She was plunged in present distress, and looked forward with well-grounded dread to the future. "The confederates took advantage of her condition and her fears: they employed Lord Lindsay, the fiercest zealot in the party, to obtain her subscription to the necessary papers; and he executed his commission with harshness and brutality.† Certain death was before Mary's eyes, if she refused to

Lord Lindsay of the Byers was the most ferocious and brutal of the Regent's faction; and as such was employed to extort Mary's signature to the deed of resignation, presented to her in Loch-leven Castle. He discharged his commission with the most savage rigour; and it is even said, when the weeping captive, in the act of signing, averted her eyes from the fatal deed, he pinched her arm with the grasp of his iron glove.-Scott's Bord. Min. vol. iii. 436. Mary had pardoned this very lord for his share in the murder of Rizzio; but the soul of Lindsay was incapable of generosity. "He menaced her grace," say Mary's commissioners, "that if she would not subscribe, he had command to put her presently in the tower," (the dongeon,)" and would do the same: and counselled her to fulfil their desire, or else worse would shortly follow" which Lesley explains, by saying, that Lindsay added, "unless she would thereto subscribe, she should lose her life."-Goodall, vol. ii. 167. Lesley's Defence, &c. 37, 38.

comply with his demands. She signed the deeds presented to her; by one of which she resigned the crown, renounced all share in the government of the kingdom, and consented to the coronation of the young king. By another, she appointed the Earl of Murray regent, and conferred upon him all the powers and privileges of that high office. By a third, she substituted some other noblemen in Murray's place, if he should refuse the honour which was designed for him. Mary, when she subscribed these deeds, was bathed in tears; and while she gave away, as it were, with her own hands, the sceptre which she had swayed so long, she felt a pang of grief and indignation, one of the severest, perhaps, which can touch the human heart."*

The queen had now been confined nearly ten months within the walls of Loch-leven Castle, enduring all the anguish which a situation so peculiarly deplorable would inflict on mind of great feeling and sensibility, though of an ardent and ambitious tone. But her unmerited sufferings had not been unnoticed

* Robertson's Hist. Scot. vol. i. page 144.

or unpitied. Their severity and continuance had engaged the warmest sympathy of her friends; drawn over to her cause those with whom her alleged crimes were hypothetical; and even softened the asperity of some of her hitherto most obdurate foes. Fallen royalty is ever an object of commiseration. The

immense contrast between the state of one, now elevated on a throne, and now enduring the horrors of a prison, makes a deep impression upon the mind; and insensibly produces compassion for the sufferer, an oblivion of the causes which may have occasioned the punishment, and a wish for the redress of such a disproportioned degradation.

"Such was the favourable disposition of the nation towards the queen, when she suddenly recovered her liberty," (says Dr. Robertson,) "in a manner no less surprising to her friends, than unexpected to her enemies. Several attempts had been made to procure her an opportunity of escaping; which some unforeseen accident, or the vigilance of her keepers, had hitherto disappointed. At last, Mary employed all her arts to gain George Douglas,

her keeper's brother, a youth of eighteen.*

Robertson's Hist. Scot. v. i. p. 453. Miss Benger, in her elegant and interesting "Memoirs of the Life of Mary Queen of Scots," has given a somewhat less romantic account of the circumstances of Mary's liberation : "A few days," says she," after this interview (with the Regent) Mary nearly succeeded in making her escape, disguised as a laundress. She had actually seated herself in the boat, when she was discovered by inadvertently raising to her cheek a

hand of snowy whiteness. In a second attempt,

planned by George Douglas, she was alike unsuccessful; and for his friendly offices that youth was expelled the castle, but not before he had secured to her interests another Douglas, an orphan boy, who had from infancy lived in the family, a poor dependant on the Lord of Lochleven.

"Of any new enterprise, however, Mary was so little sanguine, that on the 1st of May she wrote to Catherine de Medicis that she was watched night and day, the girls of the castle sleeping in her chamber; and that, unless the French king interposed, she should remain in prison for life. The next afternoon, however, William Douglas had the address to steal the keys from the hall in which Sir William and his mother were sitting at supper. The queen being apprised of this circumstance, once more descended, with her maid, to the lake, where a boat was waiting, into which they both entered, the maid assisting William in rowing; and, as they approached the shore, he flung into the lake the keys of the castle they had

As her manners were naturally affable and insinuating, she treated him with the most flattering distinction; she even allowed him to entertain the most ambitious hopes, by letting fall some expressions, as if she would choose him for her husband. At his age, and in his circumstances, it was impossible to resist such a temptation. He yielded; and drew others into the plot. On Sunday the 2d May, while his brother sat at supper, and the rest of the family were retired to their devotions, one of his accomplices found means to steal the keys out of his brother's chamber, and opening the gates to the queen and one of her maids, just quitted. Another coadjutor in this enterprise was John Beaton, who held frequent communication with George Douglas; and, by his assistance, provided horses to be ready on the queen's approach."V. ii. p. 358.

*

Our Author has made the bewitching little Catherine Seyton, this faithful female attendant. Certain it is, that a lady of this surname was one of the four Maries who went to France in the young queen's train, and returned with her into Scotland.Keith, p. 55, 288, 291. See a ballad entitled, "The “Queen's Maries," Scott's Bord. Min. v. iii. p. 87. These ladies had been given as attendants to Mary at a very early age. She was placed, when very young.

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