both their claims; and as he was by birth an
Englishman, and could not by his power or alliances give any ground of
suspicion to Elizabeth, it was hoped that the proposal of this marriage
would not be unacceptable to that jealous princess.

Elizabeth was well informed of these intentions;[*] and was secretly not
displeased with the projected marriage between Darnley and the queen of
Scots.[**] She would rather have wished that Mary had continued forever
in a single life; but finding little probability of rendering this
scheme effectual, she was satisfied with a choice which freed her at
once from the dread of a foreign alliance, and from the necessity
of parting with Leicester, her favorite. In order to pave the way to
Darnley's marriage, she secretly desired Mary to invite Lenox into
Scotland, to reverse his attainder, and to restore him to his honors and
fortune.[***] And when her request was complied with, she took care,
in order to preserve the friendship of the Hamiltons and her other
partisans in Scotland, to blame openly this conduct of Mary.[****]

* Keith, p. 261.

** Keith, p. 280, 282. Jebb, vol. ii. p. 46.

*** Keith, p. 255, 259, 272.

**** Melvil, p. 42.

{1565.} Hearing that the negotiation for Darnley's marriage advanced
apace, she gave that nobleman permission, on his first application, to
follow his father into Scotland: but no sooner did she learn that
the queen of Scots was taken with his figure and person, and that all
measures were fixed for espousing him, than she exclaimed against
the marriage; sent Throgmorton to order Darnley immediately, upon his
allegiance, to return to England; threw the countess of Lenox and her
second son into the Tower, where they suffered a rigorous confinement;
seized all Lenox's English estate; and, though it was impossible for her
to assign one single reason for her displeasure,[*] she menaced, and,
protested, and complained, as if she had suffered the most grievous
injury in the world.

* Keith, p. 274, 275.

The politics of Elizabeth, though judicious, were usually full of
duplicity and artifice; but never more so than in her transactions with
the queen of Scots, where there entered so many little passions and
narrow jealousies, that she durst not avow to the world the reasons of
her conduct, scarcely to her ministers, and scarcely even to herself.
But besides a womanish rivalship and envy against the marriage of this
princess, sh