still more dangerous.  As early as December 31st, 1560, Throckmorton warned Elizabeth that she must “have an eye to” the second marriage of Mary Stuart.[63] The Queen of England had a choice of alternatives.  She might prosecute the intrigue with the Earl of Arran, capture Mary on her way to Scotland, and boldly adopt the position of the leader of Protestantism.  There were, however, many difficulties, ecclesiastical, foreign, and personal, in such a course.  Arran was an impossible husband; Knox and the lords of the congregation made good allies but bad subjects; and the inevitable struggle with Spain would be precipitated.  The other course was to attempt to win Mary’s confidence, and to prevent her from contracting an alliance with the Hapsburgs, which was probably what Elizabeth most feared.  This was the alternative finally adopted by the Queen of England; but, very characteristically, she did not immediately abandon the other possibility.  On the pretext that Mary refused to confirm the Treaty of Edinburgh, her cousin declined to grant her request for a safe-conduct from France to Scotland, and spoke of the Scottish queen in terms which Mary took the first opportunity of resenting.  “The queen, your mistress,” she remarked to the English ambassador who brought the refusal, “doth say that I am young and do lack experience.  Indeed I confess I am younger than she is, and do want experience; but I have age enough and experience to use myself towards my friends and kinsfolk friendly and uprightly; and I trust my discretion shall not so fail me that my passion shall move me to use other language of her than it becometh of a queen and my next kinswoman."[64]

When, in August, 1561, Mary did sail from France to Scotland, Elizabeth made an effort to capture her.  It was characteristically hesitating, and it succeeded only in giving Mary an impression of Elizabeth’s hostility.  Some months later Elizabeth imprisoned the Countess of Lennox, the mother of Darnley, for giving God thanks because “when the queen’s ships were almost near taking of the Scottish queen, there fell down a mist from heaven that separated them and preserved her".[65] The arrival of Mary in Scotland effectually put an end to the Arran intrigue, but the girl-widow of scarcely nineteen years had many difficulties with which to contend.  As a devout Roman Catholic, she had to face the relentless opposition of Knox and the congregation, who objected even to her private exercise of her own faith.  As the representative of the French alliance, now but a dead cause, she was confronted by an English party which included not only her avowed enemies but many of her real or pretended friends.  Her brother, the Lord James Stewart, whom she made Earl of Moray, and who guided the early policy of her reign, was constantly in Elizabeth’s pay, as were most of her other advisers.  Her secretary, Maitland of Lethington, the most distinguished and the ablest Scottish statesman of his day, had, as the fixed aim