CHAP X Queen's retreat an easy one. Having succeeded in re1566 sisting a dangerous encroachment of the crown they did November not press their victory. The message sent through the Speaker was received by the House most joyfully, with most hearty prayers and thanks for the same," and with the consent of all parties the question of Parlia mentary privilege was allowed to drop. Yet while ready to waive their right of discussing further the particular pretensions of the claimants of the crown, the Commons would not let the Queen believe that they acquiesced in being left in uncertainty. Two months had passed since the beginning of the session, and the subsidy had not been so much as discussed. The succession quarrel had commenced with the first motion. for a grant of money, and had lasted with scarcely an interval ever since. It was evident that although Elizabeth's objection to name a successor was rested on general grounds, it ap plied as strongly to Lady Catherine as to the Queen of Scots, and had arisen professedly from the Queen's own experience in the lifetime of her sister; yet the Commons either suspected that she was secretly working in the Scottish interest, or they thought at all events that her procrastination served only to strengthen that interest, and that Mary Stuart's friends every day grew more numerous. The Money Bill was reintroduced on the 27th. The House was anxious to compensate by its liberality for the trouble which it had given on other subjects, and the Queen was privately informed that the grant would be made unusually large. Elizabeth determined not to be outdone, replied that although for the public service she might require all which they were ready to offer, 1 Commons' Journals, 8 ELIZ. Bill. 'she counted her subjects in respect of their hearty good CHAP X will her best treasurers;' and 'she therefore would move 1566 them to forbear at that time extending their gift as November they proposed.' The manner as well as the matter of the The Subsidy message was pointedly gracious, yet the Commons would have preferred her taking the money and listening to their opinions; and the bribe was as unsuccessful as the menace, in keeping them silent. They voted freely the sum which she would consent to take. It amounted in a rough estimate to an income tax of seven per cent. for two years; but an attempt was made to attach a preamble to the Bill which would commit the Queen in accepting it to what she was straining every nerve to avoid. Referring to the promise which she had made to the Committee, the Commons humbly and earnestly besought her, with the assistance of God's grace, having resolved to marry, to accelerate without more loss of time all her honourable actions tending thereto;' while submitting themselves to the will of Almighty God in whose hands all power and counsel did consist, they would at the same time beseech Him to give her Majesty wisdom well to foresee, opportunity speedily to consult, and power with assent of the realm sufficiently to fulfil without unnecessary delay, all that should be needful to her subjects and their posterity in the stablishing the succession of the crown, first in her own person and progeny, and next in such persons as law and justice should peaceably direct—according to the answer of Moses: "The Lord God of the spirit of all flesh set one over this great multitude which may go out and in before them, and lead them out and in, that the Lord's people may not be as sheep without a shepherd."" 1 Preamble for the Subsidy Bill.-Domestic MSS., vol. xli. Rolls House. CHAP X The meaning of language such as this could not be mistaken. All the political advantages of the Scottish December succession would not compensate to the Lord's people' 1566 for such a shepherd as the person into whose hands they seemed to be visibly drifting. It was a grave misfortune for the Protestants that they could produce no better candidate than Lady Catherine Grey, who had professed herself a Catholic when Catholicism seemed likely to serve her turn; and to whom, notwithstanding her legal claim through the provisions of the will of Henry the Eighth, there were so many and so serious objections. The friends of the Queen of Scots had set in circulation a list of difficulties in the way of her acknowledgment, the weight of which fanaticism itself could not refuse to admit.1 It is uncertain whether the preamble was ever forced Whatever be said, it is notorious that when Sir Charles Brandon married the French Queen he had a wife already living. hath earnestly acknowledged the same. A divorce was procured by the Earl of Pembroke, in Queen Mary's The Lady Katherine is therefore reign, against their wills, so that it illegitimate. cannot be legal. Even if this were not so, yet such hath been her life and behaviour, and so much hath she stained herself and her issue, as she is to be thought unworthy of the crown. For she was married, as you know, to the Lord Herbert; the marriage was performed and perfected by all necessary circumstances; there was consent of parties, consent of parents, open solemnizing, continuance till lawful years of consent, and in the meantime, carnal copulation; all which, save the last, are commonly known, and the last, which might be most doubtful, is known by confession of them both. She herself Afterwards, she by dalliance fell to carnal company with the Earl of Hertford, which was not descried till the bigness of her belly bewrayed her ill hap. The marriage between them was declared unlawful by the bishop who examined it. 'The mother wicked and lascivious; the issue bastarded. If she were next in the blood royal, her fault is so much the more to have so foully spotted the same. She can have no lawful children. Deut. xiii. 23:-It is written, "a bastard and unlawful-born person may not bear rule in the church and commonweal;" a law devised to punish on Elizabeth's attention. The draft of it alone remains CHAP X to show what the Commons intended; and either they 1566 despaired of prevailing on the Queen to accept the grant December while such a prelude was linked to it, and were unwilling to embarrass the public service; or they preferred another expedient to which they trusted less objection might be raised: the preamble at all events was abandoned; they substituted for it a general expression of gratitude for the promise to marry, and sent the Bill to the Lords on the 17th of December. Meanwhile on the 5th a measure was introduced which, if less effective in the long run for the protection of the Reformation than the declaration of a Protestant the parents for their sins, so that such a mother ought in no case to be allowed to succeed. Next, as to King Henry's will:'He had no power to bequeath the crown, except so far as Parliament gave him leave; and Parliament could only give him leave so far as the power of Parliament extended. The words of the statute give him no absolute or unlimited power to appoint an unfit person to the crown, not capable of the same as unto a Turk, an Infidel, an infamous or opprobrious person, a fool or a mad man. • But again, he had power to order the succession, either by Letters Patent, or by his will, signed with his own hand. 'He has not done it by Letters Patent; of that there is no doubt. 'His will, there are witnesses sufficient, and some of them that subscribed the same testament can truly and plainly testify, that he did not subscribe. when the King was void of memory, 'As to the enrolment in Chancery, The stamp might be appended ELIZ., vol. xli. CHAP X successor, would have ended at once the ambiguity of 1566 the religious position of Elizabeth. The Thirty-nine December Articles, strained and cracked by three centuries of evasive Bill for the ingenuity, scarcely embarrass now the feeblest of contion of the sciences. The clergyman of the nineteenth century subThirty-nine scribes them with such a smile as might have been worn reimposi Articles. by Samson when his Philistine mistress bound his arms with the cords and withes. In the first year of Elizabeth they were the symbols by which the orthodox Protestant was distinguished from the concealed Catholic. The liturgy with purposed ambiguity could be used by those who were Papists save in the name; the Articles affirmed the falsehood of doctrines declared by the Church to be divine, and the Catholic who signed them either passed over to the new opinions or emperilled his soul with perjury. In their anxiety for conciliation, and for the semblance of unanimity, Elizabeth's Government had as yet held these formulas at arm's length: the Convocation of 1562 had reimposed them so far as their powers extended; but the decrees of Convocation were but shadows until vitalized by the legislature; and both Queen and Parliament had refused to give the authority of law to a code of doctrines which might convulse the kingdom. On the failure for the suit of the succession, a Bill was brought into the Lower House to make subscription to the Articles a condition for the tenure of benefices in the Church of England. The move was so sudden and the Commons were so swift that there was no time for resistance. It was hurried through its three readings and given to the bishops to carry through the Lords. A letter from de Silva to Philip shows the importance which both Catholic and Protestant attached to it : |