Knox, John, approximately 1514-1572; Reformation -- Scotland
Arran rode to his father's house of Kinneil, where, either because he was
insane, or because there really was a Bothwell-Hamilton plot, he was
locked up in a room high above the ground. He let himself down from the
window, reached Halyards (a place of Kirkcaldy of Grange), and was thence
taken by Mar (whom Knox appears to have warned) to the Queen at Falkland.
Bothwell and Gawain Hamilton were also put in ward there. Randolph gives
(March 31) a similar account, but believed that there really was a plot,
which Arran denied even before he arrived at Falkland. Bothwell came to
purge himself, but "was found guilty on his own confession on some
points." {214b}
The Queen now went to St. Andrews, where the suspects were placed in the
Castle. Arran wavered, accusing Mar's mother of witchcraft. Mary was
"not a little offended with Bothwell to whom she has been so good."
Randolph (April 7) continued to think that Arran should be decapitated.
He and Bothwell were kept in ward, and his father, the Duke, was advised
to give up Dumbarton to the Crown, which he did. {215a} This was about
April 23. Knox makes a grievance of the surrender; the Castle, he says,
was by treaty to be in the Duke's hands till the Queen had lawful issue.
{215b} Chatelherault himself, as we said, told Randolph that he had no
right in the place, beyond a verbal and undated promise of the late
Regent.
Knox now again illustrates his own historical methods. Mary, riding
between Falkland and Lochleven, fell, was hurt, and when Randolph wrote
from Edinburgh on May 11, was not expected there for two or three days.
But Knox reports that, on her return from Fife to Edinburgh, she danced
excessively till after midnight, because she had received letters "that
persecution was begun again in France," by the Guises. {215c} Now as,
according to Knox elsewhere, "Satan stirreth his terrible tail," so did
one of Mary's uncles, the Duc de Guise, "stir his tail" against one of
the towns appointed to pay Mary's jointure, namely Vassy, in Champagne.
Here, on March 1, 1562, a massacre of Huguenots, by the Guise's
retainers, began the war of religion afresh. {215d}
Now, in the first place, this could not be joyful news to set Mary
dancing; as it was apt to prevent what she had most at heart, her
personal interview with Elizabeth. She understood this perfectly well,
and, in conversation with Randolph, after her return to Edinburgh,
lamented the deeds of her uncles, as calculated "to bring them in hate
and disdain of many princes," and also to chill Elizabeth's amity for
herself--on which her whole policy now depended (May 29). {216a} She
wept when Randolph said that, in the state of France, Elizabeth was not
likely to move far from London for their interview. In this mood how
could Mary give a dance to celebrate an event which threatened ruin to
her hopes?
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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