47. EDWARD VI (1538-1553)
This English king (prince at the beginning) was meant by Mark Twain when he wrote his "The Prince and the Pauper". Of course, the boy did not change clothes with a pauper boy just before his father's death and did not wander through his country in rags, this is the author's fancy. I think that his father was not so fond of him as he is described in the book, because Henry VIII was not the like person to be attached to somebody — but, however, "The Prince and the Pauper" is a fiction book and the author had his right to show the circumstances just as he imagined them, as he was close to the historical truth in main things and in details.
In reality Henry the Eighth had made a will, appointing a council of sixteen to govern the kingdom for his son while that latter was under age, and another council of twelve to help the first one. The most powerful of the first council was the Earl of Hertford, the young King's uncle, his late mother's brother, who lost no time in bringing his nephew with great state up to Enfield, and thence to the Tower. It was considered at the time a striking proof of virtue in the young King that he was sorry for his father's death.
There was a curious part in the late King's will, requiring his executors to fulfil whatever promises he had made. Some of the court wondering what these might be, the Earl of Hertford and the other noblemen said that they were promises to advance and enrich them.
So, the Earl of Hertford made himself Duke of Somerset (in Mark Twain's book Tom Canty did it!), and made his brother Edward Seymour a baron. To be more dutiful, they made themselves rich out of the Church lands, and were very comfortable. The new Duke of Somerset proclaimed himself Protector of the kingdom, and was, indeed, the King, as the chief power was all in his hands. He was an ardent Reformer and very soon introduced great changes, not in Church government, but in doctrine and ritual. The young Edward the Sixth had been brought up in the principles of the Protestant religion, and all the Protestants therefore knew that their day of triumph had come, they committed all manner of excesses, breaking images and otherwise insulting the majority of their countrymen. The Act of the Six Articles was repealed, and violent hands were laid on church property.
These religious changes, sufficiently unpopular with the majority of Englishmen, were accompanied by social evils not altogether unconnected with them. The new landowners, selfish and grasping, keener on enclosing common lands than on providing work for the rural population, compared badly with their predecessors, the monks. Devon and Norfolk rose in revolt, and although the Duke of Somerset, who understood the causes of the rising well
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enough to sympathise with them, more or less succeeded in restoring order, the Council was able to put the blame for misgovernment upon him, and ordered his imprisonment.
His successor, the Duke of Northumberland, ambitious and unscrupulous, did all in his power to further the Reformation as the best means to wealth and power. But while he and his friends grew rich, the country at large grew poorer, and some helped to overthrow the government with the help of Somerset.
When the Duke of Somerset was still Lord Protector, he was anxious to have the young King engage in marriage to the young Queen of Scotland (Mary Stuart) in order to prevent this princess from making an alliance with any foreign power; but as a large party in Scotland were unfavourable to this plan, he invaded that country. His excuse for doing that was that the Border men — that is, the Scotch who lived in that part of the country where England and Scotland joined — troubled the English very much. But the English Border men troubled the Scotch too; and through many long years there were perpetual border quarrels which gave rise to numbers of old tales and songs.
"High upon Highlands And laigh upon Tay, Bonny George Campbell Ride out on a day: Saddled and bridled,
So gallant to see,
Home came his good horse, But never came he. Saddled and bridled
And booted rode he; A plume to his helmet, A sword at his knee;
But toom came his saddle A bloody to see,
О home came his good horse, But never came he!"
However, the Protector invaded Scotland; and the Scottish Regent with an army twice as large as his, advanced to meet him. They met on the banks of the river Esk, within a few miles of Edinburgh; and there the Protector promised to retire if the Scotch would only engage not to marry their princess to any foreign prince, and the Scottish Regent thought the English were afraid. But in this he made a horrible mistake; for the English soldiers on land and the English sailors on the water so set upon the Scotch that they fled, and more than ten thousand of them were killed. It was a dreadful battle. The ground for four miles, all the way to Edinburgh, was strewn with dead men, and with arms, and legs, and heads. Some hid themselves in streams and were drowned; some threw away their armour and were killed while they ran; but in this battle of Pinckey (1547) the English lost only two or three hundred men. They were much better clothed than the Scotch.
Now, we must return to the story of Devonshire and Norfolk revolts. In Devonshire, the rebellion was so strong that ten thousand men united within a few days, and even laid siege to Exeter. But the rebels were defeated, and one of the leaders, the vicar, was hanged on his own church steeple.
In Norfolk the popular leader was a man named Robert Ket, a tanner of Wymondham. The mob were, in the first instance, excited against the tanner by the one John Flowerdrew, a gentleman, who owned him a grudge; but the tanner soon got the people on his side, and established himself near Norwich with quite an army. There was a large oak-tree in that place,
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on a spot called Moushold Hill, which Ket named the Tree of Reformation; and under its green boughs he and his men sat, in the midsummer weather, holding courts of justice, and debating affairs of state. They even allowed some rather tiresome public speakers to get up into that Tree of Reformation and point out their errors to them, while they lay listening in the shade below. At last, one sunny July day, a herald appeared below the tree, and proclaimed Ket and all his men traitors, if they did not disperse and go home at once, in which case they were to receive a pardon. But Ket and his men became stronger than ever, until the Earl of Warwick went after them with a sufficient force and cut them all to pieces. A few were hanged, drawn, and quartered, as traitors, and their limbs were sent into various country places to be a terror to the people. Nine of them were hanged upon nine green branches of the Oak of Reformation; and so, for the time, that tree may be said to have withered away.
As we already mentioned, the Duke of Somerset was arrested as a traitor and taken to the Tower.
He was ordered to be beheaded on the Tower Hill at eight in the morning, and proclamations were issued bidding the citizens keep at home until after ten. They filled the streets, however, and crowded the place of execution as soon as it was light, and with sad faces and sad hearts saw the once powerful Duke ascent the scaffold to lay his head upon the dreadful block. While he was yet saying his last words to them with manly courage, and telling them, in particular, how it comforted him to have assisted in reforming the national religion, a member of the Council was seen riding up on horseback. They again thought that the Protector was saved, and again shouted with joy. But the Duke himself told them they were mistaken, and laid down his head and had it struck off at a blow.
Many of the bystanders rushed forward and steeped their handkerchiefs in his blood, as a mark of their affection.
It is not very pleasant to know that, while his uncle was in prison under sentence of death, the young King was being vastly entertained by plays, and dances, and sham fights: but there is no doubt in it, for he kept a journal himself.
There were only two victims in this period who perished because of their holding the Catholic religion. One of them, a woman Joan Bucher, the other — a Dutchman. Edward was, to his credit, exceedingly unwilling to sign the warrant for the woman’s execution and shed tears before he did so.
Edward's sister Mary, whose mother had been Catherine of Aragon, and who inherited her mother's gloomy temper, and hated the reformed religion as connected with her mother's wrongs and sorrows — she knew nothing about it, always refusing to read a single book in which it was truly described — the Princess Mary held by the unreformed religion too, and was the only person in the kingdom for whom the old Mass was allowed to be performed; Edward always viewed it with horror; and when he fell ill — first of the measles, and then of the small-pox, he was greatly troubled in mind to think that if he died, and Mary, who was the next heir to the throne, succeeded, the Roman Catholic religion would be set up again. In 1552 very soon after Somerset's execution, the Second Prayer Book of Edward VI was published, and it was distinctly Protestant in tone.
The young King, however, had never enjoyed good health and in 1553 he made a will, nominating his cousin Lady Grey as his successor. His Protector Northumberland brought about Jane's marriage with his son Guildford Dudley and flattered himself that he had thus made his position quite secure.
Edward VI died the same year, in the sixteenth year of his age, and in the seventh of his reign. "It is difficult to judge, — writes Charles Dickens, — what the character of one so young might afterwards have become among so many bad, ambitious, quarrelling nobles. But he was an amiable boy, of very good abilities and had nothing coarse or cruel or brutal in his disposition — which in the son of such a father is rather surprising".
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Comprehension questions
1.What book was Edward IV the protagonist of? What is it about? Are the events described in the book the truth?
2.Characterise the Earl of Hertford (Duke of Somerset), Lord Protector.
3.Describe the Protector’s campaign in Scotland.
4.Describe Devonshire and Norfolk revolts. The Oak of Reformation.
5.Somerset’s execution.
6.Edward VI’s death. Who did the young King name as his successor?
48. QUEEN MARY (1516-558)
The Duke of Northumberland was very anxious to keep his young king's death a secret, in order that he might get the two Princesses into his power. But the Princess Mary, being informed of that event on her way to London to see her sick brother, turned her horse's head and rode away into Norfolk, because her friend, the Earl of Arundel, had sent her warning of what had happened.
As a secret could not be kept, the Duke of Northumberland and his council sent for the Lord Mayor of London and some of the aldermen, and told them everything. Then they told it to the people, and wanted to inform Lady Jane Grey that she was to be Queen.
She was a pretty girl of only sixteen, and was amiable, learned and clever. When the lords who came to her fell on their knees before her and told her what news they brought, she was so astonished that she fainted. On recovering, she expressed her sorrow for the young King's death, and said that she knew she was unfit to govern the kingdom. The lords took her down the river (as the custom was) until she was crowned. But the people were not at all favourable to Lady Jane, considering that the right to be Queen was Mary's, and they greatly disliked the Duke of Northumberland. Some powerful men among the nobility declared on Mary's side. They raised troops to support her cause, and gathered around her at the castle of Framlingham, which belonged to the Duke of Norfolk. It was best to keep her in a castle on the sea-coast, from whence she might be sent abroad, if necessary.
The Council would have dispatched Lady Jane's father, the Duke of Suffolk, as the general of the army against this force; but, as Lady Jane implored that her father might remain with
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her, and as he was known to be a weak man, they told the Duke of Northumberland that he must take the command himself. He was not ready to do so, and he mistrusted the Council; but there was no help for it, and he set forth with a heavy heart.
And his fears for himself turned out to be well founded. While he was waiting at Cambridge for further help from Council, the Council took it into their heads to turn their backs on Lady Jane's cause, and take up the Princess Mary's. That happened because Earl of Arundel represented to the Lord Mayor and aldermen that thеу thought the Reformed religion was in much danger. The Lord Mayor and the aldermen said that there could be no doubt that the Princess Mary was to be Queen. So she was proclaimed at the Cross by St. Paul's, and barrels of wine were given to the people, and they got drunk, and danced round blazing bonfires — little thinking, poor wretches, what other bonfires would soon be blazing in Queen Mary's name.
Lady Jane Gray resigned the Crown with great willingness, saying that she had only accepted it in obedience to her father and mother; and went gladly back to her pleasant house by the river and her books. Mary then came on towards London, and was joined by her halfsister, the Princess Elizabeth. They passed through the streets of London to the Tower, and there the new Queen met some eminent prisoners, kissed them, and gave them their liberty.
The Duke of Northumberland had been taken prisoner, and, together with his son and five others, was quickly brought before the Council. And they soon sentenced him to death. His head was struck off.
Mary was now crowned Queen. She was thirty-seven years of age, short and thin, wrinkled in the face and very unhealthy. But she had a great liking for show and for bright colours, and all the ladies of her Court were magnificently dressed; she had great liking for old customs without much sense in them.
But Mary Tudor acted with the energy of her family. Very soon she began to show her desire to put down the Reformed religion, and put up the unreformed one. The people even cast a shower of stones — and among them a dagger — at one of the royal chaplains who attacked the Reformed religion in a public sermon. But the Queen and her priests went steadily on. The prisons were fast filled with Protestants, who were left there rotting in darkness, hunger, dirt and separation from their friends; many, who had time to escape, fled from the kingdom.
A Parliament gathered, and they annulled the divorce, formerly pronounced between the Queen's mother and King Henry the Eighth and unmade all the laws on the subject of religion that had been made during the last King Edward's reign. They also declared Lady Jane Gray guilty of treason for aspiring to the Crown.
Queen Mary decided to marry her cousin, Philip II of Spain, but the Englishmen had no wish to see the violent and secret methods of the Inquisition established in England. Sir Thomas Wyatt headed a rising against the marriage. This man of great daring, marching to Rochester, established himself in the old castle there and prepared to hold out against the Duke of Norfolk, who headed a party of Queen's guards, and had a body of five hundred London men. The London men, however, were all for Elizabeth, and not at all for Mary. Wyatt had no success, and, at last, he was taken and defeated. He was quartered, and many of his followers were hanged. The rest were led out, with halters round their necks, to be pardoned, and to make a parade of crying out: "God save Queen Mary!"
In the danger of this rebellion, the Queen showed herself a woman of courage and spirit. But on the day after Wyatt's death, she did the cruellest act, even of her cruel reign: she signed the warrant for the execution of Lady Jane Grey.
They tried to persuade Lady Jane to accept the unreformed religion; but she steadily refused. She came up to the scaffold with a firm step and a quiet face, and addressed to the bystanders with a steady voice. She said that she had done an unlawful act to take what was Queen Mary's right; but that she had done so with no bad intent, and that she died a humble
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Christian. She wanted to die quickly, and asked the executor: "Will you take my head off before I lay me down?" He answered: "No, Madam", and then she was very quiet when they bandaged her eyes. Unable to see the block, on which she was to lay her young head, she felt about for it with her hands, asking: "O what shall I do? Where is it?" Then they guided her to the right place, and the executor struck off her head. The father of Lady Jane soon followed. Queen Mary's next object was to lay hold of Elizabeth. Five hundred men were sent for the Princess's retired house, with orders to bring her up, alive or dead. But they came to her once more in the morning. She was so weak and ill, that it took her five days to get to London. She wrote to her sister, saying she was innocent of any crime, but she got no answer, and was ordered to the Tower. One of the Lords offered to cover her with his cloak, as it was raining, but she put it away from her, proudly and scornfully, and passed into the Tower, and sat in a court-yard on a stone. They prayed her to come in out of the wet, but she answered that it was better sitting there, than in the worse place. At last, she went in and was kept there as a prisoner, and then they removed her to a castle named Woodstock. However, Elizabeth was released, and the cause of her liberty was Philip, the Prince of Spain. Philip and the Spanish Lords did not approve the idea of doing any violence to the Princess. The Queen had been expecting her husband with great impatience, and at last he came, and they were married; and the people had a great holiday, though they had a distrust of that Spanish marriage, and even the Parliament shared the distrust, and that is why the Parliament passed no bill to enable the Queen to set aside the Princess Elizabeth and appoint another successor.
A new Parliament was then packed, in which there were no Protestants. Then the Cardinal Pole came to England as the Pope's messenger. With the Queen sitting on her throne, and the King on one side of her, and the Cardinal on the other, and the Parliament present, the special petition was read aloud, and the Cardinal made a great speech, saying that all was forgotten and forgiven, and that the kingdom was solemnly made Roman Catholic again.
Everything was now ready for the lighting of the terrible bonfires. When the Cardinal had blessed all the bishops as a preface to the burning, the great trial of heretics took place. After that very many people who did not believe in the Mass were seized and burnt alive. But the result was other than Mary expected. The sight of brave men dying for their faith did more than the utmost toleration could have done to Protestants.
The Spanish marriage naturally influenced the Queen's foreign policy. Her husband was mostly abroad, he was at war with France, and came to seek the assistance of England. England was unwilling to engage in a French war for his sake; but the King of France at this very time aided a descent upon the English coast. And war was declared, greatly to Philip's satisfaction, in 1557. The French Duke of Guise surprised Calais, and the English sustained a complete defeat. The losses they took in France greatly mortified the national pride, and the Queen never recovered from the blow.
There was bad fever raging in England at that time, and the Queen caught it, and the hour of her death came. "When I am dead and my body is opened", — she said to those around her,
—you shall find CALAIS written on my heart".
The Queen died on the seventeenth of November, 1538, after reigning not quite five years
and a half, and in the forty-fourth year of her age.
Charles Dickens concludes: “As Bloody Queen Mary, this woman has become famous, and will ever be justly remembered with horror and detestation in Great Britain. Her memory has been held in such adherence that some writers have arisen in later years to take her part, and to show that she was, upon the whole, quite an amiable and cheerful sovereign! "By their fruits ye shall know them", said OUR SAVIOR. The stake and the fire were the fruits of this reign, and you will judge this Queen by nothing else.”
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Comprehension questions
1.How did Mary ascend to the throne?
2.What horrible things did she begin her reign with?
3.What was her husband, Philip II of Spain like?
4.What was her chief religious policy?
5.What news got her down and speeded up her death?
6.How is she evaluated by Dickens? Do you think it is an objective view?
49.QUEEN ELIZABETH I (1533-1603) AND MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS (1542-1587)
There was rejoicing all over the land after Mary's death. Weary of Mary's reign, the people looked with hope and gladness to the new Queen. The nation seemed to wake from a horrible dream.
Queen Elizabeth was five-and-twenty years of age when she rode through the streets of London, from the Tower to Westminster Abbey to be crowned. Her countenance was strongly marked, but on the whole, commanding and dignified; her hair was red and her nose somewhat too long and sharp for a woman's. She was not a beautiful creature, but she looked all the better for coming after the dark and gloomy Mary. She was well educated, but a roundabout writer, and rather a hard swearer and coarse talker. She was clever, but cunning and deceitful, and inherited much of her father's violent temper.
She had seen enough of the religious troubles, from which England was suffering, to understand that the one thing needed was national unity; both sides were by this time too strong, and she therefore decided to bring about a settlement by way of compromise.
Elizabeth I began her reign with the great advantage of having a wise and careful Minister, William Cecil (afterwards she made him Lord Burleigh).
On the next day after the coronation one of the courtiers presented a petition to the new Queen, saying that it was the custom to release some prisoners on such occasions, and that she would have the goodness to release the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, and
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also the apostle Saint Paul, who had been for some time shut up in a strange language so that the people could not get at them.
To this, the Queen replied that it would be better first to inquire of themselves whether they desired to be released or not; and, as a means of finding out, a great public discussion was appointed to take place between representatives of the two religions in Westminster Abbey. It was soon clear that it was necessary for the common people to understand something about what they repeat and read. And a Church Service in plain English was settled, and other laws and regulations were made, completely establishing the great work of the Reformation. Elizabeth issued a modification of the Second Prayer Book of Edward VI. All that she and Parliament demanded (by the act of Uniformity, 1559) was that this Prayer Book should be used in all churches. An Act of Supremacy passed in the same year finally abolished foreign interference in English ecclesiastical affairs and restored jurisdiction in such matters to the Crown.
So, Elizabeth succeeded to establish a national English Church, but some preferred to keep to their religion, and they were inclined to follow the teaching of John Calvin (1509-1564), French Protestant Reformer in Geneva, who disapproved of all connection between Church and State and of government of bishops, claimed absolute freedom for every congregation to govern itself in its own way. Calvin asserted that each man’s fate was predestined, and did not depend on their good or bad deeds, but, rather, God determined who is to be saved and who is to be doomed. This religion was secularised: it prescribed work, pursuit of daily routine, thriftiness and profit-gaining. The doctrine expressed the views of the burgeoning capitalist class5. After some time those who held these opinions were called Puritans.
But Elizabeth had other matters to engage her attention besides the religious settlement in England. The great trouble of Elizabeth's reign and unfortunate cause of a great part of turmoil and bloodshed as occurred in it was Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots.
She was the daughter of the Queen Regent of Scotland, Mary of Guise. Scotland had accepted the doctrines of Calvin with enthusiasm, and Mary of Guise found herself opposed
5 In his The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism the German sociologist, economist, and politician Max Weber wrote that capitalism in northern Europe evolved when the Protestant (particularly Calvinist) ethic, which encouraged the rational pursuit of economic gain, influenced large numbers of people to engage in work in the secular world, developing their own enterprises and engaging in trade and the accumulation of wealth for investment. In other words, the Protestant was an important force behind the unplanned and uncoordinated mass action that influenced the development of capitalism.
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by the Scottish nobility, who even surpassed the English courtiers of Edward VI in confiscating Church property for their own profit. Mary of Guise sent for French troops, and the Lords of the Congregation invited Elizabeth to help them. (We must go back to the reign of Henry VIII, who had married his daughter Margaret to James IV of Scotland. Margaret's son, James V, had married Mary of Guise, and their only child was Mary Queen of Scots).
When Mary Queen of Scots was quite a child, she has been married to the Dauphin, the son and heir of the King of France. As the Roman Church had never recognised the marriage of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth's mother, Mary Queen of Scots could regard herself as rightful Queen of England.
Much subsequent troubles might have been avoided if Henry VIII’s scheme for a marriage between his son Edward VI and Mary had been successfully carried out. But an invasion of Scotland and the burning of Edinburgh were hardly the best ways of its success.
After her marriage to Dauphin Mary became closely connected with France, and France was jealous of England, so there was far greater danger in this than it would have been without her alliance with that great power. Her husband, after the death of his father, became Francis the Second, King of France, and the matter grew very serious. The young couple wanted to be English King and Queen, and the Pope was disposed to help them.
Now the reformed religion, under the guidance of a powerful preacher John Knox, lately returned from Geneva, had been making fierce progress in Scotland. English historians claim that at that time it was still a half savage country, where there was a great deal of murdering and rioting; and the Reformers, instead of reforming those evils, went to work in the ferocious old Scottish spirit, laying churches and chapels waste, pulling down pictures and altars, and knocking about the Grey Friars, and the Black Friars, and the White Friars, and the Friars of all sorts or colours, in all directions. All that caused France to sent troops to Scotland, with the hope of setting the friars of all colours and sorts on their legs again; of conquering that country first, and England afterwards; and so crushing the Reformation to pieces. The Scottish Reformers, who had formed a great League which they called the Congregation of the Lord, secretly got Elizabeth to know that, if the reformed religion failed in their country, it would be the same in England. Elizabeth sent an army to Scotland to support the Reformers, who were in arms against their sovereign. Her fleet appeared there, and thus prevented the French from landing help for their friends. Mary of Guise retreated to Edinburgh and then to Dunbar. On the 29th of March an English army entered Scotland, and the regent received an asylum in Edinburgh castle, and in July 1560 she died. By the Treaty of Leith the French left Scotland and acknowledged Elizabeth as Queen of England.
Soon after that the young French King died. Mary Stuart was then invited by her Scottish subjects to return home and reign over them. She accepted — it happened in 1561.
Going to her own rough country, Mary embarked at Calais, and as she came out of the harbour, a vessel was lost before her eyes, and she said, "O! Good God! What an omen this is for such a voyage!" She was very fond of France, and sat on the deck, looking back at it, weeping until it was quite dark. When she went to bed, she ordered to be awoken at daybreak, if the French coast were still visible, that she might behold it for the last time. As morning happened to be clear, it was done so, and she again wept for the country she was leaving and said many times: "Farewell, France! I shall never see thee again!" She was only nineteen then.
When Mary came to Scotland and settled at the palace of Holyrood, she found herself among uncouth strangers and wild customs, very different from the court in France. When she was tired out by her voyage, the people met her with a serenade of discordant music and made her head ache — it was a fearful concert of Scotland pipes. She met the powerful leaders of the Reformed Church, who were against her amusement, however innocent, and denounced music and dancing as works of the devil. John Knox himself often lectured her, violently and angrily, and did much to make her life unhappy. All these reasons confirmed her old attachment to the Romish religion. She even gave a solemn pledge to the heads of the Romish
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Church that if she ever succeeded to the English Crown, she would set up that religion again. And the Romish party constantly put her forward against the Queen of England.
Elizabeth, on the other hand, was very vain and jealous, and had an extraordinary dislike to people being married, though suitors of her own started up from Spain, Austria, Sweden and England. She always declared in her good set speeches that she would never be married at all, but would live and die a Maiden Queen.
Mary Queen of Scots in 1565 married her cousin Henry, Lord Darnley, also a grandson of Margaret Tudor. He was a tall simpleton; he could dance and play the guitar, but he had a habit to get drunk and eat gluttonously, and often showed himself in many mean and vain ways.
Mary's brother, the Earl of Murray, the head of the Protestant party in Scotland, had opposed this marriage, partly on religious grounds, and partly from personal dislike of the bridegroom. Mary then banished Murray, and, when he and some other nobles rose in arms to support the reformed religion, she herself, in a month from her wedding day, rose against them in armour with loaded pistols in her saddle. Driven out of Scotland, the nobles presented themselves before Elizabeth — who called them traitors in public, but assisted them in private.
Mary soon began to hate her husband, and he, in his turn, began to hate David Rizzio, the Scotland Queen's secretary, whom he believed to be her lover. Darnley made a wicked agreement with several other lords to murder Rizzio. On the 1st of March, 1566, this was done: Darnley brought the conspirators up a private staircase, dark and steep, into a range of rooms where Mary was sitting at supper with her sister and the doomed man. When they entered the room, Darnley took the Queen round the waist, and Lord Ruthven came in, gaunt and ghastly, leaning on two men (he had just risen up from a bed of sickness). Rizzio ran behind the Queen seeking protection. "Let him come out of the room", said Ruthven. "He shall not leave the room", replied the Queen, "I read the danger in your face, and it is my will that he remain here". They then sat upon him, struggled with him, overturned the table, and killed Rizzio with fifty-six stabs. And the Queen said; “No more tears. I will think now of revenge!”
Her husband issued a proclamation, falsely denying that he had any knowledge of the late bloody business. Mary soon afterwards gave birth to a son. Now she fell in love with the Earl of Bothwell, and they together began to plan means of getting rid of Darnley. Bothwell had such power over Mary that he made her even to pardon the assassins of Rizzio.
Darnley, who had left Mary and gone to his father's house to Glasgow, now was taken ill with the small-pox, but it looked as pretence, and within another month Bothwell proposed to one of the late conspirators against Rizzio to murder Darnley.
Soon Mary induced her husband to go back with her to Edinburgh, and to occupy instead of the palace a lone house outside the city called the Kirk of Field. Here he lived for a week. One Sunday night Mary remained with him until ten o'clock, and then left him, to go to Holyrood to be present at an entertainment. At two о'clock in the morning the city was shaken by a great explosion, and the Kirk of Field was blown to atoms.
Darnley's body was found next day lying under a tree at some distance. It is impossible to say how it came there. But the Scottish people believed it was just that very revenge of which Mary had spoken so often. Voices cried out in the streets of Edinburgh in the dead of the night for justice on the murderess. Placards were posted by unknown hands in the public places denouncing Bothwell as a murderer, and the Queen as his helper. Three month after, in April 1567, Mary Queen of Scots became Bothwell's wife (he had been married himself, and his divorce was pronounced).
The nobles rose in arms, and, defeating Bothwell and Mary at Carberry, imprisoned the Queen in Lochleven Castle. The castle stood in the midst of a lake and could only be approached in a boat. Mary tried to escape more than once. The first time she had nearly
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succeeded: she dressed in the clothes of her washerwoman, but one of the boatmen, who suspected something, wanted to lift up her veil, and she lifted her hand to prevent him - and the boatman saw it was very white, and he rowed her back again.
At the third attempt Mary succeeded. A boy in the castle called little Douglas stole the keys of the great gate and rowed the Queen across the lake, and then she rode a horse. But Murray, who had been made a regent of Scotland, while Mary was in prison, gave her a battle. In a quarter of an hour he cut down all her hopes. She had another wary ride on horseback, and took shelter at Dundrennan Abbey.
Mary resolved to throw herself on the mercy of Queen of England. Elizabeth was in a dilemma; Mary in England or, worse still, in France, might very well become a centre of plots against herself, but on the other hand it was well to have Mary in safe keeping. Elizabeth decided to hold an inquiry into Mary's share in the murer of Darnley. Mary was placed in honourable captivity at Bolton Castle. Lord Lennox, Darnley's father, accused Mary of the murder of his son, and she was considered guilty.
In the very next year (1569) a rebellion broke out in the north, headed by the Earls of Northumberland and Westmorland, to place Mary on the English throne and to restore the old religion. Here are several lines from an old English popular ballad about that rising in the North.
"Then rose that reverend gentleman, And with him came a goodly band To join with the brave Earl Percy, And all the flower o'Northumberland. Then newes to leeve London came In all the speede that ever might bee,
And word is brought to our royall queene Of the rysing in the North countree.
Her grace she turned her round about, And like a royall queene she swore, "I will ordain them such a breakfast, As never was in the North before".
The earls showed little military capacity, and the rising was suppressed. It is almost impossible to doubt, as Charles Dickens writes, that Mary knew and approved the plans of the rebels; and the Pope himself issued a bill, in which he openly called Elizabeth "the pretended queen" of England. So Mary, from the very moment of her coming to England, began to be the centre of plots and miseries. At last, one great plot was discovered, and it ended the career of Mary, Queen of Scots. Several people were planning the murder of Elizabeth in favour of Mary, who had to occupy the English throne. But the plotters were all taken and executed.
Queen Elizabeth had been warned long ago of what was being secretly done, that in holding Mary alive, she held "the wolf who would devour her". Mary was brought to trial, before a tribunal of forty, composed of both religions. There, and in the Star Chamber at Westminster, the trial lasted a fortnight. Mary defended herself with a great ability, but she could only deny everything. She was found guilty and declared to have incurred the penalty of death. The parliament met, approved the sentence, and prayed the Queen to have it executed. The Queen replied that she requested them to consider whether any means could be found to save Mary's life. The Parliament answered: No.
Feeling sure that her time had now come, Mary wrote a letter to the Queen of England, making three requests: first, that she might be buried in France; secondly, that she might not be executed in secret, but before her servants and some others; thirdly, that after her death, her servants should not be molested, but should be sent home. Elizabeth shed tears over this letter, but sent no answer.
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