Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/251

1570.] EXCOMMUNICATION OF ELIZABETH. 237 the Queen of Scots was a slandered woman; that Elizabeth's pretended care for her honour was but a contrivance to give countenance to accusations which would not endure investigation, they would have re- plied, that her injustice was aggravated by her hypo- crisy ; they would have dared her to produce the so-called evidence before the eyes of Europe, that she might herself receive the infamy from which she affected to be shielding Mary Stuart. Was the truth as the defenders of the Queen of Scots maintain, such a chal- lenge would have been more fatal to Elizabeth than the landing on her shores of all the legions of Alva and Anjou ; but this could not be ; Catherine de Medici had perhaps learnt by this time that Alva's legions would not be at her service, that the Catholics were for the present crushed, and that, as against France, they would stand true to their own Sovereign. She therefore con- fessed, when Sir H. Norris read the letter to her, that she had nothing to reply to it. She still hoped, she said, that the Queen of Scots might be allowed to leave England, or might be eventually re-established in her own country ; but both she and Charles admitted that they could make no further unconditional requests in her favour. 1 If the Queen of England could discover any terms consistent with her own safety on which the restoration could be effected, they said that they would themselves become securities that those terms should be observed ; but Charles declared positively that he did ' Norris to Cecil, March 15 ; Norris to Elizabeth, March 17: MSS. France, liolls House.