(1542-1587)
[Illustration: Mary, Queen of Scots.]
Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, was the third child of James V. and his
wife, Mary of Guise. That lady had borne him previously, two sons, both
of whom died in infancy. Mary was born on December 7, 1542, in the
palace of Linlithgow. She was only seven days old when she lost her
father, who, at the time of her birth, lay sick at the palace of
Falkland.
The young queen was crowned by Cardinal Beaton, at Stirling, on
September 9, 1543. Soon after her birth, the Parliament nominated
commissioners, to whom they intrusted the charge of the queen's person,
leaving all her other interests to the care of her mother. The first two
years of her life, Mary spent at Linlithgow, where it is said she had
the small-pox, but the disease must have been of a particularly gentle
kind, having left behind no visible traces. During the greater part of
the years 1545, 1546, and 1547, she resided at Stirling Castle, in the
keeping of Lords Erskine and Livingstone. She was afterward removed to
Inchmahome, a sequestered island in the lake of Monteith; after
remaining there upward of two years, it was thought expedient by those
who had at the time the disposal of her future destiny, that she should
be removed to France. She was accordingly, in the fifth year of her age,
taken to Dunbarton, where she was delivered to the French admiral, whose
vessels were waiting to receive her; and attended by Lords Erskine and
Livingstone, her three natural brothers, and four young ladies as
companions, she left Scotland.
The thirteen happiest years of Mary's life were spent in France. She was
received at Brest, by order of Henry II., with all the honors due to her
rank and royal destiny. She travelled by easy stages to the palace at
St. Germain en Laye; and to mark the respect that was paid to her, the
prison gates of every town she came to were thrown open, and the
prisoners set free. Shortly after her arrival she was sent, along with
the king's own daughters, to one of the first convents in France, where
young ladies of distinction were instructed in the elementary branches
of education.
Henry, to confirm the French authority in Scotland, was eager to marry
Francis, his son, to Mary. Francis, the young dauphin, who was much
about Mary's own age, was far inferior to her both in personal
appearance and mental endowments. They had been playmates from infancy;
they had prosecuted all their studies together; he loved her with the
tenderest affection; it was not in Mary's nature to be indifferent to
those who evinced affection for her; and if her fondness for Francis was
mingled with pity, it has long been asserted that "pity is akin to
love."
On April 24, 1558, the nuptials took place in the church of Notre Dame,
with great splendor. Every eye was fixed on the youthful Mary; and,
inspired by those feelings which beauty seldom fails to excite, every
heart offered up prayers for her future welfare and happiness. She was
now at that age when feminine loveliness is perhaps most attractive. It
is not to be supposed, indeed, that her charms, in her sixteenth year,
had ripened into that full-blown maturity which they afterward attained;
but they were on this account only the more fascinating. Some have
conjectured that Mary's beauty has been extolled far above its real
merits; and it cannot be denied that many vague and erroneous notions
exist regarding it. But that her countenance possessed, in a pre-eminent
degree, the something which constitutes beauty, is sufficiently attested
by the unanimous declaration of all contemporary writers. Her person was
finely proportioned, and her carriage exceedingly graceful and
dignified.
Shortly after the espousals, Mary and her husband retired to one of
their princely summer residences, where she discharged the duties of a
wife without ostentation. But the intriguing and restless ambition of
her uncles could not allow her to remain long quiet. About this time
Mary Tudor, who had succeeded Edward VI. on the English throne, died;
and although the Parliament had declared that the succession rested in
her sister Elizabeth, it was thought proper to claim for Mary Stuart a
prior right. But it was destined that there was to be another and more
unexpected death at the French court. Henry II. was killed at a
tournament by Count Montgomery. Francis and Mary succeeded to the
throne. Mary was now at the very height of European grandeur, for she
was queen of two powerful countries, and heir presumptive of a third.
She stood unluckily on too high a pinnacle to be able to retain her
position long. Francis died after a short reign of seventeen months, and
the heir to the throne Charles IX., being a minor, Catharine de Medicis
became once more virtually queen of France; and from her Mary could
expect no favors.
In August, 1561, Mary left France with tears, and was received in
Scotland with every mark of respect. She came, alone and unprotected, to
assume the government of a country which had long been distinguished for
its rebellious turbulence. Contrasted, too, with her former situation,
that which she was now about to fill appeared particularly formidable.
By whatever counsel she acted, the blame of all unpopular measures would
be sure to rest with her. If she favored the Protestants, the Catholics
were sure to renounce her, and if she assisted the Catholics, the
Protestants would be again found assembling at Perth, listening, with
arms in their hands, to the sermons of John Knox, pulling down the
remaining monasteries, and subscribing additional covenants. Is it
surprising, then, that she found it difficult to steer her course
between the rocks of Scylla and the whirlpools of Charybdis? If
misfortunes ultimately overtook her, the wonder unquestionably ought to
be, not that they ever arrived, but that they should have been guarded
against so long.
To further their political views, Mary's hand was sought for by princes
of the several European courts. The princes of the house of Austria,
apprehensive of the ambition of France, wished a union between the
Scottish queen and the Archduke Charles. Philip II., envying the
Austrians so important a prize, used all his influence to procure her
hand for his son Don Carlos, heir to the extensive domains of the
Spanish monarchy. Catharine de Medicis, jealous of them both, offered
the hand of the Duke of Anjou, brother to her former husband, and
Elizabeth, the artful queen of England, recommended Lord Robert Dudley,
afterward Earl of Leicester.
Mary shunned all their intrigues, and followed the bent of her own
inclination in marrying Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, eldest son of the
Earl of Lennox. Darnley, at this time in the bloom of youth, was
distinguished for the beauty and grace of his person, and accomplished
in every elegant art; and he also professed the Catholic religion.
Darnley's qualifications, however, were superficial, and abandoning
himself to pleasure and the vices of youth, he became gradually careless
and indifferent toward the queen, whose disappointments and
mortifications were in proportion to the fervor of her former
sentiments. Her French secretary was one David Rizzio, who was possessed
of musical talents, and to whom she became much attached. Darnley became
jealous of Rizzio, and he, with a number of conspirators, took
possession of the palace on March 9, 1566, while the queen was at supper
with the Countess of Argyle and Rizzio. The latter clung to the queen
for protection, but he was torn from her and dragged to the next
apartment, where the fury of his enemies put an end to his existence, by
piercing his body with fifty-six wounds. The conspirators put Mary under
guard, but she escaped, and by the aid of Bothwell and others, she was
soon enabled to put her enemies at defiance. This event served to
alienate Mary's affections from Darnley.
On June 19, 1566, the queen gave birth to a son; an event more fortunate
to the nation than to his unhappy mother, whose evil destiny received
aggravation from a circumstance which appeared so flattering to her
hopes.
Darnley, neglected by the queen, and despised by the people, remained in
solitude at Stirling, but alarmed by the rumor of a design to seize his
person, he thought fit to retire to his father at Glasgow. On his way
thither he was seized with a dangerous illness. Mary visited him, and
it is said prevailed on him to be removed to the capital, where she
would attend on him. Kirk of Field, a house belonging to the provost of
a collegiate church, was prepared for his reception. The situation, on a
rising ground and in an open field, was recommended for the salubrity of
its air.
At two o'clock on the morning of February 10, 1567, the city was alarmed
by a sudden explosion. The house in which Darnley resided was blown up
with gunpowder. The dead body of Henry and a servant, who slept in his
room, were found lying in an adjacent garden, without marks of violence,
and untouched by fire. Thus perished Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, in his
twenty-first year, a youth whom the indulgence of nature and fortune had
combined to betray to his ruin.
This execrable deed gave rise to various suspicions and conjectures,
which, while they glanced at the queen from her new sentiments with
regard to her husband, were, with a general consent, directed toward
Bothwell. A proclamation was issued from the throne, offering a
considerable reward for the murderer. Neither the power and greatness of
Bothwell, nor his favor with the queen, secured him from the indignant
sentiment of the nation. He had a mock trial, in which he was acquitted.
The queen, on a journey from Edinburgh to Stirling, to visit her son,
was seized by a party of Bothwell's and conducted a prisoner to his
castle at Dunbar. Here he prevailed on her to marry him, and on her
subsequent appearance in public she was received with a sullen and
disrespectful silence by the people.
The transactions which had passed during the last three months in
Scotland were beheld by Europe with horror and detestation. The murder
of the king, the impunity with which his assassins were suffered to
escape, and the marriage of the queen with the man accused of being
their chief, were a series of incidents, which, for their atrocity and
rapid succession, were scarcely to be paralleled in the pages of
history. A general infamy fell upon the Scotch nation, which was
regarded, from these circumstances, as a people void of decency,
humanity, and honor.
[Illustration: Mary Stuart and Rizzio.]
The discontented nobles confederated together and flew to arms. Bothwell
and Mary were unable to stem the opposition; she surrendered to her
enemies, and was conducted a captive to the castle of Lochleven. Mary
had for some weeks suffered the terrors of a prison; of her deliverance
there seemed to be but little prospect; no one had appeared as her
defender or advocate. Thus solitary, deserted, and distressed, her
persecutors reckoned on her fears and on her sex. Lord Lindsay, the
fiercest zealot of the party, was employed to communicate their plan to
the queen, and to obtain from her a subscription to the papers with
which he was charged. In the execution of his commission, he spared
neither harshness nor brutality; certain death was offered to the
unhappy victim, as the alternative of her refusal. Thus urged, she
yielded to the pressure of circumstances, and put her signature to the
papers presented to her by Lindsay. By one of these papers she resigned
the crown, renounced all share in the government, and consented to
the coronation of the young king. By another, she appointed Murray to
the regency, and vested him with the powers and privileges of the
office. Pierced with grief, and bathed in indignant tears, she signed
the deed of her own humiliation, and furnished to her adversaries the
instrument of her abasement.
The people were not generally satisfied with the conduct of Murray, the
regent, and the scattered party of the queen began gradually to reunite.
Such was the disposition of the nation when Mary, through the medium of
George Douglas, a youth of eighteen, contrived to escape from prison.
She flew on horseback, at full speed, to Hamilton, where, before a train
of great and splendid nobles, and an army 6,000 strong, she declared
that the deeds signed by her during her imprisonment, and the
resignation of her crown, were extorted from her by fear. An engagement
between her forces and those of Murray took place at Hamilton; her army
was defeated. She stood on a hill and saw all that passed. In confusion
and horror she began her flight, and so terrible was the trepidation of
her spirits, that she stopped not till she reached the abbey of
Dunrenan, in Galloway, fully sixty Scottish miles from the field of
battle. In the space of eleven days she had beheld herself a prisoner,
at the mercy of her greatest enemies; at the head of a powerful army,
with a numerous train of nobles devoted to her service; and a fugitive,
at the hazard of her life, driven, with a few attendants, to lurk in a
corner of her kingdom. Still anxious and agitated in her retreat, she
was impelled by her fears to an irretrievable step, fatal to all her
future hopes. In vain her attendants, with the lords Herries and Heming,
implored her on their knees not to confide in Elizabeth, her resolution
was not to be shaken, and to England she fatally resolved to fly. No
longer an object of jealousy, but compassion, Mary trusted in the
generosity of a sister queen, that she would not take advantage of her
calamitous situation. She got into a fisherman's boat, and with about
twenty attendants, landed at Workington, in Cumberland, whence, with
marks of respect, she was conducted to Carlisle.
She addressed, on her arrival in England, a letter to the queen, in
which she painted in glowing colors the injuries she had sustained, and
implored the sympathy and assistance which her present situation so
pressingly required. Elizabeth and her council deliberated upon the
course which, in this extraordinary event, it would be proper to pursue;
and at last determined, in spite of justice and humanity, to avail
herself of the advantages given her by the confidence of her rival. Mary
demanded a personal interview with Elizabeth, but this honor she was
told must be denied to her. She had no intention of acknowledging
superiority in the queen of England, who, she expected, would, as a
friend, herself receive and examine her defences. But Elizabeth chose to
consider herself as umpire between the Scottish queen and her subjects;
and she prepared to appoint commissioners to hear the pleadings of both
parties, and wrote to the Regent of Scotland to empower proper persons
to appear in his name, and produce what could be alleged in vindication
of his proceedings.
Mary, who had hitherto relied on the professions of Elizabeth, was by
this proposal at once undeceived, and she was, in despite of her
remonstrances and complaints, conducted to Bolton, a castle of Lord
Scroop, on the borders of Yorkshire. Commissioners met on both sides,
and after protracted deliberations for four months, they left things
just as they found them.
The last eighteen years of Mary's life were spent in imprisonment, and
are comparatively a blank in her personal history. She was transported,
at intervals, from castle to castle, and was intrusted sometimes to the
charge of one nobleman, and sometimes to another; but for her the active
scenes of life were past; the splendor and dignity of a throne were to
be enjoyed no longer; the sceptre of her native country was never more
to grace her hands; her will ceased to influence a nation; her voice did
not travel beyond the walls that witnessed her confinement. She came
into England at the age of twenty-five, in the prime of womanhood, the
full vigor of health, and the rapidly ripening strength of her
intellectual powers. She was there destined to feel, in all its
bitterness, that "hope deferred maketh the heart sick." Year after year
passed slowly on, and year after year her spirits became more exhausted,
her health feebler, and her doubts and fears confirmed, till they at
length settled in despair. Premature old age overtook her before she was
past the meridian of life; and for some time before her death, her hair
was white "with other snows than those of age." Yet, during the whole of
this long period, amid sufferings which would have broken many a
masculine spirit, and which, even in our own times, have been seen to
conquer those who had conquered empires, Mary retained the innate grace
and dignity of her character, never forgetting that she had been born a
queen, or making her calamities an excuse for the commission of any
petty meanness, which she would have scorned in the days of her
prosperity. Full of incident as her previous life had been, brilliant in
many of its achievements, it may be doubted whether the forbearance,
fortitude, and magnanimity displayed in her latter years, do not redound
more highly to her praise than all that preceded. Elizabeth wished for
some plausible pretext to take away the life of the unhappy Mary, whom,
though so defenceless, she regarded as a dangerous rival. The Duke of
Norfolk made offers of marriage to Mary, to which she consented, in case
she should be liberated. His scheme also was to favor the Catholic
cause, and on its being discovered he was thrown into prison, where,
after six months' confinement, he was liberated, on condition of his
holding no further intercourse with the queen. He was, however, arrested
the second time, and executed.
A conspiracy soon after took place, through the blind affection of the
English Catholics for Mary, and their implacable hatred of Elizabeth;
that, while it proved fatal to the life of one queen, has left on the
memory of the other an indelible stain. It was a conspiracy of two
zealous Catholics, to take the life of Elizabeth. The plot was revealed
in confidence to Anthony Babington, a young gentleman of Derbyshire,
possessing a large fortune and many amiable qualities, whom the
Archbishop of Glasgow had recommended to the notice of Mary. The
conspirators, through treachery, were arrested, and it is said two
letters from Mary were found with Babington. This was a pretext to
represent these fanatics as the instruments of the captive queen.
Determined that no circumstance of solemnity suited to the dignity of
the person arraigned might be wanting, Elizabeth appointed, by a
commission under the great seal, forty persons, the most illustrious in
the kingdom for their rank and birth, together with five judges, for the
decision of the cause.
On October 11, 1586, the commissioners arrived at Fotheringay, where
Mary was confined. She solemnly protested her innocence of the crime
laid to her charge, and having never countenanced any attempt against
the life of Elizabeth, she refused to acknowledge the jurisdiction of
the commissioners. "I came," said she, "into the kingdom an independent
sovereign, to implore the queen's assistance, not to subject myself to
her authority. Nor is my spirit so broken by past misfortunes, or
intimidated by present dangers, as to stoop to anything unbecoming the
majesty of a crowned head, or that will disgrace the ancestors from whom
I am descended, and the son to whom I shall leave my throne."
Mary made her own defence; and her conduct before her judges displayed
the magnanimity of a heroine, tempered by the gentleness and modesty of
a woman. The judges were predetermined to find her guilty: the trial was
a mere pretence to give a sanction to their proceedings; they were
unanimous in declaring Mary "to be accessory to the conspiracy of
Babington, and to have imagined divers matters, tending to the hurt,
death, and destruction of Elizabeth, contrary to the express words of
the statute made for the security of the life of the queen."
On Tuesday, February 7, 1587, the Earls of Shrewsbury and Kent arrived
at Fotheringay, and read in Mary's presence the warrant for her
execution, which was appointed for the ensuing day. "That soul," said
Mary, calmly crossing herself, "is unworthy the joys of heaven, which
repines because the body must endure the stroke of the axe. I submit
willingly to the lot which heaven has decreed for me; though I did not
expect the Queen of England would set the first example of violating the
sacred person of a sovereign prince." Then laying her hand on a Bible,
which happened to be near her, she solemnly protested her innocence.
At the scaffold she prayed for the prosperity of her son, and for a long
and peaceable reign to Elizabeth. She hoped for mercy, she declared,
only through the death of Christ, at the foot of whose image she
willingly shed her blood. With intrepid calmness she laid her neck on
the block; her hands were held by one executioner, while the other, with
two blows, dissevered her head from her body. "So perish all the enemies
of Elizabeth!" exclaimed the dean, as he held up the streaming head.
"Amen," answered the Earl of Kent alone; every other eye was drowned in
tears; every other voice was stifled in commiseration. Thus, after a
life of forty-four years and two months, nineteen years of which had
been passed in captivity, perished the lovely and unfortunate Mary,
Queen of Scots.