Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/462

448 Assembly taking advantage of it, proceeded to call upon the Lords of the Secret Council to bring the queen to trial and put her to death. Throckmorton remonstrated with them most solemnly against any such proceeding, and the Assembly, lowering its tone, determined to send to her Lords Lindsay and Ruthven and Robert Melville. They carried with them three instruments ready prepared for the queen's signature: by the first she resigned the crown to her son; by the second she appointed Murray regent till he was of age; and by the third constituted the Duke of Chatelherault, the Earls of Lennox, Argyll, Atholl, Morton, Glencairn, and Mar, a council of regency till the arrival of Murray, with power to continue in that office if he refused the charge.

Melville was employed to prepare Mary by exciting her terrors. He was first admitted, and assured her that if she refused to sign these papers her death was certain. To induce her more readily to comply, he hinted to her that her signing under restraint would be wholly invalid, and might enable her at some fortunate moment to repudiate them, and he brought messages to the same purport from Atholl, Maitland, and Throckmorton. Mary indignantly refused, but on the entrance of Lindsay, who had never forgotten her menace of the loss of his head at Carberry, his stern countenance and fierce manner so overawed her that, probably inwardly adopting Melville's suggestion, she took the pen and without even reading the documents signed them all. So far the confederates had obtained a grand triumph, but before it was completed they must perpetrate another illegal outrage. It was necessary that this resignation and appointment should pass the privy seal, and when Ruthven and Lindsay presented the deeds to Thomas Sinclair, deputy-keeper, he refused to affix the seal, the queen being under restraint; on which Lindsay collected a posse of his retainers, assaulted the keeper in his house, and compelled him to affix the seal by force.

The Lords of the Secret Council now lost no time in completing their work, and crowning the young king. The Hamiltons, however, refused to admit of it, till it was conceded that it should in no way prejudice the right of the Duke of Chatelherault; and Knox contended that he should not be anointed, which was a more Jewish rite, but simply crowned. This latter point was overruled; and the infant being carried in the arms of Mar, his governor, from the castle to the high church in Stirling, and the Lords Lindsay and Ruthven swearing a most false oath—a little matter to them—that the queen resigned the crown to her son of her own free will, James VI. was there crowned by the Bishop of Orkney, on the 29th of July, 1537. Bonfires, dancing, and universal mirth throughout the city testified the real exultation of the people.

Elizabeth, on receiving the news of the deposition of the Queen of Scots, expressed the utmost indignation. She did not like Mary, but she respected in her the rights of sovereigns, and regarded with horror such new and ominous proceedings as that of subjects at will discrowning their sovereigns. Besides, the confederates had taken care to hold their new king fast, and to send for Murray, so that there was a great probability that the Scottish Government would adopt a tone of independence to which it had long been unaccustomed. She, therefore, instructed Throckmorton to keep aloof from the coronation, which he did, and to put in her most decided remonstrance against the whole proceeding. But the confederate lords, who had come to Edinburgh to await the arrival of Murray, paid a visit to Throckmorton though he would not go to them, and after hearing his remonstrance, showed him the folly of it. They communicated to him that the Hamiltons, through the Archbishop of St. Andrew's and the Abbot of Kilwinning, had proposed to execute the queen, as the best mode of reconciling all parties. They contended that if she ever recovered her liberty she might marry and have numbers of children, whereas now there was nobody but this crowned child betwixt their claim and the throne.

Throckmorton expressed his horror at this disclosure of the murderous treachery of the Hamiltons, who had so lately professed themselves the stanch friends of the queen; and suggested that it was policy as foolish as it was wicked, for the queen might be brought to divorce herself from Bothwell, and marry a son of the duke's or a brother of Argyll's. To this Murray of Tullibardine replied, that all that had been discussed, and the Hamiltons deemed nothing so secure as the queen's death.

All obstacles being removed to his triumphant return, the Earl of Murray set out from France for Scotland. This able, but cold-blooded and unprincipled man, had, as we have seen, always taken care, after putting into play the machinery which should serve his own ambition, to retire out of the way, and leave others to do the dirty and bloody work. Like the spider, however, he kept up a close watch in the distant obscurity of his retreat, and was ready to start forward at the right moment, and secure his own advantage. Had he been as generous and just as he was clever, he would have been one of the great men of the age. Had he stood firmly by his sister, he might have corrected the defects in her character, protected her from her enemies, the most dangerous of which were her own ardent feelings, and led her and himself through a noble career of prosperity and material blessing.

He had sent to Elizabeth, by Elphinstone, to represent himself as his sister's friend and defender, and, therefore, Elizabeth received him on his way through London, and expected to find him such as he had professed himself. She calculated that, with his friendship, the Queen of Scots would be maintained in her private position in security as a check against the ambition of the nobles; but Murray, with all his art, had not the policy to conceal his true sentiments, and Elizabeth perceived, with astonishment and anger at the deceit which he had practised upon her, that he was a decided enemy to his sister, the ex-queen. They rose in their conversation to high words, and parted with mutual ill-will.

Murray now pretended that much as he had been disposed to support the cause of Mary, he had recently received such proofs of her guilt as entirely changed his sentiments towards her; at the same time it was well known that he had been in the most constant and complete communication with the confederates, through their whole proceedings. But he now saw the supreme power within his grasp, during the minority of his nephew, and he began to withdraw his mask.

This arch-dissimulator proceeded on his way, accompanied by M. de Lignerolles, the French envoy