CAMEO VI.

Mary's reception 1568.

QUEEN ELIZABETH's first impulse on hearing of Mary's arrival in her dominions was to invite her at once to Court, and there receive her affectionately, and make common cause with her.

But Cecil, Leicester, and all the rest of the ministers, were determined to prevent this. They believed Mary to be guilty; they regarded her as the head of the Roman Catholic party, and necessarily the enemy of the Queen and the Reformation. A war to restore her would be extremely unpopular with all Protestant English, and might further lead to an attack from France, since the Huguenots were at this time in favour with Catherine de' Medici, always Mary's enemy, and on friendly terms with the Earl of Moray. Besides, Cecil must have known, better than Elizabeth herself, how much all dangers might be aggravated by the personal rivalry of the two Queens in the same court. At any rate, he was entirely determined to keep them apart, and all that was done was to send off Lady Scrope to act as lady in waiting; and Sir Francis Knollys to attend on Mary with fitting state, while she made up her mind what was to be done.

Sir Francis was Elizabeth's cousin on the Boleyn side, and Puritanically inclined, and the Queen thought him a perfectly safe person to be exposed to the attractions of the dangerous siren. He found Lord Northumber land very angry at being prevented from seeing her, and though he considered that Lord Lowther, the Deputy-Governor of Carlisle, had only done his duty by such exclusion, he allowed her free intercourse with the persons who came to pay court to her. Meantime, Herries pleaded her cause in London, and Flemyng at Paris; and on the other hand, Sir John Norris, the English Ambassador in France, was warned by Huguenots that "the Queen of England did hold the wolf that should

devour her," and that all the Roman Catholic powers were going to join CAMEO VI. to overthrow her, and set Mary on her throne.

Mary was living as a guest at Carlisle, going and coming as she pleased, seeing her friends from Scotland, and riding out every day, hunting, and amusing herself. It was hard to believe any ill of

one so lovely. Knollys wrote: "If the spots in this Queen's coat be manifest, the plainer and sooner that her Highness doth record her discontentation therewith, the more honourable it will be, I suppose; and it is the readiest way to stop the mouths of factious, murmuring subjects. This lady and princess is a notable woman. She seemeth to regard no ceremonial honour beside the acknowledgment of her estate royal. She showeth a disposition to speak much, to be bold, to be pleasant, and to be very familiar. She showeth a great desire to be avenged of her enemies. She showeth a readiness to expose herself to all perils in hope of victory. She desireth much to hear of hardiness and valiancy, commending by name all approved hardy men of her country, although they be her enemies, and she concealeth no cowardice even in her friends. The thing that most she striveth after is victory, and it seemeth indifferent to her to have her enemies diminished either by the sword of her friends, or by the liberal promises and rewards of her purse, or by divisions and quarrels raised among themselves, so that for victory's sake pain and peril seemeth pleasant unto her; and in respect of victory, wealth and all things seemeth to her contemptible and vile. Now, what is to be done with such a lady and princess, or whether such a princess and lady is to be nourished in one's bosom, I refer to your judgment."

Knollys himself was much with her; he taught her English, which was regarded as quite a different language from Scotch, and he held religious discussions with her. Mary had listened to Knox and his followers in the pulpits of Edinburgh, and she made no objection to going to English Churches, hearing sermons, and conversing with the chaplain; but she afterwards said, she never found any two who agreed in anything but cursing the Pope, and praying for the Queen; and this was probably quite true, since doctrine had fallen to a very low ebb in England, and every one was doing and believing pretty much as was right in his own eyes.

Lord Scrope and Sir Francis were much afraid of Mary riding off, angry and disobliged. They proved to themselves how easily she might reach the Border when out hunting or hawking, and how readily she might let herself down into an orchard below her bed-room window. They kept a diligent watch upon her, but much recommended her removal, and accordingly she was taken to Lord Scrope's castle at Bolton, where she continued to hold a kind of court, and was visited by the northern nobles and gentry, many of whom were Roman Catholics. The removal took place on the 16th July, 1568, and it was determined that in September there should be a court of inquiry held at York to look into the question at issue between Mary and her

Mary at Carlisle. 1568.

CAMEO VI.

Inquiry at York. 1568.

subjects. Elizabeth's commissioners were the Duke of Norfolk, the
Earl of Essex, and Sir Ralph Sadler; Mary's, John Leslie, the Roman
Catholic Bishop of Ross; Lords Herries, Livingston, and Boyd; the
Abbot of Kilwinning; Sir John Gordon of Lochinvar; and Sir James
Cockburn of Stirling. For the little King of Scotland came Moray
and Morton; Adam Bothwell, the so-called Protestant Bishop of
Orkney; the Abbot (because he held the lands) of Dunfermline; and
Lord Lindsay.

Probably Elizabeth honestly meant to have the truth brought to light, but there was not one of her ministers who would not have been greatly discomfited by a total acquittal of Mary. Failure of proof against her would be in their eyes failure of justice, and the re-establishment of the Guise influence, Romanism, and the fires of Smithfield. Therefore they were disposed not to scrutinise too closely the evidence that the other side might bring. Indeed, so entirely had Machiavel's principles been accepted, that public morality did not exist, and the very men who were religious, faithful, and honest in private life, saw no harm in tampering with evidence, treacherously exciting rebellion in foreign countries, and accepting the most bare-faced forgeries.

Queen Mary, by Elizabeth's direction, was the accuser, demanding her subjects to show the cause wherefore they had driven her from her throne.

Their answer did not enter on any question of her share in the death of Darnley, only stating that she had married Bothwell, and when her subjects wished to put him to death for his crimes, he had fled, and she would not consent to a divorce, but threatened all his enemies hotly. Therefore they were obliged to seclude her for a season, and she, being wearied with the cares and burthens of government, had voluntarily laid down her crown, and constituted Moray, without knowledge on his own part, as Regent.

It was a very lame story, easily answered. Bothwell had been actually recommended as a husband to the Queen by the very men who, a few weeks later, rose against her for not divorcing him. They had let him ride off without trying to seize him, and as to resigning her crown by her own good will, she had been forced to do it as the only means of saving her life.

Moray, in the meantime, secretly had desired to know whether the commissioners had authority to pronounce Mary guilty, and if, in that event, they would promise to pronounce sentence, or to deliver her up to him. They sent to their Queen to know how they should answer, and before the answer came back, Moray had sent them by Maitland five letters and some poetry. The commissioners wrote: “Afterwards they showed us one horrible and long letter of her own hand, as they say, containing foul matter, and abominable to be thought or written of."

At the same time, Maitland sent private information to Mary, who complained to Sir Francis Knollys, but as the accusation was not

publicly made, there was no real opportunity of proving whether the letters were hers. The English Queen, on her side, desired that the conferences should be removed from York to Westminster, so as to lose less time in referring backwards and forwards. The cause was to be heard before the Queen in Council, but without the presence of the accused. Before leaving York, however, the Duke of Norfolk made, through the Bishop of Ross and the other Scottish friends of Mary, the extraordinary proposal of marrying Mary, if she were divorced from Bothwell.

This certainly was strange, if he thought the letters genuine, as he evidently did at first. He was thirty-six years old, the son of the poetic Surrey, and he held with the Church of England, though his first wife had been the daughter of the old Roman Catholic Earl of Arundel. He had never seen Queen Mary, so that his offer was not caused by her personal fascination, but it is not unlikely that he had become convinced that the letters were either forged or altered; and it must be owned that the general indignation at the removal of such a personage as Darnley was more convenient than real. With this view, Moray and Norfolk seem to have agreed that the murder should not, if possible, be charged openly against the Queen.

However, it was plain that the English would not be satisfied without some cause for her deposition more rational than that she would not divorce Bothwell at the bidding of the lords who had first advised her to marry him. So on the 26th of November, Moray, in the Painted Chamber at Westminister, added what he called an eik, or additional item, accusing the Queen of the murder of her husband.

Three days later appeared Darnley's father, the Earl of Lennox, to make the same accusation against his daughter-in-law, appealing to Elizabeth because his son had been an English subject.

The Earls of Northumberland, Westmoreland, Shrewsbury, Worcester, Huntingdon, and Warwick were called in to examine the matter; Elizabeth declaring all the time that what concerned her was not the judging between the Queen of Scots and her subjects, which she would not undertake, but the deciding whether Mary should be received at court as an innocent woman, her equal, and her sister.

Various papers were laid on the table before the Council-Acts of Parliament of Scotland, reports of the trials of the men who had been put to death, and the casket letters, all lying "by hap" together, to be looked at by any of the nobles who chose to do so. Such a thing as examination of papers by an expert was utterly unimagined in those days, and these appear on the first day to have been simply handed about from one statesman to another, and read aloud, but not left with them for examination. Only the next day, English translations of the letters and sonnets were supplied. Two of the letters thus translated remain in the Record Office, marked by Cecil's hand.

Two witnesses were brought forward-Darnley's servant, Thomas Nelson, who had been taken alive out of Kirk of Field, on whose

CAMEO VI.

Proposals of
Norfolk.

1568.

CAMEO IV.

The lame peace of Longjumeau. 1568.

The place was besieged by Montluc, but in vain; and for the next seventy years La Rochelle continued the chief stronghold of the Huguenots.

Catherine de Medici had all this time been getting together a very considerable army, but she did not wish it to fight, only to overawe the Huguenots, and force them to come to terms. Indeed she dreaded victory on either side, as the conqueror would be sure to become a thorn in her side.

So she offered to restore the edict of Amboise, without any of the drawbacks, on condition that the Germans were dismissed, and the towns that had been seized surrendered to the King. Condé and Coligny wanted to keep some cities as guarantees, but this was eluded, and the treaty that was signed at Longjumeau on the 23rd of March, 1568, was called "the little lame peace," and "the insecure peace."

The Queen had advanced 300,000 crowns to pay off the Germans, and she insisted that this sum should be repaid her from the estates of the chiefs, not by subscriptions from the Huguenot congregations, intending thus to weaken them, and to prevent political collections at public worship. It was indeed a most insecure peace. Things had been done on either side which inflamed every one's feelings. The wickednesses that had been perpetrated on the clergy, the monks, and the nuns, could not be forgotten, and the concessions to the Calvinists shocked the clergy. The preachers in Paris denounced moderation, and cited the deaths of Korah, the slaughter of the calf-worshippers and of the votaries of Baal, as examples, just as John Knox and his friends were doing on the other side in Scotland. Murder was avenged by murder. When the royalist troops re-entered the cities the sacrilege and cruelty were remembered, and equal atrocities were committed. In a tumult at Amiens, 100 Huguenots were killed, 150 at Auxerre, others at Orleans, Bourges, and Troyes. At Ligny, a fugitive Calvinist was hunted down and killed in the very arms of the Mayor, who was trying to save him; and at Clermont, a man who had failed in tokens of reverence towards the Host was dragged to the market-place, and burnt on a pile of timber pulled from his own house. The Huguenots declared that 10,000 persons perished during the six months' peace, and only 500 in the war; and though this is an impossible exaggeration, it was true that their situation was becoming worse every day.