Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/511

 IS84-] THE BOND OF ASSOCIATION, 495 of Scotland, on the simple conditions of deserting Angus and Mar and the Hamiltons, disowning the ministers, backing up the bishops, and recognizing James as her next heir. This done, he said that he would reveal all the secrets of the foreign conspiracy, and would expose the intrigues of the Queen of Scots. Hunsdon ventured to ask him whether James too had not been a party to those conspiracies, had not con- templated a change of creed, and had not conversed with Jesuits from Rheims ? Arran confidently answered that it was all a Protestant slander. ' The King had never seen a Jesuit nor knew that a Jesuit had been in the realm.' ' It was utterly false that he had ever deal* with the Pope, the King of Spain, or the King of France, to the prejudice of her Majesty.' l This was too much : Hunsdon might be deceived, but not Wal- singham or Burghley. The part was overdone. It would have been safer to have confessed the whole truth to have admitted both for his master and himself that they had been playing as Elizabeth had been playing with all sides, but that they were ready to sell them- selves if she would give them their price. The con- ditions might have been complied with, but the affecta- tion of ignorance about the Jesuits was too palpably absurd. Arran went back to Edinburgh in the insolence of imagined triumph ; a second Parliament was called im- mediately, where the forfeiture of the banished Earls Hunsdon to Walsingham, August 1424 : MSS. Scotland.