The Queen was forthwith imprisoned in Lochleven Castle; and just at this time the famous casket of letters from Mary to Bothwell was seized, in the custody of a servant of Bothwell's. Of the documents subsequently produced as having formed part of that collection, the experts are totally unable to prove decisively whether any or all are genuine, or forged, or a mixture of forgeries and transcripts from genuine originals; though on the whole the last hypothesis is the least incredible of the three.
[Sidenote 1: Murray made regent]
[Sidenote 2: 1568 Mary's escape to England]
All this took place in June. Elizabeth was now suggesting that the baby prince James should be sent to her safe-keeping: there were similar hints—mutatis mutandis—from France. The Scots lords played off French and English against each other, and kept the child in their own hands. There was a strong desire in some quarters that Mary should be put to death; she was actually compelled, at the end of July, to sign her abdication in favour of the infant James. Soon after Murray arrived from France, whither he had gone shortly after the murder, and she assented to his appointment as Regent—indeed begged him to undertake it, having virtually no other course open. Both he and Lethington probably desired to protect her. Meantime however, Elizabeth was demanding her release, the successful rebellion of subjects against their lawful prince being by no means to her liking. Murray, however, felt that such a course could only involve civil war, and if pressed would force him to have Mary executed on the strength of the evidence, genuine or forged, of her complicity in the murder of Darnley. Yet it was universally believed that many of the lords now with Murray were no less guilty; over their heads too the sword was hanging by a thread. Murray as Regent ruled with vigour; and his enforcement of the anti-Catholic laws soon roused the hostility of that section. After many months of imprisonment, the Queen succeeded in escaping from Lochleven in May (1568); but the attempt to rally her followers was desperate. There was a fight at Langside on May 13th; Mary's party were completely routed; she herself fled south; and on May 16th she crossed the Solway; becoming, and remaining from thenceforth, Elizabeth's prisoner.
Thus, in June 1568, there was in France an uneasy truce between Catholics and Huguenots; in the Netherlands, the struggle between the Prince of Orange and Alva was just commencing; in Britain, the Queen of Scots had just fallen into the power of her sister of England—disgraced in the eyes of the world by her marriage with Bothwell, and on almost all hands credited with the murder of Darnley; so that whatever might happen it was certain that no foreign Power would have either the will or the means to intervene on her behalf.
The affairs of Ireland will demand our attention; but, as they did not at the time directly influence English policy, it will be more convenient to treat of them consecutively in a later chapter. The same may be said of the great sea-going movement, which was now active and was in a few years' time to be revealed as a feature of the first importance in the development of "our island story". Here we will merely note that the consideration of these subjects is deferred. The progress however of the religious settlement, always a present factor in the relations of England with other Powers, requires to be treated pari passu with the other events of the period; as also do the relations between the Queen and her Parliament.
[Sidenote: England: Protestantism of the Government]
We have already observed that Elizabeth had personal predilections in favour of the ceremonial, if not the actual theological, position adopted by her father. The weightiest of her counsellors however, headed by Cecil and Bacon, succeeded in a more definite protestantising of the bench of bishops than the Queen herself would have desired. The formularies of the Church, confirmed by the Act of Uniformity, were very much easier to reconcile with Calvinism than with what Calvinists called idolatry, and in particular the abolition of the law of celibacy in itself had a very strong tendency to abolish the sense of differentiation between clergy and laity so essential to the old Catholic position. It may have been the consciousness of this which made Elizabeth feel and express with much freedom her own objection to married clerics. But Cecil and his party were alive to the fact that the religious cleavage was everywhere becoming intensified as a political cleavage also; that politically, England would be obliged to declare for one side or the other, or would be rent in twain; that danger to Elizabeth's throne—and this she fully recognised herself— was much more likely to arise from Catholic than from Protestant quarters. Being therefore determined that she should take the Protestant side—whether from genuine religious conviction or from motives of political expediency—they steadily encouraged moderate Protestants of the type of Archbishop Parker, and others who were still more under the influence of the Swiss, or at least the Lutheran, reformers; a course in which they were greatly aided by the direct hostility to Elizabeth of the Guise party in France. In that country, the Politiques found themselves driven into the Catholic camp; in England, the Queen, whose personal sentiments were not unlike those of Katharine de Medici, was reluctantly compelled by the force of circumstances to yield to her Protestant advisers.
[Sidenote: Religious parties]
Elizabeth's first Parliament was puritan in its tendencies, and only fell short of that which had approved the second prayer-book of Edward. The bulk of the clergy still no doubt favoured the old religion, but it was the followers of the new lights who received promotion, and it was they who were encouraged by the Act of Uniformity. In many parts of the country, however, and especially in the North, the magnates countenanced a hardly veiled disregard of the new laws: and the Queen's apparent inclination to find a way of recognising Mary as her successor, as well as her favour for crosses and disfavour for married clergy, raised the hopes of the Catholics. The Huguenot war in 1562 compelled her to change her tone, and enabled Cecil to enforce the law against attendance at Mass with greater vigour. The first Parliament had been dissolved in 1559; the second, which met in the beginning of 1563, was not less strenuously Protestant and opposed to the Stewart succession. It was only the determined stand of the Catholic peers which prevented sharp legislation against the Catholics in general; and even as it was, the application of the oath of Supremacy was widened. Then Parliament was prorogued, and the affair of Havre caused the Huguenot alliance to cool. By the winter of 1564-5, the English Queen was irritating the bishops and the clergy, the most capable of whom were increasingly identifying themselves with puritan views, by insistence not altogether successful on obedience to the Act of Uniformity in the matter of vestments; although it was notorious that there was strong feeling against some of the regulations, which in not a few instances were habitually ignored. The feeling was intensified by a lively suspicion that she really wished for the Darnley marriage which actually took place a few months later, though she was professedly urging Leicester's suit, and beyond all doubt encouraged Murray and the Scottish Protestants to rebellion.
[Sidenote: 1566-67 Parliament and the Queen's marriage]