The Queen's Maries: A Romance of Holyrood

by G. J. Whyte-Melville

Independent of her own private sorrows and distresses, the Queen’s political position was at this time one of peculiar difficulty and anxiety. A sincere Catholic, and consequently, from the very nature of her faith, an ardent upholder of its infallibility, and advocate for proselytism, she was compelled by the exigencies of her station to give countenance to its most determined foes. Not only did she see its tenets repudiated by the great majority of her people, but the very toleration they extorted for themselves, was denied to her, and it was a subject of open discontent that the Mass, which had been suppressed elsewhere, was suffered to be performed in the Queen’s own chapel at Holyrood. The very adviser on whom she placed the utmost reliance, her half-brother, the Earl of Moray, was the chief support of the Protestant party in her kingdom. And although Seton and a few more of her nobility remained secretly attached to the old faith, their number was comparatively trifling, and their zeal scarcely proof against the temptations of ambition and self-interest.

Then, as if her difficulties were not sufficiently perplexing without foreign interference, her relatives, the Guises, lost no opportunity of reminding her that they looked to her alone for the restoration of the Religion in Scotland, and eventually over the whole of Britain; whilst a strong party in Spain furnishing her, for aid, with nothing but unasked advice, actually reproached her for lukewarmness in the cause to which she was sacrificing day by day her authority, her comfort, her very safety, and to which she was so sincerely attached, that, rather than resign it, she would have lost, as she afterwards did lose, her crown, ay, and the head that it encircled.

The insults levelled at her person, through her belief, constantly goaded her to anger, which prudential considerations urged her to suppress; and when pictures were paraded before her in the streets, ridiculing all that she held most sacred, and priests maltreated in her own chapel for the performance of their ritual and hers, it is painful to imagine the feelings of a sensitive woman and a Queen compelled to forego her revenge, and even to court the favour of those undutiful subjects who had originated such overt and outrageous scandal.

No wonder she galloped on with burning cheeks and swelling heart, reflecting only on the failure of her benevolent scheme so thwarted by the obstinate integrity of Knox, and insensible as the very horse that carried her to the beautiful scene opened out at her very feet.

Before her lay the noble sweep of St Andrew’s Bay, framed, as it were, in its golden sands, that stretched far to the north along the coast of Forfarshire, till their tawny line was lost in the distant ocean at the jutting promontory of the Red-head. Clear against the blue expanse, clotted here and there with a white sail, rose the delicate pinnacles of the cathedral, supported on the right by the bluff square tower of St Regulus, firm and massive like some bold champion, proud yet careful of his charge. On the left, far out into the water, stood the sea-girt defences of the castle, while between these prominent objects many a graceful arch and pointed spire denoted the churches and colleges adorning that stronghold of learning and piety, refining the taste with their exalted beauty, whilst they carried the eye upwards towards heaven. Below these, the smiling town, with its white houses and gardens scattered more and more as they neared the water, straggled downwards to the beach; and, beyond all, the broad sea lay, calm and mighty in the serenity of its majestic repose.

On her bridle-hand, Mary might have scanned the wide champaign of two counties, through which two rivers ran in parallel lines to the ocean, the intermediate space dotted with woods and rich in cultivation, the river Eden gleaming like silver in the foreground, the smoke of Dundee floating white against the dark heights of Forfarshire, as it followed the downward current of the Tay, and in the far distance, the dim outline of the noble Grampians, losing their misty tops amongst the clouds that streaked the placid sky.

Yet Mary marked nothing of this. With a flushed cheek, with a drooping head, and, oh! with a cruel sorrow at her heart, she galloped on, and never checked her pace, nor addressed her attendants, till she reached the gate of the ecclesiastical city once more.

Then she drew rein, and as they rode together up the South Street, she blamed herself that she had not sooner observed and taken pity on Mary Hamilton’s obvious exhaustion both of mind and body.

The bay-horse was, ere this, reduced to a state of abject submission and docility; the bridle, on which he was wont to strain so eagerly, lay loose upon his neck, and he seemed to be looking about for his stable with a very wistful expression of fatigue and discomfiture; but his rider’s face was pale and rigid, while her eye was wide open, and her mouth firmly set; she seemed unconscious of all that was passing around her, and disclosed that vacant, yet pitiful expression of face which is only to be seen in those who walk in their sleep, or who are undergoing some racking torture of mind by which their outer faculties are benumbed.

‘You are weary, child,’ said the Queen, kindly. ‘I should have remembered you are not so indefatigable a rider as myself. Well, we are at home now, and I shall not require you again this evening.’