402 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 44. shaken the strength of the least fragile of human frames, but Mary Stuart seemed not to know the meaning of the word exhaustion ; she had scarce alighted from her horse than couriers were flying east, west, north, and south, to call the Catholic nobles to her side ; she wrote her own story to her minister at Paris, bidding the Arch- bishop in a postscript anticipate the false rumours which would be spread against her honour, and tell the truth her version of the truth to the Queen-mother and the Spanish ambassador. To Elizabeth she wrote with her own hand, fierce, dauntless, and haughty, as in her highest prosperity. 1 ' 111 at ease with her escape from Holyrood, and suffer- ing from the sickness of pregnancy, she demanded to know whether the Queen of England intended to support the traitors who had slain her most faithful servant in her presence. If she listened to their calumnies and upheld them in their accursed deeds, she was not sc unprovided of friends as her sister might dream ; there were princes enough to take up her quarrel in such a cause. The loyalty of Scotland answered well its sovereign's summons. The faithful Both well, ever foremost in good or evil in Mary Stuart's service, brought in the night- riders of Liddesdale, the fiercest of the Border marauders; Huntly came, forgetting his father and brother's death and his own long imprisonment ; the Archbishop of St 1 This letter may be seen in the Rolls House ; the strokes thick and slightly uneven from excitement, but strong, firm, and without sign of tremulousness.
