that had raised him, and maintained his resistance for several years. A victory which he won over an English army at Blackwater, in 1598, gave him an adequate supply of arms and ammunition.

In 1599 Queen Elizabeth appointed her last favorite, the Earl of Essex, to the dignity of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, for the express purpose of suppressing the rebellion of the Earl of Tyrone. With the utmost confidence in his abilities, the Earl of Essex hastened to Ireland, but soon found his task more difficult than he had expected; and, after some months of harassing warfare, he concluded a treaty with the rebellious Irish chieftain, in utter defiance of the

so taken by surprise at his sudden appearance that she received him most graciously; but when he had left, and she had time to reflect on his conduct, she regarded his last presumption as an aggravation of his previous faults; and when he appeared a few hours later he met with a very different reception, and was given into the custody of Lord Egerton.

Mental agitation now threw the Earl of Essex into a serious illness. The queen's affection returned when she was informed of her favorite's danger. She ordered eight physicians to consult on his case, and sent one of them with some broth, saying that if she could visit him consistently with her

queen's commands. Elizabeth sent her favorite a sharp reproof for this and other disobedience, and also ordered him to remain in Ireland until he received further instructions; but he instantly returned to England, and, to the queen's utter surprise, presented himself at court.

Splashed with dirt, the Earl of Essex rushed into the queen's presence-chamber, although he was well aware of how punctilious Elizabeth was about the neat and seemly apparel of those who approached her. As she was not there, he hastened to her bed-chamber, where she had scarcely risen, sitting with her hair about her face. He fell on his knees before her, and she was 4-55.-U. H.

honor she would do so, the tears all the while running down her cheeks. Thereupon the Earl of Essex recovered, and was permitted to remain in retirement in his own house.

After a long struggle between her affection for her favorite and her sense of justice, Elizabeth at length consented that the Earl of Essex should be called to account for his mismanagement of affairs in Ireland. He did not attempt to excuse himself, but made an humble submission to the queen, who received his contrite messages with great complacency. He then applied to the queen to renew the grant which she had formerly made to him; but she refused, with

the ring to return it to Her Majesty, but that she had withheld it at her husband's command. In a paroxysm of rage and grief, Queen Elizabeth shook the dying countess in her bed, crying: "God may forgive you, but I never can!”

It

The breach between the queen and her favorite now appeared irreparable. Utterly maddened by passion, the Earl of Essex entered into a treasonable correspondence with King James VI. of Scotland to dethrone Elizabeth, and endeavored to excite a riot in London; but he was arrested and committed to the Tower. His trial soon followed, and his guilt was so evident that the queen did not have the least pretext to grant him a pardon. Her affection for her favorite, and her resentment for his recent conduct, reduced Elizabeth to a pitiable condition of mind; and a long and painful vacillation on her part followed. She signed the death-warrant; then countermanded it; again determined on his death; then felt a new return of tenderness.

Knowing his impetuous temper, the queen had in a moment of tenderness years before given the Earl of Essex a ring, assuring him that if he ever got into trouble his return of that ring would give him a favorable hearing. Now that he lay under sentence of death she looked confidently for the return of the ring; but, after waiting in vain day after day, and attributing his failure to send it to his obstinacy, the offended pride of the disappointed and resentful queen, both as sovereign and friend, led her to sign the death-warrant; and the unfortunate Earl of Essex was beheaded on Tower Hill, February 25, 1601, in the thirty-fourth year of his age.

Two years afterward the Countess of Nottingham, one of Elizabeth's courtiers, when on her death bed called the queen to her bedside and confessed that the Earl of Essex

In her agony of grief and despair, Elizabeth shut herself up in her palace, and, throwing herself on the floor, she became a prey to a deep melancholy from which she never recovered. Though the Irish rebellion was subdued by Lord Mountjoy, and many English victories were won over the Spaniards, the poor queen took no heed. For ten days and nights she lay on the floor, supported by cushions. She refused to go to bed, or to take anything prescribed by her physicians.

As the queen's end was visibly approaching, her attendants requested her to appoint her successor. When the name of Lord Beauchamp, a member of the royal family, was mentioned, she said, with a display of the old Tudor spirit: "I will have no rogue's son in my seat." King James VI. of Scotland was named, but the dying queen was speechless and could only signify her assent. Being too weak to make any resistance, she was laid in her bed; and the next morning, March 24, 1603, she died in the seventieth year of her age and the forty-fifth of her reign.

Thus, like her sister and predecessor, Elizabeth died broken-hearted. Such was the melancholy end of the most brilliant reign in English history; and thus ended the Tudor dynasty, which, comprising five reigns, had worn the English crown for one hundred and eighteen years (A. D. 1485– 1603).

Elizabeth was a good queen, but not a good woman. In character she had the most contradictory qualities; uniting, in a marked degree, her father's iron will, imperious temper and sound judgment with her mother's insincerity, vacillation and vanity. She was frequently coarse in her manners, and occasionally profane in her speech.

Though Elizabeth was arbitrary in her

Two

fallen because of mistaken judgment. Said she to her Parliament: "I have desired to have the obedience of my subjects by love, and not by compulsion. "

Because of her earnest desire to win the affections and promote the welfare of he subjects, notwithstanding her faults, the English people have ever since looked back with pride and pleasure to "the golden days of Good Queen Bess."

J

AMES V., an infant of two years, became King of Scotland upon the death of his father, James IV., in the disastrous battle of Flodden Field,

in September, 1513. In the midst of the grief caused by that catastrophe, all Scotland was filled with alarm. Edinburgh was fortified with a wall, and preparations were made to resist the advance of the victorious English. These precautions were, however, unnecessary, as King Henry VIII. of England generously declined to press his advantage against his sister Margaret, the widow of King James IV.; and, as his own kingdom was safe, he disbanded his army.

The Scottish Parliament met at Perth and appointed the widowed Queen Margaret regent; but within a year she married the Earl of Angus, the head of the great Douglas family of Scotland; whereupon the Parliament made John, Duke of Albany, the High Admiral of France and the nephew of King James III. of Scotland, regent in her stead. Peace was also made with England. The great number of Frenchmen which the Duke of Albany brought with him to Scotland made him very unpopular at first; and Margaret at first refused to give up the young king to him, but she was besieged in Stirling Castle and forced to yield.

The Hamiltons, headed by the Earl of Arran, and the Douglases, under the leader

ship of the Earl of Angus, distracted Scotland by the constant warfare which they kept up against each other. The regent, the Duke of Albany, aided by the French, put an end to the strife between the two hostile Scottish families. He seized the Earl of Angus and sent him to France, whence he soon made his escape to England and joined his wife, who had fled to that country. Lord Home and his brother, two of the most powerful of the Douglas faction, were seized, and beheaded after a mock trial.

The Duke of Albany went back to France about a year after his appointment as regent of Scotland, leaving Anthony de la Bastie, a Frenchman, as his representative in Scotland, and placing French garrisons in the Scottish fortresses, thus increasing the Scottish hatred of the French to the greatest degree. Anthony de la Bastie was killed by the Homes in revenge for the death of Lord Home. The feud between the Hamiltons and the Douglases was now renewed with more than its former violence, and the rival factions fought their battles in the very streets of Edinburgh. The Douglases were generally the successful party, and the Earl of Angus drove the Hamiltons from Edinburgh and held the city with an armed force. After remaining in France for five years, the Duke of Albany was induced to return to Scotland by the threats and entreaties of the Scottish Parliament, A. D. 1520.

In 1522 King Henry VIII. of England commenced interfering in the affairs of Scotland by demanding that the Duke of Albany should be dismissed from the regency and that Scotland should renounce her alliance with France. The Scottish Parliament rejected the English king's demand and made preparations for war, and a desultory warfare followed between the English and the Scots along the border. The Duke of Albany greatly disgusted the Scottish nation by his mismanagement, and in 1524 he abandoned the regency and sailed for France.

After the Duke of Albany had left Scotland, Henry VIII. of England sought to force the Scots to renounce their alliance with France, and in this he was warmly supported by his widowed sister Margaret, the mother of the boy king of Scotland. The head of the French party in Scotland was Cardinal Beaton, Archbishop of St. Andrews, who exerted himself to check the designs of the King of England. But the English influence was more powerful for the time; and, in accordance with the advice of Henry VIII., King James V., then twelve years of age, assumed the government of Scotland in his own name, by the act called The Erection of the King, August, 1524.

The defeat and capture of King Francis. I. of France by the Germans and Spaniards in the battle of Pavia, in 1525, aroused great sympathy for him in Scotland, and again turned the current of popular feeling in that country in favor of France.

The

In 1526 King James V., then fourteen years of age, chose the Earls of Angus, Argyle and Errol as his guardians. Earl of Angus was the first to enter upon his duties; but when his term expired he refused to resign the custody of the boy king's person, holding him in his power for two years, and tyrannizing over him in such a manner as to acquire the youthful monarch's cordial hatred.

In 1528 James V. escaped by night from Falkland, and rode to Stirling Castle, disguised as a groom. He immediately set to

work to crush the Douglases, and was so successful that the Earl of Angus was obliged to seek refuge in England. That powerful Scottish nobleman's possessions. were confiscated, and his branch of the great Douglas family was thoroughly ruined.

King James V. next directed his attention to the borderers, who had become as lawless as the Highlanders. He chastised them severely, and hanged their most prominent leader, John Armstrong, as a common thief. It was the steady policy of James V. to break the power of the Scottish nobles and to increase the authority of the Scottish crown. He made important reforms in the administration of justice, and in every way he protected and befriended his humblest subjects against the violence and extortion of the nobles. In this way he obtained their enthusiastic devotion, and acquired the title of "King of the Commons.”

James V. was a faithful Roman Catholic; but the Reformation made great progress in Scotland during his reign, in spite of the cruel persecution inaugurated by Cardinal Beaton, the Primate of Scotland.

In 1542 Scotland became involved in a war with England, and a Scottish army of ten thousand men was sent to invade that kingdom; but this army was surprised and shamefully routed by five hundred English at Solway Moss, December 6, 1542, as already noticed in the history of England. King James V. received the news at Caerlaverock Castle, and at the same time he was informed that a daughter was born to him. This daughter was the celebrated and unfortunate Mary, Queen of Scots. The failure of a male heir and the shameful defeat of his army were more than the poor king could endure; and he died of grief and disappointment eight days later, December 14, 1542, leaving the crown of Scotland to his infant daughter, MARY.

James Hamilton, Earl of Arran, was chosen regent for the infant Queen Mary, who was left in the care of her mother, Mary of Guise, the second wife of James V. Mary of Guise belonged to the powerful French family of Lorraine having that name.

of England took advantage of this despondency to force the Scots to consent to a treaty providing for the marriage of the infant Queen Mary with his own son Edward, Prince of Wales, afterward King Edward VI. of England. In this way Henry VIII. hoped to unite the crowns of Scotland and England.

When the Scots had recovered from their depression their Parliament repudiated the treaty forced upon them by the English monarch, whereupon Henry VIII. declared war against Scotland May 1, 1544. An English army under the Earl of Hertford then made a savage raid into Scotland, and sacked and burned Leith and Edinburgh, but was defeated and driven out of Scotland. The next year the Earl of Hertford renewed his invasion and ravaged the southern part of Scotland with dreadful cruelty, burning between two and three hundred villages and a number of towns, churches and manors; but the English effected no permanent conquest of the country, and the Earl of Hertford returned to England.

as

In 1547 the Earl of Hertford, then Duke of Somerset, and Protector of England during the minority of King Edward VI., invaded Scotland a third time, and defeated the Scots at Pinkie with the loss of ten thousand men, September 10, 1547. The Duke of Somerset then returned to England with the greater part of his army; but, the English held possession of the southern fortresses of Scotland, the regent of Scotland sent little Queen Mary to France to be there educated and betrothed to the Dauphin, thus rendering her marriage with Edward VI. of England forever impossible. By extraordinary exertions and with the aid of six thousand French troops, the regent of Scotland drove the English back into their own country; and peace was made between Scotland and England in 1550.

In the meantime the Reformation was making rapid progress in Scotland. The The Scots were highly exasperated by the persecutions with which the Roman Catholic

Beaton, the Primate of Scotland, sought to check the advance of Protestantism; and the only effect of the persecutions was to make numerous converts to the Reformed doctrines. A large party in Scotland applauded the course of King Henry VIII. of England in suppressing the monasteries and nunneries in his kingdom, and advocated the adoption of similar proceedings in their own country.

In 1545 George Wishart was burned to death for preaching the doctrines of the Reformation. Sixteen of his disciples were admitted into the Castle of St. Andrews, Cardinal Beaton's stronghold, and murdered the Primate in revenge for the martyrdom of their teacher. They held possession of the castle for fourteen months against all the efforts of the regent to retake it, but were finally forced to submit, and were sent to the French galleys. Among the number. was John Knox, who afterward became so famous as the great Apostle of Calvinism in Scotland. The regent appointed his own brother, John Hamilton, to the office of Archbishop of St. Andrews to succeed the murdered Cardinal Beaton.

The Earl of Arran was created Duke of Chatelherault by King Henry II. of France in 1554, whereupon he resigned the regency of Scotland and went to France Mary of Guise, the mother of the girl queen Mary, then became regent; and in 1558 she secured the marriage of her daughter with the Dauphin Francis, the heir to the French crown. The next year, upon the death of his father, King Henry II., the Dauphin became King of France with the title of Francis II.; so that the crowns of France and Scotland were now united by marriage. The result was that the French influence became predominant in Scotland, the queenregent appointing Frenchmen to many of the offices in the kingdom, and putting them in charge of the Scottish fortresses. By their airs of superiority these French officials soon became cordially detested by the Scots, who were impatient to have them out of the country.