Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/530

$io REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [en. 6i. enthusiasm. The Guises, as the leaders of the French Catholic aristocracy, intended, if the house of Yalois failed, to snatch the crown from heretic Bourbons. The Guises' chance of success would be multiplied a hundredfold if they could revolutionize England in the interests of Mary Stuart ; while the singular fortune of that world-famed lady, her wild story, her exile, her imprisonment, her constancy to the faith of which she was the supposed martyr, set on fire the imaginations of half the youths in Europe. Philip it seemed would do nothing till the ground had first been broken by others. Well then, others should break it. The refu- gees at Hheims were in the closest intercourse with Guise. Sanders and many others of them were for ever on the road between Brussels, Paris, Madrid, and the Vatican. A beginning had been made in Scotland. It had failed, but it could be attempted again, and the secret Catholic correspondence of the time reveals hence- forward a connected and organized scheme, in which many different constituents were parts of a single move- ment, the last issue of which was to be the entrance of the Duke of Guise into England over the Scotch Border. The objections of Philip to French interference would, it was hoped, be found inapplicable to the house of Lor- raine, for the house of Lorraine were pensioners of his own. The Duke of Guise would act, not as a French- man, but as the executor of the Papal decree, and neither France nor Spain would then have cause to dread the ambitious projects of the other. 1 A passage in a letter from Don Bernardino do Mendoza to Cayas ex-