Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/426

412 was, that it deputed the Earls of Morton and Glencairn, and Maitland of Lethington, to wait on Queen Elizabeth and propose to her a marriage with Arran, the son of the presumptive heir to the Scottish crown; a scheme supposed to originate with Cecil, who thought thus to give the queen a strong plea for uniting the kingdoms; in this, however, the queen's own obstinacy regarding matrimony defeated him.

It remained now to obtain the consent of Francis and Mary to these decisions; and Sir James Sandilands, a knight of Malta, was dispatched to Paris for this purpose. His reception was such as might be expected, more especially as the two earls had been sent to Elizabeth with the proposal of marriage. 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, and sought to destroy the religion in which she had been educated. When Throckmorton waited on her for the ratification of the treaty, she declined that also, alleging that her subjects had already violated every article of it; that they had acted in absolute independence of her sanction; and that Elizabeth had not only continued to support her subjects in their disloyalty, but had herself infringed the treaty by admitting to her presence deputies from the Parliament who had proceeded without the consent of their sovereign. The princes of Lorraine, Mary's uncles, expressed the utmost indignation at the whole proceeding, and are said to have taken measures for invading Scotland with much greater forces than before, and punishing the audacious Reformers.

All such speculations were cut short by the death of Francis II., the husband of Mary, on the 2nd 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 with 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. But, if she was coldly treated by the new court of France, she was not likely to receive any the more genial treatment from her cousin of England. It were hard to say whether her own subjects of Scotland or Elizabeth contemplated her return with more aversion. Her subjects saw in her a princess whose religious ideas were totally opposed to their own, and to their schemes for its predominance. Elizabeth, though she felt that the union of France and Scotland was severed by the death of Francis, knew that Mary's beauty, accomplishments, and crown would soon attract new lovers, and that some alliance might be formed which might become as formidable as the one just extinct. In conjunction, therefore, with Mary's refractory, and, in fact, traitorous subjects, Elizabeth proceeded to take the most arbitrary and unwarrantable measures for preventing the return of the Scottish queen to her kingdom, and for dictating to her such a marriage as should suit her own views.

The fleet of Winter, therefore, continued cruising in the Frith of Forth, and Randolph pressed the Lords of the Congregation to enter into a perpetual league with England, ere their own sovereign could return, as well as to unite in the great object of preventing their mistress marrying a foreign prince, by compelling her to give her hand to one of her own subjects. These lords of the new religion fell into Elizabeth's plans with the utmost alacrity, and promised to keep up the lucrative connection with the English court. Chatelherault, Morton, Glencairn, and Argyll promised their most devoted services; Maitland, as secretary, agreed to betray to Cecil all the plans of Mary and the party with whom she would naturally act; and the Lord James, her half-brother, proceeded to France, ostensibly to condole with his sister, but really to make himself master of her views and intentions, and, returning by England, revealed them to Elizabeth, and encouraged her to intercept the young queen by the way. Perhaps in all history there is no instance of a more dark and ungenerous conspiracy against a young and generous queen than this against Mary of Scotland.

The envoys of Elizabeth lost no time in pressing Mary to ratify the treaty. Again and again they returned to the charge, and on every occasion Mary gave the same answer—a most reasonable one—which she had given to Throckmorton—namely, that, as it was a subject which vitally affected her crown and people, as her husband was dead, and her uncles refused to give her advice upon it lest they should seem to interfere with Scotland, she could not decide till she had reached her kingdom, and had consulted with her council. She might have repeated what she had at first stated, that the treaty had been openly violated both by Elizabeth and her own subjects.

In one respect Mary was ill-advised, and that was to ask permission of Elizabeth to pass through England on her way to Scotland. The proud English queen, incensed at Mary's prudent resistance to her attempts to force her into the ratification of the abused treaty, now, on D'Oyselles' preferring this request in writing, answered him with great passion, and in the presence of a crowded court, that the Queen of Scots must ask no favour till she had signed the treaty of Edinburgh. When this ungenerous and unqueenly refusal was communicated to Mary, she sent for Throckmorton, and requesting all present to retire to a distance, in a manner to mark the sense of the rude conduct of his own queen, she thus addressed him:—"My lord ambassador, as I know not how far I may be transported by passion, I like not to have so many witnesses of my infirmity as the queen your mistress had, when she talked, not long since, with M. d'Oyselles. There is nothing that doth more grieve me than that I did so forget myself as to have asked of her a favour which I could well have done without. I came here in defiance of the attempts made by her brother Edward to prevent me, and, by the grace of God, I will return without her leave. It is well known that I have friends and allies who have power to assist me, but I chose rather to be indebted to her friendship. If she choose, she may have me for a loving kinswoman and useful neighbour, for I am not going to practise against her with her subjects as she has done with mine: yet I know there be in her realm those that like not the