278 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 65. their own expense, unless on an immediate emergency. The few noblemen among them had estates to lose, but were disinclined to gratuitous risks. If Elizabeth ex- pected them to hold their ground with their own re- sources, some kind of compromise with the other side could not be avoided. The Gordons, the Kers, the Setons, the Grahams, the Humes, the Maxwells, repre- senting as they did the historical genius of Scotland, had a popularity and a strength of their own. They were Catholics at heart, determined enemies of the Reformation and all belonging to it. Their feudal au- thority enabled them at all times to bring a swarm of personal followers into the field. France and Spain were as liberal as the Queen of England was niggardly ; and it had been proved, over and again, that although the Protestant leaders could keep the Government in their hands with a small annual contribution from Eng- land, they were no match alone for three quarters of the Peers of Scotland backed by the Catholic treasuries. They did not choose to try the experiment again, and Angus and Gowrie declined to widen the gulf between ] themselves and the other nobles to please Leicester or Huntingdon, till they were satisfied that they might not ] themselves be flung into it. The state of things was now precisely what it had been when the Earl of Morton recovered power after his first deposition. The Lords of the English faction, as they were called, had the King in their hands, and for the present the control of the situation. On the same conditions which the Abbot of Dunfermline had
