Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 7.djvu/204

 i8 4 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 43. tained any such thought she soon abandoned it ; her self-abnegation was to be complete ; and in ignorance of the objections of Mary Stuart to the Archduke Charles she had even allowed Cecil at the close of 1563 to re- open negotiations with the Emperor for the transfer of his son to herself. Ferdinand however had returned a cold answer. He had been trifled with once already. Elizabeth had played with him, he said, for her own pur- poses with no real intention of marriage ; and neither he nor the Archduke should be made ridiculous a second time. 1 Elizabeth accepted the refusal and redoubled her advances to Mary Stuart ; relinquishing, if she had ever really entertained, the thought of a simultaneous marriage for herself until she had seen how her scheme for Dudley would end. She was so capable of falsehood that her own expres- sions would have been an insufficient guarantee for her sincerity ; yet it will be seen beyond a doubt that those around her her ministers, her instruments, Cecil, Ran- dolph, the foreign ambassadors all believed that she really desired to give Dudley to Mary Stuart arid to settle the Scottish difficulty by it. In this, as in every- thing else, she was irresolute and changeable; but neither her conduct nor her words can be reconciled with the hypothesis of intentional duplicity; and the weak point of the project was that which she herself regarded with true, your Majesty seeth that he hath a shrewd guess at it.' Ran- dolph to Elizabeth, January 21 : Scotch MSS. Rolls House. 1 Christopher Mundt to Cecil, December 28, 1563 : Burghky Pa- pers, HAINES.