A.D. 1560. THE REFORMATION IN SCOTLAND. 247 then existed, and, if England should be attacked by France, would furnish an auxiliary force of four thousand men. On the 2nd of April, 1560, lord Grey entered Scotland with an army of two thousand horse and six thousand foot, and was joined at Preston by the army of the Congregation, to the number of eight thousand. The Scottish and English army marched on to Leith. The English fleet, under the command of William Winter, had entered the Frith of Forth at the end of January. In the northern parts of Scotland the French had succeeded in forming a league, by which the clans and men of the isles had engaged to uphold the Romish faith and the French authority. The siege of Leith commenced. At this crisis the queen-regent became dangerously ill; and at an interview which she requested with the leaders of the Congregation, at Edinburgh, she endeavoured to reconcile the differences which had led to such extremities; and exhorted them to send both the French and English troops out of the kingdom. She died on the 10th of June. Leith was defended by the French troops with great bravery; and the siege went slowly on. The garrison had been reduced to the greatest extremity when the town was at last surrendered, after the conclusion of a treaty of pacification. The peace which put an end to this brief period of English warfare in Scotland, was concluded at Edinburgh on the 6th of July. The negotiations on the part of England had been managed with remarkable skill by Cecil. He succeeded in obtaining from the French commissioners a renunciation of the pretensions to the crown of England, which had been assumed by the king and queen of France; and he obtained a complete recognition of the liberty of conscience for which the reformers had taken up arms. The Congregation were to be secured by an act of oblivion; a general peace and reconciliation were to take place amongst the nobility and subjects of the land, including the reformers and the adherents to the ancient faith; a Council was to govern the kingdom in the absence of the queen, of whom Mary was to appoint seven, and the estates five; all foreign troops were to quit the country; and a parliament was to be held in August. In this treaty no express recognition of the reformed worship was introduced; and the bishops and other churchmen who had received injuries, were to be redressed. The treaty of Edinburgh was so unpalatable to the house of Guise, that for nearly a year the queen of Scotland refused to ratify it. The estates of the kingdom, however, assembled, at the time stipulated by the treaty, without receiving any commission from their queen. It was held that the express words of the treaty provided that such a meeting of the estates should be lawful without being so convoked. The first proceeding of the estates was to draw up a Confession of Faith, founded on the reformed doctrines as received by Calvin. The opposition of the bishops and other Romanists was useless. The Confession of Faith was followed by three Acts :-The first abolished the power and jurisdiction of the pope in Scotland; the second repealed all statutes in favour of the Romish church; and the third provided that all who should say mass, or hear mass, should incur confiscation of goods for the first offence, banishment for the second, and death for the third. The proceedings in the parliament of Scotland necessarily gave offence to queen Mary, and she again refused to ratify the treaty of Edinburgh. On the 6th of December, 1560, Francis II., the young king of France, died, after a reign of seventeen months. Mary appears very soon to have determined upon a return to Scotland; hoping, by previous negotiation, to have won over her subjects to a willing obedience. She was admirably fitted by her beauty, her winning manners, and her acute intellect, to obtain the homage of all hearts, could she have resolved to separate herself from the policy of her family. The lord James Murray, the illegitimate son of James V., was sent as an ambassador to Mary. He was the chief leader of the Congregation, and was intrusted with full powers to request his sister to return home, if unaccompanied by a foreign force, in which case she might repose with confidence upon the loyalty of her subjects. Murray wisely and bravely stipulated, in opposition to the remonstrances of the reformed ministers, that Mary should be left free to the private exercise of her own religion. After the death of Francis, Elizabeth also sent an ambassador to condole with her; to assure her of the desire of England to remain at peace; but to demand her confirmation of the treaty concluded by her commissioners at Edinburgh. Again Mary refused to ratify this treaty till she had returned to her own kingdom, and submitted the matter to her parliament. The most unwise pretension of Mary, thus reasserted by this refusal, was a real declaration of hostility, affecting the quiet of the English nation. Elizabeth refused to grant the Scottish queen a safe conduct either on her voyage to Scotland, or should she land in the English dominions. The queen undoubtedly acted with the approval of her ministers, who could not forbear to look with apprehension upon the return to Scotland of one so opposed to their general policy. Mary was extremely indignant at this refusal of a safe conduct. She had previously assured the English ambassador that she was most anxious for the friendship of Elizabeth; but, at the same time, she told Murray, in confidence, that she desired to have the amity with England dissolved. On the 14th of August, 1561, Mary embarked at Calais on her voyage to Scotland, and landed at the port of Leith on the 19th. She was received by a deputation, and conducted to the palace, or abbey, of Holyrood. Mean hackneys, wretchedly caparisoned, waited her arrival. Under the windows of Holyrood the citizens sang psalms to discordant three-stringed rebecks, which kept the weary queen from sleeping; and the next morning when a popish priest was about to perform mass in her private chapel, he would have been slain by the master of Lindsay, and a furious multitude, had not Murray placed himself at the door of the chapel, and maintained the principle for which he had contended, that the queen should not be molested in the private exercise of her religion. A.D. 1561. SEVERE MEASURES AGAINST PAPISTS. 249 CHAPTER XIX. IN 1560, the wise Council of Elizabeth called in the base coin, which depreciation was now acknowledged to be the main cause of the excessive dearness of commodities. The difficult operation of restoring the current money to a just value was carried through successfully, because it was set about boldly. When Charles IX., a boy eleven years old, succeeded to the crown of France, the direction of the government was in the hands of the duke of Guise and the cardinal his brother; who, joined in interests with the queenmother, were naturally opposed by the princes of the blood, headed by the prince of Condé. The Guises persecuted the Protestants; the other party supported them. In 1561, according to some writers, a hundred thousand persons were butchered by the contending factions. The Protestants, although inferior in numbers, fought with desperation; and the duke of Guise solicited and obtained assistance against them from Philip of Spain. The prince of Condé, on the other hand, concluded a treaty with Elizabeth, who, after some attempts at mediation, sent a force of three thousand men to take possession of Havre. The English warlike operations, though conducted with great bravery, were finally unsuccessful. The Catholics and Protestants concluded a hollow peace; and at length both parties agreed in determining that the English should hold no position in France. The garrison of Havre defended themselves for two months, and then capitulated. They were released without ransom, and came with their property to London. But they brought with them the pestilence which had thinned their ranks; and the French Catholics looked upon the infliction as a judgment upon the English heretics. In 1563, the parliament again met, and a statute of increased rigour was passed against Papists. In this year Edmund and Arthur Pole were convicted of a conspiracy to set Mary of Scotland on the English throne. Their associates were executed, but they wore out their lives as prisoners in the Tower of London. At this time it was feared by the reformers in Scotland, and their fears were communicated to the English court, that intrigues were going forward for marrying Mary to some foreign prince of her own religion. It was the policy of the queen of England to induce Mary to marry an English subject-" some noble person within the kingdom of England, having the qualities and conditions meet for such an alliance.' Lord Robert Dudley, the younger son of the duke of Northumberland, was recommended. Cecil, at the end of 1564, wrote: "I see the queen's majesty very desirous to have my lord of Leicester to be the Scottish queen's husband; but when it cometh to the conditions which are demanded, I see her then remiss of her earnestness." "The conditions which are demanded" were probably such as Eliza Cecil's Instructions to Randolph. beth did not choose to bring too prominently before her subjects. She had a strong dislike even to hear of this question of the succession; and said that Maitland, the Scottish minister, was always, like a death-watch, ringing her knell in her ears. The eagerness of Mary for the recognition of her succession to the English throne, and the reluctance of Elizabeth to grant it, may each be explained by the fact that Mary was the instrument of those who had determined to eradicate the Reformed religion, and that Elizabeth was equally resolved to support it. The negotiations for the marriage with Leicester gradually faded away. There was another candidate for Mary's hand, ready at an opportune moment. Henry Stuart, lord Darnley, was the son of the earl of Lennox, by the daughter of Margaret Tudor, queen of Scots, who had married the earl of Angus after the death of her royal husband. The countess of Lennox was the next to Mary in hereditary succession to the English crown. The earl of Lennox had long resided in England as an exile, and in 1564, having returned to Scotland with letters from Elizabeth urging the reversal of his attainder, he was finally restored. Then came his countess and their son to the Scottish court. Darnley arrived on the 13th of February, 1565. Within two months an envoy was sent by Mary to desire Elizabeth's approval of her marriage with her cousin. That assent was refused by the Council on the ground that the marriage would be dangerous to the Protestant religion ;-Darnley having manifested a decided preference for the Romish party;-that it would strengthen the league of Catholic princes which was now organizing ; and that Mary not yet having renounced her claim to the crown of England, this marriage would more imperil Elizabeth's title. Darnley was a handsome stripling of nineteen; Mary was in her twenty-third year. They were married on the 29th of July, and Darnley was proclaimed king the same day. Cecil, in August, 1565, wrote thus to the English ambassador in France:-"The duke [Chatelherault], the earls of Argyle, Murray, and Rothes, with sundry barons, are joined together, not to allow of the marriage otherwise than to have the religion established by law; but the queen refuseth in this sort-she will not suffer it to have the force of law, but of permission to every man to live according to his conscience." The great minister adds, "And herewith she hath retained a great number of Protestants from associating openly with the other." The Reformers would not accept this toleration, and they rose in arms. Murray was proclaimed a rebel. Elizabeth sent an envoy to Mary, to endeavour to promote her reconciliation with her brother. Mary engaged for herself and her husband that they would attempt nothing to the prejudice of the queen of England; but she required that the English crown should be settled by Act of parliament upon herself and Darnley; and that Elizabeth should afford no countenance to Scottish rebels. Mary showed her vigour of character at this crisis. She took the field with her forces; and headed her troops with pistols at her saddle-bow. The revolt was crushed without any decisive contest. The Roman see had sent money to Mary; and Philip II. had placed twenty thousand crowns in the hands of his ambassador at London, to be employed "with secrecy and address, in the support of the Scottish queen and her husband." It was held that Murray was countenanced and assisted by Elizabeth, though to a very limited extent. But A.D. 1565. ASSASSINATION OF RICCIO IN HOLYROOD. 251 Murray having escaped to the English court, the queen "spoke very roundly to him before the ambassadors, that whatsoever the world said or reported of her, she would by her actions let it appear, that she would not, for the price of a world, maintain any subject in any disobedience against a prince." In the declaration of the banished lords to the English government, they complained that two crafty Italians, David Riccio and Francisco, with other unworthy persons, had dispossessed the ancient nobility of their place in the queen's council. Riccio, a Milanese, had been a singer in Mary's service, and was afterwards promoted to the office of her private secretary. He had soon acquired considerable influence; had been assiduous in promoting Darnley's marriage; and when Mary's first passionate love for that weak young man had given way to contempt for his follies and vices, Riccio became her chief adviser in place of the husband she had chosen. Riccio "was on good grounds suspected to be a pensioner of Rome," and he helped to induce Mary to sign the "Bond" which had been concluded, under the auspices of Catherine de Medici and the duke of Alva, for the extermination of the Protestants in Europe. The common desire for revenge associated Darnley with some of the fierce Scottish nobles, such as Morton and Ruthven, in a conspiracy against the life of the obnoxious secretary. The king was engaged with the superior Protestant leaders, in a separate bond for the restoration of the banished lords, upon their promise to support him and to give him the crown-matrimonial. They were to maintain the Protestant religion as one of the conditions of this alliance. Information of these contracts was written to Cecil from Berwick, on the 6th of March, by Bedford and Randolph. They added, that "persuasions" would be tried with the queen; but if they did no good, "they propose to proceed we know not in what sort." This political revolution against the Roman Catholic ascendancy was to be accomplished before the meeting of the Scottish Parliament, in which the Romanist interests would have succeeded in confiscating the estates of Murray, Rothes, Grange, and the other lords, who had fled to England; and probably would have attempted the re-establishment of the ancient religion. About an hour after sunset on Saturday, the 9th of March, the court of Holyrood Palace was suddenly filled with armed men, to the number of a hundred and fifty, led by the earls of Morton and Lindsay. The king and lord Ruthven entered the queen's cabinet, where Mary, lady Argyle, and Riccio were sitting at supper. "David took the queen by the plaits of her gown and put himself behind the queen, who would gladly have saved him; but the king having loosed his hands, and holding her in his arms, David was thrust out of the cabinet through the bed-chamber into the Chamber of Presence," where he was murdered. "It is told for certain that the king's own dagger was left sticking in him. Whether he stroke him or not we cannot tell for certain." Queen Mary, in a letter to her ambassador in Paris, says, that • Memorandum of Cecil, in Raumur, p. 70. + Tytler's Scotland, vol. vii., p. 19. Letter from Bedford and Randolph to the English Council.-Ellis, first serics, vol. ii., p. 209. |