[1561 A.D.] priest, but to prevent any Scottish man from entering to witness or partake in the idolatrous ceremony. It was immediately after this riot and the display of the insulting and offensive pageant before mentioned that the young queen had the first of her celebrated interviews with John Knox, in which he knocked at her heart so rudely as to cause her to shed tears. The stern apostle of Presbytery was, indeed, unsparing of rebuke, without sufficiently recollecting that previous conviction is necessary before reproof can work repentance, and that unless he had possessed powers of inspiration or the gift of working miracles he could not have by mere assertion converted a Catholic from the doctrines which she had believed in from her earliest childhood. Yet Knox afterwards expressed remorse that he had dealt too favourably with the queen, and had not been more vehement in opposing the mass at its first setting up; according to the opinion of those who thought that a sovereign may and ought to be resisted in an idolatrous form of worship, or, in other words, excluded from the tolerance which her subjects claim as their dearest privilege. Tumults arose at Stirling on the same score of the queen's private worship: but though Mary felt the injury and expressed her sense of it by weep [1561-1565 A.D.] ing and sorrowing, yet she wisely passed it over, and trusted to the influence of her brother, who, by his great interest among the wiser sort of the reformers, by proclamations banishing the monks and friars, and other popular steps in favour of the reformed religion, procured a reluctant connivance at the celebration of the Catholic rites in the chapel royal. Mary, indeed, employed her brother as her first minister in all affairs, and especially in restoring quiet on the borders, where he executed many freebooters, and left England no cause of complaint. The intercourse of Mary with that country had always stood upon a delicate and doubtful footing. Elizabeth was desirous that the Treaty of Edinburgh in 1560, which ended the war of the Reformation, should be formally ratified, particularly in respect of that article by which the queen of Scotland and her late husband had agreed to lay down, and never again to assume, the royal titles or arms of England. If Mary had complied with this clause without restriction, it would have been a virtual resignation of her right of succession to England through her grandmother, Margaret, daughter of Henry VII; a sacrifice which Queen Elizabeth was in no respect entitled to demand, nor Queen Mary disposed to grant. Lethington offered to ratify the clause of renunciation, if it were limited to Elizabeth's lifetime, which was all that was or could have been intended by the original treaty. But on the point of her successor Elizabeth was always desirous to preserve an affected obscurity, and to insist on entertaining any discussion involving that topic was to give her at all times the highest offence. Her ministers, therefore, were pertinacious in demanding that Queen Mary should resign in general terms all right whatever to the crown of England, without restriction either as to time or circumstances. While their envoys were engaged in these discussions, the two queens preserved a personal correspondence, in which high-flown and flighty professions of friendship and sisterly affection served to cloak, as is usual in such cases, the want of cordiality and sincerity which pervaded the intercourse of two jealous females, each suspicious of the other. The reign of Mary Stuart and her immortal rivalry with Elizabeth of England have already been treated with such fulness in the chapters of English history devoted to this period, that only a bare outline of this fascinating drama will be given here. A figure of great importance was Mary's halfbrother James, later made earl of Moray." MARY STUART AS QUEEN AND PRISONER The friendship between Mary and the earl of Moray which had been strained by religious differences, broke completely on the question of her marriage, for in spite of his bitter resistance she married a Catholic. Queen Elizabeth had not only refused to declare Mary Stuart her successor-a step which it was claimed would have ended their feud-but she proposed that her Scottish rival should marry her discarded lover, the earl of Leicester. Mary declined the suggestion, and on July 29th, 1565, married Lord Darnley, son of the exiled Catholic earl of Lennox, who had lately returned to Scotland. Darnley was the grandson of Henry VIII's sister Margaret, and was next to Mary herself in the English succession. This marriage so strengthened the Catholic elements and consolidated the loyalists that the earl of Moray was forced into exile with various other nobles, and Mary with characteristic vigour crushed in their inception various Protestant uprisings by means of a swift armed excursion called the Roundabout (or Chaseabout) Raid. Her union with Darnley seems to have been [1565-1568 A.D.] at first a love-match as well as a triumph of state-craft, but her love speedily died in the face of his viciousness and weakness. She refused to grant him the royal title, and gave the Italian musician Rizzio, or Riccio, the post of chief adviser, and as Darnley claimed, of lover as well. With Darnley's encouragement, a plot against Rizzio's life was entered into by Moray, Lennox, Morton, Ruthven, Lindsay, and others, and Rizzio was dragged from the very presence of Mary and slain March 9th, 1566. Moray and other exiles returned now, but the queen patching up a temporary truce with her cowardly husband fled to Dunbar where she gathered strength enough to frighten the exiles back to retirement. June 19th, 1566, the queen gave birth to a son who became James I of England after a series of dramatic events. Mary had naturally nothing but contempt and hatred for her weak and vicious husband, and her impressionable heart fell under the sway of the even more vicious yet bold and resolute earl of Bothwell, who had befriended her at the time of Rizzio's murder. The assassination of Darnley on February 10th, 1567, and Mary's marriage with Bothwell, May 15th (though Bothwell was openly accused of her husband's murder), horrified all Scotland, and the degree of Mary's complicity still constitutes one of the mysteries of history. As both sides of the case have been fully recounted in our history of England it need not be reopened here. So great was the revulsion of feeling in Scotland that Mary and her husband fled and raised an army which was met by the troops of the lords to whom Mary surrendered June 15th, 1567, on condition that Bothwell be allowed to escape. Bothwell left the country forever. Mary, brought back to Edinburgh a captive, was hooted and jeered by her subjects, and compelled to abdicate in favour of her son, James VI, with the earl of Moray as regent, July 24th, 1567. He returned from England to take control. The Hamiltons, however, so hated him that they took up Mary's cause and enabled her to demand the restoration of her crown. The issue was decided with finality in the battle of Langside, May 13th, 1568. Mary hopelessly defeated and in despair of her very life determined to seek refuge with her arch-enemy, the queen of England. Her subsequent detention, the conference concerning her guilt in the murder of Darnley in which her brother Moray appeared as her accuser, and her long imprisonment are all to be found at length in the record of Elizabeth's reign. We shall concern ourselves now only with the affairs of Scotland after the election of Moray to the regency." |