Elizabeth Stuart

“ Elizabeth, however, did not feel entirely safe upon her throne. She had a rival and a very dangerous one. Mary, of the house of Stuart, daughter of a French duchess and a Scottish father, widow of king Francis II of France and daughter-in-law of Catherine of Medici (who had organised the murders of Saint Bartholomew's night) , was the mother of a little boy who was afterwards to become the first Stuart king of England. She was an ardent Catholic and a willing friend to those who were the enemies of Elizabeth. ”

“ Mary possessed a finer and nobler nature than Elizabeth; she was a woman of higher courage and greater conviction, more generous, magnanimous, and confiding, and, apart from her incomparably greater beauty and fascination, she possessed mental endowments fully equal to those of the English queen. But, whilst caution and love of mastery in Elizabeth always saved her from her weakness at the critical moment, Mary Stuart possessed no such safeguards, and was periodically swept along helplessly by the irresistible rush of her amorous passion. ”

“ THE death of Mary Stuart did something to simplify parties in Scotland; and, if her son had possessed the qualities of a ruler, he would have had a better chance of reducing his kingdom to order than any of his predecessors, because a middle class was at length rising into importance. As far as knowledge and discernment went, he was an able politician, and on several occasions he showed not only skill in his combinations, but—what he is not generally credited with by those who study only his career in England—considerable energy and courage. ”

“ The question of Elizabeth's legitimacy was an ever recurring one, and afforded a {90} rallying point for malcontents, who asserted that her mother's marriage with Henry VIII. was invalidated by the refusal of the Pope to sanction the divorce. Mary Stuart, who stood next to Elizabeth in the succession, formed a centre from which a network of intrigue and conspiracy was always menacing the Queen's peace, if not her life, and her crown.
Scotland, since the extinction of the line of Bruce, had been ruled by the Stuart Kings. ”

“ I know I have the body of a weak woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and of a King of England, too; and I think foul scorn that Spain, or any prince of Europe should dare to invade the borders of my realm!' This was Elizabeth's honest temper, and if Charles Stuart in throwing himself upon his nobles and his country had been true to them, he would never have gone to the scaffold. ”

“ With no adviser or woman near her, in her panic and despair she took the fatal resolve and crossed the Solway into Elizabeth's realm, trusting to the magnanimity of the woman whom she had tried to ruin and supplant. Again her heart had deceived her. Elizabeth had no pity for a vanquished foe, and for the rest of her miserable life, well nigh a score of years, Mary Stuart was a prisoner. But in all those years she never ceased to plot and plan for the overthrow of Elizabeth and her own elevation to the Catholic throne of all Britain. ”

“ It is only by recalling the early history of James Stuart that we can realize the attitude and temper of the Scottish Sovereign at the moment when the death of Elizabeth called him to the English throne. He came flushed with a triumph over Calvinism and democracy, but embittered by the humiliations he had endured from them, and dreading them as the deadly enemies of his crown. Raised at last to a greatness of which he had hardly dreamed, he was little likely to yield to a pressure, whether religious or political, against which in his hour of weakness he had fought so hard. ”

“ A pretty hero for a play!—The pedantic, selfish, ambitious, and cowardly son of Mary Stuart, who kissed the hand reeking with his mother’s blood, and held out the Scottish crown to be an awmous-dish, into which Elizabeth disdainfully threw her niggard charity, like an old maid depositing a farthing in the plate at the Magdalen Hospital door. ”

“ Finally, Elizabeth asked them what guarantee they would give for her life in the event of her consenting to pardon the Queen of Scotland. The envoys responded that they were authorised to make pledges in the name of the King of Scotland, their master, and all the lords of his realm, that Mary Stuart should renounce in favour of her son all her claims upon the English crown, and that she should give as security for this undertaking the King of France, and all the princes and lords, his relations and friends. ”

“ In the earlier years of Elizabeth Philip had been driven to her alliance by his fear of France and his dread of the establishment of a French supremacy over England and Scotland through the accession of Mary Stuart. As time went on, the discontent and rising of the Netherlands made it of hardly less import to avoid a strife with the Queen. Had revolt in England prospered, or Mary Stuart succeeded in her countless plots, or Elizabeth fallen beneath an assassin's knife, Philip was ready to have struck in and reaped the fruits of other men's labours. ”

“ She looked at Charles Stuart, about to speak out her disdain, when the expression of his face suddenly checked her. Even as a child Elizabeth had a marvelous intuition, which told her when another's feelings were in danger of being hurt. It gave her a strange, quite unacknowledged feeling that she was far older and wiser than the children she played with. There was always an inner self sitting in judgment on all childishness, even when she was on the highroad to every sort of nonsense by way of the wild streak. ”

“ In the fatal form of Mary was embodied everything most perilous to England's glory and to England's Queen. Mary Stuart meant absolutism at home, subjection to Rome and Spain abroad. The uncle Guises were stipendiaries of Philip, Philip was the slave of the Pope. Mucio had frightened the unlucky Henry III. into submission, and there was no health nor hope in France. For England, Mary Stuart embodied the possible relapse into sloth, dependence, barbarism. For Elizabeth, Mary Stuart embodied sedition, conspiracy, rebellion, battle, murder, and sudden death. ”

“ On the same day, Elizabeth made haste to spread, not only in London, but also throughout England, the rumour of the fresh danger from which she had just escaped, so that, when, two days after the departure of the French envoys, the Scottish ambassadors, who, as one sees, had not used much speed, arrived, the queen answered them that their request came unseasonably, at a time when she had just had proof that, so long as Mary Stuart existed, her own (Elizabeth’s) life was in danger. ”

“ But Elizabeth was woefully earthbound, tied down by the cares and worries that fall to humanity. As she still hung over the window-sill, gazing enraptured at the heavens, she was brought sharply down to earth. Up near the willows at the gate she dimly descried a dark figure hastening along Champlain's Road. It paused at the gate. Instantly Elizabeth was transformed. From the rapt priestess of the dawn she descended sharply to the keen-eyed spy. That was Charles Stuart just as sure as sure! And John would be up and off in another five minutes. ”

“ In the Stuart tragedy the "entreparleurs" are the Queen of Scots, the Queen of England, an anonymous Councillor, Davison, a Master of the Household, a Messenger, a Page, and two Choruses, one composed of Mary's female attendants, and another consisting of the "Estates" of England. The first act is opened by Elizabeth, who, in a long speech which she addresses to her Councillor, bewails her hard fate and her precarious tenure of both crown and life. ”

“ One serious cause of anxiety was the knowledge that Henry II. of France was constantly trying to place his daughter-in-law, Mary Stuart, on the throne of England, and there was a powerful Catholic party who felt her claim to be a just one. But death soon put an end to the king's interference, and calmed Elizabeth's fears from that source.
Then Mary Stuart's husband, Francis II., threatened to assert her rights; but he was too sickly and insignificant a [077] person to take the stand his father had done, and death removed him also out of the way. ”

“ Her sister was stealing down through the orchard, her light summer dress plainly visible against its dim greenness. She stopped at the bars that led into the pasture field, and as she did, Charles Stuart came vaulting over the fence from the lane and strode towards her. And surely everybody must have been touched with a magic wand, and turned into somebody else; because it wasn't Charles Stuart at all, but Mr. Coulson, to whom Elizabeth had bidden such an agonized farewell only yesterday! ”

“ By them this thoughtless woman was deluded, Proudly to style herself the Queen of England; No peace can be with her, and with her house; [Their hatred is too bloody, and their crimes Too great;] thou must resolve to strike, or suffer— Her life is death to thee, her death thy life. ELIZABETH. My lord, you bear a melancholy office; I know the purity which guides your zeal, The solid wisdom which informs your speech; And yet I hate this wisdom, when it calls For blood, I hate it in my inmost soul. Think of a milder counsel—Good my Lord Of Shrewsbury, we crave your judgment here. ”

“ James Stuart, emerging from the school of Buchanan and the atmosphere of Calvinism in which he had been bred, now reigned in those more sunny and liberal regions where Elizabeth so long had ruled. Finding himself at once, after years of theological study, face to face with a foreign commonwealth and a momentous epoch, in which politics were so commingled with divinity as to offer daily the most puzzling problems, the royal pedant hugged himself at beholding so conspicuous a field for his talents. ”

“ So, careless how it would affect religion, and making no condition at all about that, the same men who a year before were ready to whistle Mary Stuart down the wind, now invited her back to Scotland; the same men who had been the loudest friends of Elizabeth now encouraged Mary Stuart to persist in the pretension to the Crown of England, which had led to all the past trouble. ”

“ SCENE III. Enter BURLEIGH, LEICESTER, and TALBOT. The QUEEN takes her seat. BURLEIGH. Illustrious sovereign, thou crown'st to-day The fervent wishes of thy people; now We can rejoice in the propitious days Which thou bestowest upon us; and we look No more with fear and trembling towards the time Which, charged with storms, futurity presented. Now, but one only care disturbs this land; It is a sacrifice which every voice Demands; Oh! grant but this and England's peace Will be established now and evermore. ELIZABETH. What wish they still, my lord? Speak. BURLEIGH. They demand The Stuart's head. ”

“ To the fiercer ministers she was an idolatress, who ought to die the death, and, meanwhile, must be thwarted and insulted. To France, Spain, and Austria she was a piece in the [Pg 9] game of diplomatic chess. To the Pope she seemed an instrument that might win back both Scotland and England for the Church, while the English Catholics regarded her as either their lawful or their future Queen. To Elizabeth she was, naturally, and inevitably, and, in part, by her own fault, a deadly rival, whatever feline caresses might pass between them: gifts of Mary’s heart, in a heart-shaped diamond ”

“ 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. ”

“ On November 17th, Elizabeth became Queen of England, and the princes of Lorraine—Francis the great Duke of Guise, and his brother the Cardinal—induced their niece and her husband to assume, in addition to the arms of France and Scotland, the arms of a country over which they asserted the right of Mary Stuart to reign as legitimate heiress of Mary Tudor. ”

“ Elizabeth defied by Mary Stuart.
Neither the cares of government nor the infirmities of approaching age weaned her from the love of letters, which at every interval of leisure were her great delight. When nearly sixty years of age, in 1592, she made a second visit to Oxford, where, having been entertained with orations, disputations, etc., she pronounced on her departure, a Latin oration to the vice-chancellors and doctors, when she took her last farewell of the university. In the ensuing year she translated (p. 153) from Latin into English, Boethius's "De Consolatione Philosophæ." ”

“ The cardinal provision of the treaty was that against the employment of foreign troops in Scotland; for although the sovereignty of Mary Stuart was also formally recognised, this formal recognition was virtually little more than a mockery—a circumstance made clear by the fact that, without taking counsel with their sovereign, the estates sent commissioners to Elizabeth to propose a marriage between Elizabeth and Arran. The intention to supersede Mary by a joint sovereignty of Arran and Elizabeth is self-evident. To this proposal Lord James was by his silence a party ”

“ STUART, ARABELLA (1575-1615) , daughter of Charles Stuart, earl of Lennox, younger brother of. Lord Darnley and of Elizabeth, daughter of Sir William Cavendish and "Bess of Hardwick," is interesting historically as having been (by strict pedigree) next in succession to James VI. of Scotland to the thrones of England and Scotland, after Queen Elizabeth. Her father's mother was Margaret Douglas, the daughter of Henry VII.'s daughter, Queen Margaret of Scotland, and the earl of Angus. ”