Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 4.djvu/341

1548.] interference till Edward should be of age, if the Scots, on their part, would make no engagements with the French. Their Queen might remain among themselves, and at the end of ten years should be free to make her own choice. Good sense had not been wholly washed away by the bloodshed at Musselburgh, and voices were heard to say that this offer was a reasonable one. But exasperation and the hope of revenge were overwhelmingly predominant. The queen-mother, Mary of Guise, bold, resolute, and skilful, appeared in person in the convention. The Duchy of Chatelherault was bestowed on the Regent Arran, with a pension of twelve thousand francs; and money was freely used in other quarters. The opposition was silenced, and the intended bride of the Dauphin, that there might be no room left for a second repentance, was to be placed at once beyond the reach of the English arms. Villegaignon weighed anchor on the instant, evaded the English cruisers who were watching for him at the mouth of the Forth, and running round the Orkneys, fell back upon the Clyde, took the young Queen on board at Dumbarton, with her brother Lord James Stuart (afterwards known to history as the Eegent Murray), and bore her safely to Brest. 'So,' says Knox, ' she was sold to go into France, to the end that in her youth she should drink of that liquor that should remain with her all her lifetime a plague to the realm, and for her own final destruction.'