Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/305

 1570.] EXCOMMUNICATION OF ELIZABETH. :gi she had gone too far to retreat, she would have avowed her real purpose and gone through with it. But Eliza- beth was very different from all this. The principles which divided her council divided herself from herself. She had no sooner committed herself to one course of action than the merits of another became doubly obvious to her, while it gratified her sense of power to strike and to smile, to be alternately the lightning and the sunshine. She perhaps flattered herself that the Scots, after suffering from the invasion, would come to her feet like children beaten into submission ; a letter from Maitland to Sussex indicated that they were as yet far from any such condition. ' You tell me/ Maitland wrote, ' that her June. Majesty's forces are revoked. I am glad thereof more than I was at their coming, and it is not amiss for their ease to have a breathing time and some rest between one exploit and another. This is the third journey they have made in Scotland since your Lordship came to the Borders, and have been so occupied in every one of them, that it might well be said, if the amity and good intelligence between the realms would permit that phrase of language, to term the Englishmen as our forefathers were wont to do they have reasonably well acquit themselves of the duty of old enemies, and have burnt and spoiled as much ground within Scotland as any army of England did in one year, these hundred years by-past, which may suffice for a two months' work, although you do no more. The rude people in