a martyr, he had been restored to all
the honors of his birth, and treated with a degree of favor which could
not but strengthen his predilection for the faith of which she was the
patroness. It appears, however, that the attachment of the earl to the
cause of popery had not on all occasions been proof against immediate
personal interest. Soon after the marriage of the queen of Scots with
Darnley, that rash and ill-judging pair esteeming their authority in the
country sufficiently established to enable them to venture on an
attempt for the restoration of the old religion, the pope, in
furtherance of their pious designs, had remitted the sum of eight
thousand crowns. "But the ship wherein the said gold was," says James
Melvil in his memoirs, "did shipwrack upon the coast of England, within
the earl of Northumberland's bounds, who alleged the whole to appertain
to him by just law, which he caused his advocate to read unto me, when I
was directed to him for the demanding restitution of the said sum, in
the old Norman language, which neither he nor I understood well, it was
so corrupt. But all my entreaties were ineffectual, he altogether
refusing to give any part thereof to the queen, albeit he was himself a
catholic, and professed secretly to be her friend." And through this
disappointment Mary was compelled to give up her design.

An additional trait of the earl's character is furnished by the same
author, in transcribing the instructions which he carried home from his
brother sir Robert Melvil, then ambassador to England, on his return
from that country, after announcing the birth of the prince of Scotland.
"_Item_, that her majesty cast not off the earl of Northumberland,
albeit as a fearful and facile man he delivered her letter to the queen
of England; neither appear to find fault with sir Henry Percy as yet for
his dealing with Mr. Ruxbie," (an English spy in Scotland) "which he
doth to gain favor at court, being upon a contrary faction to his
brother the earl."

The machinations of the two earls, however cautiously carried on, did
not entirely escape the penetration of the earl of Sussex, lord
president of the north, who sent for them both and subjected them to
some kind of examination; but no sufficient cause for their detention
then appearing, he dismissed them, hoping probably that the warning
would prove efficacious in securing their peaceable behaviour. In this
idea, however, he was deceived: on their return