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Lorraine, the uncles of his queen, brothers of the queen- seemed to have forgotten their skill, though they had regent of Scotland. They were placed at the head of lost none of their courage. Their lines of circumvalaffairs, and, as the determined champions of Popery, lation were ill-drawn; their guns were ill-directed, ther were doubly odious to Navarre and his adherents. trenches were opened in ground unfit for the purpose, Accordingly, having the secret countenance of the and they were repeatedly thrown into disorder by sorties Queen of England and other Protestant princes, Navarre, of the enemy. To make matters worse, the supplies of Condé, Coligny, admiral of France, D'Andelot, colonel the Scots became exhausted, and they began to make of the French infantry, and the cardinal of Châtillon, their usual cries to the English for more money. But nephews of the constable Montmorency, united in a from the English court came, instead of the all-needfal plot to seize the king and queen, the cardinal, and the money, signs of discouragement. Elizabeth still mainDuke of Guise, and place the government in the hands of tained her equivocal conduct, and the Lords of the Conthe princes of the blood. gregation were greatly alarmed to find her actually negotiating with the sick queen-regent for an accom modation. At the very time that the Scotch and the English were engaged in a smart action at Hawkhil!, near Lochend, during the siege, Sir James Croft and Sir George Howard were with the dying Mary of Guise in the castle of Edinburgh. Elizabeth still declared that she was not fighting against Francis and Mary, the king and queen of France and Scotland, but against their ministers in the latter country, and simply for the defence of her own realm against their attempts. She desired Sir Ralph Sadler to express her willingness to treat, and to make it clear that she was no party to any design to injure or depose the rightful queen. What she aimed at was the expulsion of the French from Scotland as dangerous to her own dominions, and he was instructed, if the old plea was raised, that the Fren.h only remained there to maintain the throne of their mistress against disaffected subjects, to state that his sovereign would not admit this plea, as it was only pretence, and would not lay down her arms till the Queci of Scots was also secured in her just power and claims.

At this moment the Duke of Norfolk received his orders to conclude the treaty with the Scottish lords at Berwick. The French ambassadors, rather than proceed to extremities, offered to withdraw the bulk of their troops from Scotland, and submit the points in dispute to the decision of Elizabeth herself. It is said that they even offered to restore Calais, and that Elizabeth replied that she could never place a fishing village in competition with the security of her dominions at large. This, however, is by no means probable, for we soon find Elizabeth herself demanding Calais as a condition of peace, and it is not to be supposed that she would not have at least deferred her plans against Scotland for the much-desired repossession of that town.

Whilst these negotiations were proceeding, the conspiracy of the French princes was defeated at Amboise through the sagacity of the Duke of Guise, and Elizabeth rather hesitated in completing her treaty with the Scots; but her Council urged her to advance, alleging that France was still on the eve of a civil war, and that she would, by backing out, lose a golden opportunity of driving the French from Scotland.

On the 27th of February, 1560, the treaty was concluded at Berwick, and in the month of March the English fleet appeared in the Forth in greater strength. D'Oyselles, the French general, managed to effect his retreat from Fife, and threw himself into Leith, where he resolved to defend himself. The queenregent, who was lying there worn out by her continual struggles for the maintenance of her daughter's throne and religion, removed, by the permission of Lord Erskine, the governor, to the castle of Edinburgh, as unable to endure the hardships and anxieties of a besieged town. On the other hand, the Duke of Norfolk had collected an army of 6,000 men in the northern counties of England, and sent it, under the command of Lord Gray de Wilton, into Scotland by land. Lord Gray marched from Berwick to Preston, where he joined the forces of the Lords of the Congregation; and whilst Winter's fleet blockaded Leith by sea, the united army invested it on the land side. It was soon known that the fleet of the Marquis d'Elbeuf had been dispersed by a tempest, and partly wrecked on the coast of Holland, so that the English and their allies had little to fear from the arrival of fresh enemies.

The siege was carried on against Leith in a manner little creditable to the ancient fame of the English; as for the Scots, Sadler said, "they could climb no walls;" that is, they were not famous for conducting sieges and taking towns by assault. The English, who had acquired great fame in that kind of warfare, now

These plausible arguments did not, however, abuz the suspicions of the Lords of the Congregation, that Elizabeth was prepared to make a peace without them nor that several of their own party, including the Dus of Chatelherault, who were lukewarm and dubious Protestants, were ready to join in it. Fortunately for the Congregation, Elizabeth and the queen-regent, undaunte and uncompromising in death, could not agree; the negotiations were broken off, and Elizabeth gave orders to renew the siege with fresh vigour, still command: her officers to "contemn no reasonable offers of agre ment" that might be made by the French.

No such offers, however, appeared likely to come fro the brave defenders of Leith. They continued to fig with a spirit and gallantry which gave them a brillian reputation all over Europe; and the English, on ther part, worked doggedly, if not skilfully, to make a brez in the walls. At length they accomplished such a breach, and rushed headlong and in blind fury to force their v into the town; but one of the storming parties lost : way, and the rest, when they reached the ramparts a raised their scaling-ladders, found them too short; 12 though they fought like bull-dogs, they were obliged: give way, leaving 1,000 of their comrades in the ditches, and mowed down by the enemy's artillery.

The queen, who had recommended treating in pr ference to fighting, was greatly chagrined by this fails. and the soldiers were much discouraged. The Govern ment sent down more money, with orders to continue the siege with all vigour, and the Duke of Norfolk

A.D. 1560.]

TREATY OF PEACE BETWEEN ENGLAND AND FRANCE.

patched fresh reinforcements of 2,000 men, with promises of more, declaring that the besiegers should not lack men whilst there were any betwixt the Trent and Tweed. The investment was thus continued with the utmost rigour, and famine became terrible within the walls.

On the 10th of June the queen-regent died in the castle. On her death-bed she earnestly entreated the Lord James, in her presence, and some others of the Lords of the Congregation, as well as her own courtiers, to support the rightful power of her daughter; but, as the events showed, and the treacherous, ambitious character of the bastard brother of Queen Mary rendered probable, to very little purpose. The queen-regent's decease, however, opened a way to negotiation. The insurrectionary feeling in France made the French court readily tender such a proposition, and it was agreed that the French and English commissioners should meet at Berwick on the 14th of June. The English commissioners were Cecil and Dr. Wotton, Dean of Canterbury; the French, Monluc, Bishop of Valence, and Count de Randon. Perhaps four more acute diplomatists never met. On the 16th of June they proceeded to Edinburgh, passing through the English camp on the way, where they were saluted by a general discharge of firearms. By the 6th of July all the conditions of peace were settled, and it was announced both to the besiegers and besieged that hostilities were at an end. Leith was surrendered, and D'Oyselles, the French commander, entertained the English and Scotch officers, by whom he had been so nearly famished, at an entertainment, "where, says Stow," was prepared for them a banquet of thirty or forty dishes, and yet not one either of flesh or fish, saving one of a powdered horse, as was avouched by one that vowed himself to have tasted thereof."

The French commissioners stood stoutly for the rights and prerogatives of the crown, but they were compelled to yield many points to the imperturbable firmness of Cecil. Dunbar and Inchkeith were surrendered as well as Leith. The French troops, expecting a small garrison in Dunbar and another in Inchkeith, were to be sent home and no more to be brought over. An indemnity for all that had passed since March, 1558, in Scotland, was granted; every man was to regain the post or position which he held before the struggle, and no Frenchman was to hold any office in that kingdom. A convention of the three estates was to be summoned by the king and queen, and four-and-twenty persons were to be named by this convention, out of whom should be chosen a council of twelve for the government of the country, of whom the queen should name seven and the estates five. The king and queen were not to declare war, or conclude peace, without the concurrence of the estates; neither the lords nor the members of the Congregation should be molested for what they had done, and the Churchmen were to be protected in their persons, rights, and properties, and to receive compensation for their losses according to the award of the estates in Parliament.

On one point, and that the chief point of the quarrel, the leaders of the Congregation did not obtain their demand, which naturally was for the establishment of their religion. We may suppose that Cecil and his colleague were not very desirous of carrying this; for the Queen of England regarded the Scotch Reformers as

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fanatical and "outré," and she especially abominated the character and doctrines of Knox. It was conceded, however, that Parliament should be summoned without delay, and that a deputation should lay this request before the king and queen.

By a second treaty betwixt England and France, it was determined that the right to the crowns of England and Ireland lay in Elizabeth, and that Mary should no longer bear the arms or use the style of these two kingdoms. Another proposition, however, was refused in this treaty, and that was the surrender of Calais to England.

The war thus brought to an end reflected little credit on the diplomatic principles of Elizabeth and her ministers, however much it might display their ability and address. To excite the subjects of a neighbouring sovereign to rebellion, at the same time that she was bound by a treaty of peace, and was solemnly professing to maintain it, can never be vindicated on any system of morals, either public or private. If Mary of Scotland infringed, by her assumption of the arms or title of Elizabeth, the treaty betwixt them, that was a cause of fair but open appeal. If Elizabeth regarded her own national tranquillity as endangered, that was another just cause of protest; if she wished to protect the interests of the struggling Protestants in Scotland, nothing could have been more honourable, had the attempt been made by open and direct means, by earnest application to Francis and Mary; but so long as Elizabeth neglected these means and offices, by fomenting clandestine resistance amongst the subjects of the Scottish queen, she at once violated every honourable principle of international law, and perpetrated a felony on the rights of sovereigns.

Cecil, whilst busy with the negotiations now terminated, saw enough of the Reformers of Scotland to convince him that the French troops would be no sooner removed than they would trample under foot all the engagements into which they had entered whilst under that restraint. This was immediately verified. The Parliament assembled on the 1st of August, and the very first act which it passed was one of abolishing the Papal jurisdiction in Scotland, and decreeing severe punishment, in the very style of the church against which they had been battling, for those who presumed to worship according to the Romish creed. A crowd of lesser barons had attended at the call of the Lords of the Congregation, so that they carried everything their own way. They prohibited mass both publicly and privately, Whoever officiated at mass, or attended it in church, chapel, or private house, was amenable to confiscation of his goods and imprisonment at the discretion of the magistrate, for the first offence; to banishment for the second; and death for the third.

A confession of faith, according to the austere model of Geneva, was framed by Knox and his confederates, and the moment that this bill was passed, was put into execution. Every member of the Parliament who refused to subscribe to this new creed was instantly expelled, and, with a strange injustice, they then called over twice the names of the ejected, and, of course, receiving no answer, refused them all compensation for their losses during the war, according to the provisions of the treaty which they thus violated.

One of the most singular proceedings of the Parlia

ment was, that it deputed the Earls of Morton and Glencairn, and Maitland of Lethington, to wait on Queen Elizabeth and propose to her a marriage with Arran, the son of the presumptive heir to the Scottish crown; a scheme supposed to originate with Cecil, who thought thus to give the queen a strong plea for uniting the kingdoms; in this, however, the queen's own obstinacy regarding matrimony defeated him.

It remained now to obtain the consent of Francis and Mary to these decisions; and Sir James Sandilands, a knight of Malta, was dispatched to Paris for this purpose. His reception was such as might be expected, more especially as the two earls had been sent to Elizabeth with the proposal of marriage. Mary refused to sanction the proceedings of a Parliament which had been summoned without her authority, and which had acted in the very face of the treaty, and sought to destroy the religion in which she had been educated. When Throckmorton waited on her for the ratification of the treaty, she declined that also, alleging that her subjects had already violated every article of it; that they had acted in absolute independence of her sanction; and that Elizabeth had not only continued to support her subjects in their disloyalty, but had herself infringed the treaty by admitting to her presence deputies from the Parliament who had proceeded without the consent of their sovereign. The princes of Lorraine, Mary's uncles, expressed the utmost indignation at the whole proceeding, and are said to have taken measures for invading Scotland with much greater forces than before, and punishing the audacious Reformers.

All such speculations were cut short by the death of Francis II., the husband of Mary, on the 2nd of December, 1560. He had always been a sickly personage, and his reign had lasted only eighteen months. His successor, Charles IX., was only nine years of age, and with a mind and constitution not exhibiting more promise of health and vigour than those of his late brother. His mother, Catherine de Medici, became regent, and his uncles of Lorraine lost the direction of affairs. Catherine and Mary were no friends; the young queen-dowager of France, only nineteen, was now treated harshly and contemptuously by the lady-regent, and she retired to Rheims, where she spent the winter amongst her relatives of Lorraine. But, if she was coldly treated by the new court of France, she was not likely to receive any the more genial treatment from her cousin of England. It were hard to say whether her own subjects of Scotland or Elizabeth contemplated her return with more aversion. Her subjects saw in her a princess whose religious ideas were totally opposed to their own, and to their schemes for its predominance. Elizabeth, though she felt that the union of France and Scotland was severed by the death of Francis, knew that Mary's beauty, accomplishments, and crown would soon attract new lovers, and that some alliance might be formed which might become as formidable as the one just extinct. In conjunction, therefore, with Mary's refractory, and, in fact, traitorous subjects, Elizabeth proceeded to take the most arbitrary and unwarrantable measures for preventing the return of the Scottish queen to her kingdom, and for dictating to her such a marriage as should suit her own views.

the Frith of Forth, and Randolph pressed the Lords of the Congregation to enter into a perpetual league with England, ere their own sovereign could return, as well as to unite in the great object of preventing their mistress marrying a foreign prince, by compelling her to give her hand to one of her own subjects. These lords of the new religion fell into Elizabeth's plans with the utmost alacrity, and promised to keep up the lucrative connection with the English court. Chatelherault, Morton, Glencairn, and Argyll promised their most devoted services; Maitland, as secretary, agreed to betray to Cecil all the plans of Mary and the party with whom she would naturally act; and the Lord James, her half-brother, proceeded to France, ostensibly to condole with his sister, but really to make himself master of her views and intentions, and, returning by England, revealed them to Elizabeth, and encouraged her to intercept the young queen by the way. Perhaps in all history there is no instance of a more dark al ungenerous conspiracy against a young and generous queen than this against Mary of Scotland.

The envoys of Elizabeth lost no time in pressing Mary to ratify the treaty. Again and again they returned to the charge, and on every occasion Mary gave the same answer-a most reasonable one-which she had given to Throckmorton-namely, that, as it was a subject which vitally affected her crown and people, as her husband was dead, and her uncles refus! to give her advice upon it lest they should seem interfere with Scotland, she could not decide till s had reached her kingdom, and had consulted with her council. She might have repeated what she had at int stated, that the treaty had been openly violated both le Elizabeth and her own subjects.

In one respect Mary was ill-advised, and that was ask permission of Elizabeth to pass through England c her way to Scotland. The proud English queen, incen at Mary's prudent resistance to her attempts to fore her into the ratification of the abused treaty, now, c D'Oyselles' preferring this request in writing, answered him with great passion, and in the presence of a crowd! court, that the Queen of Scots must ask no favour she had signed the treaty of Edinburgh. When th ungenerous and unqueenly refusal was communicat to Mary, she sent for Throckmorton, and requesting present to retire to a distance, in a manner to mark *** sense of the rude conduct of his own queen, she th addressed him :-"My lord ambassador, as I know how far I may be transported by passion, I like not have so many witnesses of my infirmity as the queyour mistress had, when she talked, not long since, M. d'Oyselles. There is nothing that doth more gri me than that I did so forget myself as to have asksit her a favour which I could well have done without. I came here in defiance of the attempts made by br brother Edward to prevent me, and, by the grase God, I will return without her leave. It is well k that I have friends and allies who have power to ast me, but I chose rather to be indebted to her friends If she choose, she may have me for a loving kinswoca and useful neighbour, for I am not going to practe against her with her subjects as she has done with me: The fleet of Winter, therefore, continued cruising in yet I know there be in her realm those that like not

A.D. 1561.]

LANDING OF MARY IN SCOTLAND.

present state of things. The queen says I am young, and lack experience. I confess I am younger than she is, yet I know how to carry myself lovingly and justly with my friends, and not to cast any word against her which may be unworthy of a queen and a kinswoman; and, by her permission, I am as much a queen as herself, and can carry my carriage as high as she knows how to do. She hath hitherto assisted my subjects against me; and now I am a widow it may be thought strange that she would hinder me in returning to my own country." She added that she had never been wanting in all friendly offices towards Elizabeth, but that she disbelieved or overlooked these offices; and that she heartily wished that she was as nearly allied to her in affection as in blood, for that would be a most valuable alliance.

Mary now prepared to make her way home by sea. Her false half-brother, the Lord James, instead of being to her, at this trying moment, a friend and staunch counsellor, was, and had long been, leagued with her most troublesome and rebellious subjects, and was expecting, by the aid of Elizabeth of England, to engross the chief power in the State, if not eventually to push his unsuspecting sister from the throne. The Roman Catholics of Scotland were quite alive to the dangers which attended their sovereign in such company, and deputed Lesley, the Bishop of Ross, a man of high integrity, which, through a long series of troubles, he manifested towards his queen, to go over and return with her. Lesley was so much alarmed by the dangers which menaced her amongst her turbulent and zealexcited subjects, that he advised her in private to extend her voyage to the Highlands, and put herself under the protection of the Earl of Huntley, who, at the head of a large army, would conduct her to her capital, and place her in safety on her throne, at the same time that he enabled her to protect the ancient religion. But Mary would not listen to anything like a return by force.

She determined to throw herself on the affections of her subjects, and to go amongst them peaceably.

The return of this youthful queen to her own country and capital is one of the saddest things on record. She had left it as a child, to avoid being forcibly seized and married, from political motives, to the boy king of England. She had been educated in all the ease and gaiety of the French court. Far removed from the perpetual storms and struggles of her own country and race, she had given herself up to the enjoyments of a peaceful and pleasant life, to social pleasures, music and poetry, in which she excelled. All that she knew of her country from history showed her a race of proud, rude, half-savage nobles, who had made the lives of her ancestors miserable; who had murdered some, pursued others with perpetual rebellions, and sent them to their graves in broken-hearted despair. All that she had heard from her own mother were the eternal details of the same conflict of weapons, factions, and opinions. With a divided people, with an aristocracy to a great extent sold to do the work of her powerful and, as it proved, deadly enemy, the Queen of England, with all the disadvantages of attractive charms and inexperienced youth, she was going, as it were, from calm sunshine to perpetual tempest, and into a very whirlpool of dark Jassions and heated antipathies, which required a far

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more vigorous hand, a far cooler and more worldly temperament than her own to steer through. If she could have known her enemies from her friends, that would have been something; but the basest and most deeply bribed traitors, the cruelest and most unfeeling of her enemies, were immediately around her throne, which they had already undermined with treason, and overshadowed with death.

Mary embarked at Calais on the 15th of August. So long as the coast of France remained in sight she continued to gaze upon it; and when at length it faded from her straining vision, she stretched her arms towards it, and exclaimed, "Farewell, beloved France, farewell! I shall never see thee more!" There had passed her youth in honour and happiness. It was the only happy portion of her short existence; and no sooner did she turn to face the dark, rude sea, than her indefatigable enemy of England appeared. Elizabeth was there by her admiral to obstruct her progress, and, if possible, to seize her person. So soon as the intention of Mary to return to Scotland was known, Elizabeth collected a squadron of men-of-war in the Downs, on pretence of cruising for pirates in the narrow seas. In defiance of this, Mary put to sea, with only two galleys and four transports, and accompanied by the Lord James, Bishop Lesley, three of her relatives, the Duke of Aumerle, the Grand Prior of France, and the Marquis d'Elbœuf, the Marquis Damville, and other French noblemen. They were not long in falling in with the English fleet; but a thick fog enabled them to escape, except one transport, on board of which was the Earl of Eglinton. Yet so near was the British admiral to the queen, that he overtook and searched two other transports containing her trunks and effects. Failing, however, of the great prize, they let the ships go, and then pretended that they were only in quest of the pirates. But, on the 12th, only three days before Mary sailed, Cecil had written to the Earl of Sussex, that "there were three ships in the North Seas to preserve the fishers from pyrates," and he added that he thought they would be sorry to see the Queen of Scots pass. Elizabeth, having missed the mark, thought it necessary to apologise for the visit of her admiral, and wrote to Mary that she had sent a few barques to sea to cruise after certain Scottish pirates at the request of the King of Spain; and Cecil wrote to Throckmorton that "the queen's majesty's ships that were on the seas to cleanse them from pirates, saw her (the Queen of Scots), and saluted her galleys; and, staying her ships, examined them gently. One they detained as vehemently suspected of piracy."

On August the 19th, after a few days' voyage, Mary landed on her rugged native shore at Leith. She had come a fortnight earlier than she had fixed, to prevent the schemes of her enemies; but the mass of the people flew to welcome her, and crowded the beach with hearty acclamations: the lords, however, says a contemporary, had taken small pains to honour her reception, and "cover the nakedness of the land." Instead of the gay palfreys of France to which she had been accustomed, in their rich accoutrements, she saw a wretched set of Highland shelties prepared to convey her and her retinue to Holyrood; and when she surveyed their tattered furniture, and mounted into the bare wooden saddle, the

past and the present came so mournfully over her, that her eyes filled with tears. The honest joy of her people, however, was an ample compensation, had she not known what ill-will lurked in the back-ground against her amongst the nobles and clergy.

Mary was unquestionably the finest woman of her time. Tall, beautiful, accomplished, in the freshness of her youth, not yet nineteen, distinguished by the most graceful manners, and the most fascinating disposition, she was formed to captivate a people sensible to such charms.

night; and such was her good-natured appreciation of the motive, that she thanked them in the morning for having really kept her awake after the fatiguing voyage. Not quite so agreeable, though, was the conduct of her liege subjects on the Sunday in her chapel, where, having ordered her chaplain to perform mass, such a riot was raised, that had not her natural brother, the Lord James Stuart, interfered, the priest would have been killed at the altar. This was a plain indication that, although the Reformers

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But she came into her country, in every past age turbulent and independent, at a crisis when the public spirit was divided and embittered by religious controversy, and she was exposed to the deepest suspicion of the reforming party, by belonging to a family notorious for its bigoted attachment to the old religion. Yet the open candour of her disposition, and her easy condescension, seemed to make a deep impression on the mass. They not only cheered her enthusiastically on the way to her ancient ancestral palace, but about 200 of the citizens of Edinburgh, playing on three-stringed fiddles, kept up a deafening serenade under her windows all

demanded liberty of conscience for themselves, they meant to allow none, and a month afterwards the same riot was renewed so violently in the royal chapel at Stirling, that Randolph, writing to Cecil, said that the Earl of Argyll and the Lord James himself this time "so disturbed the quire, that some, both priests and clerks, left their places with broken heads and bloody ears."

Mary bore this rude and disloyal conduct with admirable patience. She had the advantage of the counsels of D'Oyselles, who had spent some years in the country, and had learned the character of the people She placed the leaders of the Congregation in hoes

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