Upon this, Mr. Froude's cool comment is, "Both stories were probably true"! Yes, with the difference that the proof against Murray was overwhelming; for Mr. Froude admits that "Murray's offer to Randolph was sufficient evidence against himself," whereas there was none against Darnley. At page 182, Mr. Froude makes Mary "return from Perth to Edinburgh." This renders it quite clear that he has never heard of her hurried ride to Callendar.
QUESTION OF TOLERATION.
Randolph strangely finds fault with Mary for her toleration in religious matters. "Her will to continue papistry, and her desire to have all men live as they list, so offendeth the godly men's consciences, that it is continually feared that these matters will break out to some great mischief." And lo! the mischief did break out. The Assembly of the Kirk presented, under the singular garb of a "supplication," a remonstrance to the queen, in which they declared that "the practice of idolatry" could not be tolerated in the sovereign any more than in the subject, and that the "papistical and blasphemous mass" should be wholly abolished. To whom the queen:
"Where it was desired that the mass should be suppressed and abolished, as well in her majesty's own person and family as amongst her subjects, her highness did answer for herself, that she was noways persuaded that there was any impiety in the mass, and trusted her subjects would not press her to act against her conscience; for, not to dissemble, but to deal plainly with them, she neither might nor would forsake the religion wherein she had been educated and brought up, believing the same to be the true religion, and grounded on the word of God. Her loving subjects should know that she, neither in times past, nor yet in time coming, did intend to force the conscience of any person, but to permit every one to serve God in such manner as they are persuaded to be the best, that they likewise would not urge her to any thing that stood not with the quietness of her mind."
"Nothing," remarks Mr. Hosack, "could exceed the savage rudeness of the language of the assembly; nothing could exceed the dignity and moderation of the queen's reply." Of all this, in Mr. Froude's pages, not one word! Indeed he at all times religiously keeps out of sight all Mary says or writes, admitting rarely a few words under prudent censorship and liberal expurgation. Sweetly comparing the assembly to "the children of Israel on their entrance into Canaan," he dissimulates their savage rudeness, and adds, almost pensively, that Murray, though he was present, "no longer raised his voice in opposition." Randolph fully confirms what Throckmorton reported four years before—that she neither desired to change her own religion nor to interfere with that of her subjects. Mary told Knox the same thing when she routed him, by his own admission, in profane history, and his own citations from the Old Testament. Where she obtained her familiarity with the Scriptures we cannot imagine, if Mr. Froude tells the truth about her "French education." "A Catholic sovereign sincerely pleading to a Protestant assembly for liberty of conscience, might have been a lesson to the bigotry of mankind," (vol. viii. p. 182;) "but," adds Mr. Froude, "Mary Stuart was not sincere." When Mr. Froude says Mary Stuart is intolerant, we show him, by a standard universally recognized, her words and actions, all always consistent with each other and with themselves, that she was eminently tolerant and liberal. But when he gives us his personal and unsupported opinion that "she was not sincere," he passes beyond the bounds of historical argument into a realm where we cannot follow him.
Still greater than Mr. Froude's difficulty of quoting Mary at all, is his difficulty of quoting her correctly when he pretends to. Randolph comes to Mary with a dictatorial message from Elizabeth, that she shall not take up arms against the lords in insurrection. Mr. Froude calls it a request that she would do no injury to the Protestant lords, who were her good subjects. Mary replied, according to Froude, (vol. viii. p. 188,) "that Elizabeth might call them 'good subjects;' she had found them bad subjects, and as such she meant to treat them." Mary really said,
"For those whom your mistress calls 'my best subjects,' I cannot esteem them so, nor so do they deserve to be accounted of that that they will not obey my commands; and therefore my good sister ought not to be offended if I do that against them as they deserve."
The truth is, Mary's unvarying, queenly dignity and womanly gentleness in all she speaks and writes is a source of profound unhappiness to Mr. Froude, refuting as it does his theory of her character. Consequently it is his aim to vulgarize it down to a standard in vogue elsewhere.
Mr. Froude is most felicitous when he disguises Mary, as he frequently does, with Elizabeth's tortuous drapery. Thus:
"Open and straightforward conduct did not suit the complexion of Mary Stuart's genius; she breathed more freely, and she used her abilities with better effect, in the uncertain twilight of conspiracy."