and some of the most British spirits were at work; and they,
with the malice or wisdom of opposition, combined the supply with the
succession; one was not to be had without the other.

This was a moment of great hope and anxiety with the French court; they
were flattering themselves that her reign was touching a crisis; and La
Mothe Fenelon, then the French ambassador at the court of Elizabeth,
appears to have been busied in collecting hourly information of the warm
debates in the commons, and what passed in their interviews with the
queen. We may rather be astonished where he procured so much secret
intelligence: he sometimes complains that he is not able to acquire it
as fast as Catherine de Medicis and her son Charles IX. wished. There
must have been Englishmen at our court who were serving as French spies.
In a private collection, which consists of two or three hundred original
letters of Charles IX., Catherine de Medicis, Henry III., and Mary of
Scotland, &c., I find two despatches of this French ambassador, entirely
relating to the present occurrence. What renders them more curious is,
that the debates on the question of the succession are imperfectly given
in Sir Symonds D'Ewes's journals; the only resource open to us. Sir
Symonds complains of the negligence of the clerk of the commons, who
indeed seems to have exerted his negligence, whenever it was found most
agreeable to the court party.

Previous to the warm debates in the commons, of which the present
despatch furnishes a lively picture, on Saturday, 12th October, 1566, at
a meeting of the lords of the council, held in the queen's apartment,
the Duke of Norfolk, in the name of the whole nobility, addressed
Elizabeth, urging her to settle the suspended points of the succession,
and of her marriage, which had been promised in the last parliament. The
queen was greatly angered on the occasion; she would not suffer their
urgency on those points, and spoke with great animation. "Hitherto you
have had no opportunity to complain of me; I have well governed the
country in peace, and if a late war of little consequence has broken
out, which might have occasioned my subjects to complain of me, with me
it has not originated, but with yourselves, as truly I believe. Lay your
hands on your hearts, and blame yourselves. In respect to the choice of
the succession, not one of ye shall have it; that choice I reserve to
myself alone. I will not be buried while I am living, a