have regarded as his defects that he earned the confidence of a party who distrusted nothing more than the meretricious.

Born about the year 1531, the illegitimate son of James V. and Margaret Erskine was at the age of seven made Commendator of St. Andrews. A spoiler of the Amalakites even from childhood, he did not disdain throughout the earlier part of his career to draw large revenues from the properties of the Church which he was ultimately destined to be so instrumental in overthrowing. Unaffected by any consideration for the hierarchy of which he was ostensibly a member, Lord James Stuart instinctively flung in his lot with the new Evangel, and as a youth of nineteen took an active part in the deliberations of the Calvinistic leaders.

Whatever weight may be attached to the charges levelled against Murray by the school of writers to whom Hosack and Skelton belong, none at least can question the genuineness and consistency of his Protestantism. That he entertained no scruples against bowing down in the house of Rimmon is rendered abundantly evident by the nature of his dealings with Catherine de Medici, but nothing in reality was more remote from his intentions than the lending of a hand to further the recovery of French ascendancy in Scotland. It says but little for the astuteness of the Parisian diplomatists that they ever imagined that such a personality as Murray would become a tool in their hands; and, as might have been anticipated from the outset, he merely feathered his nest at their expense, and finally betrayed them to his compatriots.

Down to the year 1560 no room existed for any relations between Murray and his sister save those of a purely formal and official description. In that year, however, with the despatch of the Puritan leader to France for the purpose, as Maitland expressed it with characteristic vividness, of groping the Queen's mind,' they assume a perfectly definite shape. How far his psychological investigations justified the confidence reposed in him has never been fully disclosed, but he undoubtedly succeeded in winning the Queen over to his views, and rendered abortive the projects of the Scotch Catholic Lords who had sent across Lesly the historian to essay the task of persuading her into attempting a landing at Aberdeen and the crushing of Protestantism before that Titanic undertaking had become an impossibility.

It has been contended that in communicating the results of

his negotiations with his sister to Throgmorton, the English ambassador, Murray must be held as blameless by virtue of the understanding which subsisted between the Lords of the Congregation and Queen Elizabeth; but in view of the fact that Mary never for a moment contemplated the possibility of such a revelation, it is difficult to entirely acquit him of doubledealing in the matter. Murray's position had now become one of extreme delicacy, but none the less he was actively engaged in playing the English game so far as circumstances permitted him to do so. Upon the one hand his heart was with Elizabeth, but, on the other, it was manifest that Mary's position at the French Court had been rendered intolerable by the domination of Catherine de Medici, and that her return to Scotland had become inevitable. Only deposition could have averted what, in Murray's eyes, was a political calamity, and yet for such a proposal he knew well that his countrymen were wholly unprepared.

To

Adopting the only course left open to him, which was that of persuading his sister that her true interests lay in the acceptance of Presbyterianism and the English alliance, Murray steered his way with no small measure of adroitness. obtain the confidence of Mary and preserve that of Elizabeth was a task demanding wariness at every turn; but until the appearance upon the scene of Darnley he contrived to perform it without a stumble.

For the time being, however, both Mary and her brother were pursuing almost identical aims. From the period covered by the disembarkment of the former at Leith down till the arrival of Lennox and his son, their relations, so far as can be discovered, were perfectly harmonious. The fact that she was heir presumptive to Elizabeth had become almost an obsession in Mary's mind, and rendered her indifferent to all other considerations. Under Maitland's guidance, Murray had become convinced that the union of the two kingdoms was a political necessity, and that no price was too high to pay for such a consummation. The obstacles to anything in the shape of a permanent alliance between temperaments so remote from one another were, none the less, insuperable, and to this underlying antagonism Murray himself, in all probability, was fully alive. Little exception, however, can be taken to his conduct, from a fraternal standpoint, throughout the duration of the Protestant phase, and had not the underhand hostility of Elizabeth driven

Mary into the championing of the Catholicism she had virtually abandoned, it is perfectly possible that he might have continued to serve her loyally enough, provided only that full scope was left for the gratification of his private ambitions.

With the internal administration of the country practically entrusted to his care, the future Regent lost little time before sweeping from his path the rivals whose power impeded the establishment of his ascendancy. The incapacity and French connections of Châtelherault had long ago rendered him a negligible factor in Scotch politics. Bothwell, Murray disposed of by the trumping-up of a charge of conspiracy, which, being backed up by the presence in Edinburgh of 5000 of his followers, caused the for once unjustly accused Hepburn to flee the country. The destruction of Huntly was an undertaking of vastly more difficulty, and one which but for the active participation of the Queen herself could never have been accomplished.

To Murray the demolition of Huntly was a matter of paramount importance, not merely on public, but on private grounds. The Lord James (as he was then still termed) had obtained a grant under the Privy Seal of the Earldom, by the title of which he was to be known to history, and subsequently, as a stepping-stone, managed, in 1561, to get himself invested with that of Mar. The latter he openly assumed, but deemed it prudent to conceal the existence of the prior grant, as the Earldom of Murray was held infeft of the Crown by Huntly, and the Cock o' the North was too formidable a personage upon whom to prematurely declare war.

The exact nature of the understanding that subsisted between Mary and Murray in regard to the uprooting of the house of Gordon, is one of the problems of Scotch history which has remained unsolved. Bringing down as it did the tottering fabric of Roman Catholicism in Scotland, the ruining of Huntly can only be described, from the point of view of a Marian partizan, as a political blunder of the first magnitude. The ardour, however, with which the Queen flung herself into the campaign against her co-religionists does not suggest any form of coercion, and there is no evidence to show that she required persuading in the matter. As to Murray, who, according to Bishop Lesly, was the sole favourite and disposer of everything' at this period, his gain was immeasurable. Not only did he render secure his long coveted earldom, get quit of a dangerous adversary, and deal

a staggering blow to Catholicism, but a favourable impression was made upon the mind of Elizabeth, and for the time being the English alliance was placed upon a footing of greater stability.

The advent of Lennox, and subsequently that of Darnley, however, affected a transformation in the whole aspect of Scottish affairs, and one under which Murray's fortunes reached their lowest ebb. Opposed from the outset to a matrimonial alliance which threatened Protestantism and brought into the field a rival claimant for a portion of his own estates, he retired in disgust from the court upon finding that all the wiles of diplomacy were powerless to avert it.

It must be acknowledged by even the warmest admirers of Murray, that he cut but a sorry figure throughout the struggle which ensued upon his abandonment of office. Failing in an attempt to kidnap Mary and Darnley when the royal couple were on their way from Perth to Queensferry, he took up arms with Châtelherault, Argyle, and Glencairn as confederates, but only to be chased from pillar to post by the Queen's troops. The end of the rising found him a fugitive across the English border. Led on to the ice by Elizabeth, he was finally left there in the most callous of fashions. In a prearranged but clumsily executed scene, he was dismissed the royal presence as an unworthy traitor,' and left for the nonce with no better occupation than to meditate upon the treachery of princes.

The inflexibility of Elizabeth in regard to the right of succession to the English throne and the contumacy of Murray, had left Mary with no option but that of gathering around her the Catholic nobility whom she had originally forfeited and slighted. Bothwell, Huntly, Athole, and Sutherland were now installed as her advisers, and Rizzio to all intents and purposes was foreign minister for Scotland.

For the moment the cause of the Reformation was in the gravest jeopardy, and only desperate remedies could have averted the danger that menaced its prospects. It must be confessed, however, that the means adopted which took the shape of the murder of Rizzio, was one that in its atrocity equalled anything recorded in the history of the Borgias. Its objective was less the cutting-off of a Piedmontese upstart than the destruction of the infant life, whose advent would bar Darnley's claim to the Crown of Scotland. Murray and his fellow exiles were undoubtedly fully privy to the conspiracy in all the rigour of its intentions, and even after making all deductions for the sake

of the issues which were involved, their complicity is one of a species that renders exoneration impossible.

Less than two days after the perpetration of what Knox describes as that just act, and most worthy of all praise and approbation,' Murray arrived at Holyrood, and was effusively received by the Queen. Though Mary must have been aware of the part played by her brother in regard to the assassination of Rizzio, he appears from this point to be fully re-established in her confidence and esteem. A readiness to forgive injuries was ever one of the Queen's most characteristic traits, and in temperamental fluctuations rather than in any deliberate scheme of policy is the key to her actions generally discoverable. Although after the flight to Dunbar, it was entirely due to Bothwell, Huntly, and Athole, that the reins of power were once more placed in her hands, their influence was practically neutralised by the introduction of Murray, Argyle, and Glencairn into the privy council, and the participators in the Holyrood shambles were thus rewarded for their concurrence in a diabolical outrage. When the Queen's confinement was rapidly approaching, the only nobleman permitted to reside with her in Edinburgh Castle was Murray, and had anything untoward occurred all power would undoubtedly have passed into his hands.

In no phase of his career does Murray's wariness exhibit itself in so extreme a form as in his attitude to the murder of Darnley. At the Craigmillar conference, it was memorably summed-up by Maitland in the assurance that he will look through his fingers, beholding our doings and saying nothing to them.' To this course of masterly inactivity, Murray steadily adhered, though accessory at the same time to all that was taking place. He does not appear to have entertained any objections to murders being done, but merely disliked the doing of them.

Two days before the disposal of Darnley, Murray discreetly retired to St. Andrews and remained in Fife 'looking through his fingers' for a period extending to over six weeks. As Mr. Lang remarks, he was always ready with his alibi.' For no apparent reason, he shortly afterwards took his departure upon a pilgrimage to France, but before doing so he made a will appointing the Queen to be the guardian of his only childa provision which hardly seems compatible with the Messalina theory of Mary's character maintained by Buchanan and other writers of the school to which he belongs, in the employment of her brother and his confederates. Whether or not the checking