Imágenes de páginas
PDF
EPUB

to her to make some search after the assassins of his son, and Queen Elizabeth had written such sarcastic and reproachful letters to her upon the subject, that she had at length no resource left but to make a show of bringing her favourite to a public trial. It was a mock trial as a matter of course, and Bothwell's acquittal was a signal for all who were obnoxious to him to flee the land. Bothwell's arrogance increased daily, and he now determined to fill without further delay the place of the man whom he had murdered. He, therefore, forced the Earl of Huntley to consent to the divorce of his sister from him, and this accomplished, his marriage with the Queen would follow; and when married to her, her son, the young prince royal, would be at his mercy. "The marriage of the Queen to Bothwell (wrote Drury to Cecil), and the death of the prince, is presently looked for." The first apprehended event soon happened; Mary having, seven days before Bothwell's acquittal, sigued a contract signifying her purpose to marry him. She could not, however, fulfil her contract so soon as six weeks after her husband's death without too much outraging public opinion: therefore, it was arranged between them that Bothwell should carry her off by force, and that she should then appear to be constrained by necessity forthwith to marry him. Audacious as Bothwell in general was, and unscrupulous as to the means he should use to the accomplishment of any of his schemes, yet he could never have succeeded as he did had he not found men of all classes willing to aid him in even his very worst schemes. Thus, at the very time that he held the Queen professedly in durance, he found assistance in the Archbishop of St. Andrew's, who hurried through his court the divorce of the Roman Catholic Lady Jane Gordon; and equally in the Presbyterians, who hurried through their court his divorce as a Protestant. And just previous to this, he had obtained the signatures of a score of nobles and half the number of bishops to a bond, which recommended him, a noble and mighty lord, as a suitable husband for their Queen, and engaged them to maintain his pretensions to the Queen's hand with their lives and fortunes. The result of all this disgraceful subserviency to the favorite's power and influence was that Mary, within three months after her husband's death, married his murderer!

Bothwell had, nevertheless, a very difficult game at all times to play he could never be sure of his position. They who most zealously served him might at any moment desert him, and the Queen, on whose smiles and favours all his prosperity, all his honours, and even his life, depended, might cool in her attachment to him, and to be rid of him give him up to the vengeance

of his many unsparing enemies. He, therefore, like a wise man of this world, most carefully treasured up such of her letters and such documents which she had signed, as seemed the most important, should she change in her feelings towards him, and be disposed to deny what he might be enabled with truth to say in his own justification. Those same written records which he in consequence so carefully treasured up for his own protection, should she disown him, supplied to his opponents the most convincing and indisputable evidence of her participation in all his guilty practices. The guarantees to him against the possible inconstancy of the Queen were unanswerable accusations against her. Mary had received from her first husband, Francis II. of France, a casket of silver, overgilt with gold, and surmounted with his cypher: this she had given to Bothwell, and within this Bothwell kept the most important letters that Mary had written to him, some love sonnets breathing the most passionate attachment to him, and the contract of his marriage with her signature attached to it. Bothwell had left this casket for safe custody in Edinburgh Castle, under the care of a man on whom he strongly depended, James Balfour; but, when the confederated lords made the Queen their prisoner and drove Bothwell to his Castle of Dunbar, he sent his chamberlain, George Dalgleish, to Sir James Balfour for the casket in question. Balfour delivered it as requested, but at the same time gave information to the lords of what he had done; and they, arresting Dalgleish, thus possessed themselves of these most overwhelming proofs of Mary's participation in Darnley's destruction.

When Murray and the other lords were summoned by Elizabeth to York and Westminster to state their reasons for accusing their Queen, they laid before the commissioners, as the most convincing proofs they could give of her guilt, the letters which were eight in number and the sonnets twelve. They were written in French and the proofs were unanswerable that they were all in Mary's handwriting. Morton, into whose hands they first fell after Dalgleish's arrest, made them over to Murray upon his return from the Continent and elevation to the regency: : he kept possession of them while he lived, and they then successively passed into the custody of the several Regents, Lennox, Mar, and Morton. Upon Morton's death they became the property of Earl Gowrie; and, on his execution in 1584, were seized by James VI., who had no desire that such condemning proofs of his mother's culpability should continue in existence. But copies of them had been early taken, and they were translated into Scotch and English and printed; and their contents leave no doubt of the guilty intentions and deeds of the writers.

It would be idle, indeed, in us now to moralize upon Mary's proceedings she was tried as few women have been ever tried, and she lived in times that too generally justified many of her actions. Of all who surrounded her, but very few were better than herself: many were murderers-all conspirators. In a general sense, as Mr. Mignet observes, the Scottish nobility were turbulent, factious, and brutal-without fidelity, honour, or conscience; passing carelessly from one conspiracy to another; now rising in favour of the Queen, and now against her; confederated one day with Murray, on the next with Lennox, and on the third with Bothwell; killing Riccio and abandoning Darnley; proscribing Bothwell after having given him every encouragement, and allowing him to escape after having risen in arms to capture him; and then pretending anxiety to avenge a crime which many of them had either advised, or foreknown, or allowed.

Thus, of the most prominent characters in those times -clerics equally with laics, archbishops equally with earls, Presbyterians equally with Romanists-it might truly be said that they were all, more or less, accomplices in all the deeds of violence that were committed; and, surrounded as Mary continually was with men of this description, whose passions were their law, and over whom whatever might be their creed religion exercised no controul, it was scarcely to be expected that Mary, having equally strong passions with any of them, should be otherwise than we find her. In other times, and with less unprincipled subjects, she might have reigned guiltless of all crimes and chargeable with few errors; but her wild and fierce and lawless passion for Earl Bothwell-he a husband and she a wife-a passion that so possessed her and overpowered her that she was perfectly resistless under it, could not but lead her ultimately into crimes which she herself foresaw and shuddered to contemplate. The foul means she took or availed herself of to gratify her guilty passions formed the turning point in her misfortunes: she never afterwards had an hour's peace nor one hour's freedom from anxiety: then commenced her real troubles-her real mental afflictions-her real adversities. Defeated, dethroned, imprisoned by her subjects, her one great crime rung in her ears by all who approached her: the blood of her husband charged upon her and in the general opinion proved upon her-torn from the man for whom she had sacrificed her reputation and her crown-cast out from her country as a pollution and a disgrace to it-Mary's feelings with her proud spirit must at times have been agonising. The cup of bitterness that she had mingled for herself she drank to

VOL. XXXI.-M

the dregs; and in her many hours of solitude, in her many years of most unjust captivity, she could not but have felt that her one great crime was the real cause of all her sorrows, of all her losses, of all her miseries. Of remorse she appears to

have felt none, or, at least, to have expressed none; her object being to recover her liberty and her crown through the influence upon others of her repeated and continued assertion, through year after year, of her entire innocence of the one great crime that was charged upon her. Undoubtedly unjust as was her long detention here, and perfidious and disgraceful as were the means used and the reasons assigned for keeping her here in a close and galling captivity, and under circumstances that at times cruelly tormented her, or violently outraged her, or distressingly disappointed her yet was there in all this but judgment and retribution, and Mary would have made a far better use of the many years she passed under durance here, had she considered them as years granted to her, that repentance might have in her its perfect work, and that she might prove therein her sorrow and contrition for her past follies and delinquencies. To the very last, however, she continued to plot for her deliverance; and it is impossible not to believe, with the evidence before us, that Mary perfectly well knew that all the conspiracies to which she gave her sanction had for their object the assassination of Elizabeth in the first place, and Mary's liberation as a consequence. The archives of Simancas, the Spanish Ambassador's correspondence, and the State-paperoffice MSS., give unmistakeable evidence of the complicity of Mary in all the schemes that were proposed for the destruction of Elizabeth. It seemed to be Mary's only chance of recovering her liberty, and perhaps her kingdom; and her ingenuity, her fertility of imagination, her numerous clever contrivances to defeat all the vigilance of her argus-eyed guards, and to carry on a correspondence with so many of the conspirators, prove with what earnestness she entered into their schemes how deeply she felt their importance to her-and how heartily she desired their full accomplishment.

The revelations made on these subjects may now be considered complete; and Mons. Mignet's "History of Mary Queen of Scots" must be adjudged as the just and faithful and perfect history of that, in every sense of the word, most unfortunate Queen.

163

ART. VII.-The Church of Christ, in its Idea, Attributes, and Ministry: with a Particular Reference to the Controversy on the Subject between Romanists and Protestants. By EDWARD ARTHUR LITTON, M.A., late Fellow of Oriel College, Oxford. London: Longmans. 1851.

THERE is no evil without some good results; or, rather we should say, God overrules every passing evil to some permanent good. As it is written, "Surely the wrath of man shall praise Thee: the remainder of wrath shalt Thou restrain." The many secessions of men who had distinguished themselves at our universities, or occupied high places in the Church, must have convinced all reflecting men that there has been something defective in the course of study under which these men were trained; and that they had been left defenceless in some point which the enemy has perceived, and by directing his attack against which he has gained an advantage over them. It is the object of the work before us to discover where the weak point lies and to fortify the Church anew on that side; or rather, we should say, to repair the breach; for it is through neglect of our old defences that an entrance has been given to Rome-the neglect of a scientific acquaintance with the fundamental differences between Romanism and Protestantism as opposite systems of dogmatic theology:

"Men were taken by surprise, and arguments appeared convincing, simply because they were not familiar to the minds of those to whom they were addressed. Our younger clergy especially, unversed in the study of the Romish controversy, were seduced in numbers by the attractive, and to them novel, guise in which the reasonings of Bellarmin and Bossuet were reproduced, and imbibed Romish principles without suspecting the source whence the poison was derived" (Preface vi).

An attention to this fundamental difference has now become imperatively necessary, and it will prove a lasting benefit to the Church, not only by settling our faith and enabling us to rest securely in the old position which we have inherited from our fathers, but also in forearming us to meet any greater trials we may have to pass through in the cloudy future, which seems as though it blackened more and more as we advance; but which, when thus prepared, we can meet without dismay, remembering that the darkest hour is nearest the dawn, and assured that the sun of righteousness will soon arise with healing in his wings. "Yea, though I walk through the valley of

« AnteriorContinuar »