MARY AND THE MASTER. 311 But brought, and was bribed by James himself to shoot Angus. Jock, though he cherished a feud with Angus, had none with Mar. His conscience was easy as to slaying Angus; Mar he would not meddle with. The bribe was never paid, and there was no shooting, while the whole anecdote rests only on Jock's deposition, taken by Lord Scrope (November 25). The deposition was recorded by Calderwood, and, given Jock's character, is hardly good evidence.23 That he made the statement, however, is certain. Meanwhile the embassy of the Master of Gray was delayed, and Elizabeth was doubtful of him, while as to Arran's mendacity regarding James and the Jesuits she was in no doubt. The capture of Father Creighton at sea, and the discovery of his papers about the old Guise plot, increased her suspicions. She thought of allowing the exiled lords to reside at Holy Island, within a short hour's ride of the Border, and on October 6 she informed them that she was mediating for them with James. But by October 19 Gray received his credentials. Davison had informed Walsingham that James "disliked the change "-that is, the betrayal of his mother. His scruples may have delayed the mission of the traitor, which, as regards Mary, Arran may have arranged unknown to the king.24 But Mary, in a letter to .Gray of October 1, denounced Gray's pretence, made to her, that he was to announce to Elizabeth a merely apparent discord between herself and her son. She said that Elizabeth's sole policy was to feed James and herself with false hopes, so as to withdraw them from their Catholic allies. And, indeed, this was Elizabeth's purpose. Mary had often taken the bait. If she and Elizabeth appeared to be approaching an agreement, Mary was at once dropped by the Catholic princes, and then there was no reason why Elizabeth should allow the treaty to go farther. When Mary, consequently, turned to France, Spain, or the Pope, then the measures in which she became involved were necessarily acts of hostility to Elizabeth; so the unhappy captive queen was more severely treated, and, at last, was executed. no escape from the weary round, of which the end was approaching. As late as September 7 Mary had been expecting much from a visit. of Sadleir, who had seen her naked in her cradle. She was now (after August 25) at Wingfield; Shrewsbury no longer had her in charge, after certain false and odious tales circulated by his wife. Mary's secretary, Nau, was to visit the English Ministers, and Eliz abeth was professing that Mary must be allowed to return to Scot There was 312 land. MARY AND THE MASTER. Mary was expressing gratitude to Archibald Douglas, and hopes of seeing the Master of Gray. But by October 1 she knew that Gray was playing a double game, and she had warnings from Fontaine in Scotland. She told Gray that she was apprised of his betrayal, by rumour, urged him to be loyal, and warned him against Archibald Douglas, of whom she must recently have learned something. Walsingham having bought the secretary of the French Ambassador, who deciphered this letter for the Master of Gray, knew all that Mary had said of Archibald and of Elizabeth. Gray presently wrote to Mary a letter of the most dastardly insolence, and it was clear, though Elizabeth hesitated till near Christmas-time, that Mary was lost. 25 Elizabeth continued to hesitate and Mary to hope. An Italian Jesuit, Martelli, warned her that she "had too many irons in the fire." She is accused of having written to a supporter in Spain, saying that she had no expectations from her treaty with Elizabeth, and that the Pope and Spain should speed on an invasion of England.26 Dangerous work; but, unless the Catholic Powers were active on her side, she well knew that Elizabeth would only play with her like a cat with a mouse. In October-November the English association was formed for the protection of Elizabeth, and the slaying of any person by whom, or for whom, an attack was made on her life. This shaft was aimed at Mary, guilty or innocent. Gray's negotiations dragged on; Mauvissière, the French Ambassador, said that James was abandoning his mother.27 Nau came from Wingfield to London to speed the treaty for Mary's liberation. Mary was ready to consent to any conditions. She bade the Guises abandon the expedition which they never meant to make. But the Pope, of course, by the old seesaw, now reproached Mary for a treaty with a heretic. The natural results followed. No longer in fear of the Catholic Powers, Elizabeth extracted from Gray such secrets as he had to sell; in return she removed the exiled Scottish lords to the south, and sent Mary to the dismal and pestilent prison of Tutbury. Here she was so guarded that she could not conspire: Paulet, her gaoler, saw to that. Gray seems to have carried his point and sold his queen about December 22,28 and Fontaine, as an enemy of the successful Master, was banished from Scotland. By January 24 the Master was back at Holyrood, and could report that James's association with his mother was cancelled. A scoundrel always has an excuse; Gray's was that Mary had behaved ill to himself, in listening to ENGLISH INTRIGUES AGAINST ARRAN (1585). 313 Fontaine and Nau.29 While in England Gray had laid the foundations of a plot for the ruin of Arran, of whom he was jealous, and it may be suggested that this plot, rather than any revelations as to Mary which he could make, was the basis of his success. Gray's beauty and charm won for him, while in England, the friendship of Sir Philip Sidney, which Gray, who was human, though a Scottish politician of the period, returned with sincere affection. Elizabeth knew that Arran was not to be trusted, and wished him out of the way. In April 1585, after the Holy League of Guise to exclude Henry of Navarre from the French throne took shape, Sir Edward Wotton received his instructions as ambassador to James, with vague promises of a pension, and actual gifts of horses and hounds. Wotton's business was to secure, against the Holy League, a league between England and Scotland; but, as usual, the chief affair of Elizabeth's ambassador was to dabble in plots against James and his chief advisers. He found Gray, Morton (Maxwell), and others bent on violence against Arran, but he gave to Gray a letter from Elizabeth in which she discountenanced such measures. It would be wiser merely to drive Arran from Court. James approved of a league with Elizabeth, and the terms were reduced to writing. Meanwhile Mary, in the wretched captivity of Tutbury, had been inclined to threaten James with her maternal curse. She hoped to see and work on his Justice-Clerk, Bellenden, who was on a mission to London. Mary attributed James's filial impiety to the influence. of Gray, but it was on James that she would invoke the Erinnys of a mother's malison. Her rights she would bequeath to her son's worst enemy, and she repeated her suspicions of Archibald Douglas.30 While Mary's despair deepened, and was apt to drive her into perilous courses, at Edinburgh the English Ambassador was dealing with his allies, the conspirators against Arran. Bellenden proposed a useful assassin, and that person, a Douglas naturally, had an interview with Elizabeth's envoy. On the whole, Wotton discouraged the Scottish love of dirk or gun; but his affair of the league between James and Elizabeth was prospering, when on July 29 he had to announce the slaying of Sir Francis Russell and the capture of Sir John Forster in a Border brawl. The slaughter was, possibly, in revenge for a recent English foray, but it was perpetrated on a day of truce. Mendoza heard that the affair rose out of an Englishman's refusing to pay for a pair of spurs bought from a pedlar. A Scot remonstrated, the Englishman struck him, 314 THE EXILES LET SLIP. a brawl began, and Russell, coming out to quiet it, was slain. So Mendoza wrote from Paris.31 The king wept at the ill news, and the chance was seized to throw suspicion on Arran as instigator of the deed. Arran was therefore warded in St Andrews Castle, but later consigned to his own house. Wotton advised Elizabeth to take great offence at Russell's death (which seems to have been caused in chance mellay), and to make it a handle against Arran.32 The occurrence of a plague in the chief towns raised "the common clamour of the people against the earl and his lady," says Calderwood, while the wet weather was also laid to his guilt, atmospheric effects having political causes. Arran, however, bribed the Master of Gray to procure his release from St Andrews Castle; or perhaps Arran extorted this favour by using his knowledge of the Master's conspiracy against his own life. This appears more probable (though Wotton speaks of bribery), as the Master (August 14) wrote to consult Archibald Douglas on his new dilemma. Elizabeth he had offended by releasing Arran: Arran had him in the hollow of his hand; so Gray saw his only hope in the return of the very exiles whose removal from the Borders he had himself accomplished. Gray had cut himself off from Mary, from the Catholic Powers, from England, though he was "very penitent," and from Arran. The exiles were his only resource.33 On August 25 Wotton, being on a hunting expedition with James, wrote to Walsingham.34 Gray had just told him that it was vain to hope to alter James's affection for Arran (though he was at the moment removed from Court), and that while James was in this mind the exiles could not be restored by fair means. The league with England would be frustrated, Gray would be in peril, and Arran might carry the king into France. Elizabeth, therefore, should make a grievance of Russell's death, decline to negotiate for the league, and "let slip" the exiles, provided with money; Gray would communicate with them through "a special friend of his" in England (Archibald Douglas probably). Wotton added that Morton (Maxwell), then at feud with Arran, was thought to be in alliance with that earl, who supplied him with gold sent from France; possibly Morton would seize James and take him to that country. Wotton ends, "If this plot" (Gray's) "take place I hope I am not such an abject but I shall be revoked before." He made no other demur, though James was negotiating a league with England, and though the conspirators intended to seize the king ALL THE EXILES RETURN (1585). 315 (September 1, Wotton to Walsingham). The adventurers included Morton (who was in disgrace because of a Maxwell and Johnstone feud), Mar, Angus, and the Hamiltons. But Arran had reverted to the French faction, he encouraged Holt and Dury, the Jesuits, and received money through Robert Bruce (not the celebrated preacher of that name), who was apt to play the part of a double spy. Early in September the news of the enterprise of the exiles was rumoured abroad, reaching Arran and James, who wrote to Hunsdon. Arran being on the alert, and still, though not at Court, in secret favour with James, Wotton knew that his own life, after all his treacheries, was hardly worth a week's purchase. In his letters he proves himself far from courageous, and incessantly asks to be recalled, as the Scots "have no sense of honour." These people have honour eternally in their mouths, even when an ambassador is doing his best to let loose on a king his worst enemies, and the exiled ministers, for these devoted men were praying, and preaching, and conspiring with the best. By September 18 Gray announces a probable pardon for Archibald Douglas: "the old fox" was likely to be a valuable tool. By September 22 Arran was mustering his forces to support the king. James meant to proceed in arms against Morton, and this was a fair pretext for a large levy of men. Elizabeth made an excuse out of the affair of the death of Russell for recalling Wotton, who, to his extreme relief, was safe in Berwick on October 15. Only by hard spurring did he escape the hands of James; for the king had learned of the arrival of the exiles on the Border, where they were met by an army of friends. The Douglases marched north by Peebles, the Hamiltons joined hands with the Maxwells, under Morton, at Dumfries, and they all trysted to meet at Falkirk, 8000 men strong, on the last day of October. Meanwhile Gray was raising men in Fifeshire, nominally to march with James against Morton, really to surprise Perth. That all these movements of men should have been accomplished so secretly as to find James utterly unprepared, seems surprising to modern readers, familiar with the rapid conveyance of news. But we may reflect that England was now favourable to the exiles; that mounted couriers could easily be stopped on the way as they rode north with tidings; that the Border was populated by enemies of Arran; that the godly everywhere were partisans of Angus; that the Maxwells controlled the western Marches; that James, impatient of business, was given up |