Louis A. Barbé

“ MARY, QUEEN OF SCOTS A Brilliant Personality More than three hundred years have elapsed since Mary Stuart was sent to the scaffold by Elizabeth, and met death with that noble fortitude which awed her enemies and which has half redeemed her fame in the eyes even of those who regard the tragedy of Fotheringay as an act no less of justice than of expediency. ”

“ JAMES VI AS STATESMAN AND POET I.—AS STATESMAN Those who accept the traditional estimate of James VI's character may deem it little short of preposterous to connect his name with the idea of statesmanship. To them he appears as a garrulous pedant and a coarse buffoon, whose rickety walk was the outward sign of a feeble, vacillating temper; as a would-be autocrat who, whilst constantly obtruding his despotic theories on his subjects, lacked the strength of mind and the energy to put them into practice ”

“ She is particularly hurt at the ingratitude of the Queen of Scots, whom she has deprived of her liberty, it is true, but otherwise treated right royally. And apostrophizing the rival whose fair face hides so much disloyalty, envy, and spite, so much fury and so much daring, she asks her whether her heart is not touched at the thought of the countless ills to which England must become a prey if it should lose its lawful Sovereign. ”

“ In the darkest pages of their history the name of the Setons is always found amongst those of the few faithful friends whom danger could not frighten nor promises tempt from their allegiance. In this respect Mary Seton's French mother was worthy of the family into which she was received. At the death of Marie de Guise, Dame Pieris transferred not only her services, but her love also, to the infant Queen, and stood by her with blind devotion under some of the most trying circumstances of her short career as reigning sovereign. ”

“ In the controversy which has now raged for three centuries, and in the course of which every incident of Mary's life has repeatedly been submitted to the closest scrutiny, anxiety to get at facts, to add to the weight of evidence, to discover fresh witnesses, to unearth new documents bearing on the points at issue, has led to a disregard of her personality more complete, perhaps, than in the case of any of her contemporaries, and contrasting strangely with the abundance of intimate details which go to make up our knowledge of her great rival. ”

“ Kind Goddess, Health, four Nymphs their voices raise To welcome thy return and sing thy praise, To beg as suppliants that thou wouldst deign To smile benignly on their Queen again, And make her royal breast thy hallowed shrine, Where best and worthiest worship shall be thine. ”

“ In the meantime, John Baliol, anxious to retain so important a stronghold, sent his whole army of forty thousand foot and fifteen hundred horse to its succour. When the besieged saw this formidable force encamped on the heights above Spot, they felt confident of success; and in their premature exultation, they jeered at the English, calling them "tailed dogs", and threatening not only to kill them, but also to cut off their tails. Their boasts were not justified by the result. In the engagement that followed, the rashness of the Scots in abandoning their favourable position proved disastrous. ”

“ When the short second act opens, sentence of death has been passed on Mary Stuart, and the Estates of England appear before their Queen to demand that, for their safety, the sentence shall be carried out. Elizabeth accedes so far as to promise that she will leave the matter in their hands. But that is only a device to gain time. As soon as she is by herself, she calls up a vivid picture of what foreign nations and posterity will think of her if she allows the blood of a Sovereign to stain the scaffold, and is so horrified at it that she determines to interfere. ”

“ It was addressed to Cecil, to the Minister with whom Randolph had been in constant correspondence for years, to whom he had communicated the trifling events of each day—incidents of Court life and scraps of Court gossip—who knew the extent of his experience of Scottish affairs, and was as familiar with his views as with his peculiarities of style and diction in expressing them; to the last man, in short, whom it would have been possible to hoodwink as to the authorship of a work bearing traces of either the hand or the inspiration of his subordinate. ”

“ The correspondence of the time shows that of all who were variously affected by Buccleuch's raid, it was James who, all along, found himself in the most difficult and delicate position. Whilst willing to conciliate Elizabeth, he hesitated to condemn an action of which his subjects were proud as of a triumph over England. He now began to understand that he would have to yield to the imperious Queen. But he was still anxious to delay the inevitable surrender, knowing that amongst the people generally the feeling of opposition to the delivery of Buccleuch was as keen as ever. ”

“ In their shameless audacity, they fastened the tails of sea-fish to the garments of the holy men. Indignant at this sacrilegious outrage, the Spirit of the Lord, through the mouth of Augustine, condemned those who had committed it to perpetuate in themselves and in all their posterity the ignominy to which they had submitted the saints of God. ”

“ It may, therefore, be neither inopportune nor uninteresting if, forgetting for a while the history of the Queen, we give our attention to the individuality of the woman; if, turning to the "treasures of antiquity laid up in old historic rolls", we endeavour, not to clear up the mystery of Darnley's murder, nor to explain the fatal marriage with Bothwell; not to pronounce on the authenticity of the sonnets, nor to solve the enigma of the famous letters ”

“ Nevertheless, as it is often from fiction alone that we gather our knowledge of the minor characters of history—of those upon which more serious records, engrossed with the jealousies of crowned heads, with the intrigues of diplomatists and the wrangles of theologians, have no attention to bestow—it does not seem altogether useless at least to point out how little resemblance there is between the Mary Beton of real life and the Nemesis of the drama. ”

“ Did vows of mortal men avail with Fate, Our vows had raised thee to the royal state. The fickle Deity that rules mankind, Though blind and deaf and foolish in her mind, Seemed neither foolish, deaf, nor blind to be When regal honours she accorded thee; Or, if she were, then 'twas by Virtue led She placed the diadem upon thy head. [60] The "Faire Flemyng" found an admirer amongst the English gentlemen whom political business had brought to the Scotch Court. This was Sir Henry Sidney, of whom Naunton reports that he was a statesman "of great parts". ”

“ To most of us Elizabeth is as distinctly, almost tangibly, present as though she had reigned in our day. She moves through the pages of history surrounded by a train of courtiers scarcely less familiar to us than those of our own generation. The Queen of Scots, on the contrary, seems to be but little more than an historical abstraction. ”

“ Both night and day he attendeth, he watcheth, he wooeth—his folly never more apparent than in loving her, where he may be assured that, how much soever he make of her, she will always love another better. This much I have written for the worthy praise of your noble mistress, who, now being neither much worth in beauty, nor greatly to be praised in virtue, is content, in place of lords and earls, to accept to her service a poor pen clerk." [63] We have not to reconcile the ill-natured and slanderous remarks of Randolph's letter with the glowing panegyric penned by him some two years previously. ”

“ Austin drew southward, so that he came to Dorchester; there he found the worst men that dwelt in the land. He told them God's lore, and they had him in derision; he taught them Christendom, and they grinned at him. Where the Saint stood, and his clerks with him, and spake of Christ, as was ever their custom, there they approached to their injury, and took tails of rays and hanged them on his cope, on each side. ”

“ Mary Carmichael and Mary Hamilton herself are mere poetical myths. Not only does no mention of them occur in any of the lists still extant of the Queen's personal attendants, but there also exist documents of all kinds, from serious historical narrative and authoritative charter to gossiping correspondence and polished epigram, to prove that the colleagues of Mary Beton and Mary Seton were Mary Fleming and Mary Livingston. How the apocryphal names have found their way into the ballad, or how the ballad itself has come to be connected with the Maids of Honour, cannot be determined. ”

“ Thereupon, the dear saint complained to Almighty God, and prayed to such purpose that, even to this very day, all the boys that are born in that village bring with them into the world little tails rooted to their hinder parts. From this circumstance has arisen the byword which so greatly annoys the English: "Englishman, show your tail!" And continues Wilwolt, "I should like to see the foolhardy man who dared to call out, 'English tailard' in that same village. He would have to take himself off very quickly if he did not wish to be beaten to death." ”

“ Much are the Western men bound (as you see) to Polydore, who taking the miracle from Augustine, applieth it to S. Thomas, and removing the infamous revenge from Dorsetshire, laieth it upon our men of Kent. But little is Kent, or the whole English nation beholding, either to him, or his fellowes, who (amongst them) have brought upon us this ignominie and note with other nations abrode, that many of them believe as verity, that we have long tailes and be monsters by nature, as other men have their due partes and members in usual number. ”

“ The Scottish chronicler, taking Wace's narrative as his starting-point, relates that when St. Augustine was preaching the word of life to the heathen, amongst the West Saxons, in the county of Dorset, he came to a certain town where no one would receive him or listen to his preaching. They opposed him rebelliously in everything, contradicted all he said, did their utmost to distort his actions, on which they put sinister interpretations, and, impious to relate, carried their audacity so far as to sew and hang fish tails to his garments. ”

“ But I could boast of beauty with the best, In skilful points of princely attire And of the golden gifts of nature's behest, Who filled my face of favor fresh and fair. My beauty shines like Phœbus in the air, And nature formed my features beside In such proport as advanceth my pride. ”

“ The Bibliothéque Nationale possesses a manuscript, [349] which is ascribed by experts to the fourteenth century, and in which the legend of St. Augustine and the tails—no longer those of ray-fish, however—supplies materials for a quaint satire against the inhabitants of Rochester. It begins with a mock-serious discussion as to the species of animals to which they belong. That they are not men is quite clear, for they have tails, and Aristotle has conclusively established that men have no tails. And yet those strange animals have something human about them, too—they reason and have laws. ”

“ Enlarging on this idea, the Councillor urges the Queen to put her prisoner to death:—It is a pious deed to kill a murderess; it cannot be displeasing to a just God that punishment should be inflicted on the wicked; and, moreover, has not the impunity of vice often brought ruin and death on kingdoms and on kings? To such arguments as these, Elizabeth replies that kings and queens are answerable to God alone; that Sovereigns who put their enemies to death increase instead of diminishing their number ”

“ Disappointing as it may be to ardent admirers of the Queen of Scots, it must be admitted that her themes do not bear out the praises bestowed on her Latinity, but contain such solecisms as would probably have been fraught with unpleasant consequences to a less noble and less fair scholar. Neither need the substance of Mary's apology for learned women excite our enthusiasm. ”

“ The attitude which William of Malmesbury credits Augustine with assuming in the circumstances seems less in keeping with what we elsewhere read of the Saint's temper than does the vengeful sentence which Goscelin makes him pronounce against the offenders. William says of him that, for Christ's sake, he bore their affronts patiently, modestly, and even joyfully, and shaking against them the dust of his feet, retired a distance of some three miles, as a precaution against further irritating the insane anger of the poor people. ”