your own

make long prayers about this business. One of you dared to say, in times past, that I and my sister were bastards; and you must needs be interfering in what does not concern you. Go home and amend lives, and set an honest example in your families. The Lords in Parliament should have taught you to know your places; but if they have forgotten their duty I will not forget mine. Did I so choose I might make the impertinence of the whole set of you an excuse to withdraw my promise to marry; but for the realm's sake, I am resolved that I will marry; and I will take a husband that will not be to the taste of some of you. I have not married hitherto out of consideration for you, but it shall be done now, and you who have been so urgent with me will find the effects of it to your cost. Think you the prince who will be my consort will feel himself safe with such as you, who thus dare to thwart and cross your natural Queen ?'

She turned on her heel and sailed out of the hall of audience, vouchsafing no other word. At once she sent for de Silva, and after profuse thanks to himself and Philip for their long and steady kindness, swelling with anger as she was, she gave him to understand that her course was chosen at last and for ever; she would accept the Archduke and would be all which Spain could desire.

Many of the peers came to her in the evening to make their excuses: they said that they had been misled by the council, who had been the most in favour of the address; and they had believed themselves to be acting as she had herself desired. The Upper House

she might have succeeded in controlling; but the Commons were in a more dangerous humour. They were prepared for a storm when they commenced the debate; and they were not disposed to be lectured into submission. The next day Cecil rose in his place: the Queen, he said, had desired him to tell them that she was displeased, first, that the succession question should have been raised in that House without her consent having been first asked; and secondly, because 'by the publication abroad of the necessity of the matter,' and the danger to the realm if it was left longer undecided, the responsibility of the refusal was thrown entirely upon her Majesty. The 'error,' she was ready to believe, had risen chiefly from want of thought, and she was ready to overlook it. For the matter itself her Highness thought that by her promises to marry she had rather deserved thanks than to be troubled with

any new petition. "The word of a prince spoken in a public place' should have been taken as seriously meant; and if her Majesty had before told them that she was unwilling, they should have been more ready to believe her when she said that she had made up her mind. Time and opportunity would prove her Majesty's sincerity, and it was unkind to suppose that she would fail in producing children. Loyal subjects should hope the best. Her Majesty had confidence in God's goodness; and except for the assurance that she would have an heir, she would not marry at all. On this point she required the Houses to accept her word. For the succession she was not surprised at their uneasiness;

she was as conscious as they could be of the desirableness of a settlement. At the present moment however, and in the existing state of parties in the realm, the thing was impossible, and she would hear no more of it.1

The Queen expected that after so positive a declaration she would escape further annoyance; but times were changing, and the relations with them between sovereigns and subjects. The House listened in silence, not caring to conceal its dissatisfaction. The Friday following, being the 8th of November, 'Mr Lambert began a learned oration for iteration of the suit to the Queen on the succession.' 2

Whether they were terrified by the spectre of a second York and Lancaster war, or whether they were bent on making an effort for Lady Hertford before they were dissolved and another House was elected in the Scottish interest, or whether they disbelieved Elizabeth's promises to marry, notwithstanding the vehemence of her asseverations, the Commons seemed resolute at all hazards to persevere. Other speeches followed on the same side, expressing all of them the same fixed determination; and matters were now growing serious. The Spanish ambassador never lost a chance of irritating the Queen against the Protestant party; and on Saturday, stimulated by de Silva's invectives, and convinced, perhaps with justice, that she was herself essentially right, Elizabeth sent down an order that the subject

1 Report made to the Commons' | MSS. Rolls House. House by Mr Secretary: Domestic 2 Commons' Journals.

should be approached no further on pain of her displeasure. The same night a note was flung into the presence-chamber saying that the debate on the succession had been undertaken because the commonwealth required it, and that if the Queen interfered it might be the worse for her.1

In the most critical period of the reign of Henry the Eighth, speech in Parliament had been ostentatiously free; the Act of Appeals had been under discussion for two years and more, Catholic and Protestant had spoken their minds without restraint; yet among the many strained applications of the treason law no peer or commoner had been called to answer for words spoken by him in his place in the legislature. The Queen's injunction of silence had poured oil into the fire, and raised a fresh and more dangerous question of privilege. As soon as the House met again on Monday morning Mr Paul Wentworth rose to know whether such an order' was not against the liberties' of Parliament. He and other members inquired whether a message sent by a public officer was authority sufficient to bind the House, or if neither the message itself nor the manner in which it was delivered was a breach of privilege, 'what offence it was for any of the House to declare his opinion to be otherwise.' The debate lasted 1 'A noche echaron en la camera | le placerian.'-De Silva to Philip, de presencia un escrito que contenia November 11: MS. Simancas. en sustancia que se habia tratado en el Parlamento de la sucesion porque convenia al bien del Reyno, y que si la Reyna no consentia que se tratase dello que veria algunas cosas que no

2

2 Commons' Journals, 8 Elizabeth.

3 Note of Proceedings in Parlia ment, November 11: Domestic MSS., Elizabeth, vol. xli.

five hours, and (a rare if not unprecedented occurrence)

was adjourned.

Elizabeth, more angry than ever, sent for the Speaker; she insisted that there should be no further argument;' if any member of either House was dissatisfied he must give his opinion before the council.

The Commons having gone so far had no intention of yielding; and de Silva watched the crisis with a malicious hope of a collision between the two Houses and of both with the Queen. The Lower House, he said, was determined to name a successor, and was all but unanimous for Lady Catherine; the Peers were as decided for the Queen of Scots.1 A dissolution would leave the Treasury without a subsidy, and could not be thought of save at the last extremity. On the return of the Speaker the Commons named a committee to draw up an answer, which, though in form studiously courteous, was in substance as deliberately firm. The finishing touch was given to it by Cecil, and the sentences added in his hand were those which insisted most on the liberty of Parliament, and most justified the attitude which the Commons had assumed.

2

After thanking the Queen for her promise to marry, and assuring her that whatever she might think to the

1 'Ellos pretenden libertad de | que inclina todo á emocion.'-De proceder á lo del nombramiento de Silva to Philip, November 13: MS. la sucesion en la qual en la camara Simancas. superior tendra mucha parti la de 2 Draft of an Address to the Escocia; se tiene por cierto y assi lo Queen, submitted to the Committee creo que Caterina tendra casi todos of the Commons' House: Domestic los de la Camara baja, y assi parece | MSS., Elizabeth, vol. xli.