Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/414

400 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 55. more patient, 'and would be content to wait till God took pity on them.' 1 She was mocked at, trifled with, and insulted with hopes of release which were never intended to be real- ized. She was in daily expectation of assassination either by poison or open violence. A person had once even come to the place where she was, with a com- mission to kill her, and she was kept alive only that Scotland might be plunged into the miseries of uncer- tainty and civil war, and that Elizabeth might make her hateful to her subjects by representing to them that she was the cause of their sufferings/ She then went on to speak of Norfolk and the Eng- lish nobility, of their friendliness to herself, their zeal for the Catholic Church, and their determination to risk life and fortune to overturn the present Govern- ment. She touched approvingly on Norfolk's treachery to the Protestants in pretending still to belong to them, on the Anjou marriage, and the fury of the English people at the prospect of having a French prince among them; and afterwards, successively, she went over all the points on which Don Guerau had written to his master the necessity of making use of the Duke, her own devotion to Spain, and the certainty of the success of an invasion. 1 1 Instructions of the Queen of Scots to Ridolfi : MSS. Simancas. A message was attached which Ridolfi was to give separately to the Pope, contrived to meet any rumours which might have reached him as to her past misdoings. ' You will explain to his Holi- ness,' she said, ' the ill-treatment which I met with from my subject, the Earl of Bothwell. The Earl carried me, the Lord Huntly, and