h. Elizabeth
would not marry Arran. Elizabeth would be no party to any of their
intrigues. She detested Knox. She detested Protestantism entirely, in
all shapes in which Knox approved of it. She affronted the nobles on one
side, she affronted the people on another; and all idea of uniting the
two crowns after the fashion proposed by the Scotch Parliament she
utterly and entirely repudiated. She was right enough, perhaps, so far
as this was concerned; but she left the ruling families extremely
perplexed as to the course which they would follow. They had allowed the
country to be revolutionised in the teeth of their own sovereign, and
what to do next they did not very well know.

It was at this crisis that circumstances came in to their help. Francis
the Second died. Mary Stuart was left a childless widow. Her connexion
with the Crown of France was at an end, and all danger on that side to
the liberties of Scotland at an end also. The Arran scheme having
failed, she would be a second card as good as the first to play for the
English Crown--as good as he, or better, for she would have the English
Catholics on her side. So, careless how it would affect religion, and
making no condition at all about that, the same men who a year before
were ready to whistle Mary Stuart down the wind, now invited her back to
Scotland; the same men who had been the loudest friends of Elizabeth now
encouraged Mary Stuart to persist in the pretension to the Crown of
England, which had led to all the past trouble. While in France, she had
assumed the title of Queen of England. She had promised to abandon it,
but, finding her own people ready to support her in withdrawing her
promise, she stood out, insisting that at all events the English
Parliament should declare her next in the succession; and it was well
known that, as soon as the succession was made sure in her favour, some
rascal would be found to put a knife or a bullet into Elizabeth. The
object of the Scotch nobles was political, national, patriotic. For
religion it was no great matter either way; and as they had before acted
with the Protestants, so now they were ready to turn about, and openly
or tacitly act with the Catholics. Mary Stuart's friends in England and
on the Continent were Catholics, and therefore it would not do to offend
them. First, she was allowed to have mass at Holyrood; then there was a
move for a broader toleration. That one mass, Knox said, was more
terrible to him