standing his resentment, he found it necessary to submit to the present necessity. He pretended an entire acquiescence in the conduct of the associators; acknowledged 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 under 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 that feared God, or tendered the preservation of the 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 honors 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 Spotswood, p. 322. ↑ Heylin's Hist. Presbyter, p. 227. Spotswood. not been entirely unacquainted with the project of his detention, he thought proper, before the English ambassadors, to dissem ble his resentment against the authors of it. [1583.] Soon after, La Mothe-Fenelon and Menneville appeared 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 assembly voted the settling of terms between the mother 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 endeavored, though in vain, to repress these insolent reflections; but in order to make the ambassadors some compensation, he desired the magis trates 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 former. The queen of Scots had often made overtures to Elizabeth, which had been entirely neglected; but 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 expe * Spotswood, p. 324. nence 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, that finding no place for right or truth among men, she 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 ad 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 further than to use some disappointed efforts for her deliverance, unhappy for herself, and fatal to others, she found the rigors 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 labored: 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 in which she had H VOL. IV. 17 been educated; the commerce with those holy ministers, whom Heaven had appointed to receive the acknowledgment of our transgressions, and to seal our penitence by a solemn readmission into heavenly favor and forgiveness: that it was in vain to complain of the rigors of persecution exercised in other kingdoms; when a queen and an innocent woman was excluded from an indulgence which never yet, in the most barbarous countries, had been denied to the meanest and most obnoxious malefactor: that could she ever be induced to descend from that royal dignity in which Providence had placed her, or depart from her appeal to Heaven, there was only one other tribunal to which she would appeal from all her enemies; to the justice and humanity of Elizabeth's own breast, and to that lenity which, uninfluenced by malignant counsel, she would naturally be induced to exercise towards her and that she finally entreated her to resume her natural disposition, and to reflect on the support, as well as comfort, which she might receive from her son and herself, if, joining the obligations of gratitude to the ties of blood, she would deign to raise them from their present melancholy situation, and reinstate them in that liberty and authority to which they were entitled.* Elizabeth was engaged to obstruct Mary's restoration, chiefly because she foresaw an unhappy alternative attending that event. If this princess recovered any considerable share of authority in Scotland, her resentment, ambition, zeal, and connections both domestic and foreign, might render her a dangerous neighbor to England, and enable her, after suppressing the Protestant party among her subjects, to revive those pretensions which she had formerly advanced to the crown, and which her partisans in both kingdoms still supported with great industry and assurance. If she were reinstated in power with such strict limitations as could not be broken, she might be disgusted with her situation; and flying abroad, form more desperate attempts than any sovereign, who had a crown to hazard, would willingly undertake. Mary herself, sensible of these difficulties, and convinced by experience that Elizabeth would forever debar her the throne, was now become more humble in her wishes; and as age and infirmities had repressed those sentiments of ambition by which she had formerly been so much actuated, she was willing to sacrifice all her * Camden, p. 489. hopes of grandeur, in order to obtain a little liberty; a bless ing to which she naturally aspired with the fondest impatience. She proposed, therefore, that she should be associated with her son in the title to the crown of Scotland, but that the administration should remain solely in him: and she was con⚫ tent to live in England in a private station, and even under a kind of restraint; but with some more liberty, both for exercise and company, than she had enjoyed since the first discovery of her intrigues with the duke of Norfolk. But Elizabeth, afraid lest such a loose method of guarding her would facilitate her escape into France or Spain, or, at least, would encourage and increase her partisans, and enable her to conduct those intrigues to which she had already discovered so strong a propensity, was secretly determined to deny her requests; and though she feigned to assent to them, she well knew how to disappoint the expectations of the unhappy princess. While. Lenox maintained his authority in Scotland, she never gave any reply to all the application made to her by the Scottish queen: at present, when her own creatures had acquired possession of the government, she was resolved to throw the odium of refusal upon them; and pretending that nothing further was required to a perfect accommodation than the concurrence of the council of state in Scotland, she ordered her ambassador, Bowes, to open the negotiation for Mary's liberty, and her association with her son in the title to the crown. Though she seemed to make this concession to Mary she refused her the liberty of sending any ambassador of her own; and that princess could easily conjecture, from this cir cumstance, what would be the result of the pretended negotiation. The privy council of Scotland, instigated by the clergy, rejected all treaty; and James, who was now a captive in their hands, affirmed, that he had never agreed to an association with his mother, and that the matter had never gone further than some loose proposals for that purpose.t The affairs of Scotland remained not long in the present situation. James, impatient of restraint, made his escape from his keepers; and flying to St. Andrews, summoned his friends and partisans to attend him. The earls of Argyle, Marshal, Montrose, and Rothes, hastened to pay their duty to their sovereign; and the opposite party found themselves Jebb, vol. ii. p. 540. † MS. in the Advocates' Library, A. 3, 28, p. 401, from the Cott. Lib. Calig. c. 9. |