Randolph was now sent to Edinburgh to make peace between Mary's party
and her foes impossible. He succeeded; the parties took up arms, and
Sussex ravaged the Border in revenge of a raid by Buccleuch. On May
14, Lennox, with an English force, was sent north: he devastated the
Hamilton country; was made Regent in July; and, in April 1571, had his
revenge on Archbishop Hamilton, who was taken at the capture, by
Crawford, of Dumbarton Castle, held by Lord Fleming, a post of vital
moment to the Marians; and was hanged at Stirling for complicity in the
slaying of Murray. George Buchanan, Mary's old tutor, took advantage
of these facts to publish quite a fresh account of Darnley's murder:
the guilt of the Hamiltons now made that of Bothwell almost invisible!
Edinburgh Castle, under Kirkcaldy with Lethington, held out; Knox
reluctantly retired from Edinburgh to St Andrews, where he was
unpopular; but many of Mary's Lords deserted her, and though Lennox was
shot (September 4) in an attack by Buccleuch and Ker of Ferniehirst on
Stirling Castle, where he was holding a Parliament, he was succeeded by
Mar, who was inspired by Morton, a far stronger man. Presently the
discovery of a plot between Mary, Norfolk, the English Catholics, and
Spain, caused the Duke's execution, and more severe incarceration for
Mary.
In Scotland there was no chance of peace. Morton and his associates
would not resign the lands of the Hamiltons, Lethington, and Kirkcaldy;
Lethington knew that no amnesty would cover his guilt (though he had
been nominally cleared) in the slaying of Darnley. One after the other
of Mary's adherents made their peace; but Kirkcaldy and Lethington, in
Edinburgh Castle, seemed safe while money and supplies held out. Knox
had prophesied that Kirkcaldy would be hanged, but did not live to see
his desire on his enemy, or on Mary, whom Elizabeth was about to hand
over to Mar for instant execution. Knox died on November 24, 1572;
Mar, the Regent, had predeceased him by a month, leaving Morton in
power. On May 28, 1573, the castle, attacked by guns and engineers
from England, and cut off from water, struck its flag. The brave
Kirkcaldy was hanged; Lethington, who had long been moribund, escaped
by an opportune death. The best soldier in Scotland and the most
modern of her wits thus perished together. Concerning Knox, the
opinions of his contemporaries differed. By his own account the
leaders of his party deemed him “too extreme,” and David Hume finds his
ferocious delight in chronicling the murders of his foes “rather
amusing,” though sad! Quarrels of religion apart, Knox was a very
good-hearted man; but where religion was concerned, his temper was
remote from the Christian. He was a perfect agitator; he knew no
tolerance, he spared no violence of language, and in diplomacy, when he
diplomatised, he was no more scrupulous than another. Admirably
vigorous and personal as literature, his History needs constant
correction from documents. While to his secretary, Bannatyne, Knox
seemed “a man of God, the light of Scotland, the mirror of godliness”;
many silent, douce folk among whom he laboured probably agreed in the
allegation quoted by a diarist of the day, that Knox “had, as was
alleged, the most part of the blame of all the sorrows of Scotland
since the slaughter of the late Cardinal.”
In these years of violence, of “the Douglas wars” as they were
called, two new tendencies may be observed. In January 1572, Morton
induced an assembly of preachers at Leith to accept one of his clan,
John Douglas, as Archbishop of St Andrews: other bishops were
appointed, called Tulchan bishops, from the tulchan or
effigy of a calf employed to induce cows to yield their milk. The
Church revenues were drawn through these unapostolic prelates, and came
into the hands of the State, or at least of Morton. With these
bishops, superintendents co-existed, but not for long. “The horns of
the mitre” already began to peer above Presbyterian parity, and Morton
is said to have remarked that there would never be peace in Scotland
till some preachers were hanged. In fact, there never was peace
between Kirk and State till a deplorable number of preachers were
hanged by the Governments of Charles II. and James II.
A meeting of preachers in Edinburgh, after the Bartholomew massacre,
in the autumn of 1572, demanded that “it shall be lawful to all the
subjects in this realm to invade them and every one of them to the
death.” The persons to be “invaded to the death” are recalcitrant
Catholics, “grit or small,” persisting in remaining in Scotland.
{137}
The alarmed demands of the preachers were merely disregarded by the
Privy Council. The ruling nobles, as Bishop Lesley says, would never
gratify the preachers by carrying out the bloody penal Acts to their
full extent against Catholics. There was no expulsion of all Catholics
who dared to stay; no popular massacre of all who declined to go.
While Morton was in power he kept the preachers well in hand. He did
worse: he starved the ministers, and thrust into the best livings
wanton young gentlemen, of whom his kinsman, Archibald Douglas, an
accomplice in Darnley's death and a trebly-dyed traitor, was the
worst. But in 1575, the great Andrew Melville, an erudite scholar and
a most determined person, began to protest against the very name of
bishop in the Kirk; and in Adamson, made by Morton successor of John
Douglas at St Andrews, Melville found a mark and a victim. In
economics, as an English diplomatist wrote to Cecil in November 1572,
the country, despite the civil war, was thriving; “the noblemen's great
credit decaying, . . . the ministry and religion increaseth, and the
desire in them to prevent the practice of the Papists.” The
Englishman, in November, may refer to the petition for persecution of
October 20, 1572.
The death of old Châtelherault now left the headship of the Hamiltons
in more resolute hands; Morton was confronted by opposition from
Argyll, Atholl, Buchan, and Mar; and Morton, in 1576-1577, made
approaches to Mary. When the young James VI. came to his majority
Morton's enemies would charge him with his guilty foreknowledge,
through Both well, of Darnley's murder, so he made advances to Mary in
hope of an amnesty. She suspected a trap and held aloof.
On March 4, 1578, a strong band of nobles, led by Argyll, presented so firm a front that Morton resigned the Regency; but in April 1578, a Douglas plot, backed by Angus and Morton, secured for the Earl of Mar the command of Stirling Castle and custody of the King; in June 1578, after an appearance of civil war, Morton was as strong as ever. After dining with him, in April 1579, Atholl, the main hope of Mary in Scotland, died suddenly, and suspicion of poison fell on his host. But Morton's ensuing success in expelling from Scotland the Hamilton leaders, Lord Claude and Arbroath, brought down his own doom. With them Sir James Balfour, deep in the secrets of Darnley's death, was exiled; he opened a correspondence with Mary, and presently procured for her “a contented revenge” on Morton.
Two new characters in the long intrigue of vengeance now come on the scene. Both were Stewarts, and as such were concerned in the feud against the Hamiltons. The first was a cousin of Darnley, brought up in France, namely Esme Stuart d'Aubigny, son of John, a brother of Lennox. He had all the accomplishments likely to charm the boy king, now in his fourteenth year.
James had hitherto been sternly educated by George Buchanan, more mildly by Peter Young. Buchanan and others had not quite succeeded in bringing him to scorn and hate his mother; Lady Mar, who was very kind to him, had exercised a gentler influence. The boy had read much, had hunted yet more eagerly, and had learned dissimulation and distrust, so natural to a child weak and ungainly in body and the conscious centre of the intrigues of violent men. A favourite of his was James Stewart, son of Lord Ochiltree, and brother-in-law of John Knox. Stewart was Captain of the Guard, a man of learning, who had been in foreign service; he was skilled in all bodily feats, was ambitious, reckless, and resolute, and no friend of the preachers. The two Stewarts, d'Aubigny and the Captain, became allies.
In a Parliament at Edinburgh (November 1579) their foes, the chiefs of the Hamiltons, were forfeited (they had been driven to seek shelter with Elizabeth), while d'Aubigny got their lands and the key of Scotland, Dumbarton Castle, on the estuary of Clyde. The Kirk, regarding d'Aubigny, now Earl of Lennox, despite his Protestant professions, as a Papist or an atheist, had little joy in Morton, who was denounced in a printed placard as guilty in Darnley's murder: Sir James Balfour could show his signature to the band to slay Darnley, signed by Huntly, Bothwell, Argyll, and Lethington. This was not true. Balfour knew much, was himself involved, but had not the band to show, or did not dare to produce it.
To strengthen himself, Lennox was reconciled to the Kirk; to help the Hamiltons, Elizabeth sent Bowes to intrigue against Lennox, who was conspiring in Mary's interest, or in that of the Guises, or in his own. When Lennox succeeded in getting Dumbarton Castle, an open door for France, into his power, Bowes was urged by Elizabeth to join with Morton and “lay violent hands” on Lennox (August 31, 1580), but in a month Elizabeth cancelled her orders.
Bowes was recalled; Morton, to whom English aid had been promised, was left to take his chances. Morton had warning from Lord Robert Stewart, Mary's half-brother, to fly the country, for Sir James Balfour, with his information, had landed. On December 31, 1580, Captain Stewart accused Morton, in presence of the Council, of complicity in Darnley's murder. He was put in ward; Elizabeth threatened war; the preachers stormed against Lennox; a plot to murder him (a Douglas plot) and to seize James was discovered; Randolph, who now represented Elizabeth, was fired at, and fled to Berwick; James Stewart was created Earl of Arran. In March 1581 the king and Lennox tried to propitiate the preachers by signing a negative Covenant against Rome, later made into a precedent for the famous Covenant of 1638. On June 1 Morton was tried for guilty foreknowledge of Darnley's death. He was executed deservedly, and his head was stuck on a spike of the Tolbooth. The death of this avaricious, licentious, and resolute though unamiable Protestant was a heavy blow to the preachers and their party, and a crook in the lot of Elizabeth.