Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 23.djvu/21



experience in France had acquired a comprehensive knowledge of men and affairs. He had been commissioned by Mary to represent her interests at the court of her son, and he commended himself to James by betraying her secrets. The king bestowed on him in 1584 the commendatorship of the monastery of Dunfermline. Gray was acting in concert with Arran, who deemed it for his own interest that Mary should remain a prisoner in England. With this view negotiations were entered into for James's reconciliation with Elizabeth, and a proposal was made to send the Master of Gray to London to arrange a treaty with the king of Scots, from which his mother should be excluded. On 20 Aug. Elizabeth expressed her consent to receive the Master of Gray, although she doubted ‘greatly of his good meaning’ (Burghley to Hunsdon, Cal. State Papers, Scott. Ser. p. 484). After considerable delay, Gray received his commission as ambassador, 13 Oct. 1584 (Gray Papers, pp. 9–10). He also brought with him a letter from the king to Burghley, intimating that he had been commissioned to ‘deell mast specially and secreitly with you nixt the quene, our dearest sister’ (Cal. State Papers, Scott. Ser. p. 489; printed in full in History of England, cab. ed. xi. 521–2). As Elizabeth cherished naturally a strong prejudice against Gray, Arran introduced him in October to Lord Hunsdon at Berwick. To Hunsdon, Gray appeared in the character of an exemplary protestant. ‘But for his papistrie,’ writes Hunsdon, ‘I wish all ours were such; for yesterday being Sunday he went to the church with me, having a service-book of mine; sitting with me in my pew he said all the service, and both before the sermon and after he sang the psalms with me as well as I could do’ (Hunsdon to Burghley, 19 Oct., Gray Papers, p. 12). The avowed purpose of the mission was to obtain the extradition or expulsion from England of the banished lords, on which condition Gray was prepared to reveal to Elizabeth the offers made to his master by the catholics, and to propose a defensive league between the two countries (Instructions from the Earl of Arran to the Master of Gray, 14 Oct. 1584, in Gray Papers, p. 11). The instructions contained no reference to Queen Mary, while the main purpose of the embassy was to secure her exclusion from the league with Elizabeth. Since Gray had been one of Mary's principal agents he could reveal to Elizabeth undoubted facts of such a character as irretrievably to damage her cause. He now wrote to Mary that to disarm suspicion it was necessary that in the first instance the young king, her son, should treat solely for himself, and that after he gained Elizabeth's confidence he might negotiate for her liberty. Mary indignantly replied that any one who proposed such a separation between her interests and those of her son must be her enemy, whereupon Gray philosophically advised her against giving ‘way to violent courses’ (Papers of the Master of Gray, pp. 30–7). Gray could not long conceal the double part he was now acting. On 5 Jan. 1584–5 Mary wrote to Fontenay that from communications made to her by Elizabeth she suspected Gray had been unfaithful (, vi. 80). When she finally learned that James had expressly repudiated her proposed association with him in the Scottish crown, she invoked the malediction of heaven on the Master of Gray, and her ‘fils dénaturé’ (Mary to Mauvissière, 12 March 1585;, vi. 123).

Gray had also begun to betray his associates. His revelations of Mary's secrets helped to bring her to the block; but already he was mooting a proposal for the assassination of Arran. Sir James Melville, who refers to the Master of Gray as at this time his ‘great friend,’ states that before his departure to England Gray had begun to suspect that Arran was jealous of his influence with the king (Memoirs, p. 330). Gray had determined to supplant Arran. He had no preference for the interests of Mary or the interests of James, except as they affected his own. Arran was the person who now stood between him and his interests. It curiously happened that nothing was more fitted to win the confidence of Elizabeth than an expression of distrust in Arran; for this distrust was the reason why she had looked coldly upon the proposed negotiations. Gray seems to have succeeded in rendering her, at least for the time, oblivious to the double treachery of which she must have known him to be guilty. At all events it suited her purpose that Arran should be ruined; and when Gray proposed that in order to effect this the exiled lords should be sent to Scotland to hurl Arran from power, she expressed her high pleasure at the proposal, and Gray, before the league had been completed, was permitted to return to Scotland to put the plot into execution. For the special purpose of assisting Gray in his designs, Sir Edward Wotton was chosen to succeed Davison as ambassador in Scotland. Wotton affected the character rather of a pleasant companion than a grave ambassador. Sir James Melville vainly warned the king that under his careless manner he hid deep and dangerous designs. He and the king were soon almost inseparable companions.