The ghastly scene which you have just witnessed serves to introduce the moving tragedy of Mary Queen of Scots. She was born in the hour of calamity, and conflict, contention, sorrow, and disaster dogged her footsteps from the cradle to the grave. Her heart-broken father, James the Fifth, had turned his face to the wall when her birth was announced. Ere she was christened he was dead, and Scotland was torn with the strife of contending factions. Scotland’s weakness was England’s opportunity, and Henry the Eighth lost no time in proposing his delicate little son, afterwards Edward the Fifth, for the hand of the five-year-old queen. The Scots refused the match, and an English army marched north and sacked Leith and Edinburgh. The invasion was “too much for a wooing and too little for a conquest.”
Four years later an English army again made an attempt to compel the Scots to marry their queen to young Edward. At Pinkie there was a great slaughter, but it was all in vain. The little queen was hurried to France, where she grew up with her four Maries at the gay court of King Henry the Second, and became far more French than Scottish. As she advanced in years, her grace and beauty, her esprit and her accomplishments, were the talk of France, and at sixteen she wedded the Dauphin, a sickly weakling, who only survived his marriage a little more than a year. At the age of nineteen Mary was a widow, about to set sail for her northern kingdom.
She was now the most charming princess of her time, fond of music, dancing, laughter, and gaiety, yet eager for risk and adventure, and always rejoicing in the clash of arms. Often she wished she were a man “to know what life it was to lie all night in the fields, or to walk on the causeway with a jack and knapsack, a Glasgow buckler, and a broadsword.” In statecraft she was the equal of Queen Elizabeth, and in person and charm she far exceeded her royal kinswoman. Her beauty, grace, and easy cordiality won the hearts of all with whom she came in contact.
She left France most reluctantly, and as long as the shores of that gay, joyous land remained in sight she riveted her gaze on them. As they gradually faded from her sight she sighed, and said again and again, “Adieu, France! I shall never see thee more!” She arrived at Leith unexpectedly on a dismal day of thick fog and incessant rain. Never was a more unpropitious home-coming. She had returned to a stern, poor, unruly kingdom, which had adopted Reformation doctrines with remarkable zeal and austerity. The guiding spirit of the time was John Knox, the most implacable and fearless Reformer who ever lived. Well indeed did he deserve the eulogy spoken at his graveside, “Here lyeth a man who in his life never feared the face of man.” The Covenant had been signed, the authority of the Pope had been thrown off, and Protestantism had taken deep root in the land. Mary was a strong Romanist, and she meant to restore her kingdom to the old faith. In this she failed utterly, for almost the whole of her people were bitterly opposed to Romanism in any shape or form.
While in France, Mary and her husband had assumed the style and title of King and Queen of England, and Elizabeth was naturally aggrieved. Now Mary offered to give up her claim if Elizabeth would recognize her as heir to the English throne. The Scottish queen said that she asked for nothing more than her due. Should Elizabeth—the Virgin Queen—die without children, Mary would be heir to her throne by right of birth, though her claim had been barred by Henry the Eighth. Elizabeth, however, flatly refused to make any such agreement.
For a time Mary was popular with her subjects, but soon the heather was on fire. All sorts of suitors aspired to her hand, and the rival factions were eager to marry her to a Catholic or a Protestant, according to the character of their respective beliefs. At length, however, she decided to marry Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, “a long lad . . . beardless and lady-faced,” and only nineteen years of age. He was a Roman Catholic like herself.
The inevitable rising took place, but it was ineffective, and for a while the Protestant cause was undone and Mary triumphed. Meanwhile the queen had discovered that her youthful husband was vain, spiteful, foolish, untrustworthy, and drunken. He was eager for the “crown matrimonial,” and yearned to rule in her name; but Mary consistently refused his request, and Darnley believed that her Italian secretary, David Riccio, was at the back of her refusal. Some of the nobles were bitterly jealous of the foreigner, who was supposed to sway the queen’s counsels, and with these malcontents Darnley came to an understanding. The result you have witnessed in the savage scene with which this chapter opened.
Riccio was dead, and Mary, maddened with rage at the night’s work, determined to have her revenge. Within a year Darnley was murdered in the lonely house of “Kirk of Field,” which stood on the site of the present University of Edinburgh. No one knew exactly how Darnley had perished, though thousands heard the roar of the explosion which blew up the house in which he was lying. His murderer was unknown, though anonymous placards on the walls of the Tolbooth accused the Earl of Bothwell of the foul deed. This earl was a masterful, bold, and vicious man, with whom Mary had fallen over head and ears in love. He was the very antithesis of Darnley with his “heart of wax,” and Mary needed a strong arm to lean upon. So flinging every prudential consideration to the winds, she gave her whole heart to the dangerous and showy man who was accused of murdering her husband. Bothwell was tried for the crime, but the trial was a mere mockery, and the accused rode to the court of justice on Darnley’s favourite steed. No witnesses were called, and the jury, composed of Bothwell’s partisans, triumphantly acquitted him.
Bothwell had already been divorced, and now he was free to marry the queen. The ceremony took place in the presence-chamber at Holyrood, and when the news leaked out men’s hearts were hot with shame and indignation. For a brief time Mary and her new husband seemed happy, but Bothwell’s fierce and brutal nature soon revealed itself. There were angry quarrels between the pair, and on one occasion Mary called for a knife with which to kill herself.
Ere long a rebellion broke out, and the insurgents marched to battle beneath a banner painted with the figure of a murdered king with an infant prince kneeling beside the body, crying, “Judge and avenge my cause, O God.” At Carberry Hill, on the longest day of the year 1567, Bothwell offered to decide the contest by single combat, but this the queen would not allow. Her forces melted away. Bothwell fled, and she was a captive in the hands of an exasperated people. A month later she was rowed across Loch Leven to the castle which still stands upon its little island. Here she was imprisoned, and here she was forced to abdicate the throne in favour of her infant son James. The Earl of Moray, her half-brother, was named regent, and the Protestant party was once more supreme.