after four days, the garrison asked for terms. Lord Grey would grant none. Assistants of traitors were, according to the law of nations, traitors themselves, and he would promise no quarter. He only gave them one night to consider their decision. In the morning, the commander and ten or twelve officers came out, trailing their ensign rolled up, and surrendered themselves to Lord Grey. They were spared; but, says Lord Grey in his despatch: "Then put I in certain bands who fell to execution. There were six hundred slain. Four hundred were as gallant and goodly personages as of any I ever beheld. So it hath pleased the Lord of Hosts to deliver your enemies into your Highness's hands." This was not hypocrisy. Lord Grey was an upright, conscientious, religious man, whom Spenser idealised in his “Legend of Sir Arthegal or of Justice,” the most distinct and definite of all the books of the Faerie Queene. Such horrible massacres were only what adventurers had every reason to expect if they fell into the enemy's hands, for they were not considered as prisoners of war. The Spanish and French had done such things again and again, and Philip made no complaints; but to our modern minds it is frightful to think of Raleigh and Spenser being in the camp which sent forth these bands to commit this butchery; and the whole scene has been brought vividly before us in Westward Ho !

It was but a horrible episode in a horrible war. The two septs of Butler and Fitzgerald, with the Earls of Ormond and Desmond at their head, had been flying at each other's throats for centuries; and, as Ormond was on the English side, Desmond was a proscribed rebel. There were butcheries on either side, and Lord Grey had absolutely made up his mind to exterminate the native Irish of the south-west, just as settlers have tried to exterminate Red Indians or Australians. He spread desolation before him, but he could not finish his work. Complaints were made in England-complaints with which Spenser had so little sympathy that he represents them as the Blatant Beast, Sir Arthegal's enemy. And Elizabeth recalled the deputy after two years, when only 1,485 chief men and gentlemen had been slain, kernes and churls without number, yet all in the belief that justice and order were being established. After his departure, Desmond was hunted down by Ormond, and killed in a cabin, and the Jesuit Sanders wandered about till he was starved to death.

Grants of the desolate lands were made to "gentlemen undertakers," who were to bring them into cultivation. Raleigh was one of these, and Spenser was another. The latter received Kilcolman Castle, a peel tower near Limerick, where he took up his abode and began the great work of his life, the Faerie Queene. Raleigh, however, was seldom on his Irish lands, though he took care to send excellent tenants from Devon and Somerset. He had fallen into the stream of Court favour. If the adventure of the laying his cloak before Queen Elizabeth, to cover a miry place, ever happened, it was at this time; and at any rate Raleigh had all the qualities that fascinated her. He

CAMEO
XIX.

Raleigh. 1581.

was tall and graceful, with a high forehead and haughty arched eyebrows, with a ready wit, high cultivation, and a power of paying her the romantic adulation in which she delighted. His usual manner was proud and reserved, and this made him many enemies. Above all, he was hated by Sir Christopher Hatton, who saw in him a rival beauty. Leicester however patronised him, probably for the sake of the Sidneys.

Friends of

James I.

1570.

It must have been no small delight to the young King James of Scot- | CAMEO XX. land when his cousin Esmé Stewart arrived in Scotland. He was the son of John Stewart, brother of James's grandfather, the Earl of Lennox, and had been bred up in France, where he held the lordship of Aubigny. Graceful, lively, and winning, he soon gained the heart of the boy of fourteen, who had been continually brow-beaten and threatened; and he brought two companions with him-Montherneau, a Frenchman by birth, and Henry Kerr, another Frenchified Scot.

The King would not stir without D'Aubigny, and insisted on his having apartments in Holyrood when he moved thither for his Parliament. The citizens of Edinburgh had arranged a wonderful pageant, in which Dame Music led the four cardinal virtues, a little Child came out of a silver globe with the keys of the city, Religion led the King to the High Church, and Bacchus presided over fountains running with wine.

There was, however, great distrust and discontent, especially when James presented his cousin with the earldom of Lennox, which of course had devolved on himself by the death of his grandfather, raising the title to the ducal dignity. The new Duke was known to have been intimate with the Duke of Guise, and it was strongly suspected that he was come to talk James over to his mother's cause; nor were the suspicions lessened by his sudden conversion from Romanism by the arguments of the young King. Indeed, this change was thought to be only a stroke of policy. Elizabeth and her Court were much alarmed, and set spies on the alert, offering bribes to James's various instructors; bribes accepted by Buchanan, but refused by Peter Young.

CAMEO XX.

Fall of Morton. 1571.

It was strongly suspected that Lennox intended to carry the young King off to France, and that James was far from unwilling to exchange his dull life for the Court which had proved so fascinating to his grandfather, James V. He actually did open a correspondence with his mother, and Elizabeth and her ministers feared that Scotland would slip from their grasp, throw itself into the hands of Guise, and demand Mary's liberation in the name of her son! What brilliant hopes must not have arisen before the captive!

Walsingham's hope was in the opposition of the Scots themselves. The grim old Earl of Morton naturally abhorred the stranger, and Sir Robert Bowes was sent to deal with him, so that a counter-plot was soon on foot by which Morton and his friends were to make away with Lennox, like Rizzio before him, and carry James to England. However, Elizabeth would not sanction this murder, and knew that to steal the King would throw Scotland into the arms of France. So she recalled Bowes, bidding him first administer a good scolding to the young King for his ingratitude, and to tell him that he would soon learn what it was to prefer a Duke of Lennox to a Queen of England! Lennox had, however, made up his mind. Morton must fall, or he must. He secured the co-operation of another Stewart, James, the second son of Lord Ochiltree, a man who had served in various armies half over the world, and was now a captain in the royal guard. Moreover, that double-dyed traitor, Sir James Balfour, who had been the actual agent in Darnley's murder, and had since betrayed Kirkaldy's brother, was available as a witness. Henry of Darnley had been a Stewart, his son was now come to years of discretion, and it was the Stewarts' business to avenge him. Morton was warned, but the proud old Douglas nature scorned to flee, and he took his seat as usual at the council table, with the King at its head. There was a knock at the door. James Stewart was admitted, and fell on his knees before the King. When bidden to speak, he declared that he was come to declare a crime too long kept secret, and forthwith accused Morton to his face as the murderer of the King's father. Morton rose indignantly, declared that he had punished all the murderers, and that the accuser was too mean for his attention, and that it was for the King to punish those who had set him on.

Stewart swore that no one had suborned him, and asked Morton what he had done with his cousin, Archibald Douglas, who was well known to have been one of the conspirators, but to be now in high position.

Morton drew his sword, Stewart sprang to his feet. Two other lords separated them, and the Earl was imprisoned. Elizabeth was at first angered, and sent Randolph to threaten James, and to raise a party in Scotland to release the Earl; but Morton's iron rule and grasping avarice had made him so much hated that no one was willing to raise a hand to save him, and the English envoys perceived that Elizabeth's interference would only make matters worse, and after five months in prison the Earl was brought to trial.

James Stewart had been made Earl of Arran on the death of the imbecile head of the ruined Hamiltons. There was an old prediction that Morton should fall by Arran, and when he heard the title read out at the head of the accusation, the Earl exclaimed, "Then all is over! I know what to look for!"

A jury of sixteen peers were empannelled, and before them he was indicted for the murder of "our sovereign lord's dearest father," with "William Taillen, and Andrew M'Aige, his cubiculars," also that they "brint his haill lodging, and raisit the same in the air by force of gunpowder." The evidence has not been recorded; but Morton owned that he had been aware of the purpose of the murderers, and on this he was convicted of being "art and part" in the murder. "Art and part!” he cried, striking his staff on the ground, “God knoweth the contrary. No doubt he meant that though consenting to the murder, he had no share in the actual contrivance.

He was sentenced to death, and was visited in prison by sundry ministers who were satisfied with his penitence, although it seems to us to go a very little way. "The slaughter of Davie," as he called the murder of Rizzio, perhaps seemed to them as meritorious as it did to him, and they, as well as he, were persuaded that he was in a state of grace. He was led to the scaffold, and there lay prostrate, sobbing, and his body heaving, while a minister prayed for him; but this was imputed to piety, and when he rose his face and voice were firm. He died by the maiden, a guillotine of his own invention, and with him fell the last glories of the fierce old house of Douglas.

Burghley and Walsingham were hotly angry, and vowed that Queen Mary's head should pay for Morton's; but Elizabeth withheld her consent. Still it was an unfortunate moment for poor Mary, who was crippled with rheumatism, and whose hair had turned grey at thirty-seven, to write to beg for a coach to take the air in, and for the society of her faithful friends, Lord Seyton, and Lady Lethington. Castelnau, the French ambassador, backed her application with all his might; but if the Scots were no longer adverse to her, and if her son were in communication with the Guises, who should say what might be the consequence? And thus the indulgence was denied. At the same time, Elizabeth's naturally avaricious disposition made her foolishly affront James by her unwillingness to yield up to him the English estates of his grandparents. The French influence began to tell more on him. A priest was brought to his Court to teach him Italian, as it was said. Lennox and Arran were his favourites, and he was in correspondence with Guise on the one hand, and on the other with Queen Mary, through her faithful George Douglas of Lochleven; and one Crichton, a Scottish Jesuit, who communicated with Father Parsons, an English one.

James was fifteen years old, and he seems to have been considering

VOL. V.