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 ancient revenues was absorbed by the nobles, a very considerable portion was devoted to the maintenance of parish schools, under the express control of the clergy. These at once formed regular nurseries of Protestant Christians, and disseminated the elements of learning more extensively over this small and remote country than it had ever been over any other part of the world.

Queen Mary, having little power in her own country, was obliged to govern by means of her natural brother, James Stuart, whom she created Earl of Moray, and who was the leader of the Protestant interest in Scotland. Personally, however, she was intimately connected with the great Catholic powers of the continent, and became a party, in 1564, to a coalition formed by them for the suppression of Protestantism all over Europe. She had never yet resigned her pretensions to the English throne, but lived in the hope that, when the Catholics succeeded in everywhere subduing the Protestants, she would attain that object. Elizabeth, who had only the support of the Protestant part of her own subjects, with a friendly feeling among the Scotch and other unimportant Protestant nations, had great reason to dread the confederacy formed against her. She nevertheless stood firm upon the Protestant faith, and the principles of a comparatively liberal and popular government, as the only safe position.

A series of unfortunate events threw Mary into the hands of Elizabeth. The former queen, in 1565, married her cousin Lord Darnley, and by that means alienated the affections of her brother and chief minister, the Earl of Moray, as well as of other Protestant lords, who raised a rebellion against her, and were obliged to fly into England. Soon after, the jealousy of Darnley respecting an Italian musician named Rizzio, who acted as French secretary to the queen, united him in a conspiracy with the banished Protestant noblemen for the murder of that humble foreigner, which was effected under very barbarous circumstances, March 9, 1566. Mary, who was delivered in the succeeding June, of her son James, withdrew her affections entirely from her husband, and began to confide chiefly in the Earl of Bothwell, who some months afterwards caused Darnley to be blown up by gunpowder, while he lay in a state of sickness; in which transaction it has always been suspected, but never proved, that the queen had a considerable share. Bothwell soon after forced her, in appearance, into a marriage, which excited so much indignation among her subjects, that the same Protestant lords who had effected the Reformation, and were the friends of Elizabeth, easily obtained the possession of her person, and having deposed her, crowned her infant son as king, under the title of, while the regency was vested in the Earl of Moray. In May 1568, Mary escaped from her prison in Lochleven, and put herself at the head of a body of her partisans, but was defeated by the regent at the battle of Langside, and was then compelled to seek refuge in England. By placing her rival under strict confinement, and extending an effectual protection to the regents Moray, Lennox, Mar, and Morton, who successively governed Scotland, Elizabeth fortified herself in a great degree against the Catholic confederacy.