Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 7.djvu/394

 374 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [0*1.44. the enmities and friendships of his family intersected and perplexed the leading division between Catholics and Protestants. Lord Darnley had been brought to Scotland as the representative of the English Catholics and as a support to the Catholic faction ; but it was singular that the great Scottish families most nearly connected with him were Protestants; while the Gordons, the Hamiltons, the Betons, the relations generally of Chatelherault, who was Lennox's principal rival, were chiefly on the opposite side. The confusion hitherto had worked ill for the interests of the Re- formers. The House of Douglas had preferred the claims of blood to those of religion : the Earl of Ruth- ven, though Murray's friend, was Darnley's uncle, 1 and had stood by the Queen through the struggle of the summer ; Lindsay, a Protestant to the backbone, had married a Douglas and went with the Earl of Morton ; the desire to secure the crown to a prince of their own blood and race had overweighed all higher and nobler claims. The desertion of so large a section of his friends had been the real cause of Murray 's failure ; Protest- antism was not dead in Scotland, but other interests had paralyzed its vitality, just as four years before Murray's eagerness to secure the English succession for his sister had led him into his first and fatal mistake of supporting her in refusing to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh. The ! Ruthven had married a half-sister of Lady Margaret Lennox.