barous
association against the reformers; and having connected his hopes of
success with the aggrandizement of his niece, the queen of Scots, he
took care that her measures should correspond to those violent counsels
which were embraced by the other Catholic princes. In consequence of
this scheme, he turned her from the road of clemency, which she intended
to have followed, and made her resolve on the total ruin of the banished
lords.[*]

{1565.} A parliament was summoned at Edinburgh for attainting them; and
as their guilt was palpable and avowed, no doubt was entertained but
sentence would be pronounced against them. It was by a sudden and
violent incident, which, in the issue, brought on the ruin of Mary
herself, that they were saved from the rigor of the law.

The marriage of the queen of Scots with Lord Darnley was so natural,
and so inviting in all its circumstances, that it had been precipitately
agreed to by that princess and her council; and while she was allured
by his youth, and beauty, and exterior accomplishments, she had at first
overlooked the qualities of his mind, which nowise corresponded to
the excellence of his outward figure. Violent, yet variable in his
resolutions; insolent, yet credulous and easily governed by flatterers;
he was destitute of all gratitude, because he thought no favors equal to
his merit; and being addicted to low pleasures, he was equally incapable
of all true sentiments of love and tenderness.[*] The queen of Scots,
in the first effusions of her fondness, had taken a pleasure in exalting
him beyond measure; she had granted him the title of king; she had
joined his name with her own in all public acts; she intended to have
procured him from the parliament a matrimonial crown; but having leisure
afterwards to remark his weakness and vices, she began to see the danger
of her profuse liberality, and was resolved thenceforth to proceed
with more reserve in the trust which she should confer upon him. His
resentment against this prudent conduct served but the more to increase
her disgust: and the young prince, enraged at her imagined neglects,
pointed his vengeance against every one whom he deemed the cause of this
change in her measures and behavior.

* Melvil, p. 63. Keith's Append. p. 176.

There was in the court one David Rizzio, who had of late obtained a very
extraordinary degree of confidence and favor with the queen of Scots. He
was a Piedmontese, of mean birth, son of