Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/546

 530 REIGN OF ELIZABETH, [CH. 67. A change of keepers had always been her peculiar fear. She knew that she was safe with Shrewsbury, but she dreaded that sooner or later she would be made over to Leicester. Once in Kenilworth, she was assured that she would never leave it alive ; and Tutbury was the halfway house towards it from Sheffield. The castle too was in itself dreary and miserable. Sheffield was the well-appointed residence of an English Earl. Tutbury was a fort on the crest of a round hill, in the midst of a treeless plain. It consisted of a circuit of walls, and in the centre a rudely-built hunting-lodge, of which the highest windows were only on a level with the parapets. The recommendation of it was its strength, and the Queen of Scots acquiesced in being taken thither only because she believed still that her stay would be brief, and because her cue was to be humble and submissive. She arrived in the middle of January. Her rooms had not been inhabited since she was last there. The plaster was peeling off the walls. The wind swept through the rents of the woodwork. The scanty furniture had been pieced together from Lord Paget's house at Beaudesert, but was wretchedly inadequate ; and the common con- veniences of life had been so ill provided that comfort and even decency were impossible. Harassed in mind and sick in body, surrounded by strangers and cut off at last from all private communi- cations, the Queen of Scots fell, for the first time, into entire despair. She wrote again and again in piteous entreaty to Burghley. She flung herself in utter self- abandonment at Elizabeth's feet, crying for liberty or