When the Earl returned to Court after the birth of his heir, he noticed an ominous change in the condition of Elizabeth. Her iron will was no longer sufficient to hide from those about her the many infirmities from which she suffered, and to the discerning eye death was plainly written upon her face. Among the ministers, too, Northumberland found changes, none more surprising to him than that which had converted Sir Robert Cecil into an adherent of James. This unscrupulous son of an unscrupulous sire had skilfully trimmed his sails to the new breeze, and was busy making as good bargains for himself, his brother, and others of his kinsmen and connections as time and circumstances permitted. To placate James the more readily, he enlisted in his service Lord Henry Howard,1 who had been for years the principal secret agent of the Scottish King in England. These things made a deep impression upon Northumberland, an impression which was strengthened by his certainty that Elizabeth had but a few months to live. He attended the Queen on her last progress, and we find him writing to Lord Cobham from Sir William Cecil's house at Burnham, "Wednesday night the Queen was not well, but would not be known of it, for the next day she walked abroad in the Park, lest any should take notice of it." On his return to London, the Earl determined to take his wife's counsel and sound James in regard to the Catholics. With this end in view, he made overtures through the Scottish Ambassador, promising his unqualified support if "toleration for the Catholics" were part of the King's policy. James replied through his Ambassador in a conciliatory manner, and promised abundant favour to all, Catholic or Protestant, who embraced his cause. Such an answer was too vague, however, for Northumberland's liking. He resolved, if possible, to bind the Scottish King to something tangible, and accordingly despatched to

1 Youngest brother of the fourth Duke of Norfolk, who had been executed in 1572. Lord Henry afterwards became Earl of Northampton. He was a tireless inventor of the gross flattery to which James was addicted.

2 State Papers, 1602.

Edinburgh a man in whose diplomatic powers he had the fullest confidence,-his own cousin, Thomas Percy,1 then Constable of Alnwick Castle.

The good looks and plausible manners of Percy greatly pleased King James, who treated him more as a nobleman of distinction than as a private gentleman. The condition and prospects of the Catholics were discussed at much length between them, the King displaying "a greate sympathy" for this section of his future subjects.2 James even went so far as to invite Percy "to lay in his chamber" for several nights, in order that they might the more freely talk the matter over. Eventually the Earl's agent was sent away with promises calculated to inspire English Catholics with the liveliest hope. These promises James afterwards repudiated, thinking, no doubt, that Percy's word would scarcely be believed against that of the King. In this surmise he was right, so far as his own times were concerned, but, to the unprejudiced historian of to-day, the balance of probability seems vastly in favour of Percy's veracity. For in various letters still extant, which the shifty monarch wrote to Northumberland during 1602 and 1603, the very pledges of toleration thus shamelessly denied are reiterated almost in the very words reported to the Catholics by Thomas Percy.3

There can be no doubt as to the effect produced upon his co-religionists by the agent's rosy account of this mission to Scotland. Northumberland, now practically convinced of James's liberal intentions, strongly advised his Catholic friends and adherents to accept the son of Mary Stuart as heir to the throne. Even shrewd Jesuits like Garnet, as well acquainted with the secrets of Court intrigue as most foreign ministers, were persuaded into abandoning their opposition to the Scottish monarch, and voluntarily tore up the tracts which they had prepared in favour of the

1 Afterwards one of the ringleaders in the Gunpowder Plot. A full account of the career of this remarkable scion of the Percy family will be found on a later page.

2 Thomas Percy to Northumberland; Alnwick MSS.

3 See supra.

4 Percy was a Romanist.

Lady Arabella or the Infanta of Spain. The great majority of the Romanists declared for James; and only a few venerable survivors of the Northern Massacre, men whose hearts had been embittered by persecution, still held suspiciously aloof. To satisfy these, and so unite the entire Catholic body in allegiance, Northumberland wrote to James the first of a series of letters which deserve perusal, as much for their evident honesty and patriotism as for the remarkable absence from their pages of that cringing flattery which Cecil, Howard, and the other "king's men" in England used so unsparingly in their correspondence with Holyrood.1

In pressing the urgency of the Catholic claims upon the King's notice, the Earl remarks :-" It were a pity to lose a good Kingdom for not tolerating a mass in a corner (if upon that it resteth), so long as they shall not be too busy disturbers of the Government of the State, nor seek to make us contributors to a Peter Priest." 2

This passage was, a year or so later, used against him in Star Chamber proceedings; but for the time being James acquiesced, or pretended to acquiesce, in the opinion so frankly expressed that no real harm could come out of permitting Catholics to worship God in their own way. The removal of political disabilities was not asked for, but merely leave to celebrate "mass in a corner" without fear of prosecution.

In reply James thanked Northumberland and his Catholic friends for their support, declared that he had no intention of persecuting the latter, and expressed himself as overjoyed to discover in the Earl "a nobleman carrying so honourable a mind, as also that doeth rightly interpret and discern" his (the King's) "honest intentions."3 Other letters were exchanged in a like strain; and the last doubter among the Catholics was finally won over by an epistle (presently to be quoted) in which James, in unequivocal terms, pledged his honour to

1 The letters of Northumberland to James may be found in Camden Society Publications, No. LXXVIII. (Correspondence of King James, from the original Hatfield MSS.).

grant liberty of conscience to all of that faith, and even to advance such of them as proved worthy to positions of power and trust.

Cecil plays the Earl false.

The correspondence between Northumberland and the King of Scots proved most disquieting to Sir Robert Cecil, who was as yet unaware of its purport. Fully conscious of his own double-dealing, he feared lest the Earl might attempt to injure him at Holyrood by disclosing proofs of the many intrigues which he had fathered in the past for the purpose of excluding James from the throne. His long and intimate knowledge of Northumberland's character might have banished any thoughts of underhand dealing from his mind; for, amid many faults, the Earl possessed the virtue of thorough loyalty to those whom he accounted his friends. But the suspicious and cynical nature, which Cecil had inherited from his father, led him to regard loyalty between man and man as an almost impossible quality. Even while he assiduously cultivated the interests of his immediate family circle, he trusted no member thereof; and his favourite maxim, like that of Mazarin, was that, in cases of suspected treachery, it was good policy to be the first traitor.

He had rather discouraged Northumberland from joining in the general change of front adopted by the party formerly opposed to James,1 for it was his design that the King should welcome him as the first and most important of these converts. It now became Sir Robert's aim to forestall any danger which might threaten his own supremacy by poisoning James's mind in advance against the Earl, as well as against Cobham and Raleigh. In Lord Henry Howard, who acted as go-between in the secret dealings with Scotland, he found a willing instrument; for Howard treasured a spite of long standing against all three of the persons thus attacked, and in his letters to James styled them "the diabolic triplicity."2

1 This party included the two Cecils, Northumberland, Rutland, Cobham, Grey, Raleigh, and Sir Francis Bacon.

2 Correspondence of King James.

Hints, innuendoes, and even deliberate perversions of truth, all designed to fill James with detestation of Northumberland and his associates, were dictated by Cecil to his agent, for immediate transmission into Scotland. And all the while, this worthy inheritor of Burghley's mantle preserved an outward appearance of friendship towards the men whom he slandered daily, and for the Earl in particular professed the most disinterested affection.

Nothing could afford a greater contrast than the allusions made to Cecil in Northumberland's Scottish correspondence. Thoroughly honest himself, and frank even to a fault, the Earl never for a moment suspected the cruel trick which was being played upon him. In his eyes, Cecil's mock friendship was a real and valued possession; and when he mentioned the latter's name to James it was always in terms of praise. At the very time when Sir Robert was assuring his future sovereign that Northumberland was a traitor at heart, without credit or respect, and utterly odious to his countrymen, we find the Earl writing to Holyrood in this fashion :

"The secret of his (Cecil's) conscience doth conclude your right to be the next heir, and that his heart will then wish that it may have that approbation with all men. The ancient familiarity and inward trust hath been between us, which doeth make him understand me very well; his knowledge of my opinion of y' title, when necessity of death must leave it to any other hand; his conceiving of my determination to run that course in setting up all the faults of my fortune that way; yet doth he continue his love in preferring me, and in befriending me what he is able."

It was but scant preferment and scurvy friendship that the Earl received at the hands of this "loving" familiar. Read what Cecil (using Lord Henry Howard as a mouthpiece) sent by way of "certaine information" to the Scottish Court, at this very time :

"The man is beloved of none, followed by none, trusted by no one gentleman or nobleman of quality within the land, beside his faction; no, not by the gentlemen or peasants of his own