[467] See Burnet, vol. i, Appendix 267, for Secretary Lethington's letter to Cecil, where he tells a circumstantial story so positively, and so open, if false, to a contradiction it never received, that those who lay too much stress on this very equivocal species of presumption would, if the will had perished, have reckoned its forgery beyond question. The king's death approaching, he asserts, "some as well known to you as to me caused William Clarke, sometimes servant to Thomas Heneage, to sign the supposed will with a stamp, for otherwise signed it was never;" for which he appeals to an attestation of the late Lord Paget in parliament, and requests the depositions of several persons now living to be taken. He proceeds to refer him "to the original will surmised to be signed with the king's own hand, that thereby it may most clearly and evidently appear by some differences, how the same was not signed with the king's hand, but stamped as aforesaid. And albeit it is used both as an argument and calumniation against my sovereign by some, that the said original hath been embezzled in Queen Mary's time, I trust God will and hath reserved the same to be an instrument to relieve [prove] the truth, and to confound false surmises, that thereby the right may take place, notwithstanding the many exemplifications and transcripts, which being sealed with the great seal, do run abroad in England." Lesley, Bishop of Ross, repeats the same story with some additions. Bedford's Hereditary Right, p. 197. A treatise of Hales, for which he suffered imprisonment, in defence of the Suffolk title under the will, of which there is a manuscript in the British Museum, Harl. MSS. 537, and which is also printed in the appendix to the book last quoted, leads me to conjecture that the original will had been mislaid or rather concealed at that time. For he certainly argues on the supposition that it was not forthcoming, and had not himself seen it; but "he has been informed that the king's name is evidently written with a pen, though some of the strokes are unseen, as if drawn by a weak and trembling hand." Everyone who has seen the will must bear witness to the correctness of this information. The reappearance of this very remarkable instrument was, as I conceive, after the Revolution; for Collier mentions that he had heard it was in existence; and it is also described in a note to the Acta Regia.
[468] It is right to mention, that some difference of opinion exists as to the genuineness of Henry's signature. But as it is attested by many witnesses, and cannot be proved a forgery, the legal presumption turns much in its favour.
[469] Bedford's (Harbin's) Hereditary Right Asserted, p. 204.
[470] A manuscript in the Cottonian library, Faustina A. xi., written about 1562 in a very hostile spirit, endeavours to prove from the want of testimony, and from some variances in their depositions (not very material ones), that their allegations of matrimony could not be admitted, and that they had incurred an ecclesiastical censure for fornication. But another, which I have also found in the Museum, Harl. MSS. 6286, contains the whole proceedings and evidence, from which I have drawn the conclusion in the text. Their ignorance of the clergyman who performed the ceremony is not perhaps very extraordinary; he seems to have been one of those vagabond ecclesiastics, who, till the marriage act of 1752, were always ready to do that service for a fee.
[471] "Hereupon I shall add, what I have heard related from persons of great credit, which is, that the validity of this marriage was afterwards brought to a trial at the common law; when the minister who married them being present, and other circumstances agreeing, the jury (whereof John Digby of Coleshill, in com. War. esquire, was the foreman) found it a good marriage." Baronage of England, part ii. 369. Mr. Luders doubts the accuracy of Dugdale's story; and I think it not unlikely that it is a confused account of what happened in the court of wards.
[472] I derive this fact from a Cotton MS. Vitellius C. xvi. 412, etc.; but the volume is much burned, and the papers confused with others relative to Lord Essex's divorce. See as to the same suit, or rather perhaps that mentioned in the next note, Birch's Negotiations, p. 219, or Aikin's James I. i. 225.
[473] "The same day a great cause between the Lord Beauchamp and Monteagle was heard in the court of wards, the main point whereof was to prove the lawfulness of E. of Hertford's marriage. The court sat until five of the clock in the afternoon, and the jury had a week's respite for the delivery of their verdict." Letter of Sir E. Hoby to Sir T. Edmonds, Feb. 10, 1606. "For my lord of Hertford's cause, when the verdict was ready to be given up, Mr. Attorney interposed himself for the king, and said that the land that they both strove for was the king's, and until his title were decided, the jury ought not to proceed; not doubting but the king will be gracious to both lords. But thereby both land and legitimation remain undecided." The same to the same March 7. Sloane MSS. 4176.
[474] Dugdale's Baronage; Luders' Essay on the Right of Succession to the Crown in the Reign of Elizabeth. This ingenious author is, I believe, the first who has taken the strong position as to the want of legal title to the house of Stuart which I have endeavoured to support. In the entertaining letters of Joseph Mede on the news of the day (Harl. MSS. 389), it is said that the king had thoughts of declaring Hertford's issue by Lady Catherine Grey illegitimate in the parliament of 1621, and that Lord Southampton's commitment was for having searched for proofs of their marriage. June 30, 1622.
[475] Luders, ubi suprà.
[476] The representative of the title of Mary Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, that is, the person on whom the claim has descended, according to the rules which determine the succession of the crown, on the supposition that Hertford was duly married to Catherine Grey, is the present Duchess of Buckingham; upon the contrary supposition, the Marquis of Stafford. This is, of course, if we may take for granted the accuracy of common books of genealogy. I have not adverted to one objection which some urged at the time, as we find by Persons's treatises, Leicester's Commonwealth, and the Conference, to the legitimacy of the Seymours. Catherine Grey had been betrothed, or perhaps married, to Lord Herbert, son of the Earl of Pembroke, during the brilliant days of her family, at the close of Edward's reign. But on her father's fall Pembroke caused a sentence of divorce to be pronounced, the grounds of which do not appear, but which was probably sufficient in law to warrant her subsequent union with Hertford. No advantage is taken of this in the proceedings, which seems to show that there was no legal bond remaining between the parties. Camden says she was divorced from Lord Herbert, "being so far gone with child, as to be very near her time." But from her youth at the time, and the silence of all other writers, I conclude this to be unworthy of credit.