Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 7.djvu/349

 THE DARNLE Y MARRIAGE. 329 minded her of the siege of Leith and of the madness of risking a quarrel with her powerful and dangerous neigh- bour. ' Scotland/ she said, ' should not be turned into a republic ; she would sooner lose her crown than wear it at the pleasure of her revolted subjects and the Queen of England ; instead of advising her to make peace, Catherine de Medici should have stepped forward to her side and assisted her to avenge the joint wrongs of France and Scotland ; if France failed her in her ex- tremity, grieved as she might be to leave her old allies, she would take the hand which was offered her by Spain ; she would submit to England never.' 1 From the moment when she had first taken the field, she had given her enemies no rest; she had swept Fife, the hotbed of the Protestants, as far as St Andrew's. The old Laird of Lundy he who had called the mass the mickle deil was flung into prison and his friends and his family had to fly for their lives. At the end of September she was pausing to recover breath at Holy- rood before she made her last swoop upon the party at Dumfries. The Edinburgh merchants found her money, her soldiers with lighted matchlocks assisting them to unloose their purse-strings. With October she would march to the Border, and in her unguarded moments she boasted that she would take her next rest at the gates of London. 2 It was now necessary for Elizabeth to come to some 1 Castelnau de Mativissiere to Paul do Foix, September : TEULET, vol. ii. 2 Paul de Foix to the King of France, September 29 ; TEULET, vol. ii.