berty
and authority to which they were entitled.[*]

* Camden, p. 489,

Elizabeth was engaged to obstruct Mary's restoration, chiefly because
she foresaw an unhappy alternative attending that event. If this
princess recovered any considerable share of authority in Scotland, her
resentment, ambition, zeal, and connections both domestic and foreign,
might render her a dangerous neighbor to England, and enable her, after
suppressing the Protestant party among her subjects, to revive those
pretensions which she had formerly advanced to the crown, and which
her partisans in both kingdoms still supported with great industry and
assurance. If she were reinstated in power with such strict limitations
as could not be broken, she might be disgusted with her situation; and
flying abroad, form more desperate attempts than any sovereign, who had
a crown to hazard, would willingly undertake. Mary herself, sensible
of these difficulties, and convinced by experience that Elizabeth would
forever debar her the throne, was now become more humble in her wishes;
and as age and infirmities had repressed those sentiments of ambition
by which she had formerly been so much actuated, she was willing to
sacrifice all her hopes of grandeur, in order to obtain a liberty; a
blessing to which she naturally aspired with the fondest impatience. She
proposed, therefore, that she should be associated with her son in
the title to the crown of Scotland, but that the administration should
remain solely in him: and she was content to live in England in a
private station, and even under a kind of restraint; but with some more
liberty, both for exercise and company, than she had enjoyed since
the first discovery of her intrigues with the duke of Norfolk. But
Elizabeth, afraid lest such a loose method of guarding her would
facilitate her escape into France or Spain, or, at least, would
encourage and increase her partisans, and enable her to conduct those
intrigues to which she had already discovered so strong a propensity,
was secretly determined to deny her requests; and though she feigned to
assent to them, she well knew how to disappoint the expectations of the
unhappy princess. While Lenox maintained his authority in Scotland, she
never gave any reply to all the application made to her by the Scottish
queen: at present, when her own creatures had acquired possession of the
government, she was resolved to throw the odium of refusal upon
them; and pret