A Short History of Scotland by Andrew Lang
page 104 of 267 (38%)
page 104 of 267 (38%)
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little knowledge of the nature of woman.
In 1563 came the affair of Chatelard, a French minor poet, a Huguenot apparently, who, whether in mere fatuity or to discredit Mary, hid himself under her bed at Holyrood, and again at Burntisland. Mary had listened to his rhymes, had danced with him, and smiled on him, but Chatelard went too far. He was decapitated in the market street of St Andrews (Feb. 22, 1563). It is clear, if we may trust Knox's account, singularly unlike Brantome's, that Chatelard was a Huguenot. About Easter priests were locked up in Ayrshire, the centre of Presbyterian fanaticism, for celebrating Mass. This was in accordance with law, and to soften Knox the girl queen tried her personal influence. He resisted "the devil"; Mary yielded, and allowed Archbishop Hamilton and some fifty other clerics to be placed "in prison courteous." The Estates, which met on May 27 for the first time since the queen landed, were mollified, but were as far as ever from passing the Book of Discipline. They did pass a law condemning witches to death, a source of unspeakable cruelties. Knox and Murray now ceased to be on terms till their common interests brought them together in 1565. In June 1563 Elizabeth requested Mary to permit the return to Scotland of Lennox (the traitor to the national cause and to Cardinal Beaton, and the rival of the Hamiltons for the succession to the thrones), apparently for the very purpose of entangling Mary in a marriage with Lennox's son Darnley, and then thwarting it. (It was not Mary who asked Elizabeth to send Lennox.) Knox's favourite candidate was Lord Robert Dudley: despite his notorious character he sometimes favoured the English Puritans. When Holyrood had been invaded by a mob who, in Mary's absence in autumn 1563, broke up the Catholic attendants on Mass (such attendance, in Mary's |
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