Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/424

 404 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 60. own time, her death would give them their desires. On all sides her policy was the same and tended to the same end. Having been forced against her will to complete the destruction of Mary Stuart's party in Scot- land, the most natural course would have been to recog- nize James as lawful sovereign there ; and failing issue from her own person, to have settled the English suc- cession upon him by Act of Parliament : or, if she could not bring herself to a step so decisive, at least to have given effectual support to the Government which she had assisted in establishing. Never were rulers in a more desperate plight than the successive Regents of Scot- land in the minority of the young King. The Crown lands were exhausted, there were no customs, fixed revenue, or regular taxation ; while they had to find garrisons for Edinburgh and Dumbarton Castles, to maintain the Court at Stirling, and to provide besides for the peace of the Border, which the Marian tendencies of the Maxwells, the Kers, and the Humes, made it doubly difficult to preserve. Murray had fallen for want of help ; and then Lennox. Morton had insisted on an allowance from Elizabeth as a condition of his accepting office. Elizabeth had manoeuvred him into the Regency without committing herself. He had sub- mitted, but he requested that if she would give him no money for the Government, she would at least distribute a few trifling presents among the other nobles, recog- nize his right to be in the place which she had forced upon him, and unite England and Scotland in a league 'for the ma.intei}ance of the common cause of reli-