Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/67

1569.] ENGLISH PARTIES. Prince died she should resume the crown ; or she might reign jointly with the Prince, the administration remain- ing in the hands of Murray and the present council ; or, lastly, if she would consent to neither of these conditions, she might be again sole Queen, if she would give suffi- cient securities for her future behaviour. She must con- sent to the maintenance of the religion established in Scotland, ' declaring the Crown of Scotland as free from the foreign jurisdiction, of Rome as the Crown of Eng- land/ If she could not herself join the Scotch com- munion, she might be a member of the Church of Eng- land, as she had already professed her willingness to be. 1 Some trustworthy person if possible the Earl of Mur- ray, 'as there was none so meet in all Scotland* would have to continue in the Regency. The forfeitures on all sides should be declared void, and the Queen of Scots must ratify, if not the whole treaty of Leith, yet so much of it as touched the rights of Elizabeth herself. The Scotch Parliament must undertake that the con- ditions should be observed, and if they were violated by Mary Stuart herself, she was to be understood to have ipso facto forfeited her crown. 2 1 Mary Stuart had been careful to keep up the hopes of her possible conversion among those about her, although to Catholics "English and foreign she always insisted on her orthodoxy. It is frightful to think what she must have suffered. * My Lord of Shrewsbury,' writes Sir Thomas Gargrave on the 3rd of April, ' hath provided that the said Queen hath heard Aveekly all this Lent three sermons every Sunday, Wednesday, and Friday one where- in she hath been very well persuaded to the reading of Scriptures, and she is, as I am advertised, very at- tentive at the sermons, and doth not lose one.' Cotton. MSS. CALIO. B. ix. fol. 383- 2 Consideration of the matters of