The proposals for Elizabeth's own hand were now diversified by her interest in those for the hand of the Queen of Scots; for it was of immense importance to the Queen of England that Mary should not wed a foreign prince who might support her claim to the English throne. Mary professed willingness to be guided by her "sister," but was insulted by Elizabeth's offer of her own favourite, Dudley, who was made Earl of Leicester. Melville, the courtly Scots ambassador, had much ado to answer Elizabeth's questions about his mistress's beauty and accomplishments in a manner agreeable to the English queen. Mary solved her own problem, only to create a new one, by marrying her cousin, Lord Darnley. Elizabeth was bitterly aggrieved when a son--afterwards James I.--was born to them. She herself continued to agitate Cecil and the council by the favours she lavished on Leicester. But the renewed entreaties of Parliament, that steps might be taken to secure the succession, led to what threatened to be a serious quarrel. Amongst these high matters, the records of her majesty's wardrobe, and the interests of Cecil in capturing for her service a tailor employed by Catherine de Medici, form an entertaining interlude. But tragedy was at hand; the murder of Darnley, Mary's marriage to the murderer Bothwell, her imprisonment at Loch Leven, Elizabeth's perturbation--for she was sincere in her fear of encouraging subjects to control monarchs by force of arms--was diversified by a last negotiation for her marriage with the Archduke Charles, which broke down over his refusal to abjure his religion. Then came a turn of the wheel; Mary escaped from Loch Leven, her followers were dispersed at Langside, and she fled across the Solway to throw herself on Elizabeth's protection and find herself Elizabeth's prisoner. The Scottish queen was consigned to Bolton; an investigation was held at York, when Mary's accusers were allowed to produce, and Mary's friends were not allowed to test, their evidence of her complicity in Darnley's murder. At that stage the investigations were stopped; but the Duke of Norfolk, the head of the commission, was not deterred from pressing the design of marrying Mary himself. Mary was placed in the charge of Shrewsbury and his termagant spouse, Bess of Hardwick. From this time for fifteen years, Elizabeth was perpetually playing at proposals for her own marriage with one or other of the French King's brothers, to keep the French court from a _rapprochement_ with Spain. Suspicions of Norfolk's intentions led to his arrest, and this precipitated the rising in favour of Mary under the Catholic northern earls of Northumberland and Westmoreland; an insurrection promptly and cruelly crushed. In the spring of 1570 the Pope issued a bull of deposition; and the plots on behalf of Mary as Catholic claimant to the throne thickened.