Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/521

 1584. J THE BOND OF ASSOCIATION. 505 She had given bitter offence to Spain and the Pope by her concessions, and all had been in vain. The liberty which was almost in her grasp had melted like an image in a dissolving view. In the fierceness of her disappointment she had with- drawn her offers. She threw herself again on her foreign friends. She blew Scotland into a flame, she appealed to the chivalry of Guise, and with the help of Morgan and Don Bernardino and the Jesuits, she again wove into form a plot for the invasion of England. For a time her schemes had seemed to prosper. The Pro- testant Lords in Scotland were overthrown ; Gowrie was executed, Lindsay imprisoned, the ministers expelled from their churches, and her son brought into relations with the Pope and the Duke of Guise. The English Catholics prepared once more for insurrection. Arundel, Paget, Northumberland, Lord Henry Howard, Lord Yaux, and many a knight and nobleman besides, had been waiting only for a signal from abroad to carry her colours to the field and end the Tudor dynasty in a second Bosworth. Guise was ready ; Parma was ready ; the Pope was burning with impetuosity ; at one time nothing was wanting but the distinct consent of the Kino- of Spain, which Mendoza and de Tassis had all but obtained from him. But this mirage too had faded away. Her kinsmen in France became unaccountably cold. 1 Philip halted on his leaden foot. Throgmorton was taken, and the 1 The Archbishop of Glasgow to the Queen of Scots, June 1424 : MSS. MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS.