324.
What increased their alarm with regard to an accommodation between James and Mary was, that the English ambassadors seemed to concur with the French in this proposal; and the clergy were so ignorant as to believe the sincerity of the professions made by the former.

The queen of Scots had often made overtures to Elizabeth, which had been entirely neglected; but hearing of James's detention, she wrote a letter in a more pathetic and more spirited strain than usual; craving the assistance of that princess, both for her own and her son's liberty.

She said, that the account of the prince's captivity had excited her most tender concern; and the experience which she herself, during so many years, had of the extreme infelicity attending that situation, had made her the more apprehensive lest a like fate should pursue her unhappy offspring: that the long train of injustice which she had undergone, the calumnies to which she had been exposed, were so grievous, that finding no place for right or truth among men she was reduced to make her last appeal to Heaven, the only competent tribunal between princes of equal jurisdiction degree, and dignity: that after her rebellious subjects, secretly instigated by Elizabeth's ministers, had expelled her the throne, had confined her in prison, had pursued her with arms, she had voluntarily thrown herself under the protection of England; fatally allured by those reiterated professions of amity which had been made her, and by her confidence in the generosity of a friend, an ally, and a kinswoman; that not content with excluding her from her presence, with supporting the usurpers of her throne, with contributing to the destruction of her faithful subjects, Elizabeth had reduced her to a worse captivity than that from which she had escaped, and had made her this cruel return for the unlimited confidence which she had reposed in her: that though her resentment of such severe usage had never carried her further than to use some disappointed efforts for her deliverance, unhappy for herself, and fatal to others, she found the rigors of confinement daily multiplied upon her; and at length carried to such a height, that it surpassed the bounds of all human patience any longer to endure them; that she was cut off from all communication, not only with the rest of mankind, but with her only son, and her maternal fondness, which was now more enlivened by their unhappy sympathy in situation, and was her sole remaining attachment to this world, deprived even of that melancholy solace which letters or messages could give: that the bitterness of her sorrows, still more than her close confinement, had preyed upon her health, and had added the insufferable weight of bodily infirmity to all those other calamities under which she labored: that while the daily experience of her maladies opened to her the comfortable prospect of an approaching deliverance into a region where pain and sorrow are no more, her enemies envied her that last consolation, and having secluded her from every joy on earth, had done what in them lay to debar her from all hopes in her future and eternal existence: that the exercise of her religion was refused her; the use of those sacred rites in which she had been educated, the commerce with those holy ministers, whom Heaven had appointed to receive the acknowledgment of our transgressions, and to seal our penitence by a solemn readmission into heavenly favor and forgiveness: that it was in vain to complain of the rigors of persecution exercised in other kingdoms; when a queen and an innocent woman was excluded from an indulgence which never yet, in the most barbarous countries, had been denied to the meanest and most obnoxious malefactor: that could she ever be induced to descend from that royal dignity in which Providence had placed her, or depart from her appeal to Heaven, there was only one other tribunal to which she would appeal from all her enemies; to the justice and humanity of Elizabeth's own breast, and to that lenity which, uninfluenced by malignant counsel, she would naturally be induced to exercise towards her: and that she finally entreated her to resume her natural disposition, and to reflect on the support, as well as comfort, which she might receive from her son and herself, if, joining the obligations of gratitude to the ties of blood, she would deign to raise them from their present melancholy situation, and reinstate them in that liberty and authority to which they were entitled.[*] * Camden, p.

489, Elizabeth was engaged to obstruct Mary's restoration, chiefly because she foresaw an unhappy alternative attending that event.

If this princess recovered any considerable share of authority in Scotland, her resentment, ambition, zeal, and connections both domestic and foreign, might render her a dangerous neighbor to England, and enable her, after suppressing the Protestant party among her subjects, to revive those pretensions which she had formerly advanced to the crown, and which her partisans in both kingdoms still supported with great industry and assurance.