Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/427

 1 5 7i.] THE RIDOLFI CONSPIRACY. 413 shelter for English Catholic rebels ; a residence for a French minister, who was kept there to nourish hopes which might or might not be realized, and, commanding free access to the sea, was a focus and hotbed of intrigues with the Continental Powers. The two Regents had watched anxiously for a chance of getting possession of it. The journey in which Murray lost his life had been undertaken in the vain hope that it would be surrendered. Sir William Drury surveyed it after he had destroyed Hamilton Castle, and a ball from a ditch had nearly ended his course there. The occupation of Dumbarton by an English garrison was among the conditions de- manded by Elizabeth in the treaty. But for the present Queen Mary's banner waved above the battlements on "Wallace's Tower ; Fleming was still in command ; the Archbishop of St Andrew's, who had been proclaimed traitor after Murray's murder, found shelter behind its crags. De Yirac was there, superintending the supplies of arms and money which were continually coming in from France, and beside others there was a young Eng- lishman also, named Hall, a friend of Sir Thomas Stan- ley, who had been concerned in the last Lancashire conspiracy. It has been said that while the treaty was under consideration in London, the two parties in Scotland had suspended hostilities. . The conference having broken up, the armistice was not to be renewed and was to terminate on the ist of April. In the last week of March, a man who had been a servant in the castle, and bore some grudge against Lord Fleming for ill-treat-