Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 7.djvu/431

 1566.] THE MURDER OF DARNLE Y. would have inevitably at no distant time have been determined in her favour. Elizabeth she knew to be more for her than against her. The Conservative weight of the country party would have far outbalanced the Puritanism of the large towns. But a recognition of her right to an eventual in- heritance was not at all the object of Mary Stuart's am- bition ; nor in succeeding to the English throne did she intend to submit to trammels like those under which she had chafed in Scotland. She had spoken of herself not as the prospective but as the actual Queen of Eng- land/; 1 she had told the lords who had followed her to Dumfries that she would lead them to the gates of Lon- don ; she would not wait ; she would make no com- promise ; she woujd jsyjcfijach the sceptre out of_Eliza-; beth's hands with a Catholic army at her back as the firsiTstep of a Catholic revolution. Even here so far had" fortune favoured her she might have succeeded could she but have kept Scotland united, could she but have availed herself skilfully of the exasperation of the Lords of the Congregation when they found themselves betrayed and deserted, could she have remained on good terms with her husband and his father, and kept the friends of the House of Lennox in both countries true 1 ' That Queen the other day was in a merchant's house in Edinburgh where was a picture of the Queen's Majesty, when some had said their opinions how like or unlike it was to the Queen's Majesty of England, 'No,' said she, 'it is not like, for I am Queen of England. ' These high words, together with the rest of her doings and meanings towards this realm, I refer to others to consider.' Bedford to Leicester, February 14, 1566. PEPYSIAN MSS. Cambridge.