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oward which the Reformer will insist that all be more and more approximated. All true Reformers are by nature of them Priests, and strive for a Theocracy. MARY STUART: HER REIGN AND EXECUTION A.D. 1561-1587 ALGERNON CHARLES SWINBURNE Apart from the peculiar interest of her own life and reign, Mary Stuart is an important personage as having been the mother of the first sovereign of the Stuart line in England (James I). Historical critics take widely differing views of the conduct and character of the Queen of Scots, both in her individual life and her relation to public affairs. In the complications then involving the political and religious organizations of Europe, the play and counter-play of motives are difficult to follow, and just discrimination becomes at times almost impossible. In like manner, the troublous times in which Mary Stuart was called to act her part rendered her own way intricate and uncertain. A devotee of the Catholic faith, she was placed upon the throne of Scotland at the very hour when that country, under the powerful leadership of John Knox, was fast becoming Protestant. This state of affairs made her task as ruler in her own realm sufficiently trying. But her difficulties were increased by the inevitable antagonisms with her great Protestant rival, Elizabeth of England, and through the involved relations of Great Britain with Spain and Catholic Europe generally. These historical puzzles seem always to call for fresh explanation. No less perplexing are the circumstances into which this Queen was drawn by her marital relations and other personal entanglements. Upon all these matters Swinburne sheds light through the medium of a sound critical judgment, in a style no less conspicuous for its fascination than by reason of its illuminative power. Mary (1542-1587), Queen of Scots, daughter of King James V and his wife Mary of Lorraine, was born in December, 1542, a few days before the death of her father, heart-broken by the disgrace of his arms at Solway Moss, where the disaffected nobles had declined to encounter an enemy of inferior force in the cause of a king whose systematic policy had been directed against the privileges of their order, and whose representative on the occasion was an unpopular favorite ap
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