Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 11.djvu/322

306 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. ' [CH. 6$. France and would adventure his life into Scotland, well and strongly accompanied. Sufficient force was promised him as soon as the Lords of their party would pass as- surance to rise on their parts.' l The Queen, who had seen through him sufficiently to recognize at any rate that he was a scoundrel, treated his advances at first as attempts on her credulity. She bade Cohham hear what he had to say, be on his guard against deception, and commit her to nothing. But she did not feel quite certain. The bottom of a base nature is difficult to probe. ' On second thought, she enter- tained a hope that the offer might be sincere ; ' and Walsingham told Cobham that he was to close with the conditions, whatever they might be. The result was extremely curious, though conjecture is still free to choose its own conclusion. Had Lennox asked for an immediate sum of money, his conduct would be intelligible. He would have put it in his pocket and laughed at his dupes. He asked indeed to be restored by the Queen's means to Scotland ; he promised to use his influence there to promote English interests ; and this too might have been mere illusion. But as a proof of sincerity he gave in a list of the nobles who had signed the bond with himself; he gave details of the plan to which Mary Stuart alluded, for her rescue from Sheffield, and he added that there was a second con- spiracy, into which, out of revenge for their neglect by England, the Earls of Angus, Gowrie, and Glencairn 1 Cobham to Walsingham, March 28 : MSS. France,