Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/327

 1 583. J THE JESUITS IN SCO TLAND, 3 1 1 of association, but that it was shared by James himself, and by the Earl of Arran, by whom, after Lennox's de- parture, the King was principally influenced. They were willing to. consent to an informal permission from the Queen of Scots that her son should be called King, but to pass an Act of Association through the Scotch Par- liament, or to allow the Queen of Scots' name to appear in the Acts of the realm by the side of her son's, was on every ground, political and personal, a thing which very few of them could bring themselves to think of. The King had tasted the pleasures as well as the pains of sovereignty, and did not fancy receding into a second place. Arran was in possession of the Hamilton estates, of which he was afraid that a change might de- prive him. The return of the Queen even to nominal power threatened a revolution, by which every one who had gained anything in the convulsions of the past fifteen years feared that he might be made to disgorge his spoil, They had raised difficulties which Mary Stuart was known to resent. She had determined not to recede from her own demands. The treaty which Elizabeth had opened with her in the preceding year had been suspended, but had not been broken off. Her release would produce extreme confusion in Scotland, while, if the French Government would make themselves a party to the treaty, as they had repeatedly promised, the dangerous effects might not be extended to England. Elizabeth determined to make the hungry Scotch Lords feel that she was less in their power than they imagined,