Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 9.djvu/82

68 PEIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 52. take fresh steps to coerce the recusant Borderers. Eliza- beth followed up her first message by a second, ' that she would not allow such doings/ and unless she re- ceived some immediate satisfactory answer to her last letter, ' she would be occasioned to proceed in such sort without him as percase he should find too much against him, and the fault thereof to proceed only from himself and none other.' 1 She sent orders to Lord Scrope, if Murray attempted anything against the Border gentle- men, to receive and protect them. In her letter she called Mary Stuart Queen, and the Lords her sub- jects. 2 A few weeks later Elizabeth found occasion to change her tone. Murray had then become again the saviour of his country, and Mary Stuart and the Borderers the enemies of her and mankind. It was her misfortune that while she could hesitate inde- finitely when action was immediately necessary, the ' perturbations of her mind/ as Knowles called them, at other times swayed her into extremes, and she allowed sudden alarms and sudden provocations to tempt her to the most ill-judged precipitancy. Her violent moods were happily of brief duration. Her present excitement arose partly from a belief that the Huguenots had been crushed at Jarnac, partly from the irritation into which she was thrown by hearing gradually of the scheme for the Norfolk marriage. The defiant attitude however which Coligny was still able 1 Elizabeth to Murray, August 2 Elizabeth to Scrope, August 20 : MSS. Scotland. 29 : MSS. Border.