Kitabı oku: «Life of Mary Queen of Scots, Volume 1 (of 2)», sayfa 16

As soon as Mary found herself alone with Darnley, she urged, with all the force of her superior mind, every argument she could think of, to convince him how much he erred in associating himself with the existing cabal. She was not aware of the full extent to which he was implicated in their transactions; for he had assured her, that he was not to blame for Rizzio’s murder, and as yet she believed him innocent of contriving it. She spoke to him therefore, with the confidence of an affectionate wife, with the winning eloquence of a lovely woman, and with the force and dignity of an injured Queen. She at length satisfied him, that his best hopes of advancement rested in her, and not on men who having first renounced allegiance to their lawful Queen, undertook to confer upon him a degree of power which was not their’s to bestow. Darnley further learned from Mary, that Huntly, Bothwell, Athol, and others, had already risen in her behalf, and yielding to her representations and entreaties, he consented that they should immediately make their escape together. At midnight, accompanied only by the captain of the guard and two others, they left the palace, and rode to Dunbar without stopping.

In a few days, Mary having been joined by more than one half of her nobility, found herself at the head of a powerful army. The conspirators, on the other hand, seeing themselves betrayed by Darnley and little supported by the country, were hardly able to offer even the shadow of resistance to the Queen. Still farther to diminish the little strength they had, Mary resolved to make a distinction between the old and the new rebels; and, influenced by reasons on which Morton had little calculated, she consented to pardon Murray, Argyle, and others, who immediately resorted to her, and were received into favour. After remaining in Dunbar only five days, she marched back in triumph to Edinburgh, and the conspirators fled in all directions to avoid the punishment they so justly deserved. Morton, Maitland, Ruthven, and Lindsay betook themselves to Newcastle, where, for aught that is known to the contrary, they occupied the very lodgings which Murray and his accomplices had possessed a week or two before.

The whole face of affairs was now altered; and Mary, who for some days had suffered so much, was once more Queen of Scotland. “And such a change you should have seen,” says Archbishop Spottiswood, “that they who, the night preceding, did vaunt of the fact (Rizzio’s murder) as a godly and memorable act, affirming, some truly, some falsely, that they were present thereat, – did, on the morrow, forswear all that before they had affirmed.” But it was not in Mary’s nature to be cruel, and her resentments were never of long continuance. Two persons only were put to death for their share in Rizzio’s slaughter, and these were men of little note. Before the end of the year, most of the principal delinquents, as will be seen in the sequel, were allowed to return to Court. Lord Ruthven, however, died at Newcastle of his old disease, a month or two after his flight thither. His death occasioned little regret, and his name lives in history only as that of a titled murderer.¹³⁸

CHAPTER XVII.
THE BIRTH OF JAMES VI

Mary’s vigorous conduct had again put her in possession of that rightful authority of which so lawless an attempt had been made to deprive her; but though restored to power, she was far from being likewise restored to happiness. The painful conviction was now at length forced upon her, that she had not in all the world one real friend. She felt that the necessities of her situation forced her to associate in her councils men, who were the slaves of ambition, and whose heartless courtesies were offered to her, only until a prospect of higher advantages held out a temptation to transfer them to another. She had not been long in her own kingdom, before Bothwell and others contemplated seizing her person, and assassinating her prime minister, the Earl of Murray; – she had hardly succeeded in frustrating these designs, when Murray himself directed his strength against her; and now, still more recently, the husband, for whose sake she had raised armies to chase her brother from the country, had aimed at making himself independent, and, to ingratiate himself with traitors, had scrupled not to engage in a deed of wanton cruelty, personally insulting to his wife and sovereign.

Ignorant where to turn for repose and safety, Mary began to lose much of the natural vivacity and buoyancy of her temper; and to feel, that in those turbulent times, she was endowed with too little of that dissimulation, which enabled her sister Elizabeth to steer so successfully among the rocks and shoals of government. In a letter written about this period to one of her female relations in France, she says, touchingly, “It will grieve you to hear how entirely, in a very short time, I have changed my character, from that of the most easily satisfied and care-chasing of mortals, to one embroiled in constant turmoils and perplexities.” “She was sad and pensive,” says Sir James Melville, “for the late foul act committed in her presence so irreverently. So many great sighs she would give that it was pity to hear her, and over-few were careful to comfort her.” But the perfidy of her nobles Mary could have borne; – it was the disaffection and wickedness of her husband that afflicted her most. Anxious to believe that he told her the truth, when he asserted that he was not implicated in the murder of Rizzio, she rejoiced to see him issue a proclamation, declaring that he was neither “a partaker in, nor privy to, David’s slaughter.” But the truth was too notorious to be kept long concealed. Randolph wrote to Cecil on the 4th of April 1566: – “The Queen hath seen all the covenants and bands that passed between the King and the Lords, and now findeth that his declaration before her and Council, of his innocency of the death of David, was false; and is grievously offended, that by their means he should seek to come to the crown matrimonial.” Hence sprang the grief which, in secret, preyed so deeply upon Mary’s health and spirits. Few things are more calculated to distress a generous mind, than to discover that the object of its affections is unworthy the love which has been lavished upon it. The young and graceful Darnley, laying at Mary’s feet the real or pretended homage of his heart, was a very different person from the headstrong and designing King, colleaguing with her rebels, assassinating her faithful servant, and endeavouring to snatch the crown from her head. “That very power,” says Robertson, “which, with liberal and unsuspicious fondness she had conferred upon him, he had employed to insult her authority, to limit her prerogative, and to endanger her person: such an outrage it was impossible any woman could bear or forgive.” Yet Mary looked upon these injuries, coming as they did from the man whom she had chosen to be the future companion of her life, “more in sorrow than in anger;” and though she shed many a bitter tear over his unworthiness, she did not cease to love him.

In the midst of these anxieties, the time for the Queen’s delivery drew near. After a short excursion to Stirling and the neighbourhood, in which she was accompanied by Darnley, Murray, Bothwell and others, she returned to Edinburgh, and, by the advice of her Privy Council, went to reside in the Castle, as the place of greatest security, till she should present the country with an heir to the throne. During the months of April and May, she lived there very quietly, amusing herself with her work and her books, and occasionally walking out, for she had no wheeled carriage. She occupied herself, too, in endeavouring to reconcile those of her nobility whom contrary interests and other circumstances had disunited. It cost her no little trouble to prevail upon the two most faithful of her ministers, the Earl of Huntly her Chancellor, and Bothwell her Lord High Admiral, to submit to the returning influence of their old enemy the Earl of Murray. It was especially galling to them, that Murray and Argyle were the only persons, in addition to the King, allowed to reside in the Castle with Mary. But it was her own wish to have her husband and her brothers beside her on the present occasion; and no representations made by Bothwell or Huntly could alter her resolution. Yet these two Earls went the length of assuring the Queen, that Murray had entered into a new conspiracy with Morton, and that they would probably put in ward both herself and her infant, as soon as it was born. Surrounded as Mary was by traitors, she could not know whether this information was true or not; but her returning affection for Murray prevailed over every other consideration.¹³⁹

Elizabeth was all this time narrowly watching the progress of affairs in Scotland. Murray’s restoration to favour pleased her much; and, to reconcile Morton and his friends to the failure of their plots, she secretly countenanced and protected them. With her usual duplicity, however, she sent to Edinburgh Henry Killigrew, to congratulate Mary on her late escape, and to assure her that she would give directions to remove Morton out of England. She likewise recalled Randolph, of whose seditious practices Mary had complained; but, as if to be even with the Scottish Queen, she commanded Killigrew to demand the reason why a certain person of the name of Ruxby, a rebel and a Papist, had been protected in Scotland? It would have been better for Elizabeth had she allowed this subject to rest. Though Ruxby feigned himself a refugee from England on account of religion, he had in reality been privately sent to Scotland by Elizabeth herself, and her Secretary Cecil. The object of his mission was to find out whether Mary carried on any secret correspondence with the English Catholics. For this purpose, he was to pretend that he was a zealous supporter of her right and title to the crown of England; and that he had some influence with the English Catholics, all of whom, he was to assert, thought as he did. Having thus ingratiated himself with Mary, he was immediately to betray any discoveries he might make to Cecil. The scheme was ingeniously enough contrived; coming as an avowed enemy to Elizabeth, and she herself actually supplying credentials to that effect, no suspicion was for some time entertained of his real designs. That he was able to learn any thing which could afford the English Queen reasonable ground of offence, is not likely; for though several communications in cipher passed between him and Cecil, their contents were never made public. Shortly before Killigrew’s arrival, Ruxby’s real character had been accidentally discovered; and when the ambassador, more for the sake of aiding than of hindering the spy in the prosecution of his object, made a pro forma request that he should not be harboured any longer, Mary instantly ordered him to be apprehended, and all his writings and ciphers to be seized and examined. The indubitable evidence which they afforded of Elizabeth’s systematic cunning, forced a smile from Mary, and might have brought a blush to the cheek of her rival. The Queen of Scots, however, did not condescend to give any utterance to the feelings which this affair must have inspired; and nothing further is known of Elizabeth’s disgraced and detected minion.¹⁴⁰

Early in June, perceiving that the time of her delivery was at hand, Mary wrote letters to her principal nobility, requiring them to come to Edinburgh during that juncture. She then made her will, which she caused to be thrice transcribed; – one copy was sent to France, a second committed to the charge of her Privy Council, and the third she kept herself. The day preceding her delivery, she wrote, with her own hand, a letter to Elizabeth, announcing the event, but leaving a blank “to be filled,” says Melville, “either with a son or a daughter, as it might please God to grant unto her.”

On Wednesday the 19th day of June 1566, between nine and ten in the morning, the Queen was safely delivered of a son. The intelligence was received every where, throughout Scotland, with sincere demonstrations of joy. “As the birth of a prince,” says Keith, “was one of the greatest of blessings that God could bestow upon this poor divided land; so was the same most thankfully acknowledged by all ranks of people, according as the welcome news thereof reached their ears.” In Edinburgh, the triumph continued for several days; and, upon the first intimation of the event, all the nobility in the town, accompanied by most of the citizens, went in solemn procession to the High Church, and offered up thanksgiving for so signal a mercy shown to the Queen and the whole realm.

When the news was conveyed to England, it was far from being heard with so much satisfaction. It was between eleven and twelve on the morning of the 19th, that the Lady Boyne came to Sir James Melville, and told him, that their prayers being granted, he must carry Mary’s letter to London with all diligence. “It struck twelve hours,” says Sir James, “when I took my horse, and I was at Berwick that same night. The fourth day after, I was at London,” – a degree of despatch very unusual in those times. Melville found Elizabeth at Greenwich, “where her Majesty was in great merriness, and dancing after supper. But so soon as the Secretary Cecil sounded the news in her ear of the prince’s birth, all merriness was laid aside for that night; every one that was present marvelling what might move so sudden a changement. For the Queen sat down with her hand upon her haffet (cheek), and bursting out to some of her ladies, how that the Queen of Scotland was lighter of a fair son, and that she was but a barren stock.” Next morning, Elizabeth gave Melville a formal audience, at which, having had time for preparation, she endeavoured to dissemble her real feelings; though, by over-acting her part, she made them only the more apparent. She told him gravely, that the joyful news he brought her, had recovered her out of a heavy sickness, which had held her for fifteen days! “Then I requested her Majesty,” says Melville, “to be a gossip unto the Queen, for our comers are called gossips in England, which she granted gladly to be. Then, I said, her Majesty would have a fair occasion to see the Queen, which she had so oft desired. At this she smiled, and said, that she would wish that her estate and affairs might permit her; and promised to send both honourable lords and ladies to supply her room.”¹⁴¹

CHAPTER XVIII.
MARY’S TREATMENT OF DARNLEY, AND ALLEGED LOVE FOR THE EARL OF BOTHWELL

As soon as she had sufficiently recovered to be able to quit the Castle, Mary resolved on leaving the fatigues of government behind, and going for some time into the country. Her infant son was intrusted to the care of the Earl of Mar as his governor, and the Lady Mar as his governess. The time was not yet arrived to make arrangements regarding his education; but the General Assembly had already sent a deputation to the Queen, to entreat that she would allow him to be brought up in the Reformed religion. To this request Mary avoided giving any positive answer; but she condescendingly took the infant from the nurse, and put it into the arms of some of the divines. A prayer was pronounced over it; and Spottiswood assures us, that, at the conclusion, the child gave an inarticulate murmur, which the delighted Presbyterians construed to be an Amen.

It was the seat of the Earl of Mar at Alloa that the Queen first visited. Being not yet equal to the fatigues of horseback, she went on board a vessel at Newhaven, and sailed up the Forth. She was accompanied by Murray and others of her nobility.¹⁴² Buchanan, whose constant malice and misrepresentation become at times almost ludicrous, says – “Not long after her delivery, on a day very early, accompanied by very few that were privy of her council, she went down to the waterside at a place called the New-haven; and while all marvelled whither she went in such haste, she suddenly entered into a ship there prepared for her. With a train of thieves, all honest men wondering at it, she betook herself to sea, taking not one other with her.” – “When she was in the ship,” he says elsewhere, “among pirates and thieves, she could abide at the pump, and joyed to handle the boisterous cables.”¹⁴³ It is thus this trustworthy historian describes a sail of a few hours, enjoyed by Mary and her Court.

Darnley, who, though not very contented either with himself or any one else, was about this time much in the Queen’s company, went to Alloa by land, and remained with Mary the greater part of the time she continued at the Earl of Mar’s. The uneasiness he suffered, and the peevish complaints to which he was continually giving utterance, were occasioned by the want of deference, with which he found himself treated by all Mary’s ministers. But the general odium into which he had fallen, was entirely to be attributed to his own folly. Between him and the Earl of Murray there had long existed a deadly hatred against each other; in associating himself with Morton, and plotting against Huntly and Bothwell, he had irremediably offended these noblemen; and in deserting Morton and his faction, he had forever lost the friendship of the only men who seemed willing to regard him with any favour. The distressing consciousness of neglect occasioned by his own misconduct, was thus forced upon him wherever he turned; and instead of teaching him a lesson of humility, it only served to sour his temper, and pervert his feelings. The Queen was deeply grieved to see him so universally hated; and anxiously endeavoured to make herself the connecting link between him and her incensed nobility. This was all she could do; for, even although she had wished it, she could not have dismissed, to please him, such of her ministers as he considered obnoxious; a measure so unconstitutional would have led to a second rebellion. But she hoped by treating her husband kindly, and showing him every attention herself, to make it be understood that she expected others would be equally respectful. Having spent some days together at Alloa, Mary and Darnley went to Peebles-shire to enjoy the amusement of hunting; but finding little sport, they returned on the 20th of August to Edinburgh. Thence, they went to Stirling, taking the young Prince with them, whom they established in Stirling Castle. Bothwell, in the meantime, in his capacity of Lieutenant of the Borders, was in some of the southern shires attending the duties of his charge.¹⁴⁴

It is necessary to detail these facts thus minutely, as Mary’s principal calumniator, Buchanan, endeavours to establish, by a tissue of falsehoods, that immediately after her delivery, or perhaps before it, she conceived a criminal attachment for Bothwell. This absurdity has gained credit with several later writers, and particularly with Robertson, whose knowledge of Mary’s motions and domestic arrangements at the period of which we speak, appears to have been very superficial. Yet he may be regarded as even a more dangerous enemy than the former. Buchanan’s virulence and evident party spirit, carry their own contradiction along with them; whilst Robertson, not venturing to go the same lengths, (though guided in his belief entirely by Buchanan), imparts to the authority on which he trusts a greater air of plausibility, by softening down the violence of the original, to suit the calmer tone of professedly unprejudiced history. In the progress of these Memoirs, it will not be difficult to show that Robertson’s affected candour, or too hastily formed belief, is as little to be depended on as Buchanan’s undisguised malice.

Buchanan wishes it to be believed, in the first place, that Mary entertained a guilty love for Rizzio. He then proceeds to assert, that in little more than three months after his barbarous assassination, she had fallen no less violently in love with Bothwell, although, in the meantime, she had been employed in giving birth to her first child, by a husband, whom he allows she doated on nine or ten months before. To bolster up this story, he perverts facts with the most reckless indifference. One specimen of his style we have already seen in his account of the Queen’s voyage to Alloa; and proceeding with his narrative, we find him positively asserting in the sequel, that for the two or three following months, Mary was constantly in the company of Bothwell, and of Bothwell alone, knowing as he must have done all the while, that Murray and Darnley, Bothwell’s principal enemies, were her chief associates, and that Bothwell spent most of the time in a distant part of the kingdom.

Robertson dates even more confidently than Buchanan, the commencement of Mary’s love for Bothwell at a period prior to her delivery. But upon this hypothesis, it is surely odd, that Murray and Argyle were permitted by the Queen to reside in the Castle previous to and during her confinement, whilst the same favour was peremptorily refused to Bothwell; and it is no less odd, that shortly after her delivery, Secretary Maitland, at the intercession of the Earl of Athol, was received once more into favour, in direct opposition to the wishes of Bothwell. It is no doubt possible, that notwithstanding this presumptive evidence to the contrary, Mary may at this very time have had a violent love for Bothwell; but are we to give credit to the improbability, merely because Buchanan was the slave of party feeling, and Robertson disposed to be credulous? Are the detected fabrications of the one, entitled to any better consideration than the gratuitous suppositions of the other? “Strange and surprisingly wild,” says Keith, “are the accounts given by Knox, but more especially by Buchanan, concerning the King and Queen about this time. I shall not reckon it worth while to transcribe them here; and the best and shortest confutation I could propose of them is, to leave my readers the trouble, or rather satisfaction, to compare the same with the just now mentioned abstracts (of despatches from Randolph to Cecil) and the three following authentic letters,” from the French and Scottish ambassadors and the Queen’s Privy Council.¹⁴⁵ Robertson, it is true, after having asserted, that “Bothwell all this while was the Queen’s prime confident,” and that he had acquired a “sway over her heart,” proceeds to confess, that “such delicate transitions of passion can be discerned only by those who are admitted near the persons of the parties, and who can view the secret workings of the heart with calm and acute observation.” “Neither Knox nor Buchanan,” he adds, “enjoyed these advantages. Their humble station allowed them only a distant access to the Queen and her favourite; and the ardour of their zeal, and the violence of their prejudices rendered their opinions rash, precipitate, and inaccurate.” This is apparently so explicit and fair, that the only wonder is, upon what grounds Robertson ventured to make his accusation of Mary, having thus shown how little dependence was to be placed on the only authorities which supported him in it. It appears that he came to his conclusions by a process of his own, which rendered him independent both of Knox and Buchanan. “Subsequent historians,” he says, “can judge of the reality of this reciprocal passion only by its effects.” Robertson must of course have been aware that he thus opened the gate to a flood of uncertainty, seeing that the same effects may spring from a hundred different causes. If a man be found dead, before looking for his murderer, it is always proper to inquire whether he has been murdered. Besides, if effects are to be made the criterion by which to form an opinion, the greatest care must be taken that they be not misrepresented. Mary must not be said to have been a great deal in Bothwell’s company, at a time she was almost never with him, and she must not be described as being seldom with her husband, at a time they were constantly together.

Laing is another and still later writer, who has produced a very able piece of special pleading against Mary, in which a false colouring is continually given to facts. “After her delivery,” he says, “she removed secretly from the Castle, and was followed by Darnley to Alloa, Stirling, Meggetland, and back again to Edinburgh, as if she were desirous to escape from the presence of her husband.” That Darnley followed Mary, is an assumption of Mr Laing’s own. Conceited as the young King was, he would rather never have stirred out of his chamber again, than have condescended to follow so perseveringly one who wished to avoid him, first to Alloa, then to Stirling, then into Peebles-shire, then back again to Edinburgh, and once more to Stirling. The only correct part of Laing’s statement is, that Mary chose to go by water to Alloa, whilst Darnley preferred travelling by land; perhaps because he wished to hunt by the way, or call at the seats of some of the nobility. The distance, altogether, was only twenty miles; and the notion that Mary removed “secretly” from the Castle, for the important purpose of taking an excursion to Alloa, is absolutely ludicrous. In support of his assertion that Mary had lost her heart to Bothwell, Laing proceeds to mention, that, shortly after the assassination of Rizzio, the Earl, for his successful services, was loaded with favours and preferment. That Mary should have conferred some reward upon a nobleman whose power and fidelity were the chief means of preserving her on a tottering throne, is not at all unlikely; but, to make that reward appear disproportioned to the occasion, Laing misdates the time when most of Bothwell’s offices of trust were bestowed upon him. Several of them were his by hereditary right, such as those of Lord High Admiral, and the Sheriffships of Berwick, Haddington, and Edinburgh. Part of his authority on the Borders he had acquired during the time of the late Queen-Regent, Mary’s mother, having been made her Lieutenant, and keeper of Hermitage Castle, in 1558; and it was immediately after his restoration to favour, during the continuance of Murray’s rebellion, that he was appointed Lieutenant of the West and Middle Marches, a situation which implied the superiority of the Abbeys of Melrose and Haddington.¹⁴⁶ The only addition made to Bothwell’s possessions and titles, in consequence of his services after Rizzio’s death, was that of the Castle and Lordship of Dunbar, together with a grant of some crown lands.¹⁴⁷

There is another circumstance connected with Bothwell, which we omitted to mention before, but which may with propriety be stated here. At the period of which we write, when he is accused of being engaged in a criminal intercourse with Mary, he had been only two or three months married to a wife every way deserving of his love. Three weeks before the death of Rizzio, he had espoused, in the thirty-sixth year of his age, the Lady Jane Gordon, the sister of his friend, the Earl of Huntly. She was just twenty, and was possessed of an elegant and cultivated understanding. They were married at Holyrood, on the 22d of February 1566, after the manner of the Reformed persuasion, in direct opposition to Mary’s wishes. She entertained them, however, at a banquet on the first day; and the feasting and rejoicings continued for a week. “The Queen desired,” says Knox, “that the marriage might be made in the chapel at the mass, which the Earl Bothwell would in no ways grant.”¹⁴⁸ Was there any love existing at this time between Mary and her minister? Robertson and Laing seem to think there was. Choosing to judge of Mary’s feelings towards Bothwell by effects, not of effects by feelings, they quote several passages from the letters of one or two of the foreign ambassadors then in Scotland, which mention that Bothwell possessed great influence at court. That these ambassadors report no more than the truth may be very safely granted; though certainly there is no evidence to show that he enjoyed so much weight as Murray, or more than Huntly. Yet he deserved better than the former, for he had hitherto, with one exception, continued as faithful to Mary, as he had previously been to her mother. The letters alluded to, only repeat what Randolph had mentioned six months before. So early as October 1565, only two months after Mary’s marriage with Darnley, and when her love for him remained at its height, Randolph wrote to Cecil; “My Lord Bothwell, for his great virtue, doth now all, next to the Earl of Athol.”¹⁴⁹ Was Mary in love with Bothwell at this date? Or was it with the Earl of Athol? And did she postpone her attachment to Bothwell, till he should prove his for her, by becoming the husband of the Lady Jane Gordon? – We proceed with our narrative.

Having spent some time with Darnley at Stirling, Mary returned to Edinburgh, for the despatch of public business, on the 11th or 12th of September. She wished Darnley to accompany her; but as he could not, or would not, act with either Murray’s or Huntly’s party, he refused. On the 21st, she came again to Stirling; but was recalled once more to Edinburgh, by her Privy Council, on the 23d. She left the French ambassador, Le Croc, with the wayward Darnley, hoping that his wisdom and experience might be of benefit to him.¹⁵⁰ The distinction which, from this period up to the hour of his death, Darnley constantly made between his feelings for Mary herself, and for her ministers, is very striking. With Mary he was always willing to associate, and she had the same desire to be as much as she could with him; but with the conditions he exacted, and by which alone she was to purchase much of his company, it was impossible for her to comply. She might as well have given up her crown at once, as have dismissed all those officers of state with whom Darnley had quarrelled. The truth is, her husband’s situation was a very unfortunate one. His own imbecility and unlawful ambition, had brought upon him general odium; but if he had possessed a stronger mind, or a greater stock of hypocrisy, he might have re-established himself in the good graces of at least a part of the Scottish nobility. But he had neither the prudence to disguise his sentiments, nor the ability to maintain them. “He had not learned,” says Chalmers, “to smile, and smile, and be a villain. He was still very young, and still very inexperienced; and the Queen could not easily govern without the aid of those odious men,” – his enemies.