England under the Tudors Part 22

As the year went on, the intrigue with Conde reached a point at which the Huguenot leader actually handed over Havre to the English, and promised the rest.i.tution of Calais; and before the autumn was far advanced, the town was garrisoned, and a troop of English--ignoring instructions from home--went to join Conde. The colour for Elizabeth's action was that the Guises had usurped the government, and that they palpably and avowedly directed their policy to the injury of England; also that she was ent.i.tled to take measures to ensure the restoration of Calais, promised by treaty. The fighting went steadily against the Huguenots, and Elizabeth made the mistake--in which the country supported her even with pa.s.sion--of holding Conde to his promise as to Calais, instead of applying herself to the establishment of the Huguenots as a powerful Anglophil anti-Guise party. Throwing over the method which had so successfully cleared Scotland of the French, she staked everything on the recovery of Calais, forced half Conde's friends to look upon him as something very like a traitor, and alienated Huguenot sentiment completely. The battle of Dreux in December, followed early in the next year by the murder of Guise, led to the truce of Amboise, in April, between the warring factions; England was left in the lurch. A desperate effort was made to retain the grip on Havre, but an outbreak of the plague among the garrison ruined all chance of success. It fell, and with it the last hope of recovering Calais (July 1563). It was not till the spring of 1564 that the French war was formally terminated by the treaty of Troyes, when the English, after much vain haggling, found themselves obliged to accept the French terms.

[Sidenote: The English Succession]

Near the end of 1562 the Queen had been stricken with smallpox and her life all but despaired of; so that the grave problem of the Succession a.s.sumed a momentary prominence. Henry's Will had never been set aside; but no one would have viewed with favour the claims of the Greys. Mary of Scotland, the heir by inheritance, was an alien, and abhorrent to the Protestants.

Darnley was the only remaining claimant of Tudor stock; [Footnote: Except the Clifford or Stanley branch, junior to the Greys. See _Front._]

while the House of York had still representatives living, in two grandsons of the old Countess of Salisbury executed by Henry--the Earl of Huntingdon and Arthur Pole, the latter of whom did actually become the centre of a still-born plot. What would have happened had the Queen died at this juncture it is impossible to guess: happily for England, she recovered. But the interest attaching to Mary's course was intensified.

The Scots Queen had in the meantime ostensibly given her support to Murray and Maitland, accompanying her half-brother on an expedition to crush Huntly, the head of the Catholic n.o.bility. Murray and Maitland did their best during the early months of 1563 to force the recognition of their Queen as Elizabeth's heir by the menace of her marriage with the Prince of Spain; Elizabeth in turn did her own best to induce Mary to marry Dudley, whom she later on raised to the rank of Earl of Leicester. This union however was one which neither Mary herself nor any of her counsellors would accept; and when the year closed, Knox and the extreme Calvinists were grimly a.s.similating the to them portentous probability that she would end by marrying either Don Carlos or the young King of France--either event threatening the restoration of the Old Church in Scotland.

[Sidenote: 1564 Darnley and others]

The civil war in France ended, as we saw, in the triumph of the Politiques. The corollary was the treaty of Troyes with England in the spring of 1564. The French court was now disposed to be friendly towards Elizabeth; the Guises had lost weight by the death of the Duke; Philip of Spain saw nothing to gain by further embroilments; so the chances of Mary's marriage either with his son or with Charles IX. were small. The Scots Queen began to give Darnley a leading place in her own mind, feeling that a marriage with him would give a double claim to the English succession, and one in favour of which the whole of the English Catholics would be united. So far Elizabeth had only urged her to marry an English n.o.bleman, with an implication that Leicester [Footnote: Dudley was not in fact raised to the Earldom till the year was well advanced.] was intended. Mary tried to extract approval for Darnley, but with the result only that Leicester was definitely and explicitly nominated. Yet even on behalf of her favourite, the English Queen would not commit herself on the subject of the succession. On the other hand, with the exception of Maitland of Lethington who was not actually opposed to the Darnley marriage on condition of Elizabeth's public approval, the Scottish Protestants were very unfavourable to that solution. So the year pa.s.sed in perpetual diplomatic fencing, Mary trying to draw Darnley to Scotland, while Elizabeth kept him at her own court, to which he with both his parents had been attached for many years past. It is not a little curious to find all this intriguing crossed by a proposal from Katharine de Medici that King Charles should marry not Mary but Elizabeth, who was eighteen years his senior: while Elizabeth herself was trying to revive the idea of her own marriage with the Archduke Charles, whose brother Maximilian had just succeeded Ferdinand as Emperor. In February 1565, Elizabeth found it no longer possible to prevent Darnley's return to Scotland, and in April it was tentatively announced that he was to be Mary's husband.

[Sidenote: 1565 The Darnley marriage]

It is not impossible [Footnote: The case for this view is effectively put in Lang, _Hist. of Scotland_, ii., pp. 136 ff.; and _cf._ Creighton, _Queen Elizabeth_, p. 87.] that privately Elizabeth had expected and desired that Mary should jeopardise her position precisely in this manner, counting on the animosity to the marriage not only of Knox's party but of all the adherents of the rival house of Hamilton. If so she was justified in the event. But publicly she expressed a strong disapproval, which took colour from the risk that the marriage might serve to rally the English Catholics in support of the joint Stewart succession.

At any rate, whether Mary merely miscalculated the political forces; or, weary of the shackles which preachers and politicians sought to impose on her, determined to take her own way at last at any cost; or allowed herself to be swayed by an unaccountable fancy for the person of her young cousin, a spoilt, arrogant, and vicious boy; marry him she did, at the end of July: in defiance of the sentiment of all her Protestant subjects, half of whom were really afraid of the attempted revival of Catholic domination, while the rest foresaw, at the best, the gravest political complications, and the revival of internecine clan and family feuds and intrigues. Mary however had not taken the step until she was sure in the first place that there was no prospect of her marriage with Don Carlos, and had in the second place received a.s.surances of support from Philip [Footnote: _Cf._ Hume, _Love Affairs of Mary Queen of Scots_, p. 262. Mary was aiming at a Catholic combination under Philip, with the active co-operation of Rome.

Cecil and Elizabeth however had good reason from experience to count on Spain's immobility, and may very well have counted also on Darnley's imbecility. They knew him.] if she married Darnley. For a girl of two and twenty, working single handed, it was an exceedingly clever move--on the hypothesis that Philip was capable of taking open action, and Darnley of acting with common decency and common intelligence.

[Sidenote: Mary and Murray]

The Protestant lords however were not unanimous. Maitland and the Douglases did not join Murray and the Hamiltons who, even before the actual marriage, were practically in open rebellion. But Mary was now playing for her own hand; if she had any trusted counsellor it was her deformed Italian secretary, David Rizzio. She dropped diplomatic fencing. Elizabeth, who had been privately sending money to Murray, remonstrated on his behalf; but Mary a.s.serted her right to deal with her own rebellious subjects. Now, as always, she maintained that she had no intention of subverting the Protestant religion, though she desired the same freedom for Catholics as for Calvinists. But she would not submit to dictation; and any promises she was willing to make were conditional on the recognition first of herself and her heirs and afterwards of Lady Lennox's heirs, as Elizabeth's successors. At the end of August she marched against Murray and the insurgents; they however avoided battle. On October 6th Murray and his princ.i.p.al adherents crossed the Border. A little later he was allowed to present himself at the English court, where Elizabeth [Footnote: Froude, viii., pp. 213 ff. (Ed. 1864): with which cf. Lang, _Hist. Scotland_, ii., pp. 150 ff., and authorities there cited.] publicly rated him, and declared that she would never a.s.sist rebels against their lawful sovereign. Murray, who had just written to Cecil that he would "never have enterprised the action but that he had been moved thereto by the Queen" of England, accepted Elizabeth's lecture without protest.

[Sidenote: The murder of Rizzio, 1566]

The expulsion of Murray from Scotland did not hinder the coming tragedy; perhaps it had the contrary effect. The lords round Mary were bitterly aggrieved by Rizzio's influence; Darnley long before he was six months married, chose to be jealous of the secretary, a sentiment carefully fostered by the lords. The common hatred united them in a "band" for the murder of Rizzio, of which Sadler, the English envoy, was cognisant; Murray probably knew just so much as he chose to know. The plot was carried out in March. The conspirators broke into Mary's room at Holyrood, and butchered Rizzio almost before her eyes.

[Sidenote: Kirk o' Field, 1567]

It may be doubted whether Mary ever forgave any one who was implicated or supposed to be implicated in that outrage. For her husband, as the offence in him was foulest and the insult from him to her deepest, she a.s.suredly conceived and cherished a bitter loathing. But there was one man who had always been ready to champion her cause, the daring, reckless, ruffianly James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell, who nevertheless was no mere swash-buckler, but according to Scottish standards of the day, a man of education [Footnote: Lang, _Hist. Scotland_, ii., p. 168.] and even, it would seem, of some culture. From this time, Bothwell was her one ally.

She had the policy and the self-control to profess a desire for reconciliation even with Darnley: to receive Murray and even Lethington into apparent favour. But Darnley's brief rapprochement with the lords was soon over; his intolerable arrogance was made the worse by his contemptibility. Three months after Rizzio's murder, the envy of the Virgin Queen of England was roused by the birth of a son to Mary. The history of the following months becomes a chaos of which there are a dozen conflicting versions. The one clear fact is that another "band" was formed to put Darnley out of the way. There were pretences at attempted reconciliation between Mary and Darnley, while the Queen's relations with Bothwell were so intimate as to produce rumours no less scandalous than those which had prevailed about Elizabeth and Dudley. Darnley fell ill; a better appearance than usual of reconciliation was patched up. The sick man was conveyed to Kirk o' Field, a house near Edinburgh, where Mary joined him. Thence one evening she went to Holyrood to attend a bridal masque. That night the house was blown up; Darnley's unscathed corpse was found in the garden.

From the tangled ma.s.s [Footnote: The evidence has been discussed in many volumes. The most judicial examination with which the present writer is acquainted is that in Mr. Lang's _Mystery of Mary Stewart_, summarised in his _History of Scotland_, ii., pp. 168 ff.] of letters, narratives, and confessions, it remains, and will for ever remain, impossible to ascertain more than a fragment of the real truth. As to many of the doc.u.ments, it is hard to say whether the theory of their genuineness or of their forgery is the more incredible. For the confessions, every man had a dozen good reasons for sheltering some of the guilty, implicating some of the innocent, and garbling the actual facts. That the thing was done by Bothwell is absolutely certain; it is hardly less doubtful that both Maitland and Morion helped to hatch the plot; there is no conclusive proof that Mary was active in it. No single act can be brought home to her which was necessarily incompatible with innocence--or with guilt. It is the acc.u.mulation of suspicious circ.u.mstances which makes the presumption lean heavily to guilt; but it remains no more than a presumption; no jury would have been justified in convicting. Her accusers had a strong case; but they tried to strengthen it by inventing or suborning additional evidence palpably false, with the result of discrediting the whole--and her friends adopted the same tactics. That both Mary and Murray knew that _some_ plot existed, and that neither of them stirred a finger to frustrate it, is hardly an open question.

Guilty in the fullest sense or not guilty, Mary's detestation of Darnley was notorious; and within three months of the murder she was the wife of the man whom the whole world accounted the murderer. Naturally, the whole world believed that she was Bothwell's accomplice in the act, and his mistress before it. There was a show at least of the marriage being brought about by force. A formal attempt at investigation into the murder had collapsed. Bothwell had his supporters; he kidnapped the Queen and Maitland--_not_ one of his supporters-with her. A scandalous divorce was p.r.o.nounced between him and his wife, and Mary wedded him. The only credible explanation is that she was over-mastered by a pa.s.sion for the daring ruffian who at least had always stood by her. The lords--accomplices in the murder with the rest--were almost immediately in arms to "rescue"

the Queen, who took the field by her husband's side. The opposing forces met at Carberry Hill; Bothwell, seeing the contest to be hopeless, fled; Mary surrendered.

[Sidenote: Mary made prisoner]

The Queen was forthwith imprisoned in Lochleven Castle; and just at this time the famous casket of letters from Mary to Bothwell was seized, in the custody of a servant of Bothwell's. Of the doc.u.ments subsequently produced as having formed part of that collection, the experts are totally unable to prove decisively whether any or all are genuine, or forged, or a mixture of forgeries and transcripts from genuine originals; though on the whole the last hypothesis is the least incredible of the three.

[Sidenote 1: Murray made regent]

[Sidenote 2: 1568 Mary's escape to England]

All this took place in June. Elizabeth was now suggesting that the baby prince James should be sent to her safe-keeping: there were similar hints--_mutatis mutandis_--from France. The Scots lords played off French and English against each other, and kept the child in their own hands. There was a strong desire in some quarters that Mary should be put to death; she was actually compelled, at the end of July, to sign her abdication in favour of the infant James. Soon after Murray arrived from France, whither he had gone shortly after the murder, and she a.s.sented to his appointment as Regent--indeed begged him to undertake it, having virtually no other course open. Both he and Lethington probably desired to protect her. Meantime however, Elizabeth was demanding her release, the successful rebellion of subjects against their lawful prince being by no means to her liking. Murray, however, felt that such a course could only involve civil war, and if pressed would force him to have Mary executed on the strength of the evidence, genuine or forged, of her complicity in the murder of Darnley. Yet it was universally believed that many of the lords now with Murray were no less guilty; over their heads too the sword was hanging by a thread. Murray as Regent ruled with vigour; and his enforcement of the anti-Catholic laws soon roused the hostility of that section. After many months of imprisonment, the Queen succeeded in escaping from Lochleven in May (1568); but the attempt to rally her followers was desperate. There was a fight at Langside on May 13th; Mary's party were completely routed; she herself fled south; and on May 16th she crossed the Solway; becoming, and remaining from thenceforth, Elizabeth's prisoner.

Thus, in June 1568, there was in France an uneasy truce between Catholics and Huguenots; in the Netherlands, the struggle between the Prince of Orange and Alva was just commencing; in Britain, the Queen of Scots had just fallen into the power of her sister of England--disgraced in the eyes of the world by her marriage with Bothwell, and on almost all hands credited with the murder of Darnley; so that whatever might happen it was certain that no foreign Power would have either the will or the means to intervene on her behalf.

The affairs of Ireland will demand our attention; but, as they did not at the time directly influence English policy, it will be more convenient to treat of them consecutively in a later chapter. The same may be said of the great sea-going movement, which was now active and was in a few years' time to be revealed as a feature of the first importance in the development of "our island story". Here we will merely note that the consideration of these subjects is deferred. The progress however of the religious settlement, always a present factor in the relations of England with other Powers, requires to be treated _pari pa.s.su_ with the other events of the period; as also do the relations between the Queen and her Parliament.

[Sidenote: England: Protestantism of the Government]

We have already observed that Elizabeth had personal predilections in favour of the ceremonial, if not the actual theological, position adopted by her father. The weightiest of her counsellors however, headed by Cecil and Bacon, succeeded in a more definite protestantising of the bench of bishops than the Queen herself would have desired. The formularies of the Church, confirmed by the Act of Uniformity, were very much easier to reconcile with Calvinism than with what Calvinists called idolatry, and in particular the abolition of the law of celibacy in itself had a very strong tendency to abolish the sense of differentiation between clergy and laity so essential to the old Catholic position. It may have been the consciousness of this which made Elizabeth feel and express with much freedom her own objection to married clerics. But Cecil and his party were alive to the fact that the religious cleavage was everywhere becoming intensified as a political cleavage also; that politically, England would be obliged to declare for one side or the other, or would be rent in twain; that danger to Elizabeth's throne--and this she fully recognised herself-- was much more likely to arise from Catholic than from Protestant quarters. Being therefore determined that she should take the Protestant side--whether from genuine religious conviction or from motives of political expediency--they steadily encouraged moderate Protestants of the type of Archbishop Parker, and others who were still more under the influence of the Swiss, or at least the Lutheran, reformers; a course in which they were greatly aided by the direct hostility to Elizabeth of the Guise party in France. In that country, the _Politiques_ found themselves driven into the Catholic camp; in England, the Queen, whose personal sentiments were not unlike those of Katharine de Medici, was reluctantly compelled by the force of circ.u.mstances to yield to her Protestant advisers.

[Sidenote: Religious parties]

Elizabeth's first Parliament was puritan in its tendencies, and only fell short of that which had approved the second prayer-book of Edward. The bulk of the clergy still no doubt favoured the old religion, but it was the followers of the new lights who received promotion, and it was they who were encouraged by the Act of Uniformity. In many parts of the country, however, and especially in the North, the magnates countenanced a hardly veiled disregard of the new laws: and the Queen's apparent inclination to find a way of recognising Mary as her successor, as well as her favour for crosses and disfavour for married clergy, raised the hopes of the Catholics. The Huguenot war in 1562 compelled her to change her tone, and enabled Cecil to enforce the law against attendance at Ma.s.s with greater vigour. The first Parliament had been dissolved in 1559; the second, which met in the beginning of 1563, was not less strenuously Protestant and opposed to the Stewart succession. It was only the determined stand of the Catholic peers which prevented sharp legislation against the Catholics in general; and even as it was, the application of the oath of Supremacy was widened. Then Parliament was prorogued, and the affair of Havre caused the Huguenot alliance to cool. By the winter of 1564-5, the English Queen was irritating the bishops and the clergy, the most capable of whom were increasingly identifying themselves with puritan views, by insistence not altogether successful on obedience to the Act of Uniformity in the matter of vestments; although it was notorious that there was strong feeling against some of the regulations, which in not a few instances were habitually ignored. The feeling was intensified by a lively suspicion that she really wished for the Darnley marriage which actually took place a few months later, though she was professedly urging Leicester's suit, and beyond all doubt encouraged Murray and the Scottish Protestants to rebellion.

[Sidenote: 1566-67 Parliament and the Queen's marriage]

It was not till the autumn of 1566 that Parliament rea.s.sembled; more than ever determined to get the Queen committed to a marriage which should end the menace of the Stewart succession. This desire was in some cases the cause and in others the effect of a zealous protestantism. A Bill was introduced, at the instance of the Bishops acting on a vote of Convocation, to compel the clergy to subscribe the Thirty-nine Articles of Religion, a slight modification of Edward's Forty-two Articles; but this was withdrawn after pa.s.sing the Commons. The Queen was enraged by the audacity of the Commons in discussing the question of her marriage and the succession, and she attempted to suppress debate; but was met with a stubborn insistence, headed by Cecil, on the const.i.tutional rights of the House. Elizabeth had to give way; but while on the question of principle the Parliament was victorious, it did not press the victory and the Queen was enabled to evade the immediate issue. The house voted supplies generously, after which she succeeded in dissolving it with a sharp reprimand and without definitely committing herself on the subject either of her own marriage or of the succession. But this was hardly accomplished, when the murder of Darnley, for the time being at least, divided the party which had hitherto supported Mary's claim to the English throne.

[Sidenote: The Queen and the Archduke]

For some months, the question of Elizabeth's marriage was allowed to fall into abeyance; but the effect of the murder was in some degree counteracted by the imprisonment of Mary in Lochleven the appeal to chivalry of a deserted, helpless, and lovely woman, and the very unattractive character of most of the men now at the head of the Scottish Government. The Stewart cause seemed to be in some danger of reviving, and once again the English Council began to urge the marriage with the Archduke Charles. Elizabeth pretended concurrence, but when she refused to promise that Charles should be allowed the free exercise of his own religion in England, it was no longer possible to doubt that she was merely playing with the idea; while there were certainly a great many of her subjects who entirely sympathised with the ostensible grounds on which the negotiation was broken off. The prospect of a closer union with the House of Habsburg was dispelled, almost at the moment when the Scots Queen fell into Elizabeth's hands, and the standard of revolt against the Spanish system was being raised in the Netherlands.

CHAPTER XVIII

ELIZABETH (iii), 1568-72--THE CATHOLIC CHALLENGE

[Sidenote: 1568 May, Elizabeth and Mary]

Before crossing the Solway, Mary wrote to Elizabeth throwing herself on her hospitality. She followed hard on the heels of her missive, and awaited the reply at Carlisle, where the Catholic gentlemen of the North rallied to receive her. The situation indeed was a singularly embarra.s.sing one for the English Queen. Mary claimed in fact that Elizabeth should either restore her, or allow her to appeal to those who would do so--that is, to France. To take her part unconditionally had its obvious dangers; not less obvious were the dangers of acceding to the alternative demand. To detain her in England, on the other hand, would inevitably make her the centre of Catholic intrigue. The most convenient arrangement would be to restore her under conditions which would minimise her power of becoming dangerous; and, in the meantime, she was perhaps less to be feared under careful supervision in England than anywhere else. So Elizabeth took the line of informing her that if she cleared herself of the charges of crimes such as made it impossible to support her if she were guilty, she should be restored; which being interpreted meant that there was to be an investigation, and Elizabeth would act on the findings. Murray on the other hand was in effect advised that the English Queen would not countenance him in levying war but that he might read between the lines of her instructions; in view of course of the fear that the party opposed to Murray might seek to procure French intervention.

[Sidenote: A Commission of enquiry]

Elizabeth was in fact in a position to dictate her own terms. Whatever right she might think fit to a.s.sume, whatever technical grounds she might a.s.sert for that right, Mary was effectively in her power. The Scots Queen--transferred for greater safety to Bolton, away from the dangerous proximity of the Border--indignantly repudiated the jurisdiction, demanded to be set at liberty, a.s.severated her own innocence. Elizabeth could not afford to set her at liberty; and with some plausibility declared that the innocence must be proved, before her rule could be re-imposed on a nation which had rejected it.

Elizabeth quite evidently intended that the investigation should neither clear nor condemn her. Mary's objections were perfectly compatible with innocence. Submission might be taken as implying the recognition of English suzerainty; and if the investigation was to be earned just so far as suited her sister sovereign, if evidence was to be admitted, tested, or sup-pressed, with a view not to ascertaining truth but to securing a convenient judgment, innocence was no sort of reason for welcoming enquiry. [Footnote: Mr Froude (viii., Ed. 1866) informs us in one breath that Mary was impelled to protest by the consciousness of guilt (p. 253), but admits in the next that Elizabeth had no intention of allowing either her guilt or her innocence to be definitely proved (pp. 262, 270, 277).]

The plan of operations was that a Commission should be appointed, before whom the Scots lords should answer for their rebellion; obviously they would defend themselves on the ground of Mary's guilt of which they professed to hold ample proof in the casket of letters, which if genuine were a.s.suredly d.a.m.ning. On the other hand, Maitland and others of the lords must have suspected at least that evidence of their own complicity in Darnley's murder would be forthcoming. The English Protestants were convinced beforehand of Mary's guilt; they were too much interested in preventing her succession to the English throne to form an unbiased judgment; whereas her condemnation would have been a serious blow to the Catholic party, which included professing Protestants like Norfolk. Altogether, what Elizabeth desired was a compromise between Mary and the Scots lords, by which both should a.s.sent to her restoration as queen with Murray as actual ruler, coupled with the confirmation of the unratified Treaty of Edinburgh, and the establishment of the Anglican form of worship as Elizabeth's price. Her real difficulty perhaps was that she did not want Mary cleared to the world by the definite withdrawal of the charge of murder; she wanted the charge to be made and to be left indefinitely not-proven.

[Sidenote: Oct. Proceedings at York]

The commission--Norfolk, Suss.e.x, and Sadler, who had spent many years in Scotland as amba.s.sador--was to sit at York in October. Thither came the Scots lords. Murray was prepared to rely upon the general charges of misgovernment, while privately submitting the evidence as to the murder to the Commissioners. Norfolk was staggered by the letters, and very nearly threw up a scheme which the Catholic party had been hatching for his own marriage with Mary. But Elizabeth's sudden discovery that this scheme existed filled her with alarm, and for the moment she cancelled the Commission.

[Sidenote: Doubts of Philip's att.i.tude]

For the course of events on the Continent was making the outlook more complicated. The initial success of the Netherlanders had been very soon followed by the crushing disaster of Jemmingen, and the country seemed to be under Alva's heel. Catholicism in its most militant and merciless form was predominant; what if Philip, irritated by the practically open piracy of English ships in the Channel and elsewhere, should espouse the cause of Mary? De Silva, the amba.s.sador whose relations with the English court were highly satisfactory, was replaced by the less diplomatic and more aggressive Don Guerau de Espes. The English envoy in Spain was so unguarded in his own religious professions as to give Philip fair ground for handing him his pa.s.sports.

If the English Catholics, irritated by the growth of Calvinism and the increased vigilance of Protestantism in England, founded new hopes on these signs of a changing att.i.tude in Philip, their present loyalty might very soon alter its colour with Mary Stewart in England.

[Sidenote: Nov. The Commission at Westminster]

It seemed safer then that the enquiry should be held in London, with a large increase in the number of the Commissioners. Of the Scots lords, Lethington was undoubtedly anxious that the murder charge should be withdrawn. Nevertheless, at the sitting held at the end of November, Murray definitely put in the charge, producing copies or translations of the Casket Letters. These the commissioners examined; later on, they were shown the originals, which they judged to be genuine doc.u.ments in the Queen's hand. Whether they were competent to test forgeries executed with tolerable skill is at least open to question. The rest of the evidence produced was not only that of interested persons, but contained inconsistencies; neither Mary herself nor her agents were ever put in possession of copies of the incriminating doc.u.ments; one side only was heard. If it was Elizabeth's object to create in the minds of the English lords a strong presumption that Mary was guilty, that purpose was successfully effected. Under such conditions Mary declined compromises. The Commission was broken up. The farce was over.

Murray returned to Scotland: the Queen remained a prisoner in England, to be--with or without her own complicity--the centre of every papist plot till the final tragedy.

[Sidenote: Comment on the enquiry]