[290] Dispaccio di Carlo Scaramelli 19 Feb. 1603 (Venetian Archives).
[291] Memoirs of Robert Cary 116.
[292] The first appears in Aubery's Mémoires pour servir à l'histoire de Hollande 1687, 214; with another apocryphal tale about finding the bones of Edward IV's children as early as Elizabeth's time. Aubery asserts that he heard the history of the ring from his father's mouth, who had heard it from Prince Maurice of Orange, to whom it had been communicated by the English ambassador Carleton. According to him the Queen then took to her bed, dressed as she was, sprang from it a hundred times during the night, and starved herself to death. Who does not, in reading this, feel himself in a sphere of wild romance? Lady Spelman has tried to clear away the improbability involved in it, that Essex should have applied to the wife of one of his enemies, by making Essex give the ring to a boy passing by, who was to give it, not to the Countess of Nottingham, but to her sister, and then mistook the two ladies.
[293] Scaramelli, 27 March: 'per occasione del perdono finalmente fatto al conte di Tirone cadde in una consideratione, che il conte di Esses gia tanto suo intimo di cuore fosse morto innocente.'
[294] Letter of the French ambassador from London, 3rd April 1603. 'C'est la verité que delors, qu'elle se sentit atteinte du mal, elle dit de vouloir mourir.' Villeroy, Mémoires d'estat iii. 212. Cary: 'The Queen grew worse and worse, because she would be so.' Compare Sloane MS. in Ellis iii. 194.
[295] Scaramelli writes to his Signoria 7th April (New Style) what was said during those days: 'La regina nel fine della infirmita et della vita dopo haver dormito alcune poche hore ritornata di sana mente conoscendosi moribonda il primo di Aprile corr. fece chiamare i signori del regio consiglio—e commandava loro,—che la corona pervenisse al Più meritevole ch'ella ha trovato sempre nel suo secreto esser il Re di Scotia cosi per il dritto della successione, che per esserne Più degno che non è stata lei, poiche egli è nato re et ella privata—egli le portera un regno et ella non porta altro che se stessa donna.' Without quite accepting this, we must not pass it over. Winwood too writes to Tremouille: 'le jour avant son trespas elle declara pour son successeur le roy d'Escosse.' Mémoires i. 461.
BOOK IV.
FOUNDATION OF THE KINGDOM OF GREAT BRITAIN. FIRST DISTURBANCES UNDER THE STUARTS.
Under no dynasty in the world have great national changes been so dependent on the personal aims of princes as in England under the Tudors. Just as all Henry VIII's subsequent proceedings were determined by the affair of the divorce, so also the policy of his three children was due to the relations into which they were thrown by their birth.