The History Of Scotland - Volume 6: From Bothwell To James VI. E-Book

Andrew Lang

• Herausgeber: Jazzybee Verlag
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2012

Seitenzahl: 295

Beschreibung

This is volume 6, covering the time from Bothwell to James VI. In many volumes of several thousand combined pages the series "The History of Scotland" deals with something less than two millenniums of Scottish history. Every single volume covers a certain period in an attempt to examine the elements and forces which were imperative to the making of the Scottish people, and to record the more important events of that time.

Leseprobe

The History Of Scotland – Volume 6

From Bothwell To James VI.

Andrew Lang

Contents:

Intrigues Of Spain, England, And Bothwell (1593 – 1595)

The King Conquers The Preachers (1596 -  1597)

James On Ill Terms With England (1597 – 1600).

The Cowrie Conspiracy.

James Succeeds To Elizabeth (1601 – 1610)

The Last Years Of James Vi (1603 – 1624)

THE HISTORY OF SCOTLAND – VOLUME 6, Andrew Lang

Jazzybee Verlag Jürgen Beck

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Germany

ISBN: 9783849604660

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INTRIGUES OF SPAIN, ENGLAND, AND BOTHWELL (1593 – 1595)

BOTHWELL'S new enterprise was at once the most grotesque and the most picturesque of those to which James fell a victim. A Stewart and a Hepburn, Bothwell was aided by the clan of which his king was the chief. Lennox, and Ochiltree, and Atholl, all in the plot, were all Stewarts (the existing House of Atholl are Murrays ofTullibardine in the male line and Stewarts by female descent). The Countess of Atholl was a daughter of Lady Cowrie, whose revenge for her husband's execution in 1584, and for the insults and injuries inflicted on herself by Arran, had never yet been sated. The House of Cowrie had been restored in 1585, on Arran's fall, to its lands and dignities; its head, John, Earl of Cowrie, was at this time a youth of sixteen or seventeen, who had been studying in the University of Edinburgh under the celebrated minister, Mr. Rollock. Probably he was now at work on his thesis for his Master's degree, which he took in August. He was then an ardent Protestant, and we shall presently find him already engaged in a revolutionary conspiracy against the king. We are not informed, however, that he was present or took any part in Bothwell's new enterprise, though it had for its base the town house of the Cowrie family the house which James had held in suspicion (p. 362).

The house of the Cowries was behind and adjacent to the Palace of Holyrood, and thither on the night of July 23 Bothwell, with the basely adventurous John Colville, was secretly conveyed. Between the Cowrie mansion and the palace was a covered passage patent at all times. Coming through this passage, from the palace, Lady Atholl led back Bothwell and Colville into James's ante-chamber, hid them behind the arras, and locked the door of the queen's chamber. Here, it seems probable, they waited while the gentlemen of the clan of Stewart took possession -of the outer and inner courts of Holyrood in the grey of the July dawn. James, early astir, was " private in a retiring-room," his majesty's clothes were loose, and " the points of his hose not knitted up," when Colville and Bothwell appeared before him with drawn swords in their hands. Bothwell said to the king, " Lo, my good bairn, you that have given out that I sought your life, it is now in this hand! " So Bothwell later told the Dean of Durham. James, with a cry of treason, fled as well as he could to the queen's chamber. The door was locked. He turned and called the intruders false traitors, bidding them strike if they durst. Bothwell and Colville knelt down, Atholl and Ochiltree arrived and interceded for the impudent suppliants. James derided their pretence of asking for forgiveness and offering to "thole an assize" on the old charge of witchcraft. He would not live a prisoner and dishonoured. Bothwell, still kneeling, kissed the hilt of his sword and offered it to James, lowering his head and tossing aside his long love-locks. James rose and took Bothwell apart into the embrasure of a window. News had now reached the citizens, "the bells were rung backward "; the burgesses, however, gathered but slowly. They may have heard Davidson's sermon; was it for them to interfere between the king and " sanctified plagues "? Hume of North Berwick, with a few other gentlemen, came under the king's windows, offering to rescue him or lose their lives. Sir James Melville was with Hume, and "cried up at the window of his majesty's chamber, asking how he did? He came to the window, and said all would be well enough, he had agreed with them on certain conditions, ' which are presently to be put into writing. Therefore,' said he, ' cause so many of the town as are come to my relief to stay in the abbey kirkyard till I send them further word, and return again within half an hour yourself. ' ' But few of the town had gathered, and these now retired, " so great was their miscontent for the time that many desired a change." Melville then went to the rooms of the Danish ambassadors, who sent him back to make anxious inquiries. James appeared at the window with the queen and said that all was well. Melville was later admitted to see James, quoted Plutarch, and prosed in the manner of Polonius, Later James met the ambassadors, but could not tell them whether he was captive or not. Captive he was; a new guard was appointed, under Ochiltree, one of the conspirators. There was something obscure and unfathomable in this plot. Bothwell, we shall see, met the Dean of Durham, who on August 15 favoured Burghley with a second account of his interview with Bothwell, fuller than that of August 5. The Queen of Scotland, the Dean said, was " not unacquainted with his greatest affairs," and the Dean seems to hint that she was better for England to deal with than the king. Moreover, she was jealous of Morton's "fayre daughter." A letter had been written as to the succession to the Scottish throne, intercepted, and brought to Bothwell. The Dean ends by strenuously recommending Bothwell to Elizabeth as " likeliest to do her faithfullest service in that country." It is useless to guess at the intrigue as to the Scottish throne: it is not credible that the young Cowrie was thought of, on the strength of his fabled Tudor descent. 

Whatever Bothwell's secret purposes and his relations with James's queen may have been, the conditions which he accepted from James were these: Full remission of all offences for himself and his accomplices, to be ratified in the Parliament of November 1593. Home, Maitland, the Master of Glamis, and Sir George Hume to be dismissed from office; Bothwell and the rest meanwhile to retire " where they thought good." Lennox, Atholl, the Master of Gray, the Provost, the bailies, and six preachers signed this treaty; "the ministers of the Kirk showed themselves highly gratified at Bothwell's return," says Bowes.

Such was the plot, directed from England by the Ministers of Elizabeth, and worked by the Stewarts and Ruthvens of Cowrie. It demonstrates the utter helplessness of James, who, denounced by his clergy, lost the services of his father's murderer, Maitland; and, betrayed by his own clan, was thrown on the mercy of his most insolent rebel. If, in such circumstances as these, James was unwilling to extirpate his Catholic subjects, and tempted to look abroad for the assistance denied him by his kinswoman, Elizabeth, by his clan, and by his clergy, perhaps he cannot be very severely blamed. His Catholic earls, the Spanish party in Scotland, did blame him for keeping them in hand while he had no intention of joining them.  

Bothwell now rode to Berwick, met John Carey (son of Lord Hunsdon), professed his gratitude to Elizabeth, and announced his hope of being made " Lord Lieutenant of the whole country." The ambition of his accomplice, John Colville, was to be Secretary of State! Bothwell then rode to Durham, on his southward way, quartered himself on Toby Matthew, Dean of Durham, already mentioned, and regaled the horrified dignitary of a respectable Church by a lively account of his performances. He had not betrayed Elizabeth to James, he said; and he had told the king that he might forget the death of Mary, as James had forgiven it. He advised that a plan of Elizabeth's for uniting the Catholic and Protestant parties in Scotland should be deferred, "lest the multitude of the one may in time, and that soon, wreck the other, being fewer in number, and so become rulers of the king." Hence it would appear that the Catholics were still a numerical majority, which is unexpected. Bothwell then wrote a letter to Elizabeth, "Most Renowned Empress," kissing "her heavenly hands." Had he been an English subject, Bothwell would have rivalled Essex he wrote in the style that Gloriana loved. He picked up on the Borders some hounds and horses for James, and was " cleansed " of witchcraft at his assize on August 10. Being in power, he was acquitted, but a letter to him from John Colville, later, makes it very probable that Bothwell had really tried an experiment in poisoning James, by aid of Richard Graham, the wizard. He had only dealt with the wizard Graham, he said, in the interests of the dying Angus. 

From that day it is almost impossible to paint the maelstrom of eddies, waves, and cross-currents of tides upon which James swam like a cork, now submerged, now visible to the anxious eye. He owed his life, probably, to the circumstance that he had no successor in whose interest it was worth while to kill the king. Hamilton had a better claim than Lennox, among the Stewarts Bothwell was of an illegitimate branch, Atholl and Ochiltree were much too remote, Gowrie can hardly have been thought of, and, in any case, all, though banded together by the blood -feud for the bonny Earl Moray, were too jealous of each other to attempt a change of dynasty. James's queen was a Bothwellian: chiefly because she hated Maitland, partly because she always opposed her husband, partly, perhaps, because Bothwell was "a gay gallant" and an amusing companion.

On the night of the day after Bothwell's acquittal on the charge of witchcraft James had arranged an escape. The Humes were at feud with the Hepburns, the whole tangle is a mass of family feuds, and Home was a Catholic. The idea was that Huntly should be ready with his Gordons, Home with his Humes, and, as James had an unwonted tendresst for the daughter of Morton (that is, Douglas of Lochleven), Morton also was in the affair. Three Erskines about the king's person were of the king's party, and two of his gentlemen, Lesley and Ogilvy, were reckoned trustworthy. James gave out that he was to ride to Falkland, but a speedy nag was intended to bear him to Morton's house, Lochleven, while Home was to attack the hostile faction in Edinburgh. But in the grey dawn of August 11 Lesley was detected as he stole through the palace grounds with James's ring and a letter for Home. So wakeful a guerilla soldier as Bothwell was not to be caught asleep: the Erskines, Thomas and James, Ogilvy, and Lesley were handed over to Ochiltree's guardsmen, and a quarrel broke out between Bothwell and James. He would not leave the king, or let him out of his power, till he was formally restored by Parliament and had avenged the bonny Earl Moray. Bowes was called for, and protested, with an innocent air, against the enterprises of Bothwell. The preachers and burgesses arranged a modus vivendi, being, " after a sort," guarantors of the king's promises. Bothwell on one side, Maitland, Home, and the Master of Glamis on the other, were to avoid the Court till Parliament met in November. So Bruce, the preacher, wrote to the presbytery of Dunfermline (August is). 

On September 9 a convention assembled at Stirling. A strange cross-current arose from the intrigues of Elizabeth and of Cecil's son, Sir Robert, who now was chief English manager of Scottish affairs. We have seen that Bothwell, immediately after the success at Holyrood, entertained the Dean of Durham with Elizabeth's plan for uniting Scottish Protestants and Catholics. How she expected fire and water to become bosom friends it is hard to understand, and Bowes (September 6) wrote to express his bewilderment. The arrangement could not be concealed from "£86£6" that is, the preachers. As Huntly and the Catholics were certain to demand religious toleration, the preachers would be purely frantic. Like Lord Hamilton, when James ventured to hint at toleration, they would exclaim, " Then are we all gone, then are we all gone, then are we all gone! If there were no more to withstand, I will withstand."

The desperate intrigue, however, certainly went on till Elizabeth presently shook off Huntly and the Catholics, with whom she was certainly intriguing as late as September 6. Elizabeth, indeed, had apparently thrown over Bothwell, in a letter of August 23, bidding James "kingly and resolutely make his unsound subjects know his power," and expressing her doubt whether the news of his arrangement with his rebel was not an auditory hallucination of her own. On September 6 Bowes wrote that "Huntly and his friends will go forward agreeable to their offers to her majesty," though he also expressed, as we saw, his perplexity about the arrangement. At Linlithgow (September 11) Bothwell was apprised that he must not come near James, though he would be formally restored by Parliament in November; after which he must quit the realm till he had licence to return. James, in fact, had recovered his liberty, and he left Stirling with Lennox. Why Lennox had deserted Bothwell is uncertain, but he may have heard of his ambitious design to become Lieutenant-General of the whole kingdom. Mar and Morton accompanied James to Lochleven, and there he was joined by Home and the gentlemen of his name, with the Master of Glamis. All these, by the original compact with Bothwell, had been debarred the Court. Maitland with the Kers of Cessford also came to James, and it was clear that the Stewart-Ruthven-Bothwell combination against their chief was broken up, while on September 22, by public proclamation at Edinburgh Cross, Bothwell was forbidden to approach the king under pain of treason. Ochiltree ceased to be captain of the Guard; the post was given to Home, a Catholic: to be sure the Guard never interfered with any gentleman who had a fancy for kidnapping his monarch.

Elizabeth remarked (October 7) that, inured as she was to Scottish revolutions, " I should never leave wondering at such strange and uncouth actions. . . . One while I receive a writ of oblivion and forgiveness, then a revocation with new additions of later consideration." " Sometimes, some you call traitors with proclaim " (meaning Huntly, Angus, and Errol), " and anon there must be no proof allowed, though never so apparent against them." Elizabeth had abandoned her intrigue with Huntly, hence these tears. "And for Bothwell! Jesus! Did ever any muse more than I that you could so quietly put up so temerarious indigne a fact. ... I refer me to my own letters what doom I gave thereof." Elizabeth had a disinterested passion for lying: James, of course, knew perfectly well that Bothwell's shaft came out of her quiver. Probably Elizabeth's letter was written after Carey (September 29) had given Cecil alarming news from Berwick. The king had nobody to whom he could intrust his personal safety except the Catholics. "There is nothing but peace, and seeking to link all the nobility together, which I hope will never be."

The preachers were as little in love with peace as Carey. Tolerance in religion has become so much a commonplace to recent generations that we can scarcely understand the ferocity which the ministers of the Kirk were to display at this and other critical moments. But their behaviour is intelligible, if we accept the statements, already cited, of Archibald Douglas and of Bothwell. The Catholics may still have been according to Bothwell, they were the numerical majority in Scotland, There, as in England, they were denied the exercise of their faith by an organised revolutionary minority. The Indifferents, it is probable (or to the preachers it seemed probable), would openly desert the Kirk as soon as toleration was proclaimed. The Church is infinitely more agreeable than the Kirk to the natural man. Not to speak of the charms of her service, of her music and other ecclesiastical arts, the Church had thrown her sanction over holidays and harmless sports, over all the innocent traditional recreations and mummeries which Stubbes was reviling in ' The Anatomy of Abuses.' Relics of paganism, of agricultural magic, these May-day, or Easter, or Christmas amusements may have been, but all the offence had been purged from them: their original significance was lost, though now in many cases recovered by the researches of Mannhardt and Mr. Frazer. To these things, if once toleration was granted, the populace would eagerly revert. They would gladly be emancipated, too, from the inquisitorial tyranny of kirk-sessions, the prurient prying into the details of private morals or absence of morals, a subject to which we shall return. It is the boast of writers who take the traditional view of the Reformation in Scotland, that it raised the moral tone of the country. To do this was the object of the Presbyterian clergy, but their own manifestos constantly bear testimony to their failure. Profanity, adultery, simple fornication, incest, murder, and robbery were rife, and this condition of morals was not peculiar to parishes inadequately served by ministers, or not "planted" with ministers at all.

Thanks to the ministers, education was relatively prosperous, and the University of St. Andrews, under a scholar and Latin poet like Andrew Melville and his "Regents," was perhaps not inferior, in elegance and range of learning, to the same university to-day. But the education, for one reason or another, bore but scanty fruit in literature. In the June of the year with which we are concerned (1593) Christopher Marlowe died in London, a great poet in a throng of great poets. To compare with these what had Scotland to show? Of her poetry in that age, what remains in common knowledge except such ballads as " The Queen's Marie " and " The Bonny Earl Moray "?

Meanwhile the intolerance of the Kirk must have bred the ugly vice of religious hypocrisy. The crypto-Catholics and Indifferents were compelled to a hypocritical compliance with the Kirk. Writers like Mr. Froude have applauded the honesty of the Reformers, men who would not pretend to believe in what they deemed to be a lie. But the pretence of this belief was enforced on reluctant Catholics. The coolest and darkest intriguer of the age, Logan of Restalrig, would end a treasonable letter with " Christ have you in His holy keeping." As to the public morals of the age, a whole generation after the Reformation, every page of this book testifies to their unspeakable iniquity. One thing was obvious to the preachers admit toleration, and, as Hamilton said, "then are we all gone." The country would veer round to the ancient faith: Presbyterian excommunication, that cruel weapon, that "gully of absolute power," would become a jest. The ancient Church would return, and where would the holders of Church lands be? When we look at the patriotism of the persecuted English Catholics, in face of the Armada, we ask why these men were forbidden the exercise of a religion which left them true to their country? It might rather appear that tolerance would remove all temptation to treasonable dealings with France or Spain. The Scottish Catholics could only hope to escape a grinding persecution by aid of foreign Powers. It is impossible to pretend that the Protestants were ethically better men than the Catholics. But the preachers knew their own business. Grant toleration, " and then are we all gone," the Kirk and the lay holders of Church lands in Scotland would be swamped and lost in the reaction, and what the preachers believed to be "the Truth" would perish among men. They were as convinced, and as despotic, as St. Dominic.

The king was known to be capable of tolerance, like his mother. In 1584 Father Holt had written, "He has evidently made up his mind to grant full liberty of worship, provided he can do so consistently with his own personal safety, and the peace of the country." He had especially no wish to alarm the Catholics of England by proving himself a persecutor. Thus, for the preachers, the most drastic measures were a matter of life and death.

Fife, where the two Melvilles ruled, was foremost in the agitation. The Provincial Assembly met at St. Andrews on September 25, 1593. Davidson was present the most irreconcilable of the Brethren. The danger, he said, proceeded from "the defection of the king," who had shaken off Bothwell, that sanctified plague. It was proposed to excommunicate the Catholic earls, who, when undergraduates at St. Andrews, must have signed the Confession of Faith. James Melville pronounced the sentence, and delivered them to Satan. All who harboured them were placed under the same anathema. The sentence of these shepherds of the East Neuk was to be intimated in every kirk in the kingdom. A fast was declared to atone for many sins, and the persecution of the English Puritans, and the commercial intercourse with Spain. Three preachers were sent to scold Morton for dealing with idolaters. Home was given into the hands of Satan.

While the preachers thus employed the spiritual weapon, a new and very dangerous conspiracy against the king was rising in the North. Bothwell kept all the country south of Forth in agitation: he was now approached by a group of Northern lords. Atholl on October 8 wrote to him from Dunkeld, addressing him as " My Lord and Loving Brother." He feared that the " Spanish factionaries," Huntly, Errol, and Angus, were likely to win over the king, " to the imminent peril of religion," and to the endangerment of relations with Elizabeth, " that most gracious and benign queen." He therefore advised Bothwell to listen to Henry Locke, the man whom Cecil used in his darkest enterprises. Bothwell was to deal through Locke with Elizabeth, who had in that very week been expressing to James her horror of Bothwell! Atholl added that he would aid Bothwell against James, and that his allies were the Earls of Gowrie and Murray, the Masters of Montrose and Gray, and the Forbeses.

James was not unaware of the machinations of Atholl and Gowrie. They were holding a convention at the Castle of Doune when James made a descent on them. Atholl had warning and fled: Montrose and Gowrie awaited the king's arrival, " and wei hardlie persevit be the king's companie, and in perrele to have been slayne," had not Lord Hamilton rescued them. Spottiswoode says that Bothwell had trysted with Atholl at Stirling for an effort against the king for October 1; that Atholl arrived, but found that James had gone to Linlithgow, where were Hamilton and other nobles. Bothwell, knowing this, did not " keep tryst " with Atholl, who pretended that he had mustered his men at Doune Castle (the house of the Earl of Moray) merely to hold a court. James did not accept this excuse, what court needed the presence of Atholl, Gowrie, Montrose, and Moray? Home was sent to reconnoitre, and then took Montrose (and Gowrie, as Moysie adds). (It was at this time, October 8, that Atholl wrote to Bothwell as to dealing with England through Cecil's agent, Locke.) Montrose explained that he was merely a messenger from Atholl to explain to James that they were all engaged in holding a court of justice.

He was dismissed, and the affair passed over at the time; but the intrigues between the Atholl confederacy, Bothwell, and the agents of England endured. Young Gowrie, now an Edinburgh student of sixteen or seventeen, was in 1600 to become famous for the mystery of his death, and his alleged conspiracy. He is already seen as a partner in what might have proved a new Raid of Ruthven. This conspiracy, though it never came to a head, pervaded politics till the summer of 1594, and attempted to place itself under the aegis of the Kirk, to which Gowrie, as became his father's son, was at this time enthusiastically devoted. In part the fear of the Catholics, in part hatred of Maitland, had united the Kirk, England, the adventurous Bothwell, the godly Gowrie, Atholl, and the dark Master of Gray against the king. These combined forces and strong measures caused Huntly, Angus, and Errol to approach the king. They desired to stand trial as to their conduct in the matter of the Spanish Blanks (October g). They met James, and knelt to him, between Soutra and Fala. If guilty, they would suffer; if acquitted, would satisfy the Kirk or go abroad. They were only accused (as regards the purpose of their signatures to the blank sheets of paper) by one witness, George Ker, under the boot. They explained that the matter which Father Creighton was to have inserted above their signatures only concerned money owed to them by foreign princes for the subsistence of the Jesuits whom they confessed to having harboured. So Angus and Errol declared. Huntly's signature, he said, referred to the necessity of allowing his uncle, Father Gordon, to leave the country; and he had Father Gordon's attested statement that his blanks bore no other sense. George Ker, under torture, had declared that the blanks were to be filled up with the conditions on which Philip of Spain would invade Scotland, and Fintry appears to have corroborated. James gave to Elizabeth the account of the blanks put forward by Angus, Atholl, and Errol (December y). This did not satisfy her. Yet, as late as October 11, Angus, Huntly, and Errol wrote to her thanking her for " her gracious acceptance of their suits," and begging her to " continue her princely favour."

So far the proposals of the earls had an appearance of candour. They would stand trial, as Bothwell had recently done. But, according to the custom of Scotland, trial in such affairs was a mere trial of forces. Knox, Murray, Lethington, and Bothwell, we know, when engaged in such circumstances, appeared attended by large levies of armed supporters, and justice was overawed. If the earls were tried at Perth, as was their wish, they would be backed by all the Hays, Gordons, and perhaps Douglases, who could mount a horse and wield a spear. By October 18 they had mustered their men. James told the Protestants that he would be answerable for order on the day of law: " such as came undesired should not be welcome." The preachers, however, summoned their own supporters, "bodin in feare of warre" that is, fully armed. All were to meet at Perth on October 24. The fiery cross (metaphorically speaking, for the actual symbol is idolatrous) was sent round to all the kirks. A Committee of Kirk Safety, twelve preachers, sat at Edinburgh. James refused to acknowledge conventions held without his orders. The assemblage of such armed bodies of partisans was one of his main grievances against the Kirk. The earls' forces were meeting at Perth, where Atholl and young Gowrie, a true chip of the old Ruthven block, were inclined to keep them out. There was every prospect of a battle royal at Perth, which would have been the focus of all feuds and an Armageddon of the Kirk. Humes would have met Hepburns; Kers, Hays, Gordons, Forbeses, Stewarts, Grahams, Ruthvens, Campbells, Mackintoshes, with burgesses and lairds under Andrew Melville, would have been let loose at each other's throats. We may almost regret that James, as it were, threw down his baton and cleared the lists. In the same way the Regent Murray had deferred the trial of Lethington when the forces were gathered at Edinburgh for the fray. The king forbade the trial. He may have heard of a plot to kidnap him, described by Carey to Cecil. The godly of Edinburgh, armed with muskets and pretending to act as a Royal Guard, were to hand James over to Bothwell, who acted with " the Kirk, barons, and boroughs." The Catholic earls, unattended but unmolested, must therefore wait at Perth, and be examined later before a commission of nobles, burghs, and the Kirk. The preachers had demanded their imprisonment, "according to the lovable laws of Scotland." But who was to imprison them? The attempt would only have entailed the battle royal, which was not to be.

Meanwhile (October 22) the Catholic earls, through Archibald Douglas, were still in the treaty with Elizabeth, and had written a letter of thanks to her. Our old friend, Lesley, Bishop of Ross, had suggested that religious tolerance should be proposed in the Scottish Parliament, so Archibald Douglas writes; but (October 29) Elizabeth was threatening James for his tardiness in punishing the earls, she had declined to intercede for them, and was working through Locke on Atholl, Bothwell, and Cowrie. Meanwhile James " drove time," or procrastinated, and assemblages of partisans in Edinburgh during the convention appointed for November 12 were forbidden. The meeting was scantily attended, the ministers were not encouraged.

On November 26 a compromise as to the Catholic earls was attempted, and an " Act of Abolition " was promulgated. By February 1, 1594, all subjects were to profess themselves Presbyterians. Those who could not do so " in conscience " (a dangerous term, the thin end of the wedge) were to depart abroad, retaining their estates, and were not to be outlawed. The story of the Spanish Blanks was to be dropped, unless the accused relapsed into treasonable dealings abroad. The Catholics were to have preachers planted in their households to convert them, and were to send away the Jesuits, under heavy pecuniary guarantees. Acceptance of the arrangement must be made before January 1, 1594. The preachers denounced this sinful attempt. What! were idolaters to be allowed to worship Baal abroad and yet retain their property? In the privileged Canaan of Scotland (December 6) the Maxwells and Johnstones had a great clan battle on Dryfe sands, and Lord Maxwell was slain. From the pulpit Bruce threatened James: " his reign should be troublesome, and short" if he did not abolish his Act of Abolition.

We know what such prophecies meant: they had a way of securing their own fulfilment. Elizabeth wrote an angry reply to James's letter about the pleas of the earls. Had he not permitted George Ker, their messenger, and the witness against them, to escape? James had, in fact, just hanged one Smeatoun through whose aid the escape was effected. Elizabeth now sent Lord Zouche to Edinburgh (January 15, 1594), and Zouche instantly began to intrigue with Bothwell's ally, the Master of Gray. Zouche's purpose appears to have been to unite the Northern conspirators, Gowrie, Atholl, the Masters of Gray and of Montrose, with Ochiltree, Both well, the Johnstones, fresh from victory over the Catholic Maxwells, and with the Kirk. This powerful combination would seize the king as usual, oust Maitland and Home, drive the Catholic earls to ruin, and avenge the bonny Earl. The scruples or the avarice of Elizabeth stifled the plot. Meanwhile she would not incite such proceedings, but would protect the enterprisers. Yet '(January 4, 1594) she had written to deny that Bothwell was harboured in England by her permission.

The Act of Abolition, so odious to the godly, was now withdrawn; the Catholic earls had declined the terms, on the plea of being unable to find sureties. While Elizabeth's envoy, Zouche, was arranging a civil war on a great scale for Scotland, in which the Stewarts and Ruthvens, under Atholl and Gowrie, should combine with the sanguinary Johnstones of the Western Border, and Bothwell, Ochiltree, and Montrose, to attack Home, Maitland, and the Catholics, Prince Henry was born at Stirling (February 19, 1594). The event was welcome to loyalists, and, to use a phrase current at that period, it " was nuts " to the Brethren. They had long felt it as a heavy cross that there was nobody except James to kidnap, no feasible successor who could be set up against him. But now there was the baby, who might be captured and used to James's prejudice, like the Prince against James III., and James himself, as an infant, against his mother. The proposal was at once made to the English envoys of Elizabeth, but Elizabeth discouraged it in a letter from Robert Cecil to Locke, her agent with the godly (March 4). Zouche was told that he had shown trop de zèle. Locke was warned not to carry any compromising papers about him. " The proposal to follow the king into the Castle of Stirling " (where the royal infant was in the charge of Mar), " and to besiege the castle, makes her majesty a little careful to prevent so dishonourable and so unjustifiable a course, mean they ever so dutifully." "They" are probably the Atholl and Gowrie gang, as Stirling was well within their reach. Elizabeth, in fact, would not part with her money.

It had, however, been arranged that Bothwell should muster men, English and Scots, and invade the country on two pretexts. "The ane was, with help of the kinsmen and ministrie, to banish the Catholic lords from the realm of Scotland." The other pretext was to avenge the bonny Earl. The author of 'The Historic of King James the Sext ' (John Colville, as is supposed) acknowledges that England was aiding Bothwell, and that James arrested one of Zouche's suite, who, by that ambassador's command, had dealt with Bothwell. To check his advance, Home, Cessford, and Buccleuch were stationed at Kelso, and a general levy was proclaimed.

The preachers, in daily sermons, did what they could to hamper the king in his peril by preaching against him, and prophesying evil. When he asked how he could leave Edinburgh defenceless by marching against the Northern Catholics, they offered to pray for him! For some reason Kelso was evacuated by Buccleuch, and occupied by Bothwell on April 1. Next day he reached Dalkeith, and was in Leith on the 3rd of April. To conciliate the preachers, James promised, in church, to march against Huntly when he had settled Bothwell. A few nobles, and the town, a disorderly array, then went out against that hero, who moved southward, slowly and in good order, lest his line of retreat should be cut. The royal levies thought that he had fled, but their patrols were driven in when they attempted to occupy a hill near Woolmet: Bothwell then charged, and drove the Royal Guard in rout, the infantry flying to Craigmillar. Within half a mile of James's position on the Borough Moor Bothwell's trumpets sounded the retreat, and he lay that night at Dalkeith. Probably he could have entered Edinburgh, but the castle he could not have taken, and there was no sign of a popular rising in his favour. He certainly bore off" the honours of the day, with many prisoners, whom he released. He issued proclamations gratifying to the godly, and awaited another opportunity.