Page:Cassell's Illustrated History of England vol 2.djvu/483

A.D. 1570.] no humour to listen to such requests. She had excited all Mary's friends at home and abroad, and a perpetual succession of intrigues, plots, and menaces of invasion kept her in no enviable condition.



The intrigues of Norfolk for obtaining Mary, the successive rebellions in the northern shires, the invasions of the borderers under Buccleuch and Ferneyhurst—who had announced the death of Murray before it took place—and the constant romours of expeditions from France or Spain, wrought her to such a pitch, that, on pretence of seizing her rebels Northumberland and Westmoreland, she sent the Earl of Sussex into Scotland at the head of 7,000 men, the real object being to take vengeance on the allies of Mary, and to devastate the country with fire and sword.

It was in vain that the Bishop of Ross and the French ambassador remonstrated vehemently against this unjustifiable invasion; that Maitland assured Cecil that the English ravages would compel all parties to unite for protection.

Sussex advanced, and first repaid the "rout" lately made by Buccleuch and Ferneyhurst, by destroying fifty castles and 300 villages in the fine districts of Teviotdale and the Merse.

So far it was but fair retaliation, but that did not content the irate queen. She ordered Lord Scroope to invade the western border and then lay waste the lands of the Lords Herries and Maxwell, the partisans of Mary, which he desolated with fire; whilst Lennox and Sir William Drury were to advance to Edinburgh with 1,200 foot and 400 horse. There they formed a junction with Morton and his party, dispersed the queen's friends, who were besieging the castle of Glasgow; and then made a terrible march into the country of the Hamiltons. They burnt and destroyed Clydesdale and Linlithgowshire; razed the castles, destroyed the villages, and left the whole country a black and terrible desert. The palace of Hamilton, and the castles of Lialithgow nnd Kinneil,