Read The History of England - Vols. 1 to 6 Online
Authors: David Hume
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Online Library of Liberty: The History of England, vol. 4
also to pay regard to their future security, by fixing a successor; that, by an opposite conduct, she showed herself the stepmother, not the natural parent, of her people, and would seem desirous that England should no longer subsist than she should enjoy the glory and satisfaction of governing it; that none but timorous princes, or tyrants, or faint-hearted women, ever stood in fear of their successors; and that the affections of the people were a firm and impregnable rampart to every sovereign, who, laying aside all artifice or bye-ends, had courage and magnanimity to put his sole trust in that honourable and sure defence.
p
The queen, hearing of these debates, sent for the speaker, and after reiterating her former prohibition, she bade him inform the house, that, if any member remained still unsatisfied, he might appear before the privy
council, and there give his reasons.q
As the members showed a disposition, notwithstanding these peremptory orders, still to proceed upon the question, Elizabeth thought proper, by a message, to revoke them, and to allow the house liberty of
debate.r
They were so mollified by this gracious condescension, that they thenceforth conducted the matter with more calmness and temper; and they even voted her a supply, to be levied at three payments, of a
subsidy and a fifteenth, without annexing any condition to it. The 2d January, 1567.
queen soon after dissolved the parliament, and told them, with some sharpness in the conclusion, that their proceedings had contained much dissimulation and artifice; that under the plausible pretences of marriage and succession, many of them covered very malevolent intentions towards her; but that, however, she reaped this advantage from the attempts of these men, that she could now distinguish her friends from her enemies. “But do you think,” added she, “that I am unmindful of your future security, or will be negligent in settling the succession?
That is the chief object of my concern; as I know myself to be liable to mortality. Or do you apprehend, that I meant to encroach on your liberties? No: It was never my meaning; I only intended to stop you before you approached the precipice. All things have their time; and though you may be blessed with a sovereign more wise or more learned than I, yet I assure you, that no one will ever rule over you, who shall be more careful of your safety. And therefore, henceforward, whether I live to see the like assembly or no, or whoever holds the reins of government, let me warn you to beware of provoking your sovereign’s patience, so far as you have done mine. But I shall now conclude, that, notwithstanding the disgust I have received (for I mean not to part with you in anger) the greater part of you may assure themselves that they go home in their
Elizabeth carried farther her dignity on this occasion. She had received the subsidy without any condition; but as it was believed, that the commons had given her that gratuity with a view of engaging her to yield to their requests, she thought proper, on her refusal, voluntarily to remit the third payment; and she said, that money in her subjects’ purses was as good to her as in her own exchequer.
t
But though the queen was able to elude, for the present, the applications of parliament, the friends of the queen of Scots multiplied every day in England; and besides the catholics, many of whom kept a treasonable correspondence with her, and
were ready to rise at her command,u
the court itself of Elizabeth was full of her avowed partizans. The duke of Norfolk, the earls of Leicester, Pembroke, Bedford, Northumberland, Sir Nicholas Throgmorton, and most of the considerable men in PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)
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England, except Cecil, seemed convinced of the necessity of declaring her the successor. None but the more zealous protestants adhered either to the countess of Hertford, or to her aunt, Eleanor, countess of Cumberland; and as the marriage of the former seemed liable to some objections, and had been declared invalid, men were alarmed, even on that side, with the prospect of new disputes concerning the succession. Mary’s behaviour also, so moderate towards the protestants, and so gracious towards all men, had procured her universal respect;
w
and the public was willing to ascribe any imprudences, into which she had fallen, to her youth and inexperience. But all these flattering prospects were blasted by the subsequent incidents; where her egregious indiscretions, shall I say, or atrocious crimes, threw her from the height of her prosperity, and involved her in infamy and in ruin.
The earl of Bothwel was of a considerable family and power in Murder of Darnley.
Scotland; and though not distinguished by any talents either of a civil or military nature, he had made a figure in that party, which opposed the greatness of the earl of Murray, and the more rigid reformers. He was a man of profligate manners; had involved his opulent fortune in great debts, and even reduced
himself to beggary, by his profuse expences;x
and seemed to have no resource but in desperate counsels and enterprizes. He had been accused more than once of an attempt to assassinate Murray; and though the frequency of these accusations on all sides diminished somewhat the credit due to any particular imputation, they prove sufficiently the prevalence of that detestable practice in Scotland, and may in that view serve to render such rumours the more credible. This man had of late acquired the favour and entire confidence of Mary; and all her measures were directed by his advice and authority. Reports were spread of more particular intimacies between them; and these reports gained ground from the continuance or rather encrease of her hatred towards her husband.
y
That young prince was reduced to such a state of desperation, by the neglects which he underwent from his queen and the courtiers, that he had once resolved to fly secretly into France or Spain, and had even provided a vessel for that purpose.
z
Some of the most considerable nobility, on the other hand, observing her rooted aversion to him, had proposed some expedients for a divorce; and though Mary is said to have spoken honourably on the occasion, and to have embraced the proposal no farther than it should be found consistent with her own
honour and her son’s legitimacy,a
men were inclined to believe, that the difficulty of finding proper means for effecting that purpose, was the real cause of laying aside all farther thoughts of it. So far were the suspicions against her carried, that, when Henry, discouraged with the continual proofs of her hatred, left the court and retired to Glasgow, an illness of an extraordinary nature, with which he was seized immediately on his arrival in that place, was universally ascribed by her enemies to a dose of poison, which, it was pretended, she had administered to him.
While affairs were in this situation, all those who wished well to her character or to public tranquillity, were extremely pleased, and somewhat surprized, to hear, that a friendship was again conciliated between them, that she had taken a journey to Glasgow on purpose to visit him during his sickness, that she behaved towards him with great tenderness, that she had brought him along with her, and that she appeared thenceforth determined to live with him on a footing more suitable to the connexions between them. Henry, naturally uxorious, and not distrusting this sudden PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)
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reconciliation, put himself implicitly into her hands, and attended her to Edinburgh.
She lived in the palace of Holy-rood-house; but as the situation of the place was low, and the concourse of people about the court was necessarily attended with noise, which might disturb him in his present infirm state of health, these reasons were assigned for fitting up an apartment for him in a solitary house, at some distance, called the Kirk of Field. Mary here gave him marks of kindness and attachment; she conversed cordially with him; and she lay some nights in a room below his; but on the ninth of February, she told him, that she would pass that night in the palace, because the marriage of one of her servants was there to be celebrated in her presence.
About two o’clock in the morning the whole town was much
Feb. 10.
alarmed at hearing a great noise; and was still more astonished, when it was discovered that the noise came from the King’s house, which was blown up by gun-powder; that his dead body was found at some distance in a neighbouring field; and that no marks either of fire, contusion, or violence appeared upon it.
b
No doubt could be entertained but Henry was murdered; and general conjecture soon pointed towards the earl of Bothwel as the author of the crime.
c
But as his favour with Mary was visible, and his power great, no one ventured to declare openly his sentiments; and all men remained in silence and mute astonishment. Voices, however, were heard in the streets, during the darkness of the night, proclaiming Bothwel, and even Mary herself, to be murderers of the king; bills were secretly affixed on the walls to the same purpose; offers were made, that, upon giving proper securities, his guilt should be openly proved: But after one proclamation from the court, offering a reward and indemnity to any one that would discover the author of that villany, greater vigilance was employed in searching out the spreaders of the libels and reports against Bothwel and the queen, than in tracing the contrivers of the king’s assassination, or
The earl of Lenox, who lived at a distance from court, in poverty and contempt, was rouzed by the report of his son’s murder, and wrote to the queen, imploring speedy justice against the assassins; among whom he named the earl of Bothwel, Sir James Balfour, and Gilbert Balfour his brother, David Chalmers, and four others of the queen’s household; all of them persons who had been mentioned in the bills affixed to the walls at Edinburgh.
e
Mary took his demand of speedy justice in a very literal sense; and allowing only fifteen days for the examination of this important affair, she sent a citation to Lenox, requiring him to appear in court, and prove his charge against
Bothwel.f
This nobleman, meanwhile, and all the other persons, accused by Lenox,
enjoyed their full liberty;g
Bothwel himself was continually surrounded with armed men;
h took his place in council;i
lived during some time in the house with Mary;
k
and seemed to possess all his wonted confidence and familiarity with her. Even the castle of Edinburgh, a place of great consequence in this critical time, was entrusted to him, and under him, to his creature, Sir James Balfour, who had himself been publicly charged as an accomplice in the king’s murder.
l
Lenox, who had come as far as Stirling, with a view of appearing at the trial, was informed of all these circumstances; and reflecting on the small train which attended him, he began to entertain very just apprehensions from the power, insolence, and temerity of his enemy. He wrote to Mary, desiring that the day of trial might be prorogued; and conjured her, by all the regard which she bore to her own honour, to employ more leisure and deliberation in PLL v6.0 (generated September, 2011)
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determining a question of such extreme moment.m
No regard was paid to his application: The jury was enclosed, of which the earl of Caithness was chancellor; and though Lenox, foreseeing this precipitation, had ordered Cunningham, one of his retinue, to appear in court, and protest in his name, against the acquittal of the criminal, the jury proceeded to a verdict.
n
The verdict was such as it behoved them to give, where neither accuser nor witness appeared; and Bothwel was absolved from the king’s murder.
The jury, however, apprehensive that their verdict would give 12th April.
great scandal, and perhaps expose them afterwards to some danger, entered a protest, in which they represented the necessity of their
proceedings.o
It is remarkable, that the indictment was laid against Bothwel for committing the crime on the ninth of February, not the tenth, the real day on which
Henry was assassinated.p
The interpretation generally put upon this error, too gross, it was thought, to have proceeded from mistake, was, that the secret council, by whom Mary was governed, not trusting entirely to precipitation, violence, and authority, had provided this plea, by which they ensured, at all adventures, a plausible pretence for acquitting Bothwel.
Two days after this extraordinary transaction, a parliament was held; and though the verdict in favour of Bothwel was attended with such circumstances as strongly confirmed, rather than diminished, the general opinion of his guilt, he was the person chosen to carry the royal sceptre on the first meeting of that national assembly.
q
In this parliament, a rigorous act was made against those who set up defamatory bills;
but no notice was taken of the king’s murder.r
The favour, which Mary openly bore to Bothwel, kept every one in awe; and the effects of this terror appeared more plainly in another transaction, which ensued immediately upon the dissolution of the parliament.
A bond or association was framed; in which the subscribers, after relating the acquittal of Bothwel by a legal trial, and mentioning a farther offer, which he had made, to prove his innocence by single combat, oblige themselves, in case any person should afterwards impute to him the king’s murder, to defend him with their whole power against such calumniators. After this promise, which implied no great assurance in Bothwel of his own innocence, the subscribers mentioned the necessity of their queen’s marriage, in order to support the government; and they recommended Bothwel to her as a husband.
s