Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/217

 1570-J THE RISING OF THE NORTH. 20.} result. The mass in those days meant intrigue, con- spiracy, rebellion, murder, if nothing else would serve ; and better it would have been for Mary Stuart, better for Scotland, better for the broad welfare of Europe, if it had been held at arms' length while the battle lasted, by every country from which it had once been expelled. But the errors of Murray if it may be so said of any errors deserved rather to be admired than condemned. In the later differences which arose between him and the Queen, he kept at her side so long as he could hold her back from wrong. He resisted her by force, when in marrying Darnley she seemed plunging into an element in which she or the Reformation would be wrecked ; and when he failed and in failing was dis- owned with insults by Elizabeth, he alone of all his party never swerved through personal resentment from the even tenor of Ms course. Afterwards, when his sister turned aside from the pursuit of thrones to lust and crime, Murray took no part in the wild revenge which followed. He withdrew from a scene where no honourable man could remain with life, and returned only to save her from judicial retribution. Only at last when she forced upon him the alternative of treating her as a public enemy or of abandoning Scotland to anarchy and ruin, he took his final post at the head of all that was good and noble among his countrymen, and there met the fate which from that moment was marked out for him. As a ruler he was severe but inflexibly just. The corruption which had begun at the throne had saturated