United States or Taiwan ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
If God pardons the fault, the most exemplary life cannot efface, here below, its living consequences. If James I was the son of Rizzio, the crime of Mary lasted as long as did her mournful though royal house, and the fall of the Stuarts was the justice of God. But in good faith, would the emancipation of girls set free such a host of dangers?
Even Elizabeth at last seemed wavering towards a recognition of her as her successor. But Mary aimed at more than the succession. Her intrigues with the English Catholics were never interrupted. Her seeming reconciliation with the young king preserved that union of the whole Catholic body which her marriage had brought about and which the strife over Rizzio threatened with ruin.
Darnley, driven to extremities by this, summoned Morton, Ruthven, Lennox, Lindley, and Douglas's bastard, and fixed the assassination of Rizzio for two days later.
English money and skill honeycombed Scottish loyalty. Darnley, vicious, vain, and passionate, was an easy prey to intrigue. The tools of England whispered in his ear that his wife was too intimate with the Italian secretary Rizzio, who had conducted the correspondence with the Catholic powers. From that hour Darnley's doom was sealed.
"Think of Queen Mary and her four Maries, and Darnley, and Rizzio, and Bothwell, and John Knox passing along as we pass now, on their way up to Holyrood?" said I. "Yes. Oh, yes! I do think of them," she answered obediently, her eyes straying into the shadows of wynd or close, or tracing out the detail of some carved gargoyle on an old façade. "Only you think of yourself more "
Her secretary for French despatches having some time after incurred her displeasure, she promoted Rizzio to that office, which gave him frequent opportunities of approaching her person, and insinuating himself into her favor.
Driven out of Scotland, they presented themselves before Elizabeth who called them traitors in public, and assisted them in private, according to her crafty nature. Mary had been married but a little while, when she began to hate her husband, who, in his turn, began to hate that David Rizzio, with whom he had leagued to gain her favour, and whom he now believed to be her lover.
Though he was on the wrong side of the door when Rizzio was being murdered, we should still like to have the wrong side described in the right way.
Rizzio, hitherto his friend and advocate, induced the Queen to reply by a reasonable refusal to this hazardous and audacious request. Darnley at once threw himself into the arms of the party opposed to the policy of the Queen and her secretary a policy which at that moment was doubly and trebly calculated to exasperate the fears of the religious and the pride of the patriotic.
The Scotch nobles had dealt with such favourites after their manner. One they had hung, others they had stabbed; the last, David Rizzio, had fallen beneath their daggers at Mary's feet.
Word Of The Day