From this time forward Mary’s history is the history of sustaining hope and depressing disappointment. Hopes of an accommodation with her rebel subjects were held out to her by Elizabeth; non-committal promises of her restoration were made; kill-time negotiations were sometimes entered into. It is distressing to read the history of her nineteen years of imprisonment. She never ceased to hope for her release, and yet her hopes were repeatedly disappointed. She continued to write Elizabeth in a friendly tone, hoping, no doubt, to touch a chord of sympathy in her cousin’s heart; but she never cringed, she never abased herself. The proud spirit of her forefathers, which she had so fully inherited, lent courage and dignity to her utterances. Various plans were laid for her rescue; but her great distance from any point from which she could be carried out of the realm, rendered them ineffectual. She was removed from place to place, more than a dozen times. The close confinement and the advance of years began to tell on her once lithe and beautiful form. And, indeed, what suffering could be more terrible to a young woman of Mary’s lively temperament, than prolonged confinement under a rigorous regime and complete separation from the society of friends. No wonder the Bard of Ayr indignantly addresses Elizabeth:-- The weeping blood in woman’s breast Was never known to thee, Nor the balm that draps on wound of woe Frae woman’s pitying e’e. If Mary continued to languish in an English prison, it was not because the majority of the Scottish people had not the good-will to liberate her and place her on the throne. But now, as in the days of her imprisonment in Lochleven Castle, the very love they bore her paralyzed their efforts in her behalf. A miscarried attempt at rescuing her would most probably involve the loss of her life. Elizabeth had received assurance that Mary would never be allowed to pass the precincts of her prison alive. The most distinguished and powerful nobles in Scotland--Argyll, Huntly, Chatelheraut, Athol, Herries, and many others--continued to support her cause, and there is hardly room to doubt, that if Scotland had been left to settle its own internal disputes, Mary would have been restored. But Elizabeth was resolved that Scotland should not settle its own disputes. She laid aside the mask, when she could no longer wear it, and, according as the need arose, sent her soldiers into Scotland to help overpower the friends of Mary. From the day on which Moray returned to Scotland from the Westminster farce, the Queen’s party began to gain strength. But what could this avail, since Elizabeth was determined that the cause of the helpless captive should not prosper. The Regent was shot at Linlithgow in January, 1570, and the Earl of Lennox, who succeeded him in the Regency, gave notice to the Ambassador of Elizabeth that English aid would be necessary for the maintenance of his position. The aid, of