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ANNE OF DENMARK, QUEEN OF JAMES THE FIRST.

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of Sweden. The government of Scot- | first of May, 1589; but, if not, the enland, however, being anxious to retain gagement should then be null and void, possession of the Orkneys, and desirous and the islands should be restored. to avoid a naval war with their powerful When the Scotch commissioners reneighbour, Frederick the Second, gave turned, they brought to James an exthe Danish ambassadors a cordial recep- quisite miniature of the beautiful Anne tion, and dispatched James's old school- of Denmark, which so excited his love, master, Peter Young, to the court of that shortly afterwards he told his Denmark, to forward the arrangements council, that "having prayed and avised for the match. Meanwhile, Elizabeth, with God aboon twa weeks, he had rewho, by bribery and other means, had solvit to wed bonnie Anne of Denmark." secured the majority in the Scottish Go- The majority of the council being the vernment, brought Mary, Queen of Scots, paid creatures of Queen Elizabeth, to the block, and succeeded in delaying strongly opposed the match; but James, the Danish match for about three years. impressed with a belief that, to secure At the close of 1587, the exaspe- the royal lassie, "she must be wooed rated King of Denmark threatened and married, and a'" before the first of Scotland with war, if the Orkneys May, 1589, effectually terminated their were not promptly restored. King artful procrastination, by paying the James took the hint, and again dis- artisans of Edinburgh, to rise in insurpatched Peter Young, and with him, rection in favour of the Danish match; Crownel Stuart, to the Danish Court. an uprising, which so alarmed the In the summer of 1588, these commis- council, that they instantly dispatched sioners returned, "well rewardit and the Earl Marshal of Scotland, the Conwell contentit," and reported so favour-stable of Dundee, and the Lord Andrew ably of the Princesses; pronouncing them to be "braw lassies," with a "routhie tocher" [plentiful marriage portion], that James instantly dispatched Crownel Stuart and the Bishop of St. Andrew's, to conclude the match with the Danish King's eldest daughter. Just as this embassy had embarked, and through the intrigues of Queen Elizabeth, who took infinite pleasure in traversing the matrimonial desires of all within her reach, commissioners from the King of Navarre landed in Scotland, and offered to James the hand of Katherine of Navarre, a Princess old enough to be his mother. With the object of this commission, Elizabeth, with all speed, acquainted the Danish sovereign; who, on discovering that the information was correct, flew in a rage, told the Scotch ambassadors to their faces, they were a set of cheats; betrothed his eldest daughter to the Duke of Brunswick, and vowed to regain the Sovereignty of his islands, cost him what it might. The Scotch ambassadors endeavoured to soothe him, and after much bickering, it was arranged that James should wed his younger daughter, Anne, if the espousals took place before the

Keith, to Denmark, to espouse the Princess Anne, in the King's name. Meanwhile, the death of the Danish Monarch, which took place at the close of 1588, deprived Anne of the rank of a reigning King's daughter, and, indeed, so altered the position of affairs, that, although James's proxies did not reach Denmark before the middle of June, more than six weeks after the extreme time specified for the betrothment, by the late Frederick the Second, they met with a cordial reception, and on the twentieth of August, 1589, Anne was married by proxy to the King of Scots, at the strongly fortified castle of Cronenburg, in the island of Zealand.

In September, the Scotch proxies and the royal bride embarked with their retinue for Scotland, with a fleet of eleven ships, under the command of Peter Munch, the Danish Admiral. But they had scarcely put to sea, when a violent tempest arose, and although by strenuous exertions they twice obtained a glimpse of the Scottish coast, they were, at last, driven by the adverse winds to take refuge in a sound in Norway. Here the young Queen landed, and at the inhospitable village of Upslo, sought shel

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mother, the Queen Regent, Sophia; her brother, the young King, Christian the Fourth; the Duke of Brunswick, who was about to wed her sister Elizabeth, and the leading nobles and ladies of the Danish Court. Here the royal pair were again married according to the rites of the Lutheran Church; and as Anne's dower, the Danish government surrendered to James the-long disputed sovereignty of the Orkney and Shetland isles, and also agreed to pay him by instalments the sum of forty thousand crowns. The royal wedding was celebrated by wild uproarious carouses and disgraceful drinking bouts, which only more firmly rooted in James that debasing vice of inebriation, in which, from his earliest youth, he was wont to indulge. In one of his letters to his council, he says, "We are at Cronenburg, drinking and driving in the auld style." After waiting to witness the marriage of the Duke of Brunswick and Elizabeth of Denmark, James and his bride, at the earnest entreaty of the Scottish council, sailed from Cronenburg on the twenty-second of April, 1590; and after a pleasant voyage, landed at Leith, on the first of the succeeding month. Here they tarried till the sixth, when they proceeded to Edinburgh, where both Anne and the King were welcomed by the nobles and the populace with a frenzy of delight.

ter from the severe frost which then set in, and bound the country around in fetters of ice. Meanwhile a young Dane, named Stephen Beal, braved the winds and the waves, and succeeded in carrying the news of her disasters to her spouse, who, resolving, like a true lover, to go in person and fetch her home, sailed for Norway, with a small squadron of five little vessels, on the twenty-second of October. After encountering a violent gale, which well nigh wrecked the tiny squadron, the adventurous James landed at Slaikray, in Norway, on the twenty-eighth; and travelling from thence through a barren country, where only ice and snow predominated; at last, after a diligent search, reached the wretched village of Upslo, on the nineteenth of November; and immediately at his coming, and without previous notice of his arrival, 'passed in quitly," says the chronicler, "with bruites [boots] and all, to her highness, Anne, and saluted her with a kiss; quhilk she refusit, as not being the form of her country. But after a few words privately spoken between his Majesty and her, familiarite eusued." On the following Sunday, James married Anne, with all the pomp and ceremony the time and place permitted; and the next morning, in compliance with an old Scottish custom, he made her a grant of the valuable lordship of Dunfermline, in "morrowing gift." At this James's first care, on reaching Edinperiod the winter storms raged with burgh, was to provide for his Queen a such fury at Upslo, that James relin- splendid coronation; and as he was not quished the idea of returning to Scot-worth a pound of "ready siller," he land till the ensuing spring. And whilst the royal pair were passing their honeymoon, with all the joy the fierce freezing season and rugged country would permit, ambassadors from Anne's mother, Sophia, arrived, with an invitation for them, if possible, to cross the mountains and pass the winter with her at Copenhagen. The invitation was accepted; and James and his bride, after encountering appalling dangers, succeeded in crossing the icy snow-shrouded Norwegian Alps, and on the twenty-first of January, voyaged over the stormy Sound from Sweden to Zealand, and were welcomed to Cronenburg Castle by Anne's

begged loans and benevolences from his lairds, telling them, in his own quaint manner, "Ye would na that your King suld seem an unco scrub at sic a time." And from those he could not borrow he begged, saying, "Ye will rather hurt yoursel vera far, than gloam out the poverty of your Prince.' On Sunday, the seventeenth of May, the coronation was solemnized according to the ancient ritual, and with all attainable pomp and magnificence, by Mr. Robert Bruce, a minister, assisted by the Duke of Lenox, the Lord Hamilton, and Mr. David Lindsay. The coronation festivities lasted till the middle of June, when the

King and Queen paid a short visit to | the royal palace of Falkland, whither the Queen removed to her dower palace of Dunfermline, where she had scarcely arrived, when her dower and revenue were finally arranged, and her household appointed.

At this period, Francis Stuart, that nephew of the late turbulent Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, to whom King James had granted the title of Bothwell, and who for some time had cherished hopes of succeeding to the crown of Scotland, was accused of having induced certain witches to raise the tempests that had well nigh shipwrecked the Queen on her late voyage. Bothwell boldly declared the charge groundless, but as everybody, from the King down to the meanest peasant, believed in wizards, witches, and witchcraft, his reasonable defence was not listened to; and to make the matter worse, several crazy old women sought their own destruction, by voluntarily giving themselves up as witches, and confessing that they had leagued with the sisters of their diabolical craft, in Scotland and Norway, against the Queen; and that by baptizing a cat, and then tying four joints of a dead man to poor pussy's feet, and flinging her into the sea; at the same time loudly crying out, "Behold there is no deceit amongst us," they had raised the storm which drove her Majesty to Norway for refuge, with the intention of drowning her. Annis Simpson, one of these mono-maniacs, of her own free will confessed that she had thus written to Marian Lenchop, a witch at Leith.

“Marion Lenchop, ye sal warn the rest of the sisters to raise the wind this day, at eleven hours, to stop the Queen's coming to Scotland."

The next day, she declared before the council, that, in compliance with this warning, the whole sisterhood of Scotch Borceresses, to the number of two hundred, met together at the midnight hour, at some ruins in the neighbourhood of Leith, and after performing a lot of absurd mummeries, which want of space prevents us from more than mentioning, they, with bare arms and dishevelled

hair, all put to sea: each one carried a
flagon of wine, and embarked, not in a
boat, but in a separate sieve, and they
all floated merrily on, chatting and quaff-
ing their wine, till they reached North
Berwick church, where they landed, and
forming a circle, danced round and
round, singing in chorus-

"Cummer, go ye before,
Cummer, go ye;

Gif ye will not go before,
Cummer, let me."

Every one believed this absurd fiction but James; and Annis, to convince him that she was a real witch, and had dealings with the evil one, called him aside and dispelled his doubts, by whispering in his astonished ear an exact detail of all that had passed between him and the Queen when they first met in Norway.* Accordingly, Annis Simpson, after a lengthy trial, which served but to increase the absurd belief in witchcraft and necromancy, was sentenced to be "werriet, and afterwards brunt."

Bothwell, on finding himself implicated in the confessions of Annis Simpson, escaped from prison; and from that day till the winter of 1593, continued to alarm the Queen and her attendants, by making desultory attacks on whatever palace her Majesty happened to sojourn in. His object, he gave out, was not to do personal injury to any one, but to obtain an audience with the King, to apologize to him, and to endeavour to convince him that he had had no dealings with the witches, and that the charge was vamped up against him by the cunning and malice of Chancellor Maitland. The aim, however, of Black Bothwell, as he was called after his escape from prison, was higher than this; for when, at the close of 1593, he, with a chosen band of rebels, found an entrance into Holyrood, where the King and Queen were then abiding, although he affected great humility, he virtually

ology. From an elaborately-penned work on witchcraft, published first in Scotland, and afterwards in England, he demonstrated the satisfactorily solved the interesting question, existence of witches, and, as was believed,

* James was a sincere believer in demon

"Why the devil did work more with ancient women than others ?"

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