urbed every man's
peace--why were not they tried along with her, they who took such high
ground as her judges? Why should she bear the brunt of all? Even
Bothwell had escaped, and Mary stood at the bar of the world alone.

But such thoughts would not seem to have moved the first spectators, to
whom all that damning sequence of events, one precipitated on the heels
of another, came fresh as they occurred day by day. As for Buchanan, he
would be less prone to doubt than any. He knew something of the Court of
France and of the atmosphere in which Mary had received her training. He
was acquainted with many a royal scandal, and had much experience of a
world in which vice was the rule and good behaviour a mere exception,
due to a cold temperament, or a wariness uncongenial to generous youth.
Such an old man of the world is slow to believe in innocence at all, and
it is very likely that to him who knew her so well it was impossible to
conceive of Mary as an example of weak but spotless virtue. The
Principal of St. Leonard's went over to Edinburgh a few days after the
completion of that tragic chapter, when Mary had been consigned to
Lochleven, and Murray had assumed the Regency. The city was still
agitated by much discussion of the dreadful questions which occupied all
minds yet was slowly calming down like an angry sea, with long seethings
and swellings of excitement. The object of Buchanan's visit was not
curiosity or desire to be in the centre of that excitement, but a
simpler matter, which has drawn many a Principal of St. Andrews since to
the capital of Scotland, an Assembly of the Church, which opened "in the
Nether Tolbooth" on the 25th of June. Of this Assembly he, though a
layman, was appointed Moderator "for eschewing of confusion in
reasoning"--a curious motive, which proves at least that his
contemporaries had great confidence in his judgment, and also that the
passion of this excited and tumultuous time ran so high in the Church
that a stronger authority than usual was wanted to keep it within
bounds. The sentiment of the Church, or at least of the dominant party
in it, would seem to have been rather satisfaction that the Sovereign,
foreign alike in training and religion, had been set aside than any
distress at the cause. The Assembly congratulates itself that "this
present has offered some better occasion than in times bygane, and has
begun to tread down Satan under foot," which is not a very amiable
deliverance