Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 36.djvu/399

Mary of Guise that a close connection with France would probably transfer the guidance of affairs to the able dowager. In order to secure her object, therefore, she must bring about a change of government. The failure of the governor and the cardinal to prevent the Earl of Hertford from burning Edinburgh and other towns in May 1544 afforded the desired opportunity. She secured the support of the Douglases, and a coalition of the nobles at Stirling called upon the governor to share his authority with the queen-dowager, 'who could bring them the support of the French king,' and as he gave no answer 'discharged him of his authority' on 10 June, in favour of Mary, subject to the ratification of a parliament to be held at the end of July (State Papers, v. 391 ; Hamilton Papers, ii. 409, 432, 740). Arran and Beaton prevented the meeting of the parliament which was to have 'discharged the governor,' and a parliament summoned by Arran to Edinburgh on 5 Nov. declared the Stirling revolution and Mary's summons of a parliament to Stirling for 12 Nov. of no effect.

In October 1546 Beaton, when meditating a journey to France to obtain a larger force, took the precaution of binding the lords under their seals to marry the young queen to Arran's son, and desired to have her kept in his castle at St. Andrews during his absence (Tytler, v. 386). The queen-mother formed an opposition 'band' (ft.), but the disappearance of the cardinal from the scene, by his murder on 29 May 1546, removed her most formidable antagonist, and left her until her death the leading figure in Scotland.

The reunion of parties which followed Beaton's death turned chiefly to Mary's advantage. A new council to represent all parties was chosen, and George Gordon, fourth earl of Huntly [q. v.], a supporter of Mary, succeeded Beaton as chancellor. Circumstances favoured her policy of closer connection with France (ib. vi. 12). Somerset continued Henry VIII's attempt to force the English marriage upon the Scots. The new king of France, Henry II, was personally attached to the dowager, his adopted sister. In the crisis after Pinkie, when the English burnt Leith and occupied Hume Castle and Broughty Crag, Mary showed the courage and decision in which the governor was wanting, took steps to raise a new army, and transferred the little queen for greater safety to the priory of Inchmahome, on an island in the Lake of Menteith.

So perilous was the position of affairs that Mary had little difficulty in persuading the nobles to consent, in a convention at Stirling (8 Feb. 1548), to marry Mary to the dauphin and send her at once to France. André de Montalembert, sieur d'Esse, disembarked six thousand French troops at Leith on 10 June, and laid siege with Arran to Haddington, which the English had captured in April (, Guerre d'Escosse;, Vie des Hommes Illustres; , vi. 42–4). A parliament which met in the abbey outside the walls on 7 July gave its consent to the French marriage (Acta Parl. Scot. ii. 481–2). The queen-dowager, after an unfortunate reconnaissance on the 9th, when many of her suite were killed by a shower of chain and hail-shot from Haddington, and she 'swooned for sorrow,' proceeded to Dumbarton, whence she sent her daughter to France on 7 Aug. (Hamilton Papers, pp. 603, 617-18;, i. 188, 685).

Mary had now to pass through an anxious time. The siege of Haddington dragged on. The wretched people, impoverished by eight years of war and stricken by plague, suffered almost more from the ill-paid French troops than from the English. Mary wrote to her father and uncle, giving a moving picture of these sufferings, and hotly denouncing the frivolity and fraud of many of the French officers. She complained that she had lost all her popularity, would not have been safe in Edinburgh without a French guard, and, roused by alarms four or five times in a night, had got a 'gout or sciatica,' so that she could neither lie nor stand. She dared not withdraw to Stirling to recover her health, lest the French and Scots should fly at one another's throats. But before January 1550 she had been able to retire to Stirling, and the inclusion of Scotland in the peace of 24 March between England and France enabled her to pay a visit to France to see her children and arrange her future policy with Henry and the Guises (, Les Écossais en France, i. 460). She embarked on a French squadron at Leith about 7 Sept., and landed on the 19th at Havre (Tytler, vi. 371 ; but cf. Michel, i. 472; Diurnal, p. 51 ;, p. 236 ; Register of the Privy Council, i. 198). At Rouen on the 25th she was received with much honour by the king, and ' almost worshipped as a goddess by the court for her services in Scotland '( Tytler, vi. 373). Passing through Paris she spent the winter with the court at Blois (Michel, i. 478; Lesley, pp. 236-7). Sir John Mason [q. v.], the English ambassador, reported uneasily that the Queen of Scots and her family bore the whole swing in the court, and that she desired the entire subversion of England, and was urging that assistance should be given to the Irish, whom she had already sought to stir up against England (Tytler, vi. 373–6; ,