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scruples not, in his history, to inform us, that he once treated her with such severity, that she lost all command of temper, and dissolved in tears before him: yet so far from being moved with youth, and beauty, and royal dignity reduced to that condition, he persevered in his insolent reproofs; and when he relates this incident, he discovers a visible pride and satisfaction in his own conduct.* The pulpits had become mere scenes of railing against the vices of the court; among which were always noted as the principal, feasting, finery, dancing, balls, and whoredom, their necessary attendant. Some ornaments, which the ladies at that time wore upon their petticoats, excited mightily the indignation of the preachers; and they affirmed, that such vanity would provoke God's vengeance not only against these foolish women, but against the whole realm.‡

Mary, whose age, condition, and education, invited her to liberty and cheerfulness, was curbed in all amusements by the absurd severity of these reformers; and she found every moment reason to regret her leaving that country, from whose manners she had in her early youth received the first impres sions. Her two uncles, the duke of Aumale and the grand prior, with the other French nobility, soon took leave of her: the marquis of Elbeuf remained some time longer; but after his departure, she was left to the society of her own subjects, men unacquainted with the pleasures of conversation, ignorant of arts and civility, and corrupted, beyond their usual rusticity, by a dismal fanaticism, which rendered them incapable of all humanity or improvement. Though Mary had made no attempt to restore the ancient religion, her Popery was a sufficient crime though her behavior was hitherto irreproachable, and her manners sweet and engaging, her gayety and ease were interpreted as signs of dissolute vanity. And to the harsh and preposterous usage which this princess met with, may, in part, be ascribed those errors of her subsequent conduct which seemed so little of a piece with the general tenor of her character.

There happened to the marquis of Elbeuf, before his departure, an adventure which, though frivolous, might enable him to give Mary's friends in France a melancholy idea of her situation. This nobleman, with the earl of Bothwell and

* Knox, p. 332, 333.
† Knox, p. 330.

+ Knox, p. 322.
Knox, p. 294

some other young courtiers, had been engaged, after a debauch, to pay a visit to a woman called Alison Craig, who was known to be liberal of her favors; and because they were denied admittance, they broke the windows, thrust open the door, and committed some disorders in searching for the damsel. It happened that the assembly of the church was sitting at that time, and they immediately took the matter under their cognizance. In conjunction with several of the nobility, they presented an address to the queen, which was introduced with this awful prelude: "To the queen's majesty, and to her secret and great council, her grace's faithful and obedient subjects, the professors of Christ Jesus's holy evangil, wish the spirit of righteous judgment." The tenor of the petition was that the fear of God, the duty which they owed her grace, and the terrible threatenings denounced by God against every city or country where horrible crimes were openly committed, compelled them to demand the severe punishment of such as had done what in them lay to kindle the wrath of God against the whole realm; that the iniquity of which they complained was so heinous and so horrible that they should esteem themselves accomplices in it, if they had been engaged by worldly fear, or servile complaisance, to pass it over in silence, or bury it in oblivion: that as they owed her grace obedience, in the administration of justice, so were they entitled to require of her, in return, the sharp and condign punishment of this enormity, which, they repeated it, might draw down the vengeance of God on the whole kingdom: and that they maintained it to be her duty to lay aside all private affections towards the actors in so heinous a crime, and so enormous a villany, and without delay bring them to a trial, and inflict the severest penalties upon them. The queen gave a gracious reception to this peremptory address; but because she probably thought that breaking the windows of a brothel merited not such severe reprehension, she only replied, that her uncle was a stranger, and that he was attended by a young company but she would put such order to him and to all others, that her subjects should henceforth have no reason to complain. Her passing over this incident so slightly was the source of great discontent, and was regarded as a proof of the most profligate manners. It is not to be omitted, that Alison Craig, the cause of all the uproar, was known to entertain a com

*

* Knox, p. 302, 303, 304. Keith, p. 509.

merce with the earl of Arran, who, on account of his great zeal for the reformation, was, without scruple, indulged in that enormity.*

*

Some of the populace of Edinburgh broke into the queen's chapel during her absence, and committed outrages; for which two of them were indicted, and it was intended to bring them to a trial. Knox wrote circular letters to the most considerable zealots of the party, and charged them to appear in town and protect their brethren. The holy sacraments, he there said, are abused by profane Papists; the mass has been said; and in worshipping that idol, the priests have omitted no ceremony, not even the conjuring of their accursed water, that had ever been practised in the time of the greatest blindness. These violent measures for opposing justice were little short of rebellion; and Knox was summoned before the council to answer for his offence. The courage of the man was equal to his insolence. He scrupled not to tell the queen that the pestilent Papists who had inflamed her against these holy men, were the sons of the devil; and must therefore obey the directions of their father, who had been a liar and a manslayer from the beginning. The matter ended with the full acquittal of Knox.† Randolph, the English ambassador in Scotland, had reason to write to Cecil, speaking of the Scottish nation, “I think marvellously of the wisdom of God, that gave this unruly, inconstant, and cumbersome people no more power nor substance; for they would otherwise run wild.”‡

We have related these incidents at greater length than the necessity of our subject may seem to require; but even trivial circumstances, which show the manners of the age, are often more instructive, as well as entertaining, than the great transactions of wars and negotiations, which are nearly similar in all periods and in all countries of the world.

The reformed clergy in Scotland had at that time a very natural reason for their ill humor; namely, the poverty, or rather beggary, to which they were reduced. The nobility and gentry had at first laid their hands on all the property of the regular clergy, without making any provision for the friars and nuns, whom they turned out of their possessions. The secular clergy of the Catholic communion, though they lost all ecclesiastical jurisdiction, still held some of the temporalities of their benefices; and either became laymen themselves, Keith, p. 202.

* Knox.

+ Knox, p. 336, 342.

and converted them into private property, or made convey ance of them at low prices to the nobility, who thus enriched themselves by the plunder of the church. The new teachers had hitherto subsisted chiefly by the voluntary oblations of the faithful; and in a poor country, divided in religious sentiments, this establishment was regarded as very scanty and very precarious. Repeated applications were made for a legal settlement to the preachers; and though almost every thing in the kingdom was governed by their zeal and caprice, it was with difficulty that their request was at last complied with. The fanatical spirit which they indulged, and their industry in decrying the principles and practices of the Romish communion, which placed such merit in enriching the clergy, proved now a very sensible obstacle to their acquisitions. The convention, however, passed a vote,* by which they divided all the ecclesiastical benefices into twenty-one shares: they assigned fourteen to the ancient possessors: of the remaining seven they granted three to the crown; and if that were found to answer the public expenses, they bestowed the overplus on the reformed ministers. The queen was empowered to levy all the seven; and it was ordained that she should afterwards pay to the clergy what should be judged to suffice for their maintenance. The necessities of the crown, the rapacity of the courtiers, and the small affection which Mary bore to the Protestant ecclesiastics, rendered their revenues contemptible as well as uncertain; and the preachers, finding that they could not rival the gentry, or even the middling rank of men, in opulence and plenty, were necessitated to betake themselves to other expedients for supporting their authority. They affected a furious zeal for religion, morose manners, a vulgar and familiar, yet mysterious cant; and though the liberality of subsequent princes put them afterwards on a better footing with regard to revenue, and thereby corrected in some degree those bad habits, it must be confessed that, while many other advantages attend Presbyterian government, these inconveniences are not easily separated from the genius of that ecclesiastical polity.

The queen of Scots, destitute of all force, possessing a narrow revenue, surrounded with a factious, turbulent nobility, a bigoted people, and insolent ecclesiastics, soon found that her only expedient for maintaining tranquillity was to preserve

* Knox, p. 296. Keith, p. 210.

#

a good correspondence with Elizabeth, who, by former connections and services, had acquired such authority over all these ranks of men. Soon after her arrival in Scotland, Secretary Lidington was sent to London, in order to pay her compliments to the queen, and express her desire of friendship and a good correspondence; and he received a commission from her, as well as from the nobility of Scotland, to demand, as a means of cementing this friendship, that Mary should, by act of parliament or by proclamation, (for the difference between these securities was not then deemed very considerable,) be declared successor to the crown. No request could be more unreasonable, or made at a more improper juncture. The queen replied, that Mary had once discovered her intention not to wait for the succession, but had openly, without ceremony or reserve, assumed the title of Queen of England, and had pretended a superior right to her throne and kingdom: that though her ambassadors and those of her husband, the French king, had signed a treaty, in which they renounced that claim, and promised satisfaction for so great an indignity, she was so intoxicated with this imaginary right, that she had rejected the most earnest solicitations, and even, as some endeavored to persuade her, had incurred some danger in crossing the seas, rather than ratify that equitable treaty: that her partisans every where had still the assurance to insist on her title, and had presumed to talk of her own birth as illegitimate: that while affairs were on this footing; while a claim thus openly made, so far from being openly renounced, was only suspended till a more favorable opportunity; it would in her be the most egregious imprudence to fortify the hands of a pretender to her crown by declaring her the successor that no expedient could be worse imagined for cementing friendship than such a declaration; and kings were often found to bear no good will to their successors, even though their own children; much more when the connection was less intimate, and when such cause of disgust and jealousy had already been given, and indeed was still continued, on the part of Mary: that though she was willing, from the amity which she bore her kinswoman, to ascribe her former pretensions to the advice of others, by whose direction she was then governed, her present refusal to relinquish them could proceed only from her own prepossessions, and was a proof that she

* Jebb, vol. ii. p. 456.

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