chamber to fetch the said warrant, and returning, sent in Mr. Brooke to signify to her majesty my being there, who presently called for me.' ib. Fourth stage: Elizabeth then signed it; and 'The same afternoon I waited on my lord chancellor, for sealing it, which was done between the hours of four and five.' ib. Fifth stage: The next morning, about TEN O'CLOCK, Mr. W. Killegrew came to me from her majesty with this message, that if I had not been with my lord chancellor, I SHOULD FORBEAR to go unto him, till I had spoken again with herself.' ib. 237. Here was an express revocation of her consent, within eighteen hours after she had signed the warrant. Did the secretary acquiesce in her stoppage of the fatal warrant? No. He says, That message coming out of season, I returned him back with this general answer, that I would be at court as soon as himself.' p. 237. He then went to persuade her not to recall the mandate, which makes the Sixth stage: At my coming to her, she demanded of me, whether the warrant were passed the seal? I told her, yes. She asked, WHAT NEEDETH THAT HASTE?' He answered, that a case of that moment was not to be dallied with. She said, that some thought it might be otherwise handled for the form. He remarked, the honorable and just way to be the safest and best.' The queen then left me, and went to dinner.' Here they parted, Elizabeth not having recalled her suspension of the warrant.-The Seventh stage was, that he went from her to tell the vice-chamberlain of her new hesitation, and to recollect and remind him that she had repented of Norfolk's execution, and had laid it heavily on my lord treasurer for a long time after.' The vice-chamberlain told him, he, for his own part, did wish him hanged that would not join in the furtherance' of it, and they went to Burghley to confer upon it, who had the council warned the next morning to confer upon it. They met, the warrant was read, and THEY finally resolved to proceed to the sending down thereof, wITHOUT TROUBLING HER HIGHNESS ANY FURTHER WITHAL; as dangerous consequence might else have grown thereof, in case her majesty, upon such a needless motion, should have fallen into any new conceit of interrupting and staying the course of justice; considering the malice of her enemies, and the disposition of the time and state of things then, both abroad and at home.' ib. p. 240-2. No account can be more clear and express. After Elizabeth had sent on purpose to stop the warrant, and had declared personally to Davison her desire to do so, the council, on public grounds, determined that it should not be stayed, but that they would, on their own responsibility, have it carried into execution, without referring to her any more. It is therefore clear that she had interfered to suspend it after she had signed, and that in contradiction to her signification of these revoking feelings; and altho they remembered that she had given them a warning instance, in Norfolk's case, that she did afterwards regret such severities, yet the ministers resolved to preclude her from preventing the execution, by not consulting her any further about it, but by having it immediately done, altho contrary to her inclinations at that time; and with a foreseeing certainty of her regrets and resentment afterwards. They acted conscientiously for the public good; but it was in opposition to her hesitating feelings, words, and wishes, and on purpose not to give her the opportunity of hindering it, because they saw, that if they had, she would have stopped the execution. CHAP. XXXIV. BOOK II. MARY'S DAUGHTER. I observe a fact mentioned of Mary, which it does not occur to me that I have seen noticed elsewhere. It is, that she had a daughter by Bothwell. Laboureur, in his additions to Castelnau, thus expresses it: To close the history of Mary Stewart, after having said that she had by the earl of Bothwell, her third husband, une fille qui fût Religieuse, a N. Dame de Soissons.' v. 1. p. 648. As she was in Lochleven Castle from the July after her husband Darnley's destruction, and her marriage with Bothwell, till the following May, the child, if Bothwell's, must have been born during that imprisonment. If it were not born there, but in England, it must have had some other father; yet I do not recollect having seen it mentioned that she was in the family condition there, nor brought to bed in it. To have been afterwards a nun at Soissons, would imply that it was conveyed privately to France, and brought up in, or placed afterwards in, that convent. If it be not mentioned in the Scottish historians, the delivery must have been concealed, and the circumstance suppressed; for Laboureur is a warm friend of Mary, and does not mention it for the purpose of depreciating her, and was much conversant with her transactions; for he has found and printed a considerable portion of her correspondence. If it be as new to others as it is to me, it might be worth while for those who visit Paris, to inspect the MSS. of the period, in the Royal Library, to elucidate this point. CHAP. XXXV. PHILIP DETERMINES TO INVADE ENGLAND NEW LEAGUE XXXV. THE HE most formidable menace to the national inde- CHAP. pendence of England, since the day that William the Conqueror landed on its shores at Pevensey, was the formation and sailing of the Spanish Armada, for the purpose of reducing the British islands to be, like Flanders, provinces of Spain, and a subjected portion of the Romish hierarchy. It had been long in the contemplation of Philip II. Opposed, unwelcomed, and never respectfully treated by the English public when he married its queen, Mary, his exorbitant pride forgave not the contumely;' and even in her lifetime he projected, in his revenge and bigotry, to have landed an invading army, which with the facilities that must have resulted from her being on the throne, was to attempt a military conquest of the heretical and dissatisfied nation." · The Memoirs of De Cheverney, who knew him in Spain, give some traits of his arrogance: No one living ever spoke to him but on his knees. None dared speak to him before he ordered them. He gave his commands with only half a phrase; it was necessary always to guess the rest. He would very rarely let himself be seen by the people, and not even by the grandees, but on solemn days.' Mem. de Chev. v. 52. p. 28, 29. 2 This curious fact is mentioned in the letter written in 1587 to the Scottish nobleman, quoted in note 90 of the last chapter, p. 457. It is well known how he had figured himself an empire over all this part of BOOK II. Mary's unexpected demise defeated this daring and treacherous hope. But Pius V. had strenuously urged him afterwards to make the attempt; and he had commissioned Alva to pursue it. Their schemes were frustrated, as the preceding pages have narrated; but the design remained a determined object of his ambitious spirit, and becoming identified with the sincerity of his superstitious fondness for the Romish religion,' was only deferred till such a force could be assembled at such a favoring conjuncture, as would effectuate the hazardous and momentous achievement. It was always the plan of a Spanish invasion to make the attack in two simultaneous directions; from the ports of Spain on the south of England, and from those of Flanders on its eastern coasts. He began from 1583 to send, but so gradually as not to alarm French jealousy, more men into Flanders than he wanted there, as our ambassador at Paris had noticed; and this body was in time so much the world; what plots he laid for the compassing thereof. A foundation was laid for subduing this land in queen Mary's time, he being then our king in right of his wife. The conquest was fully concluded on afterwards under color of religion, as by the prince of Orange, then of his privy council, revealed.' Strype's Ann. v. 3, p. 553. 3 Cheverney notices one peculiar circumstance of his personal devotion. In his last illness, after exhorting his son, he took out of a coffer a whip, the end of which was stained with blood. He raised it on high, and shook it out, saying that it was his own blood which was upon it: that he had received it from his father Charles V. who had chastised his body with it, and he wished to leave it to his own children for the same purpose.' Mem. p. 31, 32. Murdin, p. 381. Philip was then also trying to draw to his interests the Swiss cantons, from their old alliance with France, ib. He assured the French government, that he meaneth no breach of league of amity with France, but only the bringing under subjection his own subjects. The prince of Parma has likewise assured the same.' Sir E. Stafford's lett. 22d December 1583, p. 388. Philip now considered the Irish as his subjects, from the temporary gift of that island to him XXXV. enlarged, that the earl of Leicester stated, in Novem- CHAP. ber 1587, that the prince of Parma had under his command nearly forty thousand men." Practices were also pursued to raise a Spanish instead of a Marian party in Scotland, and even to assassinate Elizabeth by Spanish emissaries.' Preferred at last, from the pope, and was looking at England in the same perverted view, under his pretended lineal claim to its crown. In January 1584, he 'demanded passage of the dukes of Savoy and Lorraine for 22,000 men, and they have granted it to him.' ib. 390. To calm the fears of Geneva, 'the duke of Savoy himself sent them word of the passing of these Spaniards, under color of friendship, but they mean not, for all his friendship, but to stand upon their guard.' Lett. 8th January 1584, ib. 391. The Spanish ambassador at Paris made similar representations to Henry III. that Philip would attempt nothing to his prejudice; but the king very sourly in countenance heard him, and answered with the same countenance.' ib. 392. 5 The earl wrote from Flanders on 6th November 1587: In this meanwhile the enemy is grown very mighty, both by land and water. He never yet had that strength by much. He hath all preparations ready, as well by water as by land, to besiege or attempt any place. He is near 40,000 men for certain.' Hard. v. 1. p. 354. 6 On 23 May 1584, sir E. Stafford wrote, that in his audience with Henry III. he had, as directed, told him, 'That I was rather afraid, by the secret dealings of some of his subjects, that Scotland was become rather Spanish, than either French or English, as might appear by certain extracts, which her majesty had sent him to see, which I desired him from her majesty to read. The king took them, and desired me to leave them with him.' Murd. 399. 7 On 27 July 1584, sir E. Stafford wrote from Paris: Don Antonio sent to speak with me the last day in great haste. Declaring the affection he had to her majesty, he declared to me a very certain advertisement he had from a very good place, and out of the Spanish agent's house, that the same practice which had been executed upon the prince of Orange, there are practisers, more than two or three, ABOUT TO EXECUTE UPON HER MAJESTY, and some other, and especially her majesty, and that to be done within these two months. I have stated the like advertisement given to me by other means, who have had it by a Spaniard, which Spaniard indeed haunteth the agent's house much, and so doth also don Antonio.' Then rightly suggesting a soothing and cautious possibility, that what could not but greatly alarm his sovereign might not be true, he added, 'It is necessary for her majesty to take good heed, and have a care of herself more than ordinary, for there must no doubt be had, that she is a chief mark they shoot at; and seeing these were men, knowing enough to enchant a man, and to encourage one to kill the prince of Orange in |