Page:The Queens of England.djvu/474

 428 THE QUEENS OF ENGLAND. guid." The truth seems to have been that Anne, though bred as a "spleeny Lutheran," had incurred unpopularity with the kirk less for her favors to episcopacy or her toleration of popery, than for a general indifference to all such religious pretensions. She was Erastian. Nevertheless, her daughter Elizabeth was educated without a touch of heresy ; became in after-life the heroine of the protestant cause ; and through the youngest of her ten children, the Electress Sophia of Hanover, settled the house of Brunswick on the English throne. Anne's third child, also a daughter, was born at Dalkeith, at the close of 1598; was christened Margaret, and died in in- fancy. In November, 1600, her fourth child, a son, christened Charles, was born at Dumfermline ; but the events that di- rectly preceded this boy's birth were of a strange and excit- ing kind and very gloomy were the portents which attended his entrance into the world. The quarrels of the king and the queen during the years just recounted had been notorious past concealment. The guardian- ship of her eldest son at times was the ostensible ground, at others questions of economy and debt, at others avowed and open jealousy. Now it was Chancellor Maitland about whom they hotly contended, now the Duke of Lenox or Alexander Ruthven, and now the Earl of Marr ; nor did Anne scruple to identify herself with that league of James' enemies, who had lately failed in a desperate attempt to seize his person and usurp his authority. So public were these differences become, that the French ambassador reports to his master the fact of Anne having threatened her husband's life ; whereto the gallant Henri Quatre observes in reply, that James should save himself by anticipating her. But a nearer view of these contentions is supplied by the correspondence of Sir Ralph Win wood, to whom, shortly before Anne's confinement at Dumfermline, Sir Henry Neville thus writes : "Out of Scot- land we hear there is no good agreement, but rather an open dissidence, between the King of Scots and his wife; and many are of opinion that the discovery of some affection between her and the Earl of Cowrie's brother, who was killed with him, was the true cause and motive of all that tragedy." The writer refers to the tragedy which is known as the Gowrie Conspiracy, which was enacted in August, 1600, at the house of the Gowrie family in Perth, and which is still one of the darkest mvsteries in the blood-stained annals of Scotland.