ch
malefactors may be put in due execution. For the shoal of them is great,
their doing horrible, their malice intolerable, the examples most
miserable. And I pray God they never practise further than upon the
subject."

CHAPTER XI.

1560.

Successful campaign in Scotland.--Embassy of viscount Montacute to
Spain--of sir T. Chaloner to the Emperor.--Account of Chaloner.--Letter
of his respecting Dudley and the queen.--Dudley loses his
wife.--Mysterious manner of her death.--Suspicion cast upon her
husband.--Dudley and several other courtiers aspire to the hand of their
sovereign.--Tournaments in her honor.--Impresses.--Sir W.
Pickering.--Rivalry of Arundel and Dudley.

The accession of Francis II., husband to the queen of Scots, to the
French throne had renewed the dangers of Elizabeth from the hostility of
France and of Scotland; and in the politic resolution of removing from
her own territory to that of her enemies the seat of a war which she saw
to be inevitable, she levied a strong army and sent it under the command
of the duke of Norfolk and lord Grey de Wilton to the frontiers of
Scotland. She also entered into a close connexion with the protestant
party in that country, who were already in arms against the queen-regent
and her French auxiliaries. Success attended this well-planned
expedition, and at the end of a single campaign Elizabeth was able to
terminate the war by the treaty of Edinburgh; a convention the terms of
which were such as effectually to secure her from all fear of future
molestation in this quarter.

During the period of these hostilities, however, her situation was an
anxious one. It was greatly to be feared that the emperor and the king
of Spain, forgetting in their zeal for the catholic church the habitual
enmity of the house of Austria against that of Bourbon, would make
common cause with France against a sovereign who now stood forth the
avowed protectress of protestantism; and such a combination of the great
powers of Europe, seconded by a large catholic party at home, England
was by no means in a condition to withstand. By skilful negotiation it
seemed possible to avert these evils; and Elizabeth, by her selection of
diplomatic agents on this important occasion, gave striking evidence of
her superior judgement.

To plead her cause with the king of Spain, she dispatched Anthony Browne
viscount Montacute; a nobleman who, to the general recommendation of
wisdom and experience