cause by assuring him that the Queen would marry no CHAP IX one but himself; and Cecil mocked him with a courteous 1565 answer, and left on record, in a second table of contrasts September with the Archduke, his own intense conviction of Leicester's worthlessness.1 A ludicrous court calamity increased the troubles of Lady Mary Grey and the Queen, and with them her unwillingness to declare the sergeant war against the Queen of Scots. The three daughters of porter. the Duke of Suffolk had been placed one after the other in the line of succession by Henry the Eighth. Lady Jane was dead, Lady Catherine was dying from the effects of her long and cruel imprisonment; the third, Lady Mary, had remained at the Court, and one evening in August when the Scotch plot was thickening, got herself married in the palace itself, by an old fat priest in a short gown,' to Thomas Keys, the sergeant porter.2 Lady Mary was the smallest woman in the Court,' Keys was the largest man, and that seemed to have been the chief bond of connexion between them. The lady was perhaps anxious for a husband, and knew that Elizabeth would keep her single till she died. Discovery followed before worse had happened than the ceremony. burly sergeant porter was sent to the Fleet to grow thin on discipline and low diet; the Lady Mary went into private confinement; and both were only too eager to release each other, and escape from punishment. The bishops were set to work by the Council to undo the knot and found it no easy matter.3 Elizabeth had a fresh excuse for her detestation of the Greys and a fresh 1 De Matrimonio Regina Angliæ.' Reasons against the Earl of Leicester. -BURLEIGH Papers, vol. i. This marriage was before mentioned by me as having taken place The at the same time with that of Lady 3 Privy Council Register, August, CHAP IX topic on which to descant in illustration of the iniquities of matrimony. 1565 September De Mauvissière meanwhile, undeterred by the Queen of Scots' message, had made his way to Edinburgh, but only to find that he had come upon a useless errand. The Earl of Bothwell had rejoined Mary Stuart in the middle of her triumph, 'a man,' said Randolph, 'fit to be made a minister of any shameful act against God or man;" and Bothwell's hatred for Murray drew him closer than ever to Mary's side. In the full confidence of success, and surrounded by persons whose whole aim was to feed the fire of her passion, she would listen to nothing which de Mauvissière could urge. In vain he warned her of the experience of France; in vain he reminded her of the siege of Leith, and of the madness of risking a quarrel with her powerful and dangerous neighbour. 'Scotland,' she said, 'should not be turned into a republic; she would sooner lose her crown than wear it at the pleasure of her revolted subjects and the Queen of England; instead of advising her to make peace Catherine de Medici should have stepped forward to her side and assisted her to avenge the joint wrongs of France and Scotland; if France failed her in her extremity, grieved as she might be to leave her old allies, she would take the hand which was offered her by Spain; she would submit to England—never.'" From the moment when she had first taken the field she had given her enemies no rest; she had swept Fife, the hotbed of the Protestants, as far as St. Andrew's. The old Laird of Lundy-he who had called the mass the marriage of the Lady Mary Grey. 1 Randolph to Cecil, September 20.-Scotch MSS. Rolls House. 2 Castelnau de Mauvissière to Paul de Foix, September.—TEULET, vol. ii. 1565 September tion is con Cecil. mickle de'il-was flung into prison; and his friends and CHAP IX his family had to fly for their lives. At the end of September she was pausing to recover breath at Holyrood before she made her last swoop upon the party at Dumfries. The Edinburgh merchants found her money, her soldiers with lighted matchlocks assisting them to unloose their purse strings. With October she would march to the Border, and in her unguarded moments she boasted that she would take her next rest at the gates of London.' It was now necessary for Elizabeth to come to some resolution which she could avow-either to interfere at once, or distinctly to declare that she did not mean to interfere. Cecil according to his usual habit reviewed The posithe situation, and drew out in form its leading features. sidered by The two interests at stake were religion and the succession to the Crown. For religion 'it was doubtful how to meddle in another prince's controversy:''so far as politic laws were devised for the maintenance of the Gospel, Christian men might defend it,' 'yet the best service which men could render to the truth was to serve God faithfully and procure by good living the defence thereof at His Almighty hand.' The succession was at once more critical and more impossible to leave untouched. The Queen of Scots appeared to intend to exact her recognition as 'second person' at the point of the sword. The unwillingness of the Queen of England to marry had unsettled the minds of her subjects, who 'beholding the state of the Crown to depend only on the breath of one person,' were becoming restless and uneasy; and there were symptoms on all sides which pointed 'towards a civil quarrel in the realm.' The best remedy would be the fulfilment of the hopes which had been so 1 Paul de Foix to the King of France, September 29.-TEULET, vol. ii. 1565 CHAP IX long held out to the nation. If the Queen would marry all danger would at once be at an end. If she could not September bring herself to accept that alternative, she might make the intrigues of the Scottish Queen with her Catholic subjects, the practising with Rome, the language of Darnley to Randolph, and the continued refusal to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh, a ground for declaring war.1 The Council assembles in Every member of the Council was summoned to London. London. The suspected Earls of Cumberland, Westmoreland, and Northumberland were invited to the Court to remove them from the Border where they would perhaps be dangerous; and day after day the advisers of the Crown sat in earnest and inconclusive deliberation. A lucid statement was drawn up of Mary Stuart's proceedings from the day of Elizabeth's accession; every aggressive act on her part, every conciliatory movement of the Queen of England, were laid out in careful detail to assist the Council in forming a judg ment; the history was brought down to the latest moment, and one only important matter seems to have been withheld the unfortunate promises which Elizabeth had made to the Earl of Murray and his friends at a time when she believed that a demonstration in Scotland would be sufficient to frighten Mary Stuart, and that she would never be called on to fulfil them. In favour of sending assistance to the Protestant noblemen it was urged that the Queen of Scots notoriously intended to overthrow the reformed religion and to make her way to the English throne; the title of the Queen of England depended on the Reformation; if the Pope's authority was restored she would no longer be regarded as legitimate. To sit still in the face of the 1 Note in Cecil's hand, September, 1565.-MS. Rolls House. attitude which the Queen of Scots had assumed was to CHAP IX encourage her to continue her practices; and it was 1565 more prudent to encounter an enemy, when it could be September done at small cost and in her own country, than to wait to be overtaken at home by war and rebellion which would be a thousand times more dangerous and costly. On the other hand to defend the insurgent subjects of a neighbouring sovereign was a dangerous precedent. If Elizabeth was justified in maintaining the Scotch Protestants, the King of Spain might claim as fair a right to interfere in behalf of the English Catholics. The form which a war would assume and the contingencies which might arise from it could not be foreseen, while the peril and expense were immediate and certain. The arguments on both sides were so evenly balanced that it was difficult to choose between them. The Council however, could it be proved that the Queen of Scots was in communication with the Pope to further her designs on England, were ready to consider that a great matter.' The name of the Pope was detested in England by men who believed themselves to hold every shred of Catholic doctrine; the creed was an opinion; the Pope was a political and most troublesome fact, with which under no circumstances were moderate English gentlemen inclined to have any more dealings. The Pope turned the scale; and the Council after some ineffectual attempts to The Council find a middle course, resolved on immediately confiscating commend the estates of the Earl of Lennox; while they recommended the Queen to demand the ratification of the Treaty of Edinburgh, to send a fleet into the Forth, and to despatch a few thousand men to Berwick to be at the disposal of the Earl of Bedford.' 1 Notes of the Proceedings in Council at Westminster, September 24. In Cecil's hand.-COTTON MSS., Calig, B. 10. Scotch MSS. Rolls House. at first re war. |