A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon / For the Use of Schools and Colleges

by John Lord

CHAPTER VI.

ELIZABETH.

Elizabeth, daughter of Henry VIII., by Anne Boleyn, was in her twenty-sixth year when she ascended the throne. She was crowned the 15th of June, 1559, and soon assembled her parliament and selected her ministers. After establishing her own legitimacy, she set about settling the affairs of the church, but only restored the Protestant religion as Cranmer had left it. Indeed, she ever retained a fondness for ceremonial, and abhorred a reform spirit among the people. She insisted on her supremacy, as head of the church, and on conformity with her royal conscience. But she was not severe on the Catholics, and even the gluttonous and vindictive Bonner was permitted to end his days in peace.

As soon as the Protestant religion was established, the queen turned her attention towards Scotland, from which much trouble was expected.

Scotland was then governed by Mary, daughter of James V., and Mary, Queen of Scots. had succeeded her father while a mere infant, eight days after her birth, (1542.) In 1558, she married the dauphin, afterwards King of France, by which marriage she was Queen of France as well as of Scotland.

According to every canonical law of the Roman church, the claim of Mary Stuart to the English throne was preferable to that of her cousin Elizabeth. Her uncles, the Guises, represented that Anne Boleyn's marriage had never been lawful, and that Elizabeth was therefore illegitimate. In an evil hour, she and her husband quartered the arms of England with their own, and assumed the titles of King and Queen of Scotland and England. And Elizabeth's indignation was further excited by the insult which the pope had inflicted, in declaring her birth illegitimate. She, therefore, resolved to gratify, at once, both her ambition and her vengeance, encouraged by her ministers, who wished to advance the Protestant interest in the kingdom. Accordingly, Elizabeth, with consummate art, undermined the authority of Mary in Scotland, now distracted by religious as well as civil commotions. Mary was a Catholic, and had a perfect abhorrence and disgust of the opinions and customs of the reformers, especially of John Knox. John Knox, whose influence in Scotland was almost druidical. The Catholics resolved to punish with fire and sword, while the Protestants were equally intent on defending themselves with the sword. And it so happened that some of the most powerful of the nobility were arrayed on the side of Protestantism. But the Scotch reformers were animated with a zeal unknown to Cranmer and his associates. The leaders had been trained at Geneva, under the guidance of Calvin, and had imbibed his opinions, and were, therefore, resolved to carry the work of reform after the model of the Genevan church. Accordingly, those pictures, and statues, and ornaments, and painted glass, and cathedrals, which Cranmer spared, were furiously destroyed by the Scotch reformers, who considered them as parts of an idolatrous worship. The antipathy to bishops and clerical vestments was equally strong, and a sweeping reform was carried on under the dictatorship of Knox. Elizabeth had no more sympathy with this bold, but uncouth, reformer and his movements, than had Mary herself, and never could forgive him for his book, written at Geneva, aimed against female government, called the "First Blast of a Trumpet against the monstrous Regiment of Women." But Knox cared not for either the English or the Scottish queens, and zealously and fearlessly prosecuted his work, and gained over to his side the moral strength of the kingdom. Of course, a Catholic queen resolved to suppress his doctrines; but nearly the whole Scottish nobility rallied around his standard, marching with the Bible in one hand, and the sword in the other. The queen brought in troops from France to support her insulted and tottering government, which only increased the zeal of the Protestant party, headed by the Earls of Argyle, Arran, Morton, and Glencairn, and James Stuart, Prior of St. Andrews, who styled themselves "Lords of the Congregation." A civil war now raged in Scotland, between the queen regent, who wished to suppress the national independence, and extinguish the Protestant religion, and the Protestants, who comprised a great part of the nation, and who were resolved on the utter extirpation of Romanism and the limitation of the regal power. The Lords of the Congregation implored the aid of England, which Elizabeth was ready to grant, both from political and religious motives. The Protestant cause was in the ascendant, when the queen regent died, in 1560. The same year died Francis II., of France; and Mary, now a widow, resolved to return to her own kingdom. She landed at Leith, August, 1561, and was received with the grandest demonstration of joy. For a time, affairs were tolerably tranquil, Mary having intrusted the great Protestant nobles with power. She was greatly annoyed, however, by Knox, who did not treat her with the respect due to a queen, and who called her Jezebel; but the reformer escaped punishment on account of his great power.

In 1565, Mary married her cousin, Marriage of Mary — Darnley. Lord Darnley, son of the Earl of Lennox,—a match exceedingly distasteful to Elizabeth, who was ever jealous of Mary, especially in matrimonial matters, since the Scottish queen had not renounced her pretensions to the throne of her grandfather, Henry VII. The character of Elizabeth now appears in its worst light; and meanness and jealousy took the place of that magnanimity which her admirers have ascribed to her. She fomented disturbances in Scotland, and incited the queen's natural brother, the Prior of St. Andrews, now Earl of Murray, to rebellion, with the expectation of obtaining the government of the country. He formed a conspiracy to seize the persons of Mary and her husband. The plot was discovered, and Murray fled to England; but it was still unremittingly pursued, till at length it was accomplished.

Darnley, the consort of Mary, was a man of low tastes, profligate habits, and shallow understanding. Such a man could not long retain the affections of the most accomplished woman of her age, accustomed to flattery, and bent on pursuing her own pleasure, at any cost. Disgust and coldness therefore took place. Darnley, enraged at this increasing coldness, was taught to believe that he was supplanted in the queen's affections by an Italian favorite, the musician Rizzio, whom Mary had made her secretary. He therefore signed a bond, with certain lords, for the murder of the Italian, who seems to have been a man of no character. One evening, as the queen was at supper, in her private apartment, with the countess of Argyle and Rizzio, the Earl of Morton, with one hundred and sixty men, took possession of the palace of Holyrood, while Darnley himself showed the way to a band of ruffians to the royal presence. Rizzio was barbarously murdered in the presence of the queen, who endeavored to protect him.

Darnley, in thus perpetrating this shocking murder, was but the tool of some of the great lords, who wished to make him hateful to the queen, and to the nation, and thus prepare the way for his own execution. And they succeeded. A plot was contrived for the murder of Darnley, of which Murray was probably the author. Shortly after, the house, in which he slept, was blown up by gunpowder, in the middle of the night.

The public voice imputed to the Bothwell — Civil War in Scotland. Earl of Bothwell, a great favorite of the queen, the murder of Darnley. Nor did the queen herself escape suspicion. "But no inquiry or research," says Scott, "has ever been able to bring us either to that clear opinion upon the guilt of Mary which is expressed by many authors, or guide us to that triumphant conclusion in favor of her innocence of all accession, direct or tacit, to the death of her husband, which others have maintained with the same obstinacy." But whatever doubt exists as to the queen's guilt, there is none respecting her ministers—Maitland, Huntley, Morton, and Argyle. Still they offered a reward of two thousand pounds for the discovery of the murderers. The public voice accused Bothwell as the principal: and yet the ministers associated with him, and the queen, entirely exculpated him. He was brought to a trial, on the formal accusation of the Earl of Lennox, in the city of Edinburgh, which he was permitted to obtain possession of. In a place guarded by his own followers, it was not safe for any witnesses to appear against him, and he was therefore acquitted, though the whole nation believed him guilty.