 | THE CAPTIVITY. The knights of England, France, and Scotland |  |
THE CAPTIVITY.
And eagle-spirit of a child of song —
Long years of outrage, calumny, and wrong;
And the mind's canker in its savage mood,
When the impatient thirst of light and air
Scorches the heart; and the abhorred grate,
Marring the sunbeams with its hideous shade,
Works through the throbbing eyeball to the brain
With a hot sense of heaviness and pain!”
— Lament of Tasso.
Eighteen long years of solitary grief — of that most wretched
sickness that arises, even to a proverb, from hope too long deferred
— had already passed away since, in the fatal action of
Langside, the wretched Mary had for the last time seen her
banner fall, and her adherents scattered like chaff before the
wind by the determined valor of her foes. All, all was lost!
It had been the work of months to draw that gallant army to a
head, of which so many now lay stark in their curdled gore;
while the miserable remnant were hunted like beasts of chase,
to perish, when taken, upon the ignominious scaffold. And
now, of all the noble gentlemen who had thronged to her bridle-rein
on that fatal morning, high in hope as in valor, the merest
had escaped to guard the person of that sovereign whom they
loved so truly, and in behalf of whom they had endured so
deeply. Her crown was lost for ever; nor her crown only, but
her country.
Of all the glorious gifts which, at an earlier period of her
eventful life, nature appeared to shower upon her head, freedom
alone remained. The palfrey which bore her from the battle-field
was now the sole possession of the titular monarch of three
fair domains; the wild moors, over which she fled in desperate
that ever joined sagacity to hatred in the performance of their
plans; the dozen gallant hearts who rallied yet around their
queen, beneath the guiding of the stout and loyal Herries, her
only court, her only subjects. Still she was free; and to one
who for months before had never seen the blessed light of
heaven but its lustre was sullied by the dim panes through
which it forced its way, to lend no solace to her captivity, the
fresh breeze which eddied across the purple moorlands of her
native land had still the power to impart a sense of pleasure,
fleeting, it is true, and doubtful, but still, in all its forms and
essentials, absolute and real pleasure.
At the full distance of sixty Scottish miles from the accursed
field which had witnessed the downfall of all her hopes, worn
out in body and depressed in spirit, she paused to take, in the
abbey of Dundrennan, a few hours of that repose without which,
even in the most trying circumstances, the mind can not exist
in its undiminished powers. At this juncture, it appeared to
those about her person that Mary was utterly deserted by that
wonderful sagacity, that clear insight into the motives of others,
which had ever constituted one of the strongest points of her
character. The chief object of the faithful few, who had clung
to her with unblenching steadiness through this her last misfortune,
had been to bear her in security to some point whence
she might effect her escape to the sunny shores of that land
wherein she had passed the happiest, the only truly happy,
hours of her checkered existence. Queen-dowager herself of
France, knit by the closest ties of interest and friendship to the
court of Versailles — to which, moreover, Scotland had ever
been considered an auxiliar and well-affected state, no less than
an easy pretext for hostilities against its natural antagonist —
she had been there secure, not of safety only, but of the full
enjoyment of rank, and wealth, and dignity, and pleasure, if
suffered, and who had beheld all those that loved her suffer,
as Mary the last queen of Scotland. Inclination, it would have
seemed, no less than policy, should have urged the hapless sovereign
to the measure advocated by each and all of her devoted
train; for but a few years had flown since she had felt all those
pangs which render exile to a delicate and sensitive mind the
heaviest of human punishments, on parting from the fair shores
of that land, which even then perhaps some prophetic spirit
whispered, she must behold no more! Herries, the bold and
loyal Herries, bent his knee, stiffened with years of toil and
exposure, to sue of his adored mistress the only boon of all his
labors, all his sufferings, that she would avoid the fatal soil of
England.
“Remember,” he had cried, in tones which seemed in after-days
of more than human foresight — “remember how the false
and wily woman, who sways the sceptre of England with absolute
and undisputed sway — remember, I say, with what unflinching
determination she has thwarted you in every wish of
your heart; with what depth of secret enmity she has at all
times, and in all places, cherished your foes, and injured all
who were most dear to you! and wherefore, oh wherefore, my
beloved mistress, wherefore should her course of action now
be altered, when she has no longer a powerful queen with
whom to strive, but rather a fugitive rival to oppress? Elizabeth
of England — believe me, noble lady — has marked this
crisis as it drew nigh, with that unerring instinct which directs
the blood-raven to its destined victim while life yet revels in its
veins; and surely, so surely as you enter her accursed eyry, shall
you feel her vulture-talons busy about your heartstrings! For
years, my noble mistress, has Herries been your servant; at
council or in field, with ready hand and true word, has he ever
served the Stuart. It becomes me not to boast, yet will I speak:
Hamilton himself hung back — Herries was ever nigh.”
“Ever, ever true and loyal!” cried the hapless queen, touched
even beyond the consideration of her own calamities by the
speech of the brave veteran — “my noble, noble Herries, and
bitter, most bitter has been the reward of truth and valor; but
so has it ever been with Mary. I tell thee, baron, for me to
love a bird, a tree, a flower, much less a creature such as thou
art, an honorable, upright, and devoted friend, was but that creature's
doom: all whom I have loved have I destroyed! Alas,
alas for the undaunted spirits that were severed from the forms
they filled so nobly, on that dark battle-field!”
“Think not of them, my liege — mourn not for them,” interrupted
the baron. “Knightly, and in their duty, have they
fallen. Their last blow was stricken, and their last slogan
shouted, in a cause the fairest that ever hallowed warrior's
blade. They are at rest, and they are happy. But think of
those who, having lost their earthly all to save thee, would yet
esteem themselves pre-eminently happy so they might see thee
free and in security. Oh! hear me, Mary — hear for the first,
last time — hear the prayer of Herries! Go not, go not — as
you love life, and dignity, and liberty — as you would prove
your faith to those who have never been faithless to you — go
not to this accursed England!”
But it had all been vain. The fiat had gone forth, and reason
had deserted, as it would seem, the destined victim. No
arguments, however lucid — no fears, however natural, could
divert her from this fatal project. With the choice of good and
evil fairly set before her — honor, and rank, and liberty, in
France, a prison and an axe in England — deliberately and resolutely
she rushed upon her fate! And when she might have
found a willing asylum in the arms of kindred monarchs, she
yielded herself to the tender mercies of a rival queen, a rival
she aped the name, so also displayed the attributes and nature
of the lion! How could Mary — a professed foe, a claimant of
her crown, a woman fairer, and of brighter parts even than her
own — a mother, while she was but a barren stake — how could
Mary, with so many causes to awaken her deathless hostility,
hope for generosity or for mercy from a queen who could even
sacrifice without a pang her inclinations to her interest; whose
favors but marshalled those on whom they fell to the scaffold
and the block; whose dearest favorites, whose most faithful
servants had fallen, one by one, beneath the headsman's axe;
who had proved herself, in short, a worthy heiress to the soulless
tyrant from whom she had sprung, by the violence of her
uncurbed passions, and by the hereditary pleasure with which,
through all her long and glorious reign (glorious, as it is termed,
for with the multitude the ends will ever justify the means, and
foreign conquest hallow domestic tyranny), she rioted in innocent
and noble blood!
The Rubicon had been passed — and scarcely passed, before
Mary had discovered the entire justice, no less than the deep
love, manifested by the parting words of Herries. As her last
sovereignty, she had stepped aboard the barge that was to waft
her from her discontented and ungrateful subjects to a free and
happy home, as she too fondly hoped, in merry England. Girt
with the bills and bows which had battened so deeply and so
often in the gore of Scottishmen, gallantly dressed, and himself
of gallant bearing, Lowther, the sheriff of the marches, received
the royal fugitive. With every mark of deference that manly
strength is bound to show to female weakness, with all the chivalrous
respect a good knight is compelled by his order to display
to innocence and beauty — nay, more, with all the profound
humility of a subject before his queen — did he conduct the
hapless lady aboard his bark. Yet, while the words of welcome
on the sincerity and love of England's Elizabeth toward
her sister-queen — by his refusal to admit above a limited and
trifling portion of her train to share the asylum of their mistress,
he had already drawn the distinction between the royal captive
and the royal guest.
And so it afterward appeared. In vain did Mary petition as
a favor, or claim as a right, an interview with her relentless
persecutor. She should have known that even if Elizabeth
could, by her constitution, have pardoned her assumption of the
style or titles of the English monarchy, she could yet never overlook,
never forgive her surpassing loveliness, her elegant accomplishments,
her brilliant wit, her more than mortal grace!
She might have condescended to despise the rival queen — she
could only stoop to hate the rival beauty. From castle to castle
had she been transferred, with no regard for either her rank
or convenience. From prison to prison, from warder to warder,
had she been conveyed, as each abode seemed in turn insecure
to the lynx-eyed jealousy of her tormentor, or every jailer in
turn sickened at the loathsome weariness of his hateful and degrading
employment. No better proof — if proof were needed
— could be adduced of Elizabeth's tyrannical and cruel despotism,
than the unconstitutional authority by which she forced
noble after noble, the very pride and flower of the English aristocracy,
to change their castles into prisonhouses, their households
into warders and turnkeys, their very lives into a state of
anxious misery, which could only be surpassed by that of the
unhappy prisoner they were, so contrary to their will, compelled
to guard.
After the base mockery of the trial instituted at York, but a
few months after her arrival — that trial wherein a brother was
brought forward to convict his sister of adultery and murder —
that trial which, though it pronounced the prisoner unconvicted,
appears that Mary ever entertained a hope of obtaining her liberty,
much less the station which was her right, from either the
justice or the generosity of the lion-queen. In vain had every
course been tried, in vain had every human means been employed.
In vain had Scotland sued; in vain had France and
Spain threatened, and even prepared to act upon their threats.
For Mary there was no amelioration, no change!
From day to day, from year to year, her hopes had fallen
away one by one. Her spirits, so buoyant and elastic once,
had now subsided into a heavy, settled gloom; her very charms
were but a wreck and shadow of their former glory. For a
time she had endeavored, by all those beautiful occupations of
the pencil, the needle, or the lyre, in which none had equalled
her in her young days of happiness, to while away the deep
and engrossing weariness which by long endurance becomes
even worse than pain. For a time she had been permitted to
vary the monotony of her domestic labors by her favorite exercises
in the field and forest. Surrounded by a train of mail-clad
horsemen, warders with bended bows and loaded arquebuses,
she had a few times been allowed to ride forth into the
free woodland, and to forget, amid the gay sights and heart-stirring
sounds of the chase, the cares that were heavy at her
heart. But how should that heart forget, when at every turn
it encountered the haggard eye of the anxious keeper — anxious,
for the slightest relaxation of his duty were certain death!
How should the ear thrill to the enlivening music of the pack,
or to the wild flourish of the bugles, when the clash of steel
announced on every side the minions of her oppressor? How
should the gallop over the velvet turf, beneath the luxuriant
shadow of the immemorial oaks, convey aught of freshness to
the spirit that was about to return thence to chambers no less a
dungeon for being decked with the mockeries of state, than
of bar, and grate, and chain, which they failed not to set
before the mind? After a while, even these liberties were
curtailed! It seemed too much of freedom, that the titular sovereign
of three realms — the cynosure of every eye, the beauty
at whose very name every heart thrilled and every pulse
bounded — should be permitted to taste the common air of
heaven, even when hemmed in, without the possibility of escape,
by guards armed to the teeth, and sworn to exercise those
arms, not only against all who should attempt the rescue, but
against the miserable captive herself, should she attempt to
profit by any efforts made for her release!
And efforts were made — efforts by the best and noblest of
the British peerage — by men whose names were almost sufficient
to turn defeat to victory and shame to glory. Norfolk and
Westmoreland, and a hundred others, of birth scarcely less distinguished,
and of virtues no less brilliant, revolted from the
soul-debasing despotism of Elizabeth, and attempted, now by
secret stratagem, and now by open warfare, to force the victim
from the clutches of the lion. With the deepest regret did
Mary witness the destruction of so many noble spirits, and with
yet deeper fury did Elizabeth behold star after star of her
boasted galaxy of nobles shoot madly from their spheres in pursuit
of a meteor. Bitter were her feelings, and deadly was her
vengeance. The bloody reign of Mary might almost have been
deemed to have returned, as day by day the death-bells tolled,
as the traitor's gate admitted another and another occupant to
that above, whence the only egress was by the axe and scaffold.
Nor was this all. A thousand wild and fearful rumors
began to float among the multitude. The perils of a catholic
insurrection, the intended assassination of the queen, the establishment
of a papistical dynasty upon the throne of England,
were topics of ordinary conversation, but of no ordinary excitement.
actually in the channel; at another that the duke of Guise, with
a vast army, had effected a landing on the Kentish coast, and
might hourly be expected in the capital. Nor is it uncharitable
to suppose that these reports were designedly spread abroad,
this excitement purposely kept alive, by the wily ministers of
Elizabeth. That the despot-queen had long ago determined on
the slaughter of her rival, is certain; nor have we any just
cause for doubting that Bacon and Walsingham were men as
fully capable of goading the terrors of a multitude into fary as
was their mistress of recommending the private murder of her
hapless victim!
It was at this period that popular madness was raised to its
utmost height by the detection of Babington's conspiracy. Rich,
young, brave, and romantic; stimulated by the hope of gaining
the hand of Mary, forgetful that the personal loveliness for
which she had once been conspicuous must long have yielded to
the joint influence of misery and time; and deceived by the fatal
maxim, then too much in vogue, that means are justified by ends
— this gentleman resolved on bringing about the liberation of the
Scottish by the murder of the English queen. The affair was
not looked upon as so atrocious, but that twelve associates were
easily found for the execution of the plot; and it is barely possible
that, had they proceeded at once to action, their desperate
effort might have been crowned with success. They delayed
— they talked — they were discovered! Beneath the protracted
agonies of the question, one was found of these convicted traitors
who asserted the privity of Mary to the whole affair; and
at once, as though a torch had been applied to some train long
prepared, the whole of England burst forth into a perfect frenzy
of terror. A people are never so terrible, never so barbarous,
as when they are thoroughly and needlessly terrified. From
every quarter of the kingdom the cry was at once for blood;
that the moment had arrived when she might gratify,
without fear, her jealous thirst for her hated guest's destruction.
Addresses showered into either house of parliament, beseeching
the queen and her ministers to awaken themselves at once
to the perils of the people; to provide against the impended
dangers of a catholic succession; and to remove at once all
possibility of future conspiracies by the immediate removal of
her who was, as they asserted, not the cause only, but the principal
mover of every successive plot.
It is not to be supposed that, after pining so long in secret
for an opportunity of gratifying her malice, Elizabeth doubted
an instant. It is true indeed that, with a loathsome affectation
of tender-heartedness, she pretended to regret the stern necessity;
that she whined forth doleful remonstrances to her trusty
ministers, entreating them to discover some mode by which
she might herself be preserved from the risk of assassination,
without undergoing the misery of seeing her well-beloved cousin
of Scotland suffer in her stead! Well, however, did those ministers
know the meaning of the motives of their odious mistress;
well were they aware that there was no more of pity or reluctance
in the bosom of Elizabeth than there is of mirth in that
of the hyena when he sends forth his yells of laughter above
his mangled prey!
It was a lovely morning in the autumn; the sun was shedding
a mellow light upon the long glades and velvet turf of a
park-like lawn before the feudal towers of the earl of Shrewsbury.
Before the gate were assembled a group of liveried domestics,
with many a noble steed pawing the earth and champing
its foamy bits; hounds clamored in their couples, and falcons
shook themselves and clapped their restless wings in vain impatience.
It was evident that the attendants were but awaiting
the approach of some distinguished personage, to commence
that this personage was no other than the wretched Mary.
The castle-gates were thrown open; a heavy guard, with arquebuss,
and pike, and bow, filed through the gloomy gateway;
and then, leaning upon the arm of the still stately Shrewsbury,
the poor victim of inveterate persecution came slowly forward.
Several gentlemen in rich attire, and among them Sir Thomas
Georges, blazing in the royal liveries of England, yet bearing
on his soiled buskins and the bloody spurs that graced them
tokens of a long and hasty journey, followed; and another band
of warders brought up the rear.
The charms which had once rendered Mary the loveliest of
her sex, had faded, it is true; the dimpled cheek was sunken,
and its hues, that once had vied with the carnation, had fled
for ever; her tresses were no longer of that rich and golden
brown that had furnished subjects for a thousand sonnets, for
many a line of gray marked the premature and wintry blight
which had been cast upon her beauties by the sternness and
misery of her latter years. Still, there was an air of such
sweet resignation in every feature, such a dignity in the port
of her person — still symmetrical, though it had lost something
of its roundness — such a majesty in her still-brilliant eyes —
that even the wretches who had determined on her destruction
dared not meet the glance of her whom they so foully wronged.
She was already seated in the saddle, and the reins just
grasped in a delicate but masterly hand, when Georges, stepping
forward and bending a knee — almost, as it would seem,
in mockery — informed her that her confederates in the meditated
slaughter of Elizabeth were convicted; that it was the
pleasure of the queen that her grace of Scotland should proceed
at once to the sure castle of Fotheringay, and that it was resolved
that she should set forth upon the instant. For a moment,
but for a single moment, did Mary gaze into the eyes of
a quick shudder ran through every limb; and once she
wrung her hands bitterly — but not a word escaped her pallid
lips, not a tear disgraced her noble race.
“It is well, sir,” she said, “it is well. We thank you, no
less for your pleasant tidings, than the knightly considerations
which prompted you to choose so well your opportunity for conveying
them to our ear when we were about to set forth in
search of such brief pleasure as might for a moment gild the
monotony of a prisoner's life! We thank you, sir, most warmly,
and we doubt not your own noble heart will reward you by that
best of gifts, a happy and approving conscience! For the rest
— lead on! it matters little to the wretched and the captive by
what title the prison-bars, which shut them out from light, and
liberty, and hope, are dignified; and well do we know that for
us there is but one exit from our dungeon, or rest from our
calamities — the grave!”
She had commenced her speech in that tone of calm and
polished raillery for which she had in her earlier days been so
renowned, and which even pierced deeper into the feelings of
those who writhed beneath it than the most bitter sarcasm; but
her concluding sentences were uttered with deep feeling: and,
as she turned her liquid eyes toward heaven, it seemed most
wonderful that men should exist capable of exciting a single
pang in the heart of such a creature.
The gates of Fotheringay received her; and, as she rode beneath
the gloomy archway, a prophetic chill fell upon her soul,
and she felt that here her wanderings and her sorrows would
shortly be brought to a close! Scarcely had she reached the
miserable privacy of her chamber, when steps were heard without.
Mildmay, Paulet, and Barker, entered, and delivering a
letter full of hypocritical regrets and feigned affection, informed
her that the queen's commissioners were even then assembled
refute the foul charges preferred against her name.
Enfeebled as she had been by sufferings and sorrows, wearied
by her long and rapid journey, and, above all things,
crushed by this last blow, it little seemed that so frail and delicate
a form could have contained a soul so mighty as flashed
forth in one blaze of indignation. Her pale cheek crimsoned,
her sunken eye glared with unwonted fire; she started upon
her feet, her limbs trembling, not with terror or debility, but
with strong and terrible excitement.
“Knows not your mistress,” she cried, in clear, high tones,
“that I, too, am a queen? or would she knowingly debase the
dignity which is common to her with me? Away! I will not
deign to plead! I — I, the queen of Scotland, the mother and
the wife of kings — I plead to mine inferiors? Go tell your
mistress that neither eighteen years of vile captivity, nor dread,
nor misery, has sunk the soul of Mary Stuart so low, that she
will speak one syllable to guard her life, save in the presence
of her peers! Let her assemble her high courts of parliament,
if she so will it: to them, and to them only, will I plead. Here
she may slay me, it is true; but she must slay me by the assassin's
knife, not by the prostituted sword of justice. I have
spoken!” — and she threw herself at once into a seat, immoveable
alike in position and in resolve.
Well had it been for her had she continued firm in that determination;
but what could a weak woman's unassisted intellect
avail against the united force of talents such as those of
Hatton and Burleigh? A thousand specious arguments were
summoned to overcome her scruples, but summoned all in vain,
till the last hint — that her unwillingness to plead could arise
only from a consciousness of guilt — aroused her. Pride, fatal
pride, determined the debate, and she descended. Eloquently,
sorrowfully, manfully, did she plead her cause, combating the
want of legal witnesses, with the native powers of a clear and
vigorous mind. Once during that judicial mockery did her passions
burst the control of her judgment, and she openly, in full
court, charged the secretary, Walsingham — and, as many now
believe, most justly charged him — with the forgery of the only
documents that bore upon her character, or on the case in point.
But all was fruitless! For what eloquence should convince
men resolved in any circumstances to convict? what facts
should clear away the imputed guilt of one whom it was fully
determined to destroy?
The trial was concluded. With the air of a queen she stood
erect, with a calm brow and serene eye, as the commissioners
departed, one by one. No doom had been pronounced against
her, but she read it in the eyes of all; and as she saw her misnamed
judges quit her presence, she muttered, in the low notes
of a determined spirit: “The tragedy is well nigh closed —
the last act is at hand! Peace — peace — I soon shall find
thee in the grave.”
| THE CAPTIVITY. The knights of England, France, and Scotland | |