Page:The Queens of England.djvu/473

ANNE OF DENMARK. 427 with his queen. "The coldness of his temper," says Walter Scott in his History, "prevented his regarding her with uxor- ious fondness ; but he was goodnatured and civil, and the queen was satisfied with the external show of attention." Let it at the same time not be wondered at, if, in these days of her carelessness and youth, Anne sought also other satis- factions. She is said to have found them in the society of more pleasing men than her husband ; as well as in those habits of extravagant expense, of pleasurable indulgence, and personal display, which the records of her life in both kingdoms agree in attributing to her. No specific proof exists that should doom her name to insertion in the Scandalous Chronicle ; but such popular rumors and beliefs of the time as found vent in contemporaneous songs and ballads are sufficiently abundant ; and without suggesting anything ill natured, it seems certain that her preference for the Duke of Lenox in 1593 must have been somewhat strongly marked, to give currency to the scandal at that time received against her, and to justify in some degree the doubts which James, with characteristic gen- erosity and manly self-respect, professed to entertain of the paternity of the son who was born to him in the following year. In the year preceding, it is no less certain, her name had been mixed up with that "bonny Earl of Murray," whose handsome face and melancholy death made him the hero of innumerable songs ; and concerning whom old Balfour relates that the queen, more rashly than wisely, some few days be- fore his death "commendit" him in the king's hearing, with too many epithets, as the properest and most gallant man at court, the king replied, "An if he had been twice as fair, ye might have excepted me." Anne's first child, a son, christened Henry, was born at Stirling, early in 1594. Great were the festivities at his birth and baptism, and very welcome must have been the gorgeous presents that poured in as "God-bairn gifts," for some cups of massive gold that Queen Elizabeth sent were soon "meltet and spendit." Anne's second child, a daughter, christened Elizabeth, was born at Falkland in the autumn of 1596; and the mother fell into sad disfavor with the presbytery for trust- ing her to the charge of a Scottish noble who had married a Roman Catholic wife. "Guid Lord," prayed one of them in the pulpit, "we must pray for our queen for the fashion's sake; but we have no cause, for she will never do us ony