s to be born, Mary lingered out the early
days of summer: and in June, while still the English guns were
thundering against Leith, her new fortifications resisting with
diminished strength, and her garrison in danger--died, escaping from her
uneasy burden of royalty when everything looked dark for her policy and
cause. Many anecdotes of her sayings and doings were current during her
lingering illness, such as might easily be reported between the two
camps with more or less truth. When she heard of the "Band" made by the
leaders of the army before Leith for the expulsion of the strangers she
is said to have called the maledictions of God upon them who counselled
her to persecute the preachers and to refuse the petitions of the best
part of the subjects of the realm. Shut out from the countrymen and
advisers in whom she had trusted, with the hitherto impartial Lord
Erskine alone at her ear, adding his word concerning the "unjust
possessors" who were to be driven "forth of this land," and overcome by
sickness, sadness, and loneliness, this lady, who had done her best to
hold the balance even and to refrain from bloodshed, though she had
little credit for it, seems to have lost courage. She saw from her
altitude on the castle rock the great fire in Leith, which probably
looked at first like the beginning of its destruction, and all the
martial bands of England, and the Scots lords and their followers, lying
between her and her friends. After some ineffectual efforts to
communicate with them otherwise, she sent for the Lords Argyle,
Glencairn, and the Earl Marischal, with the Lord James, who visited her
separately, "not all together, lest that some part of the Guysian
practice had lurked under the colour of friendship." Knox's heart was
not softened by the illness and isolation, nor even by the regrets and
repentance, of the dying Queen. She consented to see John Willock, his
colleague, and after hearing him "openly confessed that there was no
salvation but in and by the death of Jesus Christ." "But of the Mass we
had not her confession," says the implacable preacher. She died on the
9th of June, worsted, overthrown, all that she had aimed at ending in
failure, all her efforts foiled, leaving those who had been her enemies
triumphant, and the future fate of her daughter's kingdom in the hands
of "the auld enemy," the ever-dangerous neighbour of Scotland. "God, for
His good mercy's sake, rid us from the rest of the Guysian bloo