of June, 1566, a son was born to Mary, who as JAMES VI. ascended the Scottish throne, and who sat on that of England as James I. On the 9th of February, 1567, the mysterious death of Henry Darnley occurred, certainly through the agency of the infamous Earl of Bothwell,40 and, as some would have it believed, with the connivance or fore-knowledge of Queen Mary, an opinion which her hasty marriage with Bothwell (May 15th, 1567,) was not calculated to soften. In the subsequent contest between the royal authority and a great part of the nation, Mary was compelled to resign her kingdom in favour of her infant son, with her ambitious brother Murray for regent, and after making a fruitless effort to regain her lost power, fled after the disastrous battle of Langside into England, to throw herself upon the protection of her rival Elizabeth, who repaid her ill-placed confidence by imprisonment, indignities, and death. After having been for eighteen years a prisoner, Mary Stuart, the descendant of a hundred kings, who had herself been crowned in two kingdoms, fell by the hands of a common executioner, because her title to a third throne was felt to be dangerous to its

41

10 Recent investigation has brought to light some facts, by which it would appear that John Knox is somewhat implicated with the actors in the death of Henry Darnley.

41" Thus died Mary, Queen of Scots, in the nineteenth year

42

66

occupier. She was in her forty-fifth year, when, to use her own words, an end was put to her tedious pilgrimage," February 8th, 1587. Mary's son had made remonstrances to Elizabeth, which, as may be supposed, were little heeded, and when Sir Robert Melville besought some delay in the execution, he was met by the stern reply of the vindictive queen, "No, not an hour."43

of her captivity, and forty-fifth of her age, having redeemed by the wrongs and sufferings of her life, and the heroism of her death, her frailties, and, if she committed it, her single crime."

SIR JAMES MACKINTOSH.

42 << Gray took the opportunity to ask why the Queen of Scots should be esteemed so dangerous to her majesty? 'Because,' answered Elizabeth hastily,' she is a papist, and they say she shall succeed to my throne."". SIR W. SCOTT.

43 Sir W. Scott.

ᎣᎣᎣ

CHAPTER XIX.

"King James, as only representer and righteous heir of the royal line of England, with an universal consent and joy ascended the throne of England." NISBET.

The Lineal Descent of QUEEN VICTORIA from

JAMES I.

HEN Queen Elizabeth was on her death bed,

WHEN

JAMES,

1603, and questioned respecting the succession, her reply was that she would have a king for her heir, and when further asked who that should be, "Who but my cousin, the King of Scots ?" sixth of that name in Scotland, and first in England, had reigned in the former kingdom for thirty-six years, when called to fill the throne of her once great rival. In his person centred the blood of the SAXON

James I. assumed the style of King of Great Britain, to avoid exciting jealousy by giving the precedence either to England or Scotland in the royal title, but the legal union did not take place till the time of Queen Anne, May 1, 1707, when by the act of parliament then passed, Scotland was to be represented in the Upper House by sixteen peers, and in the Commons by forty-five members.

kings by a double descent, of the PLANTAGENETS in its varied branches, of the House of TUDOR, besides the rich currents of his more native royal houses of BRUCE and STUART.2 Distracted as England had been almost ever since the Conquest with rival claims upon the throne, it is not surprising that she should welcome the accession of a prince in whom so many family interests were united, whilst Scotland was as much pleased to give a king to that nation which had so often attempted to impose one upon herself.3 JAMES I., in 1590, married ANNE of DENMARK, daughter of FREDERICK II., by SOPHIA of MECKLENBURG, and by her had three sons and four daughters, viz. 1. Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, born 1594, a prince of the greatest promise, who died in 1612, to the grief of the nation which loyed him; 2. Robert, who died young; 3. Charles, Prince of Wales, born 1600, afterwards king; 4. Elizabeth, born August 19th, 1596, married in 1613, to the ELECTOR PALA

2 In 1604, the Rev. George Owen Harry published “the Genealogy of King James I., with his lineal descent from Noah."

3 The Lady Arabella Stuart (who died in 1615 after four years' confinement in the Tower), whose claim to the throne of England was attempted to be set up against that of James I., was the daughter of Charles Stuart, youngest brother to Henry Lord Darnley; she stood therefore in the same relationship to Henry VII. as did King James; and her husband was William Seymour, grandson of Catherine Grey, sister of Lady Jane Grey.

4

TINE, by whom she became ancestress of the reigning family of England, and of whom presently; 5. Mary, born 1605, died 1607; 7. Sophia, born and died 1606. If the discovery of the "Gunpowder Plot" was reckoned a great proof of King James' sagacity, his treatment of Raleigh was an instance of unworthily sacrificing a brave man to the fear of foreign influence, whilst his favour shewn to Villiers, Duke of Buckingham, led the way to the convulsions which brought such bitter ruin upon his family. James I. died March 27th, 1625, in the fifty-ninth year of his age, and the twenty-second of his reign over England. His consort Anne, who died in 1618, had some pretensions to beauty and ability; she was fond of amusements and dress, and the pageantries of those days, in which she herself sometimes bore a part.

4 The arms of the Elector Palatine were borne, "tripartite, first, sable, a lion rampant crowned or, langed and armed gules, for the Palatinate; second, fusilly bendy, argent and azure, of twenty-one pieces, for Bavaria; and third (in base), a globe surmounted by a cross crosslet, for the Electorate." From an old French work containing the arms of the Knights of the Garter; and also from Edmondson.

5 Tieck, the great German critic, fancies that Shakspeare intended a compliment to James I., when he makes Timon of Athens proclaim that he knows

"One honest man,-mistake me not,-but one:

No more, I pray,-and he is a Steward."

Act iv. sc. 3.