beth was her mysterious conduct respecting
the succession to the English throne; her jealousy of power, her strange
unhappiness in the dread of personal neglect, made her averse to see a
successor in her court, or even to hear of a distant one; in a successor
she could only view a competitor. Camden tells us that she frequently
observed, that "most men neglected the setting sun," and this melancholy
presentiment of personal neglect this political coquette not only lived
to experience, but even this circumstance of keeping the succession
unsettled miserably disturbed the queen on her death-bed. Her ministers,
it appears, harassed her when she was lying speechless; a remarkable
circumstance, which has hitherto escaped the knowledge of her numerous
historians, and which I shall take an opportunity of disclosing in this
work.

Elizabeth leaving a point so important always problematical, raised up
the very evil she so greatly dreaded; it multiplied the aspirants, while
every party humoured itself by selecting its own claimant, and none
more busily than the continental powers. One of the most curious is the
project of the Pope, who, intending to put aside James the First on
account of his religion, formed a chimerical scheme of uniting Arabella
with a prince of the house of Savoy; the pretext, for without a pretext
no politician moves, was their descent from a bastard of our Edward the
Fourth; the Duke of Parma was, however, married; but the Pope, in his
infallibility, turned his brother the Cardinal into the Duke's
substitute by secularising the churchman. In that case the Cardinal
would then become King of England in right of this lady!--provided he
obtained the crown![326]

We might conjecture from this circumstance that Arabella was a catholic,
and so Mr. Butler has recently told us; but I know of no other authority
than Dodd, the catholic historian, who has inscribed her name among his
party. Parsons, the wily Jesuit, was so doubtful how the lady, when
young, stood disposed towards Catholicism, that he describes "her
religion to be as tender, green, and flexible as is her age and sex, and
to be wrought hereafter and settled according to future events and
times." Yet, in 1611, when she was finally sent into confinement, one
well informed of court affairs writes, "that the Lady Arabella hath _not
been found inclinable to popery_."[327]

Even Henry the Fourth of France was not unfriendly to this papistical
project of pla