iv ELIZABETH ANT) MARY STUAKT: 1559-1568 73

prospects were too deeply concerned. It was all very
well for Elizabeth to lay down a principle in which
she might he said to have a life-interest. She was
thirteen years his junior; but she might easily pre-
decease him; and, with Mary on the throne, his
power would certainly go, and, not improbably, his
head with it. It was not in human nature, there-
fore, that he should cherish the principle of primo-
geniture as his mistress did; and, as far as his dread
of her displeasure would allow him, he was always
casting about for some means of defeating Mary's
reversion. Her sudden plunge into crime was to him
a turn of good fortune beyond his dreams. If ha
could have had his will she would have been promptly
handed over to the Regent on the understanding that
she was to be consigned to perpetual imprisonment,
or, still better, to the scaffold.

In order to carry out her plan, Elizabeth called
on Mary and the Regent to submit their respective
cases to a Commission, consisting of the Duke of
Norfolk, the Earl of Sussex, and Sir Ralph Sadler.
Mary was extremely reluctant, as she well might be,
to face any investigation; but she was told that,
until her character was formally cleared, she could
not be admitted to .Elizabeth's presence; and she
was at the samu time privately assured that her
restoration should, in any case, be managed without
any damage- to her honour. Moray received an
equally positive assurance that if his sister was
proved guilty, she should not be restored. The two
statements were not absolutely irreconcilable, because
Elizabeth intended to prevent the worst charges from.