the full as complete as those decent affections | had been of the vaguest, alternately Catholic which walk orderly in the rule of duty. and Protestant, as had suited the interests of She who would kill her husband would give those who had the care of him; and for himher own life for her love. Perhaps we may self, he had thought as much about it as take her own words, and she would sooner young self-indulgent men of rank of his age have given her life for him than what she commonly are apt to think. But, brought gave the last wreck of her self-esteem. roughly to his senses as he had been, and Shakspeare never struck a deeper note than with the world growing all so dark about that wild prayer of hers, that Bothwell him, something of his old lessons was steal"would not think ill of her for what she was ing back over him, and, hardly knowing doing for him.” So pleads the heart for what he was, he turned mourning in his Mary Stuart, if this be indeed the worst of prayer to the God which Catholic and Prother, clinging still to her, in spite of all, estant alike had told him of. Mary had not though with shame and sorrow. Yes, if it left the house all day; she had been out of were the worst; but there are icy touches in the sick-room but for a few minutes; it was the last act of the Darnley tragedy, which to give certain directions for the alteration of shrivel up our sympathies as an April frost the arrangement of the furniture down stairs, wind shrivels the young leaves. and another singular order There had been some change in the plan in the last ten days; possibly the conveniences at Craigmillar were inferior to those at Kirk-of-Field. It was to this place that they carried Darnley on the last of January, 1567. There was a villa there of the Duke of Chatelherault's, to which, as a matter of course, his litter was being conveyed, when, to their own and to his surprise, the bearers were ordered to carry him to a small gloomy house, lying detached in the middle of a garden, belonging to a certain Robert Balfour, a brother of that Sir James Balfour who, as we remember, some few months before, had drawn the bond for the murder. It is as well to observe the arrangement of this house, of which Nelson, one of the chamberlains, who was found unhurt amidst the ruins of it, has left us a sufficiently close account. The main door opened from the garden, and close to it, inside, there was another smaller door at the end of a passage, which led off to a detached suite of apartments, contrived for separate use, like those in the Inns of Court. Opening from this passage there was a large ground-floor room; at the end of it a staircase, leading to a landing, and another room immediately over the other. Where the servants' offices were does not apper, probably in some other part of the house. What is principally noticeable is, the relative position of the two rooms, and their entire isolation. The upper one was for Darnley; Mary was below him, on the ground-floor. Darnley's sickness lingered; he was still unable to leave his bed. The winter waned slowly, and the sallow February twilights were lengthening mournfully out. It was Sunday, the tenth of the month. The King heard mass in the morning. His religion "The Queen," says Nelson, " causit tak down the utter door that closit the passage towards baith the chambers, and was nothing left to stop the passage into the chambers but only the portale dour;" of which Bothwell had a second key. Her bed, which was exactly under her husband's, was to be moved away to the other side of the room; the new black velvet hangings were to be replaced by others old and worthless; and a valuable counterpane of some fur or other to be taken away altogether. She could think of these things at such a time; let us consider it. When an ordinary imagination ventures into the atmosphere of great crimes, and tries to realize their awfulness, it pictures out and dwells upon the high-wrought passions which envelope them all is gloomy, vast, majestic, terrible. But nature is wiser than we, and there is a deeper tragedy, if we can read it rightly, in the small thoughts and cares, for which she in her real-life dramas can find a place. night fell down black and moonless. Mary returned up stairs and "promist allsua to have bidden there all night;" and Bothwell came with others, with respects and inquiries. There were four came with him: one his servant Paris; another a kinsman of his own, a Captain Hepburn; and two more, who paid shortly for this night's work upon the scaffold, Hay and Tallo they were called. They had brought powder-barrels with them, and while Bothwell was up stairs, they were busy arranging them in the spot which the Queen's late alterations had provided for them, where, till that evening, her own bed had stood. By this time it was ten o'clock. The "Paris passes to the King's chamber where the "Then the Queen tak purpose. as it had been on the suddain, and departed as she spak to give that mask to Bastian who that night was marrit to her servant." She kissed him, and she left him, knowing too well that it was the last time-that before morning, those lips she touched so lightly would be cold in death. She departed to the lights, and the music, and the weddingball at Holyrood. Darnley lay painfully on his bed; his page was with him, and Nelson, from the passage outside, heard him repeating the 55th Psalm.* Singularly, it was one of the Psalms for the English evening service of the day, and it is impossible to read it in its fatal appropriateness without very painful emotion. Mary had played ill her part of tenderness, and the shadows of the coming hours were stealing over his spirit. King, Queen, the Earl of Bothwell, and others, | der, she was well pleased that it had taken were; and Paris shows the Earl Bothwell that place, and that she would take no steps to all things were in readiness." In France, where she had friends, it might have been expected some revenge it. kinder feeling might have shown itself. But Catherine knew her pupil, and, even three weeks after, the Archbishop of Glasgow wrote to her from Paris, that no one there had a doubt of her complicity, The worst opinion which could be formed of her she herself did her best to justify. On the Wednesday a reward was offered; but no notice was taken of the thousand voices which answered it with a charge against the Earl of Bothwell. The people paraded the streets of Edinburgh through the night crying for vengeance upon him; yet she did nothing. She did worse than nothing; a fortnight after, before the month was out, she was off at Lord Seton's with him, amusing herself with archery and pleasure parties. With the one exception of Lord Seton himself, the entire party collected there consisted of those very noblemen whose fatal signature made them all chief accomplices in the murderHuntly, Argyle, Bothwell, and the worthy Archbishop Hamilton. These were the present favorites. Well might the Lord of Grange write to Bedford, "Whoever is unfrom their evil." And the signs of the deephonest reigns in this court; God deliver them ening indignation of the people showed unmistakably on her next appearance in Edinburgh, the very market women calling after her as she passed, "God be with your Majesty, if ye be sackless of your husband's death." "My heart is disquieted within me, and the fear of death is fallen upon me. "Fearfulness and trembling are come upon me, and an horrible dread hath overwhelmed me. “And I said, O that I had wings like a dove, for then would I flee away, and be at rest. * * * "It is not an open enemy that hath done me this dishonor, for then I could have borne it. "Neither was it mine adversary that did magnify himself against me, for then peradventure I would have hid myself from him. "But it was even thou, my companion, my guide, and my own familiar friend." We cannot dwell on it. God forgive her and all of us! He was found dead under a tree in the garden by the people who hurried in after the explosion, with his page at his side; but there was no mark of fire on him, and from the situation in which the bodies were found, it was conjectured that he had sprung out of the window, and had been followed and dispatched below. Hepburn had told Bothwell that he did not intend to trust the powder, as he had known it so often fail; and Darnley had perhaps fallen asleep and had been awoke by the men entering his room. But we need not follow this miserable story further. What is remarkable is the immediate impression which spread every where, that, if Mary was not cognizant of the mur * Mignet says the 65th; unless the mistake is the Brussels Pirate's, on whose edition we have unfortunately been dependent. The English translator has it right. But it was all lost on the Queen of Scotland. After playing so deeply for her prize, she was not going to lose it for the insolent clamor of a mob, and in three months she was married. Bothwell had a wife already, but the ever-ready Archbishop made a two days' business of a divorce for him, and the marriage itself was accompanied with every circumstance most disgraceful to herself and degrading to the country which had to look on at it. Her cause was utterly gone. From the Presbyterians she could of course expect nothing. Profligacy would not have troubled the Guises, but they could not forgive the outrage on the world's opinion, and they could not afford to uphold a person who could sacrifice her interests and her faith upon a love fancy. Catherine wrote to say that she could have no more to do with her; and her letter was endorsed by Cardinal Lorraine. Nor was this the worst. It shows what Mary's party in Scotland was, that when Throgmorton came in July, to Edinburgh, to examine and report on the state of the country, it came out that at that very time (Throgmorton refused to believe it, till the fact itself was dragged before him) the Archbishop, in behalf of the Hamiltons, was making proposals to put the Queen to death. Perhaps there was but one person living who retained at that time any genuine kind feeling for her, and that one it was her curse through life that she could do nothing but detest: it was the Queen of England. Since the Darnley marriage, there had been but little interchange of cordialities between them. It could not well have been otherwise, considering what were Mary's intentions in so marrying; but on first hearing of the tragical ending of it, Elizabeth came forward with everything which was most affectionate and kind. She told Mary openly what was said of her, that she winked at the crime, and did not intend to punish it. People said this of her; but for herself, she added, "de moy pensez, je vous supplie, que je ne vouldrois qu'une telle pensée residait en mon cœur pour tout l'or du monde;" only for her honor's sake she implored her to remember how much was at stake, and how much depended on the way in which she acted. This M. Mignet calls "the bitterness of reproach and ill-concealed hypocrisy," an imputation of motive which it is difficult to meet, except with a very indignant rebuke. In answer to this letter, Mary promised to bring Bothwell to trial, and the next thing which Elizabeth heard of her was, that she had put the castle of Edinburgh into his hands. Forced at last to allow him to be tried, the proceedings were precipitated so as to make them a mockery; yet Elizabeth still refused to believe that Mary was more than reckless; and four days before the trial she wrote again, urging her to put it off; telling her that the Earl of Lennox was assured of a combination to acquit Bothwell, and imploring her to act straightforwardly, to silence the calumnies which were spreading about her. What is this but the conduct of a real friend, struggling to think well of her, and anxious, of all things, to see her right herself? It is unhappily necessary that we should bespeak the patience of at least any lady readers under whose eyes these pages may fall, while we relate Elizabeth's conduct. It has been so uniformly assumed that she could not have been acting sincerely with the Queen of Scotland, that she must have envied her, must have hated her, and there | fore must have betrayed her; that when she is kind, she is always hypocritical, and everything she says or does is interpreted into the result of a steady malevolence, springing out of the meanest rivalry. As we find no evidence that, in her own lifetime, even her worst enemies suspected her of so miserable a feeling, we can only account for the present so general belief from the temper of the modern popular historians, who have explained her actions according to such principles and ways of looking at things as their own experience had made them familiar with. This is not meant for poor thin satire; it is miserable truth. It was only through fear of Elizabeth that the marriage was not sooner interfered with, and that strong measures were not taken to prevent Mary from disgracing herself. Whatever Elizabeth's real feelings were, there can be no question at all what the Scotch Calvinists supposed that they were, and that even after the mock violence which Bothwell used with Mary, and after it had been necessary to keep her by force from placing Prince James in his hands, so little hope had any one of them that Elizabeth would encourage or even permit active rebellion, that Murray had left Scotland in despair, and was trying what he could do in Paris; and Kirkaldy of Grange wrote to the Earl of Bedford, that he would give it all up, and leave home and country for ever. "The Queen," he says, "will never cease till such time as she have wrecked all the honest men in this realm. She was minded to cause Bothwell to ravish her, to the end that she may the sooner end the marriage which she promised him before she caused him to murder her hus band. There is many that would revenge this murder but that they fear your mistress." So thoroughly bad it all was, the Guises were even ready to interfere; and the French ambassadors threatened Mary with immediate consequences, if the marriage were proceeded with; yet so right was Kirkaldy about Elizabeth, that if she had given way to her own inclination, the world would have seen her in marvellous league with Mary against Murray and Catherine de Medicis. Randolph describes a morning's interview which he had with her about it all. She was possessed with a notion that Mary was shamefully calumniated about the murder, and bad as the Bothwell marriage was, and indignantly as she said she abhorred it, she did not choose that subjects should take excuse from it for insolence or for rebellion. Notwithstanding her abhorrence, her Majesty | black "banner of the Lord" floating on bedoth not like that her subjects should by any force fore her. withstand that they see her bent unto, and yet she doth greatly fear for the young Prince. Her Majesty told me also that she had seen a writing from Grange (the letter quoted above) to my Lord of Bedford despitefully written against the Queen, in such terms as she could not abide the hearing of it. She would not that any subject, what cause soever there be proceeding from the Prince, or whatsoever her life and behavior is, should dis-known how to cover that unto the world." failed her then. At last, however, it was not to be borne any longer. Perhaps at no time, and in no country, could proceedings like Mary's have been passed by without retribution of some sort or other overtaking her at last. Crime produces hatred, and hatred revenge -it is an eternal and inevitable law-and least of all was she likely to escape among these fierce Calvinists of John Knox's, men whose very moral sense was stimulated into fanaticism, and who had already, too, made more than an experience of successful rebel lion. They tried unsuccessfully to the last to win Elizabeth; they told her they were rising, not against Mary, but against Bothwell, and that Mary was in thraldom. But Elizabeth answered sternly, that their Queen had written to her to say that she was not in thraldom, but had consented to all that had passed, and therefore the prerogative must not be violated. But probably, before this answer came, it was all over. The Queen and Bothwell, with a body of about three thousand men, were marching on Edinburgh, to put down the sedition; the army of the Kirk went out to meet them, and something of the spirit which was in them may be conjectured from the standard which they had chosen to fight under; on its black massive folds there was worked curiously the body of the murdered Darnley lying under the tree as he was found, the baby prince kneeling over him, and underneath, for a device, "Judge and avenge my cause, O Lord." It was a cause before which the spirit of loyalty quailed and sank. The two armies met at Carberry; an hour's parley followed, for the interchange of challenges and expostulations. At the end of it the Queen found herself alone with Bothwell and some sixty of his private friends; the rest had melted off the hill like snow. It was over; the game was lost; she had played desperately, but the stake was forfeited. Bothwell had to ride for his life, and Mary, in the long June twilight, was escorted into Edinburgh in shameful captivity, with the in a trial so humiliating. Alone, struck down It is impossible not to admire her bearing with all her crimes about her, a young woman scarcely twenty-five years old, borne along in the iron circle of those grim avengers, and a wild flood of execrating people weltering round her; if Mary Stuart had fear, her heart would have She turned on them like a lioness at bay. "Give me your hand, sir," she said to Lord Lindsay, who rode beside her; steel gauntleted, she took it in her slender fingers. "By this hand," she said, her blue eyes glaring fury at him, "I will have your head for this." It is not like the poor, weak, injured sufferer our imagination has been taught to paint her. There was not a fiercer heart behind the mail of any warrior there, than was beating in that one woman's breast. On the news of this rough treatment of the prerogative, Elizabeth burst into high anger. The Earl of Bedford was instantly dispatched to the frontier with all the available troops, and Throgmorton was sent direct to Edinburgh, to express her feelings about it, and demand immediate explanation. But matters were already past explanation, either to Elizabeth or to any one. Mary was at Lochleven a fast prisoner, the casket had been found, and, though there had been no moral doubt of her guilt before, there was now conclusive evidence. Throgmorton wrote in despair,-"It is public speech," he says, " among all the people, that their Queen hath no more privilege to commit murder nor adultery, than any other private person, neither by God's law, nor by the law of this realm." The ultra party, among whom were Morton, John Knox, and the clergy generally, were now urgent that she should be brought to a public trial and executed. The threat of this, and its apparent imminence, for the first time alarmed her; and in July, with a mental reservation that it should be invalid against her, as extorted by violence, she signed an abdication of the throne in favor of her son. But Throgmorton was not sent from England to look on quietly at such proceedings as this. Immediately on his arri val, finding the victorious party cared nothing either for his threats or for his entreaties, he had gone to Lochleven, and in Elizabeth's name had told the Queen of Scots, that at first his mistress had determined to hold no further communication with her, to express should join her in forwarding Mary's restoration; but after what he had seen he could not undertake anything of the kind. Elizabeth was exceedingly angry, Murray grew only more cold and impracticable, and she dismissed him in high displeasure; but he reached Scotland without having at all made her horror that no steps had been taken to prevent the murder, and her shame at the marriage. But the rebellion of the nobles had softened her feelings. Whatever had been Mary's conduct, it did not become subjects to assume the sword, and she was now ready to restore her to liberty, only making one condition, that she should give up Both-up his mind, and then for the first time he well; and imploring her, for God's sake, to come forward with some answer or other to the abominable things which were said of her. But Mary would not hear of giving up Bothwell, would not answer, would not do any thing. Elizabeth hesitated. If she made a condition, it seemed as if it ought to be observed; but then came the news of the extorted abdication, and she could not contain herself any longer. It is quite clear that she did not believe a word of the worst charge against the Queen of Scotland. was shown the originals of the fatal letters. There was no more to be said. The assembly offered him the regency, and implored him to accept it. Murray said he must first see his sister, and there must have been fears of his constancy, as attempts were made to prevent it. But he was determined to go; and Throgmorton wrote to England, that there was no doubt that he was acting "in full faith and true affection towards her." He rode off to Lochleven, and we owe to Throgmorton an account of the remarkable In vain Ce-interview which followed. He was introduced into her presence, and remained with her four hours, unable to speak a word. There she was his own father's child and his Queen. Queen of France, Queen of Scotland, and to be Queen of England, what had not fortune done for her! And now what was she? In vain for five years he had watched over her as a father might; with small thanks to him, and in spite of him, she had gone her own bad way, and, deposed and degraded, she had made her name infamous through all time as a murderess and adulteress. He could not trust her. knew her too well. Humble as she seemed as she sat there, he knew that she had learnt nothing, and repented of nothing, except of having failed. What could he say to her? cil and Leicester implored her to let matters alone and not interfere. She would hear nothing; and she declared that "she would make herself a party against the rebels, to the revenge of their sovereign, and as an example to all posterity." Throgmorton was to communicate this imperious threat. The Earl of Morton listened, and then coolly told him, that if Bedford crossed the frontier, it would be the signal for Mary's death-not a hand in the country would be raised to save her. In proof of this he showed him the proposal of which we spoke above, which within forty-eight hours he had received from the Hamiltons, suggesting her execution, as the simplest solution of their difficulties. And he showed him further certain promises, which (so strangely parties had changed sides) had been sent to him from the Queen-Mother of France, to the effect that she would imprison Mary for life in a French convent, and give him all help to enforce her deposition. This would, indeed, have placed Elizabeth in an impracticable position. As things were, it was impossible for her efficiently to serve Mary, and with a bad grace she yielded to her minister, and recalled Bedford. And now all eyes were turned to Murray. He had been in France during all this. Like Elizabeth, he had refused to believe in his sister's guilt. It was only as he was preparing to return to Scotland that he was shown what appeared decisive evidence of it. Murray never did anything in a hurry; he travelled back at his leisure, passing through London on his way, where he had an interview with the Queen. She insisted that he He In the evening, after vague confession and wild prayers to him to speak to her, even if it were to tell her the very worst, he broke silence; "more," Throgmorton says, "like a ghostly confessor than as a counsellor." "He set her up a glass Where she might see the inmost part of her." The Darnley marriage, so wretchedly desired and still more wretchedly detestedthe murder, and the mock trial, and the second marriage-her obstinate clinging to it and, last of all, the dreadful witness against her, "in her own hand written," on which any day she might be brought to trial, with but one issue of it possible. Mary threw herself before him, beseeching him to save her; she desired nothing except to be spared that, and Murray was her only ref uge. Murray told her sternly to seek a |
