But though the hearts of men in that ungodly age were too hard to melt at the supposed woes of the Mary who reigned above, and too dull to turn rebels and traitors for the sake of those thrones and principalities in supra-lunar spheres which might be in her gift:  yet there was a Mary who reigned (or ought to reign) below, whose woes (like her gifts) were somewhat more palpable to the carnal sense.  A Mary who, having every comfort and luxury (including hounds and horses) found for her by the English Government, at an expense which would be now equal to some twenty thousand a year, could afford to employ the whole of her jointure as Queen Dowager of France (probably equal to fifty thousand a year more), in plotting the destruction of the said government, and the murder of its queen; a Mary who, if she prospered as she ought, might have dukedoms, and earldoms, fair lands and castles to bestow on her faithful servants; a Mary, finally, who contrived by means of an angel face, a serpent tongue, and a heart (as she said herself) as hard as a diamond, to make every weak man fall in love with her, and, what was worse, fancy more or less that she was in love with him.

Of her the Jesuits were not unmindful; and found it convenient, indeed, to forget awhile the sorrows of the Queen of Heaven in those of the Queen of Scots.  Not that they cared much for those sorrows; but they were an excellent stock-in-trade.  She was a Romanist; she was “beautiful and unfortunate,” a virtue which, like charity, hides the multitude of sins; and therefore she was a convenient card to play in the great game of Rome against the Queen and people of England; and played the poor card was, till it got torn up by over-using.  Into her merits or demerits I do not enter deeply here.  Let her rest in peace.

To all which the people of England made a most practical and terrible answer.  From the highest noble to the lowest peasant, arose one simultaneous plebiscitum:  “We are tired of these seventeen years of chicanery and terror.  This woman must die:  or the commonweal of England perish!” We all know which of the two alternatives was chosen.

All Europe stood aghast:  but rather with astonishment at English audacity, than with horror at English wickedness.  Mary’s own French kinsfolk had openly given her up as too bad to be excused, much less assisted.  Her own son blustered a little to the English ambassador; for the majesty of kings was invaded:  whereon Walsingham said in open council, that “the queen should send him a couple of hounds, and that would set all right.”  Which sage advice (being acted on, and some deer sent over and above) was so successful that the pious mourner, having run off (Randolph says, like a baby to see the deer in their cart), returned for answer that he would “thereafter depend wholly upon her majesty, and serve her fortune against all the world; and that he only wanted now two of her majesty’s yeoman prickers, and a couple of her grooms of the deer.”  The Spaniard was not sorry on the whole for the catastrophe; for all that had kept him from conquering England long ago was the fear lest, after it was done, he might have had to put the crown thereof on Mary’s head, instead of his own.  But Mary’s death was as convenient a stalking-horse to him as to the pope; and now the Armada was coming in earnest.