Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/431

A.D. 1561.] 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 gripe 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 involved 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 Huntley, the head of the most powerful family in the north. Huntley 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. Huntley, 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. It did not require much persuasion on the part of Mary, who was anxious to advance her brother, to sanction this design of Mar; and the son of Huntley, 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 Huntley, 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 Huntley'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 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 accommodation, 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 Huntley, 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. Before, however, entering on this subject, we must take a view of Elizabeth's own proceedings during the period through which we have followed the fortunes of Mary of Scotland.

In the summer of this year, Elizabeth made one of those progresses in which she so much delighted, through Essex and Suffolk. In the course of this progress she complained much of the negligent performance of divine service by the clergy, and of their not wearing their surplices. What still more incensed her was the number of married clergy, and the number of children and wives in the cathedrals and colleges, which, she said, was contrary to the intention of the founders, and very disturbing to the studies of the students and clergy. Nothing excited her indignation so much as a married bishop; and, on her first visit to Parker, the Archbishop of Canterbury, though she had put the primate and his wife to enormous expense and trouble, she addressed Mrs. Parker, at parting, in these words:—"And you!—madam I may not call you, mistress I am ashamed to call you—but, howsoever, I thank you." Hearing that Pilkington, the Bishop of Durham, had given his daughter £10,000 as a marriage portion—as much as her father, King Henry, left her—she immediately deducted £1,000 a year from the revenue of his see, which she appropriated to the maintenance of the garrison at Berwick.

But marriage in any shape threw her into paroxysms of rage. On this progress, whilst at Ipswich, she learned that Lady Catherine Grey, a sister of the unfortunate Lady Jane Grey, who was one of her bedchamber ladies, was likely to become a mother. This news excited her extreme fury; but still greater was her wrath when, on inquiring of the young lady herself, she found that she was clandestinely married to the Earl of Hertford. Lady Catherine Grey was the eldest surviving daughter of Frances Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, whose posterity was named by the will of Henry VIII. as the next successors to the throne, and, by the party opposed to the Queen of Scots, held to be the heirs presumptive. With Elizabeth's terror of all successors, this discovery produced in her the most violent emotions. The Earl of Hertford, dreading her anger, had taken the precaution to retire to France. The remembrance of her own flirtations with the lord-admiral, the uncle of this young Lord Hertford, and the disgraceful disclosures brought before the Privy Council of Edward VI., about ten years before, had no effect in neutralising her resentment. She committed Lady Catherine to the Tower; and Cecil, writing to the Earl of Sussex—Cecil, who owed his first court favour to the Lord Protector, the father of this Lord Hertford—used the grossest terms regarding Lady Catherine, and then added, "She is committed to the Tower; he is sent for. She saith that she was married to him secretly before Christmas last."

Lady Catherine Grey, in her turn, appealed to Lord Robert Dudley, so soon to be Earl of Essex, the great favourite of Elizabeth, and brother to Lord Guildford Dudley, to intercede with Elizabeth on her behalf; but the heartless courtier refused, and Lady Catherine was conveyed to the Tower, where she was delivered of a son. When Lord Hertford returned on the Royal summons, he was also committed to the Tower, but to a separate apartment. By the connivance of Warner, the Lieutenant of the Tower, the unhappy husband and wife were permitted to visit each other—another child was born—