s.

The reaction of these events, even while they were still in progress,
was first felt in Scotland. There the young King James VI after many
vicissitudes had, while still under age, taken the reins of government
into his own hands: and a son of his great uncle, Esme Stuart (who
exchanged the title Aubigny which he brought from France for the more
famous name of Lennox, and was a great friend of the Guises and the
Jesuits) obtained the chief credit with him. Lennox promoted
Catholicism, which was not so difficult, as part of the nobility still
adhered to it, at least in secret; he too lived and moved in
comprehensive plans for the re-establishment of the Church. Through
the Guises he hoped to be placed in a position to invade England with
a Catholic army of 15,000 men; if the English Catholics then did their
duty, everything they wanted could be attained: for himself he was
resolved to liberate Mary or die in the attempt. Mary was also to
reascend the Scotch throne: her son was to be co-regent with her,
provided that he himself returned to the bosom of the Catholic Church.
Mary Stuart with her indestructible energy was involved in these
designs also. She commended them warmly to the Pope and the King of
Spain: for it was precisely in Scotland that the universal
re-establishment could best be begun.[247] She wished only to know on
what resources in men and money her friends there might reckon. We
must remember the situation and the peril of these schemes and
preparations, if we would understand to some degree the violent
measures on which the Protestant lords in Scotland resolved. As in a
similar case of an earlier time in Germany, they closed the castle, in
which King James was received, against his attendants: Lennox had to
leave Scotland. But the young King was shrewd enough, and sufficiently
well advised, to rid himself of the lords almost in the same way that
they had taken him. He succeeded, chiefly through the help of the
French ambassador, a friend of the Guises. Hereupon too he seemed much
inclined to favour the undertaking with which Henry Guise occupied
himself in 1583, a scheme for a revolution in the affairs of both
countries. Guise hoped, with the support of the King of Spain, the
Pope, and the Duke of Bavaria, to be able to effect something
decisive. James VI let his uncle know his full agreement with the
proposed schemes. But, in fact, it did not seem to matter much
whether he agreed or not. It was repo