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Norfolk seemed to discover in these remonstrances, as well as the truth which they contained, made a deep impression on the regent. He daily received the strongest assurances of Mary's willingness to be reconciled to him, if he abstained from accusing her of such an odious crime, together with the denunciations of her irreconcileable hatred, if he acted a contrary part. All these considerations concurred in determining him to alter his purpose, and to make trial of the expedient which the duke had suggested.

When the intrigue between Mary and Norfolk had proceeded almost to maturity, she wrote a letter to the regent, in which she demanded that her marriage with Bothwell should be reviewed by the proper judges, and if found invalid should be dissolved by a legal sentence of divorce; but her particular motive for proposing it at this time began to be so well known, that the demand was rejected by the convention of estates. They imputed it not so much to any abhorrence of Bothwell, as to her eagerness to conclude a marriage with the duke of Norfolk.

This marriage was the object of that secret negotiation in England which we have already mentioned. The fertile and projecting genius of Maitland first conceived this scheme. During the conference at York he communicated it to the duke himself, and to the bishop of Ross. The former readily closed with a scheme so flattering to his ambition. The latter considered it as a probable device for restoring his mistress to liberty, and replacing her on her throne. Nor was Mary, with whom Norfolk held a correspondence by means of his sister, lady Scroop, averse from a measure, which would have restored her to her kingdom with so much splendour. The sudden removal of the conference from York to Westminster suspended,

but did not break off this intrigue. Maitland and Ross were still the duke's prompters, and hi agents; and many letters and love tokens were changed between him and the queen of Scots

Norfolk succeeded in gaining the consent and probation of the regent; and the greater part of the English peers, either directly or tacitly approved of it as a salutary measure.

The intrigue was now in so many hands, that it could not long remain a secret. It began to be whispered at court; and Elizabeth calling the duke into her presence, expressed the utmost indignation at his conduct, and charged him to lay aside all thoughts of prosecuting such a dangerous design. Soon after Leicester, who perhaps had countenanced the project with no other intention, revealed the whole circumstances of it to the queen. Pembroke, Arundel, Lumley, and Throgmorton, were confined and examined. Mary was watched more narrowly than ever; and Hastings, earl of Huntington, who pretended to dispute with the Scottish queen her right to the succession, being joined in commission with Shrewsbury, rendered her imprisonment more intolerable, by the excess of his vigilance and rigour. The Scottish regent, threatened with Elizabeth's displeasure, meanly betrayed the duke; put his letters into her hands, and furnished all the intelligence in his power. The duke himself retired first to Howardhouse, and then, in contempt of a summons to appear before the privy council, fled to his seat in Norfolk. Intimidated by the imprisonment of his associates; coldly received by his friends in that country; unprepared for a rebellion; and unwilling perhaps to rebel; he hesitated for some days; and at last obeyed a second call, and repaired to Windsor. He was first kept as a prisoner in a private house, and then sent to the tower. After

being confined there upwards of nine months, he was released upon his humble submission to Elizabeth, giving her a promise, on his allegiance, to hold no farther correspondence with the queen of Scots. During the progress of Norfolk's negotiations, the queen's partisans in Scotland, who made no doubt of their issuing in her restoration to the throne, with an increase of authority, were wonderfully elevated.

The marriage intrigue of Norfolk was again renewed. Philip, whose dark and thoughtful mind delighted in the mystery of intrigue, had held a secret correspondence with Mary for some time, by means of the bishop of Ross, and had supplied both herself and her adherents in Scotland with small sums of money. Ridolphi, a Florentine gentleman, who resided at London under the character of a banker, and who acted privately as an agent for the pope, was the person whom the bishop intrusted with this negotiation. Mary thought it necessary likewise to communicate the secret to the duke of Norfolk, whom Elizabeth had lately restored to liberty, upon his solemn promise to have no further intercourse with the queen of Scots; which, however, he regarded so little, that she took no step in any matter of moment without his advice. She complained in a long letter, which she wrote to him in cyphers, of the baseness with which the French court had abandoned her interest; she declared her resolution of imploring the assistance of the Spanish monarch, which was now her only resource; and recommended Ridolphi to his confidence, as a person capable both of explaining and of advancing the scheme. The duke commanded Hickford, his secretary, to decypher, and then to burn this letter; but whether he had been already gained by the court, or resolved at that time to betray his

master, he disobeyed the latter part of the order, and hid the letter, together with other treasonable papers, under the duke's own bed.

Ridolphi, in a conference with Norfolk, omitted none of those arguments, and spared none of those promises, which are the usual incentives to rebellion. The pope, he told him, had a great sum in readiness to bestow in so good a cause. The duke of Alva had undertaken to land ten thousand men not far from London. The catholics to a man would rise in arms. Many of the nobles were ripe for a revolt, and wanted only a leader. Half the nation had turned their eyes towards him, and expected him to revenge the unmerited injuries which he himself had suffered; and to rescue an unfortu nate queen, who offered him her person and her crown as the reward of his success. Norfolk approved of the design, and, though he refused to give Ridolphi any letter of credit, allowed him to use his name in negotiating with the pope and Alva. The bishop of Ross, who, from the violence of his temper, and impatience to procure relief for his mistress, was apt to run into rash and desperate designs, advised the duke to assemble secretly a few of his followers, and at once to seize Elizabeth's person. But this the duke rejected as a scheme equally wild and hazardous. Meanwhile, the English court had received some imperfect information of the plot, by intercepting one of Ridolphi's agents; and an accident happened which brought to light all the circumstances of it. The duke had employed Hickford to transmit to Lord Herries some money which was to be distributed among Mary's adherents in Scotland. A person not in the secret was intrusted with conveying it to the borders, and he suspecting it from the weight to be gold, whereas he had been told that it was silver, carried it directly to the privy council

The duke, his domestics, and all who were privy, or could be suspected of being privy, to the design, were taken into custody. Never did the accomplices in a conspiracy discover less firmness, or servants betray an indulgent master with greater baseness. Every one confessed the whole of what he knew. Hickford gave directions how to find the papers which he had hid. The duke himself, relying at first on the fidelity of his associates, and believing all dangerous papers to have been destroyed, confidently asserted his own innocence; but when their depositions and the papers themselves were produced, astonished at their treachery, he acknowledged his guilt, and implored the queen's mercy. His offence was too heinous, and too often repeated, to obtain pardon; and Elizabeth thought it necessary to deter her subjects, by his punishment, from holding a correspondence with the queen of Scots, or her emissaries. Being tried by his peers, he was found guilty of high treason, and, after several delays, suffered death for the crime.

REGENT MURRAY:

THIS eminent man was a natural son of king James V. After an education suitable to his rank, he was appointed prior of St. Andrew's; but the active vigour of his mind was not formed to move in the humble sphere of an ecclesiastic, whose concerns are not with the kingdoms of this world: he soon rushed forward into political life, and rose to such eminence, that even before Mary was recalled into Scotland, he had acquired a considerable ascendency in the councils of the nation. At an early period of life, he caught the flame of civil and religious liberty, and became the champion of

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