The Scottish Reformers,who had formed a great league which they called The Congregation of the Lord,secretly represented to Elizabeth that,if the reformed religion got the worst of it with them,it would be likely to get the worst of it in England too;and thus,Elizabeth,though she had a high notion of the rights of Kings and Queens to do anything they liked,sent an army to Scotland to support the Reformers,who were in arms against their sovereign.All these proceedings led to a treaty of peace at Edinburgh,under which the French consented to depart from the kingdom.By a separate treaty,Mary and her young husband engaged to renounce their assumed title of King and Queen of England.But this treaty they never fulfilled.
It happened,soon after matters had got to this state,that the young French King died,leaving Mary a young widow.She was then invited by her Scottish subjects to return home and reign over them;and as she was not now happy where she was,she,after a little time,complied.
Elizabeth had been Queen three years,when Mary Queen of Scots embarked at Calais for her own rough,quarrelling country.As she came out of the harbour,a vessel was lost before her eyes,and she said,'O!good God!what an omen this is for such a voyage!'She was very fond of France,and sat on the deck,looking back at it and weeping,until it was quite dark.When she went to bed,she directed to be called at daybreak,if the French coast were still visible,that she might behold it for the last time.As it proved to be a clear morning,this was done,and she again wept for the country she was leaving,and said many times,'Farewell,France!
Farewell,France!I shall never see thee again!'All this was long remembered afterwards,as sorrowful and interesting in a fair young princess of nineteen.Indeed,I am afraid it gradually came,together with her other distresses,to surround her with greater sympathy than she deserved.
When she came to Scotland,and took up her abode at the palace of Holyrood in Edinburgh,she found herself among uncouth strangers and wild uncomfortable customs very different from her experiences in the court of France.The very people who were disposed to love her,made her head ache when she was tired out by her voyage,with a serenade of discordant music-a fearful concert of bagpipes,I suppose-and brought her and her train home to her palace on miserable little Scotch horses that appeared to be half starved.
Among the people who were not disposed to love her,she found the powerful leaders of the Reformed Church,who were bitter upon her amusements,however innocent,and denounced music and dancing as works of the devil.John Knox himself often lectured her,violently and angrily,and did much to make her life unhappy.All these reasons confirmed her old attachment to the Romish religion,and caused her,there is no doubt,most imprudently and dangerously both for herself and for England too,to give a solemn pledge to the heads of the Romish Church that if she ever succeeded to the English crown,she would set up that religion again.In reading her unhappy history,you must always remember this;and also that during her whole life she was constantly put forward against the Queen,in some form or other,by the Romish party.
That Elizabeth,on the other hand,was not inclined to like her,is pretty certain.Elizabeth was very vain and jealous,and had an extraordinary dislike to people being married.She treated Lady Catherine Grey,sister of the beheaded Lady Jane,with such shameful severity,for no other reason than her being secretly married,that she died and her husband was ruined;so,when a second marriage for Mary began to be talked about,probably Elizabeth disliked her more.Not that Elizabeth wanted suitors of her own,for they started up from Spain,Austria,Sweden,and England.Her English lover at this time,and one whom she much favoured too,was LORD ROBERT DUDLEY,Earl of Leicester-himself secretly married to AMY ROBSART,the daughter of an English gentleman,whom he was strongly suspected of causing to be murdered,down at his country seat,Cumnor Hall in Berkshire,that he might be free to marry the Queen.Upon this story,the great writer,SIR WALTER SCOTT,has founded one of his best romances.
But if Elizabeth knew how to lead her handsome favourite on,for her own vanity and pleasure,she knew how to stop him for her own pride;and his love,and all the other proposals,came to nothing.
The Queen always declared in good set speeches,that she would never be married at all,but would live and die a Maiden Queen.It was a very pleasant and meritorious declaration,I suppose;but it has been puffed and trumpeted so much,that I am rather tired of it myself.
Divers princes proposed to marry Mary,but the English court had reasons for being jealous of them all,and even proposed as a matter of policy that she should marry that very Earl of Leicester who had aspired to be the husband of Elizabeth.At last,LORD DARNLEY,son of the Earl of Lennox,and himself descended from the Royal Family of Scotland,went over with Elizabeth's consent to try his fortune at Holyrood.He was a tall simpleton;and could dance and play the guitar;but I know of nothing else he could do,unless it were to get very drunk,and eat gluttonously,and make a contemptible spectacle of himself in many mean and vain ways.
However,he gained Mary's heart,not disdaining in the pursuit of his object to ally himself with one of her secretaries,DAVID RIZZIO,who had great influence with her.He soon married the Queen.This marriage does not say much for her,but what followed will presently say less.