and, as Mr. Henderson shows, her uncle the Cardinal, broke
down her long caution and self-control, while Darnley mad- dened her, and she was besotted with her only passionate love, the love of Bothwell. The rest was expiation.
Except, perhaps, on the point of religion, where the present writer states his own view, this is mainly the reading of Mary's character which Mr. Henderson presents. He does not, indeed, hold the untenable theory of Fronde that Mary began "with a purpose resolutely formed to trample down the Reformation." He thinks her "a strongly biassed Catholic." We rather regard her as naturally of the party of les politiques. Mr. Henderson himself says that "devotion to the Catholic
religion was not either the supreme influence in her life, or its advancement the main aim of her politics." His position, therefore, does not differ much from that of the present writer. Mary's conduct in regard to the bearer of the delayed Papal subsidy, in the autumn of 1566, proves that, on the whole, it was the Pope whom she was deluding. We do not observe that Mr. Henderson makes this point.
Mary desired nothing more than to marry Don Carlos, and, had she succeeded, with Don Carlos in Scotland, and Spain to back the pair, the Reformation would have been in great peril. Why, then, was the Protestant and patriotic
Lethington so anxious to bring on the Spanish marriage P Mr. Henderson makes the very ingenious suggestion that Maitland expected Mary, as wife of Don Carlos, to live in
Spain, while Moray governed Scotland as Regent. "There were probably to Moray attractions in this scheme, from a worldly as well as a Protestant point of view," while to escape from Knox may have made Spain seem Paradise to Mary. It was a fascinating plan, and might naturally end in the union of Protestant England and Scotland, under some
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