Reformation. The Romish bishops and
champions were not harshly dealt with, all
things considered; and the Queen's Ministers
were both prudent and merciful.

The one great trouble of this reign, and the
unfortunate cause of the greater part of such
turmoil and bloodshed as occurred in it, was
MARY STUART, QUEEN OF SCOTS. We will
try to understand, in as few words as possible,
who Mary was, what she was, and how she came
to be a thorn in the royal pillow of Elizabeth.

She was the daughter of the Queen Regent
of Scotland, MARY OF GUISE. She had been
married, when a mere child, to the Dauphin,
the son and heir of the King of France.
The Pope, who pretended that no one
could rightfully wear the crown of England
without his gracious permission, was strongly
opposed to Elizabeth, who had not asked
for it. And as Mary Queen of Scots would
have inherited the English crown in right
of her birth, supposing the English
Parliament not to have altered the succession,
the Pope himself, and most of the discontented
who were followers of his, maintained that
Mary was the rightful Queen of England,
and Elizabeth the wrongful Queen. Mary
being so closely connected with France, and
France being jealous of England, there was
far greater danger in this than there would
have been if she had had no alliance with
that great power. And when her young
husband, on the death of his father,
became FRANCIS THE SECOND, King of France,
the matter grew very serious. For the young
couple styled themselves King and Queen of
England; and the Pope was disposed to help
them by doing all the mischief he could.

Now, the reformed religion, under the
guidance of a stern and powerful preacher,
named JOHN KNOX, and other such men, had
been making fierce progress in Scotland. It
was still a half savage country, where there
was a great deal of murdering and rioting
continually going on; and the Reformers,
instead of reforming those evils as they should
have done, went to work in the ferocious old
Scottish spirit: laying churches and chapels
waste, pulling down pictures and altars, and
knocking about the Grey Friars, and the
Black Friars, and the White Friars, and the
friars of all sorts of colors, in all directions.
This obdurate and harsh spirit of the Scottish
Reformers (the Scotch have always been
rather a sullen and frowning people in
religious matters) put up the blood of the
Romish French court, and caused France to
send troops over to Scotland, with the hope of
setting the friars of all sorts of colors on their
legs again; of conquering that country first,
and England afterwards; and so crushing the
Reformation all to pieces. The Scottish
Reformers, who had formed a great league
which they called The Congregation of the
Lord, secretly represented to Elizabeth that,
if the reformed religion got the worst of
it with them, it would be likely to get the
worst of it in England too; and thus,
Elizabeth, although she had a high notion of
the rights of Kings and Queens to do
anything they liked, sent an army to Scotland to
support the Reformers who were in arms
against their sovereign. All these proceedings
led to a treaty of peace at Edinburgh,
under which the French consented to depart
from the kingdom. By a separate treaty, Mary
and her young husband engaged to renounce
their assumed title of King and Queen of
England. But this treaty they never fulfilled.

It happened, soon after matters had got to
this state, that the young French King died,
leaving Mary a young widow. She was then
invited by her Scottish subjects to return
home and reign over them; and as she was
not now happy where she was, she, after a
little time, complied.

Elizabeth had been Queen three years,
when Mary Queen of Scots embarked at
Calais for her own rough, quarrelling country.
As she came out of the harbour, a vessel was
lost before her eyes, and she said, " O! good
God! what an omen this is for such a
voyage! " She was very fond of France, and
sat on the deck, looking back at it and
weeping, until it was quite dark. When she
went to bed, she directed to be called at
daybreak, if the French coast were still visible,
that she might behold it for the last time. As
it proved to be a clear morning, this was done,
and she again wept for the country she was
leaving, and said many times, " Farewell,
France! Farewell, France! I shall never see
thee again! " All this was long remembered
afterwards, as sorrowful and interesting in a
fair young princess of nineteen; and I am
afraid it gradually came, together with her
other distresses, to surround her with greater
sympathy than she deserved.

When she came to Scotland, and took up
her abode at the palace of Holyrood in
Edinburgh, she found herself among uncouth
strangers, and wild uncomfortable customs,
very different from her experiences in the
court of France. The very people who were
disposed to love her, made her head ache
when she was tired out by her voyage, with a
serenade of discordant music—a fearful
concert of bagpipes, I suppose—and brought her
and her train home to her palace on miserable
little Scotch horses that appeared to be half-
starved. Among the people who were not
disposed to love her, she found the powerful
leaders of the Reformed Church, who were
bitter upon her amusements, however
innocent, and denounced music and dancing as
works of the devil. John Knox himself
often lectured her, violently and angrily, and
did much to make her life unhappy. All these
reasons confirmed her old attachment to the
Romish religion, and caused her, there is no
doubt, most imprudently and dangerously,
both for herself and for England too, to give
a solemn pledge to the heads of the Romish
Church that if she ever succeeded to the