[192] The old Bishop of Aquila had died, probably of the plague, in the previous autumn at Langley, near Windsor. He had been succeeded by Don Diego Guzman de Silva.
[193] The official account makes no mention of this. It says only that great preparations had been made to represent Sophocles’ tragedy of Ajax Flagellifer. “But her Highness, as it were, tyred with going about the colleges and hearing disputations, and overwatched with former plays, … could not, as otherwise no doubt she would, … hear the said tragedy, to the great sorrow not only of the players but of the whole University.” If the scene as described by the Spaniard took place, it must have been at the house of Sir Henry Cromwell, the great Oliver’s grandfather, at Hinchinbrook, where the Queen slept on the night of the day she left Cambridge.
[194] The Queen had, however, supped with him at his yet unfinished mansion in London—Cecil House—in 1560, and had there stood godmother to his infant daughter Elizabeth (6th July 1564).
[195] This splendid place, to which further reference will be made, was visited on his first voyage south by James I., who was so enamoured of it that he obtained it from the first Earl of Salisbury, Cecil’s younger son, in exchange for Hatfield. It was at Theobalds that King James died.
[196] The details of, and correspondence with relation to this commercial war, with the various negotiations, and especially those of the conference of Bruges, will be found in the Hatfield Papers, correspondence of the Merchant-Adventurers, Foreign Papers, correspondence of Valentine Dale, Sheres, &c., and in the B. M. Add. MSS., 28,173, correspondence of Dassonleville and other Flemish agents, as well as in Spanish State Papers, Elizabeth, vol. i.
[197] Spanish State Papers, Elizabeth, vol. i.
[198] The book in question was that written by John Hales, Clerk of the Hanaper, in favour of the succession of Lady Catharine Grey and her children. He had been indicted in January 1564 for “presumptuously and contemptuously discussing, both by words and in writing, the question of the succession to the imperial crown of England, in case the Queen should die without issue;” and thenceforward for months interrogatories and depositions with regard to his sayings and doings, and those of Catharine Grey and her husband, Lord Hertford, continued before Cecil without intermission. (The papers in the case are all at Hatfield, and are mostly published in extenso by Haynes.) Hales himself was the scapegoat, and was in the Fleet prison for six months; but in all probability, as Dudley said, Cecil and his brother-in-law, Bacon, had a great share in drawing up the book. Cecil was probably too powerful and useful to touch; but Bacon was reprimanded, and Lord John Grey of Pyrgo, an old friend of Cecil’s, was kept under arrest until his death, a few months later.
[199] Spanish State Papers, Elizabeth, vol. i.
[200] Philip s reply, partly in his own hand, to his Ambassador’s reports of Dudley’s offers is characteristic: “I am pleased to see what Lord Robert says, and will tell you my will on the point. I am much dissatisfied with Cecil, as he is such a heretic; and if you give such encouragement to Robert as will enable him to put his foot on Cecil and turn him out of office, I shall be very glad. But you must do it with such tact and delicacy, that if it fails, none shall know that you had a hand in it” (Spanish State Papers, Elizabeth, vol. i.).
[201] Hatfield Papers, part i.