498 THE SUCCESSION QUESTION October men, although it was denied expression in parliament ; and it was as a tract for the times, and not as a posthumous tribute to the martyr of a dead cause, that Went worth's Pithie Exhortation was published surreptitiously in 1598. Time, however, was the best solvent of the problem, and its working is evident even in the tenacious mind of Wentworth : so that ultimately the gloomy prophecies of thirty years were discredited, not by any apparent falsity of argument, but by the accident of the queen's long life. The succession question in its later sense appears to have played no part in the first parliament of the reign, simply because members had every reason to hope that the queen would marry and provide an heir of her own body. Her failure to do so was, however, bound to lead to its discussion, and in court circles this had already happened 1 when in October 1562 she was struck down by small-pox. For a few days her life was despaired of, and the crisis revealed, as nothing else could have done, the peril of the state. 2 It was under the shadow of a great fear that her second parliament met in January 1562/3, suspicious of the queen's reluctance to marry, and probably convinced that the peace of the country hung upon the slender thread of a sickly woman's life. 3 In the house of commons, the very day after the presentation of their Speaker, a burgess spoke at length upon the succession, and at the next meeting ' divers wise personages ' urged that a motion should be made to the queen upon this question and her marriage. On the following day a strong committee was appointed to draw up a petition, with the unusual inclusion of the Speaker as one of its members ; and on 26 January the petition was read in the house and the privy councillors there were commissioned to arrange an interview with the queen. At the same time the comptroller was sent to the lords with the request that they would further the petition, returning to announce that they ' well approved of ' it. The audience took place in the afternoon of 28 January. 4 Here, however, we become entangled in a confusion that is as old as Camden, and into our narrative of events must be woven the correction of several errors. The session of 1562/3 saw the presentation of two petitions to the queen, the one by the lords, the other by the commons. Of this there can be no doubt. But not the slightest hint that the upper house petitioned Elizabeth is to be found in its journals, and, perhaps in consequence, Camden transferred the lords' petition of 1562/3 to the parliament of 1566, being followed in this by D'Ewes, whose persistent glosses to justify his action practically convict him of his error. The blunder was 1 Spanish Cat., Eliz., i, passim. 2 Ibid. i. 262 f. 3 Ibid, i, 296. 4 Commons Journals, i. 62-4.
