r puny boy husband, but she nursed him night and day
in his long sickness and his death so affected her that "she would not
receive any consolation, but, brooding over her disasters with constant
tears and passionate, doleful lamentations, she universally inspired
deep pity." She had, indeed, lost much besides her royal husband; and in
a poem written by her afterwards, the waste of her youth in widowhood,
the loss of her great position as Queen of France, and her powerlessness
any longer to enforce her rule in Scotland by French power, are the main
burden of her complaints against Providence, not pity for the husband
she had lost.

The Guises were loath to surrender power without a struggle, and as soon
as Francis died they sought to sell their niece in marriage again. Their
first idea was for her to marry her child-brother-in-law, the new King
Charles IX., but Catharine de Medici at once stopped that plan, though
the boy himself was anxious for it and Mary was not averse. That
failing, Cardinal Lorraine turned to the heir of Spain, Don Carlos, as a
husband for her. This would have been a death-blow to Elizabeth, and
Philip feigned to listen to it; but all the strength and cunning of
Huguenots and Protestants, joined by those of Catharine and Elizabeth,
were brought into play against this threatening move, and Mary went to
Scotland with a sinking, sad, and angry heart in 1561, fearing her
uncouth subjects, foreign to her now, vexed with the Protestant party
for standing in the way of her ambitious marriage, and determined to
oppose Elizabeth to the utmost in her designs against the independence
of Scotland.

With these views, gay and winsome though she was, it was not long before
Mary was at issue with her dour Protestant subjects and their spokesman,
John Knox. It was hoped by her brother, James Stuart (Murray), and
Secretary Lethington that a _modus vivendi_ might be found by persuading
Elizabeth to secure to Mary the English succession in case she herself
died childless, on the undertaking of Mary that her marriage and policy
should be dictated by England; but it was not Elizabeth's plan to pledge
the future of England, and her nimble evasiveness drove the Scottish
statesmen to despair.

Brawls and bitterness grew in Mary's court around the Catholicism of the
queen, and English money and intrigue were freely lavished to set
Scotland by the ears. Half the nobles were disaffected, and Murray and
Lethington, having f