400.
Elizabeth, on her part, was equally vigilant to prevent the execution of their schemes, and was particularly anxious lest Mary should form any powerful foreign alliance, which might tempt her to revive her pretensions to the crown, and to invade the kingdom on the side where it was weakest and lay most exposed.[*] As she believed that the marriage with the archduke Charles was the one most likely to have place, she used every expedient to prevent it; and besides remonstrating against it to Mary herself, she endeavored to draw off the archduke from that pursuit, by giving him some hopes of success in his pretensions to herself, and by inviting him to a renewal of the former treaty of marriage.[**] She always told the queen of Scots, that nothing would satisfy her but her espousing some English nobleman, who would remove all grounds of jealousy, and cement the union between the kingdoms; and she offered on this condition to have her title examined, and to declare her successor to the crown.[***] After keeping the matter in these general terms during a twelvemonth, she at last named Lord Robert Dudley, now created earl of Leicester, as the person on whom she desired that Mary's choice should fall.
[Illustration: 1-453-mary_stuart.jpg MARY STUART] The earl of Leicester, the great and powerful favorite of Elizabeth, possessed all those exterior qualities which are naturally alluring to the fair sex; a handsome person, a polite address, an insinuating behavior; and by means of these accomplishments he had been able to blind even the penetration of Elizabeth, and conceal from her the great defects, or rather odious vices, which attended his character.

He was proud, insolent, interested, ambitious; without honor, without generosity, without humanity; and atoned not for these bad qualities by such abilities or courage as could fit him for that high trust and confidence with which she always honored him.

Her constant and declared attachment to him had naturally emboldened him to aspire to her bed; and in order to make way for these nuptials, he was universally believed to have murdered, in a barbarous manner, his wife, the heiress of one Robesart.

The proposal of espousing Mary was by no means agreeable to him; and he always ascribed it to the contrivance of Cecil, his enemy; who, he thought, intended by that artifice to make him lose the friendship of Mary from the temerity of his pretensions, and that of Elizabeth from jealousy of his attachments to another woman.[****] * Keith, p 247, 284.
** Melvil, p.

41.
*** Keith, p.