Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/611

 1585.] THE BOND OF ASSOCIATION. 595 said, shrewdly, ' there was no need of words ; weapons had spoken loud enough, and gotten them audience to clear their own cause/ * Elizabeth outdid herself. Relieved of her danger, she professed to be overwhelmed with astonishment. Alarmed for her dear brother's safety, and specially desirous he should understand that she had been no party to what had happened, she sent her cousin, young Knowles, 2 to comfort and encourage him. If the Lords ill-used him, she swore ' they should smart for it,' and she wrote him a letter which, read by the light of Walsingham's and Wotton's correspondence, suggests reflections which need not be expressed. ' Right dear Brother,' she said, ' the strange news of hard accidents that are arrived here of unlooked-for or unsuspected attempts in Scotland, even by some such as lately issued out of our land, constraineth me, as well for the care we have of your person as of the discharge of our own honour and conscience, to send you immediately this gentleman one that appertaineth to us in blood both to offer you all assistance of help, as all good endeavours of counsel, and to make it plain that we dealt plainly. These Lords, making great out- cries that I would not or could not help them to be re- stored, I, by their great importunance, yielded, that if I might be freed of my assurance given unto you for their safe keeping, I would consent unto their de- parture ; and so, after your answer, as methought most 1 CALDERWOOD. 2 Leicester's brother-in-law, son of Sir Francis Knowles