Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/421

] Lords of the Congregation, and promised to give additional aid to Kirkaldy, Ormiston, Whitelaw, and others, who expended considerable sums in the cause of the Congregation, and had their pensions from France stopped since they became its partisans.

Three hours after the arrival of Balnaves at the castle of Berwick, and whilst he and Sadler were deep in their discussions, at midnight, Arran alighted at the gate. Arran had been serving in the French army as a colonel of the Scottish guards, and in reality as a hostage for the faith of his father in Scotland. He had been summoned by Henry II. to attend the marriages of his sister and daughter to the Duke of Savoy and Philip of Spain; but Arran, who was in the secret interest of Elizabeth, sent an apology, and, as it was supposed, by the aid of Throckmorton, the English ambassador, made his escape to England, where he had several secret interviews with Elizabeth and Cecil, and then made his way to Scotland under the assumed name of M. de Beaufort.

France, on the one side, and England on the other, were now in active rivalry for the ascendancy in Scotland. The Sieur de Bettancourt arrived from the French court in the beginning of August with assurances of the speedy transmission of an army under the Marquis d'Elbœuf, and with letters to the Lord James, calling on him, by the benefits which he had received from France, to prove himself a faithful subject to his sister and queen. Towards the end of August, 1,000 men, under an Italian officer named Octavian, landed at Leith, and with those the queen-regent put that port into a tolerable state of defence; but at the same time she sent urgent despatches to France for four ships of war to cruise in the Frith, for an additional 1,000 men, and 100 barbed horse. She did not obtain all she wanted, but La Brosse arrived on the 22nd of September, with three ships, 200 men, and eighty horse. With these came the Bishop of Amiens and two learned doctors of the Sorbonne, to endeavour to reconcile the people to the ancient faith.

This was the most hopeless of missions. The people of Scotland had long grown weary of the French, and suspicious of their designs on the independence of the country. The reformed preachers had perambulated the country, exposing the corruptions of the Papal Church, and exciting indignation against the queen-regent for her bigoted attempts to put down the Reformation, for her decided leaning to French interests, and her perfidious and repeated breaches of her contracts with the Lords of the Congregation. This arrival of fresh forces confirmed all their charges, and inspired the population with augmented jealousy of France.

No sooner was the arrival of Arran known, than it produced the highest enthusiasm in the Protestant party. He was regarded as the destined husband of the English queen; and the expectation of the influence which this circumstance would give his party with England, together with the encouragement of the £2,000 just received, raised the spirits of the Congregation to the highest pitch. They accused the queen-regent of two breaches of the capitulation of Edinburgh, by celebrating mass in Holyrood House, and receiving fresh troops from France, and they sent her a message requiring her to desist from the fortification of Leith. The queen-regent bluntly refused, declaring that she was as determined as she was able to maintain the power and interests of her daughter, their sovereign.

Hereupon the Congregation prepared for direct hostilities. The Duke of Chatelherault came over to them; and a commission was issued to Glencairn and Erskine of Dun, to proceed with the purgation of the religious houses. The abbeys of Paisley, Kilwinning, and Dunfermline were accordingly suppressed by them. Sir Thomas Randall, or Randolph, who had become acquainted with Arran at Geneva, was secretly dispatched by Cecil to Hamilton, to co-operate with the Scottish Reformers, affording them a direct means of counsel and communion through him with the English court. Thus was Elizabeth in full and active connection with the insurgent subjects of the queen whose kingdom she was bound by solemn treaty not to interfere with or prejudice in any way; but perhaps she was not destitute of excuse, in the fact that the French court was equally labouring, through the sides of Scotland, to penetrate her realm. The chain of intelligence betwixt the English court and all that was going on in the Scottish one, was rendered complete by Maitland of Lethington, the secretary to the queen-regent, becoming the secret ally of the Congregation, and betraying all the councils and the most private designs of the Scottish Government to the Reformers.

On the 15th of October the Congregation assembled its forces, 12,000 in number, and marched on Edinburgh, which they occupied without resistance, the queen-regent retiring before them to Leith. They established a council for civic affairs, consisting of Chatelherault, Arran, Argyll, Glencairn, the Lord James, Balnaves, Kirkaldy, and others, and another for religious affairs, under Knox, Goodman, and the Bishop of Galloway. They sent a message to the queen-regent, requiring her to order all foreigners and men-at-arms to quit the town, and leave it to the subjects of the realm. Mary of Guise replied that the French were naturalised subjects, and Scotland united to France by marriage; and she, in her turn, commanded the Duke of Chatelherault and his associates to quit the capital, on pain of treason.

The council returned answer that, as an oppressor and an idolatress, they suspended her authority as a council of born subjects for the queen, on the ground that she was acting contrary to the will and interest of the sovereign.

On the 28th the Covenanters prepared for an assault on Leith, by constructing scaling-ladders in the High Church of St. Giles, to the great scandal of the preachers, who prognosticated that proceedings begun in sacrilege would end in defeat. This very 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 head-quarters. 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