notwithstanding the Darnley marriage. But Elizabeth and Cecil would not lose the favourable opportunity; they abandoned their attitude of obstruction and delay, and assumed one of aggression and command. Maitland could do no more. But there is a force which diplomacy cannot measure, and which cannot be applied through the ordinary medium of governmental machinery. Such is the force of a brave, resolute and inspiring character. Mary appealed to the loyalty of her people, and in a few days thousands of brave men were arrayed under her standard. The rebels, in spite of their attempts to raise the populace on their side, were never strong enough to venture an engagement with the Queen’s forces; and after a few weeks they were seeking refuge where Scottish rebels of that period always found themselves secure--across the English border. The uprising served as a test of the popular feeling, and the test proved that the nation was devoted to Mary. In an historical question like this, on which so much divergence of opinion has existed, one must be careful not lightly to dogmatize. This, however, may be said, that it is not easy to read the correspondence of that period between the English agents in Scotland and Berwick and the Secretary of State’s office in London, without being driven to conclude that the subsequent rebellious movements that afflicted Scotland were directed largely from Westminster and aimed at the ultimate overthrow of Mary Queen of Scots. The rebel nobles had suffered an inglorious defeat. Elizabeth, although she had encouraged them, now, with her habitual duplicity, to clear herself in the eyes of foreign princes, spurned them from her presence as traitors to their lawful Queen. Indeed, it requires more than ordinary mental insight to understand how Moray, if he was the conscientious and high-minded worthy that many of his friends claim him to have been--that "_vir pietate gravis_" of Buchanan--could have acted the part he did in that "scene of farce and falsehood" which Elizabeth contrived for her own justification. When he and the secularized Abbot of Kilwinning, as representatives of the discomfited rebels, approached their English patroness for consolation, she refused to give them audience, until they consented to make a solemn declaration in the presence of the French and Spanish Ambassadors, that she had given them no encouragement in their rebellion. When the humiliated Scotsmen finished their part, Elizabeth immediately added: "The treason of which you have been guilty is detestable; and as traitors, I banish you from my presence."