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.' But if she enter

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.' 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 hath a shrewd guess at it.'-Randolph to Elizabeth, January 21: Scotch MSS. Rolls House.

Christopher Mundt to Cecil, December 28, 1563: Burghley Papers, HAINES.

the greatest self-admiration. She was giving in Lord Robert the best treasure which she possessed; and Cecil approved the choice to rid his mistress of a companion whose presence about her person was a disgrace to her. But no true friend of the Queen of Scots could advise her to accept a husband whom Elizabeth dared not marry for fear of her subjects' resentment. The first two months of the year passed off with verbal fencing; the Queen of Scots was expecting news from Spain, and Murray and Maitland declined to press upon her the wishes of Elizabeth; while Mary herself began to express an anxiety which derives importance from her later history for the return to Scotland of the Earl of Bothwell.

Bothwell, it will be remembered, had been charged two years before by the Earl of Arran with a design of killing Murray and of carrying off the Queen. He had been imprisoned in Edinburgh Castle, and had escaped, not it was supposed without Mary's connivance. He had attempted to fly to France, but had been driven by foul weather into Berwick, where he was arrested by the English commander. When Randolph informed the Queen of Scots of his capture 'he doubted whether she did give him any thanks for the news;' and a few days after she desired that he should be sent back to her keeping.' Her ministers' suspecting that her mind was more favourable to him than was cause,' and fearing that she wished for him only 'to be reserved in store to be employed in any kind of mischief,' had said that they

1 Letters of Randolph to Cecil and Elizabeth, January and February, 1564: MS. Rolls House.

would rather never see him in Scotland again; and Randolph took the opportunity of giving Cecil his opinion of the Earl of Bothwell.

'One thing I thought not to omit, that I know him as mortal an enemy to our whole nation as any man alive; despiteful above measure, false and untrue as a devil. If he could have had his will, neither the Queen's Majesty had stood in as good terms with the Queen of Scots as she doth, nor minister left alive that should be a travailer between their Majesties for a continuance of the same. He is an enemy to my country, a blasphemous and irreverent speaker both of his own sovereign and the Queen's Majesty my mistress; and over that the godly of this whole nation hath cause to curse him for ever. Your honour will pardon me thus angrily to write; it is much less than I do think or have cause to think.'1

Having an animal of this temper in her hands Elizabeth had not been anxious to let him go. Bothwell was detained for three months at Berwick, and was then sent for to London. The English Government, exasperated at the unexpected support which the Scotch Protestants then were lending to Mary Stuart's claims, trusted by keeping him in close confinement and examining him strictly to extract secrets out of him which could be used to reattach them to England-some proof that the Queen intended as soon as occasion served to turn round against them and against the Reformation.'

1 Randolph to Cecil, January 22, 1563: MS. Rolls House.

2 'La de Inglaterra, deseosa de descubrir alguna cosa que pudiese

Bothwell was too loyal to his mistress to betray her; but the cage door was not opened. More than a year had passed since his arrest, and he was still detained, without right or shadow of right, a prisoner in the Tower. At length, however, Mary Stuart pleaded so loudly for him that Elizabeth could not refuse. In the midst of the marriage discussion the Queen of Scots asked as a favour what if she had pleased she could have demanded as a right. Bothwell was let go, and made his way into France.

This object secured, Mary Stuart addressed herself more seriously to the larger matter. The Emperor, supported by the Cardinal of Lorraine, was still pressing the Archduke Charles upon her, and to make the offer more welcome he proposed to settle on his son an allowance of two million francs a year. But the Archduke Charles was half a Protestant, and was unwelcome to the English Catholics. At the end of February she sent her secretary to Granvelle to explain the reasons which obliged her to refuse the Austrian alliance, and to learn conclusively whether she had anything to hope from Spain.1 If the Prince of Spain failed, her friends in England wished that she should marry Lord Darnley. She now proposed to play with the position, to affect submission, to induce the Queen of England herself, if possible, to propose Darnley to her; and by accepting him with de

causar division entre la de Escocia y | De Quadra to Philip, April 24, Milord James y los demas Protes- 1563: MS. Simancas. tantes, le ha hecho venir aqui, donde 1 Mary Stuart to Granvelle : sera examinado y bien guardado. | LABANOFF, vol. i. p. 200. Este es evangelio que aqui se usa.'