Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/480

 464 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [OH. 66. Englishman's hands. He said he looked at James, and James had blushed and turned pale. 1 Nor was Arran the King's only dangerous adviser. The young, treacherous, and accomplished Master of Gray had been for some time stealing his way into Scotch diplomacy. He had been in Paris with Guise, and had shared the secrets of the great conspiracy. Like Arran, he had professed to be devoted to the Queen of Scots. He had once proposed to lead a party of horse to Sheffield, cut her out, and carry her off; but, like Arran, he hated her at heart, wished her to remain for ever a prisoner, and was in favour of a reconcilia- tion with Elizabeth. Gray was a politician of the school of Maitland of Lethington, to whom ' God ' was ' a bogle of the nursery ; ' and his theory was a bad copy of the tyrannous type of Anglicanism, the destruction of the Kirk and the establishment of episcopacy, with the King for head of the Church Protestantism over- thrown and a decent State system erected on its ruins with a contemptuous infidelity at the root. ' Money and preferment/ wrote Fontenay, ' are the only Sirens which charm the Lords of Scotland. To preach to them of duty to their Prince, of honour, justice, virtue, noble actions, the memory of an illus- trious life which they should bequeath to their posterity, 1 ' Je voyois tous les Seigneurs, tant 1'inconstance de ce monde est grande, courir a I'enrie Pun de 1'autre pour baiser les mains de ce venerable Angloys et a le caresser en presence du Roy, qui rougissoit et p&lissoit, me voyant, ma face luy presentant continuelment 1'idee de Tostre Majeste.' Fontenay a la Reyne d'Escosse, 5 15 Aout: MSS. MAEY QUEEN OF SCOTS.