friendship of Knox, was in jeopardy, and the temptation to retain it by any means "fair or foul was probably irresistible. Yet what he now did, justified though it has been by those who maintain that Moray, like Arthur, was a stainless gentleman, well-nigh exceeds belief. He had risen in arms against his sister-he had shaken her throne - because she had elected to marry Darnley. He returned to make Darnley king, in fact as well as in name. The terms of the treaty between these singular allies were reduced to writing, in accordance with the fashion of an age which combined lawless violence with legal pedantry. These are the articles of the "band" which Moray signed: "The Earl of Moray shall become a true subject and faithful servant to the noble and mighty Prince Henry, King of Scotland, - shall be the friend of his friends and the enemy of his enemies. He shall at the first Parliament after his return grant, give and ordain the Matrimonial Crown to the said noble Prince all the days of his life. He shall fortify and maintain the said noble Prince in his just title to the Crown of Scotland, failing of succession of our Sovereign Lady, and shall justify and set forward the same to the uttermost. And as he has become true subject to the said noble Prince, so shall he not spare life or limb in setting forward all that may tend to the advancement of his honor." Darnley on his side undertook that Moray and his "complices" should be recalled to Scotland; that their treason should be forgiven; and that the Acts of the Estates by which their honors and estates were to be forfeited should be immediately withdrawn. A more shameful bargain was never struck. The fanatical passion of Knox may be held to excuse his complicity. The chosen people had no scruple in putting the unpopular favorite of an idolatrous ruler to death, and Mary was the Jezebel of the Reformer's disordered imagination. For the cold and scrupulous Moray no such apology can be found. Had it not been established by indisputable evidence, the allegation that the vir pietate gravis of the "precise Protestants of Scotland was ready to cement in Rizzio's blood an alliance with Darnley, would have been deemed incredible. The assassination of Rizzio, the return of Moray, the proclamation of Darnley, were only the accidents of the conspiracy. The plot had a wider scope. It was unquestionably directed against the queen herself. Had Mary and Darnley been captured as they hurried past Kinross during the previous summer, the queen, it is known, would have been imprisoned in Lochleven. Since then the situation had been materially modified. Mary was now within a few months of her confinement. The probability that a violent mental or physical shock would be attended with serious consequences, might be followed by her death, cannot have been absent from the minds of the conspirators. Randolph's sinister auguries were like enough to be realized. "I know that there are practices in hand contrived between the father and the son to come by the Crown against her will. I know that if that take effect which is intended, David shall have his throat cut within these ten days. Many things grievouser and worse than these are brought to my ears, yea, of things intended against her own person, which because I think it better to keep secret than write to Mr. Secretary, I speak of them but now to your Lordship." What then would follow? Chatelherault was in exile; Darnley was incapable of governing. Cordially supported by Elizabeth, Moray was sure to become a formidable candidate for the throne. Cecil had said years before that the lord James was like to be a king soon; and Mary once out of the way a parliament filled with fanatical partisans would have little difficulty in finding that he was legitimate. These then were the confederates. Moray and his companions at Newcastle, Bedford and Randolph, the agents of Elizabeth, at Berwick, Morton, Ruthven, and Knox at Edinburgh, were leagued with the worthless Darnley and the ungrateful Lennox. There was little delay. They did not linger over their work. By the 6th of March the preliminaries had been completed. The capital was filled with the angry zealots of the Congregation. Judicial precedents selected from the bloodiest passages of Hebrew history had fanned their fanaticism into a flame. During a week of fasting and humiliation they had fed upon the atrocities recorded in the earlier books of the Bible. These grim enthusiasts streaming out into the High Street from the great church where Knox had told them how Oreb and Zeeb had been slain, how the Benjamites had been cut off, how Haman had been hanged, were in the mood for murder. On the last day of the week in the winter twilight two hundred armed men wearing the livery of Morton and Lindsay surrounded the palace. The attack being utterly unexpected there was no resistance. The gates were closed and barred; the courtyard was occupied ; | and called for drink for God's sake; so a while Ruthven with some score of his Frenchman brought him a cup of wine, friends, guided by Darnley, stole noise- and after he drank, her Majesty began to lessly up the narrow stair which led to the rail at him, saying, Is this your sickness? private apartments of the queen. It was He answered, God forbid your Majesty about seven o'clock - Mary was at sup- had such a sickness. Then the Queen per. Darnley entered first; but he had said, if she died of her child or her Comhardly uttered a word when the queen monweal perished, she would leave the looking up beheld a ghastly apparition at revenge to her friends to be taken of the the open door, - Ruthven in complete Lord Ruthven and his posterity." At last armor, but pale and emaciated, for he was she broke down. "Then the Lord Ruthsuffering from mortal illness, and had ven perceiving that her Majesty was very risen from his death-bed to direct the mur- sick, he said to the King it was best to der, the man whom with a true instinct take leave of her Majesty, that she might she had always loathed. "The Queen take her rest." So they left her with her cannot abide him, and all men hate him." ladies and gentlewomen. "The gates being locked, the King being in his bed, the Queen walking in her chamber, the Lord Ruthven took charge of the lower gate and the privy passages; and David was thrown down the stairs from the Palace where he was slain, and brought to the Porter's lodge, who taking off his clothes, said, This was his destiny. For upon this chest was his first bed when he came to this place, and now he lieth a very niggard and misknown knave. The King's dagger was found sticking in his side. Queen enquired at the King where his dagger was? who answered, that he wist not well. Well, said the Queen, it will be Of the miserable tragedy which followed enough has been written. The outraged queen standing undauntedly before the craven creature who clung in abject terror to the skirt of her robe, and whose worst crime had been his devotion to herself the brief unseemly scuffle in almost absolute darkness, for the table with the lights had been overturned, and the Countess of Argyle had picked up a single taper- Mary dragged aside by Ruthven, and thrust roughly into Darnley's arms the victim hustled across the floor the shrill cry for mercy- the clash of arms on the stair-head; it is a lurid picture never to be forgotten. Ruth-known hereafter." ven was the leading actor; and there are some sentences in his curiously unimpassioned narrative which are yet startlingly vivid. "Then her Majesty rose upon her feet, and stood before David, he holding her Majesty by the plates of her gown, leaning back over the window, his dagger drawn in his hand; and one of the chamber began to lay hands on the Lord Ruthven, none of the King's party being there present. Then the said Lord Ruthven pulled out his dagger, and defended himself until more came in, and said to them, Lay no hands on me, for I will not be handled. At the coming in of the others the Lord Ruthven put up his dagger; and with the rushing in of men, the board fell to the wall, meat and candles being thereon, and the Lady of Argile took one of the candles in her hand. At the same instant the Lord Ruthven took the Queen in his arms, and put her into the King's arms, beseeching her Majesty not to be afraid; and assured her that all that was done was the King's own deed." Then after David had been dragged away, "the said Lord Ruthven being sore felled with his sickness and wearied with his travel, desired her Majesty's pardon to sit down, The Was Maitland one of the conspirators? Was he directly or indirectly implicated in the plot? The allegation of his complicity, so far as I can judge, rests upon circumstantial evidence only. His name is included in Randolph's list of the confederates; and Darnley assured Mary that her secretary had taken an active part in the conduct of the plot. He was the friend of Ruthven; he was the friend of Moray. He disliked and suspected Rizzio, who was his political, if not his personal, rival. Rizzio, he knew, was doing what he could to embitter the relations between the queens. The English alliance (his own handiwork) had been put in peril; but if the Italian secretary were removed, the danger might be averted. There is an enigmatical and ambiguous letter addressed by him to Cecil, in which, as we have seen, some radical cure is not obscurely hinted at. When he declared that there was no certain way unless they chopped at the root, had Maitland the violent removal of Rizzio in view? It need not surprise us, in short, that grave suspicion should have attached to him. Circumstanced as he was, it was impossible that he should have escaped suspicion. Yet when carefully considered, the evi- | arrived had been driven back by Morton) dence is not conclusive. There are sev to keep the peace; and after having suceral circumstances (whose cumulative ceeded in pacifying Huntly and Bothwell value is considerable) which tend to dis- he went on to Athol's room, and “found place the presumption. Randolph, who with the said Earl, the Comptroller, the was at Berwick, had for some months Secretary, James Balfour, and divers othbeen writing rather wildly about Scotch ers." After a protracted interview, Athol affairs; and Darnley's testimony is abso-perceiving all to be the King's own dolutely worthless. His unfriendliness to ing, desired Ruthven to go to the King, and Maitland was notorious; he appears to obtain leave for him to pass into his own have lost no opportunity of turning Mary country, with them that were then in the against her most capable minister. We chamber with him." Ruthven conveyed are expressly told that the queen was the message to Darnley; and Darnley, always well disposed to Maitland, and after seeing Athol, very unwillingly gave that, but for Darnley, no unkindness would the desired permission, on the understandhave arisen between him and his mistress. ing that the earl would return whenever he He did not sign the "bands" to which was required by the queen. "And the Darnley, Morton, and Moray were parties. Earl took his leave, and passed to his His name does not occur in the Privy chamber; for he made him ready, and in Council order of 19th March, nor in the his company the Earls of Sutherland and subsequent order of 8th June; both of Caithness, the Master of Caithness, the which were directed against the persons Secretary and Comptroller, with divers accessory to Rizzio's slaughter. The omis- others." It is difficult to reconcile this sion cannot have been accidental; for the narrative with guilty knowledge on Maitlists contain upwards of one hundred land's part. Ruthven was the prime mover names, and are obviously exhaustive. As in the plot; and if Maitland had been an his name was not included, the incrimi accomplice Ruthven would hardly have nating evidence, to say the least, must represented him "as fighting in the close have been considered defective. A de- against the Earl of Morton." Another tailed account of the whole affair was sent not unimportant piece of evidence is found by Mary on 2d April to her ambassador in Robert Mellville's letter written on in France; but she makes no mention of 22nd October of the same year. Darnley, Lethington. It may be said that these it appears, had continued to accuse Maitomissions go merely to show that Mait- land; and his persistency had forced Mary land, like Knox, was not actively engaged to make some inquiry into the truth of the in the murder. But the curious narrative accusations. The King cannot obtain by Ruthven from which I have quoted, such things as he seeks; to wit, such perand which is unquestionably authentic, sons as the Secretary, the Justice-Clerk, contains several allusions to "the secre- and Clerk-Register, to be put out of their tary," which could hardly have been intro- office, alleging that they were guilty of duced had the secretary been engaged. this last odious fact, whereof the Queen's Athol, Bothwell, and Huntly were in the Majesty hath taken trial and finds them palace; but they knew nothing of the not guilty therein." Buchanan's testiplot; and Ruthven leads the reader to mony is to the same effect. Though infer that Maitland, who was extremely "chiefest enemy to David after the King's intimate with Athol (Athol having married grace," yet not being "advertisit by the a Fleming), was just as ignorant. Ruth- Lords" of their enterprise, Maitland took ven was in the act of assuring Mary that no part in the murder. But he was "if anything be done this night which 'suspected of the Queen," and he "fled your Majesty mislikes, the King your hus- with the others." Melville adds that he band and none of us is in the wyte," when was in danger of his life. "That same Gray knocked at the door. "At this in- night the Earl of Athol, the Laird of Tulstant Gray knocked fast at the Queen's libardine, and Secretary Lethington were door, declaring that the Earls of Huntly, permitted to retire themselves out of the Athol, Bothwell, Caithness, and Suther- palace, and were in great fear of their land, the Lords Fleming, Livingston, the lives." Secretary, and Tullibardine the Comptroller, with their officers and servants, were fighting in the close against the Earl Morton and his company, being on the King's part." Ruthven hurried down to urge the loyal noblemen (who before he 66 It has been constantly assumed that Lethington was an actor in the Rizzio tragedy; but the facts to which I have called attention, and which have been hitherto overlooked, are hardly consistent with the popular impression. We know, besides, that he was busy making love to the queen's favorite Mary at the very time | when he is accused of plotting against her mistress; and on the whole, after examination of the conflicting testimony, I incline to hold that his complicity has not been established. He had not, in short, been "advertisit by the Lords." The conspirators, foiled by Mary's brilliant promptitude, did not reap the harvest on which they had reckoned. Moray, Rothes, Ochiltree, Kirkaldy of Grange, indeed, rode into Edinburgh next day to find the queen a virtual prisoner in Holyrood. But during the night that followed Mary convinced her foolish husband that he had chosen dangerous allies, as indeed was true enough, and persuaded him to fly with her to Dunbar. For romantic hardihood, there is nothing in her eventful life to compare with that midnight ride across the Lothians. Groping her way through the charnel-house of the Abbey, she reached the gate in the palace wall where Arthur Erskine was waiting. A single sentinel might have stopped her, but they passed unchallenged by friend or foe. Once clear of the palace park and gardens, the open country lay before her, and, mounting behind Erskine, in whose honor she had boundless confidence-"I would trust him with a thousand lives!" she hurried on to the coast. Bothwell and Huntly, "by leaping over a window toward the little garden where the lions were lodged," had escaped from the palace immediately after the murder, and were already in the field. In eight-andforty hours Mary found herself at the head of an army which the confederates did not dare to face. Retiring from Edinburgh, they dispersed in all directions, the major. ity seeking the hospitality of Elizabeth, to whose ministers, as we have seen, the details of the plot had been confidentially communicated some time before its execution. "Upon the xvii day of March, quhilk was Sunday, the hail Lords, committers of the slaughter and crimes above written, with all their complices and men of war, with dolorous hearts departit from Edinburgh toward Linlithgow, at seven hours in the morning. And upon the same day John Knox, minister of Edinburgh, in likewise departit from the said burgh at twa hours afternoon, with ane great murning of the godly of religion." The queen was again completely successful; and, bitterly resenting the ingratitude of her husband and the perfidy of her nobles, she might have been expected to punish the violence of which she had been the victim with extreme severity. There can be no doubt that with Athol and Bothwell and Huntly and the whole of the Border clans at her back, she could, had she chosen, have sent the insurgent lords to prison or to the scaffold. But she did not choose. A policy of conciliation was steadily pursued. The treachery of Moray had been a bitter mortification; but Moray was forgiven. So were Rothes, and Ochiltree, and Kirkaldy. She reconciled old enemies; she pacified ancestral feuds. She scattered pardons right and left. She was eager to forget and forgive. Her politic generosity was attended with immediate and gratifying success. moderate policy was universally approved. James VI. was born on the 19th of June, and all over Scotland "the fires of joy were lighted. Elizabeth wept for envy, she was a barren stock, while the queen of Scots was the mother of a fair son. "I never," Le Croc declared, "saw her Majesty so much beloved, honored, or esteemed, nor so great a harmony among all her subjects as at present is by her wise conduct; for I cannot perceive the smallest difference or division." Her Yet the prospect was not unclouded. Mary's enemies had been baffled for the moment; but the religious and political forces which Knox and Cecil represented remained persistently hostile. Melville (who acted as secretary in Maitland's absence) had been forced to warn his mistress that "having so many factious enemies lying in wait to make their advantage of the least appearance that can be made," she would require to be more than ordinarily circumspect. The slightest indiscretion would be cruelly punished. Was it probable (her friends could not but ask) that a woman like Mary, constitutionally frank, impulsive, and unconventional, would pass through the ordeal unscathed? The general situation was sufficiently embarrassing; but there were specific difficulties - the alienation of Maitland, the folly of Darnley, the ascendancy of Bothwell, as well as her own impaired health, - which at the close of the year 1566 must have made the most sanguine loyalist regard the future with grave apprehension. Of these embarrassments indeed one had been removed in the course of the autumn. The differences with Maitland had been composed, and the queen and her minister were again in friendly accord. I have been unable to discover any entirely satisfactory explanation of the motives which induced Maitland to quit | agree them, and purposes to be at Stirling the court. After Rizzio's death, he went to the 24th of this month, and to cause Athol, as we have seen, to the Perthshire Ledingtoun meet her there, to end the Highlands; but though Athol must have matter." The meeting took place soon returned to Holyrood directly on the col afterwards, — not at Stirling, but at a lapse of the conspiracy, Maitland did not house in the neighborhood of Edinburgh, accompany him. The allusions to the sec-"a friend's house of mine nigh this retary's movements during the next three town." (The friend was probably the or four months (which occur in the letters Laird of Craigmillar, who had married the of the English agents at Berwick) are, as sister of Janet Menteith, Maitland's first might be expected, somewhat vague and wife.) "I think your letter," Maitland puzzling. In one letter the writer declares wrote to Cecil in September, "brought that "Lethington despairs of pardon and with it unto me bonum omen, or rather a must fly into England." Then we learn good luck. For the same day it came to that "he has liberty to live in Flanders; ' my hands, it pleased the Queen's Majesty then that he is going to Caithness, where to come to a friend's house of mine, nigh he has been ordered to reside. Soon this town, secretly, accompanied only by afterwards he is heard of in Lauderdale, the Earls of Argyll, Moray, and Bothwell, and on the 28th of July he writes to Cecil to mak aggreance betwixt the said Earl from Balloch, above Dunkeld. Whatever Bothwell and me, where after some conthe origin of the estrangement, however, ference with us both, in the hearing of it is tolerably clear that before many weeks the others, by one consent all differences had passed, Mary had come to regard the betwixt us were accorded, and we made absence of her most able adviser with friends. Whereupon her Majesty was keen regret. She was not a good hater; well pleased that I should resort in her and it would appear that she was only company to this town, and received me to prevented from recalling him by the im- her good favor and my former place." portunity of Darnley and the greed of The Darnley entanglement was less Bothwell. Darnley swore that Maitland easily dealt with. The foolish and headwas one of the traitors; and Bothwell had strong lad had been sinking deeper and always held that the lands of the Abbey deeper into the mire. He had in a fit of of Haddington should have been reserved incredible folly outraged the Queen. He for a Hepburn. Bothwell and Maitland had with characteristic meanness and feehad never been friends; no love had been bleness abandoned his associates in the lost between them in the past; and Both-conspiracy. With singular infelicity he well may have felt that he was now in a had contrived to make himself obnoxious position to wipe off an old score. But to every faction in Scotland. He was disthough Darnley and Bothwell were violently hostile, the secretary had powerful allies at Holyrood. "There was a controversy," Randolph wrote to Cecil on the 2d April, "between the Earls Bothwell and Athol for the Lord of Liddington, the one being his great friend, the other in all cases against him. That matter is quieted, and the Earl Athol a continual travailer for the Lord of Liddington." "The Lord of Liddington's friends," he added on 2d May, "make all the means they can to stay his departure out of the country, whereunto the Queen is not unwilling." Mary went to the Castle to be confined in June, and until her recovery the controversy was allowed to rest. But early in August, after a violent scene in her presence between Moray and Bothwell, she determined to recall her secretary without further delay. "For news here, the Earls of Moray and Bothwell have been at evil words for my Lord of Ledingtoun in the Queen's presence, and since have not met together; but her Grace is earnest to trusted by the loyalists; he was hated by the Calvinists. He could as little look for friendship from Huntly and Bothwell as from Morton and Argyll. His own life was loose and disorderly; yet he was insanely jealous of every one who approached the queen. "He cannot bear that the Queen should use familiarity with man or woman, and especially the ladies of Argyll, Moray, and Mar, who keep most company with her." He was utterly unqualified for the duties of government; he had neither industry nor natural aptitude; yet he bitterly resented his exclusion from the Council Chamber. The sense of the feudal relation was still strong. Buchanan's judgment of Darnley, as Knox's of Bothwell, proves that neither was uninfluenced by the sentiment of the time; yet even Buchanan-a native of the Lennox- - has little to urge on behalf of Henry Stuart. Had he known it, his only safety was to have effaced himself so completely that he should have ceased to be a political embarrassment. As Eliza |