wrote, 'and answered bravely when I spoke to him. He was grieved to end his services at a moment when he hoped to be of use. His last words were, 'I can do

no more.''1

So died a good servant of a falling cause-faithful even unto death. The Bishop of Aquila had the character of his race and his profession. In the arts of diplomatic treachery he was an accomplished master. Untiring and unscrupulous, skilled in the subtle windings of the heart, he could stimulate the conscience into heroism, or play with its weakness till he had tempted it to perdition-as suited best with the ends which he pursued with the steadiness of a sleuthhound. He would converse in seeming frankness from day to day with those whom with his whole soul he was labouring to blast into ruin. Yet he was brave as a Spaniard should be-brave with the double courage of an Ignatius and a Cortez. He was perfectly free from selfish and ignoble desires, and he was loyal with an absolute fealty to his creed and his King. It was his misfortune that he served in a cause which the world now knows to have been a wrong cause; but qualifications in themselves neither better nor worse than those of Alvarez de Quadra won for Walsingham a place in the brightest circle of English statesmen.

How it might have fared with Mary Stuart and Don Carlos had de Quadra lived to complete the work for which he was so anxious, the curious in such things

1'No puedo mas.'-Memoir of Luis de Paz: MS. Simancas.

may speculate. The Prince of Spain had the intellect and the ferocity of a wolf; the Queen of Scots had a capacity for relieving herself of disagreeable or inconvenient companions. Yet they would scarcely perhaps have made their lots more wretched than they actually were we wonder at the caprices of fortune; we complain of the unequal fates which are distributed among mankind-but Providence is more even-handed than it seems; Mary Stuart might have been innocent and happy as a fishwife at Leith; the Prince of Spain might have arrived at some half-brutal usefulness. breaking clods on the brown plains of Castile.

Philip's orders had been so well observed that no hints had transpired of what was intended. The Archduke Charles was the supposed candidate in the Spanish and Imperial interest. The Cardinal of Lorraine had arranged the marriage with Ferdinand. It had been talked of in the Council of Trent. It had been argued upon in a Parliament which met at Edinburgh in the preceding June. The name of the Prince of Spain was mentioned from time to time, but rather as a vague surmise; and the last thought which entered the mind of any one was that Philip would seriously substitute his son for his cousin. The Austrian match was the object of Elizabeth's fears; and what she had said to Maitland she directed Randolph to submit formally to the Queen of Scots herself.

To settle the succession in some way, and if possible to settle it in Mary Stuart's favour, she said, was her most ardent desire. She had combated hitherto the wish

of Parliament to disinherit Mary. On public grounds she was anxious for the union of the realms-and privately she considered the Queen of Scots' claim to be the best. But the Queen of Scots, if she was to succeed to the English crown, must make up her mind to accept the Reformation, if not as her own conviction yet as the public law of the realm. If she chose to marry a Catholic prince, if she chose to make herself the representative of a Catholic party and policy, Parliament would unquestionably renew the attempt to bar her title; the country would not submit again to the Pope and the Inquisition, and Elizabeth would herself be unable to take her part further.1

'She did not believe,' Elizabeth continued-and the clause is in her own handwriting; 'she did not believe that the Queen of Scots meant anything against herself;' and 'she might perhaps be borne in hand that some number in England might be brought to allow' her general schemes. But she warned her sister not to be 'abused' by

1 To consider her own particu- | mind-except our authority or the lar which, in the way of friendship towards her, we do most weigh, we do assure her by some present proof that we have in our realm, upon some small report made thereof (of the Austrian marriage), we well perceive that, if we do not meddle and interpose her authority, it will not be long before it shall appear that as much as wit can imagine will be used to impeach her intention for the furtherance of her title. And considering the humours of such as

fear of us shall stay them-their own particular, what can our sister think more hurtful to her than by this manner of proceeding by her friends that be not of her natural nation nor of her kingdom-first, to endanger the amity betwixt us; secondly, to dissolve the concord between the two nations; thirdly, to disappoint her of more than ever they shall recover.'-Elizabeth to Randolph, August 20: Cotton. MSS., CALIG.B. 10.

foolishness. 'If she tried that way she would come to no good.' For both their own sakes and for the sake of both the countries she implored the Queen of Scots to avoid a course which might become a perpetual reproof to both of them through all posterity.' If she married the Archduke, England must and would accept that act as a declaration of hostility. If she would take advice which she might assure herself was well meant towards her, she would marry some one to whom no suspicion could be attached. Her title should then be examined, and should receive the fullest support which she herself could give it her own natural inclination being most given to further her sister's interest and to impeach what should seem to the contrary.'

As to the person-an English nobleman would best please the English nation; and measuring the attractiveness of the offer by her self-sacrifice in making it, Elizabeth said that she could be content to give her one whom perchance it could be hardly thought she could agree unto.' But she would not bind the Queen of Scots to this choice or to that; England required only that she should not marry any one of such greatness as suspicion might be gathered that he might intend trouble to the realm;' she might take a husband where she pleased 'so as he was not sought to change the policy' of the English nation, which it was certain 'that they would in no wise bear.'1

What right, it has been asked impatiently, had Eliza

1 Instructions to Randolph, August 20: Cotton. MSS., CALIG. B. 10. Matter committed to Thomas Randolph, August, 1563: Scotch MSS. Rolls House.

beth to interfere with Mary Stuart's marriage? As much right, it may be answered, as Mary Stuart had to pretend to the succession of the English crown. Those who aspire to sovereignty must accept the conditions under which sovereignty can be held. The necessities of State which at the present day bar the succession of a Roman Catholic, were stronger a thousandfold when a Catholic sovereign might bring back with her the fires of Smithfield and the fault of Elizabeth was rather in forbearing to insist upon a change of creed than in being willing to accept a successor with a less effective security

for her harmlessness.

Nor was it Elizabeth only who had a right to be alarmed. Murray, Argyle, and Maitland had been led astray by vanity and idle ambition. In their eagerness to give a sovereign to England they had half lost their interest in the Reformation, or had closed their eyes to the dangers to which they exposed it. But there were those in Scotland to whom the truth of God was more than crowns and kingdoms-to whom the revolution which had passed over their country was too precious to be fooled away by courtiers' weakness or a woman's cunning. Knox knew as well as Mary knew the fruit which would follow if she married a Catholic prince. He had laboured to save Murray from the spell which his sister had flung over him; but Murray had only been angry at his interference, and 'they spake not together familiarly for more than a year and a half.'1

1 KNOX's History of the Reformation.