Ringan Gilhaize, or, The Covenanters Part 13

On reaching Kinross, Master Knox rode straight to the sh.o.r.e, and went off in the Queen's barge to the castle, that he might present himself to her Highness before supper, for by this time the sun was far down. In the meantime, my grandfather went to the house in Kinross where the Earl of Murray resided, and his Lords.h.i.+p, though albeit a grave and reserved man, received him with the familiar kindness of an old friend, and he was with him when the Reformer came back from the Queen, who had dealt very earnestly with him to persuade the gentlemen of the west country to desist from their interruption of the popish wors.h.i.+p.

"But to this," said the Reformer to the Earl, "I was obligated, by conscience and the fear of G.o.d, to say, that if her Majesty would exert her authority in executing the laws of the land, I would undertake for the peaceable behaviour of the protestants; but if she thought to evade them, there were some who would not let the papists offend with impunity."

"Will you allow," exclaimed her Highness, "that they shall take my sword in their hands?"

"The sword of justice is G.o.d's," I replied, "and is given to princes and rulers for an end, which if they transgress, sparing the wicked and oppressing the innocent, they who in the fear of G.o.d execute judgment where G.o.d has commanded, offend not G.o.d, although kings do it not. The gentlemen of the west, madam, are acting strictly according to law; for the act of parliament gave power to all judges within their jurisdiction to search for and punish those who transgress its enactments;" and I added, "it shall be profitable to your Majesty to consider what is the thing your Grace's subjects look to receive of your Majesty, and what it is that ye ought to do unto them by mutual contract. They are bound to obey you, and that not but in G.o.d; ye are bound to keep laws to them--ye crave of them service, they crave of you protection and defence. Now, madam, if you shall deny your duty unto them (which especially craves that ye punish malefactors), can ye expect to receive full obedience of them? I fear, madam, ye shall not."

"You have indeed been plain with her Highness," said the Earl, thoughtfully; "and what reply made she?"

"None," said the Reformer; "her countenance changed; she turned her head abruptly from me, and, without the courtesy of a good-night, signified with an angry waving of her hand, that she desired to be rid of my presence; whereupon I immediately retired, and, please G.o.d, I shall, betimes in the morning, return to my duties at Edinburgh. It is with a sad heart, my Lord, that I am compelled to think, and to say to you, who stand so near to her in kin and affection, that I doubt she is not only proud but crafty; not only wedded to the popish faith, but averse to instruction. She neither is nor will be of our opinion; and it is plain that the lessons of her uncle, the Cardinal, are so deeply printed in her heart, that the substance and quality will perish together. I would be glad to be deceived in this, but I fear I shall not; never have I espied such art in one so young; and it will need all the eyes of the Reformed to watch and ward that she circ.u.mvent not the strong hold in Christ, that has been but so lately restored and fortified in this misfortunate kingdom."

Nothing farther pa.s.sed that night; but the servants being called in, and the preacher having exhorted them in their duties, and prayed with even more than his wonted earnestness, each one retired to his chamber, and the Earl gave orders for horses to be ready early in the morning, to convey Master Knox back to Edinburgh. This, however, was not permitted; for by break of day a messenger came from the castle, desiring him not to depart until he had again spoken with her Majesty; adding, that as she meant to land by sunrise with her falconer, she would meet him on the fields where she intended to take her pastime, and talk with him there.

CHAPTER XXIX

In the morning, all those who were in the house with the Earl of Murray and John Knox were early afoot, and after prayers had been said, they went out to meet the Queen at her place of landing from the castle, which stands on an islet at some distance from the sh.o.r.e; but, before they reached the spot, she was already mounted on her jennet and the hawks unhooded, so that they were obligated to follow her Highness to the ground, the Reformer leaning on the Earl, who proffered him his left arm as they walked up the steep bank together from the brim of the lake.

The Queen was on the upland when they drew near to the field, and on seeing them approach she came ambling towards them, moving in her beauty, as my grandfather often delighted to say, like a fair rose caressed by the soft gales of the summer. A smile was in her eye, and it brightened on her countenance like the beam of something more lovely than light; the glow, as it were, of a spirit conscious of its power, and which had graced itself with all its enchantments to conquer some stubborn heart. Even the Earl of Murray was struck with the unwonted splendour of her that was ever deemed so surpa.s.sing fair; and John Knox said, with a sigh, "THE MAKER had indeed taken gracious pains with the goodly fas.h.i.+on of such perishable clay."

When she had come within a few paces of where they were advancing uncovered, she suddenly checked her jennet, and made him dance proudly round till she was nigh to John Knox, where, seeming in alarm, she feigned as if she would have slipped from the saddle, laying her hand on his shoulder for support; and while he, with more gallantry than it was thought in him, helped her to recover her seat, she said, with a ravis.h.i.+ng look, "The Queen thanks you, Master Knox, for this upholding,"

dwelling on the word this in a special manner; which my grandfather noticed the more, as he as well as others of the retinue observed, that she was playing as it were in dalliance.

She then inquired kindly for his health, grieving she had not given orders for him to bed in the castle; and turning to the Earl of Murray, she chided his Lords.h.i.+p with a gentleness that was more winning than praise, why he had not come to her with Master Knox, saying, "We should then perhaps have not been so sharp in our controversy." But, before the Earl had time to make answer, she noticed divers gentlemen by name, and taking off her glove, made a most sweet salutation with her lily hand to the general concourse of those who had by this time gathered around.

In that gracious gesture, it was plain, my grandfather said, that she was still scattering her feminine spells; for she kept her hand for some time bare, and though enjoying the pleasure which her beautiful presence diffused, like a delicious warmth into the air, she was evidently self-collected, and had something more in mind than only the triumph of her marvellous beauty.

Having turned her horse's head, she moved him a few paces, saying, "Master Knox, I would speak with you." At which he went towards her, and the rest of the spectators retired and stood aloof.

They appeared for some time to be in an easy and somewhat gay discourse on her part; but she grew more and more earnest, till Mr Knox made his reverence and was coming away, when she said to him aloud, "Well, do as you will, but that man is a dangerous man."

Their discourse was concerning the t.i.tular Bishop of Athens, a brother of the Earl of Huntly, who had been put in nomination for a superintendent of the church in the West Country, and of whose bad character her Highness, as it afterwards proved, had received a just account.

But scarcely had the Reformer retired two steps when she called him back, and holding out to him her hand, with which, when he approached to do his homage, she familiarly took hold of his and held it, playing with his fingers as if she had been placing on a ring, saying, loud enough to be heard by many on the field,--

"I have one of the greatest matters that have touched me since I came into this realm to open to you, and I must have your help in it."

Then, still holding him earnestly by the hand, she entered into a long discourse concerning, as he afterwards told the Earl of Murray, a difference subsisting between the Earl and Countess of Argyle.

"Her Ladys.h.i.+p," said the Queen, for my grandfather heard him repeat what pa.s.sed, "has not perhaps been so circ.u.mspect in everything as one could have wished, but her lord has dealt harshly with her."

Master Knox having once before reconciled the debates of that honourable couple, told her Highness he had done so, and that not having since heard anything to the contrary, he had hoped all things went well with them.

"It is worse," replied the Queen, "than ye believe. But, kind sir, do this much for my sake, as once again to put them at amity, and if the Countess behave not herself as she ought to do, she shall find no favour of me; but in no wise let Argyle know that I have requested you in this matter."

Then she returned to the subject of their contest the preceding evening, and said, with her sweetest looks and most musical accents, "I promise to do as ye required. I shall order all offenders to be summoned, and you shall see that I shall minister justice."

To which he replied, "I am a.s.sured then, madam, that you shall please G.o.d, and enjoy rest and tranquillity within your realm, which to your Majesty is more profitable than all the Pope's power can be." And having said this much he made his reverence, evidently in great pleasure with her Highness.

Afterwards, in speaking to the Earl of Murray, as they returned to Kinross, my grandfather noted that he employed many terms of soft courtliness, saying of her that she was a lady who might, he thought, with a little pains, be won to grace and G.o.dliness, could she be preserved from the taint of evil counsellors; so much had the winning sorceries of her exceeding beauty and her blandishments worked even upon his stern honesty and enchanted his jealousy asleep.

When Master Knox had, with the Earl, partaken of some repast, he requested that he might be conveyed back to Edinburgh, for that it suited not with his nature to remain sorning about the skirts of the court; and his Lords.h.i.+p bade my grandfather be of his company, and to bid Sir Alexander Douglas, the master of his horse, choose for him the gentlest steed in his stable.

But it happened before the Reformer was ready to depart, that Queen Mary had finished her morning pastime, and was returning to her barge to embark for the castle, which the Earl hearing, went down to the brim of the loch to a.s.sist at her embarkation. My grandfather, with others, also hastened to the spot.

On seeing his Lords.h.i.+p, she inquired for "her friend," as she then called John Knox, and signified her regret that he had been so list to leave her, expressing her surprise that one so infirm should think so soon of a second journey; whereby the good Earl being minded to cement their happy reconciliation, from which he augured a great increase of benefits both to the realm and the cause of religion, was led to speak of his concern thereat likewise, and of his sorrow that all his own horses at Kinross being for the chase and road, he had none well-fitting to carry a person so aged, and but little used to the toil of riding.

Her Highness smiled at the hidden counselling of this remark, for she was possessed of a sharp spirit; and she said, with a look which told the Earl and all about her that she discerned the pith of his Lords.h.i.+p's discourse, she would order one of her own palfreys to be forthwith prepared for him.

When the Earl returned from the sh.o.r.e and informed Master Knox of the Queen's gracious condescension, he made no reply, but bowed his head in token of his sense of her kindness; and soon after, when the palfrey was brought saddled with the other horses to the door, he said, in my grandfather's hearing, to his Lords.h.i.+p, "It needs, you see, my Lord, must be so; for were I not to accept this grace, it might be thought I refused from a vain bravery of caring nothing for her Majesty's favour;"

and he added, with a smile of jocularity, "whereas I am right well content to receive the very smallest boon from so fair and blooming a lady."

Nothing of any particularity occurred in the course of the journey; for the main part of which Master Knox was thoughtful and knit up in his own cogitations, and when from time to time he did enter into discourse with my grandfather, he spoke chiefly of certain usages and customs that he had observed in other lands, and of things of indifferent import; but nevertheless there was a flavour of holiness in all he said, and my grandfather treasured many of his sweet sentences as pearls of great price.

CHAPTER x.x.x

Before the occurrence of the things spoken of in the foregoing chapter, the great Earl of Glencairn, my grandfather's first and constant patron, had been dead some time; but his son and successor, who knew the estimation in which he had been held by his father, being then in Edinburgh, allowed him, in consideration thereof, the privilege of his hall. It suited not, however, with my grandfather's quiet and sanctified nature to mingle much with the brawlers that used to hover there; nevertheless, out of a respect to the Earl's hospitality, he did occasionally go thither, and where, if he heard little to edify the Christian heart, he learnt divers things anent the Queen and court that made his fears and anxieties wax stronger and stronger.

It seemed to him, as he often was heard to say, that there was a better knowledge of Queen Mary's true character and secret partialities among those loose varlets than among their masters; and her marriage being then in the parlance of the people, and much dread and fear rife with the protestants that she would choose a papist for her husband, he was surprised to hear many of the lewd knaves in Glencairn's hall speak lightly of the respect she would have to the faith or spirituality of the man she might prefer.

Among those wuddy worthies he fell in with his ancient adversary Winterton, who, instead of harbouring any resentment for the trick he played him in the Lord Boyd's castle, was rejoiced to see him again: he himself was then in the service of David Rizzio, the fiddler, whom the Queen some short time before had taken into her particular service.

This Rizzio was by birth an Italian of very low degree; a man of crouched stature, and of an uncomely physiognomy, being yellow-skinned and black-haired, with a beak-nose, and little quick eyes of a free and familiar glance, but shrewd withal, and possessed of a pleasant way of winning facetiously on the ladies, to the which his singular skill in all manner of melodious music helped not a little; so that he had great sway with them, and was then winning himself fast into the Queen's favour, in which ambition, besides the natural instigations of his own vanity, he was spirited on by certain powerful personages of the papistical faction, who soon saw the great efficacy it would be of to their cause, to have one who owed his rise to them constantly about the Queen, and in the depths of all her personal correspondence with her great friends abroad. But the subtle Italian, though still true to his papal breeding, built upon the Queen's partiality more than on the favour of those proud n.o.bles, and, about the time of which I am now speaking, he carried his head at court as bravely as the boldest baron amongst them. Still in this he had as yet done nothing greatly to offend. The protestant Lords, however, independent of their aversion to him on account his religion, felt, in common with all the n.o.bility, a vehement prejudice against an alien, one too of base blood, and they openly manifested their displeasure at seeing him so gorgeous and presuming even in the public presence of the Queen, but he regarded not their anger.

In this fey man's service Winterton then was, and my grandfather never doubted that it was for no good he came so often to the Earl of Glencairn's, who, though not a man of the same weight in the realm as the old Earl his father, was yet held in much esteem, as a sincere protestant and true n.o.bleman, by all the friends of the Gospel cause; and, in the sequel, what my grandfather jealoused was soon very plainly seen. For Rizzio learning, through Winterton's espionage and that of other emissaries, how little the people of Scotland would relish a foreign prince to be set over them, had a hand in dissuading the Queen from accepting any of the matches then proposed for her; and the better to make his own power the more sicker, he afterwards laid snares in the water to bring about a marriage with that weak young prince, the Lord Henry Darnley. But it falls not within the scope of my narrative to enter into any more particulars here concerning that Italian, and the tragical doom which, with the Queen's imprudence, he brought upon himself; for, after spending some weeks in Edinburgh, and in visiting their friends at Crail, my grandfather returned with his wife and Agnes Kilspinnie to Quharist, where he continued to reside several years, but not in tranquillity.

Hardly had they reached their home, when word came of quarrels among the n.o.bility; and though the same sprung out of secular debates, they had much of the leaven of religious faction in their causes, the which greatly exasperated the enmity wherewith they were carried on. But even in the good Earl of Murray's raid, there was nothing which called on my grandfather to bear a part. Nevertheless, those quarrels disquieted his soul, and he heard the sough of discontents rising afar off, like the roar of the bars of Ayr when they betoken a coming tempest.

After the departure of the Earl of Murray to France, there was a syncope in the land, and men's minds were filled with wonder and with apprehensions to which they could give no name; neighbours distrusted one another: the papists looked out from their secret places, and were saluted with a fear that wore the semblance of reverence. The Queen married Darnley, and discreet men marvelled at the rashness with which the match was concluded, there being seemingly no cause for such uncomely haste, nor for the lavish favours that she heaped upon him. It was viewed with awe, as a thing done under the impulses of fraud, or fainness, or fatality. Nor was their wedding-cheer cold when her eager love changed into aversion. Then the spirit of the times, which had long hovered in willingness to be pleased with her intentions, began to alter its breathings, and to whisper darkly against her. At last the murder of Rizzio, a deed which, though in the main satisfactory to the nation, was yet so foul and cruel in the perpetration, that the tidings of it came like a thunder-clap over all the kingdom.

The birth of Prince James, which soon after followed, gave no joy; for about the same time a low and terrible whispering began to be heard of some hideous and universal conspiracy against all the protestants throughout Europe. None ventured to say that Queen Mary was joined with the conspirators; but many preachers openly prayed that she might be preserved from their leagues in a way that showed what they feared; besides this suspicion, mournful things were told of her behaviour, and the immoralities of her courtiers and their trains rose to such a pitch, compared with the chast.i.ty and plain manners of her mother's court, that the whole land was vexed with angry thoughts, and echoed to the rumours with stern menaces.

No one was more disturbed by these things than my pious grandfather; and the apprehensions which they caused in him came to such a head at last, that his wife, becoming fearful of his health, advised him to take a journey to Edinburgh, in order that he might hear and see with his own ears and eyes; which he accordingly did, and on his arrival went straight to the Earl of Glencairn, and begged permission to take on again his livery, chiefly that he might pa.s.s unnoticed, and not be remarked as having neither calling nor vocation. That n.o.bleman was surprised with his request; but, without asking any questions, gave him leave, and again invited him to use the freedom of his hall; so he continued as one of his retainers till the Earl of Murray's return from France. But, before speaking of what then ensued, there are some things concerning the murder of the the Queen's protestant husband--the blackest of the sins of that age--of which, in so far as my grandfather partic.i.p.ated, it is meet and proper I should previously speak.

CHAPTER x.x.xI

While the cloud of troubles, whereof I have spoken in the foregoing chapter was thickening and darkening over the land, the event of the King's dreadful death came to pa.s.s; the which, though in its birth most foul and monstrous, filling the hearts of all men with consternation and horror, was yet a mean in the hands of Providence, as shall hereafter appear, whereby the kingdom of THE LORD was established in Scotland.