Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/254

 240 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 54. possible compromise by winch slie could reconcile im- possibilities, by which she could replace Mary Stuart yet leave her powerless for mischief, with merely the outward insignia of Sovereignty this was the solution of the problem which commended itself to Elizabeth, as that which, on the whole, promised best for English interests and for her own safety. It was because she had been baffled on this very point when she hoped that she was about to succeed, that she was so much irritated in the past summer with the Earl of Murray and the Convention of Perth. She had allowed herself, appa- rently without Cecil's knowledge, to correspond in secret with the Earl of Argyle and with Maitland ; to encourage them both in upholding Mary Stuart's cause, as she had done before when Mary Stuart was at Loch- leven, and to persuade them to trust in her rather than in France. Her secret purposes must remain always extremely obscure. It is possible that she was deliber- ately dishonest ; but, beyond doubt, she led the Earl of Argyle to believe that in thwarting Murray,, and in keeping up a party in opposition to him, he was but fulfilling the Queen of England's wishes. 1 since the right of the crown comes only by her Majesty to him, and therefore will appertain to the said Duke and his successors.' Commis- sion from the Duke of Chatelherault to the Kings of France and Spain, June, 1570: MSS. Scotland, Rolls House. 1 Argyle himself told Randolph ' that in all things he had done in defence of the Queen his mistress, since the time of her imprisonment in Lochleven, he did it by such ad- vice as the Queen of England had given him, which had caused him since that time to have lost the friendship of others that were very dear to him, even the Lord Regent's self, whose death he minded to see revenged so far as justice and law