Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/472

 456 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 66. him always as hostile to them as his mother had been, yet neither his mother nor the Jesuits had found him as docile as they had hoped and looked for. He had written to the Pope, but he had not been converted. He had shown himself entirely willing to please Mary Stuart by the execution of the Lords who had been the instruments of her overthrow ; but he had shown no great desire to see her again in Scotland, or to share his power with her, or even to acknowledge that he held his crown by her will and pleasure. He had been, no doubt, influenced greatly by Lennox and Arran ; but he had opinions which, as he grew older, became more de- cided, and it now becomes important to look more closely at him, and to examine in detail the figure of the youth who was to play so large a part in the history of Great Britain. The materials are fortunately provided in a singular and minute account of him, which was furnished to his mother by an acute and observing Frenchman. On the death of the Cardinal of Lorraine, July. the Cardinal's secretary, M. ISTau, passed into the service of Mary Stuart, and while M. Nau resided with her at Sheffield, and thenceforward managed her correspondence, his brother, M. Fontenay, became one of her many agents abroad, and passed his time carrying her messages, and advocating her cause in Rome, Paris, and Madrid. He too occasionally visited her at Shef- field, and when the last defeat of the Lords gave her back her spirits and her energy, she sent M. Fontenay through France to Scotland to see her son, to urge the execution of Lindsay and the Abbot of Dunfermline, to