uncle, the Cardinal of Guise, lest it should reach the ears of Queen Catherine. This last was sure to try to frustrate it, both from hatred to her daughter-in-law, Mary, and from regarding England as the only check on the power of Spain. In fact, she was not without hopes of getting Elizabeth to accept her favourite son Henri, Duke of Anjou, then about thirteen. This negotiation was conducted with such secrecy, that no one knew the real facts till the recent publication of the letters.

The Roman Catholic powers, then, had at this conference at Bayonne, excepting the mild and moderate Emperor, decided to take action together, with Philip acting as their leader, as his father had striven to be, and there was to be a league against the Turks in the Mediterranean. The Inquisition was doing its work in Spain and Italy, and it was to be set in action at once in the Low Countries. In France, Catherine had admitted the idea that a Sicilian Vespers might dispose of the Huguenots, and the Scottish Queen was to endeavour to follow out the successes she had already gained over her reformed subjects, in hopes of the Spanish Armada, which was to dethrone Elizabeth in her favour; and the claims of Elizabeth to the crown, and of her Church to Catholicity, were rejected by the Spaniards, and by Rome under Spanish influence, though the liberal-spirited Maximilian and the cunning French Queen would have allowed them both, having views on her hand for their children.

The weak point in this compact was that no one but Philip and Alva were thoroughly in earnest, and they-to judge by Alva's words-did not think so much of the true objects, the Glory of God and the Unity of Christ's Body, as of the honour of kings and the discipline of their kingdoms, so that their zeal was utterly loveless, and therefore became savage ferocity.

The first of the struggles with the sovereigns connected with this league came on in Scotland. Young Henri of Navarre had given the alarm to his mother, and the French Calvinists had warned their Scottish brethren, while the folly and impatience of the young Queen and her husband gave ample opportunity of bringing about their ruin.

Darnley had the rank of King Consort, but he wanted the crown matrimonial, which would absolutely have made him king for life, even in case of his surviving Mary, and have given the crown-if she left no heirs to his children by a second wife. To this, of course, she and her counsellors, among whom Rizzio was the closest, could not consent. Henry conducted himself much as Guildford Dudley had done. He sulked, left his wife alone while he hunted and hawked, flirted with the young ladies, and rioted with the young men, of the Court. He was no more than an ill-conditioned lad, who, finding himself a nominal king at nineteen, wanted to be a king out and out, and to use the station for nothing but his own pleasure and glorification.

Mary had more sense and more comprehension of her office, and her

CAMEO I.

Compact of the Roman

Catholic
Powers.

1565.

CAMEO I.

Discontents

in Scotland.

1566.

resistance maddened him. He imputed it to David Rizzio her crooked old secretary, raged against him, complained to the English ambassador, and showed himself ready to league with the Protestant lords, while he gave increasing offence to Mary by coming into her room reeling with drink, and then, when she showed just displeasure, he abused Rizzio all the more.

The carnival of 1566 was enlivened by a marriage between the Earl of Bothwell and Lady Jean Gordon, sister of the Huntley to whom Mary now trusted, after having been induced by Moray to destroy his father. Bothwell would not be married, as his bride and the Queen wished, in the old Catholic fashion, but had the rite performed by a Calvinist minister. However, the Queen and her husband were both present, and there was a five days' festival at Holyrood.

All the time there was treachery at work. Darnley hated Rizzio, and the secretary had refused overtures from the English Court to become a spy of Elizabeth's. He was aware of his mistress's correspondence with her French relations and with the King of Spain, and very likely was, what the fanatic Scots called him, an agent of the Pope. In him the lords of the congregation thought they beheld the influence which had made their Queen pass out of their management and obtain toleration, if no more, for her Church. So Rizzio, like other royal favourites in Scotland, must die, and in the very week of the wedding, secret meetings were held to consider how to destroy him, and the conspirators put themselves in communication with Moray and the other nobles who had been driven across the border for their rebellion on Mary's marriage. There is extant "ane bond made by my Lord of Moray and certain other noblemen with him before the slaughter of Davie " signed at Newcastle on the 2nd of March by Moray and the five other lords who were still in Edinburgh, in conjunction with Darnley and the nobles at home who were to carry out the plot, Darnley undertaking to bring home the nobles who profanely called themselves banished "for the Word of God," and to support their religion, which was not his own. The English ambassador Randolph, and Cecil, knew of the plot, and it is to be feared, so did their Queen, and though it was not of their making, they no doubt considered that they were not bound to hinder an agent of the Pope and Spaniard from meeting his fate. The ministers, Knox and Craig, preached hotly about Phinehas and Zimri, Ehud and Eglon, and the like; and if Knox was not a member of the confederacy against the Italian, there is no doubt that he was aware of it.

Parliament was opened by Mary on the 6th of March, and summonses were sent out against Moray and the rest to appear in five days for trial. The Queen also intended to endeavour to have the Bishops reinstated as peers, and the question of the future settlement became the more imminent as the birth of her first child was expected in two months' time. She had meant to have introduced her husband to this her first Parliament since her marriage, and to get his rank as King Consort confirmed,

CAMEO I.

but he declared that unless she let him stand first as King, and open the Parliament himself, he would not be there at all, and as this was plainly The Parlia impossible, he galloped off to Leith.

The foolish boy expected, according to the bond, that he should in three days' time have his wife a prisoner in his power, and that he should be reigning on his own account by the support of Moray and his lords.

With this hope he came home in recovered spirits and good humour, and to disarm suspicion invited Rizzio to play at tennis with him. Some one hinted that this would be a good opportunity of despatching the victim, but Darnley answered with jealous spite, "No, it should be at the Queen's supper, in her chamber."

At nightfall on the 7th of March, 1566, the Earl of Morton, the present head of the house of Douglas, and chancellor, collected 500 men around Holyrood Palace. About 150 he brought into the inner court, and then caused the gates to be locked and the keys brought to him.

Meantime Darnley had supped in his own rooms with Lord Lindsay of the Byres, Lord Ruthven, who had come out, though very ill with fever, and George Douglas, and to these came Morton and some other friends. Mary's rooms were just above, and there was a stair of communication for her husband's use. Up this he bade them follow him, saying that he would keep her in talk till they were ready.

Mary was supping in her inner cabinet, a sort of dressing-room within the bed-room. With her were her half-brother and sister, Robert and Jean, Countess of Argyle, who was sitting beside her on a couch, several gentlemen, her French doctor, and Rizzio himself, sitting with his cap on-a favour granted to the delicate Italian, but which added to the ire of the proud Scottish lords.

Darnley went up to his wife, kissed her, and sat down by her with his arm round her. She asked him whether he had yet supped, but at that moment she beheld the haggard face of Ruthven, and his armour flashing under his loose gown. Thinking he had wandered out in delirium, Mary spoke to him kindly, but he only grimly demanded “that man Davie," and when she asked why they so demanded him, Ruthven replied with broad abuse of the Italian as hindering the King from obtaining the crown matrimonial, and therewith he made a thrust at the secretary. The Queen rose and stood before the unhappy man, who had retreated into the recess of the window and cried out-"Madam, I am a dead man!"

"Fear not," said Mary; "the King will never suffer you to be hurt in my presence."

On which appeal Darnley began to hesitate, but the other conspirators began to crowd into the little room, and the table was knocked over against the Queen, Lady Argyle catching up one candle as it fell. All was dire confusion; Rizzio clung to Mary's dress, crying-"Save

ment of Scotland.

1566.

Rizzio. 1566.

CAMEO I. me!" Ruthven snatched Mary from him and put her into Darnley's Murder of arms, while George Douglas stabbed at the unhappy man over her shoulder. A pistol was levelled at her by Andrew Ker of Faudonside, but hung fire, and the sword of Patrick Bellenden was knocked aside by her English page, while her husband forced her into a chair and held her fast, and the victim, crying for mercy, was dragged away, the dress to which he had clung, tearing away in his grasp, and was finally killed in the outer room, every one who could stabbing at him, while his shrieks came back to the Queen, who sobbed out-"My poor Davie, the Lord have mercy on thy soul !" In another moment the cries were still, the body was hurled down stairs, and Ruthven and Darnley were left with the Queen.

Ruthven, quite exhausted, sank into a chair and drank off a cup of wine. The Queen began bitterly to reproach both him and her husband, and Darnley replied with petulant, jealous reproaches. In the meantime, the servants had been overpowered by the other confederates, and Holyrood was in their possession. Bothwell and Huntly let themselves down with cords from one of the windows, and the enterprise had been successful.

Mary, when she thoroughly understood that Rizzio was dead, wiped her eyes, and said-"No more tears; I will think upon revenge!" The citizens of Edinburgh came round Holyrood, and she would have spoken to them from the window, but Ruthven swore that he would cut her into collops if she attempted it, and Darnley, assuring them that the Queen was safe and well, ordered them all to their homes.

Mary did, however, break down at last, and was very ill all night, so that Darnley, afraid of the consequences, let her ladies return to her. She then recovered her self-possession, and was able to secure a black box in the unfortunate secretary's room, containing letters and the keys of the ciphers by which she corresponded with France and Spain, and through the ladies too she was able to communicate with Huntly and Bothwell.

She was kept all the next day in her own rooms, with the King to watch over her, and at night arrived the six banished lords. She threw herself into Moray's arms, declaring that if her dear brother had been present he would never have seen her thus treated; but though he shed tears of sympathy at her distress she soon gathered that he was of one mind with the rest, and a party to the coercion she suffered, if she did not even find out that he had consented to the murder of the man she trusted. Her part was at once decided on. She had been confided to her husband's custody, and she set herself to talk him over. She was two or three years older than he, and infinitely his superior in force of character. He was frightened at his own deed, and it was not hard for her to show him how absurd his jealous suspicions had been, and how he had been made the mere tool of the party who wanted to treat King and Queen alike as mere slaves, and to destroy their Church. By the

evening of the second day Mary's representations had gained him over, and she showed herself ready to make terms with the lords. They had drawn up a fresh bond, which they required the Queen to accept, placing her government in their hands and assuring them of forgiveness for the murder. They sent it to her, and went to supper at Morton's house, after which they despatched Archibald Douglas to see whether she had signed it. Darnley answered that she had read the articles and approved them, but that she was unwell and had gone to bed, so that she would not sign till the next day.

It was true that she had gone to bed, but at 2 A.M. she rose, with the aid of one maid, and, with Henry and four gentlemen, stole down stairs and through the wine-cellar to a door, where five horses awaited them. Mary was seated behind her chamberlain, Arthur Erskine, and her maid behind the captain of the guard, and they galloped off to Seton House, where the faithful Lord Seton had 200 horsemen in readiness to escort her to Dunbar Castle. Mary now rode alone, and so swiftly that the party were at Dunbar Castle before sunrise, and having obtained admittance from the astonished seneschal, she called for a fire, and asked for some fresh eggs, which, in the mirth and excitement of that hungry morning, she and her maid themselves cooked in the embers. Then she sat down to write to her uncle, the Cardinal, to whom she subscribed herself “ Votre nièce, Marie, reyne sans royaulme." She also wrote to Charles IX., Catherine de' Medici, and Elizabeth, and sent the letters off by a little fishing-vessel that lay in the port of Dunbar. Bothwell and Huntly meantime were gathering their followers, and all the Queen's party and 8,000 men had soon rallied round her. The lords at Edinburgh had been entirely taken by surprise at her thus slipping through their fingers; they were in no condition to resist, and most of them fled to England or to their own castles, John Knox to Kyle, though Craig stood his ground.

Moray and the banished lords, knowing that she did not suspect their participation in the murder, remained and were taken into favour, reconciling themselves to Bothwell; but Ruthven, Morton, and all those whom the Queen had actually seen attacking her secretary, were "put to the horn" at Edinburgh Cross. Darnley showed no compunction at giving them up, saying, "as they had brewed so they must drink; and he had managed to persuade the Queen that he had nothing to do with the plot, and was as much taken by surprise as she was.

In self-defence the confederates published the bond, and Mary saw the true state of the case. The unhappy Henry had sealed his doom with both parties; his wife and his confederates alike saw that he was not to be trusted for a moment. He walked up and down alone, hardly any one attending him, bemoaning himself to whoever would hear him; and Mary herself, weary and exhausted, was writing to propose that so soon as her child was born she should return to France and leave

CAMEO I.

Flight of
Mary.

1566.