him
according to the Presbyterian rite. The significant sequence of these
events gave an irresistible advantage to her enemies. It was an
obvious inference that she had been a party to the murder of the king,
when she was so eager to marry the man that slew him. The only answer
would be by discarding him. Nobody could think the son safe in the
hands of his father's murderer.

Either the Lords must get the queen into their power, or they must
dethrone her and govern Scotland during the long minority of her son.
The forces met at Carberry Hill. There was no fight. Mary hoped, by
a temporary parting from her third husband, to save her crown. She
passed into captivity, was shut up at Loch Leven, and compelled to
abdicate. The Protestant interest was at last supreme.

Mary escaped from her island prison, gathered an army, gave battle at
Langside, and lost it, and then, losing courage before her cause was
helpless, fled to England, in the belief that Elizabeth would save
her.

From the death of Darnley, still more after her Protestant marriage,
she had ceased to be the champion of her own Church. That was again
her position when she came to England. There, she was heir to the
throne, and the centre of all the hopes and efforts to preserve or to
restore Catholicism.

The story of Mary Stuart cannot be told without an understanding in
regard to the Casket Letters. They are still the object of an
incessant controversy, and the problem, although it has made progress
of late, and the interest increases with the increase of daylight,
remains unsolved. The view to be taken of the events depends
essentially on the question of authenticity. If the letters are what
they seem to be, the letters of the queen to Bothwell, then she is
implicated in the murder of her husband. If they are not authentic,
then there is no evidence of her guilt. Everybody must satisfy
himself on this point before he can understand the ruin of the
Catholic cause in Scotland and in England, and the consequent arrest of
the Counter-Reformation in Europe.

At the same time the issue does not seriously affect the judgment of
History on the character of the queen herself. She repeatedly
expressed her delight in murder, and her gratitude to those who
executed or attempted it, and stands on the same level of morality
with the queen her mother-in-law, or with the queen her rival. But the
general estimate does not throw light on the particular act