Political History Part VII

Again Scotland had to endure a long royal minority. The distraction of Scotland promised to Henry VIII a good chance of annexing the kingdom, whether by the marriage of Edward, prince of Wales, to the infant queen, Mary, or by acquiring, through treachery, her person and of the castles of the country. Sir George Douglas at once crossed the border. Angus soon followed, with the lords captured at Solway Moss, all bound more or less to work Henry's will. In Scotland the cardinal; Arran, who was next heir to the throne; Huntly and Murray were proclaimed regents. Knox and others speak of a will of James V., forged by the cardinal, but the stories are inconsistent, and rest mainly on the untrustworthy evidence of Arran. His legitimacy was rather worse than dubious, and henceforth he sided with the party most powerful at each crisis. Now the restored Douglases were most powerful; by the 28th of January 1543 they imprisoned the cardinal, but their party was already breaking up.

In March a full parliament was held, the Bible in English was allowed to circulate, and envoys were sent to treat with Henry. But by the 22nd of March Beaton was a free man, liberated by Sir George Douglas. Arran's brother, later archbishop of St Andrews, arrived from France and worked on the wavering regent, while his rival, Lennox, came also from France, and failing to oust Arran, became Henry's pensioner in England. If Arran were illegitimate, Lennox was next heir to the throne, and the consequent Stewart-Hamilton feud was to ruin Mary Stuart. Sir George Douglas went to London and negotiated with Henry for the marriage of Mary and Prince Edward. But the people were still so, averse to England that Beaton's was the more popular party: they carried Mary to Stirling: the treaty with Henry was ratified, indeed, but a quarrel was picked over the arrest by England of six Scottish ships; and Arran, who had just given orders for the sack of monasteries in Edinburgh, suddenly (3rd of September) fled to Beaton and was reconciled to the church, just after he had (28th of August) proclaimed Beaton an outlaw.

At once the sacking of religious houses in Dundee, Lindores. and Arbroath had begun; the hour of religious revolution had struck; but the godly were put down when the regent and the cardinal were so suddenly reconciled. Arran must have perceived that Henry had infuriated the Scots and that the cardinal might adopt the claims of Lennox and proclaim Arran illegitimate. But Beaton could not keep both Arran, whom he had now secured, and Lennox, who betrayed him, and made for England. The cardinal, however, punished the church-sackers and imprisoned George Douglas, while Hertford in 1544 moved with a large army against Scotland, and Henry negotiated with a crew of discontented lairds and a man named Wishart for the murder or capture of Beaton. Hertford struck at Edinburgh in May, and in the leader's own words "made a jolly fire " and did much mischief. The suffering Commons now began to blame Beaton. Lennox presently married Margaret, Henry's niece, daughter of his sister, Margaret Tudor, by her husband, Angus. Their eldest son was the miserable Henry Darnley, second husband of Mary Stuart. In Scotland arose party divisions and reunions, the queen mother being in the hands of the Douglas faction., while Beaton's future murderers backed him and Arran. Then the Douglases allied themselves with the cardinal, and Henry VIII. tried to kidnap Angus and his brother, Sir George. For once true to their country, they helped Buccleuch to defeat a large English force at Ancram Moor in February 1545, and Henry, seeking help from Cassilis, revived the plot to murder Beaton. Cassilis was a Protestant and the patron of Knox's friend and teacher, George Wishart; Cassilis would not commit himself formally, and the threads of the plot are lost, owing to a great gap in the records.

The Douglases continued to play the part of double traitors; Hertford, in autumn, again devastated the border and burned religious houses (whether he always burned the abbey churches is disputed), but Beaton never lost heart and had some successes. We lose trace of the plot to slay him from the 20th of October 1545 till the end of May 1546, the documents being missing; but on the 29th of May 1546 Beaton was cruelly murdered in his castle of St Andrews. On the 1st of March he had caused George Wishart, a man of austere life and a Protestant propagandist, to be strangled and then burned.

To what extent revenge for Wishart was the motive of the Kirkcaldys and Leslies and Melvilles who led the assassins, and how far they were paid agents of England, is unknown. These men had been alternately bitter enemies and allies of Beaton; in 1543 Kirkcaldy of Grange and the master of Rothes were offering their venal daggers to England, through a Scot named Wishart. The details of the final and successful plot were uncertain, the martyr Wishart cannot be identified with Wishart the would-be murderer, but with Beaton practically expired the chances of the French and Catholic party in Scotland.

The death of Beaton brought the Douglases into resistance to Henry VIII., who aided the murderers, now besieged in Beaton's castle of St Andrews. An armistice was arranged; the besieged begging for a remission from the pope, and also asking Henry to request the emperor to move the pope to refuse. The remission, however, arrived before the 2nd of April 1547, and was refused by the murderers.

Henry VIII. and Francis II. were now dead. In. mid July French armed galleons approached St Andrews, and the castle surrendered as soon. as artillery was brought to bear on it. With other captives, John. Knox was put aboard a French galley. In September the Protector Somerset (Hertford) invaded and utterly routed the Scots at Pinkie near Musselburgh. No result ensued, except Scottish demands for French aid, and a resolve to send Mary to France. Ferocious fighting, aided by French auxiliaries, followed: in 1550 the English abandoned all castles occupied by them in Scotland. Mary was now in France, the destined bride of the Dauphin; while Knox, released from the galleys, preached his doctrines in Berwick and Newcastle, and was a chaplain of Edward VI., till the crowning of Mary Tudor drove him to France and Switzerland. Here he adopted, with political modifications of his own, the extremest form of Calvinism.

A visit of Mary of Guise to France (1550) ended in her acquiring the regency, which she administered mainly under French advice. The result was irritation, the nobles looking towards England as soon as Mary Tudor was succeeded by Elizabeth, while Protestantism daily gained ground, inflamed by a visit from Knox (1555-1556). Invited again, in 1557, he shrank from the scene of turmoil, but a "band" of a Protestant tendency was made by nobles, among them Mary's natural brother James Stewart, later the Regent Murray (3rd of Dec. 1557).

On the 24th of April, Mary wedded the Dauphin, and about the same date Walter Milne, an aged expriest, was burned as a heretic, the last Protestant martyr in Scotland. There was image-burning by godly mobs in autumn; a threat of the social revolution, to begin at Whitsuntide, was issued on the 1st of January 1559,-" the Beggars' Warning." Mary of Guise issued proclamations against preachers and churchwreckers, backed by a statute of March 1559. The preachers, mainly ex-friars and tradesmen, persevered, and they were summoned to stand their trial in April, but Knox arrived in Perth, where an. armed multitude supported their cause. On the 10th of May they were outlawed for non-appearance at Stirling. Knox accuses Mary of Guise of treachery: the charge rests mainly on his word.

On the 10th of May the brethren wrecked the monasteries of Perth, after a sermon by Knox,and the revolution was launched, the six or seven preachers already threatening the backward members of their party with excommunication. The movement spread to St Andrews, to Stirling, to Edinburgh, which the brethren entered, while Mary of Guise withdrew. She was still too strong for them, and on the 24th of July they signed a compact. They misrepresented its terms, broke them, and accused the regent of breaking them. Knox and William Kirkcaldy of Grange had been intriguing with England for aid, and for the marriage of the earl of Arran (son of the earl of Arran, now also duc de Chateiherault, ex-regent) with Queen Elizabeth. He escaped from threatened prison in France, by way of Switzerland, and though Elizabeth never intended to marry him,, the Hamiltons now deserted Mary of Guise for the Anglo-Protestant party. Maitland of Lethington, the Achitophel of his day, also deserted the regent; but in November the reformers were driven by the regent and her small band of French soldiers from Edinburgh to Stirling. They were almost in despair, but, heartened by Knox and Lethington, they resumed negotiations with Elizabeth, who had already supplied them with money. An English fleet suddenly appeared, and drove the French to retreat into Leith from an expedition to the west. In February 1560 a league was made at Berwick between Elizabeth and "the Congregation." France was helpless, the tumult of Ambroise alarmed the Guises for their own lives and power, and the regent, long in bad health, was dying in Edinburgh castle. On the 10th of June she expired, and hunger forced her French garrison in Leith, after a gallant and sanguinary defence, to surrender.

Afer an armistice, treaties of peace were concluded on the 6th of July: the treaty, as far as it touched the rights of Mary Stuart, was not accepted by her, nor did she give her assent to the ensuing parliament or convention of Estates. Knox and the other preachers began to organize the new kirk, under "superintendents" (not bishops), whose rule was very brief. The Convention began business in August, crowded by persons not used to be present, and accepted a Knoxian " Confession of Faith." On the 24th of August three statutes abolished papal and prelatical authority and jurisdiction; repealed the old laws in favour of the church, and punished celebrants and attendants of the Mass, for the first offence by confiscation, for the second by exile, for the third by death. The preachers could get the statute passed, but the sense of the laity prevented the death penalty from being inflicted, except, as far as we know, in one or two instances.

The Book of Discipline and the Book of Common Order express Knox's ideals, which, as far as they were noble, as in the matter of education and of provision for the poor, remained, in part or in whole, "devout imaginations." Not, so the Knoxian claims for the power of ministers to excommunicate, with civil penalties, and generally to "rule the roost" in secular matters. The nobles and gentry clung to the wealth of the old church; the preachers, but for congregational offerings, must have starved.

Neglect as well as mob violence left the ecclesiastical buildings in a ruinous condition, but the authority of the preachers, with their power of boycotting (excommunication), became a theocracy. The supernatural claims of these pulpiteers to dominance in matters public or private were the main cause of a century of war and tumult. The preachers became, what the nobles had been, the opponents of authority; the Stuarts were to break them and be broken on them till 1688. In the hands of the ministers a Calvinism more Calvinistic than Calvin's was the bitter foe of freedom of life, of conscience, and of religious tolerance.

On the other hand, unlike the corrupt clergy whom they dispossessed, they were almost invariably men of pure and holy life; stainless in honour; incorruptible by money; poor and self-sacrificing; and were not infrequently learned in the original languages of the scriptures. Many were thought to be possessed of powers of healing and of prediction; in fact a belief in their supernormal gifts, like those of Catholic saints, was part of the basis of their prestige. The lower classes, bullied by sabbatarianism and deprived of the old revels, were restive and hostile; but the educated middle class was with the preachers; so were many lesser country gentry; and the nobles, securing the spoils of the church, were acquiescent.

The religious revolution in Scotland, after the work of destruction had been done, was the most peaceful that occurred in any European country. On the Catholic side there was as Mary's yet no power of resistance. Huntly, the Catholic "Cock of the North," had himself been compromised in the actions of the Congregation. How the Catholics of the west highlands took the change of creed we do not know, but they were not fanatically devout and attempted no Pilgrimage of Grace. Life went on much as usual, and the country, with a merely provisional government, was peaceful enough under the guidance of Moray, Maitland of Lethington, and the other lay Protestant leaders. They wished, as we saw, to secure the hand of Elizabeth for the earl of Arran, a match which would practically have taken away the Scottish crown from Mary Stuart, unless she were backed by the whole force of France. But Elizabeth had seen Arran in London and had probably detected his hysterical folly. He actually became a suitor for Mary's hand, when the death of her husband the French king (5th of December 1560) left her a friendless exile. Her kinsmen, the Guises, fell from power, and were no longer to be feared by England, so that Elizabeth need not abandon her favourite, Lord Robert Dudley, in the hope of securing Scotland by her marriage with Arran.

In the spring of 1561, Mary's brother, Lord James Stewart, lay prior of St Andrews, visited her in the interest of the Scottish Protestant party, while Lesley, later bishop of Ross, brought the promises of Huntly. He would restore the Mass in the North and welcome the queen at Aberdeen if she would land there, but Mary knew the worth of Huntly's word, and preferred such trust as might be ventured on the good faith of her brother. She foiled the attempts of the English ambassador to make her ratify the treaty of Edinburgh, and, while Lethington, no worse a prophet than Knox, predicted "strange tragedies," Mary came home.

Young as she was, she came as no innocent novice to a country seething with all the perfidious ambitions that a religious revolution brings to the surface. She was wise with the wisdom of the Guises, but sincere friends she had none, and with all her trained fascinations she made few, except in the circle of the Fiemings, Beatons, Livingstones and Seatons. Lethington, who had deserted her mother, dreaded her arrival; she forgave him, and for a time, relying on him and her brother, contrived to secure a measure of tranquillity.

Scotland was, doubtless, in Mary's mind, a mere steppingstone to England. There the Catholic party was strong but for its lack of a leader, and to the English Catholics Mary seemed their rightful queen. By one way or other, by a Spanish marriage, by the consent of Elizabeth to recognize Mary as her heir, by the ambitions of her own nobles and the wit of Lethington, ever anxious to unite the island under one sovereign, Mary hoped to wear the three crowns. Catholicism she would restore if she could, but that was not her first object. It was commonly thought that, though she would never turn Calvinist, she might adopt the Anglican doctrine as understood by Elizabeth, if only she could he recognized as Elizabeth's successor. Till she became Elizabeth's captive there was always the possible hope of her conversion, and despite her professions to the pope there was at least one moment when the pope perceived this possibility. Meanwhile she only asked freedom of conscience for herself, and her mass in her own chapel. The bitter fanaticism of Knox on this point encountered the wiser policy of Lord James and of Lethington.

Mary had her mass, but the constant and cowardly attacks on her faith and on her priests embittered her early years of queenhood in. her own country. The politicians hoped that Elizabeth might convert Mary to her own invisible shade of Protestantism if the sister sovereigns could but meet, and for two years the promise of a meeting was held up before Mary.

Meanwhile the needy and reckless Bothwell, a partisan of Mary of Guise, a Protestant and the foe of England, was accused by Arran of proposing to him a conspiracy to seize the queen, but the ensuing madness of Arran left this plot a mystery, though Bothwell was imprisoned till he escaped in August 1562. Mary then undertook a journey to the north, which ended in a battle with the Gordons, the death of Huntly and the execution of one of his sons. This attack by a Catholic queen on. the leader of the Catholic party has been explained in various ways. But Mary's heart was in the expedition and in the overthrow of Huntly; she was in the hands of her brother, to whom she had secretly given the earldom of Murray, coveted by Huntly, whose good faith she had never believed in, and whose power was apt to trouble the state and disturb her friendly relations with England. She was deliberately "running the English course," and she crushed a probable alliance between the great clans of the Gordons and Hamiltons.

The question of her marriage was all important, and her chances were not improved by the scandal of Chastelard, whether he acted as an emissary of the Huguenots, sent to smirch her character, or merely played the fatuous fool in his own conceit. He was executed on the 22nd of February 1563 at St Andrews. Lethington then went to London to watch over Mary's interests, and either to arrange her, marriage with Don CaHos, or to put pressure on Elizabeth by the fear of that alliance. Now, in March 1563, Elizabeth first drew before the Scottish queen the lure of a marriage with her favourite, Lord Robert Dudley, Mary to be acknowledged as her successor if Elizabeth died without issue.

Later in the year, and after Lethington's diplomatic mission to France, Elizabeth announced that a marriage of Mary with a Spanish, Imperial or French prince would mean war, while she still hinted at the Leicester marriage, or perhaps at a union with young Henry Darnley, son of Lennox. Elizabeth's real intention was merely "to drive time," to distract Scotland and to leave her rival isolated. The idea of a Spanish marriage excited the wrath of Knox, whose interviews with Mary did nothing but irritate both parties and alienate the politicians from the more enthusiastic Protestants. The negotiations for the Leicester marriage were prolonged till March 1565, when Elizabeth had let slip on Mary Henry Darnley (the youpg son of Lennox, who himself had been allowed to return to Scotland), and at the same time made it clear that she had never been honest in offering Leicester.

Till the spring of 1565, Mary, despite the insults to her religion and the provocations to herself, had remained attached to "the English course" and to the counsels of Moray and Lethington. Her naturally high temper, wearied of treacheries and brow-beatings, now at last overcame her. Darnley was esteemed handsome, though his portraits give an opposite impression; his native qualities of cowardice, perfidy, proffigacy and overweening arrogance were at first concealed, and in mid April 1565 Lethington was sent to London, not to renew the negotiations with Leicester (as had been designed till the 31st of March), but to announce Mary's intended wedding with her cousin.

Thus the cunning of Elizabeth and Cecil had its reward. Darnley being a Catholic, as far as he was arything, the jealous fears of the Brethren under Knox reached a passionate height. The Hamiltons saw their Stuart enemies in power and favour. Murray knew that his day of influence was over, and encouraged by the promises of Elizabeth, who was remonstrating violently against the match into which she had partly beguiled and partly forced Mary, he assumed a hostile attitude and was outlawed (6th of August 1565). A week earlier Mary, without waiting for the necessary papal dispensation (Pollen, Papal Negotiations with Mary Stuart), had publicly married Darnley, who bore the title of king, but never received the crown matrimonial.

Mary now promised restoration to Huntly's son, Lord George; she recalled Bothwell, who had a considerable military reputation, from exile in France; and she pursued Murray with his allies through the south of Scotland to Dumfries, whence she drove him over the English border in October. Here Elizabeth rebuked and disavowed him, and Mary's triumph seemed complete. Her valour, energy and victory over Elizabeth were undeniable, but she was now in the worst of hands, and her career took its fatal ply. Lethington had not left her, but he was overlooked; Lennox and the impracticable Darnley were neglected; and the dangerous earl of Morton, a Douglas, had to tremble for his lands and office as chancellor, while Mary rested on her foreign secretary, the upstart David Riccio; on Sir James Balfour, noted for falseness even in that age; and on Bothwell.

As early as September 1565 gossips were busy over the indiscretion of Riccio's favour: Darnley had forfeited the good opinion of his wife; was angry because the Hamiltons were not wholly sacrificed to the ancieiit feud of Lennox and his clan; and Knox's party looked forward with horror to the parliament of March 1566, when Mary certainly meant " to do something tending to some good anent restoring the ancient religion." She was also supposed to have signed a Catholic league, which only existed in devout imaginations, but in February 1560 she sent the bishop of Dunblane to crave a large subsidy from the pope. Quite ignorant as to the real state of affairs, he raised the money and sent-a nuncio, who never risked himself in Scotland, but made the extraordinary proposal later, that Mary should execute or at least " discourt " her chief advisers.

Meanwhile the clouds of hatred gathered over the queen. Lethington (5th of February 1566), wrote to Cecil saying that "we must chop at the very root," and Randolph, Elizabeth's ambassador, heard that measures against Mary's own person were being taken. Randolph was dismissed for supplying Murray with English gold; from Berwick he and Bedford reported to Cecil the progress of the conspiracy. While Mary was arranging a marriage between Bothwell and the late Huntly's daughter, Lady Jane Gordon, Darnley intrigued with Lord Ruthven and George Douglas, a bastard kinsman of Morton, for the murder of Riccio, and for his own acquisition of the crown matrimonial. Morton and Lindsay were brought into the plot, while Murray, in England, also signed. He was to return to Edinburgh as soon as the deed of slaughter was done, and before parliament could proceed to his forfeiture.

Mary, according to Ruthven's published account, had herself unconstitutionally named the executive committee of parliament, the Lords of the Articles, who were usually elected in various ways by the Estates. While Mary was at supper, on the 9th of March, Darnley, with Ruthven, George Douglas and others, entered the boudoir in Holyrood, by his private stair, while Morton and his accomplices, mainly Douglases, burst in by way of the great staircase. There had been an intention of holding some mock trial of Riccio, but the fury of the crowd overcame them: Riccio was dragged from Mary's table and fell under more than fifty dagger wounds. While Mary, Darnley and Ruthven exchanged threats and taunts, Bothwell and Huntly escaped from the palace, but next day, Mary contrived to send letters to them and Atholl. On the following evening Murray arrived, and now even Murray was welcome to his sister. Darnley had taken on him (his one act of kingly power) to dismiss the parliament, but he now found himself the mere tool of his accomplices. He denied, he never ceased to deny, his share in the guilt, and Mary worked on his vanity and his fears, and moulded his " heart of wax " to her will. On his assurances the lords, expecting an amnesty, withdrew their guards from the palace and next day found that the bird had flown to the strong castle of Dunbar. Hence Mary summoned the forces ,of the country, under Bothwell and Huntly; she forgave Murray; the murderers had no aid from the Protestants of Edinburgh, who as before failed them in their need. Knox himself fled to Kyle, though there is no evidence that he was privy to a deed which he calls "worthy of all praise," and Morton and Ruthven spurred to Berwick, while Lethington skulked in Atholl. His possessions were handed over to Bothwell. Darnley betrayed some obscure accomplices. He was now equally detested by Murray, by the new exiles and by the queen, while she reconciled Murray and Bothwell. She tried to assuage all feuds; in an inventory of her jewels she left many of them to Darnley, in case she and her child did not survive its birth. The infant, James, was born in the castle on the 19th of June.

On Mary's recovery, her aversion to Darnley, and her confidence in Bothwell, were unconcealed; and, early in September, she admitted Lethington to her presence. She had learned that Darnley meant to leave the country: she met him before her Privy Council, who sided with her; he withdrew, and the lords, including Murray, early in October signed a " band " disclaiming all obedience to him. On the 7th or 9th of October, Mary went to Jedburgh on the affairs of Border justice, and a week later she rode with Murray to Hermitage castle, where for several days Bothwell had lain, wounded nearly to death by Eliot, a border reiver. On her return she fell into an almost fatal illness and prepared for her end with great courage and piety; Darnley now visited her, but was ill-received, while Bothwell was borne to Jedburgh from Hermitage in a litter.

While Buchanan represents the pair as indulging in a guilty passion, the French ambassador, du Croc, avers that Mary was never in better repute with her subjects. On the 24th of November Mary was at Craigmillar castle, near Edinburgh, where undoubtedly she held a conference with her chief advisers that boded no good to Darnley; and there were rumours of Darnley's design to seize the infant prince and rule in his name. The evidence on these points is disputable, but now, or not long after, Huntly, Bothwell, Lethington and Argyll signed a " band " for Darnley's murder.

Meanwhile, in December, Mary held the feasts for the baptism of her son by Catholic rites at Stirling (17th of December),while Darnley stood aloof, in fear and anger. A week later, moved by Bedford, representing Elizabeth, and by Bothwell and her other advisers, Mary pardoned Morton and his accomplices. She also restored Archbishop Hamilton to his consistorial jurisdiction, but withdrew her act, in face of presbyterian opposition. Darnley had retired to his father's house at Glasgow, where he fell ill of small-pox, and, on the 14th of January 1567 Mary, from Holyrood, offered to visit him, though he had replied by a verbal insult to a former offer of a visit from Stirling. About this week must have occurred the interview in the garden at the Douglas's house of Whittingehame, between Morton, Bothwell and Lethington, when Morton refused to be active in Darnley's murder, unless he had a written warrant from the queen. This he did not obtain. On the 20th of January 1567 Mary left Edinburgh for Glasgow, her purpose being to bring Darnley back to Craigmillar. At this time (the 22nd-25th of January), she must have written the two first Casket Letters to Bothweil. Letter II. (really Letter I.) leaves no doubt, if we accept it, as to her murderous design. What followed must be read in Mary's biography: the end was the murder of Darnley in the house at Kirk o' Field, after the midnight of Sunday, the 9th of February. Public and conspicuous as was the crime, the house being blown up with gunpowder, no secret has been better kept than the details. The facts of Mary's lawless marriage with Bothweil, her capture at Carberry Hill, her Bothwell, her confinement in Loch Leven Castle, her escape, her defeat at Langside, and her fatal flight to an English prison, with the proceedings of the English Commissions, which uttered no verdict, must be read in her biography.

Return To A Brief History of Scotland