unscathed, and employed no means, either direct or indirect, for vengeance, ought to be regarded as an instance of magnanimity and Christian forbearance rare indeed among princes of the sixteenth century, and perfectly incompatible with the vindictive temper imputed to her by her defamers. "Her whole reign," observes a biographer, who has based his statement on documentary evidence, "was a series of plots and pardons."1 There was not, in fact, one member of the confederacy by which her fall was accomplished, who had not been a recipient of her grace for some previous act of treason. Unfortunately for herself, those whom Mary Stuart pardoned, she was, with too confiding generosity, apt to trust. The most successful of her regal predecessors had found it expedient, in their dealings with the overweening oligarchs who oppressed the people and controlled the Crown, to act on the worldly-wise maxim, "divide and rule;" but Mary, a peace-maker by nature, and a peace Sovereign by principle, desired to govern a realm in which all ranks should be united in love to each other for love of her. At the juncture which claims our present attention, she had taken some pains to effect a pacification between the rival claimants of the rich ecclesiastical domains of Haddington, Bothwell and Lethington, who had been threatening each other's lives for the last four months.2 "The Queen," writes Forster to Cecil, "hath made the agreement between the Earl of Bothwell and the Secretary."3 Eager as Lethington was to retain the whole of the abbey lands adjoining his father's estate, he saw the policy of submitting with a good grace to the Queen's arbitration. By resigning a portion of his prey, he removed a previously insuperable obstacle to acting as Bothwell's colleague in the new ministry which Mary was labouring to form, and was reinstated in his former office of Secretary of State. As for his reconciliation with Bothwell, that was conducted, according to the Asmodean principle, with outward pledges of amity and deadlier purposes of 1 Chalmers. 2 Inedited letter from Drury to Cecil, June 20. Border Correspondence -State Paper Office 2 Inedited Sent 19 1566 malice. He played his game so finely withal, as to succeed in beguiling Bothwell into becoming the instrument of his vengeance on Darnley, and thus, effecting Bothwell's ruin, remained the undisputed possessor of the abbey lands. The events of the few brief months that intervened between the conception of Lethington's daring plot for ridding himself of his two great adversaries, Darnley and Bothwell, and its consummation, resemble the progressive scenes of a startling tragedy—a tragedy in which the part assigned to the royal heroine was about as voluntary as that of the puppet queen on the mechanist's chess-board, whose springs are directed by the unseen hands of the deep-seeing planner of the game. The only move in which Mary exercised free will was the fatal one of associating the parties who were denounced by her husband as deeply implicated in the late conspiracy against her person and government, with Bothwell, in whose hands was the whole military power of the realm, and who, acting independently of the English faction, had up to that moment proved an effectual bulwark against the ambitious designs of Moray and his confederates. Well might Darnley take alarm when he observed symptoms of a coalition so ominous to the royal house of Stuart. His first impulse had been to provide for his personal safety by securing the means of leaving Scotland; but his father having objected to his doing so, he had made a desperate effort to induce Mary to dismiss from her cabinet, not Bothwell, to whom he never expressed the slightest ill-will, but Moray and his guilty confederates, Lethington, Sir John Bellenden, and Makgill.1 Unfortunately, his bad temper, venting itself in a sullen disobliging demeanour to Mary, defeated his own purpose, offended her, and irrevocably committed him with those whose presence in her Court he had refused to tolerate. Bitter cause had Mary to lament her infatuation, when too late, in allowing herself to be deluded by the insidious counsels of her Premier, instead of listening to the warning voice of her husband, who knew their practices and principles too well. 1 Letter of Sir Robert Melville-printed in Keith. omcialny together as ministerial coneagues, v a secret band of alliance to fortify and sup] in all their undertakings against all opparrangements for the Coalition Cabinet being t Moray continued to exercise the office of Pr and, as he had done ever since the Queen "tool in Edinburgh Castle, before the birth of the Pr the principal direction of the civil power Bothwell, as the Queen's Lieutenant and he Admiral of Scotland, had the military and na as it was, under his control. The Earl of Lord Chancellor-a dignity previously held a by the outlawed traitor, Morton, because it w a life-long appointment. Moray's brother-in was Justice-General; Lethington, Secretary John Bellenden, Justice Clerk; Mr James M Register; and Richardson, another creatur the Lord Treasurer. Associated with this ju bers of the Privy Council, were Darnley's nea the Roman Catholic Earl of Atholl; the pr Bothwell, Protestant Bishop of Orkney; Al don, Protestant Bishop of Galloway; Jo historian, Roman Catholic Bishop of Ross; Rothes; Sir John Maxwell of Terregles, lorand one or two others. As an interlude between the diplomatic to the claims and contentions of persons hereto cally opposed in creed and party, and inducin with, instead of against, each other, Mary r self with the more feminine amusement of " sorting over her jewels,"2 and issuing direc costume that was to be worn by the noble assi approaching royal solemnity of her baby's 1 Moray's Answer to the Protestation of the Earls of Hu printed in Keith. 2 Forster to Cecil, Sept. 19-Border Correspondence. The pleted, nister; grossed Lord e, such y was aimed otland rgyll, ; Sir Clerk pray's, mem sman, Adam Gore the arl of -ries; tling etrio act her and the the Ling, gyll, MS. at Stirling with great speed.' The Conventio assembled for that purpose at Edinburgh, granted of £12,000 to defray the expenses of their Majes son, the native Prince of the realm,” to be paid b ment on the Three Estates of Scotland, in th equitable proportions: £6000 by the spiritual es by the barons and freeholders, and £2000 by th Thus no part of this tax pressed on the indige levied on those whose wealth could well support for the honour of the nation. It was somewhat that the Lords of Convention, by whom thi granted for the ceremonial of a baptism accord Romish ritual, were, with the exception of t Atholl, all Protestants, including Moray, Argy Lethington, and Bothwell. Surely it would more consistent with the religious professions these gentlemen to have refused the aid, unless the Crown were baptised in the Reformed faith. worthies had all some private interests of the serve, to which the cause of the true Evangile inferior object. The Bishop of Mondivi, papal Nuncio at t France, in a letter to Cosmo I., Duke of Tusca "that the Protestant cause in Scotland was los at this juncture;" adding, "that the Queen pleased her to enter effectually into the policy o Catholic sovereigns in Europe, might have towards the restoration of her own faith; but no induce her to act as she was required in that matt 1 Forster to Cecil, September 19-Border Correspondence MS., inedited. On this incident, simple and innocent as it has built his absurd calumny of Mary's attention to Bothw the Prince's baptism. 2 Keith, from Privy Council Decreets. 3 Labanoff's Recueil des Lettres de Marie Stuart. prelate had been appointed by the Pope to the office of nuncio to the Court of Holyrood; but Mary, who feared his arrival might rekindle the horrors of a religious war in her realm, politely excused herself from receiving him, by pleading her apprehension that "he might be exposed to very uncourteous usage, and that it was not in her power to protect his life," although Mondivi "protested his willingness to brave all consequences, if her Majesty had sufficient courage to do what was requisite on her part, by receiving his visit in a proper spirit." 1 After the funds for the christening of her boy had been voted, Mary's next care was for the redress of the disorders which, during the late domestic troubles, had broken out again on the Borders, and for this purpose she commanded the Earl of Bothwell to proceed into Liddesdale and take all notorious offenders into custody, and lodge them in the dungeons of Hermitage Castle till he could present them before her in the justice-court, which she had proclaimed her intention of holding at Jedburgh in the second week of October.2 The date of Bothwell's departure on this mission is generally stated to have been either on the 6th or 7th of that month; but Lord Scrope's letter to Cecil on the 6th proves that it must have taken place several days earlier, and that the dangerous bodily hurts Bothwell received in the discharge of his duty were inflicted, not on the 7th of October, but the 5th. "I have,"3 writes Scrope, "presently gotten intelligence out of Scotland that the Earl of Bothwell, being in Liddesdale for the apprehension of certain disordered persons there, had apprehended the Lairds of Mangerton and Whitehaugh, with sundry other Armstrongs of the surname and kindred, whom he had put within the Hermitage. And yesterday, going about to take such like persons of the Elliots, in pursuit of them, his lordship, being foremost and far before his company, encountered one John Elliot of the Park hand to hand, and shot him through the thigh with a dag [horse-pistol]; upon which wound, the man, feel 1 Labanoff's Recueil des Lettres de Marie Stuart. 3 Datches f State Danon MS Bordon Comospondence. |