i 1921 IN 1562/3 AND 1566 513 A further draft of the preamble, of which only the third section is now extant, but which is, I take it, an amended version of the second model, makes this point clearer : and it further incorporates one other of the features of the abandoned address in its affirmation of the purity of motive behind the agitation of that session. 1 The greatest interest attaches to this partial draft, for it proves, what has hitherto been doubtful, that the queen saw the preamble. It is the final page of a copy that was submitted to her, and at the foot of it she has expressed her feelings in inimitable and emphatic manner. 2 Her displeasure was evidently conveyed to the house before the offensive preamble was formally read, and thereupon the attenuated substitute was adopted which can now be read in the Statutes of the Realm, 3 and which in its threefold division and its topics alone hints at its doughty parentage. So at least it would seem, for the subsidy bill was read as a whole for the third time on 12 December,
- and therefore the preamble which on 10 December was read a first
and second time was doubtless the substitute. The * long argu- ments ' with which the phlegmatic Seymour distinguished these two readings in the journals commemorate the stubbornness with which the intransigeants gave way. 4 The subsidy bill passed in the lords on 18 December, 5 and on 2 January Elizabeth dissolved one of her most troublesome parliaments. It was fitting that to such a drama there should be an epilogue ; and before the dissolution was pronounced the queen herself addressed the parliament. Her speech has hitherto been known only at second-hand from a report of it printed in D'Ewes's Journals ; 6 but a draft in her own hand is in the British Museum, 7 and a transcript of it is printed in extenso in the Hatfield Manuscripts, although wrongly dated there. 8 It reveals once more the extraordinary ability of Elizabeth to reprehend and yet to conciliate, to play the prince and yet to identify herself with the welfare of the realm. * Who is so simple ', she exclaimed, that doutes whither a prince that is hed of all the body may not com- maund the fete not to stray whan the[y] wold slip ? God forbid that your liberty shuld make my bondage or that your lawful liberties shuld any wais haue bine infringed, no no, my comandement tended no whit to that ende : and at the close of the speech, Let this my displing stand you in stede of sorar strokes neuer to tempt to far a princes paciens and let my comfort piuk up your dismayed sprites 1 Infra, p. 519. * Infra, pp. 519-20. 3 iv. i. 505-6. 4 Commons' Journals, i. 79. 5 Lords' Journals, i. 660. • pp. 116-17. 7 Cotton Charter, iv. 38 (2). 8 part xiii, pp. 214-15. VOL. XXXVI. — NO. CXLIV. L 1
