Ringan Gilhaize, or, The Covenanters
Page 33
CHAPTER XXXII
All the next day, and for many days after, consternation reigned in thestreets of the city, and horror sat shuddering in all herdwelling-places. Multitudes stood in amazement from morning to nightaround the palace; for the Earl of Bothwell was within, and stillhonoured with all the homages due to the greatest public trusts. Everand anon a cry was heard, "Bothwell is the murderer!" and the multitudeshouted, "Justice, justice!" But their cry was not heard.
Night after night the trembling citizens watched with candles at theircasements, dreading some yet greater alarm; and in the stillness of themidnight hour a voice was heard crying, "The Queen and Bothwell are themurderers!" and another voice replied, "Vengeance, vengeance!--Blood forblood!"
Every morning on the walls of the houses writings were seen, demandingthe punishment of the regicides--and the Queen's name, and the name ofBothwell, and the names of many more, with the Archbishop of St Andrewsat their head, were emblazoned on all sides as the names of theregicides. But Bothwell, with the resolute bravery of guilt in theconfidence of power, heeded not the cry that thus mounted continuallyagainst him to Heaven, and the Queen feigned a widow's sorrow.
The whole realm was as when the ark of the covenant of the Lord wasremoved from Israel and captive in the hands of the Philistines. Theinjured sought not the redress of their wrongs; even the guilty wereafraid of one another, and by the very cowardice of their distrust wereprevented from banding at a time when they might have rioted at will.What aggravated these portents of a kingdom falling asunder, was themockery of law and justice which the court attempted. Those who wereaccused of the King's death ruled the royal councils, and were greatestin the Queen's favour. The Earl of Bothwell dictated the veryproceedings by which he was himself to be brought to trial,--and whenthe day of trial arrived, he came with the pomp and retinue of avictorious conqueror--to be acquitted.
But acquitted, as the guilty ever needs must be whom no one dares toaccuse, nor any witness hazards to appear against, his acquittal servedbut to prove his guilt, and the forms thereof the murderousparticipation of the Queen. Thus, though he was assoilzied in form oflaw, the libel against him was nevertheless found proven by theuniversal verdict of all men. Yet, in despite of the world, and even ofthe conviction recorded within their own bosoms, did the infatuated Maryand that dreadless traitor, in little more than three months from theera of their crime, rush into an adulterous marriage; but of theinfamies concerning the same, and of the humiliated state to which poorScotland sank in consequence, I must refer the courteous reader to thehistories and chronicles of the time--while I return to the narrative ofmy grandfather.
When the Earl of Bothwell, as I have been told by those who heard himspeak of these deplorable blots on the Scottish name, had been createdDuke of Orkney, the people daily expected the marriage. But instead ofthe ordinary ceremonials used at the marriages of former kings andprinces, the Queen and all about her, as if they had been smitten fromon high with some manifest and strange phrenzy, resolved, as it were inderision and blasphemy, notwithstanding her own and the notour popery ofthe Duke, to celebrate their union according to the strictest forms ofthe protestants; and John Knox being at the time in the West Country,his colleague, Master Craig, was ordered by the Queen in council topublish the bans three several Sabbaths in St Giles' kirk.
On the morning of the first appointed day my grandfather went thither; avast concourse of the people were assembled, and the worthy minister,when he rose in the pulpit with the paper in his hand, trembled and waspale, and for some time unable to speak; at last he read the names andpurpose of marriage aloud, and he paused when he had done so, and anawful solemnity froze the very spirits of the congregation. He then laiddown the paper on the pulpit, and lifting his hands and raising hiseyes, cried with a vehement sadness of voice,--"Lord God of the pureheavens, and all ye of the earth that hear me, I protest, as a ministerof the gospel, my abhorrence and detestation of this hideous andadulterous sin; and I call all the nobility and all of the Queen'scouncil to remonstrate with her Majesty against a step that must coverher with infamy for ever and ruin past all remede." Three days did hethus publish the bans, and thrice in that manner did he boldly proclaimhis protestation; for which he was called before the privy council,where the guilty Bothwell was sitting; and being charged with havingexceeded the bounds of his commission, he replied with an apostolicbravery,--
"My commission is from the word of God, good laws, and natural reason,to all which this proposed marriage is obnoxious. The Earl of Bothwell,there where he sits, knows that he is an adulterer,--the divorce that hehas procured from his wife has been by collusion,--and he knows likewisethat he has murdered the king and guiltily possessed himself of theQueen's person."
Yet, notwithstanding, Mr Craig was suffered to depart, even unmolestedby the astonished and overawed Bothwell; but, as I have said, themarriage was still celebrated; and it was the last great crime ofpapistical device that the Lord suffered to see done within the boundsof Scotland. For the same night letters were sent to the Earl of Murrayfrom divers of the nobility, entreating him to return forthwith; and mygrandfather, at the incitement of the Earl of Argyle, was secretly sentby his patron Glencairn to beg the friends of the state and the lawfulprince, the son whom the Queen had born to her murdered husband, to meetwithout delay at Stirling.
Accordingly, with the flower of their vassals and retainers, besidesArgyle and Glencairn, came many of the nobles; and having protestedtheir detestation of the conduct of the Queen, they entered into aSolemn League and Covenant, wherein they rehearsed, as causes for theirconfederating against the misrule with which the kingdom was so humbled,that the Scottish people were abhorred and vilipendit amongst allChristian nations; declaring that they would never desist till they hadrevenged the foul murder of the King, rescued the Queen from herthraldom to the Earl of Bothwell, and dissolved her ignominiousmarriage.
The Queen and her regicide, for he could not be called her husband, werepanic-struck when they heard of this avenging paction. She issued a boldproclamation, calling on her insulted subjects to take arms in herdefence, and she published manifestoes, all lies. She fled with Bothwellfrom Edinburgh to the castle of Borthwick; but scarcely were they withinthe gates when the sough of the rising storm obliged him to leave her,and the same night, in the disguise of man's apparel, the Queen of allScotland was seen flying, friendless and bewildered, to her sentencedparamour.
The covenanting nobles in the meantime were mustering their clans andtheir vassals; and the Earls of Morton and Athol having brought theinstrument of the League to Edinburgh, the magistrates and town-councilsigned the same, and, taking the oaths, issued instanter orders for theburghers to prepare themselves with arms and banners, and to man thecity walls. The whole kingdom rung with the sound of warlikepreparations, and the ancient valour of the Scottish heart was blithenedwith the hope of erasing the stains that a wicked government had broughtupon the honour of the land.
Meanwhile the regicide and the Queen drew together what forces his powercould command and her promises allure, and they advanced from Dunbar toCarberry Hill, where they encamped. The army of the Covenanters at thesame time left Edinburgh to meet them. Mary appeared at the head of hertroops; but they felt themselves engaged in a bad cause, and refused tofight. She exhorted them with all the pith of her eloquence;--she wept,she implored, she threatened, and she reproached them with cowardice,but still they stood sullen.
To retreat in the face of an enemy who had already surrounded the hillon which she stood was impracticable. In this extremity she called witha voice of despair for Kirkcaldy of Grange, a brave man, whom she sawat the head of the cavalry by whom she was surrounded, and he havinghalted his horse and procured leave from his leaders, advanced towardher. Bothwell, with a few followers, during the interval, quitted thefield; and, as soon as Kirkcaldy came up, she surrendered herself tohim, and was conducted by him to the headquarters of the Covenanters, bywhom she was received with all the wonted testimonials
of respect, andwas assured, if she forsook Bothwell and governed her kingdom withhonest councils, they would honour and obey her as their sovereign. Butthe common soldiers overwhelmed her with reproaches, and on the marchback to Edinburgh poured upon her the most opprobrious names.
"Never was such a sight seen," my grandfather often said, "as the returnof that abject Princess to her capital. On the banner of the League wasdepicted the corpse of the murdered king, her husband, lying under atree, with the young prince, his son, kneeling before it, and the mottowas, 'Judge and revenge my cause, O Lord.' The standard-bearer rode withit immediately before the horse on which she sat weeping and wild, andcovered with dust, and as often as she raised her distracted eye theapparition of the murder in the flag fluttered in her face. In vain shesupplicated pity--yells and howls were all the answers she received, andvolleys of execrations came from the populace, with Burn her, burn her,bloody murderess! Let her not live!"
In that condition she was conducted to the provost's house, into whichshe was assisted to alight, more dead than alive, and next morning shewas conveyed a prisoner to Lochleven Castle, where she was soon aftercompelled to resign the crown to her son, and the regency to the Earl ofMurray, by whose great wisdom the Reformation was established in truthand holiness throughout the kingdom--though for a season it was againmenaced when Mary effected her escape, and dared the cause of the Lordto battle at Langside. But of that great day of victory it becomes notme to speak, for it hath received the blazon of many an abler pen; it isenough to mention, that my grandfather was there, and after the battlethat he returned with the army to Glasgow, and was present at thethanksgiving. The same night he paid his last respects to the Earl ofMurray, who permitted him to take away, as a trophy and memorial, thegloves which his Lordship had worn that day in the field; and they haveever since been sacredly preserved at Quharist, where they may be stillseen. They are of York buff; the palm of the one for the right hand isstill blue with the mark of the sword's hilt, and the fore-finger stoolis stained with the ink of a letter which the Earl wrote on the field toArgyle, who had joined the Queen's faction; the which letter, it hasbeen thought, caused the swithering of that nobleman in the hour of theonset, by which Providence gave the Regent the victory--a conquest whichestablished the Gospel in his native land for ever.