that of another party; which was quite a natural and proper transaction in an age when royalty could only be upheld by an association of nobles, or by one leading man among them. Though the promises of the rebels were to this effect, their intentions were in reality very different. They had no sooner got the Queen into their hands, than they began to treat her as a captive criminal. Favoured in their base designs by the prejudices of the populace, they led her to Edinburgh with every circumstance of degradation. The crowd which collected in the streets as she passed through them, was so great, that she and her guards could only move one after another in a string; and thus she was closely environed by a rude mob, who assailed her with a thousand varied insults. One of the plans taken by the party to inflame the people against her, was the exhibition of a standard, containing a view of Darnley's body, lying under a tree, with the infant prince on his knees, uttering the words, "Judge and avenge my cause, Oh Lord!" This was repeatedly presented to her eyes. Horror-struck at her situation, the unhappy Queen shed abundance of tears; and thus, as the day was exceedingly hot and dusty, her face at length became begrimed to such a degree, as to be scarcely recognisable. To increase the ridicule of her appearance, her captors obliged her to go through the procession, without changing the short and miry little riding-habit which she had worn in the fields, for any more dignified garment. They enclosed her for the night, without attendance of any sort, in a small apartment of the house of the provost; where, next morning, she was seen at a window, using the most violent gestures which ex

treme grief can suggest, and with no covering to the upper part of her body, but the wild tresses, which, in her distraction, she had permitted to escape from their usual restraint. She spent the whole of the 16th of June in this situation, her ears regaled, during a part of it, with the noise of a skirmish which took place in the street betwixt the retainers of two hostile nobles, and her mind haunted with the most appalling fears regarding her destination. At length, after a confinement of twoand-twenty hours, she was taken forth about eleven o'clock at night, and hurried away to the little islet fortress of Lochleven, where she was put under the charge of Sir Robert Douglas; who, being related to Morton, and connected by marriage with Murray, seemed the most trusty jailor that could be selected.

It is one of the most grievous discounts from royalty, that the relations which give to private life its sweetest grace and best enjoyments, are, in that loftier station, often sacrificed to political calculations. Had Mary been born in a humble sphere of life, her child would have probably been a solace to her above all others; and scarcely any contingency could have occurred to render him a source of misfortune or regret. But in the high place which she was ordained to fill in society, her child was rendered the means of danger and annoyance to her, even before he entered the world; and he no sooner saw the light, and it was proclaimed, as the simple language of scripture expresses it, that a man child was born,' than he became unconsciously her most conspicuous enemy. It was an obvious idea, on the part of the no◄

bles who deposed Mary, to take her infant under their protection, and make him their nominal sovereign; for not only was he the next heir to the crown, and the person who, at any rate, must have eventually succeeded, but his long minority promised them a duration of their ill-acquired power, and they could calculate upon educating him as they pleased. Accordingly, a month had scarcely elapsed after the incarceration of the Queen, when a deputation of the insurgents appeared before her in her prison, and, by dint of threats, and personal violence, compelled her to sign a deed resigning the sovereignty into the hands of her son. Fortified by this document, they proceeded to Stirling; and, on the 29th of July, when James was only thirteen months and ten days old, he was crowned and proclaimed as King James the Sixth. The Earl of Murray was then absent in France; but he returned, about ten days after the coronation, and was almost immediately appointed to the office of Regent. The character of Murray is well known-righteous and amiable to all who did not interfere with his ambitious views, but, in the prosecution of these, cruel and unprincipled; a man who, if he had not had the good fortune to profess and advance the Protestant faith-or rather, if that had not been his best tacticsfor nobody in his senses could suppose such a man sincere would have been recorded by history as a usurper and a parricide.

In the succeeding May, by the assistance of the brother of her keeper, Mary escaped from Lochleven, and immediately succeeded in raising an army among the numerous vassals of the family of Hamil

ton; but unfortunately, engaging in a rash rencontre with the troops of the Earl of Murray, at Langside, near Glasgow, she was defeated, and compelled to take to flight. Seeing no refuge for herself in Scotland, she now adopted the resolution of flying to claim the protection of the Queen of England, which country she entered, for that purpose, with in the week of her defeat. Her seizure, her imprisonment, and her eventual destruction by that princess, are facts which need not here be given in detail.

By the restraint imposed upon Mary in England, the Earl of Murray was confirmed in his regency, with no other drawback to his power, than the occasional ebullitions of the Queen's party, and the submission which he was obliged to pay to Elizabeth, who, from the influence she possessed over the Protestant interest in Scotland, might almost be termed his constituent. His government is generally allowed to have been mild and conciliating; but he happened to give mortal offence to a gentleman of the name of Hamilton, one of the family which formed the principal part of the faction opposed to him. That person, urged by private resentment to undertake a duty which his friends persuaded him to think public, deliberately shot the Regent with a harquebuss, from the window of a house in Linlithgow, January 23, 1569-70, after he had governed little more than two years. The Scottish parliament then selected Matthew Earl of Lennox, the father of Darnley, and grandfather of the infant King, to act as Regent in his place. Lennox was a feeble, though by no means a bad man; and his accession to an office which it required all the talents and vigour

of Murray to execute properly, was the signal for a renewed attempt in favour of the Queen. Her friends now began a struggle with her enemies, distinguished by a peculiar ferocity, and a total want of all those amenities which in general tend to smooth the aspect of civil war. The Castles of Dumbarton and Edinburgh, besides others belonging to the Hamiltons in Clydesdale, still held out for Mary. Indeed, the capital itself was entirely in the hands of the Queen's party; and to increase her hopes, the castle of that city was now held for her by Kirkaldy of Grange and Maitland of Lethington, two men of the greatest importance, and who had till lately been her enemies. Stirling, the second fortress of the kingdom, naturally became the head-quarters of the King's party, who also, on one occasion, established themselves in the Canongate, one of the fauxbourgs of Edinburgh, and there held a parliament in opposition to one which was assembled in the name of Mary within the city. So keen did this struggle at length become, that both parties began to hang all prisoners who fell into their hands, while the two rival parliaments fulminated attainders against each other, with a regularity of discharge almost equal to that which was exemplified by the guns of the castle, and those of the batteries which assailed it,

The young King, in the mean time, grew up under the care of his faithful and affectionate governor the Earl of Mar, and that of his equally faithful and affectionate nurse the Countess. One anecdote of his infancy has been preserved, with ludicrous care, by the contemporary historians.

The Regent Lennox having called a parliament, otherwise a meeting of his own party, at Stirling,