Driven hither and thither by so many contrary opinions and contending interests, it was no easy matter for the Scottish Queen to come to a final determination upon this subject. Although, in her own words, "not to marry she knew could not be for her, and to defer it long many incommodities might ensue," she at the same time saw that there were insuperable reasons against a foreign alliance. The loss of her best and most powerful continental friend, the Duke of Guise, was one of these; another was, the avowed wish of Elizabeth and the English nation; and the third, and that which weighed most forcibly, the earnest entreaties of her own subjects. The great proportion of the inhabitants of Scotland were now Protestants; and to have attempted to place over them a foreign Catholic Prince, would have been to have incurred the risk of throwing them at once into the arms of Elizabeth, and of losing their allegiance for ever. Mary was therefore willing to make a virtue of necessity, and to allow herself to be guided very much by "her good sister's discretion." This concession to the English Queen was far from being agreeable to Catharine de Medicis and the French Court. It seemed to be paving the way for a cessation of that friendship which had so long existed between France and Scotland. Catharine, altering her policy, began to treat Mary with every mark of attention. She paid up the dowry she received from France, which had fallen into arrears, and requested Mary to exercise as much patronage and influence in that country as she chose. Elizabeth, however, had already suggested a husband for her; and, to the astonishment of every body, had named her favourite minion, Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Though the proposal of one of her own subjects, and one too, whom she had raised from comparative obscurity, was regarded by Mary as little else than an insult, she agreed, that two commissioners upon her part, Murray and Maitland--should meet two of Elizabeth's, the Duke of Bedford and Randolph, to discuss the expediency of the match. At the conference, which took place at Berwick, it was stated for Mary, that she could never condescend to marry a newly-created English Earl, having so long a list of princes of the blood-royal of the noblest houses of Europe among her suitors; and it was added, boldly, that Elizabeth seemed somewhat deficient even in self-respect, when she could think of recommending such a husband for a Queen, her kinswoman. It is not at all likely, that either Elizabeth, or the Earl of Leicester, expected or wished any other answer. Elizabeth could hardly have done without her favourite; and the Earl would have fallen into irretrievable disgrace, had he dared to confess a preference for any mistress over the one he already had.