Darnley was left alone with his page, Taylor, who slept CHAP X in his room, and his two servants, Nelson and Edward 1567 Seymour. Below in the darkness, Bothwell's two fol- February 9 lowers shivered beside the powder heap, and listened with hushed breath till all was still. The King, though it was late, was in no mood for sleep, and Mary's last words sounded awfully in his ears. 'She was very kind,' he said to Nelson, but why did she speak of Davie's slaughter?' Just then Paris came back to fetch a fur wrapper which the Queen had left, and which she thought too pretty to be spoiled. 'What will she do?' Darnley said again when he was gone; it is very lonely.' The shadow of death was creeping over him; he was no longer the random boy who two years before had come to Scotland filled with idle dreams of vain ambition. Sorrow, suffering, disease, and fear had done their work. He opened the Prayer-book, and read over the 55th Psalm, which by a strange coincidence was in the English service for the day that was dawning. These are the last words which are known to have passed the lips of Mary Stuart's husband: 'Hear my prayer, oh Lord, and hide not thyself from my petition. My heart is disquieted within me, and the fear of death is fallen upon me. Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and an horrible dread hath overwhelmed me. 'It is not an open enemy that hath done me this dishonour, for then I could have borne it. It was even thou my companion, my guide, and my own familiar friend.' Forlorn victim of a cruel time! Twenty-one years old -no more. At the end of an hour he went to bed, with ELIZ. II. B B CHAP X his page at his side. An hour later they two were 1567 lying dead in the garden under the stars. Feb 9 The exact facts of the murder were never known— only at two o'clock that Monday morning, a 'crack' was heard which made the drowsy citizens of Edinburgh turn in their sleep, and brought down all that side of Balfour's house of Kirk-a-Field in a confused heap of dust and ruin. Nelson, the sole survivor, went to bed and slept when he left his master, and knew nothing till he found the house falling about him;' Edward Seymour was blown in pieces; but Darnley and his page were found forty yards away, beyond the town wall, under a tree, with no sign of fire on them,' and with their clothes scattered at their side. Some said that they were smothered in their sleep; some that they were taken down into a stable and 'wirried;' some that hearing the keys grate in the doors below them, they started from their beds and were flying down the stairs, when they were caught and strangled. Hay and Hepburn told one consistent story to the foot of the scaffold :-When the voices were silent overhead they lit the match and fled, locking the doors behind them. In the garden they found Bothwell watching with his friends, and they waited there till the house blew up, when they made off and saw no more. It was thought however that in dread of torture they left the whole dark truth untold; and over the events of that night a horrible mist still hangs unpenetrated and unpenetrable for ever. This only was certain, that with her husband Mary Stuart's chances of the English throne perished also, and with them all serious prospect of a Catholic revolution. With a deadly instinct the world divined the author of the murder; and more than one nobleman on the night on which the news reached London, hastened to transfer CHAP X his allegiance to Lady Catherine Grey.' 2 The faithful Melville hurried up to defend his mistress -but to the anxious questions of de Silva, though he called her innocent, he gave confused answers. Lady Lennox demands vengeance upon the Queen of Scots,' de Silva said; nor is Lady Lennox alone in the belief of her guilt; they say it is revenge for the Italian secretary. The heretics denounce her with one voice; the Catholics are divided; her own friends acquit her; the connexions of the King cry out upon her without exception.' 3 On the 1st of March Moret, the Duke of Savoy's ambassador at the Scotch court, passed through London on his way to the Continent. He had been in Edinburgh at the time of the murder; and de Silva turned to him for comfort. But Moret had no comfort to give. 'I pressed him,' said de Silva, to tell me whether he thought the Queen was innocent; he did not condemn her in words, but he said nothing in her favour;' spirits of the Catholics are broken; should it turn out that she is guilty, her party in England is gone, and by her means there is no more chance of a restoration of religion." 1 De Silva to Philip, February 17. -MS. Simancas. 26 Aunque este salvó á la Reyna, veo le algo confuso.' De Silva to Philip, February 22. MS. Ibid. 3 Ibid. Apretandole que me dixese lo que le parecia conforme á lo que el the habia visto y colegido si la Reyna 5 Mucho ha este caso enflaquecido 1567 February CHAP XI 1564 THE CHAPTER XI. HE Earl of Sussex having failed alike to beat Shan O'Neil in the field or to get him satisfactorily murdered, had at last been recalled, leaving the government of Ireland in the hands of Sir Nicholas Arnold. An unsuccessful public servant never failed to find a friend in Elizabeth, whose disposition to quarrel with her ministers was usually in proportion to their ability. She had shared the confidence of the late Deputy in what to modern eyes appears unpardonable treachery; she received him on his return to England with undiminished confidence, and she allowed him to confirm her in her resolution to spend no more money in the hopeless enterprise of bringing the Irish into order; while she left Arnold to set the bears and bandogs to tear each other, and watched contentedly the struggle in Ulster between O'Neil and the Scots of the Isles. The breathing-time would have been used to better advantage had the reform been carried to completeness which had been commenced with the mutinous miscreants miscalled the English army. But the bands could not be discharged with decency till they had received their wages; without money they could only continue to maintain themselves on the plunder of the farmers of the Pale; and the Queen, provoked with the 1564 past expenses to which she had so reluctantly assented, CHAP XI knotted her purse-strings, and seemed determined that Ireland should in future bear the cost of its own government. The worst peculations of the principal officers were inquired into and punished: Sir Henry Ratcliff, Sussex's brother, was deprived of his command and sent to the castle; but Arnold's vigour was limited by his powers. The paymasters continued to cheat the Government in the returns of the number of their troops; the Government defended themselves by letting the pay run into arrear; the soldiers revenged their ill-usage on the people; and so it came to pass that in O'Neil's country alone in Ireland-defended as it was from attacks from without, and enriched with the plunder of the Palewere the peasantry prosperous, or life or property secure. Munster was distracted by the feuds between Ormond and Desmond; while the deep bays and creeks of Cork and Kerry were the nests and hiding-places of English pirates, whose numbers had just received a distinguished addition in the person of Sir Thomas Stukely, with a barque of four hundred tons and ' a hundred tall soldiers, besides mariners.' Stukely had been on his way to Florida with a license Sir T. Stukeley in from the Crown to make discoveries and to settle there; Ireland. but he had found a convenient halting-place in an Irish harbour, from which he could issue out and plunder the Spanish galleons.' He had taken up his quarters at Kinsale, to make the sea his Florida;" and in antici 'Stukely's piracies are much railed at here in all parts. I hang down my head with shame. Alas! though it cost the Queen roundly, let him for honour's sake be fetched in. These pardons to such as be hostes humani generis I like not.'-Chaloner 2 Sir Thomas Wroth to Cecil, No- |