of England's debt, neither by obtaining of any favour at your hand by her intervention, nor yet for any support in time of their banishment. Allow them their charges out of their own lands, and the greater part even of the English bishops will declare for you.'1

Never had Elizabeth been in greater danger; and the worst features of the peril were the creations of her own untruths. Without a fuller knowledge of the strength and temper of the English Catholics than the surviving evidence reveals, her conduct cannot be judged with entire fairness. Undoubtedly the utmost caution was necessary to avoid giving the Spaniards a pretext for interference; and it is due to her to admit that her own unwillingness to act openly on the side of the northern lords had been endorsed by that of Cecil. Yet she had been driven into a position from which, had Mary Stuart understood how to use her advantage, she would scarcely have been able to extricate herself. If the Queen of Scots had relied on her own judgment she would probably have accepted the advice of Melville and Throgmorton and her other English friends; she would have declared an amnesty, and would have rallied all parties except the extreme Calvinistic fanatics to her side. But such a policy would have involved an indefinite prolongation of the yoke which she had already found intolerable; she must have concealed or suspended her intention of making a religious revolution, and she must have continued to act with a forbearance towards the Pro

1 Letter from Sir N. Throgmorton to the Queen of Scots: Printed by Sir James Melville; abridged.

testants which her passionate temper found more and more difficulty in maintaining. The counsels of David Rizzio were worth an army to English liberty: she had surrendered herself entirely and exclusively to Rizzio's guidance; and when Melville attempted to move the dark and dangerous Italian 'he evidenced a disdain of danger and despised counsel.' Rizzio, 'the minion of the Pope,' preferred the more direct and open road of violence and conquest, which he believed, in his ignorance of the people amongst whom he was working, to be equally safe for his mistress, while it promised better for other objects which he had in view for himself. Already every petition addressed to the Crown was passing through his hands, and he was growing rich upon the presents which were heaped upon him to buy his favour. He desired rank as well as wealth; and to be made a peer of Scotland, the reward which Mary Stuart intended for him, he required a share of the lands of the banished earls, the estates of Murray most especially, as food at once for his ambition and revenge.

It is time to return to his friend and emissary, Francis Yaxlee, who went at the end of August on a mission to Philip.

The conditions under which the King of Spain had promised his assistance seemed to have arrived. Mary Stuart had married Lord Darnley as he advised; her subjects had risen in insurrection with the secret support of the Queen of England, who was threatening to send an army into Scotland for their support. She had run into danger in the interests of the Church of Rome, and

she looked with confidence to the most Catholic King to declare for her cause. Yaxlee found Philip at the beginning of October at Segovia. Elizabeth's diplomacy had been so far successful that the Emperor Maximilian was again dreaming that she would marry the Archduke Charles. He was anxious to provide his brother with a throne: he had been wounded by Mary Stuart's refusal to accept the Archduke, when his marriage with her had been arranged between himself and the Cardinal of Lorraine, with the sanction of the Council of Trent. Elizabeth had played upon his humour, and he had reverted to the scheme which had at one time been so anxiously entertained by his father and Philip.1 The King of Spain's own hopes of any such solution of the English difficulty were waning; yet he was unwilling to offend the Emperor, and he would not throw away a card which might after all be the successful one. It was perhaps the suspicion that Philip was not acting towards her with entire sincerity which urged Mary Stuart into precipitancy; or she might have wished to force Elizabeth into a position in which it would be impossible for any Catholic sovereign to countenance her. But Elizabeth, on the one hand, had been too cautious, and Philip on the other, though wishing well to the Queen of Scots and evidently

1 A noche recibi una carta de Chantonnay del 27 del pasado en que me escribe que habiendo dicho al Emperador de parte de V. M. que si era necesario que, para que se hiciese el negocio del matrimonio del Archiduque con la de Inglaterra, V. M. escribiese á la Reyna de su

mano sobrello, y que el Emperador le habia respondido que no estaba desahuciado deste negocio, y le diria lo que sobrello habia de escribir á V. M. El deseo es grande que [el Emperador] tiene á este negocio.'— De Silva to Philip, November 10. MS. Simancas,

believing that she was the only hope of the Catholic cause in England, yet could not overcome his constitutional slowness. He was willing to help her, yet only as Elizabeth had helped the Scotch insurgents, with a secrecy which would enable him to disavow what he had done. He was afraid of the Huguenot tendencies of the French Government; he was afraid that if he took an open part he might set a match to the mine which was about to explode in the Low Countries: he therefore repeated the cautions which Alva had given Beton at Bayonne; he gave Yaxlee a note for twenty thousand crowns which would be paid him by Granvelle at Brussels; he promised if Elizabeth declared war to contribute such further sums as should be necessary; but he would do it only under shelter of the name of the Pope and through the Pope's hands; in his own person he would take no part in the quarrel; the time, he said, was not ripe. He insisted especially that Mary Stuart should betray no intention of claiming the English throne during Elizabeth's lifetime. It would exasperate the Queen of England into decisive action, and justify her to some extent in an immediate appeal to arms. As little would he encourage the Queen of Scots to seek assistance from her uncles in France. She might accept money wherever she could get it, but to admit a French army into Scotland would create a greater danger than it would remove."

1 'Porque esto la escandalizaria | y en alguna manera seria justificar mucho y daria gran ocasion para su causa.'-Answer to Yaxlee: MIGejecutar contra ellos lo que pudiese, NET vol. ii. p. 200. 2 Ibid.

With this answer Yaxlee was dismissed; and so anxious was Philip that Mary Stuart should know his opinion that he enclosed a duplicate of his reply to de Silva, with directions that it should be forwarded immediately to Scotland, and with a further credit for money should the Queen of Scots require it.

Yet Philip was more anxious for her success and more sincere in his desire to support her than might be gathered from his cautious language to her ambassador; and his real feelings may be gathered from a letter which he wrote after Yaxlee had left Segovia to Cardinal Pacheco his minister at Rome.

PHILIP II. TO CARDINAL PACHECO.1

October 16.

'I have received your letter of the 2nd of September, containing the message from his Holiness on the assistance to be given to the Queen of Scots. As his Holiness desires to know my opinion, you must tell him first that his anxiety to befriend and support that most excellent and most Christian princess in her present straits is worthy of the zeal which he has ever shown for the good cause, and is what his disposition would have led me to expect. The Queen of Scots has applied to myself as well as to his Holiness; and possessing as I do special knowledge of the condition of that country, and having carefully considered the situation of affairs there, I have arrived at the following conclusions:

1 MS. Simancas.