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108 for the future they should suffer no interruption to the free exercise of their religious faith.

All obstacles on the part of the French court were now removed, and the young princess prepared for her journey to England. But the pope continued his opposition, still presaging misfortune from the marriage, and refusing to deliver the dispensation. The patience of the queen-mother was exhausted; the ministers of France proposed to proceed on a dispensation from the ecclesiastic authorities in their own realm; but to this James demurred, lest the validity of the marriage might hereafter be called in question. At length the pope was satisfied by an oath taken by Louis, binding himself and his successors to compel James and his son, by all the power of France if necessary, to keep their engagement. The dispensation was delivered by Spada, the papal nuncio; the duke of Chevreuse, a prince of the house of Guise, and therefore a near relative of James and Charles, through the queen of Scots, was appointed proxy by Charles, and Buckingham was ordered to go over and receive the bride. But James was still destined not to see the completion of the marriage, after all his trouble through nine years of matrimonial negotiations, nor what would equally have delighted him, the receipt of the money.



On the 10th of March, 1625, he returned to Theobalds from the hunt with an illness upon him, which was regarded as the tertian ague, but which soon developed itself as gout at the stomach. He had long been so thoroughly undermined in constitution by his habits of eating and drinking,