16 MARY OF GUISE TO BE REGENT. The approaching day of doom had been hastened even before Wallace's death. In February or March 1549 Knox was released from the galleys, by April 7 he was in England. His fellow-captives of the castle garrison were set free by July 1550. Presently Knox was a licensed preacher at Berwick; there he abode for two years, for as many in Newcastle, and then was a year in London.54 From Berwick his doctrine might readily be heard by Scots within easy distance of the Border. Only one ingredient in the Medea's caldron of Revolution was quiescent, and that ingredient Mary of Guise stirred into activity. Leaving Scotland in September 1550, she visited France. Her professed object was to see her daughter. Her real aim was, by the aid of her kinsmen, the Guises, and the French Court, to obtain the regency for herself, and to oust Arran, who, to distinguish him from his son, Earl of Arran, must now be called Duke of Châtelherault. She was accompanied, says the 'Diurnal of Occurrents' (which misdates her departure, making it August instead of September 8), by Lord James Stuart, Queen Mary's natural brother, and many other nobles and clergy. She was received "as a goddess," and her companions were bribed, or magnificently entertained, according as we follow Lesley or the Venetian Minister. The letters of Mason, the English Ambassador to France, prove, or allege, that her stay with her kinsmen was not altogether happy. She arrived on September Her nobles at once squabbled about their lodgings. The ambassador was gouty, and wished to return home "and die among Christian men." This disposition makes his temper crabbed. He announces that the French wish to appoint a French Governor of Scotland, to which the Scots will not agree. On January 28, 1551, the English Council sent to Mason a secret agent, recommended by the scheming Balnaves. He arrived on February 24, but was very timid, and provided, as a substitute for himself, young Kirkcaldy of Grange, who henceforth was deep in what may be euphemistically styled "secret service." His cypher name was "Corax." Mason suspected a French war on England; "it is already half concluded to send away the Queen of Scots with all convenient speed, and with her 300 or 400 men-at-arms and 10,000 foot." 55 Mary of Guise is hostile to England, and "is in this Court made a goddess." Yet the Scots (March 18) were grown home-sick. "The Scots mislike the yoke that foolishly they have put their head in" (April 22). By April 28 one Stuart was charged with an attempt to poison the young THE REGENCY OF MARY OF GUISE (1554). 17 Queen of Scotland. He was an archer of the Scots Guard, but, we may hope, he was not known to "Corax.” 56 He had been one of the Castilians; like Knox he had rowed in the galleys. Mason reported his escape to Ireland (April 29). He was captured, and brought to Angers on June 5. Whether he was hanged, as Lesley says, or not, Dumas furnishes him with later adventures in the novel called 'L'Horoscope.' Mary of Guise's return was said to be delayed by an intrigue of the French king with Lady Fleming, one of her suite. She arrived in England on October 22: she had an interview with Edward VI., who is said to have pressed his own suit for the hand of her daughter. By the end of November Mary of Guise was in Scotland again. During the queen-dowager's stay in France Henry II. had sent the Bishop of Ross and other envoys to Châtelherault, hinting broadly that he wished Mary of Guise to assume the Regency.5 57 The emissaries found the Duke very reluctant to acquiesce. Nor did the change at once take place. The queen-mother and Arran visited the North (where the captain of Clanchattan had a year before been executed by Huntly), and inflicted various penalties on unruly Celts. In the South the blood-feud for Ker of Cessford had caused the death of Buccleuch in Edinburgh, when "startled burghers fled, afar, The furies of the Border war.' 258 This "unhappy accident" the Kers professed to deplore. The queen-mother soothed the various discords, and, secretly tampering with the nobles, undermined the power of Châtelherault.59 The dowager's party proved the stronger. In a Parliament at Edinburgh on April 12, 1554, Châtelherault resigned the Regency to his rival. Says Knox, "A crown was put on her head, as seemly a sight (if men had eyes) as to put a saddle upon the back of ane unrewly kow.” 60 Arran received an approval of his conduct in the Regency, a general amnesty for his actions, and a general acknowledgment of his financial rectitude.61 There was to be "a new world." The death of Edward VI., in July 1553, the accession of Mary Tudor, the consequent persecutions and returns to Scotland of Protestant Scottish refugees, and the conduct of Mary of Guise in selecting French and deposing Scottish Ministers, all worked to a single end. the tenure of power by foreigners: VOL. II. Scotland had ever detested B smouldering embers of Protestantism; and the circumstances that seemed to favour the Catholic cause resulted speedily in its downfall. "Bloody Mary" might ally herself with Spain: Mary of Guise might serve her own ambitious House: both might seem defenders of the Faith, but reaction was inevitable, and the Church was foredoomed. NOTES TO CHAPTER I. The That Henry asserted the feudal claims of Edward I. has been denied. reader may consult the copious evidence for the fact in Mr Pollard's article on Somerset and Scotland, in the English Historical Review,' July 1898, pp. 464472. At first Somerset kept the claims in the background. 2 Privy Council Register, i. 27; Bain, Calendar of Scottish Papers, i. 34. 3 Knox, i. 180. 4 Privy Council, i. 57; Laing's Knox, i. 180, note 4. 5 Privy Council, i. 22-27. 6 Act. Parl., ii. 466-480. 7 Pollard, English Historical Review,' ut supra. Correspondance Politique de Odet de Selve, pp. 53, 54, 93. Paris: Alcan, 1888. 8 Thorpe's Calendar, i. 59. 9 De Selve, 53, 54, 143. 10 Odet de Selve, Correspondance Politique, pp. 66, 78, 86; Privy Council, i. 43. 11 Privy Council, i. 52-54. 12 Knox appears to date this at the end of January 1547 (i. 182, 183). Compare Tytler, vi. 8 (1837), citing State Paper for December 17, and Thorpe, i. 60; Privy Council, i. 57, 58. Writing from memory, Knox was often incorrect in his dates, and in this and other cases, his error helps his argument that Arran was treacherous. 13 Knox, i. 183. 14 Proceedings, Scot. Society of Antiquaries, 1862, iii. 58. 15 See Hume Brown, Life of John Knox, i. 59. 16 Hume Brown, Knox, i. 94. 17 Knox, i. 201. Knox declares that "so blessed were his labours," yet (i. 204) he denounced the "corrupt life" of his converts. 18 Thorpe, i. 61. 19 State Papers, Domestic, Addenda, 1547-1565, p. 323. 20 Stewart of Cardonald, a spy, to Wharton. Calendar of Scottish Papers, i. 4. 21 Knox, i. 203. 22 Knox, i. 205, 206; Buchanan, xv. 45. Lesley says the terms asked were that the garrison should be salvi cum fortunis; but the terms granted were that, subject to the will of the King of France, the men only should go forth unharmed, soli homines integri discederent (Lesley, p. 461; Rome, 1578). If Knox's account of the terms is correct, they were not kept. Possibly Knox confused the terms asked for with the terms actually obtained. Mr Hume Brown ('Life of Knox,' i. 80) says that Buchanan's evidence confirms Knox's. The words of Buchanan, "incolumitatem modo pacti," seem to me to mean that they were merely promised their bare lives. Compare the use of incolumitas by Cæsar, De Bello Civili, iii. 28, and Tytler, vi. 17, note I (1837). The account of the expedition is mainly from Patten's Diary, in Dalyell's 'Fragments of Scottish History' (1798). 30 Buchanan, fol. 180; Pitscottie, xxii. 10. For another report, Tytler, vi. 25, 26. 31 Calendar, i. 19, 20. 32 Thorpe, i. 66. 33 De Selve, "among the Savages" (p. 204, September 17). 35 Calendar, i. 25. 37 Calendar, i. 30. 39 Calendar, i. 34. 38 Calendar, i. 33. 40 Calendar, i. 71. 41 Teulet, 'Relations Politiques,' i. 179; Act. Parl., ii. 481. 42 Knox, i. 217. 43 Calendar, i. 173, 174. 45 Calendar, i. 175, 176. 4 December 1548 (Calendar, i. 170, 171). 46 Beaugué, 'Histoire de la Guerre d'Ecosse,' Maitland Club, p. 104. 47 Teulet, i. 'Relations Politiques,' p. 201 (1862). 48 Knox, i. 222, 223. 49 Lesley, p. 475. 50 November 29, 1549. (Teulet, i. 210, 211. Marie to the Cardinal de Guise.) 51 Fœdera, xv. 211-217; Privy Council Register, i. 85-87. 52 Knox, i. 237-241. We may compare, as to this martyr, the contemporary account in Foxe, where the conduct and language of the Court are not (as by Knox) described as violent. The accused is not addressed as "false traitor," "heretic," "knave," and so forth. Wallace is described by Knox as a simple man, without great learning, but one that was zealous in godliness, and of an upright life." He was much in the company of the wife of Ormistoun, himself then banished as a traitor. Through the last three years of war he and Brunston had been constant agents of Somerset. Wallace was apprehended at Lord Seton's house, Wyntoun, near Haddington, and his trial took place before Arran, Huntly, Glencairn (son of the "godly" Earl, recently dead), "and divers others besides the Bishops and their rabble." The scene was "the Kirk of the Black Thieves, otherwise Friars," the Dominicans. Accused of preaching, Wallace denied the fact: he had only "given exhortation," and, read the Scriptures "in privy places." According to Knox, Wallace in his defence styled the Bishops "dumb dogs, and unsavoury salt." The charges against him were read. He was accused of christening his own child, of denying Purgatory and the efficacy of prayer to saints and for the dead. He admitted the charges, and denounced the mass as "abomination before God." He was condemned, and burned on the Castle Hill. Turning to Foxe's account, we see that Argyll—“Justice”—and Angus were present, and the whole "Senate." Glencairn is not named; Knox, however, says that he made a kind of protest to "the Bishop of Orkney and others that sat near him." Knox and Foxe agree in stating that Wallace appealed to the Bible as his judge. He was not, if we follow Foxe, burned on the day of his condemnation, as Knox declares; the intervening day was passed in attempts to argue or tease him into recantation. He did not, as in Knox, insult the Bishops as "dumb dogs," or Foxe omits the fact. He appears to have been strangled before the burning. Foxe's account is from "testimonies and letters brought from Scotland in 1550." (Laing's Knox, i. 543-550.) In both versions Wallace calls the mass an "abomination" or "abominable." Foxe declares that, as Wallace went to the stake, "the common people said, 'God have mercy upon him.' 53 Lingard, v. 159 (1855). 54 Knox, ii. 280. 55 February 23. Foreign Calendar, Edward VI., p. 75. 1861.) (Edited by Turnbull, 56 Teulet, i. 249-260 (Bannatyne Club). Foreign Calendar, Edward VI., pp. 97, 121, 126. Compare Hay Fleming, Mary, Queen of Scots, p. 200, note 15. 58 Privy Council Register, i. 109, 152. 60 Knox, i. 242. 57 Lesley, p. 486. 59 Lesley, p. 477. 61 Act. Parl., ii. 602-604. THE ABSOLUTION AND THe Siege. At this point it seems desirable to say something about the trustworthiness of Knox's History. He was in the castle, a trusted adviser; he ought to have known what occurred. But he asserts that the galleys appeared on "the penult day of June." Eight days earlier, he avers, the Government had shown the Castilians a copy of the papal absolution, "containing . . . this clause, Remittimus irremissibile”—that is, we remit the crime that cannot be remitted." The garrison thought that this was not a trustworthy absolution, and declined to give up the castle. Yet we know that the absolution arrived early in April. As Knox is fond of charging his adversaries with treachery, it is needful to note the facts. The absolution did not arrive eight days before "the penult of June." On April 2 James Stuart of Cardonald, as we saw, reported to Wharton that M. de Combas, a French diplomatist, had already brought the document. On April 24 de Selve wrote that he suspected that the Castilians had refused the absolution carried by de Combas. Cardonald avers that before April 2 the Castilians were declaring that they would rather have a boll of wheat than all the Pope's remissions, "and so in no way can he" (Arran) "have St Andrews, albeit they have not declared him plainly, but allege against him fault in himself, for not keeping of his promise." In describing the coming of the French ships, Knox remarks, "This treasonable mean had the Governor, the Bishop, the Queen, and Monsieur Dosele under the Appointment drawn." Now Arran asked for French aid on November 26, long before the "Appointment" of December 17 (Privy Council Register, 1. 54). There seems to be no treachery on Arran's part. Apparently, however, it was fair for the Castilians to engage English aid, and even to ask Henry, to move the Emperor, to urge the Pope to refuse the requested absolution. In short, the Castilians never meant to keep their promise: never meant to surrender the castle on their own stipulated terms-the receipt of a papal absolution. Yet their ally, Knox, accuses the governor of treachery (Knox, i. 203; Calendar, i. 4, 5; de Selve, p. 134). As to the siege of the castle by the French galleons, Knox makes it begin on June 30. After two days' fire from the ships, "the castle handled them so that Sancta Barbara [the gunner's goddess] helped them nothing." One galleon was nearly wrecked, the rest retired to Dundee, and, on Arran's arrival from the Border, the castle was invested on the land side. This was on July 19. For the first twenty days the castle "had many prosperous chances," but Knox warned the garrison that their corrupt life could not escape God's punishment, and that their walls would be but eggshells. On July 31, after a heavy fire, the castle |