left the University with the first sense of pleasure which she had experienced in the ecclesiastical administration. Alas! for the imperfection of human things. The rashness of a few boys marred all.

Elizabeth had been entreated to remain one more evening to witness a play which the students had got up among themselves for her amusement. Having a long journey before her the following day, and desiring to sleep ten miles out of Cambridge to relieve the distance, she had been unwillingly obliged to decline.

The students, too enamoured of their performance to lose the chance of exhibiting it, pursued the Queen to her resting-place. She was tired, but she would not discourage so much devotion, and the play commenced.

The actors entered on the stage in the dress of the imprisoned Catholic bishops. Each of them was distinguished by some symbol suggestive of the persecution. Bonner particularly carried a lamb in his arms at which he rolled his eyes and gnashed his teeth. A dog brought up the rear with the host in his mouth. Elizabeth could have better pardoned the worst insolence to herself: she rose, and with a few indignant words left the room; the lights were extinguished, and the discomfited players had to find their way out of the house in the dark, and to blunder back to Cambridge.1

It was but a light matter, yet it served to irritate

1 De Silva to the Duchess of enough is not mentioned by Nicolls, Parma, August 19: MS. Simancas. | who details with great minuteness De Silva was not present, but de- the sunny side of the visit to the scribed the scene as he heard it from University: Progresses of Elizabeth, an eye-witness. The story naturally | 1564.

Elizabeth's sensitiveness. It exposed the dead men's bones which lay beneath the whited surface of University good order; and she went back to London with a heart as heavy as she carried away from it. The vast majority of serious Englishmen, if they did not believe in transubstantiation, yet felt for the sacrament a kind of mysterious awe. Systematic irreverence had intruded into the churches; carelessness and irreligion had formed an unnatural alliance with Puritanism; and in many places the altars were bare boards resting on tressels in the middle of the nave. The communicants knelt, stood, or sat as they pleased; the chalice was the first cup which came to hand; and the clergymen wore surplice, coat, black gown, or their ordinary dress, as they were Lutherans, Calvinists, Puritans, or nothing at all.1

The parish churches themselves, those amazing monuments of early piety, built by men who themselves lived in clay hovels while they lavished their taste, their labour, and their wealth on 'the house of God,' were still dissolving into ruin. The roofs were breaking into holes; the stained whitewash was crumbling off the damp walls, revealing the half-effaced remains of the frescoed stories of the saints; the painted glass was gone from the windows; the wind and the rain swept through the dreary aisles; while in the churchyards swine rooted up the graves.

And now once more had come a reaction like that

1 Varieties used in the administration of the service, 1564: Lansdowne MSS.

which had welcomed Mary Tudor. In quiet English homes there arose a passionate craving to be rid of all these things; to breathe again the old air of reverence and piety; and Calvinism and profanity were working hand in hand like twin spirits of evil, making a road for another Mary to reach the English throne.

The progress being over, Elizabeth returned to the weary problems which were thickening round her more and more hopelessly. From France came intelligence that 'a far other marriage was meant for the Queen of Scots than the Lord Robert; with practices to reduce the realm to the old Pope, and to break the love between England and Scotland.'1 The Earl of Lennox had been allowed to cross the Border at last as a less evil than the detaining him by violence; but Cecil wrote from Cambridge to Maitland, 'making no obscure demonstration of foul weather.' Parliament was expected to meet again in October, and with Parliament would come the succession question, the Queen's marriage question, and their thousand collateral vexations. Either in real uncertainty, or that she might have something with which to pacify her subjects, Elizabeth was again making advances towards the eternal Archduke. His old father Ferdinand, who had refused to be trifled with a second time, was dead. Ferdinand had left the world and its troubles on the 25th of July; but before his death, in a conversation with the Duke of Wurtemburg, he had shown himself

1 Sir T. Smith to Cecil (cipher), Sept. 1, 1564: French MSS. Rolls House.

less implacable. An opportunity was offered for reopening the suit, and Cecil, by the Queen's order, sent a message through Mundt the English agent in Germany, to the new Emperor Maximilian, that although for his many excellent qualities the Queen would gladly have married Lord Robert Dudley, yet, finding it impossible, she had brought herself to regard Lord Robert as a brother, and for a husband was thinking of the Archduke. On the 12th of September a resolu

September. tion of council was taken to send an embassy to Vienna, ostensibly to congratulate Maximilian on his accession-in reality to feel the way towards 'the prince with the large head.'' A few days later, during an evening stroll through St James's Park, Elizabeth herself told the secret to de Silva, not as anything certain, but as a point towards which her thoughts were turning.3

The Queen of Scots meantime, to whom every uttered thought of Elizabeth was known, began to repent of her precipitate explosion of temper. She had obtained what she immediately desired in the return of

' Cecil to Mundt, September 8, | Archduke. This may be very 1564: Jussu Reginæ. Burghley strange, and therefore pray you Papers, HAINES, vol. i. keep it very close.'-Cecil to Sir T. Smith, September 12, 1564: WRIGHT, vol. i.

2. Some one is to be sent with condolences on the death of the Emperor-Sir H. Sidney or Sir N. Throgmorton or I or Lord Robert; which it shall be I think nobody yet knoweth. But to tell you the truth, there is more meant than condolence or congratulation. It may be an intention for the marriage with the

3 De Silva to the Duchess of Parma, Sept. 23: MS. Simancas. Elizabeth said that the Court fool advised her to have nothing to do with Germans, who were a poor heavy-headed set.

Lennox; her chief anxiety was now to prevent the Austrian marriage, and to induce Philip, though she could not marry his son, to continue to watch over her interests. In September the Spanish ambassador in Paris wrote that his steps were haunted by Beton, Mary's minister; he had met the advances made to him with coldness and indifference; but Beton had pressed upon him with unwearied assiduity;1 desiring, as it appeared afterwards, to learn what Philip would do for his mistress in the event of her marriage with Darnley.

At the same time it was necessary to soothe Elizabeth, lest she might withdraw her protection, and allow Parliament to settle the succession unfavourably to the Scottish claims. Maitland therefore having forfeited Cecil's confidence, the Queen of Scots obtained the services of a man who, without the faintest pretensions to statesmanship, was as skilled an intriguer as Europe possessed. Sixteen years had passed since Sir James Melville had gone as a boy with Monluc, Bishop of Valence, to the Irish Castle, where Monluc by his light ways was brought to shame. From the Bishop, Melville had passed to the Constable Montmorency. From Montmorency he had gone to the Elector Palatine, and had worked himself into a backstairs intimacy with European courts and princes. Mary Stuart herself had probably known him in France; and in the spring of 1564 she wrote to request him to return to

1 Don F. de Alava to Philip II., September 20, 1564: TEULET, vol.

VOL. VII.

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