The more opposition Darnley experienced, the more anxious he became, as is frequently the case, to accomplish his wishes. It was now for the first time, that he found Rizzio's friendship fail him. That Italian, whom the bigotry of the Reformers, and the ignorant prejudices of more recent historians, have buried under a weight of undeserved abuse, was one of the most faithful servants Mary ever had. He approved of her marriage with Darnley for state reasons, and had, in consequence, incurred the hatred of Murray and his party, whilst Darnley, on the contrary, had courted and supported him. But Rizzio loved his mistress too well to wish to see her husband become her master. His motives, it is true, may not have been altogether disinterested. He knew he was a favourite with Mary, and that he would retain his situation at court so long as her influence was paramount; but he had not the same confidence in the wayward and vacillating Darnley, who was too conceited to submit to be ruled, and too weak to be allowed to govern. The consequence naturally was, that a coldness took place between them, and that the consideration with which Mary continued to treat Rizzio, as her foreign secretary, only served to increase Darnley's disaffection. Such was the state of matters, when the Earl of Morton, secretly supported by Maitland, and more openly by the Lords Ruthven and Lindsay, determined on making use of Darnley's discontent to forward his own private interests, and those of some of his political friends. His object was, in the first place, to strengthen his own party in the government, by securing the return of Murray, Argyle, Rothes, and the other banished Lords; and in the second, to prevent certain enactments from being passed in the approaching Parliament, by which Mary intended to restore to her ecclesiastics a considerable portion of church lands, which he himself, and other rapacious noblemen, had unjustly appropriated. These possessions were to be retained only by saving the rebels from the threatened forfeitures, and thus securing a majority in Parliament. But Mary, with a firmness which was the result of correct views of good government, was now finally resolved not to pardon Murray and his accomplices. For offences of a far less serious nature, Elizabeth was every month sending her subjects to the block; and it would have argued imbecility and fickleness in the Queen of Scots, so soon to have forgotten the treachery of her own, and her husband's enemies. There was scarcely one of her ministers, except Rizzio, who had the courage and the good sense to confirm her in these sentiments; and he continued to retain his own opinion, both in this affair and that of the crown-matrimonial, notwithstanding the open threats of Darnley, the mysterious insinuations of Morton, and the attempt at bribery on the part of Murray. This last nobleman, who had played the hypocrite so abjectly before Elizabeth and her court, did not scruple, in