Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/80

66 REIGN OF ELIZABETH. '[CH. 52 compromised by Paris ; lie was seen to have had his hand deeper than Murray knew in the tragedy of Kirk o' Field. Confidence in him and in his scheming had become impossible ; and with the darkness all around him, and with such dangerous lights at times breaking from it, the Regent was proof against Norfolk's bland- ishments and Elizabeth's commands. He could but fall at the worst, and it was better to fall nobly at his post and in his duty to Scotland, than start aside into crooked ways and stultify all that he had done. He called about him the small gallant knot of men who had stood by the Reformation through good and evil. The Earls of Mar, Glencairn, and Morton, the Master of Montrose, Lords Semple, Ruthven, and Oli- phant, met him at Perth, at the end of July. He would not allow Mary Stuart to plead that he had packed his convention. He invited Huntly, Athol, and Mait- land, and they thought it prudent to attend. Ten earls, fifteen lords, five bishops, and commissioners of the Commons from every town in Scotland, came at his summons to consider Elizabeth's demands. They de- cided with a preponderance of voices before which the secret dissentients were forced to be silent, that, although,, if it could be done with security to themselves and to him, they were ready to receive the late Queen among them as a private person, they considered her return to the throne, either alone or in conjunction with her son, as ' so prejudicial to the State, and so dan- gerous for the unquieting of the whole Isle, that they would in no wise consent to it.' ' The petition for the