took to buckle on his armour for the enterprise; and they had no difficulty in finding other agents.

It would have been easy to have seized on Rizzio, and disposed of him as the Scottish peers at the Bridge of Lauder used the favourites of James III. But this would not have accomplished the revenge of Darnley, who complained that the queen showed this mean Italian more civility than she did to himself, and therefore took the barbarous resolution of seizing him in her very presence.

Whilst this savage plot was forming, Rizzio received several hints of what was likely to happen. Sir James Melville was at pains to explain to him the danger that was incurred by a stranger in any country, who rose so high in the favour of the prince, as to excite the disgust of the natives of the land. A French priest, who was something of an astrologer, warned the secretary to beware of a bastard. To such counsels he replied, that the Scots were more given to threaten than to strike; and as for the bastard (by whom he supposed the Earl of Murray to be meant), he would take care that he should never possess power enough in Scotland to do him any harm.' Thus securely confident, he continued at court, to abide his fate.

Those lords who engaged in the conspiracy did not agree to gratify Darnley's resentment against Rizzio for nothing. They stipulated, as the price of their assistance, that he should in turn aid them in obtaining pardon and restoration to favour for Murray, and his accomplices in the Run-aboyt Raid; intimation was dispatched to these noblemen, apprising them of the whole undertaking, and desiring them to be at Edinburgh on the night appointed for doing the deed.

and

Queen Mary, like her father, James V., was fond of laying aside the state of a sovereign, and indulging in small private * parties, quiet, as she termed them, and

merry. On these occasions she admitted her favourite domestics to her table, and Rizzio seems frequently to have had that honour. On the 9th of March, 1566, six persons had partaken of supper in a small cabinet adjoining to the queen's bedchamber, and having no entrance save through it. Rizzio was of the number. About seven in the evening the gates of the palace were occupied by Morton, with a party of two hundred men; and a select band of the conspirators, headed by Darnley himself, came into the queen's apartment by a secret staircase. Darnley first entered the cabinet, and stood for an instant in silence, gloomily eyeing his victim. Lord Ruthven followed in complete armour, looking pale and ghastly, as one scarcely recovered from a long sickness. Others crowded in after them, till the little closet was full of armed men. While the queen demanded the purpose of their coming, Rizzio, who saw that his life was aimed at, got behind her, and clasped the folds of her gown, that the respect due to her person might protect him. The assassins threw down the table, and seized on the unfortunate object of their vengeance, while Darnley himself took hold of the queen, and forced Rizzio and her asunder. It was their intention, doubtless, to have dragged Rizzio out of Mary's presence, and to have killed him elsewhere; but their fierce impatience hurried them into instant murder. George Douglas, called the Postulate of Arbroath, a natural brother of the Earl of Morton, set the example, by snatching Darnley's dagger from his belt, and striking Rizzio with it. He received many other blows. They dragged him through the bedroom and antechamber, and dispatched him at the head of the staircase, with no less than fifty-six wounds. Ruthven, after all was over, fatigued with his exertions, sat down in the queen's presence, and, begging her pardon for the liberty, called for a

drink to refresh him, as if he had been doing the most harmless thing in the world."

The witnesses. the actors. and the scene of this cruel tragedy, render it one of the most extraordinary which history records. The cabinet and the bedroom still remain in the same condition in which they were at the time; and the floor near the head of the stair bears visible marks of the blood of the

unhappy Rizzio. The queen continued to beg his life with prayers and tears; but when she learned that he was dead, she dried her tears. "I will now," she said, "study revenge."

How she did "study," and also accomplish revenge upon those who had thus insulted her, the reader will find related in the annals of the next few years, which it does not come within our present plan to relate.

N order to understand the strife between the Huguenots and the Catholics in France,

it is necessary to carry the reader back to Francis II. (15591560). The young king ascended the throne at sixteen; he was just married to Mary, Queen of Scots, a youthful and fascinating beauty of about his own age. This lady, then lively and gay, afterwards so unfortunate, was connected by her mother with the distinguished and ambitious house of Guise, and inheriting a crown in infancy, she had been sent to France for security and education, The substantial authority was divided between Catherine de Medicis, the queen mother, and the two Guises, Francis and the cardinal of Lorraine. These three were all unyielding adherents of the Romish

Church.

An opposition to the house of Guise existed in the prince of Condé and Coligny with his two brothers; and a

plot, called the Conspiracy of Amboise (1560), was formed for the purpose of seizing on the persons of the Guises, and bringing them to trial for high treason. The plot failed, the armed bands which had entered Amboise were attacked and dispersed, and executions expiated the attempt.

In the midst of these increasing elements of discord, the young Francis pined into the grave, leaving his beautiful and fascinating queen behind him. She left the shores of France with a heavy heart for Scotland.

Charles IX. (1560-1574) was but ten years of age when he succeeded his brother. Catherine de Medicis balanced the Catholics against the Protestants, the Guises against the Bourbons. Condé and his brother, the titular king of Navarre, belonged to the royal blood of Bourbon, and as they afterwards looked for aid to Elizabeth of England, so their antagonists had been assured of and obtained support from Philip II. of Spain, whose gloomy soul contemplated the extermination of a hundred thousand heretics as a service acceptable to his Redeemer. Edicts of various tenor.

appeared, but were neither respected nor enforced; and the colloquy of Poissy (1561), between the cardinal of Lorraine with a large array of Catholic divines, and Theodore Beza, with a dozen Calvinistic disputants, produced, as might be expected, no impression on the minds of either party.

Forty-five years after Luther had risen to oppose indulgences in Germany, the first blood was shed in civil conflict within the limits of France. The duke of Guise passing (March, 1562) by Vassy, on the frontiers of Champagne, found some Protestants singing hymns in a barn; his attendants insulted them; blows were given and returned, and in the end sixty of the reformers were killed, and two hundred wounded. From this time the struggle continued fierce and sanguinary for thirty-one years; the wars of religion saw France arrayed against itself, and human victims sacrificed by thousands in a Christian cause. The calamities engendered by intolerant passions did not even expend themselves in so many years of war, but reappeared at intervals for a century more. The Protestants of France were known by the name of Huguenots, a corruption of a German word, Eidgenossen, associated by oath.

After the Massacre of Vassy, Guise and Condé began to assemble their partisans with a view to an appeal to arms. Coligny hesitated, he looked on civil war with horror, but it had been long gathering, and could not now be avoided, so he joined Condé, who, however, was taken prisoner at Dreux, in 1562, whereupon he signed a treaty with Catherine de Medicis, which had the effect of suspending hostilities for a time. It is designated as the Convention of Amboise (1563).

This peace lasted but a short time. A bitter, cruel war ensued, and in 1569 the troops of Henry, the king's brother, met those of Condé at Jarnac, and conquered them.

Condé was taken, and as he stood after the fight by a tree, the captain of Henry's guards came behind him and assassinated him with a pistol-shot. Thus died Condé, at the age of thirtynine. The Huguenot cause was depressed, and the court in triumph, when Jane of Navarre restored the drooping spirits of her friends, by bringing to them her son Henry (afterwards Henri Quatre), and the son of Condé; there swore the young prince to defend religion and the common cause, till death or victory. New troops from Germany put the Huguenots again in a condition to act: Coligny met the enemy at Montcontour, in Poitou (1569), where a new defeat scattered and wasted his troops; but Montgomery, the accidental cause of the death of Henry II., joined him in Languedoc, and Coligny marched on Paris. Both sides needed repose, and peace again suspended the strife (1570); it granted Rochelle and three other places, as cities of refuge to the Protestants.

The court now altered its tone; the chiefs of the Huguenots were invited to Paris and caressed; the king embraced Coligny, saying with a gracious air, "I have you now, and you shall not get away when you please." A marriage also was arranged between Henry the young prince of Béarn, and Margaret de Valois, the king's sister. Henry, by his mother's death, inherited the title of king of Navarre.

Henry of Navarre was married, 18th August, 1572, to the sister of Charles IX., king of France. On the 22nd Coligny was shot at and dangerously wounded by an assassin named Maurevel; the news was brought to the king in the tennis-court; he threw his racket from him furiously, crying, "Shall I never see the end of these troubles?" With his mother he visited the wounded man, and lavished on him marks of regret and indignation. On the night of the 23rd and 24th the Massacre of Saint Bartholomew began. The tocsin was