Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/310

 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 65. King's mind so well to depend upon her Majesty, as if it had pleased her to have been at some charges to con- tinue him in that good devotion, she might have had the disposing of him in marriage, the saving of which charges now will breed peril hereafter/ 1 Both La Mothe and de Mainville came too late to prevent the departure of Lennox. Encouraged by his letters from France, and by the evident irresolution of the confederate Lords, he had communicated with James and had arranged to carry him off from Stirling. The plot was discovered by a servant 3 the day before it was to have been executed, and Growrie snatched up his royal prisoner, and secured him in the safer quarters of Edinburgh Castle. Lennox having missed his mark, made a feint of attacking Edinburgh Castle, and actually threw supplies into Blackness ; but matters had now become extremely critical, and in the panic at the ex- pected French interference James's murder had become a seriously probable contingency. The English Puri- tans would have made no very curious inquiry into the end of a boy from whom they anticipated nothing but mischief; the politicians who wanted the succes- sion for Huntingdon or Lady Arabella would have been still less scrupulous ; and Elizabeth herself would un- doubtedly have breathed more freely had she under- stood that he was dead. Meiidoza believed that on La Mothe's first coming to England orders were sent from London to Gowrie to have him poisoned, and that one 1 Walsingham to Cobham, Jan- nary 4 : JtlSS. France. 2 ' Un perrero,' the keeper of the King's dogs.