them to be genuine. TRIAL OF MORTON. 271 This was not the opinion of four of the Edinburgh preachers, who attested Whittingham's confession. "The ministers have seen it, and in their sermons give God great thanks therefor," writes Randolph to Hunsdon on March 20. If the very preachers admitted that Lennox was falsely accused, the case looks black for Archibald and the letters attributed to Archbishop Beaton, which he intercepted, and handed to Bowes. The confessions of Whittingham made Randolph's position perilous. A placard asked why he came from Elizabeth to complain of James's liberality to his kinsman, Lennox. Had Elizabeth not been liberal to Leicester and Sir Christopher Hatton? Elizabeth was now asking for the expulsion of Sir James Balfour. Why had she never objected to him through the years when he was Morton's chief adviser? Why did Elizabeth shelter Archibald Douglas, one of Darnley's assassins, while her conscience so suddenly stirred her against Sir James? If Elizabeth's Protestantism was alarmed by Catholics near the king, why was she treating for marriage herself with a Catholic, the brother of the King of France? Did Randolph take pleasure in the society of owls and nightingales? was that why he had nocturnal meetings with Angus and Mar? These questions, in which we may guess the hand of Lethington's brother John, were fixed on Randolph's door on March 13. Affleck had confessed on March 12; so, probably, had Whittingham.60 The astute Randolph had met his match at last. Some less ingenious disputant fired a shot through his window in his absence: he took the hint and retired to Berwick. Angus had been banished to Inverness: his castles were occupied, the people of Dalkeith were disarmed; there was left no force on Morton's side to co-operate with Hunsdon's men on the Border. Elizabeth disbanded them, and Morton's doom was sealed. Lennox and James Stewart had managed their concerns with resolution and skill.61 Captain James Stewart was rewarded with the tutorship of the mad Earl of Arran, and presently with his earldom. Morton was brought from Dumbarton at the end of May, and put to trial on June 1. It was deemed quickest to accuse him of Darnley's murder alone, out of nineteen charges. We have no full record of the trial, but a letter of Sir John Foster's to Walsingham shows that Morton's meeting with Bothwell and Lethington at Whittingham about January 19, 1567, was known to the judges.62 On that occasion he was made privy to Darnley's 272 EXECUTION OF MORTON (1581). murder, but (he said in his confession) refused to sign the band without a written warrant from Mary, which he never obtained. We may reasonably conjecture that this evidence was extracted from Douglas of Whittingham, at whose house the plot was discussed. Whatever other testimony may have been produced (one part was the queen's accusation of Morton at Carberry), Morton was found guilty of "art and part of concealing of the king's father's murder." "Art and part! God knows the contrary!" Morton is said to have exclaimed. But in his confession to two preachers, Durie and Balcanquhal, he admitted enough to satisfy them of the justice of his sentence. He told the story of the Whittingham conference. "If I had gotten the queen's handwrite, and so had known her mind, I was purposed to have turned my back on Scotland." Yet he calmly assumed that he did know Mary's mind, and that it was murderous, though he had just said that he did not. He admitted that, knowing Archibald Douglas, by his own confession, to have taken active part in the crime, he continued to employ him, raising him to the bench. The preachers candidly remarked that he "confessed the foreknowledge and concealing of the king's murder," and so "could not justly complain of his sentence." To whom could he reveal it? he replied; "To the queen she was the doer of it." Yet he confessedly did not "know her mind." Morton added, regretfully, that "he expressed not the fruits of his profession in his life and conversation." To his " "profession" he returned, in a manner edifying, and perhaps sincere. One Binning, a servant of Archibald Douglas, who confessed that Archibald lost one of his velvet "mules," or slippers, in hurrying from Kirk-o'-Field, was also put to death. Morton died bravely: his head was spiked on a gable of the Tolbooth. So ended the last of Darnley's murderers who died by the law, and of the men who, being guilty of the crime, accused their queen. Morton had one virtue personal courage; and one political merit, a strong hand. His errors were conspicuous. His title of Earl of Morton was held for a few years by the turbulent Lord Maxwell. 63 5 For. Cal. Eliz., x. 259. See the full terms of the pacification in the Privy Council Register, ii. 193-200. For. Cal. Eliz., 1572-74, 259-262. 6 Spottiswoode, i. 260. 7 Privy Council Register, ii. 216, 219. Journal of the Siege, Bannatyne Miscellany, ii. 72-80. 9 For. Cal. Eliz., x. 355. 10 For. Cal. Eliz., 399-401. 11 Labanoff, iv. 91; For. Cal. Eliz., x. 470, 540, 550; Robertson, Inventories, cxxxvi, cxxxvii; Privy Council Register, ii. 330, 331, 435. 12 For. Cal. Eliz., x. 212. 13 In Stevenson's Nau, pp. 133, 134. 14 Book of the Universal Kirk, i. 335, 338, 342, 361, 362. 15 M'Crie, Life of Andrew Melville (1819), i. 126, 131. Also 'The Poetical Remains of Mr John Davidson': Edinburgh, 1829. Fifty printed. 16 Book of the Universal Kirk, i. 336. 1575. 17 Diurnal, p. 341. 18 Hosack, ii. 200, note 6, citing "Registry of Presentations." 19 Spottiswoode, History of the Church of Scotland, ii. 200 (1851). 20 Tytler, viii. 17; Walsingham to Cecil and Elizabeth, April 11, 12. 21 For. Cal. Eliz., 1575. No. 214-216-218. 22 For. Cal. Eliz., 1575, PP. 93, 94. 23 For. Cal. Eliz., 1575, pp. 97, 98. 24 Murdin, pp. 282-286. 25 Spottiswoode, ii. 203-205. 26 Spanish Calendar, ii. 486. November 7, 1574. 27 Papers in the Scots College at Paris. Hosack, Mary Stuart, ii. Appendix B. 28 Spottiswoode, ii. 205. 29 Labanoff, v. 31, 32. 30 Moysie's Memoirs, Bannatyne Club, 1830, pp. 1-6. 31 Moysie, pp. 7, 8, gives these dates: Morton goes to Stirling on May 28, and is more powerful than Argyll, Atholl, and the rest, though they are admitted to council in the castle. Cf. Spottiswoode, ii. 220-230; Bowes' Correspondence (Surtees Society), 1842, pp. 6-8; Calderwood's History of the Kirk of Scotland (1843), iii. 408, 426. 32 Labanoff, v. 51-67. 33 Hosack, ii. 546-550. Scots College Papers. Randolph to Hunsdon, March 20, 1681; Tytler, viii. 429. 54 Balfour to Mary, January 31, 1581; Laing, ii. 314, 318; Froude, xi. 19, 382, note I. 55 So Moysie, Calderwood, and others. Bowes, January 1, 1581, says that the arrest took place in Morton's own chamber. Probably Moysie and the others mean to place the accusation in the Council-room, the arrest, following, in Morton's own room. But see Bowes, pp. 157-161. 56 Calderwood, iii. 481. 58 Bowes, pp. 158, 160. 60 Calderwood, iii. 506-510. 57 Spottiswoode, ii. 271. 61 The letters and other sources are in Bowes, Calderwood, and the Appendix to Tytler, viii. 416-431. 62 Tytler, viii. 429, 430. 63 Cf. The Mystery of Mary Stuart, pp. 382, 385, and Calderwood, iii. 557576. CHAPTER XI. KING AND KIRK. 1581-1584. THE death of Morton was followed by that long struggle between the Crown and the Kirk which filled the reign of James VI. The Protestant party had never looked on their hold of the country as secure. In the historical perspective we see that their constant trepidations were really baseless, but it was impossible for men engaged in the strife to estimate correctly the chances of the old and the new faiths. The preachers justly resented the avarice of the lay holders of Church property, without perceiving that the lay abbots and parsons would never consent to imperil their wealth by a restoration of the ancient creed, and a redistribution of the Church lands. The very thoroughness of the robbery was the protection of the Kirk. England, that bulwark of Protestantism, had, in fact, little to fear from the disunited Catholic Powers. While Spain and France neutralised each other, and while England was anti-Catholic, the Kirk was safe. Neither distracted France nor Spain could seriously take hold of Scotland. Perhaps that which favoured most the slender chances of a Catholic restoration north of Tweed was the extreme zeal of preachers who, not satisfied to live apart from Rome, were intent on building up a theocracy like that of Geneva. The king, though so young, was a precocious theologian, and could only be driven to tamper with Rome by the excessive severities of the Scottish Calvinists. It was not the interest of James to change his creed; he desired nothing less than subordination to his Catholic mother, or Catholic kinsmen of the House of Guise. By intellect, by education, and by conviction he was Protestant. Yet the |