le over Mary Stuart. She told the Scotch Council here in
Edinburgh that, if they hurt a hair of her head, she would harry their
country, and hang them all on the trees round the town, if she could
find any trees there for that purpose. She tempted the queen to England
with her fair promises after the battle of Langside, and then, to her
astonishment, imprisoned her. Yet she still shielded her reputation,
still fostered her party in Scotland, still incessantly threatened and
incessantly endeavoured to restore her. She kept her safe, because, in
her lucid intervals, her ministers showed her the madness of acting
otherwise. Yet for three years she kept her own people in a fever of
apprehension. She made a settled Government in Scotland impossible;
till, distracted and perplexed, the Scottish statesmen went back to
their first schemes. They assured themselves that in one way or other
the Queen of Scots would sooner or later come again among them. They,
and others besides them, believed that Elizabeth was cutting her own
throat, and that the best that they could do was to recover their own
queen's favour, and make the most of her and her titles; and so they
lent themselves again to the English Catholic conspiracies.

The Earl of Moray--the one supremely noble man then living in the
country--was put out of the way by an assassin. French and Spanish money
poured in, and French and Spanish armies were to be again invited over
to Scotland. This is the form in which the drama unfolds itself in the
correspondence of the time. Maitland, the soul and spirit of it all,
said, in scorn, that 'he would make the Queen of England sit upon her
tail and whine like a whipped dog.' The only powerful noblemen who
remained on the Protestant side were Lennox, Morton, and Mar. Lord
Lennox was a poor creature, and was soon dispatched; Mar was old and
weak; and Morton was an unprincipled scoundrel, who used the Reformation
only as a stalking-horse to cover the spoils which he had clutched in
the confusion, and was ready to desert the cause at any moment if the
balance of advantage shifted. Even the ministers of the Kirk were fooled
and flattered over. Maitland told Mary Stuart that he had gained them
all except one.

John Knox alone defied both his threats and his persuasions. Good reason
has Scotland to be proud of Knox. He only, in this wild crisis, saved
the Kirk which he had founded, and saved with it Scottish and English
freedom. But for Knox