Robertson has asserted, that Mary "instantly joined" the Continental Confederacy, and was willing to go any length for the restoration of Popery. He would thus have us believe that she was a direct party to the horrible massacre of the Hugonots in France; and that she would have spared no bloodshed to re-establish in Scotland that form of worship which she herself, in conjunction with her Parliament, had expressly abrogated. Robertson goes further, and maintains, with a degree of absurdity so glaring that we are at a loss to understand why it should never before have been exposed, that "to this fatal resolution (that of joining the Anti-Protestant Confederacy) may be imputed all the subsequent calamities of Mary's life." Why a secret contract which Mary might have made with an ambassador from France, the terms or effects of which were never known or felt in any corner of Scotland, should have produced "all her subsequent calamities," must remain an enigma to those who do not possess the same remarkable facility of tracing effects to their causes which seems to have been enjoyed by Dr Robertson. But it is extremely doubtful that Mary ever gave either her consent or approbation to this League. Robertson's authorities upon the subject by no means bear him out in his assertions. He affirms, that "she allowed mass to be celebrated in different parts of the kingdom; and declared that she would have mass free for all men who would hear it." But the first part of this information is supplied by the Englishman Bedford, who was not then in Scotland, and the second rests upon the authority of the insidious Randolph. Robertson likewise mentions, that Blackwood, in his "_Martyre de Marie_," says, "that the Queen intended to have procured in the approaching Parliament, if not the re-establishment of the Catholic religion, at least something for the ease of Catholics." But this announcement of what was _intended_ is so very unimportant, that even, if true, it requires no refutation; the more especially, as Blackwood goes on to say, though Robertson stops short, that this "something for the ease of Catholics" was only to be a request that the Protestants would be more tolerant.[111] Robertson however adds, that "Mary herself, in a letter to the Archbishop of Glasgow, her ambassador in France, acknowledges '_that in that Parliament she intended to have done some good with respect to restoring the old religion_.'" For this quotation from Mary's letter, Robertson refers to Keith; but upon making the reference, it will be found that he has somewhat unaccountably garbled the original. All that Mary wrote to her ambassador concerning the Parliament was, that "the spiritual estate is placed therein in the ancient manner, _tending to have done some good_ anent restoring the old religion, and to have proceeded against our rebels according to their demerits."[112] The different shade of meaning which Robertson has given to this passage, is rather singular.