The skull and portraits of Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, and their bearing on the tragedy of Mary, Queen of Scots / by Karl Pearson, F.R.S.; with frontispiece, forty-five plates, four figures in the text and six tissues of cranial contours.

  • Pearson, Karl, 1857-1936.
Date:
[1928]
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The skull and portraits of Henry Stewart, Lord Darnley, and their bearing on the tragedy of Mary, Queen of Scots / by Karl Pearson, F.R.S.; with frontispiece, forty-five plates, four figures in the text and six tissues of cranial contours. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    with the Registers of the Church, cast into the streets, afterwards gathered in heapes, and con¬ sumed with fire. Shortly all was ruined, and what had escaped in the time of the first tumult, did now undergo the common calamitie; which was so the worse, that the violences committed at this time were shadowed with the warrant of publick authority. Some ill advised preachers did likewise animate people in those their barbarous proceedings, crying out that the places where idols had been worshipped ought by the law of God to be destroyed, and that the sparing of them was reserving of things execrable; mistaking the Commandment given to Israel for destroying the places where the Canaanites had worshipped their false gods; which was given upon a special respect to that people, and did not concern all the nations and people of the world. Perhaps the acme of intolerance was exhibited by the mad Hamilton, the Earl of Arran, who—when the Herald read Mary’s proclamation that no one under pain of death should interfere with the protestant worship as established on her arrival, nor, on the other hand, should anyone be allowed to interfere with the worship of her French servants and household,—made the following protest: Bot sen that God hes said that the idolater shall dye the deyth, we protest solemnedlie, in the presence of God, and in the eares of the hale peple that hears this Proclamatioun, and speciallie in presence of you, Lyoun Herault, and the rest of your colleagues etc, makers of this Proclamatioun that if any of his servands sail comitt idolatrie, speciallie say mess, participat thair with, or tack the defence thairof (quhilks we war laith suld be in hir Grace’s cumpany), in that case this Proclamatioun be not extended to thame in that behalf, not be a saveguard nor girth to thame in that behalf, na mair nor if they comitt slaughter or murther, seeing that ane is meikle mair abhominable and odeous in the sicht of God than is the uther; Bot that it may be lefull to inflict upon thame the peins contained in God’s Word against idolaters, quhairever they may be apprehendit, bot [without] favour*. The “peins contained in God’s Word against idolaters” were of course murder and assassination. We hear a good deal in the history books about the murder of Rizzio, and not infrequently stress is laid, following the venal Buchanan, on his supposed dubious relations with Mary Stewart, but what stress is ever laid on the assassination on the same night in Holyrood of Father Blacke]- ? To the protestants Blacke was a man of “ evill lief”; to the Catholics he was a scholar of some dis¬ tinction. Perhaps the most we can say of him with certainty today is that he must have been a man of great courage, to stay on for the religious comfort of Mary’s household, after the first attempt to assassinate him. Assassination, which had been wholly political, became religious at the bidding of the preachers. The fate which befell the son of Kish for not slaughtering the king of the Amalekites would fall on the protestant lords, if they did not obey the preachers’ behests—the assassina- * Keith: History, Yol. n. p. 42. f Bedford to Cecil, March 13, 1565/6: “ David as I wrote to you in my last letters is slayne, and at the same tyme was also slayne by like order one Frier Blacke, a ranke papiste, and a man of evill lief, whos death was attempted by another before, and he stricken and sore hurte.” (Scottish Papers, Vol. ii. p. 266, Edinburgh, 1900.) The words “by like order,” i.e. that of Morton and Ruthven, are very im¬ portant; they indicate that the assassination scheme was not only to save Darnley’s honour, but was given a religious character. Without pretending to judge Father Blacke, it is needless to remark that the “ moral” justification for the assassination of Catholics was invariably strengthened by adding to the charge of idolatry that of “evill lief.”