Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 7.djvu/491

 /S66.] THE MURDER OF DARNLEY. 471 jects and their posterity in the stablishing the succes- sion of the crown, first in her own person and progeny, and next in such persons as law and justice should peaceably direct according to the answer of Moses : this great multitude which may go out and in before them, and lead them out and in, that the Lord's people may not be as sheep without a shepherd/ ' 1 The meaning: of language such as this . oo ^ December. could not be mistaken. All the political ad- vantages of the Scottish succession would not com- pensate to 'the Lord's people' for such a shepherd as the person into whose hands they seemed to be visibly drifting. It was a grave misfortune for the Protestants that they could produce no better can- didate than Lady Catherine Grey, who had professed herself a Catholic when Catholicism seemed likely to serve her turn ; and to whom, notwithstanding her legal claim through the provisions of the will of Henry the Eighth, there were so many and so serious ob- jections. The friends of the Queen of Scots had set in circulation a list of difficulties in the way of her ac- knowledgment, the weight of which fanaticism itself could not refuse to admit. 2 1 Preamble for the Subsidy Bill : Domestic MSS., vol. xli. Rolls House. 2 ' Whatever be said, it is no- torious that when Sir Charles Bran- don married the French Queen he had a wife already living. ' The Lady Katherine is therefore illegitimate. 'Even if this were not so, yet such hath been her life and beha- viour, and so much hath she stained herself and her issue, as she is to be thought unworthy of the crown.
 * The Lord God of the spirit of all flesh set one over,