Page:The Queens of England.djvu/477

ANNE OF DENMARK. 431 he had succeeded in the chase, she is reported among other things to have said to him ; and that the buck he had prom- ised to slay was sufficiently noble. Beatrice Ruthven she would still have kept near her person ; and though the king persisted in thrusting her out, their determined and secret correspond- ences became a public scandal. Nor did Anne afterwards scru- ple to remark to a noble of the court, who in one of her quar- rels for the custody of her children had been told to remind her of the powers which the state had vested in the king, that "the king should not find her so easv a orev as the Earl of Gowrie." It is not necessary to the purpose of this narrative that the subsequent events which threw a strong color of truth on the king's statement of his danger, and which undoubtedly re- vealed the existence of a conspiracy in which the Ruthvens had taken part, should here be related. Enough has been said to illustrate the disposition of the queen to her husband, and the circumstances which attended the birth of her second son. She was .as far advanced in her pregnancy when the shock of these incidents occurred, as Mary of Scots when she beheld the death of Rizzio. She left Falkland for the castle of Dumfermline, and there awaited her period in seclu- sion and sorrow, praying "that Heaven would not visit her family with its vengeance for the sufferings of the Ruthvens." On the bodies or bones of the two dead Ruthvens, meanwhile, the king and parliament sat according to reverend custom ; and ultimately sentenced them to ignominious exposure on the 19th of November. It proved to be the day on which the second son of James and Anne was born. He was christened Charles, and afterwards inherited the English throne as the first of that name. His baptism was sudden, for he was hardly ex- pected to outlive his birth ; and it was through an infancy and boyhood of almost hopeless feebleness he struggled to his ill-fated manhood. His complexional weakness, incapable alike of stern resistance or of manly submission, was thus unhappily a part of his most sad inheritance. He was nearly six years old before he could stand or speak ; his limbs being weak and distorted, and his mouth mal-formed. He walked with difficulty always ; the stuttering hesitation in his speech remained with him to the last ; and these were but the types of that wretched weakness of purpose, and obstinacy of irres- olution, for which his subjects brought him to the scaffold. Verily the sins of the parents are visited upon the children.