y's Memoirs.

** La Boderie, voL i. p. 120.

*** Winwood, vol. ii. p 55.

He therefore agreed with Rosni to support secretly the states general,
in concert with the king of France; lest their weakness and despair
should oblige them to submit to their old master. The articles of the
treaty were few and simple. It was stipulated, that the two kings should
allow the Dutch to levy forces in their respective dominions; and should
underhand remit to that republic the sum of one million four hundred
thousand livres a year, for the pay of these forces: that the whole
sum should be advanced by the king of France; but that the third of it
should be deducted from the debt due by him to Queen Elizabeth. And if
the Spaniards attacked either of the princes, they agreed to assist each
other; Henry with a force of ten thousand men, James with that of six.
This treaty, one of the wisest and most equitable concluded by James
during the course of his reign was more the work of the prince himself,
than any of his ministers.[*]

Amidst the great tranquillity, both foreign and domestic with which the
nation was blest, nothing could be more surprising than the discovery
of a conspiracy to subvert the government, and to fix on the throne
Arabella Stuart, a near relation of the king's by the family of
Lenox, and descended equally from Henry VII. Every thing remains still
mysterious in this conspiracy; and history can give us no clew to
unravel it. Watson and Clarke, two Catholic priests, were accused of the
plot; Lord Grey, a Puritan; Lord Cobham, a thoughtless man, of no fixed
principle; and Sir Walter Raleigh, suspected to be of that philosophical
sect who were then extremely rare in England, and who have since
received the appellation of "Free-thinkers;" together with these, Mr.
Broke, brother to Lord Cobham, Sir Griffin Markham, Mr. Copeley, Sir
Edward Parham. What cement could unite men of-such discordant principles
in so dangerous a combination, what end they proposed, or what means
proportioned to an undertaking of this nature, has never yet been
explained, and cannot easily be imagined. As Raleigh, Grey, and Cobham
were commonly believed, after the queen's death, to have opposed
proclaiming the king till conditions should be made with him, they were,
upon that account, extremely obnoxious to the court and ministry;
and people were apt, at first, to suspect that the plot was merely a
contrivance of Secretary Cecil, to get r