Volume II Part 2 (1/2)

I said that I had already supped Then he called for a cup of wine, and drank to e hirow fatter, 'for,' said he, 'the zeal of the commonweal has eaten ye up, and made ye lean' I answered, that every little member should serve to some use; but that the care of the commonweal appertained most to him, and the rest of the nobility, who should be as fathers to it Then he said, I well kneould find a pin for every bore Then he discoursed of gentlewoe, that I left hilad at ”[95]

Such was the man as now inseparably joined to Mary, and who, by fraud and villany, had made himself, for the time, so absolute in Scotland, that her possession of the throne of her ancestors, nay, her very life, seems to have depended upon his will and pleasure

CHAPTER VI

THE REBELLION OF THE nobLES, THE MEETING AT CARBERRY HILL, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES

Mary's first step, after her e, was to send, at her husband's desire, aland and France, to explain to these Courts the iven to these ambassadors, as Buchanan has justly remarked, and after him the French historians De Thou and Le Clerc, were drawn up with much art They came, no doubt, from the pen of Bothwell's friend, Secretary Maitland; and they recapitulate so forcibly all the Earl's services, both to Mary and her e so successfully upon his influence in Scotland, his favour with the nobility, and their anxiety that he should beco; and finally, colour so dexterously his recent conduct, that after their perusal, one is almost induced to believe that the Queen could not have chosen a better husband in all Christendom Of course, Mary would herself see them before they were despatched, as they are written in her naiven to the attempt made in them to screen her husband fro with him, the scheme of the abduction; for she would, in that case, have represented, in afrom it If she had consented to such a sche it be believed that her e with a suspected h probably not by Mary herself), was a matter of necessity; and she could never have been so inconsistent as labour to convince her foreign friends, that though violence had been used in the first instance, she had ulti Bothwell's wife But it was her sincere and laudable desire, now that she was married, to shelter her husband as much as possible; and, conscious of her own innocence, she did not anticipate that the ainst herself Itthe lah force and fraud were not perhaps employed on the very day of its consummation, yet that they had previously done their utmost, and that it was not the Queen who surrendered herself to Bothwell, but Bothho forced hih Mary atte eye of the world, they who had an opportunity of being near her person easily saw that her peace of mind recked So little love existed either on the one side or the other, that even the days usually set aside for nuptial rejoicings, were ether at Holyrood fro the whole of that time, Bothas so alarmed, lest she should yet break from him, and assert her independence, that he kept her ”environed with a continual guard of two hundred harquebuziers, as well day as night, wherever she went;”--and whoever wished an audience with her, ”it behoved hih the ranks of harquebuziers, under the mercy of a notorious tyrant,--a new example, ith this nation had never been acquainted; and yet few or none were adht in fear by the testimony of an evil conscience, would not suffer her subjects to have access to her Majesty as they ont to do”[96] The letter froes are quoted, deserves, at this period of Mary's history, every attention, for it ritten, scarcely two e, by the Lords who had associated theainst Bothwell, but who had not yet discovered the necessity of ied him The declarations therefore, they then made, contrasted with those which ambition and selfishness afterwards prompted, prove their sincerity in the first instance, and their wickedness in the last ”They firainst her husband or not, _the Queen would not have lived with him half a year to an end_, as ether, and _theof his other wife at hoular than it is ih Bothas divorced froh her brother, the Earl of Huntly, had given his consent to the divorce, yet that in reality, the dissolution of the e was, on the part of Bothwell, merely _pro forma_, to enable him to prosecute his scheme of ambition, that his attachment to the Lady Jane Gordon continued unabated, and that if Mary had ever loved hi that he did not return her affection No wonder that under such an accuarded by foreign courts,--the ready hatred of oted Presbyterian subjects,--the dependence, ale, in which she was kept,--and the brutal treatment she experienced from her worthless husband,--no wonder that Mary was heard, in moments al suicide[97] Her heart was broken,--her prospects were blighted,--her honour, which was dearer to her than life, was doubted She was a Queen without the command of her subjects,--a ithout the love of her husband The humblest peasant in Scotland was hter of the royal line

But Bothas not per in the success of his villany Many, even of his own friends, now began to think that he had carried through histhat he should have won Mary by fair means, but not by foul; and when they saw that he had not only imperatively thrust hi rapid strides towardshimself absolute in Scotland, they trembled for the freedom of the Constitution, and the safety of the Commonweal With an imprudence equal to his audacity, Bothas at no pains either to disguise his wishes, or to conciliate the good will of those whose assistance ht have been valuable With the restless uneasiness of one conscious of guilt, and dreading its probable consequences, he scrupled not to avow his anxiety to get into his possession the person of the young Prince, and had even ”et hiing his father's death”[98] But the Prince was lodged in the Castle of Stirling, in the custody of the Earl of Mar, a nobleman of approved fidelity and honour, who positively refused to deliver him up It was not easy, however, to divert Bothwell froh the Queen did not countenance it, being, on the contrary, rather desirous that her son should remain with Mar, yet he ceased not to cajole and threaten, by turns, until all Scotland was roused into suspicion and anger[99] A nu, and entered into an association to defend the person of the Prince; and they soon saw, or thought they saw, the necessity of taking active measures to that effect On the 28th of May, procla the intention of the Queen and Bothwell to proceed, with a strong force, to the Borders, to suppress so all loyal subjects to assemble in arms at Melrose It was immediately rumoured that this expedition was only a pretence, and that Bothwell's real design was to , there to make himself master of the Castle and its inhabitants In a second proclamation, made for the purpose, this suspicion was characterized ashold of the public mind, and was not easily removed The Prince's Lords, as they were called, the chief of ere Argyle, Athol, Morton, Mar, and Glencairn, busied the their followers, as if in compliance with the requisition to assemble at Melrose On the 6th or 7th of June 1567, Bothwell took the Queen with him from the Palace of Holyrood to the Castle of Borthwick, situated about eightdiscovered, only a day or two before, that Edinburgh was no longer a safe residence for hi so strong a party start up against his former patron, had allowed himself to be tampered with, and Bothwell now suspected that he held the Castle not for hiht be persuaded by them to sally down to Holyrood with a party of troops, and carry hiht it wise to withdraw to a safer distance

It was not long before the nobility at Stirling heard of Bothwell's retreat to Borthwick, and they resolved to take advantage of it They advanced unexpectedly froh, suddenly invested the Castle of Borthwick It ith great difficulty that Bothwell and the Queen escaped to Dunbar, and the Lords then fell back upon Edinburgh Huntly coh, at his request, the ates of the city, the opposite party found little difficulty in forcibly effecting an entrance Huntly, and the rest of Bothwell's friends, still trusting to Sir James Balfour's fidelity, retreated into the Castle The opposite faction, with Morton at its head, immediately issued proclamations, in which they derounds, ”that the Queen's Majesty, being detained in captivity, was neither able to govern her realm, nor try the murder of her husband, and that they had assembled to deliver her and preserve the Prince”[100] These proclas of hostility were as yet entertained or expressed against Mary One of theh on the 12th of June, commences thus:--”The Lords of Secret Council and nobility, understanding that Jan Lady's most noble person upon the 24th day of April last, and thereafter warded (ihness in the Castle of Dunbar, which he had in keeping, and, before a long space thereafter, conveyed her Majesty, environed with men of war, and such friends and kinsmen of his as would do for him, ever into such places where he haddestitute of all counsel and servants, during which tin to a dishonest , is null and of no effect” And the procla their determination, ”to deliver the Queen's Majesty's most noble person forth of captivity and prison,” and to bring Bothwell and his accomplices to trial, both for theof the Queen's Majesty's person,” as well as to prevent the enterprise intended against the Prince[101] Can any thing establish an historical fact more explicitly than such evidence?

Bothas, in thehis friends at Dunbar In a few days, upwards of 2000 men had resorted to him, more because the Queen ith him, than fro that the hostile Lords should be allowed tith, he marched, with this force, from Dunbar on the 14th of June

When the news of his approach reached Edinburgh, the Lords ih with a soht of each other till theof the 15th, when Bothwell's troops were discovered upon Carberry Hill, a rising ground of soh and Dalkeith The Lords, who had spent the night at Musselburgh, et on the high ground, and took up a position to the west of Bothwell It was here discovered that neither party was very anxious to coement; and the French a between both ar the authorized on the part of the Queen, to proiven, if the Lords would lay down their arms and disband their followers But the Earl of Morton answered, ”that they had taken up arainst the , whom, if she would deliver to be punished, or at least put from her company, she should find a continuation of dutiful obedience fro of effecting his purpose, unwillingly quitted the field, and returned to Edinburgh But both parties were still desirous to temporize,--Bothwell, because he hourly expected reinforcements from Lord Herries and others,--and the Lords, because they also looked for an accession of strength, and because the day was hot, and the sun shi+ning strong in their faces[103] To draw out the ti to end the quarrel, by engaging in single combat any Lord of equal rank ould encounter hie, one of the best soldiers of the day, and Murray of Tullibardin, both expressed their willingness to accept the challenge, but were rejected on the score of inferiority in rank Lord Lindsay then offered hiht to refuse It was expected, therefore, that the whole quarrel would be referred to theh at the head of an ar consented, that a husband to whom she had so short a while been married, and for whom the veracious Buchanan would have us believe she entertained so extravagant an affection, should thus unnecessarily risk his life Twenty gentleround was about to be ed their minds, and declared they did not choose that Lord Lindsay should take upon himself the whole burden of a quarrel in which they all felt equally interested[104]

In these negotiations the day passed over It was noeen seven and eight in the evening, and a battle , had not an unexpected step been taken by the Queen Without betraying Bothwell, she fore in which he kept her She sent to desire that Kircaldy of Grange should coness to part from Bothwell as was demanded, if Morton and the other Lords would undertake to conduct her safely into Edinburgh, and there return to their allegiance This overture, on being reported by Grange, was at once accepted, provided Mary agreed to dismiss Bothwell on the field It may be easily conceived that to Bothwell hireeable, and could never have entered the iination,and obedient wife

Historians, we think, have not sufficiently insisted on the strong presumption in Mary's favour, afforded by her conduct at Carberry Hill It is true, that therebetween her and Bothwell, that as soon as she was re-instated in her power, she would recall hi that, notwithstanding the alleged violence of her love, she had been willing to consent to a temporary separation, both she and Bothwell knew the spirit of the men they had to deal with too well, to trust to the chance of outwitting the to their demands Mary must have been aware, that if she parted with Bothwell at all, she in all probability parted with him for ever Had she truly loved him, she would rather have braved all risks (as she did with Darnley when Murray rebelled) than have abandoned him just at the crisis of his fortune But she had at no period felt more than the commonest friendshi+p for Bothwell; and since she had been seized by hie of Almond, she had absolutely hated hiarding this transaction in these terms ”Albeit her Majesty was at Carberry Hill, I cannot name it to be her army; for many of theence with the Lords; chiefly such as understood of the Earl Bothwell's nities that he had both said and done unto her since their e He was so beastly and suspicious, that he suffered her not to pass a day in patience, or without giving her cause to shed abundance of salt tears Thus, part of his own company detested him; and the other part believed that her Majesty would fain have been quit of hiht shame to be the doer thereof directly herself”[105] Melville adds, that so determined was Bothwell not to leave the field if he could avoid it, that he ordered a soldier to shoot Grange when he overheard the arrangereat difficulty,” says another cotemporary writer, that Mary prevailed upon Bothwell to mount his horse, and ride aith a few followers back to Dunbar[106] There is no wonder;--but that a wife of one , who is said for his sake to have murdered her former husband, should perht have won, had she allowed hie and unaccountable When Bothwell left Carberry Hill, he turned his back upon a Queen and a throne;--he left hope behind, and must have seen only ruin before

As soon as her husband had departed, Mary desired Grange to lead her to the Lords Morton and the rest came forward to meet her, and received her with all due respect The Queen was on horseback, and Grange hi up to the associated nobles, she said to them,--”My Lords, I am come to you, not out of any fear I had of one to the worst; but I abhor the shedding of Christian blood, especially of those that are my own subjects; and therefore I yield to you, and will be ruled hereafter by your counsels, trusting you will respect me as your born Princess and Queen”[107] Alas! Mary had not calculated either on the perfidy of the ar virulence of their hired retainers, who, having been disappointed in their hopes of a battle, thought theythe person of a Ro before theht of a suitor and a prisoner They led her into Edinburgh between eight and nine in the evening; and the citizens, hearing of the turn which affairs had taken, careat crowds, and lined the way as they passed The envy and hatred of the oted part of the rabble did not fail to exhibit itself Royalty in misfortune, like a statue taken fro, siht which previously kept it at a distance fro rancoured in the bosoms of the more zealous and less honest Presbyterians, an ill-concealed jealousy of Mary's superiority; and in the athered round her, the turbulent and unprincipled led the way, as they co allowed to return to Edinburgh as a Queen, and to take possession of her wonted state, Mary was forced to ride as a captive in a triumphal show The hatred which was borne towards Bothas transferred to her, and the Lords, at the head of as the crafty Morton, forgetting the procla their intention to rescue the Queen froe in which she was held, only took her from one tyrant to retain her in the hands of many As the cavalcade proceeded, a banner was displayed in front, on which was represented the King lying dead at the foot of a tree, and the young Prince upon his knees near hie e exultation, as this ensign was carried past, and turning their eyes on the Queen, as dissolved in tears, they scrupled not, by the coarse ony of her feelings

When Mary arrived in Edinburgh, and found she was not to be taken to Holyrood House, (from which, indeed, the Lords had previously carried off ave up all for lost, and in her despair called upon all who came near her to rescue her froiven to the public mind, which it required so in her behalf, she was taken to the Provost's house in the High Street, where she was lodged for the night The crowd gradually dispersed, and the Lords were left to thee their future plan of procedure

Kircaldy of Grange, was the only one a them as disposed to act honourably He reminded them that he had been commissioned to assure the Queen of their loyal services, provided she parted from Bothwell, and careeht that they should fail in theirs Influenced by these representations, a divisionthemselves, had not Morton fallen on an expedient to silence the scruples of Grange

He produced a letter, which he alleged Mary had just written to Bothwell, and which he had intercepted, in which she was made to declare, that she was resolved never to abandon hied to yield to circu all the blunt sincerity of a soldier, and being little given to suspicion, was startled by this letter, and left Morton, in consequence, to take his oay That the pretended epistle was in truth a ery, is proved to demonstration, by the fact that, important as such a document would have been, it was never afterwards alluded to by the Lords, nor produced in evidence along with the other papers they so laboriously collected to lay before Elizabeth's Couess what reliance is to be placed on the authenticity of writings, subsequently scraped together by ery so clumsily, that they were unable to avail the spirit was again busily at work; and having the Queen's person onceapparently supported by the people, he was deter a step which would secure hiht ultiency of Scotland He, therefore, veered suddenly round; and though he had asserted, on the 12th of June, that Mary was kept in unwilling bondage by Bothwell, he saw it prudent to maintain on the 15th, that there was no man in Scotland to whom she was so passionately attached In support of this assertion, the letter became a necessary fabrication; and Morton well knew that a political falsehood, though credited only for a day, ine in the hands of a skilful workht's reflection operated a considerable change in thepopulace In the course of the 16th, they collected before the Provost's house; and the Queen having coly the iniquity of the constraint in which she was kept by her own nobles who had betrayed her, a general feeling began to ues no sooner perceived this change, than they waited on the Queen, and, with the most consummate hypocrisy, protested that she had quite mistaken their intentions, and that, to convince her of their sincerity, they should immediately replace her in the palace of Holyrood Mary listened to the, as if to fulfil their pro respectfully on one side of her horse, and Athol on the other But when she reached the Palace, she was as strictly watched as ever; and about ht, to her terror and surprise, they suddenly cauise herself in an ordinary riding-habit,her whither she was going She was escorted by the Lords Ruthven and Lindsay, and, after riding all night, arrived at the castle of Loch-Leven early in the th, standing on a small island in the centre of the lake, which is ten or twelve las, the Lady of Loch-Leven, as she was colas, and mother to the Earl of Murray, by James V ”It is needless to observe,” says Keith, ”how proper a place this was for the design of the rebels, the house being surrounded ater on all sides, for the space, at shortest, of half aso nearly related to so them, in whom, therefore, they could the more securely confide And indeed it has been said, that the Lady Loch-Leven answered the expectation of the Lords to the full, having basely insulted the captive Queen'sJaitimate issue, and true heir of the crown The Lady Loch-Leven was not only mother to the Earl of Murray, but likewise to the Lord Lindsay's lady, by her husband Robert Douglas of Loch-Leven The family of Loch-Leven was moreover heirs-apparent to that of Morton; and to that family they did actually succeed some tihter of the Earl of Angus;--all which considerations centering together in one, , a most sure and close prison for the Royal captive”[108]

To give an air of so like justice to a measure so violent and unexpected, Morton and his friends endeavoured to sanction it by what they were pleased to term an Act of Privy Council They experienced, however, no little difficulty in deter this act They recollected the proclamations in the Queen's favour to which they had so recently put their naeh _ht_, they did not choose, if they could avoid it, to stand convicted of treason in the face of the whole country They tried, therefore, to excuse the step they had taken, by asserting, that though they still believed her Majesty had unwillingly e by hih she had quitted his company for theirs at Carberry, yet that after they had ”opened and declared unto her Highness her own estate and condition, and the er that her dearest son the Prince stood in, requiring that she would suffer and command the murder and authors thereof to be punished, they found in her Majesty such untowardness and repugnance thereto, that rather she appeared to fortify and maintain the said Earl Bothwell and his accomplices in the said wicked crimes” The truth of this statement is directly contradicted by the transactions of the 15th of June, when Mary, though at the head of an ar the Lords desired, and when, with a degree of facility only to be accounted for on the supposition that she was anxious to escape from his company, she had separated herself finally froing her with ”fortifying” and ”” him in his crimes, these Lords themselves declared, on the 11th, that they had assen's e and captivity;” and, a lish ambassador they ”firmly believed the Queen would not have lived with Bothwell half a year to an end”[109]

In addition to this act of Privy Council, which was no doubt the production of Morton, and is signed by him and Athol, and six other noblemen of less note, a bond of association was drawn up the sath, of the system on which the Lords were about to proceed It is a remarkable feature of this bond, that, in so far as Mary is concerned, it very materially contradicts the act of Council Instead of containing any accusation against her, it represents her throughout as having been the victi the conviction of the subscribers, that Bothas the murderer of Darnley, and that, had he himself not taken means to prevent a fair trial, he would have been convicted of the cri wickedness to wickedness, the Earl had treasonably, and without any reverence for his native Prince, carried her prisoner to his castle at Dunbar, and had afterwards pretended unlawfully toaccomplished, his cruel and ambitious nature i to resort to her Majesty to speak with her without suspicion, unless in his presence and hearing, and her cha continually watched by armed men” It is therefore maintained that their interference was necessary, both on account of the ”shareat danger of the young Prince, her only son They had taken up arn; and though they had already chased him froed to continue in ar were condignly punished, the pretended n relieved of the thraldonominy, which she had sustained, and still underlies by the said Earl's fault, the person of the innocent prince placed in safety, and, finally, justice restored and uprightly administered to all the subjects of the realth to which Morton and the other Lords, as yet ventured They had sent Mary to Loch-Leven, merely to keep her at a safe distance from Bothwell; and as soon as they had seized his person, or driven hidom, it was of course in to her throne They did not hint, in the most distant uilt of her husband's death; and they expressly declared that, for every thing which had taken place since, Bothwell alone was to bla by their oords, they entertained as ave to the country was, that they intended she should remain at Loch-Leven only for a short ti to punish one who fro her to perpetual i round her, and conducting her back to her capital in triumph These ot that Morton, as at the head of the new faction, had assassinated Rizzio, and countenanced the h at present in France, had left the country only till new disturbances should afford new prospects for his inordinate ambition

CHAPTER VII

MARY AT LOCHLEVEN, HER ABDICATION, AND MURRAY'S REGENCY

Scotland was now in the most unfortunate condition in which a country could possibly be Like a shi+p without a pilot, it was left at thebefore there sprung out of these two opposing currents or distinct parties, known by the name of the Queen's and the Prince's Morton and his friends calling theh; whilst the Queen's nobles asse a them, besides the Hamiltons, Huntly, (who had been allowed by Sir Jah, in which he had taken shelter soh he had at first joined with Morton and Mar at Stirling, when they announced their determination to keep the Prince out of Bothwell's hands, never intended taking up arainst the Queen), Rothes, Caithness, Crawfurd, Boyd, Herries, Livingston, Seaton, Ogilvie, and others[111] Morton laboured to effect a coalition with these Lords; but though he employed the mediation of the General assembly, they would not consent to any proposals he made them