they called Adamson's style metallic ("hard iron style"). They said, "You lie in your throat!" They called Episcopacy "your new-devised Popedom." They denied that the Kirk had threatened to excommunicate the king.8 80 These were remarkable ladies, if their logic, their Latin, and their manners were all their own. But we are now entered on that deadlock between Kirk and State which never ended till, wearied and worn, the Kirk practically surrendered to the Prince of Orange. Later, Craig told the bullying Arran that he "should be cast down from his high horse of pride." That was an easy prediction, but Calderwood thinks it was fulfilled "when James Douglas of Parkhead thrust Arran off his horse with a spear and slew him." 81 Mr Froude spares a compliment to the "second-sight" of the preachers. Indeed their "subliminal premonitions" were ever part of their power with the populace. • For example, in the Parliament of November 1581, specially confirming the Act of Mary's last Parliament of April 1567 (Act. Parl. Scot., iii. 210). 10 Calderwood, iii. 594, 595. 11 Mary to Mendoza, January 14, 1582, Spanish State Papers, iii. 205, 206. 12 Watts, apparently, was sent "before September" 1581, while on September 7 Mendoza writes to Philip that the six lords will "send a person of understanding who was brought up in Scotland” (‘Edinburgh Review,' vol. 187, p. 324 ; Spanish State Papers, iii. 170). Apparently Father Persons sent Watts, the six lords sent some one else. 13 Edinburgh Review, vol. 187, p. 326. 21 Calderwood, v. 594. 27 Bowes, pp. 176-178. 28 See Calderwood, iii. 643, for another version. Cf. Spottiswoode, ii. 290. 29 Spanish State Papers, iii. 407; Froude, xi. 283. 30 Calderwood, iii. 637-640. 32 Calderwood, iii. 644. 34 Also Bowes to Cecil; Bowes, p. 182. 25 Hume Brown, ii. 192. 1875. 31 Bowes, p. 181. 33 Thorpe, i. 426. 36 Spanish State Papers, iii. 399. 3 Mary to Chateauneuf, December 8, 1585; Labanoff, vi. 239; Spanish Calendar, iii. 400; Spottiswoode, ii. 311, 312. 38 Bowes, pp. 267, 268. 40 Spanish State Papers, iii. 438, 439. 42 Bowes, pp. 236, 240, 253, 265. 44 Thorpe, pp. 437, 439. March-April 1583. 47 Thorpe, i. 443. 49 Thorpe, i. 445. 51 Calderwood, iii. 716. 53 Calderwood, iii. 718. 39 Spanish State Papers, iii. 438. 41 Calderwood, iii. 674. 43 Teulet, ii. 538-546. 46 Thorpe, i. 440. 48 Bowes, pp. 404-406; Thorpe, i. 446. 52 M'Crie's Melville, i. 284-291. 54 Teulet, iii. 352-355; Spanish State Papers, iii. 487, 488. 55 See a letter from St Andrews to Mainville, July 13, Spanish State Papers, iii. 488-491. 56 Teulet, iii. 355-361. 57 Teulet, iii. 362-365; Spanish State Papers, iii. 502, 503. 58 Calderwood, iii. 722, 723. 60 Spottiswoode, ii. 303. 62 Act. Parl. Scot., iii. 330, 331. 63 Bowes to Walsingham; Thorpe, i. 464. 64 Thorpe, i. 464. 66 Thorpe, i. 466. 59 Thorpe, i. 458, 459. 61 Calderwood, iii. 731-747. 65 Thorpe, i. 465. 67 Spanish State Papers, iii. 518, 519. 68 Caligula, C viii. fol. 29. The references for the plot and its failure are in the documents calendared by Thorpe, i. 466-470. The Bannatyne Miscellany, i. 91-107; Spottiswoode, ii. 309-314. Papers relating to William, Earl of Gowrie. 69 Bain, ii. 350; Nau, p. 59. 70 There is a disquisition on the point in M'Crie's 'Andrew Melville,' i. 286-310 (1819). 71 Calderwood, iv. 44. 73 Calderwood, iv. 49-62. 75 Act. Parl. Scot., iii. 290 et seq. 72 Calderwood, iv. 37. 74 Teulet, ii. 659. 77 Spottiswoode, ii. 314, 315; Calderwood, iv. 62-64; Act. Parl. Scot., iii. 296. 78 Calderwood, iv. 87. 80 Calderwood, iv. 126-141. 79 Calderwood, iv. 99. CHAPTER XII. THE END OF MARY STUART. THE TRUTH ABOUT THE 1584-1587. THE result of the execution of Gowrie; of the exile of Angus, Mar, and the Master of Glamis; of the flight to England of the more extreme of the preachers, and of the restoration of royal authority with that of Episcopacy, was to leave James in his favourite position of "free king" (May 1584). The freedom, however, was merely subjection to his favourite Minister, Arran, with his avaricious wife, who ran a career of rapine unlikely long to endure. James, having attained what he wanted in the way of religion namely, control over the Kirk-was no longer tempted to dally with Guise and the Pope, who could only do great things for him at the price of his change of creed. There was probably no moment when James really contemplated return to the ancient faith, and he had a dread of foreign aid, as dangerous to his own independence. He knew his subjects too well, and was too proud of the via media discovered by his own theological acumen, to adopt Catholicism. At the same moment the Catholic Powers, from Philip of Spain to Guise, slackened in their eagerness to assist him, and the discovery of Throckmorton's plot to kill Elizabeth, with his execution later, depressed the English Catholics, on whom James began to see that he could not depend as the means of securing for him the English succession. All these considerations inclined him to break off the long-contemplated association with his mother, to leave her to her fate, and to rely on Elizabeth. This part of James's reign, the space of about a year and a half in which Arran held power, was of very evil omen. It 304 CECIL SCHEMES TO SEPARATE JAMES FROM MARY. was really a kind of reign of terror. Ministers were persecuted merely because they prayed for their exiled brethren. Hume of Argathy and his brother were executed for communicating with one of the exiles on a matter of private business.1 Rewards were offered to informers, and Douglas of Mains and Stewart of Drumquhassel were later executed (1585) on a charge of conspiracy, which was believed to be derived from an informer in collusion with the Government, while Edmonstone of Duntreath was to confess, falsely, to being concerned in the plot, and was to be pardoned. Though many of these misdeeds may have been due to Arran's initiative, the king was no longer a child. secution of the preachers took forms which he was to renew, deliberately, in his maturity. Already he was playing the tyrant as opportunity served, and unendurable as spiritual tyranny is, it was matched in odiousness, or excelled by the conduct of the king. His per While he waged a war of pamphlets and letters with the banished preachers, especially with James Melville, who was with the exiled lords at Newcastle, he was turning towards a league, or an exchange of good services, with England. The Spanish diplomatists believed that James was still running their course, and Philip sent him 6000 ducats.2 What James and Arran desired above everything was the extradition of Angus, Mar, and the rest, or at least their expulsion from England. While they dwelt on the frontier, and paraded Berwick in armed companies, now encouraged, now depressed by the caprices of Elizabeth, neither Arran nor James had an hour of security. The English Ambassador to Holyrood, Davison, was intriguing and conspiring with these busy exiles. He was especially fomenting a plot to seize Edinburgh Castle, then under the command of Alexander Erskine, of the Mar family. This appears from Davison's letters to Walsingham of July 4, July 14, and other despatches. But while Walsingham was backing Davison in this treachery, and inclined to release Mary (who was expected to plead for the exiled lords), Cecil was running a "byecourse." His idea was to send Lord Hunsdon on a private mission to meet Arran at Faulden Kirk, on the Border. The two might arrange a modus vivendi with James, which would leave Mary deserted. Hunsdon had an interest of his own, a marriage between James and a lady of his family. Arran hoped to gain from. Elizabeth the expulsion or extradition of the exiled lords, and 3 "GRAIUS AN PARIS?" 305 security against the sermons of the exiled preachers. In return he could offer the abandonment of Mary by her son, and a complete revelation of the Catholic conspiracies against Elizabeth. These would be betrayed by the Master of Gray, a young man of great beauty, a favourite of James, a Catholic, and lately a trusted agent of Mary's at Paris. In the March of 1584 the Master had sheltered in his house at Edinburgh Father Holt, the captured Jesuit whom James had favoured, conversed with, and secretly released. At that time the Master had recently returned from Paris, where he dealt with the Duc de Guise in Mary's and James's interests. From Paris he had earlier conveyed "great store of chalices, copes, and other things belonging to the mass, to spread abroad in Scotland." 5 But the events which left James a free king, and the delays of Philip and Guise, had turned the Master into a new course. He would betray Mary, ally himself with. Arran, and, when his hour came, would betray Arran in turn and attain power. While Cecil and Hunsdon were thus working behind the backs of Walsingham and Davison, while Davison was conspiring against the king to whom he was accredited, while Arran was designing to abandon Mary, and Gray was preparing to betray both of them, an agent of Mary's was in Scotland, Fontaine, or Fontenay, the brother of her French secretary, Claude Nau. His mission was to speed the execution of Mary's old enemy, Lord Lindsay, then a prisoner, and to complete the "association" between mother and son." Fontaine at Holyrood was in an unenviable position. He and his brother Claude Nau, Mary's secretary, were disliked and distrusted by the Duc de Guise, and by Mary's ambassador in France, Archbishop Beaton. They were no less detested by the Master of Gray. This astute young man had obviously discovered the vanity of the Catholic plottings in which he had been initiated. They were mere cobwebs spun by priests to whom the foreign statesmen never seriously trusted. Cecil had spies everywhere, and on the rack the captured intriguers told all they knew, and more. Gray found Arran and the king turning to Elizabeth: he turned with them. James, to be sure, accepted a sword sent by Mary and declared himself her knight. The axe, she hoped, would soon be red with the blood of her old enemy, the Lindsay of Carberry Hill, of Lochleven, one of the envoys who exposed the casket letters. But James's words were only part of his genial dissimulation: he VOL. II. U |