cious and dangerous
connections.[**]

* Digges, p. 412, 428. Melvil, p. 130.

** Spotswood, p. 309.

The king excused himself by Sir Alexander Hume, his ambassador; and
Lenox, finding that the queen had openly declared against him, was
further confirmed in his intention of overturning the English interest,
and particularly of ruining Morton, who was regarded as the head of it.
That nobleman was arrested in council, accused as an accomplice in the
late king's murder, committed to prison, brought to trial, and condemned
to suffer as a traitor. He confessed that Bothwell had communicated
to him the design, had pleaded Mary's consent, and had desired his
concurrence; but he denied that he himself had ever expressed any
approbation of the crime; and in excuse for his concealing it, he
alleged the danger of revealing the secret, either to Henry, who had no
resolution nor constancy, or Morton, who appeared to be an accomplice in
the murder.[*]

* Spotswood, p. 314, Crawford, p. 333. Moyse's Memoirs,
Spotswood, p. 312. t Digge, p. 359. 373.

Sir Thomas Randolph was sent by the queen to intercede in favor of
Morton; and that ambassador, not content with discharging this duty of
his function, engaged, by his persuasion, the earls of Argyle,
Montrose, Angus, Marre, and Glencairne, to enter into a confederacy for
protecting, even by force of arms, the life of the prisoner. The more
to overawe that nobleman's enemies, Elizabeth ordered forces to be
assembled on the borders of England; but this expedient served only to
hasten his sentence and execution. Morton died with that constancy and
resolution which had attended him through all the various events of
his life; and left a reputation which was less disputed with regard
to abilities than probity and virtue. But this conclusion of the scene
happened not till the subsequent year.

Elizabeth was, during this period, extremely anxious on account of
every revolution in Scotland; both because that country alone, not being
separated from England by sea, and bordering on all the Catholic and
malecontent counties, afforded her enemies a safe and easy method of
attacking her; and because she was sensible that Mary, thinking herself
abandoned by the French monarch, had been engaged by the Guises to have
recourse to the powerful protection of Philip, who, though he had not
yet come to an open rupture with the queen, was every day, both by the
injuries which he commi