History Of Scotland Vol. 2 - Part 8

( Originally Published 1909 )

Character of James—Greatly influenced by personal Timidity—His Irresolution—His high Opinion of Royal Prerogative—Controlled by the Opinions of his Subjects, and the Nature of his Right to the Crown—Saved from many Dangers by his Flexibility of Temper—His Attachment to Favorites—He throws the Government into the Hands of Lennox and Arran—Infamous Character of the latter—His profligate Marriage and general Unpopularity—He misleads Lennox, and seeks to undermine his Influence—A Conspiracy to reform the State—The Earl of Gowrie is induced to join it—His Character—The King is seized at the Raid of Ruthven, and detained a Prisoner—He dissembles with Gowrie and his Associates—Arran is made Prisoner—Lennox is banished, and dies in France—The King ostensibly ratifies the Raid of Ruthven, which is approved of also by the General Assembly of the Church—Meantime James entertains deep Discontent for the Restraint inflicted on him—He lets Elizabeth know his real Sentiments—The Lords permit him more personal Liberty—He escapes to St. Andrew's—The Lords concerned in the Raid of Ruth ven are overpowered at Court—James rules at first with Moderation, but Arran recovers his Influence, and impels the King to vindictive Measures—Queen Elizabeth expostulates with James without Effect —Walsingham visits the Scottish Court, and forms a high Opinion of the King—The Scottish Clergy interfere on behalf of the Lords connected with the Ruthven Conspiracy—These Lords take Arms—Gowrie is taken at Dundee—Angus and Mar take Stirling, which is promptly retaken—Gowrie tried and executed —Violence of Arran—Now uncontrolled Minister

THE death of the Earl of Morton restored the king in the full sense of the word to the management of his own affairs, in which it was his pleasure to use almost exclusively the advice and ministry of the Duke of Lennox and James Stewart, the new Earl of Arran. It is, therefore, now a proper time to make some observations upon the character of James VI., who, though in genius and disposition inferior to many of his long line of ancestors, was destined, by uniting in his person the crowns of England and Scotland, to attain a pitch of power which none of them before his mother's accession could have been entitled even to dream of.

It happens, in general, at least among civilized people, that accidents connected with the corporeal and outward frame alone seldom produce much influence upon the mind : nothing can be more common than to see a vigorous mind in a feeble frame, and a gallant resolution ill seconded by a puny person. In the case of James VI., however, this was extremely different; for a considerable part of that prince's habits and tone of thought and feeling may be traced to the consequences of the brutal assault upon Rizzio, committed in his mother's presence two months ere yet he beheld the light. A weakness in his limbs, which he never entirely re-covered, gave him a singular, odd, ungainly, and circuitous mode of walking, diametrically opposite to that which we connect with the movements of majesty. The same shocking scene, probably, gave rise to a nervous timidity, by which James was affected to a ludicrous degree. It was remarked of him, that different not only from the disposition of his fathers, but from that of his mother Mary, who could look with an unshrinking eye upon all the array of war, James wanted the most ordinary personal courage, a virtue, and one is sometimes tempted to suppose the only one, of that age. The king could never behold a naked sword without shrinking, and he turned away his head even from that very pacific weapon which he was obliged to draw for the purpose of bestowing the accolade on a knight dubbed with unhacked rapier and from carpet-consideration. The same species of timidity ran through his whole mind and actions, like an extensive flaw in a rich piece of tapestry, defacing and rendering of little value that which would have otherwise been rare and precious. Thus, while nature had given him a sound and ready judgment, and a wit which was sometimes even brilliant, she withheld from him that accurate knowledge of propriety which is manifested in applying to its proper place, or using in its fit time, either what is serious or what is humorous, without which tact or sense of propriety wisdom sinks into a vender of proverbs, and wit into a mere buffoon. To remedy, if possible, these natural defects, James's education had been seduluously cared for; his tutor, George Buchanan, being not only one of the best scholars of the age, but capable of rivalling the purest classics in the composition of their own beautiful language. In this art he accomplished his pupil James, just up to that point where strength and vigor of thought is demanded. to give animation to language, but unfortunately he could conduct the royal student no further. The ordinary subtleties of scholastic learning were easily comprehended by a mind which delighted in ingenious trifling; but a timorous disposition cannot form ideas of dignity and resolution, nor, of course, can a timorous mind frame, or a hesitating tongue give utterance to, a daring conclusion.

Yet it must be owned there were periods of James's life in which awakened pride and natural talent assumed the appearance of firmness and presence of mind, authorizing us, perhaps, to suppose that his want of courage arose from the defects of his nerves, which upon great occasions might be supplied by the energies of his mind, rather than from actual cowardice; which intellectual failing must always be most predominant when the danger is greatest.

In his ideas of government it naturally followed that James was influenced by his own situation; by his consciousness that his elevation to the crown had taken place neither from affection or respect to his person, but from the desire to obtain under the shadow of his authority an opportunity of dethroning his mother. This consciousness generated an apprehension, lest, through means of some conspiracy among his subjects, he should, in his turn, be overtaken by a fate similar to that which had banished his mother from Scotland, and occasioned her being confined as a prisoner in a foreign land. His fears on this score had been increased during the stern rule of Morton, who had, with singular imprudence, neglected the obvious means by which the pride and vanity of the youthful monarch might have been reconciled to his condition, through an ostensible show of respect and deference.

It may be added, that James, both from situation and taste, was very much disposed to study and to acquiesce in the numerous works at this time current in Europe, which argued in behalf of the despotic and unimpeachable authority of monarchs, as the direct delegates of Heaven, and as accountable for the use of their power to that divine authority alone by whom that power was conferred.

But though this species of reasoning in one point of view led James to a conclusion which was doubtless highly agreeable to him, yet in another, and that one of great importance, it might have been fatal to his right of immediate possession of the crown of Scotland. In the first place, his right had been, during his infancy, set up and maintained by a party who had assumed the government, issued laws, and even struck money in his name, expressing, as a fixed principle, that the control of the sovereign lay with the subjects; and that he might be resisted by them so soon as he ceased to use his authority for the public good. His own right resting on such a foundation, it could not escape so acute an observer as James that, in assuming and defending an opposite doctrine, he ran the risk of provoking that large and strong body of his subjects who had placed him on the throne, together with the whole clergy of Scotland, upon whose suffrages his right had been established, and by whose exertions it had been maintained.

But, secondly, if James had adopted in action, as he probably did in theory, the doctrines of arbitrary power and unchallengeable authority, however flattering in the abstract, he might incur not only the probability of alienating the affections and loyalty of the nobles and clergy by whom his government had been established, and by whose internal strength, as well as their close connection with England, it had been originally supported, but the certainty of losing the favor and support of those among his subjects who from interest or conviction might, like himself, rely upon hereditary right. It could not escape him that such right was not in himself, but that the doctrine which pro-claimed it indefeasible must . pronounce that it was still vested in the person of his unfortunate mother Mary.

Thus the theoretical pretensions of James to rule by divine right were at absolute variance with the mode in which he ascended, and the title by which he held the throne; and his natural indecision of temper was augmented by the difficulty of reconciling his own ideas of the right of a king de jure to his real condition of a men-arch de facto. The consequence of such a collision _happening in the person of a prince of an irresolute temper necessarily produced a vacillating and indefinite species of conduct, which led each faction in turn to suppose that the king was of their party. And although the indecision and inconsistency arising from this cause rendered James's con-duct less respectable than that of a more daring and deter-mined prince, yet it must be owned that this system of action, cloaked by bold words, and occasionally evincing some firmness, seemed rather the fruit of policy than timidity, and had the effect of excluding neither party from hope of his favor, and inducing all to abstain from violent measures against a prince whom none could regard as their declared enemy, though at the same time no one was entitled to consider him as their exclusive head and protector. The same uncertainty of conduct, the same good-natured pliability, rendered James, at a later part of his reign, disposed, as we shall see, to cultivate the good opinion of the various factions in England, in order to unite in his own behalf their different votes for the succession.

Thus the first monarch of Britain may be said to have reaped from his flexibility of temper the advantage claimed by the versatile Earl of Pembroke, when he accounted for his being a favorite through various mutations of Church and State during four reigns, from Henry VIII. downward, by confessing that he was born of the willow, not of the oak, or, in other words, that he had been a dexterous and unblushing time-server.

The same want of manly firmness in James VI. is to be discovered in his habits of favoritism. Wherever such attachment exists, it resembles some creeping plant striving to support itself by that firmness on the part of another which it does not find within itself; and like such parasite plants, also, James was not very nice in selecting the prop by help of which he proposed to raise and sustain his own resolution.

Another quality of James's mind was gratified by this tendency to rule by the means of favorites. Without apparently any strong sense of pleasure or disposition to unlimited indulgence in his own person, James was addicted to occupy his time in frivolous pursuits, or consume it in the languor of indolence. This last habit of inaction induced him to trust the execution of the necessary but troublesome parts of his kingly duty to favorites, who secured their master's good opinion by an affectation of extreme regard for his person, which the good-natured king appears never to have suspected of being counterfeit. Encouraged by such persons as had gained his ear, he readily adopted the belief in his own supreme wisdom, which was echoed and re-echoed by all around him; and he was unbounded in his reliance upon those who enjoyed his favor, because it never occurred to him that he could have been mistaken in choosing proper objects of affection and confidence, or that men so correct in admiring his wisdom might probably be themselves rather deficient in that attribute. With still more culpable negligence he was careless of the faults of those who had his favor : thus he often overlooked, if he did not actually en-courage' in their persons, a tone of vice and profligacy which did not apparently belong to his own character.

We have already shown reasons why as a king James was jealously attached to his privileges, yet cautious of exerting his power in such a manner as to provoke resistance.

In this case, perhaps, his constitutional timidity was of ad-vantage to his subjects and himself, since it was the means of adjourning to another generation the contention between the prerogative of the king and those rights which began to be claimed on behalf of the people.

We must remark, in the last place, that James's attachments to his favorites, though inordinate while they continued, were in fact far from being deep-rooted; and there is reason to think that in many cases the usurpation over him, which his supine indolence permitted them to assume, was in the long run felt as a slavery, which, though he himself had not energy to throw off, he was not averse to see destroyed by any other means; at least it is certain that most of his favorites had become distasteful to him before their fall.

In a word, James VI. was an example that neither high rank, nor shrewd sense, nor ready wit, nor a deep acquaintance with the learning of the age, can acquire respectability for a man timid both by moral and physical causes, and in-capable of acting, upon suiting occasion, with total carelessness to his own comforts, his own safety, or, if the case calls for it, his own life. With these remarks on the character of a monarch called to perform one of the most interesting parts in British history, and to close a long train of useless and unnatural wars between the divided portions of the island, we will close what we have to say on the subject, and return to the prosecution of Scottish history.

Such as he was, King James now threw the government of Scotland so exclusively into the hands of Lennox and Arran, that the nation at large were extremely disgusted with his conduct. Arran, in particular, had the rapacity of Morton, without either his wisdom or his experience; and in private life he set decency and morality alike at defiance. Ile had carried on a criminal intrigue with the wife of the Earl of March, a woman young and handsome, but in other respects infamously profligate. To make way for a union between her and her lover, the countess pleaded for divorce from her husband upon the same scandalous reason which was afterward alleged by the Countess of Essex; and having thus obtained her liberation from the band of matrimony, she conferred her hand in shameless triumph upon her paramour Arran. This gave the highest offence to a nation which boasted of having reformed their moral system upon the pure lessons of the Gospel, and whose creed, though sometimes strained to the toleration of acts of rapine and violence in the ambitious and vindictive, was specially adverse to the licentious excesses of a voluptuary.

For some time the two favorites who held an undivided sway over James's affections pursued their course hand in hand, or rather Stewart suffered the Duke of Lennox to appear the ostensible superior, and was contented to rank in the capacity of his assistant and dependent. When raised, however, to the rank of nobility, and wedded to a woman of ambition as irregular as his own, the new Earl of Arran became impatient of the duke's precedence and superiority in a degree which had never occurred to him when Captain James Stewart. He endeavored, by various means, to rival his credit with the king, and inspired the people with jealousy of his favor. Under pretence of friendship he found little difficulty in instigating the inexperienced Duke of Lennox to quarrel with several of his soundest friends and best advisers; and was thus the means of stirring up dissension between the duke and the Master of Mar, Sir William Stew-art, captain of Dumbarton, Alexander. Clark, provost of Edinburgh, and, above all, the Earl of Gowrie, treasurer of Scotland, persons of considerable influence, and all well inclined to the Duke of Lennox till estranged from him by the intrigues of Arran and his lady.

This was not all, nor even the worst part of the evil rendered by Stewart to the young nobleman who had first raised his influence at court. He never failed, upon every possible opportunity, to breathe into the minds of the clergy and people that Lennox, whatever might be now his pretences, was still at heart a devoted servant of the Duke of Guise, a favorer of the Catholic religion, a tool of the court of France, and a dangerous person to retain any share in the king's affections. Now, although these insinuations, considering the quarter from which they came, might have been more than suspected, yet as they fell upon the ears of persons who were very much disposed to receive them as true, the circumstance of deriving their origin from the false and profligate Arran did not operate, as it would otherwise have done, to deprive them of credit. Strong jealousy, there-fore, prevailed among the envoys and partisans of England, as also the clergy and reformed part of Scotland, all of which parties regarded the duke, being a stranger and a converted Catholic, as still retaining a dangerous partiality for the country and the religion in which he had been educated.

But these suspicions excited against Lennox did not at all raise in the public estimation the character of the Earl of Arran, by whom they had been infused into the mind of the people. On the contrary, whatever might be his success in representing his rival Lennox as the friend of France and Rome, he himself continued to be esteemed, by almost all except the deceived king and a few dependents who hoped to rise by his favors, a, bold, bloody, and ambitious minister, regardless both of law and justice, and only intent upon amassing power and wealth by the wreck and ruin of others.

Scotland had been long accustomed to the use of violent remedies in state diseases, so that the apprehension of Lennox's partiality for France, and of Arran's general profligacy and oppression, soon excited a party among the nobles to remove these obnoxious favorites from the king's presence by force itself, if force should be found necessary. The members of this conspiracy were chiefly such nobles as had been attached to the king's party during the civil wars, most of whom considered the execution of Morton as a violent precedent, tending to place the lives and fortunes of other nobles at the discretion of the crown; since in the course of the late tempestuous times there were few or none who had not been at one period or another privy to, if not aiding in, matters which might be construed into high treason.

The principal conspirators were the Earl of Mar, the Master of Glammis, the Lords Oliphant, Boyd, and Lindsay, the abbot of Dunfermline, secretary of state, and others who had been formerly allied with Morton and the English faction, They were very desirous to draw to their party the Earl of Gowrie, a man so generally esteemed for courage and hardihood that he was known among his intimates by the name of Greysteel, being that of a champion in Scottish romance, bestowed at the time upon such as were held to excel in chivalry. But although the Earl of Gowrie was even by direct descent connected with those who drove matters on most severely against Queen Mary,' he does not appear to have been himself of a turbulent disposition, or much disposed to enter into the conspiracy, of which he afterward bore the chief blame, and for which he suffered the chief punishment. An agent, named Cunningham of Drumquhassel, was employed to persuade him that the Duke of Lennox had an intention to slay him at their first meeting. The belief of this false report induced the credulous earl to engage himself with the lords who were associated for displacing the king's favorite ministers, or, as they termed it, for reformation in the state. Their avowed purpose was to cause both Lennox and Arran to be removed from the king's presence by exiling the former to his native country of France, and imprisoning the more obnoxious minion, or putting him to death, should no less effectual mode of destroying his influence over the king be fallen upon.

The time selected for executing this scheme was that which the king had chosen to enjoy the amusement of hunting in the country of Athole, so well suited for that sport.

His favorite ministers did not attend him on this occasion. Lennox remained at Dalkeith, and the Earl of Arran at Kinneil, which had fallen to him as the principal mansion of the unfortunate earl whose title and property became his spoil. When, therefore, James returned from Athole toward the low country, with a small train of his household servants, it was natural that Gowrie should invite him to his castle of Ruthven, which lay in the king's road, and that the king should accept the invitation of a great officer of the court against whom he had no ground for apprehension. James had no sooner arrived at Ruthven than his reasonable suspicions were awakened by the concourse of armed men who surrounded the castle, and the arrival of guests augmenting the number of those formerly assembled, all known to belong to one faction in the state, and wearing not the thoughtless air of persons about to engage in sylvan sports, but the anxious and severe aspect of such as were bound on some perilous enterprise. He took care, however, not to let these suspicions transpire, and endeavored to act as if he apprehended nothing.

Next morning the king appeared early, dressed and ready to set out upon his journey; but the associated lords had no mind to lose an opportunity which might not have again returned. The principal persons concerned in the enterprise entered James's bedroom in a body, and delivered to him a petition or remonstrance, setting forth that they, the king's faithful subjects, had for the space of two years suffered such false accusations, calumnies, oppressions, and persecutions, by means of the Duke of Lennox and of the person who assumed the title of Earl of Arran, that like insolence and enormities had never been heard of in Scotland. Their manifesto further stated that their persecution was felt by the whole body of the commonwealth, but chiefly by the ministers of the Gospel, and the true prfessors thereof; and that while men who had been attached to his majesty's service during his youth were, though the king's best subjects, driven into banishment, and many of those who remained were subjected to partial prosecutions and oppressions, and while all of them were grossly calumniated, and violently excluded from the presence of the sovereign, they saw with indignation that papists and notable murderers were, on the other hand, daily called home from deserved exile, and either restored to such property as they had be-fore enjoyed, or compensated by gifts out of the estates of the king's faithful subjects.

The same remonstrance charged Lennox and Arran with involving the king in plots and confederacies with the pope, the king of Spain, and the French papists, and with the bishops of Glasgow and Ross, the adherents of his mother, Queen Mary, by whom he was urged to effect her freedom from imprisonment, and associate her with himself in the royal authority.

However disagreeable this rough remonstrance might be to the king, the time and place rendered it dangerous to express his displeasure; so James received it, as prudence recommended, with complaisance. But upon his attempting to leave the chamber, with a general promise to give all due consideration to the petition of his beloved subjects, the Master of Glammis interposed between him and the door of the apartment, and gave him bluntly to understand he would not be permitted to leave the castle. After vain expostulation, the king burst into tears. "Let him weep," said Glammis fiercely: "better children weep than bearded men." These words sunk deep into the king's heart; and though generally of a placable disposition, the insult which they contained was never forgotten or forgiven.

For the present, however, James was compelled to submit to his fate, and to subscribe and issue a proclamation, declaring his purpose, by his own free consent, to remain for some time in the province of Stratherne, with such lords as were then around him.

When the news of this change of ministry, as it may be called, for such rude violence was in Scotland the frequent mode for transferring political power, reached the two favorites against whom it was chiefly levelled, each of them behaved in a manner indicative of his character. The Earl of Arran, as daringly rash as he was unprincipled and ambitious, rode headlong toward Ruthven Castle, at the head of a handful of armed followers, with whom he boasted "to drive the conspirators into mouse-holes." Had he encountered a considerable force under the Earl of Mar, which was lying in wait on purpose to intercept him, there is little doubt he would have been slain with his whole party; but the same rashness which endangered his life was, in fact, the means of saving it; for receiving some intimation of the am-bush he separated himself from his own troop of horse, and fetching a circuit around the squadron of Mar, he rode to Ruthven Castle with two attendants only. What his purpose could have been in so rash a proceeding we are left to conjecture; but the result was more favorable to him than could have been anticipated. Arran was not permitted, of course, to approach the person of the king, but, on the contrary, made prisoner, and thrown into a dungeon. He was soon after transferred to Stirling Castle; and a strong inclination was exhibited on the part of the associated lords to have taken his life, for which specious pretexts could not have been wanting. But unwillingness, perhaps, to provoke James by an action so violent, and the protection of the Earl of Gowrie, who was destined, it would seem, to save the life of him who finally brought his head to the block, occasioned the favorite to be detained prisoner, and his life preserved, to be a principal author of future state commotions.

The Duke of Lennox, who seems to have rested his only hopes of power upon the favor of his sovereign, was no sooner given to understand that James was debarred of his liberty on account of the favor which he had shown to him than he generously resolved, by withdrawing himself from Scotland, to remove at least that pretext for continuing the captivity of his sovereign. Without making any attempt to restore the state of administration which had been altered by the enterprise now popularly called the Raid of Ruthven, he capitulated with the lords who were concerned in the enterprise, and endeavored to obtain liberty to return to court. This license was sternly refused; and a proclamation was issued, by which he was commanded to leave Scotland. Lennox offered no resistance; but after some procrastination, in which he perhaps hoped that the ruling faction might relent, or the king regain some share of freedom and power, he at length retreated to Dumbarton Castle, and from thence returned to France by the way of London.

There is every reason to think that this young nobleman, who showed few bad inclinations and many gentle and generous qualities, returned the king's preference by a personal attachment to James more deep and sincere than that with which monarchs are usually repaid by their favorite min-ions. His melancholy at separating from Scotland was of so deep a kind that we can hardly assign disappointed ambition for its sole source, and willingly suppose that attachment to the sovereign who had so highly graced and favored him was a principal cause of Lennox's disease. Trouble of mind brought on a fever, which terminated his life at Paris. He died, declaring his sincere adherence to the Protestant faith, and refusing the succors of the Catholic Church, in contradiction to the calumnies which had such general circulation in Scotland.

James, who had been early imbued with the principle that the power of dissembling was essential to the art of reigning, now steered his course in conformity to the directions of the lords who had assumed the management of State affairs, and published a declaration, in which he acknowledged the Raid of Ruthven, with all its circumstances of violence toward his person and injury toward his feelings, to be laudable and good service, and prohibited any of his subjects to attempt a rising or assembling in arms under pretence of setting him free from the counsellors who had been then intruded upon him.

The conspirators themselves also published a long declaration, exaggerating the crimes and the presumption of the fallen favorites, and vindicating their violent removal as good service done to God, to the State, and to the king. The assembly of the Church, prejudiced against Lennox for his supposed attachment to the Catholic faith, and more justly abhorring the profligate life and tyrannic ministry of Stewart, earl of Arran, readily sanctioned the Raid of Ruthven, and required all sincere Protestants to combine with the lords by whom the enterprise was carried into effect. This act was appointed to be read by every minister to his congregation. The king also granted, what he had it not in his power safely to withhold, a remission, namely, to those concerned in the restraint of his person; and the convention of estates passed an act of ample indemnity on the same occasion.

Meanwhile James suffered in private all that could be endured by a young sovereign whose opinion of his prerogative was so lofty, and who felt that not his authority only but even his person had been grossly violated and insulted in the course of an action which he was now compelled to acknowledge to be good service, and not only to be pardoned, but to be rewarded as such. From some of those who immediately approached his person he did not attempt to conceal his internal feelings of being held under restraint by his present self-constituted counsellors.

To foreigners he was more reserved. Both the queen of England and the king of France had sent special ambassadors to inquire into the nature of the last revolution in Scot-land, and, ostensibly at least, to offer the young king assistance, if he should complain of being placed under restraint by his subjects. To the French ambassador, Monsieur De la Mothe Fenelon, and to Bowes, one of those who were sent by Queen Elizabeth, the king made general replies, in the same tenor with his public declarations; namely, that he was well contented with the lords who were now about him, who conducted themselves as faithful subjects, although they had, perhaps, been rash in adopting some prejudices against Lennox and others by whom he had formerly been counselled. With De la Mothe the king did not think it safe to be more frank, because the clergy and the more severe disciples of the reformation regarded that nobleman as an ambassador of the bloody murderer, by which name they distinguished the Duke of Guise, and they somewhat indecently termed the white cross, which, as a knight of the Order of St. Esprit, De la Mothe wore upon his shoulder, the badge of antichrist. With a person so unpopular the king dared not exchange any confidence; and for reasons of a different kind he did not choose to communicate his real sentiments to Bowes, one of the English ambassadors.

But while he amused these individuals in terms expressing a general contentment with his condition, the king was more confidentially explicit to others. Hoping, perhaps, to interest Elizabeth in his favor, on account of her well-known general sentiments of respect to royal authority in the abstract, he privately declared to Sir George Carey, son of Lord Hunsdon, and kinsman to Queen Elizabeth, that he was in reality highly dissatisfied with the violence which had been put upon him, and displeased with the counsellors who had thrust themselves into the management of his affairs. Sir George Carey undertook to keep this communication secret from his colleague Bowes and all others save his mistress herself.

Whether he communicated James's private message to Queen Elizabeth or not is not known, and is of very little consequence, since that sovereign could hardly require ex-press information to make her fully aware that James could not possibly look upon the Raid of Ruthven in a milder light than as an act of rebellion. Indeed, from her conduct she must be esteemed totally indifferent to the king's opinions and feelings on the subject, so long as the conspiracy had raised into power in Scotland a party disposed, like the lords in question, to act as the friends and partisans of England. She was, therefore, careful not to use any interference in her godson's behalf, if his complaints to Carey were actually transmitted to her, and left the affairs of Scotland to hold their own natural course.

The revolution in time began to take a turn in favor of James. By dint of the king's successful dissimulation, and confiding in the variety of pardons, remissions, and ratifications which they had accumulated for their protection, if necessary, the Earl of Gowrie and his party began to relax in the severity which they had at first exercised in watching the king's person, and permitted him to follow his hunting parties and journeys of pleasure without interruption. He failed not to take advantage of the freedom thus afforded him to draw gradually around him such other nobles and counsellors as were unconnected with or inimical to those who were presently in power; and opening his mind to them privately, he expressed his resolution either to free himself from his present restraint, or to die in the attempt to acquire his liberty. At the same time he promised, in secret to Melville and other wise and judicious statesmen, who shared his confidence, and recommended to him moderate counsel, that should he succeed in his attempt to regain his liberty, he would nevertheless abstain from pursuing any passionate or vindictive course against those concerned in the conspiracy of Ruthven. Nay, he even professed that he would not exclude them from his favor, so as to drive them to desperation. In a word, he affirmed it to be his intention to rule with an equal hand among his nobility of all factions, to discourage the party spirit, which, being the natural con-sequence of the long civil wars, had been so great an evil to the country, and, disowning all distinction of king's men and queen's men, he professed his purpose to use the talents indifferently of all whom he should find capable to render him service. These dispositions of the king, which were privately whispered abroad, not only awakened the hopes of such of the peers as were excluded from administration to look for a speedy change, but even inclined some of the statesmen then in power, and the Earl of Cowrie himself, to become fearful of the consequences of governing by a faction, and rendered them desirous that the king should be admitted to his liberty, and that the system of administration should be remodelled on a less exclusive footing, providing these points could be conceded to James without incurring the terrors of reaction and retaliation on the part of the faction readmitted to power.

While matters were in this state, James devised measures for his own escape from the lords who since the Raid of Ruthven had exercised the supreme power of the State, and retained possession of his person. In summer, 1583, while the king was residing at his hunting-seat of Falkland, a convention was appointed to be held at St. Andrew's for the purpose of settling some disputed affairs between England and Scotland. The king conceived that he saw in this appointment some means of acquiring his freedom. His plan was to send letters to the Earl of March, the Earl of Montrose, Marischal, Argyle, and Rothes, all enemies of the faction of Ruthven, appointing them to come to St. Andrew's on a certain day; and as he did not send intimation of the time or purpose of meeting to the other noblemen connected with the Raid of Ruthven, he concluded it likely they would not appear. The faithful Melville endeavored to dissuade his majesty from the above, as a precarious and hazardous coarse: he represented that as the meeting of a convention was a matter which could not be well kept secret, the lords of the Ruthven Raid were likely to take the alarm from the very circumstance of their not having received the usual summons; and as their estates lay chiefly in Fife and Stratherne, they might assemble in force sufficient to out-number those opposite peers, upon whose support the king relied, and who had to bring their followers from a greater distance.

Notwithstanding this representation, James, with more spirit than belonged to his character, resolved to proceed in the enterprise. For this purpose he determined to be at St. Andrew's two or three days before the time appointed for the convention, and consulted with Colonel William Stewart, the commander of the guard, how he might place his royal person in security, when he should take up his quarters in that town. Accordingly, unsuspected, as it appeared, by his ministers, whose want of intelligence or dulness of apprehension seems to have been rather surprising, he set out upon his journey for St. Andrew's, as if he had been riding a-hawking; having at that time no attendant of the Ruthven faction near his person excepting the Earl of Mar. The king came to St. Andrew's "as blythe," says Melville, "as a bird escaped from the cage." The arch-bishop, in the meantime, held the castle of that place in readiness for the service of his sovereign. A proposal of taking a view of the fine old fortress was acted upon by the king merely as if it had been an accidental suggestion of the moment, which had no deeper motive than curiosity. But he and his retinue had no sooner entered the castle gates than they were shut and barred by Colonel William Stewart, the drawbridges raised, and the gentlemen of the guard placed on duty in defence of the walls.

The next day the nobles of both parties entered the town: the discontented barons in greater number, better supplied with arms than the opposite party, and with the intention, it seemed, as well as the power, again to seize upon his majesty's person. A day of strife and battle seemed impending, in which the person of the king should be the prize of the victor, like that of his grandfather at the battles of Melrose and Kirkliston. But the exertions of James's friends, who brought a body of royalists into the castle from the town and neighborhood, made the malcontent lords unwilling to come to violence; while Gowrie, obtaining admittance to the king's presence, renounced as treasonable his share in the Raid of Ruthven, disclaimed all future proceeding of so unlawful a character, and after a grave admonition from James was once more admitted to the king's favor.

The principal accomplices in the late conspiracy, finding themselves too weak to dispute the matter in arms, and being thus deserted by the chief member of their party, took the course of peaceful submission, and coming one by one before the king, acknowledged their offence, and obtained his majesty's pardon, under condition, however, that they should submit to such temporary exile as James should please to inflict upon them. The language of the king, as well as his proclamations, was of a merciful and moderate character; and he appeared little elated at the victory which he had gained in a struggle that seemed at first so doubtful. He intimated, that although he had been for some time detained against his consent, in consequence of the Raid of Ruthven, yet it was not his intention to prosecute as a crime that or anything else done in his minority; but that he was, on the contrary, resolved to consider all offences which had occurred as arising rather out of the troublesome character of the times than owing to the criminal intention of the actors. He appointed two principal nobles of each faction —Angus and Mar on the one side, and Huntley and Crawford on the other to withdraw from court for a season, as being in some sort the representatives pf the contending par-ties, whose absence might prevent the renewal of factious debates. The king, in the interim, proposed to guide his affairs by the less violent partisans, selected indifferently from both sides, from those nobles whom he meant to retain about his person.

There can be little doubt that had King James pursued the wise and moderate course announced by these temperate proposals, in which he was sincere at the time, he could not have failed to have brought to good order the councils of his kingdom. But his propensity to favoritism, which so often interfered with his better thoughts, was destined on the present occasion to disturb his more deliberate, wise, and clement measures.

The Earl of Arran had, by favor of Gowrie, been lately freed from his prison in Stirling, having obtained permission to reside at his own house of Kinneil, upon his parole not to leave it, and particularly riot to approach the court. Immediately upon hearing of the revolution which had taken place at St. Andrew's, he proposed to come to court and pay his duty to his majesty. By the advice of his present council, who were all aware of the favorite's deserved unpopularity, and apprehensive of his influence over the king's mind, James was induced flatly to refuse the permission requested. But some time afterward, under the specious pretence of paying his respects to the king upon one single occasion, he was admitted to James's presence,. when, resuming that personal influence over his master which had been suspended by his absence, he became as great or a greater favorite than ever: the rather that Lennox, who had more than rivalled him in the king's favor, was now deceased.

The known want of faith of this wicked man prevented the persons who had been concerned in the last troubles, and particularly the agents in the Raid of Ruthven, from relying upon the word of the king, though repeatedly pledged, for their safety and indemnity. James, they thought, might in his person forgive the restraint inflicted on him, but his more vindictive favorite would be sure both to remember and revenge his own imprisonment at Ruthven and Stirling, his threatened estrangement from court, and the yet more hostile intentions, which had even menaced his life.

Accordingly, it was soon made evident that it was the avowed policy of this ambitious and rapacious counsellor to prosecute a violent course against those concerned in the Raid of Ruthven. A menacing proclamation was issued, in which the offenders on this occasion were treated as persons still lying under the lash of the law, and which summoned each of them to take out formal remissions pr pardons for their several offences. This proclamation plainly intimated that conditions of a penal kind, but chiefly pecuniary mulcts, would be imposed on the persons who should apply for the offered pardons, and likewise implied that the criminal fact was considered as yet obnoxious to prosecutions, notwithstanding the several occasions on which the offenders had already obtained the royal pardon, both by express grant and by general proclamation.

This unwise and threatening manifesto struck terror into all those who had been accessory to this crime. Many of them withdrew from court, the more prudent actually left the country, and others prepared to follow the same example. Gowrie, himself, who had acknowledged his guilt, and received an explicit pardon, was driven from the court by the coldness of the king, and the insolence of Arran, whose evil nature was in this particularly apparent, since Gowrie had not only been the means of preserving his life when made prisoner at Ruthven Castle, but also, by warmly urging his being again permitted to see the king after the revolution of St. Andrew's, had laid the foundation for his restoration to power. Forgetful of these causes for gratitude to Gowrie, Arran pressed the unfortunate earl so hard that, despairing, as it afterward appeared, of regaining the king's favor, he remained uncertain whether he should fly from the country, or renew his engagements with other lords in the same situation, who meditated some violent mode of defence and retaliation. The further consequences of this will appear hereafter.

Queen Elizabeth, seeing in the severity menaced against the lords of the Raid of Ruthven the probable extinction of the party in Scotland most attached to the English interest, seems to have resolved to try what impression could be made on James, a young, and, she might suppose, an ignorant person, by a letter of a character more magisterial and men-acing than usually occurs in the correspondence of sovereigns while friendly relations exist between them. She reminded him of the noble lesson of Isocrates that a sovereign should hold his words to be of more account than the oaths of other men. She bemoaned him, she said, for permitting evil spirits to distract his mind, and lead him to think an honorable answer could be returned to her when all his actions gainsaid his former words. "You deal not with one," proceeded Elizabeth, "whose experience can take dross for good payment, nor with one that will be easily beguiled; no, I mean to set to school your craftiest counsellors." She was sorry, she continues, to see him bent to wrong himself in thinking to wrong others. She called upon him to remember what he had written to her with his own hand concerning the dangerous courses the Duke of Lennox was entered into; in contradiction of which, she alleges, that he now seemed to give the reproach of guilty folks to those who had pre-served him from rushing upon that acknowledged hazard. "I hope you more esteem your honor," she adds, "than to give it such a stain, since you protested so often to have taken these lords" (meaning the lords concerned in the Raid of Ruthven) "for your most affectionate subjects, who had acted all for your best advantage." She concluded this magisterial expostulation, by beseeching him to pass no further on the course he was pursuing (that of severity, namely, against Gowrie and his friends) till he should consult with an ambassador extraordinary, whom she proposed to despatch toward him, and from whom he might receive better and more fruitful counsel than from all the dissemblers of his own court.

This singular epistle was written in Elizabeth's own hand, and that in which James replied is no less worthy of notice. James was at home when a dispute was to be maintained by classical quotati n. He answered his god-mother's quotation from Isocrates, by taking notice of another maxim of the same author, which directs us to esteem those less our friends who continually praise us than such as use timely reproof, in which kind view of her sharp admonition he is determined, he adds, to consider it as the fruit of sisterly love, although acting upon misinformation. It is true, he says, that he was compelled at the moment, when he was in the power of those noblemen, to publish such proclamations and subscribe such pardons as were presented to him in their favor. The circumstances of the times did not admit his disputing their pleasure. It was also true, he acknowledged; that while under the same restraint of a predominant faction he intimated in public to the French and English ambassadors that he was contented with his condition, and had none save friends about him; but he reminds Elizabeth that at the very time while he made this compulsory answer to De la Mothe Fenelon and Bowes, he communicated to Sir George Carey, her kinsman, his real feelings of his situation, and his determination rather to hazard dying honestly than to reign shamefully. He imputes the severe language used by Queen Elizabeth to the suggestions of partial counsellors, and declares that he will rather keep in memory her former effectual friendship than start at any wrong-placed syllable or sour sentence placed in her late paper at the instance of others. Respecting Elizabeth's de-sire that he will proceed no further against the Ruthven faction until a special ambassador should arrive on her part, he declares that, although Isocrates (whose maxims he has again at her service) advises princes to execute with speed that which is fitting to be done, yet he intends to abstain from doing anything which can justly offend Elizabeth until the arrival of her envoy, hoping and desiring that this per-son so trusted may be as willing to promote the effects of true love and friendship between them as he was assured was the desire and intention of Elizabeth as well as his own.

The ambassador whose wisdom was thus praised, and whose arrival at the court of James was so formally announced, was no less a person than the celebrated Walsingham, second to Burleigh alone as the favorito counsellor of Elizabeth, and one of the most accomplished statesmen in Europe. He was sent by Elizabeth, thinking, probably, that his gravity and learning might have some effect upon James, and obtain so much ascendency as might check his purpose of altogether destroying the Ruthven conspirators, and for the more general purpose of obtaining, by means of a statesman so well acquainted with mankind, an accurate idea of the character of the Scottish sovereign, with whom Elizabeth must necessarily have so many important affairs to transact, and of whom she was the more likely to receive different reports, as, in fact, James's character appeared very different to those who looked upon it in different points of view.

Walsingham, otherwise excellently qualified for his mistress's purpose, was aged and infirm, and the necessity of his using a wheel-carriage rendered his progress extremely slow; the rather as, being magnificently attended, the old statesman travelled with a train of eight-score of horse. At his first audience of James, Walsingham required to know why his majesty had changed the counsels and company of the noblemen lately around him, they being the best and most religious of his peers, and those of whom the queen of England had the highest opinion, and with whom she most willingly held intercourse. James made an immediate and well-turned answer, indicating, it may be supposed, his freedom as an independent prince to use what counsellors he pleased, and the reasonable expectation that those whom he trusted ought to receive the confidence of his allies. This reply was so grave and pointed as struck wonder into the queen's old statesman, which he did not hesitate to express.

Walsingham had another audience with James, no other person being present; after which, the Englishman, taking Sir James Melville by the hand, declared his entire contentment with the Scottish sovereign. "I have spoken," said he, "with an excellent young prince, ignorant of nothing; and of such happy expectation that I think my heavy travel in coming hither is well bestowed in having but seen him."

The Earl of Arran desired to enter into conversation with this celebrated statesman, who haughtily refused either to see him or to abide longer at the court, where it is probable, however well he was received himself, he found no token of his intercession being available in favor of the Ruthven party. This he imputed to the influence of Arran, whom he termed a scorner of religion, a sower of discord, and an enemy of true and honest men.

In revenge of the contempt with which he was treated by Walsingham, Arran took a course of expressing his feelings more dishonorable to himself and to his master than to the English envoy. He intercepted a diamond ring, designed for Walsingham by James, valued at seven hundred crowns, and presented in its stead one which enclosed a piece of ordinary rock crystal. The knights and gentlemen of quality who attended in Walsingham's retinue were also discourteously treated in being excluded from permission to wait upon the king when receiving his court.

Walsingham passed over these petty expressions of spleen with the contempt which they deserved from a statesman of his wisdom and experience. On his return home, the report of this distinguished minister, concerning the wisdom and learning of James, was of high advantage to the king, especially among those of the English people who began to look forward to the days which should follow Queen Elizabeth's death, and were, therefore, disposed to inquire into the character of her presumptive successor. James's natural parts and acquired information qualified him to make a good figure in conversation, while his indecision of disposition, and his being so unhappily subject to the influence of unworthy counsellors, often prevented the maxims which he knew how to use in counsel from being seconded by actions conforming to them. Walsingham's high opinion of James was so boldly expressed as for a time to draw down on her ancient states-man some shadow of that jealousy with which Queen Elizabeth was apt to visit those who expressed a good opinion of any one near in her succession. On the whole, however, the queen was disposed to treat James in future with more respect than hitherto.

In November of this year Ludovic Stewart, eldest son to the late Duke of Lennox, arrived in Scotland, invited over by James, who took this mode of showing his kind recollection of his banished and deceased favorite. He was promoted to his uncle's dignity and dukedom, and in due time, for he was but very young at his arrival in Scotland, was promoted to considerable offices of dignity. By this kindness James evinced an amiable disposition, inclined to carry friendship beyond the grave.

In the meantime the troubles of Scotland daily increased. The conspirators of Ruthven sued out their pardons, which were not granted, but upon condition that they should de-part the kingdom. Gowrie himself obtained license to go into France; but delaying his purpose, became involved in more dangerous counsels, which terminated in his violent death. The clergymen had also mingled in the troubles of the community; for having long since declared, by an act of general assembly, that the Raid of Ruthven was good service, individual preachers were from time to time induced to dilate upon the legality of the measure. When called to account for such political sermons, they pleaded the privilege of the pulpit as an ample apology for expressing their opinion upon State affairs; and contended that though they might from thence utter treason, or what was liable to be punished as such, they were not amenable to the king's privy council, or any secular judge, but must always be tried and judged by the church judicatories, at least in the first in-stance. Andrew Melvin, a preacher of talents and learning, set a bad example on this occasion to his brethren, accusing the king by the undutiful assertion that he perverted the laws of both God and man, and flying to England when he was commanded to enter into prison.

From all these subjects of complaint the disaffection grew so general that the Earls of Angus and Mar, conspirators in the exploit of Ruthven, united to seize the town and castle of Stirling, intending to render it the headquarters of their party, and expecting to be joined by the Earl of Gowrie, who had a part in their plot. This was on the 19th of April, 1584; but the king, who was at Edinburgh, was so well seconded by the zeal of his subjects, and particularly by the citizens of the metropolis, that on the 24th James was ready to advance toward Stirling with such a powerful army that the Earls of Angus and. Mar did not choose to wait his arrival. They had learned that the Earl of Gowrie had suffered himself to be surprised and taken by Sir William Stewart, the captain of the king's guard, at Dundee; and despairing of success in their enterprise fled to England, leaving a few followers in the castle, by whom it was surrendered to the king, and placed under custody of the all-grasping Earl of Arran.

In the meantime the Earl of Gowrie was brought to his fate. He had hired a vessel to leave Scotland for France; but delayed his departure, as the commotions had begun to take place which appeared to promise a general insurrection. Some communication he appears himself to have had with Angus and Mar in their attempt to surprise Stirling; how-ever, he declared at his death that he was engaged in no plot against the king's person, crown, or estate, but only moved by the hopes of saving his own family and fortune from ruin. He had remained for days and weeks uncertain what course he should adopt : want of decision, which was always his chief fault, and now proved his ruin, induced him to linger, until Colonel William Stewart, commander of the royal guard, arrived to apprehend him. The Earl of Gowrie defended his lodgings by force, and called upon the people of Dundee to join with him as a faithful Protestant pursued for his religion. Tho citizens, however, took part with the royal guard, and the earl was compelled to surrender himself. He was first taken to Kinneil, the abode of his enemy Arran, and afterward brought to Stirling, and tried with the usual irregularity of proceeding then used by the Scottish courts in cases of high treason. One point of the charge was singular: Gowrie had from his prison petitioned for an interview with James, for the purpose, he stated, of disclosing a secret which might have endangered the king's life and estate, if he himself had not stayed and impeded the same. The use made of this petition was to frame, out of the acknowledgments which it contained, a fourth article of indictment. which was added to three already charged in the earl's accusation. This additional charge bore that the accused earl, having intelligence of a weighty purpose concerning the life and estate of the king and of the queen, his mother, did treasonably conceal the same, and does as yet conceal the particulars thereof.

The inquest upon this unfortunate earl had no hesitation to find him guilty of high treason. He was executed with that declaration in his mouth, which has been ascribed to many great men in misfortune, that "if he had served God as faithfully as he had done his king, he had not come to an end so disastrous." Gowrie's death was the subject of general censure and regret. Whatever had been his accession to the Raid of Ruthven, he had been one of the first to desert the conspirators, implore the king's pardon, and lend his assistance to restore the liberty of his sovereign. It was not until he found that the pardon which had been so repeatedly and formally granted was not likely to protect him that he was induced to take measures for the safety of his life and fortune, by uniting himself with those who stood in the same peril. There was, therefore, injustice in imputing to the earl as voluntary guilt a line of conduct which was the natural consequence of a breach of public faith toward him; and the iniquity was more flagrant that the schemes of which he was accused seem rather to have been something which he thought of than what he had actually determined upon, so that they could be hardly termed even crimes of intention, far less offences actually perpetrated. At least, if Gowrie in strict law merited death, all men execrated the ungrateful rapacity of Arran, who drove matters to extremity against the very person without whose intervention he would have lost his life shortly after the Raid of Ruthven. Nor did the evil consequences of Gowrie's death expire with the earl himself, but will be found to furnish occasion to a future dark and bloody chapter in this history.

By this vindictive and cruel execution the king of Scot-land, or rather his unpopular and profligate minister, was for the time placed beyond dread of attack by that party of nobles who, supported by England, and formidable in their own strength, had endeavored to establish a reformation, as they termed it, in the administration of Scotland, by banishing Arran, and establishing a control over the person of the king and government of the State.

But in gaining this victory Arran himself, daring as he was, must have been sensible that he exposed himself to an additional load of unpopularity. This event not only excited the hostility of that class of persons, few, perhaps, in number, but respectable from their reputation for wisdom, who, though sincere friends of the monarchy, were desirous of seeing its legal powers exerted with prudence and moderation, but at the same time animated against him the deep and determined enmity of a large party, the friends, kinsmen, and adherents of the nobles who had been driven into exile. And what was at least equally formidable, it exasperated against the governing favorite the Church of Scotland in general, and all those numerous congregations who, in zeal for their religion, and love and reverence for their preachers, were disposed to adopt the political sentiments which they heard delivered from the pulpit, as authorized by the Holy Scripture.