QUEEN RE-TRIED

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 1, Issue 64, 6 November 1931, Page 4

QUEEN RE-TRIED

welshman examines -history of mary, queen of ' scots; "NOT GUILTY ON ALL COUNTS." "Not guilty on all counts" is the judgment of Sir Edward Parry, the bounty court judge, who has re-tri"ed Mary Queen of Scots." Sir Edward sets out his reasons for believing Mary Queen pf Scots' innocent of the crimes cfiarged ' against her in a hook called "The Persecution of Mary Stewart," which has repently been pubiished. Here is Sir Edward's or his publisher's own deseription of the hook printed on* the dust cover:— "A highly 'diverting analysis of the evidence garnered from State papers that Mary Queen of Scots was the victim of a criminal conspiraey effected by niurder, fraud, falsehood, forgery, and duress,' engineered by a set of gangsters, of ' whom 'Tfie Bastard' Moray, Morton, and Maitland were the cfiief, with Johfi Knox as cheqrful accessory." a Gafigster. Froude, the historian, called Moray "Stainless Moray." Sir Edward writes him down as one of the most unscrupulous of the "gangsters," guilty bf treaehery and other crimes, who engineered the judicial murder of George Gordon, Earl of Huntly, cfiief of the Gordon Clan, in order to get some of his estatesSir Edward Parry, writing as a Protestant, holds the view that Mary was a victim, partly of Protestant hatred and partly of sheer self-seek-ing villainy on the part of leading Scottish noblemen. Possible Peril. "It is generally admitted," he says, "that she was marked out for destruction in the interests of religion and statecraft by William Cecil, Queen ]Elizabeth's minister." Mary was a Roman Catholic. Therefore she wa3 a possible peril to Protestantism in England. If Elizabeth died, and Mary became Queen of England it was feared that she would restore Roman Catholicism. Cecil made sure that this should not happen by haying her head struck off with an axe. "Mary," says Sir Edward, "was from early life the victim of a criminal conspiraey against her sovereign power engineered from purely . political motives by William Cecil." "The story of Mary," he adds, f'resolves itself into the history of the criminal conspiraey of three ;mqn — James Stewart, Earl of Moray, her bastard brother; William Maitland, laird of Lethington, Secretary of Scotland; and James Douglas, Earl pf Morton, the son of her father's enemy. "All these men acted under tbe direction of William Cecil, and were not only traitors to their country, but were actuated by selfish motives and the desire of personal gain. "We have been too apt to regard the destruetion of Mary as purely a political affair. If we viewed it from a Protestant point of view we rejoiced, if from a Catholic standpoint we mourned. "But though Cecil paid the piper and called the tune, the criminals who destroyed Mary were the three men I have named and their accomplices, and having gained their end by murder and fraud they then, by tfie use of forgery and otfier villainies, sought to blacken her name by charging her with crimes which they themselves had planned and carried out." Sir Edward gives Mary's enemies a bad time oi it. It is a lively book. What Scots Calvinists will tfijnk of a Welsh Protestant championing a Roman Cathoiic Queen Mary is diflicult to guess.