THE HISTORY OF ENGLAND

Volume One of Three

FROM THE INVASION OF JULIUS CÆSAR
TO THE END OF THE REIGN OF JAMES THE SECOND,

BY DAVID HUME, ESQ.

1688

London: James S. Virtue, City Road and Ivy Lane
New York: 26 John Street
1860
And
Philadelphia:
J. B. Lippincott & Co.
March 17, 1901

In Three Volumes:

VOLUME ONE

Part D.
From Elizabeth to James I.

CONTENTS

[ CHAPTER XXXVIII. ]

[ ELIZABETH. ]

[ CHAPTER XXXIX. ]

[ ELIZABETH. ]

[ CHAPTER XL ]

[ ELIZABETH. ]

[ CHAPTER XLI. ]

[ ELIZABETH. ]

[ CHAPTER XLII. ]

[ ELIZABETH. ]

[ CHAPTER XLIII. ]

[ ELIZABETH. ]

[ CHAPTER XLIV. ]

[ ELIZABETH. ]

[ APPENDIX III ]

[ CHAPTER XLV. ]

[ JAMES I. ]

[ CHAPTER XLVI. ]

[ JAMES I. ]

[ CHAPTER XLVII. ]

[ JAMES I. ]

[ CHAPTER XLVIII. ]

[ JAMES I. ]

[ CHAPTER XLIX. ]

[ JAMES I. ]

[ APPENDIX TO THE REIGN OF JAMES I.[*] ]

[ NOTES. ]

ILLUSTRATIONS

[ Elizabeth ]

[ Mary Stuart ]

[ Mary Stuart ]

[ Sir Philip Sidney ]

[ Sir Walter Raleigh ]

[ James I. ]

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CHAPTER XXXVIII.

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ELIZABETH.

CONTEMPORARY MONARCHS.
EMP. OP GERM. K. OF SCOTLAND. K. OF FRANCE. K. OF SPAIN.
Ferdinand..1564 Mary abdicates.1567 Henry II....1559 Philip II.1598
Maximilian.1576 James VI. Francis II..1560 Philip III.
Rodolph II. Charles IX..1574
Henry III.. 1589
Henry IV.
POPES.
Paul IV.... 1558
Pius IV.... 1565
Pius V..... 1572
Gregory XIII.1585
Sixtus V... 1590
Urban VII.. 1590
Gregory XIV. 1591
Innocent IX. 1591
Clement VII.

1558.

In a nation so divided as the English, it could scarcely be expected that the death of one sovereign, and the accession of another, who was generally believed to have embraced opposite principles to those which prevailed, could be the object of universal satisfaction: yet so much were men displeased with the present conduct of affairs, and such apprehensions were entertained of futurity, that the people, overlooking their theological disputes, expressed a general and unfeigned joy that the sceptre had passed into the hand of Elizabeth. That princess had discovered great prudence in her conduct during the reign of her sister; and as men were sensible of the imminent danger to which she was every moment exposed, compassion towards her situation, and concern for her safety, had rendered her, to an uncommon degree, the favorite of the nation. A parliament had been assembled a few days before Mary’s death; and when Heathe, archbishop of York, then chancellor, notified to them that event, scarcely an interval of regret appeared; and the two houses immediately resounded with the joyful acclamations of “God save Queen Elizabeth: long and happily may she reign.” The people, less actuated by faction, and less influenced by private views, expressed a joy still more general and hearty on her proclamation; and the auspicious commencement of this reign prognosticated that felicity and glory which, during its whole course, so uniformly attended it.[*]

Elizabeth was at Hatfield when she heard of her sister’s death; and after a few days she went thence to London, through crowds of people, who strove with each other in giving her the strongest testimony of their affection. On her entrance into the Tower, she could not forbear reflecting on the great difference between her present fortune and that which a few years before had attended her, when she was conducted to that place as a prisoner, and lay there exposed to all the bigoted malignity of her enemies. She fell on her knees, and expressed her thanks to Heaven for the deliverance which the Almighty had granted her from her bloody persecutors; a deliverance, she said, no less miraculous than that which Daniel had received from the den of lions. This act of pious gratitude seems to have been the last circumstance in which she remembered any past hardships and injuries. With a prudence and magnanimity truly laudable, she buried all offences in oblivion, and received with affability even those who had acted with the greatest malevolence against her. Sir Henry Benningfield himself, to whose custody she had been committed, and who had treated her with severity, never felt, during the whole course of her reign, any effects of her resentment.[**] Yet was not the gracious reception which she gave, prostitute and undistinguishing. When the bishops came in a body to make their obeisance to her, she expressed to all of them sentiments of regard; except to Bonner, from whom she turned aside, as from a man polluted with blood, who was a just object of horror to every heart susceptible of humanity.[***]

* Burnet, vol. ii. p. 373.
** Burnet, vol. ii. p. 374.
*** Burnet, vol. ii. p. 374. Heylin, p. 102.

After employing a few days in ordering her domestic affairs, Elizabeth notified to foreign courts her sister’s death, and her own accession. She sent Lord Cobham to the Low Countries, where Philip then resided; and she took care to express to that monarch her gratitude for the protection which he had afforded her, and her desire of persevering in that friendship which had so happily commenced between them. Philip, who had long foreseen this event, and who still hoped, by means of Elizabeth, to obtain that dominion over England, of which he had failed in espousing Mary, immediately despatched orders to the duke of Feria, his ambassador at London, to make proposals of marriage to the queen; and he offered to procure from Rome a dispensation for that purpose. But Elizabeth soon came to the resolution of declining the proposal. She saw that the nation had entertained an extreme aversion to the Spanish alliance during her sister’s reign; and that one great cause of the popularity which she herself enjoyed, was the prospect of being freed by her means from the danger of foreign subjection. She was sensible that her affinity with Philip was exactly similar to that of her father with Catharine of Arragon; and that her marrying that monarch was, in effect, declaring herself illegitimate, and incapable of succeeding to the throne. And though the power of the Spanish monarchy might still be sufficient, in opposition to all pretenders, to support her title, her masculine spirit disdained such precarious dominion, which, as it would depend solely on the power of another, must be exercised according to his inclinations.[*] But while these views prevented her from entertaining any thoughts of a marriage with Philip, she gave him an obliging, though evasive answer; and he still retained such hopes of success, that he sent a messenger to Rome, with orders to solicit the dispensation.

* Camden in Kennet, p. 370. Burnet, vol. ii. p. 375.

The queen too, on her sister’s death, had written to Sir Edward Carne, the English ambassador at Rome, to notify her accession to the pope; but the precipitate nature of Paul broke through all the cautious measures concerted by this young princess. He told Carne, that England was a fief of the holy see; and it was great temerity in Elizabeth to have assumed, without his participation, the title and authority of queen: that being illegitimate, she could not possibly inherit that kingdom; nor could he annul the sentence, pronounced by Clement VII. and Paul III., with regard to Henry’s marriage: that were he to proceed with rigor, he should punish this criminal invasion of his rights, by rejecting all her applications but being willing to treat her with paternal indulgence, he would still keep the door of grace open to her, and that if she would renounce all pretensions to the crown, and submit entirely to his will, she should experience the utmost lenity compatible with the dignity of the apostolic see.[*] When this answer was reported to Elizabeth, she was astonished at the character of that aged pontiff; and having recalled her ambassador, she continued with more determined resolution to pursue those measures which already she had secretly embraced.

The queen, not to alarm the partisans of the Catholic religion, had retained eleven of her sister’s counsellors; but in order to balance their authority, she added eight more, who were known to be inclined to the Protestant communion: the marquis of Northampton, the earl of Bedford, Sir Thomas Parry, Sir Edward Rogers, Sir Ambrose Cave, Sir Francis Knolles, Sir Nicholas Bacon, whom she created lord keeper, and Sir William Cecil, secretary of state.[**]

* Father Paul, lib. v.
** Strype’s Ann. vol. i. p. 5.

With these counsellors, particularly Cecil, she frequently deliberated concerning the expediency of restoring the Protestant religion, and the means of executing that great enterprise. Cecil told her, that the greater part of the nation had, ever since her father’s reign, inclined to the reformation, and though her sister had constrained them to profess the ancient faith, the cruelties exercised by her ministers had still more alienated their affections from it: that happily the interests of the sovereign here concurred with the inclinations of the people; nor was her title to the crown compatible with the authority of the Roman pontiff: that a sentence, so solemnly pronounced by two popes against her mother’s marriage, could not possibly be recalled without inflicting a mortal wound on the credit of the see of Rome; and even if she were allowed to retain the crown, it would only be on an uncertain and dependent footing: that this circumstance alone counterbalanced all dangers whatsoever; and these dangers themselves, if narrowly examined, would be found very little formidable: that the curses and execrations of the Romish church, when not seconded by military force, were, in the present age, more an object of ridicule than of terror, and had now as little influence in this world as in the next: that though the bigotry or ambition of Henry or Philip might incline them to execute a sentence of excommunication against her, their interests were so incompatible, that they never could concur in any plan of operations; and the enmity of the one would always insure to her the friendship of the other: that if they encouraged the discontents of her Catholic subjects, their dominions also abounded with Protestants, and it would be easy to retaliate upon them: that even such of the English as seemed at present zealously attached to the Catholic faith, would, most of them, embrace the religion of their new sovereign; and the nation had of late been so much accustomed to these revolutions, that men had lost all idea of truth and falsehood in such subjects: that the authority of Henry VIII., so highly raised by many concurring circumstances, first inured the people to this submissive deference; and it was the less difficult for succeeding princes to continue the nation in a track to which it had so long been accustomed; and that it would be easy for her, by bestowing on Protestants all preferment in civil offices and the militia, the church and the universities, both to insure her own authority, and to render her religion entirely predominant.[*]

The education of Elizabeth, as well as her interest, led her to favor the reformation; and she remained not long in suspense with regard to the party which she should embrace. But though determined in her own mind, she resolved to proceed by gradual and secure steps, and not to imitate the example of Mary in encouraging the bigots of her party to make immediately a violent invasion on the established religion.[**] She thought it requisite, however, to discover such symptoms of her intentions as might give encouragement to the Protestants so much depressed by the late violent persecutions. She immediately recalled all the exiles, and gave liberty to the prisoners who were confined on account of religion. We are told of a pleasantry of one Rainsford on this occasion, who said to the queen, that he had a petition to present her in behalf of other prisoners called Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John: she readily replied, that it behoved her first to consult the prisoners themselves, and to learn of them whether they desired that liberty which he demanded for them.[***]

* Burnet, vol. ii. p. 377. Camden, p. 370.
** Burnet, vol. ii. p. 378. Camden, p. 371.
*** Heylin, p. 103.

Elizabeth also proceeded to exert in favor of the reformers some acts of power which were authorized by the extent of royal prerogative during that age. Finding that the Protestant teachers, irritated by persecution, broke out in a furious attack on the ancient superstition, and that the Romanists replied with no less zeal and acrimony, she published a proclamation, by which she inhibited all preaching without a special license;[*] and though she dispensed with these orders in favor of some preachers of her own sect, she took care that they should be the most calm and moderate of the party. She also suspended the laws so far as to order a great part of the service; the litany, the Lord’s prayer, the creed, and the gospels; to be read in English. And having first published injunctions, that all the churches should conform themselves to the practice of her own chapel, she forbade the host to be any more elevated in her presence; an innovation which, however frivolous it may appear, implied the most material consequences.[**]

These declarations of her intention, concurring with preceding suspicions, made the bishops foresee with certainty a revolution in religion. They therefore refused to officiate at her coronation; and it was with some difficulty that the bishop of Carlisle was at last prevailed on to perform the ceremony. When she was conducted through London, amidst the joyful acclamations of her subjects, a boy, who personated truth, was let down from one of the triumphal arches, and presented to her a copy of the Bible. She received the book with the most gracious deportment; placed it next her bosom; and declared that, amidst all the costly testimonies which the city had that day given her of their attachment, this present was by far the most precious and most acceptable.[*] Such were the innocent artifices by which Elizabeth insinuated herself into the affections of her subjects. Open in her address, gracious and affable in all public appearances, she rejoiced in the concourse of her subjects, entered into all their pleasures and amusements; and without departing from her dignity, which she knew well how to preserve, she acquired a popularity beyond what any of her predecessors or successors ever could attain. Her own sex exulted to see a woman hold the reins of empire with such prudence and fortitude: and while a young princess of twenty-five years, (for that was her age at her accession,) who possessed all the graces and insinuation, though not all the beauty of her sex, courted the affections of individuals by her civilities, of the public by her services; her authority though corroborated by the strictest bands of law and religion, appeared to be derived entirely from the choice and inclination of the people.

* Heylin, p. 104. Strype, vol. i. p. 41.
** Camden, p. 371. Heylin, p. 104. Strype, vol. i. p 54.
Stowe, p. 635.
*** Burnet, vol. ii. p. 380. Strype, vol. i. p. 29.

A sovereign of this disposition was not likely to offend her subjects by any useless or violent exertions of power; and Elizabeth, though she threw out such hints as encouraged the Protestants delayed the entire change of religion till the meeting of the parliament, which was summoned to assemble. The elections had gone entirely against the Catholics, who seem not indeed to have made any great struggle for the superiority;[*] and the houses met in a disposition of gratifying the queen in every particular which she could desire of them. They began the session with a unanimous declaration, “that Queen Elizabeth was, and ought to be, as well by the word of God, as the common and statute laws of the realm, the lawful, undoubted, and true heir to the crown, lawfully descended from the blood royal, according to the order of succession settled in the thirty-fifth of Henry VIII.”[**]

* Notwithstanding the bias of the nation towards the
Protestant sect, it appears that some violence, at least
according to our present ideas, was used in these elections:
five candidates were nominated by the court to each borough,
and three to each county; and by the sheriff’s authority the
members were chosen from among these candidates. See state
papers collected by Edward, earl of Clarendon, p. 92.
* I Eliz. cap. 3.

This act of recognition was probably dictated by the queen herself and her ministers; and she showed her magnanimity, as well as moderation, in the terms which she employed on that occasion. She followed not Mary’s practice in declaring the validity of her mother’s marriage, or in expressly repealing the act formerly made against her own legitimacy: she knew that this attempt must be attended with reflections on her father’s memory, and on the birth of her deceased sister; and as all the world was sensible, that Henry’s divorce from Anne Boleyn was merely the effect of his usual violence and caprice, she scorned to found her title on any act of an assembly which had too much prostituted its authority by its former variable, servile, and iniquitous decisions. Satisfied, therefore, in the general opinion entertained with regard to this fact, which appeared the more undoubted, the less anxiety she discovered in fortifying it by votes and inquiries; she took possession of the throne both as her birthright, and as insured to her by former acts of parliament; and she never appeared anxious to distinguish these titles.[*]

The first bill brought into parliament with a view of trying their disposition on the head of religion, was that for suppressing the monasteries lately erected, and for restoring the tenths and first-fruits to the queen. This point being gained without much difficulty, a bill was next introduced, annexing the supremacy to the crown; and though the queen was there denominated “governess,” not “head,” of the church, it conveyed the same extensive power which under the latter title had been exercised by her father and brother. All the bishops who were present in the upper house strenuously opposed this law; and as they possessed more learning than the temporal peers, they triumphed in the debate; but the majority of voices in that house, as well as among the commons, was against them. By this act, the crown, without the concurrence either of the parliament, or even of the convocation, was vested with the whole spiritual power; might repress all heresies, might establish or repeal all canons, might alter every point of discipline, and might ordain or abolish any religious rite or ceremony,[**]

* Camden, p. 372. Heylin, p. 107, 108
** I Eliz. cap. 1. This last power was anew recognized in
the bill of uniformity I Eliz. cap 2.

In determining heresy, the sovereign was only limited (if that could be called a limitation) to such doctrines as had been adjudged heresy by the authority of the Scripture, by the first four general councils, or by any general council which followed the Scripture as their rule, or to such other doctrines as should hereafter be denominated heresy by the parliament and convocation. In order to exercise this authority, the queen, by a clause of the act, was empowered to name commissioners, either laymen or clergymen, as she should think proper; and on this clause was afterwards founded the court of ecclesiastical commission; which assumed large discretionary, not to say arbitrary powers, totally incompatible with any exact boundaries in the constitution. Their proceedings, indeed, were only consistent with absolute monarchy; but were entirely suitable to the genius of the act on which they were established; an act that at once gave the crown alone all the power which had formerly been claimed by the popes, but which even these usurping prelates had never been able fully to exercise without some concurrence of the national clergy.

Whoever refused to take an oath acknowledging the queen’s supremacy, was incapacitated from holding any office; whoever denied the supremacy, or attempted to deprive the queen of that prerogative, forfeited, for the first offence, all his goods and chattels; for the second, was subjected to the penalty of a præmunire; but the third offence was declared treason. These punishments, however severe, were less rigorous than those which were formerly, during the reigns of her father and brother, inflicted in like cases.

A law was passed confirming all the statutes enacted in King Edward’s time with regard to religion:[*] the nomination of bishops was given to the crown, without any election of the chapters: the queen was empowered, on the vacancy of any see, to seize all the temporalities, and to bestow on the bishop elect an equivalent in the impropriations belonging to the crown. This pretended equivalent was commonly much inferior in value; and thus the queen, amidst all her concern for religion, followed the example of the preceding reformers in committing depredations on the ecclesiastical revenues.

The bishops and all incumbents were prohibited from alienating their revenues, and from letting leases longer than twenty-one years or three lives. This law seemed to be meant for securing the property of the church; but as an exception was left in favor of the crown, great abuses still prevailed. It was usual for the courtiers, during this reign, to make an agreement with a bishop or incumbent; and to procure a fictitious alienation to the queen, who afterwards transferred the lands to the person agreed on.[**] This method of pillaging the church was not remedied till the beginning of James I. The present depression of the clergy exposed them to all injuries; and the laity never stopped till they had reduced the church to such poverty, that her plunder was no longer a compensation for the odium incurred by it.

A solemn and public disputation was held during this session in presence of Lord Keeper Bacon, between the divines of the Protestant and those of the Catholic communion. The champions appointed to defend the religion of the sovereign were, as in all former instances, entirely triumphant; and the Popish disputants, being pronounced refractory and obstinate, were even punished by imprisonment.[***]

* I Eliz. cap. 2.
** Strype, vol. i. p. 79.
*** Strype, vol. i. p. 95.

Emboldened by this victory, the Protestants ventured on the last and most important step, and brought into parliament a bill[*] for abolishing the mass and reestablishing the liturgy of King Edward. Penalties were enacted, as well against those who departed from this mode of worship, as against those who absented themselves from the church and the sacraments. And thus in one session, without any violence, tumult, or clamor, was the whole system of religion altered, on the very commencement of a reign, and by the will of a young woman, whose title to the crown was by many thought liable to objections; an event which, though it may appear surprising to men in the present age, was every where expected on the first intelligence of Elizabeth’s accession.

The commons also made a sacrifice to the queen, more difficult to obtain than that of any articles of faith: they voted a subsidy of four shillings in the pound on land, and two shillings and eightpence on movables, together with two fifteenths.[**] [1] The house in no instance departed from the most respectful deference and complaisance towards the queen. Even the importune address which they made her on the conclusion of the session, to fix her choice of a husband, could not, they supposed, be very disagreeable to one of her sex and age. The address was couched in the most respectful expressions, yet met with a refusal from the queen.

* 1 Eliz. cap. 2.
** See note A, at the end of the volume.

1559.

She told the speaker, that, as the application from the house was conceived in general terms, only recommending marriage, without pretending to direct her choice of a husband, she could not take offence at the address, or regard it otherwise than as a new instance of their affectionate attachment to her: that any further interposition on their part, would have ill become either them to make as subjects, or her to bear as an independent princess: that even while she was a private person, and exposed to much danger, she had always declined that engagement, which she regarded as an encumbrance; much more, at present, would she persevere in this sentiment, when the charge of a great kingdom was committed to her, and her life ought to be entirely devoted to promoting the interests of religion and the happiness of her subjects: that as England was her husband, wedded to her by this pledge, (and here she showed her finger with the same gold ring upon it with which she had solemnly betrothed herself to the kingdom at her inauguration,) so all Englishmen were her children, and while she was employed in rearing or governing such a family, she could not deem herself barren, or her life useless and unprofitable: that if she ever entertained thoughts of changing her condition, the care of her subjects’ welfare would still be uppermost in her thoughts; but should she live and die a virgin, she doubted not but divine Providence, seconded by their counsels and her own measures, would be able to prevent all dispute with regard to the succession, and secure them a sovereign who, perhaps better than her own issue, would imitate her example in loving and cherishing her people; and that for her part, she desired that no higher character, or fairer remembrance of her should be transmitted to posterity, than to have this inscription engraved on her tombstone, when she should pay the last debt to nature: “Here lies Elizabeth, who lived and died a maiden queen.”[*]

After the prorogation of the parliament,[**] the laws enacted with regard to religion were put in execution, and met with little opposition from any quarter. The liturgy was again introduced in the vulgar tongue, and the oath of supremacy was tendered to the clergy. The number of bishops had been reduced to fourteen by a sickly season which preceded: and all these, except the bishop of Landaff, having refused compliance, were degraded from their sees: but of the inferior clergy throughout all England, where there are near ten thousand parishes, only eighty rectors and vicars, fifty prebendaries fifteen heads of colleges, twelve archdeacons, and as many deans, sacrificed their livings to their religious principles.[***]

* Camden, p. 375. Sir Simon d’Ewes.
** It is thought remarkable by Camden, that though this
session was the first of the reign, no person was attainted;
but on the contrary, some restored in blood by the
parliament; a good symptom of the lenity, at least of the
prudence, of the queen’s government; and that it should
appear remarkable, is a proof of the rigor of preceding
reigns.
*** Camden, p. 376. Heylin, p. 115. Strype, vol. i. p. 73,
with some small variations.

Those in high ecclesiastic stations, being exposed to the eyes of the public, seem chiefly to have placed a point of honor in their perseverance; but on the whole, the Protestants, in the former change introduced by Mary, appear to have been much more rigid and conscientious. Though the Catholic religion, adapting itself to the senses, and enjoining observances which enter into the common train of life, does at present lay faster hold on the mind than the reformed, which, being chiefly spiritual, resembles more a system of metaphysics, yet was the proportion of zeal, as well as of knowledge, during the first ages after the reformation, much greater on the side of the Protestants. The Catholics continued, ignorantly and supinely, in their ancient belief, or rather their ancient practices: but the reformers, obliged to dispute on every occasion, and inflamed to a degree of enthusiasm by novelty and persecution had strongly attached themselves to their tenets; and were ready to sacrifice their fortunes, and even their lives, in support of their speculative and abstract principles.

The forms and ceremonies still preserved in the English liturgy, as they bore some resemblance to the ancient service, tended further to reconcile the Catholics to the established religion; and as the queen permitted no other mode of worship, and at the same time struck out every thing that could be offensive to them in the new liturgy,[*] even those who were addicted to the Romish communion made no scruple of attending the established church. Had Elizabeth gratified her own inclinations, the exterior appearance, which is the chief circumstance with the people, would have been still more similar between the new and the ancient form of worship. Her love of state and magnificence, which she affected in every thing, inspired her with an inclination towards the pomp of the Catholic religion; and it was merely in compliance with the prejudices of her party, that she gave up either images, or the addresses to saints, or prayers for the dead.[**] Some foreign princes interposed to procure the Romanists the privilege of separate assemblies in particular cities, but the queen would not comply with their request; and she represented the manifest danger of disturbing the national peace by a toleration of different religions.[***]

* Heylin, p. 111.
** Burnet, vol. ii. p. 376, 397. Camden, p. 371.
*** Camden, p. 378. Strype, vol. i. p. 150, 370.

While the queen and parliament were employed in settling the public religion, the negotiations for a peace were still conducted, first at Cercamp, then at Chateau-Cambresis, between the ministers of France, Spain, and England; and Elizabeth, though equally prudent, was not equally successful in this transaction. Philip employed his utmost efforts to procure the restitution of Calais, both as bound in honor to indemnify England which merely on his account had been drawn into the war; and as engaged in interest to remove France to a distance from his frontiers in the Low Countries. So long as he entertained hopes of espousing the queen, he delayed concluding a peace with Henry; and even after the change of religion in England deprived him of all such views, his ministers hinted to her a proposal which may be regarded as reasonable and honorable. Though all his own terms with France were settled, he seemed willing to continue the war till she should obtain satisfaction; provided she would stipulate to adhere to the Spanish alliance, and continue hostilities against Henry during the course of six years:[*]* but Elizabeth, after consulting with her ministers, wisely rejected this proposal. She was sensible of the low state of her finances; the great debts contracted by her father, brother, and sister; the disorders introduced into every part of the administration; the divisions by which her people were agitated; and she was convinced that nothing but tranquillity during some years could bring the kingdom again into a flourishing condition, or enable her to act with dignity and vigor in her transactions with foreign nations. Well acquainted with the value which Henry put upon Calais, and the impossibility, during the present emergence, of recovering it by treaty, she was willing rather to suffer that loss, than submit to such a dependence on Spain, as she must expect to fall into, if she continued pertinaciously in her present demand. She ordered, therefore, her ambassadors, Lord Effingham, the bishop of Ely, and Dr. Wotton, to conclude the negotiation, and to settle a peace with Henry on any reasonable terms. Henry offered to stipulate a marriage between the eldest daughter of the dauphin, and the eldest son of Elizabeth; and to engage for the restitution of Calais as the dowry of that princess;[**] but as the queen was sensible that this treaty would appear to the world a palpable evasion, she insisted upon more equitable, at least more plausible conditions.

* Forbes’s Full View, vol. i. p. 59.
** Forbes’s Full View, vol. i. p. 54.
It was at last agreed, that Henry should restore Calais at
the expiration of eight years; that in case of failure, he
should pay five hundred thousand crowns, and the queen’s
title to Calais still remain; that he should find the
security of seven or eight foreign merchants, not natives of
France, for the payment of this sum; that he should deliver
five hostages till that security were provided; that if
Elizabeth broke the peace with France or Scotland during the
interval, she should forfeit all title to Calais; but if
Henry made war on Elizabeth, he should be obliged
immediately to restore that fortress.[*] All men of
penetration easily saw that these stipulations were but a
colorable pretence for abandoning Calais; but they excused
the queen on account of the necessity of her affairs; and
they even extolled her prudence in submitting without
further struggle to that necessity. A peace with Scotland
was a necessary consequence of that with France.
* Forbes, vol. i. p. 68. Rymer, tom. xv. p 505.

Philip and Henry terminated hostilities by a mutual restitution of all places taken during the course of the war; and Philip espoused the princess Elizabeth, eldest daughter of France, formerly betrothed to his son Don Carlos. The duke of Savoy married Margaret, Henry’s sister, and obtained a restitution of all his dominions of Savoy and Piedmont, except a few towns retained by France. And thus general tranquillity seemed to be restored to Europe.

But though peace was concluded between France and England, there soon appeared a ground of quarrel of the most serious nature, and which was afterwards attended with the most important consequences. The two marriages of Henry VIII., that with Catharine of Arragon, and that with Anne Boleyn, were incompatible with each other; and it seemed impossible that both of them could be regarded as valid and legal: but still the birth of Elizabeth lay under some disadvantages to which that of her sister Mary was not exposed. Henry’s first marriage had obtained the sanction of all the powers, both civil and ecclesiastical, which were then acknowledged in England; and it was natural for Protestants as well as Romanists to allow, on account of the sincere intention of the parties, that their issue ought to be regarded as legitimate, But his divorce and second marriage had been concluded in direct opposition to the see of Rome; and though they had been ratified by the authority both of the English parliament and convocation, those who were strongly attached to the Catholic communion, and who reasoned with great strictness were led to regard them as entirely invalid, and to deny altogether the queen’s right of succession. The next heir of blood was the queen of Scots, now married to the dauphin; and the great power of that princess, joined to her plausible title rendered her a formidable rival to Elizabeth. The king of France had secretly been soliciting at Rome a bull of excommunication against the queen; and she had here been beholden to the good offices of Philip, who, from interest more than either friendship or generosity, had negotiated in her favor, and had successfully opposed the pretensions of Henry. But the court of France was not discouraged with this repulse; the duke of Guise and his brothers, thinking that it would much augment their credit if their niece should bring an accession of England, as she had already done of Scotland, to the crown of France, engaged the king not to neglect the claim; and, by their persuasion, he ordered his son and daughter-in-law to assume openly the arms as well as title of England, and to quarter these arms on all their equipages, furniture, and liveries. When the English ambassador complained of this injury he could obtain nothing but an evasive answer; that as the queen of Scots was descended from the blood royal of England, she was entitled, by the example of many princes, to assume the arms of that kingdom. But besides that this practice had never prevailed without permission being first obtained, and without making a visible difference between the arms, Elizabeth plainly saw that this pretension had not been advanced during the reign of her sister Mary; and that, therefore, the king of France intended, on the first opportunity, to dispute her legitimacy, and her title to the crown. Alarmed at the danger, she thenceforth conceived a violent jealousy against the queen of Scots; and was determined, as far as possible, to incapacitate Henry from the execution of his project. The sudden death of that monarch, who was killed in a tournament at Paris, while celebrating the espousals of his sister with the duke of Savoy, altered not her views. Being informed that his successor, Francis II., still continued to assume, without reserve, the title of King of England, she began to consider him and his queen as her mortal enemies; and the present situation of affairs in Scotland afforded her a favorable opportunity, both of revenging the injury, and providing for her own safety.

The murder of the cardinal-primate at St. Andrew’s had deprived the Scottish Catholics of a head whose severity, courage, and capacity had rendered him extremely formidable to the innovators in religion; and the execution of the laws against heresy began thenceforth to be more remiss. The queen regent governed the kingdom by prudent and moderate counsels; and as she was not disposed to sacrifice the civil interests of the state to the bigotry or interests of the clergy, she deemed it more expedient to temporize, and to connive at the progress of a doctrine which she had not power entirely to repress. When informed of the death of Edward, and the accession of Mary to the crown of England, she entertained hopes that the Scottish reformers, deprived of the countenance which they received from that powerful kingdom, would lose their ardor with their prospect of success, and would gradually return to the faith of their ancestors. But the progress and revolutions of religion are little governed by the usual maxims of civil policy; and the event much disappointed the expectations of the regent. Many of the English preachers, terrified with the severity of Mary’s government, took shelter in Scotland, where they found more protection, and a milder administration; and while they propagated their theological tenets, they filled the whole kingdom with a just horror against the cruelties of the bigoted Catholics, and showed their disciples the fate which they must expect, if ever their adversaries should attain an uncontrolled authority over them.

A hierarchy, moderate in its acquisitions of power and riches, may safely grant a toleration to sectaries; and the more it softens the zeal of innovators by lenity and liberty, the more securely will it possess those advantages which the legal establishments bestow upon it. But where superstition has raised a church to such an exorbitant height as that of Rome, persecution is less the result of bigotry in the priests, than of a necessary policy; and the rigor of law is the only method of repelling the attacks of men who, besides religious zeal, have so many other motives, derived both from public and private interest, to engage them on the side of innovation. But though such overgrown hierarchies may long support themselves by these violent expedients, the time comes when severities tend only to enrage the new sectaries, and make them break through all bounds of reason and moderation. This crisis was now visibly approaching in Scotland; and whoever considers merely the transactions resulting from it, will be inclined to throw the blame equally on both parties; whoever enlarges his view, and reflects on the situations, will remark the necessary progress of human affairs, and the operation of those principles which are inherent in human nature.

Some heads of the reformers in Scotland, such as the earl of Argyle, his son Lord Lorne, the earls of Morton and Glencarne, Erskine of Dun, and others, observing the danger to which they were exposed, and desirous to propagate their principles, entered privately into a bond or association; and called themselves the “congregation” of the Lord, in contradistinction to the established church, which they denominated the congregation of Satan. The tenor of the bond was as follows: “We, perceiving how Satan, in his members, the Antichrist of our time, do cruelly rage, seeking to overthrow and to destroy the gospel of Christ and his congregation, ought, according to our bounden duty, to strive in our master’s cause, even unto the death, being certain of the victory in him. We do therefore promise, before the majesty of God and his congregation, that we, by his grace, shall with all diligence continually apply our whole power, substance, and our very lives, to maintain, set forward, and establish the most blessed word of God and his congregation; and shall labor, by all possible means, to have faithful ministers, truly and purely to minister Christ’s gospel and sacraments to his people: we shall maintain them, nourish them, and defend them, the whole congregation of Christ, and every member thereof, by our whole power, and at the hazard of our lives, against Satan, and all wicked power who may intend tyranny and trouble against the said congregation; unto which holy word and congregation we do join ourselves; and we forsake and renounce the congregation of Satan, with all the superstitious abomination and idolatry thereof; and moreover shall declare ourselves manifestly enemies thereto, by this faithful promise before God, testified to this congregation by our subscriptions. At Edinburgh, the third of December, 1557.”[*]

* Keith, p. 66. Knox, p. 101.

Had the subscribers of this zealous league been content only to demand a toleration of the new opinions, however incompatible their pretensions might have been with the policy of the church of Rome, they would have had the praise of opposing tyrannical laws, enacted to support an establishment prejudicial to civil society: but it is plain that they carried their views much further; and their practice immediately discovered the spirit by which they were actuated. Supported by the authority which they thought belonged to them as the congregation of the Lord, they ordained that prayers in the vulgar tongue[*] should be used in all the parish churches of the kingdom; and that preaching and the interpretation of the Scriptures should be practised in private houses, til God should move the prince to grant public preaching by faithful and true ministers.[**] Such bonds of association are always the fore-runners of rebellion; and this violent invasion of the established religion was the actual commencement of it.

Before this league was publicly known or avowed, the clergy, alarmed with the progress of the reformation, attempted to recover their lost authority by a violent exercise of power, which tended still further to augment the zeal and number of their enemies. Hamilton, the primate, seized Walter Mill, a priest of an irreproachable life, who had embraced the new doctrines; and having tried him at St. Andrew’s, condemned him to the flames for heresy. Such general aversion was entertained against this barbarity, that it was some time before the bishops could prevail on any one to act the part of a civil judge, and pronounce sentence upon Mill; and even after the time of his execution was fixed, all the shops of St. Andrew’s being shut, no one would sell a rope to tie him to the stake and the primate himself was obliged to furnish this implement. The man bore the torture with that courage which, though usual on these occasions, always appears supernatural and astonishing to the multitude. The people, to express their abhorrence against the cruelty of the priests, raised a monument of stones on the place of his execution; and as fast as the stones were removed by order of the clergy, they were again supplied from the voluntary zeal of the populace.[***] It is in vain for men to oppose the severest punishment to the united motives of religion and public applause; and this was the last barbarity of the kind which the Catholics had the power to exercise in Scotland.

* The reformers used at that time King Edward’s liturgy in
Scotland. Forbes, p. 155.
* Keith, p. 66. Knox, p. 101.
* Knox, p. 122.

Some time after, the people discovered their sentiments in such a manner as was sufficient to prognosticate to the priests the fate which was awaiting them. It was usual on the festival of St. Giles, the tutelar saint of Edinburgh, to carry in procession the image of that saint; but the Protestants, in order to prevent the ceremony, found means, on the eve of the festival, to purloin the statue from the church; and they pleased themselves with imagining the surprise and disappointment of his votaries. The clergy, however, framed hastily a new image, which in derision was called by the people young St. Giles; and they carried it through the streets, attended by all the ecclesiastics in the town and neighborhood. The multitude abstained from violence so long as the queen regent continued a spectator; but the moment she retired, they invaded the idol, threw it in the mire, and broke it in pieces. The flight and terror of the priests and friars, who, it was remarked, deserted, in his greatest distress, the object of their worship, was the source of universal mockery and laughter.

Encouraged by all these appearances, the congregation proceeded with alacrity in openly soliciting subscriptions to their league; and the death of Mary of England, with the accession of Elizabeth, which happened about this time, contributed to increase their hopes of final success in their undertaking. They ventured to present a petition to the regent, craving a reformation of the church, and of the “wicked, scandalous, and detestable” lives of the prelates and ecclesiastics.[*] They framed a petition which they intended to present to parliament, and in which, after premising that they could not communicate with the damnable idolatry and intolerable abuses of the Papistical church, they desired that the laws against heretics should be executed by the civil magistrate alone, and that the Scripture should be the sole rule in judging of heresy.[**] They even petitioned the convocation, and insisted that prayers should be said in the vulgar tongue, and that bishops should be chosen with the consent of the gentry of the diocese, and priests with the consent of the parishioners.[***] The regent prudently temporized between these parties; and as she aimed at procuring a matrimonial crown for her son-in-law the dauphin, she was, on that as well as other accounts, unwilling to come to extremities with either of them.

* Knox, p. 121.
** Knox, p. 123.
*** Keith, p. 78, 81, 82.

But after this concession was obtained, she received orders from France, probably dictated by the violent spirit of her brothers, to proceed with rigor against the reformers, and to restore the royal authority by some signal act of power.[*] She made the more eminent of the Protestant teachers be cited to appear before the council at Stirling; but when their followers were marching thither in great multitudes, in order to protect and countenance them, she entertained apprehensions of an insurrection, and, it is said, dissipated the people by a promise[**] [2] that nothing should be done to the prejudice of the ministers. Sentence, however, was passed, by which all the ministers were pronounced rebels, on account of their not appearing; a measure which enraged the people, and made them resolve to oppose the regent’s authority by force of arms, and to proceed to extremities against the clergy of the established religion.

In this critical time, John Knox arrived from Geneva, where he had passed some years in banishment, and where he had imbibed, from his commerce with Calvin, the highest fanaticism of his sect, augmented by the native ferocity of his own character. He had been invited back to Scotland by the leaders of the reformation; and mounting the pulpit at Perth, during the present ferment of men’s minds, he declaimed with his usual vehemence against the idolatry and other abominations of the church of Rome, and incited his audience to exert their utmost zeal for its subversion. A priest was so imprudent, after this sermon, as to open his repository of images and relics, and prepare himself to say mass. The audience, exalted to a disposition for any furious enterprise, were as much enraged as if the spectacle had not been quite familiar to them: they attacked the priest with fury, broke the images in pieces, tore the pictures, overthrew the altars, scattered about the sacred vases; and left no implement of idolatrous worship, as they termed it, entire or undefaced. They thence proceeded, with additional numbers and augmented rage, to the monasteries of the Gray and Black friars, which they pillaged in an instant: the Carthusians underwent the same fate: and the populace, not content with robbing and expelling the monks, vented their fury on the buildings which had been the receptacles of such abomination; and in a little time nothing but the walls of these edifices were left standing. The inhabitants of Coupar, in Fife, soon after imitated the example.[***]

* Melvil’s Memoirs, p. 24. Jebb. vol. ii. p. 446.
** See note B, at the end of the volume.
*** Spotswood, p. 121. Knox, p. 127.

The queen regent, provoked at these violences, assembled an army, and prepared to chastise the rebels. She had about two thousand French under her command, with a few Scottish troops; and being assisted by such of the nobility as were well affected to her, she pitched her camp within ten miles of Perth. Even the earl of Argyle, and Lord James Stuart, prior of St. Andrew’s, the queen’s natural brother, though deeply engaged with the reformers, attended the regent in this enterprise, either because they blamed the fury of the populace, or hoped by their own influence and authority to mediate some agreement between the parties. The congregation, on the other hand, made preparations for defence; and being joined by the earl of Glencarne from the west, and being countenanced by many of the nobility and gentry, they appeared formidable from their numbers, as well as from the zeal by which they were animated. They sent an address to the regent, where they plainly insinuated, that if they were pursued to extremities by the “cruel beasts” the churchmen, they would have recourse to foreign powers for assistance; and they subscribed themselves her faithful subjects in all things not repugnant to God, assuming, at the same time, the name of the faithful congregation of Christ Jesus.[*] They applied to the nobility attending her, and maintained, that their own past violences were justified by the word of God, which commands the godly to destroy idolatry, and all the monuments of it; and though all civil authority was sacred, yet was there a great difference between the authority and the persons who exercised it;[**] and that it ought to be considered, whether or not those abominations, called by the pestilent Papists religion, and which they defend by fire and sword, be the true religion of Christ Jesus. They remonstrated with such of the queen’s army as had formerly embraced their party, and told them, “that as they were already reputed traitors by God, they should likewise be excommunicated from their society, and from the participation of the sacraments of the church which God by his mighty power had erected among them; whose ministers have the same authority which Christ granted to his apostles in these words, ‘Whose sins ye shall forgive shall be forgiven, and whose sins ye shall retain shall be retained.’”[***]

* Knox, p. 129.
** Knox, p. 131.
*** Knox, p. 133.

We may here see, that these new saints were no less lofty in their pretensions than the ancient hierarchy: no wonder they were enraged against the latter as their rivals in dominion. They joined to all these declarations an address to the established church; and they affixed this title to it: “To the generation of Antichrist, the pestilent prelates and their ‘shavelings'[*] in Scotland, the congregation of Christ Jesus within the same sayeth.” The tenor of the manifesto was suitable to the title. They told the ecclesiastics, “As ye by tyranny intend not only to destroy our bodies, but also by the same to hold our souls in bondage of the devil, subject to idolatry, so shall we, with all the force and power which God shall grant unto us, execute just vengeance and punishment upon you: yea, we shall begin that same war which God commanded Israel to execute against the Canaanites; that is, contract of peace shall never be made till you desist from your open idolatry, and cruel persecution of God’s children. And this, in the name of the eternal God, and of his Son Christ Jesus, whose verity we profess, and gospel we have preached, and holy sacraments rightly administered, we signify unto you to be our intent, so far as God will assist us to withstand your idolatry. Take this for warning, and be not deceived.”[**] With these outrageous symptoms commenced in Scotland that cant, hypocrisy, and fanaticism which long infested that kingdom, and which, though now mollified by the lenity of the civil power, is still ready to break out on all occasions.

The queen regent, finding such obstinate zeal in the rebels, was content to embrace the counsels of Argyle and the prior of St. Andrew’s, and to form an accommodation with them. She was received into Perth, which submitted, on her promising an indemnity for past offences, and engaging not to leave any French garrison in the place. Complaints, very ill founded, immediately arose concerning the infraction of this capitulation. Some of the inhabitants, it was pretended, were molested on account of the late violences; and some companies of Scotch soldiers, supposed to be in French pay, were quartered in the town; which step, though taken on very plausible grounds, was loudly exclaimed against by the congregation.[***]

* A contemptuous term for a priest.
* Keith, p. 85, 86, 87. Knox, p. 134.
* Knox, p. 139.

It is asserted that the regent, to justify these measures, declared, that princes ought not to have their promises too strictly urged upon them; nor was any faith to be kept with heretics: and that for her part, could she find as good a color, she would willingly bereave all these men of their lives and fortunes.[*] But it is nowise likely that such expressions ever dropped from this prudent and virtuous princess. On the contrary, it appears that all these violences were disagreeable to her; that she was in this particular overruled by the authority of the French counsellors placed about her; and that she often thought, if the management of those affairs had been intrusted wholly to herself, she could easily, without force, have accommodated all differences.[**] [3]

The congregation, inflamed with their own zeal, and enraged by these disappointments, remained not long in tranquillity. Even before they left Perth, and while as yet they had no color to complain of any violation of treaty, they had signed a new covenant, in which, besides their engagements to mutual defence, they vowed, in the name of God, to employ their whole power in destroying every thing that dishonored his holy name; and this covenant was subscribed, among others, by Argyle and the prior of St. Andrew’s.[***]

* Knox, p. 139. Spotswood, p. 123.
** See note C, at the end of the volume.
*** Keith, p 89. Knox, p. 138.

These two leaders now desired no better pretence for deserting the regent and openly joining their associates, than the complaints, however doubtful, or rather false, of her breach of promise. The congregation also, encouraged by this accession of force, gave themselves up entirely to the furious zeal of Knox, and renewed at Crail, Anstruther, and other places in Fife, like depredations on the churches and monasteries with those formerly committed at Perth and Coupar. The regent, who marched against them with her army, finding their power so much increased, was glad to conclude a truce for a few days, and to pass over with her forces to the Lothians. The reformers besieged and took Perth; proceeded thence to Stirling, where they exercised their usual fury; and finding nothing able to resist them, they bent their march to Edinburgh, the inhabitants of which, as they had already anticipated the zeal of the congregation against the churches and monasteries, gladly opened their gates to them. The regent, with the few forces which remained with her, took shelter in Dunbar, where she fortified herself, in expectation of a reënforcement from France.

Meanwhile, she employed her partisans in representing to the people the dangerous consequences of this open rebellion; and she endeavored to convince them, that the Lord James, under pretence of religion, had formed the scheme of wresting the sceptre from the hands of the sovereign. By these considerations many were engaged to desert the army of the congregation; but much more by the want of pay, or any means of subsistence; and the regent, observing the malecontents to be much weakened, ventured to march to Edinburgh, with a design of suppressing them. On the interposition of the duke of Chatelrault, who still adhered to her, she agreed to a capitulation, in which she granted them a toleration of their religion, and they engaged to commit no further depredations on the churches. Soon after, they evacuated the city; and before they left it, they proclaimed the articles of agreement; but they took care to publish only the articles favorable to themselves, and they were guilty of an imposture, in adding one to the number, namely, that idolatry should not again be erected in any place where it was at that time suppressed.[*] [4]

An agreement concluded while men were in this disposition, could not be durable; and both sides endeavored to strengthen themselves as much as possible against the ensuing rupture, which appeared inevitable. The regent, having got a reënforcement of one thousand men from France, began to fortify Leith; and the congregation seduced to their party the duke of Chatelrault, who had long appeared inclined to join them, and who was at last determined by the arrival of his son, the earl of Arran, from France, where he had escaped many dangers from the jealousy, as well as bigotry, of Henry and the duke of Guise. More French troops soon after disembarked under the command of La Brosse, who was followed by the bishop of Amiens, and three doctors of the Sorbonne. These last were supplied with store of syllogisms, authorities, citations, and scholastic arguments, which they intended to oppose to the Scottish preachers, and which, they justly presumed, would acquire force, and produce conviction, by the influence of the French arms and artillery.[**]

* See note D, at the end of the volume.
** Spotswood, p. 134. Thuan. lib. xxiv. c. 10.

The constable Montmorency had always opposed the marriage of the dauphin with the queen of Scots, and had foretold that, by forming such close connections with Scotland, the ancient league would be dissolved; and the natives of that kingdom, jealous of a foreign yoke, would soon become, instead of allies, attached by interest and inclination, the most inveterate enemies to the French government. But though the event seemed now to have justified the prudence of that aged minister, it is not improbable, considering the violent counsels by which France was governed, that the insurrection was deemed a favorable event; as affording a pretence for sending over armies, for entirely subduing the country, for attainting the rebels,[*] and for preparing means thence to invade England, and support Mary’s title to the crown of that kingdom. The leaders of the congregation, well acquainted with these views, were not insensible of their danger, and saw that their only safety consisted in the vigor and success of their measures. They were encouraged by the intelligence received of the sudden death of Henry II.; and having passed an act from their own authority, depriving the queen dowager of the regency, and ordering all the French troops to evacuate the kingdom, they collected forces to put their edict in execution against them. They again became masters of Edinburgh; but found themselves unable to keep long possession of that city. Their tumultuary armies, assembled in haste, and supported by no pay, soon separated upon the least disaster, or even any delay of success; and were incapable of resisting such veteran troops as the French, who were also seconded by some of the Scottish nobility, among whom the earl of Bothwell distinguished himself., Hearing that the marquis of Elbeuf, brother to the regent, was levying an army against them in Germany, they thought themselves excusable for applying, in this extremity, to the assistance of England; and as the sympathy of religion, as well as regard to national liberty, had now counterbalanced the ancient animosity against that kingdom, this measure was the result of inclination no less than of interest.[**] [5] Maitland of Lidington, therefore, and Robert Melvil, were secretly despatched by the congregation to solicit succors from Elizabeth.

* Forbes, vol. i. p. 139. Thuan. lib. xxiv. c. 13.
** See note E, at the end of the volume.

The wise council of Elizabeth did not long deliberate in agreeing to this request, which concurred so well with the views and interests of their mistress. Cecil in particular represented to the queen, that the union of the crowns of Scotland and France, both of them the hereditary enemies of England, was ever regarded as a pernicious event; and her father, as well as Protector Somerset, had employed every expedient both of war and negotiation to prevent it: that the claim which Mary advanced to the crown rendered the present situation of England still more dangerous, and demanded on the part of the queen the greatest vigilance and precaution; that the capacity, ambition, and exorbitant views of the family of Guise, who now governed the French counsels, were sufficiently known; and they themselves made no secret of their design to place their niece on the throne of England: that deeming themselves secure of success, they had already, somewhat imprudently and prematurely, taken off the mask; and Throgmorton, the English ambassador at Paris, sent over, by every courier, incontestable proofs of their hostile intentions:[*] that they only waited till Scotland should be entirely subdued; and having thus deprived the English of the advantages resulting from their situation and naval power, they prepared means for subverting the queen’s authority: that the zealous Catholics in England, discontented with the present government, and satisfied in the legality of Mary’s title, would bring them considerable reënforcement, and would disturb every measure of defence against that formidable power: that the only expedient for preventing these designs, was to seize the present opportunity, and take advantage of a like zeal in the Protestants of Scotland; nor could any doubt be entertained with regard to the justice of a measure founded on such evident necessity, and directed only to the ends of self-preservation: that though a French war, attended with great expense, seemed the necessary consequence of supporting the malecontents in Scotland, that power, if removed to the continent, would be much less formidable; and a small disbursement at present would, in the end, be found the greatest frugality: and that the domestic dissensions of France, which every day augmented, together with the alliance of Philip, who, notwithstanding his bigotry and hypocrisy, would never permit the entire conquest of England, were sufficient to secure the queen against the dangerous ambition and resentment of the house of Guise.[**]

* Forbes, vol. i. p. 134, 136, 149, 150, 159, 165, 181, 194,
229, 231, 235—241, 253.
** Forbes, vol. i. p 387 Jebb, vol. i. p. 448. Keith,
Append. 24.

Elizabeth’s propensity to caution and economy was, though with some difficulty,[*] overcome by these powerful motives and she prepared herself to support by arms and money the declining affairs of the congregation in Scotland. She equipped a fleet, which consisted of thirteen ships of war; and giving the command of it to Winter, she sent it to the Frith of Forth: she appointed the young duke of Norfolk her lieutenant in the northern counties; and she assembled, at Berwick, an army of eight thousand men under the command of Lord Gray, warden of the east and middle marches. Though the court of France, sensible of the danger, offered her to make immediate restitution of Calais, provided she would not interpose in the affairs of Scotland, she resolutely replied, that she never would put an inconsiderable fishing-town in competition with the safety of her dominions;[**] and she still continued her preparations. She concluded a treaty of mutual defence with the congregation, which was to last during the marriage of the queen of Scots with Francis, and a year after; and she promised never to desist till the French had entirely evacuated Scotland.[***] And having thus taken all proper measures for success, and received from the Scots six hostages for the performance of articles, she ordered her fleet and army to begin their operations.

* Forbes, vol. i. p. 454, 460.
** Spotswood, p. 146.
*** Knox, p. 217. Haynes’s State Papers, vol. i. p. 153.
Rymer, tom. xv. p. 569.

1560.

The appearance of Elizabeth’s fleet in the frith disconcerted the French army, who were at that time ravaging the county of Fife; and obliged them to make a circuit by Stirling, in order to reach Leith, where they prepared themselves for defence. The English army, reënforced by five thousand Scots,[*] sat down before the place; and after two skirmishes, in the former of which the English had the advantage, in the latter the French, they began to batter the town; and, though repulsed with considerable loss in a rash and ill-conducted assault, they reduced the garrison to great difficulties. Their distress was augmented by two events; the dispersion by a storm of D’Elbeuf’s fleet, which carried a considerable army on board,[**] and the death of the queen, regent, who expired about this time in the Castle of Edinburgh; a woman endowed with all the capacity which shone forth in her family, but possessed of much more virtue and moderation than appeared in the conduct of the other branches of it. The French, who found it impossible to subsist for want of provisions, and who saw that the English were continually reënforced by fresh numbers, were obliged to capitulate; and the bishop of Valence and Count Randan, plenipotentiaries from France, signed a treaty at Edinburgh with Cecil and Dr. Wotton, whom Elizabeth had sent thither for that purpose. It was there stipulated, that the French should instantly evacuate Scotland; that the king and queen of France and Scotland should thenceforth abstain from bearing the arms of England, or assuming the title of that kingdom; that further satisfaction for the injury already done in that particular should be granted Elizabeth; and that commissioners should meet to settle this point, or, if they could not agree, that the king of Spain should be umpire between the crowns. Besides these stipulations, which regarded England, some concessions were granted to the Scots; namely, that an amnesty should be published for all past offences; that none but natives should enjoy any office in Scotland; that the states should name twenty-four persons, of whom the queen of Scots should choose seven, and the states five, and in the hands of these twelve should the whole administration be placed during their queen’s absence; and that Mary should neither make peace nor war without consent of the states.[***] In order to hasten the execution of this important treaty, Elizabeth sent ships, by which the French forces were transported into their own country.

* Haynes, vol i. p. 256, 259.
** Haynes. vol. i. p. 223.
*** Rymer, tom. xv. p. 593. Keith, p. 137. Spotswood, p.
147. Knox, p. 229.

Thus Europe saw, in the first transaction of this reign, the genius and capacity of the queen and her ministers. She discerned at a distance the danger which threatened her; and instantly took vigorous measures to prevent it. Making all possible advantages of her situation, she proceeded with celerity to a decision; and was not diverted by any offers, negotiations, or remonstrances of the French court. She stopped not till she had brought the matter to a final issue; and had converted that very power, to which her enemies trusted for her destruction, into her firmest support and security. By exacting no improper conditions from the Scottish malecontents, even during their greatest distresses, she established an entire confidence with them; and having cemented the union by all the ties of gratitude, interest, and religion, she now possessed an influence over them beyond what remained even with their native sovereign. The regard which she acquired by this dexterous and spirited conduct, gave her every where, abroad as well as at home, more authority than had attended her sister, though supported by all the power of the Spanish monarchy.[*]

The subsequent measures of the Scottish reformers tended still more to cement their union with England. Being now entirely masters of the kingdom, they made no further ceremony or scruple in fully effecting their purpose. In the treaty of Edinburgh, it had been agreed, that a parliament or convention should soon be assembled; and the leaders of the congregation, not waiting till the queen of Scots should ratify that treaty, thought themselves fully entitled, without the sovereign’s authority, immediately to summon a parliament. The reformers presented a petition to this assembly, in which they were not contented with desiring the establishment of their doctrine, they also applied for the punishment of the Catholics, whom they called vassals to the Roman harlot; and they asserted, that among all the rabble of the clergy—such is their expression—there was not one lawful minister; but that they were all of them thieves and murderers; yea, rebels and traitors to civil authority, and therefore unworthy to be suffered in any reformed commonwealth.[**] The parliament seem to have been actuated by the same spirit of rage and persecution. After ratifying a confession of faith agreeable to the new doctrines, they passed a statute against the mass, and not only abolished it in all the churches, but enacted, that whoever any where either officiated in it, or was present at it, should be chastised, for the first offence, with confiscation of goods and corporal punishment, at the discretion of the magistrate; for the second, with banishment; and for the third, with loss of life.[***]

* Forbes, vol. i. p. 354, 372. Jebb, vol. ii. p. 452.
** Knox, p. 237. 238.
*** Knox, p. 254.

A law was also voted for abolishing the papal jurisdiction in Scotland: the Presbyterian form of discipline was settled, leaving only at first some shadow of authority to certain ecclesiastics, whom they called superintendents. The prelates of the ancient faith appeared, in order to complain of great injustice committed on them by the invasion of their property, but the parliament took no notice of them; till at last these ecclesiastics, tired with fruitless attendance, departed the town. They were then cited to appear; and as nobody presented himself, it was voted by the parliament, that the ecclesiastics were entirely satisfied, and found no reason of complaint.

Sir James Sandilands, prior of St. John, was sent over to France to obtain the ratification of these acts; but was very ill received by Mary, who denied the validity of a parliament summoned without the royal consent; and she refused her sanction to those statutes. But the Protestants gave themselves little concern about their queen’s refusal. They immediately put the statutes in execution; they abolished the mass; they settled their ministers; they committed every where furious devastations on the monasteries, and even on the churches, which they thought profaned by idolatry; and deeming the property of the clergy lawful prize, they took possession, without ceremony, of the far greater part of the ecclesiastical revenues. Their new preachers, who had authority sufficient to incite them to war and insurrection, could not restrain their rapacity; and fanaticism concurring with avarice, an incurable wound was given to the papal authority in that country. The Protestant nobility and gentry, united by the consciousness of such unpardonable guilt, alarmed for their new possessions, well acquainted with the imperious character of the house of Guise, saw no safety for themselves but in the protection of England; and they despatched Morton, Glencarne, and Lidington, to express their sincere gratitude to the queen for her past favors, and represent to her the necessity of continuing them.

Elizabeth, on her part, had equal reason to maintain a union with the Scottish Protestants; and soon found that the house of Guise, notwithstanding their former disappointments, had not laid aside the design of contesting her title, and subverting her authority. Francis and Mary, whose counsels were wholly directed by them, refused to ratify the treaty of Edinburgh and showed no disposition to give her any satisfaction for that mortal affront which they had put upon her, by their openly assuming the title and arms of England. She was sensible of the danger attending such pretensions; and it was with pleasure she heard of the violent factions which prevailed in the French government, and of the opposition which had arisen against the measures of the duke of Guise. That ambitious prince, supported by his four brothers, the cardinal of Lorraine, the duke of Aumale, the marquis of Elbeuf, and the grand prior, men no less ambitious than himself, had engrossed all the authority of the crown; and as he was possessed of every quality which could command the esteem or seduce the affections of men, there appeared no end of his acquisitions and pretensions. The constable, Montmorency, who had long balanced his credit, was deprived of all power: the princes of the blood, the king of Navarre, and his brother, the prince of Condé, were entirely excluded from offices and favor: the queen mother herself, Catharine de Medicis, found her influence every day declining; and as Francis, a young prince, infirm both in mind and body, was wholly governed by his consort, who knew no law but the pleasure of her uncles, men despaired of ever obtaining freedom from the dominion of that aspiring family. It was the contests of religion which first inspired the French with courage openly to oppose their unlimited authority.

The theological disputes, first started in the north of Germany, next in Switzerland, countries at that time wholly illiterate, had long ago penetrated into France; and as they were assisted by the general discontent against the court and church of Rome, and by the zealous spirit of the age, the proselytes to the new religion were secretly increasing in every province. Henry II., in imitation of his father, Francis, had opposed the progress of the reformers; and though a prince addicted to pleasure and society, he was transported by a vehemence, as well as bigotry, which had little place in the conduct of his predecessor. Rigorous punishments had been inflicted on the most eminent of the Protestant party; and a point of honor seemed to have arisen, whether the one sect could exercise, or the other suffer, most barbarity. The death of Henry put some stop to the persecutions; and the people, who had admired the constancy of the new preachers, now heard with favor their doctrines and arguments. But the cardinal of Lorraine, as well as his brothers, who were possessed of the legal authority, thought it their interest to support the established religion; and when they revived the execution of the penal statutes, they necessarily drove the malecontent princes and nobles to embrace the protection of the new religion. The king of Navarre, a man of mild dispositions, but of a weak character, and the prince of Condé, who possessed many great qualities, having declared themselves in favor of the Protestants, that sect acquired new force from their countenance; and the admiral, Coligny, with his brother Andelot, no longer scrupled to make open profession of their communion. The integrity of the admiral, who was believed sincere in his attachment to the new doctrine, and his great reputation both for valor and conduct, for the arts of peace as well as of war brought credit to the reformers; and after a frustrated attempt of the malecontents to seize the king’s person at Amboise of which Elizabeth had probably some intelligence,[*] every place was full of distraction, and matters hastened to an open rupture between the parties. But the house of Guise, though these factions had obliged them to remit their efforts in Scotland, and had been one chief cause of Elizabeth’s success, were determined not to relinquish their authority in France, or yield to the violence of their enemies. They found an opportunity of seizing the king of Navarre and the prince of Condé; they threw the former into prison; they obtained a sentence of death against the latter; and they were proceeding to put the sentence in execution, when the king’s sudden death saved the noble prisoner, and interrupted the prosperity of the duke of Guise. The queen mother was appointed regent to her son Charles IX., now in his minority: the king of Navarre was named lieutenant-general of the kingdom: the sentence against Condé was annulled: the constable was recalled to court: and the family of Guise, though they still enjoyed great offices and great power, found a counterpoise to their authority.

* Forbes, vol. i. p. 214. Throgmorton, about this time,
unwilling to intrust to letters the great secrets committed
to him, obtained leave, under some pretext, to come over to
London.

1561.

Elizabeth was determined to make advantage of these events against the queen of Scots, whom she still regarded as a dangerous rival. She saw herself freed from the perils attending a union of Scotland with France, and from the pretensions of so powerful a prince as Francis; but she considered, at the same time, that the English Catholics, who were numerous, and who were generally prejudiced in favor of Mary’s title, would now adhere to that princess with more zealous attachment, when they saw that her succession no longer endangered the liberties of the kingdom, and was rather attended with the advantage of effecting an entire union with Scotland. She gave orders, therefore, to her ambassador, Throgmorton, a vigilant and able minister, to renew his applications to the queen of Scots, and to require her ratification of the treaty of Edinburgh. But though Mary had desisted, after her husband’s death, from bearing the arms and title of Queen of England, she still declined gratifying Elizabeth in this momentous article; and being swayed by the ambitious suggestions of her uncles, she refused to make any formal renunciation of her pretensions.

Meanwhile the queen mother of France, who imputed to Mary all the mortifications which she had met with during Francis’s lifetime, took care to retaliate on her by like injuries; and the queen of Scots, finding her abode in France disagreeable, began to think of returning to her native country. Lord James, who had been sent in deputation from the states to invite her over, seconded these intentions; and she applied to Elizabeth, by D’Oisel, for a safe-conduct, in case she should be obliged to pass through England;[*] but she received for answer, that, till she had given satisfaction, by ratifying the treaty of Edinburgh, she could expect no favor from a person whom she had so much injured.

* Goodall, vol. i. p. 175.

This denial excited her indignation; and she made no scruple of expressing her sentiments to Throgmorton, when he reiterated his applications to gratify his mistress in a demand which he represented as so reasonable. Having cleared the room of her attendants, she said to him, “How weak I may prove, or how far a woman’s frailty may transport me, I cannot tell: however, I am resolved not to have so many witnesses of my infirmity as your mistress had at her audience of my ambassador D’Oisel. There is nothing disturbs me so much, as the having asked, with so much impunity, a favor which it was of no consequence for me to obtain. I can, with God’s leave, return to my own country without her leave; as I came to France, in spite of all the opposition of her brother, King Edward: neither do I want friends both able and willing to conduct me home, as they have brought me hither; though I was desirous rather to make an experiment of your mistress’s friendship, than of the assistance of any other person. I have often heard you say, that a good correspondence between her and myself would conduce much to the security and happiness of both our kingdoms: were she well convinced of this truth, she would hardly have denied me so small a request. But perhaps she bears a better inclination to my rebellious subjects than to me, their sovereign, her equal in royal dignity, her near relation, and the undoubted heir of her kingdoms. Besides her friendship, I ask nothing at her hands: I neither trouble her, nor concern myself in the affairs of her state: not that I am ignorant, that there are now in England a great many malecontents, who are no friends to the present establishment. She is pleased to upbraid me as a person little experienced in the world: I freely own it; but age will cure that defect. However, I am already old enough to acquit myself honestly and courteously to my friends and relations, and to encourage no reports of your mistress which would misbecome a queen and her kinswoman. I would also say, by her leave, that I am a queen as well as she, and not altogether friendless: and, perhaps, I have as great a soul too; so that methinks we should be upon a level in our treatment of each other. As soon as I have consulted the states of my kingdom, I shall be ready to give her a seasonable answer; and I am the more intent on my journey, in order to make the quicker despatch in this affair. But she, it seems, intends to stop my journey; so that either she will not let me give her satisfaction, or is resolved not to be satisfied; perhaps on purpose to keep up the disagreement between us. She has often reproached me with my being young; and I must be very young indeed, and as ill advised, to treat of matters of such great concern and importance without the advice of my parliament. I have not been wanting in all friendly offices to her; but she disbelieves or overlooks them. I could heartily wish that I were as nearly allied to her in affection as in blood; for that indeed would be a most valuable alliance.”[*]

* Caballa, p. 374. Spotswood, p. 177.

Such a spirited reply, notwithstanding the obliging terms interspersed in it, was but ill fitted to conciliate friendship between these rival princesses, or cure those mutual jealousies which had already taken place. Elizabeth equipped a fleet on pretence of pursuing pirates, but probably with an intention of intercepting the queen of Scots in her return homewards. Mary embarked at Calais; and passing the English fleet in a fog, arrived safely at Leith, attended by her three uncles, the duke of Aumale, the grand prior, and the marquis of Elbeuf, together with the marquis of Damville and other French courtiers. This change of abode and situation was very little agreeable to that princess. Besides her natural prepossessions in favor of a country in which she had been educated from her earliest infancy, and where she had borne so high a rank, she could not forbear both regretting the society of that people, so celebrated for their humane disposition and their respectful attachment to their sovereign, and reflecting on the disparity of the scene which lay before her. It is said, that after she was embarked at Calais, she kept her eyes fixed on the coast of France, and never turned them from that beloved object till darkness fell, and intercepted it from her view. She then ordered a couch to be spread for her in the open air; and charged the pilot, that, if in the morning the land were still in sight, he should awake her, and afford her one parting view of that country in which all her affections were centred. The weather proved calm, so that the ship made little way in the night-time; and Mary had once more an opportunity of seeing the French coast. She sat up on her couch, and still looking towards the land, often repeated these words: “Farewell, France, farewell, I shall never see thee more.”[*] The first aspect, however, of things in Scotland was more favorable, if not to her pleasure and happiness, at least to her repose and security, than she had reason to apprehend. No sooner did the French galleys appear off Leith, than people of all ranks, who had long expected their arrival, flocked towards the shore with an earnest impatience to behold and receive their young sovereign. Some were led by duty, some by interest, some by curiosity; and all combined to express their attachment to her, and to insinuate themselves into her confidence on the commencement of her administration. She had now reached her nineteenth year; and the bloom of her youth and amiable beauty of her person were further recommended by the affability of her address, the politeness of her manners, and the elegance of her genius. Well accomplished in all the superficial but engaging graces of a court, she afforded, when better known, still more promising indications of her character; and men prognosticated both humanity from her soft and obliging deportment, and penetration from her taste in all the refined arts of music, eloquence, and poetry.[**] And as the Scots had long been deprived of the presence of their sovereign, whom they once despaired ever more to behold among them, her arrival seemed to give universal satisfaction; and nothing appeared about the court but symptoms of affection, joy, and festivity.

* Keith, p. 179. Jebb, vol. ii. p. 483.
** Buchan. lib. xvii. c. 9. Spotswood, p. 178, 179. Keith,
p. 180. Thuan. lib xxix. c. 2.

The first measures which Mary embraced confirmed all the prepossessions entertained in her favor. She followed the advice given her in France by D’Oisel and the bishop of Amiens, as well as her uncles; and she bestowed her confidence entirely on the leaders of the reformed party, who had greatest influence over the people, and who, she found, were alone able to support her government. Her brother, Lord James, whom she soon after created earl of Murray, obtained the chief authority; and after him Lidington, secretary of state, a man of great sagacity, had a principal share in her confidence. By the vigor of these men’s measures, she endeavored to establish order and justice in a country divided by public factions and private feuds; and that fierce, intractable people, unacquainted with laws and obedience, seemed, for a time, to submit peaceably to her gentle and prudent administration.

But there was one circumstance which blasted all these promising appearances, and bereaved Mary of that general favor which her agreeable manners and judicious deportment gave her just reason to expect. She was still a Papist, and though she published, soon after her arrival, a proclamation enjoining every one to submit to the established religion, the preachers and their adherents could neither be reconciled to a person polluted with so great an abomination, nor lay aside their jealousies of her future conduct. It was with great difficulty she could obtain permission for saying mass in her own chapel; and had not the people apprehended, that if she had here met with a refusal, she would instantly have returned to France, the zealots never would have granted her even that small indulgence. The cry was, “Shall we suffer that idol to be again erected within the realm?” It was asserted in the pulpit, that one mass was more terrible than ten thousand armed men landed to invade the kingdom:[*] Lord Lindesey, and the gentlemen of Fife, exclaimed, “that the idolater should die the death;” such was their expression. One that carried tapers for the ceremony of that worship was attacked and insulted in the court of the palace. And if Lord James and some popular leaders had not interposed, the most dangerous uproar was justly apprehended from the ungoverned fury of the multitude.[**]

* Knox, p. 287.
** Knox, p. 284, 285, 287. Spotswood, p. 179.

The usual prayers in the churches were to this purpose: that God would turn the queen’s heart, which was obstinate against him and his truth; or if his holy will be otherwise, that he would strengthen the hearts and hands of the elect, stoutly to oppose the rage of all tyrants.[*] Nay, it was openly called in question, whether that princess, being an idolatress, was entitled to any authority, even in civil matters.[**]

The helpless queen was every moment exposed to contumely, which she bore with benignity and patience. Soon after her arrival, she dined in the Castle of Edinburgh; and it was there contrived, that a boy, six years of age, should be let down from the roof, and should present her with a Bible, a Psalter, and the keys of the castle. Lest she should be at a loss to understand this insult on her as a Papist, all the decorations expressed the burning of Corah, Dathan, and Abiram, and other punishments inflicted by God upon idolatry.[***] The town council of Edinburgh had the assurance, from their own authority, to issue a proclamation banishing from their district “all the wicked rabble of Antichrist the pope, such as priests, monks, friars, together with adulterers and fornicators.”[****] And because the privy council suspended the magistrates for their insolence, the passionate historians[v] of that age have inferred that the queen was engaged, by a sympathy of manners, to take adulterers and fornicators under her protection. It appears probable, that the magistrates were afterwards reinstated in their office, and that their proclamation was confirmed.[v*]

* Keith, p. 179.
** Keith, p. 202.
*** Keith, p. 189.
*** Keith, p. 192.
v Knox, p. 292. Buchan. lib. xvii. c. 20. Haynes, vol. i.
p. 372.
v* Keith, p. 202.

But all the insolence of the people was inconsiderable in comparison of that which was exercised by the clergy and the preachers, who took a pride in vilifying, even to her face, this amiable princess. The assembly of the church framed an address, in which, after telling her that her mass was a bastard service of God, the fountain of all impiety, and the source of every evil which abounded in the realm, they expressed their hopes, that she would ere this time have preferred truth to her own preconceived opinion, and have renounced her religion, which, they assured her, was nothing but abomination and vanity. They said, that the present abuses of government were so enormous, that if a speedy remedy were not provided, God would not fail in his anger to strike the head and the tail, the disobedient prince and sinful people. They required, that severe punishment should be inflicted on adulterers and fornicators. And they concluded with demanding for themselves some addition both of power and property.[*]

The ringleader in all these insults on majesty was John Knox; who possessed an uncontrolled authority in the church and even in the civil affairs of the nation, and who triumphed in the contumelious usage of his sovereign. His usual appellation for the queen was Jezebel; and though she endeavored by the most gracious condescension to win his favor, all her insinuations could gain nothing on his obdurate heart. She promised him access to her whenever he demanded it; and she even desired him, if he found her blamable in any thing, to reprehend her freely in private, rather than vilify her in the pulpit before the whole people: but he plainly told her, that he had a public ministry intrusted to him; that if she would come to church, she should there hear the gospel of truth, and that it was not his business to apply to every individual, nor had he leisure for that occupation.[**] The political principles of the man, which he communicated to his brethren, were as full of sedition, as his theological were of rage and bigotry. Though he once condescended so far as to tell the queen that he would submit to her, in the same manner as Paul did to Nero,[***] he remained not long in this dutiful strain. He said to her, that “Samuel feared not to slay Agag the fat and delicate king of Amalek, whom King Saul had saved; neither spared Elias Jezebel’s false prophets, and Baal’s priests, though King Ahab was present. Phineas,” added he, “was no magistrate; yet feared he not to strike Cosbi and Zimri in the very act of filthy fornication. And so, madam, your grace may see that others than chief magistrates may lawfully inflict punishment on such crimes as are condemned by the law of God.”[****] Knox had formerly, during the reign of Mary of England, written a book against female succession to the crown: the title of it is, “The first blast of the trumpet against the monstrous regimen of women.” He was too proud either to recant the tenets of this book, or even to apologize for them; and his conduct showed that he thought no more civility than loyalty due to any of the female sex.

* Knox, p. 311, 312.
** Knox, p. 310.
*** Knox, p. 288.
**** Knox, p. 326.

The whole life of Mary was, from the demeanor of these men, filled with bitterness and sorrow. This rustic apostle scruples not, in his history, to inform us, that he once treated her with such severity, that she lost all command of temper, and dissolved in tears before him: yet so far from being moved with youth, and beauty, and royal dignity reduced to that condition, he persevered in his insolent reproofs; and when he relates this incident, he discovers a visible pride and satisfaction in his own conduct.[*] The pulpits had become mere scenes of railing against the vices of the court; among which were always noted as the principal, feasting, finery, dancing, balls, and whoredom, their necessary attendant.[**] Some ornaments, which the ladies at that time wore upon their petticoats, excited mightily the indignation of the preachers; and they affirmed, that such vanity would provoke God’s vengeance not only against these foolish women, but against the whole realm.[***]

Mary, whose age, condition, and education, invited her to liberty and cheerfulness, was curbed in all amusements by the absurd severity of these reformers; and she found every moment reason to regret her leaving that country, from whose manners she had in her early youth received the first impressions.[****] Her two uncles, the duke of Aumale and the grand prior, with the other French nobility, soon took leave of her: the marquis of Elbeuf remained some time longer; but after his departure, she was left to the society of her own subjects; men unacquainted with the pleasures of conversation, ignorant of arts and civility, and corrupted, beyond their usual rusticity, by a dismal fanaticism, which rendered them incapable of all humanity or improvement. Though Mary had made no attempt to restore the ancient religion, her Popery was a sufficient crime: though her behavior was hitherto irreproachable, and her manners sweet and engaging, her gayety and ease were interpreted as signs of dissolute vanity. And to the harsh and preposterous usage which this princess met with may, in part, be ascribed those errors of her subsequent conduct which seemed so little of a piece with the general tenor of her character.

* Knox, p. 332, 333.
** Knox, p. 322.
*** Knox, p. 330.
**** Knox, p. 294

There happened to the marquis of Elbeuf, before his departure, an adventure which, though frivolous, might enable him to give Mary’s friends in France a melancholy idea of her situation. This nobleman, with the earl of Bothwell and some other young courtiers, had been engaged, after a debauch, to pay a visit to a woman called Alison Craig, who was known to be liberal of her favors; and because they were denied admittance, they broke the windows, thrust open the door, and committed some disorders in searching for the damsel. It happened that the assembly of the church was sitting at that time, and they immediately took the matter under their cognizance. In conjunction with several of the nobility, they presented an address to the queen, which was introduced with this awful prelude: “To the queen’s majesty, and to her secret and great council, her grace’s faithful and obedient subjects, the professors of Christ Jesus’s holy evangil, wish the spirit of righteous judgment.” The tenor of the petition was that the fear of God, the duty which they owed her grace, and the terrible threatenings denounced by God against every city or country where horrible crimes were openly committed, compelled them to demand the severe punishment of such as had done what in them lay to kindle the wrath of God against the whole realm; that the iniquity of which they complained was so heinous and so horrible that they should esteem themselves accomplices in it, if they had been engaged by worldly fear, or servile complaisance, to pass it over in silence, or bury it in oblivion: that as they owed her grace obedience, in the administration of justice, so were they entitled to require of her, in return, the sharp and condign punishment of this enormity, which, they repeated it, might draw down the vengeance of God on the whole kingdom: and that they maintained it to be her duty to lay aside all private affections towards the actors in so heinous a crime, and so enormous a villany, and without delay bring them to a trial, and inflict the severest penalty upon them. The queen gave a gracious reception to his peremptory address, but because she probably thought that breaking the windows of a brothel merited not such severe reprehension, she only replied, that her uncle was a stranger, and that he was attended by a young company; but she would put such order to him and to all others that her subjects should henceforth have no reason to complain. Her passing over this incident so slightly was the source of great discontent, and was regarded as a proof of the most profligate manners.[*]

* Knox, p. 302, 303, 304. Keith, p. 509.

It is not to be omitted, that Alison Craig, the cause of all the uproar was known to entertain a commerce with the earl of Arran, who, on account of his great zeal for the reformation, was, without scruple, indulged in that enormity.[*]

Some of the populace of Edinburgh broke into the queen’s chapel during her absence, and committed outrages; for which two of them were indicted, and it was intended to bring them to a trial. Knox wrote circular letters to the most considerable zealots of the party, and charged them to appear in town and protect their brethren. The holy sacraments, he there said, are abused by profane Papists; the mass has been said; and in worshipping that idol, the priests have omitted no ceremony, not even the conjuring of their accursed water, that had ever been practised in the time of the greatest blindness. These violent measures for opposing justice were little short of rebellion; and Knox was summoned before the council to answer for his offence. The courage of the man was equal to his insolence. He scrupled not to tell the queen that the pestilent Papists who had inflamed her against these holy men were the sons of the devil; and must therefore obey the directions of their father, who had been a liar and a manslayer from the beginning. The matter ended with the full acquittal of Knox.[**] Randolph, the English ambassador in Scotland, had reason to write to Cecil, speaking of the Scottish nation, “I think marvellously of the wisdom of God, that gave this unruly, inconstant, and cumbersome people no more power nor substance; for they would otherwise run wild.”[***]

* Knox.
** Knox, p. 336, 342.
*** Keith, p. 202.

We have related these incidents at greater length than the necessity of our subject may seem to require; but even trivial circumstances, which show the manners of the age, are often more instructive, as well as entertaining, than the great transactions of wars and negotiations, which are nearly similar in all periods and in all countries of the world.

The reformed clergy in Scotland had at that time a very natural reason for their ill humor; namely, the poverty, or rather beggary, to which they were reduced. The nobility and gentry had at first laid their hands on all the property of the regular clergy, without making any provision for the friars and nuns, whom they turned out of their possessions. The secular clergy of the Catholic communion, though they lost all ecclesiastical jurisdiction, still held some of the temporalities of their benefices; and either became laymen themselves and converted them into private property, or made conveyance of them at low prices to the nobility, who thus enriched themselves by the plunder of the church. The new teachers had hitherto subsisted chiefly by the voluntary oblations of the faithful; and in a poor country, divided in religious sentiments, this establishment was regarded as very scanty and very precarious. Repeated applications were made for a legal settlement to the preachers; and though almost every thing in the kingdom was governed by their zeal and caprice, it was with difficulty that their request was at last complied with. The fanatical spirit which they indulged, and their industry in decrying the principles and practices of the Romish communion, which placed such merit in enriching the clergy, proved now a very sensible obstacle to their acquisitions. The convention, however, passed a vote,[*] by which they divided all the ecclesiastical benefices into twenty-one shares: they assigned fourteen to the ancient possessors: of the remaining seven they granted three to the crown; and if that were found to answer the public expenses, they bestowed the overplus on the reformed ministers. The queen was empowered to levy all the seven; and it was ordained that she should afterwards pay to the clergy what should be judged to suffice for their maintenance. The necessities of the crown, the rapacity of the courtiers, and the small affection which Mary bore to the Protestant ecclesiastics, rendered their revenues contemptible as well as uncertain; and the preachers, finding that they could not rival the gentry, or even the middling rank of men, in opulence and plenty, were necessitated to betake themselves to other expedients for supporting their authority. They affected a furious zeal for religion, morose manners, a vulgar and familiar, yet mysterious cant; and though the liberality of subsequent princes put them afterwards on a better footing with regard to revenue, and thereby corrected in some degree those bad habits, it must be confessed that, while many other advantages attend Presbyterian government, these inconveniences are not easily separated from the genius of that ecclesiastical polity.

* Knox, p. 296. Keith, p. 210.

The queen of Scots, destitute of all force, possessing a narrow revenue, surrounded with a factious, turbulent nobility, a bigoted people, and insolent ecclesiastics, soon found that her only expedient for maintaining tranquillity was to preserve a good correspondence with Elizabeth,[*] who, by former connections and services, had acquired such authority over all these ranks of men.

* Jebb, vol. ii. p. 456.

Soon after her arrival in Scotland, Secretary Lidington was sent to London, in order to pay her compliments to the queen, and express her desire of friendship and a good correspondence; and he received a commission from her, as well as from the nobility of Scotland, to demand, as a means of cementing this friendship, that Mary should, by act of parliament or by proclamation, (for the difference between these securities was not then deemed very considerable,) be declared successor to the crown. No request could be more unreasonable, or made at a more improper juncture. The queen replied, that Mary had once discovered her intention not to wait for the succession, but had openly, without ceremony or reserve, assumed the title of Queen of England, and had pretended a superior right to her throne and kingdom: that though her ambassadors and those of her husband, the French king, had signed a treaty, in which they renounced that claim, and promised satisfaction for so great an indignity, she was so intoxicated with this imaginary right, that she had rejected the most earnest solicitations, and even, as some endeavored to persuade her, had incurred some danger, in crossing the seas, rather than ratify that equitable treaty: that her partisans every where had still the assurance to insist on her title, and had presumed to talk of her own birth as illegitimate: that while affairs were on this footing; while a claim thus openly made, so far from being openly renounced, was only suspended till a more favorable opportunity; it would in her be the most egregious imprudence to fortify the hands of a pretender to her crown by declaring her the successor: that no expedient could be worse imagined for cementing friendship than such a declaration; and kings were often found to bear no good will to their successors, even though their own children; much more when the connection was less intimate, and when such cause of disgust and jealousy had already been given, and indeed was still continued, on the part of Mary: that though she was willing, from the amity which she bore her kinswoman, to ascribe her former pretensions to the advice of others, by whose direction she was then governed, her present refusal to relinquish them could proceed only from her own prepossessions, and was a proof that she still harbored some dangerous designs against her: that it was the nature of all men to be disgusted with the present, to entertain flattering views of futurity, to think their services ill rewarded, to expect a better recompense from the successor; and she should esteem herself scarcely half a sovereign over the English, if they saw her declare her heir, and arm her rival with authority against her own repose and safety: that she knew the inconstant nature of the people; she was acquainted with the present divisions in religion; she was not ignorant that the same party, which expected greater favor during the reign of Mary, did also imagine that the title of that princess was superior to her own: that for her part, whatever claims were advanced, she was determined to live and die queen of England; and after her death it was the business of others to examine who had the best pretensions, either by the laws or by right of blood, to the succession: that she hoped the claim of the queen of Scots would then be found solid; and, considering the injury which she herself had received, it was sufficient indulgence if she promised, in the mean time, to do nothing which might in any respect weaken or invalidate it: and that Mary, if her title were really preferable—a point which, for her own part, she had never inquired into—possessed all advantages above her rivals; who, destitute both of present power and of all support by friends, would only expose themselves to inevitable ruin, by advancing any weak, or even doubtful pretensions.[*]

These views of the queen were so prudent and judicious, that there was no likelihood of her ever departing from them: but that she might put the matter to a fuller proof, she offered to explain the words of the treaty of Edinburgh, so as to leave no suspicion of their excluding Mary’s right of succession;[**] and in this form she again required her to ratify that treaty. Matters at last came to this issue, that Mary agreed to the proposal, and offered to renounce all present pretensions to the crown of England, provided Elizabeth would agree to declare her the successor.[***] But such was the jealous character of this latter princess, that she never would consent to strengthen the interest and authority of any claimant by fixing the succession; much less would she make this concession in favor of a rival queen, who possessed such plausible pretensions for the present, and who, though she might verbally renounce them, could easily resume her claim on the first opportunity.

* Buchanan, lib. xvii. c. 14-17. Camden, p. 385. Spotswood,
p. 180, 181.
** Spotswood, p. 181.
*** Haynes, vol. i. p. 377.

Mary’s proposal, however, bore so specious an appearance of equity and justice, that Elizabeth, sensible that reason would, by superficial thinkers, be deemed to lie entirely on that side, made no more mention of the matter; and though further concessions were never made by either princess, they put on all the appearances of a cordial reconciliation and friendship with each other.

The queen observed that, even without her interposition, Mary was sufficiently depressed by the mutinous spirit of her own subjects; and instead of giving Scotland for the present any inquietude or disturbance, she employed herself, more usefully and laudably, in regulating the affairs of her own kingdom, and promoting the happiness of her people. She made some progress in paying those great debts which lay upon the crown; she regulated the coin, which had been much debased by her predecessors; she furnished her arsenals with great quantities of arms from Germany and other places; engaged her nobility and gentry to imitate her example in this particular; introduced into the kingdom the art of making gunpowder and brass cannon; fortified her frontiers on the side of Scotland; made frequent reviews of the militia; encouraged agriculture, by allowing a free exportation of corn; promoted trade and navigation; and so much increased the shipping of her kingdom, both by building vessels of force herself, and suggesting like undertakings to the merchants, that she was justly styled the restorer of naval glory, and the queen of the northern seas.[*] The natural frugality of her temper, so far from incapacitating her for these great enterprises, only enabled her to execute them with greater certainty and success; and all the world, saw in her conduct the happy effects of a vigorous perseverance in judicious and well-concerted projects.

* Camden, p. 388. Strype, vol. i. p. 230, 336, 337.

It is easy to imagine that so great a princess, who enjoyed such singular felicity and renown, would receive proposals of marriage from every one that had any likelihood of succeeding; and though she had made some public declarations in favor of a single life, few believed that she would persevere forever in that resolution. The archduke Charles, second son of the emperor,[*] as well as Casimir, son of the elector palatine, made applications to her; and as this latter prince professed the reformed religion, he thought himself, on that account, better entitled to succeed in his addresses. Eric, king of Sweden, and Adolph, duke of Holstein, were encouraged by the same views to become suitors: and the earl of Arran, heir to the crown of Scotland, was, by the states of that kingdom, recommended to her as a suitable marriage.

* Haynes, vol. i. p. 233.

Even some of her own subjects, though they did not openly declare their pretensions, entertained hopes of success. The earl of Arundel, a person declining in years, but descended from an ancient and noble family, as well as possessed of great riches, flattered himself with this prospect; as did also Sir William Pickering, a man much esteemed for his personal merit. But the person most likely to succeed, was a younger son of the late duke of Northumberland, Lord Robert Dudley, who, by means of his exterior qualities, joined to address and flattery, had become in a manner her declared favorite, and had great influence in all her counsels. The less worthy he appeared of this distinction, the more was his great favor ascribed to some violent affection, which could thus seduce the judgment of this penetrating princess; and men long expected that he would obtain the preference above so many princes and monarchs. But the queen gave all these suitors a gentle refusal, which still encouraged their pursuit; and thought that she should the better attach them to her interest, if they were still allowed to entertain hopes of succeeding in their pretensions. It is also probable that this policy was not entirely free from a mixture of female coquetry; and that, though she was determined in her own mind never to share her power with any man, she was not displeased with the courtship, solicitation, and professions of love, which the desire of acquiring so valuable a prize procured her from all quarters.

What is most singular in the conduct and character of Elizabeth is, that though she determined never to have any heir of her own body, she was not only very averse to fix any successor to the crown, but seems, also, to have resolved, as far as it lay in her power, that no one who had pretensions to the succession should ever have any heirs or successors. If the exclusion given by the will of Henry VIII. to the posterity of Margaret, queen of Scotland, was allowed to be valid, the right to the crown devolved on the house of Suffolk; and the lady Catharine Gray, younger sister to the lady Jane, was now the heir of that family. This lady had been married to Lord Herbert, son of the earl of Pembroke; but having been divorced from that nobleman, she had made a private marriage with the earl of Hertford, son of the protector; and her husband, soon after consummation, travelled into France. In a little time she appeared to be pregnant, which so enraged Elizabeth, that she threw her into the Tower, and summoned Hertford to appear, in order to answer for his misdemeanor. He made no scruple of acknowledging the marriage, which, though concluded without the queen’s consent, was entirely suitable to both parties; and for this offence he was also committed to the Tower. Elizabeth’s severity stopped not here: she issued a commission to inquire into the matter; and as Hertford could not, within the time limited, prove the nuptials by witnesses, the commerce between him and his consort was declared unlawful, and their posterity illegitimate. They were still detained in custody, but by bribing their keepers, they found means to have further intercourse; and another child appeared to be the fruit of their commerce. This was a fresh source of vexation to the queen; who made a fine of fifteen thousand pounds be set on Hertford by the star chamber and ordered his confinement to be thenceforth more rigid and severe. He lay in this condition for nine years, till the death of his wife, by freeing Elizabeth from all fears, procured him his liberty.[*] This extreme severity must be accounted for, either by the unrelenting jealousy of the queen, who was afraid lest a pretender to the succession should acquire credit by having issue; or by her malignity, which, with all her great qualities, made one ingredient in her character, and which led her to envy in others those natural pleasures of love and posterity, of which her own ambition and desire of dominion made her renounce all prospect for herself.

* Haynes, vol. i. p. 369, 378, 396. Camden, p. 389. Heylin,
p. 154.

There happened, about this time, some other events in the royal family where the queen’s conduct was more laudable. Arthur Pole and his brother, nephews to the late cardinal, and descended from the duke of Clarence, together with Anthony Fortescue, who had married a sister of these gentlemen, and some other persons, were brought to their trial for intending to withdraw into France, with a view of soliciting succors from the duke of Guise, of returning thence into Wales, and of proclaiming Mary queen of England, and Arthur Pole duke of Clarence. They confessed the indictment, but asserted that they never meant to execute these projects during the queen’s lifetime: they had only deemed such precautions requisite in case of her demise, which some pretenders to judicial astrology had assured them they might with certainty look for before the year expired. They were condemned by the jury; but received a pardon from the queen’s clemency.[*]

* Strype, vol. i. p. 333. Heylin, p. 154.

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CHAPTER XXXIX.

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ELIZABETH.

1562.

After the commencement of the religious wars in France, which rendered that flourishing kingdom, during the course of near forty years, a scene of horror and devastation, the great rival powers in Europe were Spain and England; and it was not long before an animosity, first political, then personal, broke out between the sovereigns of these countries.

Philip II. of Spain, though he reached not any enlarged views of policy, was endowed with great industry and sagacity, a remarkable caution in his enterprises, an unusual foresight in all his measures; and as he was ever cool, and seemingly unmoved by passion, and possessed neither talents nor inclination for war, both his subjects and his neighbors had reason to expect justice, happiness, and tranquillity from his administration. But prejudices had on him as pernicious effects as ever passion had on any other monarch; and the spirit of bigotry and tyranny by which he was actuated, with the fraudulent maxims which governed his counsels, excited the most violent agitation among his own people, engaged him in acts of the most enormous cruelty, and threw all Europe into combustion.

After Philip had concluded peace at Chateau-Cambresis and had remained some time in the Netherlands, in order to settle the affairs of that country, he embarked for Spain; and as the gravity of that nation, with their respectful obedience to their prince, had appeared more agreeable to his humor than the homely, familiar manners and the pertinacious liberty of the Flemings, it was expected that he would for the future reside altogether at Madrid, and would govern all his extensive dominions by Spanish ministers and Spanish counsels. Having met with a violent tempest on his voyage, he no sooner arrived in harbor than he fell on his knees; and after giving thanks for his deliverance, he vowed that his life, which was thus providentially saved, should thenceforth be entirely devoted to the extirpation of heresy.[*] His subsequent conduct corresponded to these professions. Finding that the new doctrines had penetrated into Spain, he let loose the rage of persecution against all who professed them, or were suspected of adhering to them; and by his violence he gave new edge even to the usual cruelty of priests and inquisitors. He threw into prison Constantine Ponce, who had been confessor to his father, the emperor Charles; who had attended him during his retreat; and in whose arms that great monarch had terminated his life: and after this ecclesiastic died in confinement, he still ordered him to be tried and condemned for heresy, and his statue to be committed to the flames. He even deliberated whether he should not exercise like severity against the memory of his father, who was suspected, during his later years, to have indulged a propensity towards the Lutheran principles: in his unrelenting zeal for orthodoxy, he spared neither age, sex, nor condition: he was present, with an inflexible countenance, at the most barbarous executions: he issued rigorous orders for the prosecution of heretics in Spain, Italy, the Indies, and the Low Countries: and having founded his determined tyranny on maxims of civil policy, as well as on principles of religion, he made it apparent to all his subjects, that there was no method, except the most entire compliance or most obstinate resistance, to escape or elude the severity of his vengeance.

* Thuanns, lib. xxiii. cap. 14.

During that extreme animosity which prevailed between the adherents of the opposite religions, the civil magistrate, who found it difficult, if not impossible, for the same laws to govern such enraged adversaries, was naturally led, by specious rules of prudence, in embracing one party, to declare war against the other, and to exterminate by fire and sword those bigots who, from abhorrence of his religion, had proceeded to an opposition of his power and to a hatred of his person. If any prince possessed such enlarged views as to foresee, that a mutual toleration would in time abate the fury of religious prejudices, he yet met with difficulties in reducing this principle to practice; and might deem the malady too violent to await a remedy, which, though certain, must necessarily be slow in its operation. But Philip, though a profound hypocrite, and extremely governed by self-interest seems also to have been himself actuated by an imperious bigotry; and as he employed great reflection in all his conduct, he could easily palliate the gratification of his natural temper under the color of wisdom, and find in this system no less advantage to his foreign than his domestic politics. By placing himself at the head of the Catholic party, he converted the zealots of the ancient faith into partisans of Spanish greatness; and by employing the powerful allurement of religion, he seduced every where the subjects from that allegiance which they owed to their native sovereign.

The course of events, guiding and concurring with choice, had placed Elizabeth in a situation diametrically opposite; and had raised her to be the glory, the bulwark, and the support of the numerous, though still persecuted Protestants, throughout Europe. More moderate in her temper than Philip, she found, with pleasure, that the principles of her sect required not such extreme severity in her domestic government as was exercised by that monarch; and having no object but self-preservation, she united her interests in all foreign negotiations with those who were every where struggling under oppression, and guarding themselves against ruin and extermination. The more virtuous sovereign was thus happily thrown into the more favorable cause; and fortune, in this instance, concurred with policy and nature.

During the lifetime of Henry II. of France, and of his successor, the force of these principles was somewhat restrained, though not altogether overcome, by motives of a superior interest; and the dread of uniting England with the French monarchy engaged Philip to maintain a good correspondence with Elizabeth. Yet even during this period he rejected the garter which she sent him; he refused to ratify the ancient league between the house of Burgundy and England;[*] he furnished ships to transport French forces into Scotland; he endeavored to intercept the earl of Arran, who was hastening to join the malecontents in that country; and the queen’s wisest ministers still regarded his friendship as hollow and precarious.[**]

* Digges’s Complete Ambassador, p. 369. Haynes, p. 585.
Strype vol. iv. No. 246.
** Haynes, vol. i. p. 280, 281, 283, 284.

But no sooner did the death of Francis II. put an end to Philip’s apprehensions with regard to Mary’s succession, than his animosity against Elizabeth began more openly to appear; and the interests of Spain and those of England were found opposite in every negotiation and transaction.

The two great monarchies of the continent, France and Spain, being possessed of nearly equal force, were naturally antagonists; and England, from its power and situation, was entitled to support its own dignity, as well as tranquillity, by holding the balance between them. Whatever incident, therefore, tended too much to depress one of these rival powers, as it left the other without control, might be deemed contrary to the interests of England; yet so much were these great maxims of policy overruled, during that age, by the disputes of theology, that Philip found an advantage in supporting the established government and religion of France, and Elizabeth in protecting faction and innovation.

The queen regent of France, when reinstated in authority by the death of her son Francis, had formed a plan of administration more subtle than judicious; and balancing the Catholics with the Hugonots, the duke of Guise with the prince of Condé, she endeavored to render herself necessary to both, and to establish her own dominion on their constrained obedience.[*] But the equal counterpoise of power, which, among foreign nations, is the source of tranquillity, proves always the ground of quarrel between domestic factions; and if the animosity of religion concur with the frequent occasions which present themselves of mutual injury, it is impossible during any time, to preserve a firm concord in so delicate a situation. The constable Montmorency, moved by zeal for the ancient faith, joined himself to the duke of Guise: the king of Navarre, from his inconstant temper, and his jealousy of the superior genius of his brother, embraced the same party: and Catharine, finding herself depressed by this combination, had recourse to Condé and the Hugonots, who gladly embraced the opportunity of fortifying themselves by her countenance and protection.[**]

* Davila, lib. ii.
** Davila, lib. iii

An edict had been published, granting a toleration to the Protestants; but the interested violence of the duke of Guise, covered with the pretence of religious zeal, broke through this agreement; and the two parties, after the fallacious tranquillity of a moment, renewed their mutual insults and injuries. Condé, Coligny, Andelot assembled their friends and flew to arms: Guise and Montmorency got possession of the king’s person, and constrained the queen regent to embrace their party: fourteen armies were levied and put in motion in different parts of France;[*] each province, each city, each family, was agitated with intestine rage and animosity. The father was divided against the son; brother against brother; and women themselves, sacrificing their humanity as well as their timidity to the religious fury, distinguished themselves by acts of ferocity and valor.[**] Wherever the Hugonots prevailed, the images were broken, the altars pillaged, the churches demolished, the monasteries consumed with fire: where success attended the Catholics, they burned the Bibles, rebaptized the infants, constrained married persons to pass anew through the nuptial ceremony: and plunder, desolation, and bloodshed attended equally the triumph of both parties. The parliament of Paris itself, the seat of law and justice, instead of employing its authority to compose these fatal quarrels, published an edict by which it put the sword into the hands of the enraged multitude, and empowered the Catholics every where to massacre the Hugonots:[***] and it was during this period, when men began to be somewhat enlightened, and in this nation, renowned for polished manners, that the theological rage, which had long been boiling in men’s veins, seems to have attained its last stage of virulence and ferocity.

* Father Paul, lib. vii.
** Father Paul, lib. vii.
*** Father Paul, lib. vii. Haynes, p. 391.

Philip, jealous of the progress which the Hugonots made in France, and dreading that the contagion would spread into the Low Country provinces, had formed a secret alliance with the princes of Guise, and had entered into a mutual concert for the protection of the ancient faith and the suppression of heresy. He now sent six thousand men, with some supply of money, to reënforce the Catholic party; and the prince of Condé, finding himself unequal to so great a combination, countenanced by the royal authority, was obliged to despatch the Vidame of Chartres and Briguemaut to London, in order to crave the assistance and protection of Elizabeth. Most of the province of Normandy was possessed by the Hugonots: and Condé offered to put Havre de Grace into the hands of the English; on condition that, together with three thousand man for the garrison of that place, the queen should likewise send over three thousand to defend Dieppe and Rouen, and should furnish the prince with a supply of a hundred thousand crowns.[*]

Elizabeth, besides the general and essential interest of supporting the Protestants, and opposing the rapid progress of her enemy the duke of Guise, had other motives which engaged her to accept of this proposal. When she concluded the peace at Chateau-Cambresis, she had good reason to foresee that France never would voluntarily fulfil the article which regarded the restitution of Calais; and many subsequent incidents had tended to confirm this suspicion. Considerable sums of money had been expended on the fortifications; long leases had been granted of the lands; and many inhabitants had been encouraged to build and settle there, by assurances that Calais should never be restored to the English.[**] The queen therefore wisely concluded, that, could she get possession of Havre, a place which commanded the mouth of the Seine, and was of greater importance than Calais, she should easily constrain the French to execute the treaty, and should have the glory of restoring to the crown that ancient possession, so much the favorite of the nation.

No measure could be more generally odious in France than the conclusion of this treaty with Elizabeth. Men were naturally led to compare the conduct of Guise, who had finally expelled the English, and had debarred these dangerous and destructive enemies from all access into France, with the treasonable politics of Condé, who had again granted them an entrance into the heart of the kingdom. The prince had the more reason to repent of this measure, as he reaped not from it all the advantage which he expected. Three thousand English immediately took possession of Havre and Dieppe, under the command of Sir Edward Poinings; but the latter place was found so little capable of defence, that it was immediately abandoned.[***] The siege of Rouen was already formed by the Catholics, under the command of the king of Navarre and Montmorency; and it was with difficulty that Poinings could throw a small reënforcement into the place. Though these English troops behaved with gallantry,[****] and though the king of Navarre was mortally wounded during the siege, the Catholics still continued the attack of the place, and carrying it at last by assault, put the whole garrison to the sword.

* Forbes, vol. ii. p. 48.
** Forbes, vol. ii. p. 54, 257.
*** Forbes, vol. ii. p. 199.
**** Forbes, vol. ii. p. 161.

The earl of Warwick, eldest son of the late duke of Northumberland, arrived soon after at Havre with another body of three thousand English, and took on him the command of the place.

It was expected that the French Catholics, flushed with their success at Rouen, would immediately have formed the siege of Havre, which was not as yet in any condition of defence; but the intestine disorders of the kingdom soon diverted their attention to another enterprise. Andelot, seconded by the negotiations of Elizabeth, had levied a considerable body of Protestants in Germany; and having arrived at Orleans, the seat of the Hugonots’ power, he enabled the prince of Condé and the admiral to take the field, and oppose the progress of their enemies. After threatening Paris during some time, they took their march towards Normandy, with a view of engaging the English to act in conjunction with them, and of fortifying themselves by the further assistance which they expected from the zeal and vigor of Elizabeth.[*] The Catholics, commanded by the constable, and under him by the duke of Guise, followed on their rear; and overtaking them at Dreux, obliged them to give battle. The field was fought with great obstinacy on both sides; and the action was distinguished by this singular event, that Condé and Montmorency, the commanders of the opposite armies, fell both of them prisoners into the hands of their enemies. The appearances of victory remained with Guise, but the admiral, whose fate it ever was to be defeated, and still to rise more terrible after his misfortunes, collected the remains of the army; and inspiring his own unconquerable courage and constancy into every breast, kept them in a body, and subdued some considerable places in Normandy. Elizabeth, the better to support his cause, sent him a new supply of a hundred thousand crowns; and offered, if he could find merchants to lend him the money, to give her bond for another sum of equal amount.[**]

* Forbes, vol. ii. p. 320. Davila, lib. iii.
** Forbes, vol. ii. p. 322, 347.

1563.

The expenses incurred by assisting the French Hugonots had emptied the queen’s exchequer; and in order to obtain supply, she found herself under a necessity of summoning a parliament: an expedient to which she never willingly had recourse. A little before the meeting of this assembly, she had fallen into a dangerous illness, the small-pox; and as her life, during some time, was despaired of, the people became the more sensible of their perilous situation, derived from the uncertainty, which, in case of her demise, attended the succession of the crown. The partisans of the queen of Scots, and those of the house of Suffolk, already divided the nation into factions; and every one foresaw, that, though it might be possible at present to determine the controversy by law, yet, if the throne were vacant, nothing but the sword would be able to fix a successor. The commons, therefore, on the opening of the session, voted an address to the queen; in which, after enumerating the dangers attending a broken and doubtful succession, and mentioning the evils which their fathers had experienced from the contending titles of York and Lancaster, they entreated the queen to put an end to their apprehensions, by choosing some husband, whom they promised, whoever he were, gratefully to receive, and faithfully to serve, honor, and obey: or if she had entertained any reluctance to the married state, they desired that the lawful successor might be named, at least appointed by act of parliament. They remarked, that, during all the reigns which had passed since the conquest, the nation had never before been so unhappy as not to know the person who, in case of the sovereign’s death, was legally entitled to fill the vacant throne. And they observed, that the fixed order which took place in inheriting the French monarchy, was one chief source of the usual tranquillity, as well as of the happiness, of that kingdom.[*]

* Sir Simon d’Ewes’s Journ. p. 81.

This subject, though extremely interesting to the nation, was very little agreeable to the queen; and she was sensible that great difficulties would attend every decision. A declaration in favor of the queen of Scots would form a settlement perfectly legal; because that princess was commonly allowed to possess the right of blood; and the exclusion given by Henry’s will, deriving its weight chiefly from an act of parliament, would lose all authority whenever the queen and parliament had made a new settlement, and restored the Scottish line to its place in the succession. But she dreaded giving encouragement to the Catholics, her secret enemies, by this declaration. She was sensible that every heir was, in some degree, a rival; much more one who enjoyed a claim for the present possession of the crown, and who had already advanced, in a very open manner, these dangerous pretensions. The great power of Mary, both from the favor of the Catholic princes, and her connections with the house of Guise, not to mention the force and situation of Scotland, was well known to her; and she saw no security, that this princess, if fortified by a sure prospect of succession, would not revive claims which she could never yet be prevailed on formally to relinquish. On the other hand, the title of the house of Suffolk was supported by the more zealous Protestants only; and it was very doubtful whether even a parliamentary declaration in its favor would bestow on it such validity as to give satisfaction to the people. The republican part of the constitution had not yet acquired such an ascendant as to control, in any degree, the ideas of hereditary right, and as the legality of Henry’s will was still disputed, though founded on the utmost authority which a parliament could confer, who could be assured that a more recent act would be acknowledged to have greater validity? In the frequent revolutions which had of late taken place, the right of blood had still prevailed over religious prejudices; and the nation had ever shown itself disposed rather to change its faith than the order of succession. Even many Protestants declared themselves in favor of Mary’s claim of inheritance;[*] and nothing would occasion more general disgust, than to see the queen, openly and without reserve, take part against it.

* Keith, p. 322.

The Scottish princess also, finding herself injured in so sensible a point, would thenceforth act as a declared enemy; and uniting together her foreign and domestic friends, the partisans of her present title and of her eventual succession, would soon bring matters to extremities against the present establishment. The queen, weighing all these inconveniences, which were great and urgent, was determined to keep both parties in awe, by maintaining still an ambiguous conduct; and she rather chose that the people should run the hazard of contingent events, than that she herself should visibly endanger her throne, by employing expedients, which, at best, would not bestow entire security on the nation. She gave, therefore, an evasive answer to the applications of the commons; and when the house, at the end of the session, desired, by the mouth of their speaker, further satisfaction on that head, she could not be prevailed on to make her reply more explicit. She only told them, contrary to her declarations in the beginning of her reign, that she had fixed no absolute resolution against marriage; and she added, that the difficulties attending the question of the succession were so great that she would be contented, for the sake of her people, to remain some time longer in this vale of misery; and never should depart life with satisfaction, till she had laid some solid foundation for their future security.[*]

The most remarkable law passed this session, was that which bore the title of “Assurance of the queen’s royal power over all states and subjects within her dominions.”[**] By this act, the asserting twice, by writing, word, or deed, the pope’s authority, was subjected to the penalties of treason. All persons in holy orders were bound to take the oath of supremacy; as also all who were advanced to any degree, either in the universities or in common law; all schoolmasters, officers in court, or members of parliament: and the penalty of their second refusal was treason. The first offence, in both cases, was punished by banishment and forfeiture. This rigorous statute was not extended to any of the degree of a baron; because it was not supposed that the queen could entertain any doubt with regard to the fidelity of persons possessed of such high dignity. Lord Montacute made opposition to the bill; and asserted, in favor of the Catholics, that they disputed not, they preached not, they disobeyed not the queen, they caused no trouble, no tumults among the people.[***] It is, however, probable, that some suspicions of their secret conspiracies had made the queen and parliament increase their rigor against them; though it is also more than probable, that they were mistaken in the remedy.

There was likewise another point, in which the parliament, this session, showed more the goodness of their intention than the soundness of their judgment. They passed a law against fond and fantastical prophecies, which had been observed to seduce the people into rebellion and disorder:[****] but at the same time they enacted a statute, which was most likely to increase these and such like superstitions: it was levelled against conjurations, enchantments, and witchcraft.[v]

* Sir Simon D’Ewes’s Journal, p. 75.
** 5 Eliz. c. 1.
*** Strype, vol. i. p 260.
**** 5 Eliz. c. I
v 5 Eliz. c. 16.

Witchcraft and heresy are two crimes which commonly increase by punishment, and never are so effectually suppressed as by being totally neglected. After the parliament had granted the queen a supply of one subsidy and two fifteenths, the session was finished by a prorogation. The convocation likewise voted the queen a subsidy of six shillings in the pound, payable in three years.

While the English parties exerted these calm efforts against each other in parliamentary votes and debates, the French factions, inflamed to the highest degree of animosity, continued that cruel war which their intemperate zeal, actuated by the ambition of their leaders, had kindled in the kingdom. The admiral was successful in reducing the towns of Normandy which held for the king; but he frequently complained that the numerous garrison of Havre remained totally inactive, and was not employed in any military operation against the common enemy. The queen, in taking possession of that place, had published a manifesto,[*] in which she pretended that her concern for the interests of the French king had engaged her in that measure, and that her sole intention was to oppose her enemies of the house of Guise, who held their prince in captivity, and employed his power to the destruction of his best and most faithful subjects. It was chiefly her desire to preserve appearances, joined to the great frugality of her temper, which made her at this critical juncture keep her soldiers in garrison, and restrain them from committing further hostilities upon the enemy.[**]

* Forbes, vol. ii.
** Forbes, vol. ii. p. 276, 277.

The duke of Guise, meanwhile, was aiming a mortal blow at the power of the Hugonots; and had commenced the siege of Orleans, of which Andelot was governor, and where the constable was detained prisoner. He had the prospect of speedy success in this undertaking; when he was assassinated by Poltrot, a young gentleman whose zeal, instigated (as is pretended, though without any certain foundation) by the admiral, and Beza, a famous preacher, led him to attempt that criminal enterprise. The death of this gallant prince was a sensible loss to the Catholic party; and though the cardinal of Lorraine, his brother, still supported the interests of the family, the danger of their progress appeared not so imminent either to Elizabeth or to the French Protestants. The union, therefore, between these allies, which had been cemented by their common fears, began thenceforth to be less intimate; and the leaders of the Hugonots were persuaded to hearken to terms of a separate accommodation. Condé and Montmorency held conferences for settling the peace; and as they were both of them impatient to relieve themselves from captivity, they soon came to an agreement with regard to the conditions. The character of the queen regent, whose ends were always violent, but who endeavored by subtlety and policy, rather than force, to attain them, led her to embrace any plausible terms; and in spite of the protestations of the admiral, whose sagacity could easily discover the treachery of the court, the articles of agreement were finally settled between the parties. A toleration under some restrictions was anew granted to the Protestants; a general amnesty was published; Condé was reinstated in his offices and governments; and after money was advanced for the payment of arrears due to the German troops, they were dismissed the kingdom.

By the agreement between Elizabeth and the prince of Condé, it had been stipulated,[*] that neither party should conclude peace without the consent of the other; but this article was at present but little regarded by the leaders of the French Protestants. They only comprehended her so far in the treaty, as to obtain a promise that, on her relinquishing Havre, her charges, and the money which she had advanced them, should be repaid her by the king of France, and that Calais, on the expiration of the term, should be restored to her. But she disdained to accept of these conditions; and thinking the possession of Havre a much better pledge for effecting her purpose, she sent Warwick orders to prepare himself against an attack from the now united power of the French monarchy.

The earl of Warwick, who commanded a garrison of six thousand men, besides seven hundred pioneers, had no sooner got possession of Havre, than he employed every means for putting it in a posture of defence;[**] and after expelling the French from the town, he encouraged his soldiers to make the most desperate defence against the enemy. The constable commanded the French army; the queen regent herself and the king were present in the camp; even the prince of Condé joined the king’s forces, and gave countenance to this enterprise; the admiral and Andelot alone, anxious still to preserve the friendship of Elizabeth, kept at a distance, and prudently refused to join their ancient enemies in an attack upon their allies.

* Forbes, vol. ii. p. 79.
** Forbes, vol. ii. p. 158.

From the force, and dispositions, and situation of both sides it was expected that the siege would be attended with some memorable event; yet did France make a much easier acquisition of this important place than was at first apprehended. The plague crept in among the English soldiers; and being increased by their fatigue and bad diet, (for they were but ill supplied with provisions,[*]) it made such ravages, that sometimes a hundred men a day died of it; and there remained not, at last, fifteen hundred in a condition to do duty.[**] The French, meeting with such feeble resistance, carried on their attacks successfully; and having made two breaches, each of them sixty feet wide, they prepared for a general assault, which must have terminated in the slaughter of the whole garrison.[***] Warwick, who had frequently warned the English council of the danger, and who had loudly demanded a supply of men and provisions, found himself obliged to capitulate, and to content himself with the liberty of withdrawing his garrison. The articles were no sooner signed, than Lord Clinton, the admiral, who had been detained by contrary winds, appeared off the harbor with a reënforcement of three thousand men; and found the place surrendered to the enemy. To increase the misfortune, the infected army brought the plague with them into England, where it swept off great multitudes, particularly in the city of London. Above twenty thousand persons there died of it in one year.[****] [6]

* Forbes, vol. ii. p. 377, 498.
** Forbes, vol. ii. p. 450, 458.
*** Forbes, vol. ii. p. 498.
**** See note F, at the end of the volume.

Elizabeth, whose usual vigor and foresight had not appeared in this transaction, was now glad to compound matters; and as the queen regent desired to obtain leisure, in order to prepare measures for the extermination of the Hugonots, she readily hearkened to any reasonable terms of accommodation with England.[*]

* Davila, lib. iii.

1564.

It was agreed, that the hostages which the French had given for the restitution of Calais, should be restored for two hundred and twenty thousand crowns; and that both sides should retain all their claims and pretensions.

The peace still continued with Scotland and even a cordial friendship seemed to have been cemented between Elizabeth and Mary. These princesses made profession of the most entire affection; wrote amicable letters every week to each other; and had adopted, in all appearance, the sentiments as well as style of sisters. Elizabeth punished one Hales, who had published a book against Mary’s title;[*] and as the lord keeper Bacon was thought to have encouraged Hales in this undertaking, he fell under her displeasure, and it was with some difficulty he was able to give her satisfaction, and recover her favor.[**] The two queens had agreed in the foregoing summer to an interview at York,[***] in order to remove all difficulties with regard to Mary’s ratification of the treaty of Edinburgh, and to consider of the proper method for settling the succession of England; but as Elizabeth carefully avoided touching on this delicate subject, she employed a pretence of the wars in France, which, she said, would detain her in London; and she delayed till next year the intended interview. It is also probable, that being well acquainted with the beauty, and address, and accomplishments of Mary, she did not choose to stand the comparison with regard to those exterior qualities, in which she was eclipsed by her rival; and was unwilling that a princess, who had already made great progress in the esteem and affections of the English, should have a further opportunity of increasing the number of her partisans.

* Keith, p. 252.
** Keith, p. 253.
*** Haynes, p. 388.

Mary’s close connections with the house of Guise, and her devoted attachment to her uncles, by whom she had been early educated and constantly protected, was the ground of just and insurmountable jealousy to Elizabeth, who regarded them as her mortal and declared enemies, and was well acquainted with their dangerous character and ambitious projects. They had made offer of their niece to Don Carlos, Philip’s son; to the king of Sweden, the king of Navarre, the archduke Charles, the duke of Ferrara, the cardinal of Bourbon, who had only taken deacon’s orders, from which he might easily be freed by a dispensation; and they were ready to marry her to any one who could strengthen their interests, or give inquietude and disturbance to Elizabeth.[*]

* Forbes, vol. ii. p. 287. Strype, vol. i. p. 400.

Elizabeth, on her part, was equally vigilant to prevent the execution of their schemes, and was particularly anxious lest Mary should form any powerful foreign alliance, which might tempt her to revive her pretensions to the crown, and to invade the kingdom on the side where it was weakest and lay most exposed.[*] As she believed that the marriage with the archduke Charles was the one most likely to have place, she used every expedient to prevent it; and besides remonstrating against it to Mary herself, she endeavored to draw off the archduke from that pursuit, by giving him some hopes of success in his pretensions to herself, and by inviting him to a renewal of the former treaty of marriage.[**] She always told the queen of Scots, that nothing would satisfy her but her espousing some English nobleman, who would remove all grounds of jealousy, and cement the union between the kingdoms; and she offered on this condition to have her title examined, and to declare her successor to the crown.[***] After keeping the matter in these general terms during a twelvemonth, she at last named Lord Robert Dudley, now created earl of Leicester, as the person on whom she desired that Mary’s choice should fall.

[ [!-- IMG --] [ENLARGE]

The earl of Leicester, the great and powerful favorite of Elizabeth, possessed all those exterior qualities which are naturally alluring to the fair sex; a handsome person, a polite address, an insinuating behavior; and by means of these accomplishments he had been able to blind even the penetration of Elizabeth, and conceal from her the great defects, or rather odious vices, which attended his character. He was proud, insolent, interested, ambitious; without honor, without generosity, without humanity; and atoned not for these bad qualities by such abilities or courage as could fit him for that high trust and confidence with which she always honored him. Her constant and declared attachment to him had naturally emboldened him to aspire to her bed; and in order to make way for these nuptials, he was universally believed to have murdered, in a barbarous manner, his wife, the heiress of one Robesart. The proposal of espousing Mary was by no means agreeable to him; and he always ascribed it to the contrivance of Cecil, his enemy; who, he thought, intended by that artifice to make him lose the friendship of Mary from the temerity of his pretensions, and that of Elizabeth from jealousy of his attachments to another woman.[****]

* Keith, p 247, 284.
** Melvil, p. 41.
*** Keith, p. 213, 249, 259. 265.
**** Camden, p. 396

The queen herself had not any serious intention of effecting this marriage, but as she was desirous that the queen of Scots should never have any husband, she named a man who, she believed, was not likely to be accepted of; and she hoped by that means to gain time, and elude the project of any other alliance. The earl of Leicester was too great a favorite to be parted with; and when Mary, allured by the prospect of being declared successor to the crown, seemed at last to hearken to Elizabeth’s proposal, this princess receded from her offers, and withdrew the bait which she had thrown out to her rival.[*] This duplicity of conduct, joined to some appearance of an imperious superiority assumed by her, had drawn a peevish letter from Mary; and the seemingly amicable correspondence between the two queens was, during some time, interrupted. In order to make up the breach, the queen of Scots despatched Sir James Melvil to London; who has given us in his memoirs a particular account of his negotiation.

Melvil was an agreeable courtier, a man of address and conversation; and it was recommended to him by his mistress, that, besides grave reasonings concerning politics and state affairs, he should introduce more entertaining topics of conversation, suitable to the sprightly character of Elizabeth, and should endeavor by that means to insinuate himself into her confidence. He succeeded so well, that he threw that artful princess entirely off her guard,[**] and made her discover the bottom of her heart, full of all those levities, and follies, and ideas of rivalship which possess the youngest and most frivolous of her sex.

* Keith, p. 269, 270. Appendix, p, 158. Strype, vol. i. p.
414.
** Haynes, p. 447.

He talked to her of his travels, and forgot not to mention the different dresses of the ladies in different countries, and the particular advantages of each in setting off the beauties of the shape and person. The queen said, that she had dresses of all countries; and she took care thenceforth to meet the ambassador every day apparelled in a different habit: sometimes she was dressed in the English garb, sometimes in the French, sometimes in the Italian; and she asked him which of them became her most. He answered, the Italian; a reply that he knew would be agreeable to her, because that mode showed to advantage her flowing locks, which, he remarked, though they were more red than yellow, she fancied to be the finest in the world. She desired to know of him what was reputed the best color of hair: she asked whether his queen or she had the finest hair: she even inquired which of them he esteemed the fairest person; a very delicate question, and which he prudently eluded, by saying that her majesty was the fairest person in England and his mistress in Scotland. She next demanded which of them was tallest: he replied, his queen. “Then is she too tall,” said Elizabeth; “for I myself am of a just stature.” Having learned from him that his mistress sometimes recreated herself by playing on the harpsichord, an instrument on which she herself excelled, she gave orders to Lord Hunsdon, that he should lead the ambassador, as it were casually, into an apartment where he might hear her perform; and when Melvil, as if ravished with the harmony, broke into the queen’s apartment, she pretended to be displeased with his intrusion; but still took care to ask him whether he thought Mary or her the best performer on that instrument.[*] From the whole of her behavior, Melvil thought he might, on his return, assure his mistress, that she had no reason ever to expect any cordial friendship from Elizabeth, and that all her professions of amity were full of falsehood and dissimulation.

* Melvil, p, 49, 50., Keith, p 264.

After two years had been spent in evasions and artifices, Mary’s subjects and counsellors, and probably herself, began to think it full time that some marriage were concluded; and Lord Darnley, son of the earl of Lenox, was the person in whom most men’s opinions and wishes centred. He was Mary’s cousin-german, by the lady Margaret Douglas, niece to Henry VIII., and daughter of the earl of Angus, by Margaret, queen of Scotland. He had been born and educated in England, where the earl of Lenox had constantly resided, since he had been banished by the prevailing power of the house of Hamilton; and as Darnley was now in his twentieth year, and was a very comely person, tall and delicately shaped, it was hoped that he might soon render himself agreeable to the queen of Scots. He was also by his father a branch of the same family with herself; and would, in espousing her, preserve the royal dignity in the house of Stuart: he was, after her, next heir to the crown of England; and those who pretended to exclude her on account of her being a foreigner, had endeavored to recommend his title, and give it the preference. It seemed no inconsiderable advantage, that she could, by marrying him, unite both their claims; and as he was by birth an Englishman, and could not by his power or alliances give any ground of suspicion to Elizabeth, it was hoped that the proposal of this marriage would not be unacceptable to that jealous princess.

Elizabeth was well informed of these intentions;[*] and was secretly not displeased with the projected marriage between Darnley and the queen of Scots.[**] She would rather have wished that Mary had continued forever in a single life; but finding little probability of rendering this scheme effectual, she was satisfied with a choice which freed her at once from the dread of a foreign alliance, and from the necessity of parting with Leicester, her favorite. In order to pave the way to Darnley’s marriage, she secretly desired Mary to invite Lenox into Scotland, to reverse his attainder, and to restore him to his honors and fortune.[***] And when her request was complied with, she took care, in order to preserve the friendship of the Hamiltons and her other partisans in Scotland, to blame openly this conduct of Mary.[****]

* Keith, p. 261.
** Keith, p. 280, 282. Jebb, vol. ii. p. 46.
*** Keith, p. 255, 259, 272.
**** Melvil, p. 42.

1565.

Hearing that the negotiation for Darnley’s marriage advanced apace, she gave that nobleman permission, on his first application, to follow his father into Scotland: but no sooner did she learn that the queen of Scots was taken with his figure and person, and that all measures were fixed for espousing him, than she exclaimed against the marriage; sent Throgmorton to order Darnley immediately, upon his allegiance, to return to England; threw the countess of Lenox and her second son into the Tower, where they suffered a rigorous confinement; seized all Lenox’s English estate; and, though it was impossible for her to assign one single reason for her displeasure,[*] she menaced, and, protested, and complained, as if she had suffered the most grievous injury in the world.

* Keith, p. 274, 275.

The politics of Elizabeth, though judicious, were usually full of duplicity and artifice; but never more so than in her transactions with the queen of Scots, where there entered so many little passions and narrow jealousies, that she durst not avow to the world the reasons of her conduct, scarcely to her ministers, and scarcely even to herself. But besides a womanish rivalship and envy against the marriage of this princess, she had some motives of interest for feigning a displeasure on the present occasion. It served her as a pretence for refusing to acknowledge Mary’s title to the succession of England; a point to which, for good reasons, she was determined never to consent. And it was useful to her for a purpose still more unfriendly and dangerous, for encouraging the discontents and rebellion of the Scottish nobility and ecclesiastics.[*]

Nothing can be more unhappy for a people than to be governed by a sovereign attached to a religion different from the established; and it is scarcely possible that mutual confidence can ever, in such a situation, have place between the prince and his subjects. Mary’s conduct had been hitherto in every respect unexceptionable, and even laudable; yet had she not made such progress in acquiring popularity, as might have been expected from her gracious deportment and agreeable accomplishments. Suspicions every moment prevailed on account of her attachment to the Catholic faith, and especially to her uncles, the open and avowed promoters of the scheme for exterminating the professors of the reformed religion throughout all Europe. She still refused to ratify the acts of parliament which had established the reformation; she made attempts for restoring to the Catholic bishops some part of their civil jurisdiction;[**] and she wrote a letter to the council of Trent, in which, besides professing her attachment to the Catholic faith, she took notice of her title to succeed to the crown of England, and expressed her hopes of being able, in some period, to bring back all her dominions to the bosom of the church.[***] The zealots among the Protestants were not wanting, in their turn, to exercise their insolence against her, which tended still more to alienate her from their faith. A law was enacted, making it capital, on the very first offence, to say mass any where, except in the queen’s chapel;[****] and it was with difficulty that even this small indulgence was granted her: the general assembly importuned her anew to change her religion; to renounce the blasphemous idolatry of the mass, with the tyranny of the Roman Antichrist; and to embrace the true religion of Christ Jesus.[v]

* Keith, p. 290.
** Spotswood, p. 198.
*** Father Paul, lib. vii.
**** Keith, p. 268.
v Keith, p, 545. Knox. p. 374.

As she answered in temper, that she was not yet convinced of the falsity of her religion or the impiety of the mass, and that her apostasy would lose her the friendship of her allies on the continent, they replied by assuring her, that their religion was undoubtedly the same which had been revealed by Jesus Christ, which had been preached by the apostles, and which had been embraced by the faithful in the primitive ages; that neither the religion of Turks, Jews, nor Papists was built on so solid a foundation as theirs; that they alone, of all the various species of religionists spread over the face of the earth, were so happy as to be possessed of the truth; that those who hear, or rather who gaze on the mass, allow sacrilege, pronounce blasphemy, and commit most abominable idolatry; and that the friendship of the King of kings was preferable to all the alliances in the world.[*]

The marriage of the queen of Scots had kindled afresh the zeal of the reformers, because the family of Lenox was believed to adhere to the Catholic faith; and though Darnley, who now bore the name of King Henry, went often to the established church, he could not, by this exterior compliance, gain the confidence and regard of the ecclesiastics. They rather laid hold of the opportunity to insult him to his face; and Knox scrupled not to tell him from the pulpit, that God, for punishment of the offences and ingratitude of the people, was wont to commit the rule over them to boys and women.[**] The populace of Edinburgh, instigated by such doctrines, began to meet and to associate themselves against the government.[***] But what threatened more immediate danger to Mary’s authority, were the discontents which prevailed among some of the principal nobility.

* Keith, p. 550, 551.
** Keith, p. 546. Knox, p. 381.
*** Knox, p. 377.

The duke of Chatelrault was displeased with the restoration, and still more with the aggrandizement of the family of Lenox, his hereditary enemies; and entertained fears lest his own eventual succession to the crown of Scotland should be excluded by his rival, who had formerly advanced some pretensions to it. The earl of Murray found his credit at court much diminished by the interest of Lenox and his son; and began to apprehend the revocation of some considerable grants which he had obtained from Mary’s bounty. The earls of Argyle, Rothes, and Glencairne, the lords Boyde and Ochiltry, Kirkaldy of Grange, Pittarow, were instigated by like motives; and as these were the persons who had most zealously promoted the reformation, they were disgusted to find that the queen’s favor was entirely engrossed by a new cabal, the earls of Bothwell, Athole, Sutherland, and Huntley; men who were esteemed either lukewarm in religious controversy, or inclined to the Catholic party. The same ground of discontent which in other courts is the source of intrigue, faction, and opposition, commonly produced in Scotland either projects of assassination or of rebellion; and besides mutual accusations of the former kind, which it is difficult to clear up,[*] [7] the malecontent lords, as soon as they saw the queen’s marriage entirely resolved on, entered into a confederacy for taking arms against their sovereign. They met at Stirling; pretended an anxious concern for the security of religion; framed engagements for mutual defence; and made applications to Elizabeth for assistance and protection.[**] That princess, after publishing the expressions of her displeasure against the marriage, had secretly ordered her ambassadors, Randolf and Throgmorton, to give in her name some promises of support to the malecontents; and had even sent them a supply of ten thousand pounds, to enable them to begin an insurrection.[***]

Mary was no sooner informed of the meeting at Stirling, and the movements of the lords, than she summoned them to appear at court, in order to answer for their conduct; and having levied some forces to execute the laws, she obliged the rebels to leave the low countries, and take shelter in Argyleshire. That she might more effectually cut off their resources, she proceeded with the king to Glasgow, and forced them from their retreat. They appeared at Paisley, in the neighborhood, with about a thousand horse, and passing the queen’s army, proceeded to Hamilton, thence to Edinburgh, which they entered without resistance. They expected great reënforcements in this place, from the efforts of Knox and the seditious preachers; and they beat their drums, desiring all men to enlist, and receive wages for the defence of God’s glory.[****]

* See note G, at the end of the volume.
** Keith, p. 293, 294, 300, 301.
*** Knox, p. 380. Keith, Append, p. 164. Anderson, vol. iii.
p. 194.
**** Knox, p. 381.

But the nation was in no disposition for rebellion: Mary was esteemed and beloved: her marriage was not generally disagreeable to the people: and the interested views of the malecontent lords were so well known, that their pretence of zeal for religion had little influence even on the ignorant populace.[*] The king and queen advanced to Edinburgh at the head of their army: the rebels were obliged to retire into the south; and being pursued by a force which now amounted to eighteen thousand men,[**] they found themselves under a necessity of abandoning their country, and of taking shelter in England.

Elizabeth, when she found the event so much to disappoint her expectations, thought proper to disavow all connections with the Scottish malecontents, and to declare every where, that she had never given them any encouragement, nor any promise of countenance or assistance. She even carried further her dissimulation and hypocrisy. Murray had come to London, with the abbot of Kilwinning, agent for Chatelrault; and she seduced them, by secret assurances of protection, to declare before the ambassadors of France and Spain that she had nowise contributed to their insurrection. No sooner had she extorted this confession from them, than she chased them from her presence, called them unworthy traitors, declared that their detestable rebellion was of bad example to all princes; and assured them, that as she had hitherto given them no encouragement, so should they never thenceforth receive from her any assistance or protection.[***] Throgmorton alone, whose honor was equal to his abilities, could not be prevailed on to conceal the part which he had acted in the enterprise of the Scottish rebels; and being well apprised of the usual character and conduct of Elizabeth, he had had the precaution to obtain an order of council to authorize the engagements which he had been obliged to make with them.[****]

* Knox, p. 380, 385.
** Knox, p. 388.
*** Melvil, p. 57. Knox, p. 388. Keith, p. 319. Crawford, p,
62, 63.
**** Melvil, p. 60.

The banished lords, finding themselves so harshly treated by Elizabeth, had recourse to the clemency of their own sovereign; and after some solicitation and some professions of sincere repentance, the duke of Chatelrault obtained his pardon, on condition that he should retire into France. Mary was more implacable against the ungrateful earl of Murray and the other confederates, on whom she threw the chief blame of the enterprise; but as she was continually plied with applications from their friends, and as some of her most judicious partisans in England thought, that nothing would more promote her interests in that kingdom, than the gentle treatment of men so celebrated for their zeal against the Catholic religion, she agreed to give way to her natural temper, which inclined not to severity, and she seemed determined to restore them to favor.[*] In this interval, Rambouillet arrived as ambassador from France, and brought her advice from her uncle, the cardinal of Lorraine, to whose opinion she always paid an extreme deference, by no means to pardon these Protestant leaders, who had been engaged in a rebellion against her.[**]

The two religions, in France, as well as in other parts of Europe, were rather irritated than tired with their acts of mutual violence; and the peace granted to the Hugonots, as had been foreseen by Coligny, was intended only to lull them asleep and prepare the way for their final and absolute destruction. The queen regent made a pretence of travelling through the kingdom, in order to visit the provinces, and correct all the abuses arising from the late civil war; and after having held some conferences on the frontiers with the duke of Lorraine and the duke of Savoy, she came to Bayonne, where she was met by her daughter, the queen of Spain, and the duke of Alva. Nothing appeared in the congress of these two splendid courts, but gayety, festivity, love, and joy; but amidst these smiling appearances were secretly fabricated schemes the most bloody, and the most destructive to the repose of mankind, that had ever been thought of in any age or nation. No less than a total and universal extermination of the Protestants by fire and sword was concerted by Philip and Catharine of Medicis; and Alva, agreeably to his fierce and sanguinary disposition, advised the queen regent to commence the execution of this project, by the immediate massacre of all the leaders of the Hugonots.[***]

* Melvil, p. 59, 60, 61, 62, 63. Keith, p. 322.
** Keith p. 325. Melvil, p. 63.
*** Davila, lib iii.

But that princess, though equally hardened against every humane sentiment, would not forego this opportunity of displaying her wit and refined politics; and she purposed rather by treachery and dissimulation, which she called address, to lead the Protestants into the snare, and never to draw the sword till they were totally disabled from resistance. The cardinal of Lorraine, whose character bore a greater affinity to that of Alva, was a chief author of this barbarous association against the reformers; and having connected his hopes of success with the aggrandizement of his niece, the queen of Scots, he took care that her measures should correspond to those violent counsels which were embraced by the other Catholic princes. In consequence of this scheme, he turned her from the road of clemency, which she intended to have followed, and made her resolve on the total ruin of the banished lords.[*]

1565.

A parliament was summoned at Edinburgh for attainting them; and as their guilt was palpable and avowed, no doubt was entertained but sentence would be pronounced against them. It was by a sudden and violent incident, which, in the issue, brought on the ruin of Mary herself, that they were saved from the rigor of the law.

The marriage of the queen of Scots with Lord Darnley was so natural, and so inviting in all its circumstances, that it had been precipitately agreed to by that princess and her council; and while she was allured by his youth, and beauty, and exterior accomplishments, she had at first overlooked the qualities of his mind, which nowise corresponded to the excellence of his outward figure. Violent, yet variable in his resolutions; insolent, yet credulous and easily governed by flatterers; he was destitute of all gratitude, because he thought no favors equal to his merit; and being addicted to low pleasures, he was equally incapable of all true sentiments of love and tenderness.[*] The queen of Scots, in the first effusions of her fondness, had taken a pleasure in exalting him beyond measure; she had granted him the title of king; she had joined his name with her own in all public acts; she intended to have procured him from the parliament a matrimonial crown; but having leisure afterwards to remark his weakness and vices, she began to see the danger of her profuse liberality, and was resolved thenceforth to proceed with more reserve in the trust which she should confer upon him. His resentment against this prudent conduct served but the more to increase her disgust: and the young prince, enraged at her imagined neglects, pointed his vengeance against every one whom he deemed the cause of this change in her measures and behavior.

* Melvil, p. 63. Keith’s Append. p. 176.

There was in the court one David Rizzio, who had of late obtained a very extraordinary degree of confidence and favor with the queen of Scots. He was a Piedmontese, of mean birth, son of a teacher of music, himself a musician; and finding it difficult to subsist by his art in his own country, he had followed into Scotland an ambassador, whom the duke of Savoy sent thither to pay his compliments to Mary, some time after her first arrival. He possessed a good ear, and a tolerable voice; and as that princess found him useful to complete her band of music, she retained him in her service after the departure of his master. Her secretary for French despatches having some time after incurred her displeasure, she promoted Rizzio to that office, which gave him frequent opportunities of approaching her person, and insinuating himself into her favor. He was shrewd and sensible, as well as aspiring, much beyond his rank and education; and he made so good use of the access which fortune had procured him, that he was soon regarded as the chief confidant, and even minister of the queen. He was consulted on all occasions; no favors could be obtained but by his intercession; all suitors were obliged to gain him by presents and flattery; and the man, insolent from his new exaltation, as well as rapacious in his acquisitions, soon drew on himself the hatred of the nobility and of the whole kingdom.[*] He had at first employed his credit to promote Darnley’s marriage; and a firm friendship seemed to be established between them; but on the subsequent change of the queen’s sentiments, it was easy for Henry’s friends to persuade him that Rizzio was the real author of her indifference, and even to rouse in his mind jealousies of a more dangerous nature. The favorite was of a disagreeable figure, but was not past his youth;[**] [8] and though the opinion of his criminal correspondence with Mary might seem of itself unreasonable, if not absurd, a suspicious husband could find no other means of accounting for that lavish and imprudent kindness with which she honored him.

* Keith, p. 282, 302, Crawford’s Memoirs, p. 5. Spotswood,
p. 193.
** See note H, at the end of the volume.

The rigid austerity of the ecclesiastics, who could admit of no freedoms, contributed to spread this opinion among the people; and as Rizzio was universally believed to be a pensionary of the pope’s, and to be deeply engaged in all schemes against the Protestants, any story to his and Mary’s disadvantage received an easy credit among the zealots of that communion. Rizzio, who had connected his interests with the Roman Catholics, was the declared enemy of the banished lords; and by promoting the violent prosecutions against them, he had exposed himself to the animosity of their numerous friends and retainers. A scheme was also thought to be formed for revoking some exorbitant grants made during the queen’s minority, and even the nobility, who had seized the ecclesiastical benefices, began to think themselves less secure in the possession of them.[*] The earl of Morton, chancellor, was affected by all these considerations, and still more by a rumor spread abroad, that Mary intended to appoint Rizzio chancellor in his place, and to bestow that dignity on a mean and upstart foreigner, ignorant of the laws and language of the country.[**] So indiscreet had this princess been in her kindness to Rizzio, that even that strange report met with credit, and proved a great means of accelerating the ruin of the favorite. Morton, insinuating himself into Henry’s confidence, employed all his art to inflame the discontent and jealousy of that prince; and he persuaded him, that the only means of freeing himself from the indignities under which he labored, was to bring the base stranger to the fate which he had so well merited, and which was so passionately desired by the whole nation. George Douglas, natural brother to the countess of Lenox, concurred in the same advice; and the Lords Ruthven and Lindesey, being consulted, offered their assistance in the enterprise; nor was even the earl of Lenox, the king’s father, averse to the design.[***] But as these conspirators were well acquainted with Henry’s levity, they engaged him to sign a paper, in which he avowed the undertaking, as tending to the glory of God and advancement of religion, and promised to protect them against every consequence which might ensue upon the assassination of Rizzio.[****] All these measures being concerted, a messenger was despatched to the banished lords, who were hovering near the borders; and they were invited by the king to return to their native country.

* Keith, p. 326. Melvil, p. 64.
** Buchanan, lib. xvii. c. 60. Crawford, p. 6. Spotswood, p.
194. Knox, p. 393. Jebb, vol. i. p. 456.
*** Crawford, p. 7.
**** Goodall, vol. i. p. 266. Crawford, p. 7.

This design, so atrocious in itself, was rendered still more so by the circumstances which attended its execution. Mary, who was in the sixth month of her pregnancy, was supping in private, and had at table the countess of Argyle, her natural sister, with Rizzio, and others of her servants. The king entered the room by a private passage, and stood at the back of Mary’s chair: Lord Ruthven, George Douglas, and other conspirators, being all armed, rushed in after him; and the queen of Scots, terrified with the appearance, demanded of them the reason of this rude intrusion. They told her, that they intended no violence against her person; but meant only to bring that villain, pointing to Rizzio, to his deserved punishment. Rizzio, aware of the danger, ran behind his mistress, and seizing her by the waist, called aloud to her for protection; while she interposed in his behalf, with cries, and menaces, and entreaties. The impatient assassins, regardless of her efforts, rushed upon their prey, and by overturning every thing which stood in their way, increased the horror and confusion of the scene. Douglas, seizing Henry’s dagger, stuck it in the body of Rizzio, who, screaming with fear and agony, was torn from Mary by the other conspirators, and pushed into the ante-chamber, where he was despatched with fifty-six wounds.[*]

* Melvil, p. 64. Keith, p. 330, 331. Crawford, p. 9.

The unhappy princess, informed of his fate, immediately dried her tears, and said, she would weep no more; she would now think of revenge. The insult, indeed, upon her person; the stain attempted to be fixed on her honor; the danger to which her life was exposed, on account of her pregnancy; were injuries so atrocious and so complicated, that they scarcely left room for pardon, even from the greatest lenity and mercy.

The assassins, apprehensive of Mary’s resentment, detained her prisoner in the palace; and the king dismissed all who seemed willing to attempt her rescue, by telling them, that nothing was done without his orders, and that he would be careful of the queen’s safety. Murray and the banished lords appeared two days after; and Mary, whose anger was now engrossed by injuries more recent and violent, was willingly reconciled to them; and she even received her brother with tenderness and affection. They obtained an acquittal from parliament, and were reinstated in their honors and fortunes. The accomplices also in Rizzio’s murder applied to her for a pardon; but she artfully delayed compliance, and persuaded them, that so long as she was detained in custody, and was surrounded by guards, any deed which she should sign would have no validity. Meanwhile she had gained the confidence of her husband by her persuasion and caresses and no sooner were the guards withdrawn, than she engaged him to escape with her in the night-time, and take shelter in Dunbar. Many of her subjects here offered her their services; and Mary, having collected an army, which the conspirators had no power to resist, advanced to Edinburgh, and obliged them to fly into England, where they lived in great poverty and distress. They made applications, however, to the earl of Bothwell, a new favorite of Mary’s; and that nobleman, desirous of strengthening his party by the accession of their interest, was able to pacify her resentment; and he soon after procured them liberty to return into their own country.[*]

The vengeance of the queen of Scots was implacable against her husband alone, whose person was before disagreeable to her, and who, by his violation of every tie of gratitude and duty, had now drawn on him her highest resentment. She engaged him to disown all connections with the assassins, to deny any concurrence in their crime, even to publish a proclamation containing a falsehood so notorious to the whole world;[**] and having thus made him expose himself to universal contempt, and rendered it impracticable for him ever to acquire the confidence of any party, she threw him off with disdain and indignation.[***]

* Melvil, p. 75, 76. Keith, p. 334. Knox, p, 398.
** Goodall, vol. i. p. 280. Keith, Append. p. 167.
*** Melvil, p. 66, 67.

As if she had been making an escape from him, she suddenly withdrew to Allca, a seat of the earl of Marre’s; and when Henry followed her thither, she suddenly returned to Edinburgh and give him every where the strongest proofs of displeasure, and even of antipathy. She encouraged her courtiers in their neglect of him; and she was pleased that his mean equipage and small train of attendants should draw on him the contempt of the very populace. He was permitted, however, to have apartments in the Castle of Edinburgh, which Mary had chosen for the place of her delivery. She there brought forth a son; and as this was very important news to England, as well as to Scotland, she immediately despatched Sir James Melvil to carry intelligence of the happy event to Elizabeth. Melvil tells us, that this princess, the evening of his arrival in London, had given a ball to her court at Greenwich, and was displaying all that spirit and alacrity which usually attended her on these occasions: but when news arrived of the prince of Scotland’s birth, all her joy was damped: she sunk into melancholy; she reclined her head upon her arm; and complained to some of her attendants, that the queen of Scots was mother of a fair son, while she herself was but a barren stock. Next day, however, at the reception of the ambassador, she resumed her former dissimulation, put on a joyful countenance, gave Melvil thanks for the haste he had made in conveying to her the agreeable intelligence, and expressed the utmost cordiality and friendship to her sister.[*] Some time after, she despatched the earl of Bedford, with her kinsman George Gary, son of Lord Hunsdon, in order to officiate at the baptism of the young prince; and she sent by them some magnificent presents to the queen of Scots.

The birth of a son gave additional zeal to Mary’s partisans in England;[**] and even men of the most opposite parties began to cry aloud for some settlement of the succession. These humors broke out with great vehemence in a new session of parliament, held after six prorogations. The house of peers, which had hitherto forborne to touch on this delicate point, here took the lead; and the house of commons soon after imitated the zeal of the lords. Molineux opened the matter in the lower house, and proposed, that the question of the succession and that of supply should go hand in hand; as if it were intended to constrain the queen to a compliance with the request of her parliament.[***] The courtiers endeavored to elude the debate: Sir Ralph Sadler told the house, that he had heard the queen positively affirm, that for the good of her people she was determined to marry. Secretary Cecil and Sir Francis Knollys gave their testimony to the same purpose; as did also Sir Ambrose Cave, chancellor of the duchy, and Sir Edward Rogers, comptroller of the household.[****]

* Melvil, p. 69, 70.
** Camden, p. 397.
*** D’Ewes, p. 129.
**** D’Ewes, p. 124.

Elizabeth’s ambitious and masculine character was so well known, that few members gave any credit to this intelligence; and it was considered merely as an artifice, by which she endeavored to retract that positive declaration which she had made in the beginning of her reign, that she meant to live and die a virgin. The ministers, therefore, gained nothing further by this piece of policy, than only to engage the house, for the sake of decency, to join the question of the queen’s marriage with that of a settlement of the crown; and the commons were proceeding with great earnestness in the debate, and had even appointed a committee to confer with the lords, when express orders were brought them from Elizabeth not to proceed further in the matter. Cecil told them, that she pledged to the house the word of a queen for her sincerity in her intentions to marry; that the appointment of a successor would be attended with great danger to her person; that she herself had had experience, during the reign of her sister, how much court was usually paid to the next heir, and what dangerous sacrifices men were commonly disposed to make of their present duty to their future prospects; and that she was therefore determined to delay, till a more proper opportunity, the decision of that important question.[*] The house was not satisfied with these reasons, and still less with the command prohibiting them all debate on the subject. Paul Wentworth, a spirited member, went so far as to question whether such a prohibition were not an infringement of the liberties and privileges of the house.[**] Some even ventured to violate that profound respect which had hitherto been preserved to the queen; and they affirmed, that she was bound in duty, not only to provide for the happiness of her subjects during her own life, but also to pay regard to their future security, by fixing a successor; that by an opposite conduct she showed herself the step-mother, not the natural parent of her people, and would seem desirous that England should no longer subsist than she should enjoy the glory and satisfaction of governing it; that none but timorous princes, or tyrants, or faint-hearted women, ever stood in fear of their successors; and that the affections of the people were a firm and impregnable rampart to every sovereign, who, laying aside all artifice or by-ends, had courage and magnanimity to put his sole trust in that honorable and sure defence.[***] The queen, hearing of these debates, sent for the speaker; and after reiterating her former prohibition, she bade him inform the house, that if any member remained still unsatisfied, he might appear before the privy council, and there give his reasons.[****]

* D’Ewes, p. 127, 128.
** D’Ewes, p. 128.
*** Camden, p. 400.
**** D’Ewes, p. 128.

As the members showed a disposition, notwithstanding these peremptory orders, still to proceed upon the question, Elizabeth thought proper, by a message, to revoke them, and to allow the house liberty of debate.[*] They were so mollified by this gracious condescension, that they thenceforth conducted the matter with more calmness and temper, and they even voted her a supply, to be levied at three payments, of a subsidy and a fifteenth, without annexing any condition to it.

1567.

The queen soon after dissolved the parliament, and told them, with some sharpness in the conclusion, that their proceedings had contained much dissimulation and artifice; that, under the plausible pretences of marriage and succession, many of them covered very malevolent intentions towards her; but that, however, she reaped this advantage from the attempts of these men, that she could now distinguish her friends from her enemies. “But do you think,” added she, “that I am unmindful of your future security, or will be negligent in settling the succession? That is the chief object of my concern; as I know myself to be liable to mortality. Or do you apprehend that I meant to encroach on your liberties? No: it was never my meaning; I only intended to stop you before you approached the precipice. All things have their time; and though you maybe blessed with a sovereign more wise or more learned than I, yet I assure you that no one will ever rule over you who shall be more careful of your safety. And therefore, henceforward, whether I live to see the like assembly or no, or whoever holds the reins of government, let me warn you to beware of provoking your sovereign’s patience, so far as you have done mine. But I shall now conclude, that, notwithstanding the disgusts I have received, (for I mean not to part with you in anger), the greater part of you may assure themselves that they go home in their prince’s good graces.”[**]

Elizabeth carried further her dignity on this occasion. She had received the subsidy without any condition; but as it was believed that the commons had given her that gratuity with a view of engaging her to yield to their requests, she thought proper, on her refusal, voluntarily to remit the third payment; and she said, that money in her subjects’ purses was as good to her as in her own exchequer.[***]

* D’Ewes, p. 130.
** D’Ewes, p. 116, 117.
*** J Camden, p. 400.

But though the queen was able to elude, for the present, the applications of parliament, the friends of the queen of Scots multiplied every day in England; and besides the Catholics, many of whom kept a treasonable correspondence with her, and were ready to rise at her command,[*] the court itself of Elizabeth was full of her avowed partisans. The duke of Norfolk, the earls of Leicester, Pembroke, Bedford, Northumberland, Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, and most of the considerable men in England, except Cecil, seemed convinced of the necessity of declaring her the successor. None but the more zealous Protestants adhered either to the countess of Hertford, or to her aunt, Eleanor, countess of Cumberland; and as the marriage of the former seemed liable to some objections, and had been declared invalid, men were alarmed, even on that side, with the prospect of new disputes concerning the succession. Mary’s behavior, also, so moderate towards the Protestants, and so gracious towards all men, had procured her universal respect;[**] and the public was willing to ascribe any imprudences into which she had fallen to her youth and inexperience. But all these flattering prospects were blasted by the subsequent incidents; where her egregious indiscretions, shall I say, or atrocious crimes, threw her from the height of her prosperity and involved her in infamy and in ruin.

The earl of Bothwell was of a considerable family and power in Scotland; and though not distinguished by any talents either of a civil or military nature, he had made a figure in that party which opposed the greatness of the earl of Murray and the more rigid reformers. He was a man of profligate manners; had involved his opulent fortune in great debts, and even reduced himself to beggary by his profuse expenses;[***] and seemed to have no resource but in desperate counsels and enterprises.

* Haynes, p. 446, 448.
** Melvil, p. 53, 61, 74.
*** Keith, p. 240.

He had been accused more than once of an attempt to assassinate Murray; and though the frequency of these accusations on all sides diminish somewhat the credit due to any particular imputation, they prove sufficiently the prevalence of that detestable practice in Scotland, and may in that view serve to render such rumors the more credible. This man had of late acquired the favor and entire confidence of Mary; and all her measures were directed by his advice and authority. Reports were spread of more particular intimacies between them; and these reports gained ground from the continuance, or rather increase, of her hatred towards her husband.[*] That young prince was reduced to such a state of desperation by the neglects which he underwent from his queen and the courtiers, that he had once resolved to fly secretly into France or Spain, and had even provided a vessel for that purpose.[**] Some of the most considerable nobility, on the other hand, observing her rooted aversion to him, had proposed some expedients for a divorce, and though Mary is said to have spoken honorably on the occasion, and to have embraced the proposal no further than it should be found consistent with her own honor and her son’s legitimacy,[***] men were inclined to believe, that the difficulty of finding proper means for effecting that purpose, was the real cause of laying aside all further thoughts of it. So far were the suspicions against her carried, that when Henry, discouraged with the continual proofs of her hatred, left the court and retired to Glasgow, an illness of an extraordinary nature, with which he was seized immediately on his arrival in that place, was universally ascribed by her enemies to a dose of poison, which, it was pretended, she had administered to him.

* Melvil, p. 66, 77.
** Keith, p. 345-348.
*** Camden, p. 404. Goodall’s Queen Mary, vol. ii. p. 317.

While affairs were in this situation, all those who wished well to her character, or to public tranquillity, were extremely pleased, and somewhat surprised, to hear that a friendship was again conciliated between them, that she had taken a journey to Glasgow on purpose to visit him during his sickness, that she behaved towards him with great tenderness, that she had brought him along with her, and that she appeared thenceforth determined to live with him on a footing more suitable to the connections between them. Henry, naturally uxorious, and not distrusting this sudden reconciliation, put himself implicitly into her hands, and attended her to Edinburgh. She lived in the palace of Holyrood House; but as the situation of the palace was low, and the concourse of people about the court was necessarily attended with noise, which might disturb him in his present infirm state of health, these reasons were assigned for fitting up an apartment for him in a solitary house at some distance, called the Kirk of Field. Mary here gave him marks of kindness and attachment; she conversed cordially with him; and she lay some nights in a room below his; but on the ninth of February, she told him that she would pass that night in the palace, because the marriage of one of her servants was there to be celebrated in her presence. About two o’clock in the morning, the whole town was much alarmed at hearing a great noise; and was still more astonished, when it was discovered that the noise came from the king’s house, which was blown up by gunpowder; that his dead body was found at some distance in a neighboring field; and that no marks, either of fire, contusion, or violence appeared upon it.[*]

No doubt could be entertained but Henry was murdered; and general conjecture soon pointed towards the earl of Bothwell as the author of the crime.[**] But as his favor with Mary was visible, and his power great, no one ventured to declare openly his sentiments; and all men remained in silence and mute astonishment. Voices, however, were heard in the streets, during the darkness of the night, proclaiming Bothwell, and even Mary herself, to be murderers of the king; bills were secretly affixed on the walls to the same purpose; offers were made, that, upon giving proper securities, his guilt should be openly proved; but after one proclamation from the court, offering a reward and indemnity to any one that would discover the author of that villany, greater vigilance was employed in searching out the spreaders of the libels and reports against Bothwell and the queen, than in tracing the contrivers of the king’s assassination, or detecting the regicides.[***]

The earl of Lenox, who lived at a distance from court in poverty and contempt, was roused by the report of his son’s murder, and wrote to the queen, imploring speedy justice against the assassins; among whom he named the earl of Bothwell, Sir James Balfour, and Gilbert Balfour his brother, David Chalmers, and four others of the queen’s household; all of them persons who had been mentioned in the bills affixed to the walls at Edinburgh.[****]

* It was imagined that Henry had been strangled before the
house was blown up. But this supposition is contradicted by
the confession of the criminals; and there is no necessity
to admit it in order to account for the condition of his
body. There are many instances that men’s lives have been
saved who had been blown up in ships. Had Henry fallen on
water, he had not probably been killed.
** Melvil, p. 78. Cabbala, p. 136.
*** Anderson’s Collections, vol. ii. p. 38; vol. iv. p. 167,
168. Spotswood, p. 200. Keith, p. 374.
**** Keith, p. 372. Anderson, vol. ii. p. 3.

[ [!-- IMG --] [ENLARGE]

Mary took his demand of speedy justice in a very literal sense, and allowing only fifteen days for the examination of this important affair, she sent a citation to Lenox, requiring him to appear in court, and prove his charge against Bothwell.[*] This nobleman, meanwhile, and all the other persons accused by Lenox, enjoyed their full liberty;[**] Bothwell himself was continually surrounded with armed men; [***] took his place in council;[****] lived during some time in the house with Mary;[v] and seemed to possess all his wonted confidence and familiarity with her. Even the Castle of Edinburgh, a place of great consequence in this critical time, was intrusted to him, and under him, to his creature, Sir James Balfour, who had himself been publicly charged as an accomplice in the king’s murder.[v*] Lenox, who had come as far as Stirling with a view of appearing at the trial, was informed of all these circumstances; and reflecting on the small train which attended him, he began to entertain very just apprehensions from the power, insolence, and temerity of his enemy. He wrote to Mary, desiring that the day of trial might be prorogued; and conjured her, by all the regard which she bore to her own honor, to employ more leisure and deliberation in determining a question of such extreme moment.[v**] No regard was paid to his application: the jury was enclosed, of which the earl of Caithness was chancellor; and though Lenox, foreseeing this precipitation, had ordered Cunningham, one of his retinue, to appear in court, and protest in his name against the acquittal of the criminal, the jury proceeded to a verdict.[v***] The verdict was such as it behoved them to give, where neither accuser nor witness appeared; and Bothwell was absolved from the king’s murder. The jury, however, apprehensive that their verdict would give great scandal, and perhaps expose them afterwards to some danger, entered a protest, in which they represented the necessity of their proceedings.[v****]

* Keith, p. 373.
** Keith, p. 374, 375.
*** Keith, p. 405.
**** Anderson, vol. i. p. 38, 40, 50, 52.
v Anderson, vol. ii. p. 274.
v* Spotswood, p. 201.
v** Keith, p. 375. Anderson, vol. i. p. 52.
v*** Keith, p. 376. Anderson, vol. ii. p. 106. Spotswood, p.
201.
v**** Spotswood, p. 201. Anderson, vol. i p. 113.

It is remarkable, that the indictment was laid against Bothwell for committing the crime on the ninth of February, not the tenth, the real day on which Henry was assassinated.[*] The interpretation generally put upon this error, too gross, it was thought, to have proceeded from mistake, was, that the secret council by whom Mary was governed, not trusting entirely to precipitation, violence, and authority, had provided this plea, by which they insured, at all adventures, a plausible pretence for acquitting Bothwell.

Two days after this extraordinary transaction, a parliament was held; and though the verdict in favor of Bothwell was attended with such circumstances as strongly confirmed, rather than diminished, the general opinion of his guilt, he was the person chosen to carry the royal sceptre on the first meeting of that national assembly.[**] In this parliament a rigorous act was made against those who set up defamatory bills; but no notice was taken of the king’s murder.[***] The favor which Mary openly bore to Bothwell kept every one in awe; and the effects of this terror appeared more plainly in another transaction, which ensued immediately upon the dissolution of the parliament. A bond or association was framed; in which the subscribers, after relating the acquittal of Bothwell by a legal trial, and mentioning a further offer which he had made, to prove his innocence by single combat, oblige themselves, in case any person should afterwards impute to him the king’s murder, to defend him with their whole power against such calumniators. After this promise, which implied no great assurance in Bothwell of his own innocence, the subscribers mentioned the necessity of their queen’s marriage, in order to support the government; and they recommended Bothwell to her as a husband.[****] This paper was subscribed by all the considerable nobility there present. In a country divided by violent factions, such a concurrence in favor of one nobleman, nowise distinguished above the rest, except by his flagitious conduct, could never have been obtained, had not every one been certain, at least firmly persuaded, that Mary was fully determined on this measure.[v] [9] Nor would such a motive have sufficed to influence men, commonly so stubborn and untractable, had they not been taken by surprise, been ignorant of each other’s sentiments, and overawed by the present power of the court, and by the apprehensions of further violence from persons so little governed by any principles of honor and humanity. Even with all these circumstances, the subscription to this paper may justly be regarded as a reproach to the nation.

* Keith, p. 375. Anderson, vol. ii. p. 93. Spotswood, p.
201.
** Keith, p. 78. Crawford, p. 14.
*** Keith, p. 389.
**** Keith, p. 381.
v See note I, at the end of the volume.

The subsequent measures of Bothwell were equally precipitate and audacious. Mary having gone to Stirling to pay a visit to her son, he assembled a body of eight hundred horse, on pretence of pursuing some robbers on the borders; and having waylaid her on her return, he seized her person near Edinburgh, and carried her to Dunbar, with an avowed design of forcing her to yield to his purpose. Sir James Melvil, one of her retinue, was carried along with her, and says not that he saw any signs of reluctance or constraint; he was even informed, as he tells us, by Bothwell’s officers, that the whole transaction was managed in concert with her.[*] A woman, indeed, of that spirit and resolution which is acknowledged to belong to Mary, does not usually, on these occasions, give such marks of opposition to real violence as can appear any wise doubtful or ambiguous. Some of the nobility, however, in order to put matters to further trial, sent her a private message, in which they told her, that if in reality she lay under force, they would use all their efforts to rescue her. Her answer was, that she had indeed been carried to Dunbar by violence, but ever since her arrival had been so well treated that she willingly remained with Bothwell.[**] No one gave himself thenceforth any concern to relieve her from a captivity which was believed to proceed entirely from her own approbation and connivance.

This unusual conduct was at first ascribed to Mary’s sense of the infamy attending her purposed marriage, and her desire of finding some color to gloss over the irregularity of her conduct. But a pardon, given to Bothwell a few days after, made the public carry their conjectures somewhat further. In this deed, Bothwell received a pardon for the violence committed on the queen’s person, and for “all other crimes;” a clause by which the murder of the king was indirectly forgiven. The rape was then conjectured to have been only a contrivance, in order to afford a pretence for indirectly remitting a crime, of which it would have appeared scandalous to make openly any mention.[***]

* Melvil, p. 80.
** Spotswood, p. 202.
*** Anderson, vol. iv. part ii. p. 61.

These events passed with such rapidity, that men had no leisure to admire sufficiently one incident, when they were surprised with a new one equally rare and uncommon. There still, however, remained one difficulty which it was not easy to foresee how the queen and Bothwell, determined as they were to execute their shameful purpose, could find expedients to overcome. The man who had procured the subscription of the nobility, recommending him as a husband to the queen, and who had acted this seeming violence on her person, in order to force her consent, had been married two years before to another woman; to a woman of merit, of a noble family, sister to the earl of Huntley. But persons blinded by passion, and infatuated with crime, soon shake off all appearance of decency. A suit was commenced for a divorce between Bothwell and his wife; and this suit was opened at the same instant in two different, or rather opposite courts; in the court of the archbishop of St. Andrew’s, which was Popish, and governed itself by the canon law; and in the new consistorial or commissariot court, which was Protestant, and was regulated by the principles of the reformed teachers. The plea advanced in each court was so calculated as to suit the principles which there prevailed; in the archbishop’s court, the pretence of consanguinity was employed, because Bothwell was related to his wife in the fourth degree; in the commissariot court, the accusation of adultery was made use of against him. The parties, too, who applied for the divorce, were different in the different courts: Bothwell was the person who sued in the former; his wife in the latter. And the suit in both courts was opened, pleaded, examined, and decided, with the utmost precipitation; and a sentence of divorce was pronounced in four days.[*]

* Anderson, vol. ii. p. 280.

The divorce being thus obtained, it was thought proper that Mary should be conducted to Edinburgh, and should there appear before the courts of judicature, and should acknowledge herself restored to entire freedom. This was understood to be contrived in a view of obviating all doubts with regard to the validity of her marriage. Orders were then given to publish in the church the banns between the queen and the duke of Orkney; for that was the title which he now bore; and Craig, a minister of Edinburgh, was applied to for that purpose. This clergyman, not content with having refused compliance, publicly in his sermons condemned the marriage, and exhorted all who had access to the queen, to give her their advice against so scandalous an alliance. Being called before the council to answer for this liberty, he showed a courage which might cover all the nobles with shame, on account of their tameness and servility. He said that, by the rules of the church, the earl of Bothwell, being convicted of adultery, could not be permitted to marry; that the divorce between him and his former wife was plainly procured by collusion, as appeared by the precipitation of the sentence, and the sudden conclusion of his marriage with the queen; and that all the suspicions which prevailed with regard to the king’s murder, and the queen’s concurrence in the former rape, would thence receive undoubted confirmation. He therefore exhorted Bothwell, who was present, no longer to persevere in his present criminal enterprises; and turning his discourse to the other counsellors, he charged them to employ all their influence with the queen, in order to divert her from a measure which would load her with eternal infamy and dishonor. Not satisfied even with this admonition, he took the first opportunity of informing the public, from the pulpit, of the whole transaction; and expressed to them his fears that, notwithstanding all remonstrances, their sovereign was still obstinately bent on her fatal purpose. “For himself,” he said, “he had already discharged his conscience; and yet again would take heaven and earth to witness that he abhorred and detested that marriage as scandalous and hateful in the sight of mankind; but since the great, as he perceived, either by their flattery or silence, gave countenance to the measure, he besought the faithful to pray fervently to the Almighty that a resolution, taken contrary to all law, reason, and good conscience, might, by the divine blessing, be turned to the comfort and benefit of the church and kingdom.” These speeches offended the court extremely; and Craig was anew summoned before the council, to answer for his temerity in thus passing the bounds of his commission. But he told them, that the bounds of his commission were the word of God, good laws, and natural reason; and were the Queen’s marriage tried by any of these standards, it would appear infamous and dishonorable, and would so be esteemed by the whole world. The council were so overawed by this heroic behavior in a private clergyman, that they dismissed him without further censure or punishment.[*]

* Spotswood, p. 203. Anderson, vol. ii. p. 280.

But though this transaction might have recalled Bothwell and the queen of Scots from their infatuation, and might have instructed them in the dispositions of the people, as well as in their own inability to oppose them, they were still resolute to rush forward to their own manifest destruction. The marriage was solemnized by the bishop of Orkney, a Protestant, who was afterwards deposed by the church for this scandalous compliance. Few of the nobility appeared at the ceremony: they had most of them, either from shame or fear, retired to their own houses. The French ambassador, Le Croc, an aged gentleman of honor and character, could not be prevailed on, though a dependent of the house of Guise, to countenance the marriage by his presence.[*] Elizabeth remonstrated, by friendly letters and messages, against the marriage.[**] The court of France made like opposition; but Mary, though on all other occasions she was extremely obsequious to the advice of her relations in that country, was here determined to pay no regard to their opinion.

The news of these transactions, being carried to foreign countries, filled Europe with amazement, and threw infamy, not only on the principal actors in them, but also on the whole nation, who seemed, by their submission and silence, and even by their declared approbation, to give their sanction to these scandalous practices.[***] The Scots who resided abroad met with such reproaches, that they durst nowhere appear in public; and they earnestly exhorted their countrymen at home to free them from the public odium, by bringing to condign punishment the authors of such atrocious crimes. This intelligence, with a little more leisure for reflection, roused men from their lethargy; and the rumors which, from the very beginning,[****] had been spread against Mary, as if she had concurred in the king’s murder, seemed now, by the subsequent transactions, to have received a strong confirmation and authority.

* Spotswood, p. 203. Melvil, p. 82.
** Keith, p. 392.
*** Digges, p. 14.
**** Melvil, p. 82. Keith, p. 402. Anderson, voL i. p. 128,
134, Crawford, p. 11. Keith, Pref. p. 9.

It was every where said, that even though no particular and direct proofs had as yet been produced of the queen’s guilt, the whole tenor of her late conduct was sufficient, not only to beget suspicion, but to produce entire conviction against her: that her sudden resolution of being reconciled to her husband, whom before she had long and justly hated; her bringing him to court, from which she had banished him by neglects and rigors; her fitting up separate apartments for him; were all of them circumstances which, though trivial in themselves, yet, being compared with the subsequent events, bore a very unfavorable aspect for her: that the least which, after the king’s murder, might have been expected in her situation, was a more than usual caution in her measures, and an extreme anxiety to punish the real assassins, in order to free herself from all reproach and suspicion: that no woman who had any regard to her character, would allow a man, publicly accused of her husband’s murder, so much as to approach her presence, far less give him a share in her councils, and endow him with favor and authority that an acquittal, merely in the absence of accusers, was very ill fitted to satisfy the public; especially if that absence proceeded from a designed precipitation of the sentence, and from the terror which her known friendship for the criminal had infused into every one: that the very mention of her marriage to such a person, in such circumstances, was horrible; and the contrivances of extorting a consent from the nobility, and of concerting a rape, were gross artifices, more proper to discover her guilt than prove her innocence: that where a woman thus shows a consciousness of merited reproach, and instead of correcting, provides only thin glosses to cover her exceptionable conduct, she betrays a neglect of fame, which must either be the effect or the cause of the most shameful enormities: that to espouse a man who had, a few days before, been so scandalously divorced from his wife, who, to say the least, was believed to have a few months before assassinated her husband, was so contrary to the plainest rules of behavior, that no pretence of indiscretion or imprudence could account for such a conduct: that a woman who, so soon after her husband’s death, though not attended with any extraordinary circumstances, contracts a marriage which might in itself be the most blameless, cannot escape severe censure; but one who overlooks for her pleasure so many other weighty considerations, was equally capable, in gratifying her appetites, to neglect every regard to honor and humanity: that Mary was not ignorant of the prevailing opinion of the public with regard to her own guilt, and of the inferences which would every where be drawn from her conduct; and therefore, if she still continued to pursue measures which gave such just offence, she ratified by her actions, as much as she could by the most formal confession, all the surmises and imputations of her enemies: that a prince was here murdered in the face of the world; Bothwell alone was suspected and accused; if he were innocent, nothing could absolve him, either in Mary’s eyes or those of the public, but the detection and conviction of the real assassin: yet no inquiry was made to that purpose, though a parliament had been assembled; the sovereign and wife was here plainly silent from guilt, the people from terror: that the only circumstance which opposed all these presumptions, or rather proofs, was the benignity and goodness of her preceding behavior, which seemed to remove her from all suspicions of such atrocious inhumanity; but that the characters of men were extremely variable, and persons guilty of the worst actions were not always naturally of the worst and most criminal dispositions; that a woman who, in a critical and dangerous moment, had sacrificed her honor to a man of abandoned principles, might thenceforth be led blindfold by him to the commission of the most enormous crimes, and was in reality no longer at her own disposal: and that, though one supposition was still left to alleviate her blame; namely, that Bothwell, presuming on her affection towards him, had of himself committed the crime, and had never communicated it to her; yet such a sudden and passionate love to a man whom she had long known, could not easily be accounted for, without supposing some degree of preceding guilt; and as it appeared that she was not afterwards restrained, either by shame or prudence, from incurring the highest reproach and danger, it was not likely that a sense of duty or humanity would have a more powerful influence over her.

These were the sentiments which prevailed throughout Scotland: and as the Protestant teachers, who had great authority, had long borne an animosity to Mary, the opinion of her guilt was by that means the more widely diffused, and made the deeper impression on the people. Some attempts made by Bothwell, and, as is pretended, with her consent, to get the young prince into his power, excited the most serious attention; and the principal nobility, even many of those who had formerly been constrained to sign the application in favor of Bothwells marriage, met at Stirling, and formed an association for protecting the prince, and punishing the king’s murderers.[*]

* Keith, p. 394.

The earl of Athole himself, a known Catholic, was the first author of this confederacy, the earls of Argyle, Morton, Marre, Glencairne, the lords Boyd, Lindesey, Hume, Semple, Kirkaldy of Grange, Tulibardine, and Secretary Lidington, entered zealously into it. The earl of Murray, foreseeing such turbulent times, and being desirous to keep free of these dangerous factions, had some time before desired and obtained Mary’s permission to retire into France.