Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/178

 164 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 53. have been wiser and better to have allowed to take their course. He was ambitious for his country, and he had felt perhaps more interest than he ought to have done in his sister's views upon the English succession ; but from the time when he could no longer blind him- self to her character, he had laid aside every inferior consideration, and had set himself steadily to maintain the cause for which he really cared. To Maitland, on the other hand, the Reformation had been interesting so far and so far only as it promised political greatness to Scotland. His keen understand- ing had shown him that the union of the two king- doms was inevitably approaching ; and full of Scotch pride and Scotch traditions, his one hope was to end the long rivalry in the way most glorious to his own people, and to place a prince of Scotch blood on the throne of the Plantagenets. The person was of little moment to him. He had brought the English to Leith in the belief that Elizabeth would marry the Earl of Arran. When Elizabeth refused and the French King died, and Mary Stuart came bajck, his energies were then de- voted to securing Mary Stuart's succession. When the Queen of Scots had seemingly wrecked her prospects by marrying Both well, he had assisted at the corona- tion of James, believing then that for her own sake Elizabeth would give him the place for which his mother had so long intrigued, and so pacify her own people and gratify Scotland through its pride. But again Elizabeth disappointed him. Her theories of government, her sympathy with Mary Stuart's snf