Page images
PDF
EPUB

to have been misunderstood, or inaccurately reported, by certain recent writers on the Marian controversy.

Patrick, Master of Gray (of whom the historian Maitland says, that he had a head to contrive almost any wickedness, and willingness to execute it'), is thus described by Davison, in a letter to Sir Christopher Hatton, in 1584, when rising into notoriety at the Scottish court:

This gentleman, besides that he is a known papist, a favourer of the French cause, a servant and pensioner of the queen's (Mary), and a suspected pensioner of the pope, hath himself confessed to have had, at his coming out of France, a cupboard of plate given him by the Spanish ambassador resident there, to the value of five or six thousand crowns; beside other gifts from the Duke of Guise and other the queen's friends: and since his coming here hath been treasurer of all such money as was sent him by Bellandine, as coming from the queen; whereof I know where he weighed at one time ten thousand carats, reserved to the king's own use, besides his own part, and that was disposed amongst other of the courtiers, to relieve their hungry appetite,' &c.

Gray was at this time actually engaged in the queen's party, which he subsequently deserted, on some fancied or real slight on the part of Mary herself; and we next find him in confidential communication with Leicester, Walsingham, and the notorious Archibald Douglas, the Scots ambassador in England, a partisan as deeply involved in intrigues with Elizabeth's ministers as himself. To him (before accepting the extraordinary commission to England) Gray expressed, in no ambiguous terms, his fears lest his own prosperity at the Scottish court, and that of Douglas also, might be found incompatible with the life of Mary.

After informing Douglas that his majesty is very wel content with all your proceidings, but cheifly tuching his beukis and hunting horses,' he continues, with reference to that princess,

'he (the king) is content how strictly she be keipit, and all hir auld knaifish servantis heingit. In this you must deil verie warly, to escheu inconvenientis, seeing necessitie of all honest menis affairs requyres that she wer out of the way.'-8th September, 1586.

We find in the Cotton MSS. another letter written by him on the following day (9th Sept.) to Walsingham. After some communication respecting affairs in Flanders, (Gray being agent in Scotland for the English expedition of Sir Philip Sydney, who, strange to say, seems to have respected and esteemed him,) he says, in evident reference to the letter of the preceding day, Sir, I have written to his majesty's ambassadour of an advertysement I

The reader will remember, in Ellis's Original Letters, James's correspondence with Elizabeth on these weighty subjects, only three months after his mother's

execution.

had

had yesternicht. I pray you inquyr it, for it is not impertinent. The Eternall be with you!' It seems clear, therefore, that Gray was anxious to let Walsingham into the secret of his own dark wishes respecting the Queen of Scots. But, besides these letters, which, to his eternal ignominy, are still preserved, he carried on another correspondence with Leicester. That nobleman, after Mary's death, when Gray had fallen into disfavour with Elizabeth, showed his letters to Sir Alexander Stewart, in order that the latter might report them to King James: and there is little doubt that they contained even more direct suggestions for the murder of the queen. The consequence of this disclosure was (we may observe en passant) that James shook off entirely the ascendency which Gray had acquired over him, and that the latter, in his discontent, joined again his old associates the disaffected Catholic nobles, and was, in consequence, banished the realm.

Gray was, therefore, sold to England, and probably planning the secret murder of Mary, at the very time when he was selected by her son (in November, 1586) to intercede for her life. Yet it is not true, as most historians (Dr. Lingard and Sir Walter Scott among the number) seem to imagine, that he accepted this commission with the deliberate intention of acting against the tenor of it. His own letters* (which Lingard has, in part, quoted, but singularly misunderstood) clearly prove the contrary. The most plausible interpretation to be put on his conduct is, that at the beginning he entertained a hope that-if all further trouble were not saved by a more summary mode of proceeding with Mary -the repugnance of James to her execution might, with the aid of dexterity, be overcome. He knew that prince's submissive and timorous disposition,-his natural subordination to the genius of Elizabeth, the coldness of temper which rendered him so little accessible either to the stimulus of injured honour, or that of wounded affection; he knew, moreover, that James had set his whole heart on the prospect of the English succession, the tempting lure which Elizabeth so craftily held out to him, keeping it always a little beyond his reach: finally, he saw him inextricably involved in the toils of the English party at home, and, in truth, far more afraid of the discontented nobility who might take up arms for his injured mother, than either of King Philip or Queen Elizabeth. Nevertheless he soon perceived that James, whether through very shame, or wrought upon by others, had resolved to take up his mother's cause in earnest; that it was unsafe any longer to tamper with the royal determination; and that, if the English Queen was equally resolved on her part, there was no choice left for him and for his correspondent, Douglas, but to relinquish either the favour Some of them are in Lodge's Illustrations-others in the Burleigh papers.

of Windsor or that of Holyrood. And the alternative which he adopted was not chosen through national or religious feeling, or any other of the more mixed motives which sway men of ordinary temper, he simply resolved (as he tells his friend the ambassador in plain terms) to attach himself to the side which had the chances of life in its favour, that is, the younger monarch! In this view he accepted the commission imposed upon him; probably intending to act so far in obedience to it, as to endeavour to defer, if possible, the execution of the sentence, until either the feeble resolution of James might be subdued, after the temporary excitement into which the indignity offered to his crown and blood had hurried him, or (which Gray regarded as safer for himself) Mary might be disposed of in a secret manner. On the 10th November he writes to Douglas, after some previous letters full of complaints respecting the expense of the embassy-an intended journey to Flanders having, he says, already eaten him up':

'All men drive at him (James) fyrst for his mother, and next for the matter of his title. The Guisarches, and his mother's friends, shall take occasion upon theis motives to deal both directly and indirectly with his majesty. And, for my part, I have taken this resolution to serve his majesty faithfully and fyrst, and if I see England to meine wel, I shall remaine constant that way; if not, I mean to follow no course partially, but to hate and love according to my maister's mind.'

He then represents himself as doubting whether to accept the embassy,

Refuse I, the king shall think I know already quhat shall come of things; so that if she die, he shall not feal to quarrel me for it; leive she, I shall have double harme. Refuse I not, but enterpryse the voyage, if she die, men shall think I have lent hir a hand, so that I shall leive under that slander; and leive she by my travail, I bring a staff to my awin head, or at the least shall have little thankes.'

[ocr errors]

On the 27th November he is more explicit :

Seeing this maiter comes on thus-I would faine the queen thair and hir counsell would devyse some middis, for, by God, the matter is hard to you and me both and I protest before God, I undertak that voyage for to see what good I can do, to make some middis, because I see the king wholly myndit to run a uther course if violence be usit: which I know shall be my wrak, being so far embarkit that way that skairsly can I retire myself. And for yourself, it is true, you have thair moyens,-[Alluding to Douglas's connexion with Elizabeth's ministry.]-but keip your compt, if his majesty steir a uther course, ye shall die a banisht man.'

It will be remembered that Archibald Douglas, one of the assassins of Darnley, was pardoned by James, and sent to England as ambassador, but partly with a view to keeping him out of the

country;

country; and Gray here insinuates, that if Mary die while James is in his present humour, Douglas, as well as himself, will become answerable in his eyes for her death, and will never be permitted to revisit Scotland.

'Ye know,' proceeds he, how mortell princes are, so it is good to remember home. I will be thus plainly with you: see I no myddis but that all shall break between these princes, I will seik the longest lyf, and will follow my master directly and sincerely.'

He then recommends the ambassador to gayne that young man William Keythe,' that is, to corrupt the king's own envoy extraordinary!

In a subsequent letter he seems really anxious to take credit to himself for his disinterested exertions in favour of the queen, who (not very unnaturally) was prejudiced against him, and had said to Douglas that she knew mair of him' (Gray) 'nor he did.'

'In the mean time,' says he, 'speak hardly to the queen, that I think she hath not usit me according to her promise, seeing this is the second time she has suspected me without a cause.'

With regard to Gray's subsequent conduct in the execution of his commission, it was asserted on all hands and partly admitted even by himself, that he counteracted to the best of his power the honest exertions of his colleague Melvill; that while outwardly pressing Elizabeth with texts of Scripture, and reasons from classical history, against laying violent hands on her royal kinswoman, he was privately urging her to perpetrate the act, and whispering into her willing ear the vindictive adage, Mortui non mordent.' But it is by far the most probable supposition that he, fearing as he must have done the vengeance of the Catholic party to which he still nominally belonged, was anxious, not for her execution, but for that darker mode of taking her life, which Elizabeth, could she have found, even then, trusty servants to perform that which Sir Amias Paulet refused, would probably have adopted at last. And this, in substance, Gray is reported to have subsequently confessed at Edinburgh.

These letters, we cannot but think, prove thus much in favour of James, that-unless he had dissimulation enough thoroughly to deceive his own crafty envoy,--he really was eagerly desirous of his mother's rescue, and prevented from insisting on it, as far at least as with sheathed sword he might, only by the double dealing and treason with which he was environed. They are, at all events, curious, as showing the character of the servants whom the state of parties in his own country compelled him- to employ. The murderer in heart of James's mother writes to the actual murderer of the same prince's father, to calculate coolly the chances between serving and betraying him! Surely, the very

worst

worst acts with which the sovereigns of that bad age are chargeable are mitigated, in the eyes of God and man, by reason of the inextricable nets of fraud and violence in which their wicked counsellors had enveloped them!

In fact, the whole state-history of those times seems to present nothing but a series of plots and counterplots, in which both personal honour and political morality were played with as mere counters in the game of ambition.* As the reader proceeds farther in examining for himself the original documents, out of which the superficial history of the age-a mere deceitful elevation without solidity or substance within-has been constructed, he scarcely finds a character or an event unmarked by the suspicion of treachery; he despairs of being able to distinguish truth from falsehood, sincerity from hypocrisy; and learns at last to contemplate with a kind of reverence those few characters which seem the pivots on which the revolving world of political intrigue then circulated; the Burleighs, Hunsdons, Walsinghams, of England; the Alvas, Guises, Chatillons, of the Continent; those who held on the same path for good and evil-who, however they may have marked their career by fraud, violence, and bloodshed, in pursuit of a particular object, yet never played double, or hedged their ventures.

Of the French envoys who were in this island in 1586 and 1587, and from whose despatches these volumes contain such large extracts, there was probably not one who acted the simple part of a diplomatist, or abstained from involving himself in the secret intrigues of the country in which he came to reside. Courcelles, the ambassador at Edinburgh, was never regarded as a model of honesty; Lord Hunsdon, in one of his letters from Scotland, in 'Lodge's Illustrations,' mentions the having procured from him certain papers by some device, for the whych, I assure your Highness, he hath byn twice reddy to hange himselfe :-a great pitty he was so lettyd from so good a deed!' But the industry of Mr. Leigh has brought to light, from the State Paper Office, direct evidence of the nature of the suspicion to which M. de Courcelles had subjected himself, namely, that of being implicated in the Babington conspiracy. D'Esneval writes to him (7th Oct. 1586), that the conspirators then under arrest, Vous avoient fort chargé, et que l'on avoit depesché en diligence vers le Roy d'Ecosse, pour le prier de vous arrester.' Bellièvre, who was sent over as special envoy to intercede for Mary's life, was, on the other

[ocr errors]

These were, indeed,' as Dr. Nares rather quaintly terms them, the very worst of times, when the most spiteful struggle was on foot that ever disturbed the world when a settled system of dissimulation in most of the courts of Europe had abso lutely destroyed all confidence, and when there was found to be more security in craft than in swords and shields.'-Life of Lord Burghley, vol. iii. p. 300.

hand,

« PreviousContinue »