fought Mary's forces at the village of Langside. The battle lasted less than three quarters of an hour; "then the queen saw her troops swept down the hill, broken and scattered in defeat, the Macfarlanes, with leaps and yells and flashing claymores, cutting and hewing among the wretched fugitives.' Mary fled toward the Border, and found refuge in the abbey of Dundrennan on the shore of Solway Firth, sixty miles from the field of battle. Here she remained for three days, then crossed over into England, and threw herself upon the protection of Queen Elizabeth. Elizabeth committed her to the custody of the Earl of Shrewsbury. After twenty years imprisonment,

Mary was beheaded on the 8th of February, 1587.

When Bothwell was separated from Queen Mary at Carberry Hill on the day of her surrender to the lords, he repaired to Dunbar Castle, and thence fled to Orkney. Before leaving Dunbar, he sent George Dalgleish, his servant, to the castle at Edinburgh, instructing him to bring back a certain silver casket which Bothwell had left in a desk in his apartment. This casket had been given to Mary by her first husband, Francis II., and she had afterwards presented it to Bothwell. Sir James Balfour, governor of the castle, delivered the box to Dalgleish, but privately informed the earl of Morton that he had done so. In consequence, the messenger was intercepted on his return.

The silver casket was opened and found to contain a number of letters and sonnets written by Mary to Bothwell. There were eight letters in all, and these letters contained such incontestible proof of the queen's participation in Darnley's murder that the nobles had little difficulty in persuading Mary to sign her abdication at Lochleven. The letters were laid before Parliament a few months later, and unanimously declared, many of the queen's partisans being present, to have been "written wholly with Mary's own hand." They were afterwards placed in evidence against the queen at her trial in England; and though in her time, as in later years, labored attempts were made to prove the letters forgeries, Mary's known character and subsequent behavior afforded convincing proof of her guilt.

One of the letters reveals the queen's knowledge of, and assent to, Bothwell's plan of carrying her off to Dunbar Castle by a pretended show of force after Darnley's murder. The Earl of Huntly had been let into the secret, and tried to dissuade the queen from carrying out the design. Mary wrote to Bothwell, "He preached unto me that it was a foolish enterprise, and that with mine honor I could never marry you, seeing that being married, you did carry me away. . . I told him that, seeing I had come so far, if you did not withdraw yourself of yourself no persuasion, nor death itself, should make me fail of my promise.'

Two days after Mary's arrival at Glasgow, when she had gone there with the purpose of decoying Darnley back to Edinburgh, she wrote a long letter to Bothwell, one of the eight found in the casket. In this letter from Glasgow, Mary said:

Being departed from the place where I had left my heart, it was easy to be judged what was my countenance, seeing that I am no more than a body without a heart. He [Darnley] said that he was like one dreaming, and that he was so glad to see me, he thought he would die of joy.. You never heard him speak better or more humbly. If I had not known from experience that he has a heart as soft as wax, and if mine had not been of diamond, into which no dart can enter but that which comes from your hands, I could have pitied him. However, fear nothing. We are coupled [referring to her own husband and to Bothwell's wife] with two false races: the Devil sunder us, and God unite us forever, for the most faithful couple that ever he tied. Cursed be this pocky fellow that troubleth me so much. You make me dissemble so much that I am afraid thereof with horror, and you make me almost to play the part of a traitor. Remember, that if it were not for obeying you, I had rather be dead. My heart bleedeth for it. To be short, he will not come but with condition that I shall promise to be with him as heretofore at bed and board, and that I shall forsake him no more. Send me word what I shall do, and whatsoever happens to me, I will obey you. Think also if you will not find some invention more secret by medicine, for he is to take medicine at Craigmillar. .Burn this letter, for it is too dangerous.

Now if

it please you, my dear life, I spare neither honor, conscience, hazard, nor greatness whatsoever; take it, I pray you, in good part, and not after the interpretation of your false brother-in-law, to whom, I pray you, give no credit against the most faithful lover that ever you had, or ever shall have. See not her [Bothwell's wife] whose feigned tears should not be so much esteemed as the true and faithful labors which I sustain to merit her place, for the obtaining of which against my nature I betray them that may hinder God forgive me.

me.

JAM

CHAPTER XXVIII

JAMES STUART, SON OF MARY

AMES STEWART, Prior of St. Andrews and Earl of Moray, known in Scottish history as the "Good Regent," was the natural son of James V. by Lady Margaret Erskine, daughter of the fifth Earl of Mar, who afterwards married Sir Robert Douglas of Lochleven. He was born in 1533, and in his infancy was placed under the care of George Buchanan. James Stewart accompanied his half-sister, the young Queen Mary, when she went to France for her education. When the Reformation began, although at first adhering to the party of the queen regent, later (1559), he joined the Lords of the Congregation and soon became the leader of the Protestant nobles.

Moray was in Paris when he heard of the revolution which had dethroned Mary, and of his own nomination to the regency. He returned home at once, and taking the reins of government into his own hands, soon proved his ability to perform the work to which he had been called. After the battle of Langside and the flight of his sister into England, the regent continued his efforts to maintain order. But it was a difficult undertaking, as he had many enemies and his position tended to multiply them. Sir William Kirkaldy of Grange, governor of Edinburgh Castle, and Maitland of Lethington, now joined the queen's party, and a period of civil war ensued. For some years the factions of the regent and the queen kept the kingdom in incessant turmoil. Early in the year 1570, during a period of civil strife, Moray marched his army to Stirling. While returning through Linlithgow, on January 23d, he was shot by Hamilton of Bothwellhaugh, and died within a few hours.

Six months later, Matthew Stewart, Earl of Lennox, father of the murdered Darnley, was elected regent, and assumed the government. His ablest supporters were John Knox and James Douglas, Earl of Morton. The regent summoned a Parliament to meet at Edinburgh in May, 1571; but the queen's party held possession of the capital, and the meeting was adjourned, to reconvene at Stirling. It met there in August; at the same time, the opposing party held its Parliament in Edinburgh. From that city, a company of the queen's adherents, under the Earl of Huntly and Lord Hamilton, marched against Stirling, surprised the lords who were there assembled, and killed the regent. John Erskine, Earl of Mar, was then chosen regent; but he died on the 28th of October, 1572.

The regency now devolved upon the Earl of Morton. In the spring of 1573, he concluded an arrangement with England by which nearly two thousand English troops entered Scotland and assisted in the reduction of

the castle of Edinburgh. The castle was surrendered toward the end of May. Its governor, Kirkaldy of Grange, and his brother, were hanged at the Cross of Edinburgh.

John Knox died at Edinburgh on November 24, 1572, in the sixtyseventh year of his age.

Early in 1578, Morton resigned the regency. He had never been popular, and his treatment of the Reformed Church lost him the support of its clergy. When the Roman Church was abolished at the time of the Reformation, the bishops and other prelates of that establishment were allowed to receive, during their lives, two thirds of the ecclesiastical revenues, the Protestant Church receiving for its maintenance one third. As the prelates began to die, their offices were filled by clerical agents of Morton and some of the other nobles. These agents being ministers, assumed the titles and were allowed a small part of the revenues of their positions, but handed the bulk of the receipts over to the patrons who had secured their appointment. The Scotch people called them straw bishops, or tulchans-tulchan being the name applied to a stuffed calf, which at milking time was set in position as if to suck the cow, the cow thus being deceived into giving her milk freely.

Alexander Erskine, keeper of Stirling Castle, and guardian of the young king, held a secret meeting with some of the dissatisfied nobles, in 1578, at which the twelve-year-old James was present. At this meeting the king was advised to take the reins of government into his own hands. Knowledge of the meeting having come to Morton's ears, he tendered his resignation as regent, which James accepted.

The government was then committed to a council of twelve members; and a competition between the rival factions in Scotland began for the possession of the juvenile king's favor. In 1579, Esme Stewart, Lord D'Aubigne, nephew of the Regent Lennox, and cousin to James, arrived in Scotland from France, where he had been brought up. This unworthy nobleman soon became a favorite of the king. He was first created Earl, then Duke of Lennox, and was appointed High Chamberlain and governor of the castle of Dumbarton. Captain James Stewart, second son of Lord Ochiltree, and brother-in-law to John Knox, was another of the king's favorites. He was elevated to the rank of Earl of Arran in 1581.

In December, 1580, Captain Stewart entered the king's council chamber, Earl Morton being present, and accused the latter of having taken part in the murder of Darnley. Two days later, the ex-regent was imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle, and was tried on the 1st of June, 1581. Almost every man upon the jury was his known enemy. Morton was condemned and beheaded on June 2d. Before his death he acknowledged that Bothwell had told him of the plot, and tried to induce him to join in the conspiracy. When asked why he had not revealed the intended crime, he replied "To whom could I have revealed it? To the queen? She was the doer of it

To Darnley? I durst not for my life; for I knew him to be such a child, that there was nothing told him but he would reveal it to her again."

In the spring of 1581, the king ratified Craig's Confession of Faith, which thus became the first National Covenant of Scotland. About this time Boyd, Archbishop of Glasgow, having died, the Privy Council granted to the Duke of Lennox the revenues of the archbishopric. But as Lennox was not able to draw them in his own name, he had recourse to a bishop of straw, according to the tulchan system. He found a minister of Stirling, named Robert Montgomery, who consented to play the part of his tulchan; and the king sought to impose this puppet upon the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland.

In 1582, the Assembly met at St. Andrews determined to prevent the settlement of Montgomery as Archbishop of Glasgow. The Government, understanding what they were about to do, sent a messenger-at-arms, who entered the Assembly hall and forbade them to proceed against Montgomery, under penalty of being treated as rebels. Notwithstanding this threat, the Assembly, after serious deliberation, declared that "No man could pretend to ecclesiastical functions, office, promotion, or benefice, by any absolute gift, collation, or admission by the civil magistrate or patron "; and that Montgomery, by accepting an ecclesiastical function at the hands of the State, had incurred the double penalty of deposition and excommunication.

Montgomery, in alarm, appeared before the Assembly, acknowledged that he had offended God and His Church, humbled himself before them, and promised to give up the archbishopric. But he was induced by Lennox to retain his post and soon after entered with a band of soldiers into the hall in which the Presbytery of Glasgow had met, to whom he presented an order from the king. The Presbytery refused to comply with this order, which they regarded as null and void in an ecclesiastical matter. The moderator was dragged from his chair, insulted, beaten, and thrown into prison.

The excommunication of Montgomery was announced from the pulpits. An Extraordinary Assembly met and drew up an address to the king in these terms:

That your Majesty, by device of some councillors, is caused to take upon you a spiritual power and authority, which properly belongeth unto Christ, as only King and Head of the Church, the ministry and execution of which is only given unto such as bear office in the ecclesiastical government in the same. So that in your Highness' person, some men press to erect a new popedom, as though your Majesty could not be full King and head of this commonwealth, unless as well the spiritual as temporal sword be put into your Highness' hands—unless Christ be bereft of his authority, and the two jurisdictions confounded which God hath divided, which directly tendeth to the wreck of all true religion.

It now remained to present this spirited address to the king. A deputation, at the head of which was Andrew Melville, repaired to Perth, where