"Let none of them escape" was Elizabeth's message to the gaolers of Mary
and her companions at Carlisle. The unhappy queen prayed to see her in
whose hospitality she had confided, or to be allowed to depart free.
Elizabeth's policy was to lead her into consenting to reply to her
subjects' accusations, and Mary drifted into the shuffling English
inquiries at York in October, while she was lodged at Bolton Castle.
Murray, George Buchanan, Lethington (now distrusted by Murray), and
Morton produced, for Norfolk and other English Commissioners at York,
copies, at least, of the incriminating letters which horrified the Duke
of Norfolk. Yet, probably through the guile of Lethington, he changed
his mind, and became a suitor for Mary's hand. He bade her refuse
compromise, whereas compromise was Lethington's hope: a full and free
inquiry would reveal his own guilt in Darnley's murder. The inquiry was
shifted to London in December, Mary always being refused permission to
appear and speak for herself; nay, she was not allowed even to see the
letters which she was accused of having written. Her own Commissioners,
Lord Herries and Bishop Lesley, who (as Mary knew in Herries's case) had
no faith in her innocence, showed their want of confidence by proposing a
compromise; this was not admitted. Morton explained how he got the
silver casket with the fatal letters, poems to Bothwell, and other
papers; they were read in translations, English and Scots; handwritings
were compared, with no known result; evidence was heard, and Elizabeth,
at last, merely decided--that she could not admit Mary to her presence.
The English Lords agreed, "as the case does now stand," and presently
many of them were supporting Norfolk in his desire to marry the accused.
Murray was told (January 10, 1669) that he had proved nothing which could
make Elizabeth "take any evil opinion of the queen, her good sister,"
nevertheless, Elizabeth would support him in his government of Scotland,
while declining to recognise James VI. as king.
All compromises Mary now utterly refused: she would live and die a queen.
Henceforth the tangled intrigues cannot be disengaged in a work of this
scope. Elizabeth made various proposals to Mary, all involving her
resignation as queen, or at least the suspension of her rights. Mary
refused to listen; her party in Scotland, led by Chatelherault, Herries,
Huntly, and Argyll, did not venture to meet Murray and his party in war,
and was counselled by Lethington, who still, in semblance, was of
Murray's faction. Lethington was convinced that, sooner or later, Mary
would return; and he did not wish to incur "her _particular_ ill-will."
He knew that Mary, as she said, "had that in black and white which would
hang him" for the murder of Darnley. Now Lethington, Huntly, and Argyll
were daunted, without stroke of sword, by Murray, and a Convention to
discuss messages from Elizabeth and Mary met at Perth (July 25-28, 1569),
and refused to allow the annulment of her marriage with Bothwell, though
previously they had insisted on its annulment. Presently Lethington was
publicly accused of Darnley's murder by Crawford, a retainer of Lennox;
was imprisoned, but was released by Kirkcaldy, commander in Edinburgh
Castle, which henceforth became the fortress of Mary's cause.
The secret of Norfolk's plan to marry the Scottish queen now reached
Elizabeth, making her more hostile to Mary; an insurrection in the North
broke out; the Earl of Northumberland was driven into Scotland, was
betrayed by Hecky Armstrong, and imprisoned at Loch Leven. Murray
offered to hand over Northumberland to Elizabeth in exchange for Mary,
her life to be guaranteed by hostages, but, on January 23, 1570, Murray
was shot by Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh from a window of a house in
Linlithgow belonging to Archbishop Hamilton. The murderer escaped and
joined his clan. During his brief regency, Murray had practically
detached Huntly and Argyll from armed support of Mary's cause; he had
reduced the Border to temporary quiet by the free use of the gibbet; but
he had not ventured to face Lethington's friends and bring him to trial:
if he had, many others would have been compromised. Murray was sly and
avaricious, but, had he been legitimate, Scotland would have been well
governed under his vigour and caution.
REGENCIES OF LENNOX, MAR, AND MORTON.
Randolph was now sent to Edinburgh to make peace between Mary's party and
her foes impossible. He succeeded; the parties took up arms, and Sussex
ravaged the Border in revenge of a raid by Buccleuch. On May 14, Lennox,
with an English force, was sent north: he devastated the Hamilton
country; was made Regent in July; and, in April 1571, had his revenge on
Archbishop Hamilton, who was taken at the capture, by Crawford, of
Dumbarton Castle, held by Lord Fleming, a post of vital moment to the
Marians; and was hanged at Stirling for complicity in the slaying of
Murray. George Buchanan, Mary's old tutor, took advantage of these facts
to publish quite a fresh account of Darnley's murder: the guilt of the
Hamiltons now made that of Bothwell almost invisible!
Edinburgh Castle, under Kirkcaldy with Lethington, held out; Knox
reluctantly retired from Edinburgh to St Andrews, where he was unpopular;
but many of Mary's Lords deserted her, and though Lennox was shot
(September 4) in an attack by Buccleuch and Ker of Ferniehirst on
Stirling Castle, where he was holding a Parliament, he was succeeded by
Mar, who was inspired by Morton, a far stronger man. Presently the
discovery of a plot between Mary, Norfolk, the English Catholics, and
Spain, caused the Duke's execution, and more severe incarceration for
Mary.
In Scotland there was no chance of peace. Morton and his associates
would not resign the lands of the Hamiltons, Lethington, and Kirkcaldy;
Lethington knew that no amnesty would cover his guilt (though he had been
nominally cleared) in the slaying of Darnley. One after the other of
Mary's adherents made their peace; but Kirkcaldy and Lethington, in
Edinburgh Castle, seemed safe while money and supplies held out. Knox
had prophesied that Kirkcaldy would be hanged, but did not live to see
his desire on his enemy, or on Mary, whom Elizabeth was about to hand
over to Mar for instant execution. Knox died on November 24, 1572; Mar,
the Regent, had predeceased him by a month, leaving Morton in power. On
May 28, 1573, the castle, attacked by guns and engineers from England,
and cut off from water, struck its flag. The brave Kirkcaldy was hanged;
Lethington, who had long been moribund, escaped by an opportune death.
The best soldier in Scotland and the most modern of her wits thus
perished together. Concerning Knox, the opinions of his contemporaries
differed. By his own account the leaders of his party deemed him "too
extreme," and David Hume finds his ferocious delight in chronicling the
murders of his foes "rather amusing," though sad! Quarrels of religion
apart, Knox was a very good-hearted man; but where religion was
concerned, his temper was remote from the Christian. He was a perfect
agitator; he knew no tolerance, he spared no violence of language, and in
diplomacy, when he diplomatised, he was no more scrupulous than another.
Admirably vigorous and personal as literature, his History needs constant
correction from documents. While to his secretary, Bannatyne, Knox
seemed "a man of God, the light of Scotland, the mirror of godliness";
many silent, douce folk among whom he laboured probably agreed in the
allegation quoted by a diarist of the day, that Knox "had, as was
alleged, the most part of the blame of all the sorrows of Scotland since
the slaughter of the late Cardinal."
In these years of violence, of "the Douglas wars" as they were called,
two new tendencies may be observed. In January 1572, Morton induced an
assembly of preachers at Leith to accept one of his clan, John Douglas,
as Archbishop of St Andrews: other bishops were appointed, called
_Tulchan_ bishops, from the _tulchan_ or effigy of a calf employed to
induce cows to yield their milk. The Church revenues were drawn through
these unapostolic prelates, and came into the hands of the State, or at
least of Morton. With these bishops, superintendents co-existed, but not
for long. "The horns of the mitre" already began to peer above
Presbyterian parity, and Morton is said to have remarked that there would
never be peace in Scotland till some preachers were hanged. In fact,
there never was peace between Kirk and State till a deplorable number of
preachers were hanged by the Governments of Charles II. and James II.
A meeting of preachers in Edinburgh, after the Bartholomew massacre, in
the autumn of 1572, demanded that "it shall be lawful to all the subjects
in this realm to invade them and every one of them to the death." The
persons to be "invaded to the death" are recalcitrant Catholics, "grit or
small," persisting in remaining in Scotland. {137}
The alarmed demands of the preachers were merely disregarded by the Privy
Council. The ruling nobles, as Bishop Lesley says, would never gratify
the preachers by carrying out the bloody penal Acts to their full extent
against Catholics. There was no expulsion of all Catholics who dared to
stay; no popular massacre of all who declined to go. While Morton was in
power he kept the preachers well in hand. He did worse: he starved the
ministers, and thrust into the best livings wanton young gentlemen, of
whom his kinsman, Archibald Douglas, an accomplice in Darnley's death and
a trebly-dyed traitor, was the worst. But in 1575, the great Andrew
Melville, an erudite scholar and a most determined person, began to
protest against the very name of bishop in the Kirk; and in Adamson, made
by Morton successor of John Douglas at St Andrews, Melville found a mark
and a victim. In economics, as an English diplomatist wrote to Cecil in
November 1572, the country, despite the civil war, was thriving; "the
noblemen's great credit decaying, . . . the ministry and religion
increaseth, and the desire in them to prevent the practice of the
Papists." The Englishman, in November, may refer to the petition for
persecution of October 20, 1572.
The death of old Chatelherault now left the headship of the Hamiltons in
more resolute hands; Morton was confronted by opposition from Argyll,
Atholl, Buchan, and Mar; and Morton, in 1576-1577, made approaches to
Mary. When the young James VI. came to his majority Morton's enemies
would charge him with his guilty foreknowledge, through Both well, of
Darnley's murder, so he made advances to Mary in hope of an amnesty. She
suspected a trap and held aloof.