In 1581, Mary made a still more melancholy representation of her condition. “I am reduced to such an excessive weakness,” she says, “especially in my legs, that I am not able to walk a hundred steps, and yet I am at this moment better than I have been for these six months past. Ever since last Easter, I have been obliged to make my servants carry me in a chair; and you may judge how seldom I am thus transported from one spot to another, when there are so few people about me fit for such an employment.”[184] In the midst of all this distress, it was only from resources within herself that she was able to derive any consolation. Her religious duties she attended to with the strictest care, and devoted much of her time to reading and writing. At rare intervals, she remembered her early cultivation of the Muses; and she even yet attempted occasionally to beguile the time with the charms of poetry. She produced several short poetical compositions during her imprisonment; and of these, the following Sonnet, embodying so simply and forcibly her own feelings, cannot fail to be read with peculiar interest:
“Que suis je, helas! et de quoi sert ma vie?
Je ne suis fors q’un corps privé de coeur;
Un ombre vain, un objet de malheur,
Qui n’a plus rien que de mourir envie.
Plus ne portez, O ennemis, d’envie
A qui n’a plus l’esprit à la grandeur!
Je consomme d’excessive douleur,—
Votre ire en bref ce voira assouvie;
Et vous amis, qui m’avez tenu chere,
Souvenez vous, que sans heur—sans santé
Je ne saurois aucun bon œuvre faire:
Souhaitez donc fin de calamité;
Et que ci bas étant assez punie,
J’aye ma part en la joye infinie.”[185]
But the most celebrated of all Mary’s efforts during her captivity, is a long and eloquent letter she addressed to Elizabeth, in 1582, when she heard that her son’s person had been seized at the Raid of Ruthven,—and when, dreading, with maternal anxiety, that he might be involved in the woes which had overtaken herself, she gave vent to those feelings which had long agitated her bosom, and which she now, with pathetic force, laid before Elizabeth, as the author of all her misfortunes. The ability and vigour with which this letter is written, well entitle it, as Dr Stuart has remarked, to survive in the history of the Scottish nation. It was Mary’s own wish that it should do so. “I am no longer able,” she says, “to resist laying my heart before you; and while I desire that my just complaints shall be engraved in your conscience, it is my hope that they will also descend to posterity, to prove the misery into which I have been brought by the injustice and cruelty of my enemies. Having in vain looked to you for support against their various devices, I shall now carry my appeal to the Eternal God, the Judge of both, whose dominion is over all the princes of the earth. I shall appeal to him to arbitrate between us; and would request you, Madam, to remember, that in his sight nothing can be disguised by the paint and artifices of the world.” She proceeds to recapitulate the injuries she had sustained from Elizabeth ever since she came to the throne of Scotland,—reminding her, that she had busied herself in corrupting her subjects and encouraging rebellion; that when imprisoned in Loch-Leven, she had assured her, through her ambassador, Throckmorton, that any deed of abdication she might subscribe, was altogether invalid; yet that, upon her escape, though she at first allured her by fair promises into England, she had no sooner arrived there, than she was thrown into captivity, in which she had been kept alive only to suffer a thousand deaths; that she had tried for years to accommodate herself to that captivity, to reduce the number of her attendants, to make no complaint of the plainness of her diet, and the want of ordinary exercise, to live quietly and peaceably, as if she were of a far inferior rank, and even to abstain from correspondence with her friends in Scotland; but that the only return she had experienced for her good intentions was neglect, calumny, and increasing severity. “To take away every foundation of dispute and misunderstanding between us,” Mary continued, “I invite you, Madam, to examine into every report against me, and to grant to every person the liberty of accusing me publicly; and while I freely solicit you to take every advantage to my prejudice, I only request that you will not condemn me without a hearing. If it be proved that I have done evil, let me suffer for it; if I am guiltless, do not take upon yourself the responsibility, before God and man, of punishing me unjustly. Let not my enemies be afraid that I aim any longer at dispossessing them of their usurped authority. I look now to no other kingdom but that of Heaven, and would wish to prepare myself for it, knowing that my sorrows will never cease till I arrive there.” She then speaks of her son, and entreats that Elizabeth would interfere in his behalf. She concludes with requesting, that some honourable churchman should be sent to her, to remind her daily of the road she had yet to finish, and to instruct her how to pursue it, according to her religion, in which she would wish to die as she had lived. “I am very weak and helpless,” she adds, “and do beseech you to give me some solitary mark of your friendship. Bind your own relations to yourself; let me have the happiness of knowing, before I die, that a reconciliation has taken place between us, and that, when my soul quits my body, it will not be necessary for it to carry complaints of your injustice to the throne of my Creator.”[186] The only result which this letter produced, was a remonstrance from Elizabeth which she sent by Beal, the Clerk of her Privy Council, against such unnecessary complaints.[187]
In Scotland, meanwhile, the event of greatest consequence which had taken place, was the trial and execution of the Earl of Morton, for having been art and part in the murder of Darnley. Morton’s intolerable tyranny having rendered him odious to the greater part of the nobility, and the young King having nearly arrived at an age when he could act and think for himself, he found it necessary, very unwillingly, to retire from office. He did not, even then, desist from carrying on numerous intrigues; and it was rumoured, that he intended seizing the King’s person, and carrying him captive into England. Whether there was any truth in this report or not, it is certain that James became anxious to get rid of so factious and dangerous a nobleman. The only plausible expedient which occurred to him, or his Council, was, to accuse Morton of a share in Bothwell’s guilt. His trial does not seem to have been conducted with any very scrupulous regard to justice. But a jury of his peers was allowed him; and they, having heard the evidence in support of the charges, found him guilty of having been in the council or knowledge of the conspiracy against the late King, of concealing it, and of being art and part in the murder. It was to the latter part of this verdict alone that Morton objected. He confessed that he knew of the intended murder, and had concealed it, but positively disclaimed having been art and part in it. This seems, however, to have been a distinction without a difference. On the 1st of June 1581, he was condemned to the block, and next day the sentence was executed. The instrument called the Maiden, which was used to behead him, he had himself brought into Scotland, and he was the first to suffer by it. His head was placed on the public gaol at Edinburgh, and his body buried privately by a few menials. He had been universally hated, and there was hardly one who lamented his death.
CHAPTER XI.
MARY’S TRIAL AND CONDEMNATION.
The closing scene of Mary’s life was now rapidly approaching. Debilitated as she was by her long confinement, and the many painful thoughts which had been incessantly preying on her peace of mind, it is not likely that she could have long survived, even though she had been left unmolested within the walls of her prison. But she had been the source of two much jealousy and uneasiness to Elizabeth, to be either forgotten or forgiven. Weak as she was in body, and destitute alike of wealth and power, her name had nevertheless continued a watchword and a tower of strength, not only to all her own friends throughout Christendom, but to all who were disposed, from whatever cause, to stir up civil dissensions and broils in England. Scarcely a conspiracy against Elizabeth’s person and authority had been contrived for the last sixteen years, with which the Queen of Scots was not supposed to be either remotely or immediately connected. Nor is it to be denied, that appeals were made to her sufferings and cruel treatment, to give plausibility to many an enterprise which was anti-constitutional in its object, and criminal in its execution. Other less objectionable enterprises Mary herself expressly countenanced, for she always openly declared, that being detained a captive by force, she considered herself fully entitled to take every means that offered to effect her escape. She acted solely upon a principle of self-defence. Whenever a nobleman of influence like Norfolk, or a man of integrity like Lesley, undertook to arrange a scheme for her release, she willingly listened to their proposals, and was ever ready to act in concert with them. She had been detained in strict ward in a realm into which she had come voluntarily, or rather into which she had been seduced by specious promises and offers of assistance; and it would have been against every dictate of common sense and common justice, to suppose that she had not a right to free herself from her unwarrantable imprisonment. It is true, that many of her attempts, mixed up as they were with the interested and ambitious projects of others, gave Elizabeth no little inconvenience and anxiety. But this was the price she must have laid her account with paying for the pleasure of seeing the Queen of Scots a helpless hostage in her hands.
To discourage the numerous plots which were formed, either by Mary’s real or pretended adherents, a number of persons of the first rank in the kingdom entered into a solemn “Association,” in which they bound themselves to defend Elizabeth against all her enemies, “and if any violence should be offered to her life, in order to favour the title of any pretender to the crown, not only never to allow or acknowledge the person or persons by whom, or for whom such a detestable act should be committed, but, as they should answer to the Eternal God, to prosecute such person or persons to the death, and pursue them with the utmost vengeance to their overthrow and extirpation.” The Parliament, which met in 1585, sanctioned this Association; and, alarmed by the recent discovery of a fanatical design, on the part of a Roman Catholic, to assassinate the Queen, because she had been excommunicated by the Pope, they passed an Act, by which they determined, with the most arbitrary injustice, “That if any rebellion should be excited in the kingdom, or any thing attempted to the hurt of her Majesty’s person, by or for any person pretending a title to the crown, the Queen should empower twenty-four persons, by a commission under the Great Seal, to examine into and pass sentence upon such offences; and that, after judgment given, a proclamation should be issued, declaring the persons whom they found guilty excluded from any right to the crown; and her Majesty’s subjects might lawfully pursue every one of them to the death; and that, if any design against the life of the Queen took effect, the persons by or for whom such a detestable act was executed, and their issues, being in any wise assenting or privy to the same, should be disabled for ever from pretending to the crown, and be pursued to death, in the like manner.” That the persons by whom any of these faults were committed, should be punished, was in strict accordance with equity; but that the persons for whom they might be supposed to be done, should be considered as much involved in their guilt, was alike contrary to law and reason. The discontented were forming plots every year against Elizabeth, and, with the very existence of many of these plots, Mary was unacquainted; yet, by this statute, she was made answerable for all of them. There is little wonder, therefore, if she considered it only a forerunner of greater severities; and it was not long before an occasion occurred which afforded a plausible pretext for making a practical application of it.