Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/314

 $98 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 65. thoughts, and against whom so many daggers had been sharpened, found himself in the Queen's presence. He too had his game that he was playing. Deficient as he was in nerve and daring, at cool falsehood he had not his match in the world. Elizabeth received him gra- ciously, and bade him wear his cap while speaking to her in consideration of his rank. She then told him that he was suspected of having gone to Scotland at the instiga- tion of the Duke of Guise, with a view to making a religious revolution and of destroying the alliance with England ; that he was said further to have introduced Jesuits there, whom he had seen, talked to, and con- sulted with. Every word of this was literally true : yet he swore that it was nothing but a dream. His return to Scotland was at the King's invitation, he said. He had no connection with Guise, and had never spoken to a Jesuit. He was a true Protestant. He had always insisted to the King that the Queen of England was his surest friend ; and the cause of his unpopularity had been nothing but a difference with the ministers about Church government. He preferred the Anglican system to the Scotch, and he had wished to introduce the orderly institution of bishops. Elizabeth allowed him to believe that she thought him sincere. She should hear, she said, how he be- haved in France, and if she was satisfied with the accounts of him she would allow him to return to Scot- land. He imagined that he had succeeded in blinding her, and afterwards, that his friends in England might not be led astray about him by a report of his words, he