The assassination of Moray a few weeks later (Jan. 23, 1570) was a severe blow to Elizabeth, and an irreparable disaster to his own country. An attempt has been made to create an impression that the English Queen was somehow responsible for his death, because she did not march an army into Scotland to support him. He no more wished to receive an English army into Scotland than Elizabeth wished to send one. Therein they were both of them wiser than the critics of their own day, or this. What he did ask for was money, and the recognition of James. The request for money Elizabeth was willing to consider, though, as a rule, she did not believe in paying for any work she could get done gratis. The recognition of James seems a very simple thing to the critics. But it was as difficult for Elizabeth as the recognition of the Prince of Bulgaria is now to Austria, and for similar reasons. She was under no obligation whatever to Moray. His own interest compelled him to play her game. But she well knew his value. On hearing of his death she shut herself up in her chamber, exclaiming, with tears, that she had lost the best friend she had in the world. As long as Moray lived, and was able to keep the Marian lords in some sort of check, Elizabeth judged, and rightly, that she had more to lose than to gain by any open interference in Scotland. It was no business of hers to put down anarchy there. Scotch anarchy did not imperil England. What would imperil England would be the appearance of French troops in Scotland; and she judged that nothing would be so likely to bring them there as any pretension to establish an English protectorate. Her Protestant councillors fretted at her _laisser faire_ policy. But then they, for personal or at least for sectarian reasons, were eager for that general European conflagration which she, with superior discernment and larger patriotism, was trying to avert. The death of Moray so weakened the King’s party that it became necessary to give them a little help. Elizabeth gave it in such a way as she thought would be least likely to excite the jealousy of France. She told the new Regent Lennox that, though she could not send an army to support him, she would send one to chastise the Hamiltons and the Borderers, who were harbouring her rebel the Earl of Westmoreland, and, along with him, making raids into England. This was done sharply and thoroughly. The robber holds on the Border, and Hamilton Castle itself, were one after another taken and blown up by the English Wardens of the Marches (April and May 1570).