not expect much success in his errand, which was to desire the queen's consent to the marriage of his mistress. The English council were alarmed. On the 23d of April, letters were despatched to recal Lennox and Darnley from Scotland; and, on the 1st of May, resolutions were adopted by the privy council of the utmost importance; and which, notwithstanding their somewhat pedantic arrangement, with a sprinkling of rhetorical diction *, are not only admirable models of our ancient language, but pregnant proofs how high Cecil, who was the writer, ought to be placed among the first class of wise statesmen. They are remarkable also for a frankness and overflowing good faith, which avow all the motives of the actors without trusting any part of them to insinuation, and circuitous or ambiguous phraseology; and, as it should seem from their tenor, not leaving the most delicate matters to be cautiously hinted in conversation. The substance of this momentous determination was, that the marriage of the queen of Scots with lord Darnley would be dangerous to the protestant religion; that it would strengthen the league of catholic princes which now visibly threatened Europe; that it was big with peril to the title by which her majesty filled the English throne; that the performance of Mary's promise to renounce her pretension to England had been for nearly six years evaded; that, as nothing but force, or the fear of force, could then prevent the marriage, the whole council agreed that it was lawful and necessary to provide for the safety of England, by strengthening the fortifications and reinforcing the garrison of Berwick; that the wardens of the borders should be prepared at an hour's notice, either to defend their own frontier, or to invade Scotland. On the latter measure alone there was a difference of opinion, some being indisposed to actual warfare. When it became evident that Mary was resolved to cut short negotiation

* Determination of the privy council of England on the marriage of the queen of Scots, 1st May, 1565. Keith, 280.

Summary of the consultation of the privy council, 4th June, 1565.Robertson's Appendix, No. X.

by hurrying on her marriage, Throgmorton was instructed, in case of a total failure of his attempts, to persuade the lords of the congregation, and all the Scottish protestants, to withstand the marriage, unless Darnley should promise to adhere to the reformed religion, which he had openly professed in England.*

In the mean time lord James Stuart, who had been created earl Moray, the undisputed chief of the reformed party, who had been prime minister to the queen his sister since her return from France, withdrew from court, as a testimony against an union fraught, in his judgment, with destruction to his country and to his faith. Seldom, in so turbulent a country as Scotland. ruled in the name of a young woman, and but just escaped from civil war, has any administration been conducted with such firmness, or has been attended with such signal success, as that which Moray guided during a critical period of four years. The reputation of Mary's government, we are told, was spread over all countries.† His firm and equal hand had reduced the highlands and borders to an obedience unknown for centuries to wild and lawless tribes. As the protestants entirely and justly trusted Moray's zeal for their religion, he was enabled to temper their fanaticism, and to prevent at least its breaking out into civil war. He appears to have conducted himself with spotless faith towards his sister, and to have obtained a degree of quiet which no other Scotsman could have ensured. The queen was not insensible of his fidelity, nor of the influence of his name. On the 8th of May, 1565, she commanded him to repair to her at Stirling, where, in Darnley's chamber, she earnestly besought him to subscribe a writing in which the marriage was recommended. She repeated her importunities for two successive days. She even appealed to him as a Stuart, and implored him to help her attempts to execute the will of their father, king James, whose earnest desire it was to keep the crown of

*Sir James Melville, 134.

Sir James Melville, 130. He, who had lived so many years abroad, well knew the opinion of the continental nations.

Scotland on the head of a Stuart. He desired time to consider proposals thus urgently pressed, and alleged the unreasonableness of such a writing without an assembly of the peerage; adding, that he disliked the marriage, because he feared that Darnley would be an enemy of true Christianity. "Hereupon arose an altercation in which the queen gave him many sore words. He answered with humility, but nothing could be obtained from him.' "'* In Mary's letter to Elizabeth which followed, says sir Nicholas Throgmorton †, "there neither wanted eloquence, anger, despite, nor passionate love." The banns of an ill-fated union were published on Sunday the 22d of July, 1565. Darnley was promoted, on the same day, to the princely dignities of duke of Albany and earl of Ross; and, on Sunday the 29th, the queen had the misfortune to indulge her headlong passion, by bestowing her hand on an undeserving favourite. The nuptials were solemnised according to the rites of the church of Rome; though Darnley withdrew during the celebration of mass. The English minister describes the insolence of the simpleton intoxicated by his triumph, "He rather seems to be a monarch of the world, than he whom we have seen and known as lord Darnley." Meanwhile Thomworth, a gentleman of Elizabeth's household, was despatched as her envoy to Edinburgh, with instructions to threaten Mary, if she should practise aught for the overthrow of the reformation in England, and to warn her more amicably against attempting to change the established church of Scotland. In the answer, it seems doubtful whether Mary offers a promise to abstain from promoting a religious counterrevolution in England; but, with respect to the alteration of religion in Scotland §, Mary only says, "that

Randolph's

*Keith's Appendix, 160. Knox, ii. 144. Edin. ed. 1814. despatch of 8th May, 1565. MSS. Paper Office. The words in the text to which inverted commas are prefixed are those of Randolph. + Despatch to Leicester, 11th May, 1565.

Randolph, 31st July. Ellis, ii. 200.

Thomworth's instructions, 30th July. State Paper Office. Published with Mary's answer, but without dates, Keith's Appendix, 99. The answer con sains no specific words about religion in England; but a note, without title or subscription, written on the same paper with the MS. is more explicit.

she has made no innovation, nor means to do any thing therein, but what shall be most convenient for the state of her majesty's self and her realm, and that by the advice of her good subjects;" words so vague as to admit of any meaning which it might suit the Scotch queen to give them, and which seem to have been chosen to evade satisfaction to the protestants of Britain, rather than to abate their apprehensions or allay their just resentment. Thomworth was also instructed to expostulate with Mary on her displeasure against the earl of Moray; which was answered by a desire that there might be no meddling in the internal affairs of Scotland. The disfavour of that statesman concerned the peace between the two kingdoms, and the quiet of all British protestants, as essentially as treaties or laws. His ascendancy in the queen's councils was a pledge of friendship to England, of safety to the Scottish reformers, and of some moderation towards the catholics themselves. He alone was able to protect the tranquillity of his sister, by balancing the ascendant of Knox, and in some measure by mitigating the spirit of that upright, sincere, heroic, but stern and fierce, reformer.

The breach between the court and the late prime minister was a signal for the formation, or invention, or exaggeration of conspiracies, by each of the incensed factions against the other. Moray was charged with a plot to carry away the queen into England. The catholic lords were as loudly accused of a design to murder Moray. The protestant lords took up arms: but their unprepared and ill-concerted revolt was easily quelled; and they were compelled to fly for refuge into England. Elizabeth had determined on withholding from them any aid which could afford a just cause for war. She even obliged the exiled lords to make disavowals of having been encouraged by her*: a species of disclaimer which passes, in the language of sovereigns, rather for apology than denial; and which, therefore, they do not scruple to exact from their servants or dependent allies. * Cecil to Randolph, 23d Oct. 1565. MS. State Paper Office.

In this case it was, doubtless, intended to dispose Mary to pardon them. Mary declared to Randolph, that she would rather lose half her kingdom than show mercy to Moray. * As no personal offence was alleged, this extravagant language can only be considered as a proof of her determination to take a part in that confederacy for the extirpation of protestantism between France and Spain, then called the Holy Alliance, which was formed at Bayonne in September, 1565, in the nightly interviews of the duke of Alva with Catherine de' Medicis. Randolph, in February, 1566, discovered that the queen of Scots had subscribed this league ; which was then compared, for the sweeping extermination which it threatened, to the famous massacre called the Sicilian Vespers ; and of which Alva sufficiently showed that it spared no station, by coolly saying, that it was childishness to fish for frogs, when a single salmon's head was worth thousands of them. This treaty was sent from Paris by two messengers: by Thornton, from the archbishop of Glasgow, Mary's minister; by Clernau, from her uncle, the cardinal of Lorrain. She was to retain a copy of it; but to return the original, subscribed with her own hand, by a messenger of her own, named Wilson. De Villemonte, another messenger, was sent to her shortly after, to stay her from agreeing with the banished lords, "because that all catholic princes were banded to root the heretics out of all Europe; which unhappy message hasted forward divers tragical accidents." §

Mary, however, needed not these incentives. The cardinal of Lorrain had, nearly three years before, made known her disposition and determination to the representatives of the whole catholic church. On the 10th of May, 1563, that prelate read her letters to the council of Trent, in which she professed her submission to the

* Randolph to Elizabeth, 8th Nov. 1565. MS. State Paper Office. It is clear, from the dates of the two despatches, that Mary's passionate language was an answer to the application which accompanied the particulars of Moray's submission or disavowal.

Randolph to Cecil, 8th February, State Paper Office; and Keith's Appendix, 167.

Melville, 147.