gained the hearts of her people; but murmurings soon arose about her
foreign ways, her foreign favouritisms, and her fidelity to her Catholic
faith. And a cloud gathered over her domestic life. She had married a
young nobleman, Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley. He was next to Mary in the
hereditary line of succession to the English throne—as Mary was a grand-
daughter of Margaret Tudor he was a grandson—by Margaret’s second
marriage with the Earl of Angus. He was also a Catholic. Darnley seems
to have been little other than a handsome, but petulant, ill-behaved,
and ill-mannered boy, fitted, neither by intellect nor disposition, to
be the husband and life-companion of such a proud, clever, and
accomplished woman as Mary. Mary refused him the crown-matrimonial, and
they very soon fell apart. Mary was not forbidden to have her private
chapel; an Italian singer in this chapel, David Rizzio, became a
favourite, he acted as her secretary, and was admitted into the inner
circle of Holyrood. One evening the supper-party was broken in upon by
Darnley and a number of his associates, and Rizzio was dragged out to
the landing, and by several weapons barbarously stabbed to death. Mary’s
fair countenance and gentle voice were mated with an iron will,
persistent in carrying out her hatreds to the death. Darnley was
murdered by a rude villain, Earl Bothwell, and Mary has never been
satisfactorily cleared of complicity in the murder. Shortly afterwards
she married this Bothwell—by force, her apologists say.
We shall not even briefly go over the oft-told tale of Mary’s after-
life. As the incidents loom out of the tangled web, we feel, even
through the centuries, as if we would fain arrest them by a warning
voice, fain save that fascinating woman from her doom. We feel a
yearning pity, almost akin to love, although stern justice gives her
blame as a woman, a wife, and a Queen. That pitiful winter’s morning in
Fotheringay Castle, in 1587, brought to Mary, by the headsman’s axe, a
cruel death, but also a kind release from captivity and unrest.
And what of her rival queen and kinswoman, “that bright Occidental
star,” Elizabeth? A woman with a strong masculine intellect, of
dauntless courage, one fitted to rule and govern, and advance a nation.
But unmistakably her father’s daughter, cruel, heartless, unforgiving,
and thoroughly false: with a woman’s caprice exalting to supreme
favouritism to-day, and striking down into the dust to-morrow. She
signed Mary’s death-warrant, and, by grimaces and plainest hints, she
made her people slay her own cousin. And when the deed was irretrievably
done she went into a hypocritical paroxysm of well-acted anger and
regret, and dealt round punishment for the act which she herself had
compassed. These two women cited to the bar of judgment, Mary might well
hide her face for many sins and frailties; but the better actor would
try to stand up, boldly and unabashed. Our own hearts must answer which
of the two we justify, rather than the other.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Old Edinburgh.
“Edina! Scotia’s darling seat!
All hail thy palaces and tow’rs,
Where once beneath a monarch’s feet
Sat legislation’s sov’reign powers!
There, watching high for war’s alarms,
Thy rough, rude fortress gleams afar;
Like some bold vet’ran grey in arms,
And marked with many a seamy scar.”
So sang Burns, when “from marking wildflowers on the banks of Ayr,” he
“sheltered,” and was feted and petted in the “honoured shade” of the
capital of Scotland. And Sir Walter Scott, in describing Marmion’s
approach to the city on a summer’s morning, cannot, from a full proud
heart, refrain from introducing his own personality:—
“Such dusky grandeur clothed the height
Where the huge castle holds its state,
And all the steep slope down,
Whose ridgy back heaves to the sky,
Pil’d deep and massy, close and high—
Mine own romantic town!”
Doubtless, as a picturesque town, Edinburgh stands in the foremost rank.
The natural configuration of the ground in ridges and hollows, and the
commanding prospects from its heights of undulating landscape, of broad
Frith, of distant hills, and of the adjacent Arthur’s Seat, like a
couchant lion guarding the town, are striking, and stir up any poetic
feeling that may be lurking in the heart. In the architecture there is a
strange and incongruous mingling of the modern and the antique, of the
genuine and the meretricious. There are many interesting historical
memorials, and very many reminders of the everyday present. Buildings
and monuments bring cherished and illustrious names to our mind; other
names are obtruded which we would gladly forget. But no one can, from
the Castle bastions, see the panorama of the city and its surroundings,
without intense interest, and an admiration which will abide in the
memory.
In 647, Edwin, the son of Ella, Saxon King of Northumbria, extended his
conquests beyond the Forth. He re-fortified the rock-castle, called
Puellerum, and to the little town which rose up around it, was given the
name of Edwinsburgh. In 1128, Edinburgh was made a Royal burgh by David
I. In 1215, a Parliament of Alexander II. met here for the first time.
In 1296, the title of the chief magistrate was changed from Alderman to
Provost.
In 1424, James I. was, at £40,000, ransomed from his long and unjust
imprisonment in England: the towns of Edinburgh, Aberdeen, Perth, and
Dundee, guaranteeing the ransom. James had, on his parole, been free to
move about England; and he soon saw how far behind her his own land was
in agriculture and commerce. To amend this he made laws, which to us
seem meddlesome and going into petty details, but doubtless were then
useful and progressive. For the prevention of fires in buildings it was
advisable to enact that “hempe, lint and straw be not put in houses
aboone or near fires,” and that “nae licht be fetched from ane house to
ane uther but within covered weshel or lanterne.” The lofty piles of
buildings for which the older town of Edinburgh is now remarkable, were
in the fifteenth century represented by wooden houses not exceeding two
stories in height; for we find that in providing against fires,
Parliament ordained that “at the common cost aucht twenty-fute ladders
be made, and kept in a ready place in the town, for that use and none
other.” From the murder of James I. in Perth, in 1456, Edinburgh dates
as the capital, and where Parliaments were exclusively held.
In 1496, in order to qualify the eldest sons of barons and freeholders
for exercising the functions of sheriffs (holding judicial powers in a
Scottish county) and ordinary justices, it was enacted that such be sent
to grammar schools, and there remain, “quhill they be competentlie
founded and have perfite Latin; and thereafter to remain three zeirs at
the schules of art and jure; so that they may have knowledge and
onderstanding of the laws.” The population of Edinburgh was then about
8,000.
When, in 1503, Margaret, daughter of Henry VII., came to Scotland as the
bride of James IV., the King met her at Dalkeith, and the royal lovers
made their entry into Edinburgh, “the Kyng riding on a pallafroy, with
the princesse behind him, and so through the toun.” Ten years later
came, on the 10th September, the sad news of Flodden, fought on the
previous day; when the brave but fool-hardy King, and the flower of
Scottish manhood “were a’ wede away.” At first it was consternation and
the confusion of despair; but soon order and new energy prevailed. Under
pains of forfeiture of life and goods, all citizens capable of bearing
arms were convoked to form, with the stragglers from Flodden, a fresh
army: the older citizens were to defend the city. The women were, under
a threat of banishment, forbidden to cry and clamour in the streets; the
better sort were to go to church and pray for their country; and
thereafter to mind their business at home, and not encumber the streets.
In 1543, under the regency of the Earl of Arran, an Act was passed
permitting the scriptures to be read in the vulgar tongue, and the
Reformation ideas began to be bruited about. Twelve years later, statues
in St. Giles’ Church, of the Virgin and certain saints were destroyed;
but the then Regent, Mary of Guise, by threatenings, given strength to
by her French troops, contrived to keep down open revolt against the old
faith. But in 1558, on the festival day of St. Giles, the patron saint
of Edinburgh, and for which festival the priests and monks had made
great preparation, it was discovered that the image of the saint had
been taken from the church during the previous night, and thrown into
the North Loch. The priests got a smaller statue from the Greyfriars,
this the people called in derision “the bairn-saint.” The Queen-Regent
was in the procession. She must have been a woman of strong character;
in her presence all went smoothly, but having left, the populace tore
the little St. Giles to pieces, hustling and dispersing the priests.
From the death of the Queen-Regent, and the withdrawal of the French
troops in 1560, the Protestant cause was in the ascendancy. An Act was
passed denouncing Popery, and sanctioning the hastily compiled
Confession of Faith. Penalties on Catholic worship, very similar to
those under which Protestants had groaned, and which they had bitterly
denounced, were imposed. Any one celebrating mass or being present at
its celebration, was to be punished by forfeiture of goods for the first
offence, by banishment for the second, and by death for the third. Queen
Mary, then in France, and her husband Francis, who held from Mary the
crown-matrimonial of Scotland, refused to ratify the Acts, and insulted
the messenger of the Parliament.
Next year, 1561, Mary, now a widow, and as such having lost her high
position at the French court, returned to Scotland. She waited upon the
deck of the vessel which was taking her from the land of her youth,
until its shores faded from her tear-dimmed eyes. “Farewell, beloved
France,” she sobbed, “I shall never behold thee again.” When, on the
first day of September, she made her public entry into Edinburgh, never
had the city shown such an exuberance of warm enthusiasm. The procession
included all the foremost citizens, Protestant and Catholic, clad in
velvet and satin; twelve citizens supporting the canopy over the
triumphal car, where, like an Helen in her matchless loveliness, sat the
young Queen. When on the following Sunday she attended mass at Holyrood,
her Catholic servants were insulted, and the crowd could hardly be
restrained from interrupting the service. And so began the hurley-
burley, through six years little other than a civil war; a time of
confusion, of plotting and counter-plotting, of intolerance, of malice
and revenge; that fair figure with the dove’s eyes, but also with a
determined will and an unswerving purpose, ever emerging into the
foreground, now an object of admiration, and then for denunciation, but
always for the highest interest and the profoundest pity.
After Marys enforced abdication in Lochleven Castle, on 29th July, 1567,
her year-old son James was proclaimed King. The Earl of Morton, head of
the powerful Douglas family, taking, in the child’s name, the usual
coronation oaths. Mary’s half-brother, the Earl of Murray, became
Regent. Three years later Murray, whilst riding in State through
Linlithgow, was shot dead in revenge for a private injury. Then followed
two years of discord and confusion from rival factions; and then, 1572,
Morton became Regent, and was the master-power in the kingdom. For eight
years he was the controlling influence. He was haughty and revengeful,
and at the same time avaricious and corrupt; so he made many enemies,
and these plotted his destruction. One day when the King, now fourteen
years of age, was sitting in Council, one of James’s favourites entered
the chamber abruptly, fell on his knees before the King, and accused
Morton of having been concerned in the murder of the King’s father, Lord
Darnley. Morton replied that instead of having been in the plot, he had
himself been most active in dragging to light and punishing the
conspirators. He now demanded a fair trial; but fair trials were not
then general. Morton’s servants were put to the torture to extort
damnatory evidence, and several known enemies were on the jury; so he
was found guilty of having been “art and part” in Darnley’s murder. To
the last he denied having advised or aided in the foul deed; but it is
probable that he knew that it was in purpose. He suffered death by
decapitation at Edinburgh, in June, 1581, the instrument of death being
a rough form of guillotine, called the _Maiden_, which, it is said, he
introduced into Scotland from Yorkshire. The gruesome machine is now in
the Edinburgh Antiquarian Museum.
[Illustration: THE SCOTTISH MAIDEN.]
In 1596, James, now thirty years of age, quarrelled with his capital.
There was in all the Stuart kings a strong strain of the old faith in
what hearts they had; or, there was at least a very strong dislike of
the independent, self-assertive idea which was the basis of the
Presbyterian Church. James granted certain favours, which we should now
think simply common rights, to his Catholic nobles, and this roused the
ire of the Kirk, then ever ready to testify against popery, to assert
for itself the right of free judgment in religious matters, but
practically to deny this right to others. A standing _Council of the
Church_ was formed out of Edinburgh and provincial Presbyteries;
inflammatory sermons were preached, and the King, refusing to receive a
petition demanding that the laws against papacy be stringently enforced,
was mobbed, and seditious cries were raised.
[Illustration: JAMES THE SIXTH OF SCOTLAND AND FIRST OF ENGLAND.]
James hastily removed the Court to Linlithgow, ordering the courts of
law to follow him there; and he ordered the magistrates to seize and
imprison the Council of Ministers as promoters of sedition. The
magistrates, anxious to regain the King’s favour, were preparing to obey
him when the ministers fled to Newcastle. The King’s unwonted
promptitude and decision, seem to have borne down all opposition. On the
1st of January, 1596-7, he re-entered Edinburgh between a double file of
guards, chiefly from the wild Highland and border clans, which lined the
streets. The magistrates on their knees submitted to him in most abject
terms, and many of the nobles pleaded for pardon. James was not a large-
minded man,—the more humble they, the more inexorable he. He gave three
of his lords charge of the city, declaring that it had forfeited all its
corporate privileges, was liable to all the penalties of treason, and
deserved to be razed to the ground. We learn that Elizabeth interceded
for the penitent city, which, deprived of its magistrates, deserted by
its ministers, and proscribed by the King, was in the lowest depth of
despondency. James relented so far as to absolve the city on the payment
of a fine of 20,000 marks, and the forfeiture to the crown of the houses
of the recreant ministers.
Elizabeth died in March 1603, and James was at once proclaimed King of
England, and warmly invited to take up his residence in London. On the
Sunday previous to his departure he was present at the service in St.
Giles’ Church. At the close of the service he rose and addressed the
congregation in a speech full of kindly expressions, declaring his
abiding affection and regard for his native land; and the sighs and
tears of the people shewed how their hearts were moved by his words.
Fifteen years later, James was again in Edinburgh. His progress from
Berwick was one continued ovation. In every town which he passed
through, flattering panegyrics, in Latin or Greek, were addressed to
him. As he entered Edinburgh by the West Port, he was met by the
magistrates in their robes, and the town-clerk read a long address
replete with compliments, so inflated and exaggerative, that the
dedication to “the most high and mighty Prince James,” of the authorised
translation of the Bible, reads comparatively flat and commonplace.
Afterwards, the king was sumptuously entertained, and presented with
10,000 marks in a silver basin.
Just at this time, the invention of logarithms, by a Scotch laird, John
Napier of Merchiston, near Edinburgh, was becoming known in the then
comparatively restricted scientific world. Logarithms are prepared
tables of numbers, by which complex problems in trigonometry, and the
tedious extraction of roots, can be performed by the simpler rules of
arithmetic. To the well-educated, they save much time and labour; in the
art of navigation, they enable the mariner who may be unskilled in
mathematics, to work out the most intricate calculations. In all vessels
on the open seas, when observations can be taken, in all mathematical
schools and astronomical observatories, logarithms are in daily use. As
with other things, familiarity discounts our wonder at their aptitude
and value; but the estimate by scientists of Napier’s invention is, that
it ranks amongst British contributions to science, second only to
Newton’s _Principia_. Kepler regarded Napier as one of the greatest men
of his age; and in the roll of those who were foremost in establishing
real science in Europe, his is the only name which can be placed
alongside the names of Copernicus, Tycho Brahe, Kepler, and Galileo.
The long sloping street called the Canongate, which reaches down from
the centre of the Old Town to Holyrood, was, with its tributary lanes
and closes, created a Burgh of Regality by King David the First. It was
outside the walls of Edinburgh, and had its own Council of Bailies,
Deacons of Trades, and Burgesses. The Canongate is full of old memories.
There is the house of John Knox, the sturdy Reformer and typical
presbyterian. There is the Tolbooth—the Heart of Midlothian. From the
balcony of that old mansion, called Moray House, a gay party were, in
1650, with malicious and triumphant eyes, looking down upon a crowd
through which was slowly wending a low cart, in which was ignominiously
bound down that spent thunderbolt of war, Montrose—he is on his way to
execution. Aye, but in after years two in that jubilant party—Argyles,
father and son—will both also pass up that street amidst jeering crowds,
and to similar fates.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration: THE CANONGATE TOLBOOTH.]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Edinburgh Castle is the central feature of the city. Its site is on the
summit of a huge isolated rock of eruptive basalt,—rising on the north
side,—out of the valley, now a garden, which divides the new from the
old town, to about 175 feet of perpendicular height. The castle, with
the slopes, occupies fully six acres of ground, and includes barrack
accommodation for 2,000 men; the armoury is calculated to contain 30,000
stands of arms. On the Argyle bastion there is a huge piece of old
artillery called Mons Meg; it is constructed of wrought iron, and had
burst at the muzzle at its last discharge. Its liner is formed of
longitudinal bars,—these are strongly hooped; it is thus allied in
construction to that of present ordnance, and, rude as the work is, it
shows the comparative high state of iron manufacture amongst the Dutch
several centuries ago.
The castle was used by Malcolm Canmore and his saintly queen, Margaret,
as a royal residence. The oldest building on the plateau which crowns
the rock, is St. Margaret’s Chapel, said to have been used by the queen.
On two sides of the quadrangle called Palace Yard are an ancient hall
which has just been restored, and a suite of residential apartments. In
a small turret-chamber, Mary’s son, James, was born. In a well-protected
room adjoining, the regalia of Scotland—crown, sceptre, sword of state,
and other insignia—are shewn.
The ancient regalia were “_conveyed_, the wise it call,” out of Scotland
by Edward I. Robert Bruce was _crowned_ at Scone with only a makeshift
crown; but it also fell into the hands of the English. The present crown
is, from the style of its workmanship, supposed to have been made in the
later years of Bruce’s reign. It was first used in the coronation of
David II., in 1329. Later sovereigns added to the ornamentation. The
sword of state was presented to James V. by Pope Julius II. There are
also certain jewels which were restored to Scotland at the death of
Cardinal York, the last of the Stuarts.
When Cromwell invaded Scotland, the regalia were, for security, taken by
the Earl Marischal to his own strong castle of Dunottar, in
Kincardineshire. When this castle was besieged by General Monk, the
regalia—known to be there by the English—were, by a feminine stratagem,
carried out by Mrs. Grainger, the wife of the minister of the
neighbouring church of Kinneff. The minister buried them in the church,
and there they remained until the Restoration.
At the Union, in 1707, the Scottish Estates passed a resolution that the
regalia were never to be removed from Scotland. A hundred years after
the whereabouts was unknown,—their very existence a matter of doubt. The
following extract is from the article “Edinburgh,” in the “Edinburgh
Encyclopedia,” edited by Sir David Brewster, published about 1815:—
“At the time of the Union, the Scottish regalia were, with much
solemnity, deposited in a strong iron-barred room, entered from a
narrow staircase; but most probably prudential reasons have long ago
led to their destruction or removal. They were too dangerous
insignias of royalty to lie within the reach of the disaffected
during the rebellions of the last century. Towards its close,
however, some doubts were raised, and a warrant to search was issued
to certain official persons. Nothing was found but an old locked
chest covered with dust, and the deputation _did not think that they
were authorized to break this open_. So the search was abandoned,
and an opportunity, _not likely to recur_, of ascertaining whether
the regalia were really in existence, was lost.”
The _italics_ are ours. In 1818, the regalia were found in a search
ordered by George IV.—then Prince Regent—in that same old chest, which
is still in evidence at the back of the jewel room.
[Illustration: SEAL OF HOLYROOD ABBEY.]
Holyrood Palace, founded by David I., in 1158, was originally an abbey
of St. Augustine canons. The ruins of the church evidence the grandeur
of the ancient structure. Of a later date is the north-west wing of the
palace,—a portion of which was a royal residence of successive
sovereigns. One of the complaints against James III. was that he here
preferred the society of poets and musicians, to that of the ruder
nobility. James IV. was also partial to artists and literary men. In his
_Marmion_, Sir Walter Scott has the quatrain:—
“Still is thy name in high account
And still thy verse has charms,—
Sir David Lindsay of the Mount,
Lord Lion King-at-arms!”
Sir David was in the first half of the sixteenth century the leading
poet in Scotland. When a boy he was page of honour to the infant king,
James V.,—carrying him on his back,—his playmate, and, in a sense, his
tutor. Sir David addresses the king, giving some early reminiscences:—
“And the first words that thou gan’st mute
Were, ’pay Da Lin;” upon the lute
Then played I twenty springs and three,—
With whilk richt pleasurt thou would be.”
The suite of apartments occupied by Queen Mary are still left, with a
portion of the old furniture and hangings. As we wander through the
rooms, we can, in fancy, see Mary in the audience chamber, in one of her
distressing interviews with the leaders of the Reformation,—when most
unjustifiable demands were made on her that, against conscience and
conviction, she should renounce the faith in which she had been
nurtured,—should change her religion to accommodate the popular change.
Or, in the private supper-room, see her and her ladies at their
needlework; or hear one of these ladies sing an old Scots ballad of
loves gone astray, and with a sad ending. Then Rizzio’s rich baritone
rises in an Italian strain; and then there is on these stairs the
trampling of armed men, and foul murder is done before the eyes of a
queen and an expectant mother; and her life is never the same again.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
[Illustration:
HOLYROOD PALACE, THE REGENT MORAY’S HOUSE ADJOINING THE PALACE, ON THE
NORTH, THE ROYAL GARDENS AND ANCIENT HOROLOGE.
(_From a drawing by Blore, published in 1826._)
]
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Little more than this wing of the palace was left by a fire, in 1650,
when Cromwell’s soldiers were quartered in the building. All the newer
portion was built in the reign of Charles II. The picture gallery is 150
feet long, and contains portraits (?) of 106 ancient Scottish kings.
Here, in the autumn of 1745, Prince Charles Edward held his mimic court.
At every general parliamentary election the sixteen representative
Scottish peers are chosen in this hall.