That artful princess had secured to her interest the very men on whom the unsuspecting Mary placed her utmost confidence, her bastard brother the earl of Murray, the earl of Morton, and secretary Lethington. The views of Murray aimed at nothing less than his sister's crown, and the obstacles which opposed his criminal ambition served only to render his attempts more daring and more flagitious.

5. The marriage of Mary with her cousin Lord Darnley, son of the earl of Lennox, who stood in the same relation to Elizabeth, was not relished by that princess. Encouraged by her ministers, Randolph and Cecil, Murray formed a conspiracy to seize and imprison the queen, and put to death her husband, and usurp the government; and on the detection of his designs, attempted to support them by open rebellion. Defeated, exiled, pardoned, and loaded with benefits by his injured sovereign, he persevered in the same actrocious purposes, till he at length accomplished them.

6. The spouse of Mary had incurred her resentment by his vices and his follies. Taking advantage of the weakness of his mind, Murray, Morton, and Lethington, had rendered him jealous of the partiality of Mary for her foreign secretary, the aged Rizzio, and engaged him in the barbarous act of murdering this ill-fated wretch at the feet of the queen, to whose garments he clung for protection. The purpose of this shocking outrage was to increase the illness of Mary, then in bad health, and possibly her death; or should she survive, to alienate completely her affections from her husband, and thus to render her suspected of the design they had projected of cutting him off by assassination. In the latter purpose they succeeded. The house which Darnley inhabited was blown up with gunpowder; his body was found strangled near the place, and the report immediately prevailed that Mary had been accessary to his murder.

7. A most imprudent step, to which she was conducted by the same band of traitors, gave countenance to this suspicion. At the earnest recommendation of Morton and some of her chief nobility, she married the earl of Bothwell, a man openly stigmatized as one of the murderers of her husband. He had, it is true, been absolved on trial for that crime, and had by force made himself master of her person. The plans of Murray and his associates, suc

cessful to the utmost of their wishes, were now ripe for consummation. On the pretext of the queen's guilt of murder and adultery, she was confined by Murray in the castle of Lochleven, and there compelled to resign her crown into the hands of her unnatural brother, who was to govern the kingdom as regent during the minority of her infant son, now proclaimed king by the title of James VI. 1567. Bothwell escaped beyond seas, and died in Denmark.

8. A great part of the nation reprobated these infamous proceedings. Mary escaped from her confinement; and at the head of an army gave battle to the rebels at Langside; but, being defeated, she fled for shelter to the north of England. Elizabeth, who had secretly taken part in all the machinations of her enemies, had now gained a great object of her ambition: she had in her hands a hated rival, and by her support of Murray and his party, the absolute command of the kingdom of Scotland. Yet policy required some show of friendship and humanity to the queen of Scots, who claimed as a suppliant her protection and aid. She professed her desire to do her justice, but first required that she should clear herself of the crimes alleged against her. To this Mary agreed, in the intrepidity of conscious innocence. In a conference held for that purpose, Murray openly stood forth as the accuser of his sister and queen, appealing to certain letters said to be written by her to Bothwell, plainly intimating her guilt. Copies of these letters were produced. Mary demanded the originals, boldly declaring them to be the forgeries of her enemies; but they were never produced. She retorted on Murray and Morton the charge of Darnley's murder; and the conference was broken off at the command of the queen of England, who detained Mary in close imprisonment.

9. The ungenerous policy of Elizabeth was condemned by her own subjects. The duke of Norfolk, the first of her nobility, and, though a protestant, favoured by the catholic party in England, secretly projected to marry the queen of Scots; and the discovery of these views giving alarm to Elizabeth, brought that ill-fated nobleman to the block, and hastened the doom of the unfortunate Mary. Worn out with the miseries of her confinement, she privately solicited the aid of foreign princes for her deliverance. Her cause was espoused by all the

catholics of England; and some of the most intemperate of these had formed a plot to deliver her from captivity, and to place her on the throne, by the murder of Elizabeth. This dangerous conspiracy was discovered, and its authors deservedly suffered death. The schemes of Mary for her own deliverance were held presumptive of her acquiescence in the whole of the plot. Though an independent sovereign, she was brought to trial before a foreign tribunal, which had already decreed her fate; and. being condemned to suffer death, she was beheaded at Fotheringay Castle, 1587, in the 45th year of her age, and 19th of her captivity in England. Previously to this event, Murray had fallen the victim of the private revenge of a gentleman whom he had injured, and Lethington poisoned himself in prison, to escape the sentence of his enemies; Morton, for some time regent of the kingdom, was afterwards tried, and suffered death for his concern in the murder of Darnley.

10. We have noticed the formidable preparations of Philip II. for the invasion of England, and their disastrous issue, in the total destruction of the Invincible Armada. The English, in their turn, made descents on the Spanish coasts; and the glory of the nation was nobly sustained by those great admirals, Raleigh, Howard, Drake, Cavendish, and Hawkins. The earl of Essex distinguished himself in those expeditions, and won the favour of Elizabeth, both by his prowess and personal accomplishments. The death of Leicester, her former favourite, and of her minister Burleigh, left Essex unrivalled in her affections, and of chief authority in the direction of her councils. Haughty and impatient of control, he disgusted the nobles; and his failure in quelling a rebellion in Ireland gave them ground to undermine him in the favour of his sovereign. In the madness of inordinate ambition, he proposed to possess himself of the person of the queen, and compel her to remove his enemies, and acquiesce in all his measures. This treasonable enterprise brought him to the scaffold, 1600.

11. From that time Elizabeth fell into profound melancholy, and soon after died, in the 70th year of her age, 1603, having named for her successor James VI., king of Scotland. Her talents were great, and the firmness of her mind unequalled; yet her private character was tarnished by cruelty, hypocrisy, and an insatiable desire of

edmiration. Her maxims of government were despotic, and she had little regard for the liberties of her people, or the privileges of her parliaments, to whom she never allowed the liberty of disputing her commands. The actual government of England in those days was little different from an absolute monarchy.

LVI.-History of Great Britain in the Reigns of James I. and Charles I.

1. James VI. of Scotland succeeded by hereditary right to the throne of England, thus uniting the two crowns; a prince of considerable learning and talents, but of little vigour of mind or political energy. He became unpopular, from his notions of an uncontrollable prerogative, to which, unwisely proclaiming his title, he provoked his subjects to question it. The current of public opinion was now strongly turned to an extension of the rights of the subject, and retrenchment of the powers of the crown; and during this reign, the seeds were sown of that spirit of resistance on the part of the people, which was destined, in the next, to overturn the constitution.

2. Domestic events were such as chiefly distinguished the reign of James I. A conspiracy was discovered in 1603, for subverting the government, and placing the king's cousin, Arabella Stuart, on the throne, in which the Lords Cobham and Grey, and Sir Walter Raleigh, were principally concerned. The two former were pardoned, and Raleigh condemned, but reprieved; when, cn the ground of his infringement of the peace with Spain, by unwarrantably attacking one of her American settlements, he was, after an interval of 15 years, beheaded on his former sentence.

3. Another conspiracy followed, of a still more dangerous nature, the gunpowder treason; a plot of the catholics to destroy, at one blow, the king and the whole body of the parliament, 1604. It was discovered, from a circumstance of private friendship, on the very eve of its accomplishment; and the principal conspirators suffered a capital punishment. The public indignation now raged against the catholics, and the humanity of James, which sought to mitigate this fury, was as ungenerously as absurdly construed into a favour which he entertained for their religious principles.

4. It was a peculiar weakness of the king to attach

himself to undeserving favourites. Such was Carr, earl of Somerset, who had no other recommendation than a handsome person, and who, after several years' exercise of all the insolence of power, fell into disgrace, on conviction of his concern in an infamous murder. His place was supplied by Villiers, afterwards duke of Buckingham; a man devoid of every talent of a minister, and odious to all ranks of the state. He planned a journey of Charles, prince of Wales, into Spain, to court the infanta; and, by his folly and insolence, frustrated the treaty on the brink of its conclusion.

5. Elizabeth, the daughter of James, was married to the protestant elector palatine, who was dispossessed of his electorate by the emperor Ferdinand III. for impru dently accepting the crown of Bohemia, till then an appanage of the empire. James was urged by parliament to a war in defence of his son-in-law, which touched the nation both as a point of honour, and as a cause of the protestant interest. He sent a feeble armament which was of no service; the only military enterprise of his reign. His favourite project was a complete union of the kingdoms of England and Scotland, a measure which however beneficial, the mutual prejudices of the two nations were as yet too violent to bear. As a preparatory step, the episcopal hierarchy was introduced into Scotland; but this served only as the food of future commotions. James I. died 1625, in the 59th year of his age, and 22nd of his reign over England.

6. On an impartial estimate of the character of the succeeding monarch, Charles I., it may be allowed, that had the nation in his reign entertained the same ideas of the regal prerogative, of the powers of parliament, and of the liberty of the subject, that had prevailed for the two preceding centuries, this unfortunate prince would have reigned with high popularity. But it was his lot to mount the throne at that critical period, when the public opinion had undergone an entire revolution on those topics; and with many excellent endowments both of head and heart, he wanted that political prudence which should have taught him to yield to the necessity of the times.

7. Charles quarrelled with his first parliament on their refusal of adequate supplies for the war in support of his brother-in-law the elector palatine. Engaged to his allies, the king, dissolving the parliament, issued warrants for