158 A DISCOURSE IN PRAISE 



things have made themselves purveyors of continual, 

 new, and noble occasions for her to shew them be 

 nignity, and that the fires of troubles abroad have 

 been ordained to be as lights and tapers to make her 

 virtue and magnanimity more apparent. For when 

 that one, stranger born, the family of Guise, being 

 as a hasty weed sprung up in a night, had spread 

 itself to a greatness, not civil but seditious ; a great 

 ness, not of encounter of the ancient nobility, not of 

 preeminency in the favour of kings, and not remiss 

 of affairs from kings ; but a greatness of innovation 

 in state, of usurpations of authority, of affecting of 

 crowns ; and that accordingly, under colour of con 

 sanguinity and religion, they had brought French 

 forces into Scotland, in the absence of their king and 

 queen being within their usurped tutele ; and that 

 the ancient nobility of this realm, seeing the immi 

 nent danger of reducing that kingdom under the 

 tyranny of foreigners and their faction, had, accord 

 ing to the good intelligence betwixt the two crowns, 

 prayed her neighbourly succours : she undertook 

 the action, expelled the strangers, restored the nobi 

 lity to their degree. And lest any man should think 

 her intent was to unnestle ill neighbours, and not to 

 aid good neighbours, or that she was readier to re 

 store what was invaded by others than to render what 

 was in her own hands ; see if the time provided not 

 a new occasion afterwards, when through their own 

 divisions, without the intermise of strangers, her 

 forces were again sought and required ; she forsook 

 them not, prevailed so far as to be possessed of the 



