CHAPTER IX.

THE QUEEN OF SCOTS DETAINED A PRISONER.

Mary's cause, as far as Elizabeth was concerned, was now hopeless, although the unfortunate Queen was not given to understand as much. She was removed from Carlisle, which was too near her English friends and her faithful Scottish Borderers. The danger of leaving her at Carlisle is thus hinted by Mr. Skelton, where he describes the effect she produced on Sir Francis Knollys:--

"When she first flashed upon him in her dishevelled beauty and strong anger--travel-stained though she was from her long ride after the Langside panic--the puritanic veteran warmed into unpremeditated welcome. When we read the remarkable letters in which he describes the fugitive Queen, we cease to wonder at the disquietude of Elizabeth; a glance, a smile, a few cordial words, from such a woman might have set all the northern counties in a blaze. The cold and canny Scot, whose metaphysical and theological ardour contrast so curiously with his frugal common sense, could stolidly resist the charm; but the Catholic nobles, the Border chivalry, would have responded without a day's delay to her summons."

It will not be amiss to give, as recorded from time to time in his own words, the impression which the fugitive and impassioned Queen made on Sir Francis during the short time she was under his care.

"We found her," he writes, "in her chamber of presence ready to receive us, when we declared unto her Your Highness' (Queen Elizabeth's) sorrowfulness for her lamentable misadventure. We found her in answer to have an eloquent tongue and a discreet head; and it seemeth by her doings she hath stout courage and liberal heart adjoining thereto." Later: "This lady and princess is a notable woman. She seemeth to regard no ceremonious honour besides the acknowledgment of her estate royal. She showeth a disposition to speak much, to be bold, to be pleasant, to be very familiar. She showeth a great desire to be revenged of her enemies. She shows a readiness to expose herself to all perils in hope of victory. She desires much to hear of hardiness and valiancy, commending by name all approved hardy men of her country, although they be her enemies; and she concealeth no cowardice even in her friends. The thing she most thirsteth after is victory; and it seemeth to be indifferent to her to have her enemies diminished either by the sword of her friends, or by the liberal promises and rewards of her purse, or by division and quarrels among themselves. So that for victory's sake, pain and peril seem pleasant to her; and in respect of victory, wealth and all things seem to her contemptuous and vile. Now what is to be done with such a lady and princess, and whether such a lady and princess is to be nourished in our bosom, or whether it be good to halt and dissemble with such a lady, I refer to your judgment. The plainest way is the most honorable in my opinion." Yes; "the plainest way is the most honourable," but "to halt and dissemble" was esteemed the most profitable. Again Knollys writes: "She does not dislike my plain dealing. Surely she is a rare woman; for as no flattery can lightly abuse her, so no plain speech seemeth to offend her, if she think the speaker thereof to be an honest man." If we knew nothing of Mary but what we have learned from the pen of this cold and critical adversary, who saw her only when misfortune and disappointment might well have soured and irritated her nature, yet found her "eloquent, discreet, bold, pleasant, very familiar," unmoved by flattery and unruffled by "plain speech," we could legitimately infer that fascinating beyond all ordinary measure must have been the days of her unclouded girlhood in France, and even the less cheerful years of her prosperity in Holyrood;[#] and we could well understand why Elizabeth--who hated her for her claim to the English throne and for her surpassing personal beauty--was anxious to place her as far as possible beyond reach of her friends and sympathizers. The necessity of doing this was emphasized nearly a year later, when Mary was at Tutbury in charge of the Earl of Shrewsbury, by a certain friend of Cecil's named Nicholas White, whose curiosity had lead him to seek an audience with the far-famed captive. In a letter to Cecil, which, as its parenthetical clauses clearly demonstrate, was intended also for the eye of Elizabeth, he wrote:--

[#] Randolph, the English Ambassador to Scotland, has left us, in a letter to Queen Elizabeth, a lively picture of the Scottish queen at the age of twenty-two. He had waited on her at St. Andrews, whither she had withdrawn to pass a few quiet days with some friends, and he describes how good-humouredly she upbraided him for interrupting their merriment with his "grave matters." Among other things he wrote:--"Immediately after the receipt of your letter to this Queen, I repaired to St. Andrews. So soon as time served, I did present the same, which being read, and as appeared in her countenance very well liked, she said little to me for that time. The next day she passed wholly in mirth, nor gave any appearance to any of the contrary; nor would not, as she said openly, but be quiet and merry. Her grace lodged in a merchant's house, her train were very few; and there was small repair from any part. Her will was, that for the time that I did tarry, I should dine and sup with her. Your Majesty was aftertimes dranken unto by her, at dinners and suppers. Having in this sort continued with her grace Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, I thought it time to take occasion to utter unto her grace that which last I received in command from your Majesty, by Mr. Secretary's letter.... I had no sooner spoken these words, but she saith, I see now well that you are weary of this company and treatment. I sent for you to be merry, and to see how like a Bourgeois wife I live with my little troop; and you will interrupt our pastime with your great and grave matters. I pray you, sir, if you weary here, return home to Edinburgh, and keep your gravity and great embassade until the Queen come thither; for I assure you, you shall not get her here, nor I know not myself where she is gone; you see neither cloth nor estate, nor such appearance that you may think that there is a queen here; nor I would not that you should think that I am she, at St. Andrews, that I was at Edinburgh."

"If I (who in the sight God bear the Queen's majesty a natural love beside my bounded duty) might give advice, there should be very few subjects in this land have access to, or conference with, this lady. For besides that she is a goodly personage (and yet in truth not comparable to our Sovereign), she hath withal an alluring grace, a pretty Scottish speech, and a searching wit, clouded with mildness." We are indebted to Mr. White for the following piece of information also: "Her hair of itself is black; and yet Mr. Knollys told me that she wears hair of sundry colours."

From this time forward Mary's history is the history of sustaining hope and depressing disappointment. Hopes of an accommodation with her rebel subjects were held out to her by Elizabeth; non-committal promises of her restoration were made; kill-time negotiations were sometimes entered into. It is distressing to read the history of her nineteen years of imprisonment. She never ceased to hope for her release, and yet her hopes were repeatedly disappointed. She continued to write Elizabeth in a friendly tone, hoping, no doubt, to touch a chord of sympathy in her cousin's heart; but she never cringed, she never abased herself. The proud spirit of her forefathers, which she had so fully inherited, lent courage and dignity to her utterances. Various plans were laid for her rescue; but her great distance from any point from which she could be carried out of the realm, rendered them ineffectual. She was removed from place to place, more than a dozen times. The close confinement and the advance of years began to tell on her once lithe and beautiful form. And, indeed, what suffering could be more terrible to a young woman of Mary's lively temperament, than prolonged confinement under a rigorous regime and complete separation from the society of friends. No wonder the Bard of Ayr indignantly addresses Elizabeth:--

The weeping blood in woman's breast Was never known to thee, Nor the balm that draps on wound of woe Frae woman's pitying e'e.

If Mary continued to languish in an English prison, it was not because the majority of the Scottish people had not the good-will to liberate her and place her on the throne. But now, as in the days of her imprisonment in Lochleven Castle, the very love they bore her paralyzed their efforts in her behalf. A miscarried attempt at rescuing her would most probably involve the loss of her life. Elizabeth had received assurance that Mary would never be allowed to pass the precincts of her prison alive. The most distinguished and powerful nobles in Scotland--Argyll, Huntly, Chatelheraut, Athol, Herries, and many others--continued to support her cause, and there is hardly room to doubt, that if Scotland had been left to settle its own internal disputes, Mary would have been restored. But Elizabeth was resolved that Scotland should not settle its own disputes. She laid aside the mask, when she could no longer wear it, and, according as the need arose, sent her soldiers into Scotland to help overpower the friends of Mary. From the day on which Moray returned to Scotland from the Westminster farce, the Queen's party began to gain strength. But what could this avail, since Elizabeth was determined that the cause of the helpless captive should not prosper. The Regent was shot at Linlithgow in January, 1570, and the Earl of Lennox, who succeeded him in the Regency, gave notice to the Ambassador of Elizabeth that English aid would be necessary for the maintenance of his position. The aid, of course, was granted, and the English auxiliaries, under Sussex, by the severity which they exercised against the adherents of the Queen, fully demonstrated their claim to the title of "auld enemies." Mary's party had done enough to prove their loyalty, but when Elizabeth unreservedly cast her lot with the opposite side, they could not hope for permanent success, and they ultimately came to terms with the Regent.

The disgust which Moray's conduct towards his sister had excited among the moderate Scottish nobles is apparent in the action of two leading personages, shortly after the breaking up of the Westminster Conference. William Maitland of Lethington--the "flower of Scottish wit"--and William Kirkaldy of Grange--the "mirror of chivalry"--had been attached to the Regent's party, although it is certain that at least Maitland aimed at a compromise with the Queen and opposed extreme measures. Seeing that a middle course was no longer possible, they unequivocally went over to the Queen's party. Kirkaldy was Governor of Edinburgh Castle, and in April, 1571, Maitland, broken down in body, but mentally the recognized leader of the Queen's men, passed within its walls. From this inacessible height Kirkaldy could look down with indifference on the futile efforts of the Regent's forces to dislodge him, and Maitland could send forth to his associates his letters of advice and encouragement. Throughout the country the opposing forces met in many a bloody conflict. Lennox was killed in an engagement with Huntly in 1571; the Earl of Mar, who succeeded him, died the following year, and the Regency passed into the hands of the fierce and licentious Earl of Morton. Morton renewed the conflict with redoubled vigour. But Kirkaldy's position remained impregnable. "Mons. Meg," the old monster gun, so famous in Scottish history, continued to roar defiance from the ramparts of the Castle, and the Standard of Mary still floated over David's tower. But the old story was repeated; English troops were sent from Berwick to reinforce Morton; and on May the 9th, 1573, the Castle surrendered.

In England the sympathy for the fallen Queen had already burst forth in sudden but ill-directed revolt, under the leadership of two of the most ancient and powerful peers of the realm,--the Earls of Northumberland and Westmorland. Slight success at the outset was soon succeeded by disorder and disaster. The Earls fled to Scotland, whence Westmorland passed safely to Flanders. Northumberland was taken by the Regent Moray, and was afterwards, to the great disgust and humiliation of all honest Scotsmen, handed over to Elizabeth by the Regent Morton, in return for a suitable sum of money. Needless to say the Earl was put to death. Sir Walter Scott, always ready to view transaction from the standpoint of chivalry, makes the following reference to this bargain:--

"The surrender of this unfortunate nobleman to England was a great stain, not only on the character of Morton, but on that of Scotland in general, which had hitherto been accounted a safe and hospitable place of refuge for those whom misfortune or political faction had exiled from their own country. It was the more particularly noticed because when Morton himself had been forced to fly to England, on account of his share in Rizzio's murder, he had been courteously received and protected by the unhappy nobleman whom he had now delivered up to his fate. It was an additional and aggravating circumstance, that it was a Douglas who had betrayed a Percy,[#] and when the annals of their ancestors were considered, it was found that while they presented many acts of open hostility, many instances of close and firm alliance, they never till now had afforded an example of any act of treachery exercised by one family against the other. To complete the infamy of the transaction, a sum of money was paid to the Regent on this occasion, which he divided with Douglas of Lochleven." (_Tales of a Grandfather_.)

[#] Northumberland was a Percy; Westmoreland, a Nevil.

On February 4th, 1568, Mary passed to the care of the Earl of Shrewsbury, who was destined to be her keeper for the next fifteen years. In November, 1570, she was brought to Sheffield where she was detained, almost without interruption, for fourteen years. Personally, Shrewsbury bore no ill-will to his charge. He appears to have been an upright and cultured man, and was evidently disposed to treat his prisoner with the consideration and leniency her rank and misfortune would seem to demand. But he was a loyal subject of Elizabeth's, and until she should be pleased to relieve him of his unpleasant duty, he would faithfully execute her will in regard to the restrictions which she thought fit to place on the liberty of the Scottish Queen.

Great as were the bodily and mental sufferings which close confinement, disappointed hopes and the ingratitude of men produced, they would have been greatly aggravated, had Mary only known by what a slender thread her life sometimes hung. Elizabeth entered into negotiations with successive Regents, from Moray to Morton, for the delivery of Mary into their hands. The remonstrations of the French and Spanish Ambassadors, who represented that such an action would be equivalent to condemning her to instant death, arrested the progress of the first negotiations till the death of Moray brought them to an abrupt ending. During the regency of Mar, the project was revived and almost realized, the necessary condition that Mary should be quickly put to death having been agreed to by the Regent and Morton. But here the death of another Regent intervened to save the doomed Queen from assassination or judicial murder. On the death of Mar, Morton, who had hitherto been the real, though not the nominal Regent, assumed the reins of government. He had no scruples about executing the will of Elizabeth, but he demanded a higher price for his services than she cared to pay. Morton and Elizabeth were well matched; they both knew the value of money, and were unwilling to close a bargain that would not promise to be a safe business transaction. Morton was, no doubt, confident that he would not be hampered by competition in the work he was undertaking, and that he could exact what wages he pleased for his expert labour. Killegrew, the agent of Elizabeth, understood this, and was anxious that the bargain should be clinched before Morton took it into his mind to demand a greater reward. "I pray God," he wrote; "we prove not herein like those who refused the three volumes of Sibylla's prophecies, with the price that they were afterwards pleased to give for one; for sure I left the market here better cheap than now I find it." But Elizabeth would not be outwitted--and Mary lived on.

A never-failing source of sorrow to Mary was the knowledge that her son, whom she had seen for the last time an infant, scarcely twelve months old, at Stirling, was in charge of those who had contrived her own overthrow, and was under the tutorship of the venal and ungrateful Buchanan. The burden of her captivity would have been immeasurably lightened, could she have been assured that he had learned to love her and feel for her misfortunes. But the young James, whatever may have been his desire, was in the hands of her enemies, and could communicate with his mother only in the manner and through the means that they were pleased to specify. Nevertheless, as he grew older he had ample opportunity of learning the real character of the men who had dethroned her, and would, it must be presumed, have done what he could to procure her release, did not the promptings of human interest run counter to the dictates of natural love. He was not of that stuff of which heroes are made. The bravery and chivalry for which his forefathers had long been distinguished, found no abode in his bosom. A sound skin and the prospect of succeeding to the English throne weighed more with him than the thought of adopting a firm and uncompromising policy in defence of his mother. While the projects of Mary's friends on the Continent gave promise of being carried to a successful issue, he was not averse to plotting with the Guises and seeking the aid of the Pope in behalf of his "dearest and most honoured lady mother"; but when these projects came to naught, he was found closely allied to the winning cause. Later on, it is true, when Mary was declared a party to a conspiracy against the life of Elizabeth, and her execution was imminent, he dispatched Ambassadors to the English Court to intercede for her life; and when at last the fatal blow was struck, he gave vent to angry feelings and expressed a desire of revenge. A large number of the Scottish nobility were anxious to avert by armed force the contemplated insult to their nation, and to secure Scotland against a humiliation such as their ancestors would never have tolerated. But a cowardly King and a divided nobility were not the forces which, in earlier days, had awakened terror in the heart of England. Elizabeth and her advisers know this, and were well aware that the fear of never reaching the goal of his ambition--the united thrones of England and Scotland--would curb within harmless limits the half-hearted anger of the selfish James.