This was a hypothetical way of excluding Mary and organising a Protestant resistance to which Elizabeth could make no objection. But the ministers knew that, as a merely voluntary association without Parliamentary sanction, it would add little strength or confidence to the Protestant party. It would not even test their numbers; for no Marian ventured to refuse the oath. Mary herself desired to be allowed to take it. The bond was therefore converted into a Statute by Parliament, though not without some important alterations (March 1585). It was enacted that if the realm was invaded, or a rebellion instigated, by _or for_ any one pretending a title to the succession, or if the Queen’s murder was plotted by any one, or with the privity of any one that pretended title, such pretender, _after examination and judgment_ by an extraordinary commission to be nominated by the Queen, and consisting of at least twenty-four privy councillors and lords of Parliament assisted by the chief judges, should be excluded from the succession, and that, on proclamation of the sentence and direction by the Queen, all subjects might and should pursue the offender to death. If the Queen were murdered, the lords of the Council at the time of her death, or the majority of them, should join to themselves at least twelve other lords of Parliament not making title to the crown, and the chief judges; and if, after examination, they should come to the above-mentioned conclusion, they should without delay, by all forcible and possible means, prosecute the guilty persons to death, and should have power to raise and use such forces as should in that behalf be needful and convenient; and no subjects should be liable to punishment for anything done according to the tenor of the Statute. Here, then, was a legal way provided by which the Protestant ministers might act against Mary if Elizabeth were murdered. They were in fact creating a Provisional Government, with power to exclude Mary from the throne. Whether they would have the courage or strength to do so remained to be seen; but they would at least have formal law on their side. It had never entered into Mary’s plans to wait for Elizabeth’s natural death. She therefore read the new Act as a sentence of exclusion. Another blow soon fell on her. In 1584, elated by her son’s victory over the raiders of Ruthven, and believing that he was willing to recognise her joint sovereignty and co-operate with a Guise invasion, she had scornfully refused the last overtures that Elizabeth ever made to her. She now learnt that he had never intended to accept association with her, and that he had urged Elizabeth not to release her. In the following year he had accepted an annual pension of £4000 with some grumbling at its amount; and a defensive alliance was at length concluded between the two countries, Mary’s name not being mentioned in the treaty (July 1586).