Page:History of England (Froude) Vol 10.djvu/520

 5 oo REIGN OF ELIZABETH. [CH. 61. another argument, which he knew would tell. If she married, Parliament would insist on a settlement of the succession. With the door opened to their hereditary enemies the nation could not and would not remain any longer in uncertainty. 1 Worried, harassed, imagining now that she desired the marriage above all things, when her people most ob- jected to it, she ordered Walsingham out of her presence in a rage, telling him he was fit for nothing but to be a champion of heretics. She turned pathetic. In a flood of tears she asked ' if there could be any doubt that the best surety to her and the realm was to marry and have a child and continue the line of her father/ ' She con- demned herself of simplicity in committing the matter to be argued by the council. She thought rather to have had a universal request to proceed in the marriage than to have made a doubt of it.' ' Conceiving by this/ wrote Burghley, 'her earnest disposition in the marriage, the council held one more consultation.' Walsingham and Leicester, since she chose to have it so, withdrew their opposition. They agreed, all of them, to do the best they could to gain the consent of Parliament, and to reconcile the country. They went again to her the next day. They told her that her pleasure should be theirs. They would die at her feet rather than offend her, and as she wished it, 1 Descifrada de Don Bernardino, 1 6 de Octubre : MSS. Simancas. The ambassador, describing the effect of Bromley's words on Elizabeth, speaks of her 'pusillanimidad ymiedo en cualquiera adversidad ' as some- thing which everybody knew.