but the Castle of Edinburgh, where Maitland of Lethington and Kirkaldy of Grange still held out. They could have had little hope in so doing, for there was no one to come to their rescue, and it seems as though all they could have aimed at was to escape the humiliation of surrender to their enemies by falling nobly. The strength of their rock was such that they could bid defiance to all Scotland, as long as they had provisions, and France still thought it worth while to send them aid, by sea, while all Queen Mary's personal income was laid out by her agents to procure means of maintaining them. Indeed they were so much suspected of having intercourse with Alva and expecting Spanish allies that they were commonly called in Scotland the Castillians. They began the war again by firing the castle guns on the 1st Jannary, 1573, and when the Parliament met, a tinsel crown and sceptre had to be carried in procession because the real ones were shut up in the castle, and the guns were extremely inconvenient both to the Estates of the realm and the burghers of Edinburgh. To obtain Queen Elizabeth's help so as to have the supplies cut off by a fleet was the only chance of the Council. Burleigh was exceedingly desirous that it should be done, but the Queen as usual equally hated assisting rebels and spending money. She thought she might be led into a war with France, and she did not want to summon a Parliament. Killigrew had gone back to Scotland, and wrote desperately of the real danger that mercenaries paid by Rome, Spain, and the captive Queen might be admitted by the castle into Scotland in force, seize the little James, and carry him off to have a French education, the very worst thing that could befall England. A vessel full of arms stores, and provisions had actually been sent to the relief of the castle under command of Sir James Kirkaldy, brother of the Laird of Grange, but his wife and James Balfour (the arch traitor) persuaded him to put into Blackness Castle, on the Firth of Forth, where a force from the Regent was prepared to capture them as soon as he entered the trap. Killigrew's letter decided Elizabeth, and she consented to assist the Scots in reducing Edinburgh Castle. Sir William Drury, an old friend of Kirkaldy, was sent with 1,500 Englishmen, to whom only 500 were added by the Scots. High towered the Castle-rock above the city, a fortress within a fortress, but not inclosed on all sides. A great square block called David's Tower was the principal strength of the Castle, and it was really impregnable in the old feudal times, and with such modes of warfare as were then understood in Scotland. The new comers were, however, instructed in engineering. They made gabions, ¿.e. baskets filled with earth, which were put between cannon so as to form a rampart, and placed batteries thus formed wherever there was a height. Six batteries thus constructed, shot great balls at the massive old buildings, which crumbled away under the shock. David's Tower began to fall, and a mass of masonry stopped up the well. Then the outwork called the Block-house, the approach VOL. V. K CAMEO XIII. 1573. Surrender of Edinburgh Castle. 1573 CAMEO XIII. from the High Street, was taken, and the besieged began to lose all hope. Maitland and Kirkaldy might still have held out as desperate men, but their troops mutinied, and threatened to deliver them up, and Kirkaldy stood forth with a white flag, and obtained from Drury a respite of two days to treat of surrender. The Laird of Pitarrow was let down by a rope to carry his proposals, and in the evening Kirkaldy met Killigrew, Drury, and Lord Boyd. He demanded safety for the garrison, leave for Maitland to retire to England, and for himself to remain on his own estates. The Englishmen would have granted these conditions, the Scots would not hear of them. The soldiers might come out singly and unharmed, and might depart unhurt, but their nine leaders, including Kirkaldy and Maitland, must surrender unconditionally. Kirkaldy returned to communicate these hard terms, and found the soldiers in a state of mutiny, threatening to hang Maitland over the walls, and to give the captain up to the enemy. There was no choice, so in early morning they surrendered themselves to the English, not to the Scots, from whom they looked for no mercy. Sir William Drury kept them in his lodgings, and would not give them up. Morton wrote to the Queen insisting on their surrender. Killigrew recommended it, and Elizabeth, after' some hesitation, yielded to the general opinion that it was due to the Scots to let them deal with their own countrymen, and commanded Drury to deliver them up, only making an exception in favour of Sir Robert Melville. Before the moment came for the surrender, Maitland of Lethington was found dead in his bed, having, it was believed, taken poison. George Buchanan had called him the Chameleon, others termed him the Ulysses of Scotland. He had played an unprincipled part, assisting in the ruin of the Queen, and when she was ruined, turning round on the victors in a manner that deprived him of all sympathy. Kirkaldy was of nobler mould, and though he too had changed sides and held out the Castle against those who had put it in his charge, there were many who thought, in those bewildering times, that his offences were less than those of many who went free, and two hundred gentlemen offered their bond for his leaving the country and resigning all his property to the Regent; but Morton was inexorable, and Sir William and Sir James Kirkaldy were condemned to be hung together at the Market Cross on the 1st of August. Though his friends described him as humble, gentle, and meek, a lamb in the house and a lion in the field, the citizens of Edinburgh could not forget how long he had kept them in terror from his eyrie, and then quoted Knox's death bed warning as a prophecy. David Lindsay, the minister who had been its bearer, attended Grange before his execution, and besought him that if Knox's augury of mercy to his soul should be verified, he would give some token. This sign was thought to be given when, some 'bonny while" after the ladder had been removed, ·་ the body not only turned from the eastward to the westward facing the sunset, but “when all thought he was away," he lifted up his bound hands that were before him and laid them down again. Upon which Mr. Lindsay glorified God before all the people. This was the final ruin of Mary's cause in Scotland. Sir Adam Gordon, her last adherent, fled to France, and no one durst confess himself a Queen's man from that moment. CAMEO XIII. 1573. CAMEO So peaceful was England through the greater part of Elizabeth's reign that the home history is little more than a record of the Queen's proMission of gresses, and the splendid entertainments with which her nobles were obliged to receive her. We have to look to the neighbouring countries for the real history of the period. Montluc. 1572, Catherine de' Medici had been told by a soothsayer that all her sons would be kings, and, as if this were to be fulfilled at home, it meant short life and childlessness to the seniors, she was urgent to obtain its accomplishment abroad; and with this view she persisted in her endeavours to secure Elizabeth's hand for one of them; and she likewise cast her eyes upon the throne of Poland, though the race was entirely alien, and nobody at court knew anything about it except Jean de Montluc, that Bishop of Valence who had once gone to some length in sympathy with the Reformation. Slavonic in race, but Roman Catholic in faith, the Poles had long been the barrier between Germany and the wilder nations to the eastward. Their culture came from Germany, and thence proceeded a sort of primitive feudal system which placed the chiefs, or palatines, as Europe called them, on an equality with their sovereign, almost like that of the Homeric chiefs in Greece. Their council assembled on horseback in the open air, and claimed the right of choosing their king; but for a century and a half the family of Jagellon had reigned, until it became extinct in the person of Sigismund Augustus II., who left no child nor brother, only sisters, all married except one. All through Sigismund's last illness there had been intrigues for the succession. Every royal younger son had his designs. Ivan Basilewich, son to the Tzar of Muscovy, hoped to unite Poland to Russia; Archduke Ernest of Austria, son to the Emperor Maximilian II., had good hopes; Albert of Prussia put himself forward; and so did Henri de Valois, Duke of Anjou, or rather his mother did so for him. M. de Balagny had been sent to feel the way in the king's lifetime, and returned on his death, on the 7th of July 1572, with the tidings that Monsieur's chances were good, since several palatines were resolved against heresy, and viewed him as the hero of Jarnac; but he also declared that he would be expected to marry the late king's sister Anne, a small, swarthy, dark-eyed, heavy-browed, grave, and decorous person of forty years old, accustomed to preside over her brother's court. This was worse than Queen Elizabeth; and Henri, who passionately admired beauty, had entangled himself by a promise of marriage to Mademoiselle de Châteauneuf, and then, deserting her, was hoping to get the marriage of the beautiful, light-minded Marie de Clèves with the Prince of Condé annulled, much disliked the whole affair, thinking it far pleasanter to be prince in France than king in Poland. However, eight days before the Massacre of St. Bartholomew, Bishop Montluc, of Valence, was sent off as ambassador to try to obtain the crown of Poland for Monsieur. He was in Lorraine when the tidings from Paris arrived, and was very near being murdered for a heretic by the populace; indeed he was actually detained at Verdun till the court was consulted, and it was strongly suspected that the Duke of Anjou himself had had some hand in the endeavour to stop him. Montluc was probably anxious to rid France of the Duke, for he praised him everywhere up to the skies, and when the Lutheran party, who were numerous in some parts of Poland, brought forward the massacre, the Bishop did not scruple to declare him entirely innocent and ignorant of it! The most formidable competitor was Ernest of Austria, but a letter had been opened addressed to one of the persons in his embassy, describing the Poles as gens barbara et gens inepta, and this had given great offence. There had also been an attempt to communicate with the Princess Anne Jagellon, who was kept in the castle of Blonie under strict surveillance, lest she should marry any one secretly and give him an unfair advantage. Before the day of election, Montluc had seen and talked to, if not bribed, all the chief electors, and solemnly pledged his master to tolerate the Reformed, and respect the constitution. The diet met on the 3rd of August, 1573, on a vast plain near Warsaw; 60,000 persons were present, the people of each palatinate being marshalled round their palatine, and a tent containing 6,000 persons was pitched in the midst. Each ambassador put forward his master's pretensions in long Latin speeches, and after a month's discussion, on the 3rd of May, the voting began, after the Veni Creator had been sung by the whole assembly, which must have presented a magnificent spectacle. Every man of noble blood had a vote; any one, according to the CAMEO Poland. 1573. |