invade the kingdom on the side where it
was weakest and lay most exposed.[*] As she believed that the marriage
with the archduke Charles was the one most likely to have place, she
used every expedient to prevent it; and besides remonstrating against
it to Mary herself, she endeavored to draw off the archduke from that
pursuit, by giving him some hopes of success in his pretensions to
herself, and by inviting him to a renewal of the former treaty of
marriage.[**] She always told the queen of Scots, that nothing would
satisfy her but her espousing some English nobleman, who would remove
all grounds of jealousy, and cement the union between the kingdoms; and
she offered on this condition to have her title examined, and to declare
her successor to the crown.[***] After keeping the matter in these
general terms during a twelvemonth, she at last named Lord Robert
Dudley, now created earl of Leicester, as the person on whom she desired
that Mary's choice should fall.

[Illustration: 1-453-mary_stuart.jpg MARY STUART]

The earl of Leicester, the great and powerful favorite of Elizabeth,
possessed all those exterior qualities which are naturally alluring
to the fair sex; a handsome person, a polite address, an insinuating
behavior; and by means of these accomplishments he had been able to
blind even the penetration of Elizabeth, and conceal from her the great
defects, or rather odious vices, which attended his character. He
was proud, insolent, interested, ambitious; without honor, without
generosity, without humanity; and atoned not for these bad qualities
by such abilities or courage as could fit him for that high trust and
confidence with which she always honored him. Her constant and declared
attachment to him had naturally emboldened him to aspire to her bed; and
in order to make way for these nuptials, he was universally believed
to have murdered, in a barbarous manner, his wife, the heiress of one
Robesart. The proposal of espousing Mary was by no means agreeable to
him; and he always ascribed it to the contrivance of Cecil, his
enemy; who, he thought, intended by that artifice to make him lose the
friendship of Mary from the temerity of his pretensions, and that of
Elizabeth from jealousy of his attachments to another woman.[****]

* Keith, p 247, 284.

** Melvil, p. 41.

*** Keith, p. 213, 249, 259. 265.

**** Camden, p. 396

The queen herself had not any serious intention of effecting this