Dickens, Charles – A Child’s History of England

committed, it is impossible to discover. The deceitful character

of Mary, and the deceitful character of Elizabeth, have rendered

almost every part of their joint history uncertain and obscure.

But, I fear that Mary was unquestionably a party to her husband’s

murder, and that this was the revenge she had threatened. The

Scotch people universally believed it. Voices cried out in the

streets of Edinburgh in the dead of the night, for justice on the

murderess. Placards were posted by unknown hands in the public

places denouncing Bothwell as the murderer, and the Queen as his

accomplice; and, when he afterwards married her (though himself

already married), previously making a show of taking her prisoner

by force, the indignation of the people knew no bounds. The women

particularly are described as having been quite frantic against the

Queen, and to have hooted and cried after her in the streets with

terrific vehemence.

Such guilty unions seldom prosper. This husband and wife had lived

together but a month, when they were separated for ever by the

successes of a band of Scotch nobles who associated against them

for the protection of the young Prince: whom Bothwell had vainly

endeavoured to lay hold of, and whom he would certainly have

murdered, if the EARL OF MAR, in whose hands the boy was, had not

been firmly and honourably faithful to his trust. Before this

angry power, Bothwell fled abroad, where he died, a prisoner and

mad, nine miserable years afterwards. Mary being found by the

associated lords to deceive them at every turn, was sent a prisoner

to Lochleven Castle; which, as it stood in the midst of a lake,

could only be approached by boat. Here, one LORD LINDSAY, who was

so much of a brute that the nobles would have done better if they

had chosen a mere gentleman for their messenger, made her sign her

abdication, and appoint Murray, Regent of Scotland. Here, too,

Murray saw her in a sorrowing and humbled state.

She had better have remained in the castle of Lochleven, dull

prison as it was, with the rippling of the lake against it, and the

moving shadows of the water on the room walls; but she could not

rest there, and more than once tried to escape. The first time she

had nearly succeeded, dressed in the clothes of her own washerwoman,

but, putting up her hand to prevent one of the boatmen from

lifting her veil, the men suspected her, seeing how white it was,

and rowed her back again. A short time afterwards, her fascinating

manners enlisted in her cause a boy in the Castle, called the

little DOUGLAS, who, while the family were at supper, stole the

keys of the great gate, went softly out with the Queen, locked the

gate on the outside, and rowed her away across the lake, sinking

the keys as they went along. On the opposite shore she was met by

another Douglas, and some few lords; and, so accompanied, rode away

on horseback to Hamilton, where they raised three thousand men.

Here, she issued a proclamation declaring that the abdication she

had signed in her prison was illegal, and requiring the Regent to

yield to his lawful Queen. Being a steady soldier, and in no way

discomposed although he was without an army, Murray pretended to

treat with her, until he had collected a force about half equal to

her own, and then he gave her battle. In one quarter of an hour he

cut down all her hopes. She had another weary ride on horse-back

of sixty long Scotch miles, and took shelter at Dundrennan Abbey,

whence she fled for safety to Elizabeth’s dominions.

Mary Queen of Scots came to England – to her own ruin, the trouble

of the kingdom, and the misery and death of many – in the year one

thousand five hundred and sixty-eight. How she left it and the

world, nineteen years afterwards, we have now to see.

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Dickens, Charles – A Child’s History of England

SECOND PART

WHEN Mary Queen of Scots arrived in England, without money and even

without any other clothes than those she wore, she wrote to