schemes he was dismissed from his lieutenancy. This ended in war, and in such a war as the countries had never before known. The coast of Fife was mercilessly ravaged; Edinburgh burned to the ground; the Border turned into a wilderness; the religious houses destroyed. The instructions given to the leaders of the English troops would be grotesque were it not for the horror of them. They never contemplate conquest, or any lasting result of any kind; their constant burden is to preach devastation, to insist on the infliction of the greatest possible amount of misery. The work on hand could not be entrusted to the men of the borders, accustomed as they were to no gentle warfare. Henry's troops were composed of foreign hirelings-French, Spaniards, Italians, even Greeks, men who would not shrink from any extreme of cruelty. We have no disposition to try by a severe standard the acts of a statesman in pursuance of a statesmanlike policy. Purism in things political may become weakness. Thus we readily admit that much can be urged in defence of the sternest deeds of Edward. But Henry's position was totally different. Edward set before himself a great and worthy end-the unity of the island, and all his measures were directed to that end. Henry set no end before himself save the gratification of his savage nature. The senseless raids into Scotland which he began, and which culminated in Pinkie, had no better origin than the desire to forget a disappointment in the indulgence of a cruel

revenge.

The picture of Henry's dealings with Scotland would not be complete without a word on the murder of Cardinal Beaton. That an English monarch and English statesmen should have stooped to be accomplices, if not the instigators of a treacherous assassination, is a disgrace without parallel in the history of the country. That they did stoop to this ignominy Mr. Tytler has clearly shown, and Mr. Burton sorrowfully admits:—

'These ugly revelations of the State Papers, if they show us one fallen star,* show others. The ardent polemic who deems himself the soldier of the Lord in a contest with Satan, demands charitable allowances; he is the desperate combatant in the front ranks of a deadly struggle, who neither asks nor gives quarter. Henry VIII. is an exception to everything. But what shall we say for English statesmen of that age when the spirit of chivalry was mellowing itself into that model of social excellence, the English gentleman? What for Hertford and Sir Ralph Sadler?'

The result of all this might have been foreseen. Hatred of

Wishart himself, who seems to have been cognisant of the plot against the Cardinal.

England blazed up more fiercely than ever; the power of France seemed to be strengthened beyond reach of danger. But influences were working on behalf of England more powerful for good than even the crimes and the folly of Henry for evil. During the minority of Mary the regency of the Queenmother undid all that Henry had done for France. The former terror of the spread of French influence began to gather strength. In old times it had been the great point in favour of the French alliance that it involved no prospect of subjection. But a change had come; and now French supremacy—a worse evil than the supremacy of England-seemed impending. The policy of the Queen-mother, dictated by the Guises, kept this feeling alive. The terms of Mary's marriage with the Dauphin were not fully known in Scotland; but what was known increased the alarm, aud what was suspected increased it yet more. The growing spirit of Protestantism set strongly in the same direction. Thus in 1659 we find Kirkcaldy of Grange frankly confessing to Cecil his terror of France, and his desire to make common cause with England in the interest of both countries-especially dwelling on the importance to England of securing the friendship of a people who had heretofore been true to themselves, and would now be true to their new ally. Urged by these various causes the reaction went on, until, at the accession of Mary, the English faction was, we suspect, the stronger of the two. And the misfortunes and crimes of that unhappy Princess brought the long struggle to a decisive issue. We have little space which we can devote to the endless questions associated with the name of Queen Mary: there are but two points on which we would dwell for a moment.

6

History has seldom recorded the doings of worse men than the nobles who surrounded the throne of Mary Stewart. To the turbulence and selfishness of their ancestors they superadded an audacity of cruelty and treachery peculiarly their own. They had acquired from France a certain hard unscrupulousness which intensified and but thinly covered the natural coarseness of their character. Their dress,' says Mr. Burton, was that of the camp or stable; they were dirty in person, and abrupt and disrespectful in manner, carrying on their 'disputes, and even fighting out their fierce quarrels, in the 'presence of royalty.' We have no purpose of tracing the tortuous politics of these men. But in order to judge Mary Stewart fairly we should remember their conduct on one or two crucial occasions. They murdered Rizzio, actuated by no better motive than a savage envy and a desire to bring back from banishment the rebel lords. They murdered Darnley,

rather than consent to a divorce, to gratify their lust for revenge, and carry out their political schemes. They acquitted Bothwell, and signed a bond recommending him as the husband of their Queen. They overthrew Bothwell and deposed the Queen on the ground of this very murder, rousing popular feeling by a picture in which they blasphemously represented the young Prince as invoking the vengeance of Heaven upon a crime in the guilt of which they had fully shared. The revolting humbug,' to use a familiar expression, of this last stroke defies comment. Well may Dr. Lingard declare that more disgraceful conduct does not sully the page of history.' Even if Mary Stewart were in very truth the murderess of 'Kirk o' Field,' our sympathies are rather with her than with men who, under no equal temptation, were at once murderers, traitors, liars, and hypocrites.

Such words do not, of course, describe all the Scotch politicians of the time. But they do describe most of the men who were hostile to Mary; and their application is of wider extent than some historians would have us believe. Thus the proceedings even of Mr. Froude's 'noble and stainless Murray' will not bear a close scrutiny. That he was an accessory to the murder of Rizzio is beyond all doubt. He deserted his fellow-conspirators when punishment overtook them, and commissioned Sir James Melville to tell the Queen that he had dischargit himself unto them that had committed the lait 'odious crym, and wald promyse Hir Majestie never to haue do with them nor trauell for them.' The probabilities are strong that he was aware of the coming fate of Darnley. His leaving Edinburgh the day before the murder is very suspicious -in the words of a witness, desirous to be away while mis'chief was going on.' The first deposition of Paris convicts him at least of guilty knowledge; and from first to last, he never showed the slightest intention of dealing even-handed justice among the murderers. Nor, waiving the imputations of duplicity and ingratitude, as to which there may be a doubt, is his honesty beyond question. Not only did he sell Queen Mary's jewels to Elizabeth, but he actually gave some of them to his own wife. The Regent Morton with great difficulty forced from the lady the spoil with which her husband had enriched her.* The judgment of Lord Sussex upon the Scotch politicians of that time with whom he came in contact was not less true than severe:- These parties toss between

* Preface to 'The Inventories of Queen Mary,' by Joseph Robertson, pp. 129, 137.

'them the Crown and public affairs of Scotland, and care 'neither for the mother nor the child (as I think before God) 'but to serve their own turns.'

The Queen's infatuation for Bothwell, as the story is commonly told, is one of the unaccountable things in history. Writers hostile to Mary generally represent him as an unredeemed ruffian, and ascribe her conduct to the lowest impulses which can move a woman. Mr. Burton's theory is widely different and far more natural :

:

'That she should fix her love on him has always been deemed something approaching the unnatural; but when the circumstances are considered, the conclusion ceases to become so absolutely startling. Mary was evidently one of those to whom at that time a great affair of the heart was a necessity of life-a necessity increased in intensity by her utter disappointment in her last attachment, and the loathing she entertained towards its object. Who then were near her to be the first refuge for her fugitive affections? None but her own nobles, for she was not in a position to treat with a foreign prince; and in looking round the most eminent of these, including Huntly, the brother of a former suitor, Argyle, Athole, and Arran, there were none who, on the ground of rank and position, had claims much higher than Bothwell, unless it might be Arran by reason of his royal blood, and he was already a rejected suitor. In personal qualifications Bothwell was infinitely above them all. He had a genius for command, with a dash of the chivalrous, which made Throckmorton describe him to Queen Elizabeth in 1560, as "a “glorious,* rash, and hazardous young man." He had lived at the court of France, and thus had over his harder and more effective qualities the polish and accomplishments which were all that Darnley had beside his handsomeness to recommend him. . . . He was at a period of life when the manly attractions do not begin to decline, for he had just passed-if he had passed-his thirtieth year. Tradition says that he was ill-favoured; but I do not remember any contemporary authority for the assertion, except the cursory sketch of him by Brantome, who may have met him, but does not speak as if he had. The question cannot now be decided by the eye, for there does not exist a picture which has even the reputation of being his portrait.'† (Vol. iv. p. 324.)

We cannot help thinking, however, that Mr. Burton mistakes Throckmorton's meaning here. At that time it was common to use Latin and French words in their Latin or French signification, rather than in that which they soon acquired, or even at that time bore in English. Here we think Throckmorton uses glorious as equivalent to gloriosus.

†There is a portrait of Bothwell's head, taken in 1861 from what is shown as his mummy at Faareveille. It is undoubtedly very ugly -loathsome,' according to Mr. Burton. But,' as he adds, who can tell how much of that ugliness may have been contributed by an abode of three centuries in the tomb?'

One quality in especial Bothwell had which we may well believe to have done him good service with Mary-unswerving fidelity to his Queen. To others he may have been, in the emphatic words of Randolph, false and untrue as a devil'; but he was never false to her. As a boy he had fought for her mother against the English when even Huntly and Seton stood aloof. From the day she herself landed in Scotland her interests seemed to be his only care, her wishes his only law. Surrounded by cruel and treacherous men, opposed by her brother, degraded by her husband, not knowing on whom to rely, a forlorn Queen, an outraged and deserted woman, what wonder that she should lean upon the one man who had never failed her, that she should yield herself up to vigour, audacity, devotion, a readiness to brave any danger, to venture any crime, at her behest-that, in her own words, she would leave 'her kingdom and dignity and go as a simple damsel with him?? That he was a profligate was a small matter in a time of universal profligacy; that the nature of the man was hard and low, that he was selfish and brutal and a tyrant, incapable of affection or gratitude, she could only learn, as she did, by the sad experience of her married life.

Mr. Burton evidently concurs with those historians who take the severest view of Mary's guilt, though he does not expressly state that concurrence, nor discuss the evidence point by point. He gives, however, an interesting and telling analysis of the contents of the casket letters; and as this is incorporated with the text, not, in the usual fashion, thrown into a note or an appendix, we suspect the bearing of those letters will be brought out to many readers with quite a new force. He does not enter specially upon the question whether, assuming Mary to have been aware of Darnley's danger, she can nevertheless be held innocent of actual participation in the murder. But his narrative, as a whole, leads to the conclusion that he thinks her guilty of full foreknowledge of the crime; and the judicial calmness of his temper, and the homely force of his style, combine to put the case with terrible strength against her. But we have very recently touched upon this matter in reviewing Mr. Froude's last volumes; and we gladly spare our readers a renewal of the distasteful and profitless controversy.

Readers of the foregoing remarks will be able to form for themselves a general estimate of Mr. Burton's book. A practical man and a rational antiquarian, he has encumbered himself with little beyond the sphere of ordinary historical students. The originality of his views gives a constant interest to his pages; yet that originality is seldom otherwise than