ant
Spanish-Catholic party had her examined and would have much wished to
find her guilty, in order to rid themselves of her for ever. But
Elizabeth was not so imprudent as to lend her hand to a movement,
which if unsuccessful--a result not hard to foresee--must destroy her
own good title. And moreover she, with her innate pride, could not
possibly have carried out the wishes of the French by marrying
Courtenay, whom her sister had rejected. The letter, which she wrote
to Mary at this crisis, is full of unfeignedly loyal submission to her
Queen, before whom she only wishes to bend her knee, to pray her not
to let herself be prejudiced by false charges against her sister; and
yet at the same time it is highminded and great in the consciousness
of innocence. Mary, who was now no longer her friend, did not
vouchsafe her a hearing, but sent her to the Tower and subjected her
to a criminal examination. But however zealously they sought for
proofs against her, yet they found none: and they dared not touch her
life unless she were first publicly found guilty. She was clearly the
heiress to the throne appointed under the authorisation of Parliament:
the people would not give up the prospects of the future which were
linked with her. When she appeared in London at this moment of peril,
surrounded by numerous attendants, in an open litter, with an
expression in which hopeful buoyant youth mingled with the feeling of
innocence and distress, pale and proud, she swayed the masses that
crowded round her with no doubtful sympathy.[180] When she passed
through the streets after her liberation, she was received with an
enthusiasm which made the Queen jealous on her throne.

Yet Elizabeth was not merely the head of the popular opposition to her
sister's policy: from the first moment onwards she was in collision
with another female foe, whose pretensions would determine the
relations of her life. If Henry VIII formerly in settling the
succession passed over in silence the rights of his married sister in
Scotland, which had now come to her granddaughter Mary Stuart, the
memory of them was now all the more vividly revived by the Catholic
party in the country. For with the religious reverence which men
devoted to the Papacy it was not at all possible to reconcile the
recognition of Elizabeth, whose very existence was as it were at
variance with it. Nor was a political motive for preferring Mary
Stuart wanting. That for which Henry VIII and