of the society, a wish that Persons should leave Rome for a time; he accordingly retired to Naples, and did not return to Rome until after the death of Clement*.

CHAP. XLII.

THE CONSPIRACY OF SIR WALTER RALEIGH.

1603.

THE conspiracy of sir Walter Raleigh and his associates appears to be involved in impenetrable obscurity. The ultimate objects of it were indistinctly understood by the conspirators; but, in their first measure,--the placing of lady Arabella Stuart on the throne, they were all agreed. It has been mentioned in a former part of this work, that Henry the eighth, by his will, limited the crown, in default of issue of his daughters Mary and Elizabeth, to Eleanor, the second daughter of his younger sister Mary, and the heirs of her body, to the entire exclusion of the Scottish line, or the descendants of Margaret his eldest sister. The validity of his will was questioned; and, so far as it regarded the limitation of the crown to the lady Eleanor, it was entirely disregarded. Margaret, as we have seen, was married, first to James the fourth of Scotland, and after his decease, to Archibald earl of Angus. James, the English king, was the great-grandson and heir of the first mar* More, p. 386.

riage; lady Arabella Stuart was the great-granddaughter and heiress of the second. By the act of the twenty-seventh of queen Elizabeth, a person found guilty of pretending to the crown, or attempting any invasion, insurrection, or assassination against queen Elizabeth, was excluded from all claim to the succession. The queen of Scots was evidently within the provisions of this act; and, supposing it to extend to James, the lady Arabella was legal heir to the crown*.

Some time before the death of Elizabeth, Cecil, by the mediation of sir George Hume, afterwards created earl of Dunbar, made his peace with James, and afterwards kept a correspondence with him, through the remainder of the reign of Elizabeth. On the accession of James to the throne of England, he gave his entire confidence to Cecil, and neglected Raleigh. This irritated the latter †, and brought him into acquaintance and familiarity with men as discontented as himself; differing in their views, but agreeing in the wish of a new order of things, and particularly in the removal of James,

* This was strongly urged against James, by Persons. (Doleman, part ii. ch. iv.)

+ Kennett, (Compl. Hist. of England, vol. ii. p. 663), says, that Raleigh presented a memorial to James, in which, “with "a singular bitterness of style, he vindicates queen Elizabeth "from the death of Mary, and lays the death of that unfor"tunate queen, chiefly at the door of Cecil, the monarch's "minister, and his father; for which he appeals to Davison, "then in prison, the man that had despatched the warrant "for her execution, contrary to queen Elizabeth's express "command."

and the placing of the crown on Arabella, as a necessary measure to accomplish their objects. A conspiracy was never framed of more discordant materials: Raleigh was generally thought to be a deist; lord Grey was a puritan, lord Cobham a professed debauchee; they were joined by half-adozen other gentlemen, and by Watson and Clarke, two roman-catholic priests. All were tried, and found by the jury to have been guilty of high treason. The execution of sir Walter Raleigh was respited; Cobham, Grey, and Markham, were pardoned; Brooke, Watson, and Clarke, suffered the punishment of traitors. "The two priests," says an eye witness, in a letter published in the Hardwicke State Papers*, "led the way to the execu

tion, and were both very bloodily handled; for 66 they were both cut down alive; and Clarke, to "whom favour was intended, had the worse luck, "for he both strove to help himself, and spoke "after he was cut down. They died boldly both; "Watson, as he would have it seem, willing;

wishing he had more lives to spend, and one to "lose for every one he had by his treachery drawn "into this treason. Clarke stood somewhat upon "his justification, and thought he had hard measure; but imputed it to his function, and there"fore thought his death meritorious, a kind of "martyrdom."

The whole of this transaction is yet a mystery. Sir John Hawles, solicitor general in the reign of

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William the third *, remarks, that "what was proved against the lords Cobham and Grey, "Watson and Clarke, does not appear; or how "their trials were managed.-He declares it to be plain, that, in his day, sir Walter Raleigh's was

66

thought a sham plot.-" Aquæ turbatæ sunt, says Wilsont, the biographer of James, "et nemo "turbavit."

Whatever may have been the part of Watson or Clarke in this transaction, the catholics have never placed them among the sufferers on account of religion, or thought them entitled to particular commiseration.

It is observable, that both Watson and Clarke were strenuously opposed to the Spanish party, and that each had written with great vehemence against the jesuits, as its active partisans. Both, on the scaffold, acknowledged, and asked pardon of the society for, the intemperance of their writings. "It was very fit," says Dodd, in his account of Watson, "that he should make a disclaim of his passion, and several groundless aspersions, which "he had uttered t."

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* Reply to sir Bart, Shower's "Magistracy and Government "of England vindicated," p. 32; and see Winwood's Mem. vol. ii. p. 8, 11.

+ Life of James I.

Vol. ii. p. 380.

CHAP. XLIII.

THE DISPOSITION OF JAMES THE FIRST TOWARDS THE CATHOLICS AT HIS ACCESSION TO THE THRONE: HIS IMMEDIATE PROCLAMATION, AND LAWS AGAINST THEM: THEIR DISAP

POINTMENT AND FEELINGS.

HENRY

THAT the disposition of James the first, when he ascended the throne of England, was favourable to the roman-catholics, was certainly, at that time, universally believed. His mother, the unfortunate queen of Scots, and George Darnley, his father, were catholics, and James was baptised by a catholic priest, and confirmed by a catholic prelate. He was known to be fond of the solemnity of the religious service of the catholics. Their hierarchy, the general habits of obedience, which they show to their pastors, and which the inferior clergy show to the superior, accorded with his notions of subordination, and seemed to him, as they certainly are, excellently calculated to dispose the mass of the body to general order and regularity. On the other hand, he was disgusted with the total absence of gradation of rank in the presbyterian ministry, with their gloomy devotions, and levelling doctrines. Their frequent disturbances of the government, and the personal insults, which they had offered both to his mother and himself, increased this disgust. He could not but recollect that the catholics had been steadily attached to his mother under all