Sir John Gordon, the son of the rebel Earl of Huntly, conducted himself poorly as a lover of the queen and thereby cost him not only his life, but that of his father along with the title of Huntly. But the most troublesome and preposterous of all her train of admirers was a Frenchman named Cbatelar or Chastelard, who also fell a victim to his follies. Little is known of him, except from the pages of Brantome; but his mere appearance there, accompanied by expressions of eulogy and warm attachment, is sufficient to mark him as a man of distinction. The biographer says he was a native of Dauphiné, and a grandnephew by his mother of the illustrious Bayard, whom he resembled in person. According to the same authority, he owned in a high degree not only all the warlike and polite accomplishments of a high-bred gallant of the day, but possessed original literary genius, and could accompany his lute by his own poetry- "usant d'une poésie fort douce et gentile en cavalier." He was a follower of the Constable Montmorency, with whom he joined the body of gentlemen who escorted the queen from France. A gentil mot of his on that occasion has been recorded-that when a fog sprang up, and the necessity of lights was spoken of, he said the bright eyes of their mistress were sufficient to light the fleet past all dangers.

He had certainly been admitted on terms of some familiarity with the queen. Brantome says her love of letters led her to admire the young man's poems, of which she was often naturally the theme, and that she answered him in verses which raised within him the wildest aspirations. It is difficult to mark the limits within which at that period a royal personage at any of the French or Italian Courts might legitimately flatter and encourage a person of good birth, endowed with the literary accomplishments of the troubadour. The homage paid to Ronsard, by beauties of princely rank, was more like adoration than patronage. But Knox certainly shows ignorance of the fitting usages of a court at that time, when he says, "The queen would lie on Chatelar's shoulder, and sometimes privily she would steal a kiss of his neck; and all this was honest enough, for it was the gentle entreatment of a stranger. But the familiarity was so Lreat, that on a night he privily did convey himself under the queen's bed." 1 That he committed this folly, whatever his encouragement may have been, is beyond doubt, though Randolph states that by his own account his hiding-place was a part of the establishment still less adapted for romance or lovemaking.2 The occurrence was in Holyrood. For this first offence, though flagrant enough, he was spared and warned. Next day, however, as Mary spent the night at Bumtisland, on her way to St Andrews, he burst into her private apartment, either to plead a palliation for his conduct or to plead his suit. It is said in Knox's History that Mary desired him to be forthwith put to death, but that Murray, who was present, maintained it to be due to the fair course of ' justice, and more conducive to her own good repute, that he should be brought to trial, and the same is told at the time by Randolph writing to Cecil.

He was tried at St Andrews, condemned, and executed. The records of the Court of justiciary for that period having been lost, we are deprived of any light which they might have cast on this strange story. Whoever desires to read bow he died, like a true knight-errant, turning to the direction of his bright particular star, though it was obscured from his view, and unheard addressing her as the most lovely and cruel of her sex, may turn to the lively pages of Brantome. Chatelar's adventures fed many preposterous rumours, and the King of Spain was told that he had been hired in France to do as be did, for the purpose of ruining the queen's matrimonial prospects.

Chatelar had been sent to France with the other attendants of the queen soon after her arrival, and had found his way back to the centre of attraction. One of the few wise things done by Mary and her advisers was the speedy restoration to their own country of this foreign train, whose presence in Scotland, however discreetly they might have conducted themselves, would have fostered a special growth of jealousies and animosities, in addition to the already luxuriant crop. What the rest would have incurred we learn in the brief history of one of them who remained behind the others-D'Elboeuf, the queen's uncle. He was charged with having joined some dissipated Scotsmen in a nocturnal riot, in which they forced an entrance to the house of a citizen, seeking access to a damsel living there. It is not stated that they committed violence on her, or even got access to her; and her own conduct was so far from being irreproachable, that the affair arose out of a dispute as to the person to whom she had for the time being sold her blandishments, and the object of the riot was to put one of the claimants in possession. The criminal records of the day convey a very false impression of the social condition of the country, if far heavier offences of the same character were not of daily occurrence. Yet the participation of D'Elbceuf raised this paltry riot to a place in history. In Knox's Book it is said that " the horror of this fact, and the rarity of it, highly commoved all godly hearts. A sort of General Assembly was convened on the occasion, who addressed the queen in a long remonstrance about the impiety, "so heinous and so horrible that, as it was a fact most vile and rare to be heard of within this realm, principally within the bounds of this city, so should we think ourselves guilty of the same if negligently, or yet for worldly fear, we pass it over in silence." They predicted that its going unpunished might cause God's sore displeasure to fall on her and her whole realm. The queen resisted the prosecution of the offenders, but promised measures for better order in time coming.

It must be admitted, however, that so far as the clergy were concerned, they do not seem to have applied to the Frenchman a more rigid rule of virtue than that which they followed themselves and endeavoured to enforce on the community generally. They were under the impulse of that great reaction against the profligacy of the age-the reaction which, driven out of France, where it had its origin, swept England under the name of Puritanism, and established a permanent influence over opinion in Scotland. Calvin had to take his notions of the absolute rule of saintship away from France, where the Huguenots were in a minority, to the small state of Geneva; and Knox sought to establish in Scotland the same iron rule which his master was able with difficulty to hold over that small and peculiar state. The rigidness of the rule by which he and his brethren of the clergy had resolved to walk is better exemplified by one exceptional case of backsliding than by their professions of godliness. One of the new clergymen-Paul Methven, minister of jedburgh-was accused of connubial infidelity. Instead of any effort to conceal this reproach to their body, they proclaimed it aloud as an awful and inscrutable judgment, and hunted the accused man until, whether guilty or not, he fled from his pursuers. He had a claim that would have served him well in any Church disposed to hide the frailties of its zealous champions, for he had the glory of martyrdom. We find, him outlawed in 1559 for "usurping the authority and ministry of the Church," and addressing large assemblies in Dundee and Montrose. The excitement aroused in a considerable body of men by the revelation among them of this one black sheep, points to the conclusion that such sins were rare in the community to which Methven belonged. Had there been other instances of flagrant offence, these too would have been made known; for it was a peculiarity of the Presbyterian bodies to blazon the infirmities of their own members as judgments and warnings, while those of the opposite religion were-dealt with by ecclesiastical superiors, and shrouded in what they deemed decorous privacy.

While thus perplexed by immoralities without and within, the new Church had to look to the more serious question of its own safety, and the preservation of the Reformed faith. The question, which party should be supreme in Scotland, seemed to depend so much upon the queen's marriage, that both preserved a sort of armed neutrality until that event should take place, and declare for the one or the other. The anxiety on the point traveled indeed far beyond the bounds of Scotland: for if Mary, with her claims on the crown of England, were married to some great Catholic potentate, no one could ,calculate what strength such an event might bring to the cause of Rome; while, on the other hand, a Protestant king in Edinburgh would secure Scotland, at all events, to the cause of the Reformation. Her ambitious relations the Guises were fully alive to the important influence which the result must have on their own designs and prospects. It is only in the events of later times that we can appreciate the scope and tendency of the projects of that illustrious race, and see how near they were to the accomplishment of a great revolution. They appeared in all their lustre at a time when the French had few great men and were becoming discontented with the position they found themselves holding among European powers. What the family of Bonaparte since achieved, this ambitious house were on the point of achieving in the sixteenth century. If we look into the history of each of the several great men of the house, we shall find them all strengthening their position by a marvellously dexterous use of every available instrument, and uniting to propagate an impression throughout the world that some wonderful destiny was in store for them. They gave themselves out as the true descendants of Charlemagne, through that Lothaire, the founder of Lotharingia or Lorraine, whose race was superseded on the throne of France by the dynasty of Hugh Capet; and though they would have found it hard to prove this descent to fastidious genealogists, the history of their family gave plausibility to their claim. When their niece ascended the throne of France, they received a solid accession of power ; and whatever may have been the form of their ambitious dreams for the future, they had the certainty, while she and her husband lived, of ruling supreme in France.

The death of the young king was a severe blow to them, They had just perfected their measures for crushing the house of Bourbon, where, from the physical condition of the remnant of the Valois family, they saw the future probable successors to the throne of France. With the change of fortune, they were compelled to give up their hold on Condé, Coligny, and the other illustrious victims through whom the cause of the Huguenots and the Bourbon family were to be crushed; and they found in Catherine d'Medici, the mother of the boy who succeeded to the throne, one who had the will, and might very soon have the power, to trample them under her feet.

Mary Meets Darnley
An event of a simple character breaks in upon the various negotiations and intrigues for providing Mary with a husband, when the tall stature and fresh boyish face of a foolish youth settled the matter by love at first sight. It was at Wemyss Castle, a weather-beaten fortress on a rock rising from the northern coast of the Firth of Forth, that Mary first saw her cousin, Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, on the 14th of February 1565. He had just come from England to join his father, and finding the queen absent from Edinburgh on one of her many progresses, he, took the privilege of a relation to push on and visit her. They had no sooner met than the many keen eyes that watched the young widow and the handsome youth saw what was to be.