Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/587

 THE BOND OF ASSOCIATION. 571 Mary Stuart had offended the Pope by consenting to come to terms with Elizabeth. She had committed her- self, yet her liberty seemed as far away as before. Her friends abroad told her to look for nothing from Spain as long as her son was a Protestant ; and even Mendoxa, who had once thought that the road to the conquest of Flanders lay through England, had now altered his mind, and had advised Philip to leave England alone till Parma had finished his work. 1 Parma had indeed been anxious that the Queen of Scots should escape, and had offered to provide the necessary money. Paget, Owen, Parsons, and others of the young English Catholics, had a hundred schemes by which, if she could but find her way outside Tutbury walls any dark winter evening, they would snatch her up and sweep her down to the sea. ' You yourself know,' wrote one of them to her, ' what want the lack of your liberty has brought forth to your own subjects and all Christendom. The Queen of England will never deliver you but by fear or force, and I see small appearance yet that she will be con- strained. There are but few examples of kings that came to crowns out of prisons, and many being at liberty out of their countries recovered their own.' 2 A few years before, there would have been no diffi- culty. Half Shrewsbury's household were then in her 1 Charles Paget to the Queen of Scots, January 4 14, 1585 ; Sir F. Englefield to the Queen of Scots, March 15, 1585 : OF SCOTS. 2 Hugh Owen to the Queen ot Scots, January 13 23 : MSS. Ibid.