tholics
were sure to renounce her, and if she assisted the Catholics, the
Protestants would be again found assembling at Perth, listening, with
arms in their hands, to the sermons of John Knox, pulling down the
remaining monasteries, and subscribing additional covenants. Is it
surprising, then, that she found it difficult to steer her course
between the rocks of Scylla and the whirlpools of Charybdis? If
misfortunes ultimately overtook her, the wonder unquestionably ought to
be, not that they ever arrived, but that they should have been guarded
against so long.

To further their political views, Mary's hand was sought for by princes
of the several European courts. The princes of the house of Austria,
apprehensive of the ambition of France, wished a union between the
Scottish queen and the Archduke Charles. Philip II., envying the
Austrians so important a prize, used all his influence to procure her
hand for his son Don Carlos, heir to the extensive domains of the
Spanish monarchy. Catharine de Medicis, jealous of them both, offered
the hand of the Duke of Anjou, brother to her former husband, and
Elizabeth, the artful queen of England, recommended Lord Robert Dudley,
afterward Earl of Leicester.

Mary shunned all their intrigues, and followed the bent of her own
inclination in marrying Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, eldest son of the
Earl of Lennox. Darnley, at this time in the bloom of youth, was
distinguished for the beauty and grace of his person, and accomplished
in every elegant art; and he also professed the Catholic religion.
Darnley's qualifications, however, were superficial, and abandoning
himself to pleasure and the vices of youth, he became gradually careless
and indifferent toward the queen, whose disappointments and
mortifications were in proportion to the fervor of her former
sentiments. Her French secretary was one David Rizzio, who was possessed
of musical talents, and to whom she became much attached. Darnley became
jealous of Rizzio, and he, with a number of conspirators, took
possession of the palace on March 9, 1566, while the queen was at supper
with the Countess of Argyle and Rizzio. The latter clung to the queen
for protection, but he was torn from her and dragged to the next
apartment, where the fury of his enemies put an end to his existence, by
piercing his body with fifty-six wounds. The conspirators put Mary under
guard, but she escaped, and by the aid of Bothwell and others, she was
soon en