y no means," wrote
Wotton, "would he name any man unto me; but only said that the
chiefest of them were such as had never offended the queen's highness
before; that the matter should begin in the evening, and the next day
by eight in the morning it should be done."

The queen was not to be killed; at least, not immediately. "They will
not kill her," the man said, "but deprive her of her estate, and then
might she chance to be used as she used Queen Jane;" and he added,
"_that they who went about the matter would not agree that any foreign
prince should have any meddling in it; neither Dudley nor any of the
English gentlemen in France were privy to the matter_."[577]

[Footnote 577: Wotton to Petre, cypher: _French
MSS., Mary_, bundle 13. State Paper Office.]

That any such combination as this letter described ever really menaced
Mary's throne cannot be affirmed with certainty. The last two
sentences, however, point to the difficulty which had embarrassed all
attempts which had been hitherto ventured. The vice of the previous
conspiracies had been the intrigues with France. The better order of
English statesmen refused to connect themselves with movements which
would give the court of Paris a dangerous influence in England, and
would entitle the French king to press the claims of the Queen of
Scots upon the English crown. If there was truth in the refugee's
story, if there really was a conspiracy of "the best of England,"
clear of all such mischievous elements, it must have consisted of the
body of the nobility, whom Lord William Howard described to Noailles
as equally dissatisfied with himself. The heresy acts had been
restored by the help of the bishops against the sustained opposition
of the majority of the lay peers. For the hundred and fifty years
during which those acts had been upon the Statute Book, they had
expressed the general feeling of the country, yet during all that
time, fewer persons had suffered under them than had been sacrificed
during the last twelve months. Having failed to destroy her sister,
having been unable to alter {p.272} the succession, the queen was
desperate; the Spaniards were watching their opportunity to interfere
by force, and would want no encouragement which she could give them;
and every honest English statesman must have watched her with the most
jealous distrust. Yet, on the other hand, she was childless; her life
must necessarily soon clos