bruary, 1570, on the banks of the small river Chelt, near Naworth, Dacres made a hardy onset against the queen's army under her kinsman lord Hunsden. The fight was sharp and cruel, and the event for a while very doubtful; for the frenzy of the catholic party might be estimated from the fact, that there were in the ranks of the revolters many desperate women, who not only fought stoutly, but inflamed and shamed their companions into mortal resistance. Three hundred were killed on both sides, which contemporaries considered as a great slaughter; as it might, perhaps, be generally deemed, being probably about a twentieth part of the number of the combatants. Dacres escaped by the speed of his horse into Scotland. Executions at York followed, of which we have few particulars; and general submission was restored. During these disturbances, on the 22d of January,1570, the regent earl of Moray was assassinated by Hamilton of Bothwell-haugh, from motives of private revenge. On the very day of the murder, Buccleugh and Fernihurst, as if not unconscious that the strong arm which had often curbed their career was withdrawn by that crime, entered the northern counties of England, burning and destroying the houses of friends and enemies in a spirit of impartial rapine. To take revenge for this inroad, as well as to punish the Scotch borderers for their aid to the catholic insurgents, Sussex commanded Scrope and Porter, his lieutenants, to march into Scotland, with instructions to plunder, waste, burn, or otherwise destroy whatever they met. Lord Scroop and sir John Foster, at the same time, carried fire and sword through various parts of the Scottish border. They demolished the castles of Home and Fernihurst. Hamilton, the greatest of the fortified dwellings in the accessible portion of Scotland, fell under their destroying hands. A few of their stragglers entered Edinburgh, rather as a mode of showing defiance and triumph than with any more serious purpose. Satiated with a month's ravage and destruction, they returned without molestation. Holinshed, iv. 237. + Hist. of James VI., 48. ed. Edinburgh, 1825. The fate of Moray's name is singular, even among conspicuous and active men, in an age torn in pieces by contending factions. Contemporary writers agree in nothing, indeed, but his great abilities and energetic resolution. Among the people he was long remembered as "the good regent," partly from their protestant zeal, but in a great measure from a strong sense of the unwonted security of life and property enjoyed in Scotland during his vigorous administration.* His catholic coun trymen abroad bestowed the highest commendations on his moral character, which are not impugned by one authenticated fact. But a powerful party has for nearly three centuries defamed and maligned him, in order to extract from the perversion of history a hypothetical web to serve as a screen for his unhappy sister,—in the formation of which they are compelled to assume, that she did nothing which she appeared to have done; and that he did all that he appears to have cautiously abstained from doing. The English revolt seemed thus to be finally extinguished by the triumph of Sussex over the partisans of Mary in Scotland. That revolt was deeply connected with the facts which, after its suppression, led to judicial proceedings of the highest sort against the first subject in the realm. The duke of Norfolk, no unworthy son of the illustrious Surrey, heir to his vast possessions and princely descent, added to that share in Elizabeth's favour which belonged to the noblest of her mother's kindred, the better sources of influence which arose from his own excellent qualities. Among these were particularly distinguished a facility of temper, and a generous proneness to trust, which, though they always contribute to the charm of private life, are in troublous seasons sometimes irreconcilable with the sternness which may then become indispensable, either to the uniformity of inflexible virtue, or to the success of daring ambition. Though he professed the protestant faith, yet, like others of the * Thuani Histor. ubi supra. old nobility who were embribed by grants of church lands, he was indulgent, if not favourable, to the adherents of the ancient religion. The queen, who had bestowed on him the offices and dignities for which he was. well fitted, gave him the highest proof of her confidence by appointing him her first commissioner in the tribunal, or rather deputation, who were to hear the arguments of the queen of Scots, as well as of her revolted subjects, and to determine what influence their respective proofs and reasonings should have over the measures of the queen of England. Thus placed at the head of a body, which, in spite of every protestation to the contrary, was to determine between sovereigns and nations, the perils of his slippery eminence were augmented by his compassionate nature and susceptible heart. To enter into the particulars of these conferences would be unseasonable when we are concerned only in their influence, and otherwise needless, because the facts and reasonings then under consideration have already been summarily recounted. A few sentences will be sufficient to render their effects on Norfolk's conduct intelligible. In the conference at York on the affairs of Mary, which met the 4th of October, Norfolk and Sussex were the representatives of Elizabeth; Leslie and Herries were the agents of Mary; and Moray, Lethington, and Buchanan were conspicuous among the deputies of the king and kingdom of Scotland: and it cannot be denied that all of them reflected credit on the governments whom they represented, and on the causes which they espoused. Mary's commissioners complained of facts which were undisputed, the revolt against their royal mistress, her imprisonment, her compulsory resignation, the mockery of placing her infant son on her throne, and her final expulsion from her native realm, which compelled her to seek refuge in the territories of her royal sister. Moray, afraid to disclose his true defence, made a faint and inadequate answer, still professing that his friends had taken up arms only against the murderer of Darnley, who had seized and ravished the queen; that she was confined only for a season for her own safety; that her resignation of the crown was really voluntary ;-in a word, every where substituting forms for facts, and words for things. Mary's reply, as long as the contest remained on this ground, was unanswerable. Moray Iwas thus reduced to the alternative of either acknowledging that he was a rebel and an usurper, or of shutting the door to reconciliation, and cutting off all retreat, by accusing Mary of the most atrocious crimes. As long as he withheld that part of the charge, he considered a compromise with his sister as possible. He persisted in enduring the obloquy of defeat, until he ascertained whether Elizabeth, so long unwilling to support the example of rebellion, would agree to ensure him against the dangerous consequences to himself of his making the accusation, if it should prove to be true. He privately laid before the English commissioners the evidence of her guilt, comprehending the intercepted casket, which contained the love-letters and verses of Mary to Bothwell, and two promises to marry him, of which one was written before his pretended trial, by the hand of the earl of Huntley, still Mary's most powerful and faithful adherent. Norfolk acknowledged that these proofs were unanswerable. Moray's charges and demands were laid by Elizabeth before her privy council, who determined that, till such accusations were answered, it was impossible to receive Mary, or to aid her in remounting the throne. The earl of Lennox now appeared as the avenger of Darnley's blood, and distinctly charged the queen as a principal actor in the murder of her husband. The conferences were adjourned to Hampton Court, without objection on the part of Mary*; the accusations of Moray being communicated to the bishop of Ross and lord Herries, who refused to make any answer, "unless the queen of Scots were allowed to justify herself in the presence of the queen of England, the whole nobility of the kingdom, and the ambassadors * October 24. 1568. of foreign states.' ."* This condition must have been known to the proposers to be equivalent to a negative. It was too late, at the very moment when the accusation assumed its most alarming form, to object to a mode of proceeding in which they had acquiesced while the charges were comparatively trivial. They well knew that the exculpation of Mary from the charge of murder had, from the beginning, been declared to be a preliminary condition to her admission to the presence of Elizabeth. They could not have been ignorant that a numerous assembly, such as that to which they appealed, was in itself not the fittest instrument for extracting truth out of intricate circumstances, even if it had been possible for Elizabeth to stake all the interests of her crown and people on the issue of the harangues of a single day. "Had the objections to the documentary proof against Mary," says one of the greatest of historians, "been ever so specious, they cannot now be hearkened to; since Mary, when she could have been fully cleared, did in effect ratify the evidence against her, by recoiling from enquiry at the critical moment."+ During the progress of this investigation the ambition of Norfolk was awakened, and perhaps his pity, if not his tenderness, touched, by the prospect of a marriage with the queen of Scots. Commiseration,--the re straint of nature on absolute power,-began then to act on behalf of that princess with a force which has not been spent in three centuries; and if it was aided in the bosom of the duke of Norfolk by the renown of beauty and by the lustre of crowns, he will not on that account be severely blamed by those who look with some indulgence on the last infirmities of noble minds. Moray encouraged his hopes during the conference at York, as he himself alleged, because he did not know that it was displeasing to Elizabeth; but probably still more because he thought that such a marriage might, with due secu * Anderson, Collect. iii. 31. Leslie's Negotiations. |