she could not defend; was apt to cause, at last, in
great measure that wild revolt of temper which drove Mary to her doom.
Her health suffered frequently from the attempt to bear with a smiling
face such insults as no European princess, least of all Elizabeth, would
have endured for an hour. There is a limit to patience, and before Mary
passed that limit, Randolph and Lethington saw, and feebly deplored, the
amenities of the preacher whom men permitted to "rule the roast." "Ten
thousand swords" do not leap from their scabbards to protect either the
girl Mary Stuart or the woman Marie Antoinette.

Not that natural indignation was dead, but it ended in words. People
said, "The Queen's Mass and her priests will we maintain; this hand and
this rapier will fight in their defence." So men bragged, as Knox
reports, {193a} but when after Mary's arrival priests were beaten or
pilloried, not a hand stirred to defend them, not a rapier was drawn. The
Queen might be as safely as she was deeply insulted through her faith.
She was not at this time devoutly ardent in her creed, though she often
professed her resolution to abide in it. Gentleness might conceivably
have led her even to adopt the Anglican faith, or so it was deemed by
some observers, but insolence and outrage had another effect on her
temper.

Mary landed at Leith in a thick fog on August 19, 1561. She was now in a
country where she lay under sentence of death as an idolater. Her
continued existence was illegal. With her came Mary Seton, Mary Beaton,
Mary Livingstone, and Mary Fleming, the comrades of her childhood; and
her uncles, the Duc d'Aumale, Francis de Lorraine, and the noisy Marquis
d'Elboeuf. She was not very welcome. As late as August 9, Randolph
reports that her brother, Lord James, Lethington, and Morton "wish, as
you do, she might be stayed yet for a space, and if it were not for their
obedience sake, some of them care not though they never see her face."
{193b} None the less, on June 8 Lord James tells Mary that he had given
orders for her palace to be prepared by the end of July. He informs her
that "many" hope that she will never come home. Nothing is "so necessary
. . . as your Majesty's own presence"; and he hopes she will arrive
punctually. If she cannot come she should send her commission to some of
her Protestant advisers, by no means including the Archbishop of St.
Andrews (Hamilton), with whom he will never work. It is not easy to