Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/52

 36 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 63. consent, and no longer by usurpation and violence. 1 There remained only the knitting up of the Morton tragedy for the first act of Lennox's work to be satis- factorily completed. The mad Earl of Arran, the heir of the House of Hamilton, once thought of as a husband for Elizabeth, was still living in confinement. He had been in charge of his cousin Colonel Stewart, Morton's accuser, and to this Stewart his title had been trans- ferred. The new-made Earl was sent to Dumbarton to bring Morton back to Edinburgh. Morton, looking over the commission, and seeing a name which he did not know, inquired the meaning of it. On receiving his answer he said that his doom was decided. There was a prophecy that the bloody heart of the Douglas should fall by the mouth of Arran. The young King had shown much natural hesitation in consenting to the death of a man who had been in the place of a father to him. His scruples had been overcome by the prospect of clearing the reputation of his mother. 2 The promise given to Elizabeth that Morton should be tried by his Peers was observed to the letter and broken to the sense. Argyle, Seton, Lochinvar, Maxwell, Eglinton, Suther- land, and half a dozen others, the leaders all of them of the faction which had been held down under the Re- gency, were impanelled. Morton challenged some of them, but his objections were overruled, and his fate was decided on before the court opened. The indict- 1 Mary Stuart to the Archbishop of Glasgow, May 26, 1581 : LABAN- OFF, vol. v. 2 Mendoza to Philip, June 15, 1581 : MSS. Simaneas.