely necessary to inform the reader where he will find the
documents at length. They have been repeatedly printed, and are given
in nearly every one of the voluminous pleadings on both sides of the
great controversy. The most carefully edited copy of them is, however,
undoubtedly that given by M. Teulet in the volume of ' Lettres de Marie
Stuart,' which he published for the purpose of supplying deficiencies in
Prince LabanofFs Collection.
426 QUEEN MARY.
wards represented Lennox at Bothwell's trial. The
queen remarked that Lennox would not have been
afraid to come had he not been conscious of guilt. She
then stood on her dignity, and closed the discussion.
Others she encountered, with whom her conversation
was still more obscure and incidental ; but she remarked
that none of the Glasgow citizens came to see her,
whence she inferred that they were on her husband's
side. Of him the first note we have is an inquiry of one
of the domestics of the queen, why she lodged not beside
him. If she did so, he would rise the quicker from
his sick-bed; and he was anxious to know whether her
visit was intended as a step towards reconciliation. He
particularly desired to know if Both well himself were
in his wife's train, and also if she had made her " State."
He wanted to know if she had taken Paris and Gilbert
into her service, and was to send Joseph Rizzio away.
She expressed extreme annoyance at his- being thus
accurately informed of her private motions he spoke
even of the marriage of Bastiat ! When they met, she
taunted him with some complaints in his letters about
the hardships he had to suffer. He, instead of answer-
ing to the point, gave words to his astonishment and
excessive joy at seeing her he believed he might die
of gladness, but he rallied her on her pensiveness. In
a second visit which he begged of her, he said his sick-
ness was caused by her unkindness he would make
no testament, but Only leave everything to her. Then
comes an outpouring, which she professes to report in
full : " You ask me what I mean by the cruelty spoken
to in my letters. It comes of you alone, who will not
accept of my promises and repentance. I confess I
have been in fault, but not in the shape which I ever
THE CASKET DOCUMENTS, 1566-67. 427
denied. So also I have failed in my duty to some of
your subjects, but this you have forgiven. I am young.
You will say you have forgiven me over and over, and
still I repeat my offences. May not a man of my age,
for lack of counsel, fall twice or thrice, or fail in his
promises, yet repent, and be chastened by experience ?
If I be forgiven, I protest I shall never sin again. I
desire nothing whatever but that we may live again at
bed and board together as husband and wife ; and if
you will not consent to this, I shall never rise out of
this bed. I pray you tell me your resolution. God
knows how I am punished for making my god of you,
and for having no other thought but on you. And if
I am remiss towards you, you are yourself the cause ;
for when I have cause of offence, if I might take my
complaint to yourself, I would go nowhere else ; but
when I hear rumours while you are estranged, I am
of necessity compelled to keep it to myself, and this
irritates me until it makes me beside myself with
anger."
She says she answered him on each particular, but
her part of the discussion was too long to be set down.
Then follows the general purport of a talk about her
husband's suspicions as to plots for his assassination,
and his plans to escape abroad. The matters are briefly
touched, as if the writing were to be read by one mi-
nutely acquainted with the particulars. Among these
there is a certain " purpose of Heigate " referring to
a person so named, a servant of Bishop Beaton, whom
Mary herself had charged with propagating a tale that
the king was to take the young prince and have him
crowned. 1 The impression made by these explanations,
1 Letter to Beaton ; Labanoff, i. 396.
428 QUEEN MARY.
as by several others of a like kind dispersed through the
correspondence, is that she has exhausted all the par-
ticulars of his fears, suspicions, and general grumblings,
as completely as an able counsel draws out of an un-
willing Avitness everything he knows.
She describes with a slight touch of scorn how she
brings him on from suspicion to unwelcome demon-
strations of tenderness. He wants her to sleep in his
lodging, to walk with him, and to take him away with
her when she goes. He refers at the same time to the
terrors now dispelled. He believes she, his own flesh
and blood, would do him no harm; and he boasts that
others would find it difficult to assail him. Then comes
one of the significant passages. If she did not know
that his heart was of wax, while her own was of dia-
mond, incapable of being penetrated from any quarter
but the adored one she addresses, she might have
almost had pity on the poor creature. But no fear ;
she will hold out : let him she addresses take heed
that he be not seduced by that false race, his wife's
family. A little farther down she says they are
coupled with two false races. " May the devil sever
us from them, and God unite us together for ever ! "
Between the two allusions to the false races she
asks if he is not inclined to laugh to see her lie so
well, or at least dissemble with gleams of truth be-
tween. Next she is getting tired, and thinks of post-
poning her task till the morning ; but she cannot
sleep unless it were, as she would desire, in the arms
of her dear love. Here she desires him to tell her
what he intends to do in the matter he knows about,
that nothing be mismanaged. Then come more tokens
of weariness, and remarks on her husband's disease,
THE CASKET DOCUMENTS, 1566-67. 429
which perhaps would not sound so offensive in the
original French as in the translations. His breath,
she says, has nearly slain her; and to realise its offen-
siveness, she tells Both well that it is worse than his
own uncle's. She had almost forgotten to say that,
in presence of the Lady Eeres at supper, Livingston
had rallied her on the sorrowful condition in which
she had left a certain person at a distance.
The continuation appears to be a resumption next
day. She had worked two hours at a bracelet for her
beloved, trying to make it lock ; he must be careful
not to show it, for it has been seen, and will be at
once traced to her. She is now going to recommence
her detestable purpose. The lord of her heart makes
her dissemble, so that she feels like a traitress ; if it
were not in obedience to him, she would rather die
than do it her heart bleeds at it. She found she had
the work to do over again, and her husband was by no
means so compliant as she had left him the evening
before. He will not come with her unless she agree to
live with him at bed and board as before; and his sus-
picions crop out again, to be smoothed down by her
skilful tongue. He will do whatever she desires, and
will love herself and all that she loves. Then follow a
few penitential words, and the old excuse that she is
led by a hand she cannot resist. As a token of the
implicitness of her obedience come in some words
very few, but so significant that they must touch with
awe whoever comes incidentally across them, whether
he believe them to be the woman's own, or forged
by others for her condemnation. She prays her lord
to consider whether the deed might not be done in
some more secret way by medicine, for there must
430 QUEEN MARY.
be medicine with the bath at Craigmillar. Then another
passionate wail about her horror of deceit she would
not do it for her own particular revenge, she does the
bidding of the spirit that has mastered hers. A good
deal there still is in the letter ; but it is incoherent
repetition about her husband's suspicions and her own
spells to lull them, the bracelet she sends as a love-
token, her jealousy of his wife's influence, and her
assurance that she is ready to sacrifice honour, con-
science, rank, and life itself for her chosen lord's
love.
There are eight letters in all, but this one alone is
longer than all the rest together. It bears a general
date, January 1567. The second in order is specially
dated 25th January. It is a short querulous letter,
complaining of forgetful ness and neglect ; her hus-
band is still in a trusting and caressing humour ; she
playfully remarks that her true lord may think he is
making love to her and with success, but his very
presence renews her infirmity in her side. One arti-
culate announcement there is she brings the man
with her to Craigmillar on Monday, and there he will
remain all Wednesday, while she goes into Edinburgh
to be bled.
The third letter, set down as written from Glasgow
in January, but not on a specific day, is rather pur-
poseless. It shows that Bothwell apprehended danger
from her profuse writing and her many messages, and
she craves forgiveness for disobeying his injunction
neither to write nor send ; and yet there seems to be
no practical object to be served in the letter it looks
like a mere irrepressible outburst of suspicion and
jealousy of her rival the existing wife. She wonders
THE CASKET DOCUMENTS, 1566-67. 431
whether that rival is to win over her what the second
love of Jason won. There is something dramatic in the
effect of this allusion to the Medea, The mind worked
up to the point on which it tells, conscious that the
letters recall some vision of love and jealousy drawing
on their victim to hatred and murder, might, even
unaided by the hint, have remembered the terrible
creation of Euripides. 1 After much amorous and
jealous raving, the letter ends with a brief notifica-
tion that she was afraid to write in the presence
of Joseph (Rizzio), Bastiat, and Joachim, and had to
wait till they departed.
The next is a short letter in the same tone as the
rest, but bearing on some incidental grumbling of her
lord, as to something that one of her women had done
which frightened or displeased him.
All these letters are attributed to the month of
January ; the next is, on the same ground internal
evidence referred to April. It deals with the plot
for carrying her off to D unbar. She is distracted by
the uncertainty of the arrangements and the insuffi-
ciency of his information for her guidance. Then
comes to her in her perplexities his false brother
Huntly, who, professing to act as his messenger to fix
the time and place where he was to intercept her,
breaks in with his croakings : It was a foolish enter-
prise, and with her honour she could not marry the
man who carried her off while yet he was the husband
of another; and then her majesty's guard in attendance
would never be got to submit to such a humiliation.
1 In the ' Inventory of the Queen's Books in the Castle of Edinburgh,
delivered by the Earl of Morton to King James VI.,' is ' The Historic of
Jasone.' Inventories, cxlvi
432 QUEEN MARY.
But she has now gone so far that she is resolved to
complete the work. No persuasion, not the prospect
of death itself, can shake her resolution. Then come
jealous and querulous railings. Why call on her to
fix the place ? He should have adjusted all that, and
told her. He has risked all through that false brother
whom she does not trust with her letter ; but if failure
be the end, she will never raise her head again. The
bearer will tell him her miserable plight ; and what
effect his vacillations and indistinct counsels must
have on it let him judge. She had expected other
things, but she sees the influence of absence and of
that other one. He must not send an answer by
Huntly; and so God give him good-night.
The next letter is a short piece of subtle casuistry.
It looks forward to the way out of the difficulty into
which they are plunging. She thinks his services,
and the good esteem long entertained for him by his
brother lords, may j ustify his pardon, should he take
on himself beyond the duty of a subject not to
restrain her, but to assure himself of such a place near
to her, that the persuasions or interference of others
may not prevent her from consenting to realise the
hopes which he may have founded on -his services. To
be short, let him make himself secure of the lords and
free to marry; and let him represent that, to be able to
serve his sovereign faithfully, he was driven to join an
importunate act with a humble request. He knows, if
he likes, how to set the matter in right trim, and will
not neglect many fair words to Lethington. If he like
not the deed, let him say so, and not leave the whole
burden on her.
Circumstances gave those who had the handling of
THE CASKET DOCUMENTS, 1566-67. 433
the letters the means of precisely dating the next on
the 22d of April. It begins about his brother-in-law
that was. There are no jealousies or suspicions of
treachery in that quarter now ; but he has perplexed
her with doubts about the affair to come off the day
after to-morrow, because there are many, and among
them the Earl of Sutherland, who will rather die than
see their sovereign lady carried off when under their
protection. She is assured that he wishes to be
honest, but she sees that he fears a charge of high
treason. All this must foster caution and care. They
had yesterday three hundred horse, including Lething-
ton's ; for the honour of God, let her lord be accom-
panied with rather more than less ; and so she prays
God that they may have a happy meeting.
There remains yet one letter, perhaps the most
remarkable of all for the passionate vehemence with
which it expresses the unconditional surrender of the
writer's heart, its utter hopeless captivity, its owner's
abject resignation to the will and humour of the
victor, mixed with faint but agonised wailings about
the incompleteness of the return, the stint of that full
flow of entire reciprocity which is now the breath
of her life. There is now no jealousy of another.
There are no uncertainties or plans or difficulties. It
is fervid passion throughout, pressing forth with a
vehemence that seems almost to choke the utterer.
It is coloured throughout with extreme dejection and
sadness, like a consciousness of the shadow of coming
calamity.
Of the tell-tale contents of the casket there still
remain to be dealt with some verses called " The
Sonnets." They are divided into sets of fourteen lines
VOL. iv. 2 E
434 QUEEN MARY.
each ; but there is no separate unity of purpose in each
of these sets, nor do they contain any other specialty
of the sonnet proper. That she was acquainted with
these specialties is shown by a real sonnet written after
long imprisonment and affliction. It condenses into
unity those solemn verses scattered through the ninth
and tenth chapters of the Epistle to the Hebrews
which speak of the old material sacrifices of slain ani-
mals as superseded by one atonement, which requires
of mankind only the purifying qualities of faith and
humility. It is clear that the casket sonnets have
been a continuous poem, cut up by the translator or
editor into pieces of the canonical length of the sonnet,
but without entire success, since the whole was not
divisible by fourteen, and the last of the sonnets
contains only six lines.
There is, in fact, a unity of purpose throughout the
whole. It is a wild wailing of love, jealousy, and
despair. She is withheld from the object of her frantic
adoration by the double marriage nay, worse, by his
attachment to her rival. And what sacrifice does that
rival make to be set beside all that she is prepared to
lay down ? If the other gives love, she has love in
return. She is protected by the respectable bond of
matrimony. She has been a worldly gainer, for she
has been elevated by the favour which the devotion of
another has conferred on her husband. And that
other what is she not ready to sacrifice ? Eank and
position ; but these are nothing. Her life, her fair
fame, her infant child, her immortal soul all will be
thrown at his feet.
There is no Latin translation of the sonnets ; and in
their Scots and French guise they have little to adorn
THE CASKET DOCUMENTS, 1566-67. 435
them but the sheer fervency of their passionateness. 1
Brautome spoke of them as unworthy of her pen ; but
there is scarcely any chance that he could have seen
the contents of the casket, and a retranslation from
Scots into French would be poor material for test-
ing the merits of the original. Nor is it quite clear
whether he is giving us his own opinion, or merely the
result of conversation with others. French critics of
the present day do not confirm the popular notion that
Queen Mary was gifted with the genius of poetry.
They even talk disrespectfully of those lines on the
death of her husband which Brantome himself pre-
served and published as a testimony to her genius. 2
French critics have gone farther of late, and deposed
poor Mary from the poetical rank which she held as
the reputed author of some pretty lines bidding adieu
to her beloved France. 3
1 As printed in the Detection they are called " Certane Frenche son-
nettis writtin be the Queen of Scottis to Bothwel befoir hir marriage
with him, and (as it is said) while hir husband levit, but certainly befoir
his divorce from his wyfe, as the words themselfs shaw." Forbes,
ii. 115.
2 M. Chasles, in his ' Etudes sur W. Shakspeare, Marie Stuart, et L' Are-
tin' a curious conjunction calls these lines " rimes barbares," and
says, " L'expression en est dure et la pensee vulgaire." P. 23.
3 " Adieu, plaisant pays de France !
O ma patrie,
La plus clie'rie,
Qui as nourri ma jeune enfance !
Adieu, France ! adieu, nos beaux jours !
La nef qui dejoint nos amours
N'a eu de moi que la moitie"
Une parte te reste, elle est tienne,
Je la fie a ton amitid
Pour que de 1'autre il te souvienne."
M. Philarete Chasles having started a doubt as to the reputed author-
ship of these lines, the question was taken up and hunted to its conclu-
sion by Fournier, and the result will be found in that amusing book,
' L'Esprit dans 1'Histoire.' He proves that the lilies were written in
436 QUEEN MARY.
There is still another piece of poetry the admitted
work of Queen Mary with which the sonnets may
he compared. When her councillor and ambassador,
Bishop Leslie, was imprisoned in the Tower for his zeal
in the cause, he wrote a book of meditations, which he
sent to the queen. She was pleased with the gift, and
comforted by its perusal ; and under this influence
sent in return, in a poetical shape, her own medita-
tions upon his. 1 An effort, supposed to be longer and
more ambitious, on ' The Institution of a Prince,' has
unfortunately been lost sight of. 2
There are two theories on which the guilty conclu-
sion to which the casket documents point has been
resisted with great perseverance and gallantry : the
one is that, as we now see them, they have been tam-
pered with ; the other, that they are forgeries from
the beginning.
All questions raised 011 the prior theory are at once
settled by the fact that those to whom the letters were
Queen Mary's name by Meusnier de Querlon, and first published by him
in 1765 in his ' Anthologie.' It gives a zest to his success to be able, to
quote from the pompous M. Dargaiid, who, speaking of Mary and her
genius, says, " Ces vers sont desormais inseparables de son nom." Quer-
lon was accustomed to such tricks ; or, as Fournier says, " Prenait
volontiers plaisir a ces sortes de mystifications litteraires." He pub-
lished a little book called ' Les Innocentes Impostures;' but all his
were by no means innocent. He was the editor of one of the editions
of the infamous book, ' Meumi Elegantise Latinae Sermonis,' in which
the foulest pruriences that the language could express were published
as the production of a virtuous and distinguished scholar.
1 ' Meditation fait par la Reyne d'Escoce, Dovairiere de France, re-
cueillie d'un Livre des Consolations Divines, composez par 1'Evesque de
Ross ;' Bannatyne Miscellany, i. 343.
* " The queen, his majesty's mother, wrote a booke of verses in French,
of the Institution of a Prince, all with her oune hand, wrought the cover
of it with her needle, and is now of his majesty esteemed a most precious
jewel." Montague's Preface to the Works of King James. It is stated
by the same author that Darnley translated Valerius Maximus.
THE CASKET DOCUMENTS, 1566-67. 437
first shown drew conclusions from them as damnatory
as any they can now suggest. Little more than a
month after the documents were in ' possession of the
confederates on the 25th of July Throckmorton, the
English ambassador, got sufficient information to write
home that " they mean to charge her with the murder
of her husband, whereof, they say, they have as appa-
rent proof against her as may be, as well by the testi-
mony of her own handwriting, which they have re-
covered, as also by sufficient witnesses." 1 Farther
still, Sir Ralph Sadler made what may be called a
precis of the significant portions of the documents.
According to the natural practice on such occasions,
he briefly sweeps over the trivial or indistinct passages,
and dwells on those which convey significant conclu-
sions, translating them at full length ; and these
translations echo the corresponding passages in the
letters, as we now possess them, with decisive pre-
cision. 2
The theory of an entire forgery seems not to have
occurred to any of those friends or foes of the queen
who saw the documents. In the Parliament held in
December there were several "of her partisans present,
such as Huntly, Athole, Errol, Herries, and others; but
we have no hint anywhere that they stood up for her
fame, or had anything to say, when, in the very body
of an Act of Parliament, the nature of the documents
1 Keith, 426.
s Sadler State Papers, ii. 337. Sadler, with his usual methodicalness,
divides his notes of the papers under three heads : 1. " The special words
in the Queene of Scotts' lettres, written with her oune hande to Bothwell,
declaring the inordynate and filthie love betwixt hir and him." 2. " The
specyall words in the said lettres declaring her hatred and detestacion of
her husbande." 3. " The specyall words of the saide lettres touching and
declaring the conspiraeie of her husband's deth."
438 QUEEN MARY.
and the guilty conclusion drawn from them were set
forth in the plainest and severest terms. 1 The theoiy
of forgery, indeed, seems to have become prevalent
only after any appeal to the original writings, and to
the recollection of the persons referred to in them, had
ceased to be practicable. And it is impossible not to
connect the absence of contemporary impugnment with
a notable peculiarity in these documents. They are
so affluent in petty details about matters personally
known to persons who could have contradicted them
if false, that the forger of them could only have scat-
tered around him, in superfluous profusion, allusions
that must have been traps for his own detection.
Wherever any of these petty matters comes to the
surface elsewhere, it is in a shape to confirm the accur-
acy of the mention made of them in these letters. For
instance take the " purpose of Heigate," referred to in
the first letter. In no history, letter, or state paper of
the day is that matter referred to except one, and that
is a confidential letter by the queen herself to Arch-
bishop Beaton, in which she desires him to warn his
servants not to prate on such matters, and refers, just
as in the casket letter, to the story having been spoken
of by Walker, a servant of Beaton's, and told to Lennox
by the Laird of Minto. 2 Again there is a reference in
the same letter to a matter, the explanation of which
has cast up only the other day. Among other inquir-
1 " Anent the Retention of our Sovreane Lord's Motheris Person " (Act
1567, c. 19). Here the Parliament, among their reasons for their con-
duct towards her, say it is to be attributed to " her o\vn default, in sa far
as be divers her privie letters written halely by her aun hand, and send
be her to James, sometime Earl of Bothwell, chief executer of the said
horrible murther, as well before the committing thereof as thereafter."
Act. Parl., iii. 27.
y Labanoff, i. 397. See above, p. 427.
THE CASKET DOCUMENTS, 1566-67. 439
ies which teased her, as showing that the sick man
knew more about her doings than she liked, was an
inquiry whether she " had made her State." This State
is now visible in the papers published by M. Teulet ;
and a very important document it is, being a recasting
of the pensions and salaries of officers chargeable on
Mary's income as Queen-dowager of France. The sum
total, of which it records the distribution, exceeds thirty
thousand livres an enormous sum in that day. The
unseen existence of this separate expenditure, and of
the official persons to whom it passed, has caused
occasional tripping among historians, who are at a loss
to account for persons who, like Rizzio and his brother,
are spoken of as holding distinguished offices, while no
trace of them in their official position can be found in
the constitutional records of the country. The docu-
ment is signed by the queen and her private secretary,
Joseph Rizzio ; and its date, 13th February 1567,
coincides with its being under consideration about the
time of the momentous visit to Glasgow. 1
It will not readily be admitted that any weight
should be given to coincidences between the casket
letters and the facts narrated in the dying confessions
of the inferior persons executed for the murder. There
1 ' Estat des gaigcs cles daines, damoiselles, gentilzhomnies,et outres ofli-
ciers domesticques de la Royne d'Escosse, Douairiere de France ;' Teulet
(8vo), ii. 268. This document would be sent to France as a warrant for the
respective payments announced by it. By far the greater portion of the
recipients are French ; and some who perhaps are not so are not easily
recognisable as Scots for instance Ceton for Scton, and Letinthon for
Lethington. The highest salary, however, goes to a Scot Beaton, Bishop
of Glasgow, who gets 3060 livres. It may be noted, for what it is worth,
that Bothwell's name does not occur in this list of beneficiaries. The
editor of Queen Mary's Inventories notices the identification of this
document with the " State" mentioned in the casket letter.
440 QUEEN MARY.
was a person less open to suspicion, however, who was
an eye and ear witness at some of the scenes described
in these letters, and his testimony concerning them was
recorded in a very peculiar manner. This was Thomas
Crawford, an adherent of the house of Lennox, who was
in personal attendance on Darnley, when he was sick
in Glasgow and received the memorable visit from his
o
wife. It is stated, in the Journal of the commissioners
who sat at York, that this man was brought to give
evidence before them. It was found that the evidence
he had to give was something much more clear and
specific than any mere recollection of past events. He
stated that old Lord Lennox, being afraid, as we have
seen, to trust himself away from his own fortress and
his own people, while he was in a state of great anxiety
and suspicion about the object of the unexpected visit,
had instructed Crawford carefully to note down all he
saw or could learn of what went on. Crawford said
he not only set down in writing what he was witness
to, but that the king was very communicative to him
about the private interviews with the queen, at which
no third person was present. According to the record
of his testimony, he stated " that he did, immediately
at the same time, write the same, word by word, as
near as he possibly could carry the same away ; and
sure he was that the words now reported in" his writ-
ing concerning the communication betwixt the Queen
of Scots and him upon the way near Glasgow, are the
very same words, on his conscience, that were spoken ;
and that others being reported to him by the king are
the same in effect and substance as they were delivered
by the king to him, though not, percase, in all parts the
very words themselves." This document being read
THE CASKET DOCUMENTS, 1566-67. 441
to the commissioners, Crawford affirmed it, " upon his
corporal oath there taken, to be true." l
It has often surprised me that, although casually re-
ferred to as in existence, this paper should not have
been printed among the documents, many of them less
expressive, which have been heaped together in the
collections regarding Queen Mary. It could not fail
to be extremely instructive on the one side or on the
other. Guided to its existence in the Eecord Office at
the Rolls by the Calendars recently issued, an oppor-
tunity has been found of comparing it with the casket
letter.
Of the result I can only say that the two agree
together with an overwhelming exactness. 2 Of course
1 The Journal of the Commissioners, apud Westminster, die Jovis,
nono die Decernbris 1568 ; Anderson, iv. 169.
2 The following may suffice as a specimen :
CRAWFORD'S TESTIMONY. THE CASKET LETTER.
" She asked him of hys sicknesse; he " ' Ze ask me quhat I mene be the
aunswered, that she was the cause thereof, crueltie contenit in my letter ; it is of
And moreover, he saide/ Ye asked me what zow alone, that will not accept my
I ment bye the erueltye specified in mye offeris and repentance. I confes that
lettres ; yat procedethe of yow onelye, that I have failit, bot not into that quhilk
wille not accepte mye offres and repent- I ever denyit ; and sicklyke lies failit
ance. I confesse that I have failed in soni to sindrie of zour mbjecti*, quhilk ze
thingis, and yet greater faultes have bin have forgevin. I am zoung. Ze wil
made to yow sundrye times, which ye have say, that ze have forgevin me oft
forgiven. I am but yonge, and ye will tymes, and zit yat I returne to my
saye ye have forgivne me diverse tymes. faultis. May not ane man of my age,
Maye not a man of mye age, for lacke of for lacke of counsel!, fall twyse or
counselle, of which 1 am verye destitute, thryse, or in lacke of his promeis, and
falle twise or thrise, and yet repent, and at last repent himself, and be chastisit
be chastised bye experience ? Gif I have be experience t Gif I may obtane par-
made anye faile that ye but thinke a faile, doun, I protest I sail never mak fault
howe soever it be, I crave your pardone, and agane. And I craif na uther thing,
proteste that I shall never faile againe. I bot yat we may be at bed and buird
desire no other thinge but that we maye togidder as husband and wyfe ; and
be together as husband and wife. And if gif ze wil not consent heirunto, I sail
ye will not consent hereto, I desire never never ryse out of yis bed. I pray zow,
to rise forthe of this bed. Therefore, I tell me zour resolutions God knawis
praye yow, give me an aunswer hereunto, how I am punischit for making my
God knoweth howe I am punished for god of zow, and for having na uther
442
QUEEN MARY.
every one is at liberty to maintain that Crawford's
statement is entirely false, and that it was got up to
support a forgery. In such repudiations, as in the
length to which St Denis could carry his head, the first
step is everything. It might also be maintained that
making mye god of yow, and for having no
other thought but on yow. And if at
anie tyme I offend yow, ye are the cause ;
for that when aine offendethe me, if for
my refuge I might open mye miiule to
yow, I woulde speake to no other ; but when
anie thinge is spoken to me, and ye and I
not beinge as husband and wife ought to
be, necessite compellethe me to kepe it in
my brest, and bringethe me in suche me-
lancolye as ye see me in. '
" She aunswered, that it semed hym she
was sorye for his sicknesse, and she
woulde tinde remedye therfore so sone as
she might.
" She asked him whye lie would have
passed awaye in the Englishe shippe.
" He aunswered. that he had spoken with
the Euglishe man, but not of minde to goe
awaie with him ; and if he had, it had
not bin without cause, consideringe howe
he was used. For he had neather to sus-
teine him sellfe nor hys servantes, and
neded not make farder rehersalle thereof,
seinge she knewe it as well as he.
" Then she asked him of the purpose of
Hegate. He aunswered, it was tolde him.
" She required howe and bye whome it
was tolde him.
" He aunswered, that the L. of Minto
tolde him that a lettre was presented to her
in Cragmillar, made bye her owne divise
and subscribed bye certaine others, who de-
sired her to subscrive the same, which she
refused to doe ; and he said that he woulde
never thinke that she, who was hys owne
propper fleshe, woulde do him anie hurte ;
and if anie other woulde do it, theye
should bye it dere, \mlesse theye tooke
him slepinge, albeit he suspected none.
So he desired her effectuouslye to beare
him companye. For she ever founde
som adoe to draw her se'.lfe from him to her
owne lodginge, and woulde never abyde
with him paste two houres at once."
thocht bot on zow ; and gif at ony
tyme I offend zow, ze ar the cans, be-
caus quhen ony offendis me, gif for
my refuge I micht playne nnto zow,
I wald speik it unto na uther body ;
bot quhen I heir ony thing, not being
familiar with zow, necessitie constrains
me to keip it in my breist, and yat
causes me to tyne my wit for verray
anger. '
"I answerit ay unto him, bot that
wald be ovir lang to wryte at lenth.
I askit quhy he wald pas away in
ye Inglis schip. He denyis it, and
sweiris thairunto ; bot he grautis that
he spak with the men. Efter this I
inquyrit him of the inquisitioun of
Hiegait. He denyit the same, quhill
I schew him the verray wordis was
spokiu ; at quhilk tyme he said that
Mynto had advert isit him that it was
said that sum of the Counsell had
brocht ane letter to me to be sub-
scrivit to put him in presoun, and to
slay him gif he maid resistence. And
he askit the same at Mynto himself;
quha answerit, that he belevit ye
same to be trew. The morne I wil
speik to him upon this point. As to
the rest of Willie Hiegait's, he con-
fessit it; bot it was the morne efter
my dimming or he did it."
THE CASKET DOCUMENTS, 1566-67. 443
the memorandum of Crawford being true, afforded the
conspirators the materials from which they could work
up the details of their little picture of a domestic
interior. Before adopting, however, any theory against
the genuineness of this document, it would be well
for the enthusiast to weigh the possible influence of
that darkly suggestive conversation between Darnley
and his domestic, in which they exchange their sus-
picions about the unexpected visit suspicions in
which murder is an element 1
Such theories, and the impossibility of confuting
them to the conviction of those who choose to main-
tain them, is one of the incidents of the rather forensic
tone in which the great controversy about Queen Mary
has been conducted. A leaf has been taken from the
Old Bailey, and it has been maintained that she should
be counted innocent until she is proved guilty. But
in the legal sense this is impossible about long past
events. To comply with it, we would require to place
Crawford in the witness-box, cross-question him, and
search the world for testimony until we fill up all gaps
and explain all inconsistencies. These things are the
strong securities with which the law surrounds the
rights of living men, especially their lives or their
liberties. We all know multitudes of things which
are not judicially proved, which we could not judi-
cially prove; yet the law requires that before we act
on them, to the injury of our neighbour, they shall be
so proved. If the life or liberty of a British subject
could be made to depend either on proving Queen
Mary guilty or proving her innocent, neither could be
made out in such a manner as to secure a verdict. At
1 See above, p. 338.
444 QUEEN MARY.
the present day we have no evidence on which we
could hang Felton, who stabbed the Duke of Buck-
inrrham in Charles L's time, or even the man who
o
shot Spencer Perceval. It would be the same with
the death of Caesar and the execution of Charles
I. Such a way of going to work would blot out
history, by making its parts extinguish each other,
like the equivalents in an equation. If Queen
Mary is entitled to the benefit of all doubts, the
confederate lords who brought the charges and evi-
dence against her are entitled to the benefit of all
doubts to protect their character from the stigma of
conspiracy.
The judge may be bound to release the accused,
although in his secret heart believing him to be guilty;
but in history belief is all, and belief cannot be resisted
when it comes, nor can a leaning to the stronger pro-
babilities where there is doubt, let the effect on the
fame of some long dead actor in the history of the
w^orld be what it will.
But while thus tenacious of the privileges of an
accused person, these enthusiasts demand a conclusion
from which such a person is excluded by the act of
seeking their protection. The verdict of " not guilty "
founded on imperfection in the evidence, is no pro-
clamation of innocence. Its tenor is generally more
distinctly interpreted by an expressive form in use in
Scotland. When the jury do not find reason to pro-
claim a case of calumniated innocence, but give the
accused the benefit of defective evidence, they find
a verdict of " not proven." It would perhaps surprise
some enthusiasts of the present day to find contem-
porary vindicators going no farther than the demand
THE CASKET DOCUMENTS, 1566-67. 445
of a verdict of " not proven." Their reason was the
same material one that influences modern trials. They
maintained that there was no sufficient case made out
for depriving her of her queenly rights. The evidence
was not conclusive, and she should have had the
benefit of the doubt. Those who believe in her as a
saint martyred by wicked men, would find disagree-
able revelations in reading what is said by the early
class of vindicators. 1
Though this controversy has produced dazzling
achievements of ingenuity and sagacity, I would be
inclined not so much to press technical points of evi-
dence as to look to the general tone and character of
the whole story. In this view, nothing appears to me
more natural than the casket letters. They fit entirely
into their place in the dark history of events. They
are thoroughly characteristic of one who, inheriting
the common blood of James IV., the Tudors, and
1 Take, for instance, this passage from ' A Defence of the Honour of
the Right High and Noble Princess Marie, Queen of Scotland and Dowager
of France : ' "I would, then, farther demand of them what authority
they had to summon and assemble a Parliament ? And whether this
fact of hers, supposing she were shown guilty, deserveth in her, being a
prince, and considering how heinously the Lord Darnley had offended
her and the crown of Scotland, such extreme punishment to be levied
upon her for one simple murther, especially by them that committed
that shameful murther upon her secretary, that have committed so
many treasons, and daily do commit so many horrible murthers upon
the queen's true loving subjects I How many, and how cruel and terrible
deaths do such traitors deserve ! We have, moreover, to demand of
them, whereas they pretend a marvellous and a singular zeal to religion
and holy Scripture, and to measure all their doings precisely by Scrip-
ture and order thereof, what sufficient warrant they have therein, by
their private authority, to lay violent hands upon their anointed prince (
I find there that King David was both an adulterer and also a murtherer.
I find that God was highly displeased with him therefor ; yet find I not
that he was therefor by his subjects deposed." Anderson's Collec-
tion, i. 56.
446 QVEKN MARY.
the Guises, was trained at a Court where good faith,
justice, and mervy \veiv represented by Catherine
of Medici, and the social morals were those of the
4 Dames Galantes ' of Brantome and the novels of
Queen Marguerite.
Suppose it to have been settled in conclave that
such a set of letters were to l>e forged, who was there
with the genius to accomplish the feat '{ Nowhere
else, perha}>s, has the conflict of the three passions,
love, jealousy, and hatred, been so powerfully stamped
in utterance. Somewhat impoverished though it may
be in the echo of a foreign medium, we have here the
reality of that which the masters of fiction have tried
in all ages, with more or less success, to imitate. They
have striven to strip great events of broad, vulgar,
offensive qualities, and to excite sensations which ap-
proach to sympathy with human imperfections. And,
indeed, these letters stir from their very foundation
the sensations which tragic genius endeavours to arouse.
We cannot, in reading them, help a touch of sympathy,
or it may be compassion, towards the gifted being
driven in upon the torrent of relentless passions, even
though the end to which she drifts is the breaking of
the highest laws, human and divine. A touch of ten-
derness towards those illustrious persons who show
their participation in the frailty of our common nature
by imperfections as transcendent as their capacities,
is one of the mysterious qualities of the human heart,
and here it has room for indulgence. In fact it is the
shade that gives impressiveness to the picture. With
all her beauty and wit, her political ability and her
countless fascinations, Mary, Queen of Scots would
not have occupied nearly the half of her present place
THJ-; CASKET DOCUMENTS, 1566-07. 447
in the interest of mankind had the episode of Both well
not belonged to her story.
The question, Who could have forged Much docu-
ments ? receives in no quarter a distinct answer. In
other instance** of attempted identification, an of Eikori
Basilike, or the Letters of Junius, attempts have been
made to bring the matter home by identifying special-
ties of style, method of handling, and turns of thought.
No one, however, has tried to prove that these docu-
ments resemble any one's acknowledged writings.
Buchanan is the person naturally hinted at as the
author of the contents of the casket, having been the
first to draw public attention to them. But if we sup-
pose him morally capable of such an act, it is pretty
clear that it did not come within his intellectual capa-
city, extensive as that was. The little domesticities
in the letters would not suit the majestic march of his
pen. In the Detection, to which he appended the
documents, he shows that, liad he prepared these him-
self!, he would certainly have overdrawn them. In fact,
in that philippic the great scholar and poet shows
that, although he may have known politics on a large
scale, he was not versed in the intricacies of the
human heart. Everything is with hirn utterly arid
palpably vile arid degrading, without any redeem-
ing or mitigating element. The love that, if wicked,
yet takes the tone of feminine attachment and pure
dc voted ness, becomes in his hand mere lust, break-
ing out in brutal arid degrading acts. The flagrant
proceedings of this guilty couple, and their pander the
Lady lie res, a cast-off mistress of Both well's, sometimes
even admit of ludicrous postures, which the author
describes with sarcastic zest. The quarrels of the
448 QUEEN MARY.
king and queen are like those that might pass between
a passionate strolling actress and the good-for-nothing
husband she has to support by her talents. She starves
him and lets him go in rags, while the favourite fares
sumptuously and is endowed with stately dresses and
jewellery. She grudges him the charge of a physi-
cian in his sickness. She carries off his service of plate,
and replaces it with pewter. A quantity of incredible
charges are heaped up ; and among others, that she
tempted her husband into acts of low profligacy, that
she might get him divorced, " to make empty bedroom
for Bothwell." She sleeps soundly, with a satisfied
mind, when she hears that her husband is dead she
gloats over his dead body, unwilling to take her eyes
from so delightful a sight she insults it with the
sordidness of the funeral appliances -- her glee is
irrepressible, and will not be controlled by any
usages of Court etiquette or even common decorum.
She lays plots to open a deadly feud between her
husband and Murray, in the hope that one of them
may fall little matter which, it will be a hatred the
less to her. And what Avas he for whom she sacrificed
herself, body and soul ? He was not only polluted by
the vilest crimes, but he had none of the external
qualities with which bad men varnish their wicked-
ness. He was hideously ugly, boorish in manner, a
babbler in talk, and a coward in action. Where, then,
was the attraction ? In the common degradation of
the two their cruelty, falsehood, arid lust. It is, per-
haps, not the least incongruous feature of this picture,
with its blacks and whites, that the victim stands, in
contrast with his slayer, as endowed with constancy,
truthfulness, and general goodness.
THE CASKET DOCUMENTS, 1566-67. 449
But while those who have gone into the intricacies
of the story cannot accept the conclusions of the Detec-
tion, they cannot read it without acknowledging that it
is a great work of rhetorical art. It bears up through-
out the grand forms of ancient classical denunciation,
rising, with blow after blow, up to the thundering
climax. It is for this reason that it is so extravagant.
It was among the rhetoricians a tour de force, as the
French say, to make the denunciation perfect a total
annihilation of a cause or a character ; and any ray of
light or hope, any redeeming touch, was a defect, almost
an infringement of the great principles of rhetoric.
Such a work, put forth in the common language of
the learned by its greatest master, had immense influ-
ence over Europe. It was paralleled by a scarcely less
remarkable translation for the benefit of the people of
Scotland. This conveys a very distinct impression of
the power of the old Scots tongue, and its capacity to
march alongside of the language of Kome, preserving
the same grand historic step. It will be found to differ
much from Knox's style, though both wrote powerfully,
and were adepts in denunciation. To say that Knox
has a touch of vulgarity would not be correct ; but he
is more homely. He affected to write in the English
of the day; and though his style is abundantly rich,
it wants a certain sinewy terseness which his friend
and coadjutor finds in the old Scots tongue. 1
1 " Albeit thir thingis were thus done as I have declairit, yit thair ar
sum that stick not to say that the quene was not onely hardly, but al-
swa cruelly delt with; that efter sa cletestabill ane fact, sche was removit
from regiment ; and quhen they cannot deny the fact, they complane of
the punischment. I do not think thair wil be any man sa schameles
to think that sa horribill ane fact aucht to have na punischment at all ;
bot if thay complane of the grevousnes of the penaltie, I feir leist to
all gude men we may seme not to have done sa gentilly and temperately
VOL. IV. 2 F
450 QUEEN MARY.
With all its exaggerations and extravagancies, the
Detection is the work of a man thoroughly sincere.
Buchanan believed in the fundamental fact of the
guilt, and he brought out his belief in the fashion of
his special accomplishments as a classical scholar, with
due devotion to the method of the rhetoricians. There
are accusations in the Detection not to be believed,
and yet the statement of them there is an important
revelation. It gives us the popular feeling about
Queen Mary. This feeling, of course, arose and had
its chief seat among the populace of Edinburgh, before
whom the tragedies of her reign had been acted. But
it was a period of action and excitement, and whatever
moved the centre was taken to the extremities of the
as lously and negligently, that have laid sa licht ane pane upon ane offence
sa haynous, and sic as was never hard of befoir. For quhat can be
done cruelly aganis the author of sa outragious ane deid, quhairin all
lawis of God and man ar violatit, despysit, and in inaner haillely extin-
guischit / Everie severall offence hes his punischment baith be God
and man appointit. And as thair be certane degreis of evill deidis, sa
ar thair also incressis in the quantiteis of punischmentis. If ane have
slane a man, it is ane deid of itself verray haynous. Quhat if he have
slane his familiar freind ? Quhat if his father ? Quhat if in ane
foull fact he had joynit all thir offeucis togidder ? Surely of sic a ane
nouther can his lyfe suffice for imposing, nor his body for beiring, nor
the judge's policie for inventing, pane, aneuch for him. Quhilk of thir
faultis is now comprysit in this offence ? I omit the meane commoun
materis the murthering of ane young gentilman, ane innocent, hir
countriman, hir kinnisman, hir familiar, and hir cousing-germane. Let us
also excuse ye fact, if it be possibill sche unadvisidly, ane young woman,
angrie, offendit, and ane of greit innocencie of lyfe till this tynie, has
slane ane lewd young man, ane adulterer, ane unkynde husband, and
ane cruelle king. If not ony ane, bot all thir respectis togidder, wer
in this mater, thay aucht not to availe to schift of all punischment, bot
to rais sum pietie of the cace. Bot quhat say ye, that nain of thir thingis
can sa mekle as be falsly pretendit ? The fact itself, of itself is odious
in ane woman ; it is monstrous in ane wyfe, not onely excessively luifit,
bot also raaist zealously honourit it is incredibill. And being commttit
aganis him qiihais age craifit pardone, quhais hartly affectioun requyrit
THE CASKET DOCUMENTS, 1566-67. 451
country by the burgesses and lairds who attended the
Estates, and the clergy and lay members of the
Assembly. It is its foundation on popular feeling that
gives the Detection its tone of vehemence and con-
fidence. The declaimer will not be at the trouble of
going into the evidence ; the thing is notorious, the
public voice is filled with it.
The fallaciousness of such a test is notorious. The
atmosphere of public rumour that surrounds any
marvel is sure to exaggerate and distort it. But the
existence of that atmosphere is in itself an important
psychological phenomenon ; and of such a pheno-
menon we have a vivid picture in the Detection.
It is a truer echo of public opinion than we can find
lufe, quhais neirnes of kyn askit reverence, quhais innocencie micht
have cleservit favour upon that young man, I say, in quhome thair is
not sa mekle as alledgeit ony just cans of offence thus to execute and
spend, yea, to exceid all tormentis dew to all offencis, in quhat degre of
crueltie sail we accompt it ? Bot let thir thingis availl in uther per-
sonnis to rais haitrent, to bring punischment, and to mak exempillis
to posteritie. Bot in this cace let us beir mekle with hir youth, mekle
with hir nobilitie, mekle with the name of ane prince. As for myne
awin part, I am not ane that think it alway gude to use extreme strait-
nes of law na, not in private, meane, and commoun personnis. Bot in
ane maist haynous misdeid, to dissolve all force of law, and quhair is na
measure of ill-doing, thair to discend beneth all measure in punisching,
wer the way to the undoing of all lawis, and the overthraw of all
humane societie. Bot in this ane horribill act is sic ane hotch-potch of
all abhominabil doingis, sic ane egernes of all outragious crueltie, sic
ane forgetfulness of all natural 1 affectioun, as nathing mair can be
fengeit or imaginit." Anderson's Collection, ii. 85-88.
This is the work of a mind saturated with the spirit which comes to
its perfection in the oration against Verres : " Quod si haec non ad
cives Romanes, non ad aliquos amicos nostrae civitatis, non ad eos qui
populi Romani nomen audissent ; denique si non ad homines verum
ad bestias ; aut etiam ut longius progrediar, si in aliqua desertissima
solitudine, ad saxa et ad scopulos haec conqueri et deplorare vellem,
tamen omnia muta atqua inanima, tanta et tarn indigna rerum atrocitate
commoverentur."
452 QUEEN MARY.
in Knox, because it is the echo of reaction. To Knox
she was a Popish Jezebel from the beginning. But
Buchanan, though a zealous Protestant, had a good
deal of the catholic and sceptical spirit of Erasmus,
and an admiring eye for everything that was great
and beautiful. Like the rest of his countrymen, he
bowed himself in presence of the lustre that surrounded
the early career of his mistress. More than once he
expressed his pride and reverence in the inspiration
of a genius deemed by his learned contemporaries to
be worthy of the theme. There is not, perhaps, to be
found elsewhere in literature so solemn a memorial of
shipwrecked hopes, of a sunny opening and a stormy
end, as one finds in turning the leaves of the volume
which contains the beautiful epigram 'Nympha Cale-
donise' in one part, the 'Detectio Marioe Reginae' in
another; and this contrast is no doubt a faithful
parallel of the reaction in the popular mind. This re-
action seems to have been general, and not limited to
the Protestant party ; for the conditions under which
it became almost a part of the creed of the Church of
Rome to believe in her innocence had not arisen.
To come back to the contents of the casket, which
were first made public along with the Detection. The
question of their genuineness is surrounded by doubts
and disputes ; but about another matter there can be
no doubt namely,. that the party in power resolved
to treat them as genuine, and steer their policy accord-
ingly. She was to be dealt with as a murderess.
Whatever demands might be made on her were to be
backed by the prospect of a public trial and the block.
It was a tacit foreshadow of strong measures that both
the English ambassador and a special envoy from the
THE ABDICATION. 453
Court of France were refused access to the queen. If
she was still queen, this was a deadly affront to two
great powers, and there could be no way out "of the
difficulty but a dethronement.
The secret counsels of the confederates were not
long of coming out in action. On the 23d of July the
Lord Lindsay and Kobert Melville set off on a memor-
able mission to Lochleven. They presented to the
queen two documents, which she must sign : the one,
a renunciation of her crown in favour of her son ; the
other, an appointment of Murray to the office of regent
during the child's minority. Several stories got afloat
about what passed at this interview. It was said that
Melville, who had a preliminary private interview with
her, carried, concealed in the sheath of his sword, a
letter from a friend, recommending her to consent to
everything, as all she did while under restraint might
be revoked. Another account says that Lindsay, pro-
voked by her obstinacy, lost his temper, and used
violence. But Mary's was not the spirit to be broken
by brute force. The influence that made her sign the
deeds must have been crushing indeed. There is no
doubt that the tenor of the casket letters was brought
before her ; indeed the first rumour of their existence
was in a letter written two days afterwards by
Throckmorton, stating that the confederates boasted
of possessing sure evidence of her guilt. At all
events, the deeds were signed. Of course documents
of so much moment were drawn up in the perfection
"oT formality. They do not contain a hint of guilt or
a reference to Both well. Any one stumbling on them
as they are recorded in the statute-book, without any
explanation from the events of the age, might take
454 QUEEN MARY.
them for the voluntary utterance of one weary of the
cares of a throne, going, like the Emperor Charles V.,
to seek consolation in the calm of monastic life. She
declares the act to be done of her own free will ; and
of her motive to it a that, " after long, great, and into-
lerable pains and labours taken by us since our arrival
within our realm for government thereof, and keeping
of the lieges of the same in quietness, we have not only
been vexed in our spirit, body, and senses thereby, but
also at length are altogether so wearied thereof that
our ability and strength of body is not able to endure
the same." The deed of demission appointed, as a
commission of regency in Murray's absence, the head
of the house of Hamilton, Lennox, Argyle, Athole,
Morton, Glencairn, and Mar. The affixing of the
privy seal was wanted for these documents, but the
keeper refused so to use it. This little difficulty was
got over by Lindsay, who took it from him by force.
The documents were ratified in Parliament, with a
declaration that the prince's title was as effectual as if
his mother, at the time of his coronation, " had been
departed out of this mortal life."
From the date of these documents Mary Stewart
ceases to appear as sovereign in the public proceedings
of the realm, and the reign of King James VI. begins.
An item remains in the windiiig-up of the tragic
story, before we open a new chapter in history. The
remorseless villain of the plot, who has bent a finer
nature than his own to his evil purposes, has to be dis-
posed of. It is an end quickly told. He escaped to
his dukedom of Orkney that one of his feudal estates
which was farthest off from the avenging power. It
was long believed that in his island principality he got
BOTHWELL'S CAREER, 1567-77. 455
a small fleet fitted out, with which he turned pirate
captain in the north seas. This was a suitable end for
such a career, according to the rules of the romances ;
but to a man so -marked and pursued, for whom every
sea would be swept, the attempt would- be certain
destruction. Grange was in pursuit of him, and in dire
emergency he made vehement efforts to get the means
of escape to the northern states of the Continent. It
happened that he thus purchased the vessel of a
troublesome pirate named David Wodt. When this
craft Avas seen off the Danish coast, it was naturally
under suspicion ; and when it was taken in charge by
a Danish ship, and Bothwell found in - command, and
in the broken-down condition of one fleeing from jus-
tice, there naturally followed an investigation when
he was landed at Bergen. His story, that he was a
king in difficulties, made the affair inexplicable and
wonderful; but it was soon seen that he was not the
pirate who had transacted business in the ship he
sailed in. 1
He seems to have become popular to have been
getting, as it were, into society in this northern region,
when trouble came upon him in a shape that, afiect-
1 We owe these revelations to a justly popular writer of travels in
northern Europe, who, finding himself in the scenes of Bothwell's latter
days, thought it worth while discovering what local records there were
of his sojourn. He found in the record which he terms the Liber Ber-
gensis, how, " September 2, A.D. 1568, came the king's ship David, upon
which Christian of Aalborg was head man. He had taken prisoner a
count from Scotland of the name of Jacob Hebroe of Botwile, who first
was made Duke of the Orkneys and Shetland, and lately married the
Queen of Scotland, and after he was suspected of having been in the
counsel to blow up the king. They first accused the queen, and then the
count ; but he made his escape and came to Norway, and was afterwards
taken to Denmark by the king's ship David." Marryat's Jutland, chap.
456 QUEEN MARY.
ing the final destiny of a life like bis, has, by contrast,
an air of the ludicrous. He was claimed by a certain
Anna, daughter of Christopher Trandson, as her hus-
band, who had deserted her; and it seems to have been
on this charge, and not for any reason of state, that
he was detained in the Castle of Malmoe. 1
Strong demands were made for his extradition both
by England and Scotland, but they were resisted. The
-Danish Government offered to put him on trial, under
their own laws and before their own courts, for any
crime he might be charged with, but would not give
him up.
There was a rumour that he had died in 1573. It
was received as conclusive in England and Scotland,
and the name of Both well belonged only to the past.
It would seem,. however, that this rumour was propa-
gated to save Denmark from the pursuit of the trouble-
some pressure to render him up. Bothwell, at all
events, lived down to the year 1577, leaving, in a
country not peculiarly temperate, records of hard drink-
ing and wild carouses with those who would join him
in his revels. He died in the Castle of Draxholm,
and was buried in the church of Farveile. 2 Not many
years ago there came to light a vindication of his
1 On the 1 7th of September, " Mrs Anna, Christopher Trandson's
daughter, brought a suit against the Earl of Bothwell for having taken
her away from her native country, and refusing to treat her as his mar-
ried wife, although he by hand, word of mouth, and by letters had pro-
mised her so to do, which letters she caused to be read before him. And
inasmuch as he had three wives living first, herself ; then another in
Scotland, of whom he had rid himself by purchase ; last of all, the Queen
Mary Mrs Anna was of opinion that he was not at all a person to be
depended on ; he therefore promised her the yearly allowance of a
hundred dollars from Scotland, and gave her a pink, with anchor,
cable, and other appurtenances." Marryat's Jutland, chap, xxvii.
* Manyat's Sweden, 16-18.
BOTHWELL'S CAREER, 1567-77. 457
conduct, written at some length, and intended for a
public state paper. It is valuable only as showing the
shape which the lies of such a man put on. He main-
tains his own innocence and that of the queen, and
both with pretty equal success, showing how he was
the unconscious victim of the machinations of Murray,
Lethington, and other his enemies. He left behind
him a shorter paper in the shape of a confession. It is
an example, added to countless others, of a phenomenon
peculiar to the nature of criminals a propensity to
confess things not charged against them, while denying
those as to which guilt is beyond possible question.
With unseemly details, the murderer of Darnley con-
fesses to sins and vices which nobody heard of and
nobody cared about. Among other things equally
credible, he said he owed his influence over Queen
Mary to philters and sweet waters. 1
1 'Les affaires du Conte de Boduel,' Bannatyne Club. These papers
will also be found among the ' Documents relatifs au Meurtre de Darnley,'
printed by M. Teulet, in his ' Supplement au Recueil du Prince Labanoif,
1859.'
END OF THE FOURTH VOLUME.
PRINTED BY WILLIAM BLACKWOO1) AND SONS, EDINBURGH.
Lately published, in Two Volumes, crown octavo, 15s.
THE SCOT A B K O A D,
;*i.^jjL**tf ..
Airt)
THE ANCIENT LEAGUE WITH FRANCE.-
,...- , ,.--
BY JOHN HILL BURTON.
EXTRACTS FRO M: REVIEWS.
The Times.
The historian of Scotland has written an excellent book on the wanderings
of his countrymen in foreign lands a book that will interest Englishmen
and fascinate Scotchmen.
Atheuseum. -sw
'' ' " ''1 ' '\ *2 J
There are many more illustrations of this subject, but we leave it, to
notice Mr Burton's able and handy volumes generally. As far as they go,
they are perfect.
Saturday Eeview.
No amount of selections, detached at random, can give an adequate idea
of the varied and copious results of reading which are stored up in the com-
pact and pithy pages of the ' Scot Abroad.'
Spectator.
This is a charming book, written in the lightest and most conversational
of styles, but as full of "meat" as if its author had been a worshipper of the
dignity of history. The pleasant author of the ' Book-Hunter,' it appears,
either passes his leisure, or did once pass it, in an effort to reconstruct the
History of Scotland, and has used the knowledge he has acquired aud the
collections he has made to illustrate the career of the Scot out of his own
country. The result is a series of sketches, all readable, most of them hill
of information which, to a Southron at least, is original, and one or two con-
taining generalisations which display a thorough comprehension of the great
"points " of European History.
Scotsman.
.x -.- - -..... ,
They display a like acquaintance with a thousand odd nooks and cor-
ners of literature, the result not merely of multifarious reading, but of
close and systematic research into little-explored recesses of great libraries,
public and private ; a similar keen appreciation of the value of' every ascer-
tainable circumstance, however minute, that happens to be in any way illus-
trative of the matter in hand ; the same sharp insight into the character of
men ; the same full and ready knowledge of their deeds ; the same catholic
contempt for mere tradition, however venerable ; the same sound common-
sense applied to historical problems proving potent to solve not a few of them.
SECOND EDITION.
In crown octavo, 7s. 6d.
THE BOOK-HUNTER,
ETC.
BY JOHN HILL BURTON.
EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS.
Athenaeum.
We have not been more amused for a long time ; and every reader who
takes interest in typography and its consequences will say the same, if he
will begin to read ; beginning, he will finish, and be sorry when it is over.
Literary Budget.
One of the most charming volumes we have ever read, abounding in
quaint anecdote, and printed in appropriate fashion on cream-coloured
paper. It is impossible anywhere to open the book without coming upon a
"good thing."
Notes and Queries.
Indeed it is obvious that the fellow-feeling which proverbially makes
men wondrous kind, actuated Mr Burton in the selection of his subject,
and the result is, a book which will please all lovers of literature, and a
book, too, which is calculated to tempt "all that are lovers of virtue and
dare trust in Providence, to be quiet and go a-book-hunting."
Scotsman.
Mr Burton carries his book-knowledge and other knowledge also
lightly; he is the least pedantic of scholars; never parades scarcely ever
quotes Greek or Latin ; employs no modern tongue even, save when
prudence or propriety requires. Yet no one can read the 'Book-Hunter'
without discovering in it lavishly scattered through it, indeed the ripe
fruits of wide and deep reading, and of no shallow or limited scholarship.
WILLIAM BLACKWOOD & SONS, Edinburgh and London.