the Guises, or in his own.
When Lennox succeeded in getting Dumbarton Castle, an open door for
France, into his power, Bowes was urged by Elizabeth to join with Morton
and "lay violent hands" on Lennox (August 31, 1580), but in a month
Elizabeth cancelled her orders.

Bowes was recalled; Morton, to whom English aid had been promised, was
left to take his chances. Morton had warning from Lord Robert Stewart,
Mary's half-brother, to fly the country, for Sir James Balfour, with his
information, had landed. On December 31, 1580, Captain Stewart accused
Morton, in presence of the Council, of complicity in Darnley's murder. He
was put in ward; Elizabeth threatened war; the preachers stormed against
Lennox; a plot to murder him (a Douglas plot) and to seize James was
discovered; Randolph, who now represented Elizabeth, was fired at, and
fled to Berwick; James Stewart was created Earl of Arran. In March 1581
the king and Lennox tried to propitiate the preachers by signing a
negative Covenant against Rome, later made into a precedent for the
famous Covenant of 1638. On June 1 Morton was tried for guilty
foreknowledge of Darnley's death. He was executed deservedly, and his
head was stuck on a spike of the Tolbooth. The death of this avaricious,
licentious, and resolute though unamiable Protestant was a heavy blow to
the preachers and their party, and a crook in the lot of Elizabeth.

THE WAR OF KIRK AND KING.

The next twenty years were occupied with the strife of Kirk and King,
whence arose "all the cumber of Scotland" till 1689. The preachers, led
by the learned and turbulent Andrew Melville, had an ever-present terror
of a restoration of Catholicism, the creed of a number of the nobles and
of an unknown proportion of the people. The Reformation of 1559-1560 had
been met by no Catholic resistance; we might suppose that the enormous
majority of the people were Protestants, though the reverse has been
asserted. But whatever the theological preferences of the country may
have been, the justifiable fear of practical annexation by France had
overpowered all other considerations. By 1580 it does not seem that
there was any good reason for the Protestant nervousness, even if some
northern counties and northern and Border peers preferred Catholicism.
The king himself, a firm believer in his own theological learning and
acuteness, was thoroughly Protestant.

But the preachers would scarcely allow him to remain a Pro