434 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 66. He feared James's connection with France, as he had feared his mother's; and though, like the Jesuits, he was willing that Mary Stuart should reign if she would lean on Spain to uphold her, he coveted, as became afterwards clear, the reversion of the title for himself. Meanwhile in Scotland itself James was going merrily forward. In his letter to the Pope he had been more desponding than the occasion called for. Disconcerted by Elizabeth's backwardness, Gowrie and his friends had attempted to make their peace with the King and Arran. They had been met coldly and ambiguously. Angus's plan of seizing James when hunting had been betrayed. The King had held his tongue, in fear of provoking England prematurely, but none the less it was clear that he knew something, if not all. The confession of Throgmorton may perhaps have made Elizabeth more encouraging. Sir Robert Bowes, at any rate, reported in January, as a thing which she would be pleased to hear, that a conspiracy was again on foot which would soon be executed. ' The chief instruments,' Gowrie himself among them, were said to be ' hanging back/ and ' showing much faintness ; ' but they were provided with unlooked-for allies in the two Hamilton Drothers, Lord Claude and Lord John, the natural chiefs of the Catholic faction, who had been deprived of their estates by Morton, and had been kept out of them to feed the avarice of the Earl of Arran. In lending support to men who had suffered for their fidelity to Mary Stuart, who had fought for her at Langside, who had murdered Murray and Lennox to please her, Elizabeth
