Life of Arabella Stuart (Volume 1); Containing a Biographical Memoir, and a Collection of Her Letters, with Notes and Documents from Original Sources, Relating to Her History (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: CHAPTER IV. JESUIT PLOTS AND MARRIAGE PROJECTS. I59O-I6O2. Arabella's favour at court was now rapidly on the wane, chiefly because of the matrimonial schemes and suspicious plots which were seething round the innocent girl. As early as 1586 the English Catholics were conspiring to gain possession of her person, in order to marry her to a foreign prince, and she was barely fifteen (1590) when their schemes, supported by the Pope's influence, took a definite shape. The elder son of the famous Alexander Farnese, Duke of Parma, was the candidate proposed, the third in the long series of suitors destined to sue in vain for Arabella's hand. The chief difficulty in the way, however, was that the firstbridegroom proposed (the elder son) married while the negotiations were proceeding; and the second son was a cardinal, and therefore under vows of celibacy, but the Pope readily undertook to release him from his obligations, in order to make the marriage feasible. In him, the direct descendant of Edward III. through the marriage of John of Gaunt's eldest legitimate daughter with John I. of Portugal, the Romanists saw a new claimant for the English crown, whose rights, if coupled with Arabella's, would, they thought, prove irresistible to the nation. Calendar of State Papers, Scottish Series, Mary Queen of Scots, 1586, p. 1012. Cipher Letter, September. But these very pretensions made it impossible to propose the match to Elizabeth, and underhand means were therefore devised to bring it about without her knowledge. The Pope sent spies to England to attempt to gain possession of the young heiress's person, Sir William Stanley, one of the most active of his agents between Spain and England, being the chief of those employed. In the confession of James Young, a Jesuit (taken in Au...