nation of the queen,’ but that Lerma had now changed his opinion, confessing to having been misinformed about the queen (Winwood, Memorials, ii. 485). In 1612, however, her supposed leaning to catholicism was once more made the subject of speculation. According to Galluzzi (Storia del Granducato di Toscana, lib. vi. cap. ii.) among the courts which in 1611 and 1612 were anxious to secure a matrimonial alliance for one of their princesses with Henry, Prince of Wales, was that of Florence, where the grand duke, Cosmo II, was desirous of marrying his sister Catharine to the English prince, hoping that the prospects of catholicism in England would benefit by the match. The Cavalier Ottaviano Lotti, who represented the grand duke in London, was very popular at court there; and him ‘the queen had admitted to the secret of her catholicism, and he served her in procuring her from Rome indulgences and devozioni;’ and the Prince of Wales desired him for his companion. Pope Paul V, however, could not be prevailed upon to approve of the scheme, and forbade its being carried on further. Lotti was therefore charged to accumulate all possible arguments for persuading the pope of the usefulness of the match for converting the island; and he was further instructed to try to interest Queen Anne in the matter, and to extract from her some documentary attestation of her sincerity in the catholic faith and of the hopes they had to induce the prince to profess it. Lotti did as he was bid, and the queen furnished him with a memorandum in which, while professing herself a catholic and desirous of the re-establishment of catholicism in the island, she showed that this could not be effected unless the pope obtained for her a daughter-in-law of that communion, adding that the prince was not firm in Anglican opinions. She assured his holiness of the desire of all good catholics in England that the marriage should be brought about, and finally, in a letter all in her own hand, declared herself the pope's most obedient daughter, and prayed him to believe what Lotti should have said in her name. But though the principal English catholics all added their instances to those of the queen, the pope was not to be moved; and the grand duke hereupon hit upon the plan of sending his sister to Lorraine, where Prince Henry was to marry her out of hand. But when Lotti returned to England to broach this device, he found things entirely changed at court there—Salisbury dead, and other marriages for the prince on the carpet. The death of Prince Henry in November 1612 put an end to the business. This circumstantial story, which was rather grandiloquently referred to in an article on Ranke's ‘Popes’ in the ‘Quarterly Review,’ April 1837, but which has not found its way into other histories, probably contains a considerable substratum of fact. At the same time what is known of the religious views of Prince Henry conflicts so strongly with one of the statements in the narrative as to throw some doubt upon the others. According to despatches now at Simancas sent by Gondomar in 1613, at the time when he was using the influence of the queen to help him to divert King James from the French alliance, she at that time attended the services of the church of England with the king, but ‘she never could be induced to partake of the communion at the hands of a protestant minister, and those who were admitted to her privacy in Denmark House knew well that as often as she thought she could escape observation she was in the habit of repairing to a garret for the purpose of hearing mass from the lips of a catholic priest, who was smuggled in for the purpose’ (Gardiner, ii. 225). The main influence which had inclined her to catholicism was ascribed to the first lady of her bedchamber, Mrs. (Miss) Drummond, who was in the receipt of a pension from Spain. When this lady married and returned to Scotland in 1613, a powerful influence was removed; but the queen continued to indulge her inclination towards Rome, and at Oatlands had two priests, one of whom said mass daily in her presence. They forbade her accompanying her husband to church, so that angry words passed between the king and queen, and he complained to Gondomar of the change which he found in her (ib. 293). When, in 1615, we find the lady of the archduke's ambassador appealing to the queen to intercede for the release of ten priests, this request might be sufficiently explained by her reputation for kindness of heart (Cal. of State Papers, July (?) 1615, and compare ib. July 14). And there is satisfactory proof that, when her last hour came, she made open profession of protestantism. Abbot, archbishop of Canterbury, and King, bishop of London, attended at her deathbed; when not only did she follow their prayers word by word, but in answer to the archbishop she declared that she ‘renounced the mediation of all saints and her own merits, and relied only upon her Saviour’ (Burton, vi. 169, from a paper, ‘Madam the Queen's Death and Maner theirof,’ among Sir James Balfour's MSS.; Abbotsford Miscellany, 81; compare also Sir Edward Harwood to Carleton, 6 March 1619, Cal. State Papers). Thus the Church of Rome could not actually claim
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