and that the lands of the suppressed abbeys had been bestowed for pious uses.' He wished that as happy a change could be worked in France; and marvelled that the deposed bishops should have been 'so stiff' in refusing to follow the Prince's religion;' he noted and delighted in English mediocrity; charging the Genevans and the Scots with going too far in extremities.' The Archbishop told him that 'there were priests and bishops in England both married and unmarried;' 'he did not disallow thereof, and was contented to hear evil of the Pope.'

The ambassadors proceeded to London, leaving behind them an agreeable impression of themselves, and carrying with them a sunny memory of a pleasant English summer home, with its woods and gardens and cawing rooks and cheery social life; the French pages had been so well schooled in their behaviour that when they were gone the Archbishop was surprised to find 'he could not charge them with purloining the worth of one silver spoon.'1 On both sides of the Channel, in London and Paris, the peace once made there was the warmest endeavour to obliterate painful recollections; the moderate party was in power at the Court of Catherine, and with it the liberal anti-Spanish foreign policy; the interests of France and England were identical on the great political questions of the day; and Elizabeth was fortunate in having a treaty forced upon her which obliged Philip to look with less favour on the Queen of

1 Parker to Cecil, June 3: Domestic MSS., Elizabeth, vol. xxxiii.

Scots-which compelled the Spanish ministers to postpone their resentment against English piracies, and drove them rather to dread their own inability to retain their Low Countries than to seek opportunities for interference abroad.

The King of Spain had intended to send no more ambassadors to England till Mary Stuart was on the throne on the Peace of Troyes he changed his mind, and resumed or affected to resume his friendly relations with Elizabeth. Guzman de Silva received his commission as de Quadra's successor; and once more in the old language Luis de Paz, the Spanish agent in London, reported to Granvelle 'the affliction and discontent of the English Catholics, who had been encouraged to hope that their trials were at an end, who had rested their entire hopes on Philip, and now knew not where to turn.'1

Mary Stuart, as her hopes of the Prince of Spain grew fainter, was pausing over the answer which she should make to Elizabeth's last proposals. She had been in communication throughout the winter with the Netherlands, and was perhaps aware in some degree of the difficulties created by the Prince's character. She had decisively refused the Archduke of Austria whom Philip wished her to take in his son's stead; and although the Spanish Court, waiting probably for some

1 'Los Catolicos del Reyno estan | veen semblante ninguno para prinmuy afligidos con gran descontento, cipio de remediar tanta desventura.' viendo que todas las esperanças que-Luis Romano to Granvelle, 1564 tenian eran en su Magd., y que no MS. Simancas.

favourable change in Don Carlos, had not yet determined that the marriage must be given up, the Queen of Scots knew enough to prevent her from feeling sanguine of obtaining him. It became necessary for her to consider whether she could make anything out of the English overtures.

Elizabeth's attitude towards her was in the main honourable and statesmanlike. The name of a successor, as she said herself, was like the tolling of her death-bell. In her sister's lifetime she had experienced how an heirpresumptive with an inalienable right became inevitably a rallying point of disaffection. She did not trust the Queen of Scots, and if she allowed her pretensions to be sanctioned by Act of Parliament she anticipated neglect, opposition—perhaps worse. But of assassination she could scarcely be in greater danger than she was already; and if she could induce Mary to meet her half way in some moderate policy, and if the Queen of Scots, instead of marrying a Catholic prince and allying herself with the revolutionary Ultramontanes, would accept an English nobleman of whose loyalty to herself she could feel assured, she was ready to sacrifice her personal unwillingness to what she believed to be the interest of her people. There could then be no danger that England would be sacrificed to the Papacy. Some tolerant creed could be established which Catholics might accept without offence to their consciences, and Protestants could live under without persecution; while the resolution of the two factions into neutrality, if not into friendship, the union of the crowns, and the confidence which would

arise from a secured succession, were objects with which private inclination could not be allowed to interfere. Elizabeth had made the offer in good faith, with a sincere hope that it would be accepted, and with a fair ground of confidence that with the conditions which she had named the objections of the House of Commons to the Queen of Scots would be overcome.

Even in the person whom in her heart she desired Mary to marry, Elizabeth was giving an evidence of the honesty of her intentions. Lord Robert Dudley was perhaps the most worthless of her subjects; but in the loving eyes of his mistress he was the knight sans peur et· sans reproche; and she took a melancholy pride in offering her sister her choicest jewel, and in raising Dudley, though she could not marry him herself, to the reversion of the English throne.

She had not indeed named Lord Robert formally in Randolph's commission. She had spoken of him to Maitland, but she had spoken also of the Earl of Warwick; and she perhaps retained some hope that if Mary would be contented with the elder brother she might still keep her favourite for herself.

1 Randolph himself seems to have thought something of the kind. On the 21st of January, before the peace with France, he wrote to Elizabeth:

"The French have heard through M. de Foix of your Majesty's intent, and the Cardinal of Guise is set to hinder it. He writes to the Queen of Scots to beware of your Majesty, that you mean nothing less than

But if she enter

good faith with her; and that it proceedeth of finesse to make her believe that you intend her good, or that her honour shall be any way advanced by marriage of anything so base as either my Lord Robert or Earl of Warwick, of which two your Majesty is determined to take the one and to give her the other. Though this whole matter be not

tained any such thought she soon abandoned it; her self-abnegation was to be complete; and in ignorance of the objections of Mary Stuart to the Archduke Charles she had even allowed Cecil at the close of 1563 to reopen negotiations with the Emperor for the transfer of his son to herself. Ferdinand however had returned a

cold answer. He had been trifled with once already. Elizabeth had played with him, he said, for her own purposes with no real intention of marriage; and neither he nor the Archduke should be made ridiculous a second time.1 Elizabeth accepted the refusal and redoubled her advances to Mary Stuart; relinquishing, if she had ever really entertained, the thought of a simultaneous marriage for herself until she had seen how her scheme for Dudley would end.

She was so capable of falsehood that her own expressions would have been an insufficient guarantee for her sincerity; yet it will be seen beyond a doubt that those around her her ministers, her instruments, Cecil, Randolph, the foreign ambassadors-all believed that she really desired to give Dudley to Mary Stuart and to settle the Scottish difficulty by it. In this, as in everything else, she was irresolute and changeable; but neither her conduct nor her words can be reconciled with the hypothesis of intentional duplicity; and the weak point of the project was that which she herself regarded with

true, your Majesty seeth that he

1 Christopher Mundt to Cecil, hath a shrewd guess at it.'—Ran- | December 28, 1563: Burghley Padolph to Elizabeth, January 21: pers, HAINES.

Scotch MSS. Rolls House.