Only in their pages can a parallel be
found to the gay and easy record which reveals, without sign of shame or
suspicion of offence, the daily life of a court compared to which the
court of King Charles II is as the court of Queen Victoria to the
society described by Grammont.
Debauchery of all kinds, murder in all forms, were the daily matter of
excitement or of jest to the brilliant circle which revolved around
Queen Catherine de' Medici. After ten years' training under the tutelage
of the woman whose main instrument of policy was the corruption of her
own children, the Queen of Scots, aged fifteen years and five months,
was married to the eldest and feeblest of the brood on April 24, 1558.
On November 17th, Elizabeth became Queen of England, and the princes of
Lorraine--Francis the great Duke of Guise, and his brother the
Cardinal--induced their niece and her husband to assume, in addition to
the arms of France and Scotland, the arms of a country over which they
asserted the right of Mary Stuart to reign as legitimate heiress of Mary
Tudor. Civil strife broke out in Scotland between John Knox and the
Queen Dowager--between the self-styled "Congregation of the Lord" and
the adherents of the Regent, whose French troops repelled the combined
forces of the Scotch and their English allies from the beleaguered walls
of Leith, little more than a month before the death of their mistress in
the castle of Edinburgh, on June 10, 1560.
Pages:
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119