Women of England Part 16

It must be remembered that in the middle of the fourth century female monasteries upon the continent had aroused among women a great deal of religious enthusiasm. Already had the seeds of religion been sown in Ireland by Patrick, when Bridget came, imbued with the ardor of religious training and stimulation received upon the continent.

The religious order for women which she inst.i.tuted spread in its ramifications to all parts of the country. Many were the widows and young maidens who thronged to her religious houses; indeed, so great was the throng, that it became necessary to form one great central establishment, superior to and controlling the activities of numerous other establishments which were scattered throughout the land. She herself made her abode among the people of Leinster, who became endeared to her as her own people. The monastery she reared amid the green stretches of pasture received the name of Cill Dara, or the Cell of the Oak, from a giant oak which grew near by, and which continued down to the twelfth century, "no one daring to touch it with a knife."

On account of the monastery and its sacred surroundings, the section became the place of residence of an increasing number of families, and from the settlement thus begun arose the modern town of Kildare.

Such sanct.i.ty and devotion to good works as that of Bridget attracted to her monastery many visitors of note. Among those who esteemed it an honor to have her friendship was the chronicler Gildas. The Ey-Bridges, i.e., the Isles of Bridget, or the Hebrides, according to the modern form of their name, claim the honor of holding in loving embrace her mortal remains. In this claim, however, they have a vigorous disputant in the town of Kildare, which claims the renown of her burial.

Pa.s.sing from the vague borderland between legend and history, we come down to the twelfth century, when mediaeval conditions were in full force and the manners and customs already described in connection with the women of the times had full hold upon their lives. As representative of the spirit of the period, the life of the renowned Eva, Princess of Leinster and Countess of Pembroke, may be briefly considered.

The history of the sad princess centres about the struggles of Dermot to regain the throne of Leinster, from which he had been deposed by the federated kings. First he equipped a body of mercenaries from Wales, only to be met with defeat in his endeavor to take Dublin from the enemy. He appealed for aid to the English king, Henry II., who was then engaged in a campaign in France. He did not receive direct help from that monarch, who himself was looking with covetous eyes upon Ireland, but he did receive permission to make recruits from among his Anglo-Norman subjects. His real aid came from the Earl of Pembroke, called Richard Strongbow. With a large fleet, Dermot now set sail for Ireland, bent not only upon the recovery of his possession of Leinster, but the conquest of the whole island.

The consideration offered by Dermot to Pembroke for his services was the hand of his daughter Eva, with the kingdom of Leinster for a dowry. Waterford, a town then of equal importance with Dublin, was successively besieged and sacked; the Danes, who held it, were driven out with great slaughter. Amid all the horror of the sacked city was consummated the union of Eva and Richard, Earl Strongbow. Dublin became the place of their residence. A few years thereafter, the husband's checkered career was closed by a wound in the foot. In Christ Church, Dublin, lies the body of the warrior, and the monument displays the figure of a rec.u.mbent knight in armor, with that of his bride at his side.

The national struggles of Scotland are as replete with examples of ill.u.s.trious women as those of Ireland; the tragedy of the lives of some of Scotia's daughters not only serves to mark the brutal spirit of times which, with all their superficial glorifying of the s.e.x, yet could with good conscience make war upon women, but also serves to ill.u.s.trate the height of feminine devotion when called forth by some great occasion with its demand for self-abnegation. Among such heroic characters must ever be honorably numbered the fair Isobel, Countess of Buchan, of whom the poet Pratt says:

"Mothers henceforth shall proudly tell How cag'd and prison'd Isobel Did serve her country's weal."

The nine years which saw the struggles of a Wallace and a Bruce, from the appearance of the former as the champion of Scottish rights to the crowning of the latter at Scone, were years big with the fate of a people full of heroic purpose and undaunted fort.i.tude. The story of the national conquest must be sought elsewhere. In 1305, upon the death of Wallace, the younger Bruce was impelled to abandon the cause of the King of England, who had been pleased to name him in a commission for the direction of the affairs of Scotland. He made his peace with Red Comyn, the leader of the rival Scottish faction, and closed with him a pact on the terms proposed by Bruce: "Support my t.i.tle to the crown, and I will give you my lands." The story of the perfidy of the treacherous Comyn and of the revolt of Bruce against Edward of England is well-known history. The actual crowning of the Scottish chieftain occurred on March 27, 1306. At that time appeared Isobel, wife of John, Earl of Buchan, who a.s.serted the claim to install the king, which had come down of ancient right in her family.

With great pomp, this ill.u.s.trious scion of the house of the Earls of Macduff led Bruce to the regal chair. The English chronicler crustily remarks: "She was mad for the beauty of the fool who was crowned." The English king was enraged at the presumption of his va.s.sal, and sent out his soldiers against the Scottish sovereign. In the notable battle which followed, the forces of Bruce were routed and he himself made a fugitive. Other reverses befell the arms of the Scotch, and among those who were carried away captive to gratify the l.u.s.t for vengeance of the English was the n.o.ble lady who had proudly inducted Bruce into the royal power. Isobel of Buchan was carried to Berwick, and condemned to a fate which can best be described in the words of an early chronicler: "Because she has not struck with the sword, she shall not die by the sword, but on account of the unlawful coronation which she performed, let her be closely confined in an abode of stone and iron, made in the shape of a cross, and let her be hung up out of doors in the open air of Berwick, that both in her life and after her death she may be a spectacle and an eternal reproach to travellers."

For four years she suffered the imposition of this heinous punishment, which was then mitigated to imprisonment in the monastery of Mount Carmel at Berwick. After three years she was removed to the custody of Henry de Beaumont. Her final fate is unknown, but it is presumable that, if she lived, her release from durance was secured by the victory of Bannockburn.

Amid the misfortunes which pressed thickly upon the house of those whose name, more than that of any other, is linked with Scotland's history--the mighty Douglases--must ever appear the sad-visaged Janet, Lady Glamis. When under the royal ban, remorseless as the will of fate, the house of Douglas was expelled from its native heath, a woman of unusual n.o.bility suffered death in the general disaster to her kin.

Grat.i.tude is not a virtue of kings, or else there would have been some remembrance of that earlier lady of the Douglas line, Catherine Douglas, who, when the a.s.sa.s.sins upon midnight murder bent appeared at the chamber of the queen of James I., opposed to their entrance--fruitlessly, indeed, but none the less n.o.bly--her slender arm, which she thrust into the staple to replace the bar that had been treacherously removed. The ambition of the Douglases, however, knew no bounds, and in actual fact their power often not only rivalled but overtopped that of the crown. The feud, with varying degrees of irritation and occasions of outbreak, had gone on until the time of James V., when the reverses suffered by the Douglases effectually destroyed their power and made them fugitives during the reign of that monarch. That king had an undying resentment to the Earl of Angus, who had obtained possession of his person as a child and had continued to be his keeper until he finally slipped the leash to take up the sovereignty unhampered. One of the sisters of the mighty earl, in the flower of her youth, became the wife of Lord Glamis. While her kinsmen were in exile, she secretly did what she could to further their designs against the Scottish throne. Charges were formulated against her, but do not appear to have been pressed. Other actions against her for treason were inst.i.tuted by her enemies, and she lived under continual hara.s.sment and apprehension of danger. All her property was confiscated as that of a fugitive from the law and one tainted with treason. Her enemies were not satisfied with the measure of revenge they had wrought upon her, and were content with nothing short of her life.

The venom of the persecution is shown by the nature of the charge which was trumped up against her to ensure her death. Four years after the death of her husband, she was indicted on the charge of killing him by poison. Three times the majority of those summoned to serve on the jury to hear the charges against her refused to attend, thus showing how little faith the popular mind had in the sincerity of the indictment against her. As it seemed impossible to secure a jury to hear the odious charge against an innocent and high-minded lady, the case was allowed to lapse. Soon after this she again married.

A description of her which was penned by a writer in the early part of the seventeenth century represents her as having been reputed in her prime the greatest beauty in Britain. "She was," he says, "of an ordinary stature, not too fat, her mien was majestic, her eyes full, her face was oval, and her complection was delicate and extremely fair. Besides all these perfections, she was a lady of singular chast.i.ty; as her body was a finished piece, without the least blemish, so Heaven designed that her mind should want none of those perfections a mortal creature can be capable of; her modesty was admirable, her courage was above what could be expected from her s.e.x, her judgment solid, her carriage was gaining and affable to her inferiors, as she knew well how to behave herself to her equals; she was descended from one of the most honorable and wealthy families of Scotland, and of great interest in the kingdom, but at that time eclipsed." This is the testimony of hearsay, but, allowing for exaggeration, the great impression which she made upon her contemporaries is amply shown.

The very nemesis of misfortune seemed to pursue this innocent lady. The next turn of envious fate brought to light a plot for her destruction which was hatched in the dark recesses of a heart burning with pa.s.sionate resentment over its inability to invade her wifely integrity. William Lyon had been one of the suitors who were disappointed at her acceptance of the son of the Earl of Argyll.

After several years had elapsed, this man sought to pa.s.s the limits of friendship, and had the baseness to seek to draw her away from the path of honor. Her contemptuous and indignant rebuff rankled in his mind, and led him to lay a deep plot tending to bring Lady Glamis under suspicion of attempting to poison the king. Her former indictment as a poisoner was counted upon to give probability to the charge. She, with all other persons under suspicion as parties to the plot, was arrested and immured in Edinburgh Castle.

So much of political matter entered into the testimony, and so skilfully was it wrought, that the jury found her guilty of the crimes charged, namely, treasonable communication with her relatives, the enemies of the king, and of conspiring to poison her monarch. The sentence was that she should be burned at the stake, and the same day of its delivery it was executed. "She seemed to be the only unconcerned person there, and her beauty and charms never appeared with greater advantage than when she was led to the flames; and her soul being fortified with support from Heaven, and the sense of her own innocence, she outbraved death, and her courage was equal in the fire to what it was before her judges. She suffered those torments without the least noise: only she prayed devoutly for Divine a.s.sistance to support her under her sufferings." She died as a burnt offering to the hate which was engendered against her line, but which could be visited only upon her, as all others of her house were out of reach of the royal anger.

Returning to Ireland and leaving behind the atmosphere of political machinations and persecutions, it is pleasant to take up the characters of some women of the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries who for different reasons have written their names lastingly in the memories of their race. To be hailed as the best woman of her times was the happy privilege of Margaret O'Carroll, who died in 1461.

McFirbis, the antiquary of Lecan, her contemporary, says of her: "She was the one woman that made most of preparing highways, and erecting bridges, churches and ma.s.s-books, and of all manner of things profitable to serve G.o.d and her soul." Her life was most celebrated for her pilgrimage to the shrine of Saint James of Compostella in Spain, and her unbounded charity. The pilgrimage followed upon a great revival of religion which seems to have swept over Ireland in 1445.

The occasion of the awakening is not known, other than that following upon the signs of religious discontent upon the continent the monks of Ireland roused themselves to earnest and arduous religious labors. The chronicler gives ill.u.s.tration of her practical charity in the account of her two "invitations": twice in the one year did she call upon all persons "Irish and Scottish" to bestow largely of their money and goods as a feast for the poor. Thousands resorted to the place of distribution, and, as each was aided in an orderly manner, they had their names and the amount and nature of their relief entered in a book kept for the purpose. In summing up her life's work, the chronicler says: "While the world lasts, her very many gifts to the Irish and Scottish nations cannot be numbered. G.o.d's blessing, the blessing of all saints, and every our blessing from Jerusalem to Innis Glauir be on her going to Heaven, and blessed be he that will reade and will heare this, for the blessing of her soule. Cursed be the sore in her breast that killed Margrett." Such a picture as this serves to offset the more usual idea of the women of Ireland during the Middle Ages as coa.r.s.e, half-civilized beings. Such a character would lend dignity and worth to any people during any age.

The many benefactions and the public spirit of this great lady make her deserving of mention in any account of the development of charities. The poet D'Arcy McGee has immortalized her in a poem in which, referring to the occasion of her "great Invitation," he says:

In cloth of gold, like a queen new-come out of the royal wood On the round, proud, white-walled rath Margeret O'Carroll stood; That day came guests to Rath Imayn from afar from beyond the sea Bards and Bretons of Albyn and Erin--to feast in Offaly!"

To be celebrated for beauty alone is the prerogative of a few of the women of the ages. What nation is there that does not hold in as cherished regard the women who have represented its n.o.blest physical possibilities as their women of unusual sanct.i.ty or those who have glorified their literature or enn.o.bled their arts? A beautiful woman--a woman whose beauty is not alone flawless in feature and full of the instinctive intellectuality of a soul mirrored in a countenance, but also typical of the expression of racial characteristics, is as much a product of ages, as much a climax of evolution at the point of perfection, as the saint, the artist, the dramatist who marks a period and exalts a people. To pa.s.s down in history as an exceptional beauty is to inspire art ideals and to furnish a theme for the lyricist. Frailty is often found united with such exceptional beauty, so is it with exceptional genius; alas! that predominating gifts should be so often inimical to balance. To find such beauty in the way of virtue is as grateful as to find an orchid exhaling perfume.

In the tales of fair women, the Fair Geraldine, who was born in the first half of the sixteenth century, must always be celebrated, not only as a typical Irish beauty, but as a woman whose virtues were of a similar order to her physical charms. She was the second daughter of the Earl of Kildare by his second wife, Lady Elizabeth Grey, and inherited from both sides of this union, which was most auspicious, the high breeding and gentle graces which fitted well her gracious carriage and great beauty and served, by enhancing her physical charms, to attract to her a wide circle of friends and to secure for her the knightly attendance of a band of distinguished suitors. She was taken to England to be educated, and at court received the polish which perfected the jewel of her beauty. She made her home with a second cousin of her mother, Lady Mary, who was afterward England's queen. While quite young she was appointed maid of honor to her kinswoman. Already her charms had ripened to the point of eliciting from the poet, soldier, and politician, Henry, Earl of Surrey, the high praise of the following sonnet:

"From Tuscane came my lady's worthy race, Fair Florence was sometime her ancient seat.

The western isle, whose pleasant sh.o.r.e doth face Wild Cambor's cliffs, did give her lively heat.

Fostered she was with milk of Irish breast; Her sire an Earl, her dame of Princes' blood, From tender years in Britain doth she rest, With King's child; where she tasteth costly food.

Hunsdon did first present her to mine eyes; Bright is her hue, and Geraldine she hight.

Hampton me taught to wish her first as mine, And Windsor, alas! doth chase her from my sight.

Her beauty of kind; her virtues from above, Happy is he that can attain her love."

The n.o.ble earl who lamented that Windsor chased her from his sight was suffering incarceration in Windsor Castle for eating meat in Lent.

That the Fair Geraldine had made full conquest of his heart is shown by his conduct at a tournament at Florence, where he defied the world to produce her equal. He was victorious, and the palm was awarded the Irish beauty. Again, he is found resorting to a famous alchemist of the day to enable him to peer into the future, that he might know what disposition of her heart would be made by the lady of his affections.

The only satisfaction he obtained was the seeing of Geraldine rec.u.mbent upon a couch reading one of his sonnets. This must have stirred his blood and have strengthened his faith in the ultimate success of his wooing. Had he obtained the revelation he sought, he would have seen the adored beauty, with that curious inconsistency of her s.e.x, bestowing herself upon Sir Anthony Brown, a man sixty years of age, and who was forty-four years her senior. After his death she married the Earl of Lincoln, whom she also survived. There is no further record of the beauty whose fame extended over England and Ireland. The circ.u.mstance of Surrey's visit to the alchemist has been preserved in Scott's _Lay of the Last Minstrel_:

"Fair all the pageant--but how pa.s.sing fair The slender form that lay on couch of Ind!

O'er her white bosom strayed her hazel hair, Pale her dear cheek, as if for love she pined; All in her night-robe loose she lay reclined And, pensive, read from tablet eburine Some strain that seemed her inmost soul to find; That favored strain was Surrey's raptured line, That fair and lovely form, the Ladye Geraldine."

In the picturesque annals of the piracy of the sixteenth century, when England was getting that sea training which was to make her the undisputed naval power of the world, when the Turkish corsair spread the terror of his savage brutality through the hearts of the brave seamen who manned the craft of legitimate commerce, at a time when the trade routes of the sea were the paths of piracy, and the sabre, the cutla.s.s, and the newly invented gunpowder were depended upon to establish the right of way for the ships of the nations, there appears no more daring character than Grainne O'Malley. Many stories of her prowess are still current in the west of Ireland, and the political ballads of her time make frequent allusion to the sea queen. For the greater part of the sixteenth century she lived, an example of that splendid virility which is yet characteristic of the hardy Irish peasantry, when not under the shadow of famine.

She came of right by her seafaring proclivities, for from the earliest period the O'Malleys have been celebrated as rivalling the Vikings in their love of the sea. In the fourteenth century a bard is found singing:

"A good man never was there Of the O'Mailly's but a mariner; The prophets of the weather are ye, A tribe of affection and brotherly love."

Grainne O'Malley, with all her depredations upon the sea, was no common pirate; through her veins ran the royal blood of the line of Connaught, and, despite her serviceability to the English as a freebooting ally upon the western coasts of the island, she acknowledged no higher power than her own. Her t.i.tle of dignity was regarded as inviolable. Quite worthy of the brush of an artist was the scene presented by the reception at court of the wild Irish chieftainess. Disdaining land travel, she performed the whole trip to London by water, sailing up the Thames to the Tower Gate. The little son who was born upon this voyage was fittingly called Theobald of the Ship. There has come down to us no account of the meeting of the two queens, but one may readily imagine the scene--the blonde Elizabeth, thin, unbeautiful, her scant features lined by petulance, but with indomitable will shown in the turn of her mouth and the strength of her chin, and the large-limbed, full-bodied Irish woman, dressed in the semi-wild attire of her race and of her calling, her arms, her wrists, her ankles, gleaming with circlets of gold, a fillet of ma.s.sive metal binding her hair, her mantle caught up at the shoulder by an immense, ornately wrought brooch. Courteously, but with no sign of inferiority in her demeanor, her swarthy skin showing the dash of Spanish blood in her veins, and her eyes flashing with the light of an unconquered spirit, stood the female buccaneer before the woman who had rule of England. The best tradition of the results of the interview tell us that a treaty was effected between the two, but that the Irish chieftainess did not yield an iota of her royal claims.

Thus was cemented a union between the English throne and the piratical leader. It must be borne in mind, however, that piracy was not then the despicable vice that it afterward came to be regarded. The commerce of the enemy was always lawful spoil, and, even when there was not actually a state of hostilities existing between countries, preying upon one another's commerce was often regarded as a semi-legitimate industry; and if the freebooter kept out of reach of the enemy, he was not likely to be seriously sought out for punishment by the authorities of his own country. The exploiters of the New World, under the t.i.tle of merchant-adventurers, were for the most part pirates; the Spanish galleons were always lawful spoil for the English merchantman, who knew the trick of painting out the name of his craft, giving it a garb of piratical black, using a false flag, spoiling the enemy after some swift, hard fighting, and then resuming again his real or a.s.sumed pacific character. In the light of her times must Grainne O'Malley be regarded.

As a sea queen she is without parallel in any time; and if the stain of their piracy does not attach to her English contemporaries, Drake, Raleigh, and Gilbert, no more should it to her. By force of a powerful individuality, she ruled a race of men who were noted as the most lawless of all Ireland, men among whom women as a cla.s.s were so little esteemed that they were not allowed to hold property. An early traditional account of this woman of the waves, which is preserved in ma.n.u.script at the Royal Irish Academy, Dublin, describes her as follows:

"She was a great pirate and plunderer from her youth. It is Transcended to us by Tradition that the very Day she was brought to bed of her first Child that a Turkish Corsair attacked her ships, and that they were Getting the Better of her Men, she got up, put her Quilt about her and a string about her neck, took two Blunder Bushes in her hands, came on deck, began damming and Capering about, her monstrous size and odd figure surprised the Turks, their officers gathered themselves talking of her; this was what she wanted, stretched both her hands, fired the two Blunder Bushes at them and Destroyed the officers." Many are the deeds of prowess ascribed to her, and so widespread was her fame that desperate characters came from all parts to enroll themselves under her standard. Her serviceability to the English, to whose extending power she had the good sense not to put herself in opposition, secured to her the right to continue her depredations.

With all her daring and the romance with which tradition has surrounded her, she was not, nor does the report of her times represent her as having been, handsome. In fact, notwithstanding that the Anglicized form of her given name is Grace, its real meaning is "the ugly." Her first husband was an O'Flaherty, the terror of which name is preserved in the litany of the Anglo-Norman, recalling the capture of the city of Galway and the surrounding country: "From the ferocious O'Flaherties,--Good Lord, deliver us." The same words, as a talisman, were inscribed over the gate of the city. We know little of the representative of this family who became the husband of Grainne O'Malley. Her second husband was Sir Richard Bourke, of the Mayo division of a great Norman-Irish clan. It was after contracting this alliance that Grainne O'Malley put herself under the protection of the English rule in Connaught. Sidney, the lord-deputy, referring to his visit to Galway in 1576, says: "There came to me a most famous female sea-captain, called Granny-I-Mallye, and offered her services to me, wheresoever I would command her, with three galleys and two hundred fighting men, either in Ireland or Scotland. She brought with her her husband, for she was, as well by sea as by land, more than master's mate with him. He was of the nether Bourkes, and now, as I hear, MacWilliam Euter, and called by the nickname 'Richard in Iron.' This was a notorious woman in all the coasts of Ireland. This woman did Sir Philip see and speak with: he can more at large inform you of her."

The personal character of this female buccaneer was never called into question; saving only her piratical proclivities, she seems to have been exemplary. The circ.u.mstances of her life at the death of her first husband forced her, a daughter of a pirate, to the seas as a "thrade of maintenance," as she apologetically put it to Queen Elizabeth. She founded and endowed religious houses, and the att.i.tude she maintained toward the powers higher than she was in the furtherance of the peace of her country. Yet her good deeds have not been borne in the same remembrance as her piratical performances. With this account of the adventurous Irish woman, we may turn to a very different picture, taken from Scotland.

The annals of the Scottish border are replete with stories of cruel warfare and of savage vengeance. The wars of England with the valorous Scots present hardly more instances of heroism and of brutality than do the accounts of the feuds which arose between the clans themselves.

Of the first sort was the expedition which Bluff King Hal sent out to punish the Scots for becoming incensed at the insolent tone and the humiliating conditions he imposed on the negotiations looking to the marriage of his young son, afterward Edward VI., and the infant Mary, Queen of Scots.

The English conducted a series of savage forays across the Scottish border. Their success led the leaders of the invading army to represent to Henry that, owing to the distracted condition of Scotland on account of the internal disorders, the time was peculiarly auspicious for a permanent conquest of a large part of the border.

Under commission of the English king to effect such a conquest, they returned and renewed their attack. The tower of Broomhouse, held by an aged woman and her family, was consigned to the flames, and she and her children perished in the conflagration. Melrose Abbey was wantonly plundered and ruined, and the bones of the Douglases were taken from their tombs and scattered about. Next, the little village of Maxton was burned. All its inhabitants had made good their escape excepting a maiden of high courage and deep devotion, who remained with her bed-ridden parents. The approach of the enemy meant their destruction.

The village maid had a lover, who, on finding that she was not with the refugees, returned to the town and forcibly carried her off, although he was grievously wounded in the act of doing so. After he had effected her rescue, the brave savior, breathing with his expiring breath a prayer of thankfulness that he had been permitted to yield up his life for her who was more than life to him, died of exhaustion and of his wounds. The measure of iniquity was complete, and, although many other b.l.o.o.d.y deeds were perpetrated in this warfare, the instrument of vengeance was at hand; when the hour came that marked a turn in the tide:

"Ancrum Moor Ran red with English blood; Where the Douglas true and the bold Buccleuch 'Gainst keen Lord Evers stood."

When the battle was over and the English had been driven with great slaughter from the field, the body of the English general was found near that of a young Scottish soldier with flowing yellow tresses, who was mangled by many wounds. The delicacy of feature soon led to the discovery that the slayer of the English leader was a woman, and her identification as the maiden Liliard of the hamlet of Maxton followed.

So had she avenged the cruel slaughter of her aged and helpless parents and that of the devoted lover who had laid down his life in her behalf. In a borrowed suit of armor and weapons she had arrayed herself under the Red Douglas, that she might seek out him who was the author of her calamities, to visit upon him the vengeance of her desolation, and yield up the life she no longer valued.

Upon the b.l.o.o.d.y field her compatriots interred her who was thereafter to be held in dear regard as one of Scotland's n.o.blest daughters.

Above the head of "Liliard of Ancrum" was erected a gravestone with the following inscription to commemorate her valor:

"Fair maiden Liliard lies under this stane, Little was her stature, but great was her fame; Upon the English loons she laid mony thumps, And when her legs were cutted off, she fought upon her stumps."

Ancrum Moor was fought in 1544. James V. had died two years earlier, and the crown of Scotland had devolved upon his infant daughter, Mary.

Henry VIII. was bent on securing the Scotch kingdom, and to that end persisted in urging the betrothal of Prince Edward to the infant Mary, Queen of Scots; but the Scots were equally averse to the alliance, hence Henry continued to hara.s.s the kingdom by armed forces. After Edward VI. succeeded his father, he continued to sue for Mary's hand, and made use of military force in the hope of accomplishing his object. The child-queen's safety being in constant jeopardy, she was betrothed to the Dauphin of France, and in 1548 left for the court of France. In her sixteenth year she married Francis, making at the same time a secret treaty bestowing the kingdom of Scotland on France, in case she died without an heir. Francis II., however, died in 1560, and Mary returned to Scotland the following year. Here, her Roman Catholic practices soon brought her into conflict with Knox, but for a time she managed to rule without serious troubles. Romantic adventure, however, best describes the life of this lovely queen. She was beset with suitors and pestered with intrigue for her favor. The most popularly known story in connection with her life is that of her relation to Rizzio, her Italian confidant. He it was who arranged Mary's marriage to Darnley, and it was his influence over her that finally led to his own a.s.sa.s.sination by Darnley and his companions in Holyrood Palace in 1566. Shortly thereafter the queen gave birth to Prince James; and from this time troubles and conspiracies constantly involved the unhappy queen, until her execution in 1586 for her a.s.sociation in the Babington conspiracy against the life of Queen Elizabeth.

It was while the partisans of Queen Mary and those of her young son James were imbruing the soil of Scotland with one another's blood, and when all the horrors of internecine warfare were being perpetrated, there was lighted a flame that added a heroine to the country's list of women who have honorably earned that t.i.tle. There appeared one day before Corgaff Castle, in Strathdon, Captain Kerr and a party of men, sent by the deputy lieutenant of the queen, Sir Adam Gordon of Auchindown, to capture and to hold it. Between the houses of Gordon and Forbes existed a deadly feud, although they were united by marriage. The Forbeses had espoused the cause of the king, while the Gordons were arrayed on the side of the queen. This added to the bitterness of their feeling, and accounts for the stubbornness which Lady Towie displayed when called upon to surrender. Her husband, John Forbes, the Laird of Towie, was in the field with his three sons; the defence of the castle accordingly fell upon her. When the Gordons appeared before the castle and demanded its subjection, its n.o.ble defender replied in such scornful terms to Captain Kerr, the leader of the besieging force, that he swore that he would wipe out the stigma of her insult with her blood. As it was impossible to carry the castle by a.s.sault without the aid of artillery, he resorted to fire--not, however, before the brave lady had shot her pistol at him pointblank, missing her aim, but yet grazing the captain's knee with the bullet.