the country with a rod of iron, plundering in all directions, tampering with the coinage, and seeking every means to enrich himself. In 1578 a convention of the nobility insisted that James, who was now in his thirteenth year, was of a proper age to govern by himself. Morton was taken by surprise, and retired, as to the best place of safety, to Lochleven Castle. About three months after, he contrived to obtain possession of the person of the young king, and to resume his authority. The Earls of Argyle and Athole raised an army,-as they said, to rescue their sovereign from the captivity of the Douglases; but when a battle seemed inevitable, the English ambassador interfered, and patched up a reconciliation. Soon after, Morton gave a banquet to his adversaries; and the Earl of Athole, the chief of these, died of the dinner. And soon there ran a rumour that Morton was negotiating for the delivery of James into the hands of Elizabeth. At this moment Esmé Stuart, lord of Aubigny, arrived from France, where he had been educated. He was the son of a second brother of the Earl of Lennox, the father of Darnley, and consequently a near relation to the young king, who at once took him into extraordinary favour. This, the first of James's many favourites, was handsome, graceful, and accomplished. His rise was proportionately rapid; he became Duke of Lennox, captain of the guard, first lord of the bedchamber, and lord high chamberlain. But, under this favourite, who knew little of Scotland, or of business of any kind, there was a minor favourite, James Stuart, commonly called Captain Stuart, the second son of Lord Ochiltree, a family which also claimed kindred with the royal house. The captain, who had a turn for treachery and intrigue equal to that of Morton, had fully resolved to work the fall of the regent ; and this he achieved after many difficulties, for Morton was strong in the prejudices and fears of the people, who were led to believe that the Duke of Lennox was an agent of the Guises, commissioned to restore the mass in Scotland. Morton had procured an act of parliament to ratify every act of his regency, and to indemnify him for any illegal exercise of authority. It was, therefore, deemed im

prudent to prosecute him for any part of his conduct as regent; but Morton, long before his regency, had been vehemently suspected of having a share in the murder of the king's father; and Captain Stuart, now created Earl of Arran, induced James to proceed against him on this account, alleging that the act of indemnity did not reach to the murderers, and that a sentence upon this fact would equally carry with it the forfeiture of Morton's life and of his immense wealth and wide estates, which would all fall to the poor king. The acute villain had grown somewhat dull with age; he allowed himself to be thrown into prison. Elizabeth sent down her old agent Randolph to interpose in his favour. The Prince of Orange and the Protestant King of Navarre also interfered-for Morton was deemed a sturdy Protestant, while the royal favourite, the young Duke of Lennox, was suspected of papistry. But these representations were not regarded, and Randolph, who was found out plotting with the Earl of Angus, was obliged to flee for his life. Elizabeth even collected troops near the borders to intimidate the Scots; but this measure was met by the levying of an army in Scotland, and James was made to send a messenger to demand explicitly whether the Queen of England wished to have peace or Her majesty then abandoned her creature to his fate, delicately protesting that it would not become her to make war in defence of a murderer, and old Morton, after a very irregular trial,† was submitted to the embraces of the "Maiden," a rude kind of guillotine, which he himself had introduced into Scotland a short time before. And thus perished another regent of Scotland. A portion of the trial is interesting, as bearing upon the question of Mary's guilt or innocence. The unanimous verdict of the jury brought the prisoner in guilty of concealing, or being art and part in the murder of Henry Darnley; and it was proved pretty clearly that his kinsman and confidant Archibald Douglas, and his servant *The Earl of Angus was nephew to Morton.

war.

† Morton's servants were barbarously tortured to force confessions from them.

Binning, were actually employed in the murder. It was also shown that he had given a bond to Bothwell, to secure him from punishment for that deed; and a paper was produced, which was said to be Bothwell's dying declaration, and which exonerated the queen from all share in the dark transaction. Morton, after sentence, confessed to the ministers of the kirk that, upon his return from England, after his exile for his part in the slaughter of David Rizzio, the Earl of Bothwell and his kinsman Archibald Douglas had solicited him to take part in the projected murder of Darnley ; but he affirmed that he declined so doing, unless Bothwell could produce to him the queen's sign-manual in warrant of the deed. He alleged that Bothwell had promised him to produce such an assurance; but he admitted that he never did, and that he never saw anything from the queen to authorise the murder. His servant Binning was executed the day after his master; but the far more guilty Archibald Douglas escaped into England.

After the death of Morton, James nominally governed the kingdom by himself; but, in fact, the whole business of the state was managed, or mismanaged, by his favourite, the young Duke of Lennox, and by James Stuart, the new Earl of Arran. The latter was as great a scoundrel as Morton, without his ability and experience, and his private life was outrageously dissolute. He soon

commenced an intrigue for the overthrow of the young Duke of Lennox, who had first put him in the way of court promotion; and the course he adopted speedily brought about the ruin both of his patron and of himself. At this moment the Catholics of England turned an anxious eye to the north, not only hoping that James, now that he was relieved from Morton, would make some exertions for his afflicted mother, but also that he might be won over, if not to their church, to a toleration of itand his feelings in this respect would be of no small importance, as they saw that he would in all probability succeed to the English throne. Active intrigues were set on foot under the main direction of Parsons, the Jesuit, Waytes, an English Catholic clergyman, and

Creighton, a Scottish Jesuit. But it was stated by, or for the king, that he was in a state of extreme poverty, and that, unless he were relieved and succoured from abroad, he must of necessity submit to the will of Elizabeth. Parsons flew to Spain, Creighton to Rome: Philip made James a present of 12,000 crowns; the pope promised 4000 crowns. Mary was made privy to the intrigue, and she offered, upon certain conditions, to legalise James's irregular accession. The English court was no stranger to what was passing, nor to the new conspiracy which ensued. The Earl of Gowrie, a son of the murderous Ruthven, invited James to his castle at Ruthven. The unsuspecting king accepted his invitation, and found himself a close prisoner. Then the authority of the state fell to the Earl of Marr, the master of Glamis, the Lord Oliphant, and others, supported by the preachers, who proclaimed to their congregations that there had been a plot on foot to restore the mass and that limb of Satan, Queen Mary. Arran was taken and thrown into a dungeon; Lennox fled to France, where he died soon after of course not without suspicion of poison. But, to prove that the Scottish preachers had been mistaken, he died a steady Protestant. When the news of her son's captivity reached Mary, she foresaw nothing less than his absolute ruin or murder, and, putting her own griefs out of consideration, she wrote a letter full of maternal tenderness and anxiety to Elizabeth, imploring her to interfere and save her only child. But Elizabeth was well satisfied with what had taken place, and she now left the affairs of Scotland to themselves. But the lords had never contemplated the violent measures which had suggested themselves to the affrighted imagination of a mother, and James, boy as he was, was their match, at least in dissimulation. He duped his gaolers into a belief that he forgave what had been done; he recovered his liberty, summoned a convention, and resumed the exercise of his authority, having formally pardoned all concerned in the Raid of Ruthven.

All this called for fresh precautions on the part of Elizabeth, who sent down her dexterous minister Walsing

Intrigues almost inexplicable followed in rapid succession, and the English court was kept in an unceasing agony of alarm by reports of foreign invasions and inroads across the Borders; insurrections at home; plots against the queen's life; English St. Bartholomews. In this state Elizabeth gave full course to the penal code against the Catholics, which had been made more and more severe, and to the fears and fanaticism of her Protestant subjects. Spies and informers were let loose till the land swarmed with them: the adherents to the old faith were incessantly harassed, cast into prison on vague suspicions, ruined in their property and prospects. The conduct of government towards the Catholics somewhat resembled the brutal pranks of a set of boys who drive and torment a dog until he is mad, and then shoot him for being dangerous. And yet, after all, no dangerous ▾ Catholic conspiracy was ever traced to any great or powerful number of English subjects-was never brought home to the doors of any hut a few fanatics and inveterate plotters who had caught the infection of the times, when the ordinary proceedings of governments looked more like plots and intrigues than state business. Every man was tempted to work destruction on his personal enemy by the ease of the process with which he could accuse him of being unsound in religion and disaffected in politics. In this way Arden, a gentleman of an ancient family in Warwickshire, was sacrificed to the revenge of his neighbour Leicester. Arden's son-in-law Somerville, and Hall, a missionary priest, and Arden's wife, were convicted of a conspiracy upon evidence extracted by the rack. Somerville strangled himself, or was strangled by others, in Newgate. Arden suffered the horrible death of a traitor. Hall, the priest, who had confessed on the rack, was suffered to live. Before this time Campion, an English Jesuit, who had been lurking in England, was put to the rack. He confessed nothing but the writing and distributing of works in favour of the church of Rome, nor does it appear that he was charged with any conspiracy, but he was executed with three priests named Sherwood, Kirby, and Bryant. Notwith