The policy which Elizabeth had thus deliberately adopted towards Scotland she persisted in. The successful Anglophiles clamoured for pensions, and her ministers were for gratifying them. She was willing to give a moderate pension to James, but not a penny to the nobles. “Her servants and favourites,” she said, “professed to love her for her high qualities, Alençon for her beauty, and the Scots for her crown; but they all wanted the same thing in the end; they wanted nothing but her money, and they should not have it.” She had ascertained that James regarded his mother as his rival for the crowns of both kingdoms, and that, whatever he might sometimes pretend, his real wish was that she should be kept under lock and key. She had also satisfied herself that the Scottish noblemen on whom Mary counted would, with very few exceptions, throw every difficulty in the way of her restoration, out of regard for their own private interests--the only _datum_ from which it was safe to calculate in dealing with a Scottish nobleman. She therefore felt herself secure. By communicating her knowledge to Mary she could show her the hopelessness of her intrigues in Scotland; while a resumption of friendly negotiations for her restoration would always be a cheap and effectual way of intimidating James. Thus she could look on with equanimity when his new favourite Stewart, Earl of Arran,[5] again chased the Anglophiles into England (December 1583). Arran himself urgently entreated her to accept him and his young master as the genuine Anglophiles. Walsingham’s voice was still for war. But, with both factions at her feet and suing for her favour, Elizabeth had good reason to be satisfied with her policy of leaving the Scottish nobles to worry it out among themselves. CHAPTER VIII THE PROTECTORATE OF THE NETHERLANDS: 1584-86 We are now approaching the great crisis of the reign--some may think of English history--the grand struggle with Spain; a struggle which, if Elizabeth had allowed herself to be guided by her most celebrated counsellors, would have been entered upon a quarter of a century earlier. England was then unarmed and weighed down with a load of debt, the legacy of three thriftless and pugnacious reigns. The population was still mainly Catholic. The great nobles still thought themselves a match for the crown, and many of them longed to make one more effort to assert their old position in the State. Trade and industry were languishing. The poorer classes were suffering and discontented. Scotland was in the hands of a most dangerous enemy, whose title to the English crown was held by many to be better than Elizabeth’s. Philip II., as yet unharassed by revolt, seemed almost to have drawn England as a sort of satellite into the vast orbit of his empire.