[Footnote E: For the situation of this palace in respect to Edinburgh see the view of Edinburgh, page 179.]
Mary made an extremely favorable impression upon her subjects in Scotland. To please them, she exchanged the white mourning of France, from which she had taken the name of the White Queen, for a black dress, more accordant with the ideas and customs of her native land. This gave her a more sedate and matronly character, and though the expression of her countenance and figure was somewhat changed by it, it was only a change to a new form of extreme and fascinating beauty. Her manners, too, so graceful and easy, and yet so simple and unaffected, charmed all who saw her.
Mary had a half brother in Scotland, whose title was at this time the Lord James. He was afterward named the Earl of Murray, and is commonly known in history under this latter designation. The mother of Lord James was not legally married to Mary's father, and consequently he could not inherit any of his father's rights to the Scottish crown. The Lord James was, however, a man of very high rank and influence, and Mary immediately received him into her service, and made him one of her highest ministers of state. He was now about thirty years of age, prudent, cautious, and wise, of good person and manners, but somewhat reserved and austere.
Lord James had the general direction of affairs on Mary's arrival, and things went on very smoothly for a week; but then, on the first Sunday after the landing, a very serious difficulty threatened to occur. The Catholics have a certain celebration, called the mass, to which they attach a very serious and solemn importance. When our Savior gave the bread and the wine to his disciples at the Last Supper he said of it, "This is my body, broken for you," and "This is my blood, shed for you." The Catholics understand that these words denote that the bread and wine did at that time, and that they do now, whenever the communion service is celebrated by a priest duly authorized, become, by a sort of miraculous transformation, the true body and blood of Christ, and that the priest, in breaking the one and pouring out the other, is really and truly renewing the great sacrifice for sin made by Jesus Christ at his crucifixion. The mass, therefore, in which the bread and the wine are so broken and poured out, becomes, in their view, not a mere service of prayer and praise to God, but a solemn act of sacrifice. The spectators, or assistants, as they call them, meaning all who are present on the occasion, stand by, not merely to hear words of adoration, in which they mentally join, as is the case in most Protestant forms of worship, but to witness the enactment of a deed, and one of great binding force and validity: a real and true sacrifice of Christ, made anew, as an atonement for their sins. The bread, when consecrated, and as they suppose, transmuted to the body of Christ, is held up to view, or carried in a procession around the church, that all present may bow before it and adore it as really being, though in the form of bread, the wounded and broken body of the Lord.
Of course the celebration of the mass is invested, in the minds of all conscientious Catholics, with the utmost solemnity and importance. They stand silently by, with the deepest feelings of reverence and awe, while the priest offers up for them, anew, the great sacrifice for sin. They regard all Protestant worship, which consists of mere exhortations to duty, hymns and prayers, as lifeless and void. That which is to them the soul, the essence, and substance of the whole, is wanting. On the other hand, the Protestants abhor the sacrifice of the mass as gross superstition. They think that the bread remains simply bread after the benediction as much as before; that for the priests to pretend that in breaking it they renew the sacrifice of Christ, is imposture; and that to bow before it in adoration and homage is the worst idolatry.
Now it happened that during Mary's absence in France, the contest between the Catholics and the Protestants had been going fiercely on, and the result had been the almost complete defeat of the Catholic party, and the establishment of the Protestant interest throughout the realm. A great many deeds of violence accompanied this change. Churches and abbeys were sometimes sacked and destroyed. The images of saints, which the Catholics had put up, were pulled down and broken; and the people were sometimes worked up to phrensy against the principles of the Catholic faith and Catholic observances. They abhorred the mass, and were determined that it should not be introduced again into Scotland.
Queen Mary, knowing this state of things determined, on her arrival in Scotland, not to interfere with her people in the exercise of their religion; but she resolved to remain a Catholic herself, and to continue, for the use of her own household, in the royal chapel at Holyrood, the same Catholic observances to which she had been accustomed in France. She accordingly gave orders that mass should be celebrated in her chapel on the first Sunday after her arrival. She was very willing to abstain from interfering with the religious usages of her subjects, but she was not willing to give up her own.
The friends of the Reformation had a meeting, and resolved that mass should not be celebrated. There was, however, no way of preventing it but by intimidation or violence. When Sunday came, crowds began to assemble about the palace and the chapel,[F] and to fill all the avenues leading to them. The Catholic families who were going to attend the service were treated rudely as they passed. The priests they threatened with death. One, who carried a candle which was to be used in the ceremonies, was extremely terrified at their threats and imprecations. The excitement was very great, and would probably have proceeded to violent extremities, had it not been for Lord James's energy and courage. He was a Protestant, but he took his station at the door of the chapel, and, without saying or doing any thing to irritate the crowd without, he kept them at bay, while the service proceeded. It went on to the close, though greatly interrupted by the confusion and uproar. Many of the French people who came with Mary were so terrified by this scene, that they declared they would not stay in such a country, and took the first opportunity of returning to France.
[Footnote F: The ruins of the royal chapel are to be seen in the rear of the palace in the view on page 114.]
One of the most powerful and influential of the leaders of the Protestant party at this time was the celebrated John Knox. He was a man of great powers of mind and of commanding eloquence; and he had exerted a vast influence in arousing the people of Scotland to a feeling of strong abhorrence of what they considered the abominations of popery. When Queen Mary of England was upon the throne, Knox had written a book against her, and against queens in general, women having, according to his views, no right to govern. Knox was a man of the most stern and uncompromising character, who feared nothing, respected nothing, and submitted to no restraints in the blunt and plain discharge of what he considered his duty. Mary dreaded his influence and power.
Knox had an interview with Mary not long after her arrival, and it is one of the most striking instances of the strange ascendency which Mary's extraordinary beauty and grace, and the pensive charm of her demeanor, exercised over all that came within her influence, that even John Knox, whom nothing else could soften or subdue, found his rough and indomitable energy half forsaking him in the presence of his gentle queen. She expostulated with him. He half apologized. Nothing had ever drawn the least semblance of an apology from him before. He told her that his book was aimed solely against Queen Mary of England, and not against her; that she had no cause to fear its influence; that, in respect to the freedom with which he had advanced his opinions and theories on the subjects of government and religion, she need not be alarmed, for philosophers had always done this in every age, and yet had lived good citizens of the state, whose institutions they had, nevertheless, in some sense theoretically condemned. He told her, moreover, that he had no intention of troubling her reign; that she might be sure of this, since, if he had such a desire, he should have commenced his measures during her absence, and not have postponed them until her position on the throne was strengthened by her return. Thus he tried to soothe her fears, and to justify himself from the suspicion of having designed any injury to such a gentle and helpless queen. The interview was a very extraordinary spectacle. It was that of a lion laying aside his majestic sternness and strength to dispel the fears and quiet the apprehensions of a dove. The interview was, however, after all, painful and distressing to Mary. Some things which the stern reformer felt it his duty to say to her, brought tears into her eyes.