Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/427

A.D. 1561.] present state of things. The queen says I am young, and lack experience. I confess I am younger than she is, yet I know how to carry myself lovingly and justly with my friends, and not to cast any word against her which may be unworthy of a queen and a kinswoman; and, by her permission, I am as much a queen as herself, and can carry my carriage as high as she knows how to do. She hath hitherto assisted my subjects against me; and now I am a widow it may be thought strange that she would hinder me in returning to my own country." She added that she had never been wanting in all friendly offices towards Elizabeth, but that she disbelieved or overlooked these offices; and that she heartily wished that she was as nearly allied to her in affection as in blood, for that would be a most valuable alliance.

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 Lesley, the Bishop of Ross, a man of high integrity, which, through a long series of troubles, he manifested towards his queen, to go over and return with her. Lesley 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 Huntley, 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.

The return of this youthful queen to her own country and capital is one of the saddest things on record. She had left it as a child, to avoid being forcibly seized and married, from political motives, to the boy king of England. She had been educated in all the ease and gaiety of the French court. Far removed from the perpetual storms and struggles of her own country and race, she had given herself up to the enjoyments of a peaceful and pleasant life, to social pleasures, music and poetry, in which she excelled. All that she knew of her country from history showed her a race of proud, rude, half-savage nobles, who had made the lives of her ancestors miserable; who had murdered some, pursued others with perpetual rebellions, and sent them to their graves in broken-hearted despair. All that she had heard from her own mother were the eternal details of the same conflict of weapons, factions, and opinions. With a divided people, with an aristocracy to a great extent sold to do the work of her powerful and, as it proved, deadly enemy, the Queen of England, with all the disadvantages of attractive charms and inexperienced youth, she was going, as it were, from calm sunshine to perpetual tempest, and into a very whirlpool of dark passions and heated antipathies, which required a far more vigorous hand, a far cooler and more worldly temperament than her own to steer through. If she could have known her enemies from her friends, that would have been something; but the basest and most deeply bribed traitors, the cruelest and most unfeeling of her enemies, were immediately around her throne, which they had already undermined with treason, and overshadowed with death.

Mary embarked at Calais on the 15th of August. So long as the coast of France remained in sight she continued to gaze upon it; and when at length it faded from her straining vision, she stretched her arms towards it, and exclaimed, "Farewell, beloved France, farewell! I shall never see thee more!" There she passed her youth in honour and happiness. It was the only happy portion of her short existence; and no sooner did she turn to face the dark, rude sea, than her indefatigable enemy of England appeared. Elizabeth was there by her admiral to obstruct her progress, and, if possible, to seize her person. So soon as the intention of Mary to return to Scotland was known, Elizabeth collected a squadron of men-of-war in the Downs, on pretence of cruising for pirates in the narrow seas. In defiance of this, Mary put to sea, with only two galleys and four transports, and accompanied by the Lord James, Bishop Lesley, three of her relatives, the Duke of Aumerle, the Grand Prior of France, and the Marquis d'Elbœuf, the Marquis Damville, and other French noblemen. They were not long in falling in with the English fleet; but a thick fog enabled them to escape, except one transport, on board of which was the Earl of Eglinton. Yet so near was the British admiral to the queen, that he overtook and searched two other transports containing her trunks and effects. Failing, however, of the great prize, they let the ships go, and then pretended that they were only in quest of the pirates. But, on the 12th, only three days before Mary sailed, Cecil had written to the Earl of Sussex, that "there were three ships in the North Seas to preserve the fishers from pyrates," and he added that he thought they would be sorry to see the Queen of Scots pass. Elizabeth, having missed the mark, thought it necessary to apologise for the visit of her admiral, and wrote to Mary that she had sent a few barques to sea to cruise after certain Scottish pirates at the request of the King of Spain; and Cecil wrote to Throckmorton that "the queen's majesty's ships that were on the seas to cleanse them from pirates, saw her (the Queen of Scots), and saluted her galleys; and, staying her ships, examined them gently. One they detained as vehemently suspected of piracy."

On August the 19th, after a few days' voyage, Mary landed on her rugged native shore at Leith. She had come a fortnight earlier than she had fixed, to prevent the schemes of her enemies; but the mass of 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