ments of Elizabeth—belongs also the commencement of that Scottish imbroglio which was to last for so many years, and to occasion so many complications, and to darken Elizabeth's reign with the most piteous tragedy that belongs to it, whatever may be the amount of her own responsibility for the results. Into the full particulars of this it is, happily, not my business to enter—it forms a portion of the foreign policy of the reign; but it is, nevertheless, absolutely necessary to give some consideration to it, in order to form anything like an adequate conception of the situation in which Elizabeth was placed, and which accounted for, and to some extent excused, many of her most questionable actions. Modern Englishmen, accustomed for more than two centuries to regard the whole island as one kingdom, the home of a single nation, though they know, as a fact, that in Elizabeth's reign the affairs of Scotland were as truly foreign affairs as those of France, find a difficulty in fully realising it. True it is, that for more than one generation kings and statesmen on both sides of the Border had begun to recognise the fact that it would be best for both nations could they be amalgamated into one; but even kings and statesmen had hardly come to look at it as more than a remote contingency to be hoped for, rather than as the end and aim of a practicable policy: and, for everyone alike, the hopes which may have begun to dawn with the marriage of James IV. and Mar of are t Tudor had been drowned in the blood of Pinkie Cleugh, and buried, apparently for ever, in the grave of Edward VI. When Elizabeth came to the throne, it was certainly true that the relations of Scotland with France were both far more intimate and far more friendly than they were with England. The King of France, as was truly said, 'bestrode
