Part 923

SCOTLAND: A. D. 1561-1568. The reign of Mary. Differing views of her conduct and character.

In August, 1561, Queen Mary returned from her long residence in France, to undertake the government of a country of which she was the acknowledged sovereign, but of which she knew almost nothing. "She was now a widow, so the Scots were freed from the fear they had felt of seeing their country sink into a province of France. The people, who had an almost superstitious reverence for kingship, which was very inconsistent with their contempt for kingly authority, welcomed her with open arms. … They had yet to find out that she had come back to them French in all but birth, gifted with wit, intellect, and beauty, but subtle beyond their power of searching, and quite as zealous for the old form of religion as they were for the new one. The Queen, too, who came thus as a stranger among her own people, had to deal with a state of things unknown in former reigns. Hitherto the Church had taken the side of the Crown against the nobles; now both [the Reformed Church and the Lords of the Congregation] were united against the Crown, whose only hope lay in the quarrels between these ill-matched allies. The chief cause of discord between them was the property of the Church. The Reformed ministers fancied that they had succeeded, not only to the Pope's right of dictation in all matters, public and private, but to the lands of the Church as well. To neither of these claims would the Lords agree. They were as little inclined to submit to the tyranny of presbyters as to the tyranny of the Pope. They withstood the ministers who wished to forbid the Queen and her attendants hearing mass in her private chapel, and they refused to accept as law the First, Book of Discipline, a code of rules drawn up by the ministers for the guidance of the new Church. As to the land, much of it had already passed into the hands of laymen, who, with the lands, generally bore the title of the Church dignitary who had formerly held them. The Privy Council took one-third of what remained to pay the stipends of the ministers, while the rest was supposed to remain in the hands of the Churchmen in possession, and, as they died out, it was to fall in to the Crown. Lord James Stewart, Prior of St. Andrews, whom the Queen created Earl of Murray, was the hope of the Protestants, but in the north the Romanists were still numerous and strong. Their head was the Earl of Huntly, chief of the Gordons, who reigned supreme over most of the north." One of the first proceedings of the Queen was to join the Earl of Murray in hostilities which pursued the Earl of Huntly and his son to their death. {2857} And yet they were the main pillars of the Church which she was determined to restore! "The most interesting question now for all parties was, whom the Queen would marry. Many foreign princes were talked of, and Elizabeth suggested her own favourite, the Earl of Leicester, but Mary settled the matter herself by falling in love with her own cousin, Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley." Murray opposed the marriage with bitterness, and took up arms against it, but failed of support and fled to England. The wretched consequences of Mary's union with the handsome but worthless Darnley are among the tragedies of history which all the world is acquainted with. She tired of him, and inflamed his jealousy, with that of all her court, by making a favorite of her Italian secretary, David Rizzio. Rizzio was brutally murdered, in her presence, March 9, 1566, by a band of conspirators, to whom Darnley had pledged his protection. The Queen dissembled her resentment until she had power to make it effective, flying from Edinburgh to Dunbar, meantime. When, within a month, she returned to the capital, it was with a strong force, brought to her support by James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell. The murderers of Rizzio were outlawed, and Darnley, while recovering from an attack of smallpox, was killed (February 9, 1567) by the blowing up of a house, outside of Edinburgh, in which the Queen had placed him. "It was commonly believed that Bothwell was guilty of the murder, and it was suspected that he had done it to please the Queen and with her consent. This suspicion was strengthened by her conduct. She made no effort to find out the murderer and to bring him to punishment, and on the day of the funeral she gave Bothwell the feudal superiority over the town of Leith." In May, three months after Darnley's death, she married the Earl of Bothwell,—who had freed himself from an earlier tie by hasty divorce. This shameless conduct caused a rising of the barons, who occupied Edinburgh in force. Bothwell attempted to oppose them with an army; but there was no battle. The Queen surrendered herself, at Carberry, June 15, 1567; Bothwell escaped, first to Orkney, and then to Denmark, where he died about ten years later. "Just a month after her third marriage the Queen was brought back to Edinburgh, to be greeted by the railings of the mob, who now openly accused her as a murderess. … From Edinburgh she was taken to a lonely castle built on a small island in the centre of Loch Leven. A few days later a casket containing eight letters was produced. These letters, it was said, Bothwell had left behind him in his flight, and they seemed to have been written by Mary to him while Darnley was ill in Glasgow. If she really wrote them, they proved very plainly that she had planned the murder with Bothwell. They are called the 'casket letters,' from the box or casket in which they were found. The confederate barons acted as if they were really hers. The Lord Lindsay and Robert Melville were sent to her at Loch Leven, and she there signed the demission of the government to her son, and desired that Murray should be the first regent." The infant king, James VI., was crowned at Stirling; and Murray, recalled from France, became regent. Within a year Mary escaped from her prison, reasserted her right of sovereignty, and was supported by a considerable party. Defeated in a battle fought at Langside, May 13, 1568, she then fled to England, and received from Elizabeth the hospitality of a prison. She was confined in various castles and manor-houses, ending her life, after many removes, at Fotheringay, where she was executed February 8, 1587.

See ENGLAND: A. D. 1585-1587.

_M. Macarthur, History of Scotland, chapter 6._

"In spite of all the prurient suggestions of writers who have fastened on the story of Mary's life as on a savoury morsel, there is no reason whatever for thinking that she was a woman of licentious disposition, and there is strong evidence to the contrary. There was never anything to her discredit in France. … The charge of adultery with Rizzio is dismissed as unworthy of belief even by Mr. Froude, the severest of her judges. Bothwell indeed she loved, and, like many another woman who does not deserve to be called licentious, she sacrificed her reputation to the man she loved. But the most conclusive proof that she was no slave to appetite is afforded by her nineteen years' residence in England, which began when she was only twenty-five. During almost the whole of that time she was mixing freely in the society of the other sex, with the fullest opportunity for misconduct had she been so inclined. It is not to be supposed that she was fettered by any scruples of religion or morality. Yet no charge of unchastity is made against her. … That Darnley was murdered by Bothwell is not disputed. That Mary was cognisant of the plot and lured him to the shambles, has been doubted by few investigators at once competent and unbiased. She lent herself to this part not without compunction. Bothwell had the advantage over her that the loved has over the lover; and he used it mercilessly for his headlong ambition, hardly taking the trouble to pretend that he cared for the unhappy woman who was sacrificing everything for him. He in fact cared more for his lawful wife, whom he was preparing to divorce, and to whom he had been married only six months. … What brought sudden and irretrievable ruin on Mary was not the murder of Darnley, but the infatuation which made her the passive instrument of Bothwell's presumptuous ambition."

_E. S. Beesly, Queen Elizabeth, chapter 4._

"Constitutionally, Mary was not a person likely to come under the sway of a violent and absorbing passion. Her whole nature was masculine in its moderation, its firmness, its magnanimity. She was tolerant, uncapricious, capable of carrying out a purpose steadily, yet with tact and policy. She was never hysterical, never fanciful. With her, love was not an engrossing occupation; on the contrary, to Mary, as to most men, it was but the child and plaything of unfrequent leisure. Her lovers went mad about her, but she never went mad about her lovers. She sent Chatelar to the scaffold. She saw Sir John Gordon beheaded. She admitted Rizzio to a close intimacy. Rizzio was her intellectual mate, the depository of her state secrets, her politic guide and confidant: but the very notoriety of her intercourse with him showed how innocent and unsexual it was in its nature,—the frank companionship of friendly statesmen. {2858} Had she been Rizzio's mistress, nay, even had love in the abstract been a more important matter to her than it was, she would have been more cautious and discreet; however important the public business which they were transacting might have been, she would hardly have kept the Italian secretary in her boudoir half the night. Her marriage with Darnley was not exclusively a love-match: it was a marriage to which her judgment, as well as her heart, consented. Her love-letters abound in pretty trifles: her business letters are clear, strong, rapid, brilliantly direct. By the fantastic irony of fate this masculine unsentimental career has been translated into an effeminate love-story,—the truth being, as I have had to say again and again, that no woman ever lived to whom love was less of a necessity. This was the strength of Mary's character as a queen—as a woman, its defect. A love-sick girl, when her castle in the air was shattered, might have come to hate Darnley with a feverish feminine hatred; but the sedate and politic intelligence of the Queen could only have been incidentally affected by such considerations. She knew that, even at the worst, Darnley was a useful ally, and the motives which induced her to marry him must have restrained her from putting him forcibly away. Yet when the deed was done, it is not surprising that she should have acquiesced in the action of the nobility. Bothwell, again, was in her estimation a loyal retainer, a trusted adviser of the Crown; but he was nothing more. Yet it need not surprise us that after her forcible detention at Dunbar, she should have resolved to submit with a good grace to the inevitable. Saving Argyle and Huntley, Bothwell was the most powerful of her peers. He was essentially a strong man; fit, it seemed, to rule that turbulent nobility. He had been recommended to her acceptance by the unanimous voice of the aristocracy, Protestant and Catholic. … On a woman of ardent sentimentality these considerations would have had little effect: they were exactly the considerations which would appeal to Mary's masculine common-sense. Yet, though she made what seemed to her the best of a bad business, she was very wretched."

_J. Skelton, Essays in History and Biography, pages 40-41._

"To establish the genuineness of the Casket Letters is necessarily to establish that Mary was a co-conspirator with Bothwell in the murder of her husband. … The expressions in the letters are not consistent with an innocent purpose, or with the theory that she brought Darnley to Edinburgh in order to facilitate the obtaining of a divorce. Apart even from other corroborative evidence, the evidence of the letters, if their genuineness be admitted, is sufficient to establish her guilt. Inasmuch, however, as her entire innocence is not consistent with other evidence, it can scarcely be affirmed that the problem of the genuineness of the letters has an absolutely vital bearing on the character of Mary. Mr. Skelton, who does not admit the genuineness of the letters, and who may be reckoned one of the most distinguished and ingenious defenders of Mary in this country, has taken no pains to conceal his contempt for what he terms the 'theory of the ecclesiastics'—that Mary, during the whole progress of the plot against Darnley's life, was 'innocent as a child, immaculate as a saint.' He is unable to adopt a more friendly attitude towards her than that of an apologizer, and is compelled to attempt the assumption of a middle position—that she was neither wholly innocent nor wholly guilty; that, ignorant of the details and method of the plot, she only vaguely guessed that it was in progress, and failed merely in firmly and promptly forbidding its execution. But in a case of murder a middle position—a position of even partial indifference—is, except in very peculiar circumstances, well-nigh impossible; in the case of a wife's attitude to the murder of her husband, the limit of impossibility is still more nearly approached; but when the wife possesses such exceptional courage, fertility of resource, and strength of will as were possessed by Mary, the impossibility may be regarded as absolute. Besides, as a matter of fact, Mary was not indifferent in the matter. She had long regarded her husband's conduct with antipathy and indignation; she did not conceal her eager desire to be delivered from the yoke of marriage to him; and she had abundant reasons, many of which were justifiable, for this desire. … The fatal weakness … of all such arguments as are used to establish either Mary's absolute or partial innocence of the murder is, that they do not harmonize with the leading traits of her disposition. She was possessed of altogether exceptional decision and force of will; she was remarkably wary and acute; and she was a match for almost any of her contemporaries in the art of diplomacy. She was not one to be concussed into a course of action to which she had any strong aversion."

_T. F. Henderson, The Casket Letters and Mary Queen of Scots, chapter 1._

"The beauties of her person, and graces of her air, combined to make her the most amiable of women; and the charms of her address and conversation aided the impression which her lovely figure made on the hearts of all beholders. Ambitious and active in her temper, yet inclined to cheerfulness and society; of a lofty spirit, constant and even vehement in her purpose, yet polite, and gentle, and affable in her demeanour; she seemed to partake only so much of the male virtues as to render her estimable, without relinquishing those soft graces which compose the proper ornament of her sex. In order to form a just idea of her character, we must set aside one part of her conduct, while she abandoned herself to the guidance of a profligate man; and must consider these faults, whether we admit them to be imprudences or crimes, as the result of an inexplicable, though not uncommon, inconstancy in the human mind, of the frailty of our nature, of the violence of passion, and of the influence which situations, and sometimes momentary incidents, have on persons whose principles are not thoroughly confirmed by experience and reflection. Enraged by the ungrateful conduct of her husband, seduced by the treacherous counsels of one in whom she reposed confidence, transported by the violence of her own temper, which never lay sufficiently under the guidance of discretion, she was betrayed into actions which may with some difficulty be accounted for, but which admit of no apology, nor even of alleviation. An enumeration of her qualities might carry the appearance of a panegyric: an account of her conduct must in some parts wear the aspect of severe satire and invective. Her numerous misfortunes, the solitude of her long and tedious captivity, and the persecutions to which she had been exposed on account of her religion, had wrought her up to a degree of bigotry during her later years; and such were the prevalent spirit and principles of the age, that it is the less wonder if her zeal, her resentment, and her interest uniting, induced her to give consent to a design which conspirators, actuated only by the first of these motives, had formed against the life of Elizabeth."

_D. Hume, History of England, chapter 42 (volume 4)._

{2859}

"More books have been written about Mary Stuart than exist as to all the Queens in the world; yet, so greatly do those biographies vary in their representations of her character, that at first it seems scarcely credible how any person could be so differently described. The triumph of a creed or party has unhappily been more considered than the development of facts, or those principles of moral justice which ought to animate the pen of the Historian; and, after all the literary gladiatorship that has been practised in this arena for some three hundred years, the guilt or innocence of Mary Queen of Scots is still under consideration, for party feeling and sectarian hate have not yet exhausted their malice. … If the opinions of Mary Stuart's own sex were allowed to decide the question at issue, a verdict of not guilty would have been pronounced by an overwhelming majority of all readers, irrespective of creed or party. Is, then, the moral standard erected by women for one another, lower than that which is required of them by men? Are they less acute in their perceptions of right and wrong, or more disposed to tolerate frailties? The contrary has generally been proved. With the exception of Queen Elizabeth, Catharine de Medicis, Lady Shrewsbury, and Margaret Erskine (Lady Douglas), of infamous memory, Mary Stuart had no female enemies worthy of notice. It is a remarkable fact that English gold could not purchase witnesses from the female portion of the household of the Queen of Scots. None of the ladies of the Court, whether Protestant or Catholic, imputed crime at any time to their mistress. In the days of her Royal splendour in France Queen Mary was attended by ladies of ancient family and unsullied honour, and, like true women, they clung to her in the darkest hour of her later adversity, through good and evil report they shared the gloom and sorrow of her prison life."

_S. H. Burke, Historical Portraits of the Tudor Dynasty and the Reformation Period, volume 4, chapter 7._

"Mary Stuart was in many respects the creature of her age, of her creed, and of her station; but the noblest and most noteworthy qualities of her nature were independent of rank, opinion, or time. Even the detractors who defend her conduct on the plea that she was a dastard and a dupe are compelled in the same breath to retract this implied reproach, and to admit, with illogical acclamation and incongruous applause, that the world never saw more splendid courage at the service of more brilliant intelligence; that a braver if not 'a rarer spirit never did steer humanity.' A kinder or more faithful friend, a deadlier or more dangerous enemy, it would be impossible to dread or to desire. Passion alone could shake the double fortress of her impregnable heart and ever active brain. The passion of love, after very sufficient experience, she apparently and naturally outlived; the passion of hatred and revenge was as inextinguishable in her inmost nature as the emotion of loyalty and gratitude. Of repentance it would seem that she knew as little as of fear; having been trained from her infancy in a religion where the Decalogue was supplanted by the Creed. Adept as she was in the most exquisite delicacy of dissimulation, the most salient note of her original disposition was daring rather than subtlety. Beside or behind the voluptuous or intellectual attractions of beauty and culture, she had about her the fresher charm of a fearless and frank simplicity, a genuine and enduring pleasure in small and harmless things no less than in such as were neither. … For her own freedom of will and of way, of passion and of action, she cared much; for her creed she cared something; for her country she cared less than nothing. She would have flung Scotland with England into the hellfire of Spanish Catholicism rather than forego the faintest chance of personal revenge. … In the private and personal qualities which attract and attach a friend to his friend and a follower to his leader, no man or woman was ever more constant and more eminent than Mary Queen of Scots."

_A. C. Swinburne, Mary Queen of Scots (Miscellanies, pages 357-359)._

ALSO IN: _J. H. Burton, History of Scotland, chapters 41-47 (volume 4)._

_M. Laing, History of Scotland, volumes 1-2._

_F. A. Mignet, History of Mary, Queen of Scots._

_A. Strickland, Life of Mary, Queen of Scots._

_J. Skelton, Maitland of Lethington._

_W. Robertson, History of Scotland, Appendix._

_C. M. Yonge, Cameos of English History, series 4, chapter 32, and series 5, chapters 1, 2, 5 and 6._

SCOTLAND: A. D. 1567. Accession of James VI.

SCOTLAND: A. D. 1568-1572. Distracted state of the kingdom. The Reformed Church and John Knox.

During the whole minority of the young king, James VI., Scotland was torn by warring factions. Murray, assassinated in 1570, was succeeded in the regency by the Earl of Lennox, who was killed in a fight the next year. The Earl of Mar followed him, and Morton held the office next. "The civil commotions that ensued on Murray's assassination were not wholly adverse to the reformed cause, as they gave it an overwhelming influence with the king's party, which it supported. On the other hand they excused every kind of irregularity. There was a scramble for forfeited estates and the patrimony of the kirk, from which latter source the leaders of both parties rewarded their partisans. … The church … viewed with alarm the various processes by which the ecclesiastical revenues were being secularised. Nor can it be doubted that means, by which the evil might be stayed, were the subject of conference between committees of the Privy Council and General Assembly. The plan which was actually adopted incorporated in the reformed church the spiritual estate, and reintroduced the bishops by their proper titles, subject to stringent conditions of qualification. …

See SCOTLAND: A. D. 1572.