being covered with the two vizors succession and liberty -which they determined must be either presently granted, denied, or deferred; in granting whereof they had their desire; and denying or deferring thereof, those things being so plaudable as indeed to all men they are, they thought to work me that mischief which never foreign enemy could bring to pass-which is the hatred of my Commons.

'But alas! they began to pierce the vessel before the wine was fined, and began a thing not foreseeing the end, how by this means I have seen my well-willers from my enemies, and can as meseemeth very well divide the House into four :

1. The broachers and workers thereof, who are in the greatest fault.

2. The speakers, who by eloquent tales persuaded the rest, are next in degree.

3. The agreers, who being so light of credit that the eloquence of those tales so overcame them that they gave more credit thereunto than unto their own wits.

'4. Those that sat still and mute and meddled not therewith, but rather wondered disallowing the matter; who in my opinion are most to be excused.

'But do you think that either I am so unmindful of your surety by succession, wherein is all my care, considering I know myself to be but mortal? No, I warrant you. Or that I went about to break your liberties ? No, it never was in my meaning; but to stay you before you fell into the ditch. For all things have their time; and although perhaps you may have after me a better

learned or wiser, yet I assure you, none more careful over you; and therefore henceforth, whether I live to see the like assembly or no, or whoever it be, yet beware how you prove your prince's patience as you have now done mine.

'And now to conclude all this; notwithstanding, not meaning to make a Lent of Christmas, the most part of you may assure yourselves that you depart in your prince's grace.

'My Lord Keeper, you will do as I bid you.'

Let

Again Bacon rose and in a loud voice said, 'The Queen's Majesty doth dissolve this Parliament. every man depart at his pleasure.'

Elizabeth swept away in the gloom, passed to her barge, and returned to the palace. The Lords and Commons scattered through the English counties, and five years went by before another Parliament met again at Westminster in a changed world.

On that evening the immediate prospect before England was the Queen's marriage with an Austrian Catholic prince, the recognition more or less distant of the Catholic Mary Stuart as heir-presumptive, the establishment with the support and sanction of the Catholic powers of some moderate form of Government, under which the Catholic worship would be first tolerated and then creep on towards ascendency. It might have ended, had Elizabeth been strong enough, in broad intellectual freedom; more likely it would have ended in the reappearance of the Marian fanaticism, to be encountered by passions as fierce and irrational as itself;

and to the probable issue of that conflict conjecture fails

to penetrate.

But the era of toleration was yet centuries distant; and the day of the Roman persecutors was gone never more to reappear. Six weeks later a powder barrel exploded in a house in Edinburgh, and when the smoke cleared away the prospects of the Catholics in England were scattered to all the winds.

The murder of Henry Stuart Lord Darnley is one of those incidents which will remain till the end of time conspicuous on the page of history. In itself the death of a single boy, prince or king though he might be, had little in it to startle the hard world of the sixteenth century. Even before the folly and falsehood by which Mary Stuart's husband had earned the hatred of the Scotch nobility, it had been foreseen that such a frail and giddy summer pleasure-boat would be soon wrecked in those stormy waters. Had Darnley been stabbed in a scuffle or helped to death by a dose of arsenic in his bed, the fair fame of the Queen of Scots would have suffered little, and the tongues that dared to mutter would have been easily silenced. But conspiracies in Scotland were never managed with the skilful villany of the Continent; and when some conspicuous person was to be removed out of the way, the instruments of the deed were either fanatic religionists who looked on themselves as the servants of God, or else they had been wrought up to the murder point by some personal passion which was not contented with the death of its victim, and required a fuller satisfaction in the picturesqueness of dramatic re

venge. The circumstances under which the obstacle to Mary Stuart's peace was disposed of challenged the attention of the whole civilized world, and no after efforts availed in court, creed, or nation, to hide the memory of the scenes which were revealed in that sudden lightning flash.

The disorders of the Scots upon the Border had long been a subject of remonstrance from the English Government. The Queen of Scots, while the Parliament was sitting at Westminster, desired to give some public proof of her wish to conciliate; and after the strange appearance of Darnley in September at the council at Edinburgh, she proposed to go in person to Jedburgh and hear the complaints of Elizabeth's wardens. The Earl of Bothwell had taken command of the North Marches: he had gone down to prepare the way for the Queen's appearance, and on her arrival she was greeted with the news that he had been shot through the thigh in a scuffle and was lying wounded in Hermitage Castle. The Earl had been her companion throughout the summer; her relations with him at this time-whether innocent or not—were of the closest intimacy; and she had taken into her household a certain Lady Reres, who had once been his mistress.

She heard of his wound with the most 1566. October. alarmed anxiety; on every ground she could ill afford to lose him; and careless at all times of bodily fatigue or danger, she rode, on the 15th of

1 'Ce ne luy eust pas esté peu de perte de le perdre!' were the unsuspicious words of du Croq on the 17th of October.-TEULET, vol. ii. p. 289.

October, twenty-five miles over the moors to see him. The Earl's state proved to be more painful than dangerous, and after remaining two hours at his bed-side she returned the same day to Jedburgh. She had not been well thought and displeasure,' which, as she herself told Maitland,1 had their root in the King,' had already affected both her health and spirits. The long ride, the night air, and 'the great distress of her mind for the Earl,' proved too much for her; and though she sat her horse till her journey's end, she fainted when she was lifted from the saddle, and remained two hours unconscious. Delirium followed with violent fever, and in this condition she continued for a week. She was frequently insensible; food refused to remain upon her stomach; yet for the first few days there seemed to be 'no tokens of death;' she slept tolerably, and on Tuesday and Wednesday the 22nd and 23rd she was thought to be improving. An express had been sent to Glasgow for Darnley, but he did not appear. On Friday the 25th there was a relapse; shiverings came on, the body grew rigid, the eyes were closed, the mouth set and motionless; she lost consciousness so entirely that she was supposed to be dying or dead; and in expectation of an immediate end a menacing order to keep the peace was sent out by Murray, Maitland, Huntly, and the other Lords who were in attendance on her.

The physician, 'Master Naw,' however, 'a perfyt man of his craft,' 'would not give the matter over.' He

1 Maitland to the Archbishop of Glasgow: Printed in KEITH.