the prosperous and this-world tenor of his long fortunate life, and the gay southern scene in which the better part of it was spent, in contrast to the dark and stormy era of his birth, the scene of that event, and the people amidst whom it took place. James's history properly commences before he entered the world. The well-known incident of Rizzio's death, which took place upwards of three months prior to his birth, as it is supposed to have produced some effect upon both his physical and moral constitution, seems entitled to the first notice in these Memoirs. It is needless, of course, to enter into any detail of the circumstances which

Henry VII. of England, who, being himself the representative of the Lancaster branch of the Plantagenets, and marrying Elizabeth of York, the descendant of the other, united in his children, as it was said, the pretensions of both the Roses. Henry's eldest daughter Margaret, was, by James IV. of Scotland, the mother of James V., who in his turn was, through his daughter Mary, the grandfather of James VI. Queen Margaret, by a second marriage to Archibald, Earl of Angus, was the mother of lady Margaret Douglas, who, being married to Matthew, Earl of Lennox, became the mother of Lord Darnley, father to the subject of our Memoir. Darnley and Mary were thus second cousins; and perhaps, but for inheriting the claims of both the children of Queen Margaret, James would never have become King of England; for the children of Margaret Douglas, by virtue of being native English, might have had a preference, by the laws of England, over a Scottish claimant with better hereditary right; a good reason, by the way, for the marriage of Mary and Darnley, though, after it turned out unhappily, it was exclaimed against, as the result of an imprudent attachment. In consequence of the failure of the male issue of Henry VIII., only son of Henry VII., Queen Mary became the heiress presumptive of Elizabeth, his last surviving daughter; and to her, accordingly, as she died without issue, James eventually succeeded.

wards, by a fortunate chance, sovereign of all the three realms forming the British empire; who was very foolish, but very fortunate; liked hunting and the Church of England; was much afraid of assassination, as he had too much need, and never could bear to see a drawn sword or a cocked pistol; who was, altogether, a droll, bustling, fidgetting, incomprehensible old gentleman, more like a schoolmaster than a king, and, ten to one, calculated to wield the ferula with more dignity, and also better effect, than the sceptre. In opposition to this train of ideas, upon the whole so ridiculous, we find that the mother of James was Mary Stuart; that name of tears; that most admirable and hapless woman; that word to conjure up all that a poet can dream of beauty, or a historian quote of misfortune; for whom the highest advantages of birth and person procured but the extreme of misery; who seemed only born for a throne that she might perish on a scaffold. Side by side with this idea, and equally opposed to that of King James, we have Darnley, his boy-father; the tall young knight who rode for a time in gilded armour by Mary's side, alike ready to fondle and protect-who afterwards fell a prey, in his unsuspecting puerility, to a band of full-grown traitors, in whose hands he was as the lily is to the whirlwind. Equally opposed to James himself, are his ancestors; on the one side, the series of chivalric kings who held sway over Scotland from a time antecedent to all authentic history; on the other, the line of the stately Plantagenets, and the warlike Douglases. * Nor is it less curious to view

* Perhaps a genealogical note may here be necessary. James was descended, by both his parents, from King

the prosperous and this-world tenor of his long fortunate life, and the gay southern scene in which the better part of it was spent, in contrast to the dark and stormy era of his birth, the scene of that event, and the people amidst whom it took place.

James's history properly commences before he entered the world. The well-known incident of Rizzio's death, which took place upwards of three months prior to his birth, as it is supposed to have produced some effect upon both his physical and moral constitution, seems entitled to the first notice in these Memoirs. It is needless, of course, to enter into any detail of the circumstances which

Henry VII. of England, who, being himself the representative of the Lancaster branch of the Plantagenets, and marrying Elizabeth of York, the descendant of the other, united in his children, as it was said, the pretensions of both the Roses. Henry's eldest daughter Margaret, was, by James IV. of Scotland, the mother of James V., who in his turn was, through his daughter Mary, the grandfather of James VI. Queen Margaret, by a second marriage to Archibald, Earl of Angus, was the mother of lady Margaret Douglas, who, being married to Matthew, Earl of Lennox, became the mother of Lord Darnley, father to the subject of our Memoir. Darnley and Mary were thus second cousins; and perhaps, but for inheriting the claims of both the children of Queen Margaret, James would never have become King of England; for the children of Margaret Douglas, by virtue of being native English, might have had a preference, by the laws of England, over a Scottish claimant with better hereditary right; a good reason, by the way, for the marriage of Mary and Darnley, though, after it turned out unhappily, it was exclaimed against, as the result of an imprudent attachment. In consequence of the failure of the male issue of Henry VIII., only son of Henry VII., Queen Mary became the heiress presumptive of Elizabeth, his last surviving daughter; and to her, accordingly, as she died without issue, James eventually succeeded.

led to that horrid transaction, or even of the incident itself, since they are already so well known. An allusion to the condition in which Mary was at the time, and the effect which it might be supposed to have upon her and her offspring, is alone necessary in this place. It would appear as one of the most flagrant proofs of the barbarism of even the best class of society in that age, that Darnley (who, it must be remembered, was educated in England) and his associates should have chosen to execute the murder of their victim in the Queen's presence, and while she was in such a peculiar condition. Entering, as it must be well recollected, her small supper-chamber, where she was sitting with Rizzio and one or two other persons, they bent their eyes upon him with a threatening expression, and, on his taking refuge behind his mistress, immediately proceeded to seize him. Mary, at various periods of her life, showed that she possessed an intrepidity of spirit not unworthy of her gallant lineage. But in that terrible scene, when her supper-table was overturned, the lights almost extinguished, and a bended pistol presented to her breast by one ruffian, while another stabbed the man who clung in despair to her person, she gave way to a sensation of alarm, which it appears she did not forget even after the birth of her child. It was her own fear, on that dreadful night, that her child could scarcely survive the agitation into which she had been thrown; and among the invectives which she launched against Lord Ruthven, the chief conspirator, one referred to the evils he might have thus brought upon his country. Fortunately, the misfortune which she apprehended, did not ensue. But it was always supposed,

by the contemporaries of her offspring, that he owed the weakness of his limbs, and his antipathy to the sight of arms, to the agitation into which his mother was thrown on the night of Rizzio's slaughter. *

The dissension consequent upon this event, betwixt Mary and Darnley, was partially stilled at the time when she was about to give birth to her child. On this account, when she retired to Edinburgh Castle, (which she chose to make the scene of her accouchment, in consideration of the security it afforded her), he was admitted to lodge in the same fortress, along with her approved friends, the Earls of Argyle, Atholl, Murray, and Mar. In a palace which she had recently built within that place of strength, and which still exhibits the initials of her own and her

It was latterly insinuated against James, by the less prominent claimants of the English throne, that he was the child of Rizzio, and not of Darnley; a scandal to which some events of his mother's life, and the view which one party took of her character, gave a certain degree of coun tenance. So lately as the time of the Commonwealth, an enemy of the royal family ingeniously remarked, in allusion to his nickname of "the British Solomon," that he eminently deserved that title, seeing he was the son of David the Fiddler, and the father of Rehoboam (meaning Charles), who had the kingdom rent from him. But that Mary was guilty with a man described to have been so old and unamiable as Rizzio, is what no historian, save the malignant Buchanan, has ever imputed to her. Nor does chronology allow of such a supposition:-The marriage of the royal pair took place less than eleven months before the birth of their offspring; and it is quite inconceivable that the Queen could have commenced a guilty connection, so soon after her union to a man whom she warmly loved, and with whom, indeed, she had no quarrel till after she was far advanced in pregnancy.