{365} Her true policy, and the one which she began to follow, was marked out for her by circumstances. Scotland was to her but the stepping-stone to the throne of England. As Elizabeth's next heir she might become queen either through the death of the reigning sovereign, or as the head of a Catholic rebellion. At first she prudently decided to wait for the natural course of events, selecting as her secretary of state Maitland, "the Scottish Cecil," a staid politician bent on keeping friends with England. But at last growing impatient, she compromised herself in the Catholic plots and risings of the disaffected southerners.

So, while aspiring to three crowns, Mary showed herself incapable of keeping even the one she had. Not religion but her own crimes and follies caused her downfall, but it was over religion that the first clash with her subjects came. She would have liked to restore Catholicism, though this was not her first object, for she would have been content to be left in the private enjoyment of her own worship. Even on this the stalwarts of the kirk looked askance. Knox preached as Mary landed that one mass was more terrible to him than ten thousand armed invaders. Mary sent for him, hoping to win the hard man by a display of feminine and queenly graciousness. [Sidenote: August 1561-December 1563] In all he had five interviews with her, picturesquely described by himself. On his side there were long, stern sermons on the duties of princes and the wickedness of idolatry, all richly illustrated with examples drawn from the sacred page. On her side there was "howling together with womanly weeping," "more howling and tears above that the matter did require," "so many tears that her chamber-boy could scarce get napkins enough to dry her eyes." With absurdly unconscious offensiveness and egotism Knox began acquaintance with his sovereign by remarking that he was as well {366} content to live under her as Paul under Nero. Previously he had maintained that the government was set up to control religion; now he informed Mary that "right religion took neither original nor authority from worldly princes but from the Eternal God alone." "'Think ye,' quoth she, 'that subjects, having power, may resist their princes?' 'If princes exceed their bounds, madam, they may be resisted and even deposed,'" replied Knox. Mary's marriage was the most urgent immediate question of policy. When Knox took the liberty of discussing it with her she burst out: "What have you to do with my marriage? Or what are you within this commonwealth?" "A subject born within the same," superbly retorted the East Lothian peasant, "and though neither earl, lord nor baron, God has made me a profitable member."

[Sidenote: Marriage with Darnley, July 1565]

Determined, quite excusably, to please herself rather than her advisers in the choice of a husband, Mary selected her cousin Henry Stuart Lord Darnley; a "long lad" not yet twenty. The marriage was celebrated in July, 1565; the necessary papal dispensation therefor was actually drawn up on September 25 but was thoughtfully provided with a false date as of four months earlier. Almost from the first the marriage was wretchedly unhappy. The petulant boy insisted on being treated as king, whereas Mary allowed him only "his due." Darnley was jealous, probably with good cause, of his wife's Italian secretary, David Riccio, and murdered him in Mary's presence; [Sidenote: March 9, 1566] "an action worthy of all praise," pontificated Knox.

With this crime begins in earnest that sickening tale of court intrigue and blackest villainy that has commonly passed as the then history of Scotland. To revenge her beloved secretary Mary plotted with a new paramour, the Earl of Bothwell, an able soldier, a {367} nominal Protestant and an evil liver. On the night of February 9-10, 1567, the house of Kirk o' Field near Edinburgh where Darnley was staying and where his wife had but just left him, was blown up by gunpowder and later his dead body was found near by. Public opinion at once laid the crime at the right doors, and it did not need Mary's hasty marriage with Bothwell [Sidenote: Marriage with Bothwell, May 15, 1567] to confirm the suspicion of her complicity.

The path of those opposed to the queen was made easier by the fact that she now had an heir, James, [Sidenote: James VI, June 19, 1566] of Scotland the sixth and afterwards of England the first. The temper of the people of Edinburgh was indicated by the posting up of numerous placards accusing Bothwell and Mary. One of these was a banner on which was painted a little boy kneeling and crowned, and thereon the legend: "Avenge the death of my father!" Deeds followed words; [Sidenote: July 16] Parliament compelled the queen under threat of death to abdicate in favor of her son and to appoint her half-brother, the Earl of Moray, regent. At the coronation of the infant king Knox preached. [Sidenote: July 29] A still more drastic step was taken when Parliament declared Mary guilty of murder [Sidenote: December 15] and formally deposed her from the throne. That Mary really was guilty in the fullest degree there can be no reasonable doubt. An element of mystery has been added to the situation by a dispute over the genuineness of a series of letters and poems purporting to have been written by Mary to Bothwell and known collectively as the Casket Letters. They were discovered in a suspiciously opportune way by her enemies. The originals not being extant, some historians have regarded them in whole or in part as forgeries, but Robertson, Ranke, Froude, Andrew Lang and Pollard accept them as genuine. This is my opinion, but it seems to me that the fascination of {368} mystery has lent the documents undue importance. Had they never been found Mary's guilt would have been established by circumstantial evidence.

Mary was confined for a short time in the castle of Lochleven, but contrived to escape. As she approached Glasgow she risked a battle, [Sidenote: May, 1568] but her troops were defeated and she fled to England. Throwing herself on Elizabeth's mercy she found prison and finally, after nineteen years, the scaffold. An inquiry was held concerning her case, but no verdict was rendered because it did not suit Elizabeth to degrade her sister sovereign more than was necessary. Not for the murder of her husband, but for complicity in a plot against Elizabeth, was Mary finally condemned to die. In spite of the fact that she did everything possible to disgrace herself more deeply than ever, such as pensioning the assassin of her brother Moray, her sufferings made her the martyr of sentimentalists, and pieces of embroidery or other possessions of the beautiful queen have been handed down as the precious relics of a saint.[2]

All the murderous intrigues just narrated contributed thoroughly to disgrace the Catholic and royalist party. The revolution had left society dissolved, full of bloodthirsty and false men. But though the Protestants had their share of such villains, they also had the one consistent and public-spirited element in the kingdom, namely Knox and his immediate followers. Moray was a man rather above the average respectability and he confirmed the triumph of Protestantism in the Lowlands in the few short years preceding his assassination in January, 1570. But by this time the revolution had been so firmly accomplished that nothing could shake it. The deposition of a queen, though {369} a defiance of all the Catholic powers and of all the royalist sentiment of Europe, had succeeded. The young king was brought up a Protestant, and his mind was so thoroughly turned against his mother that he acquiesced without a murmur in her execution. At last peace and security smiled upon North Britain. [Sidenote: Preparation for union with England] The coming event of the union with England cast its beneficent shadow over the reign of Elizabeth's successor.

[Sidenote: Absolution]

The Reformation ran the same course as in England earlier; one is almost tempted to hypostatize it and say that it took the bit between its teeth and ran away with its riders. Actually, the man cast for the rôle of Henry VIII was James VI; the slobbering pedant without drawing the sword did what his abler ancestors could not do after a life-time of battle. He made himself all but absolute, and this, demonstrably, as head of the kirk.