against the reformers, but had been
compelled to yield to their demands. When Queen Mary herself returned to
rule Scotland after the death of her French husband, King Francis, she
found her path anything but easy. A sovereign of one faith and a nation
of another had not yet learned to endure each other, and there were
queer doings in Scotland, wild nobles running off with the Queen, wilder
fanatics lecturing at her in her own court, her French favorite
assassinated, a new husband, a Scotch one, sent the same dark road, more
civil war, imprisonments, romantic escapes. It ended in Mary's secret
flight to England. She who had so nearly marched into the land a
conqueror, entered it a fugitive supplicating Elizabeth's protection.
The remainder of her life she passed in an English prison, and eighteen
years later was executed on an only half-proven charge of conspiring
against the rival who had kept her in such dreary durance.[5]

[4] See _John Knox Heads the Scottish Reformers_, page 21.

[5] See _Mary Stuart: Her Reign and Execution_, page 51.

Let us not, however, judge Elizabeth too harshly. In reading only
English history we are apt to do so, to fail in realizing the atmosphere
that surrounded her, the spirit of the age throughout Europe.
Statecraft, which had been grasping under Charles V and false under
Francis I, seemed now to have adopted fully the maxims of Machiavelli,
and pursued its ends by means wholly base, by subtle treacheries, secret
murders and open massacre. The gloomy spirit of Philip II hung like
blackest night over all the world. He hesitated at no crime which should
advance his purposes. Where he might next strike, no man knew, until the
blow had fallen. His dark secrecy and enormous power weighed as a
nightmare upon the imaginations of men. We enter an age of plots.
Elizabeth was unquestionably surrounded by them; and where so many
existed, a thousand more were naturally suspected--leading on all sides
to counterplots. Scotland had seen several assassinations. England
guarded herself desperately against them. France, nearest to Spain's
borders, suffered worst of all. Five times in succession did the chief
leader of the state fall by sudden murder. In some of these crimes
Philip had no part; in others he was plainly implicated.

RELIGIOUS WARS OF FRANCE

The early and unexpected death of Henry II of France (1559) had left the
throne to one after another of his y