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nant, she was committed to the Tower. Hertford, on his return from his travels, was sent to the same prison. Archbishop Parker, bishop Grindal, and sir William Petre, were named commissioners to enquire into these matters. Witnesses of the marriage not being produced in time, it was pronounced to be null, and the imprisonment of both parties was continued during the queen's pleasure. But the popular feelings were unfavourable to this odious policy; and, Hertford easily eluding the watchfulness of the gaolers, a second pregnancy heightened the displeasure of the queen. Hertford was fined 15,000l. in the star-chamber, for the threefold offence of deflowering a virgin of the royal blood, of repeating that outrage after sentence of nullity, and of breaking prison. The ravages of the plague, in 1563, which, in the little London of that time, swept away 1000 persons a week, produced some relaxation of severity to lord and lady Hertford. The latter was allowed to reside at the country-seat of her uncle lord John Grey.* In 1565, both were re-committed to the Tower. The rigour of their treatment was partly occasioned by the indiscretion of John Hales, who, in April, 1564, published a book in support of the rights of the house of Suffolk, and of the validity of lady Hertford's marriage; for which he was imprisoned, to prevent the appearance of encouraging attacks on the title of the queen of Scots. Lady Catherine died, with calmness and piety, on the 27th of January, 1567, after a confinement of more than six years. She besought those around her to solicit from Elizabeth forgiveness of her acts of disobedience, and protection of her three infant sons. She desired her wedding-ring to be delivered to her husband, together with another ring on which was painted a death's head, with these words around it,—

"While I live, yours." Perceiving her nails to look purple, she said, "Lo, here he is! -and putting down her eyes with her own hands, she yielded unto God her meek spirit." + Nearly half a century afterwards, her Ellis, ut supra, ii. 289.

* Haynes, 414

memory was relieved from imputation by the verdict of a jury, which by necessary inference established the validity of her marriage.*

The importance of matrimonial propositions to Elizabeth, and of all circumstances affecting the succession, was hardly diminished, when, by the death of Francis, Mary had become free to accept any other offer which might be made to her, however opposed to the policy of Elizabeth. The archduke Charles was at one time engaged, with the sanction of the brothers Guise, in the pursuit of Mary's hand. It has been before related, that the duke of Anjou was offered by the French court at once to Mary and Elizabeth. The duke of Ferrara and several princes of the empire were also candidates for the hand of Mary; and the prince of Condé was at one time suggested as a husband for her, with a view to a reconciliation between the French houses of Guise and Bourbon.†

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In 1562 a rumour was prevalent, that when Philip II. offered to cede Sardinia to the king of Navarre, in consideration of his renouncing that titular monarchy, Mary was offered to him, if he were divorced from Jeanne d'Albert for her heresy. England was also said to be held out as a part of the lure, on the deposition of the heretical queen but it is unlikely that Philip, who had not yet sacrificed his jealousy of French greatness to his zeal for the catholic cause, should have been willing to place so much power in the hands of French princes. It was apparentlý from this jealousy that an offer sprung, which was far more threatening to the peace of Elizabeth than any other which had been made to Mary. When the marriage of the queen of Scots to the archduke was seriously agitated, Philip informed cardinal Granville, in a confidential despatch, that he was content to sacrifice the suit of his son, Don Carlos, to that of his cousin, the archduke; but as he had heard, with no small uneasiness, that the king of France had turned his mind to an union with Mary Stuart, he should willingly con*Collins's Peerage, Brydges' ed. i. 173. Thuanus, lib. xxviii. c. 27.

† Castelnau, liv. v. c. 11. 12.

VOL. III.

sent to the marriage of his son, the heir of the Spanish monarchy, to the queen of Scotland.* The escape of

Mary from the hand of Don Carlos was the only fortunate event of her remaining life, and it must have been considered by Elizabeth as the removal of one of the greatest dangers that could have threatened her safety. For this reason, perhaps, it may be excusable to insert in this place, without a strict regard to the order of time, the circumstances of an event which, though not strictly a part of English history, was extremely characteristical of the monarch destined to be the most formidable antagonist of Elizabeth, and was calculated to display the odious nature of pretensions to that authority over a royal family, which was exercised blamably by Elizabeth over lady Catherine Grey, but which appears in a far more hideous form in the treatment of the prince of Asturias.

This wretched prince had from his infancy manifested every species of imbecility and depravity which can be united in the mind of one man. Incapable of instruction, yielding without bounds to every passion, stupid as the most grovelling brutes, ferocious as a beast of prey, no care of courtly masters, no lessons of learned preceptors could bestow on him that scanty polish of manner, and that smattering of the general language of intercourse, which are expected from princes. His grandfather, Charles V., who saw the heir of the Spanish dominions at sixteen, bewailed the fate of his late empire. A Venetian minister, long resident at Madrid, when he saw the prince eagerly tearing to pieces the rabbits brought in for his sport, and contemplating with delight the convulsions of their muscles and the palpitations of their hearts, foretold to his senate the miserable condition of those many millions in every region from sunrise to sunset, who were to be subject to his will. At eighteen he fell from a high scaffold, and received wounds in the head, which during the remainder of his life added convulsions, confusion of thought, and occasional attacks of insanity, to his natural defects and habitual vices. His father,

Philip to Granville, 6th August, 1564. Apud Strad, de Bello Belgico, lib. iii. p. 71. edit. Mogunt. 1651.

perhaps justifiably, restrained him. His mad passion for travelling was exasperated, and he formed wild schemes of escape. His incoherent talk often turned on the revolt of the Flemings, with whom he sometimes affected a fellow-feeling; while, on other occasions, he professed an ambition to command the army against them. When the duke of Alva took his leave to repair to that command, Carlos said, My father ought to have appointed me."-" Doubtless," said Alva, “his majesty considered your life as too precious." Carlos drew his dagger, and attempted to stab Alva; adding, "I will hinder your journey to Flanders, for I will pierce your heart before you set out."

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Towards the end of 1567 his phrensy seemed to rage more fiercely, mingled with much of that cunning which sometimes, for a moment, covers madness with a false appearance of reason. He declared to his confessors that he was resolved to take the life of a man. In

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reply to their enquiries, who it was, he said that he aimed at a man of the highest quality; and after much importunate examination, he at length uttered, My father!" His father, attended by the chief officers of state, went at midnight in armour to arrest him. Philip, acting on his fatal notions of the boundless rights of kings and fathers, did not shrink from communicating his proceedings to the great corporations of Spain, and to the principal catholic states of Europe. His subjects and his allies interceded for Carlos. Their intercessions were withstood by the iron temper, the unbending policy, and the misguided conscience of Philip, although he was occasionally haunted by the unquenchable feelings of nature. The commissioners appointed to try Carlos reported, that he was guilty of having meditated, and, at his arrest, attempted parricide; and that he had conspired to usurp the sovereignty of Flanders. They represented the matter as too high for a sentence; but insinuated that mercy might be dictated by prudence, and threw out a hint, that the prince was no longer responsible for his actions.

Men of more science than the Spanish commissioners and more secure in their circumstances, might be perplexed by the intrinsic difficulty of ascertaining the precise truth, in a case where the malignant rage of Carlos often approached to insanity, and might sometimes be inflamed to such a degree as to be transformed into utter alienation of mind. The clouds which always darkened his feeble reason, might sometimes quench it. The subtle and shifting transformations of wild passion into maniacal disease, the returns of the maniac to the scarcely more healthy state of stupid anger, and the character to be given to acts done by him when near the varying frontier which separates lunacy from malignity, are matters which have defied all the experience and sagacity of the world. At this point the records of the commission close with a note made by their secretary, stating shortly that the prince died of his malady, which hindered a judgment. A dark veil conceals the rest of these proceedings from the eyes of mankind. It is variously related. Philip is said to have ordered that advantage should be taken of the distempered appetites of Carlos, which after he had confined himself to iced water for a time, were wont to hurry him into voraciously swallowing monstrous quantities of animal food; that his excesses should be allowed, if not encouraged; and that he should thus be betrayed into becoming his own executioner. Another narrative, not quite irreconcilable with the former, describes the prince of Eboli and the cardinal Espinosa as having intimated to Olivarez, the physician of Carlos (as darkly as John spoke to Hubert), that it was necessary for him to execute the sentence of death, which the king had pronounced on the wretched patient, in such a manner that his decease might seem to be natural. When he felt himself to be in the agonies of death, he desired to see his father, and to receive his blessing. Philip sent his blessing, but by the advice of the confessor declined to disturb the dying devotions of Carlos. Vanquished by nature, however, he stole into the chamber, and, standing unseen, spreading his

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