and that Lethington had leisure to make love.1 Whatever the cause, it is tolerably certain that for some months Mary withdrew, or appeared to withdraw, her confidence from Maitland. She may have resented his abrupt return from his English mission. She may have felt that one who had been so closely associated with Moray was not a counsellor who could be intrusted with State secrets when Moray was in the field. The crafty Italian, for his part, may have thought to secure his own place, and enhance his own consequence, by inciting her against her Minister. And there could be little in common between the wilful and petulant lad who had been raised by Mary's favour to the giddy eminence which turned his foolish head and the acutest statesman of the age. Lethington continued to act as principal Secretary of State; the public duties of the office were duly discharged by him; but there is certainly reason to believe that the close intimacy which

was distorted by a distempered and jaundiced eye. “So," Mr Froude admits, “she may have appeared in Randolph's eyes; and yet the change may have been more in Randolph's power of insight than in the object at which he looked."-Froude,

1 From the 17th of March, the approximate date of the rupture, the reader must be on his guard against a too ready acceptance of Randolph's narrative. Thenceforth he was entirely under the influence of the faction opposed to Mary, and every action of the Queen | viii. 177.

had hitherto been encouraged by the Queen was temporarily interrupted. He had felt that the risks she was running were too great; and he had not hesitated to speak his mind.

The risk was great; but intimate as he had been with the Queen, he hardly knew as yet the stuff of which she was made. The insurrection was nipped in the bud. The disaffected Lords were driven across the Border. Before the end of the autumn Elizabeth was suing for Mary's friendship, and Moray had abjectly besought Rizzio to intercede for him with his sister. It is true that the nation as a whole went with Mary; the country was more prosperous and peaceful than it had been in the memory of living men; and the pretences which had been put forward by "the professors" were too crude and frivolous to mislead. But it was the high spirit of the Queen herself,-her daring courage, her readiness, her resource,-that crushed the rebels. Others might doubt and delay; but Mary, with Darnley at her side, was ready for any adventure. "And albeit the most part waxed weary, yet the Queen's courage increased manlike, so much that she was ever with the foremost." 1

1 Knox, ii. 500.

CHAPTER THREE.

THE CONSPIRACIES OF THE NOBLES.

FROM the time of the Run-about-Raid—as Moray's rising was named-till Mary's faction on Maitland's death was finally stamped out, the history of Scotland is hopelessly monotonous. The persistent efforts of Cecil and Knox to discredit the Queen were ultimately attended with success, though Mary's power of recovery was really surprising. The contest, indeed, was not so unequal as it might seem; for there can be little doubt that, till the very last, the mass of the Scottish people were warmly attached to their Sovereign. Unhappily for her cause the political force of the country was practically concentrated in "Fife and the Lothians." The Fife gentry, the Lothian burghers, were stout soldiers as well as ardent "professors," and a summons from Moray and Morton could bring together a couple of thousand men "weill bodin in feir of war" in eight-and-forty hours. It was

England, however, that turned the scale against Mary. Without the aid of Cecil, Moray and Morton would unquestionably have failed. There is abundance of evidence to show that Knox and his friends were acutely conscious that outside a narrow area they had a scanty following. A wide democratic franchise would probably have arrested the Reformation; and we shall see as we proceed that, had the Scots been left to fight it out among themselves, Mary would have been Queen till she died. Maitland was devoted to his mistress; but knowing that with England actively hostile, her ultimate success was impossible, he strove to disarm its hostility. He would have welcomed the closest union; but when friendliness was no longer to be looked for, he only asked to be let alone.

The historian should as far as possible keep his mind clear of theories; but the historian who recognises in the Run-about-Raid, the Rizzio murder, the Darnley murder, the Bothwell catastrophe, a uniformity of motive-the animosity of Knox and the duplicity of Elizabeth, as well as the indiscretion of Mary-will be able to maintain his thesis by many cogent arguments.

While the virulence of Knox was mainly polemical, Cecil's hostility was serious and statesmanlike. An English Minister was entitled to hold that, while the wave of Conservative

reaction was sweeping over Europe, Mary was a constant danger to England. It is the methods of the English Government that are fairly open to criticism. We hear enough of Mary's bad faith; but Mary's bad faith was pellucid candour when compared with the rank dishonesty of her cousin. Hardly, indeed, in the whole annals of diplomacy can a parallel be found for the unblushing mendacity of Elizabeth.

Maitland was not easily discouraged; but he was ill at ease after the Lennox marriage. He was not misled by Mary's rapid progress and brilliant peremptoriness. She had spoken with the spirit of a Queen; neither France nor England, she had declared, should come between her and her revolted subjects; and he could not but admire the force and independence of her bearing. But it was not diplomacy. He knew that on these lines no solid or permanent success was to be looked for. Mary could not afford the luxury of humiliating her formidable rival; had she been discreet she would have held her tongue, and preserved, while she went her own way, a show of amity with England. But she was a woman-an angry woman-with weak and evil counsellors at her side. It appeared only too probable that Darnley and Rizzio between them would drive Elizabeth, irresolute as she was, into active intervention. Maitland