: herself had not any serious intention of effecting this mar riage; but as she was desirous that the queen of Scots should never have any husband, she named a man who, she believed, was not likely to be accepted of; and she hoped by that means to gain time, and elude the project of any other alliance. The earl of Leicester was too great a favorite to be parted with; and when Mary, allured by the prospect of being declared successor to the crown, seemed at last to hearken to Elizabeth's proposal, this princess receded from her offers, and withdrew the bait which she had thrown out to her rival.* This duplicity of conduct, joined to some appearance of an imperious superiority assumed by her, had drawn a peevish letter from Mary; and the seemingly amicable correspondence between the two queens was, during some time, interrupted. In order to make up the breach, the queen of Scots despatched Sir James Melvil to London; who has given us in his memoirs a particular account of his negotiation. J . Melvil was an agreeable courtier, a man of address and conversation; and it was recommended to him by his mistress, that, besides grave reasonings concerning politics and state affairs, he should introduce more entertaining topics of conversation, suitable to the sprightly character of Elizabeth; and should endeavor by that means to insinuate himself into her confidence. He succeeded so well, that he threw that artful princess entirely off her guard,† and made her discover the bottom of her heart, full of all those levities, and follies, and ideas of rivalship which possess the youngest and most frivolous of her sex. He talked to her of his travels, and forgot not to mention the different dresses of the ladies in different countries, and the particular advantages of each in setting off the beauties of the shape and person. The queen said, that she had dresses of all countries; and she took care thenceforth to meet the ambassador every day apparelled in a different habit: sometimes she was dressed in the English garb, sometimes in the French, sometimes in the Italian; and she asked him which of them became her most. He answered, the Italian; a reply that he knew would be agreeable to her, because that mode showed to advantage her flowing locks, which, he remarked, though they were more red than yellow * Keith, p. 269, 270. Appendix, p. 158. Strype, vol. i. + Haynes, p. 447. P. 414. she fancied to be the finest in the world. She desired to know of him what was reputed the best color of hair: she asked whether his queen or she had the finest hair: she even inquired which of them he esteemed the fairest person; a very delicate question, and which he prudently eluded, by saying that her majesty was the fairest person in England, and his mistress in Scotland. She next demanded which of them was tallest: he replied, his queen. "Then is she too tall,” said Elizabeth ; "for I myself am of a just stature." Having learned from him that his mistress sometimes recreated herself by playing on the harpsichord, an instrument on which she herself excelled, she gave orders to Lord Hunsdon, that he should lead the ambassador, as it were casually, into an apartment where he might hear her perform; and when Melvil, as if ravished with the harmony, broke into the queen's apartment, she pretended to be displeased with his intrusion; but still took care to ask him whether he thought Mary or her the best performer on that instrument.* the whole of her behavior, Melvil thought he might, on his return, assure his mistress, that she had no reason ever to expect any cordial friendship from Elizabeth, and that all her professions of amity were full of falsehood and dissimulation. From After two years had been spent in evasions and artifices,† Mary's subjects and counsellors, and probably herself, began to think it full time that some marriage were concluded; and Lord Darnley, son of the earl of Lenox, was the person in whom most men's opinions and wishes centred. He was Mary's cousin-german, by the lady Margaret Douglas, niece to Henry VIII., and daughter of the earl of Angus, by Margaret, queen of Scotland. He had been born and educated in England, where the earl of Lenox had constantly resided, since he had been banished by the prevailing power of the house of Hamilton; and as Darnley was now in his twentieth year, and was a very comely person, tall and delicately shaped, it was hoped that he might soon render himself agreeable to the queen of Scots. He was also by his father a branch of the same family with herself; and would, in espousing her, preserve the royal dignity in the house of Stuart: he was, after her, next heir to the crown of England; and those who pretended to exclude her on account of her being a foreigner, had endeavored to recommend his title, and give it the prefer * Melvil, p. 49, 50. † Keith, p. 264. ence. It seemed no inconsiderable advantage, that she could, by marrying him, unite both their claims; and as he was by birth an Englishman, and could not by his power or alliances give any ground of suspicion to Elizabeth, it was hoped that the proposal of this marriage would not be unacceptable to that jealous princess. Elizabeth was well informed of these intentions;* and was secretly not displeased with the projected marriage between Darnley and the queen of Scots. She would rather have wished that Mary had continued forever in a single life; but finding little probability of rendering this scheme effectual, she was satisfied with a choice which freed her at once from the dread of a foreign alliance, and from the necessity of parting with Leicester, her favorite. In order to pave the way to Darnley's marriage, she secretly desired Mary to invite Lenox into Scotland, to reverse his attainder, and to restore him to his honors and fortune. And when her request was complied with, she took care, in order to preserve the friendship of the Hamiltons and her other partisans in Scotland, to blame openly this conduct of Mary. [1565.] Hearing that the negotiation for Darnley's marriage advanced apace, she gave that nobleman permission, on his first application, to follow his father into Scotland: but no sooner did she learn that the queen of Scots was taken with his figure and person, and that all measures were fixed for espousing him, than she exclaimed against the marriage; sent Throgmorton to order Darnley immediately, upon his allegiance, to return to England; threw the countess of Lenox and her second son into the Tower, where they suffered a rigorous confinement; seized all Lenox's English estate; and, though it was impossible for her to assign one single reason for her displeasure,|| she menaced, and protested, and complained, as if she had suffered the most grievous injury in the world. 1 The politics of Elizabeth, though judicious, were usually full of duplicity and artifice; but never more so than in her transactions with the queen of Scots, where there entered so many little passions and narrow jealousies, that she durst not avow to the world the reasons of her conduct, scarcely to her ministers, and scarcely even to herself. But besides a woman *Keith, p. 261. + Keith, p. 280, 282. Jebb, vol. ii. p. 46. Keith, p. 255, 259, 272. Keith, p. 274, 275. : § Melvil, p. 42. ish rivalship and envy against the marriage of this princess, she had some motives of interest for feigning a displeasure on the present occasion. It served her as a pretence for refusing to acknowledge Mary's title to the succession of England; a point to which, for good reasons, she was determined never to consent. And it was useful to her for a purpose still more unfriendly and dangerous, for encouraging the discontents and rebellion of the Scottish nobility and ecclesiastics.* Nothing can be more unhappy for a people than to be governed by a sovereign attached to a religion different from the established; and it is scarcely possible that mutual confidence can ever, in such a situation, have place between the prince and his subjects. Mary's conduct had been hitherto in every respect unexceptionable, and even laudable; yet had she not made such progress in acquiring popularity, as might have been expected from her gracious deportinent and agreeable accomplishments. Suspicions every moment prevailed on account of her attachment to the Catholic faith, and especially to her uncles, the open and avowed promoters of the scheme for exterminating the professors of the reformed religion throughout all Europe. She still refused to ratify the acts of parliament which had established the reformation; she made attempts for restoring to the Catholic bishops some part of their civil jurisdiction; † and she wrote a letter to the council of Trent, in which, besides professing her attachment to the Catholic faith, she took notice of her title to succeed to the crown of England, and expressed her hopes of being able, in some period, to bring back all her dominions to the bosom of the church. The zealots among the Protestants were not wanting, in their turn, to exercise their insolence against her, which tended still more to alienate her from their faith. A law was enacted, making it capital, on the very first offence, to say mass any where, except in the queen's chapel; and it was with difficulty that even this small indulgence was granted her: the general assembly importuned her anew to change her religion; to renounce the blasphemous idolatry of the mass, with the tyranny of the Roman Antichrist; and to embrace the true religion of Christ Jesus.|| As she answered with temper, that she was not yet convinced of the falsity of * Keith, p. 290. Father Paul, lib. vii. + Spotswood, p. 198. her religion or the impiety of the mass, and that her apostasy would lose her the friendship of her allies on the continent, they replied by assuring her, that their religion was undoubtedly the same which had been revealed by Jesus Christ, which had been preached by the apostles, and which had been embraced by the faithful in the primitive ages; that neither the religion of Turks, Jews, nor Papists was built on so solid a foundation as theirs; that they alone, of all the various species of religionists spread over the face of the earth, were so happy as to be possessed of the truth; that those who hear, or rather who gaze on the mass, allow sacrilege, pronounce blasphemy, and commit most abominable idolatry; and that the friendship of the King of kings was preferable to all the alliances in the world.* The marriage of the queen of Scots had kindled afresh the zeal of the reformers, because the family of Lenox was believed to adhere to the Catholic faith; and though Darnley, who now bore the name of King Henry, went often to the established church, he could not, by this exterior compliance, gain the confidence and regard of the ecclesiastics. They rather laid hold of the opportunity to insult him to his face; and Knox scrupled not to tell him from the pulpit, that God, for punishment of the offences and ingratitude of the people, was wont to commit the rule over them to boys and women.† The populace of Edinburgh, instigated by such doctrines, began to meet and to associate themselves against the government. But what threatened more immediate danger to Mary's authority, were the discontents which prevailed among some of the principal nobility. The duke of Chatelrault was displeased with the restoration, and still more with the aggrandizement of the family of Lenox, his hereditary enemies; and entertained fears lest his own eventual succession to the crown of Scotland should be excluded by his rival, who had formerly advanced some pretensions to it. The earl of Murray found his credit at court much diminished by the interest of Lenox and his son; and began to apprehend the revocation of some considerable grants which he had obtained from Mary's bounty. The earls of Argyle, Rothes, and Glencairne, the lords Boyde and Ochiltry, Kirkaldy of Grange, Pittarow, were instigated by like motives; * Keith, p. 550, 551. ‡ Knox, p. 377. † Keith, p. 546. Knox, p. 381. |