lf too much a sufferer by the
arrogance and ambition of the house of Guise, to be very strenuous in
his friendship towards any one so nearly connected with it; and it is
even said that, while a sense of decorum extorted from him in public
some energetic expressions of the interest taken by him in the fate of a
sister-in-law and queen-dowager of France, a sentiment of regard for
Elizabeth, his friend and ally, prompted him to counsel her, through a
secret agent, to execute the sentence with the least possible delay. Of
the treatment experienced by the master of Gray, the envoy of James, we
gain some particulars from an original memorial drawn up by himself.

He appears to have reached Ware on December 24th, whence he sent to
desire Keith and Douglas, the resident Scotch ambassadors, to announce
to the queen his approach; and she voluntarily promised that the life of
Mary should be spared till his proposals were heard. His reception in
London was somewhat ungracious;--no one was sent to welcome or convoy
him, and it was ten days before he and sir Robert Melvil his coadjutor
were admitted to an audience. Elizabeth's first address to them was, "A
thing long looked for should be welcome when it comes; I would now see
your master's offers." Gray desired first to be assured that the cause
for which those offers were made was "still extant;" that is, that the
life of Mary was still safe, and should be so till their mission had
been heard. She answered, "I think it be extant yet, but I will not
promise for an hour." They then brought forward certain proposals, not
here recited, which she rejected with contempt; and calling in
Leicester, the lord-admiral, and Hatton, "very despitefully" repeated
them in hearing of them all. Gray then propounded his last offer:--that
the queen of Scots should resign all her claims upon the English
succession to her son, by which means the hopes of the papists would, as
he said, be cut off. The terms in which this overture was made Elizabeth
affected not to understand; Leicester explained their meaning to be,
that the king of Scots should be put in his mother's place. "Is it so?"
the queen answered; "then I put myself in a worse case than before:--By
God's passion, that were to cut my own throat; and for a duchy or an
earldom to yourself, you, or such as you, would cause some of your
desperate knaves to kill me. No, by God, he shall never be in that
place!" Gray answered, "He craves nothing of your