1559.] 66 THEIR DESIRE FOR AN ENGLISH ALLIANCE. 119 of the Congregation entered Edinburgh on the 29th of June. Knox had at this time prepared a letter to Cecil, in which, addressing the queen, he says, My eyes have long looked to a perpetual concord betwixt these two realms, the occasion whereof is most present, if you shall move your hearts unfeignedly to seek the same. For humility of Christ Jesus crucified, now begun here to be practised, may join together the hearts of those whom Satan, by pride, have long dissevered. For the furtherance hereof I would have licence to repair towards you. God move your heart rightly to consider the estate of both the realms, which stand in greater danger than many do espy. The common bruit, I doubt not, carrieth unto you the troubles that be lately here risen for the controversy in religion. The truth is, that many of the nobility, the most part of barons and gentlemen, with many towns and one city, have put to their hands to remove idolatry and the monuments of the same. The Reformation is somewhat violent, because the adversaries be stubborn. None that possesseth Christ Jesus with us usurpeth anything against the authorities, neither yet intendeth to usurp, unless strangers be brought in to subdue and bring in bondage the liberties of this poor country; if any such thing be espied, I am uncertain what shall follow."* The great object of the leaders of the Scottish Reformation was to make a firm alliance with England. They gave repeated assurance to the ministers of Elizabeth that their design did not contemplate sedition or rebellion against any lawful authority. The queen-regent was diligent in spreading the contrary opinion, that their object was to overturn the existing government. Elizabeth was too cautious to give any direct encouragement to subjects to resist their rulers; and she required assurances upon this point, reserving, however, the right of resistance in a case of extreme necessity. Cecil gave them vague promises of support, if such a necessity should arise. A convention was concluded between the regent and the Lords of the Congregation; but neither party trusted to any enduring tranquillity. The regent was looking for support from France; the reformers to England for the aid of men and money. At last Elizabeth rendered some secret assistance; and the Guises, who were now the real rulers of France, sent a force of a thousand Frenchmen to Scotland, who disembarked at Leith. The regent then entrenched and fortified that port, against which proceeding the leaders of the Congregation prematurely remonstrated. At length they Imade a decided demonstration of war. On the 15th of October they marched into Edinburgh with a force of twelve thousand men; and the regent retired to her stronghold of Leith. The Congregation formed two councils, one for civil affairs, another for religion; and they addressed a letter to the regent, requiring her instantly to command all foreigners and men-at-arms to depart from Leith. She replied, that Frenchmen were naturalised subjects, and commanded the duke of Chastelherault,† who had joined the reformers, and his company, to depart from Edinburgh. They decided that the queen-regent should be deposed from her authority. army of the Congregation, ill-disciplined, and composed of vassals who would not remain long in the field, was defeated in an assault upon Leith; Letter in State Paper Office, given in Tytler's "History of Scotland," vol. vi. p. 131. The 120 SIEGE OF LEITH. [1560. and the capital was again occupied by the royal forces. The castle of Edinburgh was, nevertheless, held by the reformers, the governor refusing to surrender it unless under the authority of the parliament, who had committed it to his charge. Elizabeth at last consented to render real and open assistance to the reformers, who entreated her prompt aid upon the sole ground that it was the intention of France to make a conquest of Scotland, and then to dispossess the queen of England of her throne. In January 1564 a treaty was concluded at Berwick, in which the duke of Norfolk agreed with the commissioners of the Congregation, that Elizabeth should send assistance, and that she would support the confederated lords, whilst they recognised Mary as their queen, and maintained the rights of the crown. They stipulated that they would not sanction any other union of Scotland. with France than then existed, and, if England should be attacked by France, would furnish an auxiliary force of four thousand men. On the 2nd of April, 1560, lord Grey entered Scotland with an army of two thousand horse and six thousand foot, and was joined at Preston by the army of the Congregation, to the number of eight thousand. The English Council very wisely did not encumber the commander of their army with more than a soldier's work. They sent sir Ralph Sadler to negotiate, and wrote to lord Grey, "Stick not to go through with this enterprise, and your praise will be more than all the rest of your life, if all your life were laid together. Take heed of French enchantments. They will win time of you, if take not good heed. Well; thus we leave your lordship to your business." ye The Scottish and English army marched on to Leith. The English fleet, under the command of William Winter, had entered the Frith of Forth at the end of January. When Cecil had despatched the squadron, he wrote to Sadler, "our ships be on the seas, God speed them." In the northern parts of Scotland the French had succeeded in forming a league, by which the clans and men of the isles had engaged to uphold the Romish faith and the French authority. The siege of Leith commenced. At this crisis the queen-regent became dangerously ill; and at an interview which she requested with the leaders of the Congregation, at Edinburgh, she endeavoured to reconcile the differences. which had led to such extremities; and exhorted them to send both the French and English troops out of the kingdom. She died on the 10th of June. Leith was defended by the French troops with great bravery; and the siege went slowly on. The town was at last surrendered, after the conclusion of a treaty of pacification. Hayward has well described the extremities of hunger to which the garrison had been reduced:-" All this time the English army was well furnished with victuals from all parts of Scotland, and that upon very easy prices. But the French were so straitly girt up within Leith, that no supplies were brought unto them. Hereupon they grew very short in strength of men, and no less in provision of food for those men which they had; the one happening to them by the force of their enemies, the other either by disability or negligence of their friends; so, their old store being spent, they were enforced to make use of everything out of which hunger was able to draw nourishment. The flesh of horses was then more dainty than ever they esteemed venison before; dogs, cats, and vermin of more vile nature were highly valued; vines were stripped of their leaves and tender stalks; grass and weeds were picked up, and being well seasoned with hunger, were 1560.J PEACE CONCLUDED AT EDINBURGH. 121 reputed among them for dainties and delicate dishes." Upon its surrender the French governor, D'Oysell, entertained the captains of the besiegers within the fortress; "where," says Stow, "was prepared for them a banquet of thirty or forty dishes, and yet not one either of flesh or fish, saving one of a powdered [salted] horse, as was avouched by one that avowed himself to have tasted thereof." The peace which put an end to this brief period of English warfare in Scotland, was concluded at Edinburgh on the 6th of July. The negotiations. on the part of England had been managed with remarkable skill by Cecil. He succeeded in obtaining from the French commissioners a renunciation of the pretensions to the crown of England, which had been assumed by the king and queen of France; and he obtained a complete recognition of the liberty of conscience for which the reformers had taken up arms. This was most difficult of accomplishment; for they were regarded as rebels to their sovereign. But Cecil insisted that the treaty of Berwick between his mistress and the Lords of the Congregation should be recognised and confirmed. The able minister accomplished this by a flattering " preface" to the article which secured this acknowledgment; "and we," he writes, "content with the kernel, yielded to them the shell to play withal." The Congregation were to be secured by an act of oblivion; a general peace and reconciliation were to take place amongst the nobility and subjects of the land, including the reformers and the adherents to the ancient faith; a Council was to govern the kingdom in the absence of the queen, of whom she was to appoint seven, and the estates five; all foreign troops were to quit the country; and a parliament was to be held in August. In this treaty no express recognition of the reformed worship was introduced; and the bishops and other churchmen who had received injuries, were to be redressed. But the reformers were filled with gratitude to Elizabeth, although she had preserved a strict neutrality upon the great question of religion. Their queen was to send over a commission for assembling a parliament; and they left the future to the wellknown disposition of the great body of the people to favour the Reformation. The treaty of Edinburgh was so unpalatable to the house of Guise, that for nearly a year the queen of Scotland refused to ratify it. The estates of the kingdom, however, assembled, at the time stipulated by the treaty, without receiving any commission from their queen. It was held that the express words of the treaty provided that such a meeting of the estates should be lawful without being so convoked. There was no doubt what course affairs would take; for the question of the legality of the parliament was carried by an overwhelming majority. The first proceeding of the estates was to draw up a Confession of Faith, founded on the reformed doctrines as received by Calvin. The opposition of the bishops and other Romanists was useless. This remarkable summary of doctrine must have been the result of the most careful consideration. The solemn earnestness of its tone was characteristic of the Scottish people and their spiritual leaders in the Reformation. It concludes with this prayer: "Arise, O Lord, and let thy enemeis be confoundit; let theme flee fra thy presence that hait thy godly name: Give thy servandis strenth to speik thy worde in baldness, and lat all natiounis cleif to thy trew knawledge. Amen." * The Confession of Faith was followed up * "Acts of the Parliament of Scotland," A.D. 1500. 122 ACTS ESTABLISHING THE REFORMED RELIGION. [1560. by three Acts, which established the reformed religion upon legislative sanction, much more rapidly and sweepingly than had been accomplished in England; and with a more signal display of intolerance. The first abolished the power and jurisdiction of the pope in Scotland; the second repealed all statutes in favour of the Romish church; and the third provided that all who should say mass, or hear mass, should incur confiscation of goods for the first offence, banishment for the second, and death for the third. During the sitting of this parliament Knox was preaching in Edinburgh with his accustomed vehemence; and he scrupled not to call upon the Protestant leaders to restore the patrimony of the church, which they had appropriated, that it might be applied for the support of ministers, the encouragement of learning, and the assistance of the poor. The proceedings in the parliament of Scotland necessarily gave offence to queen Mary; and she again refused to ratify the treaty of Edinburgh. When urged to do so by Throckmorton, the English ambassador, she thus addressed him:-" Such answer as the king, my lord and husband, and his council hath made you in that matter, might suffice; but, because you shall know I have reason to do as I do, I will tell you what moveth me to refuse to ratify the treaty; my subjects in Scotland do their duty in nothing, nor have they performed one point that belongeth unto them. I am their queen, and so they call me, but they use me not so. They have done what pleaseth them, and though I have not many faithful subjects there, yet those few that be there on my party, were not present when these matters were done, nor at this assembly. I will have them assemble by my authority, and proceed in their 1560.] DEATH OF FRANCIS II. 123 doings, after the laws of the realm, which they so much boast of, and keep none of them. They have sent hither a poor gentleman to me, whom I disdain to have come in the name of them all, to the king and me, in such a legation. They have sent great personages to your mistress. I am their sovereign, but they take me not so. They must be taught to know their duty." On the 6th of December, 1560, Francis II., the young king of France, died, after a reign of seventeen months. His death prevented the execution of a project for rooting the reformed doctrines out of France, by holding an assembly of the States-General, at which all should sign a confession of the catholic faith, which should then be tendered for signature to every person in the kingdom, the refusal to be punished by banishment or death. Mary appears very soon to have determined upon a return to Scotland; hoping, by previous negotiation, to have won over her subjects to a willing obedience. She was admirably fitted by her beauty, her winning manners, and her acute intellect, to obtain the homage of all hearts, could she have resolved to separate herself from the policy of her family, even if she did not choose to conform to the religion which had been so solemnly proclaimed by a vast majority of the Scottish people assembled in parliament. It was determined in Scotland to send as an ambassador to Mary, the lord James Murray, the illegitimate son of James V. He was the chief leader of the Congregation, and was intrusted with full powers to request Mary to return home, if unaccompanied by a foreign force, in which case she might repose with confidence upon the loyalty of her subjects. Murray wisely and bravely stipulated, in opposition to the remonstrances of the reformed ministers, that his sister should be left free to the private exercise of her own religion. After the death of Francis, Elizabeth also sent an ambassador to condole with her; to assure her of the desire of England to remain at peace; but to demand her confirmation of the treaty concluded by her commissioners at Edinburgh. Again Mary refused to ratify this treaty till she had returned to her own kingdom, and submitted the matter to her parliament. In her conferences with Murray, in whom she seems to have firmly trusted, although he was in intimate correspondence with the English government, Mary "did not scruple to admit that the amity between England and Scotland was little agreeable to her, and that, considering the terms of the league lately made betwixt the two realms, she was anxious to have it dissolved." + "Murray," continues the historian, "having secretly met the English ambassador, insidiously betrayed to him everything that had passed between Mary and himself." Thockmorton, in conveying the particulars to Elizabeth, wrote, under date of 29th April, 1561, " At this present, thanks be to God, your majesty hath peace with all the world; and I see no occasion to move unto your majesty or your realm any war from any place or person, but by the queen of Scotland and her means." Those who write of the secret transactions of this period, as imperfectly laid open by official letters, have the craft of Elizabeth, the confiding sincerity of Mary, and the * Letter of Throckmorton to Elizabeth, in State Paper Office. Tytler's “Scotland ” vol. vi. p. 225. Tytler. "Scotland," vol. vi. p. 255. |