1921 IN 1562/3 AND 1566 499 repeated by Froude, and was only set right, some years ago, by Dr. (now Sir George) Prothero, 1 whose arguments are con- vincing enough, although they ignore explicit statements by Cecil, Sir John Mason, and the Spanish ambassador, Quadra, which corroborate them. 2 However, it still remains to point out what has not yet been stated, that the suits of the two houses were made on separate occasions, the audience on 28 January being with the commons alone. This the queen's reply shows, for, despite Sir George Prothero 's suggestion to the contrary, it must be identified with a speech addressed to the Speaker and the lower house, which is printed in Harington's Nugae Antiquae. 3 The audience with the lords was later, but when we do not know. The only account of it is given by Quadra, who wrote, ' The lords afterwards went to her and proposed the same ' question of the succession. In her response she ' told them that the marks they saw on her face were not wrinkles, but pits of small-pox, and that although she might be old God could send her children as He did to Saint Elizabeth ' : * they had better consider well ', she urged, ' what they were asking, as, if she declared a successor, it would cost much blood to England.' 4 As for Elizabeth's reply to the petition of the commons, it had been merely a postponement of her answer : ' I am deter- mined, in this so great and waightie a matter', she had said, 'to deferr my aunswere till some other tyme. . . .' 5 Accordingly the house continued the business of the session in daily expectation 1 Ante, ii. 742-4 ; Camden, Annals (ed. 1717), i. 124 ; D'Ewes, Journals, pp. 81 and 105 ; for glosses cf. pp. 104, 107 ; Froude, Hist, of England (cabinet ed.), vii. 456. 2 Wright, Queen Elizabeth and Her Times (1838), i. 124, 130 ; Spanish Col., Eliz., i. 296. 3 Harington, Nugae Antiquae (ed. 1804),'i. 80 ; ante, ii. 745-6. Sir George suggested that this was the queen's speech delivered in 1566 (5 November) ; but the new report of the 1566 speech that I print below (p. 514), the date of which is established beyond doubt, definitely disproves his suggestion. The two speeches are totally different, Harington's being addressed to the commons only, and the 1566 speech to both lords and commons. The date of the speech in Harington is more or less fixed, if we accept as sound my allocation of other speeches of the queen to all occasions when such were delivered, with the exception only of the interview on 28 January 1562/3 (cf . infra, pp. 502, 505, 513, and footnotes in each case) : and in fact the wording of the speech itself demands this date. I know of two manuscripts of the speech, the one in the British Museum (Add. MS. 33271, fo. 13), the other in the Record Office (State Papers, Dom., Eliz., xxvii, no. 36). The latter is headed ' 1563 ', and begins with the Speaker's name, Williams, above which is a comment in Cecil's hand, ' the spekar of the parliament '. Although there is some reason for thinking that this transcript was made after 1566, its date and Cecil's comment are significant. If we accept Williams's name in association with the speech — and I do not see how we can avoid doing so, as the British Museum manuscript also has it — then the session is settled as 1562/3. Sir George Prothero's difficulty was that, having rightly assigned to this session another speech, he did not realize that there were two answers of the queen in 1562/3, the one on 28 January (Harington's), and the other at the close of the session (see p. 502, n. 2, below). 4 Spanish Cal., Eliz., i. 296. 5 Harington, i. 82. Kk2
