of her
conformity to the faith of the Church of England. It was to no purpose
that, to meet the Queen's dread of her marriage with a Catholic prince
when her succession was once acknowledged, a marriage which would in
such a case have shaken Elizabeth on her throne, Mary listened even to a
proposal for a match with Lord Leicester, and that Murray supported such
a step, if Elizabeth would recognize Mary as her heir. Elizabeth
promised that she would do nothing to impair Mary's rights; but she
would do nothing to own them. "I am not so foolish," she replied with
bitter irony to Mary's entreaties, "I am not so foolish as to hang a
winding-sheet before my eyes." That such a refusal was wise time was to
show. But even then it is probable that Mary's intrigues were not wholly
hidden from the English Queen. Elizabeth's lying paled indeed before the
cool duplicity of this girl of nineteen. While she was befriending
Protestantism in her realm, and holding out hopes of her mounting the
English throne as a Protestant queen, Mary Stuart was pledging herself
to the Pope to restore Catholicism on either side the border, and
pressing Philip to aid her in this holy work by giving her the hand of
his son Don Carlos. It was with this design that she was fooling the
Scotch Lords and deceiving Murray: it was with this end that she strove
in vain to fool Elizabeth and Knox.

[Sidenote: France and the Reformation.]

But pierce through the web of lying as she might, the pressure on the
English Queen became greater every day. What had given Elizabeth
security was the adhesion of the Scotch Protestants and the growing
strength of the Huguenots in France. But the firm government of Murray
and her own steady abstinence from any meddling with the national
religion was giving Mary a hold upon Scotland which drew Protestant
after Protestant to her side; while the tide of French Calvinism was
suddenly rolled back by the rise of a Catholic party under the
leadership of the Guises. Under Catharine of Medicis France had seemed
to be slowly drifting to the side of Protestantism. While the
queen-mother strove to preserve a religious truce the attitude of the
Huguenots was that of men sure of success. Their head, the king of
Navarre, boasted that before the year was out he would have the Gospel
preached throughout the realm, and his confidence seemed justified by
the rapid advance of the new opinions. They were popular among the
merchant class. The _nobl