works.

the rights of Alexander's wife or not, he treated himself as heir first of Portugal, and later on, of England. Only his claims to the latter concern Parsons' the present subject. The grounds of them appear in the works of the Jesuit Father Parsons' or Persons'"Leicester's Commonwealth," and "Doleman's Conferences about the Succession," the latter of which, however, seems not to have been published before the year 1593. Parsons' main argument is that the Lancastrian king's descendants of John of Gaunt were the rightful sovereigns of England. To prove this he glances at the heirship of Blanche, wife of John of Gaunt, to Edmund Crouchback, and insists upon the doctrine, so dangerous to sovereigns, that a wicked king such as Richard II. might be lawfully deposed. Then he dwells on the claims of Philip, as being by descent from Philippa Plantagenet related by the whole blood to the house of Lancaster, whereas Henry VII.'s mother was related only by the half blood. He does not appear to have understood the precise significance in English law of relationship by the whole blood, and perhaps may be excused for his imperfect knowledge of so abstruse a legal doctrine. As the author mentions the fugitive Earl of Westmoreland's descent from Elizabeth, the younger of Henry IV.'s sisters of the whole blood, though he deduces it incorrectly, it seems probable that he

Parsons' arguments

preparations.

was indebted for his argument on this ground to the earl himself, or some of his companions in exile. An English nobleman of Elizabeth's age might be ignorant of many things, but he was pretty sure to be well informed on every claim which he could possibly make to manor or barony, above all to the crown. Parsons' fine-spun seconded arguments would go for little towards obtaining by Philip's the crown of England for Philip, but if Philip had once seized it, they would doubtless have been important as carrying with them a title less repulsive than that of undisguised conquest. Philip himself knew well that his cause could only triumph by far other means than those of the Jesuit father's pamphlets. At last in 1588, the claim of Philip of Hapsburg to the throne of the Plantagenets was fitly debated between the navy of England and the armada of Spain on the English seas, and there sank for ever into the abyss. The English catholic and the English puritan had been drawn together as Englishmen worthy of the name have ever been by the danger of the common country. Not the least important quences of result of Philip's attempt, and of England's Philip's defeat glorious victory over her most deadly foe, was favourable that Elizabeth and James had been brought Scotland. together by a community of peril and of success. I do not doubt but what from this time Elizabeth, although up to her last illness at least she would

Philip's Armada, 1588.

Conse

to James of

not recognise any certain successor, determined in her own mind that the successor should be James and none other. I accept as true Sully's statement that the queen in his interview with her in 1601 assumed that such would be the case. All her inclinations, however thwarted by the peculiar circumstances of her own position, were in favour of hereditary right. She knew, too, full well what a splendid accession of power would be brought to England by the union of the English and Scottish crowns. And the bitterest enemy of

Elizabeth has never doubted but that she loved England as truly as the noblest of her ancestors had done. And the English nation most wisely concurred in their queen's determination. The will of Henry VIII. was imperfectly known, and the heir of Mary Tudor, Duchess of Suffolk, was not of sufficient importance to bear the weight of the English crown, whilst the hereditary title and the advantages of a union of the crowns of England and Scotland were intelligible to all. The long peace, too, between England and Scotland, which had prevailed since the surrender in 1572 of Edinburgh Castle, had assuaged the immemorial animosities of the two countries, From this time the question of succession was silently resolved by queen and people alike. James's position in England was greatly strength- James's ened by his judicious marriage in 1590 with marriage

with Anne

of Den

Anne, daughter of Frederic II., King of Denmark, 1590. mark, a Protestant princess, who brought him as her dowry the sovereignty of the Orkneys and Shetlands, already lying in pawn from Denmark to Scotland; it was still more strengthened by the births of several children. Of these I mention only the three who were important to the sucElizabeth, cession, Henry, Elizabeth and Charles, who were respectively born in 1594, 1596, and 1600.

Their children, Henry,

and

Charles.

Craig's

treatise in favour of

I have already noticed the work of Parsons in favour of Philip's claim. A patriotic Scotchman, Craig, undertook to answer him. He denied the James. right of Henry or Elizabeth, with or without Parliament, to change the line of hereditary succession, and he advocated the right of the half blood to succeed to kingdoms. Especially he laboured the question of alienage. He pointed out that England and Scotland originally formed according to tradition one kingdom, that Scotchmen, if foreigners to England, were not born beyond the seas, and argued that alienage is no more a bar to the succession to the throne than attainder. One argument alone on this head his patriotism forbad him to use. He could not stoop to admit that Scotland was tributary to England, and that consequently Scotchmen were born in the allegiance of the sovereign of England. He, however, points out that Englishmen who claimed for the English crown a sovereignty over

that of Scotland were bound to admit this consequence. But he touches a nobler chord when he urges the advantages to England as well as to Scotland of the union of the two crowns.

The question of the succession did not assume a violent form after the defeat of the Spanish Armada, until the wild and wicked conspiracy of Essex's the Earl of Essex against his aged sovereign and conspiracy. kinswoman broke out. It had for its object to force the queen's hand, and to compel her to declare the King of Scotland her successor, to change her ministry, and to give the direction of affairs to Essex. The confession of Sir Christopher Blount on the scaffold proves how great a danger threatened, not only the independence, but the very life of the queen. But age and danger had not impaired Elizabeth's courage, unsurpassed by any, and matched only by that of her dead cousin the Queen of Scots.

tion, 1600,

Cecil's

policy.

The Earl of Essex, a great criminal against His executhe state, a generous nobleman in his private February 7. capacity, was executed in February 1601. After this event, so painful to Elizabeth, Robert Cecil, Robert second son of the great Lord Burleigh, took a line of action most advantageous to his sovereign and country. He entered into a correspondence with James, in which, without forgetting his duty to the queen, he provided for the future welfare of England. He stipulated that the last sands of