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 413 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 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 Arg 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 honou and power around her, making the Lord James her chief minister, and Maitland of Lethington her Secretary of State, both of whom, however, we are already aware, were in the pay and interests of the English queen. It was not in the nature of Knox to delay long appearing in her presence, and opening upon her the battery of his fierce zeal. 'Mr. Knox," wrote Randolph to Cecil, "spoke on Tuesday unto the queen. He knocked so hastily upon her heart that he made her weep, as well you know there be of that sex that will do that, as well for anger as for grief." Mary's feelings, undoubtedly, were those of injury and indignation at the rude violence with which the religion of her youth, of her family, of her education, and of her inmost heart, was thus attacked. According to Knox, her parents had died in such error and idolatry that they went to the regions of weeping and gnashing of teeth. Randolph continued-"I commend better the success of Mr. Knox's doctrines and preachings than the manner of them, though I acknowledge his doctrine to be sound. His daily prayer for her is that God will turn her heart, now obstinate against God and his truth; and if his holy will be otherwise, that he will strengthen the hands and hearts of the chosen and the elect, stoutly to withstand the rage of tyrants." But it was not merely the religion of Queen Mary which was exposed to this cynical and domineering spirit: the most innocent actions of her life, the most graceful and innocuous of her acquirements, were subjected to the iron shears of the Calvinistic philosophy. Mary had been accustomed to the enjoyment of music and the exhilaration of a social dance. All this was vile and scandalous in the eyes of Knox and his associates. She could not follow her hawks to the field, nor scarcely enjoy the pleasure of a ride amid her court, without being denounced as a vain and sinful Jezebel. "It is difficult," says Knight's History, "to conceive a greater vulgarity of ideas or coarseness of language than that in which the Presbyterian clergy assailed these pastimes, which can be only sinful in excess-an excess not proved in the case of the queen. The preachers, one and all, were at least as bold in public as John Knox had been in his private conference. Every pulpit and hill-side was made to shake with awful denunciations of God's wrath and vengeance; and, following the example of their leader, they affirmed that, instead of dancing and singing, and hearing vile masses-the worst offence of all-the queen ought to go constantly to the kirk and hear them preach the only true doctrine. It was repeated daily that idolatry was worthy of death; that Papistry was rank idolatry; that the person who upheld or in any way defended the Roman Church was on the high-road to hell, however sincerely convinced of his religion being the true one. This sour spirit fermented wonderfully among the citizens of Edinburgh. The town-council, of their own authority, issued a proclamation, banishing from their town all the wicked rabble of antichrist, the Pope-such as priests, monks, and friars, together with all adulterers and fornicators. The Privy Council, indignant at this assumption of an authority which could only belong to the sovereign and the Parliament, suspended the magistrates; and then the magistrates, the preachers, and the people declared that the queen, by an unrighteous sympathy, made herself the protector of adulterers and fornicators. Before any circumstance had occurred calculated to throw suspicion on Mary's conduct, either as a queen or a woman, she was openly called Jezebel in the pulpit; and this became the appellation by which John Knox usually designated the sovereign. It was in vain that Mary tried to win the favour of the zealous reformer. She promised him ready access to her whenever he should desire it; and entreated him, if he found her conduct blameable, to reprehend her in private rather than vilify her in the kirk before the whole people. But Knox, whose notions of the rights of his clerical office were of the most towering kind, and who, upon other motives besides those connected with religion, had declared a female reign to be an abomination, was not willing to gratify the queen in any of her demands. He told her it was her duty to go to kirk to hear him, not his duty to wait upon her; and then came the usual addition, that if she gave up her mass-priest, and diligently attended upon the servants of the Lord, her soul might possibly be saved and her kingdom spared the judgments of an offended God. There was certainly a Calvinistic republicanism interwoven with this wonderful man's religious creed. Elizabeth blamed Mary that she had not sufficiently conformed to the advice of the Protestant teachers; but if Elizabeth herself had had to do with such a preacher as John Knox, she would, having the power, have sent him to the Marshalses in one week, and to the pillory, or a worse place, in the next." It is, perhaps, impossible to conceive a situation more appalling than that of this young and accomplished queen suddenly thrown into the midst of this effervescence of spiritual pride and boorish dogmatism, so totally insensible to the finer influences of social life, so utterly unconscious of the rights of conscience in those of s different opinion. Mary certainly showed a far more Christian spirit. She reminded Knox of his offensive and contemptuous book against women, gently admonished him to be more liberal to those who could st think as he did, and use more meekness of speech in his sermons. But the Scottish clergy at that moment received s severe recompence for their contempt of the social amenities, in their aristocratic coadjutors treating the as men who had no need of temporal advantages. Ta nobles used them to overturn by their preaching the ancient church; and that done, they quietly but firmy appropriated the substance of it to themselves The example of the English hierarchy had not been lost upon them. When the clergy put in their claim for s fair share of the booty, the nobles affected great surprise at such a worldly appetite in such holy men. T clergy proposed that the property of the Church should be divided into three portions: one-third for the pastors of the new church, one-third for the poor, and one-third for the endowment of schools and colleges. Maitland of Lethington asked Knox, "Where, then, was the partn of the nobles? Were they to become hod-bearers in the building of the kirk?" Knox replied that they might be worse employed. But he and his fellow ministe |