On August 25th Protestantism was proclaimed and Catholicism suppressed
in Scotland by a convention of states assembled without the assent of
the absent Queen. On December 5th Francis II died; in August, 1561, his
widow left France for Scotland, having been refused a safe-conduct by
Elizabeth on the ground of her own previous refusal to ratify the treaty
made with England by her commissioners in the same month of the
preceding year. She arrived nevertheless in safety at Leith, escorted by
three of her uncles of the house of Lorraine, and bringing in her train
her future biographer, Brantome, and Chastelard, the first of all her
voluntary victims. On August 21st she first met the only man able to
withstand her; and their first passage of arms left, as he has recorded,
upon the mind of John Knox, an ineffaceable impression of her "proud
mind, crafty wit, and indurate heart against God and his truth."
And yet her acts of concession and conciliation were such as no fanatic
on the opposite side could have approved. She assented, not only to the
undisturbed maintenance of the new creed, but even to a scheme for the
endowment of the Protestant ministry out of the confiscated lands of the
Church. Her half-brother, Lord James Stuart, shared the duties of her
chief counsellor with William Maitland of Lethington, the keenest and
most liberal thinker in the country.
Pages:
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120