“We do protest and remonstrate against the ruler of a neighboring kingdom giving aid to rebels and revolters.” The French well knew how sorely aggrieved the English felt at the loss of Calais, and as a bribe to the queen they offered to give her back the town and citadel if she would agree not to aid the Scotch Protestants.
Elizabeth knew then that the French feared her, and she replied:—
“So long as the Queen of Scots doth falsely claim to be also queen of this my realm, then so long must I guard myself in the way that seems to me wisest and best. To free my throne from the attacks of false claimants and so secure peace and safety for my people is worth far more to me than any little fishing village in a foreign country.”
The French were driven from Scotland, and a treaty was made agreeing that Mary should give up all claim to the throne of England. Mary had empowered her agents to make whatever terms they thought best, but when she saw this provision, she refused to sign the treaty.
One year later a beautiful young woman stood at the stern of a vessel, looking back with tearful eyes at the shore from which she had sailed. The twilight deepened, and night settled around her. She turned away. “Adieu, my beloved France,” she whispered, “farewell, farewell.”
Thus it was that a queen returned to her kingdom, for the fair young woman was Mary, Queen of Scots. Her husband had died, and there was no longer any place in France for her. Scotland asked her to return to the throne that had been her own ever since she was a few days old. She was only nineteen, and she was leaving the gay, merry court in which nearly all her life had been spent; she was leaving her friends and companions, and for what? Scotland was the land of her birth, but it was a foreign country to her. It was not like her sunny France, it was a land of mist and of cold, of plain habits and stern morals. The queen was coming to her own, but her own was strange to her.
Mary had asked Elizabeth’s permission to shorten the voyage by passing through England. “That must not be,” thought the English queen. “Her presence here would be the signal for all the discontented Catholics in the kingdom to follow her banner.” Permission was refused, unless Mary would agree beforehand to give up all claim to the English crown.
“I ask but Elizabeth’s friendship,” said Mary. “I do not trouble her state nor try to win over her subjects, though I do know there be some in her realm that are not unready to hear offers”—but she would not promise to give up her claim to the crown. She was fully as independent as Elizabeth, and she added regretfully, “I grieve that I so far forgot myself as to ask a favor that I needed not. Surely, I may go home into my own realm without her passport or license. I came hither safely, and I may have means to return.”
Scotland rejoiced that the queen had come, and welcomed her with bonfires and music and speeches of welcome. The Scotch supposed that they were pleasing her, but Mary wrote to her friends:—
“In Edinburgh when I would have slept, five or six hundred ragamuffins saluted me with wretched fiddles and little rebecks, and then they sang psalms loudly and discordantly; but one must have patience.”