For England it was also an age of great and constant peril.  Elizabeth’s entire reign was undermined with plots against her life and against the life of the Protestant faith.  No sooner was one conspiracy detected and suppressed than a new one sprang up.  Perhaps the most formidable of these was the effort which Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, made to supplant her English rival.  Shortly after Elizabeth’s accession, Mary’s husband, the King of France, died.  She returned to Scotland (1561) and there assumed the Scottish crown, at the same time asserting her right to the English throne.[3]

[3] See Genealogical Table (p. 207).  Mary’s claim was based on the fact that the Pope had never recognized Henry VIII’s marriage to Anne Boleyn, Elizabeth’s mother, as lawful, while she, herself, as the direct descendant of Henry’s sister, Margaret, stood next in succession.

395.  Mary marries Darnley; his Murder.

A few years later Mary married Lord Darnley.  He became jealous of Rizzio, her private secretary, and, with the aid of accomplices, seized him in her presence, dragged him into an antechamber, and there stabbed him.  The next year Darnley was murdered.  It was believed that Mary and the Earl of Bothwell, whom she soon married, were guilty of the crime.  The people rose and cast her into prison, and forced her to abdicate in favor of her infant son, James VI, who eventually became King of England and Scotland (1603).

396.  Mary escapes to England (1568); plots against Elizabeth and Protestantism.

Mary escaped and fled to England.  Elizabeth, fearing she might pass over to France and stir up war, confined her in Bolton Castle, Yorkshire.  During her imprisonment in another stronghold, to which she had been transferred, she was accused of being implicated in a plot for assassinating the English Queen and seizing the reins of government in behalf of herself and the Jesuits (S378).

It was, in fact, a time when the Protestant faith seemed everywhere marked for destruction.  In France evil counselors had induced the King to order a massacre of the Reformers, and on St. Batholomew’s Day thousands were slain.  The Pope, misinformed in the matter, ordered a solemn thanksgiving for the slaughter, and struck a gold medal to commemorate it.  Philip II of Spain, whose cold, impassive face scarcely ever relaxed into a smile, now laughed outright.  Still more recently, William the Silent, who had driven out the Catholics from a part of the Netherlands, had been assassinated by a Jesuit fanatic.  Meanwhile the Pope had excommunicated Queen Elizabeth (1570) and had released her subjects from allegiance to her.  A fanatic nailed this bull of excommunication to the door of the Bishop of London’s palace.  This bold act, for which the offender suffered death, brought matters to a crisis.