A FRENCH OFFICER and gentleman volunteer in the queen regent's army, whom she employed to cut off the professors of the reformed religion, after several outrages by him committed in Fife upon them, entered into a poor woman's house, with a small family of children at Whiteside, to plunder it. She offered him such provision as she had; but this would not satisfy him; for notwithstanding all her tears and intreaties, the cruel wretch must have what little meal and beef she had to sustain her and her young infants. She perceiving this, upon his stooping down into a large barrel or pipe to take what was there, first turned up his heels, and then with what help her family could afford, kept him in, till amongst the meal he ended his wicked life.—Knox.
MARY of Lorrain, sister to the duke of Guise, and second wife to James V. after her husband's death, aspired to the regency; and being sprung from a family who always had shewn themselves inveterate and implacable enemies to the kingdom of Christ, she set herself with might and main, to exterminate the gospel and its professors out of Scotland.—She told them, in plain words, that, in despite of them and their ministers both, they should be banished out of it, albeit they preached as true as ever St. Paul did: and, for that purpose, procured to her faction in Scotland some thousands of French soldiers, which obliged them to lift arms in their own defence. One time, these cruel savages having obtained a small advantage in a skirmish at Kinghorn, and committed many outrages of plunder in Fife, she broke out into the following expression: "Where is now John Knox's God? My God is stronger than his, even in Fife." At another time when the reformed had pulled down some monuments of idolatry at St. Johnston, this catholic heroine vowed, "She should destroy both man, woman and child in it, and burn it with fire: and that, if she had a fair pretext for the deed, she would not leave an individual of the heretical tribe, either his fortune or life." Again 1560, when her Frenchmen had obtained another victory at Leith, and having stripped the slain, and laid their bodies upon the walls before the sun, at the beholding of which from the castle of Edinburgh, it is said she leaped for joy and said, "Yonder is the fairest tapestry I ever saw! I would the whole field were covered with the same stuff." But God soon put a stop to this wicked contumely; for in a few days (some say the same day) her belly and legs began to swell of that loathsome and ugly disease whereof she died in the month of June following. Before her death, she seemed to shew some remorse for her past conduct; but no signs of true repentance, else she would not have received the Popish sacrament of extreme unction. The papists having now lost their head, and the church not suffering her to be buried with the superstitious rites of popery, she was coffined, and kept four months, and then went to France: and so she, who a little made the followers of Christ when killed lie unburied, could not obtain a burial in the kingdom of Scotland[270].
DAVID RIZIO or Riccio, born at Turin in Savoy, came over, and was introduced unto queen Mary's musicians (being of that craft) and complying with her humour in every thing, he was advanced to be one of her secretaries. But being one of the pope's minions and a deadly enemy to the cause of Christ in Scotland, he laid continual schemes to ruin the noble reformers. He laid a plot to murder the good earl of Murray with his own hand, but it miscarried. He had a principal hand in the queen's match with Darnly; but soon became his rival, and the queen's paramour. He exceeded the king in apparel and furniture, and intended to have cut off the Scots nobility, and brought in a set of foreign ministers. He counterfeited the king's seal, and nothing could be done without him at court. He was apprized of his hazard, but nothing could affright him. Whereupon the king, with James Douglas, Patrick Lindsay, &c. knowing that he was gone in privily to the queen one night, (as his custom was) came in upon them, while he was sitting by the queen at supper. She sought to defend him by the interposition of her body; but bringing him to an outer chamber, at first they intended to have hanged him publicly, which would have been a most grateful spectacle to the people; but being in haste, James Douglas gave him a stroke with his dagger, which was by the company succeeded, to the number of fifty-three strokes, and so he soon expired, March 9, 1566[271].
HENRY STUART, son to the earl of Lenox, returned to Scotland 1565, and was married to the queen; and being a bigotted papist, the reforming lords opposed his marriage, but were obliged to flee to England. While matters went well betwixt him and the queen, he was wholly at her devotion, and at her instigation, cast the Psalms of David into the fire. But after Rizio's death, the earl of Bothwel becoming the queen's beloved paramour, she fell in disgust with the king; and he being misled up in popery, and seeing himself thus forsaken of the queen, and despised by her faction of the nobility, wrote to the king of France, that the country was all out of order, because the mass and popery were not again fully erected in Scotland. But the queen, to be rid of him, caused to be given him a dose of poison. But being in the prime of youth, he surmounted the disorder. Being a man wholly given to sensual pleasure, he was easily deceived: the queen decoyed him to Edinburgh, where she and Bothwel laid a plan for his life wherein Bothwel was to be the aggressor. In prosecution of which, he with some others entered the king's lodging in the night, and while he was asleep strangled him and one of his servants, and drew him out at a little gate they had made through the wall of the city, and left his naked body lying, and so, like another Johoiakim, who burnt the roll, was cast without the gates of Jerusalem.
JOHN HAMILTON was, by his brother the regent, after the cardinal's death made arch-bishop of St. Andrew's. He exactly trod in the footsteps of his predecessors; and that not only in uncleanness, taking men's wives from them for his concubines, (as the popish clergy must not be married) but was also a violent oppressor and persecutor of Christ's gospel in his mystical members. Adam Wallace and Walter Mill were by his direction committed to the flames. Again, when Mr. Knox went with the lords to preach at St. Andrew's, he raised 100 spear-men to oppose him. He had a hand in most of the bloody projects, in the queen regent's management. In her daughter Mary's reign, she followed the same course. He had a hand in Henry Stuart's death, and was afterward one of the conspirators of the the death of the good regent the earl of Murray; but the reformed getting the ascendent, he was obliged to flee to the castle of Dumbarton, and was there taken, when it was taken by the regent earl of Marr, and for his former misdemeanours, was hanged up by the neck like a dog at Stirling, about the year 1572.
WILLIAM MAITLAND, commonly called in history, young Lethington, though a man of no small parts or erudition, yet became sadly corrupted by the court. He was made secretary to queen Mary, and with her became a prime agent against the reformation. He oftentimes disputed with Mr. Knox, and at last gave in a charge of treason against him on account of religion. And one time, he was so chagrined at the preachers of the gospel, namely Mr. Craig, that he gave himself to the devil, if after that day he should care what became of Christ's ministers, let them blow as hard as they would. He had a prime hand in the queen's marriage with Darnly, and against the lords who professed the reformed religion. After the queen fled to England, he was the principal manager of all the popish plots and tragical disasters that for some time happened in England and Scotland. But the queen's affairs growing desperate, he fled to Edinburgh castle, which was then held for the queen by the laird of Grange. Mr. Knox sent a message to them of their danger, and what would befal them. But Lethington made a mock of Mr. Knox and his advice; but the castle being taken 1573, he was imprisoned in the steeple of Leith, where six escaped further ignominy by public punishment. It was said he poisoned himself, and lay so long unburied that the vermin upon his body were creeping out at the doors of the house, in under the ground of the steeple.—Calderwood's history.
JAMES HEPBURN Earl of Bothwel was a wicked vicious man from his very infancy. At first he inclined as seemed to the protestant side, but becoming the queen's principal minion, he apostatized to popery, because it was her religion. He vigorously opposed the work of reformation, attempted to murder the good Earl of Murray, but was prevented. After the slaughter of Rizio, he succeeded in his place, and became a partaker of the king's bed. After which he murdered him, and married the queen (although he had three wives living at that time). He designed to have murdered James VI. then a child, but was prevented by the lords who rose in defence of religion and their liberties. The queen was by them made to abandon him, which made him flee to Shetland, where he became a pirate: but being obliged to escape from thence to Denmark, where after near ten years confinement, he became distracted and died mad.
JAMES DOUGLAS Earl of Morton was a man of no small natural endowments, but a man of a covetous and lecherous disposition. While chancellor, he got the Fulcan bishopricks erected[272], that the bishops might have the title and honour; but the nobility got the profit or church revenues. After he became regent, though things came to a more settled state, yet for his own political ends, he oppressed the people, but especially the clergy by promises to assign them stipends in parishes. He extorted from them the rights to the thirds of the benefice, and oftimes caused one minister to serve four or five parishes, while himself took all the stipends but one, (so that by the end of the century some ministers had but 11 l. and some but the half and miserably paid). He was the first that introduced prelacy into Scotland. Says a historian, "He threatened some of the ministers, misliked general assemblies, could not endure the free and open rebuke of sin in the pulpit, maintained the bishops and pressed his own injunctions and conformity with England; and had without question stayed the work of God, had not God stirred up a faction of the nobility against him." For first, the king took upon him the regency: then he was accused of the late king's murder. He had amassed great sums of money together; but it was partly embezzled by his friends, and partly conveyed away in barrels and hid; So that when brought to Edinburgh, he had to borrow twenty shillings for the poor. Thus having lost both his friends and his money, which might have procured him friends, he was condemned and executed at Edinburgh, June 2d, 1581. And so, for advancing the king's authority and supremacy over the church and introducing bishops into it, he was by him and them but poorly rewarded.—Calderwood and Fulfilling of the Scriptures.
JAMES STUART, son to the lord Ochiltree, was from a single centinel advanced to a captain in king James's minority; but, becoming still greater at court, he assumed unto himself the title of earl of Arran. He became the king's only favourite, and was by him advanced unto the helm of affairs; and then he set himself to ruin the church of God: for first, he got the king's supremacy in all causes civil and ecclesiastick, asserted by parliament; and then he got a set of wicked and profane bishops, like himself, again reinstated in the church. In a word, this ambitious, covetous, bloody, seditious Cataline, and scorner of religion and enemy to the commonwealth was the author of all the broils and disorders in church and state from 1680 to 1685; and would have done more (being now made chancellor and captain of the castle of Edinburgh) had not the Lord, by his own immediate hand of providence, interposed in behalf of his church; for, first, being disgraced at court, while on the pinnacle of dignity, he was tumbled down unto his first original: then taking a tour through Kyle, came near Douglas, and was at last set upon by James Douglas (afterward lord Fotherald) in the valley of Catslaks, in revenge for his accusation of his friend the earl of Morton, and thrown from his horse, and killed with a spear, and his body left lying exposed to be devoured of dogs upon the king's high way.—Calderwood, Spotiswood, and Melvil's memoirs.
MARY STUART daughter to James V. first married the dauphin of France, and after his death returned home, and took on her the regal government of Scotland. Tho' some historians represent her for a woman of a quick judgment and good natural abilities, yet it is evident she was of a revengeful temper and lecherous disposition; and being misled up in popery from her infancy, her opposition to the protestant reformed religion seems all of a piece. It would fill a volume to recite the wickedness, mischiefs and tragical disasters, that, through her instigation, by her command or example, were committed during her reign. For, not to mention her intrigues with Rizio and Chattelet the French dancer, whom she caused at last to be hanged; the court rung with all manner of wickedness, impiety and profanity. About 1566, she entered into a league with Charles IX. of France to extirpate the reformed religion. She and her favourites robbed the church of their patrimony to maintain the luxury of the court: So that they could all have scarce 2000l. yearly. Nor upon all their petitions, though in a starving condition, could they get any redress from her. She married Darnly, then fell in adultery with Bothwel, then they concerted his murder: and after she married the Regicide, lifted arms against the professors of the true religion, by whom she was obliged to flee to England. In a word, every dreary year of her unfortunate reign was blackened with some remarkable disaster, and by such acts of impudence and injustice, as corrupt nature and popish cruelty could suggest. After her elopement to England, the popish faction, of which she was the head, kept the nations in continual intestine broils, till a scheme was by them laid to marry the duke of Norfolk a papist, get rid of her son James and Queen Elizabeth, and grasp both kingdoms into the hands; but this proving abortive, she next endeavoured to have herself declared Second in England, whereupon Queen Elizabeth signed a warrant somewhat precipitantly for her execution; and so she was beheaded in Fotheringay castle, Feb. 18. 1586, or according to some 1587. She died with some fortitude, but would have nothing to do with the protestant clergy at the place of execution, saying, she would die in the catholick religion wherein she was bred and born, willing only to have her confessor: at last she lifted the crucifix and kissed it. And so she ended her days, as she lived, and with her ended bare-faced popery for a time in Scotland.—Knox, Melvil, Spotiswood, &c.