onghold in the kingdom was placed in his
hands, and this step was the prelude to a trial and acquittal which the
overwhelming force of his followers in Edinburgh turned into a bitter
mockery. The Protestants were bribed by the assembling of a Parliament
in which Mary for the first time gave her sanction to the laws which
established the reformation in Scotland. A shameless suit for his
divorce removed the last obstacle to Bothwell's ambition; and a seizure
of the Queen as she rode to Linlithgow, whether real or fictitious, was
followed three weeks later by their union on the fifteenth of May. Mary
may have yielded to force; she may have yielded to passion; it is
possible that in Bothwell's vigour she saw the means of at last
mastering the kingdom and wreaking her vengeance on the Lords. But
whatever were her hopes or fears, in a month more all was over. The
horror at the Queen's marriage with a man fresh from her husband's blood
drove the whole nation to revolt. The Catholic party held aloof from a
Queen who seemed to have forsaken them by a Protestant marriage and by
her acknowledgement of the Protestant Church. The Protestant Lords
seized on the general horror to free themselves from a master whose
subtlety and bloodshed had placed them at his feet. Morton and Argyle
rallied the forces of the Congregation at Stirling, and were soon joined
by the bulk of the Scottish nobles of either religion. Their entrance
into Edinburgh roused the capital into insurrection. On the fifteenth of
June Mary and her husband advanced with a fair force to Seton to
encounter the Lords; but their men refused to fight, and Bothwell
galloped off into lifelong exile, while the Queen was brought back to
Edinburgh in a frenzy of despair, tossing back wild words of defiance to
the curses of the crowd.

CHAPTER V

ENGLAND AND THE PAPACY

1567-1582

[Sidenote: England and religious change.]

The fall of Mary freed Elizabeth from the most terrible of her outer
dangers. But it left her still struggling with ever-growing dangers at
home. The religious peace for which she had fought so hard was drawing
to an end. Sturdily as she might aver to her subjects that no change had
really been made in English religion, that the old faith had only been
purified, that the realm had only been freed from Papal usurpation,
jealously as she might preserve the old episcopate, the old service, the
old vestments and usages of public worship, her action abr