60.
The banished lords, finding themselves so harshly treated by Elizabeth, had recourse to the clemency of their own sovereign; and after some solicitation and some professions of sincere repentance, the duke of Chatelrault obtained his pardon, on condition that he should retire into France.

Mary was more implacable against the ungrateful earl of Murray and the other confederates, on whom she threw the chief blame of the enterprise; but as she was continually plied with applications from their friends, and as some of her most judicious partisans in England thought, that nothing would more promote her interests in that kingdom, than the gentle treatment of men so celebrated for their zeal against the Catholic religion, she agreed to give way to her natural temper, which inclined not to severity, and she seemed determined to restore them to favor.[*] In this interval, Rambouillet arrived as ambassador from France, and brought her advice from her uncle, the cardinal of Lorraine, to whose opinion she always paid an extreme deference, by no means to pardon these Protestant leaders, who had been engaged in a rebellion against her.[**] The two religions, in France, as well as in other parts of Europe, were rather irritated than tired with their acts of mutual violence; and the peace granted to the Hugonots, as had been foreseen by Coligny, was intended only to lull them asleep and prepare the way for their final and absolute destruction.

The queen regent made a pretence of travelling through the kingdom, in order to visit the provinces, and correct all the abuses arising from the late civil war; and after having held some conferences on the frontiers with the duke of Lorraine and the duke of Savoy, she came to Bayonne, where she was met by her daughter, the queen of Spain, and the duke of Alva.

Nothing appeared in the congress of these two splendid courts, but gayety, festivity, love, and joy; but amidst these smiling appearances were secretly fabricated schemes the most bloody, and the most destructive to the repose of mankind, that had ever been thought of in any age or nation.

No less than a total and universal extermination of the Protestants by fire and sword was concerted by Philip and Catharine of Medicis; and Alva, agreeably to his fierce and sanguinary disposition, advised the queen regent to commence the execution of this project, by the immediate massacre of all the leaders of the Hugonots.[***] * Melvil, p.