MODERN HISTORY OF ENGLAND. BOOK II. CHAP. XX. HISTORY OF MARY OF SCOTLAND, FROM HER ARRIVAL ON the morning of the 19th August 1561, the two 14 Happy was he or she that first must have the presence of the queen. The Protestants were not the slowest.' Kuox Hist. p. 306. This author dates her arrival on 19th July; but Brantome, Leslie, Spottiswood, and Calderwood, on 20th; and Buchanan on 21st. So much can men vary on the circumstances of events. Castelnau says she arrived on the eighth day of her voyage, and Leslie on the sixth; another singular variation. Keith, 181. Fires of joy were set forth that night; and a company of most honest men, with instruments of music and musicians, gave their saluMOD. HIST. VOL. IV. B XX. II. BOOK But a rude attempt was made to interfere with the private exercise of her religion, by those who, claiming liberty of it for themselves, ought to have allowed it to her. The good sense of lord James secured her from the impending insult, and the oppressing passions of the violent were assuaged by wise and just advise. Mary claimed the natural right of every intelligent being; but she spoke among a people who were fully as intolerant as the church which 5 tations at her chamber window. The melody, as she alleged, liked her well, and she willed the same to be continued some nights after with great diligence. The lords repaired to her with great diligence; and so nothing was understood but mirth and quietness.' Knox, 306. John Knox wrote as he felt; but what Mary's real impressions at this time were, we learn from Brantome, who was with her: When she Janded, she had to go on horseback, and her ladies and lords on the miserable hackneys of the country, harnessed like themselves. At such an equipage she began to weep, and to say that these were not the pomps, the parade, the magnificence, nor the superb housings of France, which she had so long enjoyed; but she must have patience.' And what was worse, in the evening, at the abbey of Edinburgh, when she wished to lay down, there came 5 or 600 raggamuffins of the city, saluting her with some wretched fiddles and little rebecks, which abound in this country, and began singing psalms, as badly and discordantly as could be. Heh! what music! and what a repose for her night!' Brantome Disc. sur la Reine d'Ecosse. 3. When preparations began to be made for the idol of the mass to be said in the chapel, the lord Lyndsay, with the gentlemen of Fyfe and others, plainly cried in the yard, "The idolatrous priests should die the death.' One that carried in the candle was evil afraid; there durst no papist whisper.' Knox, 306. But the lord James took upon him to keep the chapel door. His best excuse was, that he would stop all Scottish men to enter into the mass. But it was sufficiently known that the door was kept that none should have entry to trouble the priest.' Knox, ib. 5 The council assembled; and politic heads were sent unto the gentlemen, with these persuasions: Why will you chase our sovereign from us? She will incontinently return to her galleys; and what then shall all the realm say of us? May we not suffer her a little while? I doubt not but she will leave it. Her uncles will depart; and then we shall rule all at our own pleasure.' With these and the like persuasions was the fervency of the brethren quenched.' Knox, p.307. 6 Knox says, her fair words were even still crying, 'Conscience, conscience! It is a sore thing to constrain the conscience.' p. 309. A sacred and immortal truth, which would be a great promoter of human happiness, if every one that uttered it would but sincerely feel it, and act correspondently with the impression. XX. they had left, but to which she still adhered: and CHAP. Knox preaching a violent sermon against idolatry, the queen chose to have a conference with him, in which she expressed her own opinions undisguised. But if she trusted to her own powers of natural eloquence, she found that they only roused his zeal of elocution to a very unceremonious and overpowering lecture; which excited her to disclose that her secret resolution was to uphold the papal system; 10 an unfortunate determination! as it could only produce an evil state of things between her and her subjects, and no less disquiet and danger 9 7 It is astonishing to us now to read, that the earl of Arran could then declare in a public proclamation, that idolators were to die the death:' that to say mass was to commit idolatry, and that this was more abominable than to commit murder; and also to read the marginal note, that this was a stout and godly protestation.' Knox, p. 308. She blamed his book against the regiment of women. She said she had and would cause the most learned in Europe to write against it. She accused him, 'That he had raised a part of her subjects against her mother and herself. You think I have no just authority. You have taught the people to receive another religion than their princes can allow; and how can that doctrine be of God, seeing that he commands subjects to obey their princes.' When Knox quoted the instance of Daniel and his fellows, she answered, 'Yet none of these men raised their sword against their princes. They resisted not by the sword. Think you that subjects, having power, may resist their princes?' Knox, 310-313. He adds his copious answers. Lord James was with her. 9 Knox thus describes the finale to his reply: 'At these words the queen stood, as it were, amazed, more than a quarter of an hour; her countenance altered; so that the lord James began to entreat her, and to demand What hath offended you, Madam?" At length she said, 'Well, then, I perceive that my subjects shall only obey you and not me, and will do what they list, and not what I command; and so I must be subject to them, and not they to me.' Knox, 313. 10 Lord James disclaiming all disloyalty, she replied, 'Yes; but ye are not of the church that I will nourish. I will defend the church of Rome; for I think it is the true church.' She persisted in her opinion, till she was called to dinner, with this remark, 'You are over hard for me; but if they were here whom I have heard, they would answer you.' Knox, 314, 315. His judgment of her from this conversation was, that she had a proud mind, a crafty wit, and an indurate heart, against what he deemed the truth.' ib. 315. BOOK to Elizabeth and the great majority of the English II. nation."1 One of her French uncles, the duc D'Aumale, returning to France, the two others, the marquis D'Elbeuf and the grand prior, accompanied her in a progress or tour thro some of the chief towns in the southern part of her kingdom. She began it on horseback, with a train of ladies, in the autumn.' At Stirling she was in danger from a fire;13 and her personal right of free worship was both unfairly and 13 12 "Elizabeth immediately as Mary sailed from France, wrote to her a statement of her own wishes and intentions as to their future relatious with each other, to meet her as she arrived in Scotland; and therefore on 16 August 1561, while the Scottish queen was yet on the seas, penned the letter declaring that she did not mean to intercept her, and explaining what she wished her to do for their mutual friendship. She again requested her to ratify the treaty. We require no benefit of you, but that you will perform your promise, whereunto you are bound by your seal and your hand; for the refusal whereof we see no reason alleged can serve. Neither covet we any thing, but that which is in your power as queen of Scotland, which your late husband's ambassador and you concluded; which your own nobility and people were made privy to; which indeed made peace and quietness betwixt us—yea, without which no perfect amity can continue between us. We assure you that we be fully resolved upon this being fully performed, to unite in a sure band of amity, and to live in neighborhood with you as quietly, friendly, yea, as assuredly in the knot of friendship, as we be in the knot of nature and blood. Where it seemeth that report had been made to you that we had sent our admiral to the seas with our navy to impeach your passage, both your servants do well know how false that is: knowing for a truth that we have not any more than two or three small barks upon the seas to apprehend certain pirates; being thereto intreated and almost compelled by the earnest complaint of the king of Spain's ambassador, of certain Scotsmen ahunting our seas, as pirates.' Lett. in Robert. app. 195, 6. 12 She set out from Holyrood House on 11 Sept. 1561, to Linlithgow Palace, and on 13th reached Stirling. Treasurer's account in Chalmers, 1. p. 83. These contain charges for saddles and bridles for twelve of the queen's ladies,' and for black riding cloaks to 'fifteen of the queen's ladies.' ib. p. 82. 13 The queen lying in her bed, having a candle burning by her, being asleep, the curtains and tester took fire, and so was like to have smothered her as she lay.' Randolph's letter, Keith, 190. An idle prophecy that a queen should be burnt at Stirling, was applied by the Scots on this occasion. ib. |