Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/423

 i 5 76.] fHE SPANISH TREATY. 403 The Parliament of 1576 passed off without touching the succession question ; and never, Mary Stuart wrote to the Archbishop of Glasgow in the summer of that year, had her prospects been fairer than they had now become. Every cloud had rolled away from the sky. Elizabeth, she said, had not dared to interfere with her pretensions. At the close of the session she had asked two of the judges, who, in their conscience, had the best right to succeed after her death : the judges had answered, that Henry VIII. had no power to change the customs of the realm ; the next in blood must in- herit : and Elizabeth had replied with a sigh, ' the Queen of Scots then is my heir.' 1 Whether she considered that she was consulting best for her own security, or for the interests of the realm, or whether she felt bound in honour to show the same forbearance to the claims of the Queen of Scots as had been shown by her sister towards her own, her evident purpose was to humour the ex- pectations of the Catholics, and to comfort all unquiet spirits with the hope that if she was let alone for her for a man of his quality, we can be content you shall enlarge his diet by allowing unto him for his dinner the shoulder of a wren, and for his supper a leg of the same, besides his ordinary ounces. The like proportion we mean you shall allow to our brother of Warwick, saving that we think it meet that in respect that his body is more replete than his brother's, that the wren's leg allowed at supper on festival days be abated, for that light supper agrceth best with rules of physic. This order our meaning is you shall inviolably observe, and so may you right well assure yourselves of a most thankful debtor lo so well deserving a creditor.' Memoran- dum of her Majesty's letter to the Earl and Countess of Shrewsbury, June 4, 1577 : MSS. MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS. 1 The Queen of Scots to the Arch- bishop of Glasgow, May and June, 1576: LABANOFF, vol. i v