XLI. 1581. maintained, where they had such reason to apprehend CHAP. that their interests would every moment be sacrificed to those of a foreign and hostile nation: that notwithstanding these great inconveniences, discovered by past experience, the house of Burgundy, it must be confessed, was more popular in the nation than the family of France; and what was of chief moment, Philip was of the same communion with Mary, and was connected with her by this great band of interest and affection: and that, however the queen might remain childless, even though old age should grow upon her, the singular felicity and glory of her reign would preserve her from contempt: the affections of her subjects, and those of all the Protestants in Europe, would defend her from danger; and her own. prudence, without other aid or assistance, would baffle all the efforts of her most malignant enemies. These reflections kept the queen in great anxiety and irresolution; and she was observed to pass several nights without any sleep or repose. At last her settled habits of prudence and ambition prevailed over her temporary inclination; and having sent for the Duke of Anjou, she had a long conference with him in private, where she was supposed to have made him apologies for breaking her former engagements. He expressed great disgust on his leaving her; threw away the ring which she had given him; and uttered many curses on the mutability of women, and of islanders. Soon after, he went over to his government of the Netherlands; lost the confidence of the states, by a rash and violent attempt on their liberties; was expelled that country; retired into France; and there died. The queen, by timely reflection, saved herself from the numerous mischiefs which must have attended so imprudent a marriage; and the distracted state of the French monarchy prevented her from feeling any effects of that resentment which she had reason to dread from the affront so wantonly put upon that royal family. 1582. Affairs of The anxiety of the queen, from the attempts of the English Catholics, never ceased during the whole course Scotland. of her reign; but the variety of revolutions which hap Letters of the Sidneys, vol. i. p. 287, et seq. Cabala, p. 363. d Camden, p. 486. XLI. 1582. CHAP. pened in all the neighbouring kingdoms was the source, sometimes of her hopes, sometimes of her apprehensions. This year the affairs of Scotland strongly engaged her attention. The influence which the Earl of Lenox, and James Stuart, who now assumed the title of Earl of Arran, had acquired over the young king, was but a slender foundation of authority, while the generality of the nobles and all the preachers were so much discontented with their administration. The assembly of the church appointed a solemn fast; of which one of the avowed reasons was, the danger to which the king was exposed from the company of wicked persons; and on that day the pulpits resounded with declamations against Lenox, Aug. 23. Arran, and all the present counsellors. When the minds of the people were sufficiently prepared by these lectures, a conspiracy of the nobility was formed, probably with the concurrence of Elizabeth, for seizing the person of James at Ruthven, a seat of the Earl of Gowry's; and the design, being kept secret, succeeded without any opposition. The leaders in this enterprise were the Earl of Gowry himself, the Earl of Marre, the Lords Lindesey and Boyd, the Masters of Glamis and Oliphant, the Abbots of Dumfermling, Paisley, and Cambuskenneth. The king wept when he found himself detained a prisoner; but the Master of Glamis said, "No matter for his tears; better that boys weep than bearded men:" an expression which James could never afterwards forgive But, notwithstanding his resentment, he found it necessary to the present necessity. He pretended an entire acquiescence in the conduct of the associators; acknowleged the detention of his person to be acceptable service; and agreed to summon both an assembly of the church and a convention of estates, in order to ratify that enterprise. The assembly, though they had established it as an inviolable rule, that the king, on no account and on no pretence, should ever intermeddle in ecclesiastical matters, made no scruple of taking civil affairs under their cognizance, and of deciding, on this occasion, that the attempt of the conspirators was acceptable to all e Spotswood, p. 319. f Ibid. p. 320. XLI. 1582. that feared God, or tendered the preservation of the CHAP. king's person, and prosperous state of the realm. They even enjoined all the clergy to recommend these sentiments from the pulpit; and they threatened with ecclesiastical censures every man who should oppose the authority of the confederated lords. The convention, being composed chiefly of these lords themselves, added their sanction to these proceedings. Arran was confined a prisoner in his own house: Lenox, though he had power to resist, yet rather than raise a civil war, or be the cause of bloodshed, chose to retire into France, where he soon after died. He persevered to the last in the Protestant religion, to which James had converted him, but which the Scottish clergy could never be persuaded that he had sincerely embraced. The king sent for his family, restored his son to his paternal honours and estate, took care to establish the fortunes of all his other children; and to his last moments never forgot the early friendship which he had borne their father: a strong proof of the good dispositions of that prince'. No sooner was this revolution known in England, than the queen sent Sir Henry Cary and Sir Robert Bowes to James, in order to congratulate him on his deliverance from the pernicious counsels of Lenox and Arran; to exhort him not to resent the seeming violence committed on him by the confederated lords; and to procure from him permission for the return of the Earl of Angus, who, ever since Morton's fall, had lived in England. They easily prevailed in procuring the recall of Angus; and as James suspected that Elizabeth had not been entirely unacquainted with the project of his detention, he thought proper before the English ambassadors to dissemble his resentment against the authors of it. Soon after, La Mothe-Fenelon and Menneville appeared 1583. as ambassadors from France: their errand was to inquire concerning the situation of the king, make professions of their master's friendship, confirm the ancient league with France, and procure an accommodation between James and the Queen of Scots. This last proposal gave great umbrage to the clergy; and the Spotswood, p. 322. h Heylin's Hist. Presbyter. p. 277. Spotswood. 1583. CHAP. assembly voted the settling of terms between the mother XLI. and son to be a most wicked undertaking. The pulpits resounded with declamations against the French ambassadors; particularly Fenelon, whom they called the messenger of the bloody murderer, meaning the Duke of Guise and as that minister, being knight of the Holy Ghost, wore a white cross on his shoulder, they commonly denominated it, in contempt, the badge of Antichrist. The king endeavoured, though in vain, to repress these insolent reflections; but in order to make the ambassadors some compensation, he desired the magistrates of Edinburgh to give them a splendid dinner before their departure. To prevent this entertainment, the clergy appointed that very day for a public fast; and finding that their orders were not regarded, they employed their sermons in thundering curses on the magistrates, who, by the king's direction, had put this mark of respect on the ambassadors. They even pursued them afterwards with the censures of the church; and it was with difficulty they were prevented from issuing the sentence of excommunication against them, on account of their submission to royal, preferably to clerical, authority. What increased their alarm with regard to an accommodation between James and Mary was, that the English ambassadors seemed to concur with the French in this proposal; and the clergy were so ignorant as to believe the sincerity of the professions made by the Letter of former. The Queen of Scots had often made overtures Elizabeth. to Elizabeth, which had been entirely neglected; but Mary to hearing of James's detention, she wrote a letter in a more pathetic and more spirited strain than usual; craving the assistance of that princess both for her own and her son's liberty. She said, that the account of the prince's captivity had excited her most tender concern ; and the experience which she herself, during so many years, had of the extreme infelicity attending that situation, had made her the more apprehensive lest a like fate should pursue her unhappy offspring: that the long train of injustice which she had undergone, the calumnies to which she had been exposed, were so grievous, k Spotswood, p. 324. XLI. 1583. that, finding no place for right or truth among men, she CHAP. was reduced to make her last appeal to Heaven, the only competent tribunal between princes of equal jurisdiction, degree, and dignity: that after her rebellious subjects, secretly instigated by Elizabeth's ministers, had expelled her the throne, had confined her in prison, had pursued her with arms, she had voluntarily thrown herself under the protection of England; fatally allured by those reiterated professions of amity which had been made her, and by her confidence in the generosity of a friend, an ally, and a kinswoman: that, not content with excluding her from her presence, with supporting the usurpers of her throne, with contributing to the destruction of her faithful subjects, Elizabeth had reduced her to a worse captivity than that from which she had escaped, and had made her this cruel return for the unlimited confidence which she had reposed in her: that though her resentment of such severe usage had never carried her farther than to use some disappointed efforts for her deliverance, unhappy for herself, and fatal to others, she found the rigours of confinement daily multiplied upon her, and at length carried to such a height, that it surpassed the bounds of all human patience any longer to endure them that she was cut off from all communication, not only with the rest of mankind, but with her only son; and her maternal fondness, which was now more enlivened by their unhappy sympathy in situation, and was her sole remaining attachment to this world, deprived even of that melancholy solace which letters or messages could give: that the bitterness of her sorrows, still more than her close confinement, had preyed upon her health, and had added the insufferable weight of bodily infirmity to all those other calamities under which she laboured that while the daily experience of her maladies opened to her the comfortable prospect of an approaching deliverance into a region where pain and sorrow are no more, her enemies envied her that last consolation; and, having secluded her from every joy on earth, had done what in them lay to debar her from all hopes in her future and eternal existence: that the exercise of her religion was refused her; the use of those sacred rites |