JAMES I. (OF ENGLAND). 



JAMES. I. (OF ENGLAND). 



686 



and Stuart, recently created Earl of Arran, were now the rulers of 

 the kingdom, and they exercised their uncontrolled power with 

 immeasurable insolence. At length a party of the nobles, including 

 the earls of Mar, Glencairu, aud Gowrie, lords Lindsay, Boyd, and 

 others, concerted a scheme for seizing the king's person, which they 

 carried into effect on the 12th of August 1582 at Cowrie's Castle of 

 Kuthven in Perthshire, whence the enterprise is known in Scottish 

 history by the name of the Raid of Ruthven. On this revolution 

 Arran was thrown into confinement, Lennox was ordered to leave the 

 kingdom, and soon after died in France, and James himself remained 

 a captive iu the hands of the conspirators, whose proceedings imme- 

 diately received the full approval of a convention of the estates. They 

 had also the active though unavowed support of Queen Elizabeth, who 

 in the overthrow of the government of Morton and the ascendancy of 

 Leunox and Arran had seen her whole policy with regard to the 

 northern kingdom thwarted. On the other hand, Ilenri III. of France 

 interposed his influence, though unsuccessfully, to rescue the Scottish 

 king from the thraldom in which he was now kept. 



James remained in a state of restraint amounting almost to actual 

 imprisonment for about ten months. At last, on the 27th of June 

 1583, having been permitted to go from Falkland to St. Andrews, he 

 contrived, with the assistance of some friends, with whom he had 

 arranged his plans, to throw himself into the castle there, and to 

 maintain bis position till the faction of his enemies, finding themselves 

 outnumbered by those who flocked from all parts to his assistance, 

 threw down their arms aud gave up the contest. One of the king's 

 first acts after he recovered his liberty was to release and recal to 

 court the infamous Airan, and again to commit the management of 

 affairs to that wretched minion, whose government speedily became as 

 harsh and arbitrary as ever. James in the first instance had evinced 

 a disposition to follow a moderate and conciliatory course with the 

 faction lately at the head of affairs; he had even visited the Earl of 

 Gowrie ut Kuthven Castle and granted him a full pardon ; but under 

 the influence of Arran he soon changed his conduct. An act was 

 obtained from the convention of estates declaring all those who had 

 been concerned in the Raid of Ruthven guilty of high treason : most 

 of them made their escape to England ; but Gowrie, who relying on 

 his pardon had made his submission, was seized, turown into prison, 

 tried, condemned, and sent to the block. Seeing the power of that 

 party thus to all appearance broken for ever, Elizabeth now applied 

 herself to form an alliance with Arran, who readily undertook that 

 the government of Scotland should be conducted in conformity with 

 the wishes of the English queen, and by bis unbounded influence over 

 his royal master was easily able to perform that engagement. James 

 was induced, among other acts of subserviency, to write to his mother 

 in such uudutiful and unfeeling terms as to make Mary, in the bitter- 

 ness of her resentment, threaten to leave him the load of a parent's 

 curse. Soon after this, July 29th, 1585, a treaty of intimate alliance 

 was concluded between Elizabeth and the Scottish king, and an 

 annual pension of 50001. waa settled by Elizabeth upon James. A 

 chief manager in these transactions had been a new court favourite of 

 James, the eldest son of Lord Gray, styled the Master of Gray, an 

 individual well fitted by nature and education for intrigue and 

 treachery. With the view, it is supposed, of removing a formidable 

 rival, Arran had caused Gray to be sent as ambassador to the English 

 court, where the unprincipled politician appears to have been imme- 

 diately gained over by Elizabeth, and engaged by her to act his part 

 in forwarding her various schemes of policy with regard to Scottish 

 aOuirs. One of the first uses which Elizabeth made of this new instru- 

 ment was to effect the overthrow of Arran, on whose unsteadiness and 

 caprice she felt that he could place little reliance. With her connivance, 

 the lords who had been banished on account of the Raid of Ruth ven 

 entered Scotland at the head of a force of 10,000 men, in the end of 

 October 1585, and advanced to Stirling, where the king aud Arran 

 were, invested the castle, on which Arran took to flight, and the king 

 was compelled to negotiate with them upon tin ir own terms. All 

 their jia.->t offences were pardoned ; the principal forts ot the kingdom 

 were put into their hands; and, a parliament having been called, 

 Arran aud his late associates were all dismissed from power, Arran 

 himself being besides stripped of hU titles and estates the latter, 

 chiefly the confiscated property of those whose moment of retaliation 

 was now come. The new settlement of the government was followed 

 by the conclusion, July bth, 1586, of another treaty with England, by 

 which the two kingdoms bound themselves in a league offensive and 

 defensive against all foreign powers who should invade the territories 

 or attempt to disturb the reformed religious establishment of either. 



In October of the same year James's mother, the unfortunate Mary, 

 after her imprisonment of nearly twenty years, was brought to trial, 

 and on the 8th of February following she was put to death. Between 

 her condemnation and her execution James had made considerable 

 exertions to save her ; in addition to solicitations and remonstrances, 

 he took steps to obtaiu the aid of France, Spain, and other foreign 

 courts in support of his demands; but his ambassador to the English 

 court, the Master of Gray, is said to have actually been the most 

 urgent instigator of the execution, often reminding Elizabeth and her 

 ministers that the dead cannot bite, and undertaking that no unpleasant 

 consequences should follow from any momentary resentment which 

 James might how. In point of fact, the Scottish king was very soon 



pacified ; he blustered at first under the sting of the insult that had 

 been offered him ; but reflecting that by any violent course he should 

 put in hazard both his pension and his chance of the English succes- 

 sion, he prudently allowed himself to be soothed by Elizabeth's excuses, 

 and continued on the same terms of friendship with her as before. 

 Gray was however, on the discovery of the part he had acted, disgrac-d 

 and dismissed from court. The next year James signalised his zeal in 

 the service of his English patroness by firmly rejecting all the over- 

 tures of the king of Spain and the other Roman Catholic powers to 

 induce him to join them, aud by co-operating zealously with Elizabeth 

 iu her preparations for repelling the attack of the Armada. 



In 1589, James was married to the princess Anne, the second 

 daughter of Frederick II., king of Denmark. He proceeded in person 

 to Upslo in Norway, to which place his bride, after having put to sea, 

 had been driven back by a storm, and there the marriage was solemnised 

 on the 24th of November. James did not return to Scotland till the 

 20th of May 1590. The character of Queen Anne, who survived to 

 1st March 1619, is depicted in the scandalous chronicles of the time 

 in not very creditable colours ; she is represented as an eager and 

 restless intriguer, both in politics and in gallantry ; on the other hand 

 however Archbishop Abbot, who knew her well, and who was not 

 likely to regard with indulgence some of the faults she is charged 

 with, speaks of her memory with great respect. She seems to have 

 been a person of greater energy and decision than her husband, over 

 whom she exerted considerable influence, notwithstanding his constant 

 doting fondness for one male favourite after another. The first 

 memorable event that occurred in Scotland after the king's return was 

 a daring attempt made by his relation, Francis Stuart, lately created 

 Earl of Bothwell, a grandson of James V. by his son John, prior of 

 Coldingham. He had been committed to prison on the ab-jurd charge, 

 made by some unhappy persons apprehended and tortured as witches, 

 that he had employed their art to raise the storms by which the life 

 of the queen had been endangered on her first attempted voyage to 

 Scotland, and the king had afterwards been so long detained in Den- 

 mark. Upon effecting hia enlargement, he collected a force of his 

 retainers, aud on the night of the 27th of December 1591, entered the 

 palace of Holy rood- House, with the design, as he pretended, of expelling 

 the chancellor Maitlaud from the king's council, but apparently with 

 still more daring intentions. The alarm was given after he had Bet 

 fire to several of the apartments and had nearly made his way to 

 where the king was ; he succeeded however in making his escape, and 

 fltd to the north. The Earl of Huntly having been sent in pursuit of 

 him, took that opportunity of falling upon his private enemy the 

 young Earl of Murray (soa-in-law aud heir of the late regent), and 

 slaying him, after burning his house to the ground ; an atrocity which 

 excited the deepest popular indignation at the time, aud is celebrated 

 in Scottish song. Bothwell and all his adherents were soon after 

 attainted in parliament; but this did not put an end either to his 

 audacious proceedings or to the treasonable attempts of other parties. 

 In the beginning of 1593 a new conspiracy of Huntly and the other 

 Leads of the popish faction was detected for bringing a Spanish force 

 into the kingdom, with the object of re-establishing Roman Catholicism 

 and invading England ; and a few months later, Bothwell, after having 

 failed in another attempt to seize the royal person at Falkland, having 

 associated himself with the remaining adherents or connections of the 

 late favourites Lennox aud Arran, suddenly returned from England, 

 where he had been protected by Elizabeth, and on the 24th of July 

 1593, entered the palace with a band of armed followers, and made the 

 king his prisoner. James was obliged both to grant a full pardon to 

 the traitor and to dismiss the chancellor Maitlaud aud his other chief 

 ministers ; and he remained in durance till a convention of the nobles 

 having assembled at Stirling in the beginning of September, his keepers 

 found it necessary to release him. Disturbances however were again 

 and again excited in the course of this and the two following years by 

 the attempts both of Bothwell and the Roman Catholic peers ; and at 

 length these two factious, which had hitherto professed the most 

 opposite principles, joining their forces, under the conduct of the 

 Earls of Huntly and Errol, encountered the royal army commanded 

 by the youug Earl of Argyle, at Glenlivat in Aberdeenshire, Octo- 

 ber 3rd, 1594, and, notwithstanding their inferiority iu numbers, put 

 it completely to the rout. This disaster however was immediately 

 repaired by the results of an expedition conducted into the northern 

 districts by James in person, who forced the Roman Catholic lords 

 first to retreat to the mountains, aud eventually to make their submis- 

 sion, when they were allowed to retire beyond seas on giving security 

 that they would engage in no further intrigues against the 1'rotestaut 

 religion or the peace of the kingdom. Bothwell fled to France, and 

 afterwards withdrew to Spain and Italy, where he professed himself a 

 convert to the Romish faith, and spent the rest of his days in obscurity 

 aud indigence. 



These commotions bad scarcely been quieted when James became 

 involved in new troubles in consequence of a contest into which he 

 was brought with the clergy of the Presbyterian Church, which had 

 been legally established as the national form of religion by an act of 

 the Scottish parliament in 1592. Although James bad been induced 

 by considerations of policy to give his assent at the moment to this 

 popular act, he was himself an avowed admirer of episcopacy, and was 

 even very generally suspected of n strong inclination towards popery; 



