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 a Spanish marriage for Prince Charles, which was already in 1613 being advanced by Sarmiento (Gondomar), she had too strong an aversion from Somerset to aid the intrigues in the same direction into which he was entering about the year 1614, with the object of recovering the ascendency that he was beginning to lose. Possibly, the visit to England in 1614 of her brother King Christian IV (whose falsely reported death she had in 1612 ‘mourned in white taffeta’) may have helped to weaken whatever Spanish sympathies she retained. He had come this time unexpectedly and—to the gossips—unaccountably, not in magnificent state, as on his earlier visit in 1606, when, amidst the thunder of the navy guns, he had on Windmill Hill told King James that if he had spent half a kingdom on a conquest he could not have contented him half so well. At all events, with the help of the newly appointed secretary of state, Sir Ralph Winwood, the queen began to operate against Somerset, dark suspicions against whom may have had their weight with her; and in April 1615 she was prevailed upon through Archbishop Abbot (see his narrative in vol. i. of Collections) to persuade the king to appoint Villiers a gentleman of the bedchamber—the first step towards the supplanting of the favourite in esse, which was soon consummated by the Overbury scandal. With Villiers, as her correspondence shows, the queen was always on easy and excellent terms, though probably her personal influence over the king was never slighter than during the ascendency of his last favourite. In 1616 the queen was thought to aim at a regency during the king's absence in Scotland—whether for any motive beyond that of vanity does not appear. In her last years she showed a friendly feeling towards the French royal family, even when, in 1618, court ladies were beginning to adopt the catholic religion in expectation of the Spanish match (see Calendar of State Papers, 7 March 1618). Her own coquettings with Rome—for some such term seems, after all, appropriate—had come to an end at a rather earlier date. Their history on the whole forms the most curious chapter in her life, though different historians have put very different interpretations upon it. The hopes entertained by the catholics in Scotland in the years immediately preceding James's accession to the English throne have been already touched upon (, vi. 137). In England rumour began to busy itself with the queen's supposed inclination towards Rome already at the time of her coronation, when she had refused to communicate according to the rites of the church of England. She had communicated on a subsequent occasion, and had accompanied the king to church on Christmas day, 1603. But she refused to do so again. Soon afterwards she received consecrated objects from Pope Clement VIII through Sir Arthur Standen, a catholic whom King James had sent on a mission to some of the Italian states. Standen, who made no secret of the matter, was sent to the Tower, the pope's gifts were returned, and some changes were made by the king in the queen's household. But the chief result of her first communications with Rome was a proclamation, in February 1604, for the banishment of all Jesuits and seminary priests (, i. 116, 142–4). Towards the end of the same year Sir James Lindsay went to Rome, with instructions but without a mission, not a paid ambassador but a messenger who had been granted a pension beforehand. He was reported to have told the pope—but he denied the truth of the report—that the queen was already a catholic at heart, and that the king was, on certain conditions, ready to follow her example. At all events the pope had been much gratified by Lindsay's information, had appointed a committee of cardinals for considering the condition of England, and had ordered prayers to be offered up for her conversion (ib. 225–6). With these endeavours may perhaps be connected the journey from Spain to England, contrived by the jesuit Walpole in 1605, of a lady, who is manifestly to be identified with Donna Luisa de Carvajal, ‘with purpose to convert the queen our mistress to the Roman religion.’ Great hopes were entertained of this visitor, but already in the same year her endeavours are said to have met with little success (, Memorials, ii. 149, 157). The events of this year 1605—the year of the Gunpowder plot—could not but repress any desire in high places to show favour to catholicism; and the queen had special reason to be cautious, as Garnet, in a statement which the king would not allow to be given in evidence, had referred to her as ‘most regarded of the pope’ (, u. s., 280, note). Thus it was not till some years afterwards, under Paul V, that Rome, this time in a less sanguine spirit, again took up the English question (, Geschichte des Kirchenstaates, i. 366). In 1608 the Savoy ambassador at Madrid told Sir Charles Cornwallis that Philip III and the Duke of Lerma had been very hopeful that a toleration of catholicism would within a few years be granted in England, partly because of ‘the great