to revolt as soon as she was ready to aid them. [Sidenote: The murder of Rizzio.] No such danger had ever threatened Elizabeth as this. But again she could "trust to fortune." Mary had staked all on her union with Darnley, and yet only a few months had passed since her wedding-day when men saw that she "hated the King." The boy turned out a dissolute, insolent husband; and Mary's scornful refusal of his claim of the "crown matrimonial," which would have given him an equal share of the royal power with herself, widened the breach between them. Darnley attributed this refusal to Rizzio's counsels; and his father, Lord Lennox, joined with him in plotting vengeance against the secretary. They sought aid from the very party whom Darnley's marriage had been planned to crush. Though the strength of the Protestant nobles had been broken by the flight of Murray, the Douglases remained at the court. Morton had no purpose of lending himself to the ruin of the religion he professed, and Ruthven and Lindesay were roused to action when they saw themselves threatened with a restoration of Catholicism, and with a legal banishment of Murray and his companions in the coming Parliament, which could only serve as a prelude to their own ruin. Rizzio was the author of this policy; and when Darnley called on his kinsmen to aid him in attacking Rizzio, the Douglases grasped at his proposal. Their aid and their promise of the crown matrimonial were bought by Darnley's consent to the recall of the fugitive lords and of Murray. The plot of the Douglases was so jealously hidden that no whisper of it reached the Queen. Her plans were on the brink of success. The Catholic nobles were ready for action at her court. Huntly and Bothwell were called into the Privy Council. At the opening of March 1566 the Parliament which was to carry out her projects was to assemble; and the Queen prepared for her decisive stroke by naming men whom she could trust as Lords of the Articles--a body with whom lay the proposal of measures to the Houses--and by restoring the bishops to their old places among the peers. But at the moment when Mary revealed the extent of her schemes by her dismissal of the English ambassador, the young king, followed by Lord Ruthven, burst into her chamber, dragged Rizzio from her presence, and stabbed him in an outer chamber, while Morton and Lord Lindesay with their followers seized the palace gate. Mary found herself a prisoner in the hands of her husband and his confederates. Her plans were wrecked in an hour. A proclamation of the king dissolved the Parliament which she had called for the ruin of her foes; and Murray, who was on his way back from England when the deed was done, was received at Court and restored to his old post at the Council-board. [Sidenote: Mary's revenge.]