This was not all. He was resolved also to throw himself into the arms of the pope; desirous only of doing so without too much ostentation, and fancying, says Buchanan, that he could thus lessen the infamy of this base deed. For this purpose the convent of the Franciscans was chosen.[305] The queen-mother attended. For a Guise the scene was one of exquisite enjoyment such as Mary would not willingly lose. Some of the courtiers who were devoted to Rome were also present. There, in the dim light of the chapel, that weak man, to whom people had been looking for the triumph of the Reformation in Scotland, fondly fancying that he was performing a secret action, knelt down before the altar, humbly confessed his errors, trampled under foot the oaths which he had taken to his own country and to England, renounced the evangelical profession of Jesus Christ, submitted to the pope, and received absolution of the cardinal.[306] The spectators exulted in Arran’s humiliation. The wretched man continued indeed to be regent in name, but from that hour he possessed nothing more than the phantom of authority, having for his own governor the lord cardinal. He therefore fell into contempt, and those even for whom he had sacrificed everything had no respect for him. ‘He who will save his life shall lose it.’
The report of his perjury spread rapidly abroad. Few were surprised to hear it, but a great many were angry. The English ambassador wrote to him as follows: ‘Forasmuch as I do hear sundry reports of your sudden departure to Stirling, which if they were true in part ... might highly touch your honor: ... I cannot well satisfy myself without the address of these my letters unto your lordship, only to require of your goodness to signify unto me how you do remain towards the king’s majesty and the accomplishment of your oath and promise afore expressed. I beseech your lordship to let me know the truth by your own advertisement, to the intent that I may undelayedly write the same to the king’s majesty before he shall receive any sinister or wrong informations in that behalf, which might percase alter his highness’ affection and good opinion conceived towards you. Whereof for my part I would be right loath.’[307]
CORONATION OF MARY STUART.
Another ceremony followed that of the abjuration. It was the coronation of the little queen, which took place on September 9, with great pomp. The alliance between Scotland and France was renewed, and fresh promises were made to Francis I. The cardinal thus brilliantly opened his reign, and by placing the crown on the head of a little girl, he said to himself that at least he had no need to fear that the child would take it into her head to thwart his schemes.[308]
Henry VIII. was in consternation. The abjuration of the regent and the political revolution which accompanied it upset his most cherished plans. But the ratification of the treaty with him was so recent that the question might be raised whether the whole of this Stirling business was anything more than a transient mistake, the fruit of Arran’s weakness. He therefore enjoined his ambassador to use his utmost endeavors to recall the regent to his first intentions. It appeared to Henry impossible that Arran should act in a manner so foolish, so dishonorable, so cruel, so pitiless for Scotland, as not only to throw away all the advantages offered to himself, but still more to give up his country to fire and sword and to all the calamities of a terrible war. All these considerations urged by Sadler were fruitless. At length, indignant at the perjury and the insult, Henry recalled his ambassador, declared war on Scotland, ordered the seizure of the numerous Scottish ships which lay in his ports, threw into prison the seamen and the merchants, and sent a herald to announce to the Scots ‘that they had covenanted with a prince of honor that would not suffer their disloyalty unpunished and unrevenged, whose power and puissance, by God’s grace, is and shall be sufficient against them to make them know and feel their own faults and offences. Fear,’ said he, ‘the hand of God over you.’ It was war, war with all its horrors of fire and sword, that Henry in his wrath had determined to wage with Scotland. ‘You shall beat down and overthrow the castle of Edinburgh, burn and sack the capital, with Holyrood and Leith and the villages around, putting man, woman, and child to the sword without exception. To overthrow St. Andrews so as the upper stone may be the nether, and not one stick stand by another.’[309] The wrath of Henry was terrible; but nothing could alarm the presumptuous cardinal. When he heard of the imprisonment of the Scottish merchants and seamen, he smiled and said jestingly, ‘When we have conquered England we will make compensation to the merchants.’
THE EARL OF LENNOX.
When the cardinal came out of prison, his eyes had fallen on two men who stood in his way. One of these was the regent, and he had got rid of him by becoming his master. The other was the earl of Lennox, a man formidable by his rank and his pretensions, who had even supposed it possible that he might marry the queen-mother. But Mary of Guise, like all her kindred, was a fanatical devotee of Rome, and at the instance of the cardinal she prayed the King of France to recall Lennox on any specious pretext, adding that his residence in Scotland might lead to a disturbance of peace. Lennox saw that they were trifling with him. He was quite as versatile as Arran but more capable, and seeing that he had lost the favor of France, he offered his services to the King of England, who eagerly accepted them. Lennox was then looked upon as the head of Scottish Protestantism. The two foremost lords of Scotland had performed a feat of what is vulgarly called chassé-croisée. The leader of the Protestants had become a papist, and the man of the court of Francis I. had turned Protestant. Instead of the daughter of the Guises, he married Lady Margaret Douglas, a niece of Henry VIII. That is how men of the world manage matters. Evangelical religion had not lost much in losing Arran. Neither had it gained more by acquiring Lennox. These men were only moved by political interests, and Scottish Protestantism more than any other was to reject these shameful combinations of Christ and Baal, and was to have one king alone, Jesus Christ.
The cardinal, victorious along the whole line, set himself immediately to the work which he had most at heart,—to crush the Reformation. The law which authorized the reading of Holy Scripture had borne its fruit, and ‘in sundry parts of Scotland,’ says the chronicler, ‘thereby were opened the eyes of the elect of God to see the truth and abhor the papistical abominations.’[310] This abhorrence might possibly drive them to deplorable excesses, an instance of which we are soon to see.
There were at Perth, on the left bank of the pleasant river Tay, some friends of the Reformation. Endowed for the most part with genuine piety, they held meetings, read the Holy Scriptures together, searched out their meaning, and gave or listened to the exposition of them.[311]