Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/19

 1579.] THE JESUIT INVASION. 3 taining, all those who had wavered between the two parties, and would have gone with Morton, if they could have received any kind of reasonable encourage- ment, fell away from an ungrateful service, to employers who promised to be more open-handed. Argyle, Max- well, Montrose, with another Maitland, brother of the more celebrated secretary, secretly reorganized their party. It was easy to persuade James that Elizabeth was insulting and robbing him, while Maitland and Sir Robert Melville worked on his natural feelings as he grew older, by dwelling to him on his mother's injuries. His kinsmen in France affected an earnest interest in his welfare; and smarting under a sense of ill-usage, he had listened eagerly to Guise's advice to invite over his cousin, and to confer on him the Lennox title which Elizabeth had denied his right to dispose of. The sudden death of the Earl of Athol after a ban- quet at Stirling had, about the same time, occasioned fresh suspicions of Morton. His administration had been unpopular with all parties. He had alienated the Calvinists by supporting bishops to please Elizabeth. He had made his policy English in its faults as well as its merits, and when England threw him over, the dis- satisfaction which had murmured in secret broke into open hostility. Thus it was that when the young Gallicised Scot landed at Leith in September, 1579, he found the country, or at least the nobles, and all who were under their influence, prepared to receive him with open arms. Rumour said indeed that before leav- ing Paris he had been closeted with the Archbishop of