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them with cries of 'Come here, loons, come here, tykes, come here, heretics;" but they came on all too quickly, and so indiscriminately did they slaughter the Scots that an odd sort of apology is made by the Englishman, that 'their armour among them so little differing, and their apparel so bare and beggarly, . . . all clad alike in jacks covered with white leather doublets of the same, or of fustian, and most commonly all white hosen. Not one with either chain, brooch, ring, or garment of silk that I could see. . . . This vileness of port was the cause that so many of their great men and gentlemen were killed. . . The outward show, the semblance and sign, whereby a stranger might discern a villain from a gentleman, was not among them to be seen.' 2

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The miserable battle of Pinkie has been called the last great disaster in a contest for national existence-the turning-point at which there came life when hope seemed past." The enemy filled several fortresses with their troops, and established themselves in great strength on Inchkeith in the Firth of Forth, and at Broughty Ferry, near Dundee. With the aid of the French they were turned out, and at length by the mediation of France peace was effected with England in April 1550. Meanwhile the little Queen Mary, the immediate but unconscious cause of so much wretchedness, was living in safety on the island of Inchmahome, on the lake of Monteith, midway between Stirling and the Highlands. A great deal has been said and imagined about the quiet life of the little Queen and her Maries, in this beautiful home; and there, amongst the ancient trees and boxwood, a nook has been called 'The Child-Queen's

1 Patten's Account of Somerset's Expedition.

2 Ibid.

3 Burton, vol. iii. p. 483.

Garden.' Inchmahome signifies the Isle of Rest, but this short rest was preparatory to a life with no rest. It is a sad thought that that rest was followed by a youth in a court where sanctity did not predominate; by an early womanhood as the ruler of a nation whose every department, civil and religious, was torn asunder ; then by the nineteen years' captivity, and the great hall of Fotheringay. In June 1548 the Estates met at Haddington, and there the French Ambassador, the Sieur d'Essé, being present, the Queen of Scots was betrothed to the Dauphin of France; and it was agreed to send the Queen to France 'when they thought the time fitting, and fair weather that she might pass through the seas." One of her many biographers thus describes her departure: 'Mary Stuart parted from her mother on the 7th of August,' 'on that picturesque green spot of broken ground which juts from the foot of the lofty rock of Dumbarton into the broad waters of the Clyde. All things being now ready, and the tide serving, the young sovereign was brought with the ceremonial pomp of royal etiquette by the Lords Erskine and Livingstone, the two noble Commissioners for the safe keeping of her person, ... down the narrow descent from her chamber in the fortress on the western peak of the rock, attended by her four Maries; her faithful nurse, Janet Sinclair; her governess, the Lady Fleming; her two preceptors, the Abbot of Inchmahome and the Prior of Balmaclellan ; and her three illegitimate brothers-the Lord James Stuart, Prior of St. Andrews, afterwards the Regent Moray, Lord John, the Commendator of Holyrood Abbey, and the Lord Robert Stuart, Prior of Orkney, who were to be the companions of her

1 See 'Queen Mary's Child-Garden:' second series of Hora Subseciva, by Dr. John Brown.

2 Pitscottie, vol. ii. 503.

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voyage. The Queen-Mother, then assisted by the Governor Arran, delivered her royal daughter to the Chevalier de Villegagne and the Sieur de Brégé, . . . the gentlemen commissioned by the King of France to receive that precious charge. The little Queen was observed to shed tears silently after she had received the maternal blessing and farewell kiss of the only parent she had ever known; but, early trained in the royal science of self-control, she offered no resistance, and permitted herself to be carried on board the galley of the King of France, which had been fitted up, and sent expressly for her accommodation. An eyewitness of the embarkation has recorded "that the young Queen was at that time one of the most perfect creatures the God of nature ever formed, for that her equal was nowhere to be found, nor had the world another child of her fortune and hopes."'1 She had a fortunate voyage, and landed at Brest on the 30th of August.

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1 Strickland's Queen Mary, pp. 98, 99.

CHAPTER XXIX.

THE LAST PROVINCIAL COUNCIL.

'O'er the Church the gathering twilight falls.'

The Christian Year.

IN 1554 Marie of Lorraine became Regent. As a Catholic and a Frenchwoman, her task was specially difficult, but her surpassing cleverness enabled her to steer the helm well in her daughter's kingdom in the critical circumstances that preceded a revolution. While her own religion and her heart were Catholic, the Protestants found her tolerant with their novelties so long as they kept within bounds. Early on Sunday morning the 24th of April 1558 Mary Queen of Scots was married to Francis, the Dauphin of France. The event took place in Paris, in the Cathedral of Notre Dame, with extraordinary magnificence; and it was duly announced in the young Queen's far-distant capital by the thundering voice of Mons Meg. By the marriage-treaty, the prerogatives of the Scottish crown were apparently preserved; but honest Scottish statesmen were troubled with many and far from causeless forebodings. The spirit which had disdained the pretensions of England to supremacy would never bow to the patronizing of France. 'The godly,' as the Protestants called themselves, looked on the alliance in a most dolorous light. They saw suspiciously-shaped comets, the rivers alternately dried up and overflowed their banks, whales of a 'huge greatnesse' frequented the Firth of Forth, all because of the idolatrous union; and, 'which was most

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terrible, a fiery dragon was seen to flie low upon the earth, vomiting forth fire both in the day and night season and put the people to a necessity of watching their houses and corn-yards.'1 Among the six commissioners who went from Scotland to be present at the marriage was Robert Reid, the good and learned Bishop of Orkney. He and three other of the commissioners died suddenly at Dieppe on their way home; and there were hints that these four knew too much about French and Scottish business, and a great deal was said about poisoning. The Bishop, who had effected great improvements in his isolated diocese, was a specially terrible loss at a time when good bishops were few. After the assassination of Cardinal Beaton, John Hamilton, Bishop of Dunkeld, a natural brother of the Earl of Arran, was translated to the Primacy. In 1550 Adam Wallace was burned for heresy; and on the 28th of April 1558 Walter Mylne, an aged priest, who had been Vicar of Lunan in Angus, was cruelly burned at St. Andrews. He was the last person who suffered death for Protestantism in Scotland, a 'plain good man' of 'decrepit age;' and no execution seems to have so exasperated the people. They raised a heap of stones on the spot of his suffering, and the clergy regarded the matter so seriously that they pulled down the cairn once or twice, 'with denunciations of cursing gif ony man there suld ley ony stane. But in vain,' continues Knox, was that wind blawing, for still was the heip made, till that the priests and Papists did steal awa the stanes by nicht to big their walls, and to uther their private uses.' 2 During the reign of Mary of England, from 1554 to 1556, many English Protestants sought refuge for their lives across the borders. Among them were two well-known preachers, William Harlaw and John Willock. In 1549 John Knox 2 Knox, p. 122.

1 Spottiswoode, p. 186.

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