she has made no innovation, nor means to do any 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 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. authority of the sacred assembly, and promised, if she succeeded to the throne of England, that she would subject both kingdoms to the apostolic see. * It appears that, at a still earlier period, in autumn 1562, she secretly excited the insurrection of the earl of Huntly, that he might take her out of the hands of Moray, by whom she was accompanied †: the catholic insurgents carried their hostilities so far as to oblige her to vanquish them in battle, and to consent to the execution of some of their leaders. The earl of Huntly was himself trampled to death in the decisive battle of Corrichie. One of his sons was executed at Aberdeen three days after. George earl of Huntly, the next son, was convicted of treason: but, after three years' imprisonment, was released from confinement, and raised to the office of chancellor, without waiting for a reversal of his attainder; as if to proclaim more loudly the impatient eagerness of the queen to manifest her enmity to her protestant subjects. This unfortunate princess had been advised by her uncles to treat Huntly as the most powerful among the catholics; and, at the time of the insurrection, to hold out hopes of her hand to John Gordon, his second son. On her journey northward on that occasion, when solicited to suppress the Roman catholic worship, she angrily answered, that she hoped, before a year was expired, to have the mass restored through the whole kingdom. The indiscretion which thus alarmed the Scottish people and the English government peculiarly unfitted her to be the tool of the subtle * Fra. Paolo. lib. 7. Pallavic. e. xx. c. 16. Wherever the cardinal describes the same event with Fra. Paolo without contradicting him, so acute, unwearied, rancorous, and well informed an opponent must be understood as assenting to all he does not deny. + Sir R. Gordon's History of the Earls of Sutherland, 140. Archbishop Spottiswood, 185. The shades by which Huntly's enterprise against Moray, (whom it was intended to murder if he had been inveigled into a visit at Strathbogie, the principal seat of the Gordons,) grew into an open rebellion against the queen, are curiously indicated in the narrative of the protestant primate. Of the neighbouring clans, the Frasers and Munros had immediately joined the royal army, when the Gordons refused to surrender the castle of Inverness to the summons in the queen's name. The clan Chaltan, who were among Huntly's followers, did not forsake him till it became more apparent that his resistance was against the queen's authority. Spottiswood, 186. and embroiled project which had been suggested to her m France, where she had been advised to affect a confidence in the earl of Moray, and not to lay aside the mask until the European confederacy should be ready to co-operate; while she was also warned never to cut off all ties with the catholics, her only assured friends. She had learned, in the school of Catherine de' Medicis, to dissemble deeply for a short time, and an immediate object but the qualities of her sex, and the habits of her station, rendered long dissimulation painful, and disposed her to yield to the impulse of every momentary passion. Her sallies, generally pointed and animated, were circulated among the people, who considered them as proofs that all she did for the protestants was intended to deceive them, and felt towards her that bitter anger which was inspired by an insult to their understanding, which she hoped to dupe by her hypocrisy. : Another incident embroiled the affairs of Scotland. David Rizzio, a Piedmontese musician, who had come to Edinburgh in the train of the minister from Savoy, having been introduced into the palace as a performer in the royal band, soon ingratiated himself with the queen, and was appointed to be her private secretary. The ease with which he wrote French (the principal qualification for his office), seems originally to have recommended him to the appointment. He promoted Darnley's marriage; and, whether actuated by his own zeal, or prompted by advice from the princes of Lorrain, contributed to the re-establishment of the catholic party in power. He obeyed the instructions of the house of Guise to counteract the interposition of England for the banished lords. Darnley's subscription was engraven on a signet, the custody of which was delivered to this upstart alien, with leave to employ it.* "David," says Randolph, now worketh all, and is governor to the king." To every man intoxicated by sudden elevation, * Knox, book v. edit. Edin. 1814, ii. 176. + Randolph to Cecil, (taken without reference by Chalmers, i. 214.) "David is he that now worketh all, chief secretary to the queen of Scots, and only governor to her good man."- 3d June, 1565. State Paper Office much of his enjoyment depends on the parade of his promotion. Rizzio gave general offence by his insolent display of favour. He affected to show writings to the queen, and to whisper in her ear, at levees crowded with the nobility. Even Moray himself sued David earnestly, and more humbly than could be believed, with the present of a fair diamond," to obtain restoration from exile.* When the queen desired Melville to befriend David, he urged her to pardon the lords; and observed to her, that there was danger from unhappy reports of which she could not be ignorant. The mention of these reports was followed by a conversation with Rizzio in which Melville, with his accustomed frankness, warned that minion of his peril. But Rizzio disdained counsel, and despised danger. Jealousies of every sort tore asunder Darnley's disordered mind. He was conscious of having disgusted the queen by intoxication, and the brutal language which it pours forth. Though utterly incapable of the conduct of affairs, he could not brook the insignificance to which he thought himself reduced by the unbounded favour of Rizzio. A jealousy of a lower kind, whether grounded on scandalous rumours, or whispered by designing men, or suggested by his own grossness, began to haunt and torment a mind conscious of offences against Mary, and prone to ascribe to the impulse of passion every mark of favour shown by a woman towards a man. The lords of the council, in the beginning of 1566, were Huntly, Bothwell, and Athol; all either catholics or favourers of the catholic party. They, with the effectual aid of Rizzio, dissuaded Mary from yielding to the entreaties of Elizabeth, or to the prudent counsel of Melville, which concurred in exhorting her to pardon so powerful a body of nobles as those who were then exiles in England. The banished lords, who had taken up arms on the principle of resisting the queen's marriage unless their religion was established by law, required the ratification of the acts of the convention of 1560, by an + Ibid. 110. * Melville, 147. |