persevere in a course so discreditable and so dangerous. So easy it would be for her to strike Mary Stuart down, if she had half the promptitude of Mary herself, that it seemed impossible to him that she would neglect the opportunity. As yet the party of the Queen of Scots had no solid elements of strength: Rizzio was the chief councillor; the Earl of Athol was the General-' a youth without judgment or experience, whose only merit was a frenzied Catholicism.'1 Catherine de Medici, who thought like de Foix, and desired to prevent Elizabeth from becoming absolute mistress of Scotland, sent over Castelnau de Mauvissière to mediate between the Queen of Scots and her subjects. But Mary Stuart understood better the temperament with which she had to deal; she knew that Elizabeth was thoroughly cowed and frightened, and that she had nothing to fear. She sent a message to Castelnau that she would allow neither France nor England to interfere between her and her revolted subjects; while her rival could only betake herself to her single resource in difficulty, and propose again to marry the Archduke.

There was something piteous as well as laughable in the perpetual recurrence of this forlorn subject. She was not wholly insincere. When pushed to extremity she believed that marriage might become her duty, and she imagined that she was willing to encounter it. The game was a dangerous one, for she had almost exhausted the patience of her subjects, who might compel her at

'De Foix to the Queen-mother, September 18: TEULET, vol. ii.

last to fulfil in earnest the hopes which she had excited. It would have come to an end long before had it not been that Philip, who was irresolute as herself, allowed his wishes for the marriage to delude him into believing Elizabeth serious whenever it was mentioned; while the desirableness of the Austrian alliance in itself, and the extreme anxiety for it among English statesmen, kept alive the jealous fears of the French. To de Silva the Queen appeared a vain, capricious woman, whose pleasure it was to see the princes of Europe successively at her feet; yet he too had expected that if her Scotch policy failed she would take the Archduke in earnest at last, and thus the value of the move was not yet wholly played away, and she could use his name once more to hold her friends and her party together.

As a matter of course, when the Archduke was talked of on one side the French had their candidate on the other; and Charles the Ninth being no longer in question, Paul de Foix threw his interest on the side of Leicester. While the Queen of Scots was displaying the spirit of a sovereign and accomplishing with uncommon skill the first steps of the Catholic revolution, Elizabeth was amusing herself once more with balancing the attractions of her lover and the Austrian prince: not indeed that she any longer wished to marry even the favoured Lord Robert; 'If she ever took a husband,' she said to de Foix, 'she would give him neither a share of her power nor the keys of her treasury; her subjects wanted a successor, and she would use the husband's services to obtain such a thing; but under any aspect the thought

of marriage was odious to her, and when she tried to make up her mind it was as if her heart was being torn out of her body.'1

Yet Leicester was fooled by the French into a brief hope of success. He tried to interest Cecil in his cause by assuring him that the Queen would marry no one but himself; and Cecil mocked him with a courteous answer, and left on record, in a second table of contrasts with the Archduke, his own intense conviction of Leicester's worthlessness.2

A ludicrous Court calamity increased the troubles of the Queen and with them her unwillingness to declare war against the Queen of Scots. The three daughters of the Duke of Suffolk had been placed one after the other in the line of succession by Henry the Eighth. Lady Jane was dead; Lady Catherine was dying from the effects of her long and cruel imprisonment; the third, Lady Mary, had remained at the Court, and one evening in August when the Scotch plot was thickening got herself married in the palace itself by an old fat priest in a short gown' to Thomas Keys the sergeant porter.3 Lady Mary was the smallest woman in the Court,' Keys

1 She said she was resolved'Ne departir jamais à celuy qui seroit son mary ni de ses biens ni forces ni moyens, ne voulant s'ayder de luy que pour laisser successeur d'elle à ses subjectz; mais quand elle pensoit de ce faire, il luy sembloit que l'on luy arrachast le cœur du ventre; tant elle en estoit de son naturel eslonguée.'-Paul de Foix

to the Queen-mother, August 22: TEULET, vol. ii.

2 De Matrimonio Reginæ Angliæ.' Reasons against the Earl of Leicester: Burghley Papers, vol. i.

3 This marriage was before mentioned by me as having taken place at the same time with that of Lady Jane Grey and Guilford Dudley. I was misled by Dugdale.

was the largest man, and that seemed to have been the chief bond of connection between them. The lady was perhaps anxious for a husband and knew that Elizabeth would keep her single till she died. Discovery followed before worse had happened than the ceremony. The burly sergeant porter was sent to the Fleet to grow thin on discipline and low diet; the Lady Mary went into private confinement; and both were only too eager to release each other and escape from punishment. The bishops were set to work by the council to undo the knot and found it no easy matter.1 Elizabeth had a fresh excuse for her detestation of the Greys and a fresh topic on which to descant in illustration of the iniquities of matrimony.

De Mauvissière meanwhile, undeterred by the Queen of Scots' message, had made his way to Edinburgh, but only to find that he had come upon a useless errand. The Earl of Bothwell had rejoined Mary Stuart in the middle of her triumph, ‘a man,' said Randolph, 'fit to be made a minister of any shameful act against God or man;'2 and Bothwell's hatred for Murray drew him closer than ever to Mary's side. In the full confidence of success and surrounded by persons whose whole aim was to feed the fire of her passion, she would listen to nothing which de Mauvissière could urge. In vain he warned her of the experience of France; in vain he re

2

1 Privy Council Register, Au- | Rolls House. Fishop of London to gust, 1565. Proceedings of council Cecil: MS. Ibid. on the marriage of the Lady Mary Grey: MS. Domestic, Elizabeth,

2

20:

Randolph to Cecil, September cotch MSS. Rolls House.

minded her of the siege of Leith and of the madness of risking a quarrel with her powerful and dangerous neighbour. 'Scotland,' she said, 'should not be turned into a republic; she would sooner lose her crown than wear it at the pleasure of her revolted subjects and the Queen of England; instead of advising her to make peace, Catherine de Medici should have stepped forward to her side and assisted her to avenge the joint wrongs of France and Scotland; if France failed her in her extremity, grieved as she might be to leave her old allies, she would take the hand which was offered her by Spain; she would submit to England—never.'1

From the moment when she had first taken the field, she had given her enemies no rest; she had swept Fife, the hotbed of the Protestants, as far as St Andrew's. The old Laird of Lundy-he who had called the mass the mickle deil—was flung into prison and his friends and his family had to fly for their lives. At the end of September she was pausing to recover breath at Holyrood before she made her last swoop upon the party at Dumfries. The Edinburgh merchants found her money, her soldiers with lighted matchlocks assisting them to unloose their purse-strings. With October she would march to the Border, and in her unguarded moments she boasted that she would take her next rest at the gates of London.o

It was now necessary for Elizabeth to come to some

1 Castelnau de Mauvissière to Paul de Foix, September: TEULET, vol. ii.

2 Paul de Foix to the King of France, September 29: TEULET, vol. ii.