Elizabeth saw and disliked the drifts of these Antimonarchical maxims and practises yet not resolute enough to trust providence with the preservation of her person At the next meeting in the Lord Keepers House persists in one of her principal demands from the Queen of Scots Commissioners to have beside the delivery up of two strong Castles the Duke of Castle Herault the Earles of Huntlâ—y Argile Humes Hâ—ris c. to be Pledges or Hostages for the good behaviour of their Queen This was to change one priâ—oner for more to disarm the Scotch Queen and turn her into a wilderness of wolves or more savage beasts ready every minute to devour her The Bishop of Ross and her other Delegates lookt over Queen Elizabeths shoulder and her Councils to see the black Assembly men vying hard for the honour of this fatal invention returned a modest answer to Her Majesty , That this could not be yielded in Christian prudence nor mercy to their miserable Mistresse wch was repelled by the L. Keeper with that sharp reply which if any thing cut off all mutual confidence in the Queens That the Kingdome Princes Nobles Castles and what soever else was valuable in Scotland could be no considerable pledge for the security of England While matters were thus carried on there both parties in Scotland by Queen Elizabeths order enter into a truce which the Disciplinarians kept according to the articles of their faith putting to the sword what persons of quality they wished out of the way wherein the murder of their late King and a feigned design to poison this now in being served them very plausibly for a disguise They seized upon what Castles and Forts they could get by fraud or stratagem without any great noise of armes among the rest that on Dunbriton frith where the fury of the meaner sort being slacked by customary murder the wrath of the Regent and his sanguinary Chaplains must have a solemn holy sacrifice to appease it which was the Archbishop of St. Andrews whom they found in that Castle He craved the ordinary justice of the law but the fear of Queen Elizabeths mediatory Letters or any other prevalent possibility to save him carried him the shorest way by a Council of war to be as he was dispatched at the Gallows But divine vengeance not â—ong after found the Regent out at Sterlin sitting secure as he thought in his Parliament of Rebolls where by the hands of some on the Queens party he paid the due debt of his bloud to the innocence of that holy Martyr whom he murder'd And now the good Brethren haing divers months since out stript the rebellious precedents of their ancestors by leaping over the letter and all pretentions of Law and authority in the election of their Regent find themselves safe on this side all scrupulous trouble and so without any more addresses into England or home disputes about stating their power commit their cause to the protection of Iohn Erskin Earl of Marre whose first ominous repulse before Edenburgh and mild temper inclining toward a composure together with his impardonable endeavours to bring in again Archbishops and Bishops drew such swarms of contentious Presbyters about him that after thirteen moneths strugling with his own Conscience and their unconscientious proceedings he dyed through extremity of grief In this time by the good managing of the Brethren a proposition was made by the Members of Parliament in England That if the Queen of Scots acted any thing against the known Laws of the Land upon advantage given by her contract of marriage with the Duke of Norfolk she should be proceeded against as a Wife to one of the Peers of the Realm But for Royal Majesties sake Queen Elizabeth interposeth by her power and would not suffer it to be put to the Vote of the House or at least not enacted as a Law After all this jugling and under-hand contrivance the Disciplinarian faction in Scotland perceiving trouble and hazard increasing upon them at home and potent enemies multiplying abroad resolve now to cut up root and branch of all that hindred the growth of their dominion and having but blunt instruments in Scotland make bold with the highest authority and sharpest ax of England to effect it wherein as part of the work is easie with some rotten boughs which having no intrinsecal conjunction nor continuity with that body whereof they had been arms and members were broaken off at pleasure by the hand of Justice so the knotty pieces were not without some difficulty wrought off by the strength of malice and acuteness of subtilty in the too partial industrious Journey-men for the cause The Bishop of Rosse the Queen of Scots greatest agent and advocate fencing under the umbrage of the publick Embassie saved his life but not his liberty to do her service Felion Story Barnes Mather c. were at several times arraigned and executed But these were taken to be at too great a distance to give warning to their captive Queen The Duke of Norfolk was her principal adhearent they aim'd at the most likely Champion to have justified her title who though at his death he protested his chiefest endeavours had been to reestablish the oppressed Queen and suppress the rebellious practises in her Kingdom yet because his Plot was laid in the dark and his complices abroad such as for their own ends kept not within the compass of his designs but wrought the ruine of England into their hopes met with Law enough to condemn him by his Peers and after four moneths reprieve by the Queens singular favour inexorable Justice to behead him upon the Scaffold This much heightened the Assembly men in Scotland who wiping their eyes to behold with much consolation of spirit by what a slender thread their successes had hung the ax over their imprisoned Queen endeared each other by the mutual assurance they gave it could not be long before her Head too must off and then the Discipline they thought would take place with the unquestionable Succession of the King Not ten dayes passed after the Dukes death before they wrought by their Agents that Commissioners were sent Lord de l' Amour Sadler Wilson and Bromley to expostulate with the Queen of Scots about her treasonable practises against the Crown of England and to ring the knell of the Dukes destiny in her ears The French more earnestly than before interceding for her liberty are silenced with instances of their own cashiering their Kings Childerike by Pipin Charls of Lorraign by Hugh Capet imprisoning the Queens of Lewis Philip the Long and Charls the Fair successively The cases of Henry the Second of England Alphonsus of Castile and Charls the fifth of Spain and Scicilie are produced as precedents for taking the Crown their Mothers surviving And the honourable restraint of the Queen of Scots pleaded a favour beyond her desert