Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/341

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page needs to be proofread.

1583.] THE JESUITS IN SCOTLAND. 325 matters were likely to proceed between her Majesty and him,' was now affecting to desire an amicable arrange- ment ; but in reality she desired nothing less. She was only ' casting a bone to stick between their teeth.' ' He wished/ he said, ' that his mother would give over her plots, and would turn truly to the religion received in the two realms ; ' in a draft of the association which she had sent him to look at she had claimed precedence ; 'she was a determined Papist/ and French to the heart; he must look to his future as well as his present inter- ests ; and the English, he said significantly, 'justly dreaded another Queen Mary ; ' ' when his mother first proposed the association to him, she spoke of it only as a means to recover her liberty ; ' and she promised, as soon as she was released, to repeat her abdication ; she had afterwards altered her note ; she had shown that she intended to reclaim the whole or a part of the Go- vernment, and to this he was determined never to con- sent : he declined to be a party to any agreement in which he was himself to be compromised till he saw deeper ' into his mother's meaning.' * James had thus revealed his own in ward disposition. Lennox had failed to make a Catholic of him, and by his real or seeming treachery had for a time frightened him out of conspiracies. He had made up his mind to stick to Elizabeth if Elizabeth would allow him, to leave his mother in an enforced retirement which removed her from the political stage, and to look forward, with 1 Bowes to "Walsinghain, May 3, 1583 : MSS. Scotland.