Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/443

A.D. 1565.] them, and would not admit them to her presence unless they would free her from all blame, by confessing before the French and Spanish ambassadors that she had had nothing to do with their rising. As they knew that this was to mystify the continental Courts, they consented, but they little anticipated the result. Murray, the Duke of Hamilton, and the Lord Abbot of Kilwinning being admitted, on their knees declared that the queen had no part in the conspiracy, which was entirely of their own concocting and executing. "Now," exclaimed this truthless queen, "ye have spoken the truth; get from my presence, traitors as ye are!" The confounded men were driven from her presence; and, assuming a lofty and dignified air, according to her true servant Cecil, she declared roundly that "whatever the world said or reported of her, she would by her actions let it appear that she would not for the price of the world maintain any subject in any disobedience against any prince. For, besides the offence of her conscience, which should justly condemn her, she knew that Almighty God might justly recompense her with the like trouble in her own realm."

The crest-fallen Scottish lords retired to the north, where Elizabeth suffered them to hide their dishonoured heads, supplying them, however, with the necessary means of existence. Mary summoned them to surrender, but failing to do so, she proclaimed them rebels. Randolph, who ought long ago to have been ordered out of Scotland, still remained there, and to console the queen his mistress for her defeat, he regaled her ear with the most abominable scandals against Mary that he could rake together or invent. Amongst others he did not fail to insinuate that Murray was become her enemy, on account of an incestuous passion which she had entertained for him, and the knowledge of which she would now fain extinguish by his murder. This atrocious calumny, which her very worst enemies could not believe, is one of many such still to be seen in his letters to Leicester, and Raumer, the Prussian historian, has stated it as a fact.

Mary, on her part, displayed a spirit of forgiveness equally surprising. She had called a Parliament for the purpose of attainting the rebel lords and confiscating their estates, but no sooner did Chatelherault and her traitor brother, Murray, exhibit assumed symptoms of repentance, than she discovered a disposition to pardon them, and would probably have done it, but for the persuasions of her uncle, the Cardinal of Lorraine, and the fanatic fury of the mob, who insulted the priests, disturbed her at mass in her own chapel, and at the preceding Easter had dragged out a priest in his robes, with the chalice in his hand, and bound him to the market-cross of Edinburgh, where they pelted him with mud and rotten eggs. These, in an evil hour, led her to join the great Popish league of France and Spain, by which she hoped to gain the support of the monarchs of these countries against England and her own intolerant people. By this ill-advised step she only roused the religious zeal of her Protestant subjects to a formidable height, and increased the power of Elizabeth to wound her, whilst she gained no support whatever from the cruel bigots who, by their Bayonne alliance, covered their names with infamy and horror.  

Queen of Scots, victorious by arms over her enemies, determined to call together a Parliament, and there to procure the forfeiture of Murray and his adherents. This threw the rebel lords into the utmost consternation; for, in the then temper of the nation at large, the measure would have been passed, and they would have been stripped of their estates and entirely crushed. To prevent this catastrophe no time was lost. It was actively spread amongst the people that Mary, having signed the league, it was the intention, through the Kings of France and Spain, to put down the Reformation in Scotland. It was represented that David Rizzio, a Milanese, who was become Mary's secretary for the French language, was the agent of the league and a pensioner of Rome, and that it was necessary to have him removed. This Rizzio had come into the kingdom in the train of Moret, the Savoy ambassador; and, according to Melville, was at first content with being made a singer in the queen's band; but this fact Chalmers, by examining the treasurer's accounts, and tracing Rizzio's progress from the first, denies. Whatever was his original station, however, he soon rose to that of Mary's secretary, and to the possession of her confidence. Nor was this at all extraordinary, for Mary felt that she was surrounded by traitors and enemies. The violence and intolerance of the reform nobles had driven her into the league, and Rizzio, as a strict Papist, supported all her views. Besides himself, there were also his brother Joseph Rizzio, and one Francisco, Italians, and other foreigners, in the queen's service. Rizzio strongly urged the queen to call the Parliament, and thus to crush her turbulent and insolent enemies, and unless he could be got out of the way that would inevitably take place, and the ruin of Murray, Morton, and the rest be certainly ensured. Unfortunately for Rizzio, he had incurred the hatred, not only of these Protestant lords, but of Darnley, the queen's husband. That young man had soon displayed a character which could bring nothing but misery to the queen. He was a man of shallow intellect but of violent passions, and, as is usually the case with such persons, of a will as strong as his judgment was weak. He was ambitious of the chief power, and sullenly resentful because it was denied. Mary, who was of a warm and impulsive temperament, in the ardour of her first affection, had promised Darnley the crown matrimonial, which would have invested him with an equal share of the Royal authority; but soon unhappily perceiving that she had lavished her regard on a weak, headstrong, and dissipated person, she refused to comply, fully assured of the mischiefs which such power in his hands would produce. Darnley resented this denial violently. He reproached the queen with her insincerity in most intemperate language; treated her in public with scandalous disrespect; abandoned her society for the 