442 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 66. He laughed as lie girded on her gift, telling the bearer that he would be his mother's true knight, and that before many days the heads of Lindsay and others besides him should prove how religiously he would ob- serve his oath. 1 The confederate Lords had risked their lives in a wild belief that Elizabeth would be true to them. As they had failed, she was not content with leaving them in Scotland to James's vengeance ; but, with a repetition accurate as an automaton's of her be- haviour to Murray, she endeavoured to prove that she had never been in any way connected with them, by hard treatment of Angus and Mar and the other fugi- tives who had taken refuge in Northumberland. Out- ward displeasure, had it gone no further, might have been politic affectation, but the Court had veered round with the altered prospect, carrying Elizabeth with it, and the opposite. policy was in the ascendant altogether, ' The poor gentlemen that are retired into this realm,' wrote Walsingham, ' are like to receive but cold comfort, having fewer favourers than I looked for, and such become their enemies as neither the authority of their place nor the care they ought to have of her Majesty's safety doth make allowable in them. But it agrees with the course we now hold here in displacing and depriving the best affected ministers. 2 ce quc la Royne luy en mande a la premiere occasion, n'attendant que preuve et proces contre luy.' In- structions secretes de M. Fontenay, August, 1583 : MSS. MABY QUEEN op SCOTS. Incorrectly dated in the State Papers, January, 1583. 1 Fontena^to the Queen of Scots, August 15 ; MSS. MAUY QUEEN OF SCOTS. Decipher. 2 Several Puritan clergy had been just prosecuted under the Act of
