Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 7.djvu/350

 330 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [011.44. resolution which she could avow either to interfere at once or distinctly to declare that she did not mean to interfere. Cecil, according to his usual habit, reviewed the situation and drew out in form its leading features. The two interests at stake were religion and the succes- sion to the Crown* For religion ' it was doubtful how to meddle in another prince's controversy : ' ' so far as politic laws were devised for the maintenance of the Gospel Christian men might defend it,' ' yet the best service which men could render to the truth was to serve God faithfully and procure by good living the defence thereof at His Almighty hand/ The succession was at once more critical and more impossible to leave un- touched. The Queen of Scots appeared to intend to exact her recognition as ' second person ' at the point of the_svvord. The unwillingness of the Queen of England to marry had unsettled the minds of her subjects, who, ' beholding the state of the Crown to depend only on the breath of one person/ were becoming restless and uneasy ; and there were symptoms on all sides which pointed ' towards a civil quarrel in the realm/ The best remedy would be the fulfilment of the hopes which had been so long held out to the nation. If the Queen would marry all danger would at once be at an end. If she could not bring herself to accept that alternative, she might make the intrigues of the Scottish Queen with her Catholic subjects, the practising with Rome, the language of Darnley to Randolph, and the continued refusal to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh, a ground for declaring war. 1 1 Note in Cecil's hand, September, 1565; JITS'. Rolls House