Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/461

] Seaton, and Fleming. The Archbishop of St. Andrew's, and Lesley, Bishop of Ross, were the directors of their counsels. Such a party was formidable, and the confederates flew to the clergy to rouse the people on their side. In return for these services the confederate lords promised to restore the possessions of the Church, to place all education in the hands of the clergy, and to take care that the prince was educated in the strictest principles of Protestantism. They prevailed on Knox, Douglas, Dow, and Craig, to seek an interview with the Hamiltons, and persuade them to an accommodation, but in this they failed.

Meantime, although Queen Mary was shut up in the island castle of Lochleven, under the strictest surveillance, she was not idle. No confinement could be more hateful or more severe. The castle was in the keeping of Lady Margaret Erskine, daughter of Lord Erskine, who had been the mistress of James V., the father of Mary, and was by the king the mother of the Earl of Murray. She afterwards married Sir Robert Douglas, and had by him a family. Her eldest son, William Douglas, was now proprietor of the castle, but Lady Douglas always boasted that she had been the lawful wife of James V., and that therefore her son, the Earl of Murray, was the rightful heir of the throne. Mary was, in her eyes, only a usurper and supplanter of her son; and proud and stern as she was by nature, we may imagine the jealous rigour with which she executed the office of jailoress to the Queen of Scots. To aid her in this office she had the cordial assistance of those two iron men, Ruthven and Lindsay of the Byres.

But such jailors and such a prison did not crush the spirit of Mary Stuart. She continued to convey an account of her situation and sentiments to the courts of both France and England. The French monarch dispatched M. Villeroy to have an interview with her, but this was not allowed, and the messenger whom she had chosen to state her case to Elizabeth, we have seen was a traitor.

By various letters of this Melville on his return to Edinburgh, in the State Paper Office, dated June and July, and addressed to Cecil, we find him engaged in a scheme for prevailing on Mary to resign in favour of her son, and, as it would appear, under threat of bringing her to trial for the murder of her husband if she refused. Accordingly, though on the very day on which one of his most significant letters to Cecil is dated, the 1st of July, Melville went to Lochleven, and delivered to her the letter of the Queen of England. At this interview, Ruthven, Lindsay, and Douglas were present, so that, had he wished it, he could enter into no private communication; but eight days after they sent him again to her, and allowed him to be alone with her. On this occasion he endeavoured to persuade her to abandon Bothwell, but she refused.

Both France and England were anxious to obtain the person of the prince, and whilst France was ready to give up the queen for that object, Elizabeth of England professed to wish for her enlargement and the punishment of the murderers. Neither of these plans found favour with the confederate lords. If France obtained the person of the prince, it would be in a condition to dictate to every party in Scotland, and the lords themselves saw no security for their own ascendancy. If they set the queen at liberty, they assured Throckmorton they should only sign their own death-warrants. France tried to win over Murray by splendid offers, to join with it and desert the confederates; but Murray, who saw only his interest in maintaining the rights of the queen and the prince against the confederate lords, now joined Elizabeth in demanding justice for the queen; and he dispatched his confidential servant, Nicholas Elphinstone, to Mary to assure her of his devotion to her cause. How far he was honest subsequent events soon proved. Elphinstone in his passage through London had a private interview with Elizabeth, who entered into all his views, which were to support the confederates to a certain extent, but not by destroying the queen to render them independent of her. She ordered Cecil to write a letter in her name to Mary, confessing that she could not write herself because "she had not used Mary well in those broken matters that were passed." She bade him assure Mary that Murray had never defamed her in regard to the death of her husband, never plotted for the secret conveying of the prince to England, but was the most faithful and honourable servant that she had in Scotland. Elizabeth, with her deep insight into character and events, saw clearly that so long as she supported Murray in conjunction with the interests of his own family, she might continue to lean on him for aid; whilst the Protestant lords, once free of Mary and united with the Church, would set her at defiance.

But the confederate lords, having the queen in their hands, alike refused admission to the envoys of France, England, or Murray. They themselves endeavoured to induce her through Melville, whom they admitted to her presence as a friend, and as a favour, to resign the crown, abandon Bothwell, and consent to the crowning of her son. Melville had a third interview with her, on the 18th of July, for this purpose, and conveyed to her a letter from Throckmorton advising her to the same course. Mary, who believed herself with child, would not even consent to the divorce from Bothwell, because it would illegitimate her expected offspring, and on Melville's retiring, she presented him with a letter to Bothwell, which Melville refused to take charge of, and which she then angrily threw into the fire.

This resistance of the queen was noised abroad by the confederates, through both press and pulpit; and the public mind was worked up to such a pitch, that the populace began to cry for her head if she would not consent to give up Bothwell. There was now a new doctrine advanced, calculated not only to alarm Mary but Elizabeth herself; it was that of the right of the nation to call its sovereign to account for any crimes that he or she might commit. "It is a public speech," wrote the astonished Throckmorton to Elizabeth, "that their queen hath no more liberty nor privilege to commit murder or adultery than any private person, neither by the laws of God nor the laws of the realm."

Knox, Craig, the rest of the ministers of the Church, with the celebrated Buchanan, promulgated loudly this startling doctrine, destined to take such effect on the grandson of Queen Mary, and to produce such marvellous consequences in this and other kingdoms. It was a doctrine greedily imbibed by the people, and the General