[183] Haynes, 233.
[184] See particularly two letters in the Hardwicke State Papers, i. 122 and 163, dated in October and November 1560, which show the alarm excited by the queen's ill-placed partiality.
[185] Cecil's earnestness for the Austrian marriage appears plainly (Haynes, 430), and still more in a remarkable minute, where he has drawn up, in parallel columns, according to a rather formal, but perspicuous, method he much used, his reasons in favour of the archduke, and against the Earl of Leicester. The former chiefly relate to foreign politics, and may be conjectured by those acquainted with history. The latter are as follows: 1. Nothing is increased by marriage of him, either in riches, estimation, or power. 2. It will be thought that the slanderous speeches of the queen with the earl have been true. 3. He shall study nothing but to enhance his own particular friends to wealth, to offices, to lands, and to offend others. 4. He is infamed by death of his wife. 5. He is far in debt. 6. He is likely to be unkind, and jealous of the queen's majesty. Id. 444. These suggestions, and especially the second, if actually laid before the queen, show the plainness and freedom which this great statesman ventured to use towards her. The allusion to the death of Leicester's wife, which had occurred in a very suspicious manner, at Cumnor, near Oxford, and is well known as the foundation of the novel of Kenilworth, though related there with great anachronism and confusion of persons, may be frequently met with in contemporary documents. By the above quoted letters in the Hardwicke Papers, it appears that those who disliked Leicester had spoken freely of this report to the queen.
[186] Elizabeth carried her dissimulation so far as to propose marriage articles, which were formally laid before the imperial ambassador. These, though copied from what had been agreed on Mary's marriage with Philip, now seemed highly ridiculous, when exacted from a younger brother without territories or revenues. Jura et leges regni conserventur, neque quicquam mutetur in religione aut in statu publico. Officia et magistratus exerceantur per naturales. Neque regina, neque liberi sui educantur ex regno sine consensu regni, etc. Haynes, 438.
Cecil was not too wise a man to give some credit to astrology. The stars were consulted about the queen's marriage; and those veracious oracles gave response, that she should be married in the thirty-first year of her age to a foreigner, and have one son, who would be a great prince, and a daughter, etc., etc. Strype, ii. 16, and Appendix 4, where the nonsense may be read at full length. Perhaps, however, the wily minister was no dupe, but meant that his mistress should be.
[187] The council appear in general to have been as resolute against tolerating the exercise of the catholic religion in any husband the queen might choose, as herself. We find, however, that several divines were consulted on two questions: 1. Whether it were lawful to marry a papist. 2. Whether the queen might permit mass to be said. To which answers were given, not agreeing with each other. Strype, ii. 150, and Appendix 31, 33. When the Earl of Worcester was sent over to Paris in 1571, as proxy for the queen, who had been made sponsor for Charles IX.'s infant daughter, she would not permit him, though himself a catholic, to be present at the mass on that occasion. ii. 171.
[188] "The people," Camden says, "cursed Huic, the queen's physician, as having dissuaded the queen from marrying on account of some impediment and defect in her." Many will recollect the allusion to this in Mary's scandalous letter to Elizabeth, wherein, under pretence of repeating what the Countess of Shrewsbury had said, she utters everything that female spite and mistrust could dictate. But in the long and confidential correspondence of Cecil, Walsingham, and Sir Thomas Smith, about the queen's marriage with the Duke of Anjou, in 1571, for which they were evidently most anxious, I do not perceive the slightest intimation that the prospect of her bearing children was at all less favourable than in any other case. The council seem, indeed, in the subsequent treaty with the other Duke of Anjou, in 1579, when she was forty-six, to have reckoned on something rather beyond the usual laws of nature in this respect; for in a minute by Cecil of the reasons for and against this marriage, he sets down the probability of issue on the favourable side. "By marriage with Monsieur she is likely to have children, because of his youth;" as if her age were no objection.
[189] Camden, after telling us that the queen's disinclination to marry raised great clamours, and that the Earls of Pembroke and Leicester had professed their opinion that she ought to be obliged to take a husband, or that a successor should be declared by act of parliament even against her will, asserts some time after, as inconsistently as improperly, that "very few but malcontents and traitors appeared very solicitous in the business of a successor."—P. 401 (in Kennet's Complete Hist. of England, vol. ii.). This, however, from Camden's known proneness to flatter James, seems to indicate that the Suffolk party were more active than the Scots upon this occasion. Their strength lay in the House of Commons, which was wholly protestant, and rather puritan.
At the end of Murden's State Papers is a short journal kept by Cecil, containing a succinct and authentic summary of events in Elizabeth's reign. I extract as a specimen such passages as bear on the present subject.
October 6, 1566. Certain lewd bills thrown abroad against the queen's majesty for not assenting to have the matter of succession proved in parliament; and bills also to charge Sir W. Cecil, the secretary, with the occasion thereof.