Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/283

 1 5 70. ] EXCOMMUNICA TION OF ELIZA BE TH. 269 port if tlrey were refused. If a united Scottish Parlia- ment demanded her liberation, Elizabeth knew that she could not dare any longer to detain her, and the Leith treaty would be left unsigned, and Mary Stuart, with half her subjects at her back, would again call herself Queen of England. The Protestant Lords perfectly understood her embarrassment and had no intention of sacrificing themselves for her convenience. 1 1 Sussex performed the ungra- cious office of forcing Elizabeth to look the situation in the face. ' The King's Lords,' he wrote to her, ' for lack of maintenance see only destruction to themselves ; the rather for that it is delivered to them that your Majesty intends to restore their mistress. If it he your Ma- jesty's intention to bring all Scot- land to the mother's side, then is the course good they now begin to run in that country, and your Highness shall see the case at an end quickly, which, under correction, had been better to have been done under your direction than at their own choice. Tf, on the other hand, your Majesty intend to let this course and to con- tinue a party for the child, then must you of necessity openly take upon you the maintenance of his authority as King ; send presently money to such as take his part to levy for a time men of war of their own, and aid them besides with your forces here to bring the rest to yield to that authority : to get in their hands all the strengths in any part of the realm that stand in fit place to receive any foreign power.' Sussex to Elizabeth, April 23 : MSS. Scot- Two days later he wrote to the same effect to Cecil. ' If her Majesty lack a sufficient party, the fault is in herself. Morton and his faction say that if she will enter into public maintenance of the King, and send money to entertain 3000 soldiers of their own for three months, and command the force here to aid them for that time, they will bring all Scotland in effect to obey their authority and yield in sense to England without the Queen's charges. The time passes away, and her "Majesty must resolve what she will do. If she will restore the Scottish Queen, it was no good policy for me to show countenance on the other side. If she will main- tain the other side and command me to join with them, I will make all men within thirty miles of the Bor- der obey that authority or I will not leave a stone house for any of them to sleep in. And if she command me to pass further, I will deliver the Castle of Edinburgh or any others