obles wrested from the Queen. It was
to hold the Netherlands in check that Philip longed for Mary's success.
Her triumph over Murray and his confederates would vindicate the cause
of monarchy; her triumph over Calvinism would vindicate that of
Catholicism both in her own realm and in the realm which she hoped to
win. He sent her therefore assurances of his support, and assurances as
strong reached her from the Vatican. The dispensation which was
secretly obtained for her marriage with Darnley was granted on the
pledge of both to do their utmost for the restoration of the old
religion.

[Sidenote: The Darnley Marriage.]

Secret as was the pledge, the mere whisper of the match revealed their
danger to the Scotch Protestants. The Lords of the Congregation woke
with a start from their confidence in the Queen. Murray saw that the
policy to which he had held his sister since her arrival in the realm
was now to be abandoned. Mary was no longer to be the Catholic ruler of
a Protestant country, seeking peaceful acknowledgement of her right of
succession to Elizabeth's throne; she had placed herself at the head of
the English Catholics, and such a position at once threatened the safety
of Protestantism in Scotland itself. If once Elizabeth were overthrown
by a Catholic rising, and a Catholic policy established in England,
Scotch Protestantism was at an end. At the first rumour of the match
therefore Murray drew Argyle and the Hamiltons round him in a band of
self-defence, and refused his signature to a paper recommending Darnley
as husband to the Queen. But Mary's diplomacy detached from him lord
after lord, till his only hope lay in the opposition of Elizabeth. The
marriage with Darnley was undoubtedly a danger even more formidable to
England than to Scotland. It put an end to the dissensions which had
till now broken the strength of the English Catholics. It rallied them
round Mary and Darnley as successors to the throne. It gathered to their
cause the far greater mass of cautious conservatives who had been
detached from Mary by her foreign blood and by dread of her kinship with
the Guises. Darnley was reckoned an Englishman, and with an English
husband to sway her policy Mary herself seemed to become an
Englishwoman. But it was in vain that the Council pronounced the
marriage a danger to the realm, that Elizabeth threatened Mary with war,
or that she plotted with Murray for the seizure of Mary and the driving
Darnley back ov