Mary compelled to resign the Crown-Murray accepts the Regency-Escape of Mary from Lochleven-Circumstances of her escape-Battle of Langsyde-Mary takes refuge in EnglandMary's detention in England-Conferences of York and London-Mary placed under charge of the Earl of Shrewsbury-Anxiety for her safe custody--The duke of Norfolk and Mary -Lady Catherine Grey. THE captivity of queen Mary was the signal for the return of John Knox to Scotland. If he were not privy to the conspiracy for the assassination of 1567.] MARY COMPELLED TO RESIGN THE CROWN. 151 David Riccio, he did not withhold his satisfaction at an event which he considered essential to the safety of religion and the good of the commonwealth. He had fled from Edinburgh when Mary was in a condition to revenge that murder. He came back when she was a prisoner, to urge the strongest measures against her; grounding "the lawfulness to punish her upon Scripture history, the laws of the realm, and her coronation oath." * The confederacy against Mary and Bothwell was known as the Secret Council. Knox heartily embraced their cause; stipulating that the Reformed religion should be restored to the position in which it was placed by the parliament of 1560. After various attempts to persuade Mary to renounce Bothwell, Knox "thundered out cannon-hot against her." + Morton told Throckmorton, the English ambassador, that he could not do for the queen what he wished; but was obliged to give way to the zeal of the clergy and the people. Elizabeth, no doubt with sincerity, was remonstrating against the confinement and proposed deposition of Mary; but she was, at the same time, not prepared to take any strong measures of forcible interference for her safety. The unhappy queen was hemmed about with violent enemies and doubtful friends. Elizabeth charged her ambassador to insist that subjects were not to be judges of a sovereign ;-it was "contrary to Scripture and unreasonable, that the head should be subject to the foot." Knox, Buchanan, Craig, and other preachers boldly maintained, and it was "a public speech amongst the people," that "their queen hath no more liberty nor privilege to commit murder nor adultery than any other private person, neither by God's laws nor by the laws of the realm." The people were inflamed to the highest fury. Mary's life appeared in danger, and she talked of seeking refuge in a French nunnery. The General Assembly of the Church united with the lords of the Secret Council in desiring the queen to be brought to trial, and, if found guilty, to be put to death; "and there seemed every probability that this dreadful result was about to take place, had it not been for the interference of Throckmorton.” ‡ Murray was absent in France. At last, another course was resolved upon. Lord Lindsay, under whose severe custody she had been five weeks at Lochleven castle, and who had come to the capital to attend the General Assembly, now returned to the queen with three instruments to which her signature was demanded; whose tenour was, to resign the crown in favour of her son; to appoint Murray regent of the realm during her son's infancy; and to constitute certain lords regents till Murray's return, or permanently if he should decline the office. Mary long refused compliance; but the stern Lindsay terrified her into submission. The immediate coronation of the infant prince was their next measure. The English ambassador was invited to attend the ceremony, but he gave a peremptory refusal, stating that the proceedings of the Secret Council had been wholly against the advice and remonstrances of Elizabeth. The abdication of Mary took place on the 24th of July; the coronation of James on the 29th. The earl of Mar, his governor, bore the infant prince to the throne at the High Church of Stirling: the deeds of resignation by his mother were read, and Lindsay and Ruthven swore that they were her voluntary acts; Knox preached; the child was crowned; Morton * Report of Throckmorton, July 18. Tytler, vol. vii. p. 164. Throckmorton to Cecil. 152 MURRAY ACCEPTS THE REGENCY. [1567. swore for him that he would maintain the Reformed religion and extirpate heresy; the lords took the oath of allegiance; and the infant of thirteen posed to the interim-regents to put her to death. All that Throckmorton could accomplish in favour of the prisoner, was that so fearful a measure, "the outgait" of the question, as they termed it, should be suspended till the return of Murray.* Murray came from France at the beginning of August. The French government showed indifference to the fate of Mary, and great efforts were made by that government to secure the interest of the powerful man who had been chosen regent. He decided to communicate with Elizabeth. Alleged proofs of Mary being privy to her husband's murder had been put into his hands; and he was disposed to take part with the confederate lords. He had an interview with the queen of England, who took a high tone, and expressed her determination to restore Mary to her crown. Elizabeth's advisers would have moderated her indignation at Mary's rebellious subjects; but she kept to her resolution to support the cause of a sovereign held captive by an authority that set itself above the throne. When Murray reached Scotland he was irresolute as to the acceptance of the regency. On the one side, he was pressed by those who held in their hands letters and papers which they exhibited as proofs of Mary's guilt; on the other, it was represented to him that Mary's abdication was extorted from her. He determined to see her himself. On the 15th of August, in company with Morton, Athol, and Lindsay, he visited her at Lochleven. Mary appealed to him as her brother and her friend. He set before her all that had been alleged as the follies and crimes of her life; and a conversation, which lasted till midnight, ended in his exhorting her to seek refuge in the mercy of God. In the morning they had another interview, when Mary exhorted him to save her life, and pressed him to accept the regency. On the 22d of August Murray was proclaimed regent. At a meeting with the English ambassador, he declared his intention to make common cause with the lords. Though he had not been a party to their past doings, he commended what they had done; *The undoubted details of this treachery of Mary's pretended friends are given by Mr. Tytler, vol. vii. pp. 170 to 175, in complete disproof of the statements of "our popular historians." . 1568.] ESCAPE OF MARY FROM LOCHLEVEN. 153 "and seeing the queen my sovereign and they, have laid on me the charge of regency, a burden I would gladly have avoided, I am resolved to maintain their action, and will reduce all men to obedience in the king's name, or it shall cost me my life." Throckmorton having asked to see Mary, was refused; and he was recalled to England. On the 15th December, the regent summoned a parliament. The queen's resignation of the crown, the king's coronation, and the regency of Murray, were confirmed. The pope's authority was abolished; the Confession of Faith of 1560 was sanctioned; all heretics and hearers of mass were declared liable to various punishments; and the Presbyterian Church was fully established as "the Immaculate Spouse of Christ." An Act of parliament was passed to exonerate those who had risen in arms to demand justice on the murderers of Darnley; which Act declared that the queen was confined for her demerits, seeing that by her private letters to Bothwell, and by her pretended marriage with him, she was cognisant, art and part, of the murder of the king her husband. These "divers her privy letters written wholly with her own hand,” have been the subject of interminable controversy. They were said to have been found in a silver casket, which Mary had given to Bothwell, and which came into the hands of Morton after her surrender at Carberry-hill. Hume holds that "the objections made to their authenticity are, in general, of small force." These letters afterwards formed part of the evidence upon an elaborate inquiry into the guilt or innocence of Mary. After the queen had been six months under restraint, opinions came to be more divided about her conduct and character. The sympathy naturally inspired by the misfortunes of a young and beautiful woman began to operate as a counterpoise to the severe denunciations of the stern reformers. New factions began to be formed, each having its objects of personal ambition. Murray, as was almost inevitable, screened the higher delinquents in Darnley's assassination, and proceeded severely against their tools. The Romanists, now a marked and proscribed minority, were anxious for some revolution which might restore their influence. On the 2d of May, 1568, Scotland was convulsed by the tidings that Mary had escaped from that prison whose walls were girded by the waters of Lochleven, seeming to present an insurmountable barrier to her release. In that isolated castle she had passed nine months of sorrow and anxiety -possibly of penitence-but never without hope of restoration to sovereign authority. Admiration she could command under the greatest reverse of fortune. George Douglas, the younger brother of William Douglas, the owner of Lochleven castle, was subdued by her charms; and even his proud mother, whose son was the regent Murray, had mitigated her original severity under Mary's fascinating influence. By the aid of George Douglas she had attempted to escape in the disguise of a laundress; but her delicate white hands had betrayed her real condition, and she was brought back to her solitary prison. This attempt was made on the 25th of April, and is described in a letter from Drury to Cecil. Mary had put on the hood of her laundress and had covered her face with a muffler or veil; and so, with a bundle of Robertson and Laing agree in this opinion. Hume supports his conviction by an argument for their genuineness under fifteen heads (Notes to vol. v.) Mr. Aytoun boldly says, "The letters are now, I believe, universally admitted to be rank forgeries." Notes to "Bothwell," p. 293. History of England, vol. v. 154 CIRCUMSTANCES OF HER ESCAPE. clothes she entered a boat that was about to cross the Loch. [1568. "After some space, one of them that rowed said merrily, 'Let us see what manner of dame this is,' and therewith offered to pull down her muffler, which to defend she put up her hands, which they espied to be very fair and white." Thus discovered, the boatmen heeded not her commands to row her over to the shore, but carried her back again to the castle. George Douglas, John Beaton, a brother of the archbishop of Glasgow, and other friends, were waiting at Kinross. A more successful attempt quickly followed. On the 2nd of May she accomplished her purpose by the aid of the same devoted admirer, the younger Douglas, who, dismissed from the castle, was still able to carry on a secret correspondence with the queen, and contrived to organise a formidable confederacy in her favour. The story of Mary's escape has been worked up into the most picturesque of narratives by the great novelist of Scotland, and with no important deviation from the actual circumstances. These are related with some minuteness in an account transmitted by John Beaton to the king of France, and, upon his authority, repeated in an Italian letter to Cosmo de Medici from his envoy at Paris.* Beaton, nothing discouraged by the failure of the 25th of April, had contrived a new plan for her escape; and on the evening of the 2nd of May, there are anxious watchers on the neighbouring hills, and in the village of Kinross. One solitary man is gazing towards the castle from the edge of the lake. The outer gate opens, and a female hastens towards a boat. She leads a girl of ten years old by the hand; and a youth stays behind for a minute to lock the gate through which they have passed. He is a page of the castle, called the little Douglas. He has been won to Mary's succour, and he has rendered the most effectual aid by adroitly removing the massy key as he places a plate before the castellan, who is intent upon his evening meal. "The lad, Willie," as he is called in a letter from Kirkaldy to Douglas, has done his work like a true hero of romance; and he has been immortalised under another name,† The female and her two youthful attendants enter the boat. There is a white veil, with a broad red fringe, waving in the setting sun; and the gazers upon the boat know by this signal that it remains for them to insure success to this perilous enterprise. It was lord Seaton and his friends who were watching the going in and the return of the boat, from their quiet hidings on the hills. It was George Douglas who was the first to receive Mary on the edge of the lake. The instant she landed the queen was on horseback-she who once regretted "that she was not a man, to lie all night in the fields, or to walk upon the causeway with a jack and a knapscap, a Glasgow buckler and a broadsword." She rode at full speed to Niddrie castle, where she rested a few hours; wrote a letter to France; commanded a Hepburn to go to Dunbar to claim the castle for her; and then to carry to Bothwell, in Denmark, the news of her deliverance. She then again took horse, and arrived at Hamilton, where she considered herself secure. In a few hours she was surrounded by numerous lords and their followers. The deposed prisoner of a dreary castle on the 2nd of May, was on the 5th a queen at the head of an army. * Tytler, "Proofs and Illustrations to History of Scotland," vol. vii. p. 457. |