who had for many years been in her pay, prompt to work any wickedness which was demanded by her policy. Both Mary and her son might now be said to be in her hands. No sooner was he in power, than he managed, through the influence of Elizabeth, who had always weighty persuasions at hand, to bring over Mary's chief friends, the Hamiltons, and Huntley's people, the Gordons, and he demanded the immediate and unconditional surrender of the castle of Edinburgh. Kirkaldy, Maitland, and Hume, who held it, refused, however, to give it up, and thus put them at the mercy of their enemies. On this, Elizabeth ordered Drury, the marshal of Berwick, to advance to Edinburgh with a strong force furnished with a powerful battering train, and, if necessary, lay the castle in ashes. In this extremity, the besieged lords, and Mary from her prison in England, implored the King of France to hasten to their assistance, and not to allow Elizabeth to extinguish the last spark of opposition in Scotland; but Charles replied that it was quite out of his power: for Elizabeth, on the very first movement, would send a fleet to Rochelle, where he was besieging the Huguenots.
The castle was consequently compelled to surrender on the 9th of June, 1573, after a siege of thirty-four days. Elizabeth insisted that the leaders should be put at her disposal. In a few days Maitland, who had now exhausted all his shifts and subtleties, died of poison, as some assorted—and amongst them Mary, who charged it boldly in a letter to Elizabeth—from the ready hand of Morton; as others believed, by his own hands. The brave Kirkaldy of Orange was hanged and quartered as a traitor on the 3rd of August, though a hundred persons of the Kirkaldy family offered to Morton twenty thousand pounds Scots, and an annuity of three thousand marks, for his life. Maitland, like Morton, was one of the murderers of Darnley; but Morton, the most hardened of them all, had seen the last of his confederates, and, for a time, held the supreme power. There, at present, we leave him, to trace the proceedings of Elizabeth in other quarters.
Though the French king had refused to assist Mary's party in Scotland in their last extremity, for fear of Elizabeth's affording aid to the Huguenots besieged in Rochelle by the Duke of Anjou, that did not prevent Elizabeth assisting the Rochellais. She allowed a strong fleet of Englishmen, under the nominal command of the Count de Montgomery, to assemble in Plymouth for the relief of that place, and she promised them further aid. To avert this, Charles IX. endeavoured to flatter Elizabeth into neutrality. He requested her to stand god-mother to his infant daughter, as we have seen. The French Protestants, however, were so incensed at Elizabeth's compliance, which they regarded as an act of apostacy, that they attacked the squadron which conveyed the English ambassador, Elizabeth's proxy, seized one of his ships, slew some of his attendants and put his own life in peril. Charles IX. saw in this a favourable opportunity for inducing Elizabeth to cause the Plymouth fleet to disperse. He therefore dispatched an ambassador before the queen's anger could cool, requesting her refusal of a promised loan to these audacious Rochellais, and to disperse the hostile fleet at Plymouth. But Elizabeth referred the envoy to her ministers on that point, who assured him that they had no power whatever to impede the sailing of the fleet, for that Englishmen sailed on the plea of traffic wherever they pleased; and if they committed any acts of hostility on friendly powers, they were at the mercy of those powers to seize them and treat them as pirates.
Elizabeth was soon, however, punished for this flagrant equivocation. Montgomery sailed in April; but, on discovering the strength of the French fleet moored under the forts and batteries of Rochelle, he was seized with terror, and returned to Plymouth without striking a blow. Elizabeth, indignant at his failure, then sent him word that she was highly displeased at his presuming to unfurl the English flag, and forbade his access to any of the English ports. In June of the next year he was taken prisoner in Normandy, and on the 26th of that month he was executed as a traitor in Paris. The bravery of the people of Rochelle, however, and the election of the Duke of Anjou to the throne of Poland, saved that city. A new pacification was entered into, but the peace of France was again disturbed by a coalition betwixt the heads of the Huguenots and the Marshals Montmorency, De Cossé, and Damfont, the Papal leaders called the Politicians. This league was formed to get possession of the king, whoso health was now fast failing, remove Catherine and the Duke of Guise from power, and proclaim Alençon as the successor to the crown in the absence of Anjou in Poland. Elizabeth was actively engaged in all these movements, especially in advising Alençon to place himself at the head of affairs. But the watchful genius of Catherine discovered and defeated the plot: Montmorency and Cossé were committed to the Bastille, Alençon and the King of Navarre were so closely watched that they were stopped in five attempts to escape, and numbers of the inferior actors were put to death.
In May, 1574, Charles IX. of France died a miserable death, full of remorse and horror, worn out with consumption, in the twenty-sixth year of his age. By the management of Catherine, the throne was secured by her next son, Anjou, notwithstanding his being absent in Poland. Anjou ascended the French throne under the title of Henry III., detested by all the Protestants for his share in the massacre of St. Bartholomew. In the following year a new plot was formed betwixt the Protestant council at Milland in Rovergue and the Romanists under Damville, to place Alençon on the throne—a scheme cordially supported by Elizabeth, in favour of her present lover, Alençon. Alençon effected his escape from Court in September, 1575; and Elizabeth, notwithstanding her recent renewal of the treaty of Blois, advanced him money to raise him an army of German Protestants. In February, 1575, the King of Navarre also escaped, and the two princes called on Elizabeth to declare war in their favour; but the demand was overruled in the Council, and Elizabeth offered herself as mediatrix betwixt the king and his brother Alençon, who was grown jealous of the ascendency of Navarre.
On the 21st of April a treaty was concluded by which the exercise of the Protestant religion was permitted to a certain extent; the king promised to call an assembly of the States to regulate the affairs of the kingdom, and Alençon succeeded to the appanage of his eider brother, and henceforward was styled Anjou.
