compassion for her.' Throgmorton interceded, argued, protested. Subjects, he said, could not sit in judgment on their sovereign. If they executed her, they would wipe away her infamy,' and 'turn upon themselves the indignation of the world.' But the fierce rhetoric of Knox, with the bloody annals of the chosen people for his text, tore to shreds these feeble considerations. The English minister was told that 'in extraordinary enormities and monstrous doings there had been and must be extraordinary proceedings. New offences did in all States occasion new laws and new punishments.' Surely,' said Maitland to him with bitter truth, the Queen of England has taken an ill way to have us at her devotion. The Earl of Murray found cold relief and small favour at her hand, and now she has sent here to procure our Queen's liberty. I would I had been banished my country for seven years on condition the Queen your mistress had dealt liberally and friendly with us. However the case fall out we shall find little

favour at her hands more than fair words.'1

'I pray you advise,' Throgmorton privately wrote to Cecil, I pray you advise what is best; and so as the Queen being dead either in body or estate, this Prince and country come not in the French devotion to one camp. If her Majesty do not in time win these Lords and recover her crazed credit among them before they have ended these matters without her advice, I see they will take a course little to our advantage.'"

1 Throgmorton to Cecil, July 19: KEITH.

2 Throgmorton to Cecil, July 19: MSS. Scotland, Rolls House.

It seemed as if, overborne by the storm, and by the hopelessness of the situation, the English ambassador now gave up the Queen for lost, and was turning his thoughts and his efforts to preserving the alliance between England and Scotland. Even this would be no easy matter, so exasperated were the Scots at the tone which Elizabeth had assumed to them. 'Il perde le jeu qui laisse la partie,' said Maitland to him in another conversation: to my great grief I speak it, the Queen my Sovereign may not be abydin among us, and this is no time to do her good if she be ordained to have any. Therefore take heed that the Queen your mistress do not lose the goodwill of this company irreparably. I assure you if the Queen's Majesty deal not otherwise than she doth you will lose all, and it shall not lie in the power of your wellwillers to help it no more than it doth in our power now to help the Queen our Sovereign.'1

Mary Stuart's sun was now at the point of setting. The people well knew her nature, and among the passions which were distracting them, the fear, which is the mother of cruelty, was not the least powerful. In their eyes the gentle sufferer of modern sentimentalism was a trapped wild cat, who, if the cage was opened, would fix claw and fang into their throats. On the 21st of July, at a meeting of the council, the milder propositions of Maitland and Morton were definitively set aside. It was resolved to proceed immediately with

1 Throgmorton to Elizabeth, July 21: MSS. Scotland.

the coronation of the Prince. If the Queen consented —as when she first knew the extent of her danger she had promised to do-her life would be spared, and her letters and the other evidences of her 'infamy' would be withheld from public knowledge. If she refused, the truth in all its deformity would be laid before the world. In some form or other she would be brought to trial and as certainly condemned. Under no circumstances should she leave the realm; and 'having gone so far,' 'they would not think to find any safety so long as she was alive.' Mary Stuart herself looked for nothing but extremity.

From a loophole

in the round tower which was her prison in an angle of Lochleven Castle, she called to a child who was allowed to wander on the island, and bade him 'tell her friends to God for her soul-her body was now worth

to
pray
but little.' 1

John Knox, who, in theological language, expressed the conclusions of keen, cool, political sagacity, 'did continue his severe exhortations against her, threatening the great plagues of God to the whole country and nation if she was spared from condign punishment.' Elizabeth's behaviour at this crisis was more credit

1 The Spanish ambassador heard this from Elizabeth:-'La Reyna me habia dicho que despues que la habian puesto en la torre con tanta estrecheza y poca compania, que habia visto por una ventanilla un muchacho que por ser de poca edad las guardas no tenian cuenta, y solia darle algu

2

nos avisos, y le habia dicho que dixese a sus amigos que rogasen á Dios por el alma, que el cuerpo valia poco.'-De Silva al Rey, Julio 26; MSS. Simancas.

2 Throgmorton to Elizabeth, July 21: MSS. Scotland.

able to her heart than to her understanding.

She had

only to remain neutral, and she would be delivered for ever from the rival who had troubled her peace from the hour of her accession, and while she lived would never cease to trouble her. There was no occasion for her to commit herself by upholding insurrection. The Scots were no subjects of hers, and she was not answerable for their conduct. The crime of Mary Stuart's execution-if crime it would be-would be theirs not hers; and if she did not interfere to prevent or revenge it, the ultimate effect would inevitably be to draw the bands closer between Scotland and England. Yet she forgot her obvious interest; and her affection and her artifices vanished in resentment and pity. Her indignation as a sovereign was even less than her sorrow for a suffering sister. She did not hide from herself the Queen of Scots' faults-but she did not believe in the extent of them; they seemed as nothing beside the magnitude of her calamities, and she was prepared to encounter the worst political consequences rather than stand by and see her sacrificed.

'You may assure those Lords,' she wrote in answer to Throgmorton's last letters, that we do detest and abhor the murder committed upon our cousin the King; but the head cannot be subject to the foot, and we cannot recognize in them any right to call their Sovereign to account. You shall plainly tell them that if they determine anything to the deprivation of the Queen their Sovereign, we are well assured of our own determination that we will make ourselves a plain party against

1

them to the revenge of their Sovereign for all posterity.
As to the French alliance, it will grieve them in the
end as much as it will injure England; and yet were it
otherwise, we cannot, nor will for our particular profit
at this time, be induced to consent to that which we
cannot in conscience like or allow, but shall remit the
consequences thereof to the goodwill and favour of
Almighty God, at whose hands we have found no lack
in the doing or omitting anything whereunto our con-
science has induced us.' So she wrote to Scotland;
and the Spanish ambassador, who was suspicious enough
generally of her motives, was satisfied that she meant
what she said. If the Lords persevered, she told him,
she would call on France to join with her in punishing
them; if France refused, and gave them countenance,
· she would invite Philip to hold France in check, while
she herself sent an English army to Scotland to set the
Queen at liberty and replace her on her throne.2 Yet
she felt that her menaces might miss their effect, nay,
perhaps might produce, if she attempted to act upon
them, the very thing which she most dreaded. She
might revenge Mary Stuart's death, but she would not
prevent the Lords from killing her if she provoked
them to extremities. And again, when it came to the
point, the sending troops to Scotland on such an errand,
against the opinion of half her council, might involve
an English revolution. Violently as she was affected,
she could not hide the truth from herself, and therefore

1 Elizabeth to Throgmorton, July 27: MSS. Scotland.
2 Elizabeth to de Silva, July 29: MSS. Simancas.