It was a long dark ride to Dunbar, but there Mary was safe. She pardoned and won over Glencairn, whom she liked, and Rothes; Bothwell and Huntly joined her with a sufficient force, Ruthven and Morton fled to Berwick (Ruthven was to die in England), and Knox hastened into Kyle in Ayrshire. Darnley, who declared his own innocence and betrayed his accomplices, was now equally hated and despised by his late allies and by the queen and Murray, – indeed, by all men, chiefly by Morton and Argyll. Lethington was in hiding; but he was indispensable, and in September was reconciled to Mary.
On June 19, in Edinburgh Castle, she bore her child, later James VI.; on her recovery Darnley was insolent, and was the more detested, while Bothwell was high in favour. In October most of the Lords signed, with Murray, a band for setting Darnley aside —not for his murder. He is said to have denounced Mary to Spain, France, and Rome for neglecting Catholic interests. In mid-October Mary was seriously ill at Jedburgh, where Bothwell, wounded in an encounter with a Border reiver, was welcomed, while Darnley, coldly received, went to his father’s house on the Forth. On her recovery Mary resided in the last days of November at Craigmillar Castle, near Edinburgh. Here Murray, Argyll, Bothwell, Huntly, and Lethington held counsel with her as to Darnley. Lethington said that “a way would be found,” a way that Parliament would approve, while Murray would “look through his fingers.” Lennox believed that the plan was to arrest Darnley on some charge, and slay him if he resisted.
At Stirling (December 17), when the young prince was baptised with Catholic rites, Darnley did not appear; he sulked in his own rooms. A week later, the exiles guilty of Riccio’s murder were recalled, among them Morton; and Darnley, finding all his enemies about to be united, went to Glasgow, where he fell ill of smallpox. Mary offered a visit (she had had the malady as a child), and was rudely rebuffed (January 1-13, 1567), but she was with him by January 21. From Glasgow, at this time, was written the long and fatal letter to Bothwell, which places Mary’s guilt in luring Darnley to his death beyond doubt, if we accept the letters as authentic. 22
Darnley was carried in a litter to the lonely house of Kirk o’ Field, on the south wall of Edinburgh. Here Mary attended him in his sickness. On Sunday morning, February 9, Murray left Edinburgh for Fife. In the night of Sunday 9-Monday 10, the house where Darnley lay was blown up by gunpowder, and he, with an attendant, was found dead in the garden: how he was slain is not known.
That Bothwell, in accordance with a band signed by himself, Huntly, Argyll, and Lethington, and aided by some Border ruffians, laid and exploded the powder is certain. Morton was apprised by Lethington and Bothwell of the plot, but refused to join it without Mary’s written commission, which he did not obtain. Against the queen there is no trustworthy direct evidence (if we distrust her alleged letters to Bothwell), but her conduct in protecting and marrying Bothwell (who was really in love with his wife) shows that she did not disapprove. The trial of Bothwell was a farce; Mary’s abduction by him (April 24) and retreat with him to Dunbar was collusive. She married Bothwell on May 15. Her nobles, many of whom had signed a document urging her to marry Bothwell, rose against her; on June 15, 1567, she surrendered to them at Carberry Hill, while they, several of them deep in the murder plot, were not sorry to let Bothwell escape to Dunbar. After some piratical adventures, being pursued by Kirkcaldy he made his way to Denmark, where he died a prisoner.
Mary, first carried to Edinburgh and there insulted by the populace, was next hurried to Lochleven Castle. Her alleged letters to Bothwell were betrayed to the Lords (June 21), probably through Sir James Balfour, who commanded in Edinburgh Castle. Perhaps Murray (who had left for France before the marriage to Bothwell), perhaps fear of Elizabeth, or human pity, induced her captors, contrary to the counsel of Lethington, to spare her life, when she had signed her abdication, while they crowned her infant son. Murray accepted the Regency; a Parliament in December established the Kirk; acquitted themselves of rebellion; and announced that they had proof of Mary’s guilt in her own writing. Her romantic escape from Lochleven (May 2, 1568) gave her but an hour of freedom. Defeated on her march to Dumbarton Castle in the battle of Langside Hill, she lost heart and fled to the coast of Galloway; on May 16 crossed the Solway to Workington in Cumberland; and in a few days was Elizabeth’s prisoner in Carlisle Castle.
Mary had hitherto been a convinced but not a very obedient daughter of the Church; for example, it appears that she married Darnley before the arrival of the Pope’s dispensation. At this moment Philip of Spain, the French envoy to Scotland, and the French Court had no faith in her innocence of Darnley’s death; and the Pope said “he knew not which of these ladies were the better” – Mary or Elizabeth. But from this time, while a captive in England, Mary was the centre of the hopes of English Catholics: in miniatures she appears as queen, quartering the English arms; she might further the ends of Spain, of France, of Rome, of English rebels, while her existence was a nightmare to the Protestants of Scotland and a peril to Elizabeth.
After Mary’s flight, Murray was, as has been said, Regent for the crowned baby James. In his council were the sensual, brutal, but vigorous Morton, with Mar, later himself Regent, a man of milder nature; Glencairn; Ruthven, whom Mary detested – he had tried to make unwelcome love to her at Lochleven; and “the necessary evil,” Lethington. How a man so wily became a party to the murder of Darnley cannot be known: now he began to perceive that, if Mary were restored, as he believed that she would be, his only safety lay in securing her gratitude by secret services.
On the other side were the Hamiltons with their ablest man, the Archbishop; the Border spears who were loyal to Bothwell; and two of the conspirators in the murder of Darnley, Argyll and Huntly; with Fleming and Herries, who were much attached to Mary. The two parties, influenced by Elizabeth, did not now come to blows, but awaited the results of English inquiries into Mary’s guilt, and of Elizabeth’s consequent action.
CHAPTER XXI. MINORITY OF JAMES VI
“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 Châtelherault, 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. 23
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 Châtelherault 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.
CHAPTER XXII. REIGN OF JAMES VI
On March 4, 1578, a strong band of nobles, led by Argyll, presented so firm a front that Morton resigned the Regency; but in April 1578, a Douglas plot, backed by Angus and Morton, secured for the Earl of Mar the command of Stirling Castle and custody of the King; in June 1578, after an appearance of civil war, Morton was as strong as ever. After dining with him, in April 1579, Atholl, the main hope of Mary in Scotland, died suddenly, and suspicion of poison fell on his host. But Morton’s ensuing success in expelling from Scotland the Hamilton leaders, Lord Claude and Arbroath, brought down his own doom. With them Sir James Balfour, deep in the secrets of Darnley’s death, was exiled; he opened a correspondence with Mary, and presently procured for her “a contented revenge” on Morton.
Two new characters in the long intrigue of vengeance now come on the scene. Both were Stewarts, and as such were concerned in the feud against the Hamiltons. The first was a cousin of Darnley, brought up in France, namely Esme Stuart d’Aubigny, son of John, a brother of Lennox. He had all the accomplishments likely to charm the boy king, now in his fourteenth year.
James had hitherto been sternly educated by George Buchanan, more mildly by Peter Young. Buchanan and others had not quite succeeded in bringing him to scorn and hate his mother; Lady Mar, who was very kind to him, had exercised a gentler influence. The boy had read much, had hunted yet more eagerly, and had learned dissimulation and distrust, so natural to a child weak and ungainly in body and the conscious centre of the intrigues of violent men. A favourite of his was James Stewart, son of Lord Ochiltree, and brother-in-law of John Knox. Stewart was Captain of the Guard, a man of learning, who had been in foreign service; he was skilled in all bodily feats, was ambitious, reckless, and resolute, and no friend of the preachers. The two Stewarts, d’Aubigny and the Captain, became allies.
In a Parliament at Edinburgh (November 1579) their foes, the chiefs of the Hamiltons, were forfeited (they had been driven to seek shelter with Elizabeth), while d’Aubigny got their lands and the key of Scotland, Dumbarton Castle, on the estuary of Clyde. The Kirk, regarding d’Aubigny, now Earl of Lennox, despite his Protestant professions, as a Papist or an atheist, had little joy in Morton, who was denounced in a printed placard as guilty in Darnley’s murder: Sir James Balfour could show his signature to the band to slay Darnley, signed by Huntly, Bothwell, Argyll, and Lethington. This was not true. Balfour knew much, was himself involved, but had not the band to show, or did not dare to produce it.
To strengthen himself, Lennox was reconciled to the Kirk; to help the Hamiltons, Elizabeth sent Bowes to intrigue against Lennox, who was conspiring in Mary’s interest, or in that of the Guises, or in his own. When Lennox succeeded in getting Dumbarton Castle, an open door for France, into his power, Bowes was urged by Elizabeth to join with Morton and “lay violent hands” on Lennox (August 31, 1580), but in a month Elizabeth cancelled her orders.
Bowes was recalled; Morton, to whom English aid had been promised, was left to take his chances. Morton had warning from Lord Robert Stewart, Mary’s half-brother, to fly the country, for Sir James Balfour, with his information, had landed. On December 31, 1580, Captain Stewart accused Morton, in presence of the Council, of complicity in Darnley’s murder. He was put in ward; Elizabeth threatened war; the preachers stormed against Lennox; a plot to murder him (a Douglas plot) and to seize James was discovered; Randolph, who now represented Elizabeth, was fired at, and fled to Berwick; James Stewart was created Earl of Arran. In March 1581 the king and Lennox tried to propitiate the preachers by signing a negative Covenant against Rome, later made into a precedent for the famous Covenant of 1638. On June 1 Morton was tried for guilty foreknowledge of Darnley’s death. He was executed deservedly, and his head was stuck on a spike of the Tolbooth. The death of this avaricious, licentious, and resolute though unamiable Protestant was a heavy blow to the preachers and their party, and a crook in the lot of Elizabeth.
THE WAR OF KIRK AND KING
The next twenty years were occupied with the strife of Kirk and King, whence arose “all the cumber of Scotland” till 1689. The preachers, led by the learned and turbulent Andrew Melville, had an ever-present terror of a restoration of Catholicism, the creed of a number of the nobles and of an unknown proportion of the people. The Reformation of 1559-1560 had been met by no Catholic resistance; we might suppose that the enormous majority of the people were Protestants, though the reverse has been asserted. But whatever the theological preferences of the country may have been, the justifiable fear of practical annexation by France had overpowered all other considerations. By 1580 it does not seem that there was any good reason for the Protestant nervousness, even if some northern counties and northern and Border peers preferred Catholicism. The king himself, a firm believer in his own theological learning and acuteness, was thoroughly Protestant.
But the preachers would scarcely allow him to remain a Protestant. Their claims, as formulated by Andrew Melville, were inconsistent with the right of the State to be mistress in her own house. In a General Assembly at Glasgow (1581) Presbyteries were established; Episcopacy was condemned; the Kirk claimed for herself a separate jurisdiction, uninvadable by the State. Elizabeth, though for State reasons she usually backed the Presbyterians against James, also warned him of “a sect of dangerous consequence, which would have no king but a presbytery.” The Kirk, with her sword of excommunication, and with the inspired violence of the political sermons and prayers, invaded the secular authority whenever and wherever she pleased, and supported the preachers in their claims to be tried first, when accused of treasonable libels, in their own ecclesiastical courts. These were certain to acquit them.
James, if not pressed in this fashion, had no particular reason for desiring Episcopal government of the Kirk, but being so pressed he saw no refuge save in bishops. Meanwhile his chief advisers – d’Aubigny, now Duke of Lennox, and James Stewart, the destroyer of Morton, now, to the prejudice of the Hamiltons, Earl of Arran – were men whose private life, at least in Arran’s case, was scandalous. If Arran were a Protestant, he was impatient of the rule of the pulpiteers; and Lennox was working, if not sincerely in Mary’s interests, certainly in his own and for those of the Catholic House of Guise. At the same time he favoured the king’s Episcopal schemes, and, late in 1581, appointed a preacher named Montgomery to the recently vacant Archbishopric of Glasgow, while he himself, like Morton, drew most of the revenues. Hence arose tumults, and, late in 1581 and in 1582, priestly and Jesuit emissaries went and came, intriguing for a Catholic rising, to be supported by a large foreign force which they had not the slightest chance of obtaining from any quarter. Archbishop Montgomery was excommunicated by the Kirk, and James, as we saw, had signed “A Negative Confession” (1581).
In 1582 Elizabeth was backing the exiled Presbyterian Earl of Angus and the Earl of Gowrie (Ruthven), while Lennox was contemplating a coup d’état in Edinburgh (August 27). Gowrie, with the connivance of England, struck the first blow. He, Mar, and their accomplices captured James at Ruthven Castle, near Perth (August 23, “the Raid of Ruthven”), with the approval of the General Assembly of the Kirk. It was a Douglas plot managed by Angus and Elizabeth. James Stewart of the Guard (now Earl of Arran) was made prisoner; Lennox fled the country. In October 1582, in a Parliament at Holyrood, the conspirators passed Acts indemnifying themselves, and the General Assembly approved them. These Acts were rescinded later, and James had learned for life his hatred of the Presbyterians who had treacherously seized and insulted their king. 24
In May 1583 Lennox died in Paris, leaving an heir. On June 27 James made his escape, “a free king,” to the castle of St Andrews: he proclaimed an amnesty and feigned reconciliation with his captor, the Earl of Gowrie, chief of the house so hateful to Mary – the Ruthvens. At the same time James placed himself in friendly relations with his kinsfolk, the Guises, the terror of Protestants. He had already been suspected, on account of Lennox, as inclined to Rome: in fact, he was always a Protestant, but baited on every side – by England, by the Kirk, by a faction of his nobles: he intrigued for allies in every direction.
The secret history of his intrigues has never been written. We find the persecuted and astute lad either in communication with Rome, or represented by shady adventurers as employing them to establish such communications. At one time, as has been recently discovered, a young man giving himself out as James’s bastard brother (a son of Darnley begotten in England) was professing to bear letters from James to the Pope. He was arrested on the Continent, and James could not be brought either to avow or disclaim his kinsman!
A new Lennox, son of the last, was created a duke; a new Bothwell, Francis Stewart (nephew of Mary’s Bothwell), began to rival his uncle in turbulence. Knowing that Anglo-Scottish plots to capture him again were being woven daily by Angus and others, James, in February 1584, wrote a friendly and compromising letter to the Pope. In April, Arran (James Stewart) crushed a conspiracy by seizing Gowrie at Dundee, and then routing a force with which Mar and Angus had entered Scotland. Gowrie, confessing his guilt as a conspirator, was executed at Stirling (May 2, 1584), leaving, of course, his feud to his widow and son. The chief preachers fled; Andrew Melville was already in exile, with several others, in England. Melville, in February, had been charged with preaching seditious sermons, had brandished a Hebrew Bible at the Privy Council, had refused secular jurisdiction and appealed to a spiritual court, by which he was certain to be acquitted. Henceforward, when charged with uttering treasonable libels from the pulpit, the preachers were wont to appeal, in the first instance, to a court of their own cloth, and on this point James in the long-run triumphed over the Kirk.
In a Parliament of May 18, 1584, such declinature of royal jurisdiction was, by “The Black Acts,” made treason: Episcopacy was established; the heirs of Gowrie were disinherited; Angus, Mar, and other rebels were forfeited. But such forfeitures never held long in Scotland.
In August 1584 a new turn was given to James’s policy by Arran, who was Protestant, if anything, in belief, and hoped to win over Elizabeth, the harbourer of all enemies of James. Arran’s instrument was the beautiful young Master of Gray, in France a Catholic, a partisan of Mary, and leagued with the Guises. He was sent to persuade Elizabeth to banish James’s exiled rebels, but, like a Lethington on a smaller scale, he set himself to obtain the restoration of these lords as against Arran, while he gratified Elizabeth by betraying to her the secrets of Mary. This man was the adoring friend of the flower of chivalry, Sir Philip Sidney!
As against Arran the plot succeeded. Making Berwick, on English soil, their base, in November 1585 the exiles, lay and secular, backed by England, returned, captured James at Stirling, and drove Arran to lurk about the country, till, many years after, Douglas of Parkhead met and slew him, avenging Morton; and, when opportunity offered, Douglas was himself slain by an avenging Stewart at the Cross of Edinburgh. The age reeked with such blood feuds, of which the preachers could not cure their fiery flocks.
In December 1585 Parliament restored Gowrie’s forfeited family to their own (henceforth they were constantly conspiring against James), and the exiled preachers returned to their manses and pulpits. But bishops were not abolished, though the Kirk, through the Synod of Fife, excommunicated the Archbishop of St Andrews, Adamson, who replied in kind. He was charged with witchcraft, and in the long-run was dragged down and reduced to poverty, being accused of dealings with witches – and hares!
In July 1586 England and Scotland formed an alliance, and Elizabeth promised to make James an allowance of £4000 a-year. This, it may be feared, was the blood-price of James’s mother: from her son, and any hope of aid from her son, Mary was now cut off. Walsingham laid the snares into which she fell, deliberately providing for her means of communication with Babington and his company, and deciphering and copying the letters which passed through the channel which he had contrived. A trifle of forgery was also done by his agent, Phelipps. Mary, knowing herself deserted by her son, was determined, as James knew, to disinherit him. For this reason, and for the £4000, he made no strong protest against her trial. One of his agents in London – the wretched accomplice in his father’s murder, Archibald Douglas – was consenting to her execution. James himself thought that strict imprisonment was the best course; but the Presbyterian Angus declared that Mary “could not be blamed if she had caused the Queen of England’s throat to be cut for detaining her so unjustly imprisoned.” The natural man within us entirely agrees with Angus!