Section 1165

spent the most susceptible years of her life in the court of France under those worthy custodians of the con- science— Vasquez, Escobar, JlcndozaV These Jesuit fatliers had not hesitated to defend by their casuistry, and luider color of religion, fraud, forgery, falsehood, and murder. Their teachings, before counteracted by the protests of such believers as Pascal and such heretics as Luther, had brought forth their fruit in the assassina- tion of William of Orange and of Coligni, and in the wholesale massacre of St. Bartholomew. Surely it could not be expected that Mary would i)rove herself unwor- thy of her birth and her costly education. Indeed, as earl}^ as 1558 she had shown herself an apt pupil wor- thy of her Jesuitical masters. Never a blush of secret shame mantled her maiden cheek when she signed the treaty which the Scotch commissioners brought her for the purpose of guarding the independence of the nation, jealous of foreign interference; never a hint from which dijilomats could guess that fifteen days before she had signed away the kingdom to the crown of France, an- nulling beforehand whatever solemn promise to the con- trary she might make to her own most beloved and trusting subjects. So young, so fair, and yet so false, ■was Mary queen of Scots. " The -enthusiastic admirers and apologists of Mary maintain that she was sincerely in favor of toleration. They would make her a kind of apostle of religious liberty. It is an unreasonable stretch of charity, however, to suppose that she would not . . . have rejoiced in the restoration, and, had it been feasi- ble, the forcible restoration of the old religion. . . . That she should 'serve the time and still commode herself discreetly and gently with her own subjects,' and ' in effect repose most on them of the Reformed religion,' was the policy which had been sketched for her in France, as we learn from her faithful friend. Sir James Melville" (Fisher, Reform, p. 858, 859). But ]\Iary was wise enough to comprehend that the situation was such that any active opposition to the newly-established re- ligion would be futile and disastrous to herself, and she accommodated herself to the circumstances. Yet even this she did only moderately. Her letters to pope Pius IV and to her uncle, the cardinal of Lorraine, in 15G3, plainly reveal the secret working of her desire to re- store the old religious system to supremacy as soon as practicable. AYith this purpose in view she refused to grant her assent to the acts of Parliament which estab- lished the new religion as the faith of the nation; while she herself failed not to seize every opportunity to prove her attachment to Romanism. The very first Sunday after her arrival Mary commanded a solemn mass to be celebrated in the chapel of the palace ; and, as might have been expected, an uproar ensued, the servants of the chapel were insidted and abused, and had not some of the lay nobility of the Protestant party interposed, the riot might have become general. The next Sunday Knox preached a violent sermon against idolatry, and in his discourse he took occasion to say that a single mass was, in his estimation, more to be feared than ten thousand armed men. Upon this, Mary sent for the Reformer, desiring to have an interview with him. The interview took place, as well as one or two subsequent ones from a like cause ; but the only result was to make plainer the fact that she was at variance with the newly- established religious power of her country. Her youth, however, her beauty and accomplishments, and her af- fability, interested many in her favor; she had, more- over, from the first continued the government in the hands of the Protestants. The jirincipal direction of affairs she had left in the hanils of her half-brother, the earl of Murray (q. v.), the leader of the Protestant no- bles, and she had made William Maitland, of Lethington, another great Protestant leader, one of her most trust- ed advisers. The government in the hands of worthy leaders, the court sacredly promised to the unimpaired preservation of the Reformed faith and worship, no Protestant felt inclined to ask more ; and there were but few to complain when Mary only demanded for herself