Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/179

1569.] THE RISING OF THE NORTH. 165 ferings, her dread of the misinterpretation of the world if she did not protect her, kept the question of ques- tions still unsettled. Maitland now saw or thought he saw that the Queen of Scots must be eventually restored, and the discontent of the English Catholics, of the noblemen, and of the whole nation under an insecure and undetermined succession, opened a new opportunity to him through the Norfolk marriage. He had flung himself into the scheme with all his strength, careless where it would lead him, so only he could succeed in his great object. His knowledge, his powerful charac- ter, his intellectual cultivation, unusual in any age and unexampled in his own above all the response in every Scotch breast to the aim which he was pursuing gave him an influence which shook from Murray's side half of the best of his friends. Even the foolish ministers of the Kirk he had talked over poor wretches who if he had succeeded would have been handed over to Alva's Blood Council. Knox only, who in mere worldly sagacity was Maitland' s match, had been deaf to his persuasions. 1 He had divided the nobles. He had gained Hume and Athol, and, worse than all, the chivalrous Kirkaldy of Grange. He had fed everywhere a restless expectation of the Queen's return; and at length the Regent, being determined to check his in- trigues, had arrested him, on the evidence of Paris and Crawford, as an accomplice with Bothwell. He de- manded his trial, and the 22nd of November was fixed 1 Maitland to Mary Stuart, August, 1569, intercepted ciphers : MSS, QUEEN OF SCOTS, Rolls House.