litical
and religious balance at home, and though she made some fruitless
efforts to renew the old friendship with Scotland, she had no mind to
intrigue like the Guises with the English Catholics nor to back Mary
Stuart's pretensions to the English throne.

[Sidenote: Philip's policy.]

With Scotland as an ally and with France at peace Elizabeth's throne at
last seemed secure. The outbreak of the strife between the Old Faith and
the New indeed, if it gave the Queen safety abroad, somewhat weakened
her at home. The sense of a religious change which her caution had done
so much to disguise broke slowly on England as it saw the Queen allying
herself with Scotch Calvinists and French Huguenots; and the compromise
she had hoped to establish in matters of worship became hourly less
possible as the more earnest Catholics discerned the Protestant drift of
Elizabeth's policy. But Philip still held them back from any open
resistance. There was much indeed to move him from his old support of
the Queen. The widowhood of Mary Stuart freed him from his dread of a
permanent annexation of Scotland by France as well as of a French
annexation of England, while the need of holding England as a check on
French hostility to the House of Austria grew weaker as the outbreak of
civil war between the Guises and their opponents rendered French
hostility less possible. Elizabeth's support of the Huguenots drove the
Spanish king to a burst of passion. A Protestant France not only
outraged his religious bigotry, but, as he justly feared, it would give
an impulse to heresy throughout his possessions in the Netherlands which
would make it hard to keep his hold upon them. Philip noted that the
success of the Scotch Calvinists had been followed by the revolt of the
Calvinists in France. He could hardly doubt that the success of the
French Huguenots would be followed by a rising of the Calvinists in the
Low Countries. "Religion" he told Elizabeth angrily "was being made a
cloak for anarchy and revolution." But, vexed as Philip was with her
course both abroad and at home, he was still far from withdrawing his
support from Elizabeth. Even now he could not look upon the Queen as
lost to Catholicism. He knew how her course both at home and abroad had
been forced on her not by religious enthusiasm but by political
necessity, and he still "trusted that ere long God would give us either
a general council or a good Pope who would correct abuses and then all
w