27. Certain lords, viz., the Earls of Pembroke and Leicester, were excluded the presence-chamber for furthering the proposition of the succession to be declared by parliament without the queen's allowance.
November 12. Messrs. Bell and Monson moved trouble in the parliament about the succession.
14. The queen had before her thirty lords and thirty commoners, to receive her answer concerning their petition for the succession and for marriage. Dalton was blamed for speaking in the Commons' house.
24. Command given to the parliament not to treat of the succession.
Nota: in this parliament time the queen's majesty did remit a part of the offer of a subsidy to the Commons, who offered largely, to the end to have had the succession established. P. 762.
[190] Catherine, after her release from the Tower, was placed in the custody of her uncle, Lord John Grey, but still suffering the queen's displeasure, and separated from her husband. Several interesting letters from her and her uncle to Cecil are among the Lansdowne MSS. vol. vi. They cannot be read without indignation at Elizabeth's unfeeling severity. Sorrow killed this poor young woman the next year, who was never permitted to see her husband again. Strype, i. 391. The Earl of Hertford underwent a long imprisonment, and continued in obscurity during Elizabeth's reign; but had some public employments under her successor. He was twice afterwards married, and lived to a very advanced age, not dying till 1621, near sixty years after his ill-starred and ambitious love. It is worth while to read the epitaph on his monument in the S.E. aisle of Salisbury Cathedral, an affecting testimony to the purity and faithfulness of an attachment rendered still more sacred by misfortune and time. Quo desiderio veteres revocavit amores! I shall revert to the question of this marriage in a subsequent chapter.
[191] Haynes, 396.
[192] Id. 413; Strype, 410. Hales's treatise in favour of the authenticity of Henry's will is among the Harleian MSS. n. 537 and 555, and has also been printed in the Appendix to Hereditary Right Asserted, fol. 1713.
[193] Camden, p. 416, ascribes the powerful coalition formed against him in 1569, wherein Norfolk and Leicester were combined with all the catholic peers, to his predilection for the house of Suffolk. But it was more probably owing to their knowledge of his integrity and attachment to his sovereign, which would steadfastly oppose their wicked design of bringing about Norfolk's marriage with Mary, as well as to their jealousy of his influence. Carte reports, on the authority of the despatches of Fenelon, the French ambassador, that they intended to bring him to account for breaking off the ancient league with the house of Burgundy, or, in other words, for maintaining the protestant interest. Vol. iii. p. 483.
A papist writer, under the name of Andreas Philopater, gives an account of this confederacy against Cecil at some length. Norfolk and Leicester belonged to it; and the object was to defeat the Suffolk succession, which Cecil and Bacon favoured. Leicester betrayed his associates to the queen. It had been intended that Norfolk should accuse the two counsellors before the Lords, eâ ratione ut è senatu regiâque abreptos ad curiæ januas in crucem agi præciperet, eoque perfecto rectè deinceps ad forum progressus explicaret populo tum hujus facti rationem, tum successionis etiam regnandi legitimam seriem, si quid forte reginæ humanitus accideret. P. 43.