Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/533

 1580.] THE ALENCON MARRIAGE. 513 to work on; the sympathy with Mary Stuart was another ; and Scots of all persuasions were determined not to be defrauded of the English succession. These motives, skilfully handled and backed with money, would open the road to the entry of the Duke of Guise. A demand would be preferred for the release of the imprisoned Queen, and if it was refused, a united army of French and Scots would enter Northumberland and raise the northern counties. And there was yet a third branch of this con- spiracy, and not the least notable one. There was to be another preparative mission directed immediately at England ; not this one of armed men, but of lads fresh from college, fugitives from Oxford, who nurtured at Oriel and Baliol on Catholic interpretations of the English formularies, had developed, before the down had stiffened upon their cheeks, into converts to the old faith. Half the colleges had fallen into the hands of High Churchmen, and had thus become training schools for Rome. The neophytes, when their conversion was completed, were drafted off to Douay or Rheims, were admitted, most of them, while their imaginations were still fevered, into the order of Jesus, and were sent back again in one or two years to carry their master's message through the English homesteads. They were charged with no commission to teach rebellion. Their orders were but to quicken into life the dying embers of the creed, to recall the wavering, to establish the faithful, to reconcile the lapsed, to preach, teach, pro- VOL. x. 33