/S66.] THE MURDER OF DARNLEY. 471 jects and their posterity in the stablishing the succes- sion of the crown, first in her own person and progeny, and next in such persons as law and justice should peaceably direct according to the answer of Moses :
- The Lord God of the spirit of all flesh set one over,
this great multitude which may go out and in before them, and lead them out and in, that the Lord's people may not be as sheep without a shepherd/ ' 1 The meaning: of language such as this . oo ^ December. could not be mistaken. All the political ad- vantages of the Scottish succession would not com- pensate to 'the Lord's people' for such a shepherd as the person into whose hands they seemed to be visibly drifting. It was a grave misfortune for the Protestants that they could produce no better can- didate than Lady Catherine Grey, who had professed herself a Catholic when Catholicism seemed likely to serve her turn ; and to whom, notwithstanding her legal claim through the provisions of the will of Henry the Eighth, there were so many and so serious ob- jections. The friends of the Queen of Scots had set in circulation a list of difficulties in the way of her ac- knowledgment, the weight of which fanaticism itself could not refuse to admit. 2 1 Preamble for the Subsidy Bill : Domestic MSS., vol. xli. Rolls House. 2 ' Whatever be said, it is no- torious that when Sir Charles Bran- don married the French Queen he had a wife already living. ' The Lady Katherine is therefore illegitimate. 'Even if this were not so, yet such hath been her life and beha- viour, and so much hath she stained herself and her issue, as she is to be thought unworthy of the crown.
