Chapter XII: The Reign of Elizabeth (1)

Accession of Elizabeth--Sir William Cecil--The Coronation--Opening
of Parliament--Ecclesiastical Legislation--Consecration of
Parker--Elizabeth and Philip--Treaty of Cateau-Cambresis--Affairs
in Scotland--The First Covenant--Attitude of Mary of Guise--Riot
at Perth--Outbreak of Hostilities--The Lords of the Congregation
apply to England--Elizabeth hesitates--Siege of Leith--Treaty
of Edinburgh--Return of Mary to Scotland--Murray's Influence
over her--Beginning of the Religious Wars in France--Elizabeth
sends Help to the Huguenots--Peace of Amboise--English Disaster
at Havre--Peace with France--The Earl of Leicester--Project of
his Marriage with Mary--Lord Darnley--Murder of Rizzio--Birth
of Mary's Son--Murder of Darnley--Mary and Bothwell--Carberry
Hill--Mary in Lochleven--Abdicates in favour of Her Infant
Son--Mary's Escape from Lochleven--Defeated at Langside--Her
Escape into England.

Parliament had met on the morning of the 17th of November, 1558, unaware of the decease of the queen; but before noon, Dr. Heath, the Archbishop of York and Lord Chancellor of England, sent a message to the House of Commons, requesting the Speaker, with the knights and burgesses of the Lower House, to attend in the Lords to give their assent in a matter of the utmost importance. On being there assembled, the Lord Chancellor announced to the united Parliament the demise of Mary, and, though by that event the Commons were dissolved by the law as it remained till the reign of William III., he called upon them to combine with the Lords, before taking their departure, for the safety of the country, by proclaiming the Lady Elizabeth queen of the realm. Whatever might have been the fears of any portion of the community as to the recognition of the title of Elizabeth on the plea of illegitimacy, or from suspicion of her religion, that question had long been settled by the flocking of the courtiers of all creeds and characters to Hatfield, where she resided; and now on this announcement there was a loud acclamation from the members of both Houses of "God save Queen Elizabeth! Long may she reign over us!"

For two days Elizabeth, as if from due respect to her deceased sister and sovereign, remained quiescent at Hatfield; but thousands of people of all ranks were flocking thither; and on the 19th her Privy Council proceeded thither also, and, after announcing to her her joyful and undisputed accession, they proclaimed her with all state before the gates of Hatfield House. They then sat in council with her, and she appointed her own ministers, having, no doubt, made all these arrangements with the man whom she had long marked out for her prime minister, Sir William Cecil. He had for years been her confidential counsellor. By his shrewd and worldly guidance, she had shaped her future course; and in appointing her ministers now, she showed by her address to Cecil that it was for him that she designed the chief post.

Besides Cecil, she named Sir Thomas Parry, her cofferer, Cave, and Rogers of her Privy Council. Cecil immediately entered on his duties as her Secretary of State, and submitted to her a programme of what was immediately necessary to be done, which she accepted; and thus began that union between Elizabeth and her great minister, which only terminated with his life.

On the 23rd the new queen commenced her progress towards the metropolis, attended by a magnificent throng of nobles, ladies, and gentlemen, and a vast concourse of people from London and from the country round. At Highgate she was met by the bishops, who kneeled by the wayside, and offered their allegiance. She received them graciously, and gave them all her hand to kiss, except to Bonner, whom she treated with a marked coldness, on account of his atrocious cruelties: an intimation of her own intentions on the score of religion which must have given satisfaction to the people. At the foot of Highgate Hill, the Lord Mayor and his aldermanic brethren, in their scarlet gowns, were waiting to receive her, and conducted her to the Charter House, then the residence of Lord North, where Heath, the Lord Chancellor, and the Earls of Derby and Shrewsbury received her. There she remained five days to give time for the necessary preparations, when she proceeded to take up her residence in the Tower, prior to her coronation, which took place on the 15th of January, 1559.

(_From the painting by Zucchero at Hatfield House._)]

On the 25th of January Elizabeth proceeded to open her first Parliament. She had prepared to carry the decisive measures of religious reform which she contemplated, by adding five new peers of the Protestant faith to the Upper House, and by sending to the sheriffs a list of Court candidates out of which they were to choose the members. Like all other public proceedings, this was a strange medley of Romanism and Protestantism. High mass was performed at the altar in Westminster Abbey before the queen and the assembled Houses, and this was followed by a sermon preached by Dr. Cox, the Calvinistic schoolmaster of Edward VI., who had just returned from Geneva. The Lord Keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon, then opened the session by a speech, the queen being present, in which he held very high prerogative language, assuring both Lords and Commons that they might take measures for a uniform order of religion, and for the safety of the State against both foreign and domestic enemies; not that it was absolutely necessary, for she could do everything of her own authority, but she preferred having the advice and counsel of her loving subjects.

The first thing which the Commons proposed was the very last thing which she would have wished them to meddle with--that is, an address recommending her to marry, so as to secure a legitimate heir to the throne. Elizabeth, as we have seen, had had many suitors, none of whom, if we except the unfortunate Lord Admiral Seymour, or the handsome but imbecile Courtenay, Earl of Devon, had she shown any willingness to marry. There have been many theories regarding the refusal of Elizabeth to enter into wedlock. The only one which will bear a moment's examination is, that her love of power was so strong as to absorb every other feeling and consideration. She made a long speech in reply to the address, glancing towards the close of it at her coronation ring, and then saying that when she received that ring, she became solemnly bound in marriage to the realm, and that she took their address in good part, but more for their good will than for their message.

Without referring to the questionable marriage of her mother, Anne Boleyn, an Act was passed restoring Elizabeth in blood, and rendering her heritable to her mother and all her mother's line. She was declared to be lawful and rightful queen, lineally and lawfully descended of the blood royal, and fully capable of holding, and transmitting to her posterity, the possession of the crown and throne.

Next came the regulations for the government of the Church, which Elizabeth had so prudently avoided making upon her own responsibility, but left to the authority of Parliament. By it the tenths and first-fruits resigned by Mary were again restored to her. The statutes passed in Mary's reign for the maintenance of strict Romanism were repealed, and those of Henry VIII. for the rejection of the Papal authority, and of Edward VI. for the reformation of the Church ritual were revived. The Book of Common Prayer, considerably modified, was to be in uniform and exclusive use. The old penalties against seeking any ecclesiastical authority or ordination from abroad were re-enacted, and the queen was declared absolute head of the Church by a new Act of Supremacy.

Notwithstanding the softening of the parts and expressions in the liturgy most offensive to the Papists, such as the prayer "to deliver us from the Bishop of Rome and all his detestable enormities," and the modification of the terms in administration of the sacrament, to avoid offence to other Protestant churches, the bishops opposed these measures most resolutely. Convocation presented to the House of Lords a declaration of its belief in the Real Presence, transubstantiation, the sacrifice of the Mass, and the supremacy of the Pope. On the other hand, the Protestants were grievously disappointed in other particulars, especially as to restoration of the married clergy, and of the restoration to their sees of Bishops Barlow, Scorey, and Coverdale. Both these petitions failed on the question of marriage, for Elizabeth never could tolerate married priests or bishops, and these expelled bishops were all married men. The Protestants were equally disappointed in the failure of a Bill to nominate a commission to draw a code of canon law for the Anglican Church. Elizabeth, like her father, rather preferred deciding all such matters herself than allowing any other body to be authority.

But to give an air of liberality to what was not meant to involve any concession, permission was given for the Papist and Protestant divines to argue certain great points in public. Five bishops and three doctors on the part of the former, and as many Protestant divines, were appointed to dispute before the Lord Keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon, and the debates of the two Houses were suspended, that the members might attend the controversy. The Roman Catholics were to have the privilege of opening the conference, and the Protestants were to reply; but it was speedily discovered that this gave immense advantage to the Protestants. The Roman Catholics called for a change of this mode; the Lord Keeper refused to grant it; the bishops, therefore, protested that the conditions were not equal, and refused to attend. For this disobedience the Bishops of Winchester and Lincoln were committed to the Tower, and the other six disputants were bound to make their appearance at the bar of the Lords till judgment was pronounced, and they were compelled to do so till the end of the session, when they were fined in sums from £500 to forty marks. Parliament was dissolved on the 8th of May, and within a week Elizabeth summoned the bishops and other dignitaries before herself and the Privy Council, and admonished them to make themselves conformable to the laws just passed regarding religion. Heath, the archbishop, replied by boldly advising her Majesty to remember her own coronation oath, not to alter the religion which she found by law established; adding that his conscience could not permit him to conform to the new regulations, and all the other prelates and dignitaries declared the same. The Council then charged Heath and Bonner, on the evidence of certain papers, with having, during the reign of Edward VI., carried on secret conspiracies with Rome, with the intent to overthrow the Government. To this they replied by pleading two general pardons, and the Council then proceeded to administer to them the oath of supremacy. This they all refused except Kitchen, the Bishop of Llandaff, who had clung to his see through all changes for the last fourteen years, and clung to it still. They were then deprived of their sees, and a considerable number of other Church dignitaries were also deprived by the same test. The bulk of the clergy, however, conformed, and to those who were ejected pensions for life were allowed--a policy far more considerate than had ever prevailed in such circumstances before. The refugees on account of the Marian persecution, who had now flocked home from Switzerland and Germany, were installed in the vacant livings, and before the end of this year the Church of Rome had lost the State patronage in Great Britain for ever. Two statutes--the Act enforcing the oath of Supremacy, and the other the Act of Uniformity--became law, during this session. The latter Act prohibited under heavy penalties the use by a minister of any but the established liturgy, and confirmed the revised Book of Common Prayer of Edward VI.

To replace the expelled bishops was no very easy matter, not from the paucity of candidates, but from the revolutions which had taken place in the ordinal of the Church. Dr. Matthew Parker, who had been the chaplain of Anne Boleyn, and who had stood so faithfully by her, was appointed by Elizabeth Archbishop of Canterbury, but how was he to be consecrated? His election was to be confirmed by four bishops, and his consecration to be performed by them. Where were they to be found? There was not a bishop left, except Llandaff. Still more, Mary had abolished the ordinal of Edward VI., and Elizabeth had abolished that of Mary. The difficulty was, at first sight, insurmountable, and no way out of it presented itself for four months. It was then recollected that Barlow, Hodgkins, Scorey, and Coverdale, the deprived Bishops of Bath, Bedford, Chichester, and Exeter, had been consecrated by the Reformed ordinal, and that restoration which had been denied them at the petition of their friends, because they were married men, was now accorded as an escape from this dilemma. They were reinstated, and confirmed the election of Parker, consecrated him according to the form of Edward VI., and helped to confirm and consecrate all the newly elected prelates.

While Elizabeth and her ministers had been thus engaged in settling the constitution of the Church, they had also been occupied with effecting a Continental peace. Philip had refused to conclude a treaty with France previous to the death of Mary, without including in it the restoration of Calais to England, and to Philibert the Duke of Savoy his hereditary estates. The death of Mary at once cut the actual connection of Philip with England, but he remained firm in his demand, for he had formed the design of obtaining the hand of Elizabeth. He lost no time in making the offer, observing that though they were within the proscribed degrees of affinity the Pope would readily grant a dispensation, and the union of England and Spain would give them the command of Europe. But, independent of the partnership in power which this marriage would create, Elizabeth entertained schemes of Church arrangement very different to any which would accord with Philip's ideas. She, therefore, courteously excused herself on the plea of scruples of conscience, and this refusal was followed by the non-appearance of Feria, Philip's ambassador, at her coronation. Philip, however, did not give up the suit without employing all the eloquence and the arguments that he could muster; he kept up a brisk correspondence for some time with the new queen, and even when the attempt appeared hopeless, he still offered to assist her in the treaty with France. He settled his own disputes with France by marrying the daughter of the King of France, as soon as he saw the hand of Elizabeth unattainable, and procured the sister of Henry II. for his friend Philibert.

The great demand of Elizabeth was the restoration of Calais, and at Cateau-Cambresis a treaty was concluded on the 2nd of April, 1559, by which the King of France actually engaged to surrender that town to England at the end of eight years, or pay to Elizabeth 500,000 crowns; and he agreed to deliver, as guarantee for this sum, four French noblemen and the bonds of eight foreign merchants. But to this article was appended another which, to any one in the least familiar with diplomacy, betrayed the fact that the whole was illusory, and that the French would have no difficulty, at the end of the prescribed term, in showing that England had in some way broken the contract. The article stipulated that if, within that period, Henry of France, or Mary of Scotland, should make any attempt against the realm or subjects of Elizabeth, they should forfeit all claim to the retention of that town; and if Elizabeth should infringe the peace with either of those monarchs, she should forfeit all claim to its surrender or to the penalty of 500,000 crowns. The public at once saw that the French would never relinquish their hold on Calais from the force of any such condition, and the indignation was proportionate. The Government, to divert the attention of the people from this flimsy pretence of eventual restoration, ordered the impeachment of Lord Wentworth, the late governor of the castle and of the Rysbank, on a charge of cowardice and treason. Wentworth, as he deserved, was acquitted by the jury; the captains were condemned, but the object of the trial being attained, their sentence was never carried into effect.

Elizabeth, at her accession, had assumed the title of Queen of France. Henry II. immediately, by way of retaliation, caused his daughter-in-law Mary (she had married the Dauphin in 1558) to be styled Queen of Scotland and England, and had the arms of England quartered with those of Scotland. Elizabeth, with her extreme sensitiveness to any claims upon her crown, and regarding this act as a declaration of her own illegitimacy and of Henry's assertion of Mary's superior right to the English throne, resented the proceeding deeply, and from that moment never ceased to plot against the peace and power of Mary till she drove her from her throne, made her captive, and finally deprived her of her life.

We have already shown that Henry VII. commenced, and Henry VIII. and Edward VI. continued, the system of bribing the Scottish nobility against their sovereign. Elizabeth, in pursuance of her plans against the Queen of Scots, now adopted the same practice, and kept in pay both the nobles and the Protestant leaders of Scotland. To understand fully her proceedings, we must, however, first take a hasty glance at the progress of the Reformation in Scotland. That kingdom received the Reformation in its simplest, most rigid, and severe form. The doctrines which had sprung up in republican Switzerland, under Calvin and Zwingli, were imbibed there by Knox and others in their most unbending hardness. There was little of the gentle and the pliant in their tenets, but a stern asceticism, which suited well with the grave and earnest character of the Scots. When summoned by Mary of Guise to appear in Edinburgh and answer for their conduct, the preachers, attended by thousands of the respective congregations, presented themselves in such a formidable shape, that the Regent declared that she meant no injury to them. A period of such tranquillity succeeded, that the leaders of the Reform party--the Earl of Glencairn, Lord Lorne, son of the Earl of Argyll, Erskine of Dun, Lord James Stuart, afterwards the Regent Murray--on the 3rd of December, 1557, drew up that League and Covenant which was destined to work such wonders in Scotland, to rouse the suffering Reformers into a church militant, to put arms into the hands of the excited peasants, brace the sword to the side of the preacher, and, through civil war and scenes of strange suffering, bloodshed, and resistance on moor and mountain, to work out the freedom of the faith for ever in Scotland. The Covenant engaged all who subscribed it, in a solemn vow, "in the presence of the Majesty of God and His congregation," to spread the Word by every means in their power, to maintain the Gospel and defend its ministers against all tyranny; and it pronounced the most bitter anathemas against the superstition, the idolatry, and the abominations of Rome. This bond received the signatures of the Earls of Glencairn, Argyll, and Morton, Lord Lorne, Erskine of Dun, and many other nobles and gentlemen, who assumed the name of the Lords of the Congregation: and from this hour it became a scandalous apostacy for any one to flinch or fall away from this "Solemn League and Covenant."

Mary at first temporised, but eventually determined to stand firm. In a convention of the clergy held in Edinburgh, in March, 1559, the Lords of the Congregation demanded that the bishops should be elected by the gentlemen of the diocese, and the clergy by the people of each parish. This was peremptorily refused, and it was decreed that the practice of using English prayers should cease, no language should be permitted in public worship but Latin, and this was followed by a proclamation of the Queen-Regent, ordering all people to conform strictly to the established religion and to attend Mass daily; and, in an interview with the leaders of the Protestants, she showed them the commands which she had received on these heads from France, and summoned the chief ministers of the Reformed body to appear before a Parliament to be held at Stirling to answer for their conduct in introducing heretical practices and doctrines.

At this moment Knox arrived from France. It was determined by the Lords of the Congregation to attend their ministers to Stirling in such numbers as to overawe the Government, and Knox volunteered to take his part with the other preachers. The nobles and the people mustered at Perth. There Knox preached a stirring sermon; a riot was the result, and some religious houses were sacked.

The Queen-Regent, at the news of this destruction, became furious. She vowed she would raze the town of Perth to the ground, and sow it with salt as a sign of eternal desolation. She summoned to her aid Arran, now Duke of Chatelherault, the Earl of Athole, and D'Oyselles, the French commander, and being joined by two of the Lords of the Congregation, Argyll and Lord James Stuart, who were averse from the outrages committed, on the 18th of May she marched to Perth. The Congregation hastened to address letters both to the Queen-Regent and the two Lords of the Congregation, who, to their indignation, had joined her. They told Mary of Guise that hitherto they had served her willingly; but if she persisted in her persecutions, they should abandon her and defend themselves. They would obey the queen and her husband if permitted to worship in their own way, otherwise they would be subject to no mortal man. To the two Lords of the Congregation they wrote first in mild expostulation, but they soon advanced their tone to threats of excommunication, and the doom of traitors, if they did not come from amongst the persecutors. They addressed another letter "To the generation of Anti-Christ, the pestilent prelates and their shavelings in Scotland;" and they warned them that, if they did not desist from their persecutions, they would exterminate them, as the Israelites did the wicked Canaanites.

Matters were proceeding to extremity when Glencairn arrived in the Protestant camp with 2,500 men. This made the Queen-Regent pause, and an agreement was effected by means of Argyll and the Lord James, by which toleration was again granted, and the Queen-Regent engaged that no Frenchman should approach within three miles of Perth, a condition which she characteristically evaded by garrisoning it with Scottish troops in French pay. Knox and Willock had an interview with Argyll and the Lord James, and sharply upbraided them with appearing in arms against their brethren, to which these nobles replied that they had done it only as a means of arbitrating for peace; but the Congregation took means to bind them in future by framing a new covenant, to which every member swore obedience, engaging to defend the Congregation or any of its members when menaced by the enemies of their religion.

They were soon called upon to prove their sincerity. The Queen-Regent--totally regardless of the treaty just entered into--the very same day that the Lords of the Congregation quitted Perth, entered it with Chatelherault, D'Oyselles, and a body of French soldiers. She deprived the chief magistrates of their authority because they favoured the Reformation; made Charteris of Kinfauns, a man of infamous character, provost of the city, and left a garrison of troops in French pay to support him.

The Lords of the Congregation assembled at St. Andrews, and with them Knox, who had come, as he said, to the conclusion that to be rid of the rooks it was necessary to pull down their nests. Their action was prompt; Perth surrendered at the first assault. Argyll and the Lord James had succeeded in checking the march of the Queen-Regent; and on their advance to Linlithgow, she and the French forces evacuated Edinburgh, falling back to Dunbar; whilst the Covenanting army, entering Linlithgow, pulled down the altars and images, destroyed the relics, and then advanced on Edinburgh, which they entered in triumph on the 29th of June, 1559.

It was at this crisis that the progress of the Reformers in Scotland arrested the attention of the Government in England, and a letter was received from Sir Henry Percy by Kirkaldy of Grange, inquiring into the real objects of the Lords of the Congregation. Kirkaldy replied that they meant nothing but the reformation of religion; that they had purged the churches of imagery and other Popish stuff wherever they had come, and that they pulled down such friaries and abbeys as would not receive the Reformed faith; but that they had not meddled with a pennyworth of the Church's property, reserving the appropriation of that to the maintenance of godly ministers hereafter; that if the Queen-Regent would grant them spiritual liberty and send away the Frenchmen, they would obey her; if not, they would hear of no agreement. Knox also wrote to Percy in the name of the whole Congregation, and entreated that England should aid them in their struggle, telling them, in his sturdy way, that if it did it would be better for it; if not, though Scotland might suffer, England could not escape her share of the trouble.

The parsimony of Elizabeth, however, and the caution of her minister Cecil, withheld all efficient aid from the Scottish Reformers at the time that it was most essential. Whilst the Queen-Regent delayed any active proceedings in the hope of the arrival of fresh troops from France, and the knowledge that the irregular army brought into the field by the Scottish barons could not long be kept together, Elizabeth deferred the promised subsidies. In this predicament, the Lords of the Congregation made still more impassioned appeals to Cecil, and Knox wrote to him entreating him to abate the prejudice of Elizabeth towards him. But that prejudice was of the most bitter and unconquerable kind in the heart of Elizabeth. Knox had perpetrated the unpardonable offence to Elizabeth in writing his "First Blast of the Trumpet against the Monstrous Regiment of Women." While Elizabeth hesitated, the Regent was fortifying Leith.

At last the English queen determined to help her fellow-religionists, and by the treaty of Berwick agreed to aid them in an attack on the Regent. The Covenanters prepared for an assault on Leith, by constructing scaling-ladders in the High Church of St. Giles, Edinburgh, to the great scandal of the preachers, who prognosticated that proceedings begun in sacrilege would end in defeat. This soon appeared likely to be the result, for the money sent from England being exhausted, the soldiers clamoured for pay, and the army of 12,000 was on the verge of melting away very rapidly. In great alarm, the leaders vehemently entreated Elizabeth for more money, and making a struggle with her natural parsimony, she sent £4,000 to Cockburn of Ormiston, who undertook the perilous office of conveying it to headquarters. But a man who afterwards became notorious for the audacity of his crimes, the Earl of Bothwell, who now professed to be a zealous supporter of the Congregation, and had by this means obtained the knowledge of the transmission of the treasure, waylaid Cockburn, and carried off the money. This was a severe blow to the Congregation, and was speedily followed by another. Haliburton, provost of Dundee, had led a party of Reformers to attack Leith. He had planted his heavy artillery on an eminence near Holyrood; but whilst the majority of the leaders were attending a sermon, the French garrison attacked the battery, and drove the Reformers back into the city with great slaughter.

Even the arrival of an English army did not mend matters. The siege was carried on against Leith in a manner little creditable to the ancient fame of the English; as for the Scots, Sadler said, "they could climb no walls:" that is, they were not famous for conducting sieges and taking towns by assault. The English, who had acquired great fame in that kind of warfare, now seemed to have forgotten their skill, though they had lost none of their courage. Their lines of circumvallation were ill-drawn, their guns were ill-directed, their trenches were opened in ground unfit for the purpose, and they were repeatedly thrown into disorder by sorties of the enemy. To make matters worse, the supplies of the Scots became exhausted, and they began to make their usual cries to the English for more money. But from the English court came, instead of the all-needful money, signs of discouragement. Elizabeth still maintained her equivocal conduct, and the Lords of the Congregation were greatly alarmed to find her actually negotiating with the sick Queen-Regent for an accommodation. At the very time that the Scots and the English were engaged in a smart action at Hawkhill, near Lochend, during the siege, Sir James Croft and Sir George Howard were with the dying Mary of Guise in the castle of Edinburgh. Elizabeth still declared that she was not fighting against Francis and Mary, the king and queen of France and Scotland, but against their Ministers in the latter country, and simply for the defence of her own realm against their attempts. She desired Sir Ralph Sadler to express her willingness to treat, and to make it clear that she was no party to any design to injure or depose the rightful queen. What she aimed at was the expulsion of the French from Scotland as dangerous to her own dominions, and he was instructed, if the old plea was raised--namely, that the French only remained there to maintain the throne of their mistress against disaffected subjects--to state that his sovereign would not admit this plea, as it was a mere pretence, and would not lay down her arms till the Queen of Scots was also secured in her just power and claims.

On the 10th of June, 1560, the Queen-Regent died in the castle of Edinburgh. On her death-bed she entreated Lord James Stuart, and some others of the Lords of the Congregation, as well as her own courtiers, to support the rightful power of her daughter: but, as the events showed, and the treacherous, ambitious character of the bastard brother of Queen Mary rendered probable, to very little purpose. The Queen-Regent's decease, however, opened a way to negotiation. The insurrectionary feeling in France made the French court readily support such a proposition, and it was agreed that the French and English commissioners should meet at Berwick on the 14th of June. The English commissioners were Cecil and Dr. Wotton, Dean of Canterbury; the French, Monluc, Bishop of Valence, and Count de Randon. Perhaps four more acute diplomatists never met. On the 16th of June, they proceeded to Edinburgh, passing through the English camp on the way, where they were saluted by a general discharge of firearms. By the 6th of July all the conditions of peace were settled, and it was announced both to the besiegers and besieged that hostilities were at an end.

The French commissioners stood stoutly for the rights and prerogatives of the Crown, but they were compelled to yield many points to the imperturbable firmness of Cecil. Dunbar and Inchkeith were surrendered as well as Leith. The French troops, excepting a small garrison in Dunbar and another in Inchkeith, were to be sent home and no more to be brought over. An indemnity for all that had passed since March, 1558, in Scotland, was granted; every man was to regain the post or position which he held before the struggle, and no Frenchman was to hold any office in that kingdom. A Convention of the three Estates was to be summoned by the king and queen, and four-and-twenty persons were to be named by this Convention, out of whom should be chosen a Council of twelve for the government of the country, of whom the Queen should name seven, and the Estates five. The king and queen were not to declare war, or conclude peace, without the concurrence of the Estates; neither the Lords nor the members of the Congregation should be molested for what they had done, and Churchmen were to be protected in their persons, rights, and properties, and to receive compensation for their losses according to the award of the Estates in Parliament.

On one point, and that the chief point of the quarrel, the leaders of the Congregation did not obtain their demand, which naturally was for the establishment of their religion. We may suppose that Cecil and his colleague were not very desirous of carrying this; for the Queen of England regarded the Scottish Reformers as fanatical and she especially abominated the character and doctrines of Knox. It was conceded, however, that Parliament should be summoned without delay, and that a deputation should lay this request before the king and queen.

By a second treaty between England and France, it was determined that the right to the crowns of England and Ireland lay in Elizabeth, and that Mary should no longer bear the arms or use the style of these two kingdoms. Another proposition, however, was refused in this treaty, and that was the surrender of Calais to England.

It remained now to obtain the consent of Francis and Mary to these decisions; and Sir James Sandilands, a knight of Malta, was despatched to Paris for this purpose. His reception was such as might be expected. Mary refused to sanction the proceedings of a Parliament which had been summoned without her authority, and which had acted in the very face of the treaty, by seeking to destroy the religion in which she had been educated. Thereupon the Estates established Protestantism on their own authority.

All speculations as to what the Guises would do were cut short by the death of Francis II., the husband of Mary, on the 5th of December, 1560. He had always been a sickly personage, and his reign had lasted only eighteen months. His successor, Charles IX., was only nine years of age, and had a mind and constitution not exhibiting more promise of health and vigour than those of his late brother. His mother, Catherine de Medici, became regent, and his uncles of Lorraine lost the direction of affairs. Catherine and Mary were no friends; the young Queen-Dowager of France, only nineteen, was now treated harshly and contemptuously by the Lady-Regent, and she retired to Rheims, where she spent the winter amongst her relatives of Lorraine.

Mary now prepared to make her way home by sea. Her false half-brother, the Lord James, instead of being to her, at this trying moment, a friend and staunch counsellor, was, and had long been, leagued with her most troublesome and rebellious subjects, and was expecting, by the aid of Elizabeth of England, to engross the chief power in the State, if not eventually to push his unsuspecting sister from the throne. The Roman Catholics of Scotland were quite alive to the dangers which attended their sovereign in such company, and deputed Leslie the Bishop of Ross, a man of high integrity--which, through a long series of troubles, he manifested towards his queen--to go over to France and return with her. Leslie was so much alarmed by the dangers which menaced her amongst her turbulent and zeal-excited subjects, that he advised her in private to extend her voyage to the Highlands, and put herself under the protection of the Earl of Huntly, who, at the head of a large army, would conduct her to her capital and place her in safety on her throne, at the same time that he enabled her to protect the ancient religion. But Mary would not listen to anything like a return by force. She determined to throw herself on the affections of her subjects, and to go amongst them peaceably.

Mary embarked at Calais on the 15th of August, 1561. She eluded the ships sent to prevent her, and on the 19th she landed on her native shore at Leith. She had come a fortnight earlier than she had fixed, to checkmate the schemes of her enemies; but the people flew to welcome her and crowded the beach with hearty acclamations: the lords, however, says a contemporary, had taken small pains to honour her reception and "cover the nakedness of the land." Instead of the gay palfreys of France to which she had been accustomed, in their rich accoutrements, she saw a wretched set of Highland shelties prepared to convey her and her retinue to Holyrood; and when she surveyed their tattered furniture and mounted into the bare wooden saddle, the past and the present came so mournfully over her, that her eyes filled with tears. The honest joy of her people, however, was an ample compensation, had she not known what ill-will lurked in the background against her amongst the nobles and clergy.

Mary was the finest woman of her time. Tall, beautiful, accomplished, in the freshness of her youth, not yet nineteen, distinguished by the most graceful manners and the most fascinating disposition, she was formed to captivate a people sensible to such charms. But she came into her country, in every past age turbulent and independent, at a crisis when the public spirit was divided and embittered by religious controversy, and she was exposed to the deepest suspicion of the Reforming party, by belonging to a family notorious for its bigoted attachment to the old religion. Yet the candour of her disposition and her easy condescension seemed to make a deep impression on the masses. They not only cheered her enthusiastically on the way to her ancestral palace of Holyrood, but about 200 of the citizens of Edinburgh, playing on three-stringed fiddles, kept up a deafening serenade under her windows all night; and such was her good-natured appreciation of the motive, that she thanked them in the morning for having really kept her awake after her fatiguing voyage. Not quite so agreeable, though, was the conduct of her liege subjects on the Sunday in her chapel, where, having ordered her chaplain to perform Mass, such a riot was raised, that had not her natural brother, the Lord James Stuart, interfered, the priest would have been killed at the altar.

This was a plain indication that, although the Reformers demanded liberty of conscience for themselves, they meant to allow none to others; and a month afterwards the same riot was renewed so violently in the royal chapel at Stirling, that Randolph, writing to Cecil, said that the Earl of Argyll and the Lord James himself this time "so disturbed the quire, that some, both priests and clerks, left their places with broken heads and bloody ears."

Mary bore this rude and disloyal conduct with an admirable patience. She had the advantage of the counsels of D'Oyselles, who had spent some years in the country, and had learned the character of the people. She placed the leaders of the Congregation in honour and power around her, making the Lord James her chief minister, and Maitland of Lethington her Secretary of State, both of whom, however, were in the pay and interests of the English queen. It was not in the nature of Knox to delay long appearing in her presence, and opening upon her the battery of his fierce zeal.

It is, perhaps, impossible to imagine a situation more appalling than that of this young and accomplished girl suddenly thrown into the midst of this effervescence of spiritual pride and boorish dogmatism, which was so insensible to the finer influences of social life, so unconscious of the rights of conscience in those of a different opinion. Mary showed a far more Christian spirit. She reminded Knox of his offensive and contemptuous book against women, gently admonished him to be more liberal to those who could not think as he did, and to use more meekness of speech in his sermons.

But the Scottish clergy at that moment received a severe recompense for their contempt of the social amenities, in their aristocratic coadjutors treating them as men who had no need of temporal advantages. The nobles used them to overturn by their preaching the ancient Church; and that done, they quietly but firmly appropriated the substance of it to themselves. The example of the English hierarchy had not been lost upon them. When the clergy put in their claim for a fair share of the booty, the nobles affected great surprise at such a worldly appetite in such holy men. The clergy proposed that the property of the Church should be divided into three portions: one-third for the pastors of the new Church, one-third for the poor, and one-third for the endowment of schools and colleges. Maitland of Lethington asked Knox, "Where, then, was the portion of the nobles? Were they to become hod-bearers in this building of the Kirk?" Knox replied that they might be worse employed. But he and his fellow-ministers had different material to operate upon in the hard-fisted nobles. They might browbeat and insult a young queen, but they could not force the plunder from the grip of their aristocratic patrons. The whole sum which they could obtain for the maintenance of 1,000 parish churches was only about £4,000, or about £6 sterling as the annual income of a parish priest.

As for the unhappy queen, she was equally vexed by clergy and aristocracy. She was soon called upon for extensive favours by her ambitious brother, the Lord James, prior of St. Andrews. She created him Earl of Mar, and she further contemplated conferring on him the ancient earldom of Murray, which had been forfeited to the Crown in the reign of James II. A great part of the property, however, of this earldom had been taken possession of by the Earl of Huntly, the head of the most powerful family in the north. Huntly had offered, if Mary would land in the Highlands, to conduct her to Edinburgh at the head of 20,000 men, and enable her to put down the whole body of Reformers. Mary had declined this offer, as the certain cause of a civil war, if accepted. Huntly, therefore, stood aloof from the present Government, and was especially hostile to the Earl of Mar, who was the leading person in it. Mar determined to break the power of this haughty chief, and thus wrest from him the lands he claimed for his new earldom. Mary was anxious to advance her brother, and did not need much persuasion to sanction this design of Mar; and the son of Huntly, Sir John Gordon, having committed some feudal outrage, was seized and imprisoned for a short term. This punishment was regarded as an indignity by the house of Gordon, and the symptoms of disaffection towards the Government were increased. Mary, therefore, took the field with her brother, the Lord James, and marched into the Highlands at the head of her troops. The Earl of Huntly, dismayed at this spirit in the young queen, who appeared to enjoy the excitement and the inconveniences of a campaign, hastened to make overtures of accommodation; and the matter would probably have been soon amicably arranged, but, unfortunately, a party of Huntly's vassals refused Mary and her staff entrance into the castle of Inverness, and made a show of holding it against her. They were, however, soon compelled to surrender, and the governor was executed as a traitor. At this time, Sir John Gordon, escaping from his prison, flew to arms, roused the vassals of the clan Gordon far and wide; and his father, seeing no longer any chance of agreement, led his forces into the field. He advanced towards Aberdeen, and met Mar, who had now exchanged that title for the title of Earl of Murray, encamped on the hill of Fare near Corrichie. There Murray, as an excellent soldier, defeated Huntly, who was killed on the field, or died soon after. His son, Sir John Gordon, was seized, and executed at Aberdeen, three days after the battle. Murray was thus placed in full possession of his title and new estate, and Mary, with so able and powerful a relative as her chief minister, appeared in a position to command obedience from her refractory subjects. But now a new danger menaced her from the rival queen of England, who was still bent on seeing Mary so married as to give her no additional power.

In the spring of 1562 Elizabeth became engaged in the support of the Huguenots, or Protestants of France, against their Government, as she had supported the Covenanters of Scotland. After the failure of a conspiracy to surprise the court at Amboise, and the accession of Catherine de Medici to the Regency, the heads of the party again flew to arms; but Catherine making concessions, in order to engage the Huguenot chiefs Condé and Coligny to assist her in counteracting the influence of the house of Guise, a treaty was entered into by which the Protestants were to be allowed free exercise of their religion. But the Duke of Guise becoming possessed of the person of the king, soon persuaded Catherine--his mother and Regent--to break the treaty. The Huguenots again rose in defence of their lives and principles, and no less than fourteen armies were soon on foot in one part or another of France. The Duke of Guise headed the Catholics; the Prince of Condé, Admiral Coligny, Andelot, and others, commanded the Huguenots. The Parliament of Paris issued an edict, authorising the Papists to massacre the Protestants wherever they found them; the Protestants retaliated with augmented fury, and carnage and violence prevailed throughout the devoted country. The Duke of Guise found himself so hard driven by the Protestants, in whose ranks the very women and children fought fiercely, that he entreated Philip of Spain to come to his aid. Philip gladly engaged in a work so congenial, his own Protestant subjects having had bloody experience of his bigotry, and sent into France 6,000 men, besides money. On this the Prince of Condé appealed to Elizabeth for support against the common enemies of their religion. To induce her to act promptly in their favour, he offered to put Havre-de-Grâce immediately into her hands. Nowadays, in such a case, the English Government would take the public means of endeavouring by negotiation to lead its ally to concede their rights to its subjects. But Elizabeth took her favourite mode of privately aiding the discontented subjects of a power with whom she was at peace, against their sovereign. She made no overtures to Catherine de Medici, as Queen-Regent. She made no declaration of war, but despatched Sir Henry Sidney, the father of the afterwards celebrated Sir Philip Sidney, ostensibly to mediate between the Roman Catholics and Protestants, but really to enter into a compact with Condé. She was to furnish him with 100,000 crowns, and to send over 6,000 men, under Sir Edward Poynings, to take possession of the forts of Havre and Dieppe.

FROM THE PAINTING BY SIR DAVID WILKIE, R.A., IN THE NATIONAL GALLERY OF BRITISH ART.]

On the 3rd of October a fleet carried over the stipulated force, took possession of the ports, and Ambrose Dudley, Earl of Warwick, the brother of the favourite Lord Robert Dudley, was made commander-in-chief of the English army in France. The French ambassador, with the treaty of Cateau-Cambresis in his hand, demanded the cause of the infringement of the thirteenth article of this treaty, and reminded the queen that, by proceeding to hostilities, she would at once forfeit all claim to Calais at the expiration of the prescribed period. Elizabeth replied that she was in arms, in fact, on behalf of the King of France, who was a prisoner in the hands of Guise, and when the ambassador required her, in the name of his sovereign, to withdraw her troops, she refused to believe that the demand came from the king, because he was not a free agent, and that it was the duty of Charles IX. to protect his oppressed subjects, and to thank a friendly power for endeavouring to assist him in that object.

But these sophisms deceived nobody. The nobility of France regarded Guise, who had driven the English out of France by the capture of Calais, as the real defender of the country; and Condé, who had brought them in again by the surrender of Havre and Dieppe, was considered a traitor. Numbers flocked to the standard of Guise and the Queen-Regent, who were joined by the King of Navarre. The Royal army, with Charles in person, besieged Rouen, to which Poynings, the English commander at Havre, sent a reinforcement. The governor of the city defended it obstinately against this formidable combination, and the Englishmen, mounting a breach which was made, fought till their last man fell. Two hundred of them thus perished, and the French, rushing in over their dead bodies, pillaged the place for eight days with every circumstance of atrocity.

The fall of Rouen and the massacre of a detachment of her troops was news that no one dared to communicate to Elizabeth. The ministers induced her favourite, Lord Robert Dudley, to undertake the unwelcome task; but even he dared only at first to hint to her that a rumour of defeat was afloat. When at length he disclosed the truth, Elizabeth blamed nobody but herself, confessing that it was her own reluctance to send sufficient force which had caused it all. She determined to send fresh reinforcements; commissioned Count Oldenburg to raise 12,000 men in Germany, and ordered public prayers for three days in succession for a blessing on her arms in favour of the Gospel.

Condé, who had been engaged near Orleans, on the arrival of 6,000 mercenaries from Germany, advanced towards Paris; and at Dreux, on the banks of the Eure, where the Duke of Guise achieved a victory over the Huguenots, Condé and Montmorency, a leader of each party, were taken prisoners; and Coligny, who now became the chief Huguenot general, fell back on Orleans, and sent pressing entreaties to Elizabeth for the supplies which she was bound by the treaty to furnish. The English queen, never fond of parting with her money, had at this crisis none in her exchequer. But money must be forthcoming, or the cause of Protestantism must fail through her bad faith. The German mercenaries were clamorous for their pay, none of which they had received, and the representations of Coligny were so urgent that Elizabeth was compelled to summon a Parliament and ask for supplies.

Meanwhile affairs in France had been anything but satisfactory. The Huguenot chiefs had promised Elizabeth, as the price of her assistance, the restoration of Calais. Elizabeth, on her part, ordered the Earl of Warwick not to advance with his troops beyond the walls of Hammes; and when Coligny reduced the chief towns of Normandy, he gave up their plunder to his German auxiliaries, and, instead of awarding any share to the English, complained loudly of the neutrality of Warwick's troops, and the more so when he saw the Duke of Guise preparing to lay siege to Orleans. But Guise was assassinated (February 24, 1563) by Poltrot, a deserter from the Huguenot army, and this circumstance produced a great change amongst the belligerents on both sides. The Catholics were afraid of the English uniting with Coligny, and gaining still greater advantages in Normandy; and, on the other hand, Condé was anxious to make peace, and secure the position in the French Government which Guise had held. A peace was accordingly concluded at Amboise on the 6th of March, in which freedom for the exercise of their religion was conceded to the Huguenots in every town of France, Paris excepted; and the Huguenots, in return, promised to support the Government.

Elizabeth, in her anger at this treaty, made without any reference to her, appeared to abandon her own shrewd sense. Though the French Government offered to renew the treaty of Cateau, to restore Calais at the stipulated time, Havre being of course surrendered, and to repay her all the sums advanced to the Huguenots, she refused, and declared that she would maintain Havre against the whole realm of France. But when she saw that the two parties were united to drive the English troops out of France, she thought better of it. She despatched Throgmorton to act for her in conjunction with Sir Thomas Smith, her ambassador. But Throgmorton arrived too late. The united parties were now pretty secure of the surrender of Havre, and, as Throgmorton's intrigues in France were notorious, to prevent a repetition of them they seized him on pretence of having no proper credentials, and delayed audience to Sir Thomas Smith from day to day, while they pushed on the siege.