plete, that, taking off the mask, she requested her good
sister's approbation of her approaching nuptials with lord Darnley.

It is scarcely credible that a person of Elizabeth's sagacity, with her
means of gaining intelligence and after all that had passed, could have
been surprised by this notification of the intentions of the queen of
Scots, and it is even problematical how far she was really displeased at
the occurrence. Except by imitating her perpetual celibacy,--a
compliment to her envy and her example which could not in reason be
expected,--it might seem impossible for the queen of Scots better to
consult the views and wishes of her kinswoman than by uniting herself to
Darnley;--a subject, and an English subject, a near relation both of her
own and Elizabeth's, and a man on whom nature had bestowed not a single
quality calculated to render him either formidable or respectable. The
queen of England, however, frowardly bent on opposing the match to the
utmost, directed sir Nicholas Throgmorton, her ambassador, to set before
the eyes of Mary a long array of objections and impediments; and he was
further authorized secretly to promise support to such of the Scottish
nobles as would undertake to oppose it. She ordered, in the most
imperious terms, the earl of Lenox and his son to return immediately
into England; threw the countess of Lenox into the Tower by way of
intimidation; and caused her privy-council to exercise their ingenuity
in discovering the manifold inconveniences and dangers likely to arise
to herself and to her country from the alliance of the queen of Scots
with a house so nearly connected with the English crown.

Mary, however, persisted in accomplishing the union on which her mind
was set: Darnley and his father neglected Elizabeth's order of recall;
and her privy-council vexed her by drawing from the melancholy
forebodings which she had urged them to promulgate two unwelcome
inferences;--that the queen ought to lose no time in forming a connexion
which might cut off the hopes of others by giving to the nation
posterity of her own;--and that as the Lenox family were known papists,
it would now be expedient to exercise against all of that persuasion the
utmost severity of the penal laws. The earl of Murray and some other
malcontent lords in Scotland were the only persons who entered with
warmth and sincerity into the measures of Elizabeth against the
marriage; for they alone had any personal interest