Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 7.djvu/444

 424 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [011.45. These however and all subsidiary questions were soon merged in the great event of the summer. On the I9th of June, in Edinburgh Castle, between nine and ten in the morning, was born James StuarLheir-presumptive to the united crowns of England and Scotland. Better worth to Mary Stuart's ambition was this child than all the legions of Spain and all the money of the Vatican ; the cradle in which he lay, to the fevered and anxious glance of English politicians, was as a Pharos behind which lay the calm waters of an undisturbed succession and the perpetual union of the too long divided realms. Here if the occasion was rightly used lay the cure for a thousand evils ; where all differences might be forgotten, all feuds be laid at rest, and the political fortunes of Great Britain be started afresh on a newer and brighter career. Scarcely even in her better mind could the birth of the Prince of Scotland be less than a mortification to Elizabeth knowing, as she could not fail to know, the effect which it would produce upon her subjects. Parlia- ment was to have met in the spring, and she had at- tempted to force herself into a resolution upon her own marriage, which would enable her to encounter the House of Commons. In the middle of February she believed that she had made up her mind to the Arch- duke. Sir Richard Sackville had been selected as a commissioner to arrange preliminaries at Vienna ; and she had gone so far as to arrange in detail the con- ditions on which her intended husband was to reside in England.